by David Spell
Even in his already drug-induced haze, the imam sensed what was coming and struggled against his bindings. He started to yell at the two men in Farsi, Arabic, and even a few words of English, cursing them, their families, and promising the judgment of Allah on them. Jay shook his head and reached into his pack, pulling out a pack of raw bacon.
"But, you are now going to meet Allah smelling like a swine," Walker said in Farsi, smiling.
The imam's eyes bulged and a vein on his forehead was throbbed as he screamed at the officers. Jay shook out a few slices of the bacon and dropped them inside Bukhari's shirt, inside his pants, and used other pieces to wipe bacon grease on the condemned man's nose and mouth.
The imam tried to spit on Walker and Trang but his mouth was dry and nothing came out. Tu cut the other sleeve of the terrorist's shirt and held the needle above his arm, hesitating for a few seconds. He finally pushed the needle into the muscle and slowly pushed the plunger, sending the deadly cocktail of drugs into Bukhari's system. In less than five minutes, Ruhollah Ali Bukhari was dead.
The two officers had worn gloves for the entire operation but double-checked the house to make sure they had not left any incriminating evidence behind or for any evidence that they could take with them. As they started to leave, Jay asked, "Why'd you hesitate before you stuck him? Were you having second thoughts?"
Trang smiled. "No, I was thinking about saying something dramatic about how he had been sentenced to die for crimes against the United States of America and humanity. But then I thought, 'Screw him.' I'm not wasting any more words on someone like him. The bacon was a nice touch, by the way. I guess the slices you placed down his pants should scare off his seventy-two virgins in the afterlife?"
Walker nodded. "That guy is responsible for twenty or thirty thousand dead Americans. I wanted his death to be as unpleasant as it could be, short of torturing him."
At 0515 hours, the two officers locked the door and left the house. By 0535 hours, they were back at their vehicle. Tu held out his hands for the keys. Jay shook his head and got into the driver's seat. He pulled out onto the road, heading south.
"Man, why won't you ever let me drive?" Tu asked.
Jay glanced at his boss with a smile. "Because you're Asian."
Walker's right arm hurt for several days from Trang's right cross.
#
CDC Research Facility, East of Atlanta, Wednesday, 0730 hours
Many of the displaced CDC scientists and epidemiologists, especially those working on a zombie virus vaccine, were given workspace at this rural location. While occupying over fifty acres, the buildings did not have enough room to house all of the CDC employees from downtown. Support staff had rented some offices within a mile of the research facility to allow administrative workers to keep the wheels of the organization turning.
Chuck's agents had been given two large offices to share inside the sprawling compound. A week and a half after the car bombs and suicide bombers, they were still nowhere close to eliminating all of the zombies. When the President finally authorized the states to use National Guards troops, things had already been pushed beyond critical. The number of infected continued to increase as the Zs continued looking for fresh meat wherever they could find it.
The Atlanta Police Department had been devastated. They had lost over a hundred officers since the bombings near Atlantic Station. The downtown area was still controlled by the Zs and thousands remained trapped in their houses or apartments, hoping to be rescued. The police department was trying to respond to some of these requests for help but the problem now was that officers were steadily deserting their posts.
Policemen and policewomen had seen their friends die. In some cases, they'd had to shoot fellow officers who had become infected. APD and other Metro Atlanta departments were shrinking every day as police officers decided not to go to work, instead focusing on getting their own families to safety and out of the city.
With fewer and fewer cops on the street, fewer and fewer people were getting helped. Chuck and the CDC teams had been on twelve rescue missions over the last week. Most of these were VIPs, family members of government officials, or scientists from other government agencies or companies who were needed in the race to create a cure or a vaccine for the bio-terror threat. The CDC officers had also managed to get some infected blood samples and DNA swabs for Dr. Edwards' research.
This morning, however, McCain had received a one word text from Tu Trang. The word was "Yes." Chuck knew exactly what it meant and what it would require of him. Shaun Taylor had flown down the previous Sunday and met with he and Andy, offering them an unsanctioned mission that could end their careers and even send them to prison. They had both accepted it without hesitation.
#
District Heights, Maryland, Wednesday, 1740 hours
Special Agent Mir Turani turned his gray Chevrolet Impala onto his street and accelerated towards his townhouse. Most of his neighbors had already fled to parts unknown with the advancing hordes of zombies leaving Washington and moving into Maryland. Mir was ready to flee, as well, but not just because of the infected.
At 1630 hours, two phone calls had come into the FBI's temporary HQ at Andrew's Air Force Base. The first came in on the general public line. It was answered by an operator who forwarded the information to her supervisor. The second call came in five minutes later to the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate where Turani worked as Deputy Director Trimble's assistant. Trimble was not in his office so the second call had been routed to Mir's desk.
Both calls had been recorded and Mir listened to each of them several times. The caller's voice was digitally distorted and had given identical information during each call- an address in Hanover, Pennsylvania where the FBI would find three dead terrorists. That was it. There was no chance to track the call nor identify the digitized voice.
Mir recognized the address immediately. It was the safe house in which Imam Ruhollah Ali Bukhari was hiding with his two bodyguards. Turani had helped make the arrangements for Bukhari to use the farm house. The residence and the land were owned by a Muslim sympathizer who had made it available to Mir for whenever he needed it.
The FBI agent looked around the office. No one was paying any attention to him but he couldn't shake the feeling of being watched. Agents from the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate were sharing office space with agents from other sections until they all could return to their headquarters in Washington. Deputy Director Trimble had not come back from lunch, which meant he was spending the afternoon with his girlfriend. Mir had not advised his boss of the phone calls yet.
As soon as the anonymous messages came in, a supervisory agent from the Counter-Terrorism Division had contacted the Pennsylvania State Police, requesting that they secure the location, but not to enter until the FBI got there. A team was on the road within thirty minutes. Shortly thereafter, Mir stood, picked up his leather briefcase, and had headed for his car as well.
It was time for Special Agent Turani to disappear. The phone calls had shaken him up. Why had they called the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate and not the Counter-Terrorism Division? Did someone know of his connection to Bukhari? He wasn't going to stick around and find out.
There were three other radical Muslim agents whom Mir was aware of that worked for the Bureau. They had passed information to him and he had passed it, as well as his own intelligence, on to the imam. He would like to have warned them of what was coming but there was no time and Turani wasn't going to call anyone. He was sure they were listening in on all of his calls now.
Mir unlocked the front door of his townhouse and quickly stepped inside. He just needed to grab a few things and get back on the road to another safe house, this one in a more remote location. He stepped over to the alarm panel to deactivate his burglar alarm, but saw that it had already been disarmed. That can't be, he thought. I always set my alarm. Fear gripped the traitorous FBI agent as he realized something bad was about to happen.
The taser fired two prongs that struck Turani in the chest. The prongs were connected to wires that fed back to the taser and released fifty thousand volts into the traitor's body. Mir stiffened and squealed as he fell to the floor. After the five-second burst was over, the smaller masked man knelt beside him, flipped him onto his stomach, and quickly secured his hands behind him with flex cuffs.
After a few seconds, Mir found his voice and started to protest. His attacker held a gloved left forefinger up to his lips and then slapped a piece of duct tape over the agent's mouth with his right hand. Turani's eyes got big as the man produced a black hood and pulled it over his head. He felt duct tape being wrapped around his ankles.
Hands expertly searched him, removing his pistol, wallet, and cell phone. They cleaned his pockets out, leaving nothing to identify him as a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Turani had still not heard the men speak.
Five minutes later, a Ford van backed up to Mir's front door. Two more men wearing balaclavas got out of the vehicle and opened the rear of the van. The front door of the townhouse opened and they reached inside, grabbing the man lying on the floor. They checked to make sure the flex cuffs were secure, patted their prisoner down for weapons, and then unceremoniously tossed him in the cage in the back of the van. The two contractors for the CIA nodded at the two masked men inside the house, got back into the Ford Econoline, and drove away.
Inside Mir Turani's home, Chuck McCain and Andy Fleming pulled their masks off. Andy had bagged up the evidence they were taking with them. They had Turani's laptop, a hard drive that they had found hidden in the ceiling, several small notebooks, everything that was in his pockets, and three handguns. The handguns weren't actually evidence but Chuck was not going to leave them behind. The traitorous FBI agent would never be coming home.
As they were preparing to leave, McCain stopped Fleming and motioned towards the bar on the other side of the living room. An unopened bottle of Macallan Single Malt 21 Year Old Scotch sat next to several other bottles of different types of adult beverages. Chuck held the bottle up for Andy to see.
"Have you ever had a twenty-one year old scotch?" McCain asked "This stuff is over five hundred dollars a bottle. I didn't know the FBI paid so well."
Chuck opened the bottle and poured a finger's worth into two tumblers, handing one to his partner.
Andy sniffed the amber liquid and then took a sip. "Very nice. And fitting. We break into an FBI's agent home, steal a bunch of his stuff, and then kidnap him. I guess drinking his expensive booze is the least of our worries."
"And, not just drink it," Chuck laughed. "This bottle's going home with me!"
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Epilogue
Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, Friday, 0930 hours
The email hit every single FBI agents' inbox at the same time. It also went to the White House, the Justice Department, all of the major media outlets, and, of course, Mrs. Charles E. Trimble, III. The email showed the sender to be her husband, the Deputy Director of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. In reality, it was sent from an undetectable server originating at one of the CIA's off-site locations.
When Mrs. Trimble clicked open the message purporting to come from her husband of twenty-three years, she saw explicit photos of him engaging in a variety of sexual activities with a young woman whom Mrs. Trimble did not recognize. The pictures were all dated earlier in the year, named Deputy Director Trimble, the young woman, Natalia, outlined their relationship, and provided the amount of money that he had spent paying her rent, credit card bill, and car lease.
The email claimed that Trimble had been blackmailed by his assistant, Special Agent Mir Turani, and further stated that Turani was an Iranian intelligence agent who had managed to infiltrate the Bureau. For the FBI agents reading the email, this was easy enough to believe since Turani had gone missing two days earlier, right after the three dead terrorists were discovered in Pennsylvania.
At 0940 hours, a single gunshot rang out from Trimble's office. Agents drew their weapons and cautiously approached the closed door. When they pushed the door open and peered inside, the deputy director was sitting at his desk, slumped back in his chair, the front of his white shirt red with blood.
Trimble's right arm hung down beside the chair, his issued Glock pistol laying on the floor where it had slipped from his fingers. The autopsy would later show that he had placed the gun in his mouth, angling it upwards, towards the top of his skull before pulling the trigger. The incriminating email had been sent to him, too, and was open on his desktop computer.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Coming Soon!
I hope you enjoyed "When the Stars Fell from the Sky." If you did, could you do me two simple favors? First, would you leave a review on Amazon? Good reviews are life-blood for authors because they help push our work a little higher in the rankings and they let other readers know that a book is worth reading.
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If you haven't read the first two books in the series, check them out:
When the Future Ended
The Darkest Part of the Night
Be on the lookout for the next installment, "Running Towards the Abyss." It will be out later this year. If you would like to be added to my mailing list you can subscribe at DavidSpell.com. Feel free to email me your comments and suggestions at [email protected]. I love staying in touch with my extended family!