by Ty Patterson
‘What you don’t know is just as the Mumbai attacks were happening, one of our soldiers, a Marine in Bagram, shot four soldiers in camp.’
Gasps in the room. Shocked faces. Heads leaning forward, mouths opening to fire questions.
Klouse quelled them with a look. ‘We kept it out of the news, there’s enough out there. Berlin, London, Mumbai, Bagram and now, Jakarta. The killer has the same commonalities as the others. Lone, single, male. Yes, the Jakarta killer has been identified. I got a call as I was entering this room. Mohammed Yunus, loner.’
He took a deep breath and looked around the room and continued when he found he had a captive audience.
‘I am convinced these are not random attacks. I am convinced something triggered these men. Something made them go out and buy weapons and shoot innocents. This isn’t conventional warfare. This isn’t terrorism the way we know it. This is terror.’
Chapter Twelve
Daniel Klouse, the National Security Advisor waited for someone to say something. No one did until Meghan raised her hand.
Zeb suppressed a smile. The twins. Nothing fazed them, not even the presence of four-star generals, or the CIA, or the FBI director.
‘Yes?’ Klouse asked. The twins were like god-daughters to him but there was nothing other than polite interest on his face.
‘Sir, there’s no way anyone can predict who the next killer will be.’
‘I want you to do just that,’ and with that, voices burst out.
Various agency heads shouted, vying for attention. Zeb watched bemused as the aggressive general pounded the table. His boss remained a picture of calm as she looked on sardonically.
The commotion died when Klouse rapped the table sharply. ‘Our country’s in safe hands if that’s the best you’ve got,’ he said sarcastically.
‘We should surveil all known right-wing supporters,’ the FBI Director suggested.
Which isn’t a bad idea, Zeb thought, except that Bahadur wasn’t right wing. Besides, how will the agencies get around the privacy laws in different countries?
Ideas flowed thick and fast, most of them impractical and after a couple of hours, Zeb was exhausted. He felt a nudge, turned his head slightly to hear Meghan hiss at him, ‘What have you done to annoy Clare?’
‘I did nothing,’ he retorted.
‘She brought us here to punish us,’ she blazed. ‘What other reason can there be?’
* * *
Zeb searched for his boss when they broke for lunch. She wasn’t visible. He wandered around the room looking for her and came across the general.
‘Your boss,’ he pointed a stubby finger, ‘she’s huddled up with the NSA. I don’t like it. His job is to be impartial, but it doesn’t look like that.
‘I’m just an aide, sir. I know nothing of her meeting,’ he said evasively and escaped.
There she was, coming out with Klouse. She caught his eye and signaled him and when he reached her, the rest of his team joined them.
‘You’re greenlighted,’ the NSA said gravely, though his eyes were warm. ‘Certain attendees had to see that this meeting was pointless. That only a small outfit like yours could deliver results.’
‘I don’t follow, sir,’ Beth.
‘The director of the National Security Agency has a significant database on people. He was unwilling to share that with anyone until he came to this meeting and saw how it progressed.’
Zeb exchanged glances with the twins. They all knew what kind of database Klouse was referring to.
‘We still don’t have the manpower, sir, to follow people. There must be thousands in that list they have.’
‘I’ll arrange that. You’ll get whatever you need.’
‘Sir, this database, it won’t extend to other countries will it?’
‘No. But Zeb, Clare, y’all have connections with other country agencies.’ He looked exasperated when there was no further question. ‘Why are you still here?’
Chapter Thirteen
Zeb shaved in his Jackson Heights apartment the next day, an old-style razor in one hand, a warm towel in the other.
They had returned late at night after having agreed on protocols and ROE, Rules of Engagement, with the National Security Agency. They had worked with that body before but the director was newly appointed and hence Klouse’s elaborate plan to get him onboard.
I still don’t know how we’ll prevent the next attack.
The lean, tall, brown-haired, dark-eyed man in the mirror had no helpful answers.
Zeb applied the razor to cheek, a smooth downward stroke and rinsed the blade under the tap. His hand faltered when a memory escaped the box, he had stored it in.
A woman’s hand holding the blade. Laughing at him as she held his chin with one hand and shaved his thick beard with the other.
The blade fell in the sink with a clatter. He didn’t hear it. He picked it up mechanically and stared unseeingly at the drip of water from the tap as the past came flooding back, triggered by the simple act of removing facial hair.
Another memory. A small boy tugging his mother’s leg.
‘I wanna shave dad, too.’
‘Of course, honey. You’ll do it better than him. He ends up nicking himself.’
The sharp edge of the razor bit into Zeb’s thumb, brought him back to the present. He stared at the cut on his skin, at the blood seeping out. He washed the wound, finished shaving and wiped his face.
Turned away from the mirror without looking at himself, without looking at the scars, the healed bullet wounds marking his bare chest.
She knew most of those. She knew their history, where I had gotten them, who had inflicted them.
Until one day she didn’t know the new ones, because she and their son were no longer around. Killed by terrorists.
Not just killed, he corrected himself. They made me watch as they tortured her and my son, raped her, and then ended her life.
The memories still hurt. They still seared. But he was finding it became easier to examine them. To acknowledge them. His hands no longer trembled. His body no longer shivered.
Time. It was the greatest healer.
He went to his wardrobe, opened it and examined the neatly folded clothes.
‘You fold them better than I do.’ A playful nudge with her shoulder.
He drew on a pair of jeans, tucked in his tee and tightened a leather belt around his waist.
He had spent a year hunting their killers. A year in the Middle East, tracking the most dangerous terrorists in the world…and he didn’t find them.
And when the news came that a drone had killed his targets, he had felt cheated. Even revenge had been denied to him.
Broken, he had cut all ties and drifted from country to country until in Japan, the oldest sensei he had ever known, started putting him together again. In the head, because there wasn’t anything wrong with his body. Along with the healing, he had been taught some of the most secretive martial arts in the world. He had then gone to Kerala, India, where he had learned another dying fighting skill. Then Tibet. High up in the mountains, meditating with the monks in the morning, tending to their sheep in the afternoon, cooking for them at night. Practicing self-defense at dawn.
The discipline, the rigor, had helped him prepare for the world and when he returned to New York, he was ready.
He hadn’t dated again. He had no wish to fill the void in him. His team became his family. He pulled on his boots, sent his memories back to the tightly packed boxes in his mind and went to join his crew.
Chapter Fourteen
‘You know Daritan Jinhai?’ Beth accosted Zeb the moment he arrived at their Columbus Avenue office.
‘Yeah.’
‘Call him. We need to know everything about Mohammed Yunus.’
Jinhai, the head of BIN, Badan Intelijen Negara, Indonesia’s national intelligence agency, was well-known to Zeb. The two had taken down several extremist groups back when the Indonesian was a field operative. He had risen u
p the ranks and when he had been appointed to the current position, the first person he had called had been Zeb.
‘Yunus was a bank clerk, forty-three years old, unmarried.’ the Indonesian briefed them half an hour later. It was nine pm in Jakarta but the BIN head was still in his office. ‘He was a big believer in peaceful approaches to any problem. He wanted the country to dismantle its military. He believed in dialogue over action. He argued with his bosses at the bank that loan defaulters should be given second and third chances. Supporter of LGBT rights. The last person anyone would expect to go out with a gun.’
Maybe that was the point? Zeb scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘Social media accounts?’
‘Very active on all of them. Coordinated with various groups for protests and marches.’
‘Violent tendencies?’
‘None that we have found so far.’
‘Can you share everything on him?’
‘Sure, the usual means?’
‘Yeah.’
The usual means involved splitting any packet of information into smaller pieces, encrypting each one of them and then uploading them to seemingly innocuous websites. A realtor. A dating one. Only someone who had the decryption key and knew where the various packets were, could put together the dossier.
‘What are you planning?’ Jinhai asked.
Zeb hesitated. The Indonesian knew that he worked on some black-ops team but didn’t know the extent of the operations.
Heck, if I can’t trust my friends, I might as well give up.
‘Finding a way to stop these attacks.’
A long silence and then an incredulous, ‘You’re serious?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good luck with that,’ Jinhai snorted and hung up.
The sound of squeaking roused Zeb from his thoughts. He looked up to see Beth had dragged the whiteboard to the center of the office and was writing the shooters’ names on it.
Otto Freisler
Cameron Walters
Ram Bahadur
Mohammed Yunus
Ruben Moses, the shooter in Bagram
She wrote their ages, their religion, their leanings. Flicked her hair back and when she was turning back to them, Bear said tightly.
‘Add one more name to that.’
All eyes swung towards him and then to the TV screen in the office.
Another shooter. This time in Mexico.
Chapter Fifteen
The three men, John Leslie, Phil Williams and Jack Smith, met in Kowloon’s Tim Shai Tsui neighborhood. Those names were aliases, deliberately chosen because they were common.
Each one of them played host, in rotation, for their meetings. It was Leslie’s turn for this particular one.
The neighborhood they met in was a district for shopping and entertainment, not where confidential matters were discussed. Which was why the three had agreed to meet in that part of northern Hong Kong.
They arrived individually in the deserted Ozone Sky Bar, on the one hundred and eighteenth floor of the International Commerce Center, from where they had a view of the whole of Hong Kong Island.
The establishment was empty because one of the attendees had pulled strings. Not the grace and favor kind. His involved threats, and given the power he wielded, the request, a command in reality, was acceded.
‘Six countries, more than a hundred dead,’ Leslie boasted.
They clinked glasses and downed the one-hundred-and-eighty-year-old single malt in appreciation.
All of them wore suits and to the casual observer, they looked like business-men. They were business-men, but what they did wouldn’t be termed in that manner by that same casual observer.
Each man reported to the second-most senior political figure in his country. Not that anyone in their countries, or anywhere else for that matter, knew of that reporting structure.
All three of them were former special forces operatives in their respective militaries. They were spymasters, they ran secretive outfits that usually operated against foreign countries.
They were unlikely allies. Even the most astute analyst wouldn’t dream that the three were working together.
‘The program is working very well,’ Williams admitted. ‘My people have a list of fifty people we are tracking all over Europe. They could be the next killer.’
‘We too have about the same in North and South America,’ Smith nodded.
‘We have about seventy in Asia and the Middle East,’ Leslie shrugged. ‘It’s not hard to find dissatisfied people in that region.’
‘Remember,’ Williams snapped, ‘no one who’s already known to the police.’
‘This isn’t my first operation.’
‘What about Bagram?’ Smith asked. ‘What did we achieve there?’
The Pentagon might have hushed up Moses’ attack, but these men knew. There was little that they didn’t know.
Williams shrugged. ‘This is an algorithm. It’s not perfect. We were thinking Moses will go off when he returns Stateside. The damage he could do there would be useful. Unfortunately, he reacted prematurely for us. No harm done. Its further confirmation that the software works.’
‘No killing for two or three days. Let all the countries fear what will happen next. Let their people agitate.’
‘We know the drill,’ Leslie said drily.
‘What about the programmers?’
‘They are safe, on target.’
‘Very well,’ Leslie concluded. ‘At our next meeting we will decide on the second phase. To more killings,’ he raised his glass.
‘To more killings,’ his guests echoed. ‘Next week.’
Chapter Sixteen
Zeb’s team met the next day and resumed where Beth had left off.
To the five names she added a sixth. Ramses Jiminez, former gangbanger in a large cartel, who had turned to a life of peace. He lived in Juarez, worked in a grocery store and by all accounts was a person who kept to himself but was always ready with a smile. No one felt threatened by him and by the time he unloaded his AR15 into traffic in the city, it was too late.
Jiminez didn’t survive his attack. Police sharpshooters killed him but not before the Mexican had shot eight innocents.
‘Check your screens,’ she ordered. ‘There are files on every one of these killers in your inboxes. The police in all different countries have unearthed more information on the shooters. Go through all of that. Those who wish to read paper,’ she raised an eyebrow disdainfully at Bwana and Roger, ‘folders are over there,’ she pointed to a stack on the center table. ‘Two hours,’ she said. ‘We regroup and share what we have found.’
* * *
Zeb took his tablet and lay down on a couch, his favorite spot for surfing the news or catching a snooze. Bear and Chloe curled side by side on another sofa. Bwana and Roger went to the kitchen, prepared coffee for everyone and went to a corner to read. Broker was at his putting strip. He flicked a page on his screen every now and then as he practiced his swings. The twins? They were at their terminals, headphones on, Beth’s foot tapping to some music, as their fingers danced on the keyboards.
Zeb looked up at his team momentarily and felt a surge of warmth.
His wife and son couldn’t be replaced, but neither could his crew. They give me purpose.
* * *
‘All of them were on Facebook, Twitter, numerous other social media sites,’ Beth resumed in a couple of hours. ‘Correct?’
‘We now know all of them had secret social media accounts, which is where they revealed themselves. Agreed?’
‘Yeah,’ they all chorused.
‘Yeah, but Freisler didn’t say anywhere that he was going to kill,’ Bwana groused.
‘If it were that easy, hotshot,’ she sniped at him, ‘you think we’d be having this conversation?’
‘Someone’s grumpy,’ Bear said just loud enough for everyone to hear.
‘It’s Mark,’ Meghan explained. ‘He’s gone undercover, some investigation. She’s worried about
him.’
Mark, Beth’s boyfriend was a fast-rising detective in the NYPD.
‘Can we focus here?’ the younger sister glowered at her twin. ‘Some of us are trying to stop further killers.’
Order restored, the eight of them shared their individual takes on the six dossiers. The internet history of the killers and their fake accounts had come after Zeb had established direct links with the intelligence agencies of each of the affected countries. A call to Klouse had resulted in Moses’ file delivered to them.
‘Freisler,’ Bwana - large, dark-skinned, capable of immense violence if a mission required it – began, ‘was your typical right-wing extremist. Hated Muslims, Jews. Thought his country was drowning in immigrants. He was very active in various forums. Spewing hate, inciting violence in others. Nothing about what he was planning to do, however.’
‘Got that same take about him,’ Bear rumbled. ‘Ram Bahadur, however, was the opposite. He wanted India to make lasting peace with Pakistan. He thought his country’s military was too aggressive. He wanted re-unification of the two nations. His hatred was directed against his government for not doing enough. He too was violent in his posts. Said the military generals in his country had to be shot.’
Each of them went through their takes from the files and at the end of Zeb’s summary, the last one, Broker shook his head in frustration. ‘I can’t see the big picture here. Sure, they were filled with hate, something they concealed very well while out and about, but it was directed at different causes. Freisler and Walters were anti-immigration and anti-Muslim. Moses didn’t want us to be in Afghanistan. Jiminez was sick of the corruption in his country. He wanted the cartels to be dealt with more firmly. Bahadur and Yunus, their rage was against their governments. The only thing common about the six of them was they took out their weapons and fired into people. Random killers in random countries.’
