by Tom Clancy
Aslam was a true believer in America; the country had been very good to him, his wife, and their six daughters. He did not want any trouble, and, more important, he did not want anything to interfere with his new life and promising future.
While he couldn’t prove anything, Aslam thought the men might be criminals—smugglers perhaps—or in the country illegally, and he did not want the authorities to associate him or the store in any way with them. He did not want them coming back. They were driving a dark red Nissan compact car, and Aslam had been careful to record their tag number. After they’d left, he’d called the police and reported the incident to one of two officers who had come to take his statement. Then, thirty minutes later, a man who identified himself as Peter Zarick, an FBI agent, arrived to interview him. He said they would follow up on the tag number and assured him that he would not be associated with them in any way.
“What happens now?” he asked the man before he left.
“My boss will pass this information on to all the other agencies.”
“That’s very good,” said Aslam. “Because I don’t want any trouble for anyone.”
FBI Agent Peter Zarick got in his car and drove away from the 7-Eleven. When he got back to the field office, he’d turn in his 302 report to Meyers, the special agent in charge, who would fax it to Virginia, to the National Counterterrorism Center. The NCTC hosted three daily secure video teleconferences (SVTCs) and maintained constant voice and electronic contact with major intelligence and counterterrorism community players and foreign partners.
Ever since that BOLO (Be On the Lookout) alert had gone out for terrorists in Calexico, and the field office had learned that a fellow agent, Michael Ansara, had been killed, Zarick had been working his tail off, canvassing the area for any leads—and this was the first good one they had. He could barely contain himself when he reached the Field Intelligence Group Office on Aero Drive. He charged out of his car and ran.
DEA Office of Diversion Control
San Diego, California
By two p.m. Moore and Towers had left the hospital and returned to the conference room. Towers was feeling great after having his shoulder and arm treated. The GSW (gunshot wound) had appeared a lot worse than it actually was, and the doctor had spent some time telling Towers just how lucky he’d been, that he could have had a collapsed lung and so on. They wanted to give him a sling, but he’d refused. Moore had been around many operators who’d been shot, and sometimes even the meanest badasses turned into crying thumb-suckers when they were injured, but Towers was a tough and obviously thick-skinned bastard. He’d wanted no sympathy or special treatment, only a chicken sandwich with french fries, so they’d hit the drive-thru of a KFC. Moore had ordered the same, and while they ate, they watched CNN to see if it had picked up anything else on the Rojas story. At the same time, Moore scanned the intel gathered thus far on the hunt for Samad and his group. The trail ended abruptly at the Calexico airport. They’d checked all the records of all the flights from all the airports within the range of a variety of aircraft. It was needle-in-a-haystack time, and as Towers had pointed out, the FAA had docs for only about two-thirds of all small planes. Witnesses were few and far between, and even if the group had been sighted, Moore figured they’d disguised themselves as migrant workers, who were a common sight and always on the move.
Part of Moore wanted to believe that Samad and his group were just sleepers, that their mission was to live secretly in the United States for years until they would be called into action, and that would give him and the Agency the time they needed for the hunt …and the kill. He could reassure himself with that, but in the next thought he’d imagine what they’d been carrying in those rectangular packs: rifles, RPGs, missile launchers, and, God forbid, nukes? Of course, the Agency’s analysts—in conjunction with more than a dozen other agencies, including DHS, NEST (the Nuclear Emergency Support Team), the FBI, and Interpol—were scouring the planet for evidence of recent arms sales, especially between the Taliban in Waziristan and the Pakistan Army. After dozens of false leads, the trail in that regard had gone cold, and Moore suddenly cursed aloud.
“Take it easy, bro,” Towers said. He reached into his breast pocket and produced a plastic prescription bottle. “You want a painkiller?”
Moore just gave him a look.
At about 4:45 p.m., Moore received an e-mail that took him aback. Maqsud Kayani, the commander of that Pakistan patrol boat and nephew of the late Colonel Saadat Khodai, had written to share some important information he’d been given via an ISI agent who’d been a friend of his uncle’s. The ISI had recently questioned a group of Taliban sympathizers up in Waziristan, one of whom revealed that his brother was on some kind of mission in the United States. The more ironic or perhaps fateful part of the e-mail followed:
The brother was in San Diego.
I want you to know that my uncle was a brave man who understood exactly what he was doing, and I’m hoping this information will help you catch the men who murdered him.
Moore shared the e-mail with Towers, who nearly fell out of his chair as he spotted something on his own computer screen. “We got a good lead from the Bureau, right here on the 302. Three guys at a 7-Eleven, all from Pakistan. Guy who reported them was from Pakistan, too. He got a tag number.”
“They run it?”
“Yeah, came from a rental car place near the airport. Guy who took it fits the description of any one of the 7-Eleven guys. Looks like his ID was fake, though, and so was his address—whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on now. Holy shit.”
“What?” Moore demanded.
“Airport security just called. They spotted the car in the cell-phone lot on North Harbor. They have orders not to approach.”
Moore burst to his feet. “Let’s go!”
They were out the door in seconds, practically leaping into their SUV, with Moore at the wheel and Towers on his cell phone, talking to a guy named Meyers at the Bureau who already had his Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) unit en route.
“Tell them to hold back!” hollered Towers. “We don’t want them running. Keep them back!”
Moore had the airport programmed into the windshield-mounted GPS, so the unit began showing and calling out the turns: west on Viewridge toward Balboa, hang a left, get on to I-15, then merge later on with I-8. Freeway driving during rush hour left him white-knuckling his way around slower-moving vehicles. The airport was about fourteen miles away, a twenty-minute drive without traffic, but once they got onto the San Diego Freeway to head south, the ribbons of brake lights and hoods gleaming in the sun stretched to the horizon.
And that’s when Moore took to the shoulder and hauled ass, leaving a cloud of debris in their wake. They rumbled as long as they could over fast-food garbage and pieces of tractor-trailer tires until they were forced to weave back into traffic to make their next exit.
Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
Cell-Phone Waiting Lot
9011 Airport Boulevard
Samad’s mouth had gone dry as they pulled into the lot. He checked his watch: 5:29 p.m. local time. He glanced over to Niazi, seated in the van’s passenger seat. The young man’s eyes grew wider, and he licked his lips like a snow leopard before the kill. Samad craned his head back to Talwar, who had the Anza propped on his shoulder and was praying quietly. The van’s engine thrummed, and Samad tapped a button, lowering his window to breathe in the cooler evening air.
He reached into his pocket and unwrapped a piece of chocolate. He examined it as though it were a precious gem before popping it into his mouth.
The piece of paper lying across his lap, the one Rahmani referred to as the target report, had cell-phone numbers handwritten beside each of the cities:
Los Angeles (LAX)
Flt#: US Airways 2965
Dest: New York, NY (JFK)
Departure: June 6, 5:40 p.m. Pacific Time
Boeing 757, twin-engine jet
202 passengers, 8 crew
San
Diego (SAN)
Flt#: Southwest Airlines SWA1378
Dest: Houston, TX (HOU)
Departure: June 6, 5:41 p.m. Pacific Time
Boeing 737-700, twin-engine jet
149 passengers, 6 crew
Phoenix (PHX)
Flt#: US Airways 155
Dest: Minneapolis, MN (MSP)
Departure: June 6, 6:44 p.m. Mountain Time
Boeing 767-400ER
304 passengers, 10 crew
Tucson (TUS)
Flt#: Southwest Airlines SWA694
Dest: Chicago, IL (MDW)
Departure: June 6, 6:45 p.m. Mountain Time
Boeing 737-300, twin-engine jet
150 passengers, 8 crew
El Paso (ELP)
Flt#: Continental 545
Dest: Boston, MA (BOS)
Departure: June 6, 7:41 p.m. Central Time
Boeing 737-300
150 passengers, 8 crew
San Antonio (SAT)
Flt#: SkyWest Airlines OO5429
Dest: Los Angeles, CA (LAX)
Departure: June 6, 7:40 p.m. Central Time
Canadian CRJ900LR, twin-jet (tail)
76 passengers, 4 crew
The planes would be lifting off within minutes of one another, and all of Samad’s crews had finished checking in to say that their equipment was ready and that all of their flights were running on time, despite some earlier concerns about summer storms. Samad no longer had any uncertainties. He’d realized that even if he gave up, walked away, guided by the guilt imposed upon him by the memory of his dead father, that Talwar and Niazi would go on without him, that the others would go on without him. There was no stopping the jihad. He would die a fool and a coward. Thus before leaving for the mission, he had lit a match and had burned the photograph of his father, had left the ashes in the bathroom sink. They said their afternoon prayer, and then Samad had driven away from the apartment with narrow eyes and a clenched fist.
An airport police car cruised through the lot, the officers searching for unattended vehicles. Samad lifted his cell phone and pretended to speak. As he’d seen before, the other drivers were entirely consumed by their electronic devices, and there was an eerie calm that settled over the lot, broken momentarily by the next flight thundering on by.
5:36 p.m.
Samad brought up the iPhone app as their secondary source of identifying their target plane. He’d come to discover there was a thirty-second delay in the information the app gave him, but that didn’t matter. All Talwar needed to do was sight the target, and the missile would do the rest.
5:37 p.m.
The seconds were minutes, the minutes hours, as his pulse began to race. The sky had turned a bluish yellow, streaked by beams of the setting sun, with only a few finger clouds to the east. They would have a spectacular and unobstructed view of the launch.
His phone vibrated. And there they were: the text-message reports from their team inside the airport.
US Airways Flight 155
Phoenix to Minneapolis
6:42 p.m. Mountain Time
At the age of sixteen, Dan Burleson had soloed in a Cessna 150 over Modesto, California. He was flying planes before he had a driver’s license. He’d saved all of his lawn-cutting money for two years to take flying lessons. He’d grown up in the Salinas Valley and had been mesmerized by the crop-duster pilots swooping down to deliver their cargo. He knew that’s what he wanted to do. For the next three decades he pursued his passion for flying, spraying cotton fields in Georgia, serving as an airborne traffic reporter in Florida, and flying banking cargo and medical specimens out of the Southeast. He piloted single-engine planes, Cessna 210 Centurions, and twin-engine cargo planes, Beechcraft Baron 58s. He’d experienced every conceivable equipment failure imaginable, flying on one engine and nearly crashing when his plane was flipped over during a storm. He could hear the rivets popping and felt certain he was going to die.
All of which was to say that Mr. Dan Burleson was not your average commercial airline passenger. He had a keen interest in what was happening in the cockpit and could tell you when the pilots were switching command to the flight computer to literally take over the plane during the climb out to altitude. The pilot would input turns and altitude directions via keyboard tabulation or by rotating a dial to the direction desired. For example, Airport Traffic Control might call with “Delta 1234, turn right to 180 degrees.” The pilot would rotate a dial on the FMS (Flight Management System) to 180, and the plane would start turning in that direction to meet that instruction received from ATC while the plane was being controlled by the FMS computer. Every time he flew, Dan would sit there imagining what was happening in the cockpit. Call it force of habit.
On this particular evening, he was seated in 21J, the exit row, with the window at his right shoulder. At over six-feet-five and three hundred pounds, he never had much choice in seat selection. Exit row was the name of the game. He was on his way to Minneapolis for a weeklong fishing trip with two high school buddies who promised him trophy-sized smallmouth bass. The wife had given Dan the okay, and his grown son, who’d been invited, had been forced to work instead.
They were taxiing along toward the runway, and Dan leaned back and glanced across the aisle: a college-aged girl was reading a textbook with the word Aesthetics in the title, and beside her, a dark-skinned young man, perhaps Indian or Middle Eastern, sat quietly, his head lowered, his eyes closed. He looked scared. Pussy.
“Please slide your tray tables to their upright position …”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dan said with a groan.
San Diego International Airport (SAN)
Cell-Phone Waiting Lot
North Harbor Drive
The fifty-space San Park cell-phone lot was located across a tree-lined drive from the Coast Guard Station’s main gate and its rows of tiled-roof buildings. The lot was a rectangular strip of pavement with a single row of angled parking spaces set along tall rows of shrubs and a chain-link fence, beyond which stood hangars and other airport service facilities.
“Meyers split up his people. He’s got six across the street at the Coast Guard Station, and he’s got another four getting up on the roofs of the hangars to the north,” said Towers. “The red Nissan is parked at the far end, south side. We’re the team moving in.”
“Not you, just me,” said Moore, pulling into the lot and taking the nearest spot to their right beside a yellow Park-n-Ride van with dark tinted windows.
“I’m good,” argued Towers. “I’m coming.”
Moore winced. “You’re the boss, boss.” He unzipped his jacket so he’d have quick access to his shoulder holster, then hustled out of the SUV, keeping close to the shrubs, Towers tight to his shadow. A few SWAT team operators crawled catlike up the backside of the Coast Guard Station’s roof. Moore caught movement up on the roofs of the hangars to their right, and for just a second he saw a head pop up, then vanish. These SWAT unit guys were hard-core assaulters, breachers, and sniper/observers, outfitted for war with Kevlar helmets, goggles, bulletproof vests, MOLLE (Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment) gear buckling with attached equipment pouches, and H&K MP5 submachine guns—the standard-issue rifles for everyone but the snipers, who fielded the Precision Arms .308-caliber sniper rifle. One of Moore’s buddies from SEAL Team 8 had left the Navy to become an FBI SWAT team member, and he’d schooled Moore in their weapons, tactics, techniques, and procedures. He’d even tried to recruit Moore, who at the time was being heavily courted by the CIA. The point was, Moore felt comfortable supported by these determined and highly trained operators.
The sign posted at the lot’s entrance warned of a one-hour time limit and that vehicles must remain running—this to discourage long-term parking and loitering, and to create a sense of urgency in drivers all paying exorbitant fuel prices.
Consequently, as Moore and Towers approached the brick-red Nissan Versa, he saw immediately that the car was empty, its engine off. His shoulders shrank. Th
e men hurried forward, and in frustration Moore rapped a fist on the driver’s-side window.
Two SWAT team operators, along with a third man, middle-aged, gray sideburns, came around the corner and jogged toward them. The only tactical gear this older man wore was a vest and a helmet.
“Towers? Moore?” he called. “I’m Meyers. We empty here or what?”
Moore whirled around, studying the lot, his gaze panning the long row of cars and empty spaces, like ones and zeros, bits and bytes. Why would these guys leave a car in the cell-phone lot? Were they coming back for it within the hour? Were they concerned that they’d get towed? Where were they now?
He was just checking his watch, 5:42 p.m., when the back door of the yellow Park-n-Ride van beside their SUV slammed open, and out stepped a man wearing jeans, a plaid shirt, and a black balaclava concealing his face. He was shouldering a missile launcher.
Two more similarly dressed men burst out behind him, carrying machine guns.
The launcher guy rushed back toward Harbor Drive, positioning himself between the street and a tree to his left. He lifted his weapon into the air—
And there it was, his target, a Southwest twin-engine jet roaring into the sky, its blue-and-red fuselage glinting as the landing gear began folding away.
Moore observed this in the span of two breaths before he screamed, “The van!”