by Nick Mariano
While this was going on Howard and the group of agents were watching what transpired via the drone pictures and now began to wonder what the group had finally discovered and just dug up. They could see that the group was getting ready to depart and so they brought the drone back and prepared to begin a vehicle surveillance to see where the group was headed next. At 4:30 PM that Thursday both groups headed back to Wilmington and the next phase of the operation was ready to begin.
CHECKING THE CARGO
When Nazari and his group arrived back at the motel they decided to move the metal box to his room and discuss what their next course of action was. Nazari reread the portion of the diary that talked about the commando team burying a stainless steel container that contained what Himmler himself had described as a super virus capable of killing large numbers of people when it was unleashed on the Americans back in the 1940s. The description of their box seemed to match the diary, a medium sized stainless steel container with four hasps and the Nazi SS emblem on it lid. That is what the group had just dug up and so Nazari thought it was safe to say that some sort of dormant virus was still inside the container. So now the question was how to safely open the container, analyze what they had and see if it was still effective, as Mengele’s notes had indicated. Then the question remained on how to unleash it on the Americans to cause the maximum of damage. Although Nazari and two of his school colleagues had a background in medicine and biophysics he wasn’t sure how they should go about opening and testing the contents. At this point Bob jumped into the conversation and said that one of his ISIS friends in New York City had a background in medicine and chemistry and that he could have him drive down to the motel and see what he could do. This was agreed to and after Bob made his calls he informed the group that his friend would arrive the next day. In the meantime Nazari and the group would see what additional information was available on Mengele and on the Internet regarding the recently released information on his wartime experiments. This might help in planning the next stage of the operation. Right now it appeared that the container was intact, still tightly sealed and movement of the case didn’t result in things rattling around inside.
Just a half a mile down the road the group of Special Agents were also deciding their next move. Obviously the ISIS members had found something after their few days of searching. The big question now was what? Was all this searching part of an ISIS operation or something completely unrelated. The fact that all four people involved were ISIS trained in Syria led Howard to believe that it was part of some future operation. They discussed getting a search and arrest warrant for the group but no one was sure that a federal judge would issue the papers based on what had transpired so far. Was there really reasonable cause for the warrants? After running these questions through the Agent-in-Charge at the Washington Field Office and the DS attorneys, the answer was no. Something more substantial had to be discovered in order to seize the find and temporarily arrest the four-man group. Howard had the Field Office run some inquiries with various intelligence agencies to see if someone could figure out what had just been dug up and if it might be tracked back to ISIS or some other incident overseas. In the meantime the agents decided that they would continue their surveillance and watch what happened in the next few days. They also agreed that if the entire ISIS group left at some point for dinner away from the motel, they would pick the room lock and do a quick search of the room. Under the provisions of the Patriot Act, federal agents could conduct warrantless searches. The "balancing test was a previous case, United States v. U.S. District Court, in which the Supreme Court of the United States established a legal test to determine whether the primary use of the warrantless search was to collect foreign intelligence, as per presidential authority, or whether that primary use is to gather evidence for use in a criminal trial. Since ISIS definitely fell under the foreign intelligence category until such time that they could determine whether a crime had been committed, they agreed that they were OK with searching the room. Now they just had to wait and see if and when the group left their rooms again. Foster was posted outside the motel in an unmarked vehicle and would keep them posted on the group’s comings and goings. It was approaching the dinner hour and Howard and his group waited patiently to see if the ISIS members would leave the motel soon.
THE SEARCH AND MORE QUESTIONS
At around 7:00 pm the four ISIS members exited their motel rooms and left the motel in their SUV. Foster followed them and radioed the agents that they had a departure. Howard and his group sprang into action and headed to the motel equipped with their tools for entering the rooms. There were four different rooms to search and so each agent took one and the first one done with his search would do the remaining room. Foster radioed again and said they group had driven about two miles down the road to a seafood house and he could see them on the outside patio from his observation point. The agents figured they had somewhere between 30-45 minutes to get in and out of the rooms. They could have requested keys from the desk clerk but feared that word would get back to the group that federal agents were checking on them.
Each agent was into the room in a matter of minutes as luckily the motel was old and hadn’t yet converted to electronic keys and so the existing room locks were a piece of cake for the highly trained agents. The motel rooms were small and there weren’t many hiding places in them so the agents figured they could do a fairly quick but thorough search in less than twenty minutes. The first three rooms failed to uncover anything out of the ordinary. Men’s and ladies clothes, an overnight bag with toilet articles and some of the tools and metal detectors that they had seen the group using in their searches.
The last room, Nazari’s, according to their initial police inquiry, also had the same items, however, two items were found in his room that shed some light on the previous days’ searches. A medium sized stainless steel box with four large fasteners was found under his bed. The same box that they had seen from the drone overhead photos that day. Howard slid the box out carefully so not to disturb anything, and saw that the box had oxidized while being buried and that the latches couldn’t be opened without it showing signs of being tampered with. There also appeared to be a Nazi emblem of some sort etched into the lid of the box. Howard pulled out his iPhone and took a number of photos of the box from all angles and then carefully replaced it under the bed, making sure not to leave any signs on the carpet that it had been moved. He continued his search of the room and inside the overnight bag found a book, written in German he thought, with several pages of handwritten entries and some dates. None of the agents spoke German and so Howard began to photograph the individual pages with his iPhone. After he had gotten to about the fourth or fifth page, Foster radioed that the group had left the restaurant and was on their way back. Howard shot one or two more pages and then carefully replaced it in the bag. He doubled checked the room to make sure that nothing looked disturbed and was just like it was when he entered. He quickly departed and rejoined the agents in their vehicles and left the motel just as the other group’s SUV appeared coming into the motel.
The agents reconvened at their motel and Howard went over his find and showed everyone the photos he had taken on his phone. The agents didn’t know what to make of the find as these two items were all that was found. Howard said that he was aware that the Nazis had patrolled the North Carolina coast during the war in their U-boats and that some sub crews had even landed and walked around cities like Wilmington, undetected by the city residents. The first thing that came to everyone’s mind was that it was some sort of buried treasure. Money or gold the Nazis had buried for operatives in the area and that somehow it had not been recovered as planned. No one spoke German so they weren’t sure just what the book was about that he found and had taken photos of. They decided to send the photos to the Agent-in-Charge in Washington and have him get the State Department’s language experts to translate the notes. Howard said the book was fairly thick and that he had managed to only get the first
six pages copied. Perhaps the notes would shed some light about the steel box and it’s contents. Could the agents all be wrong? Was this really an ISIS operation or just a group of kids on some sort of treasure hunt involving Nazi money or gold? They’d just have to wait and see what the notes laid out.
THE CHEMIST ARRIVES
The next day Alim Maloof arrived at the group’s hotel to try to analyze what they had found. Maloof had never attended any ISIS training overseas but was nonetheless a strong sympathizer and had told Bob on more than one occasion that he would help to do anything that would “Fuck the Americans.” He had advanced degrees in medicine and chemistry and was presently employed at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City as one of most respected cancer doctors in the New York area. He had come from Beirut when things started to get shaky there and had settled into the American way of life, however, over the years he had developed a strong dislike for Americans as they tended to look down on him because of his Middle Eastern heritage. This became even more noticeable after the 9/11 attacks on The World Trade Center when the American public looked upon all Middle Easterners as terrorists. He had met Bob through a local Mosque and, after they became friends, Bob had recruited him into the ISIS cause. Because he had never traveled overseas to ISIS training of any kind, he was completely off the grid of American law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Bob greeted Alim at the motel and introduced him to his colleagues. Nazari read excerpts from the Nazi diary and told Alim about the information he had developed on the Internet concerning Mengele’s experiments during the war. He showed Alim the steel box they had recovered the day before and said that he was sure it contained the viruses that were mentioned in both the diary and on the Internet. The big question facing the group now was how to handle the container and its contents and also how to determine if the virus was still potent and could be used for an attack on the Americans. Alim thought things over for a minute and had Nazari tell him more about the information obtained from the Internet concerning the super virus. Nazari told him about an experiment where the Germans were able to combine the flu, plague and rabies virus into a sort of super virus. He told him about some long lost notes on Mengele experiments that he had found during his search of the recently released files. Files also showed that the Germans may have actually deployed the virus to the US, however, nothing afterward in the notes actually revealed if this had ever really happened. He was confident though that this information plus what the diary talked about meant that what they had dug up could be the virus Mengele had written about. Alim finally concluded that if the virus was in fact married to a host as Mengele had described in his notes that it was possible for it to revitalize itself when it was again exposed to air. The outer container appeared to be completely intact and he hoped that the canisters it was holding had also weathered the years as well since this outer shell protected them.
Alim told the group that it was much too dangerous to open the container at the motel and that this had to be done in a very controlled environment. Protective clothing and gear would have to be worn during the process in case the box contained the virus canisters and especially if any of the canisters had leaked. A sort of clean room would have to be built so that the entire process could proceed in a controlled and safe manner. Bob suggested that they move the cargo to an ISIS safe house in upstate New York. He said the house was in a remote area and that a clean room could be fabricated in the basement. He asked Alim to provide him with a list of items needed and he would procure them and have them brought to the NY house. Alim said that if Mengele’s notes were accurate then it was completely possible that the virus was still potent and could be used in an attack on the Americans. He said that they could spread the virus as an aerosol as Mengele had planned or simply infect a number of people and let them spread the virus. He suggested that they try to find a homeless person who they could use to test the virus to see if it still had its potency and was lethal. Bob said he knew a few places near his house where the homeless hung out and that he could snatch one up some night and bring him to the safe house. Alim said he could procure the protective equipment needed at the hospital where he worked and that as soon as the clean room was complete they could open the outer container and begin their experiments. The group decided that they would leave separately, the three students in their SUV, Bob in his car and Alim in a rental car he was using.
While all these discussions were taking place at the motel, the four agents were positioned outside waiting for the group’s next move. Howard was angry that he hadn’t thought about bugging Nazari’s room so that they could overhear any meetings taking place there. A fifth person had appeared that morning and a quick check of the car license plate revealed that he was driving a rental car. They would track his identity down but for now they had no idea who this person was. Howard hoped that he would have another crack at getting into Nazari’s room so that he could copy more pages of the book he had found. He had heard back that morning from Washington and it appeared to be some sort of diary written by a former Waffen-SS commando during World War II. Nothing significant was discovered in the first six pages of the diary other than a lot of bio on its writer. Washington was now checking with German Intelligence to see if they could determine who the person was and what units he had been assigned to in the war.
The ISIS group decided to leave immediately and get started on things. Bob invited the three students to return to New York with him and stay at his house until they made their move to the safe house. They would leave separately and meet up later at Bob’s. Alim would leave alone and head back to NYC and get started procuring what he needed to open the container and test its contents. The group said their temporary goodbyes, said a brief prayer that Allah would help them to be successful and strike a blow to the Americans and then all departed.
Howard and his group were caught temporarily off guard by the group’s sudden departure and they had only brought one car up to the hotel for the start of the day’s surveillance. Suddenly the ISIS members and their new guest got into their cars and headed in three different directions. The agents had no choice but to get back to their hotel as quickly as possible, get their cars and equipment and hope that they could intercept the group on the main highway out of Wilmington. They knew where Bob lived but the other four were what troubled Howard. He had definitely screwed up by not thinking about this possibility. He could only hope that they could get their surveillance going again once everyone was on the road.
LEAVING WILMINGTON
The ISIS group sped out of Wilmington while the agents hustled to get back to their motel, grab their gear and vehicles and try to catch up to them. Just before they left Wilmington, Bob instructed the group to take the back roads for several miles before going back onto the main highways. He said that he thought he had been seeing the same group of men outside their motel over the past several days and that perhaps the group had popped up on some law enforcement agency’s screen and that they might be being surveilled. He wasn’t sure but thought a little precaution was warranted. The group headed off toward the main road from town and then all three groups, using their vehicle GPSs took alternative routes back to New York City.
After about 25 minutes the agents had finally gotten their vehicles loaded, paid their room bills and tried to catch up to the three departed ISIS vehicles. Howard had telephoned the highway patrol and gave them the vehicles descriptions and license plate numbers and asked the patrol to contact him if they spotted any of the vehicles. Under no circumstances were the patrolmen to stop or hinder the vehicles. The agents headed out in their three vehicles and after close to thirty minutes hadn’t heard anything back from the highway patrol. Not a good sign. The agents finally reached the main highway back toward NYC and sped down the parkway in pursuit of the suspect’s vehicles. After over an hour none of the vehicles had been spotted and none of the highway patrol had reported sighting the suspect vehicles. Howard was sure that they had either not headed
back to NY or had taken secondary roads to get back. He wasn’t sure why they would have done the latter unless the agents had been spotted by one of the ISIS group. He had Bob’s home address and hoped that they would be able to resume their surveillance from there, but if the group was headed elsewhere, they were screwed. Something was definitely going on and the fact that the group had done this divergence just confirmed Howard’s fears that some sort of operation or attack was on the horizon.
As they were leaving, Bob checked his rear view mirror again to see if his four new friends were nearby. He spotted the familiar dark colored sedan parked nearby as they departed and then saw the vehicle speed off in another direction. He was sure though that someone was watching them and so he phoned the other two vehicles and instructed the students to head directly to the safe house in upper New York and gave them the coordinates. He said he would also go directly there himself and that they could get what they needed in a nearby town. He told Alim about his suspicions and Alim said that he had rented his car with a forged drivers license and used a stolen Visa card to pay for the rental. He said that he had parked his personal car close to the rental company and that he would abandon the rental and switch back to his car before heading back to NYC. He would also wipe down the vehicle so that his fingerprints wouldn’t be on anything. He was sure that he could evade detection by law enforcement for a day or two and that he would be able to gather all the chem/bio equipment he needed in that time frame. He would take a few sick days from his hospital and no one would be the wiser about him. Alim agreed to met Bob at the safe house in one to two days. They would then get the clean room finished and begin the examination of the box. Alim had already given Bob a list of what he need for the room’s construction and Bob said he would get things started as soon as possible. He asked Alim to send him the room layout and particulars and he could get started getting the room in place. Once that was done and they got the container open, they would determine their next step. They could find some homeless person in one of the neighboring towns and start their experiment. With any luck they could conceivably get their operation going in about a month’s time. Both Bob and Alim were excited about the possibilities this operation could have and the amount of fear and deaths they could inflict on the American public. They knew their ISIS superiors would be delighted when they heard what Bob had to tell them about the operation so far. They just needed to stay undercover so that they weren’t discovered before they could launch the attack.