“Well, okay, pull his ass in. See what he knows.”
“Pike, for one, he’s a Canadian citizen. We can’t ‘pull his ass in.’ For another, he hasn’t done anything wrong, even if he was in America.”
“Let me go after him. It’s in Canada, so it’s still a foreign country. Taskforce authorities still apply. I’ll go wring him out. Bring it to the council and get me Omega authority.”
Kurt grimaced into the VTC screen, and I knew something wasn’t right. He was keeping intelligence from me.
“What? Sir, he may be the key to the EFPs. I understand it’s slim, but slim’s better than none. I won’t kill him. I promise.”
“Pike, he’s not in Canada. We did get the Canadians to check up on him, and he flew out of the country two days ago.”
“Shit! That’s the guy! Send me wherever he went. I’ll find him.”
“He came here. He flew to Baltimore.”
I didn’t say anything for a second, trying to assimilate how pathetic our security apparatus actually was.
“Wasn’t he on the no-fly list?”
“Yes. He was. Trust me, nobody’s happy about it. We’re working it now.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? We let a terrorist get on a plane and fly
“Pike, calm down. There are thousands of names on the no-fly list, updated every single day. This guy has never done anything overt. Just a lot of smoke. He’s not a confirmed terrorist…. Shit. I’m not going to defend it. It is what it is. The police and FBI have his name and will find him.”
I was disgusted, but decided not to press the point. At least not yet. “What about the biometric profiles? Anything from them?”
“Yeah. Both of the dead guys are Algerian, although we knew that from the passports. They have a history of extremist activity with the Algerian authorities. Both have been in and out of jail, but nothing really drastic. Mainly a bunch of conspiracy charges that the Algerians throw around like popcorn. The older one might or might not have traveled to Afghanistan to train in the camps in the late nineties. Hard to prove, but that’s a little irrelevant now. They were bad guys, and nobody’s going to cry over them.”
“Any associations we can use? Any other names connected to them?”
“Nothing that we don’t already have. The intel’s incomplete. The third guy you were tracking, the guy from the catacombs, still has no name.”
“He’s the leader. He’s the one we want. All the intel indicators show this is the hit. They line up completely. We have JI, GSPC, and al Qaeda — along with the fucking EFPs. All we’re missing is the homegrown part of the equation, and that guy in Montreal is the key. I’m sure of it. If we can’t find the boss, we need to find his associates. What do we know about Abdul-Majid?”
“He runs a mosque, like they all do. Truthfully, we can’t even prove he’s bad. He just preaches bad shit all the time. We linked him to some shady charities, which put him on the no-fly list, but there’s only smoke. No fire.”
“Fat fucking good that no-fly list did. Does he have any contacts in the U.S.?”
“Some with various imams in the Northeast, but they’ve all checked out as no threat.”
“Pull ’em all in. Put the heat to them. One of them knows something.”
Kurt let out his breath. “Pike, calm down. We don’t do domestic operations, and the authorities have everything we can give them. It’s in their hands now.”
I rolled my eyes. “I know, I know. We don’t live in a police state, blah, blah, blah, but that guy is the key to this whole attack. I’m sure of it.”
Kurt leaned forward toward the screen. “You’d better be kidding about the ‘blah blah blah.’ We
I backed off. For all of my bluster, I knew he was absolutely right, but it still didn’t sit well. It’s why I was the guy who went out and thumped heads. I just didn’t have it in me to put up with the political bullshit, but I understood it.
I asked, “You got the support team headed to Ireland?”
Relieved at the change in subject, Kurt said, “Yeah. They may be a little behind you, so you might have to do a layover, but they’ll take the target off your hands.”
We had the pilot bound up in the back of the plane, and I really didn’t want to fly into U.S. airspace with him on board. It had been hard enough getting him on the plane without anyone noticing in Budapest. Going through U.S. Customs with him in a box was a nonstarter, so I’d arranged for a Taskforce support team to meet us in Ireland.
“Pimp that guy as soon as you get him. He probably doesn’t know shit, but maybe there’s a clue there.”
“Will do.”
I asked, “How’s Knuckles doing?”
“He’s getting better by the day. He’s talking now and asked about the team.”
I smiled in spite of myself. “Tell him we started smoking the shit out of the bad guys once we got rid of his deadweight.”
Kurt laughed. “I will.” He paused for a moment, then said, “Pike, you did some good work over there. Nobody’s going to pat you on the back, but let the team know. Those EFPs would be going off right now if you hadn’t intervened.”
It was a half-assed apology for his original outburst. Letting me know he still understood what happened when bullets were flying, and that he trusted the man on the ground. I appreciated the sentiment but thought it was a little early. It was only good if nobody died.
“Thanks, but this work’s not finished. I looked into the eyes of the guy in the tombs. He’s not some Johnny Jihad wannabe. He’s a killer, and he’s not going to quit.”
59
Rafik looked at the circle of men and wondered if he should tell them the truth. That the explosives had been lost and they were now on hold. Having led men in combat, both in Algeria and in Afghanistan, he understood the potential impact of the setback. Sometimes a lie was better than the truth. Sometimes the lie helped earn the victory. He had no idea of the mettle of the men before him, and worried what their reactions might be. He had seen it in untested men before. Out of the six in the apartment, four were recruits from prison. One was Abdul- Majid Mohammed, the Algerian contact from Montreal, and although he professed absolute faith, Rafik was ultimately unsure about him. Only Farouk, his remaining comrade from the original cell, could be trusted.
In the end, he decided to tell them the truth. Whatever the reaction was, Kamil would be arriving soon to help shepherd them to victory, although he was growing a little concerned at the lack of contact with his trusted friend.
“You men were about to begin the final push against our enemies. A strike that would cause untold pain, and perhaps bring about untold rewards. But something has happened that will delay our attack. Something I couldn’t have predicted.”
He laid out what had occurred, speaking in generalities, not discussing the technology he still owned. When he finished, he expected to see a look of defeat on the men. Abdul-Majid looked relieved. Farouk, having already been told the news, simply sat with a grim face. Out of the four ex-convicts in the room, two did project defeat, but two — Keshawn and the man who leased the apartment, Carl — looked thoughtful.
Rafik said, “Unless one of you has an idea, I think the best plan now is to simply return to your roles in the
