by Vince Flynn
Hakim poked his head out the door, flashing his smile with a slight gap between his top two front teeth. “Karim, you are a genius.”
Karim glanced nervously over his shoulder at his men.
Hakim saw the concern and moaned, “When are you going to get over it?”
“Maybe never.”
Lowering his voice so the others wouldn’t hear, he said, “Then you are a fool.”
If any other man had spoken to him this way he would have considered killing him, but it was his old friend so he let it pass. As a devout Muslim he abhorred drugs, but his options were limited.
“I love you like a brother, but you are so naive to the ways of the world.”
Karim was proud of the fact that he was naive to such ways. They were ways that led one to stray from the path. Three years earlier he had convinced Hakim to come fight in the holy war and the two had made the journey to Pakistan together. Only a year out of graduate school, Karim had seen little of the world. Drugs were nonexistent in Makkah, the town where they had grown up. After college his parents had tried desperately to find him a wife with the hope that it would prevent him from running off and fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq. In his mind Iraq was never a consideration. The Muslim world was a better place without Saddam Hussein, and he did not want to give his life fighting for Baath party thugs so they could once again turn on their Saudi neighbors and repress their fellow Muslims.
So it was off to Pakistan to join the fight with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Karim had prepared himself for all of the mental and physical challenges, but he could never have guessed the role that the heroin trade played in the struggle. Opium was everywhere. It was cultivated and collected and sold and distributed. Many of the foreign fighters were addicted to it. For them it was the best way to cope with the hardship of the mountains and fighting an unseen enemy who could strike at you from over the horizon any time, day or night. For the Taliban it was their lifeblood.
Karim did not worry that he would fall under the spell of the highly addictive heroin, but he worried about his friend Hakim. Even more troubling, though, was the complete lack of judgment by the al-Qaeda leadership. That they would lower themselves to the status of common drug dealers was beyond belief. That they would so willingly participate in something that the prophet was so against was an affront to their very faith, and it deeply affected his willingness to volunteer on their behalf.
Karim looked at the half-loaded pallet, shook his head sadly, and said, “I don’t know if he will forgive us for this.”
“Oh,” Hakim moaned, “there are times when I would like to choke you.” He jumped out of the plane and walked over to the pallet, where he picked up one of the bricks. “Do you have any idea how much this is worth?”
“You told me if we were lucky we could get a million dollars for it.”
“Yes,” laughed Hakim, “but you never said there would be this much. You were talking about loading several duffel bags. This…” Hakim backed away, held out his hands, and spun in a circle. “This is worth…I’m not even sure…ten million, maybe more.”
Karim could not hide his surprise. “Ten million?”
“Yes. Maybe more.”
“I had no idea…”
“Now how do you feel about drugs?” Hakim grabbed his friend and put his arm around his shoulder. “I told you this would work. Think of what you can do with that type of money. You will never again have to ask them for permission. You will be able to fund and run your operations.”
Karim smiled ever so slightly. He would never forget what his friend had told him nearly two years earlier while they were sitting by the campfire one night. Karim had been in a particularly pious mood that night and was angry with Hakim for spending too much time with the drug-dealing Afghanis. The argument had started with a simple premise on Hakim’s part: How was opium any different from oil? Karim was shocked by the stupidity of the question, but not for long. Hakim stated his case very clearly, that opium was a resource no different than any other commodity. When Karim tried to argue that oil did not destroy people’s lives, Hakim had laughed at him. What good had all of the oil profits done Saudi Arabia? They had discussed this many times while in college. That oil was corrupting their country. Hakim furthered his point by saying that Karim was a hypocrite. That he willingly took oil money to wage their jihad, but somehow the profits from the local crop were not good enough for the cause.
That night they had gone to bed as mad at each other as they had ever been, but later Karim began to ask himself what Allah would want. He wanted them to win, that was for certain, but at any cost? Karim wasn’t sure, but as the al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership proved increasingly inept, he’d been looking for other ways. Other avenues to carry the fight to the enemy without the aid of al-Qaeda. Karim left them not long after that. He wanted to make his own money. Money he would never be able to make in Saudi Arabia, for there was no upward mobility. The royal family and their friends had a monopoly on power and wealth.
When Karim laid eyes on the airstrip and the drug operation the first person he thought of was Hakim. Over the next month he thought more and more about having a backup plan and isolating himself from al-Qaeda. In a coded e-mail he sent the idea to Hakim, who immediately embraced it. When the other two cells disappeared, Karim made up his mind that he would have Hakim fly them out.
“This is a very good day, Karim.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Are you going to smile? At least show you are happy.”
“Allah likes us to be humble.”
“Allah also wants you to be happy and today is a day for you to be happy.”
Karim allowed himself a brief smile, and then he remembered what lay ahead. His expression turned solemn and Hakim asked him what was wrong. Karim looked at his men, sitting on the ground, drinking from their canteens. Within a week or two they would all be dead. Those perfect young bodies so full of life would be smashed and broken. Probably riddled with bullets. His only consolation was that they would make America feel pain. Real fear, and then there would be the second act and the third and the fourth. After their success, many more would step up to take their place. They would hit America with wave after wave. He would lead a real jihad. Not one grand attack and then sit back and do nothing. The current leadership of al-Qaeda disgusted him.
“What is wrong?” Hakim asked.
“When we begin killing Americans, I will allow myself to smile. Until then, there will be no celebration.”
CHAPTER 30
WASHINGTON, D.C.
NASH hopped on the Beltway and circled back around the city in a counterclockwise motion. He’d made three seemingly random stops: a gas station, a coffee shop, and a drugstore. Both his phones were turned off and the batteries removed. The internal GPS computer on the minivan had been disabled long ago. This way if they ever tried to pull his records there would be no record of his stopping at these various locations every week. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks on New York and D.C., none of this had been necessary. In Saudi Arabia and Syria, yes. He was used to being followed when he operated over there, but not here in America.
When they’d decided to launch their own operation in America, though, everything changed. For political reasons, the FBI wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of sending deep-cover operatives into mosques. The idea had been suggested by many people, more times than anyone could count. The folks at the bureau knew it was the right thing to do in terms of national security, but they also knew whoever signed off on it would be crucified up on the Hill, so the bureau found a middle ground. Their solution was to stay out of the mosques and instead focus on Muslim charities. It was a good start and early on they had a lot of success, especially on the money side. That’s what the bureau was really good at. They could investigate the hell out anything. Throw a hundred bright and motivated agents at a problem and inhale it. Collect every little bread crumb until they’d pieced together an amazing picture of what was going on.<
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With the charities, they found out that a lot of these seemingly innocuous organizations were actually fronts for more militant terrorist groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and al-Qaeda. Just like organized crime, the groups adapted. They changed the way they did things and slowly withdrew behind the walls of their mosques, and the FBI stopped at the imaginary line. A line shrouded in the First Amendment. The right to practice one’s religion, to say what you’d like, and associate with whomever you saw fit. They’d beat this one to death—“they” being all of the men and women who staffed the National Counterterrorism Center, or NCTC. The nerve center of the fight against terrorism in all its emerging forms.
The few who dared to speak out said that this was not about the First Amendment. The decision to stay away from the mosques was political correctness at its apogee. It was a fear of being painted bigots for spying on minorities practicing a minority religion, and it was born out of the illogical, emotion-based, feel-good philosophy of the sixties. Because Islam was different, they dared not criticize it. One of Nash’s counterparts at the FBI summed it up best one time when he said, “If four abortion clinics were blown up tomorrow, killing hundreds of people, and a group of white men who were all part of a Southern Baptist antiabortion group took credit for the attacks, do you think we would hesitate for a second to send undercover agents into their churches?”
The question was never answered. The word came down from on high that they were to continue investigating the charities, but they were to stay away from the mosques. That had been nearly two years ago and that had supposedly been when Kennedy, Stan Hurley, and a few select senators got together and agreed that something needed to be done. They pulled Rapp and Nash in and gave them their walking orders. Everything would be funded off the books. A budget of ten million was provided to start with. The initial million was culled from safety deposit boxes at an old bank in Williamsburg. More was flown in from overseas and not a single receipt was kept. Everything was shredded every step of the way. Kennedy had placed her trust in Rapp and Nash that they would spend the money wisely, and they did. The hardest part had been recruiting the agents. They started with four and hooked them with service to their country and a pile of cash. One million per guy, all tax-free, and they could choose to keep as much or as little of it offshore as possible.
They targeted four mosques. One in Washington, one in Philadelphia, and two in the New York area. They were now up to eight agents, and the intel was pouring in. It was where they’d first learned that al-Qaeda was training commando teams to send to America for coordinated attacks against individuals and infrastructure. The last six months had been an intelligence bonanza. They were steadily connecting the dots of a terrorist network that was being built to help fund and support jihad in America. Two cells had been intercepted and a third had finally been confirmed. And now he was being asked to pull the plug on the entire thing. Roll it up and make it go away. Get ready for the investigation.
Nash pulled through the security checkpoint at the NCTC and parked in the underground garage. He didn’t know what he dreaded more, going upstairs or having to go before the Intelligence Committee later in the afternoon. At least with most of the people on the Intelligence Committee he knew where he stood, which was pretty much that he didn’t respect three-quarters of them. Upstairs was filled with people he liked. People he respected and people he was going to have to lie to yet again. The internal conflict was wearing on him, which made him think of Hurley and his comments on how it was all tied together.
Nash put his phones back together, turned them on, and headed for the elevators. When the doors opened on the sixth floor, he forced himself to get out. He walked across the carpeted hallway, held his card up against the black pad, and waited to hear the click that would allow him to enter the bullpen. It came and he opened the door and stepped into the big room. Men and women from virtually every federal agency that had anything to do with law enforcement, intelligence gathering, and the military were present. They were sprawled out across the gymnasium-sized room in working pods designed to make them more efficient. On the far wall was a massive screen the size of a neighborhood movie theater. It was flashing images from eight different news organizations.
Nash didn’t look at them, but he could feel the hush spread through the buzz of the room and knew that one by one they were turning to note his arrival. Nash had spent much of the day bracing himself for what was about to happen. His voice mail was full, and he hadn’t bothered to clear it. He figured he’d wait until he could sit down at his desk and call it up on speakerphone. Besides, the people who really mattered knew not to call that number.
Nash broke left and headed down the side of the room. He passed several glass-walled offices and kept his chin down. He’d made it to within a few feet of his own office when he heard his name barked by an all-too-familiar voice. Nash slowly turned and faced Art Harris. The forty-two-year-old was the bureau’s deputy assistant director of their CTC division. He was almost six feet tall, had receding close-cropped hair, and mocha-colored skin. He was extremely fit for a man who spent his days behind a desk.
Harris had one hand resting on the hilt of his 357 Sig and the other held a copy of the Post. “You want to tell me what in the hell this is all about?”
“Good afternoon, Art.”
“Don’t good afternoon me. Explain this.”
“There’s nothing to explain.”
“Bullshit.”
Nash pointed at Harris’s hip. “Are you gonna draw on me, cowboy?”
Harris, feeling slightly foolish with everyone watching, took his hand off his gun. “Don’t change the subject. I asked you a direct question.”
“I wasn’t aware that I answered to you, Art.”
“Don’t play games with me, Nash. I’ll have your ass transferred out of here by sundown.”
“Please do. Although I might miss watching you play wet nurse.”
Harris shook the paper. “Stop dodging my question.”
“It’s all bullshit, Art.”
“Fiction?”
“Yep.”
“You know I’m no fan of the Post. They usually manage to put their little spin on most of the propaganda they put out there, but I don’t recall them being in the business of just making shit up whole cloth.”
“I don’t know what to tell ya.”
“How about the truth?”
Nash sighed and said, “Art, I don’t know how to say it any other way. I have no idea what that reporter is talking about.”
“If I find out that you’re lying to me, I’m going to nail your ass to the wall.”
“You arrogant prick.” Nash took a couple of steps toward Harris. “You gonna start investigating people based on what’s printed in the Washington Post? Because if that’s the case, maybe we should investigate you guys for being a bunch of nutless pussies.”
Harris took three quick steps forward and got right in Nash’s face. “You want to take this down to the parking garage?”
“You wouldn’t stand a chance, and you know it.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
“I’m sure,” Nash said as he backed away. “Why don’t you call that reporter and find out why he’s printing lies about the CIA. Maybe you could indict him for treason.” Nash slipped into his office and slammed the door. With a smile on his face, he walked over to his desk and looked down at a printed call list. The damn thing was a page and a half long. His wife had called three times. Nash quickly picked out which ones were the most important and then checked his watch. He had about an hour before he’d have to leave for the command performance with the Intelligence Committee. He would have done almost anything to get out of it, but he knew he had no choice. He’d have to sit there and take their pompous shit, and then lie to them, and thank them for their thoughtful and patriotic stewardship.
CHAPTER 31
SENATOR Lonsdale stared up at the vote total on the board and looked around for someone to choke. She’
d waited sixteen years for her party to get control of the Senate, and now with a five-person majority they couldn’t even pass a simple spending resolution. She scanned the well of the Senate in search of the majority whip. She’d never liked the little pudd from Illinois and had led a very vocal opposition to his being given the post. Her dark brown eyes zeroed in on him, and she began muttering a few profanities under her breath.
Then, just as quickly as she’d started, she stopped. A placid expression washed over her face as she remembered the admonishment she’d been given by her entire staff a little over a month ago. Something about her looking old, angry, and constipated. It had taken the little pussies two full weeks to work up the courage to tell her that someone had started a Web site dedicated to her declining looks. It had been a full-blown intervention with eight of them filing into her office with a slide show from the Web site. Her chief of staff, Ralph Wassen, who had not been involved in the conspiracy, stumbled upon the intervention and was appalled. Upon seeing several of the enlarged still images of her deeply lined and contorted face, he announced, to the utter delight of all, that she looked like an angry lesbian. Wassen, in addition to being her closest advisor and friend, was also a queen. His sexual preference gave him the cover to say all kinds of politically incorrect things.
As much as it pained Lonsdale to admit it, they were right. It was as if Mother Nature had sucked all the moisture from her beautiful skin and carved deep lines all over her face. That night she’d gone home and looked through a string of recent photographs and was further depressed. It was as if turning fifty-eight had suddenly aged her a full decade. She’d put on at least five pounds, if not ten. She was getting lazy. Lonsdale was not the type to sit around and feel sorry for herself for very long, so the very next day she went on a crash diet, doubled the number of cigarettes she allowed herself from four a day to eight, and began walking and taking the steps every chance she had. She made an appointment with a dermatologist and had already completed two dermabrasion sessions that hurt like hell, but they appeared to be helping.
