But as the amount of time that Kamal had been inside began to drag on to thirty, then forty minutes, Hicks began to think maybe he should call in a Varsity squad to at least seal the place up and raid the unit before Omar could get away. Omar could be showing Kamal a tactical nuke or a dirty bomb. He could be showing him plans for the bomb they wanted to build if they had the money for parts and someone who could help them build it. He could be torturing him right now, but there was no way for Hicks to know. And a lack of knowledge could get you killed in this business.
Hicks knew Omar was protecting something; something that was in that facility. He needed to know what it was, but he couldn’t let the Varsity come in and kill his one true lead before he knew more. Roger’s ego aside, interrogation was always a risky choice.
Forty minutes became an hour and the satellite image hadn’t changed. Just a bland image of the bland roof of the bland storage facility hundreds of miles below the satellite’s lens. Hicks watched people walk by the building via OMNI, only to see them cross the street in front of him a few seconds later. He could remember when VCRs were cutting edge technology. Now he could watch someone walking in front of his car from space at the same time as he saw them in real life.
Hicks could also remember a time before all this; back when many things had been new to him. When he used to think people were basically good and had the best interests of their fellow man at heart. But gradually, he learned that people generally only had their own interests in mind and would often do anything to further their own goals. Whether it was to get in good with their boss or bang some girl or get a thumbs up from Allah, people were often willing to do whatever it took to get what they wanted. It didn’t matter if you were after a better job or better karma or forty virgins in paradise; it was all about getting that shiny medal at the end of the race.
And once Hicks had come to understand that’s how people worked, he was able to see the world for what it really was: a cold and desolate fucking place.
Hicks checked the time on the satellite feed. It had been over an hour and their car hadn’t been moved. There also hadn’t been any other vehicles anywhere near the place. No one else had gone in or out of the facility, either.
Then, the image on his dashboard screen blinked to life as the satellite picked up Kamal’s and Omar’s heat signatures as they walked out of the building. Hicks changed the zoom on the camera and switched it from heat signature to tactical. He focused in on both men.
Kamal had kept his beard, but shaved his head completely bald and wore a white skull cap. He looked nothing like the federal fugitive Hicks had seen the day before. Instead, he looked like a slightly underfed man who had something on his mind.
Omar’s appearance never changed. He was a slight man and walking next to a bruiser like Kamal made him look even smaller. He was bone skinny and bug-eyed. The few teeth he still had were small and crooked. His black skin was marked with lighter patches and pockmarked from acne. He had the haunted, hunted look of a man who’d been held down most of his life, probably because he had been.
In Somalia, Omar had been an orphan who didn’t have any friends and he’d never had any formal education, at least none the University could verify. Yet somehow, this man—who’d been forgotten since childhood—had managed to scrape together enough money to leave his country and head to America. He’d started his own business and now wanted to be a major player in the jihad against his adopted country.
Men like Omar scared the hell out of Hicks because they had nothing to keep them going except the hatred that fueled everything they did. That hatred gave them strength and motivation and purpose. God help whoever found themselves on the other side of men like Omar, because the only way to stop them is with a bullet in the brain.
And Hicks would be glad to put a bullet in his brain, but only after he found out what he was doing.
As he watched Kamal and Omar come out of the storage facility, he looked to see if either of them was carrying anything or had anything tucked under their shirts. Both of them looked completely normal, except for Omar, who was fiddling with something in his hand, probably his car keys. He switched to the thermal feed to see if they were carrying anything that had changed their heat signatures. A bomb or something chemical but nothing abnormal came up.
They looked like two regular guys getting back into a car on a quiet Brooklyn morning. Kamal rode shotgun while Omar climbed in behind the wheel, started up the car, and pulled away. The car was a faded blue Corolla from the late nineties with a good amount of rust where the paint had shipped away. Hicks saw they were heading his way, so he quickly ducked, making like he was looking for something in the glove box.
Hicks knew OMNI would track them wherever they went, so there was no need for him to follow too close behind. Besides, he had other things to do.
He tapped the dashboard screen and rewound the OMNI footage to get a closer look at what Omar had been holding in his hand when he left the storage facility. Hicks stopped the playback at the point where Omar and Kamal had first left the building, then zoomed in on Omar’s hands. The image was blocky and pixilated at first, but Hicks knew the software would scrub the image until it became much clearer.
And as the image came into focus, Hicks realized that Omar had been holding a key, but it hadn’t just been a car key. One key had the Toyota logo on it. But the other was a storage locker key. And the small label on the face of the key read 338.
“Bingo,” he heard himself say. “Got you, you son of a bitch.”
Hicks wasn’t surprised when his handheld began to buzz. He knew either the Dean or Jason had been watching the feed and saw what he’d been analyzing. He just hoped it was the Dean. But unfortunately, it was Jason.
“Good work,” Jason said when Hicks allowed the call to go through. “It appears Omar has taken our friend into his confidence.”
Hicks knew he was looking for a pat on the back for picking Kamal, but he wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. “Ten grand in cash helps buy a lot of confidence with a rookie like Omar, but we won’t know what he told Kamal until we debrief him.”
“Too bad Omar made him leave his cellphone back at the house or we might’ve had an idea on what he’d shown him in there.”
“But at least we know which storage unit is his.”
“It certainly does. Because even though the storage facility doesn’t have their security cameras hooked up to any external network, they do back up their computer to a remote server twice a day. I was able to access those records and found out that number three-three-eight is a large locker that is registered to a John Smith of 505 Fifth Avenue in New York. The bill is paid in person in cash each month.”
Hicks wasn’t surprised Jason had gone ahead and looked up the record. He also wasn’t surprised it was a phony name and address or that Omar paid for it in cash. “What size is the unit?”
“The largest they have available. Ten-by-ten-by-eight. No inventory on what’s in there, unfortunately, but there never is in those kinds of places.”
Hicks didn’t expect there to be one. “I’ll worry about the unit later. Now that we know where they are…”
“…we can keep an eye on the facility through OMNI,” Jason said. “We’ll watch all emails in and out, cell and web traffic, customers, everything. You’re not the only one around here who knows what they’re doing, James. I’ll also send in a Varsity unit to look around Omar’s storage unit and see what they find.”
“No you won’t,” Hicks said. “Not until I get the chance to debrief Kamal. Omar could have anything in there. He could also have rigged the unit to explode if tampered with.”
“We’re not talking about a bunch of rookies here,” Jason said. “We’ve got some of the finest technicians in the world. I think they can safely figure out if the storage unit presents a threat.”
“I know they’re the best because I trained half of them,” Hicks reminded him. “But a proper infiltration in a building like that takes time.
The walls are too thick for OMNI to read, so any threat assessment will have to take place on site. That takes time and draws attention. Right now, there’s no sense in risking discovery until Kamal tells me what went on in there.”
Hicks could hear the disappointment in Jason’s voice. His checkmate had been short-lived. “Very well. When will you debrief Kamal?”
“As soon as I can.” He checked OMNI feed and saw Omar was, indeed, heading back toward Queens. He probably wanted to drop off Kamal himself. Maybe see where the man was staying to make sure it wasn’t too expensive. Like the Waldorf Astoria. “In the meantime, did the Dean have any more luck getting a match on the man from the camera’s SD card?”
“In a matter of speaking, yes. We can talk about it after you debrief Kamal.”
Hicks hated stone walls, especially in a fluid field op like this. “No, we’ll talk about it right now. If he’s part of this somehow, I can get Kamal to keep an eye out for him when he’s with Omar.”
Jason said nothing.
And Hicks was getting frustrated. “Jesus. This guy can’t be that important, can he? We would’ve had something on him ourselves if he was that big.”
“We don’t know for certain and that’s the problem,” Jason admitted. “The Dean reached out to our British cousins who practically admitted they’d embargoed the image and the identification but they’re refusing to let us know why. Whoever this man is, he’s very important to Her Majesty’s government.”
Hicks swore as he put his head back against the headrest. He’d been hoping the French had embargoed the image. They were usually inclined to share information after a fair amount of posturing. They enjoyed reminding fellow intelligence agencies that they still had extensive networks in Africa and the Middle East.
But the English were different. Movies and espionage books liked to show the British intelligence forces as inferior to their American counterparts. They were often portrayed as the handsome, oblivious older brother who’d fallen to drink and now depended on his younger brother for support.
Hicks knew that wasn’t the case now and never really had been. While America’s intelligence services had gotten bogged down fighting Communist expansion in Korea, Vietnam, and elsewhere around the globe, Britain had quietly protected its networks and more than held its own in the intelligence community. Their empire may have crumbled after the war, but their intelligence capabilities didn’t. American bluster had its place on the world stage, but British resolve was still every bit as formidable as it had ever been.
And Hicks knew there must be a damned good reason for protecting that image he’d gotten from the SD card.
“Is the Dean at least hopeful he can get some traction with them?”
“Hopeful, but not optimistic. He’s willing to call in a lot of favors if we need him to, but we’d better be damned sure we need him to.”
“We should know more after I debrief Kamal later,” Hicks said. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.”
“See to it that you are.” Jason killed the connection.
Hicks looked at the blank screen. Last word freak. He grabbed a dark baseball cap from the glove compartment and put it on before stepping out of the car. Investigating the storage facility was too dangerous for the Varsity team. Five guys with bags roaming through the place was bound to raise suspicion they couldn’t afford. But one man dressed like a guard might not.
Hicks got out of his car, intent on testing his theory.
THE BACK door of the storage facility was little more than window dressing. The security camera they’d set up to watch it had been ripped off the wall long ago. Only a few dead wires hung rusting against the stonework. The door was a heavy duty fire door, but the lock had been damaged and repaired several times. Picking it was a piece of cake. Getting inside was easier than it should’ve been.
By looking at the company’s cleaning bills, Hicks had determined what the guards at the facility wore and dressed accordingly. Hicks’ dark blue jumpsuit and baseball cap wasn’t an exact match for the guard uniforms, but close enough so that if someone spotted him on camera, he’d blend in better. He knew there were no cameras in the stairwell, so he wouldn’t be spotted until he reached Omar’s storage room.
The fire stairs area was a dump. The body of a large rat was slowly decomposing against the wall of the first floor landing. The image reminded him of Kamal rotting away in a tarp beneath the water tower. The irony wasn’t lost on Hicks.
The storage area, on the other hand, was brand new with sparkling linoleum floors and florescent lights bright enough to perform surgery under. A smoked globe was set into the ceiling panels above every storage unit. Since the cameras weren’t fed to any server off site, Hicks wondered if they even worked. At least they looked impressive enough to the customers. Anything to give people the illusion that their possessions, most of which they didn’t need, were more secure.
Omar’s storage unit was bigger than some Manhattan apartments—big enough to have a steel roll down gate similar to the type that stores used. And, just like those kinds of gates, the lock was set on the right-hand side. He checked to see if anyone was around, then pulled out his pick set again and went to work on the lock. It was more challenging than the backdoor had been but not challenging enough to keep Hicks from opening it.
He popped the lock and set it on the floor. He remembered what he’d said to Jason. Why he told him the Varsity shouldn’t just charge into the facility and open the unit. Biohazards and booby traps were always a possibility. But this was only his life he was talking about, and the situation with Omar was already in hand if something happened to him. Besides, Jason would welcome the opportunity to shine.
Hicks grabbed the handle at the bottom and slowly pulled the door up. Nothing happened.
The inside was a large space, just like the company records showed. Dark and mostly empty. Hicks turned on the light and saw… nothing.
Absolutely nothing except dust.
No furniture. No desk. No filing cabinet or anything that would justify renting such a large room. Just a large unit as empty as the day it had been built. He metal shelving built into the wall was equally as empty.
He’d watched the OMNI feed and knew Omar and Kamal were the only two who’d gone into the room and they’d been the only two who’d left. No one had interacted with them while they’d been in there. Neither of them had been carrying anything when they left. At least, nothing Hicks could see.
Hicks sank against the wall. Everything had been spinning so damned fast since Central Park that he felt like he wasn’t seeing all of the details of this all at once, only bits and pieces and glimpses. He sat on the floor with his back against the wall and tried to slow it all down. He tried to take everything in pieces instead of the whole because the pieces gave him the best way to solve this thing.
He concentrated on his breathing and made his mind a blank; as empty and still as the metal shelving across from him. He needed to concentrate before this became unmanageable and…
And that’s when he saw it.
The metal shelving was empty of everything except dust. A thick layer of dust had formed on the shelves, except for one square outline on the bottom shelf.
Hicks got to his feet and walked over to take a closer look. The outline of something, maybe a box or some kind of square container, was clearly visible on the bottom shelf. The rest of the shelves had a fair amount of dust on them, so it wasn’t a fluke. Something had been there, and recently.
Something that neither Kamal nor Omar needed to carry out in a box. And since neither of them had been carrying anything when they left the building, it meant they must’ve taken it out of the container and left it behind.
Whatever the container had been, it was still close by.
Hicks took another look around the unit, but there was no sign of anything except more dust.
He left the storage unit open and went into the hallway. He spotted a large trash bin at the end of the hall and looke
d inside. The bin was filled with torn papers, plastic bags and other trash, but only one thing stood out—an oversized padded envelope at the top of the pile.
Hicks slid on his gloves and pulled the envelope from the trash. He saw that the envelope had been slit open at the top, but still sealed at the lip. That meant any DNA on the seal would be intact. A good sign.
He turned it over and saw a label had been ripped off it except for something that looked like part of a circular logo of a mailing label.
Hicks knew if there was any way to glean any information from the envelope, the University lab would get it.
He went back and locked up Omar’s storage unit before taking the back stairs down to his car. No one had paid any attention to him. Then again, most people didn’t.
HICKS PUT the envelope in a forensic evidence bag he kept in the trunk of his car. He had figured he’d bring it to the University facility after he had the chance to debrief Kamal. But things didn’t work out the way they were supposed to. They rarely did.
OMNI showed that Omar hadn’t brought Kamal straight back to Queens after the storage facility. Instead, he drove him all over the city; visiting various parts of Brooklyn and Queens where extremist Muslims from various African countries congregated and prayed for death to America. There weren’t as many such places as people might think, but there were more than enough for Omar to have made a day out of it.
Hicks trailed as close as a quarter mile out to avoid being spotted. He knew Kamal wasn’t in any danger. This was all a dog-and-pony show for his benefit and, ultimately, for the benefit of the man Kamal was supposed to be working for.
Everywhere they went, Omar and Kamal got a warm greeting from Nairobis and Nigerians and Kenyans and Senegalis alike. Hicks’ surveillance had shown that Omar had visited many of these places before, but the extent of their affection for him was troubling. Omar had obviously been very busy; quietly making a lot of friends.
Sympathy For the Devil Page 16
