by Bobby Akart
“Dr. Spielman, I am so sorry for what happened in Washington. It was never my intention to create havoc. I was just trying to make a point.”
Spielman looked down and began to laugh. This caught Mac off guard, once again elevating her anxiety. Say something!
“No, Mac,” started Spielman, using her nickname, as only her friends and family did. “This is my fault. I knew better. My gut screamed at me not to choose you for the hearing, but the bottom line is that I was hoodooed.”
“Hoodooed, sir?” asked a puzzled Mac. She knew what the word meant although she wasn’t sure how it applied in this context.
Spielman finally sat down and smiled sheepishly at Mac. “I’m not a politico, Mac. When I first started my career, I was altruistic, public-spirited, and idealistic about my career and the government I hoped to serve for the rest of my life. Over time, I saw that the CDC is a bureaucracy, just like every other agency operating under this multi-tentacled monster residing in Washington.”
Spielman stood again as he continued his reflection. It started to rain, adding to the somber mood. “Over time, I learned that hard work and being at the top of my scientific game wasn’t enough if I wanted to advance my career. I had a wife and a newborn. Despite lack of desire for climbing the so-called corporate ladder of success, I learned how to swim with the sharks and it got me to my present position.”
“Yes, sir,” muttered Mac in an attempt to show her empathy. The long lead-in to the topic du jour was increasing her stress levels.
“Barbara was set up for failure by an administration that cares little for those of us who bust our tails to serve our government and the American people, who pay our wages. During the Ebola outbreak, sleazy politicians determined that if the disease was contained with no loss of American lives, then the White House would take full credit. If something went wrong, if an American doctor died or, heaven forbid, the disease reached American soil, then the person spearheading the containment effort would get hammered.”
Spielman turned and leaned against the windowsill as the rain pelted the glass. Off in the distance toward Midtown, Mac could see lightning finding the ground in quick, sharp strikes.
“Mac, I should’ve learned from history and now history will be repeating itself. In hindsight, Baggett—who, in case you haven’t figured out, is the White House stooge around here—Baggett led us to picking you as the point person to appear before Congress. Don’t get me wrong. You were by far the most qualified under the circumstances. It was the obvious connection to your mother that I missed.”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“Mac, if you attended that hearing and it went off smooth as glass, then no harm, no foul,” he replied. “However, if there was any kind of uproar, which I’m convinced they expected to happen, the President and his people could divert attention from the real issues concerning the Guatemala outbreak toward you. It was easy for them to label you as politically motivated or vindictive.”
“Sir, I shouldn’t have worn my protective gear in the hearing. I know I was out of—”
“Don’t you see,” interrupted Spielman. “It wouldn’t have mattered. If you were the perfect witness, they would have found a few pull-quotes from your testimony, added their own spin, and then force-fed it to their buddies at the Post or the Times to create a sensational fake news story. By the time the talking heads were through with you, the point of the hearing would be lost.”
“Unbelievable,” said Mac. “I was set up for failure.”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“But, sir, the threat is real. Chancellor Müller’s death may have been caused by the plague bacteria.”
“Why would you say that?”
Mac went on to explain in detail about the chancellor’s visit to Turkey and the refugee camp. How the timing fit the symptomatic period and the days following contact to her death.
“Sir, this is positive proof that terrorist elements have weaponized the plague and are spreading it through the innocents among us—refugee children.”
Spielman thought for a moment and sat down. “Mac, you know I’m with you on the outbreak having a terrorist angle. But it might be a stretch that a woman with a history of heavy smoking and lung disorders dies because she kissed a refugee child. To suggest such a thing outside these four walls would draw screams of racism and bigotry. Immigration and taking in of foreign refugees is a pretty hot topic in this summer’s political campaigns.”
“Of course, sir, I recognize that. But this is my point. I’m on top of this investigation. I’ve been on the hunt for this killer strain since the moment I arrived in the Guatemalan jungle. I’m the one that can string together the evidence for you.”
Spielman looked down and shook his head. He finally provided Mac an apologetic smile. “It doesn’t matter, don’t you see. The President wants you gone. I have no other choice.”
“Wait. Fired? Not reassigned? You’re firing me?”
Spielman leaned back and held up one hand. “Mac, it’s not by choice. I wouldn’t even reprimand you if it were up to me. My hands are tied. I can’t refuse a direct order of the President, even if it did filter down from his Chief of Staff to Baggett.”
“Wow!” Mac leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. She expected this, but hearing the words from a man she admired really hurt. She fought back her emotions.
“Now, I am free to give you an impeccable reference. There’s the WHO or any number of research firms who’d scoop you up in a heartbeat, and for more money, I might add.”
“This is my life, sir,” said Mac. Her eyes began to dart around the room, searching for an exit besides jumping out of the window.
Spielman didn’t respond, simply looking at the floor and shaking his head in apparent disgust at what he was forced to do. Despite the one being released, Mac felt bad for Spielman. She stood and gave him a hug.
“Sir, I’m sorry for the way this turned out. And I’m sorry for what I did to put you in this position. It was a pleasure to serve under you, Dr. Spielman.”
She stepped away and saw a tear sliding down his cheek. She managed a smile and turned for the door without saying another word.
*****
Mac had seen perp walks on television shows where the arrested bad guy was given the evil eye as he was walked out of a building. Perhaps there were jeers thrown in his direction or, in the case of Game of Thrones, rotten vegetables were tossed at a naked woman.
Mac felt naked and vulnerable as she was escorted out of the CDC. Her former friends and co-workers wouldn’t make eye contact with her. Only D-Bag stared her in the eye as he leaned against his office door, arms folded and a pathetic grin on his face.
When she passed by the EOC, a few heads turned and a couple of people managed a muted wave. At the plate-glass windows looking into the room, she suddenly stopped and stared at the maps on the wall.
The red dots spread across Central America and the Mediterranean like an invading army. In the brief moment that Mac got her last look at the EOC, more dots appeared, and others grew larger.
Mac might have been having a bad day, but the world’s was getting much worse.
Chapter 11
Day Thirty-Two
King Fahad Mosque
Culver City, California
There were an estimated five hundred thousand Muslims living in the greater Los Angeles area, second only to Detroit. Residents of the Muslim communities in LA were primarily South Asian in origin—Indonesia, Pakistan, and India. Only a quarter of the people identifying themselves as Muslims in demographic studies were of Arab descent. Of course, the US demographic studies didn’t include the countless other Arab Muslims who checked other because they didn’t want to land on the government’s watch lists.
Hassan finished evening prayer with his associates at the King Fahad Mosque in Culver City, a community just north of Inglewood and east of the coast at Marina del Rey. Culver City had been a center for motion picture and television prod
uction since the 1920s, hosting media giants MGM, Sony, and the NFL Network.
Culver City, proud of its diversity, boasted a burgeoning Muslim population centered around the King Fahad Mosque. Built in 1998 with funding by a Saudi Arabian prince under the guise of a charitable trust, the King Fahad facility quickly became a magnet for new Muslim residents to the area, as well as radical Islamists who began to indoctrinate young Muslim men into the world of jihad.
Two of these young men joined the terrorists on 9/11 and were on board the aircraft flying into the World Trade Center. At that point, the FBI identified the mosque as a site of extremist-related activity and its worshippers were put on a terrorist watch list. In 2007, the Los Angeles Police Department, in an effort to combat localized terrorist activities, began a program to map the city’s Muslim neighborhoods to identify potential hotbeds of extremism. Culver City was on the list.
However, with the onset of a new administration in Washington after the election of 2008, the Department of Justice clamped down on the LAPD’s program and the mapping plan was scrapped.
Outwardly, the website of the King Fahad Mosque condemned terrorist activity by averring that these difficulties are perpetrated by people who do evil in the name of good. These actions have no place in Islam.
The mosque and its directorship disavowed any violence in the name of Allah. However, some of the Muslim faith did not.
*****
Hassan and his companions exited into the bright Southern California sunshine and immediately put on their dark glasses. They were not concerned with the watchers, as they were called—the teams of FBI and CTSOB who constantly maintained surveillance on the mosque.
The CTSOB, Los Angeles’s Counter-Terrorism and Special Operations Bureau, was a constant thorn in the side of local recruiting efforts. They seemed to have eyes and ears everywhere. Despite a friendly mayor who thwarted efforts at racial profiling, the CTSOB operated independently of the mayor’s office and closely with the FBI. They’d been very effective in disrupting the ISIS operatives in LA from undertaking any large-scale missions.
Hassan was a young boy when his father plotted the millennium attacks with his al-Qaeda brothers. The LAX, Los Angeles Airport, bombing plot was one of several intended for US soil on January 1, 2000. The hijacking of an Indian Air flight was planned as well as an attack on the USS The Sullivans by a bomb-filled boat.
The LAX bombing plot was devised by Hassan’s father and was to be carried out by his uncle, who led a sleeper cell in Montreal. The bomb-making material and his uncle were seized at a US port of entry near Seattle. Under interrogation, his uncle broke down and admitted to the attack. He died in prison one year ago today.
Hassan vowed to avenge his uncle and carry out his father’s intentions to bring jihad to the City of Angels. Today, with the help of over a hundred fellow Islamic extremists who’d been waiting for this moment, the jihadis would infect as many of the quarter million passengers who passed through the terminals at LAX as their handheld atomizers would allow. They, too, would become infected, but they did so in the name of Allah.
Hassan and his two trusted brothers, Abbud Omar and Hamza Ahmed, would leave LA and travel up Interstate 15 through the desert mountains to Las Vegas, the infidel’s Sin City.
Chapter 12
Day Thirty-Three
CSL Comalapa
El Salvador
A typical day during Hunter’s training at the House of Horrors, the name given to the Delta Force training facility, started with a hundred push-ups and fifty pull-ups. This was just a light workout for him, enough to get the blood pumpin’ and the juices flowin’.
Unlike most of the military members in training, Hunter didn’t have a place at Fort Bragg. His father insisted that he have off-base housing complete with its own gym, a kitchen fit for a world-class chef, and a private gun range. Nothing was too good for the son of a major defense contractor.
In his early days in The Unit, Hunter sported a beard and mustache like most of the guys. He’d established a comradery with the other operators despite living off base. He proved himself adept at close-quarters combat and marksmanship—maintaining a record ninety-seven percent accuracy at one hundred yards during his training.
As far as The Unit was concerned, if you had to fight hand-to-hand, then something had gone wrong. But they had to be prepared for all contingencies and scenarios, so The Unit kept their skills as sharp as possible.
The Unit had a certain amount of leeway to circumvent laws that other military branches or law enforcement units weren’t afforded. When he was recruited by Project Artemis, he was told there were no rules of engagement. Kill, or be killed. This would have been appealing to any operator, as it was to Hunter.
He was hard-core when it came time to do battle, which was in stark contrast to his interaction with Mac. For now, he’d put Mac out of his mind. It was time to kill.
The group of six operatives from Project Artemis had spent the last day and a half preparing for the mission at the Cooperative Security Location, CSL, located at a Salvadoran air base in Comalapa, El Salvador. Located on the central coastline of the Central American country, CSL Comalapa was created to provide logistics, security and infrastructure support to forward-deployed military assets operating in the region. Originally designed to counter illicit drug-trafficking operations, the station was now home to several CIA, DEA, and DTRA personnel.
Logistically, El Salvador was on the wrong side of the Central America isthmus. However, it provided the team everything they needed to conduct their mission, including two Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawks, which had been heavily modified for quieter operations and employed stealth technology to be less visible to radar. Hunter and his team would be flying in under cover of darkness, but with no ambient sound or light in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico to mask them, they would have to use every advantage available.
He had a lot of confidence in the pilots, who were veterans of the Delta Force Night Stalkers. Officially referred to as the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, or SOAR, these highly trained chopper pilots were experts at flying the Black Hawks close to the ground to deliver operators to their insertion areas. These guys were proud of their ability to deliver a team into a hot landing zone with pinpoint accuracy and timing.
Hunter had some reservations about the mission. Having studied the layout of the freighter, it was apparent any biological laboratory was located deep in the center of the ship. There would be the possibility of hostiles in every doorway. The number of terrorists on board was a complete unknown.
As an extra precaution, the team was equipped with the latest technology in body armor. Weight and mobility played a factor in this mission because of the parachute drop. Standard body armor might be too bulky, so the team wore a new, ultralight body armor made of composite metal foam. This foam vest not only stopped bullets, but it even destroyed armor-piercing bullets by pulverizing them into dust. By absorbing the bullet’s kinetic energy, these powerful rounds were able to penetrate less than an inch into the foam.
There was also the possibility of MANPADS in the hands of the terrorists. Man-portable air-defense systems were shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles used to bring down low-flying aircraft like helicopters. Most were designed with infrared homing devices designed to locate a heat source on an aircraft and detonate a warhead near the source.
Finally, the six operatives would undertake a static-line parachute jump from the Black Hawk, a maneuver they’d all trained for and undertaken on prior missions, but was fraught with disaster nonetheless.
This type of jump required a static cord to be attached to the helicopter and the other end to the jumper’s deployment bag. The operative’s fall from the Black Hawk caused the static line to become tight, pulling the parachute out of their pack. The static line and the deployment bag would stay with the helicopter while the jumper dragged the chute with him, causing the upward-rushing wind to force open and inflate the canopy within four sec
onds.
The purpose of a static line during training was to teach new operatives how to maintain a correct, stable body position during the jump. During a combat mission, the technique was ideal for the jumpers to hit a narrowly defined target, like the freighter.
Hunter had extensive counterterrorism experience and the other members of his team, except Khan, had been part of SEAL teams. Despite its high risk, this was the kind of mission they’d trained for and dreamed about.
The six operatives from Project Artemis were given the final go and each held a thumbs-up over their helmets. One by one, the Navy lieutenant grabbed their thumbs, indicating it was their turn to jump. Within seconds, Norton, Jackson, Bell, Wilson, Khan, and Hunter were rocketing toward the Tasallul.
Chapter 13
Day Thirty-Three
The Tasallul
Gulf of Mexico
Hunter adjusted his chute in order to open the canopy further. He needed to create as much drag as possible to slow his descent. Leading the way, he hit the deck of the ship hard, slamming the steel surface before rolling over and over. The landing appeared sloppy and amateurish, but considering the conditions, Hunter handled it perfectly.
As his roll came to a halt, Hunter quickly found his footing, gathered his chute, and, after pulling off the harnesses, threw the entire bundle overboard into the dark, murky waters below. He was the point man on the jump, so he quickly readied his Heckler and Koch MP5 and covered the rest of the team as they hit the deck hard too.
Once the rest of the team dispatched their parachutes over the side of the ship, they took up a position at the base of the four-story superstructure containing the bridge, located in the center of the ship. Jackson, one of the former SEALs, spoke into Hunter’s earpiece. “Nice landing, Delta. Got any broken bones?”
