Sleeper Cell

by Chris Culver

  She forced a smile to her lips as I walked out. In a perfect world, she’d carefully consider what I had to say and then talk to her friends. But that wasn’t going to happen. She had something planned. She was either protecting those women, or she was exploiting them and keeping them hidden. Given that hotel’s history as a flop house for prostitutes, I leaned toward the latter.

  I walked back to my car and then drove about two blocks away, where I parked in the driveway of a single-story brick home.

  I sat, waited, and watched the parking lot of the hotel for about fifteen minutes before anything happened. The first guest to leave a room was a guy, but I couldn’t make out his features at that distance. He pressed his back against the exterior of the building and peered down the side like some kind of amateur spy. Someone probably should have told him he would have looked a lot less suspicious if he acted like a normal person.

  After checking the building, he walked back to the room from which he had come and held open the door. Two women wearing hijab immediately came out and hurried toward a minivan on the edge of the property.

  As those women ran, the man went to the room next door. This time, three women in hijab emerged and ran toward the minivan. None of them looked as if they were being held against their will, but there could have been some kind of coercion there I didn’t see.

  As the man got in the minivan’s driver’s seat, I backed my car out of the driveway and floored it back to the hotel, where I braked hard enough that my tires chirped. Then I backed up and positioned myself so that my car blocked most of the entrance.

  The minivan’s driver saw me and froze. He had backed his van out of its parking spot and was now in the center of the lot facing my car. His vehicle stopped moving as our eyes locked.

  I started to open my door, but then the van’s tires spun on the asphalt. The heavy vehicle rocketed straight toward me.

  “Oh, shit.”

  I didn’t have time to move, so I braced myself for the impact. At the last moment, the minivan screeched to a stop not more than a foot from my car. All of its doors flung open as the women inside ran.

  I pounded on the latch of my seatbelt and tried to open my door but found it pinned against the minivan’s front bumper. Before I could move, the van’s rear door slid open and women ran out. I dove across the passenger seat of my car and threw open the door just in time to see the van’s driver sprinting away.

  “I just want to talk.”

  The driver looked over his shoulder but didn’t stop. He was heading across a field straight toward the Marion County fairgrounds. I could lose him there, so I took off after him.

  When I had gotten up that morning, I had put on comfortable black leather shoes. They were great for walking around an office, but they were heavy, and they didn’t have the traction of a tennis shoe—which the guy I was chasing wore. By the time I got about halfway across the field, the guy had gained at least forty or fifty feet on me. Even if I had worn tennis shoes, though, I doubted I would have been able to catch him. He was fast enough that I never even had a chance.

  So I stopped and put my hands on my knees while I caught my breath. As the man I was chasing reached the edge of the field, he looked over his shoulder. The fairground’s barns were just ahead of him. There were a few people walking around. He could have disappeared if he wanted. Instead, though, he turned and watched me, daring me to chase him.

  He wanted me distracted.

  I looked behind me toward the hotel. A woman in hijab closed the sliding rear door of the minivan as Kylie climbed into the driver’s seat. The rear tires spun as she backed up and then floored it over the hotel’s lawn toward the road out front. The man I had been chasing stood straighter and gave me a halfhearted wave before turning and running deeper into the fairgrounds.

  I wanted to chase him down, but I didn’t need to. He and I knew people in common. More than that, he was in nearly every picture Jacob Ganim took. He may have escaped for now, but very soon, this man of God was going to get a visitor, and I didn’t plan to be nice.

  Chapter 11

  Abdullah had never felt his heart beat so quickly. His entire life, eighteen years, had led to this moment. The vest weighed heavily against his skin. For the past three months, he and his brother had lifted weights, run, and even boxed at a gym near their house to get in shape. He wore blue jeans and a wool sweater loose enough to conceal the heavy vest Hashim Bashear had constructed. To someone looking at him from afar, he would have looked fat, but beneath his outfit, he was strong and lean, more powerful than he had ever been in his life.

  He stood beside his brother in front of Westbrook Elementary School. Hamza Bashear had driven them directly from the townhouse in New York. To his right, perhaps two hundred yards away, a raucous crowd had gathered behind police barricades. They held signs and shouted political slogans. Until this moment, nothing about the day had seemed real. Now, he knew his destiny was before him.

  When Abdullah’s parents had first brought him to the United States, they told him he would have a better life than he ever would have had otherwise. And they were probably right. In Somalia, he would have had to join a gang just to survive. He didn’t have to do that in the United States, but he could hardly call what they did living. It was unfair.

  People spray painted things on their doors. When his mother left the apartment wearing hijab, people leered at her and called her a rag head. Though no one had ever physically attacked Abdullah yet, some drunk men beat up his father the night after a mass shooting on the East Coast. They broke two of his ribs and his nose. They could have killed him, all because they had seen him walk out of a mosque.

  For a long time, Abdullah’s life in the United States had left him confused. He had often wondered why God would allow bad things to happen to His people. Only later when he met Hashim Bashear online did he understand. Hashim showed Abdullah that he had a place in the world, that God cared about him, that God had created him for a purpose. Hashim taught him more than that, though; he showed him the truth of the world.

  Abdullah, for the first time, saw politicians who lied so fluently they no longer understood truth. He saw governments that undermined God’s authority. He saw a decadent, broken place beyond saving. God didn’t want the world to be as it was, and for the good of humanity, Hashim told him, God had made men like Abdullah. God had created him to become a soldier, a martyr. Standing there with a bomb strapped to his chest was his entire reason for being.

  At that moment, the president of the United States stood somewhere inside the elementary school, preparing to give a speech to elect another wicked man to a position of power. It would only lead to more suffering the world over. The cycle had to stop. Hashim Bashear had made him see that. It was his moral duty to set the world right.

  “I’m nervous,” said Yasin, his breath heavy. Abdullah nodded and looked to his brother.

  “Me, too,” he said. “But there’s no wrong in what we are about to do. We have to be strong. This is why God created us. This is why He sent us to this country.”

  Yasin drew in a long, slow breath. “Insh’Allah, my son will know me for who I am and not the man I was.”

  “He will know you as a man of God,” said Abdullah. “And he will know that you do this for him so that he and his children don’t have to fight as we do.”

  Yasin nodded, his face distant. “Today, we go home. I’m sorry if I haven’t been the best brother.”

  “Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un,” said Abdullah, reciting a familiar verse from the Quran. “To God we belong, and to Him we shall return. You are the best brother I could ask for because you are the man who stands beside me now.”

  Yasin nodded. “I’m ready.”

  Abdullah looked at him and knew it would be for the last time. “May God give us the strength to do what we must.”

  The moment the words left his lips, the two young men began walking to their deaths.

  Almost three thousand people had crammed
themselves into the gym to hear the president speak. Each one made Sean Navarro nervous, for each one could become a threat at any moment.

  Ideally, they would have hand searched every person who came into the arena, but Senator Hill’s campaign would have gone ballistic at the mere suggestion. Instead, the Secret Service had brought a portable metal detector and dozens of metal-detecting wands. Every single person who walked through the entrance went through that metal detector, and then every single person had a wand waved over his or her body for a closer scan.

  More than that, every person who entered that arena had his or her picture taken by a camera hidden inside the top rail of the metal detector. Those pictures were then sent via an encrypted satellite link to the Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center near Bluffdale, Utah. Code-named Bumblehive, the data center officially cost the US taxpayers something around one and a half billion dollars. In actuality, it cost several times that and had computing power an order of magnitude greater than most members of Congress knew.

  The data center processed all forms of digital communications from emails to parking receipts. Each of its Cray XC30 supercomputers could scan and compare thousands of images to dozens of federal databases each second. Matching the men and women who walked into the elementary school against images from a national terror watch list didn’t even scratch the surface of what the facility could do, and yet it could save the life of the most powerful man in the world.

  Agent Navarro didn’t trust technology to replace human instinct, but he couldn’t deny its utility. It was an amazing system, and already it had pointed out several potential troublemakers—two men with violent felony convictions, three suspected militia members from Idaho, and one woman with an outstanding federal arrest warrant for tax evasion.

  Agent Navarro stayed near the stage, approximately fifteen feet from the president. He was close enough to protect him should the need arise but also far enough to give the president a moment of privacy with Senator Hill before both men began their presentations. In addition to his firearm, Navarro carried a tablet computer that allowed him to see video feeds from the body cameras worn by the uniformed Secret Service agents outside and the security cameras the advance team had installed a week ago.

  He went through the various feeds but didn’t see anything that stood out to him, so he keyed his microphone.

  “We are ten minutes to magic hour. Exits one through four, sound off.”

  Early in his career, before the Secret Service had moved to digitally encrypted communications gear, Navarro and those with whom he worked had to speak in code in case anyone unfriendly tried to listen in. Agents could speak much more freely now, but they still tried to keep communication as succinct as possible.

  “Exit one, clear.”

  “Exit two, clear.”

  “Exit three, I’ve got a lost family. They’re moving to the main entrance. Otherwise clear.”

  “Exit four, clear.”

  No real threats, then. He flicked his finger across his tablet to view a feed from the body camera of one of the snipers perched on the building’s roof. Due to the agent’s position, Navarro couldn’t see much except a line of trees.

  “Overwatch, check in.”

  “I’ve got a family in the park approximately three blocks from the school. You want uniforms to clear them out?”

  Agent Navarro tried to picture the area in his head. The only park nearby was southwest of the elementary school. Evacuation routes A and B ran on either side.

  “What are they doing?” asked Navarro.

  “Flying a kite. Mom, dad, grandpa, toddler, and bouncing baby in a car seat.”

  The locals were supposed to have cleared that park already, but Navarro shook his head. “Leave them be for now, but keep an eye on them. Main entrance, how are you?”

  “We’ve got a few stragglers coming in late. Other than that, we are clear.”

  “And finally, Bamboo, what’s your status?”

  Bamboo was the code name for the president’s multicar motorcade. In addition to the Beast—the president’s armored limousine—it had decoy vehicles, radio vehicles, an ambulance, and various other vehicles for the president’s security detail.

  “Bamboo is ready to roll. Cowpuncher has engines running on the tarmac at Pease. Evac route on your order, sir.”

  Navarro flicked through his available camera feeds and scanned his eyes over the crowd. He had brought a detail of over fifty officers. Combined with the local and state police, they had almost four hundred armed law enforcement officers within a two-block radius. Given the state of the world, he would have preferred if the president never left the Oval Office, but he felt as comfortable as he could given the crowd size.

  He looked over his shoulder at President Crane and gave him the thumbs up signal.

  The president scanned the crowd and then walked toward Agent Navarro, his brow furrowed.

  “Do you know where my wife is?”

  Navarro looked to the roped-off set of seats for the first family. The first lady, her daughter, and at least one of the president’s grandchildren were gone. Navarro keyed his mike.

  “Janet, Cohiba would like to know the location of Camus.”

  “Piglet had a dirty diaper,” said Special Agent Janet Westman. “So Camus and Eeyore took him to the ladies’ room. They’ll be out momentarily.”

  “Thanks, Janet,” said Navarro before looking to the president. He turned his mike off. “Ethan had a dirty diaper, sir, so the first lady and your daughter took him to the restroom. They’ll be back any moment.”

  “Thank you, Sean,” said the president. He joined Senator Hill on the side of the stage again. The first lady and her family returned to their seats within moments. Once the president saw them, he mouthed I love you to his wife and then clapped Senator Hill on the back. The two men walked out on the stage. Navarro keyed his mike once more.

  “Showtime. Stay vigilant.”

  Yasin’s breath caught in his throat. Faith had never come as easily for him as it had for his brother. Even as a young boy, Abdullah seemed to find himself within religion in a way Yasin never had. As a child, Abdullah had begged his mother and father to enroll him in their mosque’s Arabic classes so that he could read the Quran. By the time he was twelve years old, Abdullah had half the book memorized. When asked questions, he not only knew the Quranic verse, he could quote applicable Hadith—the sayings of the Prophet—for many given situations.

  Yasin had always imagined his brother would become an imam one day. He’d lead a congregation down the straight path and change people’s lives for the better. Above all, he had pictured his brother as a peace-loving man who exemplified the merciful, generous spirit of their faith.

  But neither Abdullah nor Yasin had been born into a peace-loving world. They lived in the world of jahiliyyah, a world ignorant of God and God’s commands. Though Yasin didn’t realize it until Hashim Bashear showed him the truth, the Islamic community had truly ceased to exist centuries ago. As believers, it was their job to bring it back—even if that meant dying in the process.

  Yasin forced one foot in front of another as he walked toward the protestors. Like his brother, Yasin wore jeans and a bulky cable-knit sweater that hid the vest around his chest. He looked pudgy and soft, like most of the Americans around him, and like them, he held a handmade sign on a yardstick.

  Put some balls in the White House.

  When the other protestors saw Yasin’s sign, they laughed and welcomed him into their group. Yasin looked like one of them, but he wasn’t. He felt hot, and the vest seemed to weigh far more than it ought. Even as his index finger touched the switch in his pocket, he wondered whether he could go through with this. The people around him were lost and ignorant, but they didn’t seem malicious. They had brought children and their wives. Did God need them to die as well?

  Yasin wished he had his brother’s strength, his brother’s certainty. His legs began to feel
weak, and his heart thudded in his chest. The crowd seemed to crush in around him. He wondered what would happen if he walked away. He wouldn’t dump his vest, and he wouldn’t go to the police. He wouldn’t get anyone in trouble. Hashim Bashear had treated them fairly and well, after all. He respected them and even cared for them, but he didn’t have a direct pipeline to God. He didn’t know what God truly wanted.

  Besides, the president was inside. If he had come out beforehand to greet the protestors, Yasin would have gladly given his life and become a martyr. If he couldn’t decapitate the snake, though, he had no reason to die. He was barely twenty, and he had an infant son and a wife who depended on him. He had too much to live for and too much to lose. This wasn’t his burden. This was a job for a childless man. He started to slip through the crowd, to leave.

  He made it about three steps.

  Abdullah stood in front of the elementary school. An arched metal awning with an old school bell at its apex covered the front entrance, while four squad cars from the New Hampshire State Police blocked the road out front. Soft, gray clouds stretched from horizon to horizon. Abdullah sucked in a deep breath, knowing it would be his last chance to smell the clean, sweet scent of a spring afternoon.

  In a few minutes, he knew would die. Despite his faith, despite his knowledge that paradise awaited him, a growing trepidation began filling him.

  “God, give me the strength to do what I must,” he whispered as he stepped forward.

  A wooden doorstop held Westbrook Elementary’s front doors open. Inside, barricades had been set up to funnel crowds through a metal detector. Three men and two women in black suits stood behind those barricades. Each of them wore an earpiece, and each of them walked with a confident swagger. Though they pretended not to notice him, they still stared. Two campaign workers in red, white, and blue T-shirts smiled at him.

  “Do you have a ticket, sir?” asked one, a woman a few years younger than Abdullah’s mother. Suddenly, he wondered whether he could actually do this. The physical act of triggering the switch wouldn’t be a problem, but the vest bothered him. Hashim and Hamza had said the vests were made from ceramic parts, but Abdullah wasn’t so sure. He had seen the ball bearings they planned to use. They looked like metal. Surely Hashim hadn’t made such an elementary mistake.