The Secret Corps

by Peter Telep

  Gatterton reeled back, into the office, dropping to one knee, his shoulder bleeding profusely now, his hands shaking as he tried to steady his pistol. He sensed his heart racing, but the thump in his ears barely rose above the intense ringing of close quarters fire. He waited a few more seconds, then slowly backed away, toward his desk, where he reached into the drawer and seized a box of ammo and his holster. He rose, grimacing through the flames that now reached down into his abdomen. Fighting for breath, he slammed shut his laptop, gathered his notes, and shoved everything into a backpack sitting on the floor. Groaning, he left the office, with his Glock leading the way.

  As he reached his rental car parked alongside the house, two of the neighbors from across the street were running toward him, calling out.

  “Call the police,” he shouted. “They just tried to rob me. I’m driving myself to the hospital.”

  But those were hardly his intentions. He knew where he could get help: a place where Plesner would never find him.

  * * *

  As Nazari climbed into the Lexus with his associates, Johnny called Corey and told him to stay with the Lexus. Willie gave Johnny a hand signal, and they took off running through the trees, trailing the Lexus as it churned up a dust trail and reached the paved road.

  Corey would not wait for them, so once they reached the embankment, they dove into the dirt and held there.

  “Okay, we’re about a mile east down Adams,” Corey reported over the radio. “Still moving. Going slow, like they plan to turn off. I’m dropping back a little.”

  Twenty seconds later, Corey issued another report, “All right about two miles now. They’re slowing. Turning right onto Byers Drive, heading south. Now making a left onto Maple Street. Oh, man. Some nice houses here. Mansions, really. Turning into one house. It’s got a long paver driveway. Damn. Nice place. I’ll keep driving. There’s some scrub... a bunch of undeveloped land across the street. Good cover positions in there. Okay, I’m turning around to pick you up.”

  “Make sure you get that street address. We’ll check public records for the owner.”

  “Johnny, you know who owns that house. And by the way, the cars? All registered to an Islamic center in Houston.”

  “Of course they are.”

  Johnny checked his prepaid cell phone, discovering a voicemail from Gatterton. “Johnny, you need to call me... call me back as soon as you can. This thing has blown apart, dude. Please. Call me.”

  “Who is it?” asked Willie.

  Johnny told him and added, “Mark didn’t sound good.” He dialed Gatterton’s number, waited, but the call went straight to voicemail. “Mark, got your message. I’m here.”

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, they returned to Maple Street and veered off road to park behind a rampart of mesquite trees and sedge swaying in the wind. From there, they advanced to the perimeter, where they settled down into static positions to observe the house, with Corey remaining closest to the Suburban in case Nazari left.

  The sprawling mansion included at least 10,000 square feet of living space, with a tiled roof, private tennis court, infinity pool overlooking the channel, and a covered dock with two boat slips. This was a compound worthy of a celebrity, not a real estate mogul with delusions of jihad. Indeed, Corey’s suspicions about the home’s owner were correct; in fact, Mahmoud Fahmi and his company also owned the neighboring properties, three waterfront estates in all. The Lexus was parked just outside a four car detached garage on the east side of the property. Just inside one of the open garage doors stood a bearded man with dark pants and a sandstone-colored jacket with attached hood. He was barely thirty and drifting in and out of the shadows. For a few seconds he resembled an ancient Bedouin, his modern day garb blurring into dusty robes, his boots melting into sandals made from gazelle hide. He raised a pair of binoculars, bringing them to bear on the channel.

  Panning to the right, Johnny observed another man seated at the dock, his beard shorter and thinner, his hair lighter, his binoculars identical to his partner’s. His jacket was open, and just inside was a pistol, a Glock most likely, holstered at his side. “Picked up two spotters,” Johnny reported.

  “I have two guys watching from the house to the right,” said Willie.

  “Two to the left as well, out on the dock over there,” Corey said. “You see ‘em? Over near that fishing boat?”

  “Oh, yeah, we’re on to something here boys,” said Johnny. “Six jihadis on watch in broad daylight.”

  Willie snorted. “And who knows how many inside.”

  * * *

  After reconnoitering all three estates for most of the afternoon and early evening, Johnny concluded that this, too, was another jihadi enclave, albeit a retreat for the network’s upper echelon. Throughout the day, men had relieved each other on watch. Several had climbed into a Mercedes SUV and returned thirty minutes later carrying bags of groceries. Willie confirmed that Nazari, along with a half dozen other men, had gathered around a formal dinning room table with laptops and what he suspected were hardcopy maps. Willie had observed them through a broad window until one of the men snapped shut the blinds.

  At 1835 the smartphone provided by Warrick Marine buzzed in Johnny’s pocket. Josh was finally checking in. His friends were sending a car. They needed Johnny up in Seadrift, a waterside community about twelve miles south of their location, out past Grass Island, then north around the coast. With Willie and Corey continuing their surveillance, and Corey reporting that Mawsitsit’s arrival time at the Port of Houston now stood at approximately 0105, Johnny figured he had time to see what Josh and his boys had put together.

  Meanwhile, Corey’s friends at the Athena Group were working diligently on getting into that printer’s hard drive, but they had encountered a few time-consuming issues that according to Corey were hard to explain because IT guys had a language all their own, a cross between Klingon and the high nerdspeak of silicon valley.

  Finally, there was still no word from Mark Gatterton. Johnny had left a second message, and he had tried calling a few more times. Deeply concerned now, Johnny could only wait on his friend. He was unsure what else to do and who else to call. He thought of Donna Lindhower and swore that if Gatterton were harmed, he would go after Plesner himself, no matter the consequences.

  After hiking about a quarter mile up the road to avoid detection, Johnny met up with Josh and his Warrick buddies. Josh would not answer questions. He wore a silly grin and told Johnny to remain patient.

  They drove directly to Seadrift, where at least a score of shrimp boats lay on the east side docks, their outriggers cutting like steely teeth across the stars. Guide boats with names like “Just for Eddy” and “Caught Today, Gone Tomorrow,” were moored to the west. Beyond them, the San Antonio Bay lay like a sheet of granite reaching out toward the ship channel jetty to vanish beneath a waning moon.

  Johnny followed the group of four men through a newly constructed warehouse with dozens of fishing and sport boats stacked three high on colossal rack systems that touched the thirty-foot ceiling. Adjacent to the rear doors and concrete driveway leading down to the launch was a separate office building about the size of a double-wide trailer. Placards on the door and above the warehouse read Seadrift Dry Storage. The owner, a pot-bellied old cowboy named Sooner, emerged from the office, spat chew into an old convenience store cup, and thanked Johnny for his service in the Marines. With a chuckle, he asked if Johnny was the owner of that “beast” down there. Johnny shrugged and frowned at Josh, who wriggled his brows.

  They hiked down the driveway to the boat launch, where, shimmering in the halogen lights strung between the wooden pilings, floated the leviathan in question, her twin diesel engines growling.

  “Check her out,” Josh said breathlessly. “They call her The Marauder.”

  * * *

  Out in the Gulf of Mexico, shrouded in the gloom of night, another vessel weighing 54,000 tons and cruising at a service speed of twenty-four knots was approaching
the coast of Texas. She was 950 feet long with a beam of 106 feet, and her deck was jammed five high with hundreds of intermodal containers in shades of dark blue, red, and gray. Third Officer Luis Nando knew quite well that the U.S. Coast guard lacked the resources to keep all commercial vessels under constant visual surveillance unless they had intel suggesting they do so. At best, they monitored traffic via radar. M/V Mawsitsit was now showing a vertical pattern of two red lights with a white light at the center indicating restricted maneuverability as she slowed to within two knots. If a Coast Guard cutter were close enough to see those breakdown lights, its captain would call regarding assistance and receive a simple explanation: a momentary rudder control problem required a pause in order to switch to the backup control system. After that, Mawsitsit would be underway.

  From a perch atop a section of containers located amidships, Nando and his three men watched as the crane operator climbed into his booth, then signaled with a flashlight that he was ready. Nando gave the order to begin untying the thick ropes that held down the tarpaulin stretched between two lines of containers. That tarpaulin had ensured that their most precious cargo could not be seen from the air.

  As the tarp fell away, Nando leaned back and directed his own light into the void. He had served aboard Mawsitsit for over fifteen years, once a bright-eyed able seaman, now a jaded Third Officer whose beard was coiled with winter. He and his men had transported thousands and thousands of containers, but this... this was something new, something that required their secrecy, something that required significant payment, which had already been made to the entire ship’s complement to ensure the utmost operational security. Each of them had earned an entire year’s worth of salary for one night’s work. What troubled Nando the most, though, was not the object gleaming in his light but the group of men who had come along to oversee the operation, six Arabs with their own special cargo and their own agenda. Six Arabs who were not to be questioned. Six Arabs heading toward the Port of Houston.

  The crane coughed twice before firing up, and the operator swung the boom around. The main hoist line descended so that Nando’s men could attach the lift harness straps to the hook and block. At the same time, a crew of three more Arabs arrived, mounting a rope ladder strung from the top of the forward most container and lowering themselves into the gap.

  Once the straps were pulled taught, the crane operator waited until Nando gave him the all aboard signal of two flashes. The latticework boom creaked, and from the cavernous depths came a submarine surfacing improbably in midair. She was seventy-four-feet long and Kevlar coated. Her streamlined sail and bow were painted a deep aquamarine.

  Nando had spoken to the sub’s captain, whose Spanish was remarkably good and who had boasted about her capabilities. She could run submerged for eighteen continuous hours at a depth of sixty feet. Her twin screws driven by a pair of diesel engines were capable of six knots in short bursts. Her 1,500 gallon fuel tanks gave her a range of 2,000 miles. When fully submerged, her 249 Chinese-made batteries were her sole means of propulsion. Once those batteries were depleted she would either snorkel or surface to recharge using her engines. Ordinarily, the captain and his two-man crew hauled cocaine up from Colombia, but tonight’s mission was different.

  As the submarine was lowered into the churning depths, her radar echo return was masked by the much larger container ship. Nando and his men tugged on a secondary line, releasing the lift harness. Moonlight played over the submarine’s hull as she submerged like a dolphin playing in the ship’s wake... and then... she whispered away.

  Nando turned toward the shuffling of boots across the containers. Three of the Arabs had come up from below. Nando’s heart sank.

  They were brandishing AK-47s. Gunfire boomed from the bridge, and as Nando’s men screamed, the Arabs opened fire.

  Bribery was one thing. Assuring full control of the ship was quite another.

  Nando thought of the son he had not seen in over a decade as he slumped to the wet steel.

  Chapter Forty-One

  “I thought if I die tonight, I die helping a brother. There’s no better way to go.”

  —Josh Eriksson (FBI interview, 23 December)

  The gnarled limbs of mesquites studding Blackberry Island shone like bands of thorns in Johnny’s night vision goggles. Beneath them lay drifts of white sand along the desolate shoreline. Off to the right, past rows of guano-stained posts, stood the palisades of cordgrass reflected in the murmuring channel. Somewhere within that grass was a sixteen-foot aluminum fishing boat. Near that boat lay Willie, cloaked by brooms of undergrowth and staring back at Johnny through the scope of his Sig MCX MR .308 caliber sniper rifle. The MCX MR was a mission configurable .308 platform that delivered lethality out to 800 yards. Hours earlier they had borrowed the boat from Sooner up in Seadrift, and Willie had set out across the channel to establish an observation post from which he could survey Nazari’s entire backyard, along with the adjacent properties.

  Meanwhile, Josh remained in a holding position at the southern tip of the island, near Ferry Channel Cut, waiting for his signal to move. The interceptor boat loaned to them from Warrick Marine was the modern day equivalent of the Riverine Patrol Boats they had brought to Iraq. The biggest difference, though, was that The Marauder’s control station and deck were fully enclosed so that its passengers and crew were protected behind heavy armor and ballistic glass. A multipurpose compartment below deck was accessed through the bow ramp, and her full length protruding keel allowed for beaching on rugged coastlines. She blasted over the waves via twin 825 horsepower engines and twin 400-425 mm waterjets. Up to five crew-served weapons mounts allowed for multiple configurations that included the venerable M134 minigun, which Josh had mounted at the port station, courtesy of their partners at Dillon Aero. The aft stations featured an M240 and an M2 .50 caliber heavy machine gun.

  Johnny assumed that Nazari and his group would travel to the Port of Houston to link up with that container ship. For their part, Johnny and the others would board The Marauder and arrive at the port ahead of them. However, it was already 0110 local time, and according to Corey, the ship was now arriving. Johnny and Corey had returned to their posts across the street and detected no reaction from anyone near or inside the mansion.

  “What now, Johnny?” Willie asked over the radio.

  “Let’s hold a little longer,” he responded. “If they don’t leave by zero one thirty, we’ll move up. Then, at say zero three thirty, we’ll raid the house. Nazari’s the target, and we’ll take him alive.”

  “Even though we’re outnumbered and have no QRF?” Willie pointed out.

  Johnny hesitated. “Easy day.”

  “You mean, if you’re going to do something stupid—”

  “Hey, Johnny, the guys at Athena finally called back,” Corey said. “They’ve been working all night on our hard drive—and they finally got something.”

  “Wait, wait, wait, hold that thought,” Johnny answered as a white sedan came barreling down the road and swung into Nazari’s driveway.

  * * *

  Mark Gatterton shuddered awake. A grid of elongated shadows shone across the ceiling, and for a second, he wondered if he were in prison. He craned his neck toward a window behind the bed, where a streetlight glared through sheer curtains. His breath steadied as he touched the bandage on his shoulder and realized his arm was still numb. He shut his eyes, saw his office, the attacker, the flash from a barrel. He trembled as gunshots rang in his head, and then... his thoughts congealed. He remembered the call to Marlene, the drive down to Fredericksburg, Virginia, the shocked look on her face as she helped him into the basement, toward a reinforced steel door with multiple locks. Behind that door lay a concrete bunker, and inside was a rudimentary but functional operating room jammed with supplies and powered by its own generator.

  Dr. Marlene Heloise was a board-certified ER physician employed at Spotsylvania Regional Medical Center or “Spotsy” as she called it. She grew up in Queens, New Y
ork, and had attended medical school at New York University. Unbeknownst to her employers and most of her friends, she and her husband were active members in the VFF—the Virginia Freedom Fighters, a covert militia group whose members were frequent attendees at Gatterton’s seminars regarding jihadi infiltration of the government. He had met Marlene several years prior and been impressed with her commitment to the cause. Her husband Bill was a local firefighter deeply concerned about the direction of the country. Make no mistake: their group was not hell-bent on overthrowing the government; they were, however, survivalists or “preppers” anticipating a government collapse, as evidenced by Marlene’s makeshift hospital. At last count the VFF had over 6,500 members and was growing.

  Gatterton seized his phone from the nightstand and gasped. It was nearly two-fifteen in the morning his time. He had yet to update Johnny. Marlene must have sedated him before removing shards of lead and copper from his shoulder, and the drugs had finally worn off.

  He dialed, and when Johnny answered he spoke softly so as not to wake up his hosts. “Sorry I haven’t called you sooner—but Plesner sent two assholes after me. I got shot, but I’m okay. Now just listen, Johnny. You have no idea what you’ve uncovered.”

  * * *

  Johnny was trying to focus on what Gatterton was telling him—something about a firm named D&S Equities and Plesner’s involvement with them—even as he watched a bearded kid who could easily be the local pizza guy leap out of the white sedan and race toward Nazari’s front door. He rang the bell and shifted impatiently.

  “Not good. Not good,” Corey said over the radio. “Maybe he’s a courier. Maybe they realized the hard drive at the dive shop is missing.”

  “Mark,” Johnny said. “I need to call you back. This number?”

  “Yeah, call me.”