A
LL six men stood at parade rest, their hands clasped behind their backs. Each one was dressed in black SWAT gear replete with Kevlar helmets and goggles. Their tactical vests were loaded with extra ammunition, grenades, and ribbon charges. Underneath those vests each man wore his martyr vest; thirty pounds of C-4 with hundreds of imbedded ball bearings. It was a physical feat just to be able to stand with so much gear, let alone maneuver and attack an enemy stronghold.
Karim was about to give them his final address, when Hakim tapped his shoulder. Karim turned and said, “Yes?”
Hakim was hesitant and then said, “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Do what?” he asked, surprised.
“Send them to their deaths.”
“Of course,” Karim responded in an almost lighthearted way.
“Haven’t we had enough success for one day?”
Karim began to laugh. “You can never have enough success in one day. You can never deliver too big a blow to your enemy.”
“The other bomb is set to go off in minutes. You have already achieved so much.” Lowering his voice, he said, “Why not let them live to fight another day?”
Karim searched his friend’s eyes for a moment and then said, “You do not understand…”
“Oh, I understand,” Hakim answered hotly. “This is about you and your glory. It is about you making a name for yourself.”
“Really?” Karim gestured toward his men. “Go ahead and ask them. Ask them if they would like to leave with you right now?”
Hakim looked at the young faces again. He doubted any one of them would abandon the group.
“You doubt me,” Karim said, and then turned to address his men. “Hakim thinks that some of you would prefer to live today.” There was a grumbling among the men. “I think his faith is not as strong as ours. Would any of you men like to skip this mission and leave the country with Hakim?”
In unison, they barked, “No, sir!”
“Would any of you men like me to accompany you on this mission?”
“No, sir!” Their response rang out as one, even louder than the previous response.
Karim turned to his friend and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “Oh well.” Turning back to his men, he said, “You all know how strongly I feel about this next part of the operation. It is one thing to attack unprotected civilian targets. Many less talented could have done the same, although probably not with the precision that we achieved today. This next part of the plan is different, though. This is where we strike at the heart of the enemy. This is where we turn the hunters into the hunted. Are you men ready?”
“Yes, sir!” they barked enthusiastically.
“Good. It has been a great honor leading all of you. I will make sure that all of Islam learns your names and gives thanks every time you are mentioned.” Karim looked from one end of the line to the other and did not allow himself to think of their deaths. He instead chose to think of their arrival in paradise. He glanced at his watch and said, “It is time to leave. Let’s go.”
The six men all hustled over to the black Suburban and climbed in.
Karim stood next to the black Town Car and asked Hakim, “Are you ready?”
“Yes,” said Hakim.
“Then let us leave this place.” He took a final look around and said, “We have done such a good job of hiding our tracks, it is possible the Americans will never know that we have used this place.”
Hakim looked at his friend and with a bit of regret in his voice said, “After today, I am afraid the Americans will hunt us to the ends of the earth.”
“Let them try. You have arranged our departure?”
Hakim nodded. “Everything is taken care of.”
R
APP saw them when he was halfway down the spiral staircase. They were hard to miss. There must have been fifteen of them, at least half of whom were carrying briefcases. They looked like a team of litigators who’d been sent over from a rival law firm for an afternoon of depositions. Rapp saw Art Harris talking to the two men at the front of the pack. It appeared, by the way he was pointing and gesturing, that he was trying to buy Rapp some time.
Rapp let loose a heavy sigh and rolled his sleeves up one more turn. He didn’t have much of a strategy, but one thing was for sure: if these guys wanted to, they had every right to simply push him out of the way and walk out the door with his four prisoners. He had only a couple of cards to play, and neither was likely to intimidate these stone-faced bastards. His only real hope was that these guys would be every bit as pissed-off as he was that three bombs had just gone off in downtown Washington, D.C., killing and injuring hundreds.
Harris turned as Rapp came walking up, and said, “Speak of the devil. Here he is.” Harris gestured to the two men at the head of the group. “Mitch, this is Abe Ciresi, Deputy AG, National Security Division, and Malcolm Smith, Deputy Assistant AG, Criminal Division.”
Rapp stuck out his hand. Ciresi was a little shorter than Rapp and had light red hair. He looked as though he’d probably played football as a kid. Smith was Rapp’s height and whip-thin. Rapp figured him to be one of those guys who got up and ran five miles every morning at 5:00 a.m. “Sorry we’re not meeting under better circumstances.”
Ciresi agreed with the sentiment, but Smith had only one thing on his mind. Looking over Rapp’s shoulder, he asked, “Where are the prisoners?”
Rapp ignored him and returned the slight by looking over Smith’s shoulder. “Boy, you sure did bring a lot of people. I would have thought you guys would be out trying to catch your own bad guys.”
Harris let loose an uncomfortable laugh and took a step back.
Smith, with a troubled frown on his face, looked Rapp over from head to toe and then said, “Let’s step over here, where we can talk in private.”
Ciresi followed and the three of them moved about twenty feet away. Smith unbuttoned his suit coat and set down his briefcase. “I was warned about you, Rapp.”
“Really… by who?” Rapp couldn’t have cared less, but he figured the longer he could keep this guy talking the more time he would give Nash with Aabad.
“Let’s just say that in certain circles your reputation is well known. I don’t want this to escalate into some big pissing match between the DOJ and the CIA.”
“We know you’ve done all the heavy lifting,” Ciresi quickly added, “and we’re not here to steal any of the credit for breaking this thing.”
“Although, you might want us to, before this is all said and done,” Smith added.
“And why would I want you to do that?” Rapp asked.
“For the life of me,” Smith said as he shook his head and looked around the room, “I’m still trying to figure out what a couple of spooks from Langley were doing poking around a mosque right about the time these bombs started going off.”
“I…”
“No…” Smith said, cutting him off, “I don’t want to hear it. I want you and Ridley to get your stories straight before you talk to any of us.”
“I know Rob,” Ciresi offered. “He’s a good man.”
Rapp was starting to get the idea that maybe these weren’t pricks after all.
“So our problem,” Smith continued, “is that we have a body in the morgue. It appears that the guys you picked up had something to do with that.”
“Yeah… one of them has already admitted to the whole thing.”
“Without being Mirandized?” Ciresi asked.
“Of course not,” Rapp said. “I don’t Mirandize people.”
“And that’s why we’re here,” Smith said. “I think a lot of people in this town are going to jump to the conclusion that the guy in the morgue was working for you. I seem to remember something in the paper about this the other day.”
Rapp played dumb and offered, “Maybe he was working for Mossad. Maybe one of my contacts over there called me and asked me to check in on him.”
Ciresi nodded. “I like the way you think.”
“You see,” Smith said, “we’re not here to bust your balls or take away your thunder. But we have a problem. At least two of the guys you have are American citizens, and while I personally couldn’t give a shit if you dangled them off the roof by their ankles and threatened to drop them on their heads, as an officer of the court I cannot condone such behavior.”
“If we were to witness such behavior,” Ciresi added, “we would be duty-bound to report it.”
Rapp was liking these guys more and more. “So how would you guys like to proceed?”
“Where are you in your interview phase?”
“One of them is starting to talk. It took a little prodding.”
Both men shook their heads, and Smith said, “Too much information, Mr. Rapp.”
“I could use a little more time with him. To make sure he isn’t lying to me.”
“Which one is it?” Ciresi asked.
“Aabad bin Baaz.”
“He has dual citizenship.” Ciresi frowned
“How much more time?” Smith asked.
“An hour would be nice.”
The two men shot each other an uncomfortable look. Smith said, “We can’t give you an hour.”
Rapp was about to find out how much time they would give him when one of the female analysts in the bullpen let loose a scream. A rumble of shock spread across the big gymnasium-sized space, and analysts began to stand and point at the big screen. Rapp looked up at the big board but couldn’t figure out what was going on. All he saw were the three TV feeds and casualty tally.
He raced over to the Operations Officer’s perch and said, “Dave, what the hell just happened?”
Paulson was feverishly working one of his keyboards. The big screen went from four separate shots to one complete picture. As Paulson reached for his mouse, he said to Rapp, “I think we just had a latent explosion.”
“Which location?”
“The Monocle. Hold on a second, I’m rewinding it.”
The cloud of dust on the big screen began to retreat as if a giant vacuum cleaner was sucking it out of the air, except when the tape was rewound far enough, there was a blue sedan at the epicenter. The tape now began to play forward in super-slow motion, frame by painful frame.
Rapp looked at all the emergency workers in the immediate vicinity of the explosion. There were dozens, plus he knew the original bombs had used ball bearings to increase kill ratio. Any civilian within a half mile stood the risk of getting hit. The ones that were lined up at the barricades would drop like Confederate soldiers making the final charge at Gettysburg. Rapp could taste the bile in his throat. He’d seen the same thing done in Beirut, Tel Aviv, Baghdad, and Kandahar. Of all the tricks of the terrorist trade, he considered this to be lowest. To set up a bomb designed to intentionally target those who rush to the aid of others showed just how little these people cared for innocent life.
“What just happened?” Smith asked.
With barely contained rage, Rapp said, “Another bomb just went off.”
“Where?”
Rapp told them and then put his hand on Paulson’s shoulder and said, “Pull everybody out at the other two scenes, ASAP! Get on the horn and alert all levels, and get the bomb units in there to make sure these areas are cleared! That was supposed to have been taken care of right away.” Rapp stared up at the chaos on the big board. They had practiced all this before. He had warned the people at Homeland that the terrorists would try something like this.
“There might be more?” Smith asked.
“We don’t know. That’s the problem.” Almost as an afterthought, Rapp looked up toward the conference room and said, “But I think I know where I could find out.”
Smith and Ciresi looked at each other and came to an agreement without exchanging words.
Ciresi looked at his watch and said, “We should go downstairs and get a cup of coffee,” Ciresi said.
“Good idea.” Smith handed Rapp his business card and said, “My mobile number is on there. Traffic is really bad out there. When the prisoners arrive, please give me a call.”
Rapp nodded slowly and then said, “Will do.”
K
ARIM sat in the backseat of the Town Car, directly behind Hakim. It seemed to him that his friend was in a rather glum mood, considering how successful the day had been. He was used to being the one who brooded in an angry-faced silence, and found it rather uncomfortable when the shoe was on the other foot. He did not like his normally upbeat friend casting a pall over their victory. Karim wanted to clear the air, but there were only a few minutes before they got to the facility. There would be plenty of time after the attack, but they would not be alone. Ahmed would be with them.
Ahmed was the only one Karim would let live. They were close enough now to use radios, so Karim toggled the button and said, “Thomas, how does everything look?”
Four seconds later the radio crackled and a voice said, “Good. More people are arriving every minute.”
Karim frowned and wondered if security was being increased. He would normally never ask such a question on an open channel, but at this point there wasn’t much the Americans could do to stop them. “Has security increased?”
“A few more people are out patrolling the grounds, but nothing I can’t handle.”
“Good. We will see you shortly.” Karim set the radio on the seat next to him and looked at Hakim’s reflection in the rearview mirror. “The RV is ready?”
“Yes.”
Karim thought of the plan. With any luck they would be in Canada by tomorrow afternoon. An RV loaded with provisions was waiting for them at a pole barn in Ashburn not more than twenty minutes up the road. “And how far can we make it before we have to stop for gas?”
“Iowa.” Hakim offered him nothing more.
Karim was sick of his friend’s pouting. “What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me. You are like my brother. I know when something is bothering you. Tell me. I want to hear it.”
“You have changed.” Hakim hit the turn signal and took a left onto Dolley Madison Boulevard.
“We all change as we grow older.”
“Not always for the better.”
“I am not sure I like your implication,” Karim said.
“And I know for a fact that I do not like how you have brainwashed these young men.”
“I have brainwashed no one. These men are great warriors who are about to give their lives in the greatest struggle of our time,” Karim said with absolute sincerity. “Do not demean them.”
“I am not demeaning them. I am demeaning you. You have embraced this cult of death where you gleefully offer up the lives of others. And for what? To satisfy your own…” Hakim shook his head and stopped short of finishing his thought.
“Say it!” Karim demanded.
“I don’t want to.”
“Say it. I order you to tell me.”
Hakim looked back in the mirror at his childhood friend. “We have always been equals. I see that is no longer the case.”
“We are equals, but not in the middle of an operation. There can be only one commander.”
“There are only two of us in this car. Just two friends who grew up together. One of us seems to have forgotten that.”
“And one of us,” Karim shot back, “has grown soft with all his travels.”
“Soft,” Hakim repeated the accusation. “I would rather grow soft than carelessly waste the lives of others.”
Karim’s jaw tightened. “I care about these men more than you will ever know.”
“And you show it by sending them to their deaths.”
“You are a fool.” Karim grabbed the front passenger headrest and pulled himself forward. “We do not have billion-dollar planes and laser-guided bombs to fight with. This is how we must wage war. This is how we will defeat them. Six brave men are about to give their lives today, and you are too self-absorbed in your own emotions to admire their sacrifice.”
“And you are too self-absorbed in your own greatness. If this is such a wonderful idea, then why aren’t you going in with them?”
Karim threw himself back into his seat. Under his breath he was cursing his friend, and then himself for being so stupid to bother bringing this up. As they passed over the freeway that went to the airport, Karim saw the woods off to their left and the roofs of several buildings. “Don’t miss the turn,” he barked.
“I know where it is,” Hakim shot back bitterly.
Karim thought about really giving it to him, but they didn’t have the time. They were less than a minute from the facility. He grabbed the radio, pressed the transmit button, and said, “Thomas, we will be with you in less than sixty seconds. Do you copy?”
“Copy.”
Karim looked behind them and saw the Suburban close on their tail as they took the left turn. They were only five hundred feet from the big looping service road that would take them up the hill. Karim said a quick prayer, and was relieved he had put Ahmed in the woods so he would have some eyes on the target. He imagined, for a second, how unnerving it would be to make this drive with no knowledge of what waited at the security point.
Hakim made the turn and accelerated. The Suburban followed close behind.
“Men,” Karim said into the radio, “remember your training. Stay together, do not use the elevator, and go straight to your primary target.”
The road swung around to the right, and then there it was. The six-story building looked no different from any of the other office buildings in the area. Even the guard shack up ahead seemed practical. Hakim turned left and stopped at the guard shack. As planned, he rolled down his window and pointed to the backseat. Karim began rolling his window down, and as the guard approached; he looked at him through his sunglasses, smiled, and shot him three times in the face. Before the guard had hit the ground, one of the men was out of the Suburban. He marched straight up to the bulletproof guard shack and stuck a block of C-4 on the door. Two guards sat on the other side of the thick glass, trying to make sense of what was happening.
Hakim gunned the engine, and the car raced forward. He pulled into a parking spur on the left just as they heard the explosion. A moment later, four shots rang out, and then a few seconds after that, the Suburban sped past with four of the men standing on the running boards and holding on to the luggage rack.
“Thomas, you may engage targets at will.” Karim smiled with pride and made a last-minute decision. “Follow them.”
Hakim turned around and looked at him with complete surprise. “But that is not part of the plan.”
“I know, but I want to see them enter the building.”
“This is not wise.”
“We are fine. As you can see, they have been caught completely off guard. It is yet another sign of their arrogance.”
“I’ll drive up and we’ll come right back out. You are not going to change your mind and go in with them.”
“No,” Karim said, patting him on the shoulder. “Go! I want to savor this great moment. I want to watch them enter the building.”
Hakim took his foot off the brake and hit the gas. They drove to the corner of the building and took a hard left. Along this side of the building, two wings angled back to form a shallow V. The Suburban had jumped a curb, ran over a flagpole, and come to a halt approximately fifty feet from the front door. The men were in a straight line, weapons up, and heading toward the front door. A man and a woman came out and moved to the side to make room. The lead man in the conga line ignored them, but the second man swung his M-4 over and fired two quick shots, striking each person in the head.
“Look at them,” Karim said, full of pride. He watched as the men disappeared into the building, and then he heard a steady stream of shots. His eyes traveled up the façade of the building to the sixth floor. That was where his men were headed. To the heart of America’s war against Islam. This wouldn’t get the media attention that the blasts would receive, but it would hurt the Americans far more. Karim could barely take the thrill of knowing that America’s best and brightest were gathered at this very moment on the top floor of this building – their National Counterterrorism Center. They were gathered to manage this crisis, trying to find the very people who were now on their doorstep. The psychological blow would be devastating. If only he could be there to see the looks on the faces of the smug Americans as his men mowed them down.
“I’m leaving,” Hakim announced.
“Wait,” Karim said as he looked wild-eyed out the window. He heard the first explosion and felt the pull, the desire to join his men. The car began to move. “Just a little longer.”
Hakim jammed his foot onto the break and turned around. “You either get out or we leave.”
“Fine,” Karim answered in a sad voice. “Go.”