“Be careful.”
“Goes without saying. You do the same, old man. Don’t fall and break a hip or something.”
Conor mumbled under his breath as he headed off with her gear and it made Shani smile. She liked getting beneath Conor’s skin. It warmed her heart, and at this point, any warmth was welcomed.
The van pulled up to the barn and the routine was nearly the same as it had been the previous day. The women entered the barn in their parkas, sweaters, and jackets, coming back out looking like the most fundamental of Muslim women. While the women headed toward Mumin’s house to collect their cleaning supplies, the security guard started a tractor and headed back out the way they’d come. Maybe the entrance road needed some work.
When the women were started up the road to the far end of the compound, Shani sprinted for the barn. She hurried to the metal cabinet, removed a heavy black abaya from a hanger, and dropped it over her head, then donned the awkward niqab. She found the garment irritating. She couldn’t imagine how this indignity alone had not been enough to make Muslim women revolt. No one should be forced to hide themselves in such a way.
By the time Shani exited the barn, she could see the other black-clad women in the far distance. Some were going to Mumin’s house to get cleaning supplies while others waited in the driveway. Shani forced herself to walk slowly and transition into character. She was not a tough-as-nails Israeli woman. She was a shy, meek Saudi woman who was embarrassed at being late again.
The Native American women, armed with buckets, mops, brooms, and cleaning supplies were working their way toward the men’s building when Shani joined them. Some of the women, those she hadn’t met yesterday, eyed her suspiciously. They were talking among themselves as she approached.
Shani nodded. “Good morning. I’m glad I not miss you. I help again today.”
“Good morning,” Agnes said. “You’ll probably wish you’d missed us today. We’re cleaning the men’s building this morning.”
Shani looked at her curiously. “The building where you say not to go?”
Agnes nodded but the subtle gesture was lost in the dark folds of her outfit. “You have to be careful in there. We don’t talk to the men.”
“You can’t listen to them,” one of the other women said. “They’ll tell you they need you to look at something that needs cleaned to try to get you off to yourself. They say all kinds of nasty things.”
“It ain’t their room they’re wanting cleaned,” another commented, and the women laughed.
“And we not tell anyone that they do this, right?” Shani asked. “Not complain?”
“If our families knew they tried that shit, our husbands, they’d come up here and kill them,” Agnes said, “but that don’t help anyone. They pay us in food. Where else we going to get food?”
Shani understood that. These were women doing what they had to do to take care of their families as they had since time immemorial. While they walked, Agnes introduced Shani to the other women, using the name Saffi, as she’d introduced herself the previous day. The women each gave their names but Shani would never remember them. It was hard to identify the individual women by their eyes alone.
They reached the porch of the men’s building and another woman spoke. It sounded like the one introduced as Debra. “We do the inside first. When we’re done, we have to come out here and pick up all the cigarette butts. There’s an ashtray but they all throw them in the yard. I think they do it on purpose just to make us have to pick them up. They’re lazy. And nasty.”
One of the women went to the door and tapped on it, then stepped away and waited. They stood patiently until the door swung open. A lanky man stood in the doorway wearing only bright red briefs and a gold chain. He wore a wolfish grin beneath a thick mustache, a cigarette dangling from his lip. Shani wanted to break his nose with a head butt and wipe that grin from his disgusting face.
“We’re here to clean,” Agnes said.
The man didn’t reply but stepped out of the way, swinging the door open wide. The women streamed past him, looking away. They were nowhere near as interested in his body as he was in theirs. Shani brought up the rear of the line. When she was inside, he shut the door behind her. She immediately felt a sensation that made her want to turn around and keep an eye on him. She forced herself not to. It would have been out of character. She was not supposed to look at him.
The interior of the building, as much of it as she could see at this point, was similar to Mumin’s house, though not as big. Like the other house, it appeared to be built as a dormitory. The common area, where she and the other women were, held a large living room, a dining area, and a kitchen. A hall toward the back had rooms branching off to either side. In the distance, she could see an open door leading to a set of stairs. Perhaps this building had bedrooms on both floors.
There was a huge difference in the level of cleanliness between this building and the other. Though the women said they cleaned it on a regular schedule, it was filthy. The air stunk of unwashed bodies, cigarette smoke, urine, and garbage. Empty soft drink cans and food wrappers lay on every flat surface, including the floor. Ashes were scattered on the end tables and on the tile floors. It was as if the men intentionally spent the days between cleanings seeing just how dirty they could make things.
The man who’d let them in walked by, a wide grin on his face as he watched the women take in the mess. That confirmed it to Shani. This was a game for them. Just one more that they played with these women who had few options but to be here. Few options but to take this treatment and say nothing. It enraged her.
As the man strode down the hall to his bedroom, the women set their supplies down in the kitchen and divvied up the work.
“We’ll do bathrooms first,” Agnes said. “It’s better if we get those done before they wake up. Then we do the floors in the hall and their bedrooms. Sweep and mop. We do this together for safety. The kitchen and living room will be last. We learned a long time ago that if we clean the living room first, they mess it up before we even leave the house, then we have to do it again. Now we do it just before we step out the door. Saffi, if you have any questions, just ask one of us. Okay?”
Shani nodded.
When they split up she volunteered for one of the groups cleaning bathrooms upstairs, figuring it would allow her access to the furthest reaches of the building. She would see more and hopefully pick up more about the men who lived here. She followed three other women to the end of the hallway and they ascended the stairs with mops and buckets of cleaning supplies.
All of the doors on the top floor were shut, and loud snoring was coming from some of them. Low wattage LED bulbs dimly lit the hallway. Just as in the other building, there was a women’s bathroom and a men’s bathroom across the hall from each other. With no women staying in this building the men used both.
A woman opened one of the bathroom doors and used a block of wood to wedge it open. The smell seeped out into the hallway. The women curled their noses and turned their heads away.
“How long ago...clean this?” Shani asked.
The woman exchanged glances. “Last week,” one of them replied.
“Smells terrible,” Shani said.
“They do this on purpose,” one of the women whispered. “When they know we’re coming, they start pissing on the floor of the bathroom and they quit flushing the toilets.”
Shani imagined using one of the men’s heads to plunge the toilets. That would be satisfying. She knew because she’d done it before. It was a great way to extract information from an uncooperative subject. One of the women handed out disposable gloves. Shani took a pair and dove in. The situation wasn’t going to get any better with the passage of time.
The interior of the bathroom was as disgusting as the smell foretold. The men had indeed left toilets unflushed and chose to urinate around the toilets rather than into them. It was infuriating, done intentionally to demean the women who cleaned their home for them. Shani used a
foot to press the flush handles as another woman filled a mop bucket in the shower.
Shani heard one of the women say, “We’re cleaning,” and turned to see a man pushing through, ignoring the comment. He marched to the urinal in his underwear and a pair of sandals.
“We’re cleaning,” Shani said, so angry she nearly forgot to use her Saudi accent. “Can you go across hall?”
The man twisted his head around to glare at her. He didn’t respond verbally, though he did twist his body to the side and begin pissing down the wall. It was all Shani could do to restrain herself. She wanted nothing more than to launch herself toward this man and use both hands to bash his forehead into the wall. She’d made that same move in bathrooms before and knew how well it worked. The move would stun the man, but not nearly so much as the second and third time she did it. By the time she was done, his forehead would be a bloody pulp.
She forced herself to turn away, both to remain in character and to quell her rising anger. She reached into the cleaning bucket, grabbed the toilet cleaner, and went to work. The man stared at her when he was done but she ignored him. She could not look at him again, could not meet that condescending glare, without reacting. She got enough of a look to remember the man’s face, though. She was certain they would tangle another time, and not in the way he might imagine.
15
After the women hit all four bathrooms in the building, one group began vacuuming while another started on the kitchen. The tile floors in the hallway didn’t require vacuuming but they needed both sweeping and mopping. As men woke up and began circulating through the house, they left their doors open for the women to sweep inside their rooms.
The women worked in pairs and Shani was quick to volunteer, teaming up with Agnes. She wanted to see if there was any intelligence to be gained from the items laying out in their rooms. She knew she couldn’t risk poking around their belongings with so much traffic in the building, especially if she was teamed up with another woman. She would strictly have to go by what was already laying out exposed and in the open.
Despite the clutter of the public areas, the bedrooms were remarkably stark. Although each room was set up with two beds, most rooms were only occupied by a single man, who typically used the spare bed for storage. In each room she swept, Shani noted that the men had identical nylon duffel bags with a shoulder strap, like a large gym bag. Spread out on the beds were a few items of clothing, two pairs of shoes, and a few toiletries. There were no personal items, such as photographs, computers, or books.
The meager possessions each man had led her to believe these were not men who’d been working for Mumin in any capacity before the collapse. Had they been living in the United States before the attacks, they’d certainly have had more stuff. They’d have owned hats, sunglasses, Bluetooth speakers, televisions, or any number of other items that they’d have wanted to bring with them to the compound. They’d have owned t-shirts, Levis, and puffy down jackets. They appeared to have none of those things. With the space available to them in their rooms, and in the building as a whole, there would have been no reason not to bring those items with them.
She kept an eye open for weapons. The stash Conor had found in the storage building likely belonged to Mumin, put in place as part of preparing the compound for occupancy. These men likely had their own weapons. She couldn’t imagine them giving them up if they had them. While they were probably hidden in their rooms, she didn’t have the privacy to search for them. As she always did, she would have to assume these men were armed and treat them accordingly.
As she worked, she turned the information she was gathering over in her mind. She had to conclude that the personal items she saw were all these men brought with them to the US. They’d come from elsewhere, all outfitted by the same person with matching bags. She intentionally looked for wallets or passports, any type of identification laying out in the open, but didn’t see any.
That in itself was telling. It was basic tradecraft. If you had documents tying you to an identity who’d committed a crime, you disposed of them. At some point, likely on the same day as the terror attacks, these men had burned any identification that might have linked them to the attack. It was what she would have done.
There was a difference between these terrorists and the operators who hunted them, though. These men were probably not skilled professionals, and likely not experienced. They were flunkies, peons who’d been given a simple set of orders and had carried them out. If they made intelligent moves, such as disposing of documents, it wasn’t because they were well-trained. It was because someone told them to.
The things she saw, coupled with experience and intuition, told her that these men were likely part of the attacks. Had she encountered them somewhere else, there might have been a shred of doubt, but they were being sheltered at Mumin’s private compound, a man who’d been directly involved in supporting the attacks. This wasn’t a bed and breakfast or a refugee camp. These men were here for a reason. They were here because Mumin was being paid to shelter them. They were terrorists. They were the very men who’d launched mortars, planted bombs, and killed Americans. Now that she’d come to her conclusion, the question was what did she intend to do with that information? How would she act upon it?
With all the activity in the house at the moment, she couldn’t see herself trying to take better pictures of the men. Someone would see her. Besides, the pictures she’d sent Ricardo thus far had proven nothing. The men weren’t in the databases. That made it even more pointless to take that kind of risk. She wasn’t sending Ricardo anything else until she had something big.
Like Conor, she’d worked for Ricardo for years, on and off. Given what she knew, what would his recommendation be? What would he tell her to do?
She knew.
He would take a conservative approach. He would tell her that the evidence was inconclusive, that they didn’t have enough intel to justify sending a team to take the men into custody and interrogate them, and he would advise her that the primary mission was Mumin—everything else was secondary. He would counsel her to accomplish the job she was sent to do and then worry about the tertiary targets.
However, Shani didn’t see these men as simply tertiary targets. If these were indeed men who’d actively participated in the attacks, they were more important than Mumin. Their capture would be a coup for Ricardo and a bonus for the people paying for the op. So far, none of the original terrorists had been found alive, though several cell members were found with bullets in their heads. Capturing actual terrorists would win Ricardo points with the men he contracted with. Those points would eventually earn him additional, more lucrative contracts. Favors would be owed. In the end, there was every reason in the world to act against these men and few arguments for letting it go.
Besides, if she was wrong, if she and Conor eliminated them and they had not been part of the attacks, there would be no repercussions. There were no consequences for people like her and Conor, especially under the current circumstances. If word of the operation were ever to leak out, the dead would simply be considered collateral damage in the hunt for terrorists amidst the wreckage of the United States. The only protest would be the groan of Shani’s already battered conscience at having taken more lives.
As she swept, a plan solidified in her mind. Tonight, she and Conor would take out the security man at the entrance to the property first. Then they would enter Mumin’s house, separate him from his family, and execute him. They would photograph the body, scan his fingerprints into a portable device Ricardo had given her, and then move next door to this building.
They would make entry into the men’s dormitory, kill anyone who resisted, and hope that they could take at least one of the men alive. Ideally two, in case one died during interrogation. It was always better to have a spare. At that point, she’d video each man, transmit the video to Ricardo and say, “What now, boss?”
While they awaited Ricardo’s response, she’d do a thorough search of b
oth the house and the men’s building to see if she could find anything relevant to their mission. These terrorists had left quite a few bodies in their wake. They’d apparently been instructed to wipe out the supporting American cells as part of the clean-up. All of the people who helped them along the way ended up dead. If ballistics from a firearm found in this building matched a slug pulled from one of those bodies, whoever was making the decisions for the American government would gain important intelligence. Connections would be made.
With a plan solidifying in her mind, Shani was anxious to wrap things up in the building and rendezvous with Conor. She cleaned quickly and well, Agnes complimenting her several times on what a good job she was doing. It was hard not to like the kind, supportive woman.
When they finished the last of the upstairs floors, she was following Agnes from a bedroom when the other lady stopped abruptly, nearly causing Shani to run into her. Shani glanced down the hall, looking to see what brought Agnes up short. She expected to find one of the men exposing himself or performing some other manner of lewd behavior. Instead, she found two men facing them, one of them holding a gun. The man with the gun was the one who’d let them in the front door this morning. The other was the van driver who brought the housecleaners to the property each day.
“My name is George,” the driver said. “I’m head of security. I’m going to ask that both of you raise your abayas to your knees.”
“What’s this about?” Agnes asked. “We’ve done nothing but what we were supposed to do.”
George held up a hand to silence her. “Please humor me.”
Agnes reached down and began hauling up the bottom of her abaya. Shani didn’t move.
The men moved their eyes down to Agnes’s feet, exchange a glance, and nodded. “It’s not her,” the man with the gun said.
George directed his gaze at Shani. “I’ve already figured out that there is one more woman in this house than I delivered to the facility today. Is it you?”
Northern Sun: Book Four in The Mad Mick Series Page 9