by Cliff Ryder
Kate killed the connection, her mind racing with possibilities. Did Kryukov double-cross the terrorists? Why, other than the obvious reasons? If he did or didn’t was almost irrelevant. Who has it now?
She sent a quick message to all of the Room 59 analysts scattered around the globe. “Keep alert for any mention of loose nukes originating either from Russia or Pakistan, no matter how tenuous or far-fetched. Alert me priority with any information you come across.”
The three bearded men drove through the desert landscape, dotted with the hardy scrub vegetation and stunted trees that looked relatively familiar to all of them. No one commented on the similarities to home, however; they were all completely focused on the job at hand.
After the slaughter on the deserted road where they had been pulled over, one of the men had loaded the bodies of the two Border Patrol agents into the SUV, driven it into the middle of the desert, wiped it down and set fire to the vehicle. Meanwhile, the other two men had hauled the bodies of the luckless illegals and their coyotes several dozen yards off the side of the road and had cleaned up the truck as best as they could before leaving the scene. The third man had met up with the other two a few miles down the road, and they proceeded together to their destination.
The farmstead they pulled up to had once been a thriving ranch in the middle of the south Texas plain. It had been abandoned decades earlier, and was now a waypoint on the illegal-immigration highway. Every so often the Border Patrol would stake out the place, and the three men had stopped a few miles away and watched the buildings for two hours until the sun came up. During their surveillance, they took turns performing the predawn prayer.
When they were satisfied no one was there, they drove the truck up the long driveway, past the leaning, windowless, two-story house, its drab wooden siding stripped clean of every speck of paint by decades of dust storms.
At the sagging wooden barn, two of the men got out and walked to the door, machine pistols in hand, and checked the interior. Finding it empty, they waved the truck forward, closing the doors behind them.
The temperature inside was already stifling, but the men didn’t notice as they pulled on latex gloves and got to work. In one corner was a green tarp, underneath which were cans of spray paint and other supplies. After moving the long box out of the back of the truck, one of the men washed out the back with a strong bleach solution, then soaped it down, as well, finally rinsing it clean. Meanwhile, two of the men wiped off the thick layer of dust, then covered the truck’s lights, windows, bumpers and trim with paper and tape. After the cargo bay was clean, the third man prepped the cans and laid out large decals to complete the truck’s transformation.
When everything was ready, they spray painted the truck, starting at the front and moving back, taking breaks every few minutes to let the fumes dissipate. Gradually the panel truck turned from white to a flat gray, which dried quickly in the heat. Two of the men methodically covered every inch of metal with the paint, while the third scrubbed blood spatter from the cab’s interior and covered the bullet-torn bench seat with a blanket.
At noon, they stopped to pray again and eat a lunch of flatbread, hummus and cold falafels. Afterward, they checked the paint job, and stripped off the paper. The third man measured carefully and applied the decals, making the truck appear to be just another vehicle that belonged to one of the hundreds of private companies in El Paso. Lastly, he switched the license plates with ones that had been supplied along with the paint and other materials. He sent the other two to dispose of everything left over, warning them to travel at least a mile away from the building before digging, and to bury everything at least four feet deep.
Once they were finished, the three men walked around the truck, examining their handiwork. The driver nodded with satisfaction, and motioned for the other two to open the double doors. He drove to the end of the driveway, then went back and helped the other two sweep away the tracks leading from the barn to the road. Taking one last look around, the driver was satisfied that everything looked exactly as it had when they had arrived. He got into the cab, joining the other two men, and drove away, heading down the highway toward El Paso.
Nate Spencer pushed through the doors of the Customs and Border Protection Office of Field Operations that evening after staying at the parts-shop scene for several hours, making sure every scrap of evidence had been bagged, labeled and processed correctly. He was greeted by enthusiastic applause from most of the day shift, with a few holdouts, notably Billy Travis, glaring at him instead.
Shaking his head, Nate held up his arms to quiet the clapping. “Hey, it wasn’t just me out there, but Hernando, Carter, Ryan and, most of all, Juan Menendez. All of them helped bust these guys and recover more than one hundred kilos of uncut cocaine—the biggest haul this year, I might add.”
“Yes, but unfortunately, it cost the life of one of our own.” Chief Patrol Agent Roy Robertson had been leaning against the door frame of his office, but now he walked into the center of the assembled men and women. “I’m sorry to tell you that Agent Menendez passed away an hour ago after participating in the successful raid on the smuggling ring. The funeral will be held on Saturday, and all off-duty personnel are expected to attend. Agent Spencer, I’ll want your report on my desk by noon tomorrow.”
The celebration suddenly over, Nate caught Travis’s eye, who shook his head with a frown. Reaching up to scratch his cheek, he flipped the other man off, then turned and went to his desk.
A stack of printed e-mails was there, along with a note.
Here you go—the encryption was a bitch! E-files are on your computer. You owe me—Claire.
Nate made a mental note to buy her dinner sometime, then leafed through the messages. It soon became obvious that the device had passed through several hands. Only a few dozen of the messages were from Jesus, the driver they had arrested from the smuggling group. The majority of the e-mails were from a man named Arsalan Hejazi to an address simply titled “freedomfighter” at a common Web address. Several were copied to Jesus at an El Paso e-mail address. Nate read the most recent message.
Dear Yousef,
Our plans are progressing well. Soon we will have everything we need to strike at our enemies. Our men are coming to you soon across the southern border. Be strong, and keep working toward our common goal. Allahu Akbar.
Attached to the message was a list of machine parts and pieces, none of which were immediately recognizable to Nate except for one—the chemical symbol for plutonium.
Is this a list of parts for a bomb? he wondered. Nate reread the message, something about it niggling at the back of his mind. The name of the sender—he couldn’t quite grasp it.
He searched through the detritus in his desk drawers, looking for a notebook from one of his older case files.
Scrabbling among the copies, he came up with his logbook from the previous year. Flipping through it, he looked through his notes until he came across the entry he was looking for.
Almost a year earlier…another warehouse. Nate had been involved in a large bust that had brought in the FBI and ATF, as well. A fringe group of Muslims had been suspected of stockpiling weapons on the Mexican border in preparation for an incursion into the U.S. An informant had given them the address, and the three U.S. law-enforcement departments had swooped down on the place. But the terrorists had been forewarned, and had detonated explosives inside the building, demolishing it and also blowing themselves up. The ringleader had been a man named Sepehr al-Kharzi, a longtime member of al Qaeda, and a most-wanted member of the organization. Nate had seen him go into the building—had actually looked into the son of a bitch’s expressionless brown eyes, he recalled—before it had vanished in a huge fireball. While they had uncovered evidence of an underground escape tunnel, there was no evidence that anyone had used it, and it was presumed that al-Kharzi had been vaporized along with the other terrorists. However, as Nate stared at a copy of the terrorist’s wanted poster, he saw a familiar name among the known aliases al
-Kharzi used—Arsalan Hejazi.
Nate checked the date of the sent e-mail. Three months ago. He leaned back in his chair, absorbing the information. Flipping through the rest of the e-mails didn’t reveal an answer from the mysterious Yousef, nor any more communication from al-Kharzi, Hejazi or whatever he might be calling himself nowadays.
Nate got up and headed to Robertson’s office. His superior was on the phone, and held up a finger while he finished. “Yes, sir…no, everything was done by the book.
There won’t be anything of the sort. Yes, sir, I will, sir.
Thank you, sir. Goodbye.” He hung up the phone and frowned at Nate. “If that’s your report, it’s the fastest typing I’ve ever seen from you.”
“Yeah, you’ll have that soon enough. Look, I found something in the evidence from the bust, and wanted you to have a look.” He placed the printed e-mail on Robertson’s desk.
His boss picked it up and scanned the brief message.
“And?”
“Arsalan is an alias for Sepehr al-Kharzi, the terrorist.”
“Yeah—isn’t he the one that died in the warehouse explosion last year. So?”
“This e-mail is only three months old,” Nate pointed out.
“So one of his cronies has picked up his handle, trying to make people believe he’s still alive. You know this happens all the time, Nate,” Robertson said.
Nate put his hands on the desk and leaned forward.
“This doesn’t feel like a fake, Roy. My gut tells me this is the real thing. They’re talking about some mission, and one of the addresses was here in El Paso. And look at this parts list—including plutonium. I think he’s still out there, and still planning something.”
Robertson rubbed his hands over his face. “Shut the door, Nate, and take a seat.”
He complied and returned to the battered chair in front of the chief’s desk. “Look, we’ve just lost three agents in the last twenty-four hours—”
“What, who were the other two? What happened?”
Nate asked.
“Early this morning, Agents Morton and Delaney were killed in the line of duty by unknown persons, who also seem to have massacred at least twenty illegals.”
“Jesus, why ain’t I workin’that case right now?” Nate said.
“Dammit, Nate, you know you’re on administrative leave until your case is cleared. The person I was talking with on the phone was the deputy commissioner, straight outta D.C. Now, I’ve kept as tight a lid as possible on that illegal incident, but the shit’s about to hit the fan, and we’re all standing downwind. What I need from you right now is cooperation, and your word that the auto-parts bust went down legally and by the book.”
“Hell, yeah, it went by the book—the book that says agents will defend themselves when they are fired upon.
Menendez got killed, and Ryan is in the hospital right now as a result of our ‘by-the-book’ bust.”
“Right, and the drugs you recovered is the kind of press we need right now to counter this slaughter in the desert. If too much of a big deal is made out of that, everyone’s going to think we’re doing a worse job than some people already do. Our stats are up where it counts in all areas, but it just takes one of these incidents to blow out of proportion, and no one remembers the twenty good things we do every day—they just see the one operation that went wrong.”
“Yeah, I get that ‘the press is our best friend and worst enemy at the same time’ BS. Look, Roy, you know how wide-open the border is, even with the additional men and the National Guard people we have. A lot of guys think that it’s only a matter of time before someone sneaks something more lethal than immigrants through, and this could be it.
Do you want that to go down on your watch?”
“Jesus, Nate, you know that’s not fair—I’m doin’ everything I can, but the government wants us to do more with less every day, and I can’t have my men chasing down cold leads just because your gut says something’s going on.” He held up his hand to forestall Nate’s protest. “Look, there’s nowhere I’d rather have you be than out in the field, but that just ain’t gonna happen right now. If you say the bust went down clean, then I’m sure the clearance team will come to the same conclusion. But you know the drill—shots were fired and one of our guys died. Since those incidents with that pair of illegals a couple years ago—where he got shot in the ass, then turned around and sued us—”
“Putting two of our agents in jail for no goddamn reason, too,” Nate gripped.
“Yeah, that too. Anyway, the brass has been breathing down our necks about executing clean operations, and we need to do that as best as we can. So do me a favor—finish your report and get out of here. The minute you can come back, I’ll let you know.”
Nate ran a hand through his crew-cut, salt-and-pepper hair and sighed. “You’re the boss.” He rose and walked back into the office, only to find Travis leaning against his desk.
“Looks like ol’ Shootin’ Spencer was the one who got tagged this time.” Travis smirked as Nate walked around him and sat down.
“If I’d wanted any more shit from you, Travis, I’d squeeze that big greasy pustule you call a head and see what came squirtin’ out. Now get the hell out of here. I got work to do.”
Travis stuck his face right next to Nate’s. “Yeah, you get back to your real important report, buddy. Me, I’m headin’ out to work that slaughter case in the desert. I just wanted to tell you personally. Have fun holdin’ down the fort.”
Nate stared at the retreating back as Travis swaggered out of the office, willing the punk-ass agent to drop dead with his next step, but to no avail. The office was almost deserted, with only a few agents still finishing up their paperwork. Nate blew a breath out and dug in, as well, peck-ing out his report with two fingers on the ancient computer he had been handed down from God knew where. At least the damn thing had e-mail, although it was balky and slower than hell. He finished his report, then leaned back in his chair and snuck a peek at Robertson, who was still working at his own desk.
Nate considered his options. What do I have to lose by kicking this up the chain? Well, for starters, Roy won’t be too thrilled. But he’d be less thrilled if this turned out to be something, and downright furious if it was something big. What the hell—at least they can’t say I didn’t try.
He found the copies of the e-mails on his computer and attached the one from Arsalan, along with his thoughts on it, in a message to the Department of Homeland Security.
He hoped they’d give it to an analyst who’d be able to think at least halfway outside of the box. But this is going to Washington—what are the odds? he wondered. He shrugged and hit Enter, shaking his head as the message flashed into cyberspace.
“My God, some days working here is just like any other large corporation, except we’re supposed to be keeping three hundred million people safe every single day,” Tracy Wentworth said as she walked back to her cubicle at the ramshackle headquarters on Nebraska Avenue. She was annoyed after yet another pointless two-hour meeting on analyzing strategic weaknesses in America’s private infrastructure. Everything she’d heard was a repetition of things she already knew. They had just tried to package it in yet another new “assessment procedure.”
Only 1:00 p.m., and already her day was an exercise in futility. Two of her requested follow-ups on what she had thought had been promising leads had been denied due to
“lack of feasibility.” This was primarily due to her boss, a politicking butt-kisser who squashed anything he didn’t regard as a “slam-dunk,” to parrot a certain high-level intelligence chief’s unfortunate choice of words a few years back regarding WMDs in Iraq. Since then, Tracy suspected that all of America’s intelligence agencies had become paralyzed by fear—the fear of not connecting all of the dots fast enough, or even worse, getting something wrong, and having the press lambaste them for not doing their job properly. That especially went for the one she worked for, the Department of Homeland Security.
When she had come to DHS two years ago, Tracy had been filled with the desire to join a department that would fight the real threats that America faced. She had hoped this new agency wouldn’t be hampered by the baggage of the Cold War and the continued focus on potential-threat nations and their standing armies. She wanted to tackle fourth-generation warfare and the emerging terrorist networks spreading from the hotbed Middle East to ensnare other countries in their multitentacled grasp of drugs, money and suicidal ideology.
Unfortunately, that had not proved to be the case. From its once-promising beginning, the DHS had rapidly become stuck in the same operational quagmire that hobbled most other government departments. Small-minded career bureaucrats wielded their power like tyrants, rewarding loyal followers and punishing anyone they didn’t agree with almost at whim.
In particular, there was a terrible lack of information flowing from the top officers down, which was, in Tracy’s and many other analysts’ opinions, crucial to effectively gathering intelligence to identify and stop threats to the nation. Personality clashes and conflicting interpretations of rules, regulations and even the DHS’s role in homeland security were everyday occurrences. It all served efforts to get vital programs off the ground.
The department’s creation by squashing together twenty-two separate agencies under one roof meant there was often confusion as to what section would handle a particular project, which led to even more delays. Certain departments, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, operated under severe budgetary limitations, to the point where the agents could not execute their duties effectively. The problem was later revealed to be infighting among various departments for budget allocation. Tracy had heard the horror stories, and had unfortunately been a part of some of them, as well, as she fought for information, access and resources, along with the other 180,000 people in the sprawling department.
When she got back to her desk, she found an e-mail from her supervisor, Brian Gilliam.
Tracy,
See me soonest regarding your sewage threat analysis.
