by Brad Taylor
He traversed back and forth, entering cafés and galleries and stopping at various historical sights, acting like a tourist, all the while giving anyone the best opportunity to spot him without acting in any way that said he believed he was under surveillance.
He finally began moving west with a purpose. He reached the front steps of the mosque and hesitated, giving the surveillance a final opportunity to see him enter. Climbing the steps, he took off his shoes, but instead of placing them on the floor, he carried them with him, walking at almost a trot to the back.
He went to the nearest men’s restroom, glad the time was in between prayers, leaving the room deserted. He swiftly pulled out the metal funnel and began cramming a baseball-size lump of explosive into it. He formed it in the same shape as the funnel, using the metal as a guide, building up an inch-thick layer around the circumference and leaving a cone-shaped space in the center. When he was done, it looked like the funnel simply had a smaller capacity. His hope was to create an improvised shaped charge. He knew it wouldn’t be perfect, but it should create enough of an explosive jet to accomplish what he wanted.
He placed the electric blasting cap into the small end of the funnel, seating it in the explosives. He then flipped a switch on his final detonator, turning off the WiFi function and making it work manually with a closed-loop electric circuit. He attached both wires from the blasting cap to the detonator and taped it to the bottom of the funnel.
Satisfied with the device, he exited the mosque and immediately entered a government building on the right side, threading his way north until he exited on the Dubai Creek. Now, the walls and fence of the mosque itself would screen him as he went back to the parking area.
Speed-walking back east down the brick walkway paralleling the Dubai Creek, he hit the end of the mosque wall. He wanted to remain undetected, so he swerved into a large group of swarthy men waiting on a water taxi to take them across the river. Once through them, he could see the parking area and had to assume he’d left all surveillance staked out on the mosque.
He quickened his pace, scanning for the white-panel van. He was sure it had dropped off a passenger, then parked to await further instructions.
He reached the parking area and saw no vans, white or otherwise. He walked between the cars, giving the area one more glance, then began moving swiftly toward the eastern road that bordered the village, intent on checking out the second parking area. If he saw nothing there, he’d simply leave the surveillance behind and consider his options.
Two rows from the traffic circle he saw the black man’s car. Sitting empty. He went to the passenger side to be sure and recognized the scrape on the passenger door. He glanced left and right, then scuttled underneath the back bumper.
He found where the gas tank came closest to the exhaust pipe and placed two magnets on the tank. He affixed the metal funnel to the magnets, knowing the gap created enhanced the shaped-charge effect. Satisfied, he attached one end of the soldering wire to the electronic trigger. He wound the wire around the exhaust pipe in a single loop, then attached the other end to the second lead of the trigger. He ended by pushing the arming switch.
It would take some time, but the soldering wire would eventually melt from the heat of the exhaust. When that happened, the flow of electricity in the trigger would be interrupted, and the charge would go off, penetrating the gas tank and destroying both the car and its occupants.
In the end, it didn’t really matter how much destruction he caused. The explosives alone would cause a police response, and anyone associated with the man would be investigated. It would tie them up for at least twenty-four hours, and that’s all the time he would need.
He rolled out from underneath the car, surveyed the area from his knees, then joined the flow of pedestrian traffic back to the water-taxi stand. He glanced back at the car and could see the tip of the funnel hanging beneath. It was definitely out of place, but wouldn’t draw any undue attention. Especially if the driver simply entered the car from the front without circling the trunk. He bought a ticket on a water taxi and sat with a group of day laborers all waiting to cross the creek.
50
I got the third “no change” call from Brett and realized that Lucas was going to wait outside the mosque for whoever he was tracking. I knew I was missing some type of opportunity and hated sitting there on my ass. I should be using the time for something else.
We’d confirmed that Lucas was a one-man surveillance effort, with the local acting as driver to simply pick him up and drop him off, which meant he had no one at the rear of the mosque. I thought about it, toying with the idea of trying to locate his target.
Initially, I’d restricted our surveillance box on Lucas to trailing behind, which also restricted our ability to react. In a perfect world, you’d have operators around him in a bubble, so that no matter which way he turned, if the eye lost him, he’d run into someone else in the bubble. Once we’d confirmed he was conducting surveillance as well, we didn’t want to spook the very target he was after, and since we didn’t know who that was, we couldn’t prevent him from identifying us over time and distance. Simply staying with Lucas would inadvertently confirm to the target that he was under surveillance—in effect, blowing the operation. In truth, we’d been on Lucas for more than three hours, and there wasn’t any way to determine if we hadn’t already compromised him.
I decided to press someone to the far side of the mosque and get a snapshot of anyone who exited. Might get us nothing, but sometimes little things like this ended up paying off big-time. I’d leave Brett and Decoy on Lucas and send Knuckles, since he was the easiest one for Lucas to identify. I could always pull him back around if it came to it.
I gave him a call, telling him the plan and asking him to relay it through his Taskforce phone to everyone else. He rogered, and said he was going to reposition to the western parking lot. Out of nowhere I experienced a deep sense of déjà vu, the feeling bringing with it a tendril of dread.
A year ago, almost to the day, I had repositioned Knuckles and another team member for this exact same purpose, and they had run into a vehicle-borne IED. Knuckles had been ripped apart. The other team member had been killed.
Before I realized it, I had unconsciously hit redial on my phone to cancel the mission. I hung up before Knuckles could answer, physically shaking my head to clear the ghost feelings. Get a grip. Dubai is not Cairo. No Arab Spring here.
I inched my vehicle out of the alley I was hiding in anyway, wanting to see the route Knuckles would take. I reached the intersection and scanned left and right. Parking wasn’t allowed along this road, so if I saw a stationary vehicle, it might be a threat.
I exhaled. There was nothing but moving traffic. I put the car in reverse just as Knuckles passed me, heading west. He kept his eyes to the front, but gave me a one-finger wave from the steering wheel. As he passed I caught a glimpse of something hanging from underneath his left rear quarter panel, just behind the tire.
I leaned forward, trying to identify if it was my imagination or real. He kept going, but it wasn’t a trick of my déjà vu. Some small piece of metal was sticking out from underneath his car.
I hit redial, and it went straight to voice mail. Shit. I dialed Brett. When he answered, he was whispering.
“Pike, I can’t talk. Lucas is moving my way.”
“Fuck him. Dial Knuckles right now. Tell him to stop his car. Now.”
“What?”
My phone buzzed with an incoming call from Knuckles. I hung up on Brett without another word and switched over.
“Knuckles, stop your car. Get out of your car. I think it’s rigged with something.”
“Huh?”
“Get the hell out of your car!”
“Okay. Next intersection I’ll pull into an alley. I can’t stop on this road.”
“No! Get out now! It might be an IED.”
“Jesus Christ! I thought you meant a beacon.”
I heard a car door slam, the
n the sounds of him breathing as he moved away.
“I’m in an alley now. Vehicle’s shut down. I’m out. Now tell me what the fuck’s going on.”
I told him about the left rear quarter panel, leaving out the premonition that had made me look. He’d think I was nuts. While he checked it out, I called Decoy.
“You near your car?”
“No.”
“When you get to it, do a thorough scrub for IEDs. Knuckles has something he’s checking out now. Whatever you do, don’t just get in and crank it up.”
My other line buzzed with Brett.
“What’s up?”
“Lucas is on the move and I can’t stick with him. My heat state’s getting bad.”
“Forget him. Let him go. Link up with Decoy, but don’t start the car.”
“Why?”
“He’ll let you know. Lucas may have set us up.”
I hung up, thinking of the implications of an IED placed on Knuckles’ car. If it was real, then this whole day had been a charade. We thought we were the predators, when we’d been the prey. And Lucas had much more help than a simple driver. I prayed it was just my overactive imagination, with the biggest cost being me getting reamed at the after-action review and owing a case of beer for stopping the operation.
Knuckles called, and I found out I wouldn’t be driving all over Dubai searching for alcohol.
“It was an improvised shaped charge. Pretty ingenious. Most of it is homemade parts, but the detonator’s pretty damn sophisticated. No anti-tampering on it, though. A couple of snips, and it was rendered safe.”
“You got a plastic bag or something you can put it in?”
“Yeah, why?”
“We should have a biometrics kit in the equipment bundle. I want to print it and see if it’s Lucas who built the thing.”
“And?”
“And if it is, I’m done pussyfooting around. I’m putting a bullet in his head.”
51
Decoy looked over my shoulder at the computer screen and said, “Who the hell is that guy?”
“I have no idea.”
It had taken about an hour, but eventually we’d determined that all cars were clean, with me scrubbing mine just to be on the safe side. On my command, we’d let Lucas go, intending to find his bed-down site through his phone. After coming back to the hotel and helping Jennifer smuggle in the kit, we’d printed the funnel, sending everything we could back to the Taskforce. There ended up being four sets of fingerprints: two complete unknowns, Knuckles, and this guy, who had pinged in the database.
I unmuted the VOIP, with the entire team hovering around me. “Okay, one of you fifty-pound heads tell me what this is. Give me his history. Is he Hezbollah or what?”
“Well…uhhh…he’s a complete mystery. He came up in a BATTS sweep in Yemen three days ago. He was in an AQAP torture house getting brutalized, along with fourteen or fifteen other guys. The house was hit by an American-trained CT force looking for Khalid al-Asiri. It was a dry hole, and they scanned him just as routine SOP. He wasn’t the target, and he didn’t pop after the scan as anyone of interest.”
“Is he Yemeni? Or Lebanese?”
“Saudi. And we ran an airline data search. Nobody by this name and nationality has left Yemen since the hit.”
Saudi? What in the hell is going on?
“Any chance of a mistake?”
“Zero.”
I glanced at my Timex and saw it was closing in on four P.M. So it would be almost seven A.M. there. Kurt would be working out right now, and I needed some guidance before I did something that caused serious heartburn.
“Go to the gym and find Colonel Hale. I need to speak to him ASAP.”
I heard nothing but silence. I switched windows on the computer, hiding the picture of the Saudi and bringing up the camera. I saw two analysts looking at each other, neither of whom I recognized. New hires since I had left operational status.
“What are you doing? Did you hear me?”
One said, “Yes, but the section chief told us we had to go through him before seeing Colonel Hale. We aren’t allowed to hit up the boss directly.”
Behind me, Decoy said, “Who hired that ass-clown?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “but he’s working on a short career.”
I knew Kurt very well, and there was no way he would want to be cut out of the loop like that. Filters were fine, and even necessary, but a blanket edict was stupid. That’s how bad things slip through the cracks, because decision makers don’t have the information they needed.
“One of you go to the damn section chief and the other one get Colonel Hale.”
“He’s not at work yet. He’ll be here in a couple of hours. Eight thirty, along with the dayshift guys.”
“Look, I know that most of your stuff is slow-burn, but I have a crisis going on. I realize I’m far away from you right now, but I’m a much bigger threat than your stupid-ass section sergeant. Now go get Colonel Hale or I’m going to rip off your fucking head.”
The threat of violence seemed to do the trick. One of them scurried off while the other looked sick. I blacked the camera and microphone on our side, grinning at the results. I turned around and saw everyone else grinning too. Until I got to Jennifer. She was scowling at me, shaking her head.
“What? Come on. That was a little bit funny, wasn’t it?”
“Nobody likes a bully, Pike.”
That comment hurt a little bit, because I really did get along great with all the support folks. I just didn’t like little Napoleons preventing me from doing my job. I started to say something back to her when the computer squawked.
“Pike, you there?”
I saw Kurt and opened the mike and camera.
“Yes, sir. And I have a little issue I need some guidance on.”
“Yeah, I got the rundown from the analysts. So you think Lucas has a posse over there?”
“What else could it be? And not an amateur one either. That IED was well constructed. He’s had training.”
“What do you want to do?”
“It’s not what I want, it’s more what you’ll let me do. I’ve got Omega authority for Lucas, but I’m not sure he’s the primary threat. He could just be the handler, and taking him out only cuts the leash on this Saudi guy.”
“So you want Omega for an unknown? A target we can’t identify? I agree on the threat, but I don’t think that’ll fly. The Oversight Council will see right through this request to the next one, worried about the precedent.”
“Yeah, that’s my point. I hope they do. Remember when we set up the Taskforce? Your initial take was for a primary target and the authority to flex to a secondary target on any perishable intel we got from the first hit. That thought was right then, and it’s right now. No telling how many unknown bad guys Knuckles could have rolled up once he had Crusty, but he had to send all that bullshit back to the rear, then go through this huge vetting process. It’s not the best way to run a railroad. Especially after you’ve put all the time and effort into developing the cover to get in-country.”
“Yeah, yeah, but that’s all water under the bridge. I didn’t get what I wanted, and now we operate within a different framework.”
“That’s what I mean. This is the perfect opportunity to show them you were right. The perfect justification.”
“Well, maybe perfect on the enemy side because of the envoy’s visit, but they’re not going to be keen on turning you loose to dig around. Especially you.”
“What the hell does that mean? Me? I’ve put more terrorists away than anyone—without any compromises.”
Kurt laughed. “Calm down. You just tend to scare people.”
“Bullshit. If they think my operations are scary, they can sit on their hands and see what’s really frightening: a YouTube video of this unknown terrorist standing over the body of a dead American envoy.”
52
The director of the CIA started the rock-throwing first. “Colonel Hale, do y
ou really expect us to give you a blank check? You brief that you ‘think’ there’s a bad guy in Dubai in addition to Lucas, and you ‘think’ he’s working with Lucas, and that’s enough? I’ve seen no evidence at all to indicate that, either in your brief or through my station assets in UAE.”
This was stupid. No way am I going to win this fight.
He’d called the emergency session right after hanging up with Pike—only the third time he’d ever done so. He knew he had little chance of getting a quorum, but he had hoped the president would override the veto. Unfortunately, the president was unable to break away from a previous engagement.
Before he could respond, the secretary of defense cut in. “Last time we met, you said I knew you and that you never cried wolf. That may have been true a year ago, but lately it seems you do that every few days.”
“Sir, I can’t control the threat. I don’t make this stuff up. It’s real, and it’s in Dubai. I understand the need for vetting so we don’t go off half-cocked. I’m the one that asked the president to create this body for that very reason, but sometimes you need to throw out the rules. I’m not talking about setting a precedent. I’m talking about saving the envoy’s life.”
“Get Lucas, and I think you’ll be doing that. Get him into interrogation, find a new thread, then come back to us to assess whether we want to go Omega again.”
“Sir, the envoy’s going to be in Dubai in less than twenty-four hours. There’s no way we can do that swiftly enough to protect him.”
The D/CIA addressed the secretary of state. “John, what’re your thoughts? It’ll be your mess to clean up if this goes to shit.”
The secretary of state leaned forward. “I talked to McMasters last night, and he’s completely comfortable continuing to Dubai. He said he didn’t even care if we let Lucas run free. He’s sure that the Dubai authorities can protect him, and I tend to agree.”
Kurt said, “With all due respect, I don’t think he’s got the same information we do. He’s not the man that should be making judgments on whether Dubai can protect him. He has no idea how dangerous Lucas is.”
