Undeclared War

by Dennis Chalker

  “Okay, Bear,” Reaper said in a normal tone of voice. “I’m back.”

  “Never really thought you had left, Brother,” Bear said.

  “Okay,” Reaper said, “we have to start up again. Only this time we might try not to burn the target down to the ground behind us.”

  “It really hasn’t gotten all the way to the ground yet,” Deckert said. “That building is a real inferno. I watched the news this morning and that fire is the big story. Apparently, the local water hydrants weren’t working or somebody turned them off. Either way, the fire departments who responded couldn’t do a damned thing about the blaze. They stood by, controlled traffic and made sure the fire didn’t spread to the surrounding neighborhoods. Then they pretty much broke out the marshmallows and hotdogs for a barbecue.

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” Deckert continued. “You guys would have a lot more to worry about if any of the locals knew you had a hand in that fire. The police can only arrest you, maybe shoot you. But most of the workers in downtown Detroit want to lynch you. That fire is right on the corner of two of the biggest highways in the city—and they shut them down a couple of hours ago because of the smoke and ash. You guys seriously fucked-up the Friday morning rush hour.”

  “Well, at least it’ll be a while before they can pull out any bodies,” Max said. He had already dumped his street-person clothing and taken the first hot shower. Now he sat at the table with his hair still wet and a towel draped over his shoulders.

  “I don’t think there’s going to be any bodies to concern anyone with,” Ben said knowingly. “I’ve picked up many a fire victim, and that furnace isn’t going to leave much behind. Bodies, bones, bullets, brass, even teeth, they’re all going to be part of a football field-sized pile of slag.”

  “The news said that the fire chief suspected that chemicals or paint had been stored on the upper floors,” Deckert said. “They might consider the whole thing nothing more than an accident. No one has said arson out loud, or much of anything else really.”

  “Well,” Reaper said, “what we have to do is go over every piece of material that we pulled out of that place before it went up. There’s two stuffed garbage bags full of Intel that we need to digest. Bear stripped out the desk and I grabbed everything I could from the filing cabinet. That cabinet had a destruct charge on it—Arzee wanted it gone more than anything else. He was dying when he pulled the switch and that’s pretty hard core for an asshole like that.

  “So we’ll start with that bag. Try and keep everything as separate as you can from the two bags. Anything from the desk or the filing cabinet may be significant. We’ll go through the filing cabinet papers here. Keith, why don’t you work on the counter and sort out the desk materials there.”

  “As soon as I clean up the mess somebody left behind here,” Deckert said with a grin.

  More than an hour later, the men were still sorting through the papers they had now separated into reasonably neat stacks. Before anyone had touched anything, Reaper had them all put on a pair of disposable plastic gloves from a box in the shop. The documents they had found still came from a crime scene and would be considered evidence by any police agency that got hands on them. It would be best if none of the men around the table left their fingerprints on any of the materials. Both Reaper and Bear had been wearing their FOG glove liners during the operation and had been the only people to handle the documents. They hadn’t left any fingerprints anywhere so far.

  After an hour of sorting and examination, they separated the papers into two sets of stacks. One set was from the desk, the other was from the cabinet. Where the papers had come from might be important in figuring out what they were. Most of the documents didn’t really mean anything. They were regular business items such as the utility bills, UPS shipper receipts, and bar supply lists. The desk had given up most of those items.

  The next stack contained documents that the men couldn’t read. These papers, maps, and booklets had been written in Arabic for the most part. Reaper now suspected that a hell of a lot more was going on than just what involved his family. The rest of the men also put two and two together and came up with the likely idea of terrorists operating on U.S. soil.

  The situation could be a very serious one. Yet the primary mission was still locating Reaper’s family. That was all that concerned Reaper for the time being. Once his people were safe, then the rest of the materials would be sent on to the right hands.

  The undecipherable documents made the biggest pile from the filing cabinet. The last mound in both sets of papers turned out to be things whose use no one could figure out. Doodles, notes, phone numbers, everything that came from the drawers of the desk or filing cabinet had ended up in the bags of Reaper and Bear.

  “There’s something missing here,” Reaper said.

  “How can you tell?” Bear demanded as he looked up from a pamphlet he had been reading. The booklet had been extolling the virtues of a hunting lodge on a private island in Lake Michigan. It was an odd thing to find and had perked his interest.

  “Because there’s nothing on the Factory here,” Reaper said. “By that I mean the company books, the records of their cash flow. Things like that.”

  “Maybe they kept them in that top drawer of the filing cabinet,” Max suggested as he looked up from the table. “You said that you had to leave it shut to keep the papers from burning fast.”

  “True enough,” Reaper said, “but that doesn’t fit the rest of this stuff. These Arabic documents look important. I can’t read the stuff, but the layout resembles some of the military materials we got hold of in Desert Storm and later in Bosnia. Why would they put the company books in the top drawer of a destruct-rigged cabinet?”

  “They had a real and a cooked set?” Ben suggested.

  “Then why can’t we find the cooked set?” Reaper asked. “You keep those separate from the real set so that you can show the cooked ones to the tax people or whoever. If there’s a crooked set, they should have been in the desk. We’ve even got a copy of their sales tax and liquor licenses from the desk. Bear, where’s that big briefcase that you picked up?”

  “The one from the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet?” Bear said. “It must still be out in the camper. I’ll get it.”

  Bear headed out to get the errant case. While he was gone, they all continued their examination of the documents. In a few minutes, Bear came back into the house, lugging the heavy salesman’s case with him. He had a very odd look on his face.

  “I think these guys were running on a cash basis,” Bear said. To the astonishment of everyone, he tossed a thick bundle of hundred dollar bills on the table. The paper strip wrapped around the bills was printed in bright red: $10,000.

  “Jesus, Bear,” Reaper said as he picked up the bundle. “Where in the hell did you get that? Hey! Be careful there!”

  Bear spread out a towel over the carefully sorted papers on the kitchen table.

  “It was with its friends,” Bear said, and he dumped the contents of the case onto the towel. Bundles of hundred dollar bills cascaded out of the case—piling onto the towel and spilling onto the floor.

  “I always wanted to do something like that,” Bear looked up from the huge pile of cash with a big grin.

  “Have I called you an asshole recently?” Reaper said.

  As they went through the bundles and stacked them up, the men soon came up with 250 sets of $10,000 each.

  “So that’s what two and a half million dollars looks like,” Max said.

  “Funny,” said Bear, “I always thought it looked bigger on TV.”

  “What the hell would someone have this much cash on hand for?” Reaper said. “And why in the hell would they try to burn it rather than let it be captured?”

  “Maybe Arzee wanted it as mad money for his vacation,” Bear said.

  “Vacation?” came up from Ben at the table.

  “Yeah,” said Bear. “He had this brochure for a hunting lodge in his desk.”

&n
bsp; He picked up the document and handed it to Ben.

  “Northern Lake Michigan?” said Ben. “Wait a minute, I saw something else like that.”

  Going through the regular business papers stack from the filing cabinet, Ben pulled out a faxed receipt on shiny thermal paper.

  “Here it is,” Ben said as he handed the fax to Reaper. “It’s a receipt for a load of diesel fuel and groceries going to someplace called South Wolverine Island.”

  “I know that place,” Deckert said. “It was in the papers a few years back. Some article about the whole damned island being sold to a private party. The environmental and native Indian groups raised a big stink about it.”

  “That anywhere near Leland?” Reaper asked.

  “North of there, yeah,” Deckert said. “Why?”

  “Because that’s where this receipt came from,” Reaper said. “It was sent from a fax machine at the Leland Yacht Harbor, and it’s dated only three days ago.”

  “This is a lot of food and fuel,” Deckert said as he looked at the papers. “Enough for a large group of people.”

  “Enough for a big hunting lodge,” said Bear.

  “Not just that,” Deckert said. “There’s nothing in the way of fresh foods on this list. This is all canned and frozen stuff. Not what you’d expect a hunting lodge to feed paying customers.”

  “Arzee started to say something about my family being ‘up’ somewhere right before the explosion,” Reaper said.

  “Up North is what everyone down here calls that part of Michigan,” said Bear. “It sounds good enough to me. I think we may have found them, Ted, or at least a real good place to start.”

  Reaper was excited by what they had found, and he agreed with Bear’s assessment. As they went through more of the papers with an eye for anything regarding that part of Michigan, they came up with some more clues. Fuel receipts for stops on I-75, the main drag heading up north in Michigan. Restaurant receipts, even motel receipts. And most of them were dated within the last month.

  Going back to his computer, Deckert looked for everything he could find about South Wolverine Island and the lodge there. All information stopped as of the year before. The stated reason had been for renovation of the facilities by the new owners. More searching through databases failed to come up with any listings of the permits needed for such renovations. Even the public hearings required by law weren’t listed as ever having happened.

  Satellite images were available on-line regarding the island. It lay twenty-five miles north of Leland, the closest port on the mainland. It was part of a pair of islands, the smaller, North Wolverine Island only being about five miles northeast of the much larger South Wolverine Island. Both islands boasted heavily wooded areas, large game populations, and airstrips big enough to handle small planes.

  “Okay, we need a boat and some additional gear,” Reaper said.

  “Don’t have a boat,” Deckert said, “powered chairs don’t swim for shit.”

  “Let me call a friend,” Bear said as he left the room.

  They spent the rest of the day and into the evening learning everything they could about South Wolverine Island and what might be happening there. When the other men finally went to sleep that night, Reaper remained awake until Bear reminded him that not getting any sleep wouldn’t do Reaper any good. Finally, the big man agreed and went to get some rest himself.

  At the lodge on South Wolverine Island, Paxtun had a bad situation he needed to discuss with Ishmael. Even as remote as the island was, the news of a major fire at the Factory in Detroit, and the incredible traffic jam it caused, had made the local broadcast media.

  In addition to the loss of the building and the club, Paxtun had lost something he would have a very hard time replacing; a man he could trust. While he had trusted Arzee, his second in command, only because he could firmly control him, he still counted it a loss. The material and personal losses, the bulk of the liquid funds to finance Ishmael’s operations in North America, the hawala bankroll, had gone up in smoke.

  The terrorist leader’s reaction was anything but what Paxtun had expected. Ishmael considered the loss of funds little more than in’shallah—Allah’s will. Paxtun found his fatalism shocking.

  “You feel that this very inconvenient fire resulted from some direct action by the authorities?” Ishmael said as he sat pensively in Paxtun’s inner office. He accepted the will of Allah, but would listen to others’ suspicions.

  “I don’t see how it could be,” Paxtun said from where he sat behind his desk. “The Detroit police and federal agencies just don’t work like that in this country, no matter what some conspiracy theorists might say. There is no profit in it for them, nothing for them to gain. Even if they were going after the drugs, and we never had any intelligence indicating any kind of active investigation, our police agencies are interested in confiscation and evidence, not destruction.”

  “You may be correct in this matter,” Ishmael said. “Even if you are not, little can be done immediately. The blow to my further operations by the loss of the funds is not insignificant. We have been having difficulty moving finances around the world’s banking system since your new president has seen fit to try and become something other than the adulterer, coward, and fornicating paper tiger that your last leader was. The best thing that I can do in reaction to the situation is move up my operational timetable.”

  “What,” said Paxtun, “for Shaitan’s Blessing?”

  “Yes,” Ishmael said. “I had originally planned for our most ambitious operation to be launched next week. That is the three-day holiday your corrupt people hold to celebrate their criminal military forces.”

  “You mean Memorial Day,” Paxtun volunteered.

  “A proper name,” Ishmael said ominously. “It certainly will be a memorable day this year.”

  “Why this weekend?” said Paxtun. “There aren’t that many major celebrations within range that would make a good target, a target with a great many people concentrated in a small area. Those gatherings that have large crowds of people usually do so because of celebrities or some of our leadership being there. This year, anything like that would be under very heavy security.”

  “But what also happens at that time,” Ishmael said, “is that a large number of people and their boats are in this area all at once for the first time during the year. It is the beginning of the tourist season.”

  “Unofficially, yes,” Paxtun said. “But the cold weather this year may put off a lot of the usual people from coming up here this early in the season.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ishmael said, “I shall not wait any longer. My people are here and we shall strike.”

  “Strike at what?” Paxtun asked. “Tourists? And aren’t you limited for weapons?”

  “Since no one will now leave this island or communicate with the rest of the world until after the action is underway and it is too late to interfere,” Ishmael said magnanimously, “I will explain it to you.”

  Paxtun reasoned that Ishmael desperately wanted to brag about what he had planned to someone who didn’t know the details. Despite all of Ishmael’s talk about martyrdom and sacrifice, when it finally came down to it, he wanted someone to know about his personal dedication and sacrifice. Bragging was a weakness of megalomaniacs, and Paxtun was sure Ishmael was one. Besides, it wouldn’t be any fun to be a martyr if no one knew you had been one.

  “Our experts,” Ishmael went on, “have been carefully examining the new security arrangements that have been put in place in this country since the Prince so successfully struck a blow at the heart of the Great Satan in 2001. The destruction of the World Trade Center and the damage to the heart of the Great Satan’s war machine are things true believers look to with pride. And they shall be given even more to be proud of by my actions.

  “The loss of Iraq to the Great Satan’s invaders eliminated one source of weapons that could have struck a telling blow against this land’s decadent population of unbelievers. A nuclear
bomb would have been the greatest of tools, but Saddam was not able to deliver one before that country’s holy Muslim soil was defiled by infidels. Even the diseases and poisons he had promised us had not been completed, though the materials were on hand.

  “We searched out and located a potent weapon right here on the soil of the Great Satan itself. It is one the unbelievers created themselves in their foolish arrogance. And they barely recognize its existence.”

  “A weapon of mass destruction?” said Paxtun. “Here, in the United States? How? The nuclear storage sites always have tight security. Since the 9/11 attacks, that security has been beefed up a lot. Those sites are some of the most secure locations in the country. And there just aren’t any stores of chemical or biological weapons that could even be approached.”

  “Allah, all blessings be upon Him, provides for the dedicated true believers,” Ishmael said. “Not more than thirty miles from our location is the source for the mighty sword Allah has seen fit to put into my hands.”

  “Thirty miles!” Paxtun gulped. “But there’s nothing within thirty miles, or even forty or fifty miles of here for that matter. Even the old Big Rock nuclear power plant is gone. They tore it down some time back.”

  “It is not quite gone,” said Ishmael. “There are still some very useful materials on the site.”

  “What, reactor fuel rods?” Paxtun said. “Those are in a high-security bunker that’s alarmed and guarded.”

  “The weapons and skills my men have can deal with the guards,” Ishmael said. “They would not be expecting a boat full of fishermen to open fire on them as we will. It would have been better to have more firepower, but the shipment we received from our brother holy warriors will be enough, in’shallah.”

  “But you can’t move the fuel rods,” Paxtun said. “They’re in massive armored containers. The containers are designed to be too big to move without some special handling gear and that isn’t kept onsite. The rods are too radioactive for anyone to remove from the containers without some very sophisticated equipment. If you even had some, what would you make with them, a dirty bomb? Spray radiation all over a target?”