“All yours,” replied the guard who quickly returned to his CSI rerun on cable.
The two men wore web belts with the requisite tools. They pulled a luggage cart stacked with three sealed boxes.
The guard didn’t even ask what they were taking in.
The Pittsfield Department of Public Works and Utilities provides services to the city’s forty-two thousand citizens. Drinking water is supplied by six water reservoirs, running through 241 miles of distribution pipes, two flow control stations, and five pumping stations. At this moment, the pair, presumably from DPW, concentrated on one of two pumping stations that filled the Lebanon Avenue storage tank. An hour earlier they had visited the North Street station, quickly and efficiently completing their assignment. They expected the same ease at their second and final stop.
Inside and unobserved, they made some adjustments to the piping, adding an extra few feet of PVC they brought with them. Next, they introduced the substance they had transported two thousand miles cross-country.
Finished, they left, waving to the security guard who was much more interested in what the team of investigators on TV would accomplish in New York than the terrorists in his midst in Pittsfield.
That might have been the last anyone would have known about them had the weather not turned colder in the last thirty minutes. The drizzle that started before the men went in turned to black ice on the city streets.
The driver, Yuri Pavel, the one who spoke to the guard, was indeed a Russian immigrant. He was used to driving in brutal weather, but not used to the automatic transmissions that dominated American driving. This became a problem when he drove down North Street heading for the intersection of East Street. He was unfamiliar with antilock brakes, which actually offered far safer handling in a skid than pumping the brakes. Details were important to him in his field of chemistry, but not driving American cars. So the manual had remained unread in the Taurus glove compartment.
The traffic light was just beginning to turn from green to yellow. He had a choice: speed up and get through the light, or brake. He tested the brake. It felt wrong to him; like the car was locking up. So he hit the gas.
At first, the intersection looked clear; no one was at the light on the cross street. That was until a Chevy Silverado judged the driving conditions and timing of the light from his perspective. Thirty yards from the corner, the driver accelerated, which was precisely what Pavel was doing.
“Shit!” he yelled. He slammed on the brakes fast; once, twice, three times. This put him into an uncontrollable spin. The Silverado outweighed the Taurus. Taking the physics, the speed, and the weather into account, upon impact on the driver’s side, Pavel’s rotation increased. He hit a telephone pole at forty mph.
Russians didn’t like safety belts, and the air bag only helped Pavel’s coconspirator, another Russian chemist, Igor Romanovich. Pavel died either on the first hit by the Chevy or when his head went through the windshield. It actually didn’t matter much.
Romanovich survived the crash and was rushed to nearby Berkshire Medical Center.
It took four hours before the Pittsfield police put the pieces together. The chief of police made the call himself to the FBI.
Sixty-four
Washington, D.C.
30 January
“We caught another break, Mr. President.”
“Explain,” Taylor replied over the phone to Robert Mulligan.
“We have one in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.”
Morgan Taylor had campaigned in Pittsfield during his first run for office. He remembered citing that in 2005, Farmers Insurance had ranked Pittsfield twentieth in the nation as “Most Secure Places to Live.”
He considered, Maybe they should move up in the ranking.
“A pair infiltrated two pumping stations. The whole department’s been shut down until they can flush out whatever bad stuff they piped into the system.”
“Thank God,” Taylor said. Then he added, “You said you had one, but there was a pair?”
“Was. One’s dead. The driver.” The FBI Chief explained. “Car crash. According to the local police, the passenger started talking pretty quickly. We’ve sent our team in and we’re running his prints and pictures against everything we have. We’re doing the same with the dead man.”
“I don’t have to tell you how urgent it is that we get more,” Taylor stated.
“Understood. I’m sending the same team up to Pittsfield that delivered on the MS-13 thug. They’ll be there in under ninety minutes.”
“Thank you, Bob.”
“It’s the third leg of the stool. We should be able to zero in on more now.”
Scott Roarke, Vinnie D’Angelo, Raymond Watts, CPT Penny Walker, and Touch Parsons were having a very busy day dealing with pieces of the same puzzle.
Parsons, the FBI super geek, sat in front of a bank of computer screens. Sometimes his eyes and his mind seemed to work faster than the technology at his command. In the past year, Parsons had helped unravel the plot to bring down the president by utilizing and laboring over FERET. Now he was cross-referencing 140 million photographs worldwide, searching for that unmistakable something that would tie two captures in Montana and another in Massachusetts to the someone who was responsible.
But as the computer moved at light speed through databases, Parsons already had an image front of mind that he expected the computer program to confirm.
While the computer dove in and out of FBI files; local, national, and global news services; Getty photographs, Google images, and more, Parsons called across town to his girlfriend, CPT Penny Walker.
“Hey, anything more?” he asked.
“Into every database I can find and I just gave Roarke some startling news.” She told him.
“Holy shit!” Parson exclaimed.
“Anything on your end?”
“My pet is sniffing around.” His pet was FERET. “He’s feeding right now. Bits and bits. Really hungry. Something tells me all of us are triangulating on the same man.”
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
D’Angelo lived for open spaces and ways out. The CIA, his home, felt too confining. However, Jack Evans called him in after his escape from Burdenko and subsequent flight out of Russia.
“A pity,” Evans said. “Dubroff would have been a great get. He could have unlocked the entire Russian sleeper network for us. We’ve done okay with the dumbass freshman class they’ve put in play over the last few years. But those deep plants. They’re still out there, Vinnie. Dubroff knew them all.”
“Sorry. He was dead when I got there. Not so sure Kleinkorn didn’t pull the plug on him once he was on to me. It was a perfect trap. I’m lucky I got out.”
“No luck there. You had it all planned out,” Evans said.
“As a matter of fact…”
“Glad you’re on our side.”
“It sure isn’t for the retirement benefits,” D’Angelo joked. The government plan, even at the CIA, hardly stood up to what D’Angelo could get in the private sector. Maybe one day, he thought. Could go into business with Roarke.
“So, no names?”
“Nothing exact,” D’Angelo responded. “But close enough. Kleinkorn said that internally Dubroff gets the credit for running the spy program that will—in his words now—provide benefit into the future. I didn’t like the ring of that. Then he added, the historical credit will go to a Syrian businessman on his own mad quest.”
“Yes, a Syrian on a mad quest.”
Evans removed a folder from his upper desk drawer; a folder that never made it to the filing cabinet or the shredder. An active folder. He laid it down, opened it to a picture of the one Syrian most on his mind for the past year. “Do you believe in coincidences, Vincent?”
D’Angelo nodded no.
“Neither do I.”
The same time
The FBI computers at the Quantico labs in Virginia delivered for Touch Parsons. One photograph cross-referenced w
ith another, then ten more and a hundred beyond them. Ultimately the computer landed on a picture shot at an academic conference in Rome, Italy, three years earlier. Parsons examined the photo. It depicted a group of chemists flashing happy grins for the camera and one man trying to step out of range. It was this very man—the one who was avoiding the snapshot—that Parsons hoped to find…the man who would support his theory. He smiled and thought to himself, I am good.
Roarke wrote a single name on his grease board. Richard Cooper. Then he added Gloria Cooper’s name and stuck a line through it. Dead. Then he added a question mark. Intuition told him something that others were discovering through their own means. He erased the question mark and printed a name in red. He felt this was the man who would lead him to Cooper, or Cooper to…
Richard Cooper had intended to disappear in Aruba. Not anymore. He booked a ticket with multiple layovers and stops, circuitously traveling from Atlanta to Los Angeles, connecting to Panama City and Asuncion, with the final destination Guarani International Airport in Paraguay. For most of the thirty-seven-hours-plus trip, Richard Cooper thought of what he might say to the man responsible for his mother’s death. Then he recognized that there’d be no need for conversation. No words mattered any more when it came to Ibrahim Haddad.
Sixty-five
The White House
“It’s probably the last place in the Western Hemisphere you’d want to go.” Jack Evans explained.
Morgan Taylor read the briefing that the Director of National Intelligence brought. He was relatively unfamiliar with the TBI, the Tri-Border Region of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay, and Ciudad del Este in particular.
“The city was close to the top of the CIA’s list of the most dangerous locales in the world. We tell people to go at their own risk.”
“What do we have in Paraguay, Jack?”
“Well Bush 2 strong-armed the Paraguayan Senate to allow us to—quote/unquote—‘train’ their troops. He threatened to cut off millions in aid if Paraguay didn’t grant the United States entry. We wanted in for counterterrorism efforts. This was after U.S. troops discovered a poster of the nearby Iguacu Falls on the wall of an Al Qaeda operative’s home in Kabul. The bureau then sent in some forty agents to investigate terrorism networks, and Rumsfeld took charge of the program on orders from Cheney.
“To a great extent we were trying to establish a game-changer in the region. We’d been subject to a degree of bullying given Venezuela and uncertain relations with Colombia. So we talked Paraguay into giving us some ground to establish a presence. We still have a few assets watching what’s going on. But the visibility back then actually created more paranoia than useful intelligence.”
“How?” Taylor asked.
“Well, it was rumored that the Bush family was buying up property. State Department denied the reports. But that didn’t stop them from flying across the Internet; food for conspiracy theorists and foreign governments.”
“About what?”
“Now that’s a great question, especially under the present circumstances. It’s something we should have been paying attention to over the years.”
The president was intrigued.
“Water, Mr. President. Water. Below Ciudad del Este is one of the largest aquifers in the entire world. Fresh water, Mr. President. Maybe today, more valuable to most Americans than oil. Fresh water that fed those rumors about Bush’s land grab. And, since this crisis began, fresh water that is being sold and exported to major distributors in the United States. You tell me that’s a coincidence. I suspect that rise in share price and the profit taking is going to flow right back into Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda coffers right there in Ciudad del Este.
“Mr. President, I have never seen such a well-orchestrated terrorist plan resulting in moral and civil breakdown in the United States, simultaneously funding the global terrorism network with billions of legal dollars quite legally through U.S. corporations. It required a mastermind.”
Ciudad del Este
“My friends,” Ibrahim Haddad began, “you are aware of my great accomplishments.”
“Yes, Ibrahim,” said Midhat Al Faras, leader of Ciudad del Este’s drug smuggling network run by Hezbollah. He was the most outspoken of the group assembled by Haddad. The others were no less dangerous, simply quieter.
Sitting around the dining room table were Ahmad Almana, economic envoy in the Iranian embassy; Mustafa Ladas, who handled the early recruiting of MS-13 for Haddad; and Jalal bin Jassin, the senior Al Qaeda operative in South America.
They all had different agendas but answered to the same master. Money. Religious beliefs barely played into their quest for power. These were very powerful, dangerous men, all in their mid-fifties, looking to build enough wealth to retire in luxury while zealots under their thumbs did their bidding and their dying.
Ibrahim Haddad had the financial resources. He also provided them with a goal that brought legions of terrorists and ideologues flocking to their camps.
“What I did to America is only the prelude,” Haddad said very quietly. “Next, I will bring Israel to its knees. They’ve lived off the Jordan River for too long, leaving little drinkable water downstream for our people. They have fresh water running from their faucets. We have a toxic mix of salt water and liquid waste. They irrigated their lands while ours have gone dry. No more. Death will flow from their faucets and chaos will spill over to the streets. Then we shall bomb the squares, the schools, the hospitals, police stations, airport terminals, and synagogues. I will create fear and panic on a scale never known. Civil authority will break down, highways will be clogged as Israelis try to escape. Then we will bomb those highways. Beirut of twenty years ago will look like Disneyland compared to what I create.”
Haddad caught himself. “Ah, but I sound so egotistic. My friends, this shall be our accomplishment. Our homelands are different, but our cause is one. The end of Israel. What is left and how it is to be divided will be up to you. I will have done my part.”
Haddad held his audience by offering them a stake in the new world. It was an irresistible lure.
“When will we strike?” asked Ahmad.
“May fourteenth. The anniversary of the founding of the Zionist State.”
“Five months? Why not sooner,” asked the Al Qaeda terrorist.
“It took great planning to achieve such success in America. But the task ahead requires more thought and more help.”
“But five months?” he repeated.
“There is the time-honored saying: ‘He who acts without knowledge causes more corruption than good, and he who does not consider his speech to be part of his actions sins repeatedly. Satisfaction is scarce, and the true believer should rely on patience.’”
Haddad’s tone now suddenly changed. In a cold and cruel voice he added, “I recommend you rely on patience, my friend.
“As we read in the Qur’an, ‘Surely the patient will be paid their wages in full without reckoning.’” He paused and peered directly into the eyes of the man who dared challenge him.
“If you are in such a rush to reap your spoils, I can see that you attain true heavenly pleasures much quicker.
Jalal bin Jassin got the meaning completely. “May fourteenth.”
“Good,” Haddad said. “Next week I will give you your assignments. It will take great coordination, much strategizing and travel, and…” he looked at the Al Qaeda representative again, “patience.”
Washington, D.C.
“I need to speak to the boss right now,” Roarke explained over the phone to Louise Swingle.
Twenty seconds later the president’s trusted secretary put him through. Connected, Roarke didn’t even say hello.
“I know who we’re after.”
“And we know where he is,” the president replied.
Sixty-six
The White House Situation Room
1 February
“Gentlemen, Vice Admiral Seymour Gunning has the floor.”
That
was all Morgan Taylor said in introduction. Everyone knew and respected the ranking Navy officer in the room. He commanded Navy ST-6, Navy SEALs Team 6, on missions rarely or never reported; the deep black ops that earned Team 6 the highest regard and virtually no credit.
Gunning had been a SEAL. That was in George H.W. Bush’s day. Now, decades later, he was the same weight, with nearly the same level of body fat. The only hint to his real age was his graying temples that he wore with pride like one of his medals.
The sixty-one-year-old vice admiral rose out of his plush leather chair, setting his six-foot frame into a perfectly vertical stance. He was in full uniform, not always required in the White House. He conveyed unmistakable authority and experience.
“Thank you, Mr. President. Lights.”
An aide, not needing a second more, switched off the overhead lights in the Situation Room, located in the basement of the West Wing just below the Oval office. The space was arguably one of the most buttoned-down conference rooms in the world. This is where the president discusses, debates, and rules on global strategies, from national security to secret missions. It was from here that President Obama watched the raid on Osama bin Laden and where they would likely watch a takedown of Ibrahim Haddad.
A 60-inch digital screen drew everyone’s attention at the front of the room. Everyone meant President Taylor, Vice President Johnson, FBI Chief Mulligan, DNI Jack Evans, Homeland Security Advisor Grigoryan, Secretary of Defense Bradley Marks, Chief of Staff John Bernstein, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Paul Coss, and ranking Pentagon officers from the army, navy, marines and air force. They all sat around a huge, long wooden conference table with binders that read NOFORN or “Not for Release to Foreign Nationals.” It also was labeled CLASSIFIED, NOT FOR REMOVAL. All of the binders would be later collected and disposed of in a burn bag.
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