The Lost Codex (OPSIG Team Black Series Book 3)

by Alan Jacobson

  “The higher profile the attack, the greater the recognition. When ISIL beheaded James Foley, the media played along and gave them what they craved: attention, a world stage. Everyone suddenly knew who Islamic State was, even if they didn’t follow the news. That’s what al Humat is now after: a way to quickly grow its profile.”

  “Al Humat is not nearly as well funded as ISIL,” Uzi said, “because it’s not trying to establish a nation-state and it hasn’t assembled a traditional army that can capture strategic resources, like banks and oil fields. But al Humat has no shortage of allies among fellow Islamic groups and Middle Eastern countries. And it’s got more than enough money to accomplish its goals.”

  “Richard,” Nunn said. “The Pentagon’s plan?”

  McNamara tugged on his tie knot. “We’re ready to mobilize when and if you give the word, Mr. President. This threat has the potential to move beyond anything we’ve seen. We need to prepare for everything. And the only way you do that is to take a cold, steely, hard look at it. Make an objective assessment. And get ready.”

  “I agree,” Uzi said.

  Shepard nodded.

  Nunn pursed his lips. He considered the defense secretary’s remarks a moment, then said, “I don’t want to overreact here. We need to be measured in our response. Creating a panic in cities across the country will serve no one.”

  Vail felt her lips moving before she could take a split second to filter her thoughts. “No offense, Mr. President. But I think blowing up a Metro station already did that. In essence, by striking our nation’s capital and killing innocent civilians, al Humat has declared war on the United States.”

  There was silence. No one made eye contact with Vail—or acknowledged her statement—until Knox cleared his throat and said, “Agent Vail.” He gave her a look that she could best interpret as, keep your mouth shut.

  Nunn, apparently recognizing that her comment demanded a response, leaned forward, his brow hard. “I do not believe, Agent Vail, that anyone has taken responsibility for the attack. Am I wrong?”

  Vail shot a quick glance at Knox. Does he expect me to ignore a direct question? “No sir. At least, not directly. But Kadir Abu Sahmoud said—”

  “Exactly. For now, we monitor and plan.” Nunn turned to Knox. “Douglas, the FBI will remain vigilant in its investigation and counterterrorism activities. Richard, the Pentagon will prepare a response plan if and when a response becomes necessary. Key targets, buildings, infrastructure. You know the drill.”

  “Yes sir,” McNamara said. “But if it is al Humat, we’re talking about hitting Gaza. And we know the quagmire Israel waded into when it—”

  “If it is al Humat,” Nunn said, before pausing, “if that’s where they’re located, if that’s where this Sahmoud character is located, that’s what we’ll go after. You have a problem with that?”

  “No sir.”

  “Good. We’ll cross that bridge when the time comes. If it comes. For now, we operate defensively.” Nunn glanced around, a cursory acknowledgment of the attendees, then said, “Thank you all for your diligence. Keep my office apprised of any developments.”

  Vail rose from her chair, confused over the president’s passive posture regarding al Humat. After the next attack—wherever and whenever that was—he would have to alter his approach. Unfortunately, she had a feeling that time would come sooner rather than later.

  15

  As they filed out of the conference room, Knox pulled Uzi, Vail, and DeSantos aside.

  “I know we’ve opened this thing up,” he said as he led them down an empty corridor. There were numerous doors with biometric locks, but all were closed and no one was within earshot. “You’ll be working this case on two levels: first, as terrorism task force members. Second, as off-book OPSIG operators.”

  “How can we do that?” Vail asked.

  Knox nodded, as if acknowledging the issue. “I didn’t say it was going to be easy. I just said this is how you’re going to operate. You’ll know when you have to change hats.”

  Change hats?

  “Hector will guide you. He’s adept at navigating the world of covert ops.”

  They turned to DeSantos, whose face was impassive.

  “Hot Rod will be providing support and join you when necessary. But I want this to be a four-man team and Fahad will be your fourth team member.”

  Uzi’s Adam’s apple rose and fell conspicuously.

  Hold it together, Uzi.

  Knox stuck his chin out and studied Uzi’s face. “Can you do that?”

  Uzi swallowed again. A fine line of perspiration had broken out across his forehead. Knox had spent his career reading—and manipulating—people. Surely he was aware of how this would affect Uzi. Was he purposely spiting Uzi for some reason? Or did he truly feel Fahad would be an important contributor to the team?

  In her dealings with Knox, he never struck her as the type of individual who would jeopardize an operator’s mission with petty maneuvers. He was calculating and shadowy and powerful and his motives were not always clear, but he was very bright and he understood human nature. The trust he built was based on mutual trust.

  Or fear and leverage.

  Uzi took a breath and shrugged. “Yes sir. No worries.”

  Knox studied his face with a squinty eye. “Well, there will be worries. But if you tell me you can manage this, I’ll take you at your word.”

  With that, he turned and left them standing in the corridor.

  VAIL WALKED WITH UZI AND DeSANTOS out to Uzi’s car. As soon as the doors closed, Uzi’s gaze settled on Mahmoud El-Fahad as he exited the NCTC.

  “Boychick, you really have to learn to play well with others.”

  “Do I have to remind you that my wife and daughter were murdered by a Palestinian?”

  “A Palestinian terrorist, Uzi,” Vail said. “You have to make the distinction.”

  “I know.” He grasped the back of his neck. “I know. But …”

  “When you lived in Israel, did you have any Palestinian friends?”

  The question seemed to jolt Uzi. He sat up straight. “Of course. Good, hardworking people who just wanted to live their lives. Pawns in a political chess match.”

  Vail lifted her brow. “Then what’s the problem?”

  Uzi looked out the window and watched as Fahad shook hands with Douglas Knox. “Palestinians are indoctrinated at a young age. Some of it’s subtle, some of it’s blatant—like their school textbooks. Filled with anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric, denying Israel’s right to exist, presenting the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as a religious battle for Islam—a jihad for Allah, a struggle between Muslims and their enemies. Not to mention the oldie but goodie: the Holocaust never happened.”

  “Not a recipe for a peaceful coexistence,” DeSantos said. “I’ll give you that.”

  “That’s not the point. I mean, it is—but this stuff, it’s very powerful when you’re fed this bullshit at a young age. Look at ISIL—they’ve done it on a mass scale and turned normal youths into violent, brainwashed jihadists that chop off innocent people’s heads. It’s a very powerful tactic, imprinted in the brain, incorporated into your belief system, your moral base.”

  “Of course,” Vail said. She could tell Uzi was struggling with this. There was something he wanted to say, but he could not bring himself to come out with it. “But that’s got nothing to do with this mission.”

  Uzi craned his neck back and stared at the car’s ceiling. “Fahad is the right age to have been brainwashed by that crap. He grew up under Arafat’s rule. The textbooks are a little better now—which is to say they were that much worse back then. How—how can I trust Fahad? On a mission like this, it’s all about trust. You have to be able to rely on your colleagues implicitly. You can’t be charging ahead on a frontal assault while also watching your back. That’s what your team members
do.” He turned to DeSantos. “Santa, tell her.”

  “She knows. We went through this in London.”

  Vail leaned away and appraised Uzi. “You should’ve told Knox you’ve got a problem.”

  “Knox? He knows all this. And yet he put Fahad on our team.”

  “So then he’s convinced Fahad won’t be a problem.”

  “Or his skill set and knowledge are so important that he’s willing to take the risk. Positives outweigh the negatives.”

  “Let Hector bring it up. Knox trusts him.”

  “Happy to do it,” DeSantos said.

  Uzi chuckled. “Not sure Knox trusts anyone. You know?”

  Vail placed a hand on Uzi’s shoulder. “No. Just the opposite. I think he trusts us implicitly. He may not give you that impression, but deep down, I really think he does.”

  “He’s got our backs,” DeSantos said. “But you haven’t known him as long as I have. Even if you’re not sold on the trust question, you know he cares deeply about his baby. He created OPSIG.”

  “Hector’s his best operative,” Vail said. “He wouldn’t be reckless in risking his life if he had doubts about Fahad.”

  “You think he considers me his best operative?”

  Vail elbowed him in the side.

  Uzi took a deep, uneven breath. “Okay. But just remember that even the great Douglas Knox isn’t perfect. He makes mistakes like the rest of us.”

  “And if he’s wrong about Fahad …” DeSantos shrugged. “Well, we’ll just have to fix it.”

  16

  Uzi walked into his office and found Hoshi at her desk, an Excel document crammed with tips, thoughts, and suppositions plastered across her spacious LCD screen.

  “How’s it going?”

  Hoshi leaned back and appraised her spreadsheet. “We’ve got a lot of busy work going on. Not sure any of it will lead anywhere.”

  “So a typical day at the office.”

  “A typical day following a terrorist suicide attack. Yeah.”

  He glanced around, determined no one was nearby, and said, “I want you to check something out for me. Discreetly. Shep can’t know.”

  Hoshi frowned. “Another one of these, ‘you can get into major trouble but I’m asking you to do it anyway’ type things?”

  “No. But Shep won’t be happy. Knox won’t be happy, either.”

  “So a typical day at the office.”

  Uzi had to laugh. “Are you implying that I’ve asked you to do things like this before?”

  “You know I can’t say no to you. What do you need?”

  “There’s an operative with the Agency. Mahmoud El-Fahad. I need whatever you’ve got on the guy. Classified stuff, shit that’s buried behind walls.”

  Hoshi lowered her voice. “You’re asking me to hack classified databases and you don’t think that’d bring major trouble if anyone found out?”

  “It sounded a bit better when I said it, didn’t it?”

  “Just a bit. And what do you suspect? You think the guy’s a mole?”

  “No.” Uzi rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know. I guess I just want to make sure he’s legit, that he can be trusted. He’s Palestinian and Batula Hakim was—”

  “It’s time you let go of that.”

  Uzi stared at her. Was she right? What was the right amount of time to let something like the brutal murder of your wife and daughter fester? Was there a right amount of time? Of course not. But there was a normal amount of time. There had to be. If his favorite shrink was still around, he could ask him. But he was not—and Uzi was never one for psychoanalysis, anyway. What he had with Leonard Rudnick was special, a onetime thing. So for now, he would go with his intuition. And at the moment, he felt like he needed to dot all his i’s, to make sure everything was as it was supposed to be. Then he could relax.

  “Okay.”

  “What?” He realized he’d been staring at the far wall.

  “I said okay, I’ll dig around. You need anything else? You were kind of spacing out.”

  “That’s it. I’ll be in my office if you find anything.”

  UZI SETTLED INTO HIS CHAIR and pulled out his Lumia. He put it in encrypted mode and dialed. Gideon Aksel answered.

  “I need you to look into something for me.”

  Aksel laughed. “I don’t work for you. In fact, you used to work for me, remember?”

  Uzi buried his face in his right hand. “How could I forget?”

  “What is this favor? Which, by the way, will be the second one you’ve asked for in, what, twenty-four hours?”

  Uzi ignored the dig, massaged his eyes. “I need whatever you’ve got on Mahmoud El-Fahad.”

  “Name is familiar. Should I know him?”

  “As director general of Mossad, I really hope not, Gideon.”

  Aksel was quiet a long second, then said, “I’ll see if there’s anything to find.”

  17

  Eastern Market was dominated by a block-long nineteenth-century Neo-Renaissance brick building that sat a quarter mile from the seat of US government. A hundred years ago, it was considered the unofficial town center of Capitol Hill.

  Ten feet from the edifice and running its entire length sat a permanent green corrugated metal roofed pavilion where vendors sold their wares, sheltered from the sun and rain. People milled about: men, women, and children, couples young and old purchasing fresh fish and meat, baked goods and various kinds of cheese.

  But in the mall’s administrative office in a corner of the far-flung facility, things were not as lively: an array of black-and-white security cameras displaying various angles of the retailers’ stalls and cafés stared back at Omar Jafar. Jafar reclined in his creaky chair and watched the activity on his monitors.

  The job was generally tedious, the most excitement coming from an occasional shoplifter or the equally random elderly individual suffering a heart attack. The majority of the time, he passed his shift watching hordes of people pass the prying eyes of his lenses buying merchandise, eating food, and drinking coffee, beer, or wine.

  Jafar leaned forward, the back of his chair springing up and snapping against his torso. He tilted his head and spied a male dressed in a black hoodie carrying a backpack and moving through the crowd, which, in and of itself was not unusual. But the man’s demeanor, the wandering nature of his gait, told Jafar that something might not be right. After the mysterious explosion at the Metro station, he had been warned by his boss to keep an extra vigilant eye on customers exhibiting suspicious behavior.

  Jafar studied the screen: the “person of interest” was about five foot nine with a dark complexion. Thin, no distinguishable marks that he could see. Watching the man move from one monitor to another as he made his way through the market, Jafar thought back to his security guard training. What information did the police want? Physical description and his reason for suspecting the individual of foul play.

  Jafar grabbed his two-way radio and headed out of his office, walking briskly toward the location of his target. He did not want to call the police yet, not until he had a better indication that something was really wrong.

  As he approached the two large doors that formed the main entrance to the building, he saw his suspect thirty feet ahead. The man stopped to talk to one of the vendors, then pulled a large brown paper bag from his backpack just as Jafar heard a loud crashing noise off to his right.

  Smashing glass—crumpling metal—revving truck engine—

  Patrons yelling, diving to the side as an armored vehicle blasted through the doors he had just passed, coming to rest inside the market’s entrance.

  “What the f—”

  Jafar reached for his radio and fumbled for the dial when automatic gunfire burst out. People screamed as bodies fell—

  A man’s guttural proclamation of “Allahu akbar!” snagged his att
ention. Jafar swung his head left and saw a masked male wearing military-style gear running toward him, spraying the area with high-powered rounds from some kind of machine gun.

  Jafar pushed between a woman and a child and dove to the floor. He clapped both hands over his head and hid—until a massive explosion turned everything black.

  18

  Vail and Robby walked into Foggy Bottom’s Burger Tap & Shake at Pennsylvania Avenue and 23rd Street.

  They stood in the back, away from the line, looking over the menu that featured a description of the restaurant’s meat: “Throughout the day, we grind on premises a custom blend of three-day aged, naturally raised local harvest beef chuck and brisket.”

  “My taste buds are moaning,” she said, then noticed Robby was looking at her. “No comment please. I’m just plain hungry, okay?” She glanced at her watch. “Where the hell is Jonathan?”

  “Late.”

  She took Robby’s hand and squeezed it. “Thanks again for getting us Prati. Still a lot we don’t know. But the stuff we do know … it’s just kind of depressing.”

  The door opened and Jonathan walked in with rumpled clothing and mussed hair.

  “This is how you show up for lunch with me and Robby?”

  “I was still sleeping when you called,” Jonathan said, bumping a fist with Robby. “Late night.”

  “Oh yeah?” Robby asked.

  “It’s Saturday, I knew I could sleep in.”

  Vail frowned. “One advantage of you going to school so close to home is that we can get together once in a while.”

  “Some might call that a disadvantage,” Jonathan said, his slight chuckle suggesting he was only half joking.

  Robby gave him a disapproving shake of the head.

  “Just kidding. It’s definitely nice to be able to see you guys.”

  “As long as it doesn’t interfere with your college experience.”

  Jonathan tilted his head. “Well, yeah.”

  They ordered at the counter and found a booth, then waited for their food to come.