Targeted (FBI Heat) (11 page)

“Yes,” Masoud said sullenly. “Saleem and Rashad are not happy they must stay in Tijuana.”

“Too bad. After what happened last night, I am taking no chances that we could be robbed.” She looked from one to the other and waited. When neither moved, she extended her hand. They glanced away and fidgeted. “The key,” she demanded.

After a tense moment, Masoud relinquished the key to Samir’s truck.

Marissa stuck it in her pants pocket. “The truck is now mine.”

Uneasy glances passed among the four men.

During dinner, there was little conversation as the reality of Samir and Omar’s disappearance and probable deaths hung over the group. Other than an occasional peek at Baheera, gazes stayed glued to their plates. The terrorists’ anxious expressions revealed they were filled with uncertainty. These were weak men, sheep without a shepherd, fearful and helpless after the loss of their leader. Exactly the kind of young men easily swayed and brainwashed by al-Qaeda’s propaganda of hate.

Marissa knew the power of hate. She hated the Islamic extremists who didn’t hesitate to spill the blood of innocent victims, all in the name of jihad. Their actions severely damaged the perception of Islam by the rest of the world. Instead of benefitting fellow Muslims, they hurt them. Fellow Muslims, like Ameen Ali. His words drifted into her thoughts.
…Those men do not represent true Muslims…It is shameful that I feel I must say this. I am not a terrorist.
Her throat tightened. If the cell’s dirty bomb plot succeeded, the world would have even more grounds for distrusting and suspecting all Muslims. Yet another reason she couldn’t fail.

Marissa tamped down her simmering rage and viewed the men seated at the table with disdain.
How can I manipulate these malleable minions and insure none grows a backbone?

After dinner, she decided another trip to Tijuana tonight was unnecessary, but she wanted to keep tabs on Rashad, Saleem, and the Abdul-Jaleel elves. While the others cleaned up after the meal, she selected one of a dozen burner cell phones from a kitchen drawer. The handy little prepaid things were purchased with cash at local stores and provided instant, anonymous communication. All the cell members carried one, and each phone had been programmed with everyone else’s numbers. But Samir had refused to allow Baheera to have a phone.

When Marissa walked back into the living room, she held out the phone to Tareef. “This is my phone. Put all the numbers on it and add my number to the other phones.”

All eyes turned to her, except Tareef’s, whose gaze darted to Fateen.

She shoved the phone in front of Tareef’s face. “Do it. Now.”

Grudgingly, he took the phone and plopped onto the couch. She sat beside him, watching him closely as he transferred the numbers from his own phone’s list to insure he did not intentionally sabotage her phone with bogus numbers.

“Thank you,” she said politely when he handed the phone back to her.
Good, now I have them all on a leash
. She stood and announced, “I’m going to call Rashad, Saleem, and our Abdul-Jaleel friends. Do not disturb me.”

She suppressed a snicker when they watched her leave, each wearing a very disturbed expression. After locking the bedroom door, she made the call.

“
Allahu Akbar
. Who is this?” Saleem answered in Arabic, his tone suspicious at the unfamiliar number on his phone’s screen.

“This is Baheera. Speak English, Saleem.”

He grunted in response. “I do not like this, Baheera. We are stuck here. Samir did not make us do this,” Saleem complained, his indignation at taking orders from a woman resonating in his voice.

“Do not speak of what Samir did or didn’t do. If he had been smarter and used some of us to guard the house, the Mexicans might not have been robbing us last night, and then he and Omar would still be alive. Husaam was very disappointed in Samir’s management.”

“I do not think we are safe.”

Ah, fear. The real reason for his discontent. Coward
. “You have the two guns I took from the cabinet. You do know how to use them, don’t you, Saleem?”

“Of course. But what if the drug gang comes back tonight?”

“If I was able to survive the night…alone…surely you and Rashad can handle it,” she taunted him. Then her tone softened. “I will be rotating the guard duty. You won’t be stuck there every night.”

She listened to him exhale with relief but also heard a commotion in the background.

“What’s happening?” she asked.

“The two men from Abdul-Jaleel Electronics have arrived.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I do not like that they hide their faces and their true names from us. Are we not equals in our fight against the infidels?”

Dissention among the troops?
Marissa jumped at the chance to fuel it.

“You are smart, Saleem. Their behavior raises my suspicions also. They may have fooled Samir, but you and I know they are not to be trusted.” She could hear Khaleel and Nadeem talking in the background. They spoke Spanish, obviously to keep the other terrorists from understanding their conversation. Marissa strained to listen. “How dare they not speak English or Arabic so we can understand? You must watch them closely and tell me of their actions.”

“I will, Baheera.”

Ah, obedience and cooperation.
Successful manipulation. “Saleem, your help pleases me. Tomorrow you can come home,” she said soothingly. “Now, let me speak to…Khaleel.”

“Which one is he?”

“The tall one.”

Saleem called to the engineer. Khaleel cursed and called her a stupid bitch in Spanish. She grinned. Being fluent in five languages could be so much fun.

Khaleel came on the phone and spoke to her in Arabic. “
Allahu Akbar.
Good evening, Baheera. Have you recovered from last night’s ordeal?” he asked, unctuously.

“Thanks be to Allah, I have. Was that Spanish you were speaking?”

“Yes. Living in Tijuana, I had to learn it to survive.”

“It is a blessing then. But you and Nadeem must speak English when you are with the rest of us.” Khaleel didn’t respond. “How long will you and Nadeem work tonight?”

“Only a couple hours. We brought the instructions and will verify all the parts again. Praise Allah, the thieves did not break into the cabinet.”

She listened closely to his voice. “Yes, praise Allah. Come earlier tomorrow night and start the assembly.”

“We will come right after work.”

Marissa pressed her lips together and squeezed her eyes shut. She was absolutely sure now about Khaleel, the friend.

S
louched in his truck, Ameen watched until the last light went out in the cell’s apartment. He’d checked his phone at least a hundred times, willing it to ring with a call or text from Baheera. Over the past several hours, he’d created and discarded numerous plans for helping her. He wanted her out of there, away from those evil men. He couldn’t do anything more for her tonight but accepting it was hard as hell.

Ameen rubbed his tired eyes before starting the truck. His hours of research had yielded nothing. Nothing on Baheera. Nothing but the corporate spiel on Abdul-Jaleel Electronics. Nothing on the jihadist websites that seemed like a message for the San Diego cell.

When he circled the block, he spotted two occupants in an unmarked car parked on the street. For the past few months, someone besides him had been keeping an eye on Samir and the boys. He’d spotted them at the apartment, mosque, and hideout. FBI? CIA? Homeland Security?

A frightening thought struck. What if the Feds moved to take down the cell and didn’t realize Baheera wasn’t one of the terrorists? She could be injured or even killed. The possibility sent such a shock wave through him that he angled the truck to the curb. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
Should I warn them? Would they believe me?

He shook his head dejectedly. No, it would never work. They would paint him with the same brush as the cell. The only solution was for him to rescue Baheera before she got hurt by the bad guys or the good guys.

Ameen drove home on autopilot, his mind preoccupied with protecting the beautiful, intriguing woman. Exhausted, he headed straight to bed. But sleep didn’t come easily.

He lay staring at the ceiling, still tense with worry, as he tried to convince himself Baheera was not working alone. Besides being brave, she was smart, multilingual, and familiar with weapons. She’d exhibited a keen ability to evaluate and plan. He smiled faintly when he acknowledged they shared many similarities.

If she was a Fed, she was different from the US intelligence operatives he’d dealt with as a SEAL. Instead of a cold, calculating objectivity, she exuded a passion, an intensity, similar to his own.

Was that why he felt strangely connected to the mysterious Baheera?

Kevin Rawlings paced in the dimly lit room, reading and re-reading the stack of translations in his hands. The massive video screen on the wall was dark. The technicians sat at their consoles, lost to the worlds inside their headphones. Although normal noise could not filter through the headphones to distract the listening techs, the atmosphere in the room always prompted people to move and speak quietly.

Bob Miller, head of the National Joint Terrorism Task Force, entered the room and waited in the shadows. When Rawlings came closer, he fell into step beside him.

“I just got a call from Winslow at the White House,” Miller whispered. “They want an update. Where do we stand?”

Rawlings didn’t even try to hide his annoyance. “I spend so much goddamn time keeping everyone updated that I hardly have any time left to monitor the operation, much less plan forward progress.” He slapped the papers against his palm. “Have you read these yet?”

“Yes. Interesting but not very informative.”

Rawlings snorted.

They stopped pacing and dropped into two of the theatre-style seats facing the blank screen.

“I agree, although Husaam sounds rattled. It’s hard to believe the son of a bitch didn’t have a backup means of communication or another cell ready to take over if something disrupted the San Diego one.”

“I think it’s another sign that, with bin Laden dead, al-Zawahiri in hiding, and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in custody, al-Qaeda is splintered and struggling. With so many jihadists joining ISIS, Husaam may be having trouble getting resources. All that saber rattling about reprisal attacks after we got bin Laden has turned out to be more hot air than anything,” Miller said.

“Not if they pull off this dirty bomb attack. And I’d call the Herat bomb a significant resource,” Rawlings countered.

“True. But maybe Husaam had it all along. We never knew where it disappeared to.”

Rawlings nodded. Tapping the translations lying in his lap, he asked, “What else did you get out of these?”

“Husaam doesn’t know specifically where they’re living. Again, damn stupid, if you ask me. But I’m sure they thought keeping it secret provided another level of security. He obviously knows which San Diego mosque they attend, but Special Agent Jabbar is confident the religious leadership isn’t involved. These terrorists are outsiders.”

“Agreed. But the mosque could be Husaam’s key to locating the cell.”

“Who’s he going to send to find them?”

“I don’t know…yet. What do you get from his reaction to his wife’s disappearance?” Rawlings asked.

Miller cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

“He figured out the woman he was speaking to wasn’t his wife, but he has no clue where the real Baheera Abbas is. So, is this how you’d react if your wife disappeared?”

Miller frowned. “Of course not. But then, I’d never send my wife to be a suicide bomber. I guess he’d already written her off as dead.”

Rawlings stroked his chin. “Yeah. Husaam’s definitely not the grieving husband. I think he sounds furious and frustrated. Maybe a bit panicky but not on a personal husband-and-wife level.” He grinned at Miller’s puzzled expression. “Clear as mud?”

“Yeah. Where are you going with all this touchy-feely talk?”

He stared off into space. “Remember the weird exchange between Husaam and Panuska about seeing the doctor? Panuska asked us to research the doctor issue, so she’s obviously drawing a blank too. I’ve had staff go back over all the wiretapped calls, and we can’t find a single goddamn reference to a doctor. What the hell is the deal with the doctor all about?”

“Beats me. Must’ve been something they both already knew about but didn’t involve anyone else. Why would she need to see a damn doctor before blowing herself up?”

“I don’t know, but my gut tells me there’s a connection between the doctor and Husaam’s reaction.”

Miller shook his head. “Good luck with all that. I don’t see it. Now give me an update before Winslow calls again. The White House is real antsy.”

“Aren’t we all?”

Moonlight streamed through the open window blinds, illuminating the bedroom as the passing hours pushed past midnight into Tuesday morning. Marissa lay awake. Waiting. Thinking. Planning. She listened. Snoring, loud snoring. Convinced the four terrorists in the other two bedrooms had finally fallen asleep, she rolled silently out of bed.

She pulled a tiny flashlight and a paperclip from her purse as she tiptoed across the bedroom to Samir’s chest. The locked box in the bottom drawer was her target. The drawer of the thrift-shop chest slid open with a soft scraping. She stopped, listened. Carefully, she lifted the box from the drawer, finding it much heavier than she’d expected, and set it on the floor. What a joke that Samir would purchase such a cheap box to hold the important documents she expected to find inside.

Marissa leaned down to be eye level with the lock, switched on the flashlight, and directed the beam at the box. The paper clip defeated the simple lock in less than a minute.

She listened again. Only snoring.

After raising the lid, she positioned the flashlight to illuminate the inside of the box. Cash. Bundles of hundreds. She took out the money and counted $95,000. She slid ten one-hundred-dollar bills from a pack and stuffed them in her purse. She wouldn’t be caught penniless again in this operation. Money spoke all languages, and cash could mean the difference between life and death in covert ops.

Beneath the cash, unlabeled files and envelopes were jumbled together. She flipped through the contents. No sign of any organization. She would simply have to start at the top and work down.

The first envelope contained a handwritten note that must have come with the satellite phone from Husaam. She read the Arabic message giving Samir specific instructions on how the phone was to be used by the cell. Virtually all communication was supposed to be
incoming
phone calls. Husaam’s sat phone number was written with a strict warning that it be used only in the case of an extreme emergency. Marissa frowned. Should she have kept Samir’s phone? At the time, it had seemed too risky. But was it really less risky to give it to a stranger? Since she wanted to keep the phone safe so Homeland Security could eventually analyze it for intel, Ameen had been her only option. She would have to trust him.

A San Diego Padres game schedule was the only other item in the envelope. Someone has written “Yasir” at the top. He had been gone most nights and the first weekend after she arrived. No one told her where he was during those times. But this schedule explained why the pattern had discontinued for the past several days. The team had been out of town for the last week, but a nine-game home stand was starting tonight. She frowned.
Why is Yasir working when Samir has almost a hundred grand in cash?

The toilet flushing startled her. She instantly switched off the little flashlight. She heard the bathroom door open and footsteps approach her bedroom door. She held her breath. The doorknob jiggled, and her heart lurched. The man on the other side of the door mumbled an Arabic curse and then retreated down the hallway. She closed her eyes and breathed again but didn’t move for five minutes.

She opted not to use the flashlight when she pulled out the first folder, instead scooting into the pool of moonlight. Inside were two pieces of paper with handwritten notes. One note dated four days ago included the name Juan Gonzalez and a phone number.
Who is he?
The second note listed yesterday’s date, a time, and $20 with a question mark. Shaking her head with frustration, she folded the papers and added them to the purse.

Her hands shook when she realized the significance of the information in the next folder. Detailed diagrams with labeling and instructions in Arabic explained how to assemble a dirty bomb. As part of her hurried prep for the operation, she’d studied—as well as a linguist can study engineering drawings—the diagrams and documents recovered in 2003 in Herat, Afghanistan, and these looked frighteningly familiar.

Khaleel, the Tall Elf, had referred to instructions.
Are these a copy of what he has?

Khaleel
. A knot tightened in Marissa’s stomach as she silently cursed Ameen’s traitorous friend.

Another file held profiles of all eight terrorists. A quick review of the information revealed Samir had arrived in San Diego directly from Syria on a student visa. All the others had moved from the Seattle area.

Digging through the rest of the papers yielded no additional useful information. No mention of where the radioactive material was, how it was being delivered, or who was bringing it. Nothing.
Where the hell is it?
Apparently, even Samir did not know.

Inside the last folder she found several maps. On a map of Tijuana, someone had circled and labeled the location of the hideout and the Abdul-Jaleel Electronics plant. She held the map close and squinted. Two other locations were marked, but unlabeled. One was practically on the border near the Tijuana airport, probably in an industrial area. The second unlabeled spot marked with an “x” was barely across the border from the first spot and technically located in the San Diego community of Otay Mesa. The cell had never taken her to either site.

What are these places? What’s their significance?

The next map was of San Diego County and contained several labeled circles.
Potential targets?
Every military facility, large or small, was identified.
Damn, there are so many
. Three civilian sites in San Diego were also circled: the city government complex, San Diego State University, and Petco Park. Marissa didn’t know anything about the local sports teams, but the men had watched the Padres on television. Petco Park must be where they played and where Yasir worked.

The third map she opened displayed a detailed street map of downtown San Diego. A large red star marked one location. Not far from the airport and across the bay from Coronado. The deadly decision had been made.

A place filled with tens of thousands of unsuspecting people. The cell wanted to kill innocent civilians and contaminate the center of one of America’s largest cities with radiation.

Oh my God! The target is Petco Park.