by Frank Perry
after ten o’clock, he paid and left. It was only a couple minutes to their apartment, driving slowly.
The parking garage was a separate two-story structure, away from the apartment buildings. When he got to the complex, he drove into the lower level of the garage and angled across two spaces. The lower level was slightly below ground level. He opened the door and almost fell out of the driver’s seat, dropping the keys. Reaching down, he was disoriented and tumbled out of the car, barely keeping his balance and hopping several steps before standing erect. He was laughing at himself. After regaining balance and straightening his coat, he walked with faltering equilibrium up the dark ramp.
His building was about fifty yards away if he walked across the grass. At the top of the ramp, he angled toward his building, walking across the lawn in the dark instead of on the lighted walkway. He was thinking about his step-father’s useless life. What a stupid jerk. He really was a bastard. He’d died at forty-nine of injuries he got on the docks when a pallet broke, with worthless medical insurance. The man had been a fool, and Dennis wished he’d lived long enough to see how successful he’d become, then died.
As he walked, he never saw the big older man standing motionless behind the shrubs in the shadows of his building. He ambled within five feet of him before sensing the faint smell of an extinguished cigarette. With one more step, the phantom came from behind, throwing a wire garrote over Beal’s face, around his throat. Beal never reacted until the loop pulled tight.
The wire was wrapped around wooden handles at the ends that the attacker used to pull his victim backward, off his feet. Dennis clawed at his neck, but the wire had already cut into the skin. He screamed in unheard agony while blood vessels burst and his lungs seized. He flailed and squirmed, but the attacker was a head taller and twice as powerful. The big man jerked backward hard several times, finally rotating Beal to the ground, then pulling hard with his knee on his victim’s shoulder. For several more seconds, Beal’s legs fought for traction and feet quivered, although he was already dead by any sensible definition.
With another violent jerk, Dennis’ muscles twitched one last time; then he stopped moving. The attacker jerked again, turning his body over. Brain death would take several minutes, but the process could not be reversed. With powerful hands, the man lifted upward then twisted the wire securely behind Dennis’s neck and dropped the body to the ground. While maintaining eye contact, he removed a folding knife from his pocket. With one thrust, he severed the spinal cord beneath the wire. There could be no doubt.
Intelligence
Diplomatic fence mending over the incursion into Syria would take years. The US had objected to the treatment of its dead soldiers, but there was little support in the international community. Politicians and radicals in the Middle East used the event to further their private agendas. Ten months after Salkhaid, the FBI began receiving alerts issued by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) about significant increases in suspicious overseas communications involving Muslim extremists in several US metropolitan areas.
One morning, at the security briefing at the FBI Chicago field office, a senior agent gave an intelligence report, complete with several pictures.
“Good morning. Intel has been monitoring this man, Malik Iqbal Asif Masood, since he came back to the states. Masood is a native-born US citizen who works as a taxi driver in the western suburbs and is believed to live alone. I don’t have any information about his background or why he is under surveillance, other than he spent time in Pakistan.
“Masood has been communicating a lot with Abu Kalim Aksari, leader of the Pakistani Islamic Jihad that has been responsible for some well-planned bombings in major cities in Southeast Asia. The DNI thinks Chicago could now be a target.”
One of the agents in the briefing asked, “What are we going to do with Masood, pick him up or follow him?”
“Not at the moment, we want to see if he’ll lead us to other people involved.”
He continued, “Okay, I’m going to pass out the text of some of his recent phone calls and emails. The intel guys say there’s something planned involving at least one of the terrorist cells in our area. These are mostly broken or illogical sentences, but the bureau says it’s serious stuff.”
Federal Case
FBI Agent Luke Gallagher had been finishing training at the academy in Quantico Virginia when the raid at Salkhaid failed. Although elements of the raid got some small publicity at the time in the international press, his training schedule interfered with attention to news reports. When he completed basic training, he chose the Counter Terrorism specialty and continued an advanced training program for eighteen more weeks before going to his first choice in field offices, Chicago. He picked Chicago partially based on career ambitions, but also because his best friend from college lived in the city.
Since coming to Chicago, he found work interesting and was getting good feedback from senior agents. He was waiting for his first big case. On Monday mornings, he was usually recovering from the weekend. As a federal officer, he’d to watch his behavior, but he was also a young single guy who liked a good time. On the morning of the intelligence briefing, he was mildly hung over from bar hopping in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where he spent two days with his best friend, Sam Kleinman, and a buddy of Sam’s. They had split the cost of a room at the lake, which was popular with young people looking for fun outside the city. It was far enough that Luke could enjoy himself without feedback at the office. He was technically always on duty, but he left his identification and gun in his apartment safe.
The morning of the intelligence briefing, he was late and had to run-walk five blocks from the Western Avenue METRA station to the office. The weather was clear and pleasant with a cool breeze coming from Lake Michigan. At the corner of South Leavitt Street and Roosevelt Road, he entered the building, stopping at Starbuck’s for a “Grande” black coffee. He knew boutique coffee was a foolish extravagance. In five more minutes, he would be inside his cubicle checking crime reports with a coffee pot less than fifty feet away.
The FBI field office is located in the federal building at 2111 West Roosevelt Road, three miles southwest of the loop, across the street from University of Illinois. The Special Agent in Charge (SAC) was Ulysses S. “Sam” Lee. The FBI occupied parts of several floors in the federal building. The main office complex, located on the fifth floor, was a cavern. The elevator door opened and it was like entering a vault with too many florescent lights. The building had an all-glass exterior, but the outer ring of offices and conference rooms blocked the interior from any natural light or outside view. Cubicles divided the inner floor space into neat little private dungeons.
Five Assistant SAC’s, twelve special agents and administrative staff filled the office. Luke was assigned to the organized crime and counter terrorist task forces. The FBI tried to identify patterns indicating either behavior. Chicago is a major interconnecting commercial hub with five railroads converging and thousands of trucks transshipping goods from one line to the others. It was also a major hub for air cargo. Both organized crime and terror groups were engaged in clandestine transport on commercial carriers. To move massively destructive weapons required large semi-trucks or rail transportation. Chemical, biological and massively explosive weapons were shipped in large specialized containers.
Luke grew up near Monmouth New Jersey. As a lanky redheaded kid, he was a jokester who played tricks on people, but never had any luck attracting girls. He performed above average academically, and spent his spare time studying science and doing experiments in his basement. He earned his ham radio and first-class FCC licenses before college. His parents expected him to be an engineer and were surprised when he migrated into business school.
He attended Syracuse University in New York as a biology major, but found that lab work conflicted with social time. Although he’d a normal group of friends and always seemed to get invited to parties, he still had
trouble with girls. In his junior year, he switched majors to marketing. Five years later, he still thought about his career options if he’d remained in science. he’d trouble finding work after graduation, so went to graduate school, studying accounting. After graduation, he worked for a mid-sized accounting firm, but after three years, the firm closed, and he found himself unemployed. The FBI was recruiting accounting majors with his credentials.
After joining the Chicago office, he was surprised that he loved the work so much. As a federal agent, his work was really important. As a kid, he loved puzzles. Now he was paid to play, and the stakes were high.
Exiting the elevator, he went straight to his cubicle in the maze at the center of the fifth floor. He started each day by reading the morning crime reports. Scanning FBInet, he focused on a murder on a golf course in nearby Cary, IL. An executive from a freight handling company had been killed, mob style. International shipping companies are monitored. Several branches of Government watch them closely. Because the initial report indicated that it could be an execution, Luke was interested.
Monday routines were always the same, an