Chapter Four
Doug drove until around midnight and then he found a hotel where he could sleep for the rest of the night. It took him a few more days before he got back home to Cummings. When he arrived, he was emotionally drained from the driving and the highs and lows of completing his mission of killing the four terrorists.
The more he thought about his never ending quest to try and stop the radical terrorists from attacking Americans, the more he realized he was only putting a small dent in their overall plans. It was discouraging to him that the terrorists just kept breeding their hatred into the hearts and minds of young people all over the world. He was especially angry that it was happening right here in America and to home grown Americans.
Doug had been gone for about ten days by the time he got home. It was going to take him several days to get back into his normal routine of just being a retired person and enjoying his little house in the woods. A few of his chickens had been killed by the wild animals that made the woods their home and a young deer had fallen into one of the holes. It was still alive so he was able to help it out of the hole and set it free.
For the most part, everything was pretty much the way he left it. He thought, "Wow! No one would ever miss me if I never came back from one of my missions. The reality of his haunting revenge just made everything a little more real as he shivered at the thought of his unrelenting nightmare.
Meanwhile, the local police force in Cambridge had called in the FBI for their help in trying to find out who had killed the four young Muslim men and left them lying dead in the street. The police believed it may be a hate crime in retaliation against the Muslims for what the two Muslim bombers had done at the Boston Marathon. Three of the men looked like they had been executed with the extra bullets to the head.
The FBI collected the spent shell cartridges and sent them to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, (a computerized database center), and had the fingerprints run on them. It took a few weeks to get the results, but the FBI director was shocked when he got the word back that Douglas Cotton’s fingerprints were on them.
When Doug’s body wasn’t found in the rubble in the Florida explosion, the FBI director, Sam Collins, privately called in special agent Terry Jarvis and special agent Krista Patterson and put them in charge of a team to try and hunt Doug down. When Sam first told them he was putting them in charge of finding Douglas Cotton, better known as "The American Terrorist," Terry and Krista were shocked. They didn't know that he was still alive. They always heard the same stories as everyone else, that he was killed in Florida. Sam said, "The American Terrorist" is not dead. He is very much alive because his body was never found at the explosion site in Florida. We covered it up in hopes of capturing him alive. I don’t want anyone else from the FBI, CIA or any other law enforcement agency knowing he’s still alive. I want us to keep the fact that he somehow made it through the explosions in Florida to ourselves. We can't let anyone know he's still out there. Do you understand?” Terry replied, “Yes sir, you don’t have any problems from us. We can keep it a secret.” Krista spoke up and said, "Yes sir, that's not a problem for us."
Terry and Krista had each been with the FBI for several years, but this was their first case they were assigned to where Sam was putting them in charge. Terry was in his mid-thirties. He was a good looking dark haired, six foot one inch tall and his weight was around one hundred and ninety pounds. He worked out on weights and ran whenever he got a chance so he was in good physical shape. He was married to a school teacher by the name of Lori and had two young daughters, Emily who was 8 and Sadie who was 6. Lori was always busy with the girls and it kept her busy when Terry was on assignment.
Krista was a very attractive young woman in her early thirties. She was five feet seven inches tall and thin. She had blond hair that was about shoulder length with green eyes behind her thin dark eyebrows. She had dimples in her cheeks that showed up when she smiled. She had a boyfriend by the name of Tom Snyder, that she'd been going with for three years. He also worked with the FBI, but in another department from her. They had talked about getting married, but their work kept them apart from each other several months out of each year. Because of that separation, they kept postponing any commitment to marriage.
After the Cambridge attack Sam called in Terry and Krista and told them that the killings of the four men didn’t fit Doug’s normal M.O. (method of operation), but it was him. He knew he did it because his fingerprints were on the spent rifle casing. Before this attack, Terry and Krista had spent months running down empty leads and felt like they were just chasing a ghost. They hadn’t seen any trace of any new attacks since Doug was supposed to have been killed in Florida. This was their first real solid clue they had on him. Identifying his prints on the spent shell casings made them hopeful they could finally locate him and bring him to justice. He also never left anything behind in any of his other attacks, so finding the shell casings seemed reckless and suspicious to them.
Doug knew the FBI already had all the information about his other attacks so he didn’t think it mattered if they had proof that it was him that did the killings in Cambridge. They would be after him once again when they found out he was involved. He believed they would have a hard time trying to find him in his little secluded hiding place in Georgia.
Sam told Terry and Krista to start digging into the four Muslim men’s lives that Doug had killed in Cambridge and find out everything they could about them. Places and people Doug had blown up before were found to be involved in some type of known radical terrorist’s cell or terrorist activity. He believed these four men were probably no exception to that rule. They had to be part of some type of terrorist organization or he wouldn’t have killed them.
Terry and Krista went to work immediately on the new leads they had gotten to try and find Doug. They spent a lot of time trying to follow up on information about what type of rifle was used to kill the four Muslim men and where the ammunition came from. After several weeks of searching, their team was able to trace the ammunition to Georgia and that was as far as they could get. Everything else just kept turning up as a dead end. They would have to wait to see if Doug would strike again before they could pinpoint his location. Hopefully, he would leave more clues the next time so they could locate and capture him.
After a few months of investigating, they found out the four men Doug had killed in Cambridge were definitely involved in a radical Islamic organization. The leaders of the group had been recruiting young people from the colleges and mosques to help them in their radical ideology to promote Jihad in America. They also found out that the two Boston Marathon bombers had attended several meetings with that group of men and had also attended a few other groups in the Cambridge area. After finding out about their organization the FBI was able to shut them down.
Terry and Krista reported their findings and frustration to Sam and told him they didn’t believe there was any way they could catch Doug until he did another attack. He would have to make a few mistakes like he'd done in Cambridge. If he left more evidence then maybe they could catch him. Sam told them, “Just stay on it, I believe a person that’s as committed to his desire for revenge, will strike again. Maybe you’ll get him the next time. Just be patient, he'll show up again, I guarantee you he will.”
Doug was back to normal and enjoying his quiet and simple life in the woods. He continued to do research on his computer into where he believed some of the terrorist sleeper cells were hiding in America. He told himself that once he was certain he knew where their training camps or gathering places were located he'd go after them once again. He also did research into different types of bombs that he could use in his attacks.
During his planning and research Doug found out that Carthage, Missouri was the place where they manufactured dynamite. He decided to take a couple of days and drive to Carthage, Missouri to see if he could get his hands on some 8 inc
h sticks of the dynamite. He also found out you had to have a permit to buy the stuff. He didn't think that would be a problem because he figured he could get his hands on a fair amount of the dynamite if he flashed enough cash in front of someone. He was always able to get what he wanted if he paid enough money for it.
It didn't take long before he found what he was looking for. After he'd gotten into town he started talking to a few local people and soon he was able to make the connection he needed and purchase an entire box of the dynamite, a detonator box, and some wire along with it. He'd never worked with dynamite, but read about it on the computer and figured he could work with it. He was just hoping he could get the stuff back home without it blowing him to pieces.
On his way home, he saw a local country flea market so he decided to stop and take a look around to see what type of weapons he might be able purchase. While wandering from vender to vender, he came across a man that was selling bows and arrows and other miscellaneous hunting gear. The one thing that caught Doug's eye was a cross-bow and six arrows. Doug spent some time and had the guy show him how it all worked before he decided to buy them. Once he knew how to use the cross bow properly and felt comfortable with how to load it and shoot it, he didn’t even haggle over the price. He loved the idea that he now had a silent weapon he could use against the terrorists during his missions.
When he got back home, he spent a few weeks and practiced shooting the crossbow at a stationary target. He practiced until he became very accurate with it from close range. During that time, he took several sticks of the dynamite and taped them together in bundles. As crude and simple as it was, he now had his home-made bombs once again. All he had to do now that he had everything in place, was to find out who and where his next target would be.
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The American Terrorist: The Revenge Continues Page 6
