Burke's Revenge: Bob Burke Suspense Thriller #3 (Bob Burke Action Adventure Novels)

by William Brown

  “That would be correct,” Ace told him, “but he came back here too, a couple of days ago. My guess is he wants to do this in your backyard, right in your face.”

  Bob nodded. “You’re probably right, so you guys stay frosty. But payback can be a bitch, and it’s even worse when it comes back around the second time.”

  “Copy that,” the others said, almost in unison. “And we want a piece of that.”

  Bob stepped closer and quietly asked, “What the hell were you guys doing in Raqqah to begin with? Trying to take down al-Zaeim with four shooters and a squad of Iraqis? I’ll admit, he’d be worth the risk, but an operation like that requires first-rate planning, intel, and air, ground, and satellite multiservice coordination that is well beyond Adkins’s capability.”

  “As we heard it, they triangulated some cell phone traffic to that house,” Koz told him. “And they had a source who claimed he had ‘eyes on’ al-Zaeim and three big Turkmenis there. They always seem to be around him. Maybe they’re his bodyguards or something, and there was a tall blond European or American there too. Anyway, it appears Adkins grabbed for the brass ring and…”

  “Fell off the ride on his ass and blamed you guys. Interesting,” Bob answered.

  By 2:30, the party was going full speed. There were more than fifty people there, coming and going, but they finished off the first keg, most of the oysters, a case and a half of steaks, and had made major inroads into all the sides. That was when Bob saw two men walk around the side of the house from the side parking area. One was his old friend from O’Hare Airport, Chicago Police Detective Captain Ernie Travers. He was instrumental in helping them bring down the DiGrigoria mob in Chicago during their little spat the year before. As a result, Ernie was now Vice Chief of the city’s Organized Crime Task Force. As one of the other charter members of the Merry Men, he had been to Sherwood Forest before and knew that blue jeans and cowboy boots were the uniform of the day, but at six foot four inches tall and around 240 pounds he made for a prodigious cowboy. Bob did not know the man with Ernie. He was short and stocky, wearing a nondescript business suit and thick black-framed glasses that you’d only find on a bookkeeper, a third-grade schoolteacher, or one of the characters on The Big Bang Theory, Bob thought, not a senior FBI agent.

  Linda, Patsy, Dorothy, and Ellie immediately rushed over to greet Ernie with hugs and kisses. Bob joined in and gave him a backslapping handshake and said, “Great to see you, man. What are you doing in town?”

  “Linda told me about the party, and one of the CPD staff pilots needed some flight hours so he flew me down. I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he explained as he waved to some of the regulars sitting at other tables. “Bob, I want you to meet another old friend of mine, Tom Pendergrass. We carried each other through the Chicago Police Academy…”

  “I suspect you got the worst end of that deal, Tom, but make yourself at home,” Bob laughed as he shook Tom’s hand. “Anybody who could carry this big oaf around…”

  “I meant that figuratively, of course, not literally,” Ernie laughed.

  “You may find this hard to believe, Tom, but I actually got him in a ghillie suit lying in the woods out by O’Hare.”

  “Pretending to be a haystack?” Pendergrass laughed.

  “Hey, for your information, we ended up number one and number two in that class,” Ernie added. “A few years later Tom went over to the ‘dark side’ and joined the Feebs, while I ended up working the Cabrini Green and Robert Taylor Homes housing projects where I had enough holes shot in me that they dumped me out at O’Hare, which is where I met Bob one evening. Tom went into the international end of the business and got such garden spots as Cairo, Ankara, and more recently Cyprus.”

  “Are you working at the local FBI office up on Morganton Road now?” Bob asked.

  “I have a desk there for a couple of weeks, but it’s just temporary.”

  “There’s worse places, I can assure you,” Bob told him. “So, think of Sherwood Forest as your second home. What end of the business is international? Organized crime, terrorists?”

  “All of the above. My job is to stop them before they get here, and to break up their cells if they do.”

  That was when Ernie stepped in. “I invited Tom to come along with me because I figured you guys should meet. A couple of days ago, our old pal Phil Henderson in the FBI office in Northfield, New Jersey, called me about a couple of details he was still cleaning up with that casino mess in Atlantic City. He told me to say ‘Hi.’ Anyway, I told him I was headed down here to Fayetteville for the party, so he told me to give Tom a call when I was here. When he told me why Tom was here, I knew you guys needed to get together and cross-pollinate.”

  Ernie took Bob and Tom by their arms and led them away from the others. “Not for attribution,” Ernie said quietly to Bob, “but Tom’s watching some scary people right now with possible links to ISIS right here in Fayetteville, maybe even at Fort Bragg.”

  “ISIS? Islamic terrorists? Here? Are you shitting me?” Bob asked. “I can picture them setting up a cell a lot of places, but not here. The patriotic Southern culture and a tightly wired Army post? That’s a tough mix to try to infiltrate. They’ll stand out like sore thumbs.”

  “Not if they have a blond, blue-eyed American leading them.”

  Bob stood and stared at him for a moment. “You’re right. That could be dangerous. I fought them in and out of two countries for enough years to know they all aren’t stupid. Fanatical, yes, but not stupid. In my humble opinion, God’s neutral. But if you’re so ‘righteous’ that you think you can use bombs and suicide vests to kill innocent women and children, then I doubt God’s going to be very happy with you at all.”

  Pendergrass smiled and nodded. “You’re an interesting man, Major Burke.”

  “Call me Bob, and I’ve been called a lot of things, most of which have four letters, but ‘interesting’ has never been one of them. More to the point, the Army has been concerned for a long time about infiltrators and converts, especially in the lower ranks, and at the big stateside garrison posts like Fort Bragg or Benning or Riley. They’re inviting targets. But if you’re looking at Fayetteville and Bragg, I assume you’re working with the Army Criminal Investigation Division, the CID on this?”

  Pendergrass glanced around again. “Ernie said I can talk straight with you, Major. He filled me in on your background and your connections in JSOC, or I would never say this, but to be frank, this isn’t their expertise. Locals, whether they’re military or civilian, never like the FBI sticking its nose in their business, but in all candor, your local CID people don’t have a clue. Even if they did, they have their hands full right now.”

  “With those two shootings?” Bob asked.

  “Correct.”

  “As I understand it, they don’t have any leads yet, but it’s early.”

  “And they don’t have a clue.”

  Bob nodded. “Okay, between the two of us, who is it you are watching?”

  “You may find this damned hard to believe, but a sociology professor at Blue Ridge College. He supposedly got kidnapped or lost in Syria of all places, and I was part of the interview team to talk to him after he made it back to Cyprus.”

  “A sociology professor?”

  “I know, but don’t underestimate him. He’s smart and slippery, and I wouldn’t have said any of that if Ernie hadn’t told me how you guys ‘colored outside the lines’ in Chicago and New Jersey, and told me I can trust you. Somebody down here needs to understand what’s going on, because the CID sure doesn’t.”

  “I’ll keep my ears open,” Bob said with a smile. “My people have a few capabilities that are a few cuts above what the CID can bring to bear.”

  Pendergrass smiled back. “That’s what I hoped you’d say. And I have a sneaking suspicion he didn’t tell me everything about what happened in your little ‘dustups,’ did he?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Fayetteville

  It was 8:45
p.m., just after sunset that same evening, when Professor Henry Shaw drove his white Peugeot into the Cross Creek Mall parking lot on the northwest side of town, not too fast and not too slow. The mall stores would be closing in a few minutes and most cars were leaving rather than driving in. He circled the big mall building on the inside loop, looking for police cars, marked or unmarked security, constantly checking his mirrors to see if he was being followed. Shaw had been told to look for nondescript sedans or SUVs, black or gray, sometimes two or three vehicles working together, taking turns, with small rooftop radio antennas. Inside each vehicle, he would see middle-aged men, usually two, in business suits. The Khans had explained that was the universal profile of an FBI surveillance team, and the local police and every other intelligence agency in the country always copied the FBI. Shaw continued to circle and look, but he continued to see nothing, anywhere. Were they there? Or had he let that damned Pendergrass and the two Fayetteville detectives, Van Zandt and Greenfield, get in his head?

  Finally satisfied that no one was following him, he drove his white Peugeot to the rear door of the big Sears store and parked. Sears was one of the four anchor department stores in the mall, each located at one of its corners. Nothing could be more classically American, or a more perfect location for him to plot their downfall. He backed the Peugeot into a parking space between two other cars, where he could depart quickly if he had to, and slid down in the seat. He pressed his head back against the head rest and could see through the windows and out across the hood of the car without being seen.

  Before he returned from Syria, that arrogant bastard Aslan Khan had grilled him for hours on security and “tradecraft,” things that Henry Shaw knew nothing about. So long as he was smarter than his opposition, which he knew he always was, where was the problem? Aslan Khan didn’t mince his words when he called him a fool, a stupid American, and much worse. Gradually Shaw began to understand. He even speed-read his way through several pirated CIA and British MI6 tech manuals that Khan provided. Google was also useful. It was amazing what you could find online these days, he chuckled. When he was finished, he was forced to admit that Khan had been right. He had been a fool and a stupid American, but no longer. He had no intention of making this a suicide mission, ending his days in an American prison, or worse. For the first time in his life, he began to think and act as if people were watching him, and to be aware of his surroundings.

  So, who was watching him? That FBI bastard Pendergrass? Perhaps “Johnson” from the CIA? Or was it the NSA or some other “alphabet soup” US agency he’d never even heard of. Shaw had made no effort whatsoever to conceal his “research” trip to Turkey for the simple reason that he didn’t expect to be coming back anytime soon, if ever. For months, his intention had been to join ISIS and become a frontline fighter, a jihadist, which would give him the chrome-plated bona fides that even the most arrogant professor in the University of Chicago elite could not deny. That’s why this whole ISIS thing was merely a game to him. He never thought of himself as a master spy, revolutionary, or jihadist whose mission was to bring down the American military, but so be it. What the Caliph and the Khan brothers told him made sense. If Fayetteville, North Carolina, was where he could make a spectacular impact, then Fayetteville was where he would start his own little war.

  At 8:57 p.m., he watched as an old Honda Civic circled the parking lot. It was a faded blue with one green door and no front bumper. It drove up his aisle to the end, turned around, and drove back again before it pulled into a space five cars down from where Shaw was parked. The car door opened and Shaw saw Farrakhan Muhammad get out and walk toward him. He wore the new camouflage pattern Army Combat Uniform, a matching “patrol” baseball cap, and tan desert boots. In most other communities, people would take note of somebody walking around in an Army uniform, but not in Fayetteville. It housed the largest Army post on the East Coast, and the sight of men in uniform was the expected norm, not the exception. Even so, short, squat, and at well over 250 pounds, Muhammad looked like a “camo” bowling ball and would stand out anywhere. He appeared to understand that and looked nervously around the lot as he approached the Peugeot, opened the passenger side door and stuffed himself inside.

  “You’re late,” Shaw reprimanded him.

  “Ah wuz bein’ careful!” Muhammad snapped back.

  “You look nervous and afraid,” Shaw told him, trying to sound understanding, but he could smell the sweat and fear pouring out of him. “Being cautious is a good thing for a soldier, but being too cautious is unnatural. It will make you stand out.”

  “Thas easy fo’ you to say. I never done nothin’ like this before,” he confessed as he turned and looked out the window at the other cars in the parking lot.

  “You needn’t worry, I already checked. I wasn’t followed. Were you?” Shaw asked as he looked straight at him. “You don’t even know, do you? That’s why it is critical that you follow my instructions, Farrakhan, follow them precisely. Are we clear on that?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” the black man said as he turned and glanced around outside the car.

  “Were you able to get the C-4?”

  “Ah tole you I would, didn’t I?”

  “How much?”

  “Four blocks, thas about five pounds, plus some detonators.”

  “Excellent, you should be proud,” Shaw said in an encouraging voice as he reached over and put his hand on the black man’s shoulder. “Farrakhan, you must reach down deep inside and take courage from your faith,” he said in his ‘serious professor’ voice. “We’re warriors, you and I, and nothing can stop us now.”

  “Maybe, but a lot ’a folks talk big. Ah’m the one wif my ass on the line gettin’ dis stuff, not you. So where’s da ‘eight large,’ my man?” Muhammad scowled.

  Shaw reached inside his jacket, pulled out a thick envelope full of one-hundred-dollar bills. “That’s ten grand, Muhammad, because you deserve it.”

  The scowl on the burly black man was suddenly replaced by a toothy smile as he fanned the bills and then said, “You know, you okay after all, Shaw. You okay.”

  Shaw looked at his watch. “You have it in the car?”

  Muhammad nodded. “I got dem guns you wanted, too.”

  “How many did you get?” Shaw asked as he handed him a second envelope with the agreed-upon cash.

  “A dozen rifles, M-4s and M-16s, and a half-dozen Berettas. Plus the handguns we took off dem rednecks.”

  “Excellent. And ammunition? Did you get ammunition?”

  “Yeah, ’course I got duh ammo, two cans, and a bunch ’a them magazines.

  “You did well, Farrakhan.” Shaw smiled. “You did very well indeed.”

  Muhammad looked inside, fanned the bills and smiled. “You okay, Shaw, you okay.”

  “All right, we need to move the guns to my trunk. There’s some blankets back there to wrap them in. Then we’ll leave my car here and take yours, since we went in my car last night. You can drive.”

  They rolled the rifles and pistols in Shaw’s blanket and brought them back to his car with the magazines and cans of ammunition. Before he closed the trunk, Shaw chose one of the 9-millimeter Berettas and two loaded magazines. He worked the slide and checked the trigger pull before he put one of the magazines in the pistol and jammed it behind his belt in the small of his back.

  “You couldn’t get any silencers?” he asked Muhammad.

  “No way, man. The only folks got dat stuff is Delta and Special Ops, an’ dey ain’t sellin’ nuthin’.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” Shaw said. “These things can be noisy.”

  “Sho’ can,” Muhammad quickly agreed. “So, where we goin’?” the big black man asked, with an expression of concern on his face.

  “Fort Bragg. Time to have some more fun.”

  They drove up Bragg Boulevard, Route 24, and through the rear gate of Fort Bragg, where they had exited the night before on Butner, passing the commissary, and driving to the big North Post Exchange. It was
surrounded by a vast parking lot, with its own branch bank and a Firestone auto care store out front. As they drove, Shaw put on a pair of latex surgical gloves and set to work on the blocks of C-4 Muhammad brought. He cut two of them in half, inserted detonators deep inside, and wired each to one of the burner cell phones he had bought earlier at the discount electronics store. When he finished the wiring, he wrapped each one with a half-dozen turns of duct tape, exactly as the Khans taught him.

  “Thas all you gotta do to make one, huh?” Muhammad asked, pointing at the C-4. “Sho’ don’t look like much.”

  “Depends on whether you want to blow yourself up or not,” Shaw quickly replied as he reached up, took the plastic cover off the ceiling dome light, and unscrewed the bulb. “That’s so no one will see us inside the car when I open the door… but I’m sure you knew that,” he said as he looked skeptically at Muhammad.

  “Uh, yeah, sure, ah knew that.”

  It was 9:30 and the Post Exchange was already closed for the night. The parking lot was empty, which was exactly what Shaw wanted. There would be plenty of time to kill people later. For now, all he wanted was to spread a little wide-eyed terror around.

  “Go down to the far end of the parking lot and then drive back along the front of the Exchange building,” he told Muhammad.

  “Why? It’s all closed up, man.”

  “Just do it!” Shaw told him, already tired of his questions. Outside the building’s front door, he saw two large trash cans, one on each side of the front doors. “Stop there,” he told Muhammad. Before the car stopped rolling, Shaw took one of the C-4 explosive charges, opened his door, and walked quickly to the trashcan, dropped the C-4 inside and returned to the car.