The Secret Corps

by Peter Telep

  “We’re not sure. We just can’t find him.”

  “Well, I hope you do. You’ll keep me posted?”

  Lindquist sighed. “We sure will. Anyway, you take care now. Good hunting.”

  Johnny thumbed off the phone. He remembered to breathe.

  * * *

  “There they are,” said Corey, lowering his binoculars. “Let’s get back.”

  As Johnny and Josh pulled into Blue Door’s parking lot, Corey and Willie jogged through the woods, trailing banners of warm breath. Corey’s hometown of Girard was about six hours northwest of Warminster, hence he was intimately familiar with winters in this part of the country. In fact, his bones told him it was getting colder. They reached the SUV in the warehouse lot and punched on the heater the second they climbed inside.

  “All I can say is, this guy had better show up,” said Willie, shivering and putting his hand up to the vent, waiting for the heat as he drove them out of the lot.

  Corey did likewise and said, “It was good times, bro.”

  “Tell that to my back, my shoulders, and my damned foot where I got shot. Soon as I get that coffee, I need to pop my meds. Don’t let me forget.”

  Corey smiled. “Roger that, Grandpa.”

  “Hey, you’ll be there. And I’ll be there to laugh.”

  “You know it. So Lindsey sounded good this morning. Better than yesterday.”

  “Ivonne’s happy to get away from the house.”

  “Some place warmer, right? And hey, I didn’t realize it, but they know pretty much everything.”

  Willie shrugged. “Johnny told Elina, and I’m sure Jada got the run down from Josh. I think they’re keeping it from Johnny’s nieces.”

  “That’s a good idea. Those girls are going through a lot already.” Corey took a deep breath, and, realizing he was running out of time, he spoke quickly, “You’d do anything for Johnny, wouldn’t you.”

  “Hey, I was the skeptic here.”

  “And now?”

  Willie grinned crookedly. “Dude, we’ve already crossed phase line green, just like the good old days. Might as well see it through.”

  Corey thought about that, then asked, “You worried about getting caught?”

  “By the police? Not so much. By them? That’s another story. I like to know the size and composition of my enemy before I attack, you know?”

  “That’s why I brought this up. I have some news. Thought I’d wait to tell everybody, but I’ll let you know first. I got a text back from our boy at the FMS.”

  “And?”

  “And he tracked down a broker in Peru. He says Blue Door is selling rifles to the local police in Lima, and they’re trying to get involved with the Peruvian National Police. The interior minister is on another big push to modernize their forces, and they’re hiring guys left and right and upgrading their gear. The key international sales guy from Blue Door is this Egyptian-American dude named Sameh Ismail. We need to get more intel on him. There’s no obvious link to Shammas, but he could be using another alias. First the EXSA link to Peru, and now this. Our boy Shammas has his hands on firearms and explosives being smuggled in and out of that country.”

  “And you boys already confirmed that the stuff comes up through Colombia and works its way here,” Willie added.

  Corey nodded. “Like you said, the more we learn, the bigger it gets and the more we have to hold back. We’re talking about international drug smuggling and gun running, a major operation for the Feds. And we’re just sitting on it.”

  “I wouldn’t feel too guilty. I’m sure they got a finger on it already. Or at least part of it And what the hell? I thought you were Mr. Go-With-The-Flow?”

  “I still am. And I’m no pussy. Let’s just say I’m... concerned.”

  “Hey, we all are. Better to shoot the rabbit than go down his hole.”

  Corey snorted. “Tell that to the tunnel rats. Oh, that’s us.”

  “Hey, I will say this. I know Johnny. He won’t sit on this forever. We’ve always done the right thing.” Willie faced Corey, and his tone hardened. “For now, we do what he says. We stay on the train.”

  They pulled up beside Johnny’s SUV and wrapped their greedy paws around their breakfast. Corey had never eaten two muffins and a bagel so fast. The coffee tasted like steaming heaven. Between bites, he updated Johnny, and then Willie took them to the front of the parking lot. If anyone tried to pull a Dale Earnhardt and burn rubber for the exit, they would be there for a T-boning interception.

  * * *

  By 1000 Corey had finished his coffee and his mouth had returned to cotton. They kept low, peering through their sunglasses at the front doors and main entrance. About ten minutes later, a lone Camry cruised into the parking lot. Johnny shot them a text: let’s see what we got.

  “I’m pretty good at reading lips,” said Willie.

  “Really? What’s her name?” Corey asked

  “Funny,” grunted Willie. “Stand by.”

  Corey squinted toward the car and jotted down the tag number so they could do a reverse-tag search to identify the owner and address. There were many websites that offered these services for a fee, although the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act (DPPA) noted that it was illegal to perform a search without a legal reason to do so. They were supposed to review the privacy act to ensure their reason was protected, but in the real world, search companies wanted their fee, and members could fabricate any number of “legal” reasons to justify such a search. Triton 6 already subscribed to a document search company that included tag search; however, Corey suspected that the vehicle was a rental, and a search would only lead them back to the agency, which was under no obligation to reveal personal information about any client.

  With the tag info recorded, he double-checked the photo of Shammas they had copied from Alfaisal University’s website. The man who emerged was taller than Corey expected, at least six feet. He wore a suit and overcoat that looked tailored, not something drawn from the rack at Kohl’s. While his colleagues might don a white knit kufi on their heads, he wore no hat, and his graying black hair was gelled back away from his forehead, with a few curls dangling behind his ears. Only his long beard and closely trimmed mustache suggested he might be a Muslim. He removed his sunglasses and strode away from the car with purpose, tucking a leather portfolio beneath his arm.

  The beep of an incoming text message sent Corey’s gaze flicking down to the screen. That’s him, Johnny confirmed. Corey agreed. He reached into a nylon bag at his boots and removed his Nikon digital camera with its 55-300 mm telephoto zoom lens. He pointed it at the door, and the autofocus purred to clarify the image. He snapped off pictures as the door opened and Shammas was greeted by two men. The first was a pot-bellied troll with a dark complexion and beard—a man who could be Sameh Ismail. The second was an athletic-looking black man whose bald pate seemed one size too large for his body. By some small miracle of physics, he had wrestled himself into a tight white dress shirt, suspenders, and dark blue trousers. When he proffered his giant claw to Shammas, his fingers flashed with a blinding collection of gold rings that matched his cufflinks. Corey squeezed off a shot of that bling before all three disappeared behind the tinted glass doors.

  “You catch what they said?” he asked Willie.

  “They were just saying hello. Nothing worth our time.”

  Johnny phoned Willie, who put the call on speaker: “All right, boys. This shouldn’t take long. We need an ID on that short guy. Call him ‘Uncle Haji’ for now. And the big black dude? He’s ‘Easy Money.’ Corey, you get some good pictures?”

  “I did.” Corey had already attached the wifi adaptor to the camera and was uploading the images to his phone so he could text them to Johnny and his other contacts. “I’ll see if our boy at the FMS can ID these guys.”

  “Roger that.”

  A few seconds later, a uniformed Blue Door security guard ventured outside. He shielded his eyes against the glare and started toward Johnny’s SUV.

/>   Chapter Twenty-Four

  “So we pulled it up on the phone. Turns out New London, Connecticut is the home of a Navy submarine squadron, the Navy Submarine School, and the General Dynamics Electric Boat Division’s design and engineering facility. Some might call that a target-rich environment.”

  —Willie Parente (FBI interview, 23 December)

  There were nine women in all, each wearing hijabs covering their heads and chests. They sat in three neat rows, laboring behind sewing machines under the relentless scrutiny of Fatima, a thirty-year-old woman from Mali whose parents had been nomads, more specifically Tuareg people who wandered the Saharan regions of their West African country. Fatima was lithe, with deep brown skin and brightly colored beads like the rings of coral snakes in her braided hair.

  Mr. Bassem Younes had gone to Mali to recruit Fatima out of the vest making facilities hidden within the tin-roofed ghettos of Bamacko. He had smuggled her into the United States with the help of his cartel contacts in Juarez, and he had trained her as a secretary to work for him at Seaboard Shipping and Storage, with its headquarters in Windsor, Connecticut.

  However, Fatima’s real expertise lie in her vest designs, which had caught the attention of Younes’s associates in Cairo and Riyadh. They had urged him to find her, and so for her skill and knowledge of suicide bombing—her knowledge of how to kill most effectively—he had granted her a new life, and she seemed quite content living in America.

  At the moment, they were a few miles away from his trucking company, inside a warehouse used primarily to stock and distribute automotive parts to various retailers. The company, C-T Auto Supply, was owned and operated by Younes’s cousin. A back office now served as the vest making workshop. Younes arrived in the doorway, sipping on his tea. Fatima came around the humming and clicking machines, wiped her hands across the bottom of her blue smock, then lifted her brows at him.

  “How many thus far?” he asked.

  “That first batch of material caused quite a delay,” she reminded him. “But the new nylon is good. Strong but still light weight, which is what we need. And to answer your question, we have about nine thus far.”

  “Will you finish in time?”

  “Of course. I’ll keep them here day and night. We won’t stop until they’re finished.”

  “And the materials from Peru?”

  “They’re excellent. No issues with them.”

  Younes walked with her into the workshop, toward rows of folding tables erected near the back wall. The finished vests with bulging pockets lay in rows, while others still under construction were piled on two chairs. The vests were fashioned from a lightweight tactical nylon and cut in rectangular patterns with holes in their centers. Cut outs for the shoulders were placed on either side of the main hole. Narrow pockets stood in vertical rows along the front and back. A pair of wooden molds matching the front and back of the vests lay on another table. Nails, screws, bolts, ball bearings, and other metal fragments were placed onto the mold, and then the plastic explosive was rolled over the shrapnel like a layer of dough. Once all the shrapnel was contained within the explosive, the roll was placed into one of the pockets, and the process was repeated. Some vests contained separate fragmentation jackets, but this method, Fatima had argued, allowed the bomber a more stealthy approach on the target by removing the possibility of rattling shrapnel and decreasing the vest’s girth. The vests weighed approximately fifteen pounds after they were wired and equipped with their handheld firing devices. Their blasts were omnidirectional, and everything—even the bomber’s watch, glasses, and bones—became part of the lethal shrapnel mix.

  “I won’t delay you any further,” Younes said.

  She nodded tersely, then returned to the front of the room, where she noticed a woman having a problem with her machine and leaned in to assist.

  Younes headed off toward a row of shelves jammed with boxes of parts. He turned down another aisle and reached the loading dock, where off to his right lay the rolling metal door at ground level. Four white, nondescript box trucks, each seventeen feet long, had been driven inside, and each would deliver Allah’s wrath to the infidels. The Americans called them Vehicle Bourne Improvised Explosive devices. Younes called them steeds of war. Their destinations were still unknown to Younes, but Nazari had assured him that the target information would arrive shortly.

  While Younes’s parents had been born in Dubai, he was, like his colleagues, an American citizen. Given his heritage and the nature of his work, he had become fascinated with another young American hero. On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh had parked a Ryder truck loaded with 5,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and nitromethane in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City. The truck exploded, killing 168 people and injuring over 600. The attack was one of the most simple, elegant, and effective acts of domestic terrorism in United States history. McVeigh was an artist, with absolutely no regret for what he had done. Younes had studied the hand-drawn schematic of McVeigh’s truck. He understood how McVeigh had aligned the barrels, what he had placed in them, and where he had stacked more bags of fertilizer. Younes saw how shock tube detonators snaked between the materials.

  Of course Younes and his men were intrigued by the prospect of reproducing McVeigh’s artistry. What was more, federal regulations still failed to control the sale of large quantities of commercial grade fertilizer; however, state and local regulations did exist, although they varied wildly from state to state. In many cases, shopkeepers were asked by federal and local law enforcement authorities to report anyone buying large amounts of fertilizer, although this honor system often relied upon high school or college kids working part time at farm supply stores. These social media zombies were not the most keen-eyed observers of terrorist activity. Still, Younes, Nazari, and the rest of their core group were unwilling to take that risk.

  Necessity, they said, was the mother of invention. Thus, Younes and the group had unleashed a plan as cunning and elegant as McVeigh’s work.

  Nearly two years prior, a massive explosion at a West, Texas fertilizer plant was used by Al-Saif to conceal the theft of over twenty tons of ammonium nitrate. This was an inside job to be sure, with American jihadis hired as employees six months prior to the robbery. Just after closing time, Younes’s teams had moved in to procure the materials. By 7:50 p.m. a tremor that residents said felt like an earthquake rocked the town, leveled the facility, and took out a large portion of the West Middle School. A two-story apartment building with about fifty units was shredded into kindling and toothpicks. When the fires died and the smoke finally cleared, a crater spanning some ninety-feet across and ten feet deep marked the epicenter of the blast. Fifteen were killed, over 160 injured.

  A million dollar investigation by state and federal officials failed to find a concrete cause for the explosions. All they knew was that a fire did start in the seed room, which backed up to a storage bin containing over 150 tons of ammonium nitrate. They believed that between twenty-eight and thirty-four tons of the chemical exploded with a force equal to 15,000 pounds of dynamite. There was no accounting for missing chemicals. As the fingers began to point, none were directed at jihadis or other extremists. Liberal media pundits wrote columns about the “complete lack of oversight by state and federal agencies crippled by the GOP’s war of deregulation.” While officials blamed each other for the disaster, Younes and his teams stored their cache in a Connecticut warehouse, where it would remain until needed—

  Until the day of judgment.

  Now, because of Younes’s own bold actions, their truck bombs would be TWICE as powerful as the one used by the heroic Timothy McVeigh. The ammonium nitrate had just been transferred to this warehouse, and the plans for how to arrange the materials inside the trucks was set. Their other accouterments were contained within the blocks of cocaine shipped up from North Carolina. Younes walked by the two pallets of bricks with scorpion labels, watching as men at a nearby table broke several open and removed the boosters in
side. He reached the tailgate of the nearest truck and hoisted himself into the empty bay. He stole a moment to close his eyes and imagine the fire.

  ...prepare against them whatever you are able of power and of steeds of war by which you may terrify the enemy of Allah and your enemy and others besides them whom you do not know [but] whom Allah knows. And whatever you spend in the cause of Allah will be fully repaid to you, and you will not be wronged.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Look at me. You think I let the past rule my life? If I did, I might be in jail or dead. You don’t look back. You keep your eyes on the road. That’s why windshields are big and rear view mirrors are small.”

  —Josh Eriksson (FBI interview, 23 December)

  The security guard raked fingers through his blond hair and fixed his gaze on Johnny. The kid was in his late-twenties, a baby-faced part-timer going to college at night with, perhaps, a military background that had given him a foot in the blue door, so to speak. He tipped his head at an arrogant angle, and as he neared the SUV, Johnny lowered his window and said, “Morning, Chief.”

  “Morning, sir.”

  And with that, the kid marched by.

  Johnny exchanged a look with Josh, then lowered his head onto the seat. “I just had a heart-attack.” He checked the side mirror.

  “What’s he doing?” asked Josh.

  “He’s getting into his car.”

  “I see him now. They have security twenty-four seven. He must be coming off a night shift.”

  Johnny’s phone rang. “Silver Buick LaCrosse inbound,” Willie reported. “I couldn’t get eyes on the driver, but he’s heading your way. We got his tag, just in case.”

  “Check it out,” said Johnny as the Buick rolled into the lot, the driver backing into a space about ten cars down and facing the front doors.

  “Could be a client or another sales guy,” Josh said.