Scorched Earth

by George Galdorisi

  * * *

  The object of Meagan Bruner’s worry was at that moment still in the trunk of his car, but he was no longer moving. In fact, the trunk was open and her husband sensed he was in some sort of building. He remained bound and gagged and with duct tape still covering his eyes, but every so often someone came by and shook him and caused him to stir.

  Where was he? Who had taken him and why had they taken him? And where were they taking him? Was this the final destination? Were they going to do something to him? A gamut of emotions ran through his mind: shock, numbness, fear, anxiety, helplessness, hopelessness, dissociation, anger, and a host of others coursed through his brain. Pull yourself together, Jay, he told himself. They jacked your car. That’s all they want. Now they’re just trying to figure out what to do with you, then they’ll take the car and it’ll be over. Right?

  Bruner thought back to his training during his first squadron tour. All naval aviators go through a week of SERE—survival, evasion, resistance, and escape—training in a mock POW camp. It had been a long time since SERE, but the brutal training was seared onto his brain. He had to communicate with whoever had taken him. But he couldn’t even see them, let alone talk with them. He fought despair with everything he had.

  Amer and the two others sat huddled in the rented garage, as far away from the trunk of the BMW as they could, speaking in hushed whispers.

  “You’re the only one who’s heard the instructions from our contact, and this is all happening so fast,” one of the men said. “I still don’t know why we have to sit here all night.”

  Amer paused before replying. Their contact told him he had followed their hostage’s movements and decided that Amer and the others needed to grab him at night as the Metro brought him to the Franconia-Springfield station. But they’d need to hold him overnight, since the flight taking him out of the country didn’t leave until the next day.

  “I told you,” Amer replied. “We have our instructions on how to get him out of the country; we just need to follow them.”

  “So we put him on a plane, then what?” the other man asked. “What does that have to do with what we’ve dedicated ourselves to do? And what do we do the day after tomorrow? Just go back to our work and our classes? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  It didn’t make complete sense to Amer, either. Their two confederates who worked near BWI were going to have to do their part quickly the next day with their hostage and the refrigerated box—that too had been decided and arranged by their contact. And Amer had been told to buy the life-support equipment and send it with those two men. Fine, he had bought exactly what their contact told him to buy, where he told him to buy it; but he was starting to worry about maxing out his credit card. What were they going to do if that happened?

  “Look, let’s just get some sleep,” Amer replied. “This garage is secure; no one knows we’re here. But we need to ensure he’s alive when we deliver him tomorrow. Give him some more water but be sure to gag him after you do. We’ll roll out of here in the van at ten AM sharp.”

  * * *

  It was 0500 when they met in Williams’s office. McCord, Bleich, and Scott had stayed at Op-Center all night, but McCord had insisted that Williams didn’t need to come in until morning. They compromised, and Williams showed up much earlier than he did on normal days.

  It had been a busy night for those in Op-Center’s Intelligence Directorate, as Bleich had pulled in more of his Geek Tank superstars during the wee hours of the morning. The dots Scott so desperately wanted to connect were now connected. McCord began to lay it out for the Op-Center director.

  “At lot came together in the last few hours, boss, thanks to Aaron and Maggie’s hard work. We think we can walk this BMW car-jacking all the way back to the bombing of the ISIL compound in Mosul in March.”

  Williams had both hands clasped around his mess-deck coffee mug and nodded for McCord to continue.

  “We’ve been convinced that Mabad al-Dosari intended to carry out the threats he made after that bombing. He directly threatened the president, but then he likely figured the president was too hard a target. So who would be a good proxy? That’s the question no one’s been able to answer.”

  “And you think you may have the answer now?” Williams prodded.

  “We do. A little over a week ago, five young Muslim guys on the DHS watch list moved from Minneapolis to D.C. We started keeping an eye on everything they did. We pulled the string on their employment records, and a few of them have jobs that make no sense, and we also noticed they started making rentals that seemed odd. Last night a BMW got car-jacked down in Springfield. Then, a Mrs. Meagan Bruner showed up at the park-and-ride at the Franconia-Springfield Metro station looking for her husband. Turns out that it was her husband and his car that got jacked—”

  Williams still looked perplexed. “Boss,” McCord continued, “Meagan Bruner is the wife of Admiral Jay Bruner. He’s the Navy’s chief of legislative affairs now, but he was the Teddy Roosevelt strike group commander who led the strikes on al-Dosari’s compound back in March—”

  “Holy cow! So you think al-Dosari ordered Bruner kidnapped?” Williams asked. “What else do we know?”

  “At this point, there’s still a lot we don’t know. In spite of the BOLO that went out for Bruner’s BMW, no one ever spotted it. We know someone has him, likely one or more of the students we’ve been watching, but we’re not certain where they’re taking him. But we think the guys who took him will try to get him out of the country—”

  “But we don’t know how?”

  “Our best guess is a flight out of BWI. Aaron and Maggie learned that two of these five men we’re watching have jobs working up near BWI, at a packing and shipping company. This company packs shipping crates in their warehouse but also hires out their workers as day laborers when big shippers need a surge capacity. So we’re pretty sure the people who jacked Bruner will try to deliver him to these guys, and somehow they’ll pack him up in a shipping container and get him on a flight out of the country.”

  “I don’t even want to ask how many flights a day leave BWI,” Williams said.

  “Ahhh … we checked, boss … It’s north of six hundred flights … and over thirty-five tons of cargo a day,” Bleich said.

  McCord could see Williams sag in his chair and jumped in. “But we do have some leads. We checked the Minnesota DMV records, and we can ID the van they’re driving. We also have the make, model, and license number of the car one of their guys rented. Our best guess is that Bruner will be—or already has been—transferred from the BMW to either the van or the car.”

  McCord walked Williams through their other leads. Scott had done some digging and learned that one of the students on the watch list, Amer Deghayes, had used his credit card and PayPal to rent a two-car garage near Hyattsville—north of where Bruner was car-jacked and on the way to BWI—month to month. While the PayPal transaction didn’t specify the location of the garage, the Geek Tank was working to narrow down the options. After an extended conversation, the group was all but certain the hostage was in that garage. McCord and his team had done their staff work, now he wanted to move Williams to a decision.

  “Uh, boss, I asked Brian and Jim Wright to come in early,” McCord offered. “They’re standing by if you’re thinking of getting our team down at Quantico engaged. They’d give us our best shot at snatching Admiral Bruner from these guys before he gets spirited out of the country.”

  As ops director, Brian Dawson was Op-Center’s primary conduit for any international or domestic crisis response. But it was Williams’s domestic crisis manager, Jim Wright, who would direct any action in the United States and would alert and liaise directly with Op-Center’s team at Quantico. Wright was a former member of the bureau’s Hostage Rescue Team and had done a tour with the Special Activities Division at the CIA. As Op-Center’s “Mr. Inside,” with massive contacts in the law enforcement and intelligence agencies, Wright could get it done.

  Willia
ms considered this and paused for a long time before speaking. “Roger, Aaron, Maggie … you’ve done a great job pulling this together. I think we’ve got a damn good chance of rescuing Admiral Bruner. But I’m also mindful about how far our presidential mandate goes—and more importantly, where it doesn’t go—”

  “Boss, we’ve got what we need to move now,” McCord blurted out.

  “I appreciate you all leaning forward,” Williams replied. “But you remember how much suasion we had to use to get into the domestic business in the first place, as well as how specific our agreement with Justice and the FBI is. We’ve got to turn this one over to the bureau.”

  Williams could see their faces sag and the air go out of McCord. “Roger, get with Jim and have him pass everything you’ve got to the FBI watch floor. I’ll call the director. And once you’ve done that, ask Brian to come in here. If these guys do manage to escape the dragnet the FBI throws out, then we’ll need to get our JSOC team downrange ASAP.”

  As they all started to stream out of the room to carry out Williams’s directions he said, “Aaron, Maggie, stay behind a moment, will you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Bleich replied.

  “You’ve all done a truly exceptional job. Now I’m going to ask you all to fight a two-front war. Keep feeding the FBI everything you’ve got, but I need you to be ready to turn on a dime if we launch our JSOC team downrange. They’ll need a massive amount of intel, and I’ll need you to get it to them in real time.”

  Bleich was visibly moved. He knew the Op-Center director appreciated and valued what he did, but he’d never been told this directly that Williams needed him.

  “Boss, we’ll yell if we need anything else. And … and … thank you, sir.”

  With that, Bleich and Scott made a beeline back to the Geek Tank. Williams turned to his secure computer and began composing a POTUS/OC Eyes Only memo.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Hyattsville, Maryland

  July 18, 0830 Eastern Daylight Time

  Hyattsville, Maryland is a city of just over 20,000 residents nestled inside the Washington Beltway in Prince George’s County. It is a leafy, semi-urban area comprising mostly small-to-medium-sized houses with modest yards. State Route 1 runs through the heart of this mostly sleepy burg that has a large presence of University of Maryland students and federal government workers, the latter group attracted by the relatively low cost of housing and access to Washington via the Metro’s Green Line. The city’s motto, “A world within walking distance,” as well as the fact that it counts Muppets creator Jim Henson as the most noteworthy person born there, speak to the quiet that is Hyattsville’s hallmark.

  That quiet was about to be broken. Armed with the intelligence provided by Op-Center, the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group Hostage Rescue Team—the CIRG HRT—had deployed in the early morning hours and was now staged at strategic locations throughout and around the city, primed to look for the car or the van that might be holding Jay Bruner. With only limited assets and no specific intelligence as to where the rented garage might be in the city proper or its surrounding areas, the FBI HRT vehicles and two helicopters deployed on the northeastern section of the city, near likely routes leading toward BWI.

  The watchstanders at the FBI command center had debated whether to call the director and had finally done so at 0330 that morning. He authorized them to deploy and told them he’d be in the office at 0630 to take the call from the Op-Center director. After a detailed discussion with Chase Williams, the FBI director had his HRT deploy additional assets to Hyattsville, but in spite of Williams’s urging, stopped short of also bringing in local law enforcement to assist.

  * * *

  Jay Bruner had lapsed into sleep only occasionally during the night. With each passing hour, his terror ratcheted up a notch. Twice, whoever was holding him pulled the gag out of his mouth and shoved a small bottle of water into it. Each time he tried to speak, to bargain with them, to say something, anything, his captor shouted “shut up!”

  He was able to tell light and dark through the duct tape covering his eyes, so he sensed it was morning when many arms lifted him out of the trunk of his BMW and moved him what he sensed was only a few feet, then roughly deposited him on some surface. It felt like metal, but what was it? He couldn’t tell and that only drove his fear and anxiety to another level. His notion that all these people wanted was his car had long since disappeared. Evidently, they wanted him. But why?

  One question—what kind of surface he was lying on—was suddenly answered when he heard and felt an engine fire off. Seconds later, he heard a creaking and grinding of something opening or closing that sounded like it was coming from the same direction as the engine. Then he heard voices—the same voices he’d heard before—and then whatever vehicle he was in started moving. Jay Bruner began to pray.

  * * *

  Meagan Bruner hadn’t slept at all. She willed herself to be strong if for no other reason than to not further alarm her two daughters, both of whom were near panic. Though the West Springfield police officers at the park-and-drive lot at the Franconia-Springfield Metro station had promised to keep her apprised of any new developments; she hadn’t heard from them once since she left the Metro station lot.

  She was mindful of the three-hour time difference between the east and west coasts so she waited until 1030 EDT to text her son. It was a simple text, only asking him to call her as soon as he could. The text would go unseen for several hours, as at 1030 Eastern, 0730 Pacific, Dale Bruner had been on the grinder with Class 318 for several hours while his phone, wallet, and other personal items remained in his locker at the SEAL training facility.

  * * *

  Amer sat in the passenger seat of their van with a gas station map of the area in his lap while one of the other two men drove and the third man sat in the back of the van with the bound and gagged Bruner. Amer told the driver to keep moving at just under the speed limit. He gave him frequent instructions and constantly checked his watch.

  They wanted to stay off main highways until it was absolutely necessary to travel on them. Amer had a timeline in mind for when he was supposed to reach the warehouse where their two confederates worked. He wanted to arrive in ample time so they could put their prisoner in the life-support equipment he had purchased, and then into the refrigerated box his men working for the shipping company were packing up. Their contact had established a front business that shipped fruit overseas. Once the refrigerated box was sealed, it would have tamper-proof locks installed. But Amer didn’t want to arrive too early and have the hostage where someone else might see him.

  “In a few blocks, you’ll come up on Madison Street. You want to turn right there,” Amer said to the driver.

  “Then what?” the man asked.

  His companions were beginning to chafe at the fact that Amer seemed to know everything but elected to share only so much with them. Sure, once they had met at their contact’s house that first evening, they all had received the same training. He had taught them how to use firearms, how to use simple skills to subdue and restrain a hostage, and had even taught them evasive driving skills at an abandoned drive-in movie lot. But the contact had clearly treated Amer differently than he’d treated the others during their week plus of training. And he had given Amer the two unregistered handguns and all of the ammunition.

  “We’ll be on Madison for a little while, then we’ll turn north on 43rd Avenue.”

  “And then?” groused the driver.

  “And then,” Amer sighed, “we turn east on Oglethorpe Street for a bit, then we’ll pick up Route 1 north.”

  “I’ll be glad when we’re on a highway. Creeping along on these side streets with this guy in the back of the van is asking for trouble.”

  “We’ll be all right,” Amer offered.

  * * *

  At Amer’s destination, a warehouse near BWI, their two confederates were ready. The front company, Arnold’s Fruits and Vegetables, had contacted the shipping company and
asked for a 10 x 10 x 6 foot refrigerated box to ship a large consignment of peaches. Amer’s contact had provided an ample supply of fresh peaches to avoid suspicion, and they were packing the box with peaches as they waited for the hostage to be delivered.

  For security, Amer and these two men had agreed there would be no communication among them unless the van was going to be delayed. At the warehouse, they had their schedule to deliver the box to the FedEx receiving hangar, where it would be handed over to FedEx employees. Those workers would put the box on their flight leaving that afternoon.

  * * *

  While the FBI director spurned Chase Williams’s suggestion to engage local law enforcement in and around Hyattsville so there would be more assets to spot the van or car—“Too many moving parts,” he had said. “We have it covered,” he added—he did work with local authorities in one helpful way.

  Washington metro area commuters are always looking for any edge they can get to discover roads not gridlocked during the early-morning and late-afternoon commuting hours. In addition to government-provided road cameras on federal, state, and county highways, local radio and television networks had deployed a substantial number of traffic cams at important intersections along primary commuter routes. And in the intense competition for market share, as soon as one network put up one camera, their rival popped up one of their own. The D.C. metro area roads were blanketed with thousands of cameras.

  The FBI director had his IT people working on getting all those traffic feeds piped into his command center. If they got a hit on the car or the van, they could roll their vehicles or fly one of their two helos and intercept the target.

  * * *

  Some 330 miles south-southwest of where the FBI HRT was deployed to intercept whoever was holding Jay Bruner, another deployment was underway. Immediately after speaking with Chase Williams, Brian Dawson had called Op-Center’s JSOC—Joint Special Operations Command—team at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, at 0615. Major Mike Volner had a brief conversation with Dawson and had issued a recall for his on-call squad. The next call Dawson made was to his right-hand man for international crises, “Mr. Outside,” Hector Rodriquez. By 0830, Dawson and Rodriquez were on a Gulfstream heading for Pope Air Force Base. They’d rendezvous there with Volner and his team, and then they all would board an Air Force C-17 Globemaster that would depart as soon as the JSOC team and their gear were safely aboard, but no earlier than 1600 Eastern Daylight Time. Chase Williams and his three thoroughbreds had decided that if Bruner wasn’t found by then, he was likely out of the country and they needed to launch downrange.