Ring of Fire

by Brad Taylor

  Dexter craned his head around, saying, “No! He never paid me anything. I never even spoke to him again after that.”

  Johan said, “Do you know how many people are dead because of him?”

  “I have nothing to do with whatever he’s done!”

  Johan looped a cotton rope around Dexter’s neck and pulled back hard enough to lift Dexter in the air, but not enough to choke him. Dexter’s arms flailed about, his head bent backward over the top of the chair.

  Johan looked down into his eyes and said, “If you had told what you knew, those people might still be alive. The US might have been able to crack open the entire financial network, preventing any number of attacks. So, yes, you did have something to do with it, even if by omission.”

  Dexter croaked, “Please. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

  Johan said, “Do you like the television show Happy Days?”

  The words settled in Dexter’s brain, but he was sure he’d misheard. Or maybe Johan was insane. He remained quiet, trembling in fear, the rope biting deeper and deeper.

  Johan said, “I met a boy who loved that show. Loved to watch what he believed was the true America. He learned English from the series. Can you believe that dedication? But because of you, he’s now dead. I’d like you to tell him something for me, when you see him.”

  What?

  Johan cinched the rope tightly, and Dexter felt his windpipe crush. He began to fight for his life, his vision tunneling down to a soda straw. Before it went black completely, he heard Johan say, “Tell him I’m sorry.”

  89

  I got Kurt another beer and said, “So, Tariq is taking a trip to the Cloud? He’s ours? He probably has a ton of information in his head we can use.”

  Kurt took a swig and said, “Unfortunately, no. He’s being turned over to the FBI for prosecution. The president wants to make an example of him to others who might be financing terrorism.”

  “Sir, they do that, and he’ll get a lawyer and clam up. We won’t get anything more out of him.”

  “Yeah, but there’s a greater goal here. Most of the Islamic terrorist groups around the world are funded by wealthy Gulf Arabs. Their countries do little to stop it, other than give us platitudes about taking it seriously. The president wants to show that if they won’t do anything on their own, we will. We’d like to go after the father as well, since he’s truly the money flow, but unless we can entice him to fly to the US from Morocco, he’s out of reach.”

  “Morocco? That’s where he is?”

  “Yes.”

  “When is the transfer?”

  “Tomorrow. We get one more day with him.”

  “Can you hold him longer?”

  “Not unless you have some specific vein of intelligence you want to mine. I can’t block the transfer without cause.”

  “I don’t have any questions, but if you hand him over, it’ll make the news, and we’ll miss your really big fish. Tariq’s father will flee to Saudi Arabia, and they’ll never extradite him.”

  “Neither will Morocco.”

  “Don’t be so sure. Can you build me a concise case against him, proving he funded the port attacks?”

  “Yeah, it’s airtight, but why?”

  I pulled out my phone and dialed a long number. As it rang, I said, “By the way, I’m billing the Taskforce for these international calls.”

  While I waited for it to connect, I said, “Oh, and you’ll have to pay for the helicopter we used yesterday. And I wrecked a rental car in Norfolk.”

  Kurt rolled his eyes, and I said, “I also lost a set of FBI night vision goggles. I’m afraid that’s a big-ticket item I’ll be claiming on my travel voucher.”

  That caused his eyebrows to shoot up. He said, “You lost what?”

  I heard the phone connect and held up a finger. Ahmed al-Raffiki answered, saying, “Pike? Are you back in Morocco? I thought they only allowed one trip a year for Islamophobes.”

  I laughed and said, “No, I’m in the US. How’s the arm?”

  “It’s coming along nicely. I see you had some close calls in the United States and that the perpetrators were Moroccans. Anything to do with what we worked on?”

  “Everything. Your help thwarted that attack against the Navy ship. I appreciate it.”

  He said, “You’re welcome. Is that why you called?”

  “No. Were you serious about arresting those who kill in the name of Islam?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “All of the Moroccans had passports from Saudi Arabia, and we’ve tracked the financing to a Saudi billionaire. We have his son, but we want the father.”

  “How does this involve me? You think because I’m an Arab I can order Saudi Arabia to do something?”

  “No. The father is in Morocco. We’re set to announce the son’s arrest, but as soon as we do, the father will flee home. We want to prevent that. We want you to arrest him, then extradite him to us.”

  I heard him exhale; then he said, “That is asking a lot. There will be enormous pressure brought to bear from the Saudi royal family.”

  “I know. I want to do it quickly, before Saudi Arabia can protest. Before they can lean on the monarch to prevent it. Tomorrow I will give you the official investigation with all of the evidence against him. It is ironclad. It will protect your king and leave Saudi Arabia protesting to us.”

  “You have this evidence?”

  “Yes, and it’s not just suspicion. It’s hard facts that tie him not only to these current attacks, but into the original attacks on 9/11.”

  “Send it to me.”

  I hung up the phone and said to Kurt, “You hold that guy for three more days, and you’re going to get the mother lode.”

  Kurt said, “I had no idea you were so good at cross-cultural communication.”

  Jennifer laughed and said, “He’s not good at that at all. If anything, Ahmed is cooperating because of me.”

  Carly interjected, saying, “When I saw him in the cell, he was all fuzzy and warm. He looked like he was trying to get Ahmed to empathize.”

  I said, “That was just my cover. Screw cross-cultural communication.”

  Knuckles said, “Yeah, that’s probably Pike’s weakest skill.”

  I sat back down and patted Jennifer’s knee, saying, “Speaking of skill, Jennifer tells me you think you’re a better shot because of that Hollywood mission on the carrier.”

  Knuckles flicked his eyes to her, wondering what pillow talk had occurred. He said, “I think I proved that the other night.”

  “Really? Let’s review the bidding here. You shot a Sea-Doo driving on the water in two dimensions, using my spotter, the one I taught. Anybody could have done that with her calling the shots.”

  I took a swig of my beer and said, “Try hitting a drone that’s flying in three dimensions and going forty miles an hour. Now, that is some shooting.”

  Knuckles said, “From what I heard, it was so damn close to you, you could have thrown a rock at it. A child could have hit it.”

  Carly said, “You guys are incorrigible.”

  I said, “Sir, what do you think? Drone or Jet Ski?”

  He said, “Don’t drag me into this.”

  I said, “Okay, how about this, Knuckles? The true measure is not how well you can shoot, but how well you can teach others.”

  Confused, Knuckles said, “So?”

  “Well, Carly showed some real skill with me a few days ago. She has innate Operator qualities, but truth be told, she’s pathetic with a weapon.”

  I saw her expression go from pleased to indignant. To Knuckles, I said, “Maybe when you’re through training your own spotter, we can have them do a shoot-off. Kurt can be the judge.”

  I looked at Carly, then at Kurt, and said, “After she’s been through selection.”

  A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Since this is the “acknowledgments” page, I guess I should acknowledge that I came close to biting off more than I could chew with this plot. It sounded fairly simple at first—explore the possible state sponsorship of the tragedy of 9/11, and have the group attempt to duplicate a spectacular attack in the modern day, on the fifteenth anniversary. I picked the ports within our waters because it is a unique vulnerability that’s never really been exploited, but the more research I did, the harder it became to thread the needle between the attacks and the Taskforce’s assets. It was almost unmanageable in scope, and I found myself wanting to kick my own ass on more than one occasion during the writing process for creating the plot. Which leads to a thank-you for my wife and family for putting up with my cranky self for the past six months.

  I’m indebted to some anonymous folks for letting me pick their brains on the port infrastructure, and for pointing the way to further research into the esoteric laws and security considerations surrounding the international shipping industry. It’s safe to say that the ports of the United States are vulnerable to all manner of exploitation, from human trafficking to drugs to terrorism, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn that attacking one wasn’t nearly as easy as I thought it would be. We have a strong wall of infrastructure in place to defeat such attempts, and while it isn’t perfect—and never will be—it’s a hell of a lot better than I thought it was. This caused some sleepless nights and significantly amped-up research to make such an attack realistic.

  Tariq is based on a real person from Saudi Arabia who did indeed flee Florida just before 9/11 and had some nefarious potential ties to some of the 9/11 hijackers. A special thanks to Dan Christensen, the editor of the Florida Bulldog, for providing me with a copy of one of the FBI reports into the investigation, which they obtained through a FOIA request. The Florida Bulldog (formerly the Broward Bulldog, now FloridaBulldog.org) did an enormous amount of work on the potential link between the family and the attacks, which was picked up by news agencies all over the world. It’s worth a Google search to read their investigative report, because there certainly is an enormous amount of smoke—especially given the now-unclassified pages from the intelligence committee reports on potential Saudi complicity.

  The Panama Papers are, of course, real, and are also worth a little reading, if just to see the machinations of the sordid world of offshore banking. The revelations have already brought down at least one political leader (the prime minister of Iceland) and caused an investigation into a host of others, but of course, my use of them was complete literary license.

  A special thanks to Mint Tea Tours, a Morocco tour company who created a custom tour package to facilitate my research. When I told them what I wanted to do and why, they accommodated my every whim, traveling at a blistering pace to conduct research in all of the cities I needed to hit, traversing the breadth of the country. Along with the simple mechanics of travel, they also provided some interesting insights into the different perspectives of Islam in their own country. A lot of the conversations in this manuscript were real. Morocco itself is a beautiful country and—contrary to what would be conventional wisdom to most in the United States—is completely safe and well worth the visit. The only strange occurrence was getting questioned as I left the ferry in Tangier. I’d put down “writer” on my immigration paperwork, and the official—after not caring what I said—ran me down off the ferry, wanting to know if I was a reporter for a newspaper or magazine. I got the impression someone had talked to him, and they wanted to control whatever came out in the press. He was satisfied when I told him I wrote books (of course, in no way did I tell them what kind of books, or what I was researching . . .).

  Gibraltar was a “Jennifer” stop. Since we were driving all over Spain and on our way to the port of Algeciras, my wife said, “We’re already here. Let’s go check it out.” We did, and on a cable car to the top of the Rock, playing tourist, I asked the guy running the car what the giant dock was down below. He said it was the biggest dry dock repair facility in the Med, and the one place that could repair the giant tankers and container ships that plied the sea. At that point, the stop became integral to the plot and is a prime example of what on-the-ground research gets me, as I usually stumble into something without even looking. That and the cool monkeys at the top of the Rock, of course.

  A special thanks to my daughter’s boyfriend, Ben, for showing me the ins and outs of Pokémon Go. Originally, I was just going to use the zero-day vulnerability the app has when signing in with Gmail, but after learning how it worked, and reading some ridiculous stories of mishaps while playing the game, I decided to use it for real. Yes, I downloaded it, then went about my neighborhood with my daughter looking for a gym . . .

  The commercial drone attacks in this plot have thankfully not happened as of yet, but it’s only a matter of time, and something about which the Department of Defense is keenly aware. The proliferation of small UAVs and the exponential growth in technology has created a poor-man’s targeting system that is very real, and because of it, has sparked a cottage industry of anti-drone technology companies. Some are good, and others are just hype, but rest assured, we’re going to see an attack using a “toy” drone sooner rather than later. When that happens, defense systems will get serious in a hurry.

  As always, a huge thanks to my agent, John Talbot, and the entire Dutton Taskforce crew. Ben, Jess, Liza, and Elina—this one took a little longer, but your efforts to sharpen the edges paid off (in more ways than one—as fate would have it, both Jess and Liza went to Granada at the same time I was writing this manuscript, and while I spent some time there, it was in a regular hotel. If you want to know how I found out about the “cave apartments,” thank Liza. Team effort!). Thanks for all that you do!

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Brad Taylor, Lieutenant Colonel (ret.), is a twenty-one-year veteran of the U.S. Army Infantry and Special Forces, including eight years with the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta, popularly known as the Delta Force. Taylor retired in 2010 after serving more than two decades and participating in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, as well as classified operations around the globe. His final military post was as Assistant Professor of Military Science at the Citadel. His first ten Pike Logan thrillers were New York Times bestsellers. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina.

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