People Raged: and the Sky Was on Fire-Compendium (Rick Banik Thrillers Book 1)

by Craig Martelle

  The storage unit was trickier. They didn’t know which Clay’s was. They watched the entire compound, and once the team was in place they’d talk with the manager. They’d finalize their takedown plans, but Explosive Ordnance Disposal would enter the storage unit first. One of FBI’s SWAT teams would secure the immediate area while a second stood ready to close off the road in case the target appeared. Their plan was to trap him in the compound, but away from his storage unit.

  They didn’t expect he’d have the explosives with him. TATP was volatile, and what they’d seen from terrorists in Europe is that they wouldn’t load it until the last minute to limit the risk of accidental detonation. If they suspected an attack on Wednesday, the most likely time for moving the explosives was Wednesday morning. Their plan was to open the unit, secure any explosives, and reseal the unit to trap the suspects.

  Rick was pleased with what he heard. It sounded like a comprehensive approach based on the intelligence information. It blended into a single effort to stop a terrorist attack.

  Jack finished by thanking everyone for their contributions, and then he singled out Rick for further praise saying that he hadn’t believed Rick’s story that there had to be another terrorist cell beside the one established at the Bagdad Market. He said Rick was a model for any intelligence professional, and his tackle of the terrorist wasn’t half bad either.

  Rick blushed. He wanted recognition but wasn’t a fan of getting it in public. Travis slapped him on the back as all eyes were riveted on him. The Secretary started clapping, and the rest of the room joined in. Jack chuckled to himself as he saw Rick’s discomfort.

  “We will know by lunch the status of one Mr. Kalu and his explosives!” Jack ended his briefing and headed directly for the door, shaking his head at Rick as he walked past.

  The briefing broke up quickly after that.

  Now they waited.

  “I don’t know about you, but I think there’s no place I’d rather be than right here,” Rick said.

  “Sounds like we have some time. Maybe IHOP? I haven’t had breakfast yet. If we stay here, I’ll have to get in line to worship at the altar of Rick.”

  “And no one wants to see that,” Rick answered.

  The Apartment

  Jack Coleberg led the assault on Mwanajuma Kalu’s apartment. Once the area was secured, they sent agents, dressed as representatives from the gas company, telling anyone remaining in the building to evacuate immediately because of a gas leak. Only two people were in the seven other units of the small two-story apartment building.

  That made their job easier. Clay’s apartment was on the second floor. Once the building was clear of other residents, they launched with two sections of three team members each entering the second story walkway from opposite directions. They took up positions on either side of the door.

  One member snaked a scope between the crack at the bottom of the door and the jam to make sure the door wasn’t booby trapped. He said that the apartment looked empty.

  With one yell, they used the breaching ram to break through the door, and with weapons raised, they rushed in. It was a one bedroom apartment and took a total of four seconds to confirm that no one was home and that they hadn’t been making explosives.

  Clay’s apartment was clean and tidy, with minimal furniture, probably purchased second hand. They didn’t find any of the precursor chemicals for TATP, but they smelled a faint chemical odor. In the laundry basket, they found a pair of pants with bleach stains. They secured the basket for further testing.

  In a dresser drawer, they found almost $3000 in cash, mostly $20s but a few $100s, as well.

  The HRT turned over the apartment to forensics who would totally dismantle it. They questioned the two people they removed from the building, and then let them return home.

  Rick and Travis were waiting when Jack called the Fusion Center to report that they didn’t find people or explosives at the apartment.

  The Storage Unit

  Simultaneously with the raid on the apartment, two FBI agents entered the Empty Space Storage office. One stayed at the door watching out, his hand over his ear so he could hear the alarm if the target were inbound. The other showed the clerk his credentials. The man nodded as he looked them. And then he looked terrified when he saw the picture in the agent’s hand.

  “What unit is his?” The agent asked gruffly. The old man behind the counter answered without looking it up.

  “Where?” The old man pointed to a map on the wall with a shaking hand. The agent looked at the diagram and then spoke into a small microphone at his collar.

  “Gate code?” The old man gave him one. He passed it to someone else.

  “Was he with anyone?” The agent asked.

  “Yes, another man. I didn’t get a good look. He always stayed in the vehicle. I can’t believe it!” The old man lamented. “He was such a nice young man, the only one to ever bring me coffee and donuts. He told me to call him Clay.” The old man looked crushed. He shrank into his chair and whimpered.

  “When’s the last time he was here?”

  “Friday? Just a couple days ago. I work every day, you see…” The agent cut him off.

  “Video. I need to see the video from Friday.” The old man fumbled around, making excuses that he didn’t know how the system worked. The agent pushed the old man out of the way and took over. He scrolled smoothly through the system until he was in the archived recordings.

  “What time?” The old man told him some time in the late morning. The agent zipped through the images, stopping at each vehicle as it entered until the old man pointed at one. The agent zoomed in on the windshield. It was difficult to see the second passenger. He tried one of the other cameras and was rewarded with a clear view of a man who looked swarthy, wearing large sunglasses. The man looked at the camera as the vehicle passed, giving both a profile view and a full-face view. He was pleased. They could build a facial recognition profile.

  The agent downloaded the files to a thumb drive, telling the old man not to move.

  He left the office and handed the thumb drive to someone in a waiting vehicle, who then drove quickly away. The woman inside copied the files and sent one over an encrypted link to FBI headquarters with a copy to the Fusion Center. The original download was tagged and sealed. The agent on the inside would secure the original computer.

  A UPS truck pulled up to the gate, and the brown-clad driver punched in the code he’d just been given. He drove past the unit, then turned around so he could park facing the gate. If the target showed up, it would look like the UPS truck was a few units away. The EOD team disembarked out the back. The two members wore their full blast protective gear. At least it was cool outside.

  They looked the roll up door over, seeing nothing to indicate a trap. They looked at the lock but left it in place.

  With a double insulated drill at low revolutions, one of the two drilled a small hole in the crease between the panels of the door. Once he slowly pulled the drill bit out, the other inserted a scope and twisted it around.

  She couldn’t see anything. The first man moved back to the truck while the second EOD technician activated the light on the probe. She looked at a blue tarp. It covered the entrance to the unit. There was a flap cut on one side. She waved the other technician over to drill another hole. While looking through the scope, she directed him to a point where the probe could look past the tarp.

  After the hole had been drilled, she repositioned herself to look through the new penetration, inserting the probe and snaking it past the tarp.

  She recoiled from what she saw but then recovered and methodically looked over the rest of the storage unit.

  She removed the probe and returned to the van where she took off her helmet. She keyed a handheld radio.

  “We have one body on the floor. I believe it’s the target. We have everything else needed to make TATP, but I don’t see any storage containers, although there are buckets that I couldn’t see inside and a small
refrigerator. I can’t confirm if the explosives are here or not. The door does not appear to be booby trapped. We will cut the lock and roll up the door. We should be inside in less than two minutes.”

  She left the radio in the van. EOD techs weren’t fans of emitting radio signals while they worked. Both techs returned to the door, cut the lock and rolled it up. They looked through the flap cut into the tarp, using a flashlight to check thoroughly before they stepped through.

  They both went into the unit, each using their own light to look at everything while touching nothing. Bleach, acetone, and sulfuric acid containers were piled neatly in the corner. A couple of them were still full. They started counting quantities of each. With a pencil and a notepad, the second tech did the math. It looked like 35 pounds of explosives had been produced.

  They looked the refrigerator over carefully before opening it to find it contained nothing but a 12-pack of beer.

  They ignored the body on the floor. There was no blood, except for a small hole at the back of the man’s head. Someone else would figure out what happened. Their job was complete. They’d made sure the area was safe for the other people who need to get inside the storage unit.

  They went outside and waved at the man beyond the gate. A dark Suburban pulled through and parked out of sight. Six people appeared wearing Tyvek suits and carrying bags and kits of various sizes.

  Bad News, Worse News

  The watch commander took the call and passed the information in a whisper to Deputy Bridges. He nodded while frowning, then called to get everyone’s attention. The room was instantly quiet.

  “Let’s start with the best news.” The Deputy said, waiting, whether for dramatic pause or just to collect his thoughts. Rick found it nerve wracking. “The faceless man is no longer faceless. We have a video of him that we should receive shortly.” A cheer went up, and Rick was relieved at both being right and having a real person who people could look for.

  “Unfortunately, Mr. Kalu’s body was discovered in the storage unit. We don’t know how he died, but that isn’t as important as the faceless man is now driving a white minivan with approximately 35 pounds of TATP inside.” Rick stopped breathing.

  It was the worst case scenario. The Fusion Center was deadly silent.

  “We have a vehicle and a person to look for. We have pictures of both. The vehicle is one that our dead man rented. We’d been looking for it. We will continue to look for it. If the faceless man uses any toll road, we’ll have him. I expect the FBI is building a profile for their facial recognition software. They’ll shoot that out everywhere before the day is done.

  “We have more work to do, people. There’s a madman out there with an uncomfortably large cache of explosives.” Deputy Bridges loved making speeches.

  “Uncomfortably large cache, he says,” Rick imitated. “Do you know what kind of damage that will do?” Rick asked Travis.

  “TATP is more powerful than TNT. I think thirty-five pounds will ruin your day.”

  A second call arrived, and the watch commander answered. His eyes glazed as he listened to the encrypted voice. When he hung up, everyone looked at him. No one moved.

  “They also found wrapping paper and tape,” he hesitated as he dropped heavily into a chair. “The bombs are wrapped as Christmas presents.”

  Securing the Airport

  Rick stayed far away from anything to do with the airport. By Wednesday morning, the world’s quietest manhunt was under way. They found where the faceless man rented a vehicle from Clay. They all watched the video and saw the extended conversation. Is that when he was recruited? Was it that easy for the faceless man? Rick thought.

  He had a face, and he had a name. At least one name as it appeared that Mohammed Marsook ibn al Mohammed disappeared the moment he returned the Escalade.

  Mohammed’s picture was circulated widely to all Law Enforcement Agencies and their officers. They were also actively searching for the minivan. They knew Mohammed would not return it to the rental agency. As long as they didn’t find it abandoned, there was hope the explosives were still inside.

  On the busiest travel day of the year, law enforcement set up numerous checkpoints along the approaches to Dulles and Reagan National.

  Officers scanned the occupants of every vehicle as they approached. They were looking for the white minivan, for Mohammed, for Christmas presents in the back seat, and as much as they would deny it, they looked for any Middle Eastern-looking man or men without other passengers.

  It was a monumental effort. They changed out officers every fifteen minutes to keep their personnel fresh. They had three separate chokepoints, even though they did not restrict the lanes, only the speed at which the vehicles passed.

  They weren’t stopping up traffic, although passengers seemed alarmed when the slowdown began sooner than they were used to.

  Teams had already swept the parking structure to make sure the white minivan wasn’t there, and they checked every single vehicle looking for presents.

  Rick didn’t think that would bear any fruit as hiding the bombs in presents suggested that the bombs would be in plain sight. In support of that theory, airport security removed all the presents from under the Christmas tree that stood in the lobby as part of their Thanksgiving feel-good travel campaign.

  Employees were on edge as it had been a long time since they’d seen this level of security at their airport, and no one would tell them anything. Some of the 9/11 hijackers flew out of Dulles. It added to the employees’ unease.

  Traffic picked up in the afternoon as did passenger anxiety. People weren’t arriving at the airport early enough while too many drivers took out their frustrations on the LEOs standing in the road. There were scuffles and arrests, which further delayed people. The airlines started making noise as no one had convinced them of the danger. The TSA had changed the threat signs in the airport to red, but no one paid attention to those.

  By the end of the day and thousands and thousands of man-hours of overtime later, no one saw Mohammed, a white minivan, presents, or an explosion.

  “Maybe he got cold feet?” the watch commander told Rick. People drifted out of the Fusion Center through the evening. By 10 pm, the number of people milling about the airport was significantly less. Officers were assigned to stay into the early-morning hours until the crowds were gone. They’d look for presents. Outside of that, they were left with nothing else to do.

  Rick knew that he’d be working tomorrow, but he waited to tell his wife until he got home.

  D Minus 1

  It was Thanksgiving morning. Mohammed checked out of his retreat, thanking the staff profusely for their graciousness. He returned to Washington DC on the back roads.

  He had five meetings arranged to deliver two backpacks and three boxes. His first meeting was with the young man that Clay had thrown to the ground. They met at Bon Air Park in Arlington. Mohammed sat on a bench, the minivan parked close by in the shade of a tree.

  When the young man arrived, he parked his old car in front of the Da’esh recruiter. You have no brains and no courage, Mohammed thought to himself. You will deliver a present. If I give you a backpack, you will fail.

  The young man got out and delivered a kind greeting, bowing slightly as he talked. Without a word, Mohammed signaled for the man to follow. Like a lost puppy, he walked behind and looked down. Good, the older man thought, continuing his conversation with himself, I don’t wish to talk with you any more than I have to.

  Mohammed gave the zealot two sentences of instruction, making him repeat it back four times to ensure that he had it right. The recruiter cautioned the smaller man about the weight of the box, yet he still almost dropped it with his first attempt to move it. Mohammed cursed him for the fool he was, telling him to return after belting the box into the back seat.

  Mohammed expected the man to blow himself up. He flinched as the young zealot manhandled the package into his back seat. Mohammed got in the minivan and prepared to leave. When the young m
an returned, happy to be alive, the Da’esh recruiter handed him the remote detonator in its protective box.

  “Use this when the time is right. It will take a second or two, but then the package will be delivered, my friend. Stay strong, keep the faith, and run away with the other bystanders. Blend in and you will be saved.

  The young man nodded profusely and smiled in relief. Mohammed wished him on his way and drove off.

  “Now, you will deliver your package without hesitation, and you will be remembered for your contribution to our cause.” Mohammed smiled to himself, knowing one detail the young man didn’t.

  Thanksgiving

  Rick’s home smelled like the perfect Thanksgiving. Football was on television, and the turkey had just come out of the oven. Too bad Rick wasn’t home yet. He’d been at the Fusion Center since the early hours. It was now 2 pm, but he was on his way according to his wife.

  Becky was already there, as was Travis pushing Xandrie in a heavy wheelchair. They couldn’t stay long. The doctors recommended that she not go out at all, but she said she needed some sense of normalcy. The FBI had a handicapped-accessible van that they had impounded some time ago. They loaned it to Travis to shuttle Xandrie around.

  The doctors were amazed by her attitude. Her HRT teammates helped as much as they could, but they were still in the game. They hunted Mohammed Marsook and would keep searching until they found him. Travis also hunted him, but in a different way. He made the time to help Xandrie.

  Rick told both Becky and Travis not to join him as the Fusion Center was fully staffed. With the failure to find the bomber and the bombs on Wednesday, the next greatest target was Black Friday, which started at midnight in some places. At this point, they were guessing. They had the full attention of every Law Enforcement Agency in the area, but there simply weren’t enough officers. Too few assets to cover too great an area.