by Brad Thor
Levy chuckled, though they all appreciated the fact that the reality of it wasn’t that funny. “I guess that’s one of the many differences between Islam and the rest of the world.”
“You can say that again.”
Vaughan looked at the monitor feed for one of the infrared cameras mounted in the van’s side-view mirrors. “In Iraq, we’d know guys we wanted were inside a particular mosque, sometimes we’d chase them right up the front steps, but then we couldn’t do anything. We’d have to wait until Iraqi soldiers got on site.”
“Iraqi Muslim soldiers,” added Davidson for clarification.
“Exactly. We infidels couldn’t go inside. At least we couldn’t lead the charge.”
“Why the hell not?” asked Levy, as he took another bite of yogurt.
“Because nobody wanted it to look like we were waging a crusade against Islam.”
Levy licked both sides of his spoon once more and said, “That’s the dumbest thing I have ever heard.”
Vaughan nodded. “I agree.”
“So they think we’ll treat their mosques here in the U.S. the same way we do in Iraq?”
“Up to now, that’s exactly how we’ve treated them. It’s not just hands off, it’s hands way off.”
Levy shook his head. “Political correctness is going to be the death of Western civilization.”
“I hope you’re wrong, but there’s no question that our enemies are using political correctness against us.”
“You can say that again,” replied Davidson. “Muslim ‘honor’ killings are becoming an epidemic in the U.S., but do you think it gets reported by the media? No. Wife and child beatings are through the roof, but the media ignore those as well. Point out what’s wrong with Muslim culture and you’re automatically labeled a racist. It’s like shunning the guy on the Titanic who says he sees water in the forward bulkhead.”
Levy finished his yogurt and placed the empty cup in the bag and zipped the top shut again.
Vaughan checked his watch. “The evening Ishaa prayers will be over soon.”
“Think Nasiri will stick his head out?” asked Davidson.
“You never know. Terrorists make a lot of stupid mistakes.”
“Not this guy,” said Levy.
Vaughan and Davidson both looked at him. “How would you know?” asked Davidson.
“If he’s up to what you think he is, you have to assume he didn’t get his job by being stupid. And if he felt the heat was so intense that he had to flee to the mosque, even a storefront mosque, then you have to give him enough credit that he won’t pop his head out until he thinks he can get away with it.”
Vaughan nodded in agreement.
“Which means,” continued Levy, “that eventually we’re going to have to do more than just sit outside here watching the front door.”
He was right, and neither of the other two men in the surveillance van could argue with him.
“What are you thinking?” asked Vaughan.
Levy tapped two black Storm cases with the toe of his boot and said, “I think we’re going to have to get more aggressive with our surveillance.”
CHAPTER 36
Levy opened the cases and showed his guests what he had brought. Vaughan reached down and plucked out a wireless camera embedded within a hard, black baseball-sized shell. “What’s this?”
“Brilliant Israeli military technology.”
Davidson looked at it. “Then how come it says Remington on the side?”
“Because they licensed it for the U.S., but couldn’t get it off the ground. I bought this sample kit from the rep.”
“How does it work?” asked Vaughan. “You just drop these where you want them?”
“Better than that. You can actually throw them. When they stop rolling, they right themselves on those little stubby feet on the bottom. You can toss them on a roof, over a wall, anywhere.”
“And those are fiber-optic cameras in the other box?”
Levy nodded. “If you’ve got balls big enough to get close to the door or drill down from the ceiling, then we’ll really get a good view inside.”
“What are the baby wipes for?”
“You should see how dirty this stuff gets,” he said as he pulled another one of the camera balls out of its case.
As he did, Davidson jabbed Vaughan in the ribs and raised his eyebrows as if to say, See?
Vaughan waved him off. All he saw was a guy who was particular about how he ate his yogurt and who liked to keep his gear clean. Big deal. In fact, he’d take Josh Levy over most of the sloppy cops he’d been forced to sit through stakeouts with.
“If we can drop a couple of those in the alley behind the building, will you be able to pick up the signal out here?”
“I should.”
“Will they work okay in low light?”
“They’ve got an IR illuminator, but it puts an extra drain on the batteries. We won’t be able to run them all night.”
“Hopefully, we won’t have to.”
Davidson used the cameras mounted outside the van to check for foot traffic along the street. They were in a small honor-system parking lot where you placed your money in a slot on a big board beneath the number that corresponded to what stall you were in. Levy had picked the lot himself, preferring it to being parked out on the street. The view wasn’t as good, but it was acceptable. It was his opinion that a windowless van parked too near the mosque might draw undue attention to itself. Vaughan had agreed.
“How do you want to do this?” asked Davidson.
“We’ve got your Bronco parked around the corner,” replied Vaughan. “From this distance, I don’t think anyone is going to notice us getting out of the van.
“I’ll stay here and monitor the feeds while you take Josh with you. He’ll ride shotgun and can drop three balls. One at the beginning of the alley, one near the back door of the target building, and one before you turn back out onto the street.”
Levy shook his head. “I don’t leave the van.”
“Why not?”
“I just don’t.”
Vaughan looked at Davidson for some sort of explanation but the Public Vehicles officer just looked back at him and smiled as if to say, I told you so.
He turned back to Levy. “How are we going to know if we got the balls placed correctly?”
The PI pulled a radio from a charger rack and handed it to Vaughan. “It’s not rocket science. You roll down the window and drop them out. I’ll radio you and let you know how the picture looks.”
“What if I screw it up and one of them rolls underneath a Dumpster?”
“Don’t screw it up.”
Satisfied that the argument was settled, Levy unzipped the gym bag hanging from the arm of his chair and removed a small hand towel. Unrolling it across his lap, he fished his key ring from his pocket.
“That’s good enough for me,” said Davidson, taking the radio from Vaughan, suddenly anxious to leave. “Let’s get going.”
Hanging from Levy’s key ring was a gold nail clipper. The PI pivoted open the handle and studied his nails.
“The street’s as quiet as it’s going to get,” said Davidson as Vaughan watched Levy. “Let’s get this done before evening prayers are over with.” He poked the Organized Crime cop with the radio’s antenna, breaking the spell and getting his attention.
“Make sure to do a radio check when you get to your truck,” stated Levy as the two men parted the heavy blackout curtain and exited the van through its back door.
Cutting through the alley behind the parking lot, Vaughan said, “I’ve never known anybody who carries a nail clipper on their key ring. Is it solid gold?”
“Probably,” said Davidson with a shudder. “I can’t watch him clip his nails. It creeps me out.”
“If that’s the worst of his behavior, then you’ve got it pretty good.”
“That’s the thing. It isn’t just one quirky thing with him. It’s a million. And they all add up.”
&
nbsp; “And that’s why you don’t like doing surveillance with him?”
“Damn straight,” replied Davidson. “The guy’s an investigative genius, but there’s something just not right about him. It’s like if Magnum PI and Rain Man had a baby. You saw how he wouldn’t leave the van.”
“So?”
“So Judge Wapner probably comes on in ten minutes.”
Vaughan shook his head. “The guy’s a little eccentric. So what? You need to lighten up.”
Davidson smiled. “Give it another hour. You’ll want to beat the guy to death with the heel of your shoe.”
He doubted it and they walked in silence the rest of the way to the Bronco and climbed in.
While Davidson did a radio check, Vaughan received an e-mail from one of the forensics specialists going over Nasiri’s taxi. The piece of plastic that had been recovered at the scene of the hit-and-run was indeed from a radiator header, and the radiator header in Nasiri’s cab was new. Everything they were telling him jibed with what the Pakistani mechanic from the Crescent Garage had told them.
The bad news was that there was no blood, hair, or tissue anywhere on the outside of the vehicle. Worse still was what the tech told him next.
Skirting the poisonous tree issue had not been easy. The only thing Vaughan could do was to ask his forensic pal to search the interior of the cab, as well as the trunk, for traces of any chemicals. He said he was looking for any sign that Nasiri had washed down his cab with solvents in an attempt to hide evidence of the hit-and-run. His real hope was that they would come back with hits for TATP or the precursors for the compound. The bad news from forensics was that the cab contained no traces of chemicals whatsoever.
Vaughan shared the bad news with Davidson as they pulled away from the curb and headed toward the alley.
“I’m not surprised,” replied Davidson. “If that stuff is as volatile as you say it is, they’re not going to want to move it until they absolutely have to. If Nasiri was transporting anything, it was bottles of peroxide and cans of drain cleaner; all nice and sealed.”
Vaughan didn’t like it, but he had to agree. “So we’ve still got nothing.”
“What do you mean nothing? You’ve got Josh Levy’s balls in the palm of your hand.”
He held up one of the cameras and looked at it.
“Now, Josh may think his balls are made of brass,” said Davidson, “but I still think you should drop them out the window delicately. Nobody likes to have their balls busted.”
“Are you done?” asked Vaughan as he rolled down his window.
“Since you asked, you have to admit that even though he wanted to stay in the van, Josh really does have big balls.”
“Is that all of them?”
“All of my ball jokes?”
“Yeah.”
“For the moment.”
“Good,” said Vaughan. “I’d like to concentrate on what’s happening at the mosque.”
“Like Captain Hook.”
Vaughan nodded.
As they rolled up to the stop sign half a block from the alley, Davidson snapped the clip on the metal clipboard wedged between his seat and armrest. “You know what that is?”
“No. What is it?”
“The sound of no hands clapping.”
Vaughan shook his head. “Can we please concentrate on what we’re about to do?”
“So you’re asking me to give you a hand with this part?”
“You know, Levy probably isn’t the one I’m going to beat to death with my shoe tonight.”
“All right. I get it,” said Davidson. “You lawyers have no sense of humor. How fast do you want me to drive down the alley?”
“Fast enough to look like you know what you’re doing and are just cutting through.”
Davidson put his left hand over his eyes and waved his right index finger over the speedometer before landing on a speed. “Okay, got it. Anything else?”
“Yeah. You’d better put your thinking cap on. If this surveillance doesn’t pan out, we’re going to need a really good plan B.”
CHAPTER 37
Vaughan lowered the radio and looked at Davidson. They had just driven out of the alley after dropping all three covert surveillance balls. “Is the placement of the second camera ‘not right’ because it’s not right, or because Levy’s not right?”
“Despite what I told you, he knows what he’s doing. He wouldn’t ask you to tweak it if he didn’t have a good reason.”
Levy’s voice came over the radio again. “Did you guys copy that?”
“Ten-four,” said Vaughan. “We heard you loud and clear.”
“You didn’t pitch it under a Dumpster, but you did manage to get it wedged behind a garbage can,” added Levy. “I wouldn’t be expecting a call from the White Sox this year.”
Davidson looked at him. “Is he pissing you off yet?”
“He’s getting there.”
“So what are we going to do?”
Vaughan really wanted a view of the back door of that building. “I’ll fix it.”
He climbed out of the Bronco and made his way into the alley. It was cluttered with empty boxes, splintered pallets, Dumpsters, and garbage cans. Though he didn’t have a terrific view, he did have lots of good concealment and he carefully picked his way forward.
Just before the building that held the mosque, he stopped and took a slow look around. If he was going to move the camera, he might as well put it in the best spot possible. Now that he was here, he wished he’d brought along a couple of the fiber-optic cameras as well. Having come this far, it would have made sense to go the rest of the way and get the best look at what was going on inside as they could.
The back of the building was covered in gray brick. The basement windows had been painted black and were covered with iron bars. The first-floor windows were covered with newspaper and also covered with bars. A broken lightbulb hung over the back door. The ground was littered with cigarette butts, despite a coffee can filled with sand, which the building’s smokers must have figured was a doorstop.
Vaughan identified a spot for his camera and stacked a few empty boxes around it so it would run less of a chance of being noticed. With a new hiding place ready, he went looking for the hard, black sphere.
There was a row of about five trashcans. The ball was fairly heavy for its size, and when he dropped it out the window he hadn’t expected it to roll very far. They must have been driving down the alley at a higher rate of speed than he had thought.
Pulling a flashlight from his pocket, he leaned over, tilted back the first can, and looked. There was nothing there. He slid out the second can and came up empty as well. It was the same story with the remaining three cans. Where the hell had that thing gone to?
Vaughan studied the alley. There were buildings, cans, Dumpsters, and trash on both sides. The camera could have rolled to the other side, but he doubted it. He had dropped it on the east side of the alley. That was where it had to be.
He came back down the row of cans, tilting each one out, and this time he saw it. Even if his life had depended on it, he couldn’t have made such a one-in-a-million shot. Sitting wedged inside a laundry vent or a drain opening of some sort was his missing surveillance camera. He pulled back the can and bent over near the wall to free the ball.
He was just beginning to stand when he heard something behind him. Vaughan had no idea who it was and had learned a long time ago that discretion wasn’t always the better part of valor. He was in a dark alley in a bad neighborhood on the trail of even worse people. He went for his Glock.
The move was met with a searing pain in his right hand as he was struck with a piece of rebar and his wrist was broken.
Vaughan spun and came up with his left hand in a fist. He connected with his attacker’s jaw and sent him stumbling backward. At that moment, the barrel of a gun was shoved into his face and a flashlight was shined in his eyes.
Though it hurt like hell on his right side, Vaughan raise
d his hands. “I don’t know who you are, but I’m a police officer.”
The light was taken out of his eyes and, for a moment, he thought he was going to be let go, until he felt his Glock being removed from his holster and saw the man he had punched out gather himself off the pavement and come forward. The man was Middle Eastern. This wasn’t good.
Walking over to him, the man drew his fist back and struck him right in the gut. Vaughan doubled over.
The man grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head up. Vaughan had been in plenty of fistfights in his time and he readied himself either for a knee to the face or for the man to punch down at his head. Either way, he knew it was going to hurt.
Suddenly, he heard a voice from behind his attackers. “This isn’t even a fair fight. You assholes didn’t bring enough guys.”
Vaughan looked past the man with the gun to see Davidson right behind him with his own gun pressed up against the back of the man’s head.
The man holding him by his hair let go and Vaughan straightened himself up. His relief at seeing Davidson was short-lived. Four other men were now standing behind him with weapons pointed right at him.
“Well, it looks like maybe you did bring enough guys,” said Davidson. “Why don’t we put our guns down and settle this like men?”
One of the men stepped forward and struck him in the kidneys with the butt of a rifle. Davidson’s knees buckled from the pain and he collapsed to the ground.
As his gun was taken away from him, Davidson looked up and said, “That’s it. You’re all under arrest.”
The man who had broken Vaughan’s wrist smiled and punched Davidson in the mouth.
Someone gave a series of orders in rapid Arabic and the two police officers were dragged from the alley and into the building.
As the heavy metal door clanged shut, Vaughan wondered what was going to happen, but part of him already knew. All of the bad feelings he’d had since going after Nasiri came flooding back. This was no longer Chicago, and he was no longer a cop or a lawyer working for the family of a young woman who’d been struck by a fleeing taxi. He was a Marine and he was being dragged into a terrorist hellhole worse than anything he had ever seen.
