Senator Hazelton looked across the dining room for a long moment at the stained glass window that memorialized George Washington on a white horse.
“If what Nebit said is true, that ‘both loose ends were tied up’, it might be difficult to prove treason if articles of impeachment were approved by the House and presented to the Senate. I hope to God I never have to judge a president for treason, but there’s another matter Congress may have to consider. There have been rumors, after his election victory, that his campaign received money from foreign contributors. If there’s evidence that foreign contributions were received from a terrorist organization like the Muslim Brotherhood, that would be an impeachable ‘high crime or misdemeanor’.”
CHAPTER 73
By noon the next day, the FBI advised them they could leave and they checked out of their hotel. Drake had stopped by the night before to say goodbye to his mother-in-law, and taken Liz out to dinner. Now, they were on their way to Washington Dulles International Airport with the sky clear and bright spring blue.
“You realize we’ve only been here a week and a day,” Casey asked, “and been shot at three times?”
“It could have been worse,” Drake pointed out. “We could have flown commercial and been in one of those jetliners.”
“Point taken,” Casey conceded. “I guess that bullet Mohamed bounced off your head is pretty insignificant, in comparison.”
“Heh, don’t minimize my wound. That little red mark on my head has been worth a kiss or two.”
“I’ll bet your mother-in-law wasn’t the only one to feel sorry for you.”
“Better me than you, Mike. Your wife would banish me from your life forever, if you came back injured.”
Casey took the exit off the Dulles Toll Road and drove down Autopilot Drive to the Landmark Aviation Service hub, where the company Gulfstream G450 was serviced and refueled for the flight home.
The two PSS employees, Spencer Reynolds and Ron Larson, who had provided security for Oregon Congressman Rodecker, were already aboard the company jet. When Casey and Drake passed through Customs and joined them onboard, they raised two Bloody Marys and saluted them.
“We like the way you travel, boss,” Spencer said. “Sure beats flying around in a C-130.”
Casey moved down the aisle to the aft galley to mix two Bloody Marys and waved Drake to the executive chairs nearby.
Before he sat down, Drake’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket.
“Hi Liz,” he said, standing next to Casey and signaling for another pickled green bean to be added to his drink.
“Kate Perkins just called to let me know they found a cache of MANPADS in an underground bunker at a youth camp in Pennsylvania,” she said. “The FBI thinks they were sold to the Syrian rebels by the CIA, and then used against us. The CIA isn’t saying anything at the moment.”
“I guess that’s good and bad news. Do they think that’s all of them?”
“They think so. Nebit told them before she died last night that she received a demand letter after the first plane went down from something calling itself ‘Allah’s Sword’, claiming they had 50 of the MANPADS. They found 46 in the bunker and one more with the guy they killed who was guarding the bunker.”
“I didn’t hear anything about Allah’s Sword, did you?”
“Not until now. The FBI thinks Mohamed Hassan was Allah’s Sword and gave Nebit the note, knowing she’d give it to the president.”
“Knowing all of this, is the president still planning to hit Iran?”
“The briefing this morning for the Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed that a strike at the sheikh in Bahrain is planned, but he’s holding back on Iran until there’s clear evidence Iran ordered these attacks,” she said.
“I’m glad he’s willing to listen to someone other than Layla Nebit for a change.”
“One more thing before you jet out of here, Adam. Congressman Rodecker asked me to thank you and Mike for taking care of him. He also wanted you to know he’s working with some young Turks in Congress to draft a resolution of impeachment of the president. Someone provided them with a preliminary audit of the American Muslim Youth Camp Foundation. A lot of money seems to have made its way to the president’s campaign committee.”
“It’s good that we’re getting out of town,” Drake said, “before that bomb goes off. Are you still taking me up on my offer of a week of spring skiing at Mt. Bachelor next month?”
“Count on it. I might even bring you some crab cakes.”
He could hear her smiling. “Love your crab cakes,” he said.
“Be safe, Adam.”
“You too, Liz.”
Drake sat down and found that Casey had a smirk on his face when he handed him his Bloody Mary.
“What?” Drake asked.
“Just wondering what it is you just luv about her crab cakes?”
Drake returned a smile to his friend’s smirk.
Casey got up and opened the cockpit door to tell his pilot it was okay to take off. When he returned, he asked, “Have you thought about coming to work for me?”
“Mike, I love you like a brother. But I have an office in Portland, a secretary with a husband who just had prostate surgery, and an old vineyard to restore. I can’t move to Seattle.”
“Who said anything about moving to Seattle?”
“What exactly do you have in mind, then?”
“I want you to be Special Counsel for Puget Sound Security, and head up my Investigations Team. We have clients who ask us to conduct fraud and corporate espionage investigations for them. We provide counsel when there are ransom demands when someone’s been kidnapped. I have security teams and VIP protection details that have to deal with law enforcement from time to time. Keep your office and farm in Oregon. Commute to Seattle when I need you. Keep doing the things you’ve been doing for Liz and the senator. Just do those things for PSS on a generous retainer. I’ll even provide a company car so you don’t have to put a lot of miles on that old Porsche of yours.”
“I don’t know, Mike. Let me think about it.”
By the time the pilot told them to prepare for landing and they began descending through thick white clouds, Mike’s offer was all he’d thought about during the cross-country flight.
Drake looked out his window when they broke through the clouds and saw the waters of Puget Sound and the city of Seattle below.
“What are we doing in Seattle, Mike?”
“We had to come here first, sorry. I’ll get you home.”
Drake was looking forward to getting home before dark, and now it looked like he wouldn’t be there until later in the evening. Even though Mike was his best friend and brother-in-arms, he should have told him they were flying to Seattle instead of Portland.
When the G450 taxied and stopped in front of Puget Sound Security’s hangar at Boeing Field, Drake silently followed Casey out and down the stairs of the plane. Parked twenty feet away was a beautiful new anthracite gray Porsche Cayman GTS.
Drake walked around the car, admiring its flowing lines and peeked in a window at the sports seats with the letters “GTS” embroidered in the headrests. “Your pilot has good taste,” he said to Casey.
“Glad you like it. I said I’d get you home.”
Drake turned, not understanding what the pilot’s car had to do with getting him home in Oregon.
Casey was standing between Spencer and Ron with a set of keys dangling from his fingers. They were all smiling.
“It’s your new company car, if you want it,” the CEO of Puget Sound Security offered.
“You drive a hard bargain, my friend,” Drake said with a big smile and took the keys.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The idea for CALL IT TREASON grew out of three news items that were largely ignored by the media. These news reports simmered and stewed in my mind u
ntil I had to write this book.
The first piece of news I mentioned in the dedication to this book. The Congressmen who called for an investigation into the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in America named names and provided specific information to support their concerns in 2012. These are the original letters they sent to Inspectors General of the various departments of government; http://gohmert.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID-299623.
The Congressmen were pilloried in the media as nutcases with severe Islamophobia. They were also shunned by their colleagues on both sides of the aisle for calling attention to a threat that was and remains rather obvious.
The second item of news concerned a document that was recovered in a raid by Swiss authorities in November of 2001, two months after 9/11. In counterterrorism circles, the manifesto is known as “The Project”. It is a detailed Islamic plan for infiltrating, subverting and ultimately defeating the U.S. and the West. Developed in 1982 as part of a rechartering process for the Muslim Brotherhood, the 14-page plan written in Arabic outlines a 12-point strategy to “establish an Islamic government on earth”. It is the Muslim Brotherhood’s long-term approach to a “cultural invasion” of the West. You can read the English interpretation of “The Project” here: http://bit.ly/1MGpFIP.
The last piece of news that combined with the other news reports to create the factual background for CALL IT TREASON was a story about America’s own “no-go” Islamic zones. On March 18, 2002, The Weekly Standard featured an article by Mira L. Boland titled “Sheikh Gilani’s American Disciples”; http://tinyurl.com/q462acz. It reported that the Pakistani sheikh launched his U.S. operations in 1980 by developing communes promoted as safe havens where Muslim converts - many of them inner-city blacks sometimes recruited in prison - could build new lives. On January 2, 2012, a story in The Counter Jihad Report revealed the sheikh now has 35 terror training camps operating inside the U.S.; http://counterjihadreport.com/2012/01/03/wnd-35-terror-training-camps-now-operating-inside-u-s/. A recruitment video for the camps shows American converts to Islam being instructed in the operation of AK-47 rifles, rocket launchers and machine guns, and C4 explosives. The FBI is aware of the camps, but the State Department refuses to designate the sheikh’s organization, Jamaat ul-Fuqra, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, even though it fits the criteria. There are numerous reports of local citizens complaining about these camps, but law enforcement does not intrude into these Islamic “no-go” zones.
CALL IT TREASON is a work of fiction. But, as an author I know likes to say, it is “fact-based” fiction.
Excerpt from THE ASSASSIN’S LIST
1st in the Adam Drake Series
At the back of the executive office building, Kaamil Sayf waited in the shadows outside an emergency fire door. At midnight, the security system his company installed and maintained would crash and go offline for five minutes. In those five minutes, he needed to run up four flights of stairs to the CEO’s office, retrieve a keylogger device he’d placed on the CEO’s computer a month ago, and get back out before the security system rebooted.
On the outside, after his prison conversion to Islam, he led a covert cadre of assassins working as employees of the International Security and Information Services, or ISIS. The mission he trained for, and was selected to lead, aimed to assassinate powerful American leaders. Mighty America killed its enemies with cowardly high-flying drones, but the world would soon know how jihadists killed enemies, up close and personal.
Before the first strike next week, he had to ensure encrypted passwords for the security plan at the chemical weapons depot had not changed. The only way to know was to retrieve the keylogger that recorded every keystroke on the CEO’s computer.
When his watch flashed 12:00 a.m., Kaamil used a key to open the steel fire door and ran up the stairs. He knew the old security guard posted at his station at the main entrance wouldn’t hear him, just as he knew the security cameras wouldn’t record his visit for the next five minutes. No one was expected in the building.
He raced down a long hallway to the middle of the top floor. Through Janice Lewellyn’s office, he entered the CEO’s inner sanctum. Kaamil was under the large rosewood desk when the elevator doors chimed. Somebody besides the security guard was in the building. Kaamil pocketed the device, getting up as the office lights came on, and froze.
Sweat formed on his forehead when he heard someone walking into the office.
“What are you doing in here?” Janice Lewellyn demanded. “Why are you hiding in Mr. Martin’s office?”
“Take it easy, Mrs. Lewellyn, you know me. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m just checking to make sure the upgrade for the security system is working.”
“Since when do you do middle-of-the-night upgrades without my clearance? I think you better stay here while I call security. You shouldn’t be in Mr. Martin’s office.”
“Call security. They know all about it. I’m just doing my job, Mrs. Lewellyn.” Kaamil feigned a smile, hoping she didn’t notice the beads of sweat on his forehead.
As Janice Lewellyn turned toward the phone on her desk, Kaamil took an Emerson combat folding knife from his pocket. Moving quickly, he caught her from behind and pulled the razor-sharp blade across her throat.
Lowering her body to the floor, he cursed his rotten luck. He would keep on the surgical gloves he was wearing until he left the building. And pray to Allah nothing was left behind to identify him, because his five minutes were almost up.
He would have enough trouble explaining the collateral damage to his leader without worrying about the police.
Excerpt from oath to defend
2nd in the Adam Drake Series
Undercover agents do not like to stand out, especially when they’re in a foreign country, they don’t speak the language, and they’re new. Randy Johnson, rookie DEA agent on his first deployment, was no different. But standing six foot seven, with red hair, freckles, and a baby face that reminded you of your fifteen-year-old younger brother, he had no choice.
While on assignment in Cancun, Mexico, Randy chose to accentuate the obvious by wearing shorts, a pink linen guayabera shirt, and a red Boston Red Sox hat. His job was to look like a tourist and observe and report on cartel members spotted in and near the Mayan Riviera. He remembered faces. He’d been taught to compartmentalize them, identify features, and then compare them to photos in the DEA’s cartel scrapbook.
Randy was waiting for Juan Garcia Salina to show up at the Presidente InterContinental Resort. An informant had reported that he liked to eat lobster and shrimp curry at the hotel’s seaside El Caribeño restaurant. Salina was believed to be responsible for the recent torture and execution of a Mexican army general who had cooperated with the DEA.
The man Randy recognized on this muggy, overcast day sitting at the poolside bar and drinking a cold glass of Superior Beer was not, however, a cartel member. Randy had recognized the face of the bodyguard of a man at the top of the FBI’s most wanted list, the man thought to be behind the assassination attempt on the Secretary of Homeland Security a month ago in Portland, Oregon.
Jamal James, a former NFL defensive tackle weighing three hundred and fifty pounds and standing six foot eight inches tall, worked for David Barak. Barak had been the CEO of International Security and Intelligence Services, or ISIS, a top international security firm. After the attempted assassination, the FBI had wanted to question Barak, but he and his bodyguard had vanished. Both his corporate offices in Las Vegas and his residential compound in the mountains near Mt. Charleston, north of the city, had been searched. The FBI found evidence on a restored computer hard drive that linked Barak to the assassination team and made him appear to be its mastermind. But they didn’t find anything that revealed where he might be hiding.
Randy saw the big bodyguard walk to a table where three men were having lunch and lean down to speak with one of them, who handed him an envelope
. The bodyguard then turned and walked back to the hotel lobby.
Although the men at the table were not on the DEA watch list, Randy took a quick picture of them anyway with his cell phone, left money on the bar for his beer, and hurried after Jamal James. The man was moving like a bus through the traffic in the lobby.
A black Range Rover sat idling at the parking attendant’s stand. James tipped the attendant and hoisted his massive body into the passenger’s seat. The Range Rover settled an inch or two with the added weight before the air suspension restored the SUV’s balance. The vehicle drove off.
For a moment, Randy Johnson hesitated. Stay on post as ordered, or follow? Follow the bodyguard, he decided. If the Range Rover led him to Barak, he’d be able to send a Flash Priority One alert that every DEA agent would envy. Handing the well paid attendant a five dollar bill, he signaled for a taxi.
“Stay with that Range Rover, Carlos, and I’ll double your fare,” he said, glancing at the driver’s ID and picture as he slid into the back of a green and white Camry.
“Not necessary, señor. With this traffic I cannot lose it. Where do you think it is going?”
“No idea, no idea at all. Here, swipe my Visa card in case I have to leave in a hurry.”
“Does this involve your wife, señor?”
“Why would you ask that?”
“Couples come here after weddings. Sometimes men follow wives after they fight.”
The young agent had to laugh. Carlos Rodriguez, the middle age taxi driver, had probably seen his share of honeymoons gone bad.
“Not fighting with my wife, Carlos. You and I might go a round or two, though, if you lose the Range Rover.”
Call It Treason (The Adam Drake series Book 4) Page 24
