[Rogue Warrior 18] Curse of the Infidel

by Richard Marcinko

  * * *

  There were a lot of connections and a few cyber jumps in that chain, and I can’t blame Danny for telling Shunt it was all very tenuous. He told Shunt partly because Junior was still working, and partly because Junior hoped Danny would be more receptive if the information came from him.

  “Maybe we ought to tell Homeland Security just in case,” said Shunt.

  “They get a million of these alerts every day,” said Danny. “This would be just one more bit of noise. It’s a convoluted coincidence, Shunt. I’m surprised at you.”

  “Dick always says he doesn’t believe in coincidences.”

  “Neither do I. But this is definitely one.”

  Danny’s doubts made Shunt doubt the connections as well, and if he hadn’t received a phone call from Karen Fairchild, he might have forgotten the whole thing. Karen had heard a bit of what had happened with Junior and was concerned about him; she’d called his cell phone without getting an answer.

  Junior was standing a few feet from Shunt when she called, sipping a Diet Coke, about the only sustenance he’d had in the past twenty-four hours. Shunt answered loudly, greeting Karen and glancing at Junior. But Junior waved him off, not wanting to talk.

  “He’s gone out for a soda, I think,” said Shunt, searching for something to say. “Wants to get a Big Gulp while they’re still legal. Mayor’s outlawing big sodas.”

  “I’ve never seen Junior drink more than half a can at a sitting,” said Karen.

  “Yeah.” Shunt searched for something to say. He had a feeling Karen knew he was lying. “I, uh—did Danny talk to you about Scorched Earth? We intercepted this weird message. It was a tweet, sent in the open. But we think it’s a code.”

  Karen listened as Shunt explained.

  “Interesting,” she told him when he was done. “It’s probably not related, but the CIA just sent a bulletin to Homeland Security suggesting we up the alert status in D.C.”

  “Really?”

  “We get these alerts every few days,” she told him. “They’re always nothing. But just in case—can you send me what you have?”

  “It’s on its way.”

  * * *

  Three and a half hours later, Junior got off an Acela Express at Union Station in Washington, D.C. The station was crowded with commuters—and National Guardsmen, police officers, and bomb-sniffing dogs, all called out because of the alert that had originated with the CIA and been passed on to the authorities by Homeland (in)Security. The entire city was on extra-high alert, ready to deal with the suspected terrorist attack.

  Actually, no. That’s what Junior expected. That’s what a reasonable person might expect when a government agency is investigating a bona fide terror threat. But in fact there were no dogs, no Guardsmen, no chemical sniffers. The only policemen Junior saw in the station area were at the restaurant outside the train platform, joking with a waitress.

  As Karen had said, alerts from the CIA came so often that they were routinely ignored. It was a modern-day variation on the story of the boy who called wolf.

  Confused, maybe a little disappointed, Junior walked to the Capitol building. Bomb-detecting dogs patrolled near the street, augmenting chemical sniffers placed near the steps that could pick up trace amounts of plastic explosives. But this was more or less routine, and things were relaxed otherwise. Junior made a wide circuit of the area near the Capitol and the nearby Mall, wondering why he didn’t spot any heavy-duty precautions.

  The more he walked, the angrier he became. He was sure he and Shunt had fallen on a major plot against Washington, D.C., and equally convinced that no one was taking it seriously.

  Junior had come to D.C. with the name of the Internet provider whose system had been used to access the Internet to search for the Twitter message. In order to identify the customer, he needed to access the company’s records, coordinating them with the log-on data. The company was inefficient, old-fashioned, or security conscious (take your pick), but the customer records were not kept on the same servers Junior had accessed, and it appeared that they could only be accessed by someone with administrative rights on the system at the company’s administrative offices. Doing that implies illegal activity, and so perhaps it’s best that I don’t know exactly how he managed to discover the customer’s name and address. Surely it’s a coincidence that he has recently been spotted several times since with one of the computer system operators, a heavily tattooed lass who could easily pass for a Suicide Girl.43

  The address was in the Trinidad section, one of the less savory areas of the city—not quite as bad as the Congressional office buildings or the lobbyists’ lairs on Jay Street, though sketchy nonetheless. The subscriber’s name was Robert Jones—a good American name, one easily faked, though Junior pretended not to know this when he knocked on the door of the house, a renovated row house a couple of blocks over from the firehouse.

  As the door opened, Junior caught the sweet scent of a burning substance that was not tobacco. Out stepped a young white man with dreadlocks and irises that could have held a coffee cup.

  “What up?” he asked.

  “I’m looking for Robert Jones,” said Junior.

  “What up?” White Rasta repeated.

  “Robert Jones?”

  “He ain’t here.”

  “You sure?”

  “You mean the landlord, right? Mr. Jones. Like, who we pay rent to.”

  “He doesn’t live here?”

  “No way.” White Rasta gave him a dreamy smile. “We’re all in college, man. We don’t own, like, buildings.”

  “Really? Does Jones live upstairs?”

  “On the third floor, you mean? We have like, two floors. The girls live on the third floor.” White Rasta winked, or tried to. His facial muscles were so sedated by the herbs he’d been imbibing that the lids never made it to the bottom. When he winked, his eyes looked like those donut pillows they give hemorrhoid patients.

  “Who else lives here?” Junior asked.

  “You a cop?”

  “Hell no. I’m just looking for Jones.” Junior stepped past White Rasta and poked his head inside the door. “He owes me money.”

  “I don’t know where he’s at.”

  “I really, really need his cash. You know what I mean? You’re a friend of his?”

  “No way, bro. Listen, I’d help you if I could.”

  “Where do you send your rent?” asked Junior.

  “Oh yeah. Good idea. Come on.”

  While not fancy, the exterior of the building presented a tidy appearance to the world: thick paint over solid bricks, the weathering around the edges adding dignity and solid middle-class value. The interior, though, was dorm-room lite, with second- and thirdhand furniture cluttering the living room, bicycles and bike parts lining the hallway, shoes and clothes littering various parts of the floor. Junior followed White Rasta to the kitchen, where the strong herbal scent gave way to something halfway between garlic and a cat that had been in heat for far too long.

  “How many people live here?” asked Junior.

  “Big, huh?” White Rasta opened one of the kitchen drawers, where the communal records were kept in a three-section notebook. He plopped it onto the least-stained portion of the counter and began flipping through it.

  “Mind if I use the bathroom?” asked Junior, who wanted a pretext to search the place.

  “Just bring it back when you’re done.” White Rasta giggled as if this was the funniest thing anyone had ever said since the debut of Saturday Night Live.

  Junior went down the hall, peeked into the bathroom—it reminded him of an Indian slum, though not as tidy—then proceeded through the house, taking stock. All three of the bedrooms were upstairs, and all were conveniently if temporarily unoccupied. He found a notebook with a name in the first: Habib. In the second, some court papers demanded Robert MacLeroy to appear for a traffic summons. In the last, which the sweet scent identified as White Rasta’s, an exam in organic chemistry was headed by the
name “Terrence Jonlable.”

  He’d scored a 98. Maybe the herb does help the brain function.

  “I got the address,” said White Rasta when Junior returned. “Where’d you go?”

  “I was looking for a bathroom that was on the clean side.”

  “I usually go off the back porch.” White Rasta handed Junior a brown paper bag with Jones’s address on it.

  “Did you say your name was Terry?” asked Junior, taking the paper.

  “Terrence.”

  “Oh yeah, I’m sorry. So you guys all go to school?”

  “Yup.”

  “You’re in like, organic chem, right?” Junior asked.

  “Yeah. Crazy, far-out class, huh? Some of those tests are bummers. I only got a ninety-eight on the last one. I’m thinking I might have to study.”

  “What’s your major?”

  “Pre-med. You’re familiar. Yeah. You’re in organic?”

  “No, no. I’m just looking for Jones and the money he owes me.”

  “That’s his address.”

  “He welched on my deposit,” said Junior. “He owes two months. And I need the cash, you know?”

  “What a prick.”

  “What a prick.” Junior sized him up. “Do you have a credit card?”

  “Credit card?” White Rasta rolled his eyes so far back in his head Junior thought he’d collapse. “I’m capitalistic system, dude.”

  “No credit card?”

  “No way, man. Besides, you get one of those cards, you gotta watch for fraud and stuff. All sorts of illegal activity goin’ on there.”

  “Yeah. I’d be careful if I were you.” Junior glanced around. “You live with a couple of other guys?”

  “Two, yeah. Far-out dudes. Habs and Bobby. Bobby is like super into his bike. And his girl, like, they’re always together and I expect them home soon. But, uh—”

  “We had the same deal,” said Junior. “Three guys. Except I was the only one who put up the deposit money. Now I’m screwed.”

  “Bummer.”

  Junior poked a bit, asking White Rasta about his roommates, trying to get more information on who they were. But his interviewee’s vacant stare held him off. Finally White Rasta asked if he wanted to “imbibe.”

  “Gotta pass,” said Junior, holding up the paper bag with Jones’s address. “Say, when do your roommates come home?”

  “Huh? Like, why?”

  “I was thinking maybe if we all went over together—you know, if I had a little muscle with me.”

  “Dude, you’re buff. Bobby and Habs—they couldn’t scare a fly.”

  “Strength in numbers?”

  “I heard about that. Hey listen, I gotta do some homework for Abstract,44 like field automorphisms, man. You sure you don’t want some weed?”

  “No thanks.”

  Back outside, Junior considered his options. Not being a member of the U.S. government, he’d concluded that his most likely suspect was Habib, or “Habs,” as White Rasta called him. But he couldn’t rule the other roommates out, nor even any of the neighbors, if they had Wi-Fi. Pretending to have a phone call, he paused near the front stoop and took out his iPhone. Firing up the connection panel, he found that the apartment did in fact have Wi-Fi (TeamRoom was its handle; the girls on the third floor apparently preferring the more prosaic though equally appropriate LadiesNet). The router was using WPA2-PSK encryption—decent, though far from impenetrable.

  Junior took a short walk around the block, checking to see how many other Wi-Fi connections were nearby. He stopped counting at fifty; half had no security at all. The fact that there were so many open connections in the area indirectly reinforced Junior’s belief that he was on the right track. Since it was so much easier to use a different connection, he reasoned, anyone who wanted to throw an investigator off would use one of those. The operator probably didn’t realize he could be tracked so easily, or believed that the method they were using to communicate was so arcane that no one would ever figure it out, let alone trace it.

  Ducking into a basement entrance to a three-story walk-up just barely in eyesight of the house, Junior considered his options. He’d pretty much ruled out White Rasta as a suspect; though clearly highly intelligent, he just didn’t have the destroy-the-world vibe Junior thought he was looking for. So that meant buttonholing the other occupants—or better, stealing their laptops.

  Junior was trying to decide how he might do that when he saw a skinny, dark-complexioned man walking down the street, a backpack slung over one shoulder.

  Habib?

  The man jogged up the steps into the house and was gone before Junior could get close. He walked past the house, continuing down the block toward the corner. Just as he turned it, he saw a man and a woman, both in their early twenties, approaching. The man was pushing a bicycle.

  Junior decided to take a chance that this was the other roommate. He waited until they were a little closer, then stopped and did a double-take.

  “Hey, Bobby, right?” he said to the man.

  “Huh?”

  “Bobby MacLeroy, right? Weren’t you in my orientation? And at that party, uh—”

  “I don’t remember, man.” MacLeroy curled his arm around his girlfriend’s.

  “No prob. How’s it goin’? You livin’ with uh, Conner? In the dorms, right?”

  “I live down the street.”

  “Oh yeah, yeah, with that dude, uh—Terrence? Always smokin’ pot? Right? But he’s genius smart.”

  “You know Terrence?”

  “Everybody in pre-med knows Terrence. He’s getting perfect grades in Organic. He’s a legend. You guys got the place by yourselves?”

  “Transfer student’s with us. Who are you again?”

  “Matty. Remember?”

  “Uh, vaguely. Kind of a blur, you know?”

  “Believe me, I know.” Junior focused on the girl for the first time. She had red, curly hair, and if she stepped on a scale, wouldn’t have tipped it past ninety pounds, fully dressed. Which she was, in enough layers of sweaters and shirts to keep an Eskimo warm.

  “We gotta get goin’,” said MacLeroy.

  “Maybe we’ll party some time,” said Junior.

  “Uh, yeah, sure.” MacLeroy sounded about as convincing as a lifelong Republican swearing his willingness to vote for Obama in the next election.

  Junior went swiftly to the end of the block, then leaned back to make sure the pair were in fact going to the house. They were. And just as he was about to go back to his hiding spot, he saw Habib come trotting down the steps, backpack on his shoulder.

  Junior waited until Habib was at the end of the block, then started following, making sure to leave roughly a block and a half of gap between them. He closed the distance as they neared the college campus, expecting that Habib would go into one of the buildings there. But instead, he walked a zigzag path across H Street toward Union Station. Junior worried that Habib would take an Amtrak, which required a pre-purchased ticket. But Habib headed for the Metro entrance.

  Junior didn’t have a card. The line at the machines was just long enough for him lose Habib, and after getting his card he had to guess which way he was headed. He guessed toward the Capitol area, then had to bolt to the platform as the train pulled in. But by the time he reached it, the doors had closed. He pounded but it was too late; the train jerked forward, out of the station.

  Cursing, he turned around, trying to decide what to do. As he did, he spotted someone at the far end of the opposite platform, moving down to the very edge of the station where the tracks entered the tunnel.

  The man had a backpack, but from this distance and with his back turned, Junior couldn’t be sure that it was Habib. The man reached the end of the platform, glanced quickly over his shoulder, then hopped down and began walking along the tracks.

  Junior decided to follow.

  (IV)

  Back aboard the Bon Voyage, six men joined the other two on the bridge. We were shepherded into a large c
hart room immediately aft of the command area. While there were charts on one side of the large table that filled the center of the space, the captain primarily used this area to brief his officers. His quarters were through a door on the aft bulkhead; next to the door sat a console with a com set and a computer setup. Two of our guards trashed the gear, then went inside the captain’s cabin and broke up the equipment there. They hunted inside the captain’s desk and chests, retrieving and breaking open a strongbox that contained a pistol and some cash. They took the gun, left the money.

  The bridge crew gathered at one side of the table and began to whisper among themselves, but before long the man who had shot the captain reappeared with two other hijackers and grabbed the second mate, who’d come up on the bridge just before it was stormed. Wearing what looked like typical crewmen’s clothes, the men made no attempt to hide their faces—a very bad sign, I thought.

  Scarface came in. He must have recognized me, but didn’t bother to acknowledge me. He spoke in clipped, quick English, saying that we were to keep quiet and not cause trouble, or we would face the same fate as the captain.

  He left us and began barking orders at the others, who hopped around to different stations on the bridge. They’d been among us the whole time, a few as passengers, others as crewmen. It wasn’t hard to get low-level jobs on the ship, given the industry’s penchant for low-wage, bottom-rung workers.

  “You’ll never get a ransom,” sputtered the helmsman.

  Scarface smirked. Somehow I’m always lucky enough to find myself among scumbags with a sense of twisted humor.

  As soon as the hijackers left with the mate, the crew began discussing the situation among themselves in Swedish, debating whether a distress signal had been sent from somewhere else in the ship. The captain’s death had shocked them; a few were close to tears, their lips and hands occasionally trembling. I went to the window and watched the men now occupying the bridge. They worked almost as smoothly as the regular crew had, looking over the various instruments and controls and making only slight adjustments.

  “What are you looking at, old-timer?” asked the helmsman, coming over. I could barely understand what he was saying through his accent.