The Secret Corps

by Peter Telep

  Now he stood in his bathroom, leaning over the sink, unable to sleep and studying the courier card in his hand, trying to reconcile what they wanted him to do, what Allah needed him to do. Yesterday he had received the note and had met with the courier, who delivered to him the package: a handmade suicide vest whose instructions had been written in Arabic, forcing him to clear the cobwebs from his head and revisit his old language. The vest’s operation was as simple as his plan:

  Just after homeroom, he would enter the hall as students scrambled off to first period. He would be there at the busiest time of day, when his detonation would cause the greatest loss of life—

  Where he would watch, for just a half second, as boys and girls full of promise and ambition glanced back, into his eyes, into his tearing eyes, as all of them were shredded by the explosion.

  He trembled and whispered, “Allahu Akbar.”

  * * *

  This bomber’s name was inconsequential. He had smuggled himself into the country by exploiting the illegal cigarette trade in Ontario to buy passage aboard a high-speed boat that had ferried him to New York. Now he was up in St. Paul, Minnesota, seated in the emergency department waiting room of St. Joseph’s Hospital and repeatedly clutching the courier card in his pocket, as though drawing fortitude from the paper and ink. He was hours early, because there was nothing else to do when you were waiting to die.

  The vest was well-hidden beneath his parka. The igniter was easily accessible.

  “Are you being helped?”

  He glanced at a broad-shouldered Hispanic woman whose photo ID clipped to her scrubs read Carmen Guzman. He cleared his throat. “I’m meeting a friend. He couldn’t sleep. He’s not feeling well.”

  “All right, you’ll check-in right over there.”

  “Thank you.”

  She gave him a curious look then returned to her desk at the triage station. He flicked his glance to the old woman seated down the row from him. She was rocking to and fro and whispering something under her breath.

  The automatic doors parted and in walked a bearded man in his twenties clutching a small boy. He crossed to the desk, his face stricken.

  While this scene unfolded, the bomber—whose name would never be known by the infidels but remembered forever by Allah—rose to stretch his legs. Soon... Soon...

  Allahu Akbar.

  * * *

  The Long Island Railroad was the busiest commuter rail system in the United States, serving over 335,000 people each day. Travelers from as far off as Montauk Point, New York could board a train and ride all the way to Manhattan. Reaching the city required ticket holders to pass through either the Woodside or Jamaica Stations, depending upon their point of origin.

  Woodside was located on 61st Street and Roosevelt Avenue in Queens and had three platforms each extending some twelve cars in length. The northern platform serviced trains bound for Manhattan, while the central island platform was used by eastbound or outbound Port Washington trains, where the line terminated. The southern platform beside track number four of the main line accommodated eastbound main line trains. There were six tracks in all. The ticket office opened at 6:10 a.m. on weekdays.

  Jamaica was on Sutphin Boulevard and Archer Avenue and was the LIRR's central hub. Here the Mainline, Montauk Branch, and Atlantic Branch all came together like capillaries feeding into larger arteries. Over 200,000 commuters “changed at Jamaica” each day, making it the busiest station in the country. Five island platforms allowed passengers to board or exit trains from either side. Each morning, westbound trains from three separate lines arrived simultaneously, allowing passengers to cross over the platform, through one train, and into another in a well-choreographed shuffle of ants on the move. The station’s main entrance was housed inside a century-old building, along with the LIRR’s headquarters, a waiting area, and ticket counters.

  Because the Long Island Railroad had become such a vital and dependable link for commuters, a simultaneous and long term disruption of service at Woodside and Jamaica Stations would be a staggering blow to the state’s economy. All railway service between Manhattan and Long Island would be cut off. Moreover, a terrorist attack on those stations would deliver a secondary and psychological blow to commuters who would second-guess their modes of transport, the way many had after 9/11. The highways would become further congested. Productivity would drop off, even as fear spread like a super virus.

  To this end, the leadership of Al-Saif had contacted a very special cell and given them a very special mission.

  They were a brother and sister team, each wearing the largest and heaviest vests, or so they had been told. Mirsab, whose name fittingly meant “sword of the prophet,” had received a card with coordinates for Jamaica Station. His dry run the day before revealed that he should stand on the platform near track #2, beneath the enormous steel and glass canopy. All around him, hundreds of commuters would dodge between platforms, racing to catch their next train, while his next stop would be Paradise.

  In the meantime, Zehna, who had been given coordinates for the Woodside Station, would stand on the northern platform, also crowded with travelers bound for Manhattan. She could cast her deep brown eyes upon the infidels and torch them with the purity of her heart.

  While both stations were heavily policed by the Metropolitan Transit Authority, Mirsab felt certain that he and his sister would pass unnoticed through the crowds, with everyone bundled up against the cold. As he sat in his old Camry, parked on the street about five minutes from the station, his cell phone rang.

  “I’m scared,” she said.

  “You can’t be.”

  “I mean I’m frightened of dying.”

  He raised his voice. “We’re here for Allah, for the jihad. Remember, we create the fear. We do not feel it ourselves.”

  “You have no doubts?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I wanted to get married. I wanted to have a baby.”

  “You’ll have those in the afterlife.”

  “You’re right. I love you, brother.”

  “And I love you. But don’t fail us.”

  “I won’t. Allahu Akbar.”

  * * *

  Nasser El Bayed instructed the cab driver to take him to Orlando International Airport. He was flying out on Southwest Airlines, located in Terminal A. He wore a bulky down jacket and carried a nondescript backpack. He had no luggage to check through.

  Judging from his appearance and his current ID, which read “Carlos Ramirez” of 1446 Walden Lane, Casselberry, Florida, most people thought El Bayed was Puerto Rican or Mexican. Cuban, perhaps, since he was clean shaven and wore a crew cut. And while he suspected there was Hispanic blood in his ancestry, he was, in fact, born and raised in the United States, the son of parents who had emigrated from Saudi Arabia. He spent one year at a local community college, where he had failed all of his classes because of a video game addiction. A month later, he had taken a trip overseas to visit his grandparents in Riyadh, where he had met Dr. Ramzi Shammas, a friend of his grandfather. Dr. Shammas had taken El Bayed under his wing and had spent an entire summer teaching him about Allah and about jihad. Time ceased. Food tasted better. He had never slept so peacefully. El Bayed had met other young men like himself, and he had returned to the United States with a feeling of elation, a feeling of purpose.

  The driver followed the signs to Terminal A and dropped off El Bayed on Level 2 designated for departing flights. He tipped the man fifty dollars. The driver, who had mentioned that his daughter was just starting college, thought there was some mistake.

  “It’s yours,” El Bayed told him.

  Allahu Akbar.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  “Those boys made a deal with the devil—but they weren’t smart enough to realize that you do not trust the devil.”

  —Johnny Johansen (FBI interview, 23 December)

  Nazari’s fleet of Intrepids rocketed at full throttle beside the pale yellow glitter of Port O’Connor and the ro
ws of stilt houses wandering northward along the shore. The blue-hulled boat took the lead, with the others completing an arrowhead formation. They passed a cut in Blackberry Island where the still waters of Barroom Bay blurred into view. A few seconds later, they banked hard as they exited the channel, heading south into Matagorda Bay toward a broad swath through the peninsula where ships entered and left the Gulf of Mexico. A small, kidney-shaped island emerged to their left, and beyond it, lights from the peninsula airport stained the bellies of low-lying clouds.

  Despite running blacked out, Johnny and the others were detected by Nazari’s men. It was impossible to mute their engines or waterjets or conceal their wake. As the lead boat’s captain steered for the main shipping channel, Josh said he wanted to close with the enemy. Johnny nodded and signaled to Corey, who left the wheelhouse to man the port side minigun.

  Nazari’s boat entered the cut, and once his trailing boats did likewise, their sterns lit in strings of short-circuiting lights. In the next instant, rifle fire drummed across The Marauder’s hull, pinging and ricocheting in a drunken rhythm that had Johnny gritting his teeth and cursing the fact that the boat was nothing more than a bullet magnet, just like any other vehicle. One after another, the jihadis emptied their magazines, then reloaded.

  Josh rolled the wheel to starboard, giving Corey a wide open bead on the port side boat, now drifting away from the group.

  Johnny squeezed a fist in sympathetic anger as Corey set free a wave of tracer-lit fire, rounds tearing into the boat’s engines, drilling holes in the console, and ripping across the hull, with fiberglass splintering and boomeranging away as though it were balsa. One of the jihadis threw himself overboard before being mauled by a deluge of lead.

  Even as the Intrepid slowed and drifted mindlessly toward the eastern shoreline, Josh screamed for Corey to get down—

  Because a jihadi on the center boat was at the stern and lifting a Rocket Propelled Grenade to his shoulder. About eight or nine of his brothers were hunkered at his knees and returning fire. He hollered at them, and they broke fire and rushed to the starboard side bow, clearing the area behind him.

  Gritting his teeth, Johnny watched through The Marauder’s windshield as the RPG ignited in a flash, and the rocket spat from the launcher.

  Josh was one hell of a boat driver, cutting hard to port, trying to protect Corey and the minigun. The rocket struck at an oblique angle... and the impact sent shudders through the entire boat. Fire-lit smoke and showers of aluminum splinters spread across the windshield and vanished as quickly.

  “Corey, you okay?” Josh shouted.

  “Yeah, yeah, banged my head, but I’m good to go.”

  Willie left the wheelhouse and slid around the starboard side, crouching low to check for damage. “Not bad,” he said over the radio. “Glancing blow. I think they chipped the paint. Bastards.” Johnny leaned out for a look himself, and the damage was more extensive than that, with a few pieces of the armored hull missing, a jagged gash along one section, and a huge dent reaching back toward the wheelhouse.

  They got another one!” shouted Corey.

  A jihadi on the port side boat had taken a cue from his colleague. His launcher was balanced on his shoulder, while a comrade tugged off a plastic cap on the rocket’s nose, inserted the rocket, and then stood back.

  “Hang on! Emergency stop!” Josh said, reversing engines and bringing The Marauder to a sudden halt within one boat-length, the bow plunging, water surging over the hull, the rocket streaking by so fast that if Johnny blinked, he would have missed it.

  As soon as the boat leveled off, Corey began lecturing the jihadis with the minigun, each of his arguments wrapped neatly in a brass jacket. The gun’s reptilian tongue extended from his rotating muzzles all the way to the enemy boat’s stern, where it shredded the jihadi with the empty launcher. Wavelets beneath Corey’s strobing bead were tattooed crimson and gathered into colonies like strange jellyfish writhing toward the light. Dissonant gunfire and droning engines made it difficult for Johnny to form a thought within the water spout of white noise.

  And then... just like that... Corey ceased fire, and it was over.

  If any jihadi had survived in that second boat, he was cowering on the deck, because the shattered controls had been abandoned and the craft wheeled in an aimless arc, one engine belching smoke, the bow rising, the stern beginning to take on water.

  Farther out, the other two boats neared the mouth of the channel, having extended their lead because of Josh’s emergency stop. Recognizing that, Josh wrenched the throttle again, and Johnny called out to Corey: “Watch your fire. Be sure what’s behind your target.”

  “Roger that, Johnny. Never left my mind.”

  “Wait a second, what the hell?” Josh asked, pointing at the boats. “Look.”

  Johnny squinted through the night vision goggles. Instead of turning eastward toward the Port of Houston to rendezvous with that container ship, Nazari and his shadow were heading due south—straight into the gulf.

  “Where the hell’s he going?” Johnny asked.

  “Let’s find out.” Josh slammed forward the throttle, the boat racing toward fifty knots.

  As they sewed up the gap, Corey shouted, “More RPGs!”

  Two jihadis had brought their launchers to the stern and were tilting them so that the rockets’ exhaust would pass harmlessly to the sides of the boat.

  Once more Josh screamed and throttled down, even as he cut the wheel in a violent J-turn that sent The Marauder banking so hard that, for just a second, she was lying on her port side.

  Corey hollered and, from the corner of his eyes, Johnny saw him get washed over the railing and into the waves.

  In the next breath, the rockets whooshed overhead like fragments of lightning that had broken off to burn for a nanosecond then die.

  “Corey’s over the side!” Johnny reported. He called for Josh to stop and slammed open the wheelhouse door to scan the two-to-three foot swells on the starboard side with his night vision goggles.

  After a few seconds that took a year off Johnny’s life, he spotted Corey, nearly invisible among the waves and struggling to remain afloat against his heavy plates, boots, and the rest of his gear.

  Johnny rushed to slough off his own plates and gear belt. He took a flying leap off the stern. Water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico during the winter months were generally unpleasant, hovering in the fifties and sixties, Johnny remembered. The shock hit hard, like a thousand needles wielded by a thousand rookie nurses trying to find a vein. He surfaced and spun around, reacquiring Corey about ten meters away.

  “Hang on, I’m coming,” Johnny said.

  “Okay.”

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah,” Corey said, spitting salt water. “Wave ripped me right off the boat. Knocked the wind out me, too.” He shivered hard and spat again. “Taking everything I got to stay up right now.”

  Willie tossed out a rescue float with attached nylon line, and Johnny seized it as Corey swam up behind him. After Johnny’s signal, Willie began reeling them in toward the stern platform above the waterjets. Willie hoisted Corey from the water, while Johnny got up, onto his elbows and dragged himself from the miserable ice bath. Shuddering, he and Corey stood and jammed themselves into the wheelhouse, where Josh had switched on the heat and wasted no time bringing the boat around, locking them back into the pursuit.

  “They have a good lead on us, but again, where are they going? I have nothing on radar besides... wait a second. I do have something. Damn, now its gone.” Josh pointed at the radar screen. “You saw that, didn’t you?”

  “They wouldn’t head out to sea—unless they’re planning to meet someone,” said Willie. He took up Johnny’s night vision goggles and began scanning the distance.

  Behind him, Corey and Josh seized some blankets from one of the cargo compartments, using them to dry off as the boat bounced more roughly over the swells.

  The gulf broadened around them, the hor
izon reaching toward infinity, with Nazari’s darkened boats visible only to Willie and Josh. As the wind picked up, so too did the waves, a few swells rising to four feet.

  Johnny shouldered up next to Willie, who shoved the goggles into his hands and said, “Look past the boats. Tell me what you see. Tell me I’m not going crazy.”

  “You’re not,” said Josh. “I got it, too.”

  Frowning, Johnny lifted the goggles and rolled up the magnification.

  What he saw convinced him that Nazari was a major player—perhaps the player—because his jihadi colleagues had gone to great lengths to ensure his escape.

  * * *

  The men aboard the sixteen-foot skiffs anchored on the Thames River in New London, Connecticut where led by Mentu Sekani, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood for nearly thirty years and an imam who had helped Dr. Nazari build his organization in the United States. Two to three times a week Sekani and his team fished on the incoming tide, their boats moored to the various substructure footings of the Gold Star Memorial Bridge. The footings kept their skiffs from drifting on the tide, and the submerged growth provided chum that attracted bigger fish. When the fish were biting, the group routinely stayed out until well after dark. They were barely seen among the footings between the bridge’s two huge spans.

  It was during this reliable obscurity that they had completed their task, working with their dive teams trained in Iowa. The infidels assumed that terrorists would target the Navy base or Electric Boat Shipyard in New London. They gave little to no credit to a collection of lowly fishermen in and around some bridge pilings. They had no idea of just how well Al-Saif understood its own limitations and resources—and just how creative and cunning they could be, always exploiting the infidels’ security lapses for maximum impact.