“God is on our side, Jacob,” the President said.
“Indeed. He is, ma’am,” Sensor said.
The President lowered her voice and said, “As you know, I was seriously thinking of canceling the Regulators program as being so much pie in the sky, but this incident has convinced me otherwise. I want you to carry on, Jacob, and we’ll find the funding from somewhere.”
“Thank you, Madam President,” Sensor said. “The taxpayers’ money will be well spent,”
“Yes, that is now my considered opinion,” the President said. “And once again, congratulations on a job well done.”
* * *
Jacob Sensor made another call. “John, it’s Sensor. I just had a call from the President, and she’s extremely pleased with last night’s action. Oh yes, yes, of course, it was the night before. Did everything go as planned? Good, good. The SWAT teams know that killing teenaged terrorists is part of their job. Because of the youth of the targets, were any objections raised? None? Excellent. Transferring the bodies to the Modoc forest was not a problem? Oh, your own agency did that. Well done, John, I’m in your debt. Now, to the other matter we discussed a while back, the possibility of a traitor in our midst. How did the Secret Service investigation in Los Angeles go? What did you say? She can either resign from the National Wildfire Service without a pension or face ten years in prison. I think she’ll be happy to cooperate. Anything else? Ah, I already heard that the search of Mike Norris’s apartment came up with nothing, Well, keep me posted. I want to keep an eye on this one. By the way, John, thanks to you the Regulators are a go! I know, wonderful news. Yes, I’ll talk with you later.”
Sensor looked out his office window at the people passing back and forth in the hallway. He shook his head and smiled. A woman willing to betray her country for a face-lift. What in God’s name was the world coming to?
CHAPTER 38
An event more than four thousand miles away gave Jacob Sensor an unexpected boost that, as far as the President of the United States was concerned, sealed the deal for the Regulators.
The good news was passed to Sensor by Sir Anthony Bickford-Scott, who told him about the action in considerable detail . . .
* * *
Glen Affric National Nature Reserve in Inverness-shire, Scotland, is a classic landscape of lakes and mountains, and its vast forests of pine, birch, and oak are important havens for wildlife including red deer, pine martens, and golden eagles.
Located on Scotland’s northeast coast, its remoteness made it a prime target for the Scorching, not because of nearby towns that could be endangered but as a fearful demonstration of the long reach of Islamic pyroterrorism.
The pilot of a light aircraft overflying the reserve spotted smoke rising from the edge of a pine forest near the Plodda Falls tourist attraction. He flew lower and saw five men who seemed to be starting a fire. They didn’t look like firefighters, and he radioed his concern to controllers at the Inverness International Airport. As luck would have it, a team of smoke jumpers who’d been training in the area were at the airport sitting in an idling Shorts SD 360 aircraft and were immediately dispatched to the forest. Three of them were armed former SAS men.
As Bickford-Scott told Sensor, “It was a lucky convergence of excellent circumstances. The pilot reported the arson attempt while the terrorists were still active in the forest, and the SAS men were right there at the airport. Dash it all, Jacob, the . . .”
“Regulators,” Sensor supplied.
“Yes, Regulators, if you want to call them that. Well, anyway, they were at the scene in record time and were still drifting down in parachutes when the firefight erupted.”
Sensor said, “Surely your men were caught at a terrible disadvantage?”
“Not a bit of it,” Bickford-Scott said. “The SAS men were armed with the excellent MAC-10 submachine gun, and they know how to use it.”
Sensor said, “I’m not familiar with the weapon.”
“As far as I was told, it’s a fully automatic 9mm machine pistol with a 32-round detachable magazine, and the SAS version is fitted with a suppressor that cuts back on noise and recoil. In the right hands it’s a deadly weapon, as the encounter with the Affric terrorists demonstrated. Our boys opened up as they were dropping and continued the fight even as they hit the ground. It was all over in seconds, Jacob. All five of the terrorists were killed, either right there at the scene or shortly afterward.”
“How were the pyroterrorists armed?” Sensor said.
Bickford-Scott said, “Let me see, it’s in the report somewhere . . . ah yes, here it is . . . each had a Russian MP-443 Grach Yarygin 9mm pistol. And somebody’s written here that it is the standard sidearm for all branches of the Russian armed forces.”
Sensor said, “That does not indicate Russian involvement in pyroterrorism. They have their own forests to worry about.”
“No, indeed, it does not. But the Middle East is awash in Russian weapons . . . and American ones.”
“I wonder if the MAC-10 would be good arm for my Regulators,” Sensor said.
“Sorry, Jacob, but it’s been banned in your country since 1994, and that was the semiautomatic version. It seems that Americans are not to be trusted with such a weapon.”
“I could get around that, but it might be more trouble than it’s worth,” Sensor said. “And the gun would scare the hell out of the politicians. For now, Anthony, I’ll settle for a copy of the report that I can send on to the President.”
“I’ll dispatch it right over,” Bickford-Scott said. “It makes for some very satisfying reading. Five dead terrorists is not to be sneezed at. By the way, I’ll also send you some Cuban coffee directly arrived from Havana and some Iranian saffron powder. I know how your cook loves to use it.”
“That’s very kind of you, Anthony,” Sensor said. “And please give my congratulations to your SAS men. They did very well.”
“I will, and please tell your Regulators about the action,” Bickford-Scott said.
“Yes, I intend to,” Sensor said. “Depend on it.”
* * *
The message from the President left on Jacob Sensor’s cell phone was short and to the point. “I read the British report, and I’m thrilled. Keep up the good work.”
CHAPTER 39
Despite a terrible civil war that raged between 1975 and 1990, Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, has become increasingly popular as a tourist destination, slowly reclaiming its historic image as the “Paris of the Middle East.” The bars and restaurants in the swinging districts of Achrafieh and Gemayzeh have a liveliness and sophistication you might expect in New York, London, Paris, and Rome. The busy district of Hamra swirls with Arabic coffee shops and colorful vibrancy, and Ramlet al-Baida is a beach that reminds the sun-browned tourist that just like Cannes, Barcelona, and Valencia, Beirut is a city on the edge of the Mediterranean.
But there are dangerous areas in the city where tourists dare not go, especially several districts south of the airport. One of these is Dahieh, a run-down Shia Muslim suburb that hosts a Palestinian refugee camp that has twenty thousand inhabitants.
Near the camp, in one of the poorest neighborhoods, on one of the grimmest streets, stood a bleak, featureless concrete block building that housed the headquarters of the Brothers of the Islamic Jihad, a vicious group that had footholds in the United States, Europe, and the Far East.
Four men in Arab dress sat around a table drinking coffee. The oldest of them and their leader, the sixty-eight-year-old, oil-rich Sheik Jamari Qadir, had just asked a question of one of the younger men, and now the youth, Kadar Muhammed, answered.
“I spoke on the telephone with Nasim Azar. He says the Scorching is on schedule, and the attack on the Willamette forest will go as planned. His own men will be assisted by the Jacks of All Trades, a group of Muslim patriots in Los Angeles.”
“Aaaiii,” Qadir wailed. “There will be many holy martyrs ere that day is done.”
“Inshallah,” the younger man
said.
Qadir nodded. “Yes, yes, indeed. God willing.”
Another man spoke, fifty-six-year-old Ahmed Sultan, chided by the others for being worn out by his fifteen-year-old bride. As was his habit, a Browning Hi-Power lay on the table in front of him. “And what of Jacob Sensor?” he said. “What of the infidel? When we give him the time and date of the Willamette attack, we betray our brethren. Can we trust Sensor to pay us?”
“We can trust him,” Qadir said. “A hundred million dollars buys a lot of trust.”
“He is no friend of Islam and the Caliphate,” Sultan said.
“No, but Sensor badly wants to be President of the United States. Ambition like his makes for strange bedfellows.” Qadir shrugged. “We do him a favor, he does us a favor. As long as the money goes to establishing the Caliphate, I’d do business with the devil.”
“Does Sensor have that much money?” Sultan said.
“He can get it,” Qadir said. “In Washington he consorts with billionaires, and the American government’s money is a bottomless pit. Their President Obama gave our brothers in Iran $50 billion without a second thought. Pah, what is a hundred million to a man like Jacob Sensor? Chickenfeed, as the Americans say.”
Sultan shook his head. He looked haggard. “We will make so many martyrs, Jamari. So many young warriors lost.”
“All in a good cause, Ahmed,” Qadir said. “The reason a mujahideen is born is to die for the Caliphate. And the Scorching is postponed only for a while. When the time comes, American forests will be set ablaze, and Sensor’s money will help us drive the Yankee devils from the Middle East. Fear not, my brother, the jihad will go on until the Caliphate is established and our Islamic world returns to the glories of the seventh century.”
“Jamari, you will be a poor man by then,” Sultan said, smiling. “Day by day you spend more and more of your great fortune on the jihad.”
“If it is Allah’s will to see the Caliphate come to pass, I’ll beg for my bread in the streets and sleep in horse dung,” Qadir said.
Sultan bowed in his chair. “Great sheikh, you are indeed a mighty river to your people.”
“A word of warning. Nasim Azar must never know of our dealings with Sensor,” Kadar Muhammed said. “This meeting should be kept secret.”
“Of course, Azar must never know,” Qadir said. “Who would tell him? Not anyone here.”
The three other men muttered their agreement and in turn each swore an oath of secrecy.
“Azar knows of Sensor, but he fears him,” Qadir said. “Since we first met in Washington a year ago at an Arab-US business roundtable, Sensor speaks directly to me. And no one else but me should ever speak to him. Jacob Sensor is as clever as a fox and as savage as a wolf. He is a dangerous man.”
“Yet you trust him, Sheikh Qadir?” Sultan said.
“Yes, but only in this one instance. In no other,” Qadir said. “I will war with him at a later date, but I will choose the time and the field of battle.”
Muhammed said, “Perhaps I speak out of turn, Sheik Qadir, but there’s a question that needs answering.”
“Then ask it, Kadar, and I’ll do my best to answer it,” Qadir said.
“Then my question is this . . . what happens if Nasim Azar escapes from the burning forest? Could he do us harm?”
“Why would he escape?” Qadir said, answering the young man’s questions with one of his own. “Will he not seek holy martyrdom with the rest?”
Muhammad shook his head and sounded hesitant when he said, “I speak often with Azar, and he is a slippery one. He spends our money and promises much but delivers very little in return. Who knows what a man like that will do or will not do?”
“He showed much skill in the making of bombs,” Qadir said. “His martyrs killed hundreds of unbelievers, and for that he has my gratitude.” The sheikh smiled. “But if it is the case that he refuses martyrdom, we will hunt him down and kill him like a mad dog. Does that answer your question?”
Sultan said, “It seems that the young man has doubts about this enterprise as I do, Sheikh Qadir. You put too much trust in the man Sensor to uphold his end of the bargain. It could be that you’re making a grave mistake.”
“Ahmed Sultan, perhaps your ardent young bride has addled your brain,” Qadir said. “I have Sensor’s word on the matter, and he has mine. Everything will come to pass as I have said it will. There is no doubt about that. Sensor is my bitter enemy, and I am his, but in this one instance we can work together for our mutual benefit.”
There was a flintiness in Qadir’s eyes that scared Sultan. The man’s body bore the scars of seven great wounds sustained during the wars with Israel, and he was said to have killed a score of men with his own hands. “Then I bow to your greater knowledge of Sensor and his infidel ways,” Sultan said. “You have my unqualified support, Sheikh Qadir.”
“Then all is well,” Qadir said. “But it would be better for you if you do not question my actions again, Ahmed.”
“Ana asf,” Sultan said.
“Your apology is accepted,” Qadir said.
Sultan pushed the Browning across the table. “For you, Sheikh Qadir. It is loaded.”
Qadir picked up the Hi-Power and said, “A fine gift indeed, Ahmed.” He thumbed off the safety . . . and shot Sultan in the middle of his forehead.
The man jerked back in his chair and then slid sideways onto the floor.
In the stunned silence that followed, Qadir said, “Does anyone else present question my judgment?”
No one said a word, and Qadir said, “Then all is well.” He nodded in the direction of the dead man and said, “Take that dog out of here. Tonight his young bride will grieve for what she has lost.”
CHAPTER 40
Brigadier General Henry “Hank” Stuart accepted a scotch from Jacob Sensor and said, “What kind of military assets were we talking about here? I can only do so much.”
“Enough to get the job done quickly and efficiently,” Sensor said. “Your people will be up against small arms, pistols and rifles, nothing heavier.’”
“How many terrorists are we talking about?” Stuart said.
“Less than a hundred at a guess, maybe much less.”
Sensor studied the soldier carefully. Despite the gray in the man’s close-cropped hair, he looked too young for his rank. But the scar across his left cheekbone suggested he’d seen action. “Until the details are released to the media, this operation is to be conducted in the utmost secrecy,” Sensor said. “And it goes without saying that it must look good to the President.”
“Half a dozen Bell Venom helicopters armed with machine guns and a couple of Chinooks to carry a reinforced company of light infantry should be enough,” Stuart said. “I can organize a force like that without too many questions being asked. But it will take time.”
“You will be informed of the date of the terrorist attack on the Willamette very soon, General,” Sensor said. “You’ll have reasonable notice to start assembling your forces.” He smiled. “Needless to say, you’ll earn a second star for this.”
“I’m a patriot, Mr. Sensor,” Stuart said. “I’d undertake this mission without a promotion.”
“And that is commendable of you, general,” Sensor said. “But such patriotism will not go unrewarded. It’s a rare commodity these days in an era of Open Borders Open Arms.”
“Whoever came up with that should be stood against a wall and shot for a damned traitor,” the soldier said.
“Indeed,” Sensor said. “Another scotch?”
“Yes, one more and then I have to be on my way. I have a meeting at the Pentagon later today with Lieutenant General Baxter.”
“Yes, I know him,” Sensor said.”
“Then you know he thinks the same way we do,” Stuart said. “He has no time for those liberal fools in Congress.”
Sensor smiled. “A wise man.” Then, “General, I hesitate to bring this up, but I would like my Regulators in on the attack.”
; “Regulators?”
“A force of armed forest fire smoke jumpers I set up to dispose of pyroterrorists at the scene of the crime, as it were. I hope you don’t mind them coming along.”
“How many?” Stuart said.
“About half a dozen,” Sensor said. “You could use them as paratroopers.”
“I don’t like including civilians in any operation.”
“As a favor to me, General?”
Stuart nodded. “I suppose it can be arranged. Your men can ride along with the infantry.”
“I’m forever in your debt,” Sensor said. Then, smiling again, “How did Mrs. Stuart like the little birthday gift I sent her?”
General Stuart grinned. “She was delighted. Anne has wanted a Ford Mustang convertible since she was a teenager. And how did you know silver was her favorite color?”
“A lucky guess,” Sensor said. “I’m so glad she likes it.”
* * *
After the general left to attend his meeting, Jacob Sensor made a long-distance call to Sheikh Jamari Qadir of the Brothers of the Islamic Jihad. Qadir, because of his insomnia known to his contemporaries as Wahid Bila Nawn, the Sleepless One, answered the phone.
After identifying himself, Sensor said, “I’ve begun to make preparations for the attack. Now I need a date for the event and the plan to be used. Don’t fail me, Sheikh Qadir.”
“I won’t fail you, Sensor,” the man said, using the cool tone of voice he reserved for infidels. “And you must not fail me and my brothers.”
“You will have the money I promised, Sheikh Qadir. A hundred million pending a successful outcome for the operation.”
“I trust you, Sensor,” Qadir said. “Earlier today I executed a man who did not.”
“And that is a measure of your sincerity,” Sensor said. “I am impressed.”
“Soon I will be in touch with the man Azar, and when he tells me what I wish to know, you will be immediately informed,” Qadir said. “Sensor, I do not expect Azar to survive the action.”
“He will not. You have my assurance on that,” Sensor said.
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