***
Larbi approached the narrow pathway as the man stopped at the other side. He needed to meet him on the pathway. His plan was to fall into the man, making him drop his camera bag over the ledge while saving him. The camera would be lost but all the man would care about was that he had survived. However, he needed the man on the pathway for that to work.
He pushed himself up against the side of the hill, as far from the ledge as possible and began to edge across slowly, trying to show genuine fear of the drop just a yard or two in front of him. Larbi slowed almost to a stop as the man seemed totally entranced by whatever he was looking at on his camera. Eventually, he put it away and walked towards Larbi, only far quicker than before. Larbi was going to have to time his maneuver perfectly, just in case anyone was watching.
The man drew alongside him and smiled. Larbi feigned a slip and fell forward into the man, grabbing out for him as the man fell towards the ledge and the five hundred foot drop.
***
Gary felt the weight of the man against him as his footing gave way. The ledge loomed and he felt sure the man was reaching for him but he continued to fall. Gary felt a weight pull against him and realized it was the shoulder strap of his camera bag. The leather strap stretched and strained but the weight exerted against it was too much and it gave way.
Gary reached out but it was too late.
***
Larbi watched the man plummet to his death. He was certain that from the landing on the jagged rocks below there was no chance the man had survived but he had to be sure. From five hundred feet up, it was too far to be certain. He unzipped the camera bag and used the camera’s zoom lens to check. He decided against taking a picture; the sight was too gruesome to be seen again. The man was most definitely dead.
Whether Larbi had saved the camera or the man was irrelevant. He had to protect Nick Geller. Seeing the recognition on the man’s face of whatever he had seen on the camera was what had resulted in the camera being saved and the man dying.
Larbi grabbed some loose twigs and spent a few minutes wiping away any sign of his footprints. If they did have anyone check the scene, only one set of footprints would show up. A tragic accident would be recorded.
Unfortunately Larbi was not aware of how advanced modern cameras were. If he had been, he may have noticed, on the camera’s viewfinder, a bar on the upper right of the screen showing the upload progress to Gary Truman’s Blipfoto account.
Chapter 63
NCTC
Frankie produced a sheet of paper, placed it on Turner’s desk and beckoned for Reid to join them.
“Remember Nick’s French bank account?”
“Monsieur Jacques Guillon, I don’t think I’ll ever forget that name,” said Reid.
“I’ve been going through the detail of all his transactio—”
“Dead end,” Turner cut in.
“Maybe not,” said Frankie.
“He’s never going to use that account again, he knows it’s burnt,” agreed Reid.
“Not the account but what about the cash he withdrew?” she said teasingly.
“Unless the French have developed some super GPS impregnated paper that we know nothing about, how in the hell do we track cash?” asked Turner.
“It’s what he bought with the cash that we can track,” she said triumphantly pointing to the sheet of paper on the desk.
“What’s that?” asked Reid looking at an array of numerals written across the page.
Turner stared at the page before recognizing what they represented. “Are those credit card details?”
“Yep,” announced Frankie, struggling to hide her excitement. “Pre-paid credit cards.”
“But there must be millions of them, tens of millions,” said Reid, wondering how that could help them.
“I know. I thought they held about a hundred bucks maybe five hundred max but no, you can put thousands on them, a few even take fifteen thousand dollars and that was the breakthrough.”
Both Turner and Reid stared at the numbers on the sheet as Frankie talked. There were four card numbers, one with a tick at the end.
“The transaction history for the account was either ten or fifteen thousand dollar transactions at each location. Not all at once but when you add them up, they’re always around that amount. I had a chat with some of the specialists at Treasury and they told me about these high value pre-paid cards.”
“And this one with the tick?” asked Turner.
“The proof. Transactions on the Guillon account amounted to fifteen thousand dollars in the Chicago area where a pre-paid card was loaded with the same amount. That card was purchased in Chicago at around the same time and that card has just recently been used in Algiers.”
“Nick Geller was in Algiers! He took those cell phones in Algiers a couple of weeks ago!” said Reid excitedly.
“Wait,” cautioned Frankie, “I’ve checked. Nick didn’t use the card. I It was used by a pilot who is known to the authorities as a smuggler. They have his image from the aircraft leasing company where he just put down a payment on a plane he needs to rent.”
“Because we blew the shit out of his in the desert in Sudan, I’ll bet!” Turner chuckled.
“Which means that even though he knows we know about the account, he thinks the prepaid cards are still safe,” said Reid, looking at the other three card details. “Do you think that’s all there are?”
“No, but this was just taking two locations. Two of these are probably innocent or, according to my friends at Treasury, not Nick. As far as they’re concerned, anyone with a pre-paid card with fifteen grand is trying to hide something. But anyway, not many people have the cards loaded to the max and if we tie withdrawal locations to the dates, we just need to find how many pre-paid cards were loaded to the max in that area and get the numbers from the companies.”
“Have we asked the Algerians to pick up the pilot?” asked Reid.
“No, I thought if we did, Nick might guess that we know about the cards,” replied Frankie.
Both Turner and Reid nodded their agreement and admiration. Turner picked up a marker and walked over to his empty white board and wrote four words: ‘Pre paid credit cards.’
“Special Agent Reid, I think we have a lead,” he announced. “Great work, Frankie!”
“Thank Harry,” she said. “He told me to follow the cash!”
Turner didn’t know why but Harry’s involvement somehow soured what had been a very good moment, probably not helped by the fact that every time Harry was involved in anything, it was very seldom what it appeared to be at face value.
Chapter 64
St Albans City
Vermont
Mary Williams had to negotiate through a line of shoppers to make her way back out to the parking lot. She usually only needed a few hours’ sleep and so found being at the store at 5:30 a.m. no great hardship. She secured a good position in the growing queue for the 7:00 a.m. opening. She had argued with her mother against the need to stock up but had eventually caved. The government would protect them and ensure they were looked after but in the meantime, she just wanted some peace and quiet at home.
With the shopping secured, the next task was to fill up with gas, which fortunately proved far easier than the food shopping, although Mary couldn’t help but notice that the price had increased by nearly twenty cents a gallon. A letter would have to be sent to Exxon. Profiteering during a crisis was un-American and unbecoming of any US company. She expected that type of behavior from BP but certainly not from Exxon. She filed the receipt and would match it with the one she had from just three weeks earlier as evidence of her complaint.
By 8:15 a.m., Mary was back at the small home she shared with her mother and had done since her birth sixty-two years earlier. She unpacked her shopping. Everything had a place and there was a place for everything. That was her motto.
Her mother sat and watched. She had learned many years earlier to let Mary do it herself. Helping just le
d to huffs and puffs and ultimately Mary reorganizing it all anyway. Her daughter liked things in the right place. By the time Mary had turned sixteen, her mother had known she was going to be stuck with her. There wasn’t a man on the planet who would put up with her. She was, as much as it pained her mother to say, a person only a mother could love.
At 8:22 a.m., Mary fed her two cats. They purred at receiving the food, not at Mary; even they struggled to love the woman. At exactly 8:24 a.m., she kissed her mother goodbye and got behind the wheel of her Ford Focus. She purchased the same car, brand new every year, always American made and built. Just like everything in their lives had to be. Mary believed in her country and appreciated just how important it was to support the nation’s industries, to the extent that she insisted on paying full list price. She had served her country for over forty years and was proud to be a member of the government’s civil service.
Mary hung a left on South Main Street and journeyed the one mile to work in approximately two minutes and thirty seconds, give or take ten seconds. Mary’s short commute ensured her yearly car purchase generated significant interest in her trade-in. Had it not been for the fact that the car was a year old on the license documents, nobody would ever have believed it. The salesmen even joked that it was cleaner when it came back a year later than it was when it had gone out brand new.
Mary drew to a stop outside the two-story redbrick United States Post Office and Custom House and parked beneath the flag of the United States of America that proudly flew on the flagpole just outside. She walked through the right hand archway and entered the door marked ‘US Passport Agency’ at precisely 8:29. This was her domain. Mary was at her desk as the clock on the wall clicked to 8:30 exactly.
A number of her fellow agency officers were still engaged in conversation but when the clock hit 8:30, Mary was already processing her first application. She was a machine. Her job was to process applications and that was exactly what Mary did, with meticulous efficiency. If Mary rejected an application, it was often checked surreptitiously by another officer who, in the interests of customer service, would dot an ‘i’ or change a check to a cross. Despite this, Mary processed more applications than any other agent in the history of the office. Her daily total seldom changed. She was paid to do a job for her country and she did exactly that, to the best of her abilities, every single day.
At 9:30 a.m., a parcel arrived for Mary. She never received personal mail at work, unlike her colleagues who were constantly receiving parcels from Amazon or any number of mail order companies. This parcel was special and one she had been waiting for a number of months. A code on the top right corner of the parcel identified that this was a parcel that required special attention.
Mary relocated to the meeting room, something that she usually did when handling sensitive or high profile applications. Her colleagues wished she worked on sensitive and high profile applications permanently. Mary’s constant hushing of her colleagues when they tried to engage in general conversation throughout the day was tiresome and a cause for regular complaint. They were pleased to see her and her parcel disappear into the room.
Mary cut the parcel tape carefully and withdrew the pile of applications for US passports. They all needed to be expedited and sent overseas. Sorting the applications into alphabetical order, she was surprised at the number of them. Her first estimate was over four hundred. It was more than had been suggested at the meeting she had had a number of months earlier but she had a job to do and Mary Williams was not going to let her country down.
Mary had been selected as a member of the top-secret elite in the Passport Agency. Her diligence and hard work for her country had been recognized at the highest levels. Promotions had passed her by because patriots like Mary were needed on the frontline to protect the country. She had never been more proud. Her country needed her. Her skills would help protect the nation. She had been approached by a man from the government at her home several months earlier. He was the Under Secretary of State responsible for a special division of the Diplomatic Security Service, the agency responsible for passport security. He asked her to sign a top secret clearance agreement prior to their conversation, thereby securing her absolute discretion about the processing of passports which he might require her to issue at some point in the future. They would be issued to individuals who would be working to protect America in the fight against terror and having them issued at the regional offices, rather than head office, added a level of legitimacy that ensured even greater protection for the men and women who spent every minute of their lives in danger to protect the American people.
***
Nick Geller had selected Mary Williams carefully, just as he had selected similar candidates at the twenty-four other branches of the US Passport Agency. His disguise was worthy of Hollywood. He had transformed himself into a sixty-year-old man, the stereotypical WASP, dressed head to toe immaculately in Brooks Brothers. His air of authority had added greatly to the pretense. He looked exactly as you would have expected a very senior member of the State Department to look. The chauffeured Executive Town Car that waited for him outside each house, added further to the charade. Each of his candidates was a loner, each one was a patriot and each one would do whatever they could for their country. Each one would remain true to their promise to keep their work for Nick a secret. Each one could issue legitimate US passports for his army. All he needed to provide were the names and photos.
With his own exclusive US passport agency, Nick felt sure that his plan would go without a hitch. The consequence of any recruit discussing their actions would be treated as treason, punishable by execution. All he had to do now was the small matter of arranging transport for over ten thousand soldiers.
Chapter 65
Nick unlocked the door to his domain. His office was in a villa that nobody was allowed to enter. He had made it abundantly clear to all within the confines of the grounds that to do so would be construed as an attempt to retrieve information about the plan. The only reason this would be done would be to foil the plan and so anyone who entered the office would be shot as a traitor. The threat was all encompassing. Nobody, not even Walid or Larbi, was exempt from the threat.
Compartmentalization was key to the security of the plan. If nobody knew all the details, no matter what, no one could stop the plan. Even if ten percent of his men made it to America, the devastation they could cause would be overwhelming. In theory, they only needed one man infected with Ebola to cause chaos. Ten percent would still be over one thousand warriors. Although Nick had no intention for all of his warriors to be infected, a small portion would carry the virus while the vast majority would terrorize the civilian population, taking the fight to the streets of every major city and town in the continental US. The scenes of death and violence that had plagued their TVs from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan over the years were about to get local.
Nick sat at his desk and pulled the map of the US from under the paperwork. A number of crosses marked the locations of weapons depots that he had arranged over the last year. The crosses were located close to the major airport hubs that served the continental US. The volume of guns, ammunition and explosives in each depot would more than satisfy the needs of his ten thousand plus warriors. He pulled out the corresponding flight timetables. Hundreds of flights from across Europe and the Middle East fed into the airports. Getting the men in place was not going to be a problem. Nick even had the benefit of choosing almost exclusively from American airline companies - United, Delta, American or US Airways. With his men carrying US passports, their passage would be even easier, particularly when they landed in the US.
Across the villa complex, Nick had a number of individuals arranging travel. They were working independently and were separately housed. They were each given lists of bookings but were unaware of any of the other lists. Again, a threat had been made. Any attempt to discuss or find out what others were doing would be for no other reason than to scupper the plan. As a result
, they all remained quiet and did as they were asked. They spent their days booking individual flights and preparing instructions for over ten thousand men. Only Nick knew who was on which flight and where each man would depart from and the time at which they would arrive.
Travel plans were only required for fighters and infectors. The infectors were the Ebola carriers and the fighters were the jihadists who would take the fight to the streets of America. The infectors’ job was far simpler. They would infect hundreds of people on the plane so a large part of their job would already have been done. However, once they landed, they were to visit as many mass population facilities as possible and to draw little attention to themselves. They were to visit shopping malls, train stations, subways, churches, wherever they could go to spread their germs to the maximum number of Americans.
The fighters’ tasks were a little more complex. Nick wanted them to form fifty-man strong teams. Each team would have a number of key targets to hit in their assigned geographical area. The destruction of hospitals, schools and transport hubs were to be their top priorities, along with the elimination of any law enforcement establishments. Nick planned to have almost two hundred of these teams striking at exactly the same time across America. It was no small task but with months of preparation behind him, it was a simply a case of putting the plan into operation.
The passports were on their way. The tickets were almost all booked and the instructions for each man were ready to go. The final instructions would only be available to them on their arrival in America. Each man would receive a cell phone with his passport. His instructions would be sent by SMS on his arrival in the US. The most any one individual could compromise would be one fifty-man team or one flight, of which there were potentially hundreds.
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