“He tasks me…” Rick quoted from Star Trek.
D Minus 10 – Observation and Shopping
Mohammed stood on the second floor of the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City and looked over the railing at the people on the floors below. Workers had already cordoned off an area of the food court on the Metro Level for the Christmas Tree where the official kickoff of the shopping season started the day after Thanksgiving.
The mall wasn’t busy, but there were more people than Mohammed would have thought. He was enjoying his ice cream cone, a treat he didn’t get as often as he liked. There was no line at the ice cream vendor. It was cool outside, and most people were opting for something warmer. In Mohammed’s mind, ice cream was good anytime.
The decadence he’d grown accustomed to, that he would never share with the likes of Abu Bakr and Da’esh. He was happy they left him alone, not questioning his methods, only expecting results.
He knew the impact this strike would have. The Americans would cower in their homes. Their fear would consume them. Many would die, yes, but the real impact would be in their wallets. Their economy would seize, freezing the behemoth in its tracks.
Mohammed was conducting the last of his reconnaissance before issuing the final instructions to the zealots. The timing and the targets were final. He only needed to add enough detail to help them deliver their packages.
The ones that would look like a million others.
Hiding in plain sight.
Mohammed finished his ice cream and strolled through Kenneth Cole, Johnson & Murphy, and Michael Kors. He bought a nice button-down shirt with French cuffs at Joseph A. Bank. It would look nice on him. Maybe he’d return to the hotel and visit the workout room. It had been a while, and he was feeling soft.
He looked back over the railing at the stores and people, and he never felt more powerful.
Fifteen miles away, Clay was at the gym, doing what Mohammed intended. He threw weights around with newfound vigor. He climbed to the heavens on the stair stepper. When he finished, his clothing dripped sweat. He was gratified and felt his strength returning. He didn’t know what would be asked of him, but he wouldn’t fail. He showed his determination in his workout.
Two college girls ogled him openly as he took off his shirt and wrung out the water into a hamper of used towels. He smiled back at them, his teeth white and perfect against the darkness of his African skin. Just like the old days, he thought. But unlike the old days where he would have taken one or both of them home, he left them to their musings. He had a higher purpose now, one that didn’t include the likes of them.
Wednesday Looks Like Monday, Too
“When will it stop being Monday around here?” Rick asked his whiteboard as he continued to pace. He’d done what he could, and now his job was to wait.
Rick hated waiting.
He logged into his computer and perused every report he could find. At least the IC finally made things look like the regular internet. There were consolidated sites that looked like the Drudge Report where other information was linked to recent events around the world. From there, he found other reports and read them, too.
There was an overwhelming amount of reporting that didn’t say anything. There weren’t any actions, and every threat was imminent. No wonder the Intelligence Community wasn’t taken seriously. The sky was not always falling, except for now, when he believed it was falling, but few believed him.
He was one voice among many, yelling for attention. At least he had the CIA’s senior leadership on board with him. He didn’t know what they were doing behind closed doors.
The NSA was running the algorithm that he’d help them set up; they never stopped running it after Thorny Rose.
At least he knew, and they knew that he knew. He still had to call every day and see if anything popped up. He didn’t have access to their system, an internal-only net. They could not be accessed directly from the outside. This helped the NSA to retain control until the lawyers could approve sharing based on orders from the FISA court.
Rick saw it as a roadblock. A necessary evil because not everyone was like him. Too many were careless. An inadvertent release or a malicious release would have the same result. The communication pipeline would close, and all the intelligence associated with it would be lost.
The damage to the country would be incalculable. The cost to replace the information would be astronomical. But in Rick’s small world, all that mattered to him was that he could get the information. If he had to drive to Fort Meade, he’d do it. The CIA gave him a set of credentials that they said gave him access anywhere he needed to go, up to and including the White House.
He suggested he didn’t need all that but readily accepted it. Nice pay and a perk, too. Who was he to complain?
Rick paced, yelled at his whiteboard, and paced some more. Then he logged back in and looked for his NSA contacts.
Then he started making phone calls. He realized that it was roughly three weeks after the first communication. If there were another, it would have been yesterday or today. The voice at the end of the encrypted line assured Rick that the algorithm was running, and if a conversation happened, they’d find it but it might take time. Call back tomorrow afternoon.
Rick renewed pacing. Until the phone rang, then he sat in his chair and acted cool.
“Mr. Banik. Good afternoon. I’m Dolores, Mr. Banyon’s assistant. If you would be so kind, he’d like to see you in his office as soon as possible.”
Rick panicked. “What did I do wrong?” It was the only thing he could think of.
“Nothing as far as I know. Have you done something wrong that you want to tell us?” Dolores hesitated long enough for Rick to think she was toying with him. “The DDI doesn’t like talking over a STU if he doesn’t have to, that’s all.”
“Thank you. You had me there. One last question. Where is his office?” Rick asked quietly. He got the impression that it wasn’t the first time she’d heard the question by how smoothly she gave him the answer, to include the best route from his office.
He locked his computer and rushed out.
The efficiency of the directions delivered him to Dolores Stackhouse in under three minutes. She complimented him on his sense of urgency and told him, with a matronly smile, to catch his breath before he went in.
The DDI was fully engrossed with something on his computer, not recognizing Rick’s presence until he discreetly cleared his throat.
“Oh hey, Rick, how are you doing? Are you getting along with everyone okay? I know that some of the career Agency types can be a bit abrasive, but they tend to be the best.”
“Getting along just fine, sir.” Rick wanted to know why he was there but didn’t want to probe.
“You get your first five people as soon as tomorrow. With them, they’ll get you into those agencies. Let’s see, we’ve got DoD, FBI, DOJ, DHS, and what’s this one, the Hostage Rescue Team?”
“That’s Xandrie Kovak, the Assistant Team Leader. She’s the one who took six rounds from our buddy Ahmed. She’s out of ICU and will be sent home next week. She’s paralyzed, but she’s sharp and deserves a chance to help us get the rest of them. By the way, have we gotten anything out of Ahmed or the crime scene?”
“You’ll have to ask your DOJ liaison, and they should be able to get you access, even if you need to take a trip over there. I like what you’re thinking with Xandrie, but is she ready?”
Rick shrugged. “We’ll see, sir. And it won’t cost us anything. She’s on the FBI’s dime while convalescing. All we have to do is drop a STU-III at her home. She’ll have the HRT and our own DoD liaison as constant companions. If I were an operator, like she is, I’d want to know that people still thought I could contribute. If it doesn’t work, then that’s on me.”
The DDI nodded with an expression that said he agreed. The risk was Rick’s.
Welcome to the big leagues.
D Minus 9 – Make the Call
Mohammed sat in his hotel room
with the television off and curtains closed. He ran through scenarios in his head, thinking through each detail from the second they handed the TATP to the zealots to the time of the explosions. There were five of them left. Abdul-Wahid perished in the Bagdad Market raid.
The FBI’s investigation made no noise, but Mohammed distanced himself from the Muslim communities. What better way to be discovered than to get close to the people being watched. Mohammed blended in, a benefit of his American upbringing.
He hated the people and their decadence while simultaneously reveling in the pleasures it provided. He had a job to do, and it was important to him to be the best he could.
James Bond? Not quite. Bond was far too flamboyant and drank way too much. He was a good character for books and television, but in real life, spies went unseen. No one knew their names. They lived in the shadows.
As Mohammed did, even when he was in a crowd, he looked like everyone else.
Not so for the zealots. They stood out by looking hateful, by acting anxious. He would have to talk with them one by one. He needed Clay’s help to impress upon them the importance of appearing unthreatening. They needed to smile and nod. They needed to fit in.
He’d talk with Clay soon and give him the full details. Maybe he could provide additional insight into handling the zealots. Despite Mohammed’s air of confidence, this would be the biggest operation of his career. He’d handled one or two before, but never five for a target of this magnitude.
The way to keep a secret was to tell no one. The best way to conduct an attack was by having a simple plan. When people got excited, things fell apart quickly.
At one time, Mohammed had been a soldier on the front lines in Syria. He saw how men changed as the inevitability of combat approached. There were three types of men in war: those who relished it, those who were incapacitated by it, and those who treated it as a job. Mohammed fell into the third category. He was a good soldier and stayed in control when under fire, but he didn’t launch himself like a human weapon at the enemy. Some of those soldiers were lucky and survived, becoming heroes for their exploits. But most of those soldiers died quickly.
The business of war is not for the faint of heart. It requires a keen mind and training. The training helped recruits overcome their fear the first time an enemy fired at them. After that, they had to reconcile themselves with their place in war.
Make no mistake. Da’esh was at war with the world. Mohammed thought that was too much, but the strategy gained sympathizers, active and passive supporters. Their coffers were filled with currency from twenty different countries. Da’esh believed the Caliphate was possible.
Others believed, too.
He had to call Abu Bakr and let him know that the attack was imminent.
The American idiom of running around with their hair on fire came to mind. And that’s why he would relish watching the sky burn. He assumed the response to the explosions would be disjointed at best. The saber rattling would increase quickly in intensity, reaching a dangerous crescendo where multi-million dollar cruise missiles rained down on empty tents in the middle of nowhere.
The Americans were too predictable. After the ineffective military response, the politicians would talk, endlessly. The people would scream to stop the imperialism, the adventurism that brought somebody else’s war back home.
Mohammed smiled to himself. The war would have come here eventually, but the adventurism only delayed its arrival, and then, not by much. There can only be one Caliphate. The Russians already showed that they would keep to themselves as long as Da’esh stayed away.
It was an equitable arrangement.
For now.
He pulled out his last burner phone to make his call, but he would not call from his hotel, just in case.
The Phone Call
Lieutenant Colonel Travis Strong, Bob McClendon, and Becky Jahring stood in Rick’s office. He only had one chair, and he sat in that, behind his desk, looking regally down upon his minions.
They were all in foul moods. It was 10 am. They’d arrived by 7. It took three hours for them to get access and their badges, and it would be well after lunch before they’d get their logins.
“Welcome to my new world,” Rick said with a shrug. “It’s just the way things are around here. That being said, I made the request on Monday for you guys and here you are, standing tall on Thursday. In the CIA, that’s world-crisis level speed. They believe the threat is still out there, well, another threat anyway.
“Ahmed al-Suqami and his merry band of delinquents were going to put us in a world of hurt, but I still don’t know what the FBI recovered from the Bagdad Market or from Ahmed himself. I expect he’s not talking. As a matter of fact, I don’t even know where he is. Gitmo? That’ll be your job, Becky. Get us up to speed on any intel they found onsite or even raw information. What else did they find? Enquiring minds want to know!”
She smirked but didn’t rush off as Rick expected. He raised his eyebrows at her, and she raised hers back at him. “I’d ask what you’re waiting for, but I suspect you have a reason so I won’t.” He was going to continue, but she stopped him.
“It took me three hours to get in here, and I don’t want to go through that more than once a day. I’m waiting to see if anyone else needs something, so when I leave the building, I can get it all done without, heaven forbid, going through the full body cavity search again!” She sounded as young as she looked, but no one could fault her logic.
Rick nodded. The other two nodded as well, although Bobbie Mac had been coming and going from Langley for over twenty years. He should have been laughing at the newcomers and their misfortune. The fact that he didn’t tell Rick that the pain was real, the anguish universal.
“Bobbie Mac. Since we don’t have a State Department rep, I’ll need you to find out how many last-minute ticket changes we had for flights to the Middle East, then bounce that list off multi-entry visa holders. We are looking for changes made to flights in the time following the raid on Bagdad Market for, say, the next twenty-four hours?”
“I don’t even know where to start with that, but I’ll figure it out.” Bob squeezed past Becky and walked away with a sense of purpose.
“Travis. You canceled your leave to come in here? Maybe take a couple days and we’ll see you back on Friday?” Rick offered. “I think there’s somebody you probably want to spend more time with.”
“Stop it, Rick, you big softie! I’ll be fine, but hopefully, I can bag early each day. I’ll take a day of leave to make up for the time,” Travis said without committing one way or the other.
“You don’t even need to take vacation time to leave early. Go and come as you please. This is the civilian world. Right. If the faceless man didn’t leave, is he still planning an attack? Who are his lackeys? Besides Ahmed’s amateur recruitment efforts, does the FBI have any leads on recruiters? From the language of the first communication, we believe they are going to use explosives. What are the precursors for TATP? Can we get any tips on someone buying more than a reasonable amount of H2SO4? Maybe you can look into how we ask the question regarding precursors?”
Rick never took his eyes from his caricature of the faceless man.
His Blackphone rang. He didn’t recognize the number, so he answered tentatively.
“Felipe, Felipe Navidad. Check your email Rick. You will want to see this. I personally double checked. It’s real. Word out, brother.” Felipe hung up without waiting for Rick to respond.
“Felipe says we have something, and he sounded excited.” Rick logged into his computer system and pulled up his email.
“I can’t believe it. They used the same challenge – response as in the first call, and the system caught it. The call was made yesterday afternoon. Metadata indicates the call was made from… Holy shit! Herndon. The cake is baked and ready for the party. But that’s it. It doesn’t mention the Bagdad Market. I wonder if they even know each other.” He looked at Becky. “We need anything they collected from the r
aid site, and we need that information now.” She turned and bolted from the office, nearly running over an innocent bystander.
“What do you know of TATP? Shelf life?”
“Up to three weeks, I think, but I can pull up the right answer when I get online. I think the sooner you use it after it’s ready, the stronger it is.”
“They just cooked it which means we can refine our purchase window. It’s a long shot, but we’re in a race, and I think we’re losing. If they bought the chemicals in small quantities over time, we’d never find them. We can only hope they were in a hurry.” Rick stopped and re-read the intercepted message. He printed it, which was rare for him, but this communication was his most smoking gun.
Because of the first message, they found the second. Rick printed Felipe’s version of the first message, too, as a reference. Travis stood patiently, watching Rick’s mind work. Rick’s printer sat on his safe, hardwired to his system, safely printing without emitting telltale signals.
Rick stared at the printouts on his desk, a total of three pages and that included analysis, laid out in chronological order. He slowly shifted his whole body, while looking from one page to the next, then handed the last page to Travis. Rick leaned back heavily in his chair.
“How is this going to help us find him,” Rick said as he pointed to his whiteboard. He closed his eyes and steepled his fingers to focus his mind.
“It should open the budget floodgates, Rick.” Travis perched sideways on Rick’s desk as he dug into the report, breaking out each word, then adding them back together.
“Why is the response so limited this time?” Travis asked.
“Because of him,” Rick said, nodding toward the board. “He cut them off because they gave away too much last time. Look at the time and metadata. Once the challenge was complete, he delivered his report and hung up. He sounds like a real professional trying to save the amateurs from themselves. If his superiors in Syria blow the operation, his life is forfeit, not theirs. Maybe he’s self-serving? You ever have a bad boss, Travis?”
People Raged: and the Sky Was on Fire-Compendium (Rick Banik Thrillers Book 1) Page 17
