by J B Black
“Imam, what is your name?” Jake asked.
Abdul was distracted as Reb picked up the pliers in his right hand and then looked at his left hand as though he were closely examining it.
“Imam, I asked you a question,” Jake said.
Abdul looked at Jake and said, “My name is Abdul Jamal Aswad.”
Jake had relieved Abdul of his wallet when they had taken him from the mosque. He glanced down at the Florida driver’s license he was holding in his lap where Abdul couldn’t see it. Jake looked in Reb’s direction and gave a barely noticeable nod, indicating that what Abdul had said was correct.
Abdul was watching Reb again. Reb now had his index finger inside the jaws of the pliers and was gripping the handles as though he was crushing his finger.
“Abdul, where do you live?” Jake asked.
Abdul looked back at Jake.
“I live at 600 West Winthrop Avenue in Pensacola, Florida in an apartment in the back of the West Pensacola Islamic Center,” Abdul said.
Jake glanced back at the driver’s license and nodded his head again.
“How old are you Abdul?”
Abdul glanced over at Reb again and saw that Reb was turning the pliers back and forth as though he was trying to wrench his finger out of its socket.
“I am sixty-four years old.”
Another nod.
“Who were the members of the cell you sent to kill Reb Rogers?” Jake asked.
Abdul glanced at Reb to see what he was doing. Reb had put the pliers back down on the table and was picking up the butcher knife with his right hand. Abdul quickly looked back at Jake.
“Tariq, Omar, and Mohamed,” Abdul said.
“Abdul, why did you send them to kill Reb Rogers?”
“Sinbad told me to send them to kill Reb Rogers,” Abdul said. He had started perspiring, profusely.
“Why did Sinbad want Reb Rogers killed?”
Abdul’s brow furrowed as he thought about what Jake had asked him and he said, “Because he’s the Butcher of Lashwan.”
“Abdul, have you ever met Sinbad?”
Abdul couldn’t help himself. He looked at Reb to see what he was doing and saw that he had made a fist of his left hand and was holding it out in front of him. When Reb was sure that Abdul was looking, he extended his left index finger with a flourish and then set his left hand on the table with the index finger still extended. As Abdul watched, Reb looked at the knife in his right hand and then he looked at his left hand with the index finger sticking out. Reb looked at Abdul and then he swung the knife at the extended finger. At the last second, Reb folded his finger back into the fist just before the knife blade thudded into the tabletop.
Abdul turned back to Jake, ashen faced, and said, “Yes. Yes, I have.”
“Where did you meet Sinbad?”
“He came to my mosque,” Abdul said.
“Who is Sinbad, Abdul?” Jake asked.
Abdul glanced toward Reb and saw that Reb was busily pretending to saw away at a finger on his left hand.
“Haaa … ssaaaa … Hassaaaaa …”
Abdul’s head fell forward onto his chest.
“What the hell?” Reb shouted, as he stood up, knocking his chair over backwards in the process.
Jake jumped out of his chair and told Reb to get Abdul out of the chair before running into the kitchen. He was back in a moment with a portable defibrillator that he kept in his go bag. Jake ran around the table to where Reb had used his tactical knife to slice through the layers of duct tape to free Abdul from the chair. Abdul was now lying on his back on the floor with his knees bent up in the air because his shoes were still nailed to the floor and Reb was slicing through Abdul’s shoelaces so he could free his feet from the shoes.
Jake placed the defibrillator on the floor next to Abdul and then ripped open Abdul’s shirt baring his hairy chest. Jake quickly snatched out two handfuls of chest hair and then attached the electrodes to Abdul’s chest as best he could.
Reb managed to get both of Abdul’s feet free of his shoes and his legs stretched out just as Jake yelled, “Clear!”
CHAPTER 40
The Farm
Off County Road 38
Summerdale, Alabama
Sunday, April 18, 2010
4:20 a.m. Central Time
Reb, Jake, and Honey were standing over Abdul’s body. Jake had zapped Abdul three times with the portable defibrillator trying to resuscitate Abdul’s lifeless body. It had been to no avail. Unknown to them at the time, Abdul had a bad heart and the stress of the interrogation had been too much for him.
“Of all the lousy luck,” Jake said. “He was just about to tell us who Sinbad is and he has to go and have a heart attack.”
Jake held his right hand out in front of him making a C with his thumb and his trigger finger. “We were this close. He was saying the name. Probably was trying to say Hassan. That’s what it sounded like he was trying to say and now we’re back to square fucking one.”
Reb looked at his wristwatch and saw that the time was twenty minutes after four in the morning. “I don’t know about the two of you, but I’m bushed. Jake, there’s a brand new bed in the guest bedroom you can use. Honey and I will bunk down in the other bedroom. We can put the Imam’s body in the chest freezer in the pantry for the time being, grab some sleep and, after we’re rested, we can take the body up near the shooting range and bury it before going back to the condo. Anyway, something tells me this isn’t over by a long shot.”
Reb grabbed the body by the arms and Jake grabbed the legs and they lifted the body and carried it out of the dining room, through the kitchen, and into the kitchen’s large walk-in pantry. Honey had gone ahead of them and opened the lid to the large 22 cubic foot chest freezer Reb had purchased for the next hunting season. Reb and Jake set the body down inside the freezer in a folded position and shut the lid. Then, they went to their respective bedrooms to catch some much needed sleep.
* * *
After sleeping into the middle of the afternoon, Honey fixed them all some sandwiches and they ate their late lunch at the kitchen table. When they finished, Reb made the pronouncement that it wasn’t getting any earlier and that he was going to go out to the barn behind the farmhouse and get his tractor so they could bury the body and get back home before the day was completely gone.
Jake and Honey stood on the back porch and watched as Reb went to the barn. A few minutes later they heard the sound of an engine cranking and then Reb drove out of the barn on a John Deere 110 tractor he’d picked up second-hand a few months earlier for doing chores around the farm. The tractor was equipped with a front end loader attachment and a backhoe attachment.
Reb drove the tractor right up to the back porch and raised the loader bucket to a height that would make it easy to load Abdul’s body. After getting down from the tractor, Reb and Jake went inside to the pantry and removed Abdul’s body from the chest freezer. They carried the body out to the back porch and dropped it inside the loader bucket.
Reb climbed back on the tractor and drove off down the dirt road that led to his shooting range about three quarters of a mile away.
Honey and Jake got in the SUV and followed behind Reb with Honey doing the driving.
Even though the condition of the dirt road was much improved since Reb had purchased the property and there were no longer any major ruts or washouts because he was doing a good job of maintaining the road, Reb kept the tractor’s speed down to a slow walk so that the body wouldn’t be bounced out of the loader bucket.
After they arrived at the shooting range, Reb spent a while looking around the area for a good spot to bury the body. Reb had plans to do some more projects on the farm in the future and he didn’t want to bury the body and then have to move it later.
Reb finally decided on a location not too far from the shooting range. He backed the tractor into place and lowered the front bucket to the ground. He got out of the seat, flipped the swivel seat over and moved around an
d sat back down in the seat at the controls for the backhoe attachment. He lowered both of the stabilizer arms. Then, while Honey and Jake watched, he started digging.
Thirty-five minutes later, Reb had dug a hole that was about eight feet long by four feet wide by eight feet deep. Jake helped him get the body out of the front bucket. Together they unfolded the body and then carried it over to the hole and dropped it in. Reb climbed back onto the tractor. Half an hour later, he had filled the hole back in and compacted the loose dirt as best he could.
It didn’t occur to Reb to offer any words over the grave of Abdul or to commend his soul to his maker. Reb just did not have any more sympathy for the man who had sent the three jihadis to kill him than he had had for the three jihadis when he had thrown them to the sharks. They got what they deserved.
As far as the rest of the world was concerned, Imam Abdul Aswad and the three-member jihadist terrorist cell from the West Pensacola Islamic Center had disappeared from the face of the earth, without a trace.
By the time Reb, Honey, and Jake arrived back at the farmhouse and had cleaned up a bit, it was after seven. They piled into Reb’s SUV and headed back to Reb’s condo at Seaside Beach looking forward to getting a good night’s sleep.
CHAPTER 41
Pensacola International Airport
Pensacola, Florida
Sunday, April 18, 2010
5:59 p.m. Central Time
Delta flight 1236 from New York to Pensacola taxied to the terminal. When the gangway was connected to the jet, Randall Wilson got up from his seat, stretched, then grabbed his carry on luggage from the overhead bin above his seat and headed for the exit. He was one of the first in line to get off the plane when the door was opened. Being seated in first class had its advantages.
As Randall exited the passenger boarding bridge, he found himself on the second floor of the terminal. He took the escalator to the ground floor and, once he was past the restricted area, he started looking for the person who was to pick him up.
He had almost reached the front entrance of the terminal when he spotted a young bearded man who was obviously of middle-eastern descent holding a placard above his head that read MR. WILSON in big letters.
Randall walked over to the young bearded man, dropped his luggage, embraced him, and, using the recognition code he had been given, said, “It’s so good to see you, Larry.”
When Randall released him and stepped back, the young bearded man replied, “It’s good to see you, uncle.”
Satisfied that this was the person who had been sent to pick him up, Randall picked up his bags and said, “Lead on, Larry.”
The young bearded man turned and walked out of the terminal with Randall following. At the first trash container they came to, the young man disposed of the placard that read MR. WILSON.
They walked in silence until they reached a white, late model Toyota Camry in the short-term parking lot. Using the key fob, the young bearded man unlocked the car and popped the trunk. Inside the trunk was a large black nylon bag. Randall put his luggage in the trunk alongside it. Then he opened the bag and checked the contents to make sure that everything he had requested had been provided and found that all was there.
After zipping the bag closed, Randall closed the trunk lid and held out his hand for the key fob. He was about to ask the young bearded man if he could drop him off somewhere, but the young man had already turned and was walking away.
Randall got in the driver’s seat, started the car, activated the car’s GPS navigation system, and entered the address he had for Reb Rogers’ residence in Seaside Beach, Alabama.
The drive from the airport in Pensacola to Seaside Beach was uneventful and, when Randall arrived at Rogers’ address, he parked in one of the visitor parking spots on the third level parking deck of the garage not too far from Rogers’ assigned parking spots.
Randall opened the trunk and removed the bag with the weapons in it along with his carry on bag containing his other gear. He removed a small covert surveillance camera equipped with a wireless transmitter from his carry on bag and placed it in a position where he could watch the parking spots assigned to Rogers. Randall then took his bags, strolled over to the west elevator, and rode the elevator up to the twelfth floor.
When the elevator stopped on the twelfth floor, Randall got off and walked down the breezeway, past Rogers’ condo, past the middle elevator, all the way down the breezeway to the east elevator where he turned around and walked back to Rogers’ condo.
When Randall arrived outside the door to Rogers’ condo, he rang the doorbell. There was no answer. He rang the doorbell again and, when there was still no answer, he hammered on the door several times loudly with his fist and waited for an answer.
Randall was banging on the door for a second time, when he heard someone yelling. He stopped banging on the door and looked in the direction of the yelling and saw an elderly gentleman standing in the breezeway outside the door of the next condo down the hall.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Rusty said. “Are you trying to raise the dead?”
Randall smiled at what Rusty had said and started walking down the breezeway toward him. He said, “I’m looking for Reb Rogers. Do you know if he’s home?”
“What’s your business with him?” Rusty asked, suspiciously.
“Oh, I’m a friend of a friend who told me that if I was ever in Seaside Beach, I should look up Reb and he’d see that I would have a memorable visit,” Randall said, in a jovial manner, all the while closing the distance between himself and Rusty as he continued walking toward Rusty.
“Don’t come any closer,” Rusty warned.
“Could you give Reb a message for me?” Randall asked, getting closer.
“Hold it right there, mister,” Rusty said, reaching with his left hand and pulling up the right side of his shirt bottom revealing the holstered handgun he was wearing on his right hip.
Randall kept right on moving toward Rusty while reaching inside his open coat with his right hand.
Rusty’s right hand was coming up to draw his gun from the holster.
Before he could do so, Randall closed the gap and hit Rusty in the head with the pistol he’d stuck in the waistband of his trousers before coming upstairs. Rusty fell down, unconscious.
Randall tossed his bags into the open door to Rusty’s condo. Then he lifted Rusty under the shoulders and dragged him inside his condo and shut the door.
Randall dragged Rusty down the hallway into the living room where he then bound his wrists together behind his back with a plastic zip tie, put a cloth gag in his mouth and tied it tightly in place behind his head, and then sat him down on the couch.
Randall retrieved his bags from where they had landed in the hallway, took them to the living room, removed two more miniature surveillance cameras out of his carry on bag, and went back out into the breezeway. He returned quickly, shutting and locking the door behind him. Although no one had come out to check on the disturbance he and the old man had made, Randall did a quick inspection of Rusty’s condo and discovered that the old man was alone.
Taking a laptop computer out of his carry on bag, Randall placed it on the coffee table in the living room. He found a wall jack for the cable connection and plugged into it for Internet access.
Randall powered up his laptop. After it booted up, he checked his Internet connection and found that the elderly man had a high speed service connection. He started one of the programs on his laptop and the laptop’s screen display split into four separate images labeled Camera 1, Camera 2, Camera 3, and Camera 4. Since there was no Camera 4, that image was blacked out. Currently there was no activity showing on any of the cameras other than the digital readout showing the date and time to the nearest second.
Randall selected the programs option to go full screen on a single camera view. He started with Camera 1. Camera 1 was directed toward Rogers’ parking spots and the view showed that both parking spots were still unoccupied.
He switched to Camera 2. Camera 2 was pointed down the breezeway from where Randall had attached it to the wall above Rusty’s door back toward the west elevator. The breezeway was clear in that view.
He switched to Camera 3. Camera 3 was pointed in the opposite direction down the breezeway from above Rusty’s door back toward Rogers’ condo. The breezeway was clear in that view, too.
Randall selected another option of the program and he had a split screen again showing all of the views including the blanked out Camera 4.
Satisfied that the cameras and the surveillance software program were working properly, Randall typed in the address for his website on the darknet in the browser he was using. Once it came up, he typed in some commands that linked the video feed from the surveillance cameras to be displayed on his website. Randall resized the display of the surveillance software program and his browser so that he could look at them side by side to compare the video. There was only a slight lag on what was showing on his website and what was showing on the program’s display on his laptop.
Randall looked at his watch and saw that the local time was seven forty-five, which meant that it would be eight forty-five in Washington, DC where Hassan was located. Randall took out his cell phone and called Hassan. When Hassan answered, Randall said, “Our friend wasn’t here when I arrived so I have set up video cameras so I can keep an eye out for his arrival. The live feed is being uploaded to my website in case you would like to see what happens in real time when he arrives.”
Hassan asked Randall to hold on while he went to another room and when he got there Randall gave him the website’s address. Randall waited for Hassan to verify that he had access to the website and then Randall said, “I have no idea how long a wait we’re in for, but I will call you once our friend shows up so you won’t miss any of the action.” After Hassan confirmed that he understood, Randall broke the connection.
