by Jack Mars
“Not sure I want to now,” Reid murmured, but he picked it up anyway and, after a moment of hesitation, put his thumb to the pad. He aimed downrange at the center ballistic dummy and, with a slight wince, squeezed the trigger.
The shot popped with a satisfying report that made Reid grin reflexively, the bullet lodging itself in the thick gel of the dummy’s neck. Not my best aim, he admitted. He raised the Glock 17 again and fired four shots in quick succession, three to the chest and one to the forehead. He sidestepped once to the left and fired twice more, then angled and squeezed again three times. Each bullet found a new home in the ballistic gel, striking center mass or cranium.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” Bixby beamed.
“Yeah,” Reid agreed with a breath. “It does.” The Gen 4 was a terrific weapon; the recoil was notably reduced from the 19 model, the action smoother. And he could have sworn that the report was somehow quieter; his ears weren’t ringing. “Built-in suppressor?” he asked.
Bixby nodded. “That’s right.”
Reid was impressed. “I don’t suppose I can take this home too, can I?”
“No such luck, Zero.” The engineer chuckled as he took the gun from Reid’s outstretched hand and replaced it in the drawer. “Now then. You said you came by to talk. What’d you want to chat about?”
“Oh. Right.” Reid hadn’t forgotten the reason for his visit, though if he was being honest with himself, he would much prefer to try his hand at more of Bixby’s firearms than breach the subject he’d come to discuss. “I came down here because… I owe you one. If you know what I mean.”
The tech nodded slowly, showing a rare moment of solemnity. The month prior, when Reid’s daughters had gone missing and he had hunted down the traffickers that held them, Bixby had assisted in an indirect and discreet way by providing Watson with a duffel bag full of contraband CIA equipment. In return, Bixby wanted only one thing: to run some tests on Reid’s head. As one of the memory suppressor’s co-inventors, Bixby had a seemingly unhealthy obsession with what was going on in Reid’s brain.
“So you agree? You’ll allow me to do some tests?” he asked.
“Yes,” Reid consented. Then he added, “Noninvasive only.”
“Of course.” Bixby stroked his chin. “I’d like to run an MRI, for certain; a scan of brainwave function in response to stimuli would be useful, as might a gadolinium contrast retention. There’s just one problem.”
“What’s that?” Reid asked.
“I want to do it here, in the lab,” the tech told him. “Not a CIA facility. That way I can limit who has eyes on the results. But I don’t have half the equipment here that I’d need. Give me a few days to get some things together, and then we’ll do it.”
“Great.” Reid hesitated a moment before asking what he had really come to ask. “You mentioned once before that you might be able to recover something. Do you still think that’s a possibility?”
“A possibility, sure,” Bixby said, “but I won’t know how likely until analysis, and I’m not going to make you any promises I can’t keep, Zero.”
“I understand. How about you reach out when you’ve got what you need.”
Bixby smiled. “I certainly will. Now get out of here, I have to get back to work. Come on, I’ll see you out.” The engineer led him out of the narrow shooting range, past the partitioned workstations, and back into the main warehouse-esque chamber of the lab.
After Guyer’s failure, Reid was certain that waiting another three months to even attempt to recover his memory would be more than tortuous. And after not only the attempt on his life by the Division but also his conversation with President Pierson, Reid’s desperation to recover whatever he could had become outright essential. It was no longer just a desire to know the truth; it was now a seeming requisite to staying alive.
As they strode towards the exit, past the enormous H-shaped arrangement of gadgets and machinery, something caught his eye. He stopped suddenly.
“Bixby,” he said slowly. “What is that?” He pointed to the silver case on the shelf before him.
“That? Oh, not much that would interest you.” The tech chuckled.
“Try me,” Reid insisted.
“Okay, sure.” Bixby, never one to pass up the chance to show off his equipment, snapped open the silver case and lifted the lid.
Reid bit the inside of his cheek to hold back any reaction he might have unwittingly shown. Just as he suspected, the silver case opened like a computer, the top half displaying a wide black screen and the bottom half concealing a keyboard, control panel, and a familiar silver joystick.
It was remarkably similar to—perhaps even exactly the same as—the silver case from the tugboat that had piloted the Brotherhood’s submarine drone.
“It’s a drone guidance system,” Bixby explained needlessly. “It allows for complete remote control from a distance of about two and a half kilometers max. There’s also a fun “set it and forget it’ feature—a password-protected autopilot function, in case something happens to the pilot.”
Qafan. That was the strange password that killed the override system of the submarine drone. Reid had hardly thought about that since the attempted bombing of the destroyer, but now it came rushing back. “Neat,” he said flatly. “Uh, what sort of drone would this guide?”
“This one is fairly universal,” Bixby said with a shrug. “Just about any military-style drone the agency uses is programmable via this system… Predators, Reapers, Parasites—”
“What’s a Parasite?” Reid interjected.
“Oh, they’re very cool,” Bixby gushed. “It’s a tiny drone, no bigger than a pigeon, that attaches to another and overrides the system. You want to see one?”
“No, no, that’s okay.” Reid’s thought process felt like a spinning tire that wasn’t touching the ground. Still, he forced himself to ask the question that was at the forefront of his mind—one he really wasn’t sure he wanted answered. “Who else has this kind of tech?”
Bixby scoffed. “Who else? Nobody has this, Kent. You should know better than that.” He let out a small laugh. “I don’t share my designs outside of the agency.”
“Yeah.” Reid suddenly felt cold. His forced smile came slowly. “Of course not.” Bixby designed this. “I have to get going. I’ll, uh, see you around, Bixby.”
“Stop by anytime,” the tech offered. “And I’ll give you a ring when I’m all set for those tests. Should be by Sunday at the latest, if you’re free.”
“Great.” Reid left the lab, his feet moving as if independent of his brain as he entered the elevator again, stepped out onto the first floor of Langley, and trekked towards the parking garage. He was barely cognizant of where he was going until he was sitting behind the wheel of his car.
His cell phone was already in hand, too. He made the call.
“Hi, Kent.” Reid could hear the smile in Maria’s voice. “You miss me already?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Very much. I want you to come to dinner tonight at my house.” He couldn’t be sure if either of their personal lines were secure, so he tried not to risk saying anything that might set off suspicion in prying ears.
“Tonight?” Maria said in surprise. “I’d love to, Kent, but traffic on I-95 is going to be hellish this time of day. It’d take me at least two hours—”
“That’s fine,” Reid interrupted. “I really want to see you. I… need to see you.”
Maria was quiet for a moment. Then she said cheerfully, “Okay, you got it.” She understands, he realized. “Of course. I’ll be there.”
“Good. See you then.” He hung up the phone, his fingers numb as he twisted the key in the ignition.
It was a hunch—more of what Talia Mendel would accuse of being “wild conjecture”—but Reid was pretty certain he knew where the Libyan’s weapon had come from.
But moreover, he had the sudden and terrifying belief that he also knew why.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
Reid paced
the floor of his home office, thinking a mile a minute as he waited impatiently for Maria to arrive. He wanted—no, he needed to tell someone what he was thinking, and at the moment she was one of the very few he could trust. He needed to make sure he wasn’t being paranoid, that insanity wasn’t setting in.
But the more he thought about it, the more wretched sense it made.
He had his laptop open on the desk, a search engine results page showing a long list of seemingly useless links. Crowded around it were five history books, yanked from his shelves and opened to indexes and entries—but still he had found little that linked his only clue to what was brewing in his mind.
Qafan. That was the password that disarmed the submarine drone’s override in Israel, the one that Maria had obtained from the Libyan arms dealer. Reid hadn’t given it much of a second thought at the time, content as he was to have stopped the bombing, but after seeing the same guidance system in Bixby’s lab he couldn’t shake the password loose from his head.
He looked at his watch again. She should be here by now.
“Hey.” Reid looked up sharply to see his daughter Maya standing in the office doorway. He didn’t know how long she had been standing there, if she had watched his desperate, pensive pacing. “What are you up to?”
“Oh, uh…” He faked a smile. “Just working on a lecture for this week.”
“Uh-huh.” Maya took a couple of steps into the room, eyeing up the open books and computer. “I’ve watched you write lectures from memory at the kitchen table. You want to try again, but without the lie this time?”
He sighed. Sometimes his eldest was too keen for her own good. “It’s probably best that I don’t share this one with you, Maya…”
Too late; she leaned over his desk and scrutinized the laptop screen. “What’s ‘Qafan’?”
Reid grunted in frustration. “I don’t know. That’s the problem.” But two heads are better than one, and Maria’s not here yet. “Where’s your sister?”
“Downstairs, doing homework.”
“Alright.” Reid closed the office door and lowered his voice. “Listen, back in Israel, the submarine drone was on target to hit the battleship. The guidance system was overridden and locked by a password—‘Qafan.’ I didn’t give it much thought at the time, but now I have reason to believe the Brotherhood isn’t finished, and that password is the only clue I have that might be an indication of what they’re up to. I’ve been scouring books, the internet, but I can’t find anything reliable.”
“Okay.” Maya folded her arms over her chest. “What have you found so far? Run it by me.”
“Well,” Reid started, “there’s a small region in Azerbaijan called Qafan, but I doubt that’s anything. There’s a type of burial shroud in Hindi and Islamic culture called a qafan…”
“Though it’s usually transliterated into English with a K,” Maya finished. She scoffed at her father’s surprised expression. “Don’t give me that look, I’m smart.”
“I know you are,” he said. “But unless it’s a metaphor for death, there’s no significance there anyway.” He gestured to one of the open history books on the desk. “There was a caliphate during the Ottoman Empire named Qafan, but his rule was short-lived, and unless you have any ideas of how that might link to a twenty-first century terrorist organization, it’s a dead end.” He sighed. “It all leads to a whole lot of nothing.”
“Have you considered,” Maya said slowly, “that maybe it is nothing? It could be someone’s first name, a child or a spouse of one of the members. It could even be some randomly generated word, utter nonsense other than to keep someone from guessing it.” She sighed. “I hate to suggest it, but you might be over-thinking this.”
That’s what I was afraid of, he thought. “Maybe you’re right,” he admitted. He sank into the chair and rubbed his face with both hands. “Maria is coming over,” he told her, “to help me work this thing out. You think you could call in some Chinese or something?”
“Sure,” Maya nodded. Reid had to admit, it was kind of nice to be able to run ideas by his daughter, to not have to tiptoe around the truth. Well, maybe “nice” wasn’t the right way to put it—but it was gratifying, after having kept secrets from her for so long.
“You’re not just guessing all this based on the password, are you?” Maya asked. “That’s not exactly enough to predict another attack.”
She was, of course, right, but Reid was not about to tell her about the guidance system he saw in the lab and his other theory. He knew all too well how dangerous knowing too much about the wrong thing could be.
He shrugged. “Maybe I’m being paranoid. Maybe that’s all there was to it. There’s no reason the embassy bombing and the USS New York couldn’t have been their master plan.”
“Yeah,” Maya said quietly, staring at the floor. “Maybe.”
Reid knew that look, his daughter’s contemplative stare. “What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing.” She shook her head. “It’s just kind of weird…”
“What is?” he insisted.
“Well… it could just be coincidence, but the ship was called the New York. And those congressmen that were killed in Baghdad... weren’t they from New York?”
Reid blinked at his daughter. “Yeah. You’re right.” How did I not see that? Gears immediately churned in his head. He swiveled in his chair and typed a phrase into the search bar. “Jesus, Maya, you’re right.” A new thought came to him, and he had to fact-check it to be sure. “Do you know about the USS Cole bombing from back in 2000?”
Maya frowned. “I wasn’t even born yet, Dad.”
“I know,” he said, scanning the page quickly, “but do they teach it in school?”
“No…”
“The USS Cole was docked at a harbor in Yemen when it was attacked by terrorists in a boat loaded with C-4,” he rattled off quickly. “Seventeen people were killed in the blast. Afterwards, Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack.”
“Al-Qaeda,” Maya repeated. “Those were the same people responsible for 9/11, right?”
“Exactly,” Reid said in a hissing breath. “And you learn about that, because—”
“Because it was the deadliest terrorist attack in US history,” Maria concluded.
“It was the deadliest terrorist attack in history anywhere,” Reid corrected. My god. His hands felt numb. I think I know what they’re planning.
“Knock, knock.” Maria pushed open the door to the office just a few inches and peered in. “Hope I’m not interrupting…”
“No, come in, please,” Reid said hastily.
She did, and then immediately frowned. “Feels kind of tense in here,” she noted.
“Maya,” Reid said, “can you order some food? And maybe put on a pot of coffee.”
His daughter hesitated; it was clear she wanted to be around for this, to be helpful, but eventually she nodded. “Sure. I’ll be downstairs if you need me.” She left the room and closed the door behind her.
“So, what do you need to tell me?” Maria asked.
Reid rose quickly from his chair and began pacing again. He couldn’t sit still, not with his pulse pounding a mile a minute as it was. “There’s no one else I can take this to right now,” he told her. “I need to tell you what I’m thinking and you need to tell me if I’m crazy or not.”
“If you’re crazy?” she repeated.
“Here, sit.” He gestured to the desk chair and she lowered herself into it slowly, concern on her face. “Just tell me if this tracks, okay? In 1998, Al-Qaeda bombs the embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. In 2000, they bomb the USS Cole—but that was an instigation attack. They wanted the United States to fight back, to initiate a war.” He pointed to the laptop screen, to the article of the bombing he had brought up. “Look here. Osama bin Laden himself was alleged to have said that if the US did not respond with an attack, he would launch something bigger. We didn’t attack, and less than a year later, they did launch something bigger—much bigge
r.”
“The attack on the World Trade Center,” Maria murmured knowingly.
“Right,” said Reid, “and that time it did initiate a war, one that lasted for twelve years.”
“I’m with you so far,” Maria nodded. “But what does any of this have to do with the Brotherhood?”
“Alright, so present day.” Reid resumed his maniacal pacing. “The Brotherhood bombs the US embassy in Iraq. Their suspected targets were a congressional delegation from New York. But how did a group of insurgents hiding out in the desert know the delegation would be there?”
Maria shook her head. “Intel can come from a lot of sources, Kent. You know that…”
“Next they attempt to bomb the USS New York,” he continued unabated. “They failed. But this is the part that concerns me.” He turned to her somberly as he asked, “What if that attempt was their version of the USS Cole? What if that was an instigation attack?”
Maria drew a long breath and let it out slowly. “If I’m following you correctly, you’re suggesting that the Brotherhood planned a larger-scale attack in the event that the bombing of the battleship failed?”
“Exactly!” he said. “I believe they planned an attack, specifically on the city of New York—one that would rival, or even exceed, what Al-Qaeda managed to do in 2001. And I think it’s going to happen soon…”
Maria leaned forward and took his hand in hers. “Kent,” she said softly. “I see where you’re coming from, but even you have to admit that it’s thin. You’re connecting dots that might not even be there on the assumption that history repeats—”
“History always repeats,” he said, a bit more heatedly than he intended.
“And even if you’re right,” she continued, “the Brotherhood is all but gone. Their leader is dead. They have no funds. It took dozens of people to plan and execute 9/11, and they have what? Five members left?”
Reid shook his head. “Things have changed since then. If we hadn’t stopped the attack on the New York, it could have been carried out by only one man.” His throat ran dry as he prepared to tell her the final part—potentially the most integral part. “There’s something else. We don’t know how the Libyan acquired a military-grade submarine drone capable of destroying a US battleship, right?”