Max picked up one of the drones and activated its control panel then moved through several of its configurable options.
Levi asked Abdul to put one of the drones through its paces. Jamal was right. The drones were just simple machines, running over, around, and through obstacles.
“These will be flying no more than six or ten feet from the ground to navigate the obstacle course,” Jamal said. “They have a max battery life of fifteen minutes. It usually takes ten for an unskilled operator to go through the course. Our volunteers will be with each operator the whole time. Only three will be active at a time. Three will be in charging stations. And the last three will be queued up for play. I don’t see how this can be hijacked for any evil intent.”
“Unless somehow a different drone is added to the mix,” Levi said.
Levi met up with Max across the street of the house rented by the skinheads who’d showed up on Abdul’s database. The lot was in an unincorporated area of town, a few square miles that showed it couldn’t decide what it wanted to be—industrial, residential, or ranch. It was scrappy and best seen from a moving vehicle.
The half-acre the little farmhouse was on had a steel frame warehouse in a back corner. Cars were parked haphazardly on the lot, which was crowded with piles of discarded metal parts and weeds. No one stood guard, not even a dog. Clearly, they weren’t expecting the company that was about to rain down on them.
Max pulled a flamethrower rig out of one of his saddlebags and handed it to Levi. “This is yours.”
“So when you mentioned flamethrowers this morning, it was a literal kinda thing, huh?”
Max laughed. “Maybe.” He pulled an HK G36 out of the other bag and slipped it over his shoulder. “And this is mine. I’ll take the lead on this.”
“Go for it, G.I. Joe.”
“Hey, at least I get to be a man. You’re just a frog.” He tilted his head as he looked at Levi. “You know, you missed out. You should have joined the Red Team.”
Levi chuckled. “Really? Guess if you thought you could have made it as a SEAL, you woulda gone that direction. Shoulda coulda woulda, huh, Max?”
Max shook his head. “Fuck. Me.” He flipped his cuts to patch-side out then started toward the house.
Levi could see movement in the house. Max never knocked on the door; he just kicked it open and walked right in. He caught the first kid who came in an arm’s reach and lifted him off the ground by his neck. The kid was shorter and skinnier than Max, no match at all for the Red Teamer’s bulk and meanness.
“Which one of you’s the boss?” Max snarled. The kid getting his neck stretched pointed to another kid sitting on someone’s old porch sofa. Max dropped him and took two steps toward their leader before a couple of very brave or very stoned kids moved into his path.
The kid he’d just discarded got a look at Max’s cuts. “Jesus, Carl. He’s WKB,” he announced to the others.
Levi saw the tension blow across their features. He took up a position near the hall where he could see all threats. Max glared at the two kids who thought to block him. Faster than Levi expected, Max caught the sides of their heads and smashed them together, then shoved them out of the way. The leader still kept his seat on the cruddy sofa.
Max kicked his knee. “Stand in the presence of your betters, Carl.”
The boy slowly stood. His face was twisted in an expression that was half way between hate and fear. Levi wondered if he’d pissed himself. Maybe that was just the stink of the couch.
“My boss got word you’re neck deep in a planned hit,” Max said.
The kid sneered. “I don’t work for your boss.”
“You call yourself skinheads, boy. So, yeah, you do work for him. He’s got the corner on this market.” Max kicked the coffee table over, pouring the short streaks of white powder on the filthy carpet. “And what the fuck’s with this snow? We move heroin.”
“It ain’t nothin’,” the kid Max had first accosted said. “The hit, I mean. Just taking care of some stinking Muslims. World’s a better place without them.”
“Shut up, Alex,” one of the other guys admonished the chatty guy.
“Be that as it may,” Max said, lowering his voice to a menacing growl, “our kind don’t need the extra scrutiny right now. We’ve got bigger things in play. Your small time shenanigans is a distraction.”
“Small time,” the leader, Carl, scoffed. “We’re gonna make a big impression.” He fisted his hands near his head, then popped them open and made an explosive sound. “Believe me, because of us, the stinking rugheads are going to be run out of the country.”
Max laughed, then wrapped an arm around the leader’s neck and turned him to face Levi. He rubbed a knuckle over the guy’s head. “Cute, isn’t he? I love baby skinheads. They think they can fart in public and make a difference in our cause.”
“We aren’t farting.” The kid struggled against Max’s hold, but his arm only tightened around his neck. “We gotta plan to take out a few thousand Muslims and their sympathizers. You know they got a fucking bitch at the fair talking about saving women? That’s bullshit. She’s going down, too.”
Max shoved him away. “You know what I got? I got clearance to burn this shack down.” He grinned and looked at Levi, who fired up the flamethrower. “With all of you in it.” He nodded toward Levi, who started to torch the wood slats that framed out the narrow entryway.
“Stop! Stop!” the leader shouted. “Jesus! We’re on the same side.” A couple of the guys rushed to put the fire out.
“If we were on the same side, I wouldn’t have been sent down here to level this place.” He leaned close to the leader. “You wanna run with the big dogs, you better know your place in the pack. You don’t make your own plays. Tell me what you got planned. I’ll relay it to the boss. Maybe you’ll live to ruin another of my days.”
“We’re gonna blow them up,” the leader said.
“Who?”
“Everyone at the county fair. A couple hundred thousand go through the fair over the weekend. We can take out at least ten thousand of them.”
Max frowned. “Who put this bee in your boxers?”
“We got hit by a worm,” Carl said. “Went through all our computers. Locked them up for a week. It said we were Muslim terrorists.” His eyes narrowed. “I know who did it, too—a kid at school. One of our own’s in the same computer class. Abdul Baqri was bragging about his code, laughing at how it would identify all of us as terrorists. Well, that turd’s going down.”
“So you’re fucking over all of your brothers because a kid tripped you at school?” Max asked.
“It wasn’t just him. We hacked his worm. That man-hating bitch, Zaida Hussan, started it to call us all out. We got a plan to take out both of them, all while turning the entire community—the whole goddamned country—against the fucking rugheads.”
“Big words for a baby-skinhead,” Max said. “How’re you gonna do it?”
“Abdul’s running a booth for drones to rent out. While all those drones are flying around, we’ll bring in a dozen of our own, loaded with claymores ready to blow…right when the bitch is lecturing us all about love and acceptance and women’s rights. People will remember Abdul and his friends were in charge of the drones. They’ll check him out and see all the jihadist crap on his Facebook. They’ll know who did this. It’s beautiful.”
“It’s stupid,” Max scoffed. “Guess you’re itching to visit Guantanamo.”
“I gotta right to be heard,” Carl said.
“You gotta right to die, too,” Max snapped. “I’ll let you know what the boss says.”
“You can kill me,” the kid scoffed. “You can kill all of us. Don’t matter to me—we’re soldiers for the cause. Won’t stop the ball we’ve started rolling.”
Max turned to Levi and started for the door. “Let’s go. We’re done here.”
“No, we’re not,” Levi countered. “These wet-nosed boys think they can A) build their own drones capable of deliver
ing a payload, and B) build their own bombs. You bought their bullshit. The boss ain’t gonna like that.”
“I didn’t say we can do it,” the group’s leader interjected. “I said we had done it.”
Levi ignored him. “If we leave without seeing their little science experiment, the boss is gonna get riled up for nothing. You know how he is when he’s fired up.”
Max sighed. “We’d just be wasting our time. They got nothing to show for all their big talk.”
“That’s right,” the leader said, approaching them. “We don’t have anything to show you. Words don’t make us big players. Actions do. We have an opportunity, and we’re taking it. After we’ve made a name for ourselves, we can talk again.”
Max shook his head. “All ops go through the biggest player in the area. Our White Kingdom Brotherhood president.”
“He’s not my president,” Carl said.
Max caught his shirt and twisted it as he lifted him close to his face. “There’s a lot of big fish in this pond. You ain’t one of them. You’re not even pond scum. If your little stunt brings fire down on the club, you can kiss your skinny ass goodbye.”
Carl held his hands up and backed away when Max released him. “Shock and awe…that’s all I’m sayin’.”
Max looked around the group of bullyboys whose masks of belligerence were a poor cover for their fear. He pointed a finger at each of them and said, “If you’re wasting my time, one of you will be sacrificed and taken up to the White Kingdom Brotherhood with me. Decide now who that will be.”
“Show them, Carl,” Alex said. “Show them it ain’t just talk.”
Max looked at the kids’ leader impatiently.
Carl’s eyes narrowed. “Fine. We’ll show you.”
He led the group outside. Levi thought they’d go for their vehicles, but they just walked around behind their little shack and went into that steel farm building. Carl went in first and flipped the lights. The place was much more squared away than their house. Four folding tables had been pushed together. On them were twelve drones.
“We built these from schema we found online for delivery drones,” Carl said. “They’re capable of carrying a ten pound payload. All you do is put in the coordinates where you want the package delivered. The drones drop their payload and return to their point of origin. Right now the drones’ power systems can only fuel them for fifteen minutes, so we have to be within a seven-minute radius of our hit zone.” He shrugged. “We have a lot of options in that range where we can set up without incurring much attention.”
“So walk us through your pyrotechnics,” Levi said. “We both have military experience. We’ll let you know how viable they are. You don’t want to screw something like this up. And while your professors might have classes on robotics, I doubt they cover bomb making.”
The boys shared looks among themselves, then Carl gave a nod toward one of the boys. In a separate corner of the building, an assembly line was set up that included gun powder, prepared shrapnel, wire, large funnel cups, blast caps, cheap cell phones, and the other bits and pieces needed to make remote-controlled claymores.
Briefly, it stole Levi’s breath. All he saw laid out on that table was human blood…Muslim, Christian, male, female…it all ran red.
Levi hit Max’s chest. “Boss ain’t gonna like this. These baby skinheads don’t have the money to buy a pot to piss in. Where’d they get the money for an op like this? Not to mention the technical expertise.”
“Good points.” Max pivoted to glare at Carl.
“They’re partnering up with someone,” Levi said.
Max’s eyes narrowed. “Here we go again. You’re out there making associations without permission. What do you know about the people you’re hooking up with? Maybe they’re cops.”
Carl laughed. “They’re not cops. They got an ax to grind, like we do. Enemy of my enemy is my friend, you know.”
“Who are they?” Max asked.
“Don’t matter. The deal’s done. We got the bombs. We get the glory.”
“I want a demo,” Levi said. “Show me one of your drones delivering a box. No need to explode it. Just deliver it.”
“You still don’t believe me,” Carl said.
Levi slowly smiled. “I’m prepared to be wowed.”
The group spilled out of the workshop. Levi and Max walked a good distance away from it. One of the boys loaded the drone with an empty box, then sent it flying around the property once, twice.
Levi heard Max say something and wondered if he was wearing a comm unit. The kid running the drone brought it down low enough to release the box at Levi’s shoulders. If those claymores exploded at chest height in a crowd, they’d spread death and destruction more than twenty feet around. With twelve of these drones flying in low, hundreds of people would be taken out.
All hell broke loose around the field before that box even hit the ground. SWAT vehicles, cop cars, and a bomb disposal unit swarmed over the property. A few of the boys tried to take off, but the K-9 units took them down swiftly. When the cops didn’t take Max or Levi down, Carl complained, “You said you were WKB.”
Max grinned. “I did. I lied. Got this vest from evidence lockup.”
In almost no time, the whole site was locked down. The bomb squad shut down a wide perimeter, keeping curious onlookers from getting too close. Max and Levi watched from across the street.
Max looked over at Levi, then huffed an exasperated sigh. “We got ‘em. Why don’t you look happier?”
“Because we didn’t get them. You saw the drones kids with comparable skills built in the university labs. They were constructed out of scrap parts and had no payload capabilities. These drones were professionally manufactured. Who paid for them? Not these kids—you saw the flophouse conditions they were living in. Never mind all that gunpowder and the claymore components. Someone’s funding them. These kids aren’t the ones who cut off Mike Folsom’s head. And they weren’t the ones who tried to take Zaida from her apartment. These are just stupid kids who got tripped up by their hatred. They aren’t the end of this. You heard what they said about ‘an enemy of my enemy’. They’re working with Tahrir al-Sham. I’ll bet my left testicle.”
Max grunted.
“Maybe they tried to leverage these kids—either as a distraction so we’d think we found our bad actors and quit looking,” Levi said. “Or maybe they hoped these kids could pull off the hit and they wouldn’t have to get their hands dirty. But now that these guys are out of operation, they still have a hit to make.”
“All right. So we start over,” Max said. “It’s going to take time for the Tahrir al-Sham crew to get their shit together after this. They may not be able to recover as quickly as you might think.”
“Well, we already know they can source small, payload-carrying drones,” Levi said. “And they know how to build the bombs the drones will carry.” He shook his head. “We still have a rogue cell to identify, find, and take down. And only hours to do it.”
He called Lambert. “Go, Levi,” the commander said.
Levi gave him an update on the situation. “I need someone to dig into these kids’ finances and contacts pronto. Someone was funding them. I’ll get with Jack to see if his crew can find out if any large gunpowder sales have been made within a hundred mile radius of the fair. Or maybe back in Michigan, where you think this cell came from.”
“I’ll call Owen and buy some of Greer’s time for that background search,” Lambert said. “You’ve cut this threat in half. That’s progress.”
“Not enough,” Levi growled. “The fair starts tomorrow afternoon.”
“Keep me posted,” the commander said before he hung up.
Jack came over. “You guys don’t look as pleased as I’d expect you to be.”
“We’ve only taken half the threat down,” Levi said. “We’ve got to find the Tahrir al-Sham players, and we’re running out of time.”
“An APB has been issued for all the men we think are in the
cell,” Jack said. “Their photos have gone out to all hotels, motels, B&Bs, RV parks, campgrounds, and short-term rental houses. We’re going to find them.”
“I hope they don’t run to ground,” Levi said. “They have to know these kids are going to give them up pretty easily.”
“We’ll find them,” Jack said. “And we’ll get this locked down.” He left to go talk to a couple of his agents.
“Hey, I’m going to take off,” Max said. “I’m staying at Kelan’s. I want to dig into a few things. I’ll head out with you in the morning.”
They hooked arms and shared a fast hug. “Thanks. I really appreciate everything,” Levi said.
16
Zaida was with Ace and Selena in her living room when Levi got to her apartment. All three women stood. All three looked as exhausted as he felt. Zaida didn’t approach him. She just stood there as if glued to the spot, her hands clenched.
Levi nodded at Ace and Selena. “Thanks for keeping her safe today.”
“It’s what we do,” Selena said. “We good for the night?”
“Yeah,” Levi said. “We head out in the morning by eight a.m.”
“We’re bunking at Kelan’s,” Ace said. “We’ll be here in the morning.”
Selena gave Zaida a nod. “Holler if you need us. Otherwise, see you tomorrow.”
The women let themselves out. He and Zaida exchanged wary glances. “You okay?” he asked.
Her hands were clasped in front of her. “I’m scared for tomorrow. I can’t not be there.”
Levi went over to her. He gripped her shoulders. “We’ll have to make that call tomorrow. It starts late in the afternoon.”
“And what if this isn’t resolved in time? What if Abdul and I abandon our booths, then something really does happen? Everyone will think we had advanced knowledge that we didn’t share with them. We will still be blamed for what happens.”
Freedom Code Page 17