The Valley of Shadows

by Mark Terry

  “Sort of.”

  “Then no comment. I’m going to put some bandages on these burns. It looks like there are three spots. Probably first degree, but none of them are more than about two or three inches around.”

  He went on talking and she taped sterile gauze bandages over the burns. Taking a bottle of water from her Go Pack, she handed him a couple pain pills, which he took gratefully.

  “These are just Tylenol. I’ve got some Tylenol Threes, but the codeine might knock you out.”

  “Not to mention give me constipation and loss of interest in sex.”

  “You still have your sense of humor, no matter how misplaced.”

  “Yeah,” he said, carefully flexing his hands. “Give me the Tylenol Threes just in case.”

  “Keep talking, but let me see your hands.”

  He slowly held his hands out for her, palms up. As he talked she studied them. Like the burns on his back and side, they seemed relatively mild—no charring, just redness and blisters. But they were more extensive than the burns on his torso.

  She interrupted him to suggest that when Shelly returned they take him to a hospital. He didn’t move, his hands remaining motionless in hers.

  What he said also surprised her. He said, “Tell me about your children.”

  She sighed. “You’re changing the subject.”

  “Tell me the names and ages of your children, then I’ll tell you the rest of my story.”

  Her heart beat a little too hard in her chest and she could feel her stomach muscles tightening. Derek had managed to find the one area that could tear her apart. “Adam is ten. Lisbeth is eight,” she said.

  “A boy and a girl,” he murmured. “In Dallas?”

  She nodded.

  “And you live in D.C.?”

  “I don’t think this is the time, Derek. Yes, Rick has full custody. I visit them as often as I can. Now, tell me the rest.”

  He did. She kept her emotions under wraps. What Derek had done was reckless, but she also understood that with the entire FBI, Homeland Security, and local cops looking for Kalakar, the START teams needed to be creative if they were going to be able to justify their existence.

  She was about to ask him if he had at least gotten any useful information when Shelly sped up in the bucar, double-parked, and came running toward them. Even from a distance O’Reilly could see that her complexion had turned a pasty gray.

  When she got to them she blurted, “I just got a call and it’s all over the news. A bomb went off in Chicago.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Derek took the fresh clothing Shelly had purchased and changed in the public restroom, tossing his old, scorched clothes into a trashcan. The running shoes were cheap, but fit well enough, and she had been smart enough to pick up socks and a pack of boxer shorts for him. The shirt was a solid blue dress shirt, but she had bought a larger size so he could wear it untucked to cover his gun.

  When he went to check his Colt and attach its holster to his belt, his hands were so stiff and sore that he fumbled the gun and dropped it on the restroom floor.

  Derek stared at the gun at his feet and clenched his jaw. O’Reilly and Shelly did not need to know about that. He gingerly picked up the gun and methodically checked it, slid it back into its holster, and attached it to his belt.

  Shelly had also picked up some burn medication, which he smeared on his face and hands. It helped.

  He found the two women in the car, the radio turned to a news station, both on their sat phones.

  Early in the morning in Chicago, an as-yet-unidentified male of Middle Eastern ethnicity had attempted to enter Chicago’s City Hall on LaSalle. An alert security guard had observed that the man seemed to be wearing something bulky beneath his jacket. When he attempted to stop the man, the man reached inside his coat.

  The guard, jittery because of the terror threats and the explosion in Dallas, drew down on the man, demanding he put his hands on his head. The man instead hit the detonator to his suicide vest.

  The guard had survived, although he was in the hospital with injuries. There had been no other victims. This was due to the fact the attack took place at 5:30 a.m. central time. Derek thought that was a little strange.

  Derek drank a cup of coffee and nibbled at a breakfast burrito, listening to the radio report. Shelly got off the phone and turned to him. “You look better. How do you feel?”

  “I’m hanging in there.” He felt like he’d been stuffed into a microwave oven on high then beaten with a shovel, but decided to keep that assessment to himself.

  O’Reilly clicked off her phone and turned around as well. “You up to working?”

  Derek nodded.

  Shelly said, “We should really take you to a hospital.”

  Derek met O’Reilly’s gaze. Something flickered between the two of them, an understanding, perhaps, of the situation. A war with terrorists had been ongoing for some time—far longer than September 11, 2001—but at times the battles became more intense. There was a battle going on now and it wasn’t in Afghanistan or Iraq or Spain or London or Indonesia. It was here, in the United States. Dallas and Chicago and Washington, D.C. and New York City and Los Angeles were the battlefields, and Derek wasn’t leaving the battlefield unless he was carried out in a body bag.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Before Shelly could protest, O’Reilly said, “We’ve got two leads. One is Ali Tafir. I’ve got a work address on him now and a little background. I suggest we track him down first.”

  “Unless you want to drop me off at Greg’s place and get the other bucar. We could split up on this.”

  O’Reilly shook her head. “Let’s not waste time. We can deal with that later.”

  “What’s Tafir do?” Shelly asked.

  “He’s a businessman,” O’Reilly said. “The Compass Organization.”

  “What’s that?” Derek asked.

  “Import/export. He’s a big deal down at the Port of Los Angeles.”

  Shelly said, “In other words, if somebody wanted to get something into the U.S., he might be able to take care of that.”

  O’Reilly nodded. “That’s what I was thinking.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Kalakar rose early, said his morning prayers, and joined John Seddiqi and his wife, Ghazala, in the kitchen. Ghazala was very quiet, as she should be, thought Kalakar. He sensed, though, that she did not approve of his presence. Their daughter, Malika, was in the bathroom brushing her teeth, getting ready for school.

  For his part, Kalakar felt exhilarated. Today was the day the plan really went into effect. Today—

  John, voice quiet, said, “There was a suicide bomber in Chicago. It was on the news.”

  Kalakar nodded. He thought Ghazala’s shoulders tensed. He said, “And did this bomber kill many infidels?”

  “According to the news, just himself. It was very early in the morning. Nobody was there except a security guard, who was injured.”

  “All praise to Allah.”

  Ghazala dropped a spatula. It bounced off the stove and onto the floor. She bent to pick it up and took it to the sink and washed it off. Kalakar watched her closely, but she kept her back to him.

  John looked ill. Kalakar reached over and held his hand. “All praise to Allah, John.”

  “Allah is great,” John intoned without fervor and energy.

  Kalakar nodded. There was not much more he expected from John. Kalakar’s bags were packed and in his truck. He was ready to complete his mission and disappear. All he needed from John now was a single telephone call with valuable information. He held up his cell phone and tapped it for John to see. Rising to his feet, he said, “I will leave now. Thank you for your hospitality. May Allah bestow blessings upon your house.”

  John nodded. “And on you.”

  When Ghazala did not respond, Kalakar left. He had bought a used Chevy pickup truck with four-wheel drive and a truck cap on it. It was parked to one side of John’s driveway. John and his family lived in
a ranch house in Inglewood. The yard was small, but well tended and John and his wife seemed content there. Kalakar did not have much patience for people like John, who took their wealth and comfort for granted and failed to see that the crusaders stole that wealth and comfort from the rest of the world.

  Clambering into the truck, Kalakar pulled out and drove for thirty minutes through increasingly heavy traffic until he hit Culver City. After driving in wider and wider circles and doubling back to make certain he wasn’t being followed, he pulled into the entrance of Bel Vista Toro Self-Storage.

  Kalakar used his electronic card to activate the gate, which whirred open. He drove through, turned left, then right, slowly driving down the rows to the unit that had been rented six months earlier for him by one of his contacts.

  He backed the pickup to the corrugated steel door, shut off the engine, and used his key to unlock it, rolling it upward with a rusty rattle.

  Inside the storage bin, which was ten feet wide and twelve feet deep, rested a single wooden crate six feet long and one foot by one foot. The outside of the crate indicated it was the property of Coldwater Productions in Hollywood, California. The labels claimed it contained movie props.

  Taking a crowbar out of the back of the truck, he pried open the box. Inside was another container, more like a suitcase. Kalakar knew full well what was inside, but couldn’t resist from opening it as well.

  Flipping the container open he looked with fondness at the contents.

  The technical name was a MANPAD, which stood for Man Portable Air Defense System.

  Specifically, the container held an FIM-92A Stinger missile, capable of shooting down a low-flying jet.

  Kalakar closed the case and loaded the missile into the back of the truck. Now all he needed to know was which of the presidential nominees was flying to Los Angeles today, what time, and what their flight path would be. And he had John for that.

  CHAPTER 25

  Unlike the bucar Derek had left at Greg Popovitch’s Malibu beach house, O’Reilly’s car had a GPS. Which was good, Derek soon realized as they entered the San Pedro area where the Port of Los Angeles was located. Finding their way around without it would have been tricky.

  He had been there once before when he first came onboard with Homeland Security. His job then had been to take a tour and offer supposedly educated counsel on how to make the port safe from terrorism threats. It was the first time he had been called to the White House, when Secretary Johnston still had his office in the West Wing.

  Johnston had held up Derek’s report and said, “Derek, I’m not sure this is useful.”

  The report had been a single page. It had said:

  There’s no fucking way to secure the Port of Los Angeles.

  Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.

  Derek Stillwater, Ph.D.

  The Port of Los Angeles was the busiest port in the U.S. and the eighth busiest port in the world. It sprawled out over a total of 7,500 acres, 3,300 of those acres involving water. The Port of Los Angeles had forty-three miles of waterfront.

  Derek had then picked up a piece of paper and scrawled some calculations on it for Secretary Johnston. A TEU was the basic unit ports used to determine what their capacity was. A single TEU was a cargo container twenty feet long, eight feet wide, and eight feet and six inches high. The Port of Los Angeles handled 7.5 million TEUs annually, which Derek then calculated as over 205,000 TEUs every single day.

  “Look at it this way, Jim,” he’d said. “We’ve got the rough equivalent of a quarter million semis, any single one of them which could be jammed full of explosives, coming into an area bigger than most cities every single day.”

  “Yes, Derek, but—”

  “And I’m a goddamned specialist in biological and chemical terrorism, Jim, and any one of the 16,000 people employed directly in the port or the million people around the country employed in work related to the Port of Los Angeles, could be carrying a plastic test tube the size of my little finger containing enough plague bacteria to wipe out the entire planet. So my professional evaluation is that securing the port is impossible.”

  Gazing out the bucar’s window, Derek was more convinced of his evaluation than ever. Warehouses, loading areas, docks, cranes, cargo terminals, ships, office buildings, railroad tracks, trains, trucks, as well as tourists heading for one of the fifteen cruise lines that operated out of the port. The Port of Los Angeles was like a large city whose single purpose was to move freight.

  People griped about how porous the U.S.–Mexican border was, but so were the controlled commercial ports. There was so much freight moving in and out every day, churning the U.S. and world economies, that there was no way you could inspect every single container and person coming in or out.

  In the front passenger seat Shelly breathed a heavy sigh. Derek laughed. “Impressive, isn’t it?”

  “I didn’t realize. I’ve read about it, but to be here—”

  Off to their left a crane unloaded boxcar-sized containers—hundreds of them—off a freighter and onto the dock. Derek knew that each of those containers undoubtedly held hundreds of cardboard or wooden boxes on palettes containing blue jeans from Taiwan or engine gaskets from India or piston rings from Brazil.

  Or dirty bombs from Pakistan.

  O’Reilly tapped her finger to the screen of the GPS. “Okay, almost there.”

  Easier said than done, though; their route was slowed by caravans of passing trucks and multiple trains on a number of individual tracks hauling freight. They finally found The Compass Organization close to the docks. It was a drab, utilitarian two-story building adjacent to a row of corrugated steel warehouses. There must have been a dozen of the warehouses affiliated with The Compass Organization. The steel doors were all rolled up and a fleet of trucks were constantly coming and going.

  They parked the bucar and went into the office. It looked like any other office building. A dozen people either on telephones or computers worked at counters and desks. Anyone not sitting was walking back and forth on errands. The office hummed with activity.

  A flinty-looking black woman in a gray business suit walked over. “May I help you?”

  Shelly held up her credentials. “FBI. We’re here to speak with Mr. Tafir.”

  The woman reached out and took Shelly’s ID, studying it. She looked to O’Reilly and Derek. “May I see your identification, please.”

  They complied. Already Derek had a bad feeling. This woman was either used to officials coming by, or she was stalling. She knew how to control the pace of things, that much was certain.

  “Homeland Security,” she said. “That’s not unusual, but we generally work with Taylor Zerbe.”

  “I’m from the D.C. office.”

  She handed back his ID and studied O’Reilly’s. “And I can’t say I’ve ever had dealings with anybody from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. What is this about?”

  “Why don’t you stop stalling and take us to see Mr. Tafir,” O’Reilly said. “This is about national security.”

  The woman sighed. “I’m Lora Worth, the manager here, and you’re going to have to be more specific.”

  O’Reilly said, “We’re here to see Ali Tafir. It’s urgent.”

  Worth raised an eyebrow. “And as I said earlier, I’m the manager. What is this about?”

  O’Reilly took a step toward Worth, probably intending to be physically threatening, but Worth didn’t budge. O’Reilly said, “You are obstructing a federal investigation—”

  “O’Reilly, isn’t it?” said Worth. “Agent O’Reilly, if you have a subpoena or a search warrant, this would be a good time to present it to me. Otherwise, you really need to tell me why you’re here. Mr. Tafir is very busy. As you can tell by just looking around you, we’re all very busy. The entire Port of Los Angeles is busy today, as we are every other day of the year. We comply with everything the FBI and Homeland Security and INS and the FTC and the Department of Transportation throw at us, an
d I would be glad to provide you with a desk and all the paperwork we create complying with government regulations, but—”

  Derek didn’t hear any more because he turned on his heel and walked out. He didn’t know if Worth was dragging her feet on purpose. He had a suspicion she wasn’t. He had the idea that she was a control freak in a very busy job and what she had just said about complying with the government regulations had the ring of truth to it.

  Standing outside, he watched trucks go in and out of the warehouses. He was debating his next move when O’Reilly appeared next to him.

  “Shelly’s going to talk to Tafir,” she said. “Hang on.” She went to her own Go Pack in the trunk of the bucar and retrieved a small briefcase. Opening it, she handed him a device slightly smaller than a shoebox. It was heavy enough to hurt his hands, but he bit back his grimace and made do. “Geiger counter,” she said.