by James Hunt
The caravan’s headlights offered the only illumination on the back roads, and when the van slowed, Kasaika looked in the distance to see a deteriorating structure surrounded by an equally decaying woods. “Is there no place that death hasn’t touched this land?”
“It’s an abandoned coal mine,” the driver said. “It hasn’t been active for decades.”
Once parked, Kasaika walked with three other men while the others unloaded the vans. The two men that flanked him were Kasaika’s contacts in America. The two men had migrated eight years ago in an effort to establish themselves as natural citizens. Sefkh was Kasaika’s brother-in-law, a man whom he trusted above all others, and not just because of the marriage to his sister. The two had shared a bond ever since they were boys, during the rule of Anwar Al-Sadat in Egypt where they grew up. It was there the boys received their first taste of Americans. Both Kasaika’s and Sefkh’s fathers were opposed to any US interference and attempted to undermine the growing relationship. Neither of their families wanted any part of any country or people that sided with Israel. The only way to God, to eternity, was through Islam.
“It is good to see you, brother,” Sefkh said. “You will be glad to know that you’re an uncle now.”
Kasaika stopped dead in his tracks. “Tatara had her child?” He clutched Sefkh’s shoulders. “When?”
Sefkh smiled. “Two days ago. Both she and the baby are healthy, fine.”
“Subhaan Allah.” Kasaika embraced his brother in a hug. For the first time since he’d started this mission, he felt himself feel like it was before. Before all of this death, before all of the pain and anguish. “This is a great blessing of fortune, Sefkh.” It took all of Kasaika’s strength not to run to his sister, find her, hold both her and her newborn. But there was still work to do. “We give honor to your new family by our will. Maashallah.” Kasaika bowed.
“Thank you, brother,” Sefkh replied.
“Jazakallaho ahsanal jaza,” Zet said, embracing both Kasaika and Sefkh.
Zet had been like a brother to Sefkh, and while Kasaika never truly warmed to the man, there was no denying his commitment. Out of all of them, he’d lost the most. Kasaika returned a smile with the hug. “Your family will soon be honored as well, Zet. We will make sure of that.”
The news of his sister’s blessing could not cloud the mission, which had already been set back. “We encountered an issue during transport. The captain that was sent, along with two members of his crew, escaped.”
“That is of no concern, brother,” Sefkh replied. “We have everything in place. By the time the US government finds out about what we’re doing, it will have already been done.”
“That’s not all.” Kasaika gave a heavy sigh, turning away from the group and watching the men unload the vans. “Half of our bombs are still on board the ship.”
“What?” Zet asked, marching toward Sefkh, switching his jaw-slacked gaze between Sefkh and Kasaika. “We can’t hit our targets with only half!” Zet’s face flushed red, a dribble of spit rolling down his lips into the coarse black beard extending from his chin.
“Kasaika, he is right,” Sefkh said. “We cannot pull this off without all of the devices. Our men are already in place.”
“We will improvise,” Kasaika answered, the authority of his voice returning under the duress of the moment. “Our primary target will remain Boston. The others will have to resort to household devices until we can regroup our resources.”
Zet jumped between them, his words quick with anger. “When the Americans find out what we’ve done, we will not have the luxury and advantage of surprise. The entire country will be on lockdown, and if this captain is able to identify you, then it will lead to the rest of us.”
Sefkh smiled. “Calm yourself, Zet. The Americans aren’t the only ones capable of intelligence gathering.”
***
Agent Cooper wiped her forehead with the back of her glove after she sealed up the last shell casing that she was able to find on the dock, and the first rays of the morning sun greeted her eyes. They cast the water in an orange filter, and she squinted away, her eyes unfamiliar with the sun’s gaze. “Four months undercover, and I think this is one of the only times I remember being awake when the sun came up.”
“Must have been hard sleeping in and living the life of a drug dealer,” Diaz said.
Cooper slapped a tag on the bag and handed it over to the rest of evidence. “Harder than you think.” The radio at Cooper’s side crackled. “Agent Cooper, I have the Bristol Sheriff’s Department trying to get ahold of you?”
“Copy that. I’ll take it inside.” The harbormaster had graciously (using the term loosely) allowed Cooper and the team the use of his facilities during the raid. While he wasn’t pleased with the amount of people sniffing around his harbor, the check he received for services rendered at least made him somewhat pleasant to speak with. She reached for the phone. “This is Agent Cooper.”
“This is Sheriff’s Deputy Waylon Falls. I have a situation down here, Agent Cooper, that I’m not sure how to deal with. I called Homeland, and they told me that they didn’t have anyone in the area but gave me your number instead.”
Cooper frowned. It wasn’t unusual for Homeland to pass the buck when it came to drug situations, and under any other circumstance she would have welcomed the case, but the only thing on her mind right then was a hot shower and the cool set of sheets that were fresh on her bed. “What do you have, Sheriff?”
“A young man with a boatload of explosives.”
The frown vanished, and Cooper quickly snatched a pen and paper from the harbormaster’s desk. “And what’s your location?” She nodded as the officer gave her the address. “I’ll be there soon, Deputy. Just hold tight for me.” She hung up the phone and rushed out of the building, clutching the crumpled piece of paper in her hand. “Diaz, we gotta go!”
Agent Diaz tiredly jogged over, tossing the last of his evidence into the van, where it’d be taken back to their headquarters. “What’s got you in a rush?”
“Homeland just dropped the ball. Some sheriff called in to report some contraband, so they tossed it our way.” She shut the door and started the cruiser’s engine, turning on the red-and-blue lights. “They’re explosives.”
“Holy shit.” Diaz quickly buckled his seatbelt, and Cooper floored it. This was the type of case that cemented your career and shot you up the ladder, skipping rungs others would have killed to be even considered for.
They were only thirty minutes from the port, and when they arrived, police and the sheriff’s department were already on scene, along with an ambulance and at least two dozen confused fishermen. Cooper and Diaz ducked under the police tape and flashed their badges when an officer approached them. “My name is Agent Cooper. This is my partner, Agent Diaz. I received a call from Deputy Sheriff Falls?”
“Agent Cooper!” A very large, very green, mustached behemoth waved his arm. She walked over to him, and after their introductions, he gestured over to the boat and crates being lugged off. “At first we thought it was cocaine. You know how bad the drug problem is, but before I could explain it to the Homeland agent that I got on the phone, he transferred me over to the DEA, saying you guys handled any smuggling.”
Cooper peeked inside one of the crates being lugged off and slipped on her gloves. “Well, this is a little out of our norm, but we’re always willing to expand our services when needed.” She’d spent the last six years of her life doing undercover work, learning every drug-traffic trick in the business. Along the way, she’d dealt with her share of guns and explosives. “How many crates?”
“Two dozen.”
Cooper turned around, raising her eyebrows. Each device was about the size of a large purse, easily concealed, and could be placed anywhere.
“What’s that attached to it?” Diaz asked.
“Bomb squad said it’s radioactive material.”
Both Cooper and Diaz turned to each other, and Cooper immediately b
acked away from the crate. Deputy Falls gave a light chuckle. “Oh, don’t worry, they said you can’t catch anything unless it goes off.”
“Christ.” Cooper glanced around the rest of the dock and made her way over to the boat. “I need to speak to the crew.”
“Well, there’s only one here right now. The other two were sent to the hospital,” Falls said.
“Where’s the one that’s here?” Falls led Cooper over to the squad cars, where a young man who couldn’t have been older than twenty kept his face buried in his hands. She leaned into Falls and asked his name. “Billy?” The boy looked up at her. “I’m Agent Cooper, and this is my partner, Agent Diaz. I know you’ve been through quite a bit already, but we need to ask you a few questions.”
“Do you know how Mark’s doing?”
Diaz started jotting down everything that was said. Cooper squatted down to her knees. “Is that one of the guys you worked with on the boat?”
Billy nodded. “He was first mate. Kind of a hard-ass, but a smart old guy. They shot him.” Billy kept staring into his hands, which were still covered in dried blood. “Those guys, they… they were evil. You could tell just looking at them. I knew something was off. I knew it the moment we sidled up to them when they popped that flare. I didn’t say anything, though. Mark had been hounding us all day to keep our mouths shut. He just got tired of me and Tank—” The boy cut himself off with a lump in his throat.
“It’s okay, Billy.” Cooper placed her hand on the back of his head. “Can we get a towel and some water over here?” Falls nodded his head then rushed off, his uniform jiggling with each bounce. “Billy, what did these men look like? Did they say anything to you about what they wanted?”
“They wore masks.” Billy wiped his nose, the snot turning some of the dried blood liquid again, which smeared on his nose. “Only one of them took the mask off, but I didn’t get a good look at him.”
“What kind of masks? Halloween masks? Hockey masks? Ski masks?”
“No, it was like a, um, the things that you wrap around your head in the desert, to protect yourself from the sun.”
“That’s good. That’s helpful, Billy. What else? What else can you remember?”
Falls returned with a bucket of water and set it between Cooper and Billy. He handed the boy a towel, and Billy took it absentmindedly. “Hurt.” The words came out as soft as a whisper. “They said they wanted to hurt us. Make us hurt,” he corrected himself. “They wanted to make us hurt.” Billy looked up at Cooper with tears in his eyes. “They killed Tank and tossed him overboard like he was a carcass. Like some rotten piece of fish!”
“We’ll find them, Billy,” Cooper said, rubbing the boy’s shoulder. “I promise.” She left the boy to wash up and pulled Diaz away from Falls’s earshot. “This has terrorist plot written all over it. As much as I would like to steal the glory, we’re in over our heads here. We’ll have to get back in contact with Homeland, let them know there’s a threat.”
“On it,” Diaz said then turned to make the call.
Cooper grabbed the attention of Falls, who had let his eyes wander back over to the squad cars where Billy was being held. “I need the name of the hospital where the captain and first mate are.”
***
The waiting room was filled with hospital announcements over the intercom and a whole lot of whispers and silence. Dylan bounced his knee up and down nervously, trying to figure out what happened. He checked his phone. Still no returned calls. He had to fight calling Evelyn again, but he knew she’d see the message when she woke up. Whether she actually listened to it was another story.
“Mr. Turk?” A doctor with a clipboard in his hand and his glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose stepped into the waiting room.
“Yes?” Dylan asked, jumping from his seat and rushing over. “How’s Mark? Is he gonna make it?”
“He lost a lot of blood and has some broken ribs, but we think he’s going to be all right.”
Dylan let a long, slow breath escape him, and he bent over to rest his hands on his knees, letting the feeling return to his stomach. “Thank God.”
“We’re going to keep him for a few days, make sure there aren’t any complications, but he should be able to go home by the end of the week.”
Dylan shook the doctor’s hand. “Thank you. Thank you so much.” The doctor nodded then disappeared. Dylan slumped back into his seat, and the exhaustion from the past twelve hours permeated through his body. He rubbed his eyes then made his way over to the coffee pot tabled on the opposite end of the room. The black liquid was still hot, and it piped steam from the Styrofoam cup as he poured.
“Dylan Turk?”
Dylan rested the coffee pot back on the burner, and when he turned, individuals dressed in DEA uniforms had their badges out. “Can I help you?”
“We need to speak with you about your boat, Captain. We have a place set aside where we can chat in private.” The female officer grabbed Dylan by the arm, but he jerked it back.
“I’m not going anywhere until I have some answers.” Dylan’s voice rose, and he watched the woman’s partner circle him. “Those men killed one of my crew then tried to kill me.”
The woman glanced around the room, and Dylan became aware that the other people in the waiting room were becoming wary.
“Mr. Turk, we need to speak with you about this in private.” The agent pulled him in close, lowering her voice, and Dylan started to get the impression that whatever they found on his boat wasn’t drugs. He let them lead him into a small conference room and shut the door. “My name is Agent Cooper. This is my partner, Agent Diaz. We just spoke to one of your crew members. A Billy Costagan.”
“How is he?” Dylan hadn’t given much thought to how the young man was feeling. The events of what happened were a lot for anyone to take in, let alone some kid on his first trip out at sea.
“He’s fine,” Cooper answered. “What can you tell us about the men that attacked you?”
“Foreigners. Arab, from what I could tell. Not sure what language they were speaking though.” He looked over to Diaz, who copied everything down. “What’d they smuggle on my ship?”
Cooper ignored the question and took a seat at the small square table opposite Dylan and crossed her arms. “You lost a member of your crew out there. Tank?”
Dylan nodded. “He, uh—” The image of Tank’s death flashed in his mind. The bullet through Tank’s skull, the bargaining with the pirates, the mixture of the scent of blood, water, and lead. The bullets, mortars, and knives that played a hand in trying to kill him.
“Mr. Turk?”
Dylan shook his head, trying to remember the question that was asked. “I’m sorry. I just… it’s been a long day.”
“Just tell us what you can. What you remember.”
Dylan nodded and reached for the coffee. It had cooled enough to where he could sip on it. He let the caffeine help re-control his nerves, and he cleared his throat. “We were about one hundred twenty miles from shore when I saw a flare off the starboard side of a vessel two hundred yards northeast from our position. We approached, and neither of the two men on board spoke any English. We tied off to the vessel once I determined there wasn’t any structural damage, and when we boarded, they took two of my men hostage.” Dylan took another sip of coffee and shut his eyes. “Their leader showed himself. He spoke English, and he wanted my ship. I never learned what was wrong with theirs, but I managed to get the leader in a choke hold. I tried to get him to let us go, but he was going to kill Tank, so I let go.” Dylan’s grip around the Styrofoam loosened, and he watched the light ripple of coffee inside the cup. “Once he was free, he shot Tank in the back of the head and tossed him overboard.”
“And what happened after that?” Cooper asked.
“Christ, you people don’t waste any time do you?” Dylan looked up, his eyes red with frustration. “What’d you find on my boat?”
“Enough bombs to blow up all of downtown Boston,” Coo
per answered.
“Boston?” The words left his lips in a whisper. He immediately reached for his phone, apparently a little too quickly for the two agents’ tastes, as they reached for their weapons but immediately holstered them when they saw he was dialing. He got up from his seat and paced around the room. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.”
“Mr. Turk, you need to sit down. There are a lot of details we still need to go over.”
The phone reached its eighth ring and went to voicemail again. Dylan slammed the old flip phone shut and clenched it in his shaking fist. He walked to the door, where Agent Diaz was blocking him. “I need to get my family.”
“Sir, you need to calm down.” Agent Diaz placed his right palm on the pistol and his left on Dylan’s chest, pushing him backward.
“My family, they’re in Boston.” Dylan turned to Cooper. “Please, if there are bombs, then they’re not safe.” Sweat poured from Dylan’s face and neck. He could feel the clingy fabric of his shirt. His now dried clothes were once again becoming wet. “I have to get them.”
“Hey,” Cooper said, trying to calm him. “We will.” But before either of them got another word in, a man, escorted by at least a dozen men behind him, pounded on the door and slapped his badge onto the small window into the room. The man pulled it down faster than Dylan could read, but once Diaz opened the door and he marched in, the announcement made it clear.
“Deputy Director Perry, Homeland Security.” Unlike the DEA agents, Perry was dressed in a suit, with a folder tucked under his arm. The men flanking him, however, looked like members of a SWAT team. “Mr. Turk, you’re free to go.”
Before Dylan could move, Cooper stepped between him and the exit. “Agent Perry, I don’t think that it’s a good idea to let this man go. You don’t have all the fact—”
“I have all the facts, Agent Cooper, more than your clearance will grant you. Mr. Turk, leave. Go be with your family.”