Breathe

by Mike Brogan

  On the table beside him, she saw two handguns, a small automatic submachine gun, and two Uzi-like weapons. Aarif cleaned his guns often, and when done, locked them in a cabinet. His handgun never left his shoulder holster. He probably slept with it.

  “Go to your room,” Hasham said to her. “In one hour we’ll continue our lab work.”

  Your lab work, she wanted to shout at him.

  She walked into her room and sat on the cot. She knew Hasham brought her upstairs because he feared she’d try to find a way to sabotage the weapon. He was right. She had to try, because once the weapon was released, there was little anyone could do to prevent thousands of deaths.

  Thump . . . Thump . . .

  She realized someone just knocked on the cabin door.

  My rescuers!

  No . . . they wouldn’t knock! They’d toss stun grenades and charge in!

  She saw Hasham and Aarif draw their guns, stand up and stare at the door, clearly not expecting visitors. Aarif peeked through a window curtain, looking puzzled by what he saw. He waved Hasham over for a look.

  Thump . . . softer.

  Hasham walked over and looked out the window. His expression did not change.

  “Help . . .” A man’s voice . . . weak . . . in obvious pain.

  Fingernails scraped the door.

  Hasham nodded to Aarif.

  Aarif holstered his gun, then opened the door.

  A middle-aged man in an orange hunter’s jacket stumbled inside holding his right arm. Nell saw his right hand was blue and red, and swollen twice as big as his left hand.

  “Timber Rattler bit me. My phone’s in my truck three miles back. Could you please call nine-one-one . . .”

  “Sure,” Hasham said, “Here, sit and rest. We’ll call for help.”

  Aarif helped him into the chair.

  Nell knew Hasham would not call nine-one-one.

  The man’s face was flushed, but he seemed fairly calm despite the injury.

  Then he noticed Aarif’s collection of assault weapons and guns. The man looked concerned by the guns, especially the AK-47 and Uzis.

  Hasham and Aarif noticed him staring at the guns. Staring too long. Growing alarmed.

  “Just close your eyes, relax, rest . . .” Hasham said. He nodded at Aarif.

  Aarif stepped behind the man. Then he pulled the hunter’s head back and slashed his neck from ear to ear with a curved dagger.

  The man’s eyes shot open as his severed arteries pumped streams of blood onto his orange jacket and the cabin floor.

  Crushed with sadness, Nell collapsed back on her bed and wept for the poor man.

  * * *

  Agent Lonnie Laker sat at his desk preparing to question Amir Kareem in one minute.

  Laker needed answers. Now. And he sensed Kareem had them. Like when and where and how the attack would come. But Laker needed a bit more leverage with the terrorist. He phoned a fellow agent.

  “Monte, did you get photos of Kareem’s wife and kids? I want Kareem to see we will involve them if he doesn’t talk.”

  “They should be in your email in-box now.”

  “Great.”

  They hung up.

  Laker heard a strange sound . . . coming from the interrogation room. Scraping sounds. Probably Kareem scooting his chair away from the fan blowing icy air on him. To check, Laker got up, walked down to the window and looked in.

  Kareem had scooted his chair a few inches, and he was shivering.

  As Laker started to turn away, he noticed Kareem moving his face down toward his bound hands. No way he could chew through his flex ties. Then Kareem started using his teeth to apparently scratch a forearm itch.

  Laker soon realized Kareem was scratching too hard.

  Kareem was biting into his skin . . . biting hard, sending blood down his forearm.

  He’s digging for something!

  “SHIT!” Laker shouted as he and his assistant ran into the room and raced over to Kareem.

  Laker’s assistant, John, gripped Kareem’s head, as Laker tried to pry open Kareem’s mouth and dig out what was in there. But the man’s jaw was locked tight.

  Then Laker heard and felt a crack. Kareem had bitten down on the something hard, a capsule, breaking it, releasing its contents.

  Laker watched as Kareem swallowed everything in his mouth, then closed his eyes.

  Kareem began gasping, his body convulsed, his eyes rolled, his face went beet-red and frothy saliva spilled from his mouth and nose. He slumped over, eyes fixed, staring at nothing.

  Two minutes later, the department nurse hurried into the room. She checked his vitals, then slowly looked up at Laker.

  She shook her head. “He’s gone . . .”

  Laker whispered, “So are our chances of learning about the attack.”

  TWENTY

  No news is bad news kept racing through Donovan’s mind as he and the others sat waiting for an update on their best van lead. A van that vanished near the Adirondacks.

  They’d also waited for news from Agent Lonnie Laker’s interrogation of Kareem, the terrorist. The enhanced interrogation should have produced some information by now.

  Donovan sipped his coffee, saw Laker calling in and pressed the speaker button.

  “Did Kareem talk?” Donovan asked.

  “No, he -”

  “ - push him harder!”

  “He’s dead.”

  “What?” Donovan felt like he’d been punched in the gut.

  Agent Laker explained how Kareem bit into the cyanide capsule he’d gnawed out of his arm and died seconds later.

  Donovan slumped in his chair. “Check his phone and Internet contacts. Get names!”

  “We’re already on it.”

  They hung up.

  Donovan’s fellow agent, Kate Kearns, hurried into the room, looking upbeat.

  “What you got, Kate?”

  “The right van, I think.”

  “Where?”

  “State Route 30. Near the Adirondacks, around the Mayfield area. A truck driver heard our police BOLO. He saw a white Chevy van pass him with three dark-skinned guys. A woman in back. She wore something red around her neck.”

  “A scarf?” Lindee said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Did he see American Transit on the side of the van?”

  “No. He didn’t see the sides.”

  “Any stickers on the rear bumper?”

  “Yes. NASCAR!”

  Donovan’s pulse kicked up.

  “When?”

  “An hour ago.”

  “Gotta be the van!” Manning said.

  “Dragnet that area and find it!” Donovan said.

  “How far is Mayfield?” Jacob Northam asked.

  “About one hundred and ninety miles,” Manning said.

  Donovan sensed what Jacob wanted to do. “I’m going up there!” Jacob said.

  Donovan and Manning looked at each other.

  “Jacob,” Donovan said, “it’s safer to let our FBI hostage rescue teams handle this. They’re experts!”

  “I agree. I just want to be in the area when you rescue Nell.”

  “Me, too,” Lindee said.

  Manning looked concerned. “Lindee, these jihadists kill people on sight!”

  “But Nell rescued me last summer. She saved my life. Now it’s my turn.”

  “But we can’t justify taking you up there,” Manning said.

  “Sure you can,” Lindee said.

  Manning looked puzzled. “How?”

  “It’s simple. I’m the only one who actually saw the two men abduct her. I’m your only eyewitness. I can identify them.

  ” Lindee’s right, Donovan realized. And identifying them fast could save lives.

  Donovan also realized that Jacob would probably drive Lindee up there anyway. They’d wander around. If this situation got dangerous fast, as it undoubtedly would, Lindee and Jacob on their own could get hurt, or worse. It might be safer to keep them close by - under FBI team
protection – instead of worrying about them.

  Donovan nodded at Manning.

  “You’ll have to follow our safety instructions,” Manning said.

  They both nodded.

  The extra responsibility felt like bags of cement had dropped on Donovan’s shoulders.

  TWENTY ONE

  SANA’A, YEMEN

  Bassam Maahdi dripped like a leaky faucet as he hustled his sweaty three hundred thirty pounds through the 105-degree heat rolling past the Sana’a Mountains. He knew his fellow jihadists marveled that a man of his bulk could walk with such agility and sprightliness - and even more amazed he could walk past western intelligence agents without ever being detected. It was a learned talent. He was a very cautious man.

  He scanned the crowded noisy souk and saw no one following him. The scent of Ali’s delicious garlic-lamb stew wafted into his nostrils and even though he’d just gobbled down a six-course lunch, he signaled Ali for a two-kilo carton of stew to tide him over until dinner. He paid, grabbed the carton, and walked on.

  A hundred feet later, he stepped inside his shop, Halabi’s Rare Religious Books, near Old Sana’a University. The air conditioning felt like manna from Allah. He saw his clerk, Daood the Dwarf, stacking eighteenth-century Korans that swirled dust bunnies into the afternoon sunlight. Daood was his aunt’s three-foot-six illegitimate son, and a nasty little cross-dressing pervert.

  Maahdi walked through hanging red glass beads into a small room and descended the circular stairwell to his secret underground level. He placed his thumb on the wall panel, the door clicked open, and he entered his private inner sanctum, eighteen feet underground, safe from drones and US bunker-buster bombs, and Daood the Nosy Dwarf.

  He grabbed his expensive safe phone, but still worried that the NSA’s new technology could maybe listen in.

  He also worried that the NSA paid too much attention to Yemen – and sometimes to him. Of course, with him they wasted time chasing his six aliases.

  He dialed the only number the phone called.

  “Hello . . .?” Hasham Habib answered, seven thousand miles away in the Adirondack cabin.

  Maahdi remembered years ago transferring the money to build Hasham’s sophisticated subterranean forest laboratory.

  “Hello, Mr. Smith,” Bassam said.

  “Ah, Mr. Jones, you sound well?” Hasham said.

  “Quite well, actually. Having a delicious lunch,” Maahdi said, as he swallowed some lamb stew, sweat dripping from his chins.

  “That’s good to hear. How can I help you?”

  “Just wondering how our medical supplies are coming along?”

  “Everything’s right on schedule,” Hasham said.

  “Excellent. So you’ll deliver them to the assembly facility tomorrow?”

  “Tonight actually.”

  “Even better. And is our assembly facility fully functional and prepared?”

  “Fully functional and fully prepared.”

  “Well done. Where is it located?”

  “Small town near the park.”

  “Well, our friends will be most pleased to hear all this,” Maahdi said. “I’ll be out of cellphone range for a few hours, so if anything comes up, let’s use our favorite e-mail address.”

  “Of course,” Hasham said.

  “Good bye then, Mr. Smith.”

  “Good bye, Mr. Jones,” Hasham said, hanging up.

  Maahdi’s sweat dripped onto his desk, despite the frigid air conditioning. He despised his rare genetic defect that caused his sweating. But fortunately, an American endocrinologist had just developed a new gene-replacement cure. Next week, Maahdi’s men would abduct the talented doctor and fly him to Yemen to treat Maahdi.

  * * *

  Bobby Ameen Kamal, an NSA analyst, replayed the conversation he’d just listened to. It felt stilted, the words phony, like in code. The call was received somewhere in the northeastern United States and originated from Yemen.

  Yemen. A big red flag.

  Mr. Jones had said, “Let’s use our favorite email address?”

  Another red flag.

  Our email address suggested both men used the same email draft folder to communicate with each other. One man accessed the folder, wrote his message in it, and logged out. Then, the other guy logged on to the same folder and read what the other wrote, answered him there, and logged out.

  No email is ever sent. No email the NSA can intercept. Communicating without sending the communication.

  To Bobby Kamal, their conversation seemed as suspicious as their names: Smith and Jones. Not with those Arab accents.

  Kamal looked around at his colleagues at the National Security Agency. Most hunched over their computer stations, working on large flat screens. The computers sifted through twenty billion messages and conversations each twenty-four hours, searching for keywords, those trigger words that red-flagged a potential threat to America. If someone researched bomb-making, explosives, biochemical weapons too many times . . . the NSA knew about it, and would put them on the Watch List, Suspect List, or No-Fly List.

  Which put them on Bobby Kamal’s enemy list.

  Kamal felt honored to work for America . . . the country that saved his family when he was eight. Taliban assassins were en route to slaughter his entire family for the egregious crime of sending his sister to grade school. Four minutes before the assassins arrived, a CIA agent drove Bobby’s family to the US Military Base near Kandahar. Today, his sister was a Baltimore obstetrician delivering babies into the world.

  And Bobby was a senior NSA analyst, delivering terrorists into the hands of justice.

  He looked around the NSA’s sprawling underground campus in Fort Meade, Maryland. The Puzzle Factory. Eighteen acres of computers and sophisticated electronics helped NSA’s fifty thousand employees analyze thousands of communications related to US national security, trying to keep America safe from attack, and protect federal government computer networks from cyber attacks.

  So why didn’t these two men speak Arabic, their obvious mother tongue? Kamal spoke fluent Arabic in addition to his native Pashto, English, and French. And what about their medicine? What does it treat? What’s the brand name? Is it prescription or over-the-counter?

  Kamal turned back to his computer and ran a more sophisticated trace on the Yemen-originated call. The NSA computers quickly identified both phones as untraceable burners.

  Another red flag.

  Phone-tracking specifics scrolled onto Bobby’s screen: the Yemini call was bounced to Lima, Peru, to Antwerp, Belgium, and then to an upstate New York phone in the general area of Mayfield.

  Bobby Kamal knew Mayfield was near the Adirondack Park, probably the “park” the men mentioned. His gut told him they were not delivering medical supplies. Worst case - they were delivering terrorism . . . possibly planning an attack.

  Was it the same attack Donovan Rourke had just issued an alert for? Kamal knew Donovan; they worked together a few times. Kamal also knew Mayfield. He’d visited his uncle there. Kamal phoned the Mayfield mayor and spoke with her about the town’s assembly facilities. Then he called Donovan Rourke.

  “Hey, Donovan, Bobby Kamal.”

  “What’s up, Bobby?”

  “I intercepted a suspicious call from Yemen to someone near the town of Mayfield in upstate New York.”

  “Why suspicious?”

  “Because they’re talking about medicine that feels more like a weapon. They also talked about their assembly facility near Mayfield. Just one problem with that.”

  “What’s that?”

  “According to the Mayfield mayor, no assembly facilities like they described exist anywhere in the area any longer.”

  “Isn’t Mayfield near the Adirondack Park?”

  “Yes.”

  “So is the white van we’re looking for.”

  TWENTY TWO

  MAYFIELD, NEW YORK

  Carmel Belle put down her pruning shears and watched the big white vehicle creep to a stop at F
red’s Food & Gas across the road. Two men in dark suits got out. A large, muscular man began pumping gas, while a short man went inside and seemed to ask Fred something.

  Fred shook his head. She wondered what Fred didn’t know? Couldn’t be directions? Fred knew every road and cow path from Manhattan to Montreal. But Fred was seventy-nine and his memory had slipped a bit.

  The smaller man came back outside, shook his head to the big man, got in the big vehicle, and they drove off.

  Who were those guys? They looked serious. Did Fred sign something he should not have? I better go find out.

  Some people say I’m a busybody. Not true! She was just curious. And well, maybe a bit protective of Fred since his wife passed away six years ago.

  Besides, she needed some milk and Total cereal.

  Carmel put on a little lipstick, brushed her hair back the way Fred liked it, and headed outside. As she walked toward Fred’s she wondered if one of these days Fred might ask her to the high school reunion.

  She entered the store, jingling the doorbell, walked over and grabbed some milk and a box of Total.

  “Hey Carmel, how you doing?”

  “Fine, Fred. And you?”

  “Swamped!”

  “Doesn’t look swamped!”

  “Six customers in two hours. You’re the seventh – and guess what?”

  “What?”

  “You’re the best lookin’ by far.”

  Carmel blushed.

  “Freddie Thompson, you got smooth on your tongue!”

  “Hey, I call ‘em like I see ‘em.”

  “What’d you call those fellas in suits just in here?”

  “FBI!”

  “You hittin’ the sauce, Fred?”

  “No ma’am. The fella showed me his genuine FBI ID with his photo.”

  “What’d he want?”

  “Showed me pictures of a woman and a van. They’re searching for the woman!”

  “Why around here?”

  “’Cuz a policeman saw a white Chevy van with a woman wearing a white blouse and a red scarf heading up thisaway. I told them I didn’t see the van.”

  Carmel recalled seeing a few vans stop at Fred’s and gas up.

  “The woman in trouble?”

  “Big trouble! The men grabbed her right off a New York street. World’s gone nuts, Carmel!”