by Barbara Gee
The light bulb came on. Tanner frowned and narrowed his eyes. “So if you have to bend the rules to keep them happy here, you’ll do so in the spirit of the greater good?”
Khalud smiled, though it contained no warmth or humor. “They are decent, loyal men. They say their prayers without fail, they stay away from drugs, and they do whatever I ask of them without question. When the time comes, I will make sure they are cleansed and worthy of the job they will be given. Until then, if they want to use infidel women, get drunk with them, or go out into the city to pass the time, I allow it as long as they are discreet. Be assured that even though I allow these freedoms, I monitor the men closely. And the women who come here are under the control of a man I have developed a business relationship with. He knows how to secure the women’s silence. They are too stupid to figure out much, but if they talk at all about their excursions here, they are finished.”
Tanner frowned, showing he wasn’t yet convinced, because a devout man such as Aazim wouldn’t buy into the scheme so easily. “So in return for allowing some excess, you get the undying loyalty of your men? Do you not worry about the influence of American culture? Do you not care about the state of their souls?”
“What I care about,” Khalud said harshly, “is the success of my mission. The mission I have waited six long years for. I tolerate your questions only because you might be of use to me. I have now given all the explanation I care to. You either stay and respect my leadership, or you leave now.”
“Would I make it to the door?” Tanner asked bluntly. He knew Khalud had a gun on him at all times. He also knew he wouldn’t be averse to using it.
“I guess that is a chance you’ll have to take.”
Tanner grunted. “Or not,” he said, finally cracking a grim smile. “Like you, the only thing I care about is success. For me, that means taking revenge on the country who sanctioned the killing of my family in Fallujah. An eye for an eye. As long as your mission helps me accomplish this goal, I am as loyal to you as the others in this house. I only wish you would trust me. I’m here because you want a bomb. I suggest we get started on that. The sophisticated ones take time, you know.”
Khalud looked a bit uncomfortable. “I am still waiting for more details on the job.”
Tanner feigned outrage, even though he knew that already. He slammed his hands onto the table. “So it’s true? The job you recruited me for isn’t a sure thing?”
“It is a sure thing, but whether I get to lead it is still undecided. That’s why I have you. With a bomb builder already in place, I am far ahead of the others who might be considered.”
“There are others who can do it?” Tanner asked skeptically, hoping to get information on Khalud’s competitors.
“None who have a chance of succeeding. I trust that Allah will speak to those making decisions so they know only I can bring the result they seek.”
Tanner was developing a splitting headache. Talking to this self-righteous, utterly deluded man was exhausting. It made him feel grimy, and guilty by association. “I’ll wait one more week. No longer.”
Khalud nodded, his eyes not quite as cold and distant as they had been prior to today’s conversation. “In the meantime, I’ll give you a description of what I anticipate we’ll need. It might be more than one explosive. You can start some plans, and in a few days, give me an update. Perhaps I’ll be able to use your ideas to influence those in charge. It could work in our favor.”
“So what are we waiting for?” Tanner asked. “All I need is a computer to draw up the plans and search for the components.”
Khalud’s forehead creased and his lips firmed. “Computers are not secure.”
Tanner gave him an evil grin. “That is true, for most people. Not for me. I am very familiar with a part of the internet that hides what I do and what I’m looking for. Just get me a computer and an internet connection, and I’ll show you. You can watch my every keystroke and take the computer when we finish each day.” Tanner felt comfortable making that offer, because he knew after a day or two, Khalud would be bored out of his mind and perfectly content to let Tanner work on his own.
“I will think about it,” Khalud said.
“No computer equals no bomb. I can’t do without it. Unless all you need is a pressure-cooker bomb. That I can do easily with no technology.”
Khalud turned up his nose. “I would never waste time on something that can kill and maim only a few people.”
Tanner stood up and leaned over, his palms flat on the table. “Then get me a computer and let me show you what I can do. I guarantee you’ll be pleased. I am the best.”
With that teaser, he turned and left the room. He knew Khalud would be too curious now to refuse.
CHAPTER 24
Professional sports were a mind game just as much as a physical one. Vince had finally confided in Izzy he was losing the mind game part.
During his first two seasons as a pro, he’d made huge strides in his game, becoming one of the most promising young players in the league. He’d welcomed both the challenge and the notoriety, and had enjoyed the trappings of fame. The game came easy to him, and he seemed unstoppable.
Then he’d broken his ankle. No big deal, right? He was young and healthy, and had always been a fast healer. This time had been no exception. He’d worked hard at rehab and had returned to the ice sooner than expected. His ankle felt great and he had every intention of finishing the season on a high note.
Instead, he’d floundered. For reasons neither he nor anyone else could pinpoint, his game wasn’t the same. His coach and the team doctors and trainers assured him he just needed to “find his legs again.” When one rough week turned into two, then three, then four, things got more intense. His coach was frustrated and started taking away ice time. Vince worked harder than ever, and felt better than ever physically, but the pucks wouldn’t go in the net, and his timing was often a split second off when taking and receiving passes.
Sloppy play leading up to the play-offs had him on the receiving end of many lectures from the coaches. As his team’s play-off hopes faded, rumors of him being on the trading block began circulating, and sure enough, a week after the season ended, he’d been traded to the Minnesota Wild.
Although bitter, Vince realized he’d been given a chance to start over. He took that opportunity and ran with it. Surrounded by a new and encouraging set of teammates and a great coach, the game started clicking for him again. Right out of the gate, he became a scoring machine.
His old team took a lot of heat for dumping him so quickly, while the Wild eagerly took advantage of it. Vince thrived under Boone’s leadership, and as his game matured, so did his conduct off the ice. It was no secret Boone ran a tight ship and expected a lot, but he was also the first one there when his players needed a hand in their private lives. He became a mentor to Vince, and the young man began making better decisions and taking better care of himself.
Then his hand had been sliced wide open by a skate blade. He’d immediately undergone surgery to repair the tendons in three fingers. He’d healed and rehabbed, and made it back by the start of the play-offs. But he quickly realized his hand strength was much depleted, and three games in it was getting worse, not better.
Thorough examinations by a team of doctors revealed problems with the way the first surgery had been done, and they recommended a correction. Vince had another procedure done, then started the healing and rehab all over again. He was assured this time the job had been done right, but it was too late, his confidence was shot.
He confessed to Izzy he was terrified of another slump, of not being able to come back. When the season ended, he was faced with months of wondering whether he’d ever again be the dominating player he’d been before the injury.
Maybe it was the stress of living with that fear that had prompted him to borrow his cousin’s bike and take it for a ride in his home town. Vince assured Izzy he hadn’t been trying to kill himself when he took a downhill stretch way t
oo fast. He would have been fine if not for the unexpected gravel at the bottom of the hill, right before a major curve in the road. No, he hadn’t wanted to die, but maybe the stress made him more reckless than he would have normally been. And maybe, when he found out he’d jacked up his shoulder, he wasn’t as upset about it as he should have been.
Izzy understood what he was saying. Better to be knocked out of the game due to an injury he couldn’t recover from, rather than having the game he loved gradually taken away because he no longer believed in himself. As she listened to his grief and pain, Izzy realized that God hadn’t sent Vince to the ranch to drive her crazy, he’d sent him there to get the help he needed, and it went beyond physical therapy.
She’d do her best to be part of his support team. She had the time, after all.
***
Seven weeks down.
“I need to use the computer.” Tanner stood in the doorway of Khalud’s make-shift office, his hands on his hips. “Do you have time?”
The man scowled from across his rickety desk. “I’m busy. I have a lot of preparations to make since being put in charge of the upcoming operation. I don’t have time to sit and watch you play on the computer hour after hour.”
Tanner raised his hands. “Fine. I won’t play on the computer then. But if I’m not playing, I’m not making progress. Remember that.”
“Wait,” Khalud bellowed when Tanner turned to go. “Take the machine and do what you need to do. Give me a full report later.”
Tanner walked over to the desk and picked up the laptop. It was a much more basic model than he had hoped for, but Khalud used it only for email and Internet research, so he had no use for a high powered machine. Eventually Tanner would suggest purchasing a laptop just for him to use, but he didn’t want that to happen until he’d had a chance to glean everything he could from Khalud’s.
Khalud watched him go, but he didn’t seem overly concerned about Tanner being alone with the computer. He had already made a point of telling Tanner his email was set up to send him a text notification every single time a login attempt was made, be it successful or unsuccessful. That made Khalud feel secure, but of course he didn’t know that in recruiting Tanner he’d gotten two for one—a bomb builder and one of the best hackers in the business. And he’d just sent that hacker off with his personal computer.
Finally. Tanner was so relieved to be alone with the computer he had to hold back the urge to sprint to his room. Khalud had held out for longer than he’d expected, watching him work hour after hour, for a week straight. He’d watched Tanner download a program that allowed him to draw and design in 3D, and he’d watched him scour the internet for the components he would need to build the bomb he was conceptualizing.
Of course, Khalud didn’t know that the places Tanner went to, deep in the dark web, were actually fronts by the FBI, assuring Tanner of getting the parts he needed without getting flagged.
The positive aspect of Khalud keeping an eye on him was that Tanner had been able to build a rapport with him, carefully explaining where he was going with his bomb design, and getting Khalud’s input in return. Those conversations allowed Tanner to gather a lot of information about things Khalud had been involved with in the past. Some of the names he dropped were familiar to Tanner, and he passed the information he learned on to his handler in hopes that it would help the FBI solidify pending investigations.
The negative part of Khalud’s watchful eye was of course the fact it limited Tanner to only the explosives aspect of his job, and didn’t allow him to dig into the computer. His immediate goal was to get a list of the email addresses Khalud was in regular contact with, because the information gleaned by monitoring those communications could be a goldmine. It was tricky, though, because even though Khalud was basically computer illiterate, there could be experts on the other ends of the emails who were watching for just the type of monitoring Tanner was hoping to do.
Alone in his room with the computer, Tanner quickly ran a scan of the hard drive, making sure there were no malicious software installations such as keystroke trackers or remote monitoring. He would have been shocked to find anything, but he didn’t want to be guilty of underestimating Khalud. Sometimes men played stupid about things when they really weren’t. Tanner needed to rule that out before proceeding.
Fifteen minutes later, he was convinced the computer was clean. There was literally nothing installed on it other than the programs that typically came pre-loaded on a brand new computer. Always thorough, Tanner checked those for anything suspicious as well, but found nothing.
He skimmed through the files in the temporary download folder, and saw several recent ones that looked promising. The file names seemed extra mundane and unthreatening, which usually meant there was good stuff inside. He reached into a special pocket inside the lining of his left shoe and took out a tiny flash drive. In less than a minute the files had been copied.
Next he moved to the emails. He didn’t login of course, but he spent some time snooping around, then installed a keystroke tracker of his own design from the flash drive, which would record every key that was pressed and send it to the FBI. With that information, finding out who Khalud was emailing would be a breeze, and the content of the emails he composed would be immediately available.
Once Tanner was in possession of the email addresses, he would try to schedule a meet-up with his handler and use her computer to hack them. If he was at a random, secure computer, no one would be able to trace where the intrusion had come from, if they were even lucky enough to realize there had been one. Tanner was confident he could fly under their radar for an extended period of time, and the longer he went without being discovered, the better the chance of this operation being a success. Monitoring communications was the best way to catch a crook.
Tanner gave himself a half hour to get things set up to send all keystrokes to the FBI server he’d set up himself. That server was devoid of everything other than an operating system, and whatever else was sent to it from this job. That way, if it was ever discovered, there was no other incriminating information to be seen. It was also not connected to any other part of the FBI’s vast network, so if it was breached, it wouldn’t let someone in who didn’t belong.
He quickly finished what he was doing, returned the flash drive to the pocket in his shoe, and opened the drawing program Khalud had become familiar with. It was a good thing, because five minutes later Khalud himself came to check on him. Tanner made sure he appeared deeply engrossed in his bomb design, and then pretended to suddenly become aware of Khalud standing in his doorway. He immediately motioned him over, pointed at his screen, and launched into a very animated description of a new idea he’d had for the bomb, which would allow it to get through security checks much more easily.
Although Khalud’s eyes nearly crossed at all the technical talk, he seemed quite pleased at the general idea. He left again—consenting to allow Tanner to use the computer for the next two hours, and also giving him permission to start shopping for a 3D printer. Tanner had explained truthfully that the printer would be vital for producing the non-detectable, highly specialized parts they’d need for the bomb, and there was no way he could finish the project without it.
Khalud had capitulated easily, not even blinking at the cost. It was obvious his trust was growing, and his zeal for coming up with the perfect bomb was becoming an obsession. His eyes glazed over with lust when he envisioned himself at the center of the greatest scene of destruction since 9/11. He still badly wanted to kill the westerners he so despised, but personal glory was also becoming a big part of the equation.
That’s what would end up destroying him. Of that, Tanner had little doubt. In the meantime, he himself had a fine line to tread. He had to invent the perfect bomb. He still didn’t know where Khalud planned to place the bomb, but he knew it had to be one that could be concealed and get through scanners, and could inflict maximum damage in a crowd. One that looked invincible and convinced Khalud and
anyone else who studied it that it would perform exactly as Tanner said it would.
Only it would never, ever go off, the plans would never be copied, and everything would be destroyed at the end of the job. Tanner had to make sure of that.
CHAPTER 25
Thirteen weeks.
Izzy was feeling a little lost. Eight weeks of working with Vince Abbott at least once a day, usually twice, had come to an end. He and Boone had left the day before to head back to Minneapolis. It was time for pre-season training camp.
Vince was ready. After confessing his serious loss of confidence to Izzy, she’d convinced him to share everything about how he was feeling with Boone and Jolene. After that, Boone had gotten one of the retreat center counselors involved—none other than Charlie Jansen. The four of them had become the unofficial “get Vince back in the game” team. Boone shared his own hockey ups and downs with the younger man, telling him his slump wasn’t so unusual. He also worked with Vince every day in the ice rink after retreat center hours, following Izzy’s and Jolene’s instructions as to how much Vince could do considering his healing injuries.
Charlie met with Vince twice a week. Izzy didn’t know what all they talked about, but she saw a deep friendship developing between the two, and also a slow but steady improvement in Vince’s outlook.
As the weeks passed, Vince dropped the front he’d been using to try to convince people he was fine. After that he went through several stages, starting with unsure and vulnerable, which morphed into introspective and hopeful, then to dedicated and determined. He worked hard on his physical therapy, becoming a model patient. Izzy and Jolene took turns working with him, and Izzy enjoyed the friendship they’d developed.
At one point, a few weeks in, Vince had made an off-hand comment about stealing Izzy away from her absent boyfriend. They’d been at Boone and Jolene’s house for pizza and a movie, and when Jolene had voiced her wish Tanner could be there, too, Vince had raised a brow and chuckled.
