Bob Burke and Sharmayne Phillips left the Trauma Center and stopped on the other side of the big sliding glass doors. “You’re right,” she said. “Muhammad didn’t push the button, did he?”
“Nope. I think the plan was for Muhammad to place the C-4 near the building, and they were going to blow it later, after he cleared the area.”
“Then what? Did the two MPs spook them?”
“Them? I think it spooked his partner. When it looked like Muhammad might get caught, I think the other guy, the one with the cell phone, decided to get rid of an overweight liability.”
“I think you’re right. Okay, what’s next? We have his cell phone, the C-4 and cell phone on the bomb that didn’t go off, the .45, the bullets, and all the bomb residue. I sent all that off to the lab at Quantico early this morning. I’m going to go back inside and prod our fat friend Muhammad one more time, and then I need to get back to the office and beat on the lab. We need those forensics reports if we hope to get any search warrants. So, if you don’t have anything else…”
Bob was about to answer when he noticed a short, stocky man in a rumpled brown civilian suit and cheap maroon tie walking up the curved sidewalk toward them. It was Tom Pendergrass, the FBI Special Agent from Cyprus whom Ernie Travers had introduced him to at the Sherwood Forest party on Saturday. Behind Pendergrass and just getting out of their big navy-blue Crown Vic Fayetteville PD squad car were two other men who had their eyes on Bob and Sharmayne. One of them looked like almost every old Army supply sergeant Bob had ever known. He was dressed in an ugly plaid sports coat, cheap gray slacks, a wrinkled white shirt, and clip-on tie, and looked like he still got his buzz cuts on post. The third man was considerably younger than the other two, with a stylish, closely cropped beard, blue jeans, and a green polo shirt under a soft linen blazer.
“Special Agent Pendergrass,” Bob called out as the Fed approached and put out his hand. If there was any question whether the other two men were with him, that was answered when they joined the small circle standing on the sidewalk and took up position on each side of the FBI agent. “Long time, no see,” Bob quipped as he turned toward Sharmayne and said, “Allow me to introduce Army CID Special Agent Sharmayne Phillips. Sharmayne, Tom is the FBI Special Agent I mentioned, who is here on a temporary assignment from Cyprus.”
“Rumor has it you’re looking for an ISIS cell?” Sharmayne asked.
Pendergrass looked at Bob. “Nothing stays secret in this town very long, does it?”
“Not when it’s important,” Sharmayne added. “We need to talk.”
“So it would seem,” Pendergrass answered her and then looked at Bob. “The Major and I have a mutual friend in the Chicago Police Department who warned me that he can usually be found wherever bad guys congregate… not you, of course, but those bad guys.”
“Really?” Bob laughed. “Ernie told you that?”
“He did. But let me introduce you to two other ‘interested parties’ in this fracas: Detectives Harry Van Zandt and George Greenfield of the Fayetteville PD. They told me they’ve worked with you before, Special Agent Phillips.”
“Yeah,” she smiled at them as they all shook hands. “We’ve had some mutual robbery and car theft rings from time to time, and they usually slop over between the post and the city.”
“Since nobody works for anybody here, and I’m a civilian anyway, why don’t we start out using first names,” Bob suggested as he turned toward Tom Pendergrass. “So you think you’ve got a dog in this fight, too?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me, or surprise Harry or George, either,” Pendergrass answered.
“What’s their dog?” Bob asked.
“A dead college professor who fell out of a dumpster at the landfill and is now lying in the city morgue,” Van Zandt told him. “George and I think it’s the same ‘dog’ who’s probably doing this stuff.”
“Now, understand,” Pendergrass looked Sharmayne and Bob straight in the eyes and said. “I haven’t got a damned thing that ties this guy to anything; but if you spend more than a minute talking to him, you’ll know he’s more twisted than a Pennsylvania pretzel. He’s the one. It’s in his eyes. When you look into them, you can tell he’s just playing with us, amused, watching and waiting. And he’s smart, an egomaniac, and a psychopath. That’s why we need to pool our resources and cooperate, or we’re never going to stop him.”
“You really think he’s responsible for our bombings here on post, as well as your murder in town?” Sharmayne asked, sounding skeptical.
“I have no doubt about it,” Pendergrass answered. “He’s a college professor down the road at Blue Ridge State who teaches sociology and Middle Eastern studies. His name is Henry Shaw. He went missing in Turkey and Syria a few weeks ago, and suddenly popped up in Cyprus where I was stationed. We think he met with ISIS in Raqqah, with the Caliph himself, and was told to come back here and set up a cell and start his own private holy war.”
“ISIS? Geez, that’s all we freaking need! But how’s that figure into your murder?” Sharmayne asked as she pulled out her spiral notebook and began flipping through the pages.
“A couple of days ago, George and I had to put on our hip waders and gas masks and dig the other college professor out of the city landfill, where he fell when a contractor tipped over a dumpster. Somebody bashed the guy in the head with a pipe or something and then slit his throat from ear to ear.”
“Almost decapitated that poor bastard. It was as nasty a killing as I’ve seen in a long, long time,” George Greenfield added. “Something like that’s personal. Whoever did it was really enjoying himself.”
“How’s that tie to Shaw?” Bob asked.
“You’re going to love this,” Van Zandt stepped closer and shook his head. “Seems Shaw got back in town from his little Middle East trip the day this other professor disappeared. In fact, only three or four hours before.”
“The College lost track of Shaw when he disappeared in Syria,” Greenfield continued the story. “They got pissed and gave all of Shaw’s classes to this other guy. His name was Bloomberg. Suddenly Shaw pops back up. We know he checked his voicemail from London, so he knew what was going on. Obviously, he wanted those classes back…”
“So, he got them the old-fashioned way,” Van Zandt said. “With a piece of pipe and a very sharp knife, but we can’t tie him to it. We can’t even prove he was in Fayetteville when Bloomberg was murdered.”
“Even so,” Sharmayne said. “A sociology professor? You gotta be kidding.”
Pendergrass laughed too. “Not your father’s ‘Soc Prof’? Well, before he was a college professor, he was a Marine who ended up with a bad conduct discharge,” Pendergrass added. “So, don’t be fooled by his college professor act.”
“A BCD? That’s hard to get, even for a Marine. You gotta work at it,” Bob said.
“Easy there, I was a Marine, too,” Detective Greenfield laughed. “And yeah, you gotta work real hard to get one. But lemme put it this way, you ever go to the zoo? To the herpetology building, where they keep all them big snakes? I been on the job here and up in Philly for almost thirty years. Once, maybe twice before, I run into a perp like him, a guy who’s got eyes as cold and lifeless as one of them big king cobras. You know what I mean? You look at the snake, and all the while the snake’s looking back at you, and you suddenly realize you’re damned glad you got that big piece of glass between you. Well, that’s him.”
Sharmayne suddenly poked a finger at an entry in her notebook. “Farrakhan Muhammad, our bomber, converted to Islam and took some Arab Studies classes down at Blue Ridge State. Maybe there’s a link.”
“That’s what Shaw teaches,” Pendergrass answered. “He also converted to Islam a year ago, and we found out he has two offices. One’s in the Soc Department building and one’s in the Muslim Student Center, which has become his own personal fiefdom.”
“Farrakhan converted too, maybe six months ago. Same mosque, so they could have known each other,” Bob
added. “No telling who else he was talking to there, or on the phone, or in an on-line chat group until we track down all his students, contacts, and links.”
“Tell us what you’ve got on the clown in the Trauma Center,” Van Zandt asked.
“He was carrying a pound of C-4 and a .45 when he was caught at the scene by two MPs. We think someone else detonated the bomb he was carrying by cell phone. The .45 he had was used to shoot the two MPs and to kill two Army officers a couple of nights ago, at the golf club. We have his fingerprints all over it,” Phillips continued. “What we don’t have, is any link to anyone else.”
“Like I said, the guy’s smart. The FBI’s filed for search warrants in Federal Court to get Shaw’s cell phone records, internet searches, and emails, but absent more evidence,” Pendergrass shrugged helplessly, “I’m not optimistic we’ll get them.”
“Goddamned lawyers!” Van Zandt muttered. “It’s ISIS for Chrisake!”
“Nothing we can do about it. The CIA is going through their files too and checking with all their foreign sources, but NSA has the same problem we do. No evidence, no probable cause, no warrants. I have FBI SWAT teams in Charlotte and Atlanta on standby, plus the HRT at Quantico, but they’re just twiddling their thumbs.”
Sharmayne Phillips nodded. “After three days working this stuff round the clock, my people here are already stretched to the limit. We’re getting four more CID teams flown in from Quantico, and a fresh MP platoon from Benning. They’ll be on post by tonight.”
“Good,” Pendergrass told her, “but what I don’t have is a shred of anything I can take to a federal judge to get a search warrant.”
“Yeah, that’s our problem, too,” Van Zandt conceded. “Let’s face it, the guy’s clever, and he’s been careful. On the murder, we have no prints, no DNA, no weapon, no nothing, and no search warrants. We’re dead in the water.”
“That’s the same with the bombs and cell phones. They’re clean,” Bob said as he thought about it for a moment. “What about the records of those college classes Muhammad took?” he asked. “It would be nice to know who taught them and who else was in the classes with him.”
“We’re already on it. We started ‘interviewing’ as many of the Fort Bragg soldiers who attended his classes here on post as we can get our hands on,” Sharmayne answered. “We have those records at our Education Center, and we have every right to access them; but we decided to leave the College alone for the moment. It’s unlikely they’d cooperate with us anyway, and we don’t want to tip him off.”
“Be nice if we could compare and contrast those, and match them up with your gate access records. Does the mosque have closed circuit security cameras?” Bob asked Greenfield.
“I’d be shocked if they didn’t,” the city detective answered. “But they aren’t likely to cooperate any more than the campus ACLU, are they?”
“No, but that would be nice too, wouldn’t it?” Pendergrass turned toward Bob and asked. “And maybe his phone records and server records?”
“That would be even nicer, wouldn’t it?” Bob smiled.
Pendergrass smiled. “Ernie Travers told me you have some very clever kids on your staff,”
“The Geeks?” Bob laughed. “Yeah, they’re clever, all right. They have the best equipment in the business, and they just love a good challenge.”
“What did Ernie say they called it? ‘The KGB Spymaster Data Center’?”
“The KGB?” Sharmayne looked up from her notebook, suddenly alarmed.
“Relax, it’s just a little ‘millennial’ humor. One of them, Sasha, is a Russian ex-pat. The others always accuse him of having been trained by the KGB.”
“Well? Was he?” Sharmayne asked.
Bob shrugged. “Who knows with those people, but he was a classmate at Cal Tech with my other two, and he’s a maniac on a keyboard. It didn’t bother them, and I don’t think it bothers me.”
Phillips rolled her eyes. “Okay, but just don’t go screwing this up with some kind of illegal search, Burke. You hear me?”
“Moi?” he turned toward her with mock surprise. “I’m a civilian running a small, private telecommunications company. Since when is a Google search or two illegal?”
“ ‘Google search’ my ass!” Phillips warned. “Just remember what I said.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Burke smiled at her. “But while you’re sitting around waiting for those not-very-damned-likely search warrants you need, what do you think Shaw and his pals are going to be doing? My guys walk on little ‘cat’s paws,’ as my wife likes to call it. And personally, when the bodies start stacking up, I prefer to play offense, not defense.”
The others nodded, all except Sharmayne Phillips.
“So do I,” Tom Pendergrass broke in. “Over the past couple of days, I’ve ‘had occasion’ to swing by the Muslim Student Center. It’s right off campus, and that’s where Shaw’s other college office is located. I was trying to get a feel for his movements, but I gotta tell you, there’s a real interesting cast of characters who pass in and out of those doors.”
“You’re not telling us anything we don’t already know,” Van Zandt agreed. “The City would love to shut the damned place down, but the College fights us every step of the way.”
“Shaw’s designated faculty parking space is on the side of the building,” Pendergrass told them. “I found a spot further down the street where I can see his car, the front door of the building, and his side office window.”
“Interesting. By the way, what kind of car does he drive?” Bob asked. “What color?”
“It’s a white Peugeot, an old one. Why?”
Bob and Sharmayne looked at each other. “We think the guy who detonated the bomb at JSOC last night was driving a light-colored car. That’s not much to go on, but it’s one more piece.”
“True,” Pendergrass said. “And I’ll tell you another little tidbit. Yesterday I was camped out over there at the Soc Department offices for an hour or so, when I saw a black Mercedes stop at the front door and pick him up. From his body language, it didn’t look to me like he really wanted to get in the car, but he did. They drove south out of the city to a private airstrip. Gray’s Creek, I think it’s called?”
“Yeah, it’s down off Route 87 on Butler Nursery Road,” Van Zandt told him.
“That’s the one. They stopped at the hangars, a new one, and went inside,” Pendergrass continued. “I had to hang way back and scope them out from the road, but the name on the hangar was Caspian Aviation Services. There wasn’t any cover where I was, and I think they made me, so I left. I turned the FBI computers at the Hoover Building loose on Caspian. They’re checking everything federal and state for me, but I haven’t gotten much yet. All they found were shell corporations inside shell corporations inside more shell corporations. That Mercedes is on a corporate lease through Caspian.”
“My people have experience taking apart shell corporations,” Bob told him with a thin smile. “All it takes is time.”
“I’d love to get into that hangar, but we don’t have a damn thing on them that would get us through that door,” Pendergrass looked at Bob and smiled. “Perhaps your Merry Men?”
Bob gave him a surprised look. “It sounds to me like a Chicago cop’s been talking out of school.”
“Sometimes cops talk better than they can drink,” the FBI agent conceded.
“Burke!” Sharmayne Phillips interjected. “What are you up to? No grandstanding or off-book stuff. I heard two stories about you. One, that you were really CIA; and two, that you really were Army, but completely out of control. So, if you screw up my investigation…”
“Sharmayne, Sharmayne,” Bob raised his hands in mock surrender. “I was never CIA, at least not that I know; and I was never out of control, despite what my wife might tell you. Besides, the last time I looked at a map, Gray’s Creek was ten miles outside Fort Bragg and your jurisdiction. So, you have nothing to worry about.”
“Outside ours, too,” Greenfi
eld quickly agreed with a smile. “That’s why we don’t give a hot damn what he does. Sometimes, you gotta fight fire with fire, as long as he helps bag that guy and cuts us in.”
“Looks like majority rules,” Pendergrass shrugged. “Rumor has it there’s a Delta alumni association that runs training ops off post in the woods around here.”
Bob laughed. “Sounds like another wild-ass civilian rumor to me.”
“Oh, I heard they’ve even allowed an old Chicago police captain to ‘observe’ on a ‘training Op’ or two.”
“Cute, real cute,” Sharmayne Phillips told the others as she turned and began to walk away. “However, unlike the rest of you gentlemen, I’ve still got work to do today. Just remember what I said, Burke. Don’t screw this thing up.”
As the others also turned and began to leave, Detective Greenfield nudged Van Zandt in the ribs and pointed to a white Ford 150 pickup truck parked at the curb next to their dark blue, unmarked Fayetteville Police Department car. “Hey, Harry,” Greenfield said. “Wuddju look at that. A white 150 with a missing passenger-side window.”
“No kidding, George! Looks like somebody busted it out, doesn’t it?”
“Uh, what’s so interesting, guys?” Bob asked. “That’s my truck.”
“Yeah, we know,” Greenfield said. “We ran the plates when we pulled up.”
“But it sure is interesting, isn’t it?” Van Zandt went on. “You see, we had this really strange report last week about four big-ass bikers from Charlotte, who got caught breaking into trucks in the Fayetteville airport parking lot.”
“Caught by the police?” Sharmayne asked.
“No, and that’s the odd part. They claim they got the crap beat out of them by one little guy who was driving a white Ford 150. They said they busted his truck window and he proceeded to take all four of them down, and even shot up their bike engines.”
“So he had a gun, too?” Bob asked.
Burke's Revenge: Bob Burke Suspense Thriller #3 (Bob Burke Action Adventure Novels) Page 27