The Valley of Shadows

by Mark Terry

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN

  FBI Agent Dale Hutchins limped into the office at the FBI Headquarters in Zone 5 of Islamabad. It was early in the morning, he hadn’t been able to sleep, so he had decided to come in. His left arm was still in a sling.

  When the new guy, Jason Barnes, had picked up the booby-trapped computer, Hutchins had spun to his right, ducking his head, trying to throw himself behind a wall.

  He hadn’t been fast enough. Shards of plastic and metal had knifed into his left side. The wounds in his thigh, butt, ribs, and head had been relatively minor, although it hadn’t been any fun getting over fifty stitches, ten of them in his ass. What had really screwed him up, though, was a chunk of metal about one inch long, that had torn a gouge along his left shoulder, ripping muscle, nerve, tendon, and bone as it went.

  The Pakistani surgeon who repaired his shoulder informed him that with aggressive therapy he should have almost 100 percent use of his shoulder in time. Then he had told him that the metal shrapnel appeared to be the pin from one of the laptop’s hinges. “You were quite lucky,” the doctor told him. “Had it struck you in the back or the head, you would have been dead. It was like a bullet.”

  Jason Barnes had not been lucky.

  Sam Sherwood, Barnes’s group leader, already slouched over his desk in his glass-walled office. He looked up when Hutchins came in, wheeled his chair to the door, and said, “Welcome back.”

  Hutchins dropped gingerly into the chair behind his desk. His ass still hurt. “It’s good to be back.”

  “How’s Teh?”

  Hutchin’s wife, Tehreema, was Pakistani. She worked at the U.S. Embassy, which is where they had met. He smiled. “Good. Not completely happy with me these days.”

  Sherwood laughed. “I talked to her a couple times to check on you.”

  “I know. She told me.”

  “She said you were driving her crazy at home. I told her you weren’t coming back until the time was right.”

  “That’s now.”

  “I know. The files on the raid are on your desk. We also just got a summary of what was on the laptops we captured. Read it, we’ll talk later. It’s actionable.”

  Hutchins laid his hand on the folder. “Thanks. The sixth man?”

  “Not much luck. Frito’s coming in to talk about it in a couple hours.”

  Hutchins had talked to Frito Moin a couple times since the raid. The Pakistani had visited him in the hospital and expressed his apologies and sympathies about Barnes.

  Sherwood said, “If you’re up to it, I want you to work with Moin on finding out as much as you can about Kalakar. We’ve had a few other projects on the burners, so we turned that over to Moin and his people, but now that you’re back, I want you on it. You’re not going to be doing any raids until you’re completely healed, anyway. We’ve got to track him down, particularly now that we found out what was on the computers.”

  Hutchins felt oddly disconnected from that information. He was angry about the sixth man, angry about Barnes. He wanted revenge, pure and simple. “I’ll get on it.”

  “You sure you’re up to this?”

  Hutchins thought of Barnes, dying before his eyes, his face a blasted, bloody wreck of bone and burned flesh. He nodded. “Definitely.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Derek Stillwater burst out of a nightmare gasping for breath. Sweat soaked his body. It took a moment before he was able to figure out where he was—on a small jet headed toward Los Angeles. Shelly Pimpuntikar had shaken him awake.

  She said, “Sorry. We’re coming into LAX in a few minutes.”

  Derek ran a hand over his fevered brow, trying to shake the images and emotions in his head. His heart raced in his chest, his stomach twisted and turned.

  Images:

  • sitting on the dive platform of his cabin cruiser off the coast of St. Bart’s, serenading a tiger shark he had named Mistress Sonia with his guitar

  • his brother David next to him, saying the Congo wasn’t too bad if you didn’t mind all the parasitic diseases, holding up a stump of a hand rotted from within

  • a mushroom cloud just off the horizon

  Derek lunged from his seat and flung open the bathroom door and vomited into the sink. Glancing apologetically back at the rest of the START team, he pulled the door shut. He ran the water in the sink, his stomach doing backflips. Splashing cold water on his face, he straightened up and cautiously studied his image in the mirror.

  He shook his head, wiped his face, took in a deep breath, rinsed his mouth with water, took a drink, and pushed his way back out of the bathroom to strap into his seat across from Shelly. With some embarrassment, he noted that both Givenchy and Welch looked mildly amused. O’Reilly wore a familiar expression of disgust, and Shelly looked alarmed.

  O’Reilly said, “Don’t mind him, Shelly. He always does that.”

  Derek felt pressure in his ears as the plane began its descent. Glancing out the window he saw they were dropping down between the mountains, Los Angeles a scatter of lit jewels below them. He saw that Shelly was studying him.

  “She’s right,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  She nodded. “Who’s David?”

  He gave a little start. “Excuse me?”

  “You were kind of talking in your sleep. And you said something about somebody named David. You sounded worried about him.”

  “He’s my brother.”

  “Are you close?”

  He grunted. “Sort of. For two people who haven’t seen each other in about five years. The joys of e-mail. He lives in the Congo. I’m in Baltimore, and I travel all the time.”

  “What’s he doing in the Congo?”

  “Doctors Without Borders. And his hands are fine.”

  A puzzled expression flashed across Shelly’s face. “What?”

  O’Reilly interrupted. “We’ll see what needs to be done once we get to the Federal Building, but I want to make sure we can stay in contact with each other. I want everybody to exchange sat phone and cell phone numbers.”

  They all pulled their respective devices out and each of them read off their numbers and programmed them into their phones.

  “Now, Shelly,” O’Reilly asked, “What kind of field experience do you have?”

  Shelly’s mouth clamped into a hard, unforgiving line. “Field experience?”

  Derek felt his heart sink.

  O’Reilly rephrased, “You’ve had field training, correct?”

  “Yes. I’ve been through the FBI’s standard training course.”

  “You have a firearm?”

  Shelly nodded, although Derek noted that she dropped her gaze when she did so.

  He asked, “What kind of weapon?”

  She looked at him. “It’s the 10-mm standard—”

  Derek, voice quiet, replied, “You have no field experience, do you?”

  Her expression was determined. “I don’t think that matters.”

  “It matters. How long have you been with the bureau?”

  “Are you questioning my ability?”

  “No. I’m questioning your field experience. How long?”

  “If you must know, I completed my training three years ago.”

  Givenchy groaned. “Oh, dear God. And spent it behind a desk, I bet.”

  Derek met O’Reilly’s gaze, eyebrows raised and said, “She can partner with me.”

  O’Reilly nodded. “That’s a good idea. Don’t get her killed.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  Shelly started to protest, but Derek said, “Trust me. If you go out of the Fed Building, you go with me. We can get lost in L.A. together.”

  Within minutes they landed at LAX, hauled their gear to a waiting Suburban, and were driven to the Federal Building in downtown L.A. on Wilshire. After passing through security, they were met by Simon Ferguson, the assistant special agent-in-charge, who led them into a conference room. Except for a large conference table and chairs, it was an empty room.

  Ferguson hadn
’t grown up in L.A., that much was clear. His voice was Boston through and through, and his carrot-colored hair matched his name. “Feel free to spread out in here. We’ll get you badges shortly. I can’t tell you how screwed up this is turning out to be. We’ve got teams crawling all over the election precincts checking for bombs, but I gotta tell you, there’s a hell of a lot of them and we’re already spread pretty thin because we’ve got both Vice President Newman and Governor Stark flying into town several times over the next couple days for rallies and we’re involved in the security for that, as well.”

  O’Reilly said what they were all thinking. “On Tuesday?”

  “Sure. Both of them will be coming in Tuesday. Are you kidding? California’s one of the undecided states this time around. And yes, I know what you’re thinking. Don’t think we haven’t thought that, either. Security is ultra tight, and we’re keeping their travel routes under wraps, as best we can.”

  Derek felt his pulse quicken, the familiar sensation of a ticking clock in his head, telling him they had to move, move, move. He pushed into the conference room, dropped his Go Packs on the table and withdrew a tablet computer. “Fine. Who’s your bio and chemical person? Let’s get going on this thing.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Derek knocked on an office door on the seventeenth floor of the Federal Building. It was whipped open by an older woman who wore her silver hair in a long braid that trailed down her back. Tall enough to meet Derek’s gaze straight on, she said, “Oh, good God, it’s Derek Stillwater. Killed or tortured anybody today?”

  Behind him Shelly gasped.

  “Not yet, but I’ve still got a couple hours. How are you doing, Helen?” Derek walked into what was a relatively small, windowless office that had apparently been hit by some sort of new bomb that scattered paper instead of shrapnel.

  To Derek, Special Agent Helen Birch looked like a lumberjack cook. Round face, barrel chest, square, broad hips. She was like a walking, talking piece of beef jerky.

  “It’s been a long time, Derek. Last I heard you were shacked up in the Gulf of Mexico with some Russian spy on that boat of yours.”

  “She’s not a spy and it was mostly the Caribbean.”

  “What happened to her? You shoot her and dump the body overboard?”

  “If you knew her, you’d realize if it had come to that I’d be the one feeding the sharks. She went home.”

  “Got tired of your bullshit, huh?”

  Derek sighed, rolled his eyes, and shot the FBI agent an annoyed look, which she ignored. “You like giving me shit, don’t you?”

  “No, Derek, I love giving you shit.” Helen reached out and gave him a quick hug, turning to look at Shelly. “Who’s this?”

  Derek made introductions. Helen said, “Oh, you probably want to talk to Gerald Miller. He’s heading up the finint section.”

  “He’s out of the office at the moment,” Shelly said.

  “Oh. Well, come on in and have a seat.”

  Derek stayed standing, staring at a large map of Los Angeles that took up most of one wall. It was a mass of colored thumbtacks and Magic Marker scrawls.

  Shelly sat. “Do you know everybody in the business, Derek?”

  Helen laughed. “Derek? He gets around. I think people know him more than he knows other people.”

  “He said his reputation preceded him.”

  “That’s for damned sure,” Helen said.

  Derek shrugged. “Helen and I did some work together out here in L.A., when I was sort of attached to the bureau’s HMRU. What’re you working on here?” He gestured to the map.

  Helen crossed her arms over her ample chest and frowned. “The red tacks are all the precincts in our jurisdiction.”

  The map looked like it had broken out with the measles. Derek said, “Jesus. What’s the green?”

  “Mosques. And the blue marker indicates high concentrations of Muslims.”

  Shelly said, “You don’t believe this cell will strike at precincts in areas with mosques or high concentrations of Muslims, do you? You really need to get synagogues on your map.”

  Helen shook her head. “No. I’m just trying to get the lay of the land. I’m not sure we can—”

  Derek said, “How about those self-storage places? Can we get those up on your map?”

  Helen held up a sheaf of papers. “Here’s my list. I was just about to start working on those.”

  Shelly said, “What are you looking for?”

  Helen looked at Shelly through her bifocals. “You can set up a bio or chem lab almost anywhere, in the basement of a house or in an abandoned building, but self-storage places work well, too. And you decrease the risk of there being an accident and killing yourself and everybody around you. They’ve worked pretty well for meth labs.”

  Staring intently at Helen, Shelly queried, “Are you trying to find what site the sixth man is going to attack, or the support network, the sleeper cell? What are you focusing on?”

  Helen and Derek turned to study the young woman. Derek said, “I don’t think there’s any way we can predict where they might attack, at least not where we stand now. I imagine O’Reilly and the nuke people will be focused on the Port of Los Angeles, storage areas, and trucking companies. With bio and chemical weapons, the ingredients and facilities are hard to track.”

  Shelly flipped open her laptop. “Okay. I’ve got the location of every ATM and every Western Union station in this area on my computer. If we correlate those with the storage places and Muslim areas, we will really narrow things down. Also—”

  “Whoa,” Derek said. “This really isn’t my approach. How long is that going to take?”

  Shelly continued. “I’ve also got the office locations of a number of hawaladars in the area, although many of them are probably underground now since nine eleven.”

  Helen said, “Hawaladars. Those are the informal money transfers?”

  “Roughly, very roughly equivalent to the Western Union, but they operate back and forth between countries, especially Islamic countries, and there are no promissory notes. It’s entirely on the honor system. I imagine Gerald Miller can expand on my list. This is really my area of expertise, hawala and hawaladars and terrorism, finint.”

  Helen rubbed her jaw. Slowly she said, “Derek, why don’t you go do your thing? Agent Pimpuntikar and I will spend some time seeing if we can narrow down the likely location of our sleeper cell and get back with you.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Shelly seemed startled. “What are you going to do?”

  Derek smiled. “Hit the bars. There’s a couple old friends I need to track down if they’re still alive and in business.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Derek started with Little Pedro’s Blue Bongo on First Street in downtown Los Angeles. The exterior was southwest faux adobe, tucked away between Little Tokyo and the Artists District. He parked his bureau car—what they insisted on calling a bucar—on the street, half hoping someone would steal the decade-old Ford. All the good bucars were taken, he had been told.

  It was a Sunday night, so Little Pedro’s was caught somewhere between dedicated partiers and dead-and-gone. He glanced around the place and took a seat at the bar. The barista approached, gray eyes flinty, suggesting a hardness that her mid-thirties wannabe actress face didn’t. “What can I get you?”

  “Corona.”

  She delivered a bottle with a lime slice in the neck. He paid and she started moving on, but he said, “You see Greg Popovitch around here tonight?”

  Her expression hardened. “Who’s asking?”

  “A friend.”

  She shook her head. “Haven’t seen him.”

  Derek took a drink of his beer, sampled some chips and salsa, and thought for a moment. Another bartender walked by. Derek waved at him. He was older, graying hair, eyes the color of peat.

  “Seen Greg Popovitch around?”

  This bartender shrugged. “He’s not here much any more.”

  “If I want to fi
nd him, where would you suggest I go?”

  “Try Little Tokyo. He’s developed a taste for sushi.”

  Derek took another sip of his beer, tossed a couple bucks on the table, and headed out. He wasn’t very far before he realized he was being paced by a broad-shouldered black guy in jeans and a black leather jacket. Derek had noticed him at the far end of the bar, sipping something from a low ball glass.

  Derek paused. “Can I help you?”