Friendly Fire

by John Gilstrap

  “The congressman?”

  “The very one,” Jonathan said. “Now, what’s the tie to al-Amin?”

  Konan pointed to the meandering trail through the woods. “Let’s keep moving,” he said. “I don’t like standing still when I talk about this.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around,” Jonathan quipped, recalling his stroll through DC with Wolverine.

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Jonathan glanced over his shoulder to make sure they were alone.

  “The connections are all fuzzy, and they’re not pointing in an identifiable direction yet. But if you close one eye and look at them is just a certain way, you can talk yourself into seeing something pretty scary.” He looked to Jonathan for a reaction.

  “You’re not really going to make me ask, are you?”

  “Fine,” Konan joked. “Ruin the fun. Now, I caution you that I have analysts working for me who would argue I’m wrong—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.”

  “It’s important,” Konan insisted. “Given the stakes, it needs to be clear where the space is that separates fact from supposition.”

  Jonathan decided to let him run. It seemed like the fastest route to the punch line.

  “There’s been chatter,” Konan said. “Not much that could be considered actionable, but it’s interesting nonetheless. For years, we’ve dealt with fundamentalists from the Sandbox and the ’Stans who dream of bringing the fight to the Great Satan on our own turf, but we’ve done a pretty good job of keeping a cap on the crazies. When al Qaeda or ISIL start to reorganize, we’re pretty good at finding the leadership and droning the shit out of them. Those efforts have kept the worst of the terror threat fenced in between the big oceans.

  “Al-Amin, from what we can tell, is a Western Hemisphere offshoot. Our borders are so porous that the bad guys don’t even have to fake a passport anymore to get in. They just walk. Or ride, or take a boat. My guys estimate that as much as fifty percent are miscreants of one form or another, and that a solid twelve percent are either terrorists or wannabes.”

  “I’ve heard there are over five hundred known terrorist cells within the US,” Jonathan said.

  “That’s a low number. Within a two-hour drive of this park, I could show you two al Qaeda cells and three Hezbollah cells. The Fibbies try to watch them and eavesdrop on them, but there are limits to their resources.”

  Jonathan said, “I know plenty of people who think those known cells are just noise to distract us from the real threats that we don’t yet know about.”

  “And I agree with them,” Konan said. “If there’s anything that I lose sleep over, it’s all the splinter pop-ups that we won’t know about until they open up on a county fair or a shopping mall. I wonder sometimes if ISIL deliberately fat-fingers their cyber security so that we can keep such good tabs on them. That’s how we’ve stopped their much-hyped intention to spill blood on American soil.”

  Their path through the woods ended on the edge of a baseball diamond where some local kids were engaged in what appeared to be a pickup game. Their ages ran from ten to thirteen, and they seemed to be having a good time. Jonathan and Konan stayed on the far side of the outfield fence as they continued to stroll. Jonathan didn’t think any of the kids had enough ass to hit a home run, but he kept an eye on the action anyway.

  “So, how does al-Amin fit in?” Jonathan asked.

  “We don’t know yet,” Konan said. “Not exactly, anyway. They’re definitely the new kid on the block, but they’re learning from the mistakes of the big boys. Their Internet footprint is virtually zero, and they’ve learned to communicate mostly via burner phones. They make two, maybe three calls per phone before they toss them. They’ve got a good technical guy on their side, because they’ve actually figured out how to mask their phones’ locations, so even when they do dial in, the cell towers are confused.”

  “What’s their mission?”

  “We don’t really know that, either,” Konan said. “I know you’re tired of hearing that, but I’m just being honest. The evidence you bring today confirms that high-profile kidnappings are on the list, but to what end?”

  “I know at least one well-placed source who thinks that the end is to raise money and awareness,” Jonathan said.

  “But to what end? Money is a tool for something else. That’s what we need to know. Once they have the money and publicity, what are they going to do with it?”

  “I presume they’ll take it on a jihading spree,” Jonathan said.

  “Well, there’s another thing.” Konan had dropped his tone five decibels and had stopped walking.

  Jonathan leaned in to hear.

  “My team isn’t convinced that al-Amin is Islamist. We’ve heard no serious mention of them from any of our known sources. And these are talkative sources.”

  “Who, then?” Jonathan asked, and as Konan opened his mouth to answer, he beat him to the punch. “You’re not sure.”

  “Bingo.”

  Jonathan smiled. “You’ve kept my interest by guessing so far. Keep going.”

  “Take those guys you killed at the motel,” Konan said. “They were as American as you and me. They were also homicidal nutcases who hired out to the highest bidders. Certainly there was no Internet radicalization. God, I hate that phrase. We know of no connection to al-Amin beyond a single phone contact two months ago.”

  “A call from a known burner?”

  “Exactly. The content of the call wasn’t much—in fact they spoke in codes, numbers instead of letters. My bosses didn’t think it was high profile enough to put a team of decoders on it, but from the duration, I imagine it was some kind of directions.”

  “Why were you watching the guys from the motel in the first place?”

  Konan waved him off. “We weren’t,” he said. “It was the fact of the phone call that put them on our radar. It wasn’t until we floated that data back upstream that we identified Muhammed and Kamta and Amal. Those were their names, by the way.”

  “I didn’t need to know that,” Jonathan said. What difference would it make to know the names of someone he’d been forced to kill?

  “Hereinafter known as Motel Guys, then,” Konan said. “They likewise used a burner phone, but they made the mistake of a, not turning it off before they burned it, and b, throwing it in the trashcan behind the apartment building where they lived. We looked into them and found out that they had done some work for the Agency in the past, and frankly that cut them a little bit of slack. We didn’t let them off the hook, but we didn’t watch them as closely as we probably should have.” Interpreting Jonathan’s look of horror for what it was, he added, “Limited resources, Dig. My three letters of the alphabet don’t have a lot of ground pounders to depend on. Those come from other alphabet agencies, and they all have their own priorities. Shit happens, dude.”

  Jonathan turned and started walking back toward the woods and their vehicles beyond. “So until their names ended up in the news after our unpleasantness at the motel—”

  “We had no idea where they’d evaporated to.”

  Jonathan gave a bitter chuckle. “My God, if Middle America had any clue how screwed up the government really is—”

  “Maybe they’d pay more attention to issues at the ballot box, and less on slogans and handouts,” Konan said, finishing Jonathan’s sentence for him. “And no, I’m not the least bit insulted by your indictment of my work.”

  “Anytime.”

  “But all of this brings me to a new development that I bet you will find interesting. The al-Amin network—if that’s what you could actually call it—has come alive in the last couple of days. They seem to think that they’ve been made, and that they are under attack. This is particularly interesting because we still have no idea who they really are. But in their swirl of communications, we picked up what we think is a reference to four operatives being killed. Four, not three. Do you have any idea who the fourth one might be?”

&nb
sp; Jonathan felt his heart rate quicken. “I think I might, yes.”

  Konan’s features darkened. “Don’t you dare play coy with me. I just committed half a dozen felonies by telling you what I have.”

  While Jonathan despised showing any of his cards, Konan had earned a right to see this one. “There’s a John Doe in the morgue in Braddock County,” he said. “I happen to know that Mr. Doe’s real name was James Stepahin, and don’t ask me how or why I know this, but he used to be a freelancer for a different part of the alphabet.”

  “CIA?”

  “I neither confirm nor deny. And don’t bother checking because you’ll only get frustrated. Believe me or don’t, but I know what I’m talking about.” Jonathan couldn’t imagine a circumstance where he would betray Wolverine’s confidence.

  “Now that’s interesting,” Konan said. “How did he die?”

  “Murdered in a parking lot. By a coffee shop barista.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “It’s a long story. What’s the chatter saying?”

  “They think they’re under assault. I suspect they’re going to the mattresses, as it were.”

  Jonathan caught the reference to Mob-speak for preparing for a siege. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “Not necessarily. If they drive themselves too far underground, we’ll lose them completely. We do know that they continue to recruit, but their model is far less based on jihadist principles than it is on wreaking havoc and getting revenge.”

  “Revenge for what?”

  “That’s the brilliance of their model,” Konan said. As they crossed back into the cover of the foliage, tension visibly drained from his shoulders. “It’s not a focused anger, but rather an all-purpose anger. Against cops, against politicians, against your next door neighbor.”

  “It’s an anarchy site, then.”

  Konan weighed the word. “I suppose. I prefer revenge.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” Jonathan said, thinking aloud.

  “Think about it,” Konan pressed. “I mean, if you can attack all the underpinnings of what Middle America finds to be a source of comfort, you create terror in the most literal meaning of the word.”

  “And we can’t get ahead of it,” Jonathan said.

  “That would seem to be the case,” Konan agreed. “Certainly, people like me continue to get paychecks because of the anticipation of terror, and contractors make shit pots of money, but after trillions of dollars spent since nine-eleven, I can’t testify that we’re demonstrably safer than we were on nine-ten.”

  It was a depressing reality that everyone in the Community accepted as fact.

  “And you know what scares the living shit out of me?” Konan asked.

  Jonathan waited for it.

  “It will take only one hardcore, seriously coordinated hit to send the country into a panic. I think the American psyche is that unprepared for another attack.”

  Jonathan sensed so much negative energy emanating from his old friend that he offered a softer version of the truth. “You know, it’s not like we’ve accomplished nothing. We’ve reunited tens of thousands of bad guys with their maker. At seventy-two apiece, the price of virgins must be skyrocketing.”

  “For every one we kill, another ten step up to take their place. The bad news is, it’s not just Muslims anymore.”

  Now that was a point to which Jonathan could personally testify. “Are you always this upbeat and cheerful?” he quipped.

  “Nah,” Konan said with a laugh. “Sometimes I get a little down. Especially around the holidays.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Pam Hastings recognized the expression in Jed Hackner’s face the instant she saw it. The best label she could conjure was annoyance. “I’m not building a defense strategy for your newest pet prisoner,” he said.

  Pam ignored his words and helped herself to the chair in front of his desk. “You’re going to thank me for this,” she said.

  “Is it about Ethan Falk?”

  “It is. But—”

  “I don’t want to hear it. Not unless it makes our case stronger.”

  “How about if I can help you close a triple homicide?” She’d been preparing for that line, and it launched and landed exactly as she’d hoped.

  “I don’t remember a triple homicide,” Hackner said, but she’d clearly piqued his curiosity.

  “That’s because it was outside of Ashland, Ohio.”

  “Get out of my office.” Hackner dipped his head to return to his paperwork.

  “It happened eleven years ago.” Pam put a singsongy lilt into her voice. Unspoken temptation.

  “And?”

  “And it’s still an open, unsolved case.” The hook hadn’t sunk yet, but she could see him sniffing at it.

  “I thought Ethan Falk said he was kidnapped from someplace in upstate New York.”

  “Geneseo.”

  “I don’t care. What does Gen-whatever in New York have to do with Pikeville, Ohio?”

  “Ashland.”

  “I don’t care about that either. What’s the connection?”

  “The connection is three bodies, all shot at close range with two-two-three caliber bullets, plus signs of explosive entry.”

  Hackner put his pen down and shifted back in his seat. He was a trim man, but his ancient chair creaked anyway. “That’s what Ethan described.”

  “Exactly. But there’s more. When the Ashland detectives did their investigation, they found what they called a dungeon in a space under the basement. It showed signs of having been occupied.”

  “What kind of signs?”

  “That’s where the reports get fuzzy,” Pam said. “Much of the record has been sealed.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s part of the fuzziness. I don’t know.”

  “Was it part of a court order?”

  “More fuzz.”

  “Well, dammit, Hastings, there’s nothing there to work with.”

  “Not true,” Pam said, and she opened her binder to a bookmarked page. “I have the name of the investigating officer. He’s still in Ohio.”

  “Have you talked with him?”

  “I tried. But he hung up on me.”

  “Why?” Hackner blushed as he realized the stupidity of his question. “Hard to find out after a guy hangs up.”

  “Yeah, kind of.”

  “Have you tried again?”

  “I want to talk to him in person,” Pam said. “I’m more persuasive eye-to-eye.”

  Hackner’s eyes narrowed. “You want me to give you permission to go to Ohio, don’t you? You want me to help you spring your sociology experiment.”

  “I want you to help me solve a case,” she insisted.

  “For the good people of Ashford, Ohio.”

  “Ashland.”

  “I still don’t care.”

  “Come on, Lieutenant. Don’t you—”

  “Go.”

  Pam paused, feeling a little stunned. “Excuse me?”

  “It’s only one word, Detective. Go. It means git. Run away. Call if you need to shoot anyone.”

  She saw the smile as he spoke, and knew better than to sell to the sold. “Thank you,” she said.

  “You’re still here.” Jed Hackner returned to his paperwork.

  * * *

  Twenty-seven days, four hours, and thirty-seven minutes. Calendar days, mind you, not work days. When the clock turned that many times, Cletus Bankstrom would be a man of leisure and luxury. On that day, at that time, he would have been an employee of Braddock County for exactly thirty years, and that meant he would no longer be an employee at all. Retirement, baby. And not a retirement where he had to pay himself out of his own savings—though he’d done a pretty good job stuffing cash away over the years. Instead, because he was damned old, he qualified for the county’s old-school pension. The one where they owed him a fat check every month for the rest of his life, no matter how much money he had in the bank. If he closed his eyes, he could
already see the boat in the lake, feel the weight of the fishing pole in his hands as the water gently rocked him to the purest form of peace there was.

  The county had exactly that much time to find and train his replacement, or the police department’s property room would have to live without a manager. He’d heard of guys who punch out of a career only to return as a “consultant” to help with “transitions” and other such bullshit business speak, but that wasn’t him. When Cletus was out, he was out. It had been a good run, but he was done.

  His wife told him that he would miss the people when he left, but he wasn’t so sure. The guys were nice enough—and Chief Michaels was a man that Cletus admired—but as a civilian employee, he could never enjoy full status in the cop club. No one was rude to him—at least not per se—but he sensed a silent disdain for the work he did. And the rules he had to follow.

  Cletus was the guy who had to tell ate-up young, studly, world-saving rookie cops that they were allowed exactly four magazines for their duty weapons, and that for a new one to be issued, an old one needed to be turned in. The same was true of ASPs, nightsticks, MagLites and holsters. And shirts and vests, and, and, and . . . Yes, he got that the sworn officers were risking their lives every day out on the streets, but let’s be honest: Braddock County wasn’t exactly the Bronx. It wasn’t even DC or Baltimore. Sure, they had their crime, but the way some of these younger cops wanted to kit up, you’d think they were in Baghdad.

  And if you wanted to know Cletus’s thoughts on things, that was exactly the problem: More than a few of the kids had in fact served in Baghdad. And Kabul and God knew how many other damned scary places. They were so used to getting shot at that they prepared for a new firefight every day.

  But as luck would have it, no one in fact did want his views, so he largely kept them to himself, and counted the days.

  He’d be lying, though, if he said he didn’t enjoy handling some of the toys he got to play with. Cletus figured there was a little boy inside every man—didn’t matter how old he was—and every little boy liked to play with rifles and pistols and bullets and ballistic armor. Plus, there were the electronics, everything from listening devices to night vision to their most recent acquisition: their own fleet of three drones that no one yet knew how to fly. The Department of Homeland Security had been most benevolent these past few years, throwing so much money at police departments that it was darned near impossible to spend it all.