by Rick Jones
Weakly stated: “I am a vessel … of Allah!”
“I can do this all day,” said Millette. Then he lowered the board.
“No! Please don’t do this!”
Millette was an expert at extracting information. Without hesitation he placed the cloth over Scott’s face and poured water over it. Coughing. Gagging. The man tried to worm free from his bindings. Failed. More water. More coughing. Then Millette raised the board back to a sixty-degree angle and removed the cloth. “Who is your correspondent?”
Scott nodded. He had had enough. “If I tell you … will you stop?”
Millette whipped the board back, placed the cloth over the man’s face, and continued to pour water. “Let’s get one thing straight, Mr. Scott. You do not ask me questions. Never. When I ask you something, you give me an answer to the best of your ability. And you do so without question. Is that clear?”
Scott tried to shake his head: yes. Then wheezed as he tried to pull in air, taking in nothing but wetness.
Millette lifted the board and removed the cloth. “Very good, Mr. Scott. Let’s proceed, shall we? Now tell me, and keep in mind what I just told you: who is your correspondent?”
Scott looked completely spent as silvery strands of drool and water dripped from the corners of his mouth. “A courier. One of many in a long line who works for a man by the name of Chahine,” he finally said.
“Is that his first or last name?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “The notices I received are signed only as Chahine. Even then they’re written and signed by couriers who have received messages through other couriers.”
“And where is Chahine?”
Scott shook his head. He didn’t know.
Back to the waterboarding, then back to his sixty-degree angle upward. “Where is Chahine?” repeated Millette.
“Somewhere in the Middle East. That’s all I know.”
Millette believed him. “So Chahine has a long reach and continues to correspond with you through couriers in this country?”
Another nod. Yes.
“In D.C.?”
Scott nodded. Yes.
“Where are they located?”
“I don’t know,” said Scott. “They move all the time. Never in one place for too long. That’s why I received correspondence and never sent one. All outgoing messages were passed to converts within the system, who passed it on to other converts on the outside.”
“Converts on the outside? The ones who visit?”
“Yes.”
“And then these outside converts act as couriers? That’s the way messages are passed along?”
“Yes.”
“Stay with me, Mr. Scott. You’re doing fine.” Then: “These couriers, are they active?”
Scott shook his head. “They’re logistics. They’re errand boys and nothing more.”
“But there is an active member in D.C., yes? One they send messages to?”
Trayveon Scott hesitated at this point.
But Millette didn’t. He swung the board back, laid the cloth over Scott’s face, and poured water until Scott’s coughing and gagging almost brought the man to the verge of vomiting.
After swinging the board into the up-position, Millette removed the cloth. “No hesitation, Mr. Scott. You were doing well. But the next time you pause, then you can expect pretty much the same. Only the periods will be longer. This I guarantee. Do you understand this, Mr. Scott? Hesitation on your part will only provide you with continued discomfort …” Millette stood back and grouped his hands behind the small of his back. His tone and demeanor remained flat. “There is an active member in D.C., yes? One they send messages to? Messages you received through couriers acting on behalf of Chahine?”
Scott nodded, though reluctantly. The answer was yes.
“Very good, Mr. Scott. I promise you that this will be over soon enough.”
“Will you kill me?”
“No, Mr. Scott. We’re not the Islamic State and have no intentions of killing you. With that being said, however, accidents do happen. So we do expect your complete cooperation.”
Scott allowed a tear to slip from the corner of his eye.
“Now, Mr. Scott, shall we press on?”
Scott nodded. Yes.
“Very good.” Millette held Scott with a neutral stare. Then: “There is an active member in D.C., yes?”
Scott nodded.
“Tell me about him. His name. Everything there is to know.”
“It’s been all over the news, man.”
“His name.”
“Mohammad Allawi. You just took down his cell.”
“He’s the one you have been staying in contact with through the couriers?”
“Yes.”
“How does that work? With the couriers, I mean?”
“We know the government is watching closely,” he responded. “We know about the watch-lists and who’s on them. We know about the racial profiling, though the government refuses to acknowledge this. And we know about the continuous monitoring of the chat rooms, which is why we remain careful about what we say or pass on over the internet.”
“So you’ve become the hub of informational activity.” This was a statement, not a question.
Scott nodded. “Word-of-mouth couriers is a slow process, but it’s a process that’s effective and difficult to intercept.”
“Why you?”
“We knew that attorney-to-client mail correspondence could not be read or examined by institution staff. So we had envelopes and stationary professionally printed to appear that all transactions were from my attorney. No one would ever suspect that letters from a respected law firm to Brockbridge as being an ISIS pipeline. So we utilized that loophole for the past nine months.”
“And your place in all matters?”
“Everything begins and ends with me,” he said. “I’m the Handler. And I don’t just deal with Allawi. I deal with others as well. Mostly logistical people. But I also deal with those who have some military sophistication. The couriers I send out from Brockbridge serve as the tentacles of my reach to the Islamic State within borders.”
Though Millette didn’t appear phased by this because his features didn’t betray his emotions, he was. “How large of a network?” he asked.
“The entire eastern seaboard.”
There was a pause between them, one that caught Millette off guard. “And couriers travel throughout?”
Scott nodded. “Like I said, word-of-mouth is hard to intercept. Whether information gets to point A to point B in one day, one week or one month, it doesn’t matter as long as it gets to where it’s supposed to safely … Those within the Islamic State are a patient people. That’s how Belgium and Paris were hit. Information was passed through couriers to assure that there would be no chance of interception. The United States is no different.”
“And Allawi, he’s still in D.C.?”
Scott hesitated. A mistake.
Millette quickly crossed the room with amazing speed for a large man, flipped the board back, dropped the cloth on the man’s face, and poured water on the fabric for a considerable length of time. This time when he flipped the board upright and removed the cloth, Scott vomited copious amounts of water before coughing, gagging, and wheezing air into his lungs with such a long pull that it sounded more like a death rattle than a life-saving draw.
“What did I tell you about hesitation, Mr. Scott? Did you think I was being untruthful when I informed you that your lack of cooperation would be met with discomfort?”
Scott coughed, wheezed and nodded. No, he didn’t think Millette was a man of humor at all.
Millette stepped back and folded his massive arms across his chest. “Allawi. He’s still in D.C., yes?”
“I believe so.”
When Millett
e started forward to obviously flip the board, Scott shouted out. “Yes! … Yes, he’s in D.C.! I don’t know where exactly.”
Millette fell back and offered the sixty-four thousand dollar question. “Why?”
Scott held back, but when he saw Millette come towards him he spoke in a torrent. “Word from the principals in the Middle East is that they’re rebuilding Allawi’s cell. So a call has been put out to people who are coming in from places like New York and Boston.”
“Why?”
“Allawi’s cell was initially to perform strikes against targets in D.C.”
“But?”
“But,” Scott broke off for a beat. Then: “But something big is being planned. The last information I received in the letter was to inform Allawi that he would lead a new team for something that’s to go down in the near future. Something like within a week.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
Millette took a step forward. “You want me to believe that you’re the hub of information spreading word-of-mouth wealth, but you don’t know exactly what that wealth is?”
“Look, man–”
Millette didn’t wait for Scott to finish. He flipped the board, covered Scott’s face with a wet cloth, and poured water until Scott nearly passed out. When Scott regained his wits, he saw Millette standing about six feet away with his arms folded. Apparently he’d been out, though not for long.
“What’s Allawi’s orders?” asked Millette. “What was the information passed to Allawi from the couriers?”
Scott raised his head, appearing weak and fatigued. “There’s going to be a strike against certain principals in Washington,” he said.
“Who?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “That information has yet to be passed on to me. But it’s coming.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Matters were still being discussed by the Islamic State as to the best way to proceed.”
Millette believed him.
“And Allawi will lead?”
“Yes,” he said. “Allawi will lead.”
Millette considered Scott to be an easy nut to crack. If he’d been an Arab he would’ve had a much harder shell to break. But Trayveon Scott wasn’t. He was an American-made radical who was a part of the evolution of evil. Then in the same balanced tone he carried throughout out the interrogation, he said, “You’ve done well, Mr. Scott. Now you can rest.”
Trayveon Scott’s face twisted with emotion and then he broke, sobbing with relief.
He would live.
For now.
But the weight of his hope of continuing to do so was feather-light.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
United Kingdom
The vehicle that Mehmoud Atwa was in headed in a westbound direction. Even in the night he could see the trees and rolling hills, something that was quite different from his native land that looked more like a Martian landscape, a place that was dead and barren. Through the windshield he could see the pinprick glimmers of countless stars that shined across the sky like a cache of diamonds spread across black velvet.
Then up ahead, maybe a half kilometer away, there was a flash of light and fire as something deadly corkscrewed its way in a skyward trajectory. From its awkward motion, which Atwa had seen many times before, he knew it was a projectile coming from the launching point of an RPG.
Through the glass of the windshield, Atwa traced the grenade’s upward spiral until it disappeared from his vision completely. “It appears that Mr. Beckett is dealing with our little problem of not being alone,” he said.
“Like I said,” the driver stated in Arabic, “he plans for everything.”
Atwa closed his eyes while the driver maintained his course, both knowing that the grenade’s launch was just the beginning.
#
The alarm in the helicopter’s bay started to chime, the system picking up a fast-moving object that had locked onto their position and was closing fast. Through the thermal imaging lens of the camera situated at the chopper’s underbelly, the co-pilot recognized the unique corkscrewing motion of the object heading their way after seeing it many times while serving in the Middle East. Some things never changed.
“Pull back on the throttle!” he shouted. “Pull back on the bloody–”
Just as the pilot began his maneuver to peel back, all he did was expose the chopper’s underbelly, which gave the grenade a perfect bullseye.
Neither of the pilots had a chance.
#
The operator of the RPG stood through the opening of the SUV’s hatch, and watched the grenade cover the distance between the vehicle and the chopper within a few measured beats. The helicopter followed and hovered approximately 400 meters above the Citroën, a blackened shape in the sky, quiet and subtle.
Then impact.
The night sky quickly lit up with a blooming fireball, a near-perfect globe of flames as the chopper’s tank exploded. The vehicle appeared to hang in the air a brief moment before the laws of gravity took over. The chopper fell like a rock, straight down, twisted steel and flesh and bone, and hit the pavement hard behind the Citroën, causing a second explosion. This time the power of the impact spread the wave of the concussion’s blast that was so powerful that it rocked the car.
The operator then slapped the roof of the black SUV.
It was time to move on to the second phase.
There were still four cars out there.
And they were closing fast.
#
Charles David Rockwell was in MI5’s lead vehicle and approximately two kilometers behind the Citroën when the sky suddenly lit up in a burst of fire. There was no question as to what it was. The chopper had been downed, its wreckage falling from the sky as a result of an all-out ground assault.
“Bloody hell,” he said just above a whisper. “The bloody bastards took us right to a diversion point … They made us.”
Rockwell looked behind him. Three cars followed. All MI5. But what he couldn’t see were the specially designed SUVs that were coming up fast from behind.
But he knew they were coming.
#
There was a convoy of three vehicles, all SUVs, all black, and all with hard-shelled bodies and bullet-proof glass. The vehicles were closing the gap between them and the downed chopper, pinching the sedans of the MI5 in between. The lid of the moon-roof peeled back from the lead SUV and an operator with an RPG surfaced, took aim, locked onto the target of the rear sedan, and pulled the trigger.
A rocket-propelled grenade launched forward, the explosive winding through the air before settling into a straight line, the distance between two points, and impacting at the vehicle’s point of the bumper just above the gas tank. The sedan erupted with a voluminous explosion that lifted the car high into the air, performed two quick revolutions, and came down hard on its roof, collapsing it, the vehicle then skidding and skating across the pavement for several meters before it finally came to a full halt.
The other three sedans stepped on it to build up speed in order to separate themselves from the closing SUVs. But the SUVs were built for speed and power.
Up ahead the chopper was burning.
But the Citroën and the SUV were pulling away as well, with the Citroën following. No doubt to get away from the crossfire.
The driver of Rockwell’s vehicle looked into the rearview mirror. Then he addressed Rockwell: “They’re coming up fast, Charles. We can’t outrun them.”
“And we can’t fight them, either,” said Rockwell.
“What do we do?”
There was a second explosion. Another sedan had taken a hit, the third vehicle in line. The car’s body went up like a pillar of fire, the tank exploding. The car veered and crawled off to the side of the road afire, the bodies in the front seat burning behind
the dashboard, both dead, both unmoving, and then the sedan hit a tree where the flames continued to consume flesh and bone and twisted steel right down to charred remains.
That left two sedans.
Now the SUVs had tightened the gap to three, maybe four car-lengths behind, and pressed closer.
The black-tinted windows to the SUVs rolled downward enough to reveal the points of suppressed weaponry which appeared to be the tips of assault weapons, powerful weapons, weapons whose rounds were specially designed to cut and rip through metal as easily as a hot knife cuts through a cake of butter.
One of the SUVs raced to the left side of the second sedan, while the others remained to the sedan’s rear. As soon as the MI5 agent tried to draw a bead with his handgun toward the SUV, gunfire from the SUV erupted in unison with a series of muzzle flashes lighting the short distance between the two vehicles like a strobe-light. Bullets ripped and tore at the metal, smashed glass, and decimated flesh. Splashes of red gore filled the car. Limbs were torn and twisted as bones were broken by the rounds. And heads exploded with all the pulpy mass of melons.
Bullets continued to pepper the sedan until its body was about as perforated as a colander. And then the vehicle veered off to the side of the roadway where its nose became mired in a small ditch.
That left Rockwell’s sedan.
The SUVs pulled close.
“Pull off the road,” Rockwell told his driver. “Now!”
The driver pulled hard to the left, the car going up a small incline, over a mound, then into the base of a thick tree. They got out of the car and took position behind their open doors, their weapons drawn, and waited.
But the SUVs slowed and stopped, as if to take stock of the situation. Then after a few moments of inactivity, all the points of weapons disappeared into the cabs of the vehicles and the windows rolled up. A moment later the SUVs continued on, leaving Rockwell and his driver relieved that they were still alive.
#
Approximately six kilometers down the road, the lead vehicle and the Citroën had pulled over and waited for the rest of the team to catch up. The moment the SUVs met they surrounded the Citroën. Three men moved with skilled military coordination to the Citroën, with one man opening the passenger-side door. He was dressed in military gear wearing a Kevlar helmet with a formation of gadgetry that marched up one side and down the other, with an assemblage of NVG goggles and thermal ware. His faceplate was a convexity of yellow-hued plastic. And his body ensemble was completely ‘Robocop’ with specially designed composite shin and forearm guards. He reached a black-gloved hand toward Atwa.