by Thomas Shaw
Tom opened the hatch back on his Peugeot so he would have a place to sit that would give him a stable platform to do his job. Tom advanced the throttle until the drone slowly lifted into the still night air and switched the camera to its night vision mode and headed north to his target.
SAM, by using the GPS information from the drone, guided Tom the half mile distance to the building loaded with elicit munitions. Tom dropped down to about twenty feet above the ground as he approached the rear of the building. He put the drone into hover mode which placed it about forty feet from the large window that faced the back alley to this building. He touched a button on the screen of his smart phone and his display immediately showed the crosshairs of a scope with a distance measuring feature that displayed the number of feet and inches to the window. SAM was giving him a steady stream of information which had now turned into a count down. SAM was saying, “On my count, five, four…”
Two days earlier, SAM had arranged for two local men (after paying them a considerable about of money) to crash their cars into one another in front of this building creating a diversion to cover the sounds Tom was about to make.
“three, two, one, fire!” as Tom activated the trigger on the four inch barrel that sent the steel projectile hurling through the window. The sounds of the glass breaking blended with the head on collision at that same moment in front of the building. As the guards rushed to investigate the “accident”, Tom carefully eased his drone through the empty window frame. He was hovering in the loft of the building he had seen a couple of days earlier. His display screen showed stacks and stacks of what looked like AK-47’s and rocked propelled grenade launchers lying like cords of wood. Tom added a little power and eased the drone forward until he was past the loft and was looking down into the main part of the building. Angling to the left and reducing power he maneuvered the drone to a point where he was hovering over the canvas he had seen earlier. Pressing a button on his display screen, he released the first thermite grenade on the explosives it covered. He maneuvered the drone to the other side of the building releasing another thermite CO2 cartridge, and then it was on to the rear of the building. As he approached this pile of explosives the downward force of the helicopter propellers suddenly kicked up a blinding cloud of dust, obscuring his vision. His only option was to add power to see if he could rise above this dust cloud without running into the floor of the loft overhead. His vision finally cleared and Tom was able to drop the third incendiary device on the pile of ordnance. All that was left was the long table in the middle of the room that appeared to be stacked neatly with dozens and dozens of suicide vests. Tom dropped the last thermite grenade on the table and pressed the button that activated the timed detonators. He made a slow 360 degree turn to visually see that all four detonators were flashing, and then added power to climb back up to the loft. With the camera mounted underneath the drone, Tom was unaware that he was about to collide with the floor of the loft when he heard SAM’s voice say, “Stop”. Realizing his mistake he slowly maneuvered the drone back to the front of the building, then added power until he could see the loft thirty feet in front of him. This had taken precious time as the timers on the detonators were counting down. The drone approached the loft and once again began to kick up another dust cloud which forced him to hover until it cleared. Finally he saw the window and moved the controls to exit the building when all of a sudden the screen on his smart phone went completely white. At that same moment the parking lot where they sat lit up like someone had turned on an orange light. One second later they felt the shock wave then heard the huge explosion that rocked their car violently from side to side. The explosion blew out windows that were over half a mile away. The only thing that had saved Tom and Julie was the fact that they were sitting behind a building which absorbed the main force of the blast. Tom realized the drone hadn’t made it out of the building so they quickly left the area, returning back to their apartment.
The adrenalin rush was so intense that they were both shaking when they finally settled down in their apartment and turned on the TV. It was less than an hour later when Aljazeera interrupted the program with breaking news that a warehouse full of emergency food supplies had been bombed by the Israelis and had killed several innocent people. They watched the news for another hour then decided to go to bed which ended up with both of them having the best sex they had ever experienced due to the adrenalin rush they were experiencing.
15
They watched the television reports for the rests of the weekend and heard everything from Americans bombing a milk factory to the BBC reporting that an IED facility had apparently exploded possibly due to a static spark. No matter who made the report it was hard to explain away the fact that a thirty foot crater was left where this building use to be.
Monday morning Tom and Julie were attending their classes as usual but found it strange that Hussein was nowhere to be found. Two more days went by until Hussein was finally back on the scene and was as hospitable as ever, even inviting them to a party the school was giving for two of its students that had been drafted into the Iranian Army. It was going to be held the next evening at a posh hotel in downtown Tehran.
Hussein’s brief absence wasn’t because he was on vacation or taking a break from his academic responsibilities but instead he was being interrogated by the ISIS group he is involved with. They wanted to know why he had taken it upon himself to show an outsider, but even worse an American, their biggest IED facility. He was also asked to explain how pieces of a drone helicopter were found in the wreckage. The outward appearance of Hussein looked normal but the slashes and welts on his back and legs told another story.
This affair at the hotel was the first time Tom and Julie had been out in the public for a social event and SAM was taking great care to advise Julie on how to dress.
Tom ended up wearing slacks and a blazer while Julie wore sandals, a long dress and a scarf covering her head. They drove to the hotel and used valet parking to make their grand entrance as they had become well known to the students they had become involved with. This gathering was on the third floor in a glass enclosed ballroom but there would be no dancing tonight or any other night for that matter. It was not a sit down affair but rather the students milled around and ended up splitting into groups with the boys in one and the girls in another. The two students who were going to the army gave their little speeches and it looked like the party was winding down when Hussein and a lady dressed in a black burka from head to toe came over to talk to Jim and Julie Peterson. Introductions were made, after which Hussein asked Julie if she would join him for a fresh glass of orange juice. Tom thought it was strange that he and Nazila were the only two people talking by themselves. Nazila was fairly tall for an Iranian woman and had a soft voice but seemed to speak very good English. The noise in the room caused Tom to suggest they move toward the full length windows giving them a spectacular view of the city. After some small chit chat Tom realized that she knew more about him than he thought would be normal. SAM was picking up on this same concern and instructed Tom to ask some specific questions while she would analyze her answers with the new voice stress technology.
“How did you know I was from California?” Tom asked.
“Hussein must have told me,” she answered “I hear you are quite brilliant with your computer skills,” she added trying to change the subject.
“Something is wrong,” SAM tells Tom. “She is showing extreme stress. Ask her why she is at this gathering.”
“You know, I’ve never seen you on campus do you know these guys they are honoring tonight?” Tom said.
“Yes they are friends of mine,” she answered quickly.
SAM responded instantly. “Her stress is going up exponentially… in fact she is starting to show signs that she is facing emanate death.”
SAM had recently been analyzing voice recordings of pilots who had been shot out of the sky’s and were plummeting to certain death and noticed that all the voice p
atterns showed certain consistent features.
“I am here tonight because of my faith in Allah,” she suddenly said in her quiet voice.
SAM quickly analyzed this statement and responded, “She is about to die,” then quickly added. “She’s a suicide bomber! Get away from her immediately.”
The hair stood up on the back of Tom’s neck as the adrenalin surged through his body. His mind was racing which caused everything to appear to him to be in slow motion. He turned to look for the closest exit and realized it was a hundred feet away, when he looked back his eyes met with Nazila’s and he realized that she knew that he knew what was about to happen.
Without a second thought Tom took both hands and shoved them as hard as he could against Nazila’s chest. This caught her completely off guard as her hands instinctively went out to catch her balance. As his hands pressed into her chest he felt the hard blocks of explosives strapped around her body instead of the soft flesh of her breasts. The force from the fifty pounds of shrapnel laden explosives plus the hundred and twenty pounds of body weight slammed into the window, shattering it into a million pieces as she fell backwards into the open air. Tom saw the calm in her eyes as her training kicked in and she moved her right hand toward the emergency trigger at her stomach.
Tom had just turned and dived to the floor when the explosion blew out all the windows in the ballroom along with the outer facade of the first three floors of the hotel. The shock wave blew Tom twenty feet further into the room where he was knocked unconscious.
Hussein and Julie were standing at the far end of the room when the bomb exploded and were pretty well protected by all the people standing between them and the windows.
When Julie finally made her way to Tom, she found him covered with glass and lying face down showing no sign of life. As she turned him over his eyes fluttered open and he could see her mouth moving but he couldn’t hear a thing. She was desperately trying to get him to stand up so they could get the heck out of there before the building collapsed. His legs just wouldn’t work but somehow Julie pulled Tom’s arm over her shoulder and managed to get him to his feet as they stumbled toward the door.
By the time the valet brought their car to the front of the hotel Tom could just barely hear the sirens as the police and fire department rushed to the scene.
Julie spent the next two days pulling pieces of glass out of Tom’s back and shoulders while SAM and Dr. Merrill talked about terminating this operation due to the dangers they were encountering. Tom was adamant that they continue looking for his father even though every lead seemed to be a dead-end.
“There must be some area 51 technology that we are not aware of that can help us find my dad,” Tom pleaded. “We know he’s here, there must be some way to find him.”
“We’ve run voice stress analysis on everyone you two have talked to with zero results; I’m convinced that we need to look outside of the box for a way to find him,” Dr. Merrill added. “But I’m also concerned that this terrorists group is upping their game and we may have to pull both of you out because it’s just getting to dangerous.”
The decision was made for Tom and Julie to resume their roles as exchange students while SAM and Dr. Merrill came up with a final solution.
Tom and Julie attended their Friday classes to see if they could mix back in to their role as students. They weren’t surprised to see that half of their classmates were missing in action. After a couple of hours milling around on campus Tom decided to call it a day and headed back to their apartment. He was about half way home when he heard footsteps running up behind him but before he could turn to see who it was, two powerful sets of hands grabbed his arms and a potato sack was pulled over his head as he was thrown into a van or truck with perfect timing. SAM and Dr. Merrill listened in with horror as they tried to interoperate the Arabic that the kidnappers were yelling back and forth. SAM was able to identify one of the voices… it was Hussein.
An hour later Julie found that she was in the same situation with empty classes and decided to walk home. She punched the speed-dial on her phone but all she heard was Tom’s voice mail pick up. When she opened the front door she was shocked to see that their apartment had been ransacked and immediately notified SAM.
Several minutes went by, then Dr. Merrill’s voice came over Julie’s earpiece. “I want you to go get the bug-out-bag you stored above the ceiling panels in your closet and take the Peugeot to a location that SAM will direct you to. You must leave this apartment immediately.”
Julie retrieved the backpack and two minutes later was heading for a new location that SAM was referring to as the “safe-house”. She was being directed toward the south side of Tehran where at one time had been an exclusive area. Julie finally pulled up in front of a house hidden behind a ten foot concrete wall that completely encompassed the property. There was an iron gate at one corner of this wall that opened onto a single lane driveway that lead up to the garage that was attached to a stylish stucco house. As she stepped out her car to open the gate a young Iranian boy came out of nowhere, reached into the car retrieving the backpack setting it on the ground, then drove off in her car.
Julie was just about to yell out when SAM calmly told her this was part of the plan. “Don’t worry about the car, there is a Mini Cooper in the garage for you to use.”
As she walked through the house she was amazed how clean and fresh everything looked, then she was struck with the realization… “Where’s Tommy!”
16
The van drove to a deserted part of town while by now Tom had been bound and gagged to the point he could hardly move. With the potato sack still over his head he was man-handled out of the van up several sets of steps into an old building based on the smells he was encountering. He seemed to pass through a couple of rooms, then down a long series of steps which must have led to a basement. His captors only spoke Arabic and each one seemed to be shouting instructions as he felt his arms and legs being bound to a chair. He sat there for several minutes listening to the voices as they seemed to be arguing back and forth, and then it sounded like everyone left the room by the footsteps going up the stairs.
Several more minutes passed then suddenly someone ripped the potato sack off his head.
As Tom’s eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light he was totally surprised to see his “friend” standing in front of him.
“I hope you realize you have brought this on yourself,” Hussein said as he removed the gag from Tom’s mouth.
“What do you mean, I don’t even know what you are trying to do by tying me to this chair,” Tom said sounding as pissed off as he could.
“Look, let’s don’t bull-shit each other. I just need to know why you are here and what you and your wife are up to.”
“What do you mean, what we’re up to,” Tom spat out. “You should know better than anyone that we are here on a scholarship.”
“OK let’s start with that,” Hussein said as he held up four thumb drives. “We found these in your apartment and they don’t have any special software that you claim to use when you hacked into the hotel in Australia and the power grid in Moscow. Let’s start with you telling me how you hacked into those computers.”
SAM was trying to come up with some plausible explanation when she heard the loud slap of what sounded like a leather belt as it struck Tom’s face. Hussein didn’t seem as interested in getting an answer to his question as he was with swinging his belt, as hard as he could, across Tom’s face and upper body. This went on for several more minutes until Hussein’s arm was becoming exhausted. When he finally stopped, Tom’s face and neck looked like he had been in an auto accident and had gone through the windshield.
Dr. Merrill was completely caught off guard that Tom was being tortured to the point that he might give up his covert operation. He instructed SAM to feed him a script that he was to follow… exactly.
“Get me a computer and I’ll show you how I did it,” Tom said weakly.
“I’ve already see
n that,” replied Hussein. “I want to hear how you use these thumb drives to do it.”
He didn’t answer and the beatings continued until Tom finally passed out from the pain.
Tom awoke with at start as he felt the cold water splash in his face with a force that knocked his head back. As he slowly regained consciousness he realized he was no longer in the chair but was standing or better yet hanging by his wrists with his arms stretched high above his head. He was hanging from a rafter with his feet barely touching the floor. As the water flowed over him he realized that he had been stripped of all his clothes.
“Welcome back Mr. Peterson,” were the words Tom was trying to make sense of as the fog in his head lifted.
Hussein’s words were much clearer now. “We weren’t getting anywhere with the line of questioning about your amazing computer skills so I want to ask you about why you pushed Nazila through the window the other night.”
Tom thought for a minute, “She told me she wanted to meet Allah, so I thought I would help her out,” he said sarcastically. This time Hussein responded with a four foot long Cain pole across Tom’s back causing him to yell out. This is the same device his ISIS brothers had used on him a few days earlier.
Hussein had known Nazila for several years and was watching her closely that night at the party and was shocked to see his American friend shove her through the window and was even more shocked by the explosion a couple of seconds later. He just couldn’t bring himself to believe that she was a suicide bomber and why she would want to kill his class mates or maybe she was just after Jim Peterson.