by D. E. Daum
After making the rounds in the control center, Kelly headed for his room and a much-anticipated reunion with his wife. Ecstatic, a playful smile formed on Mariam’s face. “Do you still think I’m an incredible woman?”
“Mariam, you are at the next level above incredible, whatever that may be.”
“How about mind-boggling?” Mariam urged. Kelly nodded vigorously and Mariam continued, “Why don’t you bring me up to date? What’s happened to the bomb, and what are we doing about the Jihadists?”
Kelly explained how they got the shipment and flew it to the Nevada desert, where experts were working at deactivating it. If anything happened to go wrong, it would appear to be an underground test.
“I have people at Hamadi’s and Ali’s residences, combing through their belongings for any clue about the other terrorist operations. They each had a computer, so Sally, the other available computer expert, was flown there to scrutinize their computers for information.”
Mariam interrupted. “But what of the others?”
“They are all dead, except for the two who are being held at Nellis AFB and the fugitive, Rhamati, whom we chased back to California. Hayden interrogated the captives at least twice and was convinced that, except for Hamadi and Ali, the rest were dupes, going on a suicide mission.”
“How is Hayden by the way?” Mariam asked.
“He’s doing surprisingly well. What we thought was a heart attack was, in reality, an anxiety attack. I guess I gave him too much bad information on top of all the other things.
“Anyway, Haman and I thoroughly searched Rhamati’s apartment and computer. It was strange. As we were searching his apartment, I kept thinking this man does not act like a zealot. Just the opposite. There were no posters, slogans, suras, hadiths, books, nothing. No radical chat rooms or websites, and yet he was there.”
“Isn’t that suspicious?”
“More like curious. I suppose we could send people to check out the other would-be attackers’ homes. It’s only prudent. We do have a contingent of our heavily armed bad asses en route to confront the planned attacks. If we have to actually clash with these bastards, then they’ve won the propaganda battle, by having successfully initiated another terrorist attack within our homeland.”
There was a knock on the door. Mariam went to the door and looked through the peephole.
Smiling, Mariam looked at Kelly and mouthed “Jane,” opening the door. They hugged like long lost friends, and Kelly marveled how the two most important women in his second life were becoming fast friends.
Jane then hugged Kelly and as she pulled away, she said, “I hear you have been selected to be in charge of this operation.”
Kelly nodded and started to say, “There was no one …” when Jane put her finger to his lips
“Captain Jane DeJong, reporting for duty. Under the circumstances, the NSA has made one of his better choices and I’m itching for a fight.”
Kelly gave her the usual banter about how she was badly injured and should still be in the hospital. She stopped him cold when she said, “Would you? Would you stay in the hospital while all this shit was going down?”
No answer.
“I didn’t think so. Let me assure you I am in reasonably good shape. True, I gave myself a concussion, but the dizziness has passed, and they sewed up my boob. Doc says it’s looking good—the healing, not the boob. Oh hell, maybe he meant the boob too. He was kind of cute.”
Kelly smiled. He knew his best friend was back. How could he refuse?
“So tell me, big boy, what’s been going on? You gonna fill little ol’ Jane in?” Jane looked over at Mariam who was smirking. Jane continued, unabashed, “Figuratively, of course.”
Kelly made a couple of phone calls to check up on things and implement Mariam’s suggestion about checking out the other assailants’ pads. He reiterated what he had revealed to Mariam, then asked Jane what she thought. “I think Mariam’s right. What you did not find at this Colin Rhamati character’s place is suspicious. You told us what you failed to find. Tell us what you did find.”
“Well, the guy seemed like a Boy Scout. Nothing fit. His apartment was spotless and well organized. I found the brochure which led us to the storage unit where the weapons were stored.”
Mariam held up her hand there to interrupt Kelly. She asked. “Has anybody bothered to check up on the ownership of the storage complex? It could have a bearing, and that strange spelling of easy, E-A-Z-I rings a bell for me.”
“Good point. Let me call Jimmy to get him on that.” Kelly tasked Jimmy with tracing the storage center’s ownership and was about to hang up.
“Remember that chick you asked us to check out?”
“Samantha. Yeah, I remember. What about her.”
“There was a Samantha Parker, who lived about six blocks from your suspect and worked in a bookstore.”
“Great. What did you find out about her?”
“She’s dead. She was killed four weeks ago in an ambush in Baghdad. She was in the Army Reserves and was called up about three months ago. She arrived in Iraq about a week before her death. She was assigned to be a truck driver, which is the most dangerous non-combat duty available. Too bad!”
“You can say that again. Especially sad for one Colin Rhamati. Thanks for the info. Let me know when you find anything out about the storage place.”
“That explains why Colin didn’t seem like an extremist,” said Jane. “He wasn’t one until his girlfriend got butchered. Might make someone a little pissed off.”
Mariam looked over at Kelly and said, “Don’t you just love the way Jane cuts right to the chase? Let me see that picture of Samantha again. She was a pretty girl. It really is a shame. What else did you find in Colin’s apartment, Kelly?”
“Let’s see, there was a Qur’an. That was the only indication he was a Muslim, unless you consider my tape.”
“Whoa!” said Jane. “Hold on a moment. What do you mean your tape?”
“He had a tape of my speech.”
“Did you watch it?”
“No, but it was titled ‘The Right Hand of Allah.’”
“You have people there?” asked Jane
“Yes, Bishop and Santani. Also a computer expert, Sally”
“Have one of them check the tape out, beginning to end.”
Kelly again stopped his recitation while he called Santani. After he finished, he recalled the diary. “Hell, I forgot! Haman found a diary, and I never finished reading it.”
He quickly got up and retrieved the diary from his coat pocket.
As he was bringing the diary to where Mariam and Jane were, Kelly opened the book and several pieces of paper fell out. Kelly set the diary on the coffee table and bent down to retrieve the papers, as did the women.
Mariam spoke up first, “Oh my God, she was pregnant!” Kelly and Jane stopped reading while she explained. “She just found out the day before, and her CO made a request that she be shipped back home. They were going to be married.”
“That explains this e-mail,” said Jane. “I thought you said there were no e-mails on his computer?”
Kelly replied. “There weren’t. It could have been on another machine or deleted. Who sent it? What does it say?”
“WOW! It’s from you!”
“WHAT? How could that be? We need to go to the Control Center.”
Chapter 4
It was 10:00 A.M. Kelly, Mariam, and Jane headed for the conference room. Kelly asked Fawler, Haman, and Jimmy to join them. He explained everything they had just found out. That Colin Rhamati’s fiancée and unborn child had been killed in Iraq. That he had volunteered for a suicide mission and received two e-mails from Saleem’s website, thehand.org, one acknowledged his request and a later one approved it, authorizing him to contact Hamadi.
After Kelly finished, Jimmy told him that he had a preliminary finding on the storage center ownership. “It’s owned by Fourth Empire Corporation, a Panamanian corporation. I’m still trying to
get a listing for the officers.”
Kelly urged everyone to continue to discuss the newly discovered information and excused himself to make a call to Santani.
Santani told Kelly he was just about to call him. “As you thought, the first part of the video was your speech. I couldn’t understand a word you said, but it looked like you had the audience mesmerized. You will have to give me a lowdown on what you said sometime. Anyway, after your speech ended, the tape was blank for around fifteen minutes then there was a notice flashed on the screen to call this number. Do you have a pencil?”
Kelly grabbed a tablet and pencil off the empty desk he had borrowed. “Go ahead.”
“1-866-555-1945. While the phone number was on the screen an audio message said, ‘Soon, very soon, the Americans will pay for their arrogance. Destroy this tape when you are finished.’ What do you want me to do with the tape?”
“Make a copy for yourself and FedEx it to the Control Center. Got to go.”
Kelly returned to the conference room and brought everyone up to speed. He gave the telephone number to Jimmy. He did not have to tell Jimmy what he wanted.
“I assume there is some way that a third party can send e-mails through my e-mail?” Jimmy nodded. Kelly raised the prints of the e-mails. “Is there any way to trace the origin of these e-mails?”
Jimmy said. “I think so, but only from your website, and to do that I have to go to London.”
“Can’t do that. You’re working on too much here. In the meantime, you all discussed the information we’ve recently discovered, I hope.” They all nodded “Good. Okay, the floor is open.”
Mariam addressed no one in particular. “The use of your e-mail and copies of your speech for nefarious purposes is an attempt to discredit The Right Hand of Allah. It may be that your enemies will use these attacks, if they are even moderately successful, to blame you. It seems it may be prudent to beat them to the punch and make an announcement that unauthorized parties have been illegally using your website’s e-mail to falsely implicate you in terrorist activities.”
Kelly said, “Good point. I assume my e-mail can be made tamper-proof in the future?” Jimmy nodded. “Jane, do you have anything to add?”
“Yep. I’m betting that our neo-Nazis own that storage complex. If they do, they are either complicit or are loaning the jihadists their facilities. I’m betting they are complicit, and if they are, Eckert knows about it. I’m all for going to Germany and persuading him to tell us what he knows.”
Kelly said. “While I agree they probably arranged this whole escapade, we don’t have time to go to Germany.”
“That may be true, but we do have time to meet him at say . . . Quantico.”
Good idea Jane! I’ll have to think about that one if nothing else presents itself. “Jane, I’ll take that under advisement. Fawler, what are your thoughts?”
“I agree with your wife. I think the e-mails are the surest path to whoever organized this event. How did Colin Rhamati get in contact with these people? Remember, Colin was told to contact Hamadi, so he probably didn’t know him. I think I would nose around his mosque. Someone turned him on to the terrorists.”
Kelly’s phone rang. “Hey, boss, it’s Santani again. Something just came up. You remember when we were here yesterday, no one was home next to Rhamati’s apartment?”
“Sure, Nick, I remember. What gives?”
“His neighbor just came home, saw us coming out of the suspect’s apartment, and split. Bishop chased him down. We made him let us into his apartment, and it’s unbelievable. This guy thrives on terrorism.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean this guy is a terrorism nut. If he’s not working for them, and I’m not sure he isn’t, he should be working for us.”
“Who the hell is this guy?”
“His name is Dar Pruitt, and he’s the one who told our suspect how to contact the terrorists.”
“Speaking of the suspect, is there any news on him?”
“Nah.”
“Nick, listen. We’d like to interview Mr. Pruitt here. I need you to keep doing what you’re doing there. Have Reynolds bring Pruitt back on our plane ASAP. Have him bring Rhamati’s computer as well and Pruitt’s. I have something else for you too. In addition to checking out the other assailants, check out the clergy and friends of Colin at his mosque.”
To everyone Kelly said, “Reynolds is bringing the person who taught Colin how to get in touch with terrorists. He may be one of them, we don’t know. In the meantime, I have an assignment for you, Rubin. I’ve decided to implement Jane’s suggestion. I want you to have Rudolf Eckert flown to Quantico on the Q.T. and I want you to interview him. We made a deal with the puke, but he held back, at least we think he did, so the sky’s the limit. All right?”
“Got it. Can I have transcripts of previous interviews?”
Jane said, “We can do better than that. We have videos. One thing you should know is this sub-human is a bully and a coward and can’t stand pain.”
“They usually are and they usually can’t.” Fawler chuckled.
After Fawler left, Kelly called Rayya in London and told her about the e-mails. He gave her carte blanche and instructions to track down the source. She signed off with assurances that she would find out what he needed and get back to him.
Kelly turned to Jane and said, “Jane, this person of interest that Reynolds is bringing is supposed to be a terrorism junkie. I prefer him not to know I’m present. Can you handle an interrogation with Reynolds’ help?”
“Yes, but I’d prefer Mariam’s help. We make a great team.”
“You do, but if I may be blunt, I know that pound for pound you are deadly. I’m sure Mariam could probably hold her own too, but honestly, you two are not very frightening. Titillating yes, intimidating no.”
“Is that right? I could take you down if I had to.”
“Maybe, but what are you, a hundred thirty pounds? And Mariam is no more than a hundred ten pounds. You’re just not going to strike fear into anyone.”
“Bullshit. Tell that to Ali, to Eckert, to Evans and that’s just the few you know about. What’s the problem? If we don’t get anywhere, you can always bring Reynolds off the bench.”
“All right you win, but I want you to allow Haman to just sit in the room. I’ll be watching from next door.” Kelly glanced at his watch. 12:30 P.M.
* * * *
“Hello, Dar. My name is Starbird, this is Mary, and that over there is Haman.”
Dar looked right at Mariam. “I know you. You’re married to Saleem Rhamsy, The Right Hand of Allah. What are you doing here?”
Great. I’m hiding so I don’t get recognized, and he spots my wife. Damn it, Jane!
Mariam tried to bluff through, but the enigmatic Mr. Pruitt wasn’t buying. “You’re one hot number, lady. I’d recognize you anywhere, even veiled. You were Miss Pacific Rim. You went to college here, first at Berkley then UCLA. Go Bruins!”
Kelly scrutinized this incongruous little man. He was tall enough, Kelly guessed, at five-eleven but very thin. He had on thread bare chinos with holes in the knees and a long-sleeved plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His clothes were freshly washed and ironed. Pruitt was extremely light-skinned, and had a full beard, which along with his hair was the color of corn silk. There was one other thing that stood out—his eyes. They were blue, dark blue with a sparkle.
Mariam was still trying. “Not getting into who I may or may not be, Mr. Pruitt, you may be in trouble. It appears you have been aiding and abetting a terrorist, one Colin Rhamati.”
Dar laughed loudly and long, “Colin a terrorist? You obviously don’t know Colin! Colin is the gentlest, most honorable person I’ve ever met.”
Jane jumped in with both feet. “Your Colin wasn’t so gentle two nights ago when he was involved in a shootout in a Las Vegas hotel, which killed two of his associates and one federal agent. He wasn’t very gentle the next day either, when he held up a convenience store
in Victorville, California. Or when he tried to steal a car.” Jane used a remote to turn on a security video of the holdup. “Is that your gentle, person?”
Dar was clearly stymied. “That’s him all right. He must have a good reason.”
Reynolds had brought a dozen or more scrapbooks and two computers with him. Jimmy was examining the computers and Jane had a few of the scrapbooks in the interview room. The rest were in his office except for the one Kelly had brought in with him.
Jane said, “There is no good reason for shooting federal agents.”
“Wait a minute here! I agreed to come because Nick said you could use my help to stop the terrorists, but since I’ve been here you’ve been trying to lay some kind of guilt trip on me and give me a bunch of grief. To hell with you, lady. I ain’t saying anything more until I get a lawyer.”
