by Jason Elam
“Can you hack in and get whatever they have?” Scott asked Hernandez.
“Not without permission,” Tara quickly pointed out.
Scott pressed a button on the phone in front of him. Hicks’s voice came over the speaker. “What?”
“Can we have permission?”
“To do what?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Granted.” The line went dead.
“Looks like you’ve got your permission,” Scott said to Hernandez. To the rest of them, he said, “Go do your thing for the next two hours. Right now we’ve got nothing. When we come back together, that nothing better have become something.”
SATURDAY, MAY 16, 5:45 P.M. EEST
ISTANBUL, TURKEY
“The third bomb! Why have we not heard of the third bomb?” A vein in al-’Aqran’s forehead throbbed as he pointed an accusing finger at Tahir Talib. “If I discover that this Ghani did not properly receive his instructions . . .” Al-’Aqran dropped back into his chair, letting the implied threat hang in the room.
The Cause’s leadership council was again sitting around the small apartment’s kitchen table. Talib was visibly shaking, which was just how al-’Aqran wanted him. The man’s voice took on a pleading tone. “I swear upon the holy book, sayyid, all instructions were communicated, and the devices were delivered. I—I can’t explain what has happened.”
Al-’Aqran stewed for a few minutes while the rest of the team sat around him not daring to speak. A standing fan loudly oscillated past him, circulating the hot air in the room and cooling the sweat that was on his face. CNN International ran on a television to his right, but he had mentally tuned it out. All the pertinent information about the attacks on Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and that cesspool, Hollywood, California, had been given. He didn’t expect the small-town operations to make international news until someone made the connection with the overall attack. But not word one has been mentioned about the university. What happened to the university? Then a thought struck him.
“The notes! The notes left in the houses! We announced the university attack in them, did we not?”
Talib looked to his comrades for support, and finding none, he answered, “Well, not in so many words, but we did reference—”
Al-’Aqran exploded, throwing a small dish with the remains of a biscuit at Talib, just missing his head. The dish crashed instead against an ancient Westinghouse refrigerator. “Not in so many words? What does that mean? We talked about their universities, true? And now we have nothing to back that up! We look like fools!”
“Sayyid, look at the news,” Talib pleaded, pointing toward the television. Sweat was pouring off his face, and the damp stains under his arms had just merged with the ones on his chest and back. “Look at the destruction in the subway. Look at how their decadent entertainment industry has gone into mourning. I would hardly say we look like fools.”
“Are you stupid? Answer me! Are you stupid? You must be, because you obviously do not get it! Even young Babrak knows what I’m saying! Explain it to him, Babrak, because apparently he can’t understand my voice.”
Babrak Zahir, who until then had been calmly twirling a pen through his fingers, said, “If you reference an attack and it takes place, it is a show of strength. If you reference an attack and it does not take place, it is a sign of weakness—a lack of infrastructure or courage. Is that simple enough, my dear Tahir?”
Talib’s face quickly turned red with anger. “I understand the ramifications. I don’t need them explained to me by some freshly weaned whelp of a—”
“Ah, but apparently you do,” al-’Aqran interrupted with a slam of his hand on the table. “Apparently you do! And you may want to watch what you say to young Babrak. This freshly weaned whelp has grown quite a set of teeth.”
Talib’s complexion turned from red to white, and al-’Aqran noticed the waver in his voice. “I meant no disrespect to either of you. I’m just at a loss. Truly, sayyid, everything was set for the attack at Notre Dame University. I don’t know what has happened, but I will find out and deal with it.”
“With the strongest possible measures?”
“With the strongest possible measures.”
Still not trusting Talib, and also wanting to humiliate him a little more, al-’Aqran turned to his right-hand man and said, “Hamad, you will work with Tahir to discover the source of this problem and remedy it.”
“Of course,” answered Hamad Asaf.
“Very well, you may all go except for Babrak. I must speak to you.” Al-’Aqran noticed the fear in Talib’s eyes at Babrak being held back. Good. The man deserves to be in fear of his life. Incompetent fool!
When everyone had left the room, al-’Aqran motioned for Babrak to join him in the small living room. The older man turned off the television and twisted the fan so that it was facing the new setting. He eased himself into his usual blue fabric wing chair. Above the chair was a stylized drawing of a nineteenth-century pilgrim going on a hajj. A stiff beige couch supported by peeling chrome-plated legs stretched along the wall to his right. Across that whitewashed wall was a long, framed banner with the Arabic words of the shahadah—I testify that there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.
Al-’Aqran was gratified to see Babrak continue standing until he nodded him to a place on the couch. This young man knows something about respect.
“Tahir is a good man; we both know that,” al-’Aqran began, “but he has made a costly mistake. I want you to remain cold to him for the next several days. Put some fear into him, but do not touch him. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sayyid.”
“Good. Now what has been done about our Egyptian friend?”
“Kamal Hejazi met his fate and is now in the Bosporus. As for his son, he suddenly removed himself from his studies at October 6 University, and no one has heard from him since—nor will they.”
“Excellent. Learn from this, my young friend. Never leave a cancer in the body. It will only spread.”
“Yes, sayyid.”
“I am proud of you, Babrak. You give much honor to the name of your father. Now go. And please greet your mother for me.”
Al-’Aqran watched as Babrak walked to the door and left the apartment. He has courage and ruthlessness, but does he have conviction? The first two will turn you into a killer. The third is what transforms you into a leader. I guess only time will tell with this one.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
SATURDAY, MAY 16, 9:00 A.M. MDT INVERNESS TRAINING CENTER ENGLEWOOD, COLORADO
A strange mood hovered around minicamp this morning. The typical playful excitement was nowhere to be found. Although nobody spoke of the attacks of the previous night, they seemed to be in the forefront of everyone’s minds. The moment the reports had begun to air on the news, many of the players and coaches had flashed back to that devastating Monday night game five months ago.
Now, in the linebackers’ room, fear, anger, and grief all mixed together into a cloud that hung over the players. Emotions were high, and tempers were short.
Linebacker coach Rex Texeira was covering the front whiteboard with a diagram of a coverage scheme in which Riley would have the option of holding back in short yardage or driving in toward the quarterback. “What’s going to be your trigger, Pach?” he asked.
Unfortunately, Riley’s body and his mind were in two different places.
“Covington, you with us?” Texeira tried again.
Keith Simmons leaned forward across the thin table that held his bulky playbook and clapped Riley on the back of the shoulder. “Pach, man, Coach’s talking to you.”
Riley’s mind quickly snapped back to the present. “What? Oh, hey, Coach, my bad. What’d you ask?”
Frustration was evident in Coach Texeira’s voice as he began to explain the play again. As soon as Riley saw that it was a play he had already committed to memory, he found his mind trying to fade out again. His feelings were too strong to be worrying abou
t whether the three slot opened up or not.
He started looking around the room, trying to keep himself in the here and now. There were fourteen long, thin tables lined up in three rows. Each table had one black office chair stationed at it. Each veteran had his favorite place to sit, and woe to the rookie who sat in a veteran’s seat.
The room was surrounded by whiteboards, all except for the rear wall, which housed a projector for showing film on the drop-down screen at the front of the room. The rear wall also held a small video camera. That little camera, known to the players as “big brother,” linked into Head Coach Burton’s office so that at any time he could look in on what was going on in the individual position meetings.
The boards on either side of the room were mostly clean except for a number of large magnets labeled to represent the offensive and defensive positions and a list written in thick black erasable ink. This was the linebackers’ fines list: about twenty-five infractions, each paired with a dollar amount ranging from $25 to $150, written out in descending order. At the top of the list were basic issues, such as Late - $150, Sleeping - $100, and Holding Back - $100. As the list progressed, however, the terms became more obscure: Stupid - $75, Drama - $50, Dogging - $50, and the all-too-descriptive BRAAAP! - $25.
“Now, I’ll try it again,” came Texeira’s voice cutting through Riley’s room inventory. “What’s going to be your trigger, Pach?”
“QB drops, receivers gun, and I can pop three,” Riley answered, trying to mask his absolute lack of interest.
“Exactly. Welcome back,” Texeira said sarcastically.
Yeah, you can keep your “Welcome back,” because I’m not staying long, Riley thought as the screams and panic of that night not many months ago poured back into his brain.
SATURDAY, MAY 16, 10:25 A.M. MDT
FRONT RANGE RESPONSE TEAM HEADQUARTERS
DENVER, COLORADO
The numbers and letters cycled through at a blinding pace. Gooey could have set the program to not show the password combinations as they were tried and rejected, but really, what would be the fun of that? It had taken him long enough to build the firewall-busting program; the least he could do was watch it fly.
He glanced to his left to see if Joey Williamson was sufficiently impressed with the program and was frustrated to see him riffling through some recently printed flash-traffic.
“Not a firewall alive that can withstand this onslaught,” Gooey said proudly, nodding toward the computer screen.
“Mmm, cool,” Williamson replied without looking up.
“And while this computer is looking for a way through the front door of the LAPD server, I’m over on this one digging me an SSH tunnel through the rear.”
“Wow,” an unenthusiastic Williamson muttered.
“‘Wow’?” a frustrated Gooey said as he snatched the papers from his coworker’s hands. “Is that the best you can do? ‘Wow’?”
Williamson snatched them back. “What do you want me to say? All hail Gooey the Great! Thou art majestic and all-powerful in thine hacker-ocity!”
“Forget it,” Gooey said, turning back to his screens. “You wouldn’t know good hacker-ocity if it came up and . . . Boo-yah! We’re in!”
Williamson dropped the flash-traffic on the desk and leaned in. On the “back door” screen was a map of the main LAPD server.
“Gooey the Great does it again!”
“And don’t you forget it, son,” Gooey gloated as he began his search for uploaded videos of the attack in Hollywood.
Within three minutes, files were pouring through the hole Gooey had punched in the firewall. In the time it took Williamson and Gooey to go to the office refrigerator, mix Red Bulls with canned Starbucks Doubleshots, and pound the drinks down, every digitized scrap of information the LAPD had on the tragic event had been transferred to the FRRT server. Fully caffeinated and sugared, the analysts sat back down to begin sifting through their newly acquired treasure.
As they cycled through video after video—some from news crews and entertainment shows, others from ATMs and various other passive surveillance cameras—they searched for anything that might give a clue to the identity of the terrorist or terrorists responsible for the deaths of so many people.
Soon, Gooey’s frustration level rose. He sat back in his chair. “We don’t even know what we’re looking for!”
“Go back to the crane shot,” Williamson said. “Something’s bothering me about that one—like we’re missing something there. Anyway, it’ll help us reestablish our bearings.”
Gooey did some quick mouse and keyboard maneuverings, and a video with a view from high above the red carpet appeared.
“Good,” Williamson continued. “Now back it up to ten minutes prior to the blast and dial the speed back from triple time to time and a half.”
Both men leaned in close to the monitor. The video showed what one would expect to see at a movie premiere—limos pulling in; limos pulling out; paparazzi taking pictures; stars waving to the ever-growing crowds of people.
“Wait! Back up the video again,” Williamson said suddenly. “Look at the top of the screen. Check out Miss Babelicious walking out of the media pit.”
“Woof,” Gooey responded appreciatively.
“Down, Goo-dog; that’s not what I meant. Back up the video. . . . Now, see, she’s coming out of the pit—so where’s her camera? Where’s any equipment?”
“Maybe she’s the on-air personality. No equipment needed for that, and she certainly seems to have the necessary ‘talents,’” Gooey said, bouncing his eyebrows up and down.
Not taking Gooey’s bait, Williamson went on, “Look at her clothes. TV chicks don’t wear jeans to a premiere. Besides that, she’s leaving before the main stars arrived. What kind of entertainment babe does that?”
“Dude, it’s such a long shot.”
“It’s better than anything else we got.”
“True that,” Gooey said, warming up to the possibilities of this lead. “Tell you what, why don’t you slide on back to your workstation. Let’s split the videos and see if we can find her on any other camera. Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky. Tell you the truth, I’m kind of anxious to see if we can put a face to that walk,” Gooey finished with a sly wink.
10:45 A.M. MDT
INVERNESS TRAINING CENTER
ENGLEWOOD, COLORADO
Riley sat on the low, carpeted bench and leaned back into his locker. The fingers of his right hand picked at the grain of the maple that made up all the lockers and trimmed the whole room. He had blown it this morning, and he knew it.
After the position meeting, the linebackers had hit the field to run some basic plays. Riley could see that first-round draft pick Afshin Ziafat was struggling with the Mustangs’ defensive system. However, the compassion he typically felt for the rookies seemed to be nowhere in sight for this newbie. Through head shakes and audible sounds of disgust, Riley let Ziafat clearly know how little he thought of his game.
What was worse, when he could see that he was getting under Ziafat’s skin, it only made him want to do it all the more. Finally everything broke after one play in which Ziafat ducked inside when he should have gone outside. His path took him right into Riley.
Riley saw him coming and with one well-placed forearm stood Ziafat straight up. “Son, have you ever even played this game before?”
It was very apparent that Ziafat had had enough. He went chest-to-chest with Riley and shouted, “You got a problem with me, Covington?”
Riley was more than prepared to dish it back. “Yeah, I got a problem with you! My problem is that you don’t answer direct questions! I asked you if you’ve ever played this game before?”
Ziafat looked like he was ready to give back a little of what Riley was giving him, but then his features softened. “Listen, Riley, I know this is a tough day for everyone. I can’t imagine—”
Suddenly Riley’s hands drove into Ziafat’s chest protector. Ziafat flew backward to the ground. Rile
y stood over him with his finger pointing at Ziafat’s face. “You’re right! You can’t imagine! In fact, you have no idea! So just start playing your game and stay out of my way!”
Riley turned and walked away before Ziafat had a chance to respond. Behind him, he heard linebacker coach Rex Texeira call an end to their drill. That had been twenty minutes ago. Since that time, everyone had wisely given Riley some space.
That was a stupid thing to do, Riley berated himself. Face it: you weren’t climbing on the kid because of his game. You were on him because of his name! Welcome to the land of bigotry, buddy! How does it feel? The one thing you swore you would never be . . . well, here you are.
Riley walked to the glass-front drink refrigerator and pulled out a twelve-ounce bottle of Gatorade. He twisted off the cap on the way back to his locker and thought for the thousandth time, They can pay us millions of dollars a year, but they can’t afford to get us full-size bottles.
He sat back into his locker and downed the drink in one long swig. Lord, help me get control of myself—especially where Ziafat is concerned. Forgive me for my attitude and for going at him when he didn’t deserve it. Forgive me for my prejudice. Give me love in my heart, ’cause right now, it ain’t there.
Riley tossed his empty bottle across the room and into the garbage can. “Nice shot,” a voice said.
Turning his head, Riley saw Ziafat standing at his locker. Riley nodded. “Had a little practice.”
Ziafat took a few tentative steps toward Riley. He looked like he had something to say, so Riley waited him out. Finally, Ziafat said, “Are we cool, Riley? I mean, I know I was messing up out there, but this seems like it’s more than just my game.”
What did Pastor Tim say that one time? Riley asked himself. Sometimes you’ve just got to say words of love and hope your heart will follow. “Call me Pach. And, yeah, we’re cool. I’m just working some things out. Got a lot of stuff that’s still a little fresh with me.”
Riley could see the relief on the kid’s face, which did seem to lighten his own mood a bit. “Excellent, man. Thanks. I just really want to learn from you and Simmons—you know, bring my game to the next level. I remember taping your games back when you were at the Academy. You had some mad skills. I’d sit with a remote in my hand and watch . . .”