The Devil's Hand

by Carr, Jack

  CHAPTER 18

  Chicago, Illinois

  ALI WOULD HAVE PREFERRED to spend a few more days in the area, but time did not allow for that luxury.

  Out of necessity, he had taken a circuitous route to Chicago. Borrowing Sebastian’s Subaru, he first drove to Richardson, Texas, just outside Dallas, where he met with a man named Mahan Faramand, a sleeper agent of the regime. Ali had passed him the delivery mechanism and specified his objectives: first multiple restaurants and grocery stores, then two days later, a hospital in Richardson. It was imperative they target hospitals. Timing the releases was critical.

  The green Subaru would undoubtedly be caught on video at some point in the journey. Avoiding every camera in the western United States was an impossibility, so Ali was going to use the power of the surveillance state to his advantage. If an enterprising investigator or intelligence officer began to put the pieces together, it would lead back to a radicalized virology student in Denver.

  He had then driven back to Colorado, returned the Subaru, and passed a second device to an asset in Denver. The operation was in motion and nothing could stop it.

  He’d studied the Colorado asset for two days to confirm that the intelligence he’d been sent by Hafez Qassem through a local mosque was indeed true; he was a true believer. They’d met in Cheesman Park, across from the Denver Botanic Gardens, where Ali had explained the simple instructions to a man who had two weeks left to live. Again, public locations followed by hospitals were the key.

  Though they didn’t know it, as soon as they depressed the plungers on the CO2 cartridges, releasing Marburg Variant U into the atmosphere, they were as good as dead. No loose ends.

  Ali had given them two special inoculation pills and told them to wear N95 masks as an added precaution. In actuality, the pills were two tablets of vitamin D from Walgreens and the masks would do nothing to stop the aerosolized five- to twenty-micron droplets, each one containing one hundred viral strands of the deadly pathogen.

  They would strike a blow for Allah and would die martyrs.

  The delivery mechanism had been designed by the Iranian and Russian scientists at Damghan, a bioweapons research facility about 185 miles east of Tehran. Disguised as a bottle, it looked like a piece of trash. All the asset needed to do was press down on a handle that resembled a Corovin, a wine bottle sampling and preservation device that used a needle and Argon gas cartridge to tap wines without removing the cork. A needle powered by a cartridge containing the gas would puncture a rubber seal on a small glass vial inside the bottle, aerosolizing the virus and forcing the liquid to rapidly deploy through a nanofiber mesh filter to produce a vaporized cloud of droplets. The resulting whitish-yellow puff contained billions of viral particles. Released through a ventilation system, it could infect entire shopping malls, office buildings, or in this case, hospitals, in minutes.

  With most contagious viruses like COVID-19 or H1N1, thousands of viral particles need to be inhaled or touched and transferred to the nose or mouth to initiate the infection. Marburg was in a league of its own. As little as one or two viral particles were enough to contaminate a host. A single droplet from an aerosolized spray would generate a fatal illness with an incubation period of less than forty-eight hours. Death would follow within days.

  It was vital that the attack not look like an attack at all. Though Marburg was not “airborne,” as the American press liked to call viruses that could be spread with a cough, it was imperative that they believe it was. It needed to look like it had originated in Angola, the result of a naturally occurring hemorrhagic virus the Americans were always making movies and writing books about. The infidels never did anything other than confirm it was contained on a continent they largely ignored. All they really cared about was that African diseases stayed in Africa. What made this outbreak different was that it had made it to the homeland and had gone airborne, or so they would believe. They would connect the dots from Cabinda in northern Angola, to the Quatro de Fevereiro International Airport in the capital, to a flight landing in the United States. Ali needed at least two of the four target cities to be hit with the same infection. The virus would be traced to Angola, a country with a history of infectious tropical diseases. The most sophisticated intelligence agencies in the world would never trace it back to Iran. Of course, “never” was a word that made Ali cringe. Every plan needed a contingency. If the U.S. intelligence community did discern that the virus was not a naturally occurring disease, it would be traced back to homegrown terrorists inspired by what the talking heads liked to call an “ideology of hate.”

  That Sebastian Phillips had grown up in the United States and worked in a university bio lab would only fuel the conspiracies. With COVID-19 having dominated the news cycle for so long, most of the country had at least heard the very real possibility that the coronavirus had first originated in a Chinese bio-containment facility in Wuhan. Either way, regardless of whether the United States traced the virus to Angola, or if they discovered it was released into the environment by a terrorist organization made up of U.S. citizens, the result of an airborne pathogen with the infection and death rates of Marburg was the same. The only choice was for the United States government to release the antibodies that would destroy it. In this case, those “antibodies” were on standby in Hurlburt Field, Florida: MC-130s armed with the largest nonnuclear payloads ever developed. To save the country from an invisible virus, the United States would have no choice but to attack itself and incinerate the disease threatening to destroy the entire nation. As with a host whose immune system attacks an invading cancer, oftentimes that host did not survive. The United States was already on edge from COVID-19 and had almost destroyed their economy for a virus that was actually doing them a favor: killing off the weak.

  Pulling to the curb three blocks from his meeting location, Ali put the car in park and looked at two small children playing in the front yard of a house across the street. The home was neglected and the yard full of weeds, but the smiles on the children’s faces were no different than the smiles of children the world over. An older boy looked on, possibly their brother tasked with keeping an eye on them in this neighborhood just outside Chicago. He was about the same age Ali had been when he’d found his brother swinging from the noose, eyes bulging, tongue protruding from the left side of his mouth, a casualty of war.

  The wailing of his mother.

  Ali had been told that the asset in Chicago had been unreliable in his communications. The imam had expressed concerns. There were indications that the asset had been corrupted by Western values. There were no signs that he had been contacted by American law enforcement or intelligence officers, but one could never be too certain. Ali would be the arbiter of his fate.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE DOOR OPENED AND Kareem Talib looked suspiciously though the crack, a thin chain linking the door to the frame.

  “Salām,” Ali said, with a disarming smile.

  “Salām, chetori?” the smaller man replied.

  “I am well, Kareem. May I come in,” Ali said, switching from Farsi to English.

  “Of course,” Kareem responded, bowing his head and pushing the door closed to disengage the chain barrier before holding it open for his guest. He had been expecting the visitor.

  “Moteshaker hastam. Are your wife or children home?” Ali asked.

  “No, they are at the park. I don’t expect them for another hour.”

  “Good. Let us talk, Kareem. May I have some tea?”

  “Man rā bebakhsh, yes,” Kareem said, nervously putting his hand to his heart. “Please, follow me.”

  Ali trailed behind the shorter man down a hallway and into a small kitchen with aging linoleum floors.

  As Kareem filled a pot with water and set it on the electric coil stove, Ali pulled a photo from a magnet on the refrigerator.

  “Is this your family, Kareem?”

  “Yes, my wife and two sons.”

  “They are handsome boys,” Ali noted. “How
old are they?”

  “Four and six.”

  “You seem too old to have such young children.”

  “My first wife died in childbirth. Our daughter did not survive. I did not remarry for many years.”

  “I am sorry, Kareem. Even the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, lost six of his seven children.”

  “They await, and I will see them again on the Day of Recompense,” Kareem whispered, placing a mesh strainer into a small ceramic blue teapot.

  “Ah, that you will, Kareem. Allah will ensure you will once again be at peace.”

  Kareem nervously watched as his guest examined the photos and drawings on the refrigerator and inspected the small living area just off the kitchen.

  “How do you like your tea?”

  “Strong, Kareem. Do you know why I am here?”

  Kareem’s hand quivered, some of the boiling water spilling down the side of the teapot as he poured the hot liquid over dried leaves and rose petals.

  “I was told only to expect you. That you would have a job for me.”

  “Not just any job, Kareem. A mission from Allah.”

  Ali watched his subject cover the teapot.

  “We will let it steep for about five minutes.”

  “I understand you have not been to your mosque in quite some time, Kareem.”

  “It is best not to be noticed coming and going from mosques in Chicago. The American agents are everywhere.”

  Ali folded his arms. Chicago had one of the fastest-growing Muslim populations in the country. Close to half a million children of Allah called the Windy City home, and fifteen new mosques had been built in the past decade. Chicago was not a city where a Muslim would have a hard time blending in.

  “Have the American authorities ever tried to contact you?”

  “No. As far as I can tell, I am still clean.”

  “Ah, I see. And where do you and your family practice salat?” Ali asked, referring to the five daily prayers that were the second pillar of Islam. He intentionally looked down the hall and into the living room.

  Kareem slowly removed two clear glass teacups from the cupboard and set them on the counter, gathering his thoughts.

  “Has faith left your heart, Kareem?”

  Kareem drew in a deep breath and whispered “no” with as much emotion as he could muster.

  “Have you not come to terms with what you did for Allah?”

  Kareem pushed his hands together in an attempt to steady them.

  “Here, let me help,” Ali offered, gesturing to the small kitchen table, where his host reluctantly took a seat.

  The assassin took charge and poured a splash of tea into both cups to warm them and check the brew for consistency. Judging the tea was strong enough for his liking, he then poured them back into the pot before filling both cups to the halfway point, adding a dash of hot water to each.

  Kareem did not notice the small wax-infused wafer that his visitor slid into his cup. It dissolved immediately and Ali placed the steaming hot liquid in front of his asset.

  “Mersi,” Kareem said, thanking his unwelcome caller, thinking back to the day his adopted country was attacked: an attack he had helped facilitate. An attack that occurred on the day his wife died in childbirth: September 11, 2001.

  “Khāhesh mikonam,” Ali responded. “Why are you nervous, Kareem? Allah has chosen you to finish what you started twenty years ago.”

  Kareem took a sip of the dark tea to steady his nerves.

  “Please…” His voice trailed off.

  “If you are no longer devoted to the cause, I can understand that, Kareem. You have a nice life here in Chicago. Do you want me to leave?”

  “I am not the person that I was. Allah now has a different calling for me: to raise my two sons. I am sorry.”

  “I am sorry, too, Kareem.”

  Kareem felt his pulse begin to race. He looked into the eyes of the man who he now knew had decided to kill him. He gazed back into his tea, struggling to focus, feeling an unnatural sweat beginning to permeate his glands.

  “How do you feel, Kareem? You do not look well.”

  Ali had used the technique before. In Europe he had concentrated natural-occurring regulatory neuropeptides that control stress, emotions, and arousal into high doses—doses large enough to cause heart attacks, seizures, and strokes. He had looped the DNA sequences into a simple bacterial culture for delivery via spray or wafer. It was completely undetectable in an autopsy, as peptides are so efficiently metabolized by the body that they are gone seconds after absorption. The concoction had sent more than a few enemies of Iran to paradise.

  Kareem looked at Ali in horror as his body began to react to the overdose of neuropeptides. As he struggled to breathe, the cold sweat was replaced by a bout of nausea; his chest felt like it was being crushed by an invisible block of iron. His vision blurred and he made a feeble lunge for the kitchen counter, knocking over his tea before collapsing to the floor.

  Ali took a sip of the dark liquid. He would have preferred it stronger. He crossed his legs and watched as Kareem struggled to breathe on the dirty linoleum tile. He waited another five minutes after Kareem had stopped breathing and finished his tea. He then washed out his cup in the sink using a paper towel to turn on and off the water and also to dry out his cup before replacing it in the cupboard. He then exited the home and walked the three blocks back to his car. Chicago would be spared. No matter. This contingency had been built into the plan. Ali had another city to visit.

  He made his way out of Chicago and merged onto I-65. Setting his cruise control to the speed limit, he drove south toward Atlanta.

  CHAPTER 20

  Chicago, Illinois

  REECE HAD DONE ONE drive-by of the target house and then circled back onto West Devon Avenue, passing a Dunkin’ Donuts, a Domino’s Pizza, a tobacco shop, a Honda dealership, a hookah lounge, and ironically the Iraqi Mutual Aid Society, located within a stone’s throw of the Tel-Aviv Kosher Bakery. This one street on the outskirts of Chicago was a multicultural microcosm of American society where Italian, Mexican, and Chinese restaurants shared the street with Lahore Food and Grill and the Salvation Army. He passed a synagogue, a mosque, and a church within blocks of one another. Driving by a business awning signage that read BAGHDAD HAIR SALON, he did a double take and almost missed his turn, flashing back to a mission on the streets of Iraq’s capital city in a thin-skinned HMMWV.

  The West Ridge neighborhood of Chicago was far enough outside “the Loop” that it had been spared the rioting and looting of the previous summer. Reece couldn’t help but think how much better the country might be without politicians stoking the coals of division. They excelled at stirring up hate and discontent to advance partisan political agendas in an attempt to persuade their voting blocs that they were the answer to the very problems they were creating.

  Those who sell the panic, sell the pill.

  Those politicians might be responsible for more deaths than your target, Reece.

  The former frogman was acutely aware that his Land Cruiser stood out. He could have gotten away with it in a few California seaside surf communities or the back roads of the Pacific Northwest or a ski town in the Wasatch or Rockies, but in suburban Chicago, vintage off-road vehicles were not the order of the day. If he was going to go through with this mission, he would need to do it right. That meant a team. It meant “indigenous” vehicles. It meant technical and physical surveillance. It meant building a pattern of life and getting creative with the method of termination.

  Then what the hell are you doing here?

  Reece’s attention was drawn to a woman descending the steps of the small single-story home with two young children in tow. He watched them disappear down the street and found himself thinking of Lauren and Lucy walking to the park in Coronado together; beauty, innocence, and hope shattered at the business end of an AK. Shifting his focus back to the house, Reece wondered if his target was inside.

  Am I about to do to this
family what was done to mine? At the behest of the same government?

  According to the file, this man facilitated 9/11, Reece. He deserves what’s coming. Justice. Justice? Or, retribution?

  Just over twenty years ago, Kareem Talib had lived in Florida. He’d taken flying lessons at Huffman Aviation in 1999 but dropped out well before he’d completed the thirty-five hours required for a private pilot’s license certification. He was not a U.S. citizen at that point and had moved to Chicago shortly thereafter. A year later, Mohamed Atta, Ziad Jarrah, and Marwan al-Shehhi applied for training. Talib had conducted what was known in special operations circles as an advance force operation. He had confirmed that a dark-skinned Muslim on a student visa could apply for flight training in the United States without getting a visit from the FBI.

  By all indications, Talib had been living his life as a U.S. citizen for almost two decades without any negative interaction with law enforcement or U.S. intelligence agencies. Had he reformed, or was he just biding his time, waiting for his next assignment? That was not Reece’s department. This man was a foreign agent, responsible for the deaths of almost three thousand Americans, citizens with families and dreams just like Lauren and Lucy. His actions had forfeited his right to citizenship. It was time for him to die.

  The man who knocked on the door to the home wearing what most people still called a “COVID mask” could have been anyone: a friend, relative, neighbor, or business associate. He spoke briefly to the man who opened the door and then disappeared inside.

  Shit! I should have had my phone ready, or even better, had a high-resolution camera with a zoom lens. Rookie.

  Twenty minutes later the man reemerged alone and casually made his way down the street away from Reece’s position. The camera on Reece’s iPhone wasn’t bad, but it was not made for taking surveillance photos through windshields at over a hundred yards. Something about the way the man moved put Reece on edge. He’d seen it in the instructors at the Farm, men and women who had been trained to blend in while still remaining situationally aware in nonpermissive environments. He took a burst of photos and resisted the urge to follow the visitor.