“I’ve alerted my people,” Agent Hicks said. “Donaldson and Rivers are doing their part.”
Craig backed away from the window, looked at his watch, and began pacing as Hicks’s eyes followed him.
“So this Black Widow? Who is she?”
Craig turned around. “She’s someone we have to beat at her own game. Somewhere within her hatred and resentment lies information.”
“But we don’t even know who’s responsible for these attacks yet.”
“It was ISIS, damn it! And mark my word, they’re just getting started.”
Hicks seemed stunned. “How do you know this?”
“I’ve been tracking sleeper cells for the past year. The port attacks were a coordinated effort, but I don’t believe it stops there.”
“Well, my expertise lies more in insurance fraud,” Hicks said. “So I guess I’ll have to take your word for it.”
Suddenly Deputy Calderon entered the room with Craig’s immediate supervisor, Agent Walker, at his side. Calderon, with his disheveled hair and tense, bulging neck, looked to be on the warpath.
Walker, a short man—just over five feet—with red suspenders, walked in, rolling up the sleeves of his white button-down shirt. He didn’t look very happy either.
Calderon got right to the point. “What is this about you assaulting this woman? I thought I made it specifically clear that you were to stay away from her.” He looked toward Walker. “You make the call. I can’t deal with your out-of-control agents today.”
“She admitted her affiliation with ISIS,” Craig said, unwavering.
“Did she now?” Calderon said, stepping forward. “Well, stop the press, we caught ourselves a terrorist!”
Hicks cut in. “Agent Davis is right. And while I may question his methods, the woman did admit to being a member of the Islamic State—one they call the Black Widow.”
“Sir, I believe that the port attacks were only the beginning of a massive offensive against this country,” Craig said.
“You have evidence of this?” Walker asked.
Craig pointed to Malaka as Calderon looked through the glass and examined her. Her checkered hijab was bound tightly to her head. Her black robe, or abaya, went down to her feet.
“She was wrong, Agent Davis,” Calderon said, turning to him. “So far, everything she told us was wrong. Why should we believe anything she says now?”
“Give me five minutes,” Craig said. “She screwed with our heads. Now it’s time to return the favor.” As he looked at his superiors, he could sense their lack of support.
“I don’t want you to go anywhere near that woman,” Calderon said. “Period.”
“Sir, if I may,” Walker said. He looked at Craig. “You said she called herself the Black Widow?”
Craig nodded.
“I’ve heard of a female up in their ranks who goes by that name. Agent Davis could be onto something here.”
Calderon took a step back, sighed, and ran his hand down his face. “Is no one listening to me here?” He thrust both arms out. “The world is on fire, our computers have been hacked, and we’re messing around with Momma Surkov?”
The two agents in the corner of the room, Donaldson and Rivers, got off their phones as things suddenly grew quiet. Calderon looked at the blank faces awaiting his guidance.
He zeroed in on Craig. “Five minutes. That’s it. But you send someone else in there. And so help me God, they better walk away with something useful.”
In a parking lot three blocks away from FBI headquarters, Manuel sat in a rented U-HAUL listening to the news on the radio. The country was in disarray from coast to coast. They were already referring to it as “a new day of infamy.” Big news to be sure, but Manuel’s mind was occupied with other things. He had one task and one task alone. He was to drive the U-HAUL to the south end of the J. Edgar Hoover Building at the specific time scrawled onto his notes.
He didn’t know what kind of explosive was in the back of the U-HAUL, but he assumed the worst. Whatever it was, it caused the rear of the fifteen-foot truck to sag to the ground. In one hand he clutched a folded envelope with instructions and directions scribbled on it, and in the other, he held a cell phone.
He put the envelope to the side and grabbed a nearby layout of the FBI building, studying it. If the news reports were right, D.C. was swarming with police and military. How would he have any chance of getting close to the building in the first place? It was an impossible mission. Nonetheless, Manuel didn’t have a choice.
It wasn’t his battle. He wasn’t in control of the situation. The bomb had a timer. That’s what he had been told. And it was timed to detonate at precisely 11:11 A.M. He looked at his watch. It was 11:01.
His cell phone buzzed. Sweat dripped from his forehead, and he wiped it from his eyes. He picked up the phone on the second buzz.
“Yes?”
The Arabic voice on the other end had a hint of a British accent.
“Have you reached your destination yet?”
“I—I’m trying. They have the area blocked off. It’s much harder than you think.”
“You have ten minutes. So you’d better hurry.”
“They’ll stop me before I can even get to the building. Someone must have tipped them off.”
“No more excuses. Your wife and children are depending on you.”
Manuel teared up. His voice shook. “Please. Whatever happens to me, just let them go. They are not to blame for any of this.”
“If you carry out the task successfully, no harm will come to Victoria and your three girls.”
Manuel squinted and clenched his fist, practically crying into the phone. “Please…please, just let them go. I promise to carry out the task.”
“Your word means nothing to us. Results are what we’re after. And once you do what you’re supposed to do, we’ll no longer have an issue.”
Manuel breathed heavily into the phone, nearly sobbing.
“Better hurry. If you do plan on seeing your family again, you’re going to want to get as far away from that truck as possible.”
The man hung up, leaving Manuel sobbing into the phone. He felt desperate and lost. He cursed himself for getting involved. If only he had done nothing to begin with.
Months before Manuel found himself in a U-HAUL packed with explosives, he had been sitting at home with his wife, Victoria, and three young daughters.
A group of men moved in next door. Watching TV, Manuel got up from the couch and looked out the living room window to see an old moving van parked in the driveway across the street. Five or so men carried boxes into the house. Manuel wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. He didn’t want to be suspicious, as they were clearly Middle Eastern, but he had heard how important it was to be vigilant ever since 9/11.
The next week, he watched them come and go, picking up and dropping off boxes. There were other men as well—all Arabs. He figured them to be Muslim, as they often wore white skullcaps, or taqiyahs. Again, Manuel tried to ignore them. They were probably just a group of bachelors and nothing more. Manuel remembered the days of living with friends when he got out of high school. The party house, as he fondly referred to it.
“Maybe you should just talk to them,” his wife told him one afternoon.
“I think I will,” Manuel said. But he never did.
A couple weeks later, his six-year-old daughter, Maria, told him that one of the men from across the street yelled at her for playing in the street.
No big deal, he thought. People yell at kids sometimes.
Though the thought of some stranger yelling at his kids angered him. Then his sixteen-year-old, Lynn, told him something that troubled him more.
“They asked me how old I was and said that I would make a good wife,” she told him.
“What?” Manuel said, turning around from his workbench in the garage.
“That’s what he told me,” she said, shaken.
“Well, that’s that.” Manuel tossed a r
ag on the floor and marched over to the house across the street, ready to confront the men. It didn’t matter who had said it; he was going to give them a piece of his mind.
It was a sunny, breezy Saturday afternoon, but the closer he got to the three-bedroom home with the patchy yard, the more dread he felt inside. There were several cars in the driveway and one parked in the street. Manuel pushed onward, made it to the front door, and knocked. He heard voices from inside suddenly stop, and a man answered—thirty-something with a trim beard and thick eyebrows. He looked surprised to see Manuel, as if he’d been expecting someone else.
“Yes?” he asked with a slight British accent.
Manuel’s heart raced. The man seemed polite, and Manuel wondered how long things would stay amicable once they got down to business.
“My name is Manuel Rivera. I live across the street.”
The man extended his hand. “I’m Jabar. Nice to meet you.”
“A pleasure,” Manuel said, shaking his hand.
You sell-out, get to the point, he told himself.
“How can I help you, Manuel?” Jabar asked.
Manuel glanced past Jabar’s shoulder and saw what looked like pressure cookers lined up on a table in the dining room. There looked to be close to ten or fifteen people inside, quietly speaking to each other in a language he could only describe as Arabic.
“I don’t want to take up too much of your time,” Manuel began. “But my daughters told me that one or more of your roommates here said some things to them, like, personal questions. I would appreciate them not speaking to my daughters. Period.”
Manuel felt better getting it off his chest. He waited for a response as Jabar’s smile dropped and his brows arched downward as if he were in deep thought.
“I see,” he said, scratching his beard.
“With all due respect,” Manuel added.
“My brother, Raheem, told me about that. He meant no harm. He was just trying to pay your daughter a compliment.”
“I understand, but it is inappropriate, so no more,” Manuel said.
Jabar looked down and nodded. “Very well. My apologies.”
“It’s quite all right, thank you,” Manuel said. They shook hands and parted, and that was the last he thought he would have to deal with the situation. But it didn’t take long for things to escalate.
A week later, Manuel walked into the kitchen after getting home from work at the warehouse where he was a lead supervisor. He noticed Lynn sulking at the table while his wife was at the stove cooking. Neither of them seemed particularly happy.
“What’s wrong?” Manuel asked. He didn’t even think he really wanted to know.
His wife turned to him, frowning. A single string of dark-red hair hung in her face. “One of the men from across the street talked to Lynn again.”
“What?” Manuel said, placing his mini-lunch cooler on the counter. He looked at Lynn as she sat at the table with her arms crossed and eyes cast downward. “The same boy? What did he say?”
“He said that he wants me to go back to Libya with him and make me his bride. He said that he won’t take no for an answer.”
“Libya?” Manuel belted out.
“His name is Raheem.” She put her face in her hands. “He’s thirty-five years old. Dad, what am I supposed to do?”
Manuel rushed over to her and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Nothing, dear. Don’t worry about this man. I will take care of everything.”
“What are you going to do?” Victoria asked, stirring a pot of noodles. Steam rushed up from the boiling water and drifted to the ceiling.
“Something I should have done from the beginning,” Manuel said, walking to his room.
Once inside, he closed the door and sat on the bed to gather his thoughts. The men had disobeyed his wishes. It was something he couldn’t ignore. In the closet he had a Ruger .22. Was he a vigilante all of a sudden? He looked at his cell phone sitting on the nightstand, then back to the closet. He felt angry and violated. There was nothing innocent about the man’s comments anymore.
He’d thought at first that Raheem might have been closer to his daughter’s age, but thirty-five? That was unacceptable. He took a deep breath and grabbed the cell phone without further hesitation. He decided to make an anonymous call—something that wouldn’t make it obvious that it was him. When the sheriff’s office receptionist answered, Manuel said he wanted to report suspicious activity in the house across the street.
The room was pitch black when Manuel heard a crash at the door. He thought it was a dream. He sat up and looked at his wife, who was sleeping next to him with her back turned. Panic seized his heart. Maybe it was just a bad dream. He remained frozen, his ears on overdrive, listening for any sounds. He heard footsteps and talking. It was surreal. Under the slit at the bottom of the door, he saw lights. It was hard to comprehend what was going on, given his daze, but it become obvious that people were in his home. Once the thought crossed his mind, he looked to his nightstand, where he had earlier placed the Ruger .22, like some ominous premonition.
How foolish, he thought, to not have it at my side.
The second he came to his senses and lunged toward his nightstand, someone kicked the bedroom door open, flashing a light in his face.
“Freeze, police!” a male voice shouted.
Manuel instinctively put his hands up in the air as the light remained in his face, blinding him. His wife jerked awake, and rose from the bed, dazed.
“Let me see those hands!” the voice said.
Manuel put his hands in the air as high they would go, to the point that his arms were shaking.
“What’s going on?” Victoria asked in a tired voice.
Suddenly the light in their faces began to flash on and off with laughter following. Then the room went black and Manuel could see several dark figures standing over their bed.
Someone at the door flipped the light switch, revealing Jabar from across the street and three other men right in Manuel’s room, grinning in hostile satisfaction. Dressed in black from head to toe, Jabar had a pistol in hand while his men brandished baseball bats. Manuel couldn’t make sense of anything. He still hoped he was dreaming. The screams of his children quickly snapped him out of such hope, and he finally sprang into action.
“What are you doing in my house?” he demanded.
Victoria assessed the situation and let out a hoarse scream. One of Jabar’s men took a step forward and told her to “shut up.” She covered her mouth and held onto Manuel tightly. Half her dark-red hair, parted in the middle, hung down her back on one side, while the other half covered Manuel’s face.
“Rise and shine, neighbor,” Jabar said with a smile.
“Get out of here!” Manuel shouted. “Have you lost your mind?” He felt angry, tired, and confused. True fear hadn’t settled in yet. He still wanted to believe that he had some control of the situation.
“Time for us to have a little talk,” Jabar said, flicking his flashlight on and off in the couple’s faces.
Once they were both out of bed, Jabar led them out into the hall at gunpoint as his friends continued to turn the room upside down, pulling out drawers and emptying them, opening the closet door and tossing clothes on the floor.
The terrified couple was prodded into the living room, where they found their three young girls cowering on the couch with pistols aimed at their heads. The guns were held by five other men they hadn’t seen before. Jabar ordered Victoria onto the couch with her daughters and told Manuel to sit separate from his family on the recliner. Once seated, the men with the guns backed off and began to search through the house as Jabar explained to the traumatized family exactly what was going on.
“Manuel. Look at me,” he said.
Manuel felt rage building inside of him. He was ready to kill every intruder in his house, in spite of the consequences. After seeing guns pointed at his children’s heads, he shook with vengeance. Jabar adopted a calm, conciliatory tone, which he wrappe
d around his threatening words.
“No reason to be angry. We’re not going to hurt your family as long as you listen to me.”
Manuel looked to his three girls—six, ten, and sixteen. They looked shaken and afraid, holding each other, looking vulnerable in their simple T-shirts and pajama pants. Victoria leaned over, and with an arm around all three children, whispered assurances that everything was going to be all right.
Manuel felt helpless. His helplessness then turned to rage, but there was nothing he could do about it. Somehow he knew. Something clicked. The phone call had been mistake. Everything that was happening was his fault. He would try to reason with the men. Convince them that his family was not worth the risk.
“I did it, okay?” Manuel said, flat out. ”I called the police on you. If that’s what this is about, take it out on me and let my family go.”
“Oh, I know it was you,” Jabar said, pacing the room. “I knew it the second Raheem let them into our home.” He leaned closer to Manuel, pressing the pistol against his face, as Victoria and the children cried out. “I can’t say I was surprised.”
Manuel stared at Jabar, his face burning with rage as he tried to stay calm. “Just tell me what you want!”
Jabar seemed amused. “It’s not what I want, Manuel. It’s what the Islamic State needs you to do.”
Manuel held the cell phone in his sweaty hand with orders from Jabar to proceed. It was hard for him to even conceive doing something so wrong. Manuel oftentimes considered himself to be a “good man,” in the sense that he had never harmed anyone. Now all of that was about to change, and it was driving him crazy.
In the distance, from the vacant parking lot he could see part of the J. Edgar Hoover Building surrounded by police cars and armed guards. Two helicopters circled the area, hovering by.
News of the port attacks consumed every station on the radio. Nationally, the death toll had exceeded three thousand. Sarin gas had been deployed against the Port of Long Beach, California. Nuclear fallout had been detected from nearly every other port explosion, which resulted in the mass evacuation of surrounding areas. Manuel had no doubt that the horror unleashed that morning was directly related to the men currently holding his family hostage.
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