Back-Tracker

by Bob Blink

  “One guard,” he said. “He’s armed with an AK-47 and positioned off to the right on the far side of the room. The other two people inside are unarmed. I’ll go first since I recall the layout. You cover me.”

  Laney nodded, no longer as surprised about Jake’s advance knowledge of everything. Despite his inherent doubts, he was starting to understand that Jake was capable of doing what he claimed.

  The door was locked, but a sharp kick adjacent to the lock was all that was required to break through. The double doors weren’t supported as they should have been and worked against each other making the arrangement less than secure. Jake followed in as the doors opened, catching the startled guard by surprise. He tried to cover by raising the lethal automatic weapon, but Jake had done this before, and feeling a little like a movie rerun, he quickly placed a pair of rounds in the man’s chest.

  As the man was collapsing to the floor, Jake pointed his handgun at the two remaining occupants in the room, ordering them away from the fire that had built on the concrete floor. They backed away, dropping what they had in their hands, especially when Laney charged in afterwards and leveled the large bore of the shotgun at them. Their situation stable, Jake could hear the rapid clatter of automatic weapons in the building. The SWAT team had arrived and was clearing the building. One of the SWAT team appeared at the door checking on the sound of the shot.

  “Take them,” Jake ordered, and the man motioned for the two to leave the room and head down the hallway.

  Jake walked over and pulled a piece of paper that was starting to burn out of the flames of the fire. He handed it to Laney.

  “We’ll want that. It has a couple of names on it that will be useful.”

  Laney looked at the scrawl of characters that covered the sheet.

  “You can read Arabic or whatever this shit is?” he asked.

  “No, but they could,” Jake responded, indicating the two Muslims the guard had just taken away. “I had a chat with them last time. It won’t be required this time around.”

  “Wouldn’t that have revealed your interest?” he asked.

  “I looped back around after they told me what I needed. That way I had the information, but they had no memory of the discussion.”

  Laney shook his head. This was clearly another example of what Carlson had told him.

  “The real name of importance is Abdul-Khabir ibn Barir,” Jake said.

  “And who is that?”

  “Someone who will help us resolve this,” was all Jake would reveal. “Come on. Our guys should be wrapping this up by now.”

  Back in the hallway, Jake found the SWAT team leader talking to Chris Holland.

  “I don’t know how you knew about that tunnel, but it certainly made a difference,” the leader said. “We have the place secure. There were a couple of surprises,” he added.

  He waved to one of his men, who pushed a young man toward them. He was in his early twenties, clean-shaven and looking like a college kid. He was, however, dirty and wounded, and clearly American.

  “He was helping out,” the SWAT team leader said. “I’d read about some of these misfits joining these jihadists. I wasn’t sure I believed them.”

  He waved the captive away. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “I think so,” Jake replied.

  They could have stayed and looked around with the others, but Jake already knew that nothing more related to their problem would be found. He wanted to minimize his time around the two cops who had reason to wonder about his knowledge, so he said to Laney, “Let’s go see Carlson.”

  Chapter 29

  They were gathered in Susan Carlson’s office after seeing to the minor wound that Laney had sustained, waiting for the expert in Middle Eastern languages. Laney and Jake provided Carlson with a summary of events at the mosque.

  “You are certain no one at the mosque was aware that your interest was anything other than the police responding to the killings and the armed resistance displayed by the group?” she asked.

  “Positive,” Jake replied. “Only a couple of underlings had much of a look at us, and we turned them over to the SWAT team almost immediately. We didn’t spend any time looking around because I know that paper is the only important thing that was there to be found. I did encounter the two policemen on the list, and I could see I aroused their interest by what I knew. The perspective is a little different for me this time since I wasn’t actually experiencing making the loop-backs, and the sudden revelations of information caught them off guard.”

  “You couldn’t avoid displaying your knowledge to them?” Susan asked.

  “Not and accomplish the task without getting many of them killed,” Jake replied. “Somehow my instinct says they are not the problem, but unless something reveals the true culprit, they will have to stay on the list of possible suspects.”

  Just then there was a knock at the door, and a scholarly appearing man in his mid forties stepped into the room. He had sharp features, with black hair that was speckled with advancing gray. His beard was trimmed close, and also showed signs of losing the color battle.

  “Raul. Good,” Carlson said and signaled the new arrival to have a seat. “This came into our hands a short time ago. I was hoping you could translate it for us.”

  Carlson passed the sheet of paper over to the man. He accepted it, noting the blackened edge where the fire had consumed part of the sheet before Jake had rescued it. His eyes scanned the document quickly.

  “Several names, and a partial list of items and quantities that it appears someone was supposed to acquire. Perhaps the people on this list. I cannot be sure. Part of the document is missing, and there may have been another sheet.”

  “Can you translate the names for us?” Laney asked, and passed a pad of paper across to the scholar.

  The man wrote on the pad as he spoke aloud.

  “Masud ibn Tahir al-Baghdadi,” he scratched. “Saleh ibn Tarig ibn al-Fulan, and finally Abdul-Khabir ibn Barir,” he added, underlining the last name. “For some reason the last name is underlined on the sheet as if it is particularly important. Do you know these men or have any idea who they are?” Raul asked.

  “None at all,” Laney admitted. “We think they are important in an investigation we are involved in. We would like to locate them or any information we might have in the files on them.”

  “I will look when we are finished here,” Raul promised. “None of the names are individuals I have heard of before.”

  Then he proceeded to list several items with quantities on the pad of paper. He pushed it across to Carlson.

  “The rest is a list of equipment. I cannot guess what it is for, but perhaps the list has meaning for you.”

  Jake glanced at the list which was sideways to him, but was able to recognize several electronic components. The items could be for the controllers used in the devices they had found.

  Carlson thanked Raul, and asked him to make his search for the names a priority task.

  “Will he be searching a database that looks at people outside the country, or will it also include those we know of within the United States?” Jake asked.

  “Our database includes both, although it is far more complete with names of terrorists and the like outside the country. I assume the names are important?”

  Jake looked at Susan, wondering how much he could safely reveal. Finally he shrugged. “The last name is. We need to locate that man.”

  “Why do I suspect that you know exactly where he can be found?” Laney asked. “I think you are taking this little game of yours too far. We could save a lot of time if you’d just tell us what you know.”

  “I’ve explained why that isn’t wise,” Jake replied. “We are following a path that I know works. That is more important than making this easy. In the past I haven’t been constrained. Any mistakes, like the one you almost caused by running off on your own, and we might not be able to recover. I don’t know what would happen if I was placed in
a situation where I’d need to back-track.”

  “We’ll see what Raul comes up with,” Susan said, sensing the tension between Laney and Jake. She’d heard about the aborted attempt that Laney had made to sneak into the mosque independent of the main assault force. Even though Laney now understood a little of what Jake could do, or had been able to do in the past, he didn’t understand the ramifications of his knowledge. Even Susan wasn’t always certain about matters Jake considered important, but then only Jake had actually made the loops and was aware of what had happened and been circumvented by his interference.

  Another knock, and Susan’s secretary waved a manila folder that she held in her right hand. She stepped in and handed it to Susan, then left closing the door behind her.

  Susan opened the folder and stared briefly at the contents. Then she slid a pair of photos across the table to Jake and Laney.

  “Dick Baldwin,” she said. “Twenty-two years old, son of a fairly well-to-do banker from Pittsburg. Formerly a college student in political science. The one on the right is how he looked today. The one on the left is how he looked two months ago when he was arrested with a couple of other members of the mosque.”

  The more current picture showed a cleaned up, but defiant Baldwin in an orange prison jumper, his short red hair and clean face looking bruised, the eyes angry and defiant. The older picture showed a man with a scraggly long beard wearing a robe and sandals.

  “He joined the mosque over a year ago after dropping out of college,” Susan read from the summary.

  She looked up at the others. “For some reason he has chosen to change his appearance back to his former self, yet he is clearly aligned with those in the mosque.”

  “He won’t stand out that way,” Laney said, agreeing with what Jake had said when they saw the young man. “He’s helping them. Maybe he would be more willing to talk than the others?”

  “According to this, he’s already been turned loose. His family came with their family lawyer and had him released. He wasn’t involved in the shooting, and therefore they couldn’t hold him.”

  “We have to assume there are others like him helping out,” Jake said. “It might be informative to see what your files show for other Americans who had a close affiliation with local mosques, especially the ones who are known to be militant and a bit radical.”

  Susan looked closely at Jake and nodded. She couldn’t help wondering if he was passing a clue that would prove to be important.

  The next morning Laney, Jake and Susan met in her office prior to the daily meeting. It was six AM, and all of them suspected it would be another long day. Laney had received a call while driving to FBI headquarters from Karl Peterson, the head of maintenance at the Air and Space Museum.

  “He comes to work at five each day,” Laney explained. “After our visit, he claims he has made a point of going onto the roof and checking first thing each day. Someone was there last night. They installed several additional canisters last night. He says that it looks like they weren’t finished, because a mounting was partially done in one of the remaining units, but there isn’t a canister in place. He suggested they might be coming back again.”

  “We need to get a team over there to disarm the new units,” Carlson said. “It might be best if you two head over and miss the morning meeting and have a look at what he has found. If you agree with Peterson that those responsible could come back to finish up, we might want to set up surveillance tonight.”

  “It’s like the last time,” Peterson said, obviously upset that the building he was responsible for had been violated once again. “The alarm wasn’t triggered, and there is nothing in the log that says someone other than me went up on the roof during the past twenty-four hours. But someone has. Yesterday those new tanks weren’t there.”

  Peterson led them up to the roof and showed them the tanks that had been installed the night before. Laney now realized how important it had been to replace the older tanks after the anthrax had been removed. It was likely those responsible had checked to see if they were still in place.

  While they were examining the roof, Laney received a call.

  “The hazardous materials technicians are here,” Laney said. “They want to come up.”

  A short time later, the technicians removed the first of the new tanks. Jake, Laney, and Peterson watched from across the roof as the crew worked. The intent was to remove the container of anthrax spores from the inside as had been done with the others, and put the now harmless tank back in place. Unexpectedly, the lead technician stood and walked over to where they waited.

  “Problem,” the man said. “These aren’t the same as the others. The arrangement inside the tanks is different, and I suspect there is something other than anthrax in there. We need to take this one back to the lab where we can handle it safely until we know what we are dealing with.”

  Chapter 30

  “Sarin gas,” Carlson said into the speaker phone on her desk. She, Laney and Jake were speaking with the head of the hazardous materials lab after the disassembly and examination of the new canister had been completed.

  “That’s correct,” said the voice on the phone. “The same stuff that was released on the trains in Japan a few years ago. Sometimes it is called GB. Very nasty stuff. It acts within minutes of exposure, not at all like the anthrax we found in the other tanks.”

  “How toxic is the stuff?” Carlson asked.

  “Those who are mildly exposed can recover completely. But one has to be careful with what mildly means. Even in low concentrations the stuff is often lethal, and even when not, most often leaves the victim with permanent nerve damage. In moderate to high concentrations it is invariably fatal.”

  “Are there any antidotes?” Laney asked.

  “There are, but they have to be applied very quickly to be effective. I doubt there is a fraction of what would be required to deal with the victims of just one of the tanks, let alone the multiple tanks that are in place, and which might also be in other locations.”

  “Can you remove the Sarin from the tanks?” Carlson asked.

  “That’s not a problem,” the voice assured her. “It is well contained inside the outer canister. But be advised. The placement near the air conditioner is not necessary. The way the canisters are designed, the Sarin could be released directly. Put one of these tanks in a slightly elevated position, and trigger the pressurized vent, and being heavier than air it will float down and fill the surrounding area. There are limitless opportunities for mischief with this stuff.”

  “Shit!” Laney exclaimed.

  “I thought I read somewhere that Sarin degrades pretty fast,” Carlson said.

  “Much faster than many agents,” the expert agreed. “Normally a month or a little longer. Whoever made this stuff was aware of that and more sophisticated than your average troublemaker. The gas has been manufactured to a high level of purity, which helps, and they have added a stabilizer, something called diisopropycarbodimide to it. That helps it retain its strength in the aluminum containers in which they have placed it.”

  “How hard is the stuff to make?” Jake asked.

  “Not that difficult,” the expert replied. “The hard part is to get it this pure, and to live through the manufacturing. It would be easy to kill yourself with a little carelessness. To safely manufacture Sarin in quantity would require a competent chemist and a carefully laid out laboratory. It’s not something you would do at home, or in a simple factory.”

  Carlson looked across the desk at Jake and Laney. Both shrugged. No more questions for the moment.

  “Send your team to recover the other canisters. We need them made safe and back in place by this afternoon. It’s important that you leave no sign that you have been there. We expect those responsible might return tonight.”

  “It’s late enough I would suggest we wait until tomorrow. I can have the team replace the one we have taken the Sarin from, but I’m not certain we can work fast enough to get the others remov
ed, processed, and back in place. If you don’t believe there is an immediate threat, I’d wait.”

  Carlson didn’t like the idea of the deadly gas in place any longer than necessary, but if they believed those responsible were returning, that suggested that there was no immediate danger beyond a possible leak.

  “Okay,” Carlson said reluctantly. “But get that tank back in place as soon as possible.”

  “What are we going to do?” Laney asked once the call was terminated.

  “We are going to stake out the museum, and if those people return we are going to see who they are and where they go,” she replied.

  “We?” Laney asked.

  “We,” Carlson agreed. “I’m going with you.”

  Carlson looked over at Jake. “What is their plan? Trigger the Sarin gas to create a number of casualties, then release the anthrax to infect the first responders and any others in the area?”

  “That is certainly one scenario,” Jake agreed, “but I believe the goal is to release different agents so that we were unprepared to deal with what the population was exposed to.”

  “There are others, aren’t there?” Carlson asked in her usual insightful manner.

  Jake didn’t reply, but it wasn’t necessary. Carlson could see the answer in his eyes.

  They were in place later that evening when the museum was closed up and the nighttime cleaning crews arrived for the daily chore of cleaning up after the thousands of people who passed through the museum each day. In addition to Jake, Laney, and Carlson, two other agents from their team were also in place in separate vehicles to ensure they had sufficient coverage to be able to follow anyone they wished. Trying to tail someone with a single vehicle was all but impossible unless one was willing to be spotted. The multiple vehicles, none of which looked like an official FBI car would give them a better chance of success.

  In addition to replacing the canister that had been removed earlier in the day, Carlson had ordered a team sent in to place a series of miniature video cameras and microphones so they could watch any activity that took place on the roof. Since the normal monitoring equipment was apparently compromised, she had wanted an independent system. The units placed were a special design, which transmitted their signals not via RF or infrared, but through the electrical system of the building itself. That ensured there would be no signals the interlopers might detect, assuming they were careful and savvy enough, which they all believed likely. They were watching from a small locked utility room in a subbasement with Karl Peterson, who had refused to go home until he saw who was interfering with his building. They relied on cellular communications to stay in contact with the FBI agents waiting outside in their vehicles.