by Brad Thor
“Which is what?”
“That nobody knows we’re in there.”
“Except the terrorists,” clarified Marx.
“Correct. And we’ve cut them off from whoever their controller is. That’s the person we need to get to.”
“Let’s try to trace the number that text message came through on.”
“I guarantee you it’ll be a throw-away phone. If the right text response doesn’t come back soon, whoever originated that message is going to abandon that phone.”
“Then we check the cell phone detonators. Whoever selected them would have tested them to make sure they received incoming traffic without any problems.”
“I can have Casey pull off the tape and circuit boards to see if there’s a list of previous activity,” said Harvath, “but if it was me, I’d have deleted all the logs.”
Ashford thought about it for a moment and then nodded. “You’re probably right.”
“How about the six men we have in the mosque?” asked Marx. “In addition to interrogating them, shouldn’t we check their phones for any common numbers?”
“I can ask Casey to do that, but I don’t think that’ll provide much either.”
“Then what do you want to do?”
“I want to force their hand.”
“How?”
“I want whoever is running this cell to think the operation is in jeopardy and I want them to expose themselves. If we do this right, when they do, we’ll be able to nail them.”
CHAPTER 49
Word of a major gas leak in East London was in reality a heavy release of mercaptan, the substance added to natural gas to make it smell like rotten eggs. Residents in a four-block radius surrounding the Darul Uloom Mosque were evacuated. Shortly after the evacuations began, the reporters showed up.
A cordon had been established and the news crews, as well as onlookers, were kept a safe distance away.
With Ashford’s approval, Harvath had decided that the BBC should be allowed the “scoop.”
When the time was right, the BBC news team on site was tipped off about some strange activity only a block from their location. Hot for a story, the reporter ran for it with her cameraman in tow. They arrived just in time to see teams of heavily equipped, black-clad, balaclava-wearing anti-terrorism police piling into four gas company vans. The cameraman was able to capture all of it.
Rushing back to their own van, they uploaded the footage to the BBC, who broke into their morning news programming for a “strange development” in the East London gas leak story. Within seconds of the footage being received, the BBC’s helicopter was diverted to East London and the completely predictable speculation began. Was the gas leak terrorism? Was it a cover for an anti-terrorism raid? Why was the British government keeping its people in the dark? Don’t the people have a right to know? Should the prime minister resign? They played right into Harvath’s plan. Moments later, the other networks had picked up on the story.
Anyone watching TV now knew that there was a lot more happening in East London than a gas leak. Anti-terrorism units were not normally sent in to handle utility problems. Harvath was hoping that whoever controlled the cell at the Darul Uloom Mosque was watching TV as well.
The architecture of any human network, whether it was created for gathering intelligence or committing acts of terror, was pretty easy to understand. As you climbed the food chain, each layer was designed to protect the operative positioned above it. Those layers were people, and they were known as “cutouts.”
At the ground level was the cell itself. The number of people in that cell was dependent upon their specific assignment and the overall goal of the network.
The cell had a leader whose job it was to make sure that the cell operated efficiently and to communicate up the food chain. The next rung on the ladder was the controller. He or she might control only that one cell or he or she might control many cells, but that person’s primary job was to act as a go-between and protect the identity of the regional controller.
The regional controller could be limited to controlling all of the network’s activity in a particular region, in a particular country, or even a group of countries. The regional controller then reported to a figure known as “tight control.”
“Tight control” was in charge of the entire network worldwide. Despite site 243 being a Chinese project, Harvath doubted that any of the controllers were Chinese. Most likely, they were all Muslim men who totally believed they were operating within a true Islamic terror network. That was the brilliance of the operation.
Whoever “tight control” was, Harvath was confident he didn’t live anywhere near China. He very likely operated similarly to bin Laden prior to 9/11, as the guest of a country sympathetic to the Islamist agenda. Pulling his strings would have been achieved through coded communications. For all intents and purposes, the man could very well have believed he was working directly for the al-Qaeda hierarchy, even though he’d probably never met any of its members face-to-face.
It was the perfect turnkey operation. Why go through the trouble of building your own Muslim network when you could hijack one from the Chinese? What Harvath couldn’t figure out, though, was why they had done it. Why unleash the carnage? What was the point?
To figure that out, they were going to need to get to “tight control”; and to get to him, they were going to need to work their way up the food chain one bite at a time.
They all agreed that the terrorist who had received the text was most likely the cell leader and the sender of the message had been the cell controller. While Harvath would have liked to have applied “pressure” to the terrorist, he was barely clinging to life as it was and would not have withstood interrogation.
What’s more, reverse engineering a network was very delicate work. Members were taught distress codes and could easily relay to their controllers that the cell had been compromised. They didn’t even need to send the message themselves. Often they could trick their captors into doing it for them. It could be as simple as a chalk mark in the wrong place, a window shade at the wrong height, or the wrong color or style of font in a chat room.
Knowing full well the pitfalls, Harvath decided it best to force the controller out into the open. But to do it, Robert Ashford and Rita Marx had to call in nearly every favor they had ever accrued. For the first time in Britain’s modern history, its entire electronic surveillance apparatus was focused on one objective and one objective only—locating a single phone somewhere within the United Kingdom.
When everyone was in place, Marx radioed for the tactical teams to move in on the mosque, whose morning worshippers had already departed.
High above, television helicopters were broadcasting the entire thing. All the rest of the team could do was wait and hope that the cell’s controller would expose himself.
The gas company trucks converged on the mosque from opposite ends of the street. When the officers poured out, they were all heavily armed, armored, and wearing gas masks.
Rounds and rounds of tear gas were fired through windows as the officers rapidly advanced on the mosque. Across the country, viewers were undoubtedly glued to their sets. If the cell’s controller was watching, which Harvath prayed he was, all he would be able to surmise was that the mosque his men had been using for their headquarters was compromised and was now under a full-scale assault.
The fact that he hadn’t been able to reach any of his cell members would only heighten his anxiety. Very likely, the only question greater in his mind than how the cell had been discovered, was why his men hadn’t yet detonated their explosives. That was what their training would have dictated.
The only thing the controller would have been able to attribute the delay to was that the cell members were trying to draw more police officers into the mosque before blowing it up.
That sort of deviation definitely would have been against protocol. Their job would have been to detonate, not fight it out or try to take as many officers with them as possible.
There was one other option that the controller would have had to consider. He would have to entertain the possibility that the men had lost their nerve.
Either scenario was unacceptable. The controller would have been left with no other option than to engage the fail-safe.
When the tactical team hit the mosque’s front doors, Marx’s voice came over Harvath’s headset. “The cell phone detonators have begun lighting up.”
“Give me a location.”
“We’re working on it,” she replied. “Stand by.”
Precious seconds ticked down as the tac team flooded into the mosque. Harvath studied the faces of the Athena Team members sitting next to him. To the untrained eye, they would have appeared cold and even expressionless, but Harvath knew the look of operators about to go into battle. The women were the picture of professionalism.
He could also sense their impatience. He was feeling it too. This was their one shot and the window was narrower than almost any other he had ever dealt with. If the Brits couldn’t get a lock on the controller, they were going to be dead in the water.
“We need that location,” Harvath repeated.
“Stand by.”
“Come on. Come on.”
Finally, Marx’s voice came back over his headset, “Got it.”
The woman from Scotland Yard rattled off a set of coordinates.
“Roger,” replied the helicopter pilot, who then announced to Harvath and his passengers, “Hold on.”
The pilot banked the AgustaWestland Lynx and sped toward the center of London. It was the fastest helicopter in the world and speed was exactly what they needed right now. As Marx worked on pinpointing the exact building the controller was in, she had already begun sending undercover tactical teams in the general direction. But unless the teams were in the immediate vicinity when the address was revealed, Harvath had a strong feeling he and his team were going to be the first boots on the ground.
Buildings whipped beneath the belly of the helo as it rapidly closed the distance with their destination. Harvath had been surprised by the central London location. It wasn’t that the cell’s controller couldn’t be fully integrated into British culture—the wave of British doctor attacks had proven that—it was just incongruous with what Harvath’s experience had been. Normally, these guys used ethnic neighborhoods as cover. There, they could blend in and disappear. The neighborhoods were difficult for non-Muslims to penetrate and the close-knit, often ethnic makeup of their inhabitants provided an unending supply of lookouts and human trip wires.
That said, only hours earlier, Harvath had cautioned Bob Ashford not to underestimate their enemy, and now he reminded himself to heed his own advice. Expecting the controller to be holed up in some blighted Muslim neighborhood sitting on a carpet drinking tea while he coordinated bombings was sloppy thinking on his part. He was trained better than that. This guy could be a banker or a professor at the London School of Economics for all he knew.
As the Lynx banked again and raced up the Thames, Robert Ashford’s voice came over Harvath’s headset. “We’ve lost the signal.”
CHAPTER 50
CHICAGO
Just try to breathe,” said John Vaughan. “In and out. Nice and easy. You’re going to be okay. Just relax and breathe.”
“Jesus, it hurts,” said Levy. “I think I’m having a heart attack.”
“Focus on the sound of my voice, Josh. Listen to me. You’re going to be okay. We’re going to figure out a way to get out of here.”
“They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?”
“If they were going to kill us, they’d have done it already.”
“Either way,” added Davidson, “I’m a dead man. If they don’t kill me, my wife will. How many days have we been here?”
All three were bound and hoods had been placed over their heads. As a Marine, Vaughan was the only one who had been trained to withstand captivity and interrogation. He knew that most of it was a mental game, and that meant that he had to help Davidson and Levy get through this.
“We’ve only been here about twenty-four hours, give or take an hour or two.”
“That’s it,” said Davidson. “My marriage is definitely over. My wife is never going to believe I was taken hostage.”
Vaughan kept his attention on Levy. “Josh, I want you to describe to me how you’re feeling.”
Levy took a moment to form his assessment. “My shoulder hurts like hell, and I have a lot of pain in my chest. My back hurts and so does my neck.”
“Welcome to what it feels like to have been shot.”
“But I was shot in the shoulder, not in the chest.”
“Your torso absorbed a lot of blunt force trauma. You’re going to feel it everywhere.”
“I have tightness and trouble breathing.”
“That probably has more to do with anxiety than anything else.”
“He’s right, Josh,” said Davidson. “Try not to think about how long it has been since you last clipped your nails.”
“Up yours.”
As Levy and Davidson started laughing, Vaughan felt relieved. They needed to keep their spirits up.
Ever the wiseacre, Davidson said, “Hey, do you guys know what the only thing in the world shorter than a Muslim terrorist’s dick is? His to do list.”
There was another roll of quiet laughter, but the elevated mood didn’t last.
“What do you think they’re going to do with us?” Levy asked.
“We gave them everything,” replied Vaughan, “so I don’t know that there’s any other information they could squeeze out of us.”
“Which reminds me,” said Davidson. “I thought you big, tough Marines were supposed to be able to hold out indefinitely under interrogation.”
“No one can hold out indefinitely, Paul. That’s just in the movies.”
“But we told them everything,” said Levy. “What possible value could we still have for them? They know we came looking for Nasiri and that this wasn’t official police business.”
Vaughan had been thinking about that too. “We should take it as a good sign that we’re still here. As long as we’re alive, there’s a chance we’re going to get out of this. We’re all married, so let’s focus on our wives and children.”
“Way to ruin it for me,” said Davidson.
“Come on. Your wife can’t be that bad.”
“When we get out of here, you can stay at my house for a week with her and her two dogs, okay?”
Vaughan smiled beneath his hood. “Think about fishing then.”
“I have been. And I’ve been thinking about how I’m never going to take my cell phone on vacation again.”
“If it makes you feel better to blame me for all of this, go ahead.”
“When the turban fits.”
“By the way, who were you really fishing with when I called? I know you didn’t threaten to kill your priest.”
“You should hear the kind of stuff he threatens me with.”
Vaughan still didn’t believe him, but he laughed anyway.
“I’ve been thinking about my wife,” Levy interjected, his tone morose. “We had an argument yesterday. A bad one.”
“You’ve got to stay strong, Josh,” said Vaughan. “We’re going to make it.”
“What if we don’t?”
“We will.”
“How? Nobody knows where the hell we are. We don’t even know where we are.”
“I guarantee you that our wives are raising holy hell right now,” replied Vaughan. “The fact that Paul and I are cops means that CPD will be working extra hard to find us.”
“I didn’t tell my wife where we were going or who we were surveilling,” said Levy.
There was silence. Finally, Davidson admitted, “I didn’t give my wife specifics either.”
Beneath the darkness of his hood, Vaughan could feel the other men’s eyes shift toward him. He knew what they wanted to hear. He knew what they needed to hear and so he said
, “Then I guess it’s a good thing I told my wife everything.”
The other two didn’t respond. They knew he was lying.
CHAPTER 51
LONDON
Talk to me, Bob,” said Harvath as the Lynx flew over Westminster Bridge and decreased its speed as the pilot awaited further instructions.
“We had a flurry of activity and then everything stopped,” Ashford replied. “Somebody pinged the cell members’ phones from different numbers and when they didn’t respond, whoever it was began trying to activate the detonators on the explosives. We had the caller traced to a one-block area.”
“How many buildings are we talking about?”
“The caller wasn’t in a building. He was outside, moving.”
“Was he in a vehicle or on foot?”
“We don’t know,” said the MI5 man.
“How about CCTV cameras? Were there any in the area?”
“Yes. Rita has already pulled the footage and we’re rolling it back to the time the calls were placed. The first filter is people visibly using phones. The next is headsets or earbuds. If someone is seen using more than one phone or changing SIM cards then obviously we …” the MI5 man’s voice trailed off.
“Can you repeat?” said Harvath. “I didn’t get that last part.”
Marx’s voice came back over the radio. “I think we have our man. Arab male, early forties. Approximately two meters tall and eighty kilos.”
Harvath did the conversion in his head—six feet and around 175 pounds.
“He has short black hair and a goatee,” Marx continued. “He is wearing a brown sport coat, a blue jumper, khaki trousers, and dark shoes.”
“What happened to Bob?”
“He seems to be having trouble with his radio,” said Marx.
“You’re sure this is our guy?”
“Positive. We have footage of him operating three different devices.”
“Where is he and which direction is he headed?”
“We ID’d him off of footage from several minutes ago,” said the woman from Scotland Yard. “We need to reacquire him. We’re sorting the live feeds now. Stand by.”