Barb continued, “Right. So, put professional into column number one. That includes professional computer skills, since they were capable of discovering the data that led them to Chillenni in the first place.”
“What triggered their interest in Chillenni?”
Barb shrugged. “Beats me. They might have traced the money, or they could have found someone overseas that fingered him. I’m just assuming he was the first, but he could be the second or third in the string of hits.”
By now, Don was completely into this discussion, his coffee was getting cold. “Go on. We started with Chillenni, so let’s keep it there.”
“All right. Our buddy Anthony gives up the names of those he knows, probably in an attempt to save his life. He knows he could die for whispering any names, but a probable death in the future is less important than an immediate death right then. Only problem…”
“They didn’t play fair, they just killed him.”
“Who knows?” Barb shrugged. “Maybe they played fair, but he didn’t understand the rules. Either way, he gives up some names and then they make him disappear. Next, they hit jolly old England and our second contestant, Ali Abdullah. Reports show he was with some friends late at night, outside a meat market. A video camera near his house never shows him arriving home. We have a video camera near the meat market which shows him turning down Dunstable Road which is the right direction if he is heading home.”
“Car?”
“Possible. Possibly probable. Ali was known to carry weapons and if he fired a weapon, someone would have noticed. The only other report that corresponds to the same general timeframe is rather vague. It mentions a general feeling of ‘bad things’ happening in a park a few blocks away.”
“X-Files type stuff?” Don smirked.
“Never watched it, so I can’t comment.”
“Not a Duchovny fan?”
“Actually, I like him just fine. The series just wasn’t interesting to me at the time, and I’ve never gone back to watch it. But I mention this report because it might become relevant later.”
“So, the plot thickens!” Don smiled when Barb rolled her eyes at him.
Barb continued, “Now, we go to Germany and we lose three more. We have a camera on the front door of a club where a hot woman is seen following our mark Fahid Atif out of the front door. Then a large black man appears to tail them both for a couple of frames and then nothing.”
“Can we I.D. the possible suspects?”
“No, too grainy and too dark. The focus of the camera was the front door, not the periphery. I doubt the hot girl was there to off a terrorist.”
“That’s being sexist, you know.” Don grinned. “We might have a hot girl on a mission to fight terrorism all over the world.” Don raised his hands when Barb gave him ‘the stare.’ He laughed. “Just saying! I’m trying to support women everywhere and when I do, this is the crap I get.”
Barb wasn’t smiling. “Be real. I’m willing to admit it’s possible she helped trap him, but I would lay money on the mysterious black man as the muscle. We have the other two who disappeared leaving at about the same time from a different club down the street and heading towards the first club. So, I’m…” She eyed Don. “Spitballing here, but I think those two get caught up in whatever was happening with the first guy. So, it appears that all three get taken out. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am, three more terrorists down. Plus, they netted a big fish in this haul.”
“More intel?”
She agreed. “More intel. Now we go on to Berlin and our altercation at the club there. We have definitive eyewitnesses who say a white American is accosted by our lucky contestant Mustafa Ali Abrahm. Mr. Abrahm is seen—get this—sticking a knife through the American’s hand and impaling it to the table. The American pulls the knife out and a few seconds later, punches Mustafa hard enough to make him collapse. Then, the two are seen leaving the club and we never see Mustafa Ali Abrahm again. Like, ever again.”
“I heard you the first time.”
“I’m just making sure you were paying attention.”
“Oh,” Don admitted, “I’m paying very close attention. How reliable are the eyewitnesses?”
Barb frowned, “Unfortunately, nothing that is going to get ‘upstairs’ excited. Try drinking-at-a-club-late-at-night-reliable.”
“So, it’s possible the knife through the hand might have actually missed his hand?”
“Not unless the blood on the table is fake.”
“We have a match on the blood?”
She shook her head. “Completely contaminated. Not a thing anyone can do with it.”
“Fuck!”
Barb smiled, she had Don completely involved in her report. That chair was coming with momma. “Also, the bouncer says he didn’t see a thing. The investigator has the impression the bouncer might know more, but isn’t going to say anything. Apparently, Ali was a known jerk and there isn’t one person who is losing sleep over his disappearance. It’s all good riddance.”
“Why did the police get involved?”
“He had two friends who wanted the American caught and prosecuted.”
“Where were these two selfless individuals at the time?”
“Apparently, running for their lives.”
Don snorted. “Cowards.”
Barb said, “They might be cowards, but they are living cowards at the moment. The police have asked for their help capturing the guy but they’re too scared he’ll come for them and seem to have forgotten the details. Remember our buddy Fahid’s friends? I think they tried to help their friend and got a six-foot box as their reward.”
“I thought it was seventy-two virgins.”
“Don’t be crass, that’s only for special situations and I’m pretty sure whatever they did isn’t going to qualify.” Barb continued, “So, we have the first hit here in America, the second hit by a big black guy and the third by a very white American.”
“You forgot the sexy woman.”
“You would focus on her.”
“Hell yeah, just imagine the television rights to this story. Put some more sexy women in it and we’ll make a fortune.” Don’s eyes had a twinkle in them.
“Focus, Don. I’ll throw some testosterone your way,” she changed her voice. “And NOW the royal rumble MAIN EVENT!” Barb almost started coughing trying to imitate a ring announcer. “Over in the Netherlands, in one of the government ‘no-go’ zones we have a major altercation, once again it’s a white American.”
“Same guy?”
“No, at least not from what we can tell. The report suggests this guy was much taller. He also had something similar to Special Forces training. He went through a group of thugs armed with batons and knives without breaking a sweat. According to one of the witnesses, he caught a brick, bigger than your hand, thrown from twenty yards away. He returned the brick so hard he broke a guy’s sternum. By the time he grabbed two more suspected terrorists, after a firefight in an apartment building, he had left five dead and another in a coma.”
“An actual Special Forces unit?” Don considered who else could do something like this.
“Really, then whose? If we are doing this—and so far the actors mostly look American—nobody in our government is speaking up. Our friendly neighbors are going to figure out the same things I have eventually, and then they’ll come calling asking why we’re running covert operations in their countries.”
Don considered what she had just said. “Wait a minute, that would presume some sort of legal declaration to go after Anthony Chillenni. We would at least have his name on a report somewhere.”
Barb agreed. “All true, but we don’t. Either we have a rogue anti-terrorist group in this country running outside legal jurisdiction or we have some other unknown group doing this.”
Don shook his head. “Dammit, this discussion isn’t going well. What else do you have?”
“We come to the final chapter, at least so far. I found on one of our foreign wires that Dawi
d Zadeh has been assassinated in Syria. Everything from his shoulders down was found, stabbed by a sword and left in the middle of the street halfway between the mosque he was speaking at and his apartment. The last time he was seen alive was at the mosque teaching the Caliphate ‘truth’ to some new converts.”
Don was thinking back. “Zadeh? Isn’t he the one that skipped out of France right ahead of a raid?”
“The very same. In fact, you could say he was one of the masterminds of the group. Well, him and Abaaoud. But since the French nailed Abaaoud, Zadeh was the only one left of those involved with experience.”
“The French didn’t fuck around. They shut down civil liberties and uncovered a whole bunch of shit. They based it on a 1955 law and did something like a hundred and fifty raids in one night.”
Barb consulted her notes. “It was a hundred and sixty-eight raids. They found bulletproof vests, guns and a rocket launcher. Hard to explain what you need a rocket launcher for. The president has asked for constitutional amendments to combat terrorism so they don’t have to use the state of emergency clause so much.” She pushed those notes aside. “We’re getting off track. My point was, someone tracked down Zadeh, was able to get all the way into Damascus, and cut his head off in the middle of a street at night with no one seeing a thing.”
“Could it be Al-Qaeda vs. ISIS?”
“The head is missing. Gone. Disappeared.”
“I rather gathered if it was missing, that it was gone,” Don said dryly.
“Want to know what people said the next morning?”
Don smiled. “No, but you’re going to tell me anyway.”
Barb ignored his comment. “A lot of people were saying that they felt there was something evil or overwhelmingly scary out there and all they could do was hide in case Shaitan came for them.”
“Shaitan?”
“Their version of a demon. Not the same thing as the Satan from the Bible. Still, a pretty damning comment when you add in the witnesses from England.”
Don twisted his hand in the air. “A little tenuous.”
“Really? How about no one saw a thing? One guy gets run through, stabbed and then has his head cut off by some sort of bladed weapon. All of this in the middle of a huge city and the only thing anyone is able to uncover was there was a horrible sense of fear. What the hell did they want with the head?”
“I’d say they’re making sure he can’t have a decent burial. These people don’t represent the government.” Don mused.
Barb snorted. “Really? Which part of this makes you say something like that?”
Don ignored her sarcasm. “Even when the U.S. got Bin Laden, we were trying to be politically correct with his death rights as I remember. This group, apparently, went out of their way to make sure he can’t be laid to rest according to his religious beliefs. That points to a lack of political sensitivity, ergo no government oversight.”
“Doesn’t mean no government agency. Could be option number two, one operating outside the law.”
“If that’s true, they’re a hit squad based on our research. That’s going to point back to us.”
Barb spoke what both were thinking. “That’s not going to go over well.”
“No,” Don agreed. “No it’s not. We need to get ahead of this. Keep researching, but do it faster. I can assign whatever help you need, but we need to have a report on this before anyone starts pointing at us. I’ll start putting out feelers to get a non-official meeting together.”
“That works for me.” Barb stood up and grabbed the back of the chair.
Don waved his hand at her. “Leave it for a second. I’ll carry it down to your office myself. People need to see I not only approved it, but I felt you earned the hell out of that chair.”
Barb smiled as she left Don’s office. It wasn’t until she got back to her own office and she thought about the task ahead of her that her smile faded.
What was she going to uncover?
Colorado Base, USA
Marcus was looking over the results his little shipping container tests had provided. His team had used a twenty-foot container and sent it up into space after covering it with their radar signature reducing coating.
Marcus hadn’t heard the last of Bobcat’s bitching when Bobcat had to fly Shelly out and leave her in one of the airplane hangars. It was like he was leaving a girlfriend alone in a bar full of Marines or something.
Marcus wasn’t sure if Marines was the right military group you didn’t want to leave your girlfriend around, but he was pretty sure it would be dangerous. Either way, Bobcat had bitched up a storm.
Marcus didn’t care. He needed readings to assess their vulnerability to cosmic radiation exposure and micro-meteorite impacts. If they were going to have these containers on the moon, they would need protection. Marcus had kept the speed down for the flight to allow a longer flight time in space. TOM confirmed he was monitoring any communications that might mean someone had seen the shipping container either through electronic or visual means.
The first readings hadn’t been as bad as he had feared. Until the first sun-flare happened on the second day of the container travelling to the moon. That was an eye opening experience and it wouldn’t have been good for anything inside the container that needed to be protected. The hard x-rays from that one event would have been damaging to normal spacecraft electronics at any distance outside the protection provided by the many layers of the Earth’s atmosphere.
TOM and Marcus had worked hard on gravitic protection using the two engine design they had come up with for the larger shipping containers. They had finally decided to just build a special engine that would handle the radiation shielding and allow the two original engines to provide the protection from micrometeorites.
Now Marcus had most of his answers. It looked like they would be able to protect the containers without having to resort to several layers of aluminum shielding. Although he might suggest that they consider stuffing some protection into containers and flying them up to the moon as an over-shield to the group of containers they would use as the base.
That was his first idea, he was sure he would come up with more.
Buenos Aires, Argentina
>> TOM, I have registered multiple spikes in energy usage at a location that Ben is monitoring from the Polarus.<<
Why are you monitoring Ben’s computer?
>> It is such a small processing load that I have connected into all of Bethany Anne’s team computers and communications. <<
Like that’s not big brother or anything.
>> I don’t understand. I’m not their brother. <<
It’s an Earth saying, it means someone who is implementing oppressive control over personal liberties. Or at least, that is how I understand it.
>>I am not controlling anything. I’m merely monitoring so I may understand all available data at this time. <<
I guess you can’t require anyone to do anything. Just don’t let it be known you’re doing this. Humans suffer anxiety whenever they believe someone is paying too much attention to them.
>>Are you suggesting I refrain from updating Bethany Anne of this situation? <<
What? No. We will discuss that. I’m just suggesting that we figure out how to make sure that it doesn’t become general knowledge you have your digital claws into everything that’s going on.
>>How am I supposed to be able to help if I am not aware of the inputs? That doesn’t make sense. <<
You know, I thought I was bored. Between you and Marcus, I think I prefer silence.
>>You didn’t offer silence as an option. I’m not sure I understand your statement. <<
TOM sighed, sometimes he could almost sympathize with Bethany Anne. Never mind that for now. What did you find out from monitoring Ben?
>>He has a monitoring section on a location inside the country of Germany. It seems to be a single location. There has been a minimum amount of energy usage over the last three days. However, the energy being drawn
has increased significantly. <<
Germany? Where exactly? There? Oh dear me. That’s David’s castle. It looks like he must be back and doing something. We are going to have to inform Bethany Anne. This should be exciting.
>>What do you mean by this should be exciting? The act of telling her, or her response? <<
Oh, Tom mused, I don’t think the telling her is going to be too troublesome. What happens right after that is probably going to be a rollercoaster ride. Hold on to your butt, ADAM.
>>I have no physical body, TOM. Why would you tell me to hold on to something I don’t have? <<
Tell you what, ADAM. Why don’t you research that phrase while I get this adventure started?
Tom concentrated so he could communicate with Bethany Anne.
24
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Michael entered the house, easily hearing the three ladies talking in the back. He slowed a minute as he listened to Bethany Anne informing Gabrielle that he would officiate her father’s wedding. Michael smiled to himself. Her obvious enjoyment felt good.
He could get used to feeling good again after so many centuries of obligation driving his actions. He could understand why Stephen had almost ended his own existence.
Like Stephen, Michael understood the vitality that Bethany Anne could bring to life. He felt it himself.
He broke his reverie to hear that Gabrielle and Tabitha had made plans to go out together. It seemed like Tabitha had wanted to get some particular errand accomplished, but hadn’t had time herself. Gabrielle asked Bethany Anne to promise that she wouldn’t go anywhere without Michael to guard her.
Michael smiled. Come to me my little fly, come to me!
Michael resumed walking and made sure the two vampires could hear him coming. By the time he arrived at Tabitha’s rooms, the three were discussing a trip out of town. Gabrielle and Tabitha would probably be back no later than tomorrow evening.
Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Set One: Books 1-7, Death Becomes Her, Queen Bitch, Love Lost, Bite This, Never Forsaken, Under My Heel, Kneel or Die (Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Sets) Page 146