When he arrived at the park, children were playing soccer in a large open area. He never understood American football, such barbarism. He appreciated the physical fitness and eye-foot mastery necessary to dominate the original game of football. Luck wasn’t necessary for those who were fit and well practiced. Just like the dangerous game he played.
Once again, Mohammed was early. He parked in a shaded area, among other SUVs so he wouldn’t stand out. Another Escalade was parked nearby, black with tinted windows. At least his was white. Good guys wear white, no? He thought to himself, smirking, then thought better of it. He backed out of his spot and moved, putting the sun behind the other Cadillac so he could see if anyone was inside.
No one. It was a civilian version where the tinting wasn’t pitch black. He drove to the other side of the soccer pitch and parked next to an F-150, grossly out of place in the suburbia of DC.
The bus stopped half a block away and even from this distance, he could see Clay dwarfed his fellow passengers, but the young man walked mostly with his head down which disarmed others. If he walked boldly, then they might remember him. As it was, he was another face in the crowd.
Mohammed was pleased. He got out of his vehicle and walked in the shade of the trees until Clay made eye contact and headed directly for him. Mohammed remained in the shadows.
As Clay approached, Mohammed held a finger to his lips and waited while a young couple ran past, chasing their toddler.
“Clay. When we meet, we must be inconspicuous. Do not walk straight at anyone you are supposed to meet. It draws attention. Do you understand?”
Clay looked confused but nodded. “I understand, but why? Are we not friends?”
“We are, my friend. Indeed, we are. But we don’t need anyone else to know this. You are very special to us. Let me explain more after we’ve taken a short drive.” Clay followed obediently and got in the Cadillac.
Mohammed made small talk as they found the road to Winchester and followed it. There was some traffic, but nothing like they’d find on a weekday. They talked about music while Clay surfed Sirius, looking for something that Mohammed liked.
When he reached Channel 38, the Boneyard, Mohammed asked him to stop. They listened to heavy metal, headlined by Black Sabbath and Ozzy Ozbourne. Clay was surprised at his friend’s choice, not asking how he’d acquired a taste for the very Western music.
When they reached Winchester, Mohammed took the back roads to the Battlefield Park, where they left the SUV and proceeded on foot on one of the walking trails. It was busier than Mohammed liked, but they had space where no one was around. They found a place away from the long walking trail and leaned against a tree. There was a pond behind him, and there was no direct line of sight to them.
Clay looked skeptical. “Why the subterfuge,” he asked.
Mohammed held a Taser in his windbreaker pocket. In his pants pocket, he carried a knife bought at a 7-11 the last time he was in the States.
“Because I am Da’esh and you are going to join us,” Mohammed said, his expression calm, his tone, matter of fact.
“I don’t understand,” Clay answered simply.
Mohammed switched to Arabic, invoking Allah and his champions as they sought to make the world a better place, where believers subjugated the unclean, forced them to see the glory of Islam. It was a speech that Mohammed had given before, but usually in English. It sounded better in his native tongue.
Clay stood still, enraptured. He looked up to Mohammed with new reverence, even though he was physically looking down at the older man.
“I need you to commit to our cause. You will be a warrior, and most importantly, you will make a difference. What you do will matter. Now say it, make the commitment!” Mohammed said forcefully. This was the critical moment.
“I believe in you and what you do. I submit to the will of Allah.” Clay took a knee and bowed his head to Mohammed.
He took a deep breath, feeling the power he held over the younger man. He put his hand on Clay’s head. He could kill him now or later, and it wouldn’t matter. The man’s life was forfeit.
Most importantly, he would do Mohammed’s bidding.
A Long Night
Everyone else left promptly at five, not long after the briefing ended. Rick and Travis Strong stood there, looking at each other, the last two standing. Bobbie Mac only made it to six before he politely excused himself.
“So, what do we do now? It looks like we’ve lost all our liaisons, you know, the people we’re supposed to get answers from!” Travis laughed at his own joke. It was late. Rick called his wife two hours ago to tell her he’d probably have an all-nighter in front of him.
“I say we order a pizza, get some RockStar and build a collection plan that we can give the lightweights first thing in the morning. Maybe they’ll show up early, what with the imminent threat to our national security and all. Then again, maybe they live in the suburbs, and it’s not so important to them.” Rick remained cynical. In one of his internal diatribes, he predicted that people wouldn’t give this their full effort. How could they not, he tried to reason with himself, but seen it too often. This was a job, not a calling.
For Rick, every day was life or death, if not for people, then for his own pride. He was surprised he didn’t have an ulcer. He expected people to carry their own weight.
He was often disappointed as he expected too much.
“Stop the madness!” Rick shouted. Travis jumped backward, almost falling out of his chair.
“We’re here and in the IC; you know what that means.” Travis shook his head. He had no clue. “That means we call the shots. We’ll build a collection and analysis plan and keep in mind, we have all the assets America has to offer! We don’t care how they do it, just that they do it.”
“Tell me more, maestro.” Travis loosened his collar. He’d worn the Army Bravo uniform.
“DHS, you sandy little buttholes, find anyone who’s come here from the Middle East. And no, don’t give us that list. Analyze it for those who’ve come here before, then find the ones that don’t seem busy when they’re here. We want that list later today. Oh yeah, get your people from ICE to tell us how many visa overstays are here in DC. We want those folks rounded up – I think they’re the potential foot soldiers. Or completely harmless who just want a slice of the American pie. But that’s what ICE is for. Figure it out!” Rick was all smiles. All they had to do was build an audacious action plan, then get the DDI to approve some, maybe all of it, and then the other agencies would go to work. Rick wanted to build in an accountability tracker, something they’d post on the big screen in the Joint Terrorism Task Force War Room.
That’s what Rick called it anyway. For this effort, DHS offered their Fusion Center as Command Central for Thorny Rose. FBI had their own JTTF, as well as CIA.
“If it’s a Joint TTF, then why are there different ones? Doesn’t the name imply that everyone is in one place, coordinating, collaborating?” Rick asked. Travis held his hands up immediately.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Travis looked at Rick sideways.
“We’re at the DHS JTTF. Why are there different JTTFs? It makes no sense to me and further exacerbates our inability to share information.” Rick said looking at Travis as if he should have known this already.
“I get it. That’s a rhetorical question. You have to know, Rick, of all people. You’re a contractor. You survive off the black budget. This is about money, about every agency looking to get their cut. You want to talk bloat? I can’t even imagine, but that’s just between us girls here. I’d never butt heads on the black budget.
“But when it comes to taking charge, that’s us!” Travis waved his hand to show their spaces – a room with computer workstations, Smart-Boards, big screens, displays, and a conference table, but devoid of people. “This is our domain! It’ll be what we make it since the others abdicated their responsibilities by leaving. Or maybe they didn’t. When I commanded a battalion, I had a great Exe
cutive Officer, XO. I knew I could leave if he was still there because he’d take care of things. He could leave if the OpsO, the Operations Officer was there for the same reason. Everyone left knowing you were still here.” Travis gripped Rick’s shoulder.
“Yeah, it sucks that they put all this on you, but they trust that you’ll take care of things. That means that they’ll trust your judgment when you deliver something in the morning. I kind of feel sorry for them tomorrow when they see their taskers. Everyone in here will be jumping through their butts trying to get done before you hit them with the next tasker. And they’ll do it because you’re the great Rick Banik.”
“Thanks, man. Did you order that pizza yet? We have work to do and I’m hungry. The great Rick Banik has spoken!”
“Where the hell are we? I didn’t drive, and I wasn’t paying attention.”
“DHS building, by Dulles. I’d say to call Don Corleone’s, but they’re closed. Call Papa John’s in Herndon.” Travis made the call and looked back to Rick, who was standing at a Smart-Board with a pen.
“We’ve ripped the communication apart, and it isn’t too revealing. But here’s what I see.” Rick began to draw. “One person, a coordinator who travels freely in and out of the United States. He finds the recruits who are here and could look like anything. I don’t care about those guys. Without our coordinator, they are mostly harmless, amateurs in the professional game.” Rick looked at his drawing on the board – it looked like a banned Mohammed drawing. He smirked, then erased it.
His next caricature was a man in slacks and a button down, wearing dark sunglasses, with a shock of black hair. The drawing was reminiscent of a Gucci ad.
“He’s going to look like us,” Rick said softly. Travis sobered, believing Rick was right. The bad guys weren’t going to have long beards wearing a thawb, the traditional garb, waving a Quran, screaming at women to cover up. Maybe the recruits would be more like the radicals. If this guy stood out, then they’d already know about him. And they didn’t know anything about him. That meant he could blend in.
“It has to be a man. ISIL, ISIS, or Da’esh, whatever you want to call them would refuse to have a female coordinator. Their men wouldn’t take direction from a woman and make no mistake, this person is doing it all – recruiting, planning, and issuing the execute order. We need to find this guy, forget those who’ve overstayed their visa, but then again, we need those knuckleheads, too, even if it isn’t for Thorny Rose.” Rick looked at the board and started adding the actions that the coordinator would take.
Travis rolled his eyes, and Rick caught him. Travis held up his hands in surrender. “Not you Rick. I was thinking of the name Thorny Rose. What the hell? I think we need a secret name to the secret name. How about Raging Woody? Human Horcrux, maybe?”
“Methinks the Colonel hath too much time. Holdest thou mine beer and watchest thou thus.” Rick drew a rose in the upper left-hand corner of the Smart-Board. Then he drew a shapely woman’s behind showing the rose as a tattoo, then he added flies buzzing around. He stepped back and took a bow.
“I think our good Captain may punch you in the face if she sees that.” Travis checked the time, wondering when dinner would arrive. He hadn’t eaten in a while, but he was Army Strong. He shook his head at the horrible joke that he couldn’t shake once the Army made it their slogan du jour. Still, he could miss a meal or two with no ill effects. He watched Rick gain energy as stress and sacrifice both increased.
“Not my intent to cause anyone any extra grief. I think we have enough of that trying to manage the personalities of the great Ferris wheel of three-lettered agencies.” Rick looked at the board. “How are you with spreadsheets Travis?”
He was an Army Intelligence Officer. Of course, he was good with Microsoft Excel in addition to PowerPoint. The greatest military talent in the world was judged by their ability to use Microsoft Office products.
Travis pointed to a ribbon on his Bravo uniform, the short sleeve shirt with dress trousers. Rick shook his head. He hadn’t bothered wasting time learning Army ribbons.
“Office Expert. And this one? Army Achievement Medal for demonstrating my Office expertise at a critical moment. I got your Excel.” Rick belly laughed and almost fell over. He erased his Thorny Rose caricature and started drawing a matrix. He drew a double frame around the faceless man, then added a great arrow from the matrix to the framed picture. He wrote in block letters, “FIND THIS MAN.”
Travis cracked his knuckles, logged into the system, and brought up Excel. They looked at each other. Now was when the tedious and boring intelligence chess match began. The gauntlet was thrown down when the first communication was intercepted and translated. After that, the pieces moved around an unknown board in an unknown way.
Rick and the Thorny Rose Tiger Team had to shine light into the dark areas, see what was hidden. There were far more areas of darkness than there were lights to shine. Refining which lights to turn on and where to point them was the key aspect of a collection plan. Over the next six hours, Rick and Travis built the plan, complete with taskers by Agency to answer specific questions, like multiple entrants from the Middle East and they added from Europe, but with a Middle Eastern passport. If they looked for every businessman who made multiple trips to the United States, they’d never get anywhere. They had to make an assumption. Otherwise there would be too much data.
They assumed, refined their questions, tried to get overlap in who’d look for the answers and then they refined some more. In the end, there was a long list of questions and dates in boxes according to which agency should collect information and when they need to answer the question.
It was four in the morning, and they were both spent. Rick told Travis to take his car if he wanted to run back to his apartment, but he declined. Travis refused to get out-toughed by a Marine. Inter-service rivalry never died.
“All we need is to get our collection plan approved and let DDI distribute it. We only have to convince one person, but I don’t think he’ll buy it. He’ll have to placate the higher ups by having them talk about it.” Rick said in disgust.
“It doesn’t matter if they talk about it or whatever they do with it. You will convince the DDI that the agencies need to start answering questions within a day. If he puts that kind of time constraint on them, they’ll buckle and run instead of wasting too much time trying to leave their mark,” Travis added, trying to build Rick’s spirits to get him in the best mindset for a negotiation with the Deputy Director.
“Then that’s the plan. I’m going to rest my eyes for just a moment here…” Rick leaned back in an oversized chair with his feet on the desk.
D Minus 19 – The First Chemistry Lesson
Mohammed had the formula on his phone, hidden behind multiple passwords and written in an Arabic script with the numbers added in a progression. No one could take the information, assuming they could break in, and believe that Mohammed could produce Triacetone Triperoxide, or TATP, an explosive more powerful than TNT.
TATP was produced with three ingredients - acetone, peroxide wood bleach, and sulfuric acid.
“How do you think we should buy these ingredients?” Mohammed asked.
“At different stores, in different quantities, knowing what other uses they may have. How about this? I go in and ask for a certain paint stripper because I have X. They’ll recommend Acetone. I’ll say that my whatever is this big, so how much would they recommend? Then I’ll buy that.”
Mohammed smiled broadly and gripped Clay’s arm firmly. “Perfect, my friend. That is perfect. No shady characters looking to buy Acetone. They’ll forget all about you. They’ll only remember that you had a certain kind of paint that you needed help with. Clay! I am impressed. You are learning more quickly than I could have ever imagined or hoped for. At this rate, we’ll be able to do a trial run or two or maybe even three. When American decadence is on full display, we will strike them where they are most vulnerable. Yes, my friend, we have much shopping to do.”
“To pay for our purchases, and before you say it, there is far more than we need. These things we buy will be inexpensive. The rest of the money is for you. You need not worry about money ever again. We take care of our own.
Mohammed al Sham was overjoyed. Clay could easily intimidate new recruits into doing what they were told. Maybe he’d have Clay beat them so they better understood the cost of failure. They would know nothing of the complete plan or that anyone else existed. They only needed to know their small, but significant roles.
“Do you have a storage shed?” Mohammed asked. Clay shook his head. “Let’s get one where we can work inside. And let’s stop by the thrift store and see if we can find you a construction company jacket, shirt, or maybe something that looks like you work in construction. There will be fewer questions that way. You’ve heard the term hide in plain sight? That’s what you will do. Then we shall talk to some others, your soldiers.”
Selling the Plan
Rick woke with a start. Bobbie Mac stood over him. He appeared to be ready to check Rick’s carotid for a pulse.
“You look like hell,” Bob McClendon said into Rick’s face.
“Well hi honey. When did you get home?” Rick said slurring his words, rubbing his eyes to clear his vision. “What time is it?”
“Just after 5. Sorry for abandoning you last night, Rick. I had to get home. I thought I’d try to make up for it by coming in early. I guess you took care of everything.”
“Take care of is so relative. Travis and I built a collection plan. Take a look and see what we need to do to sell it to the DDI. Our plan is that he briefs it to the collective masses and issues the order. If I ask them to do it, well, you know how that’ll go.” Rick had slept for less than an hour. He excused himself and headed for the bathroom.
People Raged: and the Sky Was on Fire-Compendium (Rick Banik Thrillers Book 1) Page 5