by Bob Hamer
Wadi raised his voice. “You don’t know what I do to please Allah. I am doing all that is asked of me. Those I report to overseas have no problems with the way in which I am managing my work. Who are you to tell me what I should and should not do? What I watch? What I listen to? If I want to eat while the sun is up during Ramadan, that is my business. Soldiers are not required to fast during this time. I am a soldier. I have been in this war for many years, and I am on the front lines. Thanks to my efforts, hundreds of thousands of dollars have been raised for the cause. I am supporting cells throughout the world. Since you reported to me, I have seen your scorn. Is it because of my age? Or my success? Or are you just jealous I can serve the cause here and you must return to your country when this is over?”
Ismad started to speak, but Wadi waved his hand, cutting him off, and continued, “I am offended by your pettiness. I provide you with all you need to succeed. You have but one mission. Every day is a new mission for me. I am proud of my efforts, and I know Allah is pleased.”
Ismad yelled, “Allah cannot be pleased. It is about the cause, not about you and your wants, needs, and desires!”
“That is where you are wrong. It is about me and the cause. For the cause to succeed, I must succeed. Go back to the desert and serve the cause. I will continue to serve here!”
Wadi reached over to a manila envelope lying on the table. He flung it at Ismad. A Frisbee-like spin on the envelope caused it to flip and land at Ismad’s feet. Ismad glared at Wadi.
Wadi looked him directly in the eye. “Pick it up.”
Ismad sat there without moving.
“Pick it up! It contains a passport and new identification in case you need it following your mission. There is also $5,000 in emergency funds. If all goes well, return the envelope and money to me. It will be used by others. If you need it, use it.”
Ismad reached down and examined the contents.
Wadi rose from the table and walked toward the bedroom. “I must make a phone call. You know the way out.” Wadi turned on the sound system as he walked past. The music resumed.
Ismad sat there in silence. After hearing Wadi complete his call, Ismad padded into the bedroom undetected.
Wadi would sin no more.
When Ismad returned from the bedroom, he walked to the kitchen sink and washed his hands. It is defilement to pray to Allah with blood on one’s hands.
As he left the apartment, he turned off the music and set the TV to Al-Jazeera.
MATT WAS DRIVING DOWN the Pacific Coast Highway on his way to the clinic. It was almost 10:30, and the morning fog was all but cleared. Although he missed a staff meeting, he planned on spending the entire afternoon at the clinic working with Omar. The waves were crashing against the shoreline, thanks to a fierce storm hundreds of miles out to sea. It was so beautiful he debated stopping and enjoying the beach for what he believed would be some well-deserved R&R.
The early morning commuters reached their destination, and it was Teflon traffic all the way—no sticking, slick, smooth, and easy. Do you walk the beach or take advantage of a perfect commute? Perfect commutes were less frequent than crashing waves along the shoreline. He would continue to drive.
Matt had the windows down and a Charlie Daniels CD blasting. It was so loud he didn’t hear the cell phone until the fifth ring. He answered without looking at the caller ID, then reached over to turn down the volume.
“Hang on a sec. Let me turn this down. . . . There, hello.”
“You really are a white-trash hillbilly. When this case is over, let me introduce you to some smooth jazz,” said Dwayne.
“Excuse me, sir, could you connect me to my EEO counselor. I believe I’ve been dis’d by my superior.”
“Where are you?”
“Cruisin’ down PCH. You got something for me, or you just don’t trust me?”
“No, yes. Well, I don’t trust you, but that’s not the issue this morning. That subscriber information came back to an apartment on Havenhurst in West Hollywood. I sent two of the guys down to the U.S. Attorney’s office to get a search warrant. They’re waiting for the judge to come off the bench and sign it. We plan on hitting it early this afternoon. Wanna come?”
“Absolutely. When and where are you gonna brief?”
“Let’s shoot for one at Plummer Park.”
“I’ll be there. I’ll stop by the clinic for a few minutes, then head on out.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Five casually dressed task force members were waiting in the parking lot when Matt arrived at Plummer Park. Individually they did not look like agents. But collectively, standing around, with soft drinks and coffee cups in their hands and leaning next to American-made cars, it was pretty obvious to anyone with street smarts these “cops” were about to roll.
Dwayne was waiting for the two agents to return from the courthouse with the search warrant, and then the team would hit the Havenhurst apartment. The CIA had picked up overseas chatter that some type of incident was to take place in Los Angeles within forty-eight hours. Normally search warrants were served in the early morning hours to ensure the sleeping occupants were at home, but the clock was ticking. Agents did not have the luxury of waiting until sunrise tomorrow.
The affidavit and search warrant flew through the rather cumbersome process without any problems. That in and of itself was a minor miracle. The probable cause was weak; and the duty judge this week, David Borenstein, did not have a history of being law enforcement friendly. The former criminal defense attorney actually prided himself on making agents change almost every affidavit submitted, at least once. Usually the requested modifications were more a judicial power trip than a desire to ensure compliance with the Constitution. With lifetime appointments to the bench, absolutely nothing could be done other than stroke the judge’s fragile ego and make the necessary changes. Today he signed the affidavit without comment. Apparently terrorists bent on destroying Israel impacted his decision to give the legal document a quick signature.
Brian Fletcher was already set up as the point. He had been watching the apartment since the subscriber information was obtained earlier in the morning. No one had come in or out of the apartment in the three hours he was there. When he first arrived, he walked past the unit and could hear Al-Jazeera on the TV. He assumed someone was in the apartment watching television. Dwayne kept checking periodically with Brian, but the report remained the same—no activity.
Once the warrant arrived, Dwayne briefed the team.
Tim Warren, a Naval Academy graduate who had been a Navy SEAL for eight years prior to joining the Bureau, was on the task force. He had set off more explosions than a topless dancer in church and would be in charge of making the entry. Dwayne assigned two agents to cover the back of the ground-floor apartment. The others would assist on the entry. Matt would remain in the van until the apartment was cleared just in case there was a connection to the clinic.
Dwayne concluded with, “This is no white-collar boiler room. We all know what happened at the warehouse. If in doubt, back away and we’ll regroup. Terrorists with plans to wreak havoc on L.A. are believed to be behind doors number one, two, and three. Extreme caution is the order of the day.”
The agents piled into a Chevy Suburban and drove the few blocks to the Havenhurst address.
Upon arrival the agents dispatched quickly to their respective positions. The front door to the apartment was concealed by heavy brush along the walkway paralleling the building. It provided perfect cover from the street so no one could see the agents closing.
Tim approached the door with caution and carefully examined the door frame, looking for wires, sensors, or contact points. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. The TV could be heard through the closed door.
Dwayne standing behind Tim gave a signal to Matt, who was back at the van, parked at the curb. Matt phoned
the apartment. Dwayne could hear the ringing through the door, but no one answered. Matt let the phone ring twenty times, hung up, and dialed again. It rang ten more times before Dwayne knocked on the door. No response.
Rather than kick the door in, which would have been John Wayne’s style, Tim picked the lock and carefully cracked open the door. Dwayne and the other agents had their weapons drawn. Tim carefully examined the inside of the door frame and with a small fiber-optic camera scanned the back of the door and as much of the apartment as he could see. The door and room appeared clear.
Tim pushed open the door, and the agents entered, crisscrossing through the opened door and covering the room as they entered. The living room was clear. The bedroom door was open. The agents dispatched quickly to the bedroom door. Again standing on both sides of the door, they prepared to enter when Tim shouted for everyone to stop. The agents froze. Inside the bedroom a surprise awaited.
Chapter Fifty
A crimsonlike halo surrounded the head of a limp body lying on the floor. The victim was fully clothed. His neck had a thin cut from ear to ear, the raw skin laid open.
Tim carefully approached while the other agents provided cover. He checked for a pulse, but it was futile. The victim, a Middle Eastern male, was dead. The condition of the body and the blood demonstrated the death was several hours old. Tim radioed all units the apartment was cleared.
“That’s him!” said Matt who had now entered the room.
“Who?” asked Dwayne.
“That’s the guy from the warehouse. That’s GQ, the guy in the Porsche.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ll never forget that face. I was less than thirty feet from him and have played that night over in my mind every day since.”
Wadi al-Habishi had been garroted, a favorite tool of assassins, because of the silent, violent, and message-sending nature in which a person died. Matt had seen it once before, a mob hit in Encino about five years ago. Piano wire connected to two wooden handgrips, quickly looped from behind around the neck of an unsuspecting victim, crossed hands, and pulled tightly. In the hands of someone trained, death would be almost instantaneous.
“Whoever did this was either dedicated to the cause or lacked a conscience,” said Dwayne.
“Maybe both,” said Matt.
Based on the blood-splatter pattern on the bed sheets and on an opened telephone directory, as well as shoe marks on the wall where the victim kicked as he struggled, it appeared as though the victim had been sitting on the side of the bed, searching through the directory, preparing to make a call. The killer must have walked up from behind, leaned over the twin bed, and completed the task.
Matt and Dwayne presumed it was a hit. Burglars aren’t known to garrote residents, and West Hollywood apartments weren’t high priority for the professional thief. Robbery wasn’t an apparent motive. The flat-screen TV and expensive sound system were still intact. With the exception of the dead body, little seemed disturbed.
Dwayne called the Evidence Recovery Team, FBI agents who maintained a regular caseload but were specially trained to search significant crime scenes. Normally the search would be discontinued until the ERT agents arrived to avoid disturbing any evidence of the homicide. Once the ERT supervisor cleared the location, the search would resume. But the issues were different this afternoon. It would take the ERT agents several hours to arrive from throughout the division.
With the discovery of the body, time was a commodity not to be wasted. The death raised even more questions. Waiting another hour could be costly. The agents had discovered the working office of a terrorist cell, and the knowledge gained from the continued search could save lives.
Dwayne ordered the agents to resume the search, carefully preserving as much of the crime scene as possible.
The kitchen and living room area provided few pieces of evidence. The only interesting item was a calendar with the next day’s date circled. The bedroom where the deceased was lying appeared more significant.
Inside the closet was a reinforced crawl space. Secreted in the space was a Kalashinikov automatic weapon and four mini-Glocks, the same model Yasir Mehsud, Caitlin’s Humpty Dumpty, used in the alley behind the clinic. A shoebox held several cell phones and GPS devices, all terrorist tools of the trade.
When one of the agents moved a dresser in the bedroom, he discovered a large wall safe hidden behind a false vent.
It took only a few minutes for Tim to open the safe, but its contents were the types of evidence the agents hoped to find—passports and identification from various countries, many blank but some under various names containing the deceased’s photo; eighty-five thousand in cash; three dozen prepaid SIM cards; twenty credit cards under various names.
“Hey Dwayne, you might want to take a look at this,” said Pete Garcia. Pete held the Egyptian passport of Nabil al-Sherif. The picture on the passport was of Wadi. “Remember those prints on the magazine of Rashid’s .32 caliber?”
“Yeah,” said Dwayne.
“He’s our boy. Our vic loaded the magazine.”
Another agent searching the dresser drawer found a California driver’s license, a social security card, and a UCLA student identification card, all in the name of Wadi Ali al-Habishi aka Nabil al-Sherif.
Answers were beginning to come, and parts of the puzzle were starting to make sense.
Chapter Fifty-One
Why wasn’t I told about this?” screamed Dwayne over the cell phone. “I have my whole team out here trying to connect the pieces to a puzzle we must solve, and I am just learning about this now. When were you going to tell me?”
The ASAC, Pamela Clinton, was on the other end of Dwayne’s tirade. She nervously apologized for not notifying him, saying she didn’t think he needed to know.
“I have kept you fully informed of our investigation, and you don’t think something like this is significant?” He took a breath, captured his anger, and said, “Well, thanks for telling me now.”
He ended the call and held his emotions in check, though tempted to hurl the cell phone across the room.
To no one in particular, Dwayne said aloud, “That was the Queen Mother. There is a secret reception tomorrow night at the Israeli consulate for the vice president and several Israeli weapons dealers in town for an arms convention in Long Beach. The new administration is trying to smooth ruffled Israeli feathers. Tomorrow night . . . the date circled on the calendar. The plans for that building were copied in the burglary of the maintenance office, and we have chatter of a terrorist incident planned for L.A. this week. She just happens to pick this moment to mention the reception to me. Since HQ was convinced it was Disneyland or the Staples Center, she didn’t think to share the intel with us. How could anyone be so naïve? She doesn’t see a connection, or is she trying to grab the glory?”
He slammed his fist on the table. “I think we have our connection. Matt, get out of here! Get back over to the clinic. I want you on Omar like flies on the stuff she has for brains. I can’t believe this. What is she thinking? Tim, you take over until ERT arrives. Dust everything for prints. I’m more concerned with terrorism than I am a murder. I want everyone who was ever in this room identified. I want every resident interviewed, especially the manager, and I want it yesterday. Time is not on our side. Pete, you come with me. I want LAPD present when I sit down with our people. Besides, I need someone to hold me back. I may fly across that conference table if Clinton pulls another stupid stunt like this one.”
IT WAS THREE O’CLOCK by the time Dwayne and Pete arrived at the FBI offices. They went straight to the eleventh floor SCIF. The Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility was a secure, restricted access room designed to prevent electronic intrusion during discussions of the nation’s most sensitive secrets. As required, Dwayne and Pete placed their cell phones in lockers outside the facility. Inside the ent
ire upper management of the Los Angeles FBI awaited their arrival. Decisions had to be made about how best to handle the information the task force obtained earlier in the afternoon.
Dwayne laid out his reasons for believing the consulate was the target tomorrow night. His argument was compelling. He was articulate and convincing; more important, he made sense.
Jason Barnes, the ADIC, asked numerous probing questions about the investigation to date. He had an excellent grasp of the situation and agreed with Dwayne’s analysis of the facts. Once Barnes expressed his opinion, the rest of management acceded; the consulate was the perfect target. There were only two symbols of the Israeli government in Los Angeles—El-Al Airlines, the Israeli government-run airlines that flew out of LAX, and the Israeli consulate. LAX was targeted twice before—Karim Mohamed Ali Hedayat’s attack on July 4, 2002, killing an El-Al employee and passenger; and Omar Ressam, who was caught at the Canadian border and later admitted to planning the millennium bombing of LAX. What better way to attack the Big Satan and the Little Satan than by killing the vice president of the United States while on a sensitive diplomatic mission at the consulate?
Decisions had to be made regarding the secret meeting that might no longer be a secret. Should it be canceled? Should it be moved? The Israelis have always taken the position their actions would not be dictated by terrorists. Everyone in the room concurred the Israelis would want to hold the meeting as scheduled but increase security to ensure safety.
Barnes said he would notify the consulate and Secret Service. The Service would certainly want to cancel the meeting, but canceling had political ramifications. The vice president was seeking to assure the Israelis the U.S. administration supported Israel. Bowing to terrorist threats would not instill confidence.