“I know how you work, Master Sergeant. You wait until the last minute, give up as few details as possible, and get your permission that way.”
“I accept total responsibility for every operation I execute, sir.”
“These out-of-control ops are going to change that, Master Sergeant. People like you need a chain of command, and you’re going to keep us informed of everything you do.”
“Since that contravenes what I understand to be my previous orders, sir, I would have to speak with the CO and see those new orders in writing.”
“Get out of my office, Master Sergeant.”
Storey came to attention for about a nanosecond before he faced about. He said, “Good morning, sir,” but only because it was required.
He found Troy down in the basement equipment cages, cleaning his weapons. Each operator had his own cage, as a big as a single-car garage, holding everything from parachutes to high altitude mountaineering equipment, and a range of personal weapons from the mini Glock pistol to the new SEAL Mk-48 7.62mm machine gun.
“XO chew your ass?” Troy asked idly.
“What makes you say that?”
“Because that’s all that pussy ever does around here. Sneak around and chew people’s asses. He did, didn’t he?”
“He tried.”
“SEAL officers might be stupid,” said Troy. “And they might be assholes. But at least they’re never pussies like these Army guys.”
Storey wasn’t really in the mood to spring to the defense of Army officers. “He’s the kind of guy who does one tour in Special Forces as a captain, and his A-Team hates his guts. Then he burrows into the special operations staff like a tick. Next time you see him he’s a lieutenant colonel who didn’t get command. Some general pulls some strings for him, and he gets stuck into a unit like this to get himself a good fitness report.”
“It must have been a real fine ass chewing. He doesn’t usually get under your saddle.”
“I’m more concerned than pissed off.” He told Troy about the conversation.
Troy shrugged. “The usual shit.”
“No, it’s not,” said Storey. “That’s why you have to listen. He’s talking about changes in the chain of command. Because he’s stupid he’s talking about them to someone like me. Lieutenant Colonel XOs don’t talk about changing the chain of command in units run by the Secretary of Defense. But generals send people like him to be XOs of units they’re trying to get back under their control.”
“You think they might?”
“Secretary’s a busy man. He may think we’re running well enough to take his hands off the wheel.”
Troy shrugged again. “That’s officer shit. First thing I leaned from my first platoon chief—officer politics is for officers. Enlisted get involved in officer politics, they get burned every time.”
Storey grinned. “Is that Troy’s rule?”
“Bet your ass it is.”
“It’s a good one. If I ever forget it, make sure you remind me.” It was too bad, Storey thought. They’d had a lot of success running missions their own way, without ten-page messages filled with detailed guidance from all the staff officers back home. Pretty soon, there’d be officers as team leaders. Well, he’d be in the zone for Sergeant Major pretty soon. With any luck he’d be able to get back to Delta. Maybe it was time to start thinking about making a few phone calls.
Chapter Six
The scene was a dingy warehouse. Cars pulled up to the loading dock. Trunks were opened, and cans of baby formula were handed up. Money changed hands. Then trucks appeared and the formula, now repackaged in cardboard cases, was loaded inside. Back and forth. Back and forth.
“I’m bored now,” announced Supervisory Special Agent Benjamin Timmins of the FBI.
“Hold your water,” said Special Agent Beth Royale.
A Pakistani man showed up. Late fifties, carrying more than his share of comfortable, easy-living weight. Obviously dyed jet-black hair all combed back and gelled up. Dressed like someone who had never played a round of golf in his life but was a member of a country club. Like Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack. The lime green slacks were the highlight. He flipped through a clipboard full of papers, stuck his head in the trucks, shook hands all around, and left.
Timmins picked up the remote and turned off the TV. “I’ve seen about a hundred hours of this surveillance video already. Or maybe it just seemed like a hundred. It’s like watching paint dry. At least you had fun putting in the cameras and listening devices.”
“Yeah, it was just heaps of fun,” said Beth Royale.
They were in a borrowed office in the Federal Building on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. Timmins was in charge of a Fly Away Team, or Fly Squad as it was called in FBI slang. Formed after 9/11, these were specialized teams within the Counterterrorism Division, based out of Washington, that flew out to the local field offices or elsewhere when needed in major cases. The teams were composed of the most experienced counterterrorism agents, language specialists, technical people, and intelligence analysts.
“You’ve got to give him credit, though,” said Timmins.
“For what?” Beth demanded.
“For a vertically integrated company. He hires South American shoplifting gangs to boost cans of baby formula. He pays them five bucks a can. He sells them in his markets for fifteen a can. That’s a damn fine profit compared to the pennies per can the honest merchants are making. If they steal too much he unloads the excess on eBay. If they can’t find baby formula they boost cold remedies, which he sells by the gross to all the home methamphetamine cookers without reporting it. How many markets does he own now?”
“Five,” said Beth.
“I thought only Hezbollah and the Palestinians were into the baby formula scam.”
“Everyone follows the money,” Beth replied. “Why wouldn’t al-Qaeda get into it?” This case had begun, the way they usually did, when an alert local cop made a traffic stop of a truck full of stolen baby food with an Arab driver.
“So we have receiving stolen goods, transporting stolen goods, tax evasion, and money laundering. But no terrorism case. And I can’t justify tying up a Fly Squad without a terrorism case.”
“Just because we don’t have a case we could take to the grand jury doesn’t mean we don’t have a terrorism case,” said Beth. “Shakir’s careful. He only has serious discussions in places that don’t have walls.”
“So maybe he’s just a crook, and we should go home.”
Beth knew Timmins was just yanking her chain, but she clucked her tongue and gave him a loud “tsk” anyway. She’d tried to make herself stop doing that, but it was no use. It was habit. “Ben, nobody has that many serious discussions in backyards and park benches. How many times do your friends, the ones you aren’t even doing crime with, show up at your kid’s soccer games, just to shoot the shit? And how many hundreds of thousands of dollars do you wire to Pakistan every year? Dollars that disappear as soon as they get there.”
“So it’s a terrorism case,” Timmins said defensively. “Which means there’s never enough to take to court. So Shakir does his fifteen years or so, and we deport his family and friends. And that’s one more network out of our hair. Feel free to complain about me not pushing to make a bigger case.”
Beth tsked again. “I’m not complaining about that. He’ll be lucky if he gets only fifteen years.”
“Well, then, you’re here to complain about the aunt and the kid being inside the house in Studio City?”
“We’re just lucky the aunt was taking a nap,” said Beth, “and the baby was a crib climber and let us know we had company in there. I should have checked the whole house before I started work. I’ll never make that mistake again.”
“I thought you’d be ballistic.”
“Hey, Ben. That team from the L.A. office was doing the surveillance and they told us the house was empty. So they’re either incompetent or they wanted the Counterterrorism Division to get embarrassed. Either
way, that reflects on you. It’s none of my business.”
Beth knew her statement, delivered matter-of-factly, would have more impact on Timmins than all the yelling in the world would have. The Fly Squads had to deal with a lot of jealousy and resentment from the local field offices. Those L.A. boys were toast now. Even though yelling at Timmins would have been a lot more fun.
Timmins let a tone of amazement creep into his voice. “Then you’re not here to complain about that?”
“Don’t be silly, Ben.”
The tone changed to suspicion. “Then what are you here to complain about?”
“Ben, Ben, Ben. I’m not here to complain about anything.”
“Imagine my surprise.”
“You know, Ben, if people could hear you talking like that, they wouldn’t call me a bitch.”
Yes, they would, Timmins thought. But what he said was, “My profound apologies, Beth. Then why, may I ask, did you want to see me about the baby food guy?”
“I think we’ve got a substantial network here. I want to put an informant inside.”
“And just how the hell do you propose to do that?” Timmins’s bureaucratic antennae sprung up. “Are you working something I don’t know about?”
Beth tsked again. “Ben, Ben, Ben. Have I ever screwed you, in either the personal or professional sense?”
“No. Now ...”
“Have you ever taken a hit for anything I’ve ever done?”
“We’ve come pretty damn close, Beth ...”
“On the contrary, you’ve received a considerable number of pats on the back for the cases I’ve worked, haven’t you?”
Timmins opened his mouth to say something, then abruptly halted. “Wait a minute. Why am I even thinking about apologizing to you before I hear about whatever game you’re trying to run on me?”
Beth smiled sweetly. The auburn hair tended to fall across her face when she was too focused to attend to it. “You know, Ben, stress can be a real killer. And you’re starting to move into that high-risk age ...”
“Okay, Beth.”
“I want to put an informant inside.”
“And just how do you propose to do that?”
“Shakir’s brother-in-law, Roshan.”
“Are you working him?” Timmins asked suspiciously.
“Not yet. I’m just looking him over.”
“We don’t have anything on the brother-in-law.”
“I know. That’s why he’s my guy. Quiet. Family man. Runs all the markets single-handed. He probably knows where the baby formula and cold medicine come from, but not enough to make a case on. He works his ass off, lives in a little house in Studio City, and sends his money to his actual extended family in Pakistan. Shakir the big-ass brother-in-law doesn’t do shit except count his money, live in Bel Air, and wire his tithe to al-Qaeda. There’s got to be some major family dynamic going on here. Big-time resentments. Roshan knows all the players and probably hears more than he lets on. He’s perfect.”
“And you’ll do this, how?”
“When we arrest Shakir, we bring Roshan in and charge him, too. He’s not the type who’ll enjoy being in custody. He’s a put-the-kids-to-bed-every-night kind of guy. And unless I miss my guess, he does not want to go to prison. More important, he definitely does not want to go back to Pakistan, tell the relatives there’s no more money coming in, and start all over again.”
She did this to him all the time, and Timmins always looked at her the same way. “So you threaten him with deportation?”
“I save him from deportation. He becomes our confidential informant. His brother-in-law Shakir goes to jail. The U.S. Attorney refuses to file on Roshan—lack of evidence. His time in the slammer radicalized him, made him want to get into the game as a player, and he becomes the link between Shakir in prison and his network. If we’re lucky, maybe Roshan takes over the network. If not, at least he’s inside it.”
Timmins leaned back in his chair and began tapping his fingertips together.
Beth knew he was going over all the angles. She’d worked for him for nearly two years now, and knew what made him tick. White male, white shirt, dark suit. Super-competent, no waves. But in his early forties, just that close to getting the boost up to Special Agent in Charge. And like so many who were close enough to taste it, he fretted every day about blowing it. The Counterterrorism Division was high visibility in the Bureau. Being in charge of a Fly Squad was even more so. You could launch yourself with a single case. But you could also cast yourself into perpetual darkness.
She waited just long enough, then put in the shot. “It’s time we stopped playing the terrorism game like cops. Otherwise we’ll just be deporting people without making cases. And Congress and the press are going to say: it’s been three years since 9/11 and you haven’t made any terrorism cases. But if we start thinking like counterintelligence professionals we’ll start turning terrorists and playing them back into their own networks. Now that’s something we could really hang our hat on.”
Timmins’s face exposed him as imagining the possibilities. “How will we know he’s not agreeing to everything, and then playing us?”
Beth just pointed to the TV screen.
Then the moment of realization. “Jesus,” Timmins exclaimed. “This is why you insisted on making the warrants on the warehouse and markets criminal ones from the local magistrate judge, and the ones on the homes from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act judge in Washington: so we could keep them separate.”
“If we don’t use any of the home surveillance at Shakir’s trial, Roshan will never know we’re watching him. Roshan’s not the outdoor type—he won’t be having meetings on park benches.”
“This could be the perfect way to confirm an informant’s reliability,” Timmins exclaimed. “You debrief him, then you go watch what he’s actually doing and saying.” And then another pause, as another realization took hold. “Is this why you pushed so hard for video as well as audio on them?”
Beth only smiled sweetly, once again.
“You were making the moves to put this together from the get-go.”
“It just doesn’t work if we try and throw something together after we make arrests,” said Beth. Then added, “The way we usually do.” And then immediately reproached herself for it. Always having to hammer the point into the ground. Shut up, Beth.
“And I was the one who bitched about the expense of doing video as well as audio,” said Timmins. “Okay, Beth, if you’re going to play me like that, I give you permission to keep playing me. Not that you won’t anyway. Be ready to do a full-bore brief on your plan for Roshan. PowerPoint and all. We’ll definitely have to take this up to the Deputy Assistant Director for Operational Support. Then probably the Division Assistant Director. We may even have to brief the Director himself.”
“I’m all ready to go right now.”
“Why am I not surprised? This is great work, Beth.”
“Thanks, Ben.”
Chapter Seven
Whenever he used the train station in the old city of central Antwerp, Abdallah Karim Nimri made a point of walking along the Pelikaanstraat to pass through the Jootsewijk. He loved how they would cross the street before reaching him, do anything not to have to look at his face. One of them could never walk alone in the Arab ghetto unharmed, and here he walked and they were afraid. Nimri loved to see the Jews afraid. It was good for them to fear an Arab.
They had been in Antwerp for 400 years, and there were 20,000 of them. There they were in their black coats and fur hats, their diamonds and riches. But now there were 30,000 Muslims. And every day more. One day, Nimri promised himself. One day the Jews would all die.
When he had sufficiently pleased himself he turned east toward Borgerhout. And in the Arab district the faces became comfortingly familiar to him again, and the music of Arabic found his ears.
Nimri was watched by young men as hard as the old stone buildings they were slouching against. The sight of them always made
him happy. Belgium was perfect. In the Arab world the masses were seething but crushed. America was a disaster. In America Muslims did nothing but work. They made money, bought things, made more money, bought more things, and were gradually turned into creatures of luxury that were no longer Muslim.
Europe was their only hope. Only there were the conditions ideal. A culture of plenty, but not for Muslim immigrants. The professions were closed, so there was nothing but day labor—cheap labor—the only reason the Turks and Moroccans had been admitted in the first place. No one would rent them apartments or sell them homes, so they crowded into the poor districts like Borgerhout, whose overwhelming Moroccan population caused the Belgians to call it Borgerokko. It kept the people together.
The young men born there were neither Arab nor Belgian. Molded into ferocity by the teeming government housing blocks, street fights with the skinheads, drugs, petty crime, and the contempt the Europeans had for them.
All good, because eventually the suitable were drawn into the mosques seeking a path out of the emptiness. And unlike America, where they built rich mosques to their heart’s content, the Europeans would never issue building permits, so the Faithful were forced to worship in garages and warehouses, the better to build their righteous anger. So the angry began to work for the cause, with the necessary skills they had already learned on the streets. The unemployment benefits and proceeds from crime allowed them to work for the cause full-time, also relieving the organization of the burden of supporting them.
And while the Belgians might not speak to Arabs, the Belgian government was so tolerant and open-minded that the assured way of getting it to abandon any policy was to accuse it of intolerance. For fear of giving offense, the government left them alone to do their work. But if that changed, it would still be fine. As a matter of fact, Nimri felt it would be perfect if the right-wing Vlaams Belang, or Flemish Interest Party, took control and instituted anti-Islamic policies.
Belgium was perfect.
Nimri turned off the Milisstraat and wove through side streets. He felt the eyes on him, and he approved. Strangers could not enter the neighborhoods without the neighborhoods knowing. The police rarely left their automobiles. If they did they were followed by young men with video cameras to record the activities of the racist police. Rather than be drawn into incidents that would cause the government to wring its hands and fire them, they stayed away.
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