by Brad Thor
Rashid had wondered if Aleem would lead the Shahid in prayers, but Marwan explained that the man had already left the city. It was important that he see to what was coming next. As usual, what that was, Marwan wasn’t disposed to say.
When they got the third and final crate into the apartment, they closed the door and Rashid made sure the drapes were drawn as tight as possible. The odor in the kitchen was terrible. There was a plate of rotting food on the table, which Nasiri picked up and tossed into the garbage. He then pulled out some glasses and put on a pot of water for tea.
Rashid closed the blinds in the living room while the goons caught their breath and then set to work opening up the crates. The plan had worked perfectly. They hadn’t seen any neighbors and even if one or two had been watching, it would have looked as if Mohammed Nasiri had purchased a three-piece bedroom set, as that’s what was spray-painted on the side of the crates, and was having it delivered. Sure it was late at night, but with America’s 24/7 culture, most of his immigrant neighbors wouldn’t know to think anything of it.
Rashid arranged three chairs in the living room, just as he had diagrammed it for Marwan. They then tightly duct-taped the two cops and their detective colleague to them. The detective, whom he had shot at the mosque, had begun bleeding again.
Rashid checked their vests and dismissed the goons to join Nasiri in the kitchen for tea. He was almost finished.
After powering up the cell phone detonators, he adjusted their clothing to cover up the vests and then hid the camera ball between a couple of Nasiri’s books in the corner of the room.
Satisfied that everything was exactly how he wanted it, Rashid joined the men for a fast cup of tea. Marwan would want them back as quickly as possible.
They gathered up the crating material and Rashid made sure to wipe down everything he touched so as not to leave any fingerprints. The other men didn’t have to worry. Very soon, they wouldn’t even have fingers.
As Nasiri and the goons threw the garbage in the back of the truck and climbed in, Rashid pulled down the door and checked his watch. It was after midnight. Wednesday had passed into Thursday. The day of the attack had come and now it was only hours away.
Rashid climbed back into truck and started it up. As he drove off down the alley, he had no idea that Harvath and Casey had been watching him the entire time.
CHAPTER 68
As the truck exited the alley and disappeared from view, Harvath motioned to Casey and they stepped away from the Dumpster they’d been hiding behind.
“What do you think?” she asked.
Harvath looked up at the apartment. All of the lights had been turned out and the curtains were still drawn. “I think that they’ve got something very bad in those crates.”
“That’s what I’m thinking too. Whatever they’re planning, it’s big and they’ve got a lot of it.”
“Let’s go take a look.”
She put her hand on Harvath’s shoulder and said, “Wait a second. Shouldn’t we be sure there’s nobody else up there?”
“Trust me,” he replied. “There’s nobody else up there.”
“How do you know?”
Harvath started down the alley. “Because if they had more men, they would have gotten those crates up into the apartment a lot faster.”
Despite his confidence that the apartment was empty, Casey noticed that Harvath was still very careful about how he moved. He avoided motion lights and stayed close to large objects that could function as cover and concealment.
It had been hot and humid ever since they had landed in Chicago. There wasn’t any breeze and the alley was thick with the odor of over-ripe garbage. Casey was sweating. Her shirt clung to her back as she followed him.
Their target was a four-story brick building with a wooden set of fire stairs behind it. A section of chain-link fencing with a broken gate separated the property from the alley.
They walked down the narrow gangway and were about to mount the stairs when Cooper’s voice came over their earpieces. “Two new trucks just pulled up to the loading dock.”
“What are they doing?” Harvath whispered.
“Bunch of Middle Eastern guys have come out of the store and are now loading cardboard boxes.”
That place was like a clown car. Just when you thought it was empty, more of them crawled out, Harvath thought.
“Do you want us to follow them?” she asked.
“Only if you see someone matching Jarrah’s description. Other than that, hold your position and write down the license numbers, descriptions of the trucks, and anyone you see getting in.”
“Roger that,” said Cooper.
Looking at Casey, Harvath asked, “Ready?”
She adjusted the laptop bag she was carrying and flashed him the thumbs-up.
Harvath opened his messenger-style bag the rest of the way and wrapped his hand around the grip of his suppressed MP7 and led the way up the stairs.
Though the weapon was extremely compact, it was difficult to conceal beneath casual, summer clothing so they carried their MP7s in bags that wouldn’t look out of place in an urban environment. Beneath their shirts, each also carried a Glock 19 in a paddle holster.
All of the apartments they passed were dark. When they reached the third-floor landing, they could hear a television through an open window somewhere off in the distance, but nothing from inside the apartment itself.
They stepped carefully on the landing, just in case Harvath had been wrong about the unit being empty and a warped board gave them away. He moved to the door and pressed his ear against it while Casey covered him. He still heard nothing from inside.
He checked the door frame for any alarms or trip devices and when he didn’t find any, he tried the knob. The door was locked.
Harvath removed one of the lockpick guns that had been included with their gear and went to work. When the dead bolt slid back, he returned the device to his pocket, removed his MP7 completely from his messenger bag, and stood back so that Casey could grip the doorknob.
He took a deep breath, then nodded, and Casey quietly pulled the door open. Harvath swept into the kitchen searching for hostile targets. Despite the drapes on the window being drawn, a certain amount of ambient light from the buildings on the other side of the alley illuminated the room. It also smelled like someone had forgotten to take out the garbage.
With Casey behind him, he moved past a card table to the other side of the small kitchen. Across a narrow hallway, he could see through an open door into a bedroom. Next to that was a closed door, which he assumed led to the bathroom. To see any further, he needed to stick his head into the hallway, but suddenly the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
Harvath hated hallways. They had a bad habit of funneling the gunfire of even the worst shooter right at you. But that wasn’t it; not completely at least.
His sixth sense was trying to tell him something. Someone else was in the apartment. He could feel it now. He didn’t know if they were in the bedroom closet, behind the closed door to the bathroom, or at the end of the hallway where he couldn’t see. Wherever it was, there was danger in this apartment and his body was tensing up in anticipation of engaging it.
He signaled Casey that he would cover the hallway while she crossed to clear the bedroom. When he was ready, he nodded and swung out into the hallway, and that’s when he saw it.
In the eerie half-light of the living room was the outline of a hooded figure sitting in a chair. Harvath lit up the scene with a flash from his weapon light and saw that it wasn’t just one figure, but three.
He held his position as Casey quickly exited the bedroom and cleared the bathroom, which was jammed with the shipping crates they had seen being carried upstairs.
Together they moved into the living room and secured it, making sure no one was lurking beyond the apartment’s front door. Then and only then did they tend to the hostages.
Their chairs had been duct-taped in a sort of circle and the men to
them. Harvath removed their hoods and the hostages wildly gestured with their chins at their chests.
He opened the shirt of the man nearest him and instantly understood. He didn’t need to see vests on the other two to know that they had them as well.
“Everyone relax. We’re going to get you out of here.”
Instead of calming down, the man who Harvath was standing in front of became even more agitated. He was gesturing even more urgently, but not at the vest anymore. He seemed to be nodding toward the corner of the room. Harvath turned and looked behind, but couldn’t understand what the man was trying to tell him.
When Harvath couldn’t figure it out, the man became even more impatient. His eyes were wide and he was yelling from behind the layers of duct tape that had been wrapped around his head and over his mouth.
“Don’t move,” Harvath said as he pulled out his knife. The man didn’t listen and Harvath had to sling his weapon and grab the man’s face as he carefully made an incision along the left side of the tape.
Peeling enough of it away to get a good grip, he then pulled back—hard.
“The camera!” John Vaughan shouted as the tape came free. “There’s a camera between the books! The vests are triggered to remote detonate!”
It took Harvath a second but he found the camera and spun it so it faced the wall.
When he turned back around, Casey had opened the shirts of the other men, revealing their explosive vests.
“Get out of here, before they detonate!” said Vaughan.
“Easy,” replied Harvath. “The men who brought you here drove off in their truck. That’s a wireless camera with a limited range. If somebody was watching us, they would have already detonated.”
“I’m Sergeant John Vaughan with the Chicago Police. There’s going to be a terrorist attack.”
“We know,” said Casey as she examined the man’s vest with her flashlight, “but I need you to be still for a minute. Don’t talk, okay?”
Vaughan fell silent as she examined his vest and then looked under and behind his chair.
“Are you looking for the trigger?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“There’s something in the small of my back. I think it’s a cell phone.”
Casey put her flashlight between her teeth, bent down, and very carefully slid one of her hands behind the police officer. “I feel it.”
“Can you disarm it?” Harvath asked.
“I won’t know till we get him out of the chair and I see it.” Straightening back up, she looked at Vaughan and said, “There’s something called a mercury switch. The way it works is—”
“I’m a Marine. I was in Iraq,” interrupted the policeman. “I know what a mercury switch is.”
“I’m trying to figure out if moving you will trigger this vest.”
“We got the crap jostled out of us in those crates. Trust me, there’s no mercury switch.”
“So all they did was tape you to the chairs?”
“Yes,” said Vaughan.
Casey took out her knife. “Let’s cut him loose.”
Once Vaughan was free, Harvath helped him stand, while Casey studied his vest. “It’s similar to the mechanism they used in London; probably how the vests in Amsterdam were set up.”
“Who are you?” asked Vaughan.
“That’s not important,” said Harvath.
“Don’t worry,” added Casey. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Thank God, because—”
“Done,” she replied, having disconnected the cell phone trigger.
“What?”
Casey raised her finger to her lips for him to be quiet as she studied the buckles on the vest. She then put the flashlight back in her mouth and carefully unfastened them.
“Now very slowly,” she ordered, nodding at Harvath to grab the opposite side of the vest, “we’re going to lift up and I want you to slide out of it. If you feel even the slightest tug, a snag, even if you think you’re imagining it, I want you to freeze. Okay?”
“Okay,” said Vaughan.
“Good. Now on three and remember, slowly. Here we go. One. Two. Three.”
The policeman slowly slid out of the vest and backed away from it. Harvath then took it from Casey and held it up for her to examine.
Her eyes narrowed as she moved in to look at something. “What the heck is this?”
“What did you find?” asked Harvath.
“I’ll tell you after we look at the other two vests. Let’s hurry up.”
CHAPTER 69
Everything went okay?” asked Jarrah when Rashid returned.
“No problems,” he replied. “Everything is in place.”
“And Mohammed Nasiri?”
“Mohammed is ready, as are the rest of our brothers. He told me to thank you and that he is sorry for any trouble he may have caused.”
Jarrah smiled and looked up at the two men behind Rashid. “You have done very well. Go and prepare yourselves. We will pray together shortly.”
When the two men had left, Marwan motioned for his protégé to sit with him. “Come and take tea with me.”
“I think caffeine is probably the last thing I need right now,” said Rashid as he sat down and dried his palms on his thighs. He looked at the empty tables where the suicide vests had been constructed and the reloading equipment he had used to build his special ammunition. “Did you think about what I asked?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“And how are your testicles, from where the woman kicked you?”
“For the tenth time, Marwan, I’m fine. And in case I didn’t make myself clear the other nine times I said it, if you ever want something that stupid done again, you can do it yourself.”
Jarrah pointed at the closed circuit television set near him. “We have it recorded on video, if you would like to watch.”
“Have you been replaying it for everyone? Is that what you’ve been doing? You think that’s funny?”
“She kicks hard, like a donkey,” the man said with a chuckle. It took him a minute to compose himself. When he had, he reached into his pocket and set a pill bottle on the table. “Here.”
Rashid picked it up and read the label. “Valium? You think I’ve got some sort of an anxiety disorder?”
“It has nothing to do with a disorder. It will help you to relax. Trust me, you need it.”
“The hell I do.”
“There’s two left. Take them.”
“No. And what do you mean there’s two left? What happened to the rest of them?”
“I gave them to the Shahid.”
“Without asking me?”
“I don’t need your permission, Shahab.”
“What about your shooters? Did you give them Valium too?”
“Of course not. They’ve been given amphetamines.”
Rashid shook his head. “Just like Mumbai.”
“Have faith in Allah, Shahab. Today we will strike a mighty blow for Islam, Insha’Allah.”
Rashid leaned forward and poured two glasses of tea. “I guess you’re right. We have worked very hard for this day.”
“Yes, we have,” said Jarrah, accepting his glass and setting it down to cool.
They were quiet for several moments, each man pondering what was soon to happen. It was Marwan who eventually broke the silence. “I want you to know something.”
“What’s that?”
“I want you to know that I believe in you.”
“Let’s not go down this road again, Marwan. Okay?” said Rashid. “I’ve got enough on my mind already.”
The man raised his hand. “I’m telling you the truth. Sheik Aleem has gone to Los Angeles to prepare the next attack. He wants you to go to New York.”
“Are you serious?”
Marwan smiled. “Yes.”
Rashid thought about that. “You know after today, it’s going to be nearly impossible to pull off the same kind of attack.”
“With All
ah’s help, nothing is impossible,” replied Jarrah, “but Sheik Aleem and I agree with you, which is why the next attacks have been designed to be different.”
Rashid leaned forward. “How different?”
“Airplanes will rain from the sky. Radiation and a plague will infect the infidel populations. They will know terror like they have never known before.”
“And what about the cells? Are they already in place?”
“Everything is ready and waiting. Sheik Aleem has prepared a communications protocol that—” Jarrah’s voice trailed off as his eyes shifted to his television monitor.
“What is it?” asked Rashid.
“Someone is in the store.”
The younger man pulled out his pistol. “How many? Where did you see them?”
“On the first floor of the showroom. The west wall near the stairs to the—”
“Down here to the basement,” said Rashid as he leapt up. “Stay right there. Don’t move.”
As he stepped into the cinder block hallway, he heard a shout. Seconds later, automatic weapons fire began.
CHAPTER 70
Vaughan, Davidson, and Levy had no idea where they’d been moved to after being captured and tortured—or in Levy’s case shot—at the mosque. They knew it was a basement room somewhere, but that was it.
As far as why they had been placed at Mohammed Nasiri’s apartment, Vaughan had only been able to pick up bits and pieces, but thought that maybe they were going to be used to draw in a bunch of police officers and then their vests would be detonated in hopes of killing as many as possible.
The only other information the men could contribute was in regard to the TATP they thought the terrorists were going to use and what Mohammed Nasiri and the other men they had seen looked like.
It wasn’t a lot to go on, but it became a large part of Harvath’s decision to hit Marwan Jarrah’s place of business. With all of the activity, it was obvious that the attack was about to happen. But what had cinched it for Harvath was the camera at Nasiri’s apartment. Even fully charged, it would run for only so long. Whatever the Chicago cell had planned, it was going to happen very soon. Harvath had decided they couldn’t wait any longer.