All Necessary Force (39 page)

In fact, Rafik was surprised at how quickly all his prison recruits picked up the theory behind the EFPs. After the A.P. Hill hit, he’d separated the men, sending them to different hotels and bringing them individually to Keshawn’s Baltimore warehouse to be trained. He’d planned two full days for the train-up, but Carl was the second recruit through today, and both had taken a quarter of the time he had allocated. He was somewhat taken aback by their calm acceptance of the mission, without any questions on the manner of the attack. There was something different in the Americans that he couldn’t pinpoint. He’d spent countless hours training Arab recruits, and invariably they always needed a massive amount of time to fully comprehend what they were trying to do, as if they were going through the motions but not assimilating why. He had seen students do things with blasting caps that would be catastrophic in an uncontrolled environment, with the men acting nonchalant, firmly believing that Allah would protect them.

He believed in Allah as much as anyone he had taught, but it was a trial trying to get the men he trained to understand that Allah wouldn’t save them if they made a mistake. It required repetitive instruction until they grasped the concepts, something that didn’t seem to be an issue here.

Maybe I can speed things up. Get the attack going sooner rather than later.

He’d scheduled a full day of training per team, but after seeing them in action at A.P. Hill, he’d gone to two a day, with Carl the second one through. Now he was thinking he could train all four in a single day and begin the assault tomorrow morning, shaving three full days off of their timeline. Three days that they would need, given the media frenzy surrounding the stolen explosives.

I left the secret cell and went up to the fourth floor to help the guys unload the kit we had used. I should have taken Jennifer and beat feet out of the building, but I needed to give the cell some time to find what I wanted. I knew if Kurt discovered us here, he’d blow a gasket. I was under no illusions about which straw I was placing on the camel’s back.

The inventory was menial work, but necessary. We’d have to ensure we hadn’t lost anything, then make sure it all still functioned correctly, so the next team could pull it out of a locker knowing it would work as intended. It was a gray area as to what would happen if the stuff was screwed up or missing, since I had been the team leader, but I was no longer a Taskforce operator. Another complication for an ex-operator running a front company. Especially since this ex-operator just ran a bunch of missions with national implications for presidential authority.

Kurt or the Oversight Council hadn’t thought about it yet due to events, but I had. Sooner or later our company was going to need its own special oversight, to protect both them and us. A mandate that said it was okay for us to do more than the other cover organizations. All they ever did was facilitate the infiltration of an area. They never interfered in the action, leaving that to the operators on the ground. My company was different, with implications I hadn’t considered when I’d built it.

Jennifer saw me come in and said, “What did you do?”

“Nothing. Just trying to get a handle on the imam. That’s all.”

Decoy said, “Pike, I don’t know what you’ve got in mind, but leave it alone. We don’t do domestic operations. There’s a reason for that. You ever hear of posse comitatus?”

I bristled. “Don’t tell me what this taskforce does or doesn’t do. I was taking out terrorists in this organization while you were still sweating through hell week.”

Retro cut in. “Whoa, hang on. What’s that about? He’s only saying what we all feel. Pike, you know I’d follow you into hell and back, but you’ve made a few decisions lately which were a little loose.”

He dropped the case he was inventorying, holding up his hands. “You’ve done okay so far, but we’re back at home now. Back under Taskforce control. It’s time to get back to what’s right, you know what I mean?”

I knew exactly what he meant: I was no longer an operator, and thus was no longer in charge. He was telling me to back off and let the “real” operators take over. It hurt a great deal, exposing another wrinkle related to our little business. Good enough to get the job done under duress, but no longer worth a seat at the table when it was over.

“Yeah,” I said. “I get it. No issues.”

Buckshot said, “Pike, it’s not—”

I cut him off. “I fucking get it. Let’s get this done so Jennifer and I can go home.”

We spent the next four hours going through the kit, the atmosphere decidedly strained. Jennifer got the worst of it, because she wasn’t sure where she stood. I could tell she wanted to be anywhere but in that room.

When we were finally done, Decoy said, “I’ll get you guys out.” He paused, then said, “Pike, I didn’t mean what you think I meant. I know what you’ve done for this organization. You’re a damn legend. It’s just that… that…”

“That I’m now a nobody? Save the speeches. And we don’t need you to show us out. If my feeble memory serves, we don’t have to have badges to leave the building.”

Jennifer looked appalled, like she was seeing a family self-destruct and wanted to stop it. We left without another word, going down the
stairwell to the third floor. When I exited there instead of continuing down she said, “Where are you going?”

“I need to check something. Just hold fast. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

“Pike… what are you doing?”

“Nothing. Just checking something out.”

I left her and headed back to the secret cell. When I entered, Vic looked at me with distaste, but Holly smiled.

“Well,” Vic said, “here you go. Everything with a Muslim angle. Thanks for wasting our time.”

Jesus, does everyone here hate me?

“Did you find anything interesting?”

Holly said, “Not really. But see for yourself.”

She handed me a sheaf two inches thick.

“Can I take this with me? Is it classified?”

“Nope. It’s for official use only, but nothing more than you’d get as a police officer. They’re all yours.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it. You guys have a phone number where I can get you? I’m probably not coming back in here due to operational constraints, but I may need your help again.”

Vic looked at me suspiciously, but Holly said, “Sure, here’s our internal number. It’s good for another five days. After that, I don’t know what it will be. You know how the Taskforce changes numbers every five seconds.”

I smiled. “Yeah, I know. Nothing like operational security to impede operational success.”

Holly smiled back. “You said it. What a pain in the ass.” She hesitated a moment, then said, “Look, I’m not trying to be mean, but don’t use that number unless it’s important. We do have real work going on.”

So much for my operator mystique.

“Yeah, sure. I won’t bug you unless it’s important.”

I left them and returned to Jennifer patiently waiting in the hallway.

“Let’s get out of here. I’ve got some stuff I want you to look at. See what you can see.”

Going down the stairs, she said, “Pike, I think you took all of that
upstairs a little hard. They weren’t saying anything bad. We’re just the cover organization. You said that yourself when you got me to agree.”

I stopped walking and turned around. “I don’t give a shit about any of that. Those damn terrorists are inside the United States, and nobody seems to care because there’s some ridiculous line about domestic operations. Because of it, someone’s going to die.”

I started walking again. She said, “What are you planning to do?”

“Nothing as it stands. I have these reports to go through, and I’d like you to help me.”

Thirty minutes later, we were inside a hotel room near the courthouse on Clarendon Boulevard, the documents spread out on a table.

Jennifer said, “What am I looking for?”

“I have no idea. I’m hoping for a Son of Sam moment, where we get something we can use based on a traffic violation. Just see what you can find.”

I began wading through the reports, all of which pretty much outlined a bunch of bullshit Pakistani taxi drivers ripping off tourists. After two hours of going through them, I was about done. I saw nothing of any interest. I attempted to pass the next five to Jennifer, only to have her intently reading one of the earlier reports.

“What? What do you see?”

“It’s a missing person report.”

“The one about the chick who had a mysterious boyfriend? What about it? There’s nothing there about the imam.”

“Yeah, but something the roommate said caught my eye. She said the boyfriend was in a ‘Muslim cult.’ Why would she say that?”

“Let me see it again.”

The report was fresh, mainly because the police wouldn’t file a missing person request for forty-eight hours, which meant she’d been gone for close to four days. The roommate was hysterical in the report, claiming she knew the boyfriend was bad because he’d never allow himself to be seen. She believed something was strange about him, and when she’d confronted her roommate, she’d been rebuffed. The missing girl’s last act was to go to her boyfriend’s home and surprise him. The roommate
was sure the boyfriend had killed her friend for some sort of cult purposes, and she had subsequently preserved the missing girl’s room for forensic evidence, which the police had obviously done nothing with, given the number of missing person reports they received on a daily basis. She’d screamed about the case for damn near four days straight, with little forward progress.

On the surface, the document showed nothing. Just another report like all of the other ones in front of me. Snagged in the secret cell’s search engine because of a tangential relationship to anything with the term
Muslim
. But Jennifer had caught something. The roommate’s statement about a “Muslim cult” was a distinct turn of a phrase. And the man’s actions clearly showed he had something to hide. Something that was worth looking into.

65

I

knocked on the door of the ranch-style house, shielding myself from the light drizzle that had begun to fall. Nobody came to answer. It was now two in the afternoon, and I had only about three hours to work with before the girl in the police report came home. I looked back at Jennifer in our rental car and smiled, wondering if I had lost my mind. I was preparing to knock again when it was opened by a middle-aged woman wearing what looked like a Snuggie blanket-robe.

“Hi. I’m looking for Adam. I’m with J3 Special Operations at the Pentagon.”

She looked at me like I was an alien from another planet, then turned and hollered, “Pinky! It’s for you!”

I prayed the man who came to the door would recognize me. If he didn’t, I was dead in the water. I might be anyway, given what I was trying to convince him to do. Adam was on a biometric team. He was the closest thing the Taskforce had to the CSI element from television, only his whole purpose was to catalog biometric data, not solve crimes. I’d worked with him a couple of times, but each one was under duress during the middle of an operation, so we didn’t do a lot of talking. I hoped he remembered me because he was the only one I could find who was on military leave, and thus probably at home instead of overseas or at Taskforce headquarters.

The man who came to the door was about five foot four, pudgy and round. He pushed his glasses back onto his face and said, “Pike? What are you doing here?”

Whew
.

“Hey, Adam. I’ve got a little problem and I need your help.”

Two hours and fifteen minutes later, I was picking the lock of the door from the police report, feeling the press of time. From what she’d said in her interview, the roommate worked until five each day at a gift shop, and we were closing in on that hour. It had taken me way longer than I’d liked to convince Adam to come with me, and then he’d needed to go to Taskforce headquarters to get his equipment, followed by the drive to Baltimore.

I’d prayed he wouldn’t encounter anyone from the team or Kurt while he was inside the Taskforce, knowing he’d come running back out with the security force to arrest me. Luckily, that hadn’t happened, but Adam was decidedly antsy, clearly wondering if my bullshit story was true—which, of course, it wasn’t. Getting to the apartment, I had given Jennifer a dual mission of early warning and Adam control, then had gone to work on the lock.

It popped easily, making me think of Bull for a split second, then we were inside. I went into the bedroom first, using an old Polaroid camera to get a plethora of pictures, taping each one at the position it was taken so Adam could replace everything exactly like it was before we had entered. We were probably the only organization on the planet that used the dated technology, having to get our film from a nostalgia site on the Web. When I was done, I let Adam go to work, scrubbing everything for any biometric elements he could find.

We were out in thirty minutes, with a bunch of fingerprints and bags of several different hair samples for DNA. Nothing more, but enough. I dropped Adam off at Taskforce headquarters, saying, “Process that stuff and get it to Holly. Have her run it. I need an answer by tomorrow morning.”

His face scrunched in confusion, because he thought I was going to drop him back at his house and his warm little Snuggie blanket. Probably wondering how his decision to take two weeks of leave at home
instead of Disneyland had gone so badly for him. I held our handshake a little longer than was comfortable for him.

“Don’t fuck me on this. Get it done, and I’ll buy you a beer. Or a milk shake. Whatever you want.”

He nodded and walked into the building in what looked like a daze. I called Holly.

“Hey, Adam’s coming up. Look for him. He’s got some biometric stuff he’s going to process, then I need you to run it against everything you’ve got.”

“What the hell are you talking about? From where?”

“Don’t worry about it. Just do it as a favor to me. Please. There’s a chance the stuff will ping in our database or some police one. You can access the imam’s fingerprints, right? Didn’t he get arrested in Canada?”