Custos: Enemies Domestic

by Jake Aaron

  Zach lapsed back into speechless in disbelief over the approach Barb had just flown. Finally, “Well, it was a great day to fly. Good team building! I hope you enjoyed it.”

  “Zach… it was educational,” she offered, even though she really enjoyed everything except the instruction on power control. Her affected subdued emotion gave her great joy inside to put him on. “But I’m sure my folks are very disappointed… having come 2500 miles…” Making Zach uncomfortable was fun. “You’ll have to show me more about emergency landings next time,” Barb needled him about her natural “dead-sticking”ability. She still had her game face on. It was just getting better.

  “Yeah, Barb, tell your folks I’m sorry… and we’ll have to do this team building thing again. We can work on your power control,” Zach was eager to get away before she came up with more ways to torture him.

  “How about showing me more about emergency landings?” Barb twisted the dagger. Zach was charmingly straightforward. She liked being unpredictable with him.

  Zach waved, “Sure,” but he didn’t know whether she expected instruction in engines-out approaches or not. She flew that power-off approach better than he could — or ever would. She was an ongoing mystery — as much as this Custos case.

  Chapter 11

  October 1

  District of Columbia

  A week later, watchful waiting continued, and the Zimmer case remained open due to its high profile. Life was about to become more interesting for the investigators, however, as Congresswoman Lynn Paige, of Michigan ramped up her bid to be re-elected. Lynn, a 45-year-old svelte Northwestern Law School alumna, was known as the “best looking grandmother in DC.” She dressed the role with an extensive Calvin Klein wardrobe, designer sandals, and a collection of Kate Spade scarves.

  Lynn’s career choice was shaped by a realistic assessment of her legal aptitude. In law school, she knew that she was not competitive against those with a natural knack for the law, nor was she willing to study as hard as the top students in her class. Her grades did not put her in the running for a place in a top tier law firm at graduation. Besides, she actually became almost nauseated at the prospect of putting in 80 to 100 hours per week as a new hire at a large law firm doing tasks senior partners disdained. She could not see herself endlessly poring over boring documents. While she originally saw law as a ticket to a guaranteed high income and glamorous profession, she had been quickly disillusioned by very frank off-hand comments from some of her law professors. Himself a refugee from the practice of law, one professor wryly responded to the question of whether life would get better after law school: “Do Supreme Court Justices write their own opinions?” Clearly, life in law would not get better. A summer internship with a large firm after her second year capped her disillusionment with the law.

  Lynn’s outgoing personality was more suited for politics. In contrast to the isolation of research and writing she associated with the practice of law, she craved the continuous human interaction she could find in politics. Lynn liked the busy dance card she had both as a candidate and an elected official. She enjoyed the wielding of power she felt from steering the powerful and wealthy. She basked in the adoration she got from demagoguing popular issues and taking credit for projects financed with other people’s money.

  Lynn was at best an opportunist. She painted most issues as matters that only government could help. Inevitably, she cast most of her campaigns as something she was doing “for the children.” God, mother, apple pie, and now children. How can anyone be opposed to the children? Anyone against helping children had to be some kind of scoundrel or reprobate. With that kind of mantra, she never had to debate facts, figures, or lessons of history.

  Her public persona was that of a very personable, friendly activist. Out of the view of the public, her colleagues and staff knew her as LP — La Pute, but ostensibly just her initials if she were within earshot. Her first chief of staff, a French major in college, had coined that: The Bitch in Frances. Colleagues avoided her as much as possible. She was prone to steal their ideas, never giving appropriate credit. Do not get between her and a microphone, they said. There was not enough limelight for LP. Her every move was calculated to escalate her rising star.

  Her staff walked on eggshells around her. The staff routinely threw away gifts before LP saw them if they could be hurled or broken. LP expected mind reading: You should know what I want. If a staff member didn’t or guessed wrong, she would publicly humiliate him or her. Her office was known as a body shop. One took a job there until he or she could find someplace better. No one planned on working for her very long.

  Her significant other was a female urologist whose patients tended to be males. Dr. Rose Simone had replaced Lynn’s husband fifteen years ago. Lynn’s ex-husband nodded in agreement when he heard about the LP moniker that tagged his former wife. He got a big yuck whenever he heard Lynn’s for the children refrain. He had single-handedly raised their one son, in whom Lynn had no heartfelt interest. Loving an idea was one thing. Loving a person was another, for Lynn.

  Lynn cast herself as a champion of women’s rights and opportunity in the workplace, as well as urban renewal. This term she was pitching her $135 billion bill to subsidize big city redevelopment throughout the United States, areas “devastated by the Great Recession — a crucial step to help America’s children.” Inner-city Detroit, a major constituency, would be a primary beneficiary. As with so many projects, she knew, the major interests to benefit would actually be the big developers and her congressional campaign backers with advance knowledge of the particulars of legislation. No doubt, she owed her election and future prospects to these supporters. It warmed her soul that she was close to having the requisite votes to pass her sponsored legislation to keep this vicious cycle going.

  Lynn’s campaign manager told her she needed the positive press around the urban renewal bill for another reason. Numerous media reported Congresswoman Paige as the worst abuser of congressional junkets. She had somehow managed to see the “new” seven wonders of the world in one calendar year without spending a cent of her own: the Mayan city Chichen Itza, the statue Christ Redeemer, the Great Wall of China, Machu Picchu, the city of Petra in Jordan, the Colosseum in Rome, and the Taj Mahal. Of course, she was accompanied by her companion Dr. Rose Simone. While taxpayers had not paid for the trips directly, special interests had sponsored the soirees for their immediate influence and benefit. Favorable press could not come soon enough for LP.

  Meanwhile, Lynn’s re-election campaign spun a narrative casting her as a courageous heroine against the forces of darkness and evil. She seized the moment to spend big in the face of the very public Custos threat. That prompted the Diogenes to feature an in-depth article on her. Publicly, she boasted she would not be deterred by threats or intimidation. She would remain an activist for the people, which she quickly and often pointed out included children. Privately, she gave the generalized threat in the Log a month ago zero credence. She would have been more unnerved to walk unescorted through her own congressional district in Detroit. Now that was a real threat!

  _______________

  Each passing day without a casualty diminished the fear of an attack by Custos. Despite the quiet environment, Barb had alerted the FBI almost two weeks ago when she first heard from some Capitol Hill insiders that Lynn Paige was planning to draft a bill exceeding $100B. Two federal agents were immediately assigned to shadow Lynn around the clock. When shift changes occurred for Lynn’s protective detail, the hand-off updates were brief. The last: “Another day in paradise. Nothing to report. Did not have to talk with LP. Quiet. Good luck.”

  This was, in retrospect, the calm before the storm.

  Chapter 12

  October 5

  District of Columbia — Arlington, VA

  The schemer planned his next move at a macro level. He turned the high points of his plan over in his mind several times with changes here and there. Then he filled in the details that had to be changed
. He mentally rehearsed the execution of the plan. After visualization, he altered parts that could reduce the probability of success. Now he was ready.

  The schemer created the flyer on a computer disconnected from the internet. He knew NSA’s Cray supercomputers could watch anything on the internet, subject to the latest legal limitations and interpretations. The National Security Agency cast a wide net. He began the flyer with facts about the Congresswoman Paige’s feminist advocacy. He called out that her feminist agenda consistently went against the laws of Islam. Her views were flagrantly haraam, forbidden in Islam. The Congresswoman lived a lesbian life style that is kaba’ir, an enormous offense, in conflict with the Quran. Then he feathered into quoting Congresswoman Paige’s public words and phrases in and out of context — a slyly woven blanket of deceit. He pointed out that her plans to renovate parts of Detroit, in particular, would destroy two mosques — without mentioning that funds were dedicated to rebuild them. He built to a crescendo and closed the flyer with a made-up quote of her profaning Islam.

  The schemer reasoned that making copies from one printer might be traceable. He, therefore, copied a total of 203 flyers at different graphic shops, at different times, using coin-operated machines. He disguised himself differently for each location. At each shop he carefully chose a machine isolated from human activity. He ran odd combinations of pages to total the desired 203. Thirty-seven pages on a copier counter, for example, would look like a grad school paper if investigators looked for evidence. Upon finishing the copy of a batch, he nonchalantly wiped down the areas on the machines he touched. He used a large handkerchief into which he feigned sneezes and coughs between casual fingerprint erasing.

  _______________

  The disguised schemer parked around the corner and two blocks from a large mosque in Arlington, VA. He approached a ten-year-old Arab boy on the sidewalk. His leather-gloved hands offered the boy an immediate $20 to deliver 203 of the flyers to four separate locations around the mosque for worshippers to pick up following in-progress prayers. The boy was eager to do so and was back in short order to get his second $20 bill.

  Another man in his shoes would have exhibited rage over what the Congress had done to his birthright. The schemer had long ago learned to channel his anger into action. Boiling over was a waste of energy, he thought, that feeds on itself. It spirals progressively more out of control, damaging the one who rages more than the offender. He knew expending his life force that way was counterproductive. He balked at the irony of damaging himself with uncontrolled anger — when the culprit was the one who should pay. No, he was not Dr. Spock of Star Trek, but he was an efficient professional answer to a systemic national problem.

  Congress must stop overspending.

  _______________

  The flyer created a major stir among the Muslim men exiting the mosque. Curiosity became irritation. Irritation became anger. Anger became a call to action. The matter had to be brought to the attention of the Imam, they agreed. The Imam felt the agitation of the many mosque members who demanded he do something. In private, he used a cipher to encode his message. He then placed a call on a throwaway cell to a number that he had memorized. He rigidly adhered to the coded script he had written down in preparation. His jihadist leaders taught message discipline to avoid detection. Nothing extraneous should be transmitted. Unknown to him, several of the mosque’s other militant members had already made similar coded calls to the same number. They, too, destroyed their burner cell phones after use.

  _______________

  The jihad sleeper cell got its target on a disposable cell phone in a coded message. Abdul Malik, a 23-year-old University of Maryland dropout studied his target: Congresswoman Paige. She was the infidel enemy. Not only did her history show an irreverent advocacy of women’s place in the world, but very recent reports from friends said she had profaned Muhammad and holy Islam. Abdul had no doubts. The infidels of the United States had unjustly harmed him.

  Abdul was the youngest of the three sons of Ishaq Malik who emigrated from Lebanon to the United States. His father sold imported rugs in a lower middle-class neighborhood in Baltimore. Coming home from a date one evening in October of 2004, fifteen-year-old, five-foot-eight Abdul was picked up by city police. He matched the profile of an all points bulletin calling for the arrest of a notorious juvenile burglar who was the public nemesis of the police force. Police misconstrued Abdul’s refusal to cooperate as evidence of being a hardened criminal. Abdul was detained overnight for further questioning the following day.

  In fact, Abdul feared his father’s wrath to the point of clamming up. Abdul was forbidden to date. His father prohibited that. He also was told never to walk through the bad neighborhood he had cut through on his way home from his date. In his mind, Abdul was in so much trouble he was not thinking straight when he stonewalled investigators. He was in a double bind, damned by whichever choice he made.

  A repeat offender was jailed two hours after Abdul. With the September 11 attack on New York City still fresh in memory, the over-muscled, six-foot-two, 220-pound criminal took the occasion to beat and repeatedly sodomize undersized Abdul. “You damned jihadist. I’ll do to you what you and your people did to New York City… If you ever mention this, I’ll kill everyone in your family — and then you. Got it?”

  A shattered Abdul was released the next day after the actual burglar was caught. Abdul never was the same after the assault. His cuts and bruises fit well with the story he told his parents of being knocked unconscious by a car and waking up the next day. “No, we can’t report it. I ran into the crosswalk against the ‘Don’t Walk’ sign. It’s my fault,” he lied. Abdul’s scars remained inside and out.

  Years later, a fanatic Islamist from Abdul’s mosque picked up Abdul’s despondent body language. He could read something very sad in Abdul’s eyes. He observed that Abdul never smiled and had a listless comportment. He befriended the damaged boy. Abdul found psychological refuge in the rigid extreme ideology that exacted revenge and promised afterlife rewards for martyring sacrifice. The recruiter also knew that the consuming rituals and practices of Islam would distract Abdul from his demons. He constantly reminded Abdul of that fact. Six months later the extremist had successfully honed Abdul for a holy deed… to be determined.

  The jihadist knew the rubric of military recruiters, psychotherapists, politicians, and pimps. Follow, pace, lead. First, you listen and watch to understand what motivates a prospect. Second, you establish rapport by showing you empathize with the prospect; indeed, you’re a lot like the prospect. Then, you guide the prospect toward your goal.

  The conundrum in profiling jihadists is that there are few consistent common denominators. Another youth recruited by the same fanatic Islamist was the oldest son of a well-to-do thoracic surgeon, a third generation American. The nineteen-year-old boy rejected his Jewish heritage. Having done little to earn the easy life his family bestowed on him, he had no respect for it; he even loathed it. Though he had many friends, he gradually fell under the spell of the persistent charismatic extremist. That recruit was drawn more by personality than ideology or theology. There are many paths to radicalization.

  _______________

  Abdul’s upcoming mission gave him a laser focus on everything. He became hyper-vigilant. Time slowed up. He performed every routine of life with greater consciousness. In particular, he felt greater intensity this day during salah, the obligatory five-time daily prayer ritual. Assuming Einstein actually postulated that we only use 10% of our brains, Abdul thought, he was sure he was at least 20% engaged. He hoped he could be forgiven for crediting a Jew for anything. “Alhamdulillah!” God be praised.

  After mentally rehearsing tomorrow’s mission, Abdul burned the file on Congressman Paige. The he went to bed. He was so wired that he wondered if he would ever fall asleep. Adrenaline kept his heart rate high, so he kept envisioning the execution of the plan. His focused mind had no room for the usual continual reliving of the trauma from his adolescen
t years. Subconsciously, he basked in that relief. Finally, his heart rate slowed as the mental repetition of the plan lulled him to sleep.

  Tomorrow, paradise — he fuzzily thought, as he nodded off.

  Chapter 13

  October 6

  Arlington, VA

  It was a crisp October morning at 10:36 A.M. as two federal agents watched Lynn Paige’s Arlington, VA, rambler home from their black sedan. Saturday meant no public school, which allowed four pre-teen boys to play hacky sack in the street around the corner out of view of the agents. To an outsider, they seemed to be just randomly keeping a leather footbag in the air with their feet.

  The boys, however, were very serious about the game. They tried to keep the hacky sack from hitting the ground using anything but their arms or hands. The game took team effort to accumulate rounds. To count as a round, each round required every individual to have kicked the footbag at least once. The boys fist-bumped one another after completing a tenth consecutive round. That was too easy. To make the game more interesting, the group introduced a second hacky sack, the added challenge being to keep both airborne simultaneously.

  A friendly-looking man parked his Navistar package delivery truck nearby. He deliberately came toward the pre-teens. He tried to approach them very casually, knowing that age group’s distrust of adults. He smiled and gestured widely with open arms, “Who would like to earn easy money?”