by Camden Mays
It had been a flurry of activity in the Titan Shield war room. Amy Wiggins and Jason Albright each sifted through a virtual forest of data looking for crumbs of clues that could shed light on Y44 and the Roslin guests.
Additional resources of equipment and a small team of analysts were added to the group. Their mission had priority status. Even with the other resources and mission priority, the work was overwhelming.
Amy and Jason worked with Hernandez to prepare another briefing for McCune. Kingman was looking for constant updates to keep the White House informed. There were many moving parts. Cameron, Amir, and Capps were in Yemen for their mission and Jacobs was in New York City looking for Grant Ramsey.
The FBI field office in Tucson along with sources in the investigation had started putting some of the pieces together. They were both surprised and nervous when Director Henry Kingman and Charles Thompson from the FBI entered the room with McCune.
Amy Wiggins pointed at the screens on the wall and gave a summary.
“The Bomber has been identified as Yasser Nassif. Suspected AIJB cell member and was an international student at ASU from Saudi Arabi. The FBI is working on his known associates.”
Albright jumped in, “Thanks to the quick grab of surveillance video footage we were able to catch this…”
Albright clicked the video feed of the white van and three suspects dressed in chemical suits going in after the blast and coming out with cases and leaving the parking area.
“Looks like Cole’s theory may be right,” he added. “They were after something. The bomb gave them entrance and disguised their real objective.”
“What the hell is in those cases?” Thompson asked with frustration.
“We’re working on that, sir, but our hypothesis is VX or some other agent.”
“What about the van?” McCune asked.
“We were able to get a read on the license plate as it was leaving and the team ran it through the system and got a couple of hits from automatic license plate readers. The Tucson field team and State Police were able to narrow the search range with the ALPR’s data and found the van about three miles off of Interstate 10, but it was burnt out.”
“Any way to ID the three suspects?”
“We don’t have any footage of them without their chemical masks on,” Amy replied, “but, we know that Nassif had requested to speak with Bashar, one of the Roslin employees killed in the blast. Our team combed through Bashar’s social post and found photos of his parents and sister from Yemen.” Amy continued after a brief pause, “and they match the hostage victim photos Capps took in Al Mukalla when he grabbed Abdul Mahib. Our theory is that Bashar was being forced to assist AIJB.”
“Shanelle, how much longer before we need to dial into CENTCOM?” Kingman asked his assistant.
“You have about forty minutes, sir.”
“It’s going to be a long ass day,” Kingman grunted to no one in particular.
✽✽✽
Sayhut, Yemen
They shoved Hasni in the back seat between Cameron and Amir. The driver, Kallah Majid, swerved to avoid hitting a woman in the street causing Sanders to yell out. “Easy man!”
They raced to keep pace with the lead car that had Master Chief Baker, Trujillo and Darryl Capps with the other driver. Cameron was seated on the passenger side in the back seat and turned his head around to see if the third vehicle with the remainder of the team was keeping pace.
Sara Wang’s voice came through the coms.
“Bravo team, be advised we see lots of activity on the streets. It looks like they may be trying to set up roadblocks. Take your next left.”
“Copy that,” replied Baker. “Boys keep your eyes peeled.”
Corey Sanders of the Bravo Seal Team looked to Amir and Cameron in the backseat. “Be ready. This may get hairy.”
Even in the scramble to secure him into the vehicle Hasni remained stoic. The operation had been pulled off without a hitch up until now. The squeeze was made easier due to the fact Hasni preferred to travel with as small of a security detail as possible. It was a tactic to stay off the radar of spying eyes. This time it had backfired.
The convoy of cars made a left onto the main road leading out to the north end of the town. Cameron looked across Hasni to Amir.
“Why is he so calm?”
Hasni said something in Arabic. Amir had a puzzled look on his face as the driver of their car suddenly stopped the vehicle. The lead car with Capps and crew continued ahead now about forty yards in front of them.
Sanders was yelling at the driver. “What are you doing?”
Wang was yelling over the coms. “You have multiple enemy combatants inbound.”
Cameron turned to look for the proximity of the third car only to see it driving in reverse as over the coms they heard, “RPG!”
A loud explosion erupted near the front of the first car as it lifted the car almost perpendicular off the ground. The blast violently shook Cameron’s car as a second blast hit toward the rear car.
Cameron could hear the sound of shots fired as Sanders left the front passenger seat to rush to the aid of those in the front car.
Just as Sanders cleared the front bumper, the driver in Cameron’s car quickly turned a hundred and eighty degrees and shot Amir in the head. He swung his arm left to aim for Cameron but before he could get his shot off the .40 caliber bullets from Cameron’s Glock 22 ripped through and over the seat back, the final one hitting the driver in the head and sending him into the afterlife.
Cameron tried to collect himself. He saw Capps working his way back but appeared wounded. There were faint sounds over the coms, but he could not make them out as his hearing had been impacted by the close-range gunfire.
There was no sign of Baker, but Trujillo and Sanders were laying down gunfire. He looked to the rear and saw the third car had avoided the RPG but was cut off. Cameron knew he needed to get in the fight, so he quickly shoved Hasni’s bound hands up to the handlebar above Amir’s body, and zip tied him.
He jumped out of the vehicle and shouldered his M4A1 in the low and ready position and took cover behind the engine block.
The fight was a cacophony fully automatic fire. The enemy had them pinned in from various positions. The thick smoke, debris, and dust filled the air. That along with Cameron’s adrenalin made his breathing difficult. Still, at this point, he could only hear muffled sounds over his coms.
He aimed at his first target and with two shots put him down. He saw more coming from the rear of the vehicle, so he positioned himself to the front and began to fire. Another one went down. Why aren’t they shooting back? Cameron thought they’re afraid they will hit Hasni.
“Sanders! Your 9:00,” yelled Trujillo. Before Sanders could react, he was hit twice.
Cameron saw the shooter and sent a volley of fire putting him down. He loaded a fresh magazine and raced to Sanders who was bleeding from his left shoulder and hip. Bullets flew around them as Cameron pulled Sanders to Hasni’s vehicle for cover.
“I’m alright. Go get Capps,” he said.
Cameron came around the front of the car, fired at the movement to his right and loaded a fresh magazine. He saw Capps shooting and reloading in a prone position near the rear tire of the blasted first vehicle.
Trujillo had worked his way to a stucco wall and was firing in the opposite direction. The wall was getting whittled with the barrage of bullets from the enemy. His cover would not last long.
“Capps, I’m coming for you. Cover me,” Cameron yelled over his coms.
Cameron sprinted a few yards, took a knee and shot at the enemy. Hurried again, took a knee and fired. Before making the last sprint, he heard Trujillo shout over the coms, “Get Baker out of the front seat, we’ll cover you.” Hearings back, thank God.
Cameron reloaded again on his way to the passenger side of the front car where he saw the blood-soaked and burnt Baker lying on top of the dead driver.
Shots were pinging off of the hood of
the car. He heard Wang over the coms calling out to the team’s sniper, “Rooftop, Bravo six, rooftop.” He looked through the busted-out windshield to find the shooter and instead noticed an RPG swinging toward his position from the rooftop directly in front of the vehicle. He struggled to pull Baker up. Another glance to the roof confirmed Cameron’s fears as the RPG shooter to aim at him. Then suddenly the shooter’s head busted like a watermelon.
“Rooftop clear,” Cameron heard the sniper’s voice over his coms. Thank God!
Cameron finally pulled Baker out and threw him over his right shoulder.
“Moving.” He called out over his coms, grunting his way toward Hasni’s car through a wave of screaming bullets.
As he passed Trujillo’s position, he took a hit to his armor on the left side of his back. He heard a loud thump and felt the pounding as if someone had hit him with a sledgehammer.
It knocked him to the ground. As he stumbled forward, he attempted to stop his fall with his left arm, but the fall with the weight of Baker jammed his shoulder back into its socket.
Baker’s body fell over in front of him. Cameron worked to catch his breath from the shot to his back. He struggled with the dead weight of the warrior’s body but finally was able to put him onto his right shoulder again as pain shot down his useless left arm now.
As Cameron struggled to get back up, a bullet ricocheted into his left thigh. Just a flesh wound. Burns like hell, still able to move, he told himself, trying to will his body into submission and lift himself and the two-hundred pound Baker.
Then he felt Trujillo help pull him up.
“Get moving! I’ll get Capps!” Trujillo yelled.
Cameron was still twenty yards from Hasni’s car and began to think this might be his last day. He grunted, struggling to keep Baker on his shoulder. Those final few yards seemed too far to Cameron, but he eventually made it to Hasni’s car placing Baker in the back seat. He gasped for air and heard other team members over the coms.
“We’re coming up on your six. Watch the friendly fire.”
Fighting to the rear had dissipated, as the rest of Bravo team had broken through and advanced toward Hasni’s car.
The third car pulled in tight to Cameron’s position. The seal team dispersed laying down a fury of fire on the enemy. In less than two minutes the fight was over.
They threw their brothers in arms into the vehicles and the two remaining cars stuffed with passengers alive and dead raced to the extraction point.
Medic kits were out, and bandages applied to the wounds. They tried to revive Baker in vain. Cameron looked over to Amir’s body and then at Hasni. The man he had studied, analyzed and dogged for nearly four years was finally caught. But at what cost? He thought.
Hasni stared back into Cameron’s eyes.
“Are you prepared for a long dark winter?”
“It’s springtime in America, asshole!” Sanders yelled out before Cameron could answer.
The team carried their dead and severely wounded onto the chopper first and then assumed a tight formation as Cameron took Hasni by the arm leading him to the helicopter.
When they approached the chopper door, Hasni’s head snapped forward, and blood flew out as he fell to the ground.
“Sniper fire!” was called out over the coms. The shot was not heard over the sound of the helicopter.
Cameron instinctively squatted down and was still holding Hasni’s arm when the captain’s voice shook him out of it.
“Get your asses on board! We’ve to get out of here!”
Nearly 1,000 yards away the deadly Russian sniper laid motionless in his covered prone position. Peering through the scope of his rifle, he confirmed what he knew the moment he squeezed the trigger. His target was neutralized.
As they lifted off the ground, Cameron stared at Hasni’s body lying at his feet on the floor of the helicopter. One of the Bravo team members who had been in the third car threw a brown leather satchel in Cameron’s lap.
“You better hope there’s something in there to make all of this worth it,” he said glaring at Cameron. “Fucking spooks.”
“Shut the fuck up, Reed!” yelled Trujillo.
“This spook saved my ass!” Sanders added.
“Bullshit! A drone strike would have been cleaner than this shit,” Reed continued.
“All y’all better shut up before I throw you out of this bird,” Capps ended the argument holding the bandage on his right leg.
As the helicopter flew over the ocean waves, Cameron sat in silence contemplating the day’s events. He had witnessed death most violently and suddenly. Amir, Baker, and even Hasni.
And there was the thought of the lives he had taken. He put down at least three of the enemy in the firefight with the rifle, but the first one was different. The driver in the car was at close range. He was confident the memory of Kallah Majid’s eyes, as life left his body, would forever haunt him.
CHAPTER 14
Counterterrorism Center - Langley
Amy Wiggins stole an anxious peek at the eight clocks on the wall to her right representing the current time in some of the major parts of the world. She knew the operation in Yemen was well past its scheduled completion. Even enough time for mission debriefing had passed, by her estimation. As each minute clicked off without news, she grew even more distressed.
“You’re worried about them.” Albright gathered.
“Guys, remember the Border Patrol agent killed a few weeks ago? It was all over the news.” Hernandez said interrupting Albright and Wiggins.
“Yeah.”
“Well, you know they originally thought that the suspect had been killed but later discovered it was the body of a tribal police officer. The suspect had escaped. One of the captured coyotes had given a description of the suspect, indicating that he was not Latino but believed him to be Middle-Eastern.”
Hernandez continued reading from the report he was now holding.
“Here is the sketch that we have, can we run it through the software flux capacitor thing a ma jig and see if get a match?”
“Absolutely!”
Amy grabbed the paper.
“Flux capacitor?” Albright asked in disbelief.
“Either he is exhausted, or the veneer is finally coming down,” Amy whispered.
Hernandez looked around the room, let out a loud sigh as if he had accomplished his great task for the day and wanted to leave while he was ahead. So, he did.
“No, it’s still him.” Albright shook his head in disappointment.
“Guys, you’re going to want to see this,” shouted an analyst in the corner.
“What is it?”
“Putting it on the big screen now.”
The monitor showed breaking news coverage of a ‘Roslin Executive found dead in his Santa Monica home. Victim of an apparent suicide.’
“You better let Hannah know,” Amy suggested to Albright.
✽✽✽
New York City, NY
Hannah Jacobs slowed the black sedan to a stop and looked across the street to the apartment building where Grant Ramsey reportedly lived. So far, her trip to the Big Apple had been very frustrating. Her visit to Vistacom, Ramsey’s employer, had tied up most of her day.
After dealing with an overly resistant gatekeeper, she finally met with the Chief Legal Officer, but only after a long wait. It was Sunday, and the executive did not appreciate having to make his way into the corporate office on the day he typically would be off or working from home.
She learned that they had not had contact with Ramsey for a few days and the company had not been overly concerned because of his role and frequent travels. But most importantly, Hannah was surprised to learn that Vistacom did not have acquisition plans for Roslin Environmental.
She was scheduled to check in at Langley soon. She was anxious to hear about Cameron’s mission but wanted to see what the search at Grant Ramsey’s had turned up.
As she worked her way up the stairs of the apartme
nt building, she received a text for Albright that read, ‘Garrison found dead in his home, looks like suicide.’
‘Wow, call you soon, headed into GR apt,’ she typed.
Jacobs met two other FBI agents who were at Ramsey’s apartment, searching for clues of his whereabouts. Much like his corporate office, his apartment was neatly arranged and appeared to be used infrequently. She rifled through folders in his home office desk, trying to understand his actions.
“Agent Jacobs,” one the agents called from the living room. “Over here.”
The agent pointed to an eight by ten picture of a sailboat.
“Take a look behind it.”
✽✽✽
Sitting outside in a dark sedan, Grant Ramsey and his female companion watched on their tablet as Special Agent Hannah Jacobs approached the hidden lens.
“She is getting too close,” Katrina Nikolin pointed out to Ramsey.
Katrina Nikolin was a contradiction in so many ways; she could be as deadly as she was graceful, as intimidating as she was irresistible and as chilling as she was attractive. While she favored the blond look, she was often brunette, light brown and even a redhead, but always beautiful.
Recruited by the Russian SVR from an orphanage as a preteen, the thirty-two-year-old was more than beautiful. She was desirable, intelligent, and skilled in ways to kill her enemy. She spoke three languages; Russian, English, and Mandarin. She had mastered the art of seduction and was one of SVR’s most highly prized assets planted in the U.S.
Katrina used her talents to acquire intelligence from a broad range of victims. From comfortable soft target politicians to hardcore high-ranking military officials, her efforts produced a steady stream of valuable intel for her beloved country.
She understood what was at stake for her native land. For her country to survive and flourish, they needed to subdue the greed and power of the U.S. She proudly played her role in sifting away the advantages held by her enemy.
Over the last three years, Katrina had worked on Grant Ramsey, prodding him along to this point. He was a reasonably easy target due to a broken marriage, resentful of those in command, he had a growing appetite in materialism, and of course, his insatiable thirst for carnal pleasures.
