Foreign Influence_A Thriller

by Brad Thor

  CHAPTER 63

  CHICAGO

  I have already made provisions for weapons and ammunition,” said Marwan. “Your trip is not necessary. Focus on the remaining elements which need to be accomplished.”

  Rashid tried to explain. “When we left the hotel, did you notice the two cops standing there?”

  “Yes, I saw them, but I don’t—”

  “How about their vests?”

  “Level-two soft body armor,” said the man. “Level three if they have upgraded from what they were given at the police academy.”

  “That’s the armor. What about the carriers they use?”

  “Carriers don’t provide ballistic protection, Shahab.”

  “No, they don’t,” replied Rashid, “but a lot of cops now have trauma plates in addition to their armor.”

  Marwan Jarrah waved his hand dismissively as he liked to do when he felt a point was beneath his discussion. “That’s why our men have rifles. It will be like shooting through tissue paper. It won’t be a problem.”

  “But suppose it is? Suppose some young cop doesn’t mind the weight of hard plates.”

  The older man laughed. “Everyone minds the weight. You know this. You were a soldier. No one wears hard armor unless they expect an attack. This is going to be a surprise; something they will not see coming.”

  “Maybe, Marwan. Maybe. In fact, let’s say you’re right. Let’s say nobody expects this attack. But just for fun, let’s also say that the two cops we saw at the Marriott aren’t standing outside when our men arrive, but they show up one minute after.”

  Jarrah exhaled. “And?”

  “How’d they get there?”

  “This is foolish. Let’s talk about something else.”

  “It’s not foolish,” insisted Rashid. “Those cops came in a patrol car. Patrol officers are now being issued patrol rifles. So, firepower-wise they are equal to your men. And if they’re smart, which many of them are, especially the younger, more aggressive cops, they are also going to have hard armor. It’ll take them two seconds to get it out of the trunk and throw it on.

  “Our men could have plowed through half the lobby, but they won’t get to the other half, much less their next hotel. And what if it’s not patrol officers, but one of the city’s roving tactical teams that arrives?”

  The man was silent as he pieced together what his protégé was saying.

  “It will take me less than five hours to go and come back.”

  “Why Wisconsin?”

  “Because Illinois requires a firearms identification card to buy reloading supplies and Wisconsin doesn’t.”

  “It seems like a great risk to me this close to the attack.”

  Rashid looked at him. “I’m going to break up the purchases at three different locations. I’ll get the reloading machine at one, powder and primers at another, and the rounds and jackets at the third.”

  “What about video cameras?”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “What if you get stopped?”

  “I’m not going to get stopped, Marwan. But even if I do, my driver’s license has my Christian name on it.”

  “I want Fadim and Uday to go with you.”

  “That’s a great idea. I think we should all wear turbans and Islam is a dynamite religion T-shirts. How about that?”

  “I’m in no mood for disrespect,” Marwan snapped.

  “Those two get enough looks here in Chicago. If I take them with me to Wisconsin we’re going to raise a lot of eyebrows, or a lot of unibrows in Fadim and Uday’s case.”

  “This is why people in our organization are uncomfortable with you.”

  Rashid raised his hands, palms up. “Because of my sense of humor?”

  “No. It is your belief that you know better than everyone else.”

  “I do when everyone else is not using their heads. C’mon, Marwan. The first thing people think of when they see Fadim and Uday is terrorist. You can’t walk them into a store that sells guns and not expect to create a stir. I thought the idea was not to draw attention to ourselves.”

  “That is the plan,” replied Jarrah. “I am sending them along for your protection. They will ride in a separate vehicle and keep an eye on you. You will not go armed and I do not want you using your cell phone. Is that understood? You go buy the items you need and you return immediately.”

  “You don’t want me using my cell phone now?”

  “Sheik Aleem is concerned that the network may have been penetrated.”

  “Because of what happened in London?”

  “Because of London and Amsterdam.”

  “Amsterdam?” said Rashid. “That’s the site of the final European attack?”

  The man nodded.

  “What happened?”

  “There were six bombers. Only one successfully detonated. Sheik Aleem is correct to be concerned that the network may have been compromised.”

  “Then all the more reason to put our plans on hold.”

  “No,” replied the man. “It is more important than ever that we succeed. That’s why I agree with you about the ammunition and why I am letting you go get the things we need.”

  “But without my cell phone and with Fadim and Uday keeping me company.”

  “For once, Shahab, would you do something without arguing with me? That’s all I ask.”

  Rashid bowed his head. “I’m sorry, Marwan. We’ll do it your way.”

  “Good. Thank you. Now we need to talk about the police officers we are holding. They’re a liability and need to be dealt with.”

  “I agree.”

  Jarrah was taken aback. “You do?”

  “Yes. No good can come from holding on to them.”

  “So then they should be disposed of.”

  “Yes.”

  The man smiled. “This is very good, Shahab. I’m pleased that for once you see things my way. I’ll let you, then, decide how to handle it.”

  “I already know how I want to handle it,” said Rashid.

  “How?”

  “They are going to be martyrs for our cause, and they will take many of their fellow officers with them.”

  CHAPTER 64

  WEDNESDAY

  It took Mike Dent about three hours to get Harvath the information he needed. Within forty-five minutes of Dent’s call, he and the remaining Athena Team members were on a Citation X to Chicago.

  It was a tough decision to leave their teammate behind in the hospital, but they knew Rodriguez would have wanted them to finish the job.

  From that point forward, the Dutch took over the interrogation of al-Yaqoubi, though Harvath doubted they’d get much more out of him.

  Meanwhile, Carlton’s people were still working on Adda Sterk. She was producing only small amounts of intel, much of it not very useful. The same could be said of the controller for the London cell who had been broken by Ashford’s team. Whoever had assembled this network had done a very good job. Everything was compartmentalized and cutouts had been used all along the way. It was only when you got closer to the top, as they had with al-Yaqoubi, that the payouts began to get bigger.

  The last piece of information Harvath had harvested from the accountant had been the most terrifying. Whatever “Yusuf” had planned for America, it was set to begin in the next forty-eight hours.

  Per Mike Dent, Yusuf was actually a furniture importer in Chicago named Marwan Jarrah. He had fled Iraq during the 1980s and eventually became a U.S. citizen. He was an influential member of the American branch of the Islamic Relief Foundation, or IRF, a Saudi Arabia–based charity and member of the Conference of NGOs. The IRF had conducted multiple projects with the World Health Organization, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, and the World Food Program. Prominence in this organization had provided Jarrah cover to travel anywhere he wanted. It was no coincidence that the greatest hotbeds of terrorism and radical Islam were in the same parts of the Muslim
world so keenly focused upon by the IRF.

  In order to prevent Jarrah’s relatives from tipping him off, Dent had arranged for the ones he had questioned to be detained until Harvath okayed their release. For the first time since this operation had begun, Harvath felt that he had been able to take more than just one step forward before getting knocked on his ass.

  He had to block the scenes from Amsterdam from his mind or he wouldn’t be able to focus on what still needed to be done. Along with the pit of children from Fallujah and the little Iraqi boy who had died in his arms, he tucked them all into the iron box he kept for the unpleasantness of his job and shoved it back into the deepest recesses of his mind.

  He tried to think of something positive, something he could look forward to, and was surprised when Riley’s image bubbled up in his mind. It made him feel disloyal to Tracy, and Tracy brought him back to the issue of having children; the exact thing he’d been sitting on his dock thinking about when all of this had begun.

  As quickly as thoughts of Tracy and the hard decision he needed to make about his relationship with her came to mind, they were pushed aside by the work he had yet to do.

  There had been some debate as to how the team should proceed once it landed in Chicago. They had no arrest or law enforcement powers. Acts of terror plotted and committed on American soil were treated as criminal acts, which Harvath had always thought a big mistake. By not treating them as acts of war, the United States government was only inviting escalation, greater bloodshed, and exponentially greater loss of life. The jihadists were at war with America, yet American politicians refused to go to war with them. They saw them as petty criminals to be tried and given all the benefits of the American legal system. The Department of Defense, though, saw it a different way.

  The entire idea behind the Carlton Group was to protect America and her citizens, period. That was where things were now very sticky. Harvath and his organization had knowledge of pending terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. They also had intelligence regarding the man they believed to be in charge of those attacks inside the U.S. It could very well be argued that the information should have been shared with the FBI. But that was not how Reed Carlton or the small cadre of men to whom he answered inside the Pentagon saw it.

  They wanted Marwan Jarrah all to themselves and they had no intention of sharing him. They also had no intention of reading him his Miranda rights or helping him secure an attorney. There was no telling how many cells he had within the United States. They needed to grab him, interrogate him, and neutralize his network as rapidly as possible. And if it meant violating a few terrorists’ “rights” along the way, then that was the way it was going to be.

  With Carlton doing the groundwork for them, they used their time aboard the plane to eat, check on Nikki Rodriguez via the in-flight Satcom system, and grab as much sleep as possible.

  When they landed in Chicago, it was just after three in the morning. Two vehicles stuffed with gear were waiting for them; a windowless Chevy Astro van and a dented KIA Sportage with tinted glass. Harvath was anxious to set up surveillance and put together their plan for taking down Jarrah.

  They divided up the equipment and broke into two teams. Once they had established a rendezvous point, each team made a reconnaissance drive through Jarrah’s residential neighborhood and the neighborhood where his furniture outlet and the American office of record for the IRF was located. Two things immediately became clear.

  The first was that surveilling Jarrah’s house from a vehicle was going to be next to impossible. Street parking was by permit only and even if they had a permit, there wasn’t a single space to be found. There were also Neighborhood Watch. We call police signs mounted everywhere, including in people’s windows. Harvath had always hated doing residential surveillance and this was one of the biggest reasons. Neighbors tended to not only know and watch out for each other, but they also knew what everyone drove. Effectively, nonresidents stood out.

  The second problem they faced was that there appeared to be multiple entrances and exits to Jarrah’s furniture store. It was a large three-story commercial building with glass along the front and doors that opened onto the sidewalk. There was a fire escape and loading dock area in back that accessed the alley, a side door that allowed people to enter from the parking lot, and an exit on the far side of the structure that fed into a narrow gangway with the building next door. It was a lot to cover.

  There was a third problem that Harvath didn’t even want to think about. The fact that Jarrah’s home and business were in Chicago didn’t mean that he was. For all Harvath knew, he could be in New York City getting ready to oversee his first attack. Chicago had been their best and only lead.

  Harvath would have given a year’s salary to have placed drones overhead at the house and the business, or to have satellites retasked to help give him extra sets of eyes, but that wasn’t going to happen, not without setting off a bunch of alarm bells back in D.C. and getting them all in trouble. None of them were supposed to be here. Posse Comitatus notwithstanding, if anyone discovered that the DOD had created and was running its own covert, direct action network, there’d be absolute hell to pay. Harvath and his team were going to have to figure out how to get the job done while remaining under everyone’s radar.

  As they couldn’t sit outside Jarrah’s house, Megan Rhodes suggested they walk right up, ring the doorbell, and see who answered. As soon as the stores opened, she could buy an arrangement of flowers and pretend to be delivering them.

  Harvath didn’t like it, and Gretchen Casey immediately shot it down. “Just like London and Amsterdam,” she said, “this guy’s paranoia level is going to be off the charts. An incorrect delivery is going to be highly suspect.”

  “Who cares?” replied Rhodes. “The door opens, my Glock goes in his face, everybody wins.”

  “Not if he’s got six other guys behind the door armed better than you are,” said Harvath.

  “Six guys isn’t even a fair fight. Now, if he had twelve, then maybe …”

  “It’s a nice idea, Megs, but keep thinking,” said Casey, who asked Harvath, “What if there was another way we could get close to the house without arousing suspicion?”

  “I’d be willing to entertain it. What are you thinking?”

  “Do you think we could coopt one of the neighbors?”

  Harvath shook his head. “I doubt it. I saw two parked cars with Iraqi flag stickers. Either they both belong to Jarrah, or he and his neighbors share more than just the same zip code.”

  “I’m with Scot,” said Cooper. “I think we need to focus on the furniture store.”

  Casey nodded. “Okay, I agree. But I still want to see if we can’t figure out some way to gain access to his house.”

  “In the meantime,” replied Harvath, “I want to get our surveillance network in place before it’s light. If Jarrah is there, he’s not only going to be expecting surveillance, he’s going to be actively looking for it.”

  CHAPTER 65

  I don’t know,” said Abdul Rashid as he pushed himself back from the table he was working at. “You tell me. Would you want to already be shooting armor-piercing rounds, or swap out magazines once you finally come to the conclusion that you’ve got a problem? That’s assuming you can remember which one of your mags is the one with the correct rounds to begin with.”

  Jarrah looked at the reloading equipment and the piles of ammunition. “Did you get any sleep at all last night?”

  “No. And it’s a good thing. You know what I found?” continued Rashid as he rolled his chair over to the adjoining table, picked up a cell phone, and tossed it to the man. “This phone has something wrong with it.”

  “We tested all the phones. What’s the problem?”

  “You tested to see if they’d vibrate and activate the detonators. I checked their electrical integrity. For some stupid reason, every once in a while this one pulses and gives off an electrical charge.”

  “How strong?”


  “Strong enough that I’d be worried about it prematurely setting off one of the explosives.”

  Marwan walked over and kissed the younger man on the forehead.

  “What was that for?” he asked.

  Jarrah swept his arm around the room. “For all of this. The improved ammunition. The double-checking of the explosives. All of it. You’ve done a very good job, Shahab. We are almost there.”

  “So how do you want me to load the magazines for the shooters?”

  The man thought about it for a moment. “I’m apprehensive that we haven’t had an opportunity to test the new ammunition you have fabricated.”

  Rashid grabbed one of the rifles and a magazine he had loaded. “Let’s go try it in the parking lot right now.”

  The Iraqi laughed at the young man’s joke. “You are as excited as I am, but we must be practical with our orchestration; cautious.”

  “So no plinking in the lot?”

  “Shahab, I believe that you know what you are doing. I also believe that Allah blessed your journey yesterday and that it adds a layer of security to what we are doing.”

  “Good, so we’ll use the new ammo.”

  Jarrah waved his hand dismissively. “We’ve already practiced with the other ammo.”

  “The stuff you got from that gangbanging gunrunner? When?” asked Rashid.

  “Weeks ago,” the older man replied.

  Rashid looked at him. “You’ve known all along that this was going to be a Mumbai-style attack.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you, Shahab. The mission must always come first. You know that.”

  The young man turned away and rolled his chair back to his reloading equipment.

  The Iraqi smiled. “You’re tired. You should rest. Tomorrow will be a glorious day, Insha’Allah.”

  “I still have work to do. We’re going to need to replace the bad cell phone and you haven’t told me how you want the magazines loaded.”