Act of War

by Brad Thor

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  * * *

  MCLEAN, VIRGINIA

  The National Counter Terrorism Center was located in a stone and glass complex near Tysons Corner. It was part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and as such, fell under the responsibility of DNI General George Johnson.

  The NCTC brought together experts from all of the alphabets in the soup, including the FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, and DHS. Their goal was to prevent terrorist attacks on the United States as well as American interests abroad by making sure all available intelligence was being shared and no clues were being overlooked.

  Entering the main building, Harvath saw Nicholas without both of his dogs for the first time. Reed Carlton had made an exception for the animals at the Carlton Group offices. It was a private business and he could make that call. He had explained to Nicholas, though, that federal buildings were a completely different story and that at some point, his job would require that he visit one of those buildings. When that happened, he wouldn’t be able to bring Argos or Draco.

  Nicholas, being Nicholas, had, within twenty-four hours, both dogs officially recognized as certified service animals. Old habits died hard and Harvath could only wonder whom he had blackmailed, and with what, to secure the designation. Carlton, though, had had no idea.

  The minute he saw the enormous dogs outside the NCTC with their bright red vests emblazoned with the words “Service Animal,” and patches proclaiming Working Dog and Don’t Pet Me Please, I’m Working, he lost it.

  Without missing a beat, Nicholas removed a card from a zippered pocket on Draco’s vest and handed it to him. On one side was written the corresponding portion of the Americans with Disabilities Act that applied to service animals and on the other was written, “If you have been handed this card, you have very likely already violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.”

  “You’re not even American,” Carlton countered.

  “I’m still protected,” said Nicholas, his hand on Draco’s shoulder.

  No one was sure if he meant protected by the ADA or by the dog. Harvath figured it was probably both.

  Carlton wasn’t in the mood. It was a con, and he didn’t like it. There were people with legitimate needs for service animals. Nicholas, in his opinion, wasn’t one of them. But with so many returning service members now using service animals, federal agencies were used to seeing dogs in their buildings. Granted, they were breeds like German shepherds or golden retrievers, not monsters the size of Nicholas’s Ovcharkas.

  The Old Man caved and they came to an agreement. “You can bring one of your service animals,” he said, making air quotes around the word “service.”

  With the issue settled, Argos returned to the Carlton Group offices with Sloane and Chase while the rest of the team walked past the flagpole and its puzzle-piece surround, and into the main building.

  By the looks on many of the faces inside, one would have thought that the circus had come to town. The huge dog accompanied by a man less than three feet tall was certainly part of it, but the true draw for the employees of the NCTC was the two highly accomplished and highly respected warriors in their midst. There wasn’t a single analyst who didn’t harbor superspy fantasies of killing and capturing bad guys. From the Cold War to the War on Terror, Carlton and Harvath were two of the best operatives the nation had ever fielded.

  At the moment, though, that wasn’t how Harvath saw his skills. No matter how many pieces they had been able to uncover and put into place, none of them felt as if they were making a difference. They weren’t any closer to stopping the attack. Part of him was glad to be at the NCTC trying to figure things out, rather than at the White House having to answer to the President.

  After Harvath got Nicholas settled with the NSA people, he and Carlton headed for the NCTC’s Operations Center.

  With its spiral staircases, sleek workstations, glass conference rooms, enormous flat-panel monitors, and loftlike vibe, the Ops Center was the nexus of America’s counterterrorism effort and looked like a Hollywood set designer had put it together.

  General Johnson had been alerted that Harvath and Carlton were on their way in and had delayed his pre-presidential briefing. Waving the pair into the main conference room, he directed them to two chairs near the head of the table and then nodded for the FBI Director to begin.

  His jacket was off and his sleeves were rolled up. Harvath had seen the man only at the White House, where he was always buttoned up. “First, let’s start with Nihad Hamid, the director of the Muslim internship program at NASA,” he said, referring to his notes and getting right into the briefing. “As most of you know, once the FISA court approved our warrant for surveillance on Mr. Hamid, we went after his phone, computers, banking records, all of it. We also brought him in for interrogation.

  “Hamid claimed he had never heard of Khuram Hanjour, the recruiter out of Dubai. But when he was shown the files of the six engineering students from the UAE, he became very nervous.

  “As soon as our interrogator saw that, he began to push him on it. As it turns out, many of those internship slots weren’t necessarily awarded on merit. Several of the board members at Hamid’s organization, the Foundation on American Islamic Relations—”

  “Wait,” Harvath interrupted. “FAIR is involved in this?”

  “Yes. You know them?”

  “All too well. I thought that shill organization was disbanded after their offices got bombed a couple of years ago.”

  “No such luck,” said the Director. “Three of their board members put the word out in the Arab world that for the right ‘contribution,’ they could guarantee acceptance into the NASA internship. Hamid went along with it. As best we can tell, Khuram Hanjour used a cutout to pay FAIR fifty thousand per engineering student. The transaction went through a Hawala in Northern Virginia.”

  “Where are the board members now?”

  “We have them in custody and the Attorney General is drawing up the indictments.”

  “Did they know they were abetting terrorists?” Harvath asked.

  “I watched feeds of the interrogations,” the Director replied. “Are these men corrupt? Absolutely. They tried to get money out of everyone. But we don’t think this was designed to help get terrorists into the country. That won’t change the facts of the case, though, especially if an attack is successful.”

  “Where’s the Bureau with pinpointing the locations of the engineering students?” General Johnson asked.

  “We’ve got plainclothes agents staking out the different Wi-Fi locations they’ve used, and we’ve got additional agents covertly combing all the neighborhoods. Short of putting up flyers or going house-to-house, we’re at full capacity. At some point, the President is going to have to allow us to release the names and photos to local and state law enforcement.”

  “Which, as we’ve already discussed, if it leaks to the press could trigger the attack.”

  The FBI Director shook his head. “And if we don’t bring local and state LEOs in and an attack does happen? Who’s responsible for that?”

  Johnson put up his hands. “I get it. We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. The President, though, has made his position clear on this.”

  “With all due respect, General—and you know I like the President—he’s wrong. Look at the 9/11 hijackers. They bumped up against the cops. These guys might, too. But it’ll only matter if the police know to be on the lookout for them.”

  “The President says no. Not until we’ve exhausted every other available avenue.”

  “You went statewide in Tennessee for Bao Deng,” the Director challenged.

  “First of all,” Johnson replied, shifting his gaze to Harvath before returning his attention to the Director, “I didn’t make that call. Somebody overstepped his bounds. Secondly, we had him as a legitimate murder suspect.”

  “So let’s put the six engineering students on the radar for having overstayed their visas then.”

  The DN
I thought about that for a moment. “They should already be in the ICE database.”

  “Which won’t mean a thing for the cells in Seattle, Dallas, or Baltimore.”

  “Why not?” Carlton asked.

  “They’re sanctuary cities,” the FBI Director explained. “They don’t take action against illegal immigrants. Oftentimes their police departments are told flat-out not to work with the Feds and not to cross with their databases. Just flagging these guys for having overstayed their visas wouldn’t have any impact at all. That’s why the Bureau wants them tagged as terrorists.”

  The Old Man shook his head.

  “How about Deng, at least?” Harvath asked. “Why don’t we go nationwide on him for the murder in Tennessee?”

  “And if one of the national newscasts picks it up?” said Johnson.

  “What if the White House reached out to the head of each network in advance?”

  “To tell them what? That we have a suspected Chinese intelligence agent coordinating a massive terrorist attack, but don’t say anything?”

  “No. It would have to be something that put them on a moral meathook so large that they couldn’t flop off it,” Harvath replied.

  “Like what?”

  “How about an assassination plot?”

  The FBI Director shook his head. “You’re one administration too late. The mainstream media hate the current president.”

  “Who says we have to go with the current president? We can use his predecessor. That’s even better. They loved him. We’ll make it a journalistic act of conscience for them to keep quiet.”

  Johnson looked at the FBI Director. When he nodded and indicated that he was good with it, the DNI said, “Okay, I’ll run it by the President.”

  “Which leaves us with Boise,” said the Director as he looked once more at his notes. “There we’ve got at least a little good news.”

  “The bus station where the students all accessed the Wi-Fi network?” Harvath asked.

  “That’s the one. We pulled the CCTV footage for the entire day and have been able to identify each of them, when they got there, what they did while they were there, and what bus they got on.”

  “What about how they got there?” asked Carlton. “Did someone drop them off? Do we have a license plate? Anything?”

  “They were staggered and came at different points throughout the day. Two of them overlapped, but just barely and they never made contact at any point. And as far as how they all got there, we’re still trying to piece that together. There’s no smoking gun, no truck that pulled up in front and dropped them all off.

  “I’ve saved the best discovery, though, for last.” Picking up the remote for the monitor at the front of the conference room, the FBI Director activated a string of short CCTV clips. “Recognize the man in the blue jacket?” he asked.

  Harvath studied the images on the screen. “That’s Wazir Ibrahim.”

  “We concur. He apparently paid cash and bought a ticket to Nashville on the same bus as our Emirati engineering student, Mirsab Maktoum. Here’s a split screen of each of them getting on the same bus, though not together.

  “Interestingly enough, five other men, who all look to be of Somali descent, also paid cash for tickets that day. Guess what buses they were on?”

  “Every bus that one of our engineering students was on.”

  “Precisely.”

  “What about CCTV footage from the stations in the arrival cities?” Harvath asked. “Have you pulled those to see who picked them up or where they went once they got there?”

  “We’ve had agents going over the footage, as well as looking for any footage from other cameras radiating out from the bus stations. As it stands now, all of them appear to have just walked off and disappeared into each of the cities.”

  Harvath was about to ask if the bus drivers or any of the passengers had been identified and interviewed when there was a knock on the conference room door.

  It was the FBI Director’s assistant. He was holding up a file folder and the Director motioned for him to come in.

  Walking over to his boss, he handed him the file, said something quietly in his ear, and then left the room.

  Harvath wondered if they had finally located Tommy Wong. It turned out to be something even better.

  Opening the folder, the Director quickly scanned the contents and then said, “I think we may have just caught a very big break.”

  “What is it?”

  “We think we have located three more of the storage units.”

  CHAPTER 49

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  * * *

  While the FBI coordinated their strike teams, Harvath and Carlton commandeered one of the conference rooms and asked Special Agent Heidi Roe to join them.

  “What do you know about Somali criminal enterprises?” Harvath asked her.

  “I know the biggest thing they seem to be into is importing narcotics, most particularly a substance known as khat, and that they also dabble in prostitution.”

  “What about terrorism?”

  “Well, both the Bureau and the Agency have been concerned about all the young Somalis in the U.S. who have been traveling back to Africa to receive training and fight in the jihad there. Everyone’s predicting that it’s only a matter of time before we see them bring those skills back here.”

  “What do you think the chances are that’s what we’re seeing right now?” Harvath asked. “The engineers were recruited for their engineering skills and the Somalis were recruited for their terrorism skills, let’s say.”

  “Skills at what, specifically? Martyrdom?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why did they go to Idaho, then?” asked Roe. “To learn how to martyr themselves?”

  “Depends on the method. The 9/11 hijackers needed to learn how to fly airplanes to complete their martyrdom.”

  “Not all of them.”

  Harvath nodded. “That’s true. Some were simply muscle.”

  “But when you think of Somalis, is muscle the first thing that comes to mind?” Carlton asked.

  “No. Not really.”

  “You think jihadi, right? A shaheed who martyrs himself,” said Carlton.

  “A jihadi can be a fighter. It doesn’t have to be someone who intends to martyr himself. Maybe that’s why they were brought in.”

  “Let’s back up a second,” said Roe. “What do we know with a fair amount of certainty? The engineering students were brought to the U.S. specifically because of their engineering expertise. Let’s assume they’re needed to build or assemble something. Let’s call it a bomb.”

  “Okay,” Harvath replied.

  “They needed to be imported because, for whatever reason, the Chinese can’t find that kind of labor here.”

  “Or because they want this to look like an Islamic attack.”

  “Right, the whole unrestricted warfare plan. Okay, so you have your bomb assemblers. They’re Muslim, from the UAE, and let’s assume religious. Given that the Chinese are behind everything, let’s also assume that they’ve planted, or will plant, enough clues to make the case that the men were affiliated with Al Qaeda.”

  “Which their families will deny,” said Carlton, “the same way many of the 9/11 hijackers’ families denied the connections.”

  “Except this time, the families will be telling the truth,” said Harvath.

  Carlton nodded, and Roe continued. “So the UAE part makes sense. In fact, let’s assume that as long as the engineers were from somewhere in the Arab world, they’d fit the bill. How do the Somalis then fit in?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” said Harvath. “If you want this to really look like Al Qaeda, why not use Arabs, or Yemenis, or even Pakistanis?”

  “Too hard to get?”

  “Jihadis are a dime a dozen.”

  Roe tapped her pen on the conference room table. “What would make Somalis special?”

  “As far as Wazir Ibrahim was concerned, he had already been l
iving in the United States for a couple of years.”

  “So he was somewhat established,” said Roe as she wrote it down. “He knows the customs, he has a job, and he’s married.”

  “He’s also a fucking dirtbag who beat his wife and was likely involved in a child sex ring.”

  “Which his handler was obviously not aware of,” said Carlton.

  Roe looked at him. “Why do you say obviously?”

  “Because you wouldn’t want that guy in one of your cells. Too high-risk. Eventually a knucklehead like that is going to run afoul of the cops.”

  “So what’s that tell you about his handler?”

  “That there were some pretty significant things about Wazir Ibrahim that he didn’t know.”

  “And why wouldn’t his handler know those things?”

  “How much time do you have?” the Old Man asked her. “The handler could have subbed Ibrahim in at the last minute. Ibrahim could have been a very good liar. Ibrahim could have had a medical condition that only manifested itself on odd-numbered Thursdays of every other month. The list is endless.”

  Carlton reminded Roe of her grandfather. He could be irascible as well, but he was also very smart. “Ockham’s razor,” she pressed. “What’s the simplest answer?”

  “The simplest answer is that the handler just didn’t do his due diligence.”

  “Okay, let’s go with that. Why? Why, with something this important, would the handler not do his due diligence?”

  Harvath sensed that she was getting under the Old Man’s skin, but he liked the way her mind worked. She was highly analytical. She was also right and it was forcing them to think harder.

  “You wouldn’t cut corners,” said Harvath. “Not on something like this. You absolutely would do your homework.”

  Roe looked at him. “So what’s your explanation?”

  “I think Wazir Ibrahim is the template. He’s a long-term sleeper. You wouldn’t have wanted him to be here on an overstayed visa. They would have brought him in another way—as a political refugee or something like that. That’s how tens of thousands of Somalis have gained access to the country. The United States has one of the largest collections of Somali expatriates in the world.