The Assassin's list

by Scott Matthews

  “I’d like to see the emergency center, and then I’ll be out of your hair, Captain.”

  When he was returned to headquarters, after a quick tour of the emergency center, Lt. Col. Hollingsworth was in a meeting. Drake was left alone in the Commander’s office to look at the books in his glass door barrister’s bookcase. They were mostly biographies and civil war histories. The pictures on the walls were of ceremonial poses with senior officers the Commander had served with. Some were pictures of young soldiers in fatigues, in unnamed places around the world, including one of a much younger Lt. Col. Hollingsworth. Drake wondered how Hollingsworth had wound up in charge of a chemical weapons depot, far away from the action.

  Based on his tour of the depot, it was clear that the facility was well guarded against an attack from outside the perimeter fences. If an airplane violated restricted airspace and attempted to crash into an igloo, the earth-covered bunkers were reinforced to withstand the impact. No, if the depot was exposed to a serious threat, Drake concluded, it would come from within-from the civilian security force or some reservist.

  “Well, Mr. Drake, did Capt. Martinez convince you we’re secure here?” Lt. Col. Hollingsworth asked when he returned to his office.

  “That’s one straight aide-de-camp you have there, Colonel. Yes, she did her best to convince me you’re one hundred percent secure here. But we both know that’s rarely the case.”

  Lt. Col. Hollingsworth sat down in his high-backed chair and studied Drake. His look was not defensive, but coolly appraising.

  “If you think you spotted something, lay it out for me. Protecting this place and the people who live around here is my job. I take it seriously, but I don’t believe any place is one hundred percent secure.”

  “Colonel, I can see you take your job seriously. Just a couple more questions and I’ll be on my way. What identification is required to get into the depot for your civilian personnel and reservists?” Drake asked pointedly.

  “The two hundred reservists stationed here all have military ID they were issued by their units. Our security and civilian personnel have security badges we issue. If they have business here tomorrow, they’ll be admitted as always. None of them will want to be here, unless they’re working, believe me. Did you ever attend a ceremony you weren’t ordered to attend?” the Colonel asked.

  “No, I guess not,” Drake admitted. “Thank you for the courtesy you extended to the Senator. I’ll head back to Portland and see you when I return with the Senator and his party tomorrow.”

  As he was escorted back to the airport, Drake acknowledged the obvious threat. You might know who the individuals were who had access to your secure facility. How could you ever know their secret plans? ISIS might have secret plans that involved the depot, but how could you ever identify the people used to carry out those plans? The question worried him throughout his return flight to the executive airport in Hillsboro.

  Chapter 40

  Drake accelerated his old Porsche away from the charter service hanger and hit the speed dial on his cell phone.

  “Hi Margo, anything urgent develop this morning?”

  “Nothing that wasn’t expected. Cutler and Whitcomb said they were reporting you to the bar. Judge Beck said he’d give you to the end of the week to respond to their motions, or he’d grant summary judgment. I’m working through the pile of work you left on my desk, but we have to do something about these motions.

  “I know. I’m not going to have much time until Thursday or Friday. Give Eric Katz a call, see if he’s available for some short-notice contract work. He was brilliant on the Court of Appeals brief, he can handle the motions.

  “You have fun this morning?”

  “More than you can imagine. Tell you about it when I get back. I’m headed to the Secret Service field office. While I’m there, would you call Detective Carson and ask if he’s making any headway? I should be finished with the Secret Service in an hour or so.”

  “I will, if you promise you’ll be back this afternoon,” Margo bargained.

  “Yes boss, I promise,” Drake said, closing his phone. Her next performance and salary review was going to be a lot like a union contract negotiation, giving her everything she asked for.

  Drake drove to the parking garage across from the Federal office building. He didn’t expect them to tell him much, but he wanted them to realize he’d be along for the ride. After twenty minutes waiting in the reception area reading an old Sports Illustrated, he was escorted to the office of the managing agent in the Portland office.

  Richard Rendell sat behind an uncluttered government-issue executive desk. Sitting across from him was the man who had warned him to stay out of the government’s business. Neither man got up when he entered the room.

  “Mr. Drake, I’m told you have a habit of involving yourself in things that don’t concern you. I hope you’re not here to waste my time on something of that nature.”

  Drake ignored Rendell’s greeting and sat down in the other chair in front of the desk, turning to John Mason.

  “Nice to see you again, John. I see you’ve been telling Mr. Rendell about me.”

  “No need to, really. He was in charge of cleaning up the mess on your farm last week. What is it you want, Drake?” Mason said, in his best, bored civil servant tone.

  “I don’t want anything, John. This is a courtesy call. Senator Hazelton asked me to accompany him to the dedication ceremony at the Umatilla depot. He wants to know what security arrangements you’ve made for the event. Have the person in charge of planning security see me, and I’m out of here. Then you two can get back to the high-level discussions I interrupted.”

  Mason looked across the desk at Rendell. “We don’t have any security plans. The Army’s in charge of that.”

  “What about security for Secretary Rallings?” Drake asked, with lifted eyebrows. “Surely you’ve made arrangements for his protection. He’s your boss.”

  Mason bristled. “Let me tell you something you obviously don’t know. The Secret Service is not authorized to protect the Secretary of Homeland Security. Congress provides us with a list of protectees, and he’s not on it. We do not implement operational security plans for dedication ceremonies, unless the President designates the event as a National Security Special Event, which he hasn’t. This is an Army ceremony, on an Army facility, and they’re quite capable of handling an event for a couple hundred people. Secretary Rallings has his own personal protection, just as Senator Hazelton does. Ask them what their plans are.”

  “You’re telling me one of the most obvious terrorist targets walks around the country without your protection?” Drake exclaimed incredulously.

  Mason stood and tried to stare down Drake. “I don’t know who you think you are, coming here to tell me what I need to do. I don’t care if Senator Hazelton sent you, we’re done here.”

  Drake rose and stepped close, his nose inches away from Mason’s. “Mason, I know more about protecting someone than you’ll learn in two lifetimes. I learned from experience how to get inside security planned by little men like you. I was very good at it. You’re making a mistake, letting Secretary Rallings walk around without protection. If anything happens to him that you could have prevented, I’ll make sure someone who knows what they’re doing has your job. Sit back down, I’ll show myself out.”

  Ten minutes later, Drake was in his office, trying to calm down. Margo had followed him and stood in front of his desk, waiting for an explanation.

  “I think it’s time you told me what’s going on.”

  “You’re right. Have a seat,” he said, as he turned from looking out the window at the marina below. Drake trusted her enough to tell her everything, and expected her to provide her usual, common-sense reality check. When he finished telling her about the last two and a half days, she had a few questions.

  “Shall I assume you were trespassing when you saw these things at the ISIS ranch?”

  “Let’s just say it was night, and cou
ld have been open rangeland. Hard to tell where one ranch ends and another begins, except for the fence I had to crawl under. ISIS isn’t going to say anything, but you can see why I can’t explain things to the FBI or the Secret Service.”

  “So, how does your intuition jump from Kaamil and Roberto smuggling drugs into the chemical weapons depot to a terrorist plot tomorrow? I haven’t heard much that supports your conclusion,” she challenged.

  “That’s just it, Margo. I don’t have anything conclusive. I just know something’s not right and there doesn’t seem to be much I can do about it.”

  “Can you ask the Senator to do something?”

  “I can’t get him directly involved. I did this on my own. I won’t jeopardize his career. If I tell DHS or the FBI everything I know, I’m sure they’d welcome the opportunity to teach me a lesson, or embarrass him.”

  “So why did you go to Hermiston today?” Margo continued.

  “I went to check security arrangements. With my concerns, I had to know how he’s going to be protected.”

  “So if you tag along as part of the Senator’s security detail, are you going to be able to do anything to protect him?” she asked.

  Drake looked at her for a long moment. “I knew I could count on you. Probably not by myself. If you’d be so kind to get my friend in Seattle on the phone, I might be able to round up some help.”

  He thought he caught a smile on her lips as she turned and walked down the stairs to her desk. She was right, of course. If he was going to do anything more than worry, he needed his old partner along for the ride.

  Chapter 41

  With a rough idea of a plan in mind, Drake picked up the phone to talk with Mike.

  “If you’re calling to thank me for all my help over the weekend, you’re welcome. The bill is already in the mail,” his friend answered.

  “Nice. I thought we were friends. Now I’m just another client.”

  “Just one among hundreds. So, what’s up this time? You connect the dots yet on our friends in Hood River?”

  “Not yet, at least not with anything I can take to the bank. I need your help again. I’m accompanying my father-in-law to the weapons depot tomorrow as part of his security detail. I’d like you to join me, ride shotgun,” Drake said. “The Senator and the Secretary of DHS will each have their own personal two-man security detail, but if my hunch is right, that may not be enough.”

  “What do you think we might need?”

  “I’m thinking an armor-plated Yukon, chemical protective gear for nine and a driver who isn’t afraid of mixing it up if necessary. Think you can find someone like that on short notice?”

  “I might be able to. The person I have in mind will require more than his usual high rate of compensation, due to the aforementioned short notice.”

  “If the person you have in mind can meet me at the Hermiston airport tomorrow morning at eight thirty, with the Yukon, the gear I mentioned, and the stuff that person brought with him last time, I’m sure we can work something out.”

  Before she died, Kay had asked if he missed being in the Army. He told her, with all the honesty he could muster, he did miss some of the excitement. He did not tell her that what he had done hadn’t made a damn bit of difference, for all the risks he had taken. Now, he was thinking the risk might be worth it. If the sum of the parts added up to the whole he feared, it would be worth the risk to stop ISIS and Kaamil.

  Drake sat quietly for a moment. He had never considered his own father’s motivation. He must have felt the same way when he volunteered to return to Vietnam after his first tour. Why else would you put yourself in harm’s way, if you didn’t think you could make a difference? For the millionth time, he wished that he’d been able to know more about his Dad than stories his Mother told him and a name on the wall.

  Drake broke out of his reverie, signed the letters and documents Margo had stacked on his desk, and headed downstairs.

  “Margo, I signed the letters and things you put on my desk. I’ve got to leave for a bit. Call me if you hear from Detective Carson.”

  He wanted to see his pastor. The man had comforted Kay through her cancer, and had become a friend. Drake had learned he was a student of history and understood the world’s religions. If anyone could shed light on how an American Muslim became a jihadist, Pastor Steve could.

  Drake drove west on Hwy. 217 to Beaverton. The afternoon sun was low enough in the sky to require sunglasses on the way to the New Hope Faith Center. The church was a collection of new, utilitarian buildings scattered around a small college campus. There was an administration building, housing for permanent staff, a counseling center, a youth wing with a gym, and a main sanctuary accommodating as many as six thousand on Sundays.

  A white Harley-Davidson Sportster XL 1200 was parked in the pastor’s parking space by the administration building. He normally drove a green Honda, but when summer rolled around not much kept Pastor Steve off his Harley.

  Drake parked next to the pastor’s motorcycle, and walked into the building and down a carpeted hallway to the pastor’s offices. After the secretary called ahead, he was motioned into the pastor’s study. Pastor Steve sat behind his desk, holding his usual mug of coffee.

  “Adam, come in,” Pastor Steve said, getting up to give him a big hug. Big, because before divinity school, Pastor Steve was one of the best six-foot-eight-inch power forwards in college basketball. He’d written more than a dozen books on church history, started a food bank that served as many people as two county food banks in the area, and was a popular guest on local television news.

  “I didn’t make an appointment, sorry if I’m interrupting.”

  “Nonsense, I’m working on a speech. I could use a break. How are you getting along?”

  “Some days are worse than others, but I’m doing better,” Drake conceded. “I wonder if you have a couple minutes to talk about a case I’m working on.”

  “We can spend as much time as you need. I’ve missed seeing you since Kay died. Would you like some coffee? I could use a refill.”

  “Sure. I’m working on a case that may wind up involving some local Muslim jihadists. I’m curious about what makes a person of faith consider martyrdom, and even treason.”

  Pastor Steve waited while his secretary brought in a carafe of coffee and a mug for Drake, before answering.

  “Is this a question about my understanding of radical Islam, or about some of the arrests that have involved local mosques?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  Pastor Steve looked toward the books lining his floor-to-ceiling bookshelf while he decided where to start.

  “Islam is the fastest growing religion in America, and the world right now. There are over two thousand mosques in our country. Most were built in the last twenty years with Saudi oil money. Wahhabism is the official religion of Saudi Arabia, and that fundamentalist sect of Islam is the principal influence in the mosques they build and finance here. It’s also the subset of Islam that claimed the allegiance of Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and most of the terrorist organizations in the world. The true radical believer pays allegiance to no country, only to Allah.”

  “But why is that brand of Islam taking hold here?” Drake asked.

  “I can only guess,” Pastor Steve said. “In our inner cities, Muslim organizations deliver materially in a way our government and churches don’t. They build community centers, patrol the streets and get people organized. In our prisons, converting to Islam means you have protection when you’re inside, and someone with money to help outside. When welfare reform came along, Saudi money stepped in when the government stepped out. Saudi-funded Islam has just done a better job reaching out to the disaffected and angry among our people.”

  “But that doesn’t explain the appeal of radical Islam to well-educated, middle-class Americans. Not all the people who have been arrested on terrorism charges have been inner-city welfare types,” Drake said.

  “You don’t have to be poor and uneducate
d to feel disaffected and angry. If you’re told that family breakdown, racism and poverty result from Western decadence and immorality, fundamental Islam can seem pretty attractive. By converting to Islam, people who feel they’re invisible and unimportant now belong to a powerful and moral civilization without borders. They’re told that someday they’ll rule the world, like Islam did in the days of the Caliphs. Hope of utopia has powered more than one ‘ism’ in the last hundred years.”

  “Do you think American citizens, who grew up in our culture and aren’t taught in madrassas, to revere martyrdom, can be trained to be martyrs?” Drake asked.

  Pastor Steve nodded slowly. “I’d have to say yes. Minority groups who perceive themselves as underdogs and blame America for their perceived oppression, can probably be persuaded to become martyrs. The reward of paradise, coupled with the teaching that Mohammed himself desired martyrdom, as bin Laden taught, is pretty powerful stuff.”

  “Are they brainwashed by this religious training, or is it hatred that motivates them?”

  “Hatred and religious doctrine have motivated people for two thousand years. Do you know who the original terrorists were?” Pastor asked, getting up to walk to his bookcase and pull a volume from the shelf.

  “Terrorism has been with us for a long time, but no, I don’t know who the original terrorists were,” Drake answered.

  “Marco Polo wrote about a secret sect of Islam using murder and assassination as a weapon of terror, ostensibly to keep the religion pure. The master of the cult, known as the Old Man of the Mountain, kept young boys at his court who would do anything he asked them to do. It’s said he promised them paradise if they carried out his assassination orders. Marco Polo wrote that he witnessed young men jumping off the Old Man’s fortress wall to their death to prove how the master controlled them. Does that sound anything like what we’re reading about today in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, London? Why should America be any different?”