Cloudburst

by Pearson, Ryne Douglas

  “Harry Obed is one Mamir Khaled, a Palestinian. And we’ve ID’d his partner: little bro Nahar Khaled. Shari faxed photos of both and we ran the pictures by the rental agency clerk. Let me tell you, boss, she was not a happy camper being roused out of bed at one A.M. Anyway, she confirmed that Nahar was the second guy.”

  “So that puts them together at the airport.”

  “And the motel,” Eddie added. “The desk clerk was certain it was both of them.”

  “I guess we can expect confirmations from the airlines in Paris, here, and New York on the second ID. But what about before that?”

  “Nothing. Interpol, Brits, Frenchies...zippo. Israeli intelligence had to go through their national police.”

  “Huh?”

  “Punks, boss. That’s what Shari called them. They were picked up a few years back for throwing stones and shit during the West Bank uprising. Intifada, they called it. They weren’t real troublemakers, just followers. Lots of kids were doing it. It just happened the Israelis decided to come down hard on the protests that week, so it was a quick trip across the border to Lebanon.”

  Art tapped the desk. “Deported. That could piss one off.”

  “Yep. So we’ve got two young brothers forcibly removed from their family and their home. Shari says the latter is sometimes more devastating to the West Bank Arabs than having to leave their families. It’s the same thing the whole Palestinian culture has been subjected to. You know, that Israeli friend of yours is a smart fella. He looks at reasons for what he’s supposed to help prevent.”

  It was good info, but not enough for a complete picture. “It’s more than we had before, but aside from America being responsible for all the world’s ills, what was their motive? Hell, there are hundreds of people—whole families—deported every month since the Intifada began. Why attack us? Why not do something against the Israelis? They could have done more damage in a suicide attack there. I saw a tape a while back of a suicide attack in southern Lebanon. The terrorist had his car filled with five hundred pounds of TNT and another hundred pounds of nails. So this guy had his pals film him with a video camera from a rooftop as he drove by an Israeli army truck loaded with troops and blew himself up.”

  “Boss,” Eddie interjected.

  Art paused. “Yeah?”

  “They had a motive. Remember the picture?”

  “Sure.” No...

  “The little girl. About a month after the Khaled brothers were deported there was another protest... a big one. An American cruiser made a port call at Haifa and a whole slew of demonstrations broke out. Some were pretty violent, Shari said. American ships have stopped at Israeli ports before, so who knows why it was that one to cause an uproar. The West Bank, Gaza, even Jerusalem. Anyway, the Khaled boys’ mother and little five-year-old sister just happened to be near one of the demonstrations near their home when the Army moved in to break it up.”

  “Oh Jesus,” Art said softly.

  “The troops used rubber bullets to break up the crowd. One of them hit the little girl right in her mother’s arms. She was trying to get out of the middle of the thing, but there were too many people. The bullet caught the kid in the head. Killed instantly. How’s that for a motive?”

  “In their minds, yeah. Okay, where from here, Ed?”

  “Well, like you said before, these guys were the trigger pullers, but someone put them up to it.”

  Art wasn’t sure about that. “Exploited their grief would be a better way to put it. Now we’ve got to pick up the hot trail.”

  “Jackson,” Eddie said.

  “Right. He is the link. I don’t know. Maybe the trail in Paris can be picked up, but our best shot right now is trying to find Jackson and figure out what he did to help the shooters. Then we can find the head of this monster.”

  “I better put a push on Jackson’s trail.”

  “Yeah, that’s what we’ve got to do.” They were moving, Art knew, but there was a long way to go. “Is there anything new on him yet?”

  “Not much,” Eddie answered, no discouragement whatsoever in his voice. “His neighbors confirmed that he does have some relatives in Chicago, but the employment records don’t jibe. According to them he’s an only child or an orphan, but then he filled them out. It’s not like he had a security clearance.”

  This end of the investigation, only two days old, was already reaching its peak, a reality that convinced Art that the conspiracy had tentacles of as yet unknown length. There was little left to do in the Los Angeles area without some information from or about Jackson. Or was there? “Ed, I’m going to finish up here and step out for a while. You at the Hilton?”

  “Yeah. Where are you going?”

  “Out and about.”

  The White House

  It was Herb Landau’s turn to visit Bud’s office.

  The hastily called NSC meeting had just wrapped up after two hours of discussion and analysis of the situation, and fifteen minutes spent viewing excerpts, prompted by a National Security Agency official, of real-time satellite imagery.

  “How long until we can get some enhanced stills?” Bud asked.

  “An hour ... maybe,” Landau answered.

  Bud grimaced. “We’ll have to go to the boss before that.” He looked at his watch. “Fifteen minutes. So, you thought we should talk alone. I don’t know, Herb. You sprang a doozy on me the last time we did this.”

  “Are you prepared for another?” the DCI asked. After a few minutes he was sure by the look on the NSA’s face that he wasn’t.

  Six

  UNPLEASANTNESS

  Los Angeles

  The freeways at 4:30 A.M. were a wonderful thing. In an hour they would be packed, which was usual for the weekdays. Art’s Bureau Chevy had already made the trip from downtown north on the 110 freeway to Pasadena, and was heading south again, past the western fringe of the L.A. skyline. He could see the Hilton to his left, empty but strangely alight in the predawn darkness.

  Art took the gently sweeping transition road from the 110 south to the westbound 10. He wondered if rural types would be surprised by the amount of cars at this time of the morning, and he almost laughed aloud when he realized that at one time many years before this traffic would be equivalent to rush hour. It was a problem with few solutions. Mass transit had to take up some of the slack and remove some of the single-occupant cars from the road. But then Art knew he wouldn’t ride the bus. Oh well. So much for examples. Maybe that’s why I’m not a parent, he thought.

  He shook the thoughts from his head, realizing that he was wide awake and that it would be a bitch to get back on a normal sleep schedule. So it would take a few days. Who knew how long the hours would be like this? Back to the work at hand.

  The Khaled brothers more than likely fell into the category of first-time visitors to Southern California, just two of the thousands who found their way there every day. Some came to visit Disneyland. Some came for business meetings or conventions—the downtown area was perfectly suited for this purpose with its many business hotels and the numerous meeting facilities. But the Khaleds did not come for any of these reasons. They did, however, share one important trait with the flood of tourists: ignorance of the area. The route between their two known destinations, LAX and Pasadena, would have needed to be a simple one. Interstate 405 north to Interstate 10 east to the 110 north to Pasadena. That was the quickest, most direct route, one that could be easily explained in a simple set of directions. Art believed they had made the unknown stop between the airport and the motel on the day they arrived, to pick up the weapons almost certainly. It wouldn’t have made sense to make the stop between Pasadena and downtown on the day they hid out in the 818. Too many things could have gone wrong, and one delay had the potential to throw the timing all off. Yes, they had done it as Art thought. It had to be.

  But where? Finding a specific location in the city of Los Angeles and its adjacent suburbs would be a major task for a newcomer. The seemingly endless grid system of streets
stretching from the freeways was akin to a maze, simple if one was only slightly familiar with them, but potentially an impossible labyrinth where a first-time visitor might lose himself.

  Behind him, above the pairs of white dots in his rearview mirror, the predawn horizon was just beginning to show traces of a bluish glow. Soon the yellowish cast that signaled sunrise would spread across the skyline, and with the daylight the crush of cars would come. The traffic...the countless streets...the unfamiliar language emblazoned on the green highway signs—the Khaleds would have felt bombarded by the newness. Their native land was pristine and rich in history, ancient-looking and simple. Or it had been at one time. The brothers must have reacted with wonder to the abundance of glass, and lights, and billboards ...

  Wait... Art’s gaze locked on a billboard. The painted image of a red stone-and-glass tower was lofted fifty feet above and to the right of the freeway. “A weekend in L.A., just $99 a night.” Art jerked his eyes back to the road. It could work...

  He speed-dialed his cell. It was answered in the Hilton immediately. “Eddie, I’ve got an idea.”

  “Shoot,” Eddie answered through the burger in his mouth.

  “It’s not even five and you’re eating that...never mind.

  Listen, the shooters had to get their gear somewhere, right? And I figure, more than likely, they had to get it before they got to Pasadena.”

  “Yeah. They wouldn’t have put it off till the last minute, and they wouldn’t have risked a face-to-face with Jackson.” A swallow followed.

  “Or vice versa. He wouldn’t have gone for that. Like you said, Ed, the shooters didn’t give a damn about themselves, but Jackson—he seems like the kind of guy who didn’t want to take any chances before he split. For both of them it would have to be a clean pass, which got me thinking...well, I had a spark.”

  “What hit you?” Another bite.

  “A billboard.” Art leaned forward, checking his right side mirror as he moved to the exit. “The downtown Hyatt. Right up there to slap me in the face. It would be easy, clean. All Jackson would have needed to do is rent a room somewhere for a day or two and stash the weapons. Then he could have put the key for the place with the directions in a locker at the airport.”

  “It’d work.”

  “But it would have to be a place close to the freeway: someplace they couldn’t get lost finding. I don’t know, maybe no more than five or six blocks from the freeway. Probably off the Ten, or maybe the Four-oh-five. Just some cheap motel would do.” The red light at the off ramp’s bottom only made Art hesitate. Running lights was a perk. “How much manpower can we shift to check out the motels in the area?”

  There was silence as Eddie checked the roster. “I show thirty-five teams we can move around.”

  “Good.” Art turned left, back onto the freeway, heading east. “Put out pictures of all three. Someone at one of those places must have seen one of them.”

  “If they did as you think.”

  Art moved over three lanes. “There’s always an ‘if’, Ed.”

  The White House

  It was the second viewing of the recording for Bud and Herb. The president stared intently at the pictures. He had commented early on about the clarity.

  “These look as if they were shot from the upper floor of a building nearby,” the president commented. “Where did these come from?”

  “A modified KH-twelve,” Landau replied. “Normally you’d be briefed in a transition period on ‘National Technical Means.’ ”

  “Of course. I’ve heard of the KH-twelve, but not about any modifications.”

  Bud was the most knowledgeable of the two advisers on the subject. “Basically the KH-twelve ENCAP—enhanced capability—is a hybrid between a standard KH-twelve and the Hubble Space Telescope. Its existence is super secret. It was put up by the shuttle in two flights: One took the bare pieces up, and the other assembled the sections and fueled it. There is nothing in space that even compares.”

  “From seeing these I can’t imagine anything that would.”

  “These are ‘real-time’ images—recorded, of course—but we should have some enhanced stills in a short while.” Bud froze the picture on the Oval Office’s normal television, below which sat a pricey video player. The frozen frame showed just the 747 sitting near a building.

  Director Landau noticed the shaky quality of the images on the standard video player. “Given the time, sir, we could have watched the feed directly in the situation room as it happened, but we’ve found it’s usually better for the crew at Belvoir to screen it.”

  “No opposition to that. This is fine. Shall we?”

  Bud touched the remote and the picture began to move. He pulled a small notebook from his jacket. The video counts where significant events appeared on the recording were written inside. “Watch from the right, sir.”

  Two vehicles, one a large stake body truck and the other a smaller jeep, entered the frame. The jeep drove directly under the wing to the right rear of the jet, the larger truck swinging wide around.

  “Note the men getting off the truck,” Bud suggested. “Uniforms.”

  Each man wore a dark olive drab uniform and carried an assault rifle. They formed a rough oval around the 747, directed by one of the officers from the jeep. About every ten meters the soldiers stood, their rifles at their chests.

  “Mr. President,” Bud said, freezing the recording once again, “there are three things to take note of here. First, the soldiers are regular army troops—not militia or second-line. General Granger pointed that out to us. They’re wearing full uniforms and battle dress, and those are AK74s. Newer rifles. Their second-line troops don’t have those yet.

  “Second, it appears to be a single unit. Probably a platoon. These”—Bud pointed to a few points on the screen—“are the officers, probably equivalent to our own NCOs, and the platoon commander... here. The Libyans are notorious for using hodgepodge formations with a variety of equipment for ground missions. Granted, this is somewhat of a special occasion for them, but it is an indication of the seriousness. Plus, this officer from the jeep is a full colonel. We can tell by the shoulder boards.”

  “We should be able to identify him and the captain with him in a few hours,” the DCI announced. “Luckily they obliged and looked up a few times.”

  “Amazing,” the president said.

  “And third, notice which way the troops are facing—toward the aircraft. Not one is faced outward, as you might expect if they were there to protect it.”

  “Could they be guarding against the hijackers doing something?”

  “Another place, another time—maybe.” Bud advanced the recording. “But not when you take into account this.” The image slowed to a normal rate.

  “What are those?” The president leaned in, closer to the screen. From the front of the 747 a squat-looking tug appeared pulling a short train of baggage containers. Or were they? The four dark-colored cubes sat on separate carts in the train, which made a tight half-circle turn behind their tow vehicle and came to a stop near the right rear cargo hatch. Two other vehicles approached from the same direction.

  “The one that went to the back is a GPU—Ground Power Unit,” Bud explained as he let the recording run on. “It provides power for the aircraft system when the engines are off. Air-conditioning and the like. They’ll be running a cable to ‘plug it in.’ The other one is a heavy lift truck—a sort of forklift.”

  The president glanced worriedly at the DCI and NSA. “This is not comforting, gentlemen.”

  “It gets worse,” Bud said. He advanced the scene further.

  “Here you can see they’ve opened the cargo hatch at the rear,” the DCI commented as the picture sped by at eight times normal speed, “and are unloading the baggage containers. Okay, Bud.”

  The picture slowed to actual. “Watch carefully, sir,” Bud directed.

  After the last baggage container was removed by the lift, several soldiers manhandled the first of the fo
ur dark boxes onto the lift, though the machine itself did most of the work. Four soldiers looked down from the hold as the box began to rise.

  “Sir, that is a heavy lift vehicle,” Bud pointed out. “You saw that it took two baggage containers off at a time. Those are not light. Now note the trouble it’s having with these objects.”

  Haltingly, the box rose. Its weight visibly affected the lift, whose rear tires bounced as the bulk of the back-mounted counterweights struggled to keep the vehicle planted on the ground. The clarity of the picture allowed the soldiers in the cargo hold to be seen stretching their arms downward, as if willing the box to rise. When the first was raised and pushed in on the rollers, the second was loaded onto the lift. Herb Landau had already made a call to Langley, directing that the analysts working on the images identify the capacity of that lift vehicle.

  Bud pressed the fast-search button. “Whatever they loaded took an hour to complete.”

  “And they were damn heavy,” the DCI added, shifting in his seat to relieve a sudden twinge.

  “This is kind of hard to pick up, but watch the shadows.” Bud slowed the recording, pointing to the hidden side of the aircraft. “There comes a mobile ramp, just like the old days.”

  “You don’t see those much anymore.” Air-conditioned ramps and elevated lounges for the jumbos these days, the president thought. But the president still walks up a set of stairs to board Air Force One.

  When the ramp made contact there was a visible jolt. It had to back off and line up a second, and then a third time to correctly align with the number one door.

  “He’s a novice, sir,” Bud said. His Air Force days gave him the confidence to analyze this. “The driver of that ramp truck is probably a soldier.” Another point. Bud had never seen the president angry, even in his days as the VP, but he sensed now that the man was. He drew audible breaths through his nose, both nostrils flaring. “There, at the front.” Three figures jogged past the nose of the 747, disappearing behind it. “Now watch the bottom of the stairs—here. You can just barely see it.” Thin shadows appeared, then faded. “One. There goes number two. And three.” A minute later the ramp pulled away and drove out of view, leaving just the aircraft standing alone, ringed by the soldiers and attended by the GPU. The TV went off.