Enemy Among Us-A Jordan Wright Thriller

by Randy Reardon

  Mustafa looked around at the various groups. He was encouraged by what he saw. The older boys had stepped into their leadership roles, just like he’d envisioned. They worked well with their cousins, the younger ones showed respect to the leaders, just as he’d instilled in them over the years when they played team sports or went on activities together. Mustafa had always told them, “You listen and respect the one I put in charge of your group, just as you would if it were me.” Everyone seemed focused as they went through the activities, just as he’d instructed the older boys the previous night. Every minute, Mustafa was growing more confident in their abilities and in their chance for success. Success did not mean they would live, success only meant the mission would be accomplished.

  As he looked around him, Mustafa knew that this would be the last time his so-called “family” would be together. Many — probably most of the younger ones — would not survive. Those who did live would no doubt be arrested and spend the rest of their lives in prison — or, at least a good portion of it in a juvenile facility. If they carried out their mission, not only would it be disruptive and cause great damage both physically and mentally to the Great Satan, but it would also make Mustafa a hero in his own country. He thought often of how his story would be told to recruit and motivate the next group of fighters. He was the pioneer, the trailblazer, from what he recalled of American history. For those who would come after him, it would be different. They wouldn’t have the ability to move around and have as much time to plan as he had. The one thing about the Americans was that while they failed to understand the threats before they happened, they very surely did a great deal to make certain the same thing couldn’t happen again. Unfortunately for the Americans, people like him and those who recruited him weren’t interested in repeat, they knew the best approach was to come up with something new.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  The City of Philadelphia was in shock. Two more of their dedicated police officers had been gunned down. Fortunately, both the gunmen had been identified and, more important to many of the citizens, both killers were deceased. No one really seemed interested in more money spent on trials or paid to house a cop killer. With these latest two officers, the city was again in preparation for a proper farewell.

  The ceremony would be held in two days. The Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul stood majestically at the intersection of Eighteenth and Benjamin Franklin Parkway and was the Church used for these services, regardless of the faith of the deceased officer. It was customary that Police Departments from around the country send representative officers to the funeral. This could result in hundreds of out of town officers being present.

  The logistics were a challenge. With the enormity of the turnout and the subsequent motorcade to the cemetery, it became a major feat merely to move the thousands of people from one location to another. Routes needed to be planned, and, in many cases, roads closed to allow the motorcade to move unabated through the streets. In the case of Sergeant O’Meara and Officer Brown, their funeral service was going to be jointly held, but their burials would be in two separate cemeteries on the opposite sides of Philadelphia. It was a challenge, but there would also be unwavering cooperation between the Philadelphia Police, neighboring communities and the Pennsylvania State Police. The bodies would be brought to the Basilica early in the morning, with the service beginning at ten o’clock and at eleven the two processions would be leaving for their respective cemeteries.

  Mustafa read with great interest the articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer about the plans for the Officer’s funerals. These would mesh well with his plans. It was clear the man with whom Mustafa had begun to work had done what he’d promised. With the city and the surrounding area focused on the funerals, he would be able to put his plan into motion and use this to his advantage. A smile crossed his face, the expression something which was rare. He would bring great pride to the people of Iran, and start a new life for himself.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Mustafa turned his attention back to the teams and put his Philadelphia Inquirer down on the table. He felt certain that, in two days, all would be ready. He’d already informed the parents that the children would not be home for the next several days. Of course, none of the parents protested, for they knew the time had arrived. The children were as ready as they ever would be, the supplies were in place and the final training would soon be complete.

  Everything they had done for the past fifteen years was now going to result in an operation certain to make the United States question its security and its role in foreign affairs. While there would be physical damage, it was the psychological damage that Mustafa hoped would be more severe and longer lasting. He would hope that all the people they had become neighbors with, all the customers that utilized their various businesses, their teachers, everyone would no longer trust another person from another country. Mustafa saw discrimination and mistrust as the forces which could cause more harm and destruction than any bomb.

  He signaled for the oldest boys, the leaders, to come and join him at the table. They all walked over and sat down. “How is it going with your teams?”

  “Mine is ready!” announced Aziz. The others nodded. “However, Uncle, I’m worried about the younger children. Do you really think they will be able to keep up and not cause us problems?”

  The others again nodded. “I would agree with Aziz,” one of the boys began. “They are willing and want to be with us, but I fear, as we carry out our plans – well, they might be overwhelmed.”

  “I understand. However, we must all be in this together. You will find, when you are in the middle of this, that you will need every person you have. You don’t want to be caught short. Everyone has a role, right?” They all nodded. “If we don’t use the youngest, others will have to take over their jobs, plus continue to do their own.”

  “Yes, Uncle. We understand,” Aziz said thoughtfully. “But, is it possible they will get in the way and cause us more harm than good?”

  “They have trained as hard as you. You have said they are as motivated. Let’s not let their size and age fool us. We may find they are the biggest heroes of the day.” Mustafa paused to allow them to think about what he’d said. “Here is what I would suggest. Pair the youngest with an older partner. Have them work together. Make sure the older one understands they are responsible for making sure both of their responsibilities are carried out. This will relieve you having to worry about everyone.” The boys looked at each other and nodded in agreement.

  “Once again, you come up with a great solution, Uncle.” Aziz looked at each of his cousins. “I think that will work well.”

  “For the remainder of the afternoon, I want you to work with your teams on the plans. When we break for supper at dusk, that will be the end of the day. We will all eat together and then I want everyone to have fun this evening. Understood?”

  The boys all nodded their approval as they rose from the table and returned to their teams. Mustafa felt even more confidence in the success they would have in the next two days.

  As evening approached, Mustafa’s house took on the atmosphere of a party. The kids were ran around, ate pizza and drank soda. Games were being played in the side yard, while several groups were in the front yard and on the porch, with board and card games.

  Belle, out on her evening stroll, walked by and couldn’t help but notice. “Oh, tonight must be Mustafa’s birthday. He’s getting a new flat screen TV from his nieces and nephews. I told you about the cute cable guys that were there hooking everything up. He’s getting the premium package.” As always, Belle was dominating the conversation with her sister, Sylvia, who was visiting from Ohio. “I’ll tell you those cable guys were the premium package I want.”

  “Oh, Belle! You just never stop, do you?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you this. Mustafa deserves it. He spends so much time with those kids. He’s practically raised them. It’s nice of them to be so thoughtful to give him all of that. He
really deserves it. This neighborhood needs more men like him.”

  “Everywhere needs more men like him”

  “You got that right, Sis.” They continued down the rest of the block and then turned right at the next street.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Max had taken them out for pizza and a chance to get away from the command center. Max felt the time away might get them recharged and help their mental state. She knew this part of every assignment drove Jordan crazy. He was action oriented and to sit around waiting made him a challenge to manage. She’d found, over time, to get him away from the command center helped in relieving his anxiety. Jordan had reluctantly joined them and she could already see that it was doing him good.

  Jordan and William found a pool table in the back of the pizza parlor and jumped on the chance to challenge a couple of the locals to eight ball. Max stood along the wall and watched. Kate had remained at their table talking with Stan. Max found she needed the down time, too, and had left the table when the conversation continued to be shoptalk. She knew Kate and Stan were the consummate hard-core crime fighters and, if they weren’t in discussion about the case they were on, then they would rehash an old one.

  Max was enjoying watching Jordan and William, when Kate appeared beside her. Kate’s coat was already on and Max’s was over her arm. “Here. We need to get back. Jordan was right. There does seem to be a connection with these police killings. My team in D.C. is sending us information now. It’ll be there by the time we get back. Stan’s getting the pizzas to go.”

  “Of course he is.” Max grinned, she knew Stan would never miss a meal. She walked over past William and Jordan to the side of the table where their two opponents stood. “Okay, enough. I can’t let this go on. They didn’t tell you they were professionals?”

  “Lady, what are you talking about?” The larger of the two men responded.

  “My friends here are on the tour. They like to come into these neighborhood places and take advantage of the locals. I just can’t let it go on anymore. I don’t want to cause any trouble. How much did they take you for?”

  “Forty bucks so far. But, it ain’t fair if they’re professionals.”

  “I totally agree with you.” Max turned to look at Jordan and William. “Boys, we need to go and you need to give these men their money back and apologize.”

  William and Jordan just looked at her dumbfounded. They couldn’t believe she was going to make them give the money back.

  “Boys, we need to go. We’re needed back at the office, pronto.”

  They both got what she meant. They nodded and threw the money down on the table.

  The larger of their two opponents, neither of which would had ever been called small, shouted after them as they left the pool room. “Don’t ever show your damn faces around here again or we’ll push ‘em in for you!”

  Jordan grinned at William. “He has no idea, does he?” They both laughed as they walked out of the backroom of the restaurant and practically ran into Stan, carrying three boxes of pizza.

  The pizzeria was about twenty minutes away from the command post. Kate told them what little she knew about her team’s efforts to search phone and e-mail records and how that data had secured warrants to search financial records. From that information, they were able to identify solid connections which linked all of the suspects in the police murders.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  They dropped off two of the pizzas in the main room of the command center and took the other one with them to the back. Kate grabbed her laptop and the copies of the documents she’d printed and joined the others.

  “Here’s what we know. Each of the killers was a two striker. Given a little time, each would have had his third and be looking at life in prison. There is a connection through both phone and e-mails to a contact each had with an as yet unidentified individual. These contacts seem to start approximately six weeks before the suspect murdered the police officer. I have copies of some of the e-mails.” Kate passed around a set of documents. “After several of these e-mails, there are phone calls and then a meeting is set. As best we can tell, there seems to be only one face-to-face. After that everything, is done by e-mail.”

  “These emails aren’t specific. How do we know this is connected to the murders?” Jordan paced the room, with the copy of the e-mails in one hand and a slice of pizza in the other. The pepperoni was a little on the greasy side, but the crust was good.

  “My team has identified specific words that are common in the e-mails received by each individual. We’re still working on it, but we think there were code words for gun, date, location, etc. We think the code key was provided at the face-to-face meeting. We’ll have more on that coming in later, but we’ve seen this type of thing before, mostly with the larger crime families. They’ll be coordinating things in various locations and they’ve found e-mail with a code system to be an efficient way to work.”

  “Okay, then what was the hook for these guys?” Stan sat in a chair with his hands on the top of his head. Everyone knew this as Stan’s body language when he processed information. “Why did they all agree to do this, when every one of them has ended up dead?”

  “Financial security for their families, Stan. The financial records we pulled showed large deposits going into accounts held by each of these men or members of their families, all within about thirty days after they died.”

  “Thirty days?” Max questioned.

  “Almost exactly. Our thought is that seems to be the time when people stop paying attention to these families. If it were done right away, they’d be under a lot of media and police scrutiny. But, like everything else, it quickly fades and we move on.”

  William walked over and grabbed another slice. “Was it substantial? My guess would be that it had to be for them to take this on and then trust the money was going to get to the family.”

  “We’re talking a range between one hundred thousand and one hundred–fifty thousand dollars. We’ve also seen contact between the first suspect’s family and the later ones. We think the organizers allowed contact between the newly recruited and the families to verify that the money did, indeed, get paid.”

  “Wow! I mean, this is elaborate,” William said, shaking his head. I guess there isn’t anything money can’t buy.”

  Jordan stopped and put his pizza slice down. “But we still don’t know why. Why did this group want to kill cops? It’s got to be tied to something else.”

  “We did run data on major crimes happening within thirty days of an officer’s murder. Nothing correlated.”

  “Maybe the crime hasn’t happened yet,” Jordan noted.

  “Even with the connection, it still seems fairly random. It’s been a year since these murders started. There’s no rhyme or reason to the timing – at least none that we can find.”

  Jordan raised his hand. “Look. We can guess all we want. I think they are connected and leading up to something. I’m also thinking it might be tied to Mustafa and his plans.”

  “Okay, you lost me there.” Max looked at Jordan with an expression that told him she wasn’t even close to buying what he said.

  “We know they’ve been planning this for quite a while,” Jordan explained. “We know — just with Akmed’s business – there was a lot of cash generated and given to Mustafa. We don’t know what some of the other family members are doing. So, Mustafa definitely has the bucks to pay out on these hits. They have to be planning something fairly large. Who ever is backing Mustafa has invested a lot of money to train these people and get them into this country. If it’s big and they want to create havoc, then why not target the police. It gets everyone in the community unsettled. People stop trusting, they lose confidence. Then, you pull off some big attack or some disturbance and the whole city might just implode on itself.”

  “It’s a great theory, but we need more than a theory if we want to prevent Mustafa from carrying out his plan.” Stan had gotten out of his chair paced the room. “I c
an’t call Washington and mobilize the troops on a theory or hunch.”

  “I realize that. More importantly, I’m realizing we aren’t going to have the time to stop Mustafa. They are too far down the road. We just need to be quick to react when they decide to move forward.”

  “When do you think that will be?” William’s mouth was still full of pizza.

  “I think within the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours would be my guess,” Jordan responded.

  “Where?” Kate asked, with the hope Jordan would have a potential target identified.

  “Kate, I wish I knew. We’re in an area that’s just too target rich. They’ve got a ton of choices, depending on what they want to do. We won’t know until they begin.”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Sharif Choufani didn’t want to get out of bed. He wasn’t looking forward to this day. He’d invested the last fifteen years of his life to get to this point because he was passionate about what he did. He knew it was important to his fellow brothers and to the group of people he served. Today would be tough, but at the end of the day he would be able to look back and see the impact he’d made. He would receive congratulations from people he didn’t even know and his picture more than likely would be on the television news and in tomorrow’s paper. He threw the covers off and walked into the bathroom. He reached into the shower and turned on the hot water. Walking over to the mirror he pulled out his scissors and began to trim his beard. Satisfied after a few minutes he rinsed out the sink and went into the shower. After almost twenty minutes he emerged, dried off, brushed his teeth, combed his hair and then went to the closet. He’d picked out appropriate attire for the day. He dressed and walked into the living room. Noticing the time, he knew he needed to be on his way. Everything meant to happen this day was on a tight and very specific time schedule. Today was a day he couldn’t be late. He grabbed his keys and left the house, jumped into his car which he’d parked at the curb in front of his house the night before and headed for his destination.