Walking Ghost: Welcome to Terrorist University
Page 1
Copyright © 2012
by Nicholas Black
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage, photocopying, recording, and(or) any retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in review.
Author's note: The events described in this work are fiction. As in, not real. Have not happened. Probably won't happen. And, unless you're whacked-out on some powerful drugs, nothing you read could ever happen . . . ever! All the characters are made-up, no more real than fairies and goblins and space aliens. So, seriously, if you should accidentally find a name, person, place, or product that is similar to any real, or living person, place, or product, don't start laying lawsuits on us. It's a total and complete coincidence, and your lawyers will laugh at you. This especially applies to ex-girlfriends and former parole officers.
HYPERLINK "http://www.NicholasBlackBooks.com/"www.NicholasBlackBooks.com
Copyright information:
ISBN 10: 0981949479
ISBN 13:9780981949475
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Other books by Nicholas Black:
Fiction:
Purg
Burning Heaven
See Jack Die.
See Jack Hunt.
Three Wise Men
Contract Killer/The Messenger
(With Jimmy DaSaint)
Non-Fiction:
The Last American Mercenary
Walking Ghost
Soul's Harbor
visit: www.NicholasBlackBooks.com
Walking Ghost:
Welcome to Terrorist University
The true story.
Nicholas Black
Huck's WAR
American intelligence had advance knowledge of planned al Qaeda terrorist attacks, including the Madrid Train bombing on 3/11/2004, and did nothing to stop them.
How do I know this?
Because, as a fellow prisoner and close friend of several high-ranking al Qaeda operatives inside the high-security wing of Valdemoro Prison in Spain. This prison, it has a nickname.
They call it, “ Terrorist University .”
I was asked, and agreed, to participate in an intelligence gathering operation that produced this and other information. My nom de guerre from the French Foreign Legion was Jayden Roy Huck, and this is my story.
PREFACE
WHAT you will read in the following pages may bother you.
It is meant to tell the true account of an undercover operation that took place between October 2002, and June of 2003. I have left the names of the different individuals accurate. However, when dealing with certain individuals, who are still at-large, I chose to use only first names.
This is neither an indictment nor an accusation about u.s. governmental and foreign policies when dealing with international terrorism, yet it is critical when appropriate. As the writer, I do not claim to be able to create a literary work that will be appreciated for its eloquent prose. Hey, I carried a pistol before I ever picked up a pen. You might be offended by what you read. Fair enough. It is a true story, and life is often times an offensive string of circumstances.
Every conversation is as accurate as my memory will allow.
Every account is verifiable through evidence in my possession. Yes, I made copies. No, I won't tell you who has them.
Before this all started, when I was still liked by my country, there was a prayer that I stumbled across that I felt best summed up my morality.
SAVIOR
Give me, God, what you still have,
Give me what no one asks for;
I do not ask for wealth
nor for success,
nor even health—
People ask you so often, God, for all that
That you cannot have any left.
Give me, God what you still have;
Give me what people refuse to accept from you.
I want insecurity and disquietude,
I want turmoil and brawl,
And if you should give them to me, my God, once and for all.
Let me be sure to have them always,
for I will not always have the courage
To ask you for them.
(Zirnheld)
ONE
I'm not asking for forgiveness . . . that's something between God and I. And lately, He's been pretty quiet.
There's something you should know about me: I'm not one of the good guys. Often I'm quick tempered. My moral compass spins in every direction. I like the attractive girls first; and if they end up with a personality . . . so be it. I like to fight. Most times I'm no more than three feet away from a pistol. And as far as my personality, well, I don't really have one.
I'm a kind of messed-up mixture of every character I've ever seen on film, television, cartoons, or comic books. I lack any real identity, and I blame nobody. That's what made me a good spy.
I remember, back in the early nineties, watching television one time and seeing them break from the regular programming with coverage of some accident that had occurred at the world trade center. I remember sketchy images of thick pitch black smoke pouring out of the side of the parking garage like a volcano had erupted. It looked like a bad Hollywood effect.
They weren't sure what specifically had happened, but it was not 'natural.' That kind of carnage rarely is. Religious violence is one of those neat things that we humans gave to the world.
A couple of days later information started leaking out that perhaps this was not an 'accident' like it was first reported. No . . . this was something foreign to us. Something different.
This was the first successful act of terrorism against the the United States of America, inside the invisible barriers of our country that we all think are there. Everybody started saying that America was lucky that it had taken this long. A rather odd assertion of luck. The talking heads preached about how we had pushed the envelope for so long with our foreign policy, and so far with our imperialistic mentality, that it was just a matter of 'when' and not 'if.'
I was just out of high school at the time, and I didn't really consider it all that much. Terrorism was something that Arab people do because they hate their jobs and the weather is too hot in the middle east. I didn't really care much about politics. The most American spirit I had was when I watched the Olympics for about fifteen minutes every couple of years to see if an American was going to win anything . . . and mostly I was disappointed with that too. Youth and wisdom are usually more like sparring partners than lovers walking hand-in-hand.
I pretty much just did my own thing and, like most Americans, didn't pay much attention to those 'extremists.' To most of us, terrorism was not an issue. Just a bunch of immature adolescents vying for attention. Best just to treat them like an annoying child whose running around at a birthday party with his pants down. Ignore it. Surely 'they' would fade off into the distance soon enough. Then our lives could just go back to the comfortable average we are all so used to.
The unfortunate thing about my rather negligent attitude towards terrorism is that I wasn't the only one who had this mentality. Apparently it was shared by the FBI, CIA, local and state authorities, and all of the other people that are charged with keeping us safe. Those other people with the same level of disregard and apathy who, maybe, shouldn't have been so indifferent to the very clear threats that were knocking on our door.
I distinctly remember, during one of my long talks with a high-ranking member of al Qaeda, that this apathy and arrogance were among the reasons it was so easy t
o attack America. A 'me, me, me society.' "You let us do this," he said.
You let us do this.
A rather ominous statement coming from a man wanted by ten different countries for acts of Terrorism, Arms trafficking, bomb making, and the list goes on and on. A man whose last roommate was Illich Ramirez Sanchez, otherwise known as 'Carlos the Jackal.' You might wonder how I ever got involved with one of al Qaeda' s top men. It's an interesting story that will probably leave you a little angry, a bit paranoid, but most of all . . . disappointed. I'm not political. I'm not trying to make a statement. I'm not a harbinger of news or philosophy. Maybe I'll be dead by the time anyone ever reads this. And if I'm not dead, I'll be a nobody. Just another number in the machine.
I'm not special in any way. I'm just a bad guy who infiltrated al Qaeda deeper than any other American had. Regardless of what you've heard about the education of a spook . . . it takes a bad guy like me to do what I did.
Maybe I am special .
Especially bad.
TWO
"That guy ain't your buddy," Dan said.
"And he ain't gonna give you nothing." Dan looked at me with deep brown eyes, his face tanned partly from the sun, and partly from his cuban blood. "Go out there and fuck that dude up! Shut this crowd up," he said as we walked toward the ring. There might have been 4,000 people waiting to see their hometown boy kick my ass.
We were in McAllen, Texas for a full-contact, mixedmartial-arts fight. I had three and a half years of college under my belt, had gotten out of the US Navy, and was making money as a fighter-slash-bodyguard-slash-doorguy. But you've got to build up a reputation. So here I was, taking this fight for a couple hundred bucks. Truth be known, I'd have fought for free. Normally, I'd be choking drunks out of some bar I worked at for 10 bucks an hour. So actually, this was much safer. No beer bottles in the ring.
Dan, my trainer and friend, was also an agent with the U.S. Treasury Department. He was an investigator for CID (Criminal Investigation Division), you know 'the guys who got Al Capone.' Anyway, he and I did stuff together all the time. Fighting, shooting, surveillance, womanizing. Good healthy fun!
Dan says, as we're almost to the edge of the ring, "Be like those animals that go crazy on the Discovery Channel!"
"When Animals Attack?" I answer with a lifeless grin creeping out the side of my face.
"That's the one," he says. If you pay close attention you can tell that he is from some Latin country where the drinking age is 12, and traffic cops have machine guns and beards. The accent swims underneath the surface of his words like an eel.
Fifty-one seconds later I was walking away from the ring.
The crowd was silent. This is a bad scene in a B-movie.
The guy I fought was laying unconscious from a Triangle leg choke, and the referee - Tito Ortiz - was trying to revive him. I've only ever seen that many people be that quiet one other time in my life. Anyway. That was my first pro fight. I wasn't the best fighter, but I wasn't getting my ass kicked either. I had trained with some very talented Brasilians to learn my ground-fighting, and with a perpetually irate Thai to learn my kickboxing. Dan filled in the gaps. At the time I didn't speak Portuguese, Thai, or Spanish, so I didn't really know what they were saying most of the time. Al though "Stupid American!" was easy enough to understand. After five Professional fights, and several pitfights I had two world championship belts and some extra cash. It wasn't a career, but it was good enough for the time being.
In all I had most of those fights before I started getting into trouble.
With the fighting came some opportunities as a bodyguard for notoriety. That brought all sorts of people. I worked for some actors, some business men, some musicians, and on occasion a few mob guys. Hey, you go where the money's at. Anyway, in 1997 I gave an old friend a ride out to this small town so he could deliver some Steroids to some guy he didn't really trust. He wanted me to drive him out there, give him a little back up. What the hell, right? Of course, the whole thing turned out to be a sting operation aimed at eradicating the 'Steroid Menace.'
I found this out while sitting alone in my car, waiting for my friend, as a bunch of guys started falling out of this car that pulled up about twenty yards in front of my car in a Walmart parking lot. I pulled my pistol - an H&K USP 9mm.but when I saw the police vests, and heard them yelling 'Police! " I placed the pistol back down beside the seat and waited with my hands on the steering wheel. I'm not going to get into a shootout with a bunch of cops. Besides, from a tactical standpoint I'd probably only get three or four of them before they made swiss cheese out of my ass. Ok, as clumsy as they were, I might have taken five. But that's neither here nor there.
So now I'm a felon. Social stigma and all that. I did 320 hours of community service teaching federal agents and cops how to kick people like me's asses. In a way that's kind of funny. I lost my car; they fined me $ 3,500; they made me report to this nice old lady, in Dallas, who explained to me that if I stayed out of trouble and completed my probation I would be able to get the case dropped and then I'd get a clean record back. But, you know . . . people like me can never just go strait down a road. We always have to swerve around the slower traffic, even if it means putting a couple of the slugs in a ditch along the way.
So, I start guarding this guy named Tony. He has this internet company that is going to make everybody rich. At that time, in 2000, everybody was making so much money on the internet—'Dot com! Dot com!—that if somebody was into an IPO or something . . . you didn't ask questions, you just threw money at them.
At the time I was making about 20 K a month setting up all of the different security aspects and procedures for Tony's company, Stadd Media LLC. He pulls me aside one day and asks me to go to a gun show and get some guns for the 'guys' to shoot at the range. By 'guys' he meant any of the board of directors, programmers, V. P. ' s, etc. Toys for the upwardly mobile to play with. I didn't think much of it. In the previous months I had purchased go-carts, radio controlled cars, and Prostitutes. One night we spent about 40 K at a strip bar. So, no . . . the thought of spending a bunch of investors money didn't bother me. I figured that everybody was going to be so 'crazy rich' - Tony's term - that it wouldn't matter. He hands me 20, 30 K and I'm on my way. I call a guy, who knows a guy. Next thing I know there's a gun dealer buddy of mine taking my cash and turning it into guns.
So, months and months go by and everything is cool. Tony's company is doing just swell; everyone talking about how rich the investors are going to be. 'Just like Microsoft,' they would say. But no! This was no Microsoft. Because at Microsoft they don't hire a douchebag con artist as their head stock broker.
Well, Tony did. Let's call him Rob. And this idiot broker, Rob, made some statements in the company's prospectus that violated several SEC rules. Enough, in fact, to get the company's assets frozen and thrown into receivership. So not only does nobody get paid anymore, but all of our stock is now frozen. Cannot be traded in any capacity. My security company had around 1.5 million shares of Stadd Media. 1.5 million shares of nothing.
And the dream is dead.
Well, when the well runs dry you don't sit around sad and thirsty. No, you move on to the next gig. You know, 'Soldier for hire,' and all that. I get hooked up with a restaurant company and help set up some security scenarios, risk management, etc. I trade in my pistol for a tie and some Versace.
A year goes by without incident. Then one night I get a call from Tony. He says that he wants a 'can,' which in our terms is a silencer. I tell him I can't get one; which, really, is a big fat lie. But on the phone he's sounding like a freakin' coked out psychopath, so I decide that it would be in society's best interest if I didn't act on the request. Besides, he still owed me more than 30 grand, so I wouldn't be doing anymore free backflips. And fat chance on ever seeing any of that cash.
After this call, I decide that I had better make sure that Tony cannot get access to any of the other weapons. At this point they were locked securely away in a gun safe.
I got my Fed buddy, Dan, on the phone and asked him to come and take possession of the weapons (4 in all). He agreed. Two hours later he presented the rifles to the ATF, and that was the last I heard of it . . . until I got indicted by the Federal Government. Lots of cops, guns, and matching silver bracelets.
So I end up locked-up, sitting in a federal detention center. They didn't want to let me out on bond because they say I'm dangerous. Then, just to put a cherry on top, they give the judge some song and dance about me being a flight risk. Who, little old me . . . a flight risk?
Apparently, I had violated federal law when I attended the Gun show, and helped facilitate the original gun purchase. As I still had a felony (it had not yet been dropped from my record) that made me a 'Felon in Possession of a Firearm.' This is a crime for which I would not have to go to prison. Well, there was just one catch. I would have to testify against Tony, other people who worked at Stadd Media, and even my Fed buddy Dan.
As it so strangely turned out, Tony was wanted for a 'Murder for Hire Conspiracy' that had occurred on the East Coast, long before we ever even met him. The Fed's believed that I, being a close confidant of Tony, would have heard about this 'Murder.' Loose talk among friends, or something like that. Anyway, if I would just testify to all that, I would get probation, or some minor penalty.
At the exact same time, Dan was being investigated by Internal Affairs for some nonsense about leaking sensitive informa tion, and they wanted me to testify against him too. The real beef on that was that he was a Cuban American who was involved in a lawsuit against the IRS because he should have made his next pay grade long ago, and for some odd reason, none of the Hispanic agents had been given their promotions. Can you say, "Class Action?" Well, this would have severely quieted their legal action. This was the time honored 'Good old boy system' in action.
When presented with all of this I was a bit dumbfounded.