by Ty Patterson
But no.
Razaq didn’t need to know. Chain of command and need to know had to be strictly observed. He dismissed the men, went to convey the news to the Supreme Leader and returned an angry man.
The Supreme Leader had listened silently, had stroked his chin and then the eagle eyes had rested on Omar.
‘No one died other than our men?’
‘No one was killed. Dude, I thought your men were going to mow people down.’
Beatty, who preferred the title the media had conferred on him, the Flayer, looked at The Ghul in astonishment.
They were in his basement, getting ready for the nineteenth.
The Ghul polished his butcher blades and didn’t reply. He picked a blade, wiped it with a soft cloth, applied a light layer of polish and rubbed it slowly, methodically.
He inspected the blade when he had finished. It shone in the light, wicked, quiet, and deadly.
‘They were my weakest men,’ he said finally. ‘I didn’t think they would get even that far.’
He had watched the news unfold in a bar, had tamped down his bitter disappointment when he learned that not a single American had been killed. Both his men had been killed. Both had become martyrs, but it was better to be a martyr after killing infidels.
He spent the next day with the three remaining men. He didn’t need to tell them about the attack.
They knew. Their rooms had no TVs, but they had caught the news outside.
The Ghul looked in their eyes deeply to see if any of them had any second thoughts. All he saw was shame. Shame that their companions hadn’t killed.
He also saw determination. They would do better.
They would make up for the lack of deaths.
Chapter 29
February 12th – 18th
‘Their families’ phones and emails are being monitored? All that Facebook and Twitter stuff too?’ Zeb asked for confirmation from Chang as the two cops showed him out.
‘Yeah. Those five men’s families are being watched electronically. Every communication is being monitored. So far there’s no contact from the three men.’
Zeb looked at the women beside him. ‘Werner is plugged in?’
‘Yep. If a text message, or an email, or a Facebook update, or whatever even squeaks through, Werner will know.’
‘We have also got teams tracking down the gun purchases and the apartment Hadad was staying in. We might get lucky.’
Zeb nodded, but he didn’t believe The Ghul would have been that careless. Despite having apprehended Hadad, they were no closer to The Ghul. The killer remained a ghost.
Just like the Flayer
And the Butcher.
‘Remind me again. Why aren’t you confirming that the three men are suspects? And that The Ghul is in the city’
Pizaka sighed and did the running-hand-through-hair thing.
‘We debated this for hours. Us, the FBI, various acronymed agencies. The upshot was that if we confirm we run the risk of the men going underground and maybe planning an attack at a later date. Now, at the very least we know who they are and the likely targets. With all those cameras actively monitoring the sites, we have a good chance of nabbing them.’
‘Besides their names are already out there. Their photographs are splashed on all screens and papers. Every uniformed officer and patrol car is already keeping an eye out for them. It’s only The Ghul that no one’s aware of.’
Zeb saw his reflection in the man’s shades as they remained steady on him. ‘That’s a mighty big chance. You could end up having a blood bath on your hands before you nail them down.’
‘Yeah. But is there any guarantee they will not just open up randomly in a street? If someone wants to cause damage and they are determined to see it through, they will.’
‘How would you have handled it?’ Chang blinked curiously at him as he stifled a yawn.
A reluctant smile flashed on Zeb’s face and disappeared quickly.
‘I gave the very same recommendation to the Commissioner. I was checking if you guys were on board. We don’t want leaks. The circle of those in the know is pretty wide now and the media are sniffing hungrily. Our nightmare situation is if the press flash pictures of the men and they go underground.’
The two cops agreed silently. It was something they had emphasized in the starkest of terms to the task force.
Zeb paused in the parking lot while the twins slid inside their ride.
‘Let’s split the task force into smaller teams.’ He explained his idea to Chang and Pizaka who took only a moment to decide.
One team would work with Beth and run down all the residential addresses in the zone Zeb thought the Flayer hung out in. The twins had already started working on this but had found it hard going. The weight of the NYPD would speed the discovery.
‘Get the ISPs to share the search histories at those addresses. That should help winnow the addresses down considerably.’
‘Wonder why we didn’t think of that,’ Chang mumbled apologetically.
Another team would go through all the members of the gym, question the women and discreetly warn them. They would also check out if there were any other gyms the Flayer was associated with and warn the female members.
A third team would hunt The Ghul and the three men.
They had got the GPS locations of the last messages and calls received on Hadad’s phone. The phone had spent the most time in a neighborhood in the Bronx. All roads seem to lead to that borough.
Chang stretched and twisted his neck to remove the crimps in it. They were all running on adrenaline fumes and bad coffee. ‘You think Beatty and The Ghul are holed up together?’
‘Possible, but I am not convinced. Killers are usually solitary animals and I just can’t see The Ghul in the same house as Beatty.’
‘You are sure a second attack is imminent?’
Zeb’s eyes were bleak, his voice was grim.
‘Yeah. Not only that, I am guessing The Ghul will join in. Malouf and Hadad failed. The body count was zero. These guys like nothing more than rows of bodies.’
The eighteenth of February saw bursts of snowfall.
The powder didn’t settle but left the city in a slushy mess that stuck to shoes and trousers. Wheels whipped it up and sprayed on sidewalks.
The Ghul didn’t see any grayness. He had spent the night in a deep sleep, had woken up, prayed and had gone to a coffee shop for a sandwich and a beverage.
His breakfast.
He watched the TV screen above the counter, the President’s address, the throng of people outside Mount Sinai. Glenda Jackson, the mother of two, was making a good recovery.
The Ghul gripped his coffee mug tightly and looked away, but the incessant droning of the talking head drew him back to the coverage.
The screen cut to the Grand Central, to the balconies where a couple of breathless commentators rehashed the attack and the take down. They interviewed staff and commuters all of who praised the bravery and swift action of the NYPD.
The mayor came on air and promised to hunt down any terrorists who dared to attack the city. The commissioner followed, he was more circumspect, said the NYPD was investigating motives and links.
The Ghul snorted and covered it up with a cough when he saw a pair of eyes turn his way.
Motives? Killing as many infidels as possible was the motive. It wasn’t more complicated than that.
A rolling caption caught his eye.
Hadad and Malouf’s families were under siege. They hadn’t left their homes ever since the news broke out. Media vans, reporters and the curious public surrounded their houses. Questions inevitably turned to why. Why did a son born in the country turn against that land?
What went on in those homes for a person to be so radicalized that he ended up hating his own country?
Patrol cars were stationed to protect them if the mob turned angry.
There were smaller crowds outside Masood Deeb’s parents’ home. A signboard asked, ‘W
here is your son? Is he a terrorist?’
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, The Ghul changed his routine for picking them up.
Before Grand Central, he picked them up during peak hours, but after the event, he asked them to lie low and not venture out of their apartments. The men stayed cooped up for three full days. The Ghul was sure they hadn’t ventured out. Their phones were stationary.
He was also confident they wouldn’t be made. The men were average looking and bore little resemblance to the photographs plastered in the media. Those photographs, obtained from their social media sites, were a few years old and The Ghul himself had a hard time recognizing them from those images.
People put their best photographs on all those sites. Besides, I have taught them a few tricks.
On the seventeenth, the fourth day from the shooting, he picked them up at dawn in a yellow cab.
He had procured the vehicle through the HOF network in the country and that gave the perfect cover. A cab in New York was invisible.
Men getting in and out of cabs were not seen.
He blindfolded and cuffed them as usual. That hadn’t changed. The rear windows of the cab were tinted; no one would see the temporary blindfolds.
He drove them around the city the whole day, not once stopping anywhere. They relieved themselves in plastic bottles which he later threw away. He drove randomly, aimlessly, and all the while he questioned them, assessed them.
How did they feel, now that their identities were public, their families under siege?
They were suspects now. How did they feel about that?
Did they have second thoughts?
He spoke in an even tone not letting his voice or his posture show that there was no turning back. Anyone who had a change of heart would die. The answers reassured him. They were strong, firm, and angry.
The eyes revealed more. Their desire was unchanged.
The three men wanted to make up for Malouf and Hadad’s deaths. They wanted to go out guns blazing, bodies piled in front of them. The Ghul encouraged them, motivated them, spoke of the rewards awaiting them in paradise.
He brought them back late at night and made final plans for the eighteenth.
A man jostled him in the café; hot coffee splashed on his hand and brought him out of his reverie. The man mumbled an absent apology, his face riveted on the screen.
‘Bastards. The scum should be killed. We should bring back the death penalty.’
The Ghul agreed. ‘They all should be killed.’
He went back to his apartment, packed his meager belongings and checked out. He would spend the night in another apartment, rented under a different name.
When night fell, he walked for half an hour in the Bronx, sticking to the shadows and retrieved the cab. He popped the trunk, raised the mat and extracted a pair of plates. He screwed the dummy plates on the cab, pasted different numbers on the sides and set off.
He drove to the first apartment and picked up Masood Deeb, and then went to the remaining two and collected Ayoob Awad, and Nasib Botros.
The men came silently, dressed in long overcoats, clear eyed and clean-shaven. Their weapons were strapped on their shoulders, under the coats. AR-15s with spare magazines.
Enough ammo to reduce Penn Station to rivers of blood.
He drove them over Brooklyn Bridge in silence, felt them look at the Statue, then onto Wall Street where greed began. Through Broadway, Times Square, through throngs of tourists.
They passed Penn Station and only then he broke the silence. He asked them to go through their plan.
Masood ran through it again. They looked for holes, didn’t find any. He asked them what could have gone wrong with Hadad and Malouf’s plan.
The response was immediate. Poor coordination. No backup.
So what was their backup?
None was needed. But if at all any of them couldn’t fire at the fixed time, the others would open up.
Firing at 9 a.m. was important.
Peak hours. Crowd congestion.
Don’t wait for the other. But ideally keep eye contact with one another. Coordinate and lay out a triangle of fire.
They absorbed his instructions.
He turned back to Penn Station. Parked behind a row of vehicles. Doused the headlights and looked around.
There wasn’t anyone watching.
He held his hand out silently. Three phones slapped into his palm. Their wallets and all their possessions followed, everything except for small sums of money with each of them.
He made eye contact with them, gripped their shoulder and then silently exited the cab. The men would sleep in it and walk to the station in the morning.
The Ghul walked away without a backward glance.
The die was cast.
Meghan’s hair was a mess after raking her fingers through it for hours. She blew out in frustration, kicked her desk and winced as the unyielding wood met her toes.
‘No luck?’ her sister grinned at her.
‘Not one frigging, dipshitting bit.’
Zeb never swore. The sisters had unconsciously picked that up but now and then a curse broke through. Like now.
She was tracking down the addresses in the Bronx and hundreds of Google searches and calls later, all she got was suburban families, single parents, and students. But not a single person resembled Beatty, or Trevor Johnson.
‘Beatty can’t just disappear into thin air. He’s gotta be out there somewhere, he’s gotta have bills, taxes.’ She stood up and paced, glared at Zeb who was watching the screen, at the video.
‘You are just lying there while Beth and I work our asses off?’
‘I am thinking.’
‘He’s thinking.’ She turned to her twin. ‘We’d better be quiet babe. His thinking will save the world.’
‘Chill, sis. Here, why don’t we swap jobs? You call the rest of the ladies in that gym and I’ll have a crack at the addresses. The task force helping out?’
‘They are, but they aren’t any closer either. We have divided the neighborhoods among ourselves.’
The sisters swapped seats and computers and silence fell in the office again. Silence in which the screen’s rolling news coverage could be heard. The HOF had finally taken credit for the Grand Central attack and threatened more.
When?
Zeb looked at the sisters hunched over their computers, both of them with headsets, murmuring into them. The light caught on Meghan’s hair and flared for a moment before it disappeared. She felt his gaze on her and flipped him the bird.
They’re all right. Salt of the earth. Bud Petersen raised them well.
Bud Petersen’s daughters called it a night at 9. All the female gym members had been tracked down and warned. All but one. Meghan would chase her the next day.
They left Zeb behind and stumbled to their apartments.
An hour later, Bwana and Roger poked their heads through, flashed grins at Zeb and headed to theirs. Zeb drifted to sleep himself with the TV still running in the background.
Something woke him at about twelve. He lay still and scanned the office without moving his head.
Seems to be clear.
The gun slid easily in his hand and he rose noiselessly and checked out the bubble, the pantry, and the wash rooms.
All clear.
It was 12 a.m.
Witching hour. Very light traffic played on the avenue below.
A blinking light caught his eye.
That’s what woke me up. A text message.
It was from Werner.
It looked like Masood Deeb was ready to kill.
But not everyone.
He had sent a message to his sister at eleven thirty in the night. A message that the electronic surveillance had picked up and relayed to Zeb.
Don’t catch the train tomorrow.
Chapter 30
February 19th – 25th
Masood woke his men at seven on the morning of the nineteenth.
It
was bitterly cold and the cab was stuffy and stank with the sweat and body odor of three men.
They had maneuvered for some time to get into the right sleeping position for each one of them and had finally drifted off at about ten the previous night.
At ten forty-five his eyes had snapped open when he remembered. Nihad Deeb, his sister, caught the train from Penn to go to Philly a couple of times a month. The nineteenth was one of those times.
Masood warred with himself, reprimanded himself and finally when he couldn’t hold it back any more, he crawled out of the cab stealthily and went in search of a phone. One of those that had an internet connection.
He had found spare change in one of the cab’s pockets that The Ghul had missed. He returned forty-five minutes later and his last waking thought was a prayer for forgiveness for breaking security.
The men stood around for a few minutes, hugging themselves and stamping their feet to get their blood going. Masood got behind the wheel and beckoned impatiently at the other two.
They had to keep moving till the time neared.
He drove away trailing thick white fumes and stopped at an all-night diner that catered to shift workers. Each one of them disappeared inside in turns, refreshed themselves and returned.
It was eight by then.
He hit the street one last time, wound through the morning traffic that was already an endless flare of brake lights. He parked the cab in the same spot and they silently embraced one another and set off on foot.
They entered the station separately, heads bowed, hurrying, blending in the foot traffic rushing inside the station.
The station served Boston, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia and was operated by Amtrak. Commuter trains were run by Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit. The station served the subway as well as the bus services.
It served more than half a million travelers a day and The Ghul had chosen it for just that reason.
Masood made his way to the enormous departure boards and positioned himself just beneath them. The boards always had thickly knotted bunches of people staring at it.
