Collective Retribution

by Edwards, D. S.

  Eshan climbed into his truck and started the engine. The warehouse doors slid open, and he drove in. Two Cadillacs followed and the doors slid closed. Eshan watched one of the men raise the truck’s lift gate. Two more men joined him in the back. They lowered heavy crates to the concrete floor. Pallet jacks were used to roll Eshan’s cargo across the warehouse.

  The men dropped the crates in front of a heavy chain hanging from the ceiling. One of the men hooked the chain to a steel rebar loop coming up out of the floor. A motor began to whine, and the chain began to move through a pully, lifting a five-foot-square section of floor. Each crate was hoisted into the air and lowered into the opening.

  One by one, the men climbed down a ladder into the same opening. One motioned for Eshan to follow.

  Eshan removed a small duffel bag from his truck and walked to the edge of the hole. The ladder led into darkness. He grabbed a rung and began his descent. Several steps later, he found himself standing in a room approximately thirty feet wide. A flatbed train car rested on a set of railroad tracks that led down into a dimly lit tunnel.

  The men loaded the crates onto the flat car and climbed up next to them. Romero waved to Eshan. He climbed up and sat on the edge of the car, his feet dangling over the edge. One of the men pulled a rope on the top of a small motor at the back of the car, and the engine came to life. The car began to roll forward, picking up speed as they traveled. Soon they were rolling down the track at twenty-five miles per hour.

  After fifteen minutes, the car rolled to a stop in front of another ladder, this one going up. The men climbed off. Romero turned and smiled, revealing a row of gold front teeth.

  “Welcome to America.”

  They climbed the ladder and emerged in a storage unit. The crates were loaded onto a twenty-four-foot-long box truck. All of the men but Romero returned to the tunnel.

  Romero handed Eshan a set of keys and a map.

  “Here are the directions to our warehouse in Peoria,” Romero said. “The rest of the trucks are waiting there and fueled up. There is a log book, and a manifest in the glove box, in case you’re stopped by the highway patrol. It is Sunday, so the traffic should be light, and most weight scales should be closed. If there are any open, you need to stop. Just present the officer with the manifest and your log book and you should be fine. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you. Let us know if we can work together in the future.”

  Romero shook Eshan’s hand again. Without another word, he turned, walked to the tunnel, and descended back into blackness.

  Four hours later, Eshan pulled into a warehouse at 2311 Thun-derbird Road, Peoria, Arizona. He chose an empty bay, backed his truck up, and entered the building.

  Ten men stood in the dim light. Eshan greeted each one with a hug and kiss.

  “Tonight,” he said, “is a special night, my brothers. We have been chosen to change this world, and to spread the message of Allah. After Thursday, the world will no longer be able to resist the mighty one. They will bow at his feet and run into his embrace. The rise of the Twelfth Imam is nearing. Each of you will have a special place reserved for you in paradise.

  Eshan paused long enough to look each man in the eyes. “I am proud of all of you,” he said. “Proud of the fact that you had to endure the teaching of the Great Satan while attending his universities and living in his vile land. Each one of you knows your assignment, and you know the importance of our mission. I am counting on you. Allah is counting on you to complete this task.

  “Allahu Akbar!” he shouted.

  The men followed suit and began to chant.

  “Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar…”

  3

  TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  THE SUN’S FIRST RAYS REFLECTED OFF FROST-COVERED CHERRY branches, bathing the red-bricked colonial homes in a rich glow. Nirsch turned his face skyward and closed his eyes, letting the warm sun caress his face, bringing feeling back to his wind-burned cheeks and movement to his stiff limbs. He walked slowly down C Street SE, making his way to Washington D.C.’s Capitol South Metro station. The hot white chocolate mocha with extra whipped cream in his hand helped keep the blood flowing through nearly numb fingers.

  Nirsch had gotten up earlier than he normally would on a Tuesday, but this was not a normal Tuesday. He reviewed what he’d learned over the phone the night before: some of his fellow agents at the NSA had recently gathered information on an Islamic terror cell operating a training camp in the mountains of Eastern Oregon. It seemed that while hunting, a father and son had stumbled on the camp near the small town of Lakeview. The son made it out and contacted the sheriff. The father wasn’t so fortunate. He got a .223 to the brain.

  Nirsch stepped off the curb and was nearly sideswiped by a taxi. The driver yelled something in Arabic that Nirsch was sure wasn’t “Have a nice day.” Nirsch turned off C Street and made his way down First, past the Capitol Hill Club and Republican National Committee headquarters, toward the Capitol South Metro station. He passed the station and went into the convenience store next to Bull Feathers restaurant. He needed gum or mints. It won’t do to walk into the Pentagon and address the national security director with coffee breath.

  Bull Feathers, situated between the headquarters for the Democratic and Republican national committees, was a favorite hangout of interns and congressional staffers from both parties and had been a staple of life on Capitol Hill since the 1950s. Some shady political deals had been struck within these walls, as well as celebrations and other happy occasions. Nirsch had always loved the place for its carrot cake.

  He wondered if they’d be serving anything in a week.

  He discarded his coffee and made his way into the Metro station. It wasn’t a good idea to be caught with food or drinks inside the Metro. The capitol police got pretty grouchy about that sort of thing. Nirsch saw a guy get arrested once for eating a Three Musketeers bar while waiting on the platform.

  Nirsch could have driven or sent for a car, but ever since he was assigned to duty in D.C., he chose to ride the Metro. It gave him a chance to read up on briefings and the latest political dirt of the day, and he felt like he was doing his part to save the taxpayers money.

  At 6:15 it was already getting crowded. Nirsch stepped onto the platform in front of the Blue Line track and walked to the end of the platform at the edge of the tunnel. He wanted a front car. This tended to be the safest place to ride, as criminals avoided close proximity to the driver. This car was also usually less crowded than the middle cars. After an eighteen-minute ride and a cover-to-cover skim of the Capitol Express newspaper, which told him one of the honorable senators from California was resigning due to yet another intern sex scandal, the train pulled into the Pentagon station. Nirsch stepped onto the platform and was immediately swallowed up by a sea of camo fatigues and dress blues.

  He was thirty minutes early for his meeting, so he had time to go to his office, catch up on a few e-mails, write a few memos, and give instructions to Amanda Collins, his secretary.

  Nirsch couldn’t trust too many people with national security issues, but he knew he could trust Amanda. She’d been his secretary for eight years. He smiled at the memory of Michelle’s first meeting with Amanda. His wife wasn’t exactly excited about the idea of him locked in an office five days a week with a woman whose image could’ve graced the pages of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue: five feet four inches, light-brown hair with curls, and a smattering of freckles on cream-colored cheeks. Yet it wasn’t long before both Nirsch and Michelle thought of Amanda as not only a secretary, but family.

  After his meeting, he would have a long talk with Amanda, though she might already know what it was about. She always seemed to know what was going on before he did.

  When Nirsch got to his office, Amanda was already working the phone with one hand and furiously typing on her keyboard with the other. She looked up as he walked in.

  “Yes, Mr. Nirschell just arrived. Yes s
ir, I’ll tell him.” She hung up the phone and greeted Nirsch with a big smile. “Hey, Boss. That was Director Morgan’s office. I was just informed that you’re to report to the briefing room immediately, but I figure ‘immediately’ doesn’t exactly mean immediately since there are still two key participants missing. You have fourteen phone calls to return and several e-mails to answer.”

  “Any urgent phone calls?” Nirsch asked.

  “Nothing particularly urgent. You did get an unusual phone call from Herman King, that reporter at the Post.”

  “Herman King?” Nirsch asked. “What did he want? How did he make it past the switchboard?”

  Amanda handed him a phone memo. “He didn’t go through the switchboard. Somehow he had your direct number.”

  Nirsch glanced at the memo. King was asking all the right questions: Where is the president? Why has everyone on the intelligence committee disappeared?

  Nirsch wadded up the memo and tossed it in the trash.

  Amanda laughed. “Well, I guess you took care of that. You also have one particularly angry, questioning e-mail from Senator Allen.”

  “What does that arrogant jerk … uh, what does the powerful and mighty wizard of Oz, I mean Illinois, need on this beautiful winter day?”

  Amanda looked left and right before speaking, as if she thought she were being watched by an unseen gossip columnist.

  “Well, it seems there are several senators and congressmen missing in action today. The wording I believe he used was, ‘The Hart and Russell buildings are like freaking ghost towns.’ Except freaking was not the chosen expletive.”

  “That man is quite the wordsmith.”

  Amanda opened her mouth, closed it, then spoke. “Boss, what is going on?”

  For a few seconds Nirsch said nothing. He looked Amanda in the eyes. “What do you know?”

  She shrugged. “I know something has gotten the Pentagon stirred up more than I’ve ever seen. I know that several senators on the intelligence committee left town last night. I know that Air Force One left this morning with no announcement. I know the vice president didn’t return from his daughter’s wedding yesterday, as planned, and last but not least, an itinerary e-mail from United Airlines showed up in your personal inbox this morning, indicating one-way tickets for your wife and both your children. It seems to me that those with power, clout, intelligence, and the means to do so are evacuating the Hill.”

  Nirsch grabbed a chair from the waiting area, pulled it up to her desk, and sat down.

  “I’m sure I don’t have to remind you, what’s said within these walls cannot leave these walls.”

  “You don’t.”

  “Okay.” Nirsch sighed. “There is overwhelming evidence that unless we can stop them, the Iranians, with the help of the North Koreans and some Mexican drug cartels, are going to change the world with nuclear weapons. Several million Americans will die in an instant, and several million more will die in the weeks that follow.”

  Amanda’s face turned white.

  “I guess I didn’t know as much as I thought I did. How much time do you have to find them and stop them?”

  “All intelligence indicates less than a week. That could mean as late as Friday or as soon as today.”

  Amanda’s lips pressed together. The color that drained from her face returned, giving her skin a sharp red tint.

  “You know I would never do anything to undermine your ability to do your job or to endanger the safety and security of the country I love,” she said. “But in light of this news, I have other priorities I need to attend to. Please don’t take what I am about to say the wrong way, or think any less of me, but I’m afraid I have to tender my res—”

  Nirsch held up his hand. “Let me stop you right there!” His tone was sharper than he’d intended. Amanda shrank back like he’d struck her. He took a deep breath and tried to soften his voice before continuing.

  “Amanda, you’ve been with me a long time and have served your country admirably for over twenty years. You know Michelle and I think of you like family. We’ve had you and Larry over for dinner, out to the ranch, heck, we’ve even been on vacations together. After I leave, you’re released to go get your family and get them to safety—quietly, of course.”

  Amanda’s eyes teared up. “Thank you,” she said. “You have no idea how much I appreciate you or know how much I love you and Michelle, Jillian, and little Adam. I’ll get my family and we’ll leave. I’m just not sure where we’ll go. We don’t have enough money to buy plane tickets for us and my and Larry’s parents.”

  “Well, I haven’t spoken to Michelle about this, but I know it won’t be a problem. I’d like you and the family to come to the ranch until this is over. Don’t worry about the plane tickets. I think Uncle Sam can afford first class tickets to Oregon. Use my expense account and make the reservations. You can rent an SUV at the airport.”

  “I don’t know what to say. I’m grateful, but I can’t use government funds for personal tickets.”

  Nirsch smiled at her across the desk in grand Cheshire fashion.

  “I’m pretty sure we won’t miss a few thousand dollars, with 18 trillion dollars’ worth of debt on the books already. Besides, we may need as many able-bodied people on the ranch as we can get for what could be coming.” Nirsch thought of Larry’s past experience in the Navy and current duties as a Metro police officer. He was definitely a handy guy to have around.

  Amanda leaned back. “I guess now that we’ve got that settled, you need to get to the briefing room.”

  “All right, I’m on my way. But before I go, I have to say again: you cannot tell anyone what we’ve spoken about. I’m sure you’ll think of something to say to your family to explain why you’re taking a sudden mega-vacation, and please tell Larry I said to bring his service weapons, body armor, and his portable police radio.”

  “Like that’s not going to raise questions! Okay, I’ll figure it out. How will you get to the ranch when you finish up your day?”

  “I’m not sure if I will be there today. It could take a few days to find out what we need. I’ll rent a car and drive up when I’m finished.”

  “All right. I guess I’ll see you in a day or three,” Amanda said. “And Boss? Be careful.”

  Nirsch poured himself a glass of ice water and sat at a massive, cold, black granite table with the other sixteen members of the NSA Operations Division. The director soon entered the room amid a flurry of staff, paperwork, and electronic equipment.

  National Security Director Leo Morgan was a politician. The man had never been in the military, never served in law enforcement or any intelligence agency. He was an attorney for the Department of Justice who burst onto the world stage after being appointed by the president in the midst of a scandal. Credible intelligence had shown that an American-Islamic nonprofit was funneling money to a group linked to al-Queda. Board members of that same nonprofit, however, included some of the biggest donors to the campaign of soon-to-be President Richard C. Hartley. It was an election year, and the intelligence was ignored.

  Of course this lack of intelligence, as it was spun, was deemed to be a failure in leadership by the then-national security director, Parker Cole. He was the proverbial sacrificial lamb led to the slaughter. The one aid to the director who could have shed light on the cover-up died in a boating accident two days before the hearings were scheduled.

  The current director’s staff took their seats around the table. Morgan cleared his throat. “I want to thank everyone for coming.”

  “Like we had a choice,” Nirsch said under his breath.

  “This morning at o three hundred,” Morgan said, “the CIA intercepted an e-mail from Eshan Faeq. The e-mail was sent from an IP matching a hotel Wi-Fi in Scottsdale Arizona. Faeq has been in Iran and off the radar since the bombing of the Israeli embassy in November 2012..”

  “He’s here on U.S. soil?” someone asked.

  “Arizona?” another official said. “Does that mean he came acro
ss the southern border?”

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions.” the director barked. “We have no evidence that he came in from Mexico. Please hold all questions till after the briefing.” Morgan looked annoyed.

  Yup, Nirsch thought. A worthless politician.

  “We have identified five cities as possible targets. Each of you will be part of a team, in all five cities, with the exception of Mr. Nirschell. He will be going to Lakeview, Oregon. We have discovered a training camp in the mountains outside of that town after a tip by some local hunters.”

  A nervous-looking airman entered and whispered in the director’s ear. The airman walked out, and Nirsch found himself in the crosshairs of politician Morgan’s eyes.

  “Mr. Nirschell, there is a chopper outside waiting to take you to the airport. There is a jet fueled and ready to take you to Lakeview. You will need to leave immediately. Your secretary has prepared the things you’ll need to take. You will be briefed further on the plane.”

  Nirsch stood, gulped down the last of the water in his glass, and waved goodbye as he left the briefing room. Well, he thought, that was a waste of a perfectly beautiful morning.

  Amanda was waiting for him in the hallway with a neatly packed suitcase containing four outfits, warm clothing, boots, and all the personal hygiene items he would need. Nirsch kept a fully stocked closet in his office and a fully stocked cabinet in the bathroom for just such an occasion. She also handed him his “go bag.”

  Nirsch smiled down at her.

  “Thanks, Amanda. You’re the best.”

  “I know. Don’t ever forget it.”

  She spun him around and pushed him between the shoulders, hard.

  “Now go, the chopper’s in the courtyard.”

  Nirsch started to walk, then stopped, turning back to face Amanda.

  “You get your tickets?”

  “Yes, my plane leaves at 10 tomorrow morning. We land in Portland at noon Pacific Time and Redmond at 1:50. Our parents aren’t going. They’ve decided to stay.”