Black Flagged Apex (29 page)

He caught movement in his peripheral vision and hurled himself over the counter. Before he could clear the white Formica barrier, an automatic weapon sent several bullets in his direction. The counter disintegrated around him, and he felt his left knee explode, followed by a similar pain in his right ankle. He crashed into a stack of VHS tapes and toppled a recycling bin as his momentum slammed him down to the littered floor.

He heard repeated pistol shots and looked up to see Diyah Castillo sitting low against the wall a few feet away, firing her pistol through the opening in the counter. Her face looked ashen. She stared blankly down the sight of the Glock, firing slow, methodical shots. The drywall around her exploded, as True America's commandos started to take better-aimed shots from the storeroom. She didn't flinch as the rounds hit the wall next to her head.

He reached out and grabbed her bloodied left arm, yanking her toward him as several bullets struck the space she had just previously occupied. Her right arm remained extended, and she continued to fire. A ski mask and assault rifle appeared above the counter, the barrel pointed right at his head. Before the muzzle could flash, ending Sayar's life, Diyah's pistol roared, sending a .40 caliber hollow-point round through the rifle's EOTech sight. A massive dark splash hit the wall behind the commando's head.

He had managed to bring his own weapon up over Diyah's left shoulder when he saw more movement over the counter.
Too many of them,
he thought, as the slide on Diyah's Glock locked back. Her pistol was empty, and there was no way she would be able to reload it. Her left arm had been destroyed. He raised his own pistol, thinking that this was the end. He hoped their sacrifice would give Sanderson what he needed to stop True America. Before he could pull the trigger, bursts of rifle fire erupted from the front of the market. He was faintly aware of the blue and red light dancing on the market's surfaces and the sound of yelling. The words "clear" and "FBI" rang in his ears.

**

Aleem Fayed sprinted down the poorly lit, uneven sidewalk, keeping his suppressed MP-9 submachine gun as low as possible. Tariq followed a few steps behind. He couldn't believe their luck, given the fact that the True America operatives had nearly achieved a complete surprise attack. Their radio discipline had kept the impending assault from detection until the very last moment, when the final order had been given from the vehicle they were rapidly approaching. One brief radio transmission had given their electronic warfare team everything they needed.

Tariq and Aleem had been parked just around the block when the attack order had been transmitted. The close proximity of True America's command vehicle put them within striking distance. When the location of the transmitted order popped up on their mobile tablet, they hadn't wasted a second talking about options. They bolted out of their car, leaving the keys in the ignition.

The occupants of this vehicle had been the true purpose of the entire operation. The FBI might capture some of the True America shooters alive in the market, but Sanderson was more interested in getting his hands on someone higher up in the leadership structure. Given the training level of the True America operatives, Sanderson highly suspected the existence of a substantial training compound. If they could discover the location of True America's militant training center, the FBI should be able to rapidly unravel True America's plot. Aleem intended to be the one to deliver this information to the FBI.

The two operatives slowed to a quick walk, raising their weapons to a ready position. Tariq's MP-9 had been fitted with an underslung Taser, which would be critical to taking one of the men alive. It would be Aleem's job to identify the leader and kill the rest. They had exhaustingly practiced this abduction technique at the Argentina compound, to the point where they could take down a four-man security team, removing the high-value target within seconds. As they weaved through the thick tree trunks between the parked cars and sidewalk, he could see that they were dealing with two men in an Explorer parked three cars down. The sound of automatic gunfire echoed off the brownstone houses, hitting his ears from every direction.

The driver raised a handheld radio to his ear for a few seconds, before lowering it and shaking his head quickly. The Explorer's brake lights illuminated, followed by the sound of the vehicle's ignition turning over.

"Driver is our target," Aleem said.

Tariq sprinted forward, clearing the trees, while Aleem slipped between two parked cars and approached from the street. As he passed the rear of the Explorer, he barely caught the white reverse light in his peripheral vision. If the car was in gear, this could get complicated when Tariq's Taser pushed 50,000 volts of electricity through the driver's body. If his foot was on the accelerator, they'd have a major problem. It was too late to stop Tariq. He just hoped his partner detected the white reverse lights. Based on Tariq's wide angle of approach, he wasn't hopeful.

As soon as the front passenger's head came into view through the rear passenger window, Aleem fired a short burst, immediately seeing the bloody result on the front windshield. He aimed through the shattered window into the back seat, confirming that it was empty. He continued forward, but was unable to get to the front passenger window. It took him a brief moment to realize that the car was moving forward. He fired a round through the passenger window and tried to aim at the driver's leg, but the car accelerated rapidly, headed straight for a white pickup truck parked several spaces down. He sprinted behind the vehicle with Tariq, who no longer held his submachine gun.

"I tossed it in the fucking car to keep the wires intact," he hissed, anticipating Aleem's question.

The Explorer slammed into the rear of the pickup truck, causing a deafening crunch. The SUV's engine continued to scream, pushing the vehicle against the pickup truck and edging both vehicles forward. The engine's whine drowned out the sounds of gunfire, bringing the neighborhood to life. Porch lights snapped on up and down Westminster Street. They needed to get out of here immediately.

Tariq reached the Explorer first and yanked the driver's door open for Aleem, who grabbed the driver by the left arm and pulled him free of the vehicle, silencing the hideously loud engine. He dragged the convulsing man several feet onto the sidewalk, while Tariq retrieved the MP9 in the dead passenger's lap and disabled the Taser. In the few seconds it took for Tariq to do his job, Aleem searched the man for weapons, finding only a wallet in his rear pants pocket.

"Grab the radio and find his phone," he said.

Five seconds after the Explorer had crashed into the pickup truck, he jogged down the sidewalk with their target in a fireman's carry, while Tariq covered their one-block retreat to their vehicle on Argyle Road. Through his own labored breathing, Aleem noticed that the distant shooting had stopped. He hoped Sayar and his team had survived, but given the amount of gunfire they had heard approaching the Explorer, he wasn't very optimistic. Sanderson had been right about the Imam. Killing him had been extremely important to True America's leadership. Important enough to send more than a dozen highly trained commandos to conduct a brazen hit-and-run attack. His deadline for extracting information from the man slung over his back would be accelerated. There would be no way to keep the FBI's direct involvement a secret, which meant that True America might hasten their timeline upon learning that some of their operatives had been captured alive.

Chapter 23

8:59 PM

National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC)

McLean, Virginia

Ryan Sharpe removed his headset and stared at the main screen. The market operation had been a success, yielding three live suspects for background searches and interrogation. They also had thirteen dead True America militants, which they could identify and research. For an investigation that had essentially stalled earlier in the day, this would breathe new life into the search for the remaining virus canisters. He glanced up at Callie Stewart, who had chosen to watch the operation from the balcony above. She met his glance and nodded before walking into her office, presumably to report to her master.

Her team—Sanderson's team—had lost two of their undercover operatives in the attack. The two survivors had been rushed to the Brooklyn Hospital Center's Level II trauma center with multiple gunshot wounds. According to Damon Katsoulis, the mobile task force's tactical commander, Diyah Castillo had been listed in critical condition by EMTs. She had departed on the first ambulance to leave the scene, immediately followed by her team leader, Abraham Sayar, who was listed in serious condition. Two FBI agents had been wounded in the fierce gun battle, both of them hit by armor-piercing rounds fired at the snipers in the apartment. The bullets passed through the building's brick façade, striking a pair of headquarters agents as they entered the sniper's nest to provide additional firepower. Fortunately, the armor-piercing rounds had lost much of their velocity punching through centuries-old bricks and didn't penetrate the ceramic plate inserted in the lead agent's tactical vest. The round that struck the non-hardened ballistic material covering his right shoulder was another story. The "through and through" projectile lost some more velocity tearing through muscle and bone, but continued down the hallway undeterred, glancing off the second agent's head before finally lodging in a doorframe on the other side of the apartment. A few more millimeters to the right, and the bullet would have punctured her skull.

Katsoulis had arrived in one of the first vehicles to reach the market, but by the time they rushed through the front entrance, most of the battle was finished. After a brief exchange of gunfire that killed one of the suspects, the last standing True America commando surrendered. They found two more alive in the storeroom, bleeding through multiple wounds. Katsoulis said the inside of the market looked like a slaughterhouse. He had no idea how their undercover operatives had managed to survive a simultaneous, two-sided attack.

According to agents covering the back alley, at least seven heavily armed attackers emerged suddenly from one of the houses behind the market to breach the rear entrance. By the time the agents had assembled to respond as a group, the firefight inside the market had ended. The entire event had lasted roughly forty-five seconds and yielded a fresh start to their investigation.

He still didn't trust Sanderson any further than he could throw Hesterman's massive linebacker body, but he felt a debt of gratitude. Without Sanderson's involvement, they would still be scratching their heads, waiting for a warrant to enter the Imam's mosque. This thought made him wonder about the Imam's fate. Just as he felt his moral center start to wander, he remembered the dark side of Sanderson's involvement. Operating outside of the law always came with a hefty price tag. Sharpe knew this better than anyone.

He had distinctly crossed that line two years earlier, pitting Agent Edwards against Jessica Petrovich. Only a hefty dosage of sedatives and alcohol, presumably provided by Jessica against Edward's will, had saved Sharpe from answering some serious questions about his investigative methods. Luck had intervened, along with something else. Every record of the emails he had sent to Agent Edwards had disappeared. Agent O'Reilly had checked, knowing that the trail would lead back to both of them. She couldn't find a single trace of the emails anywhere.

There was only one possible explanation. The system had been hacked through Edward's computer. For obvious reasons, he couldn't push the issue, although a thorough risk assessment had been conducted on Edward's laptop. Standard procedure for a laptop that had been left "unattended" in the presence of a criminal suspect. The assessment hadn't uncovered a security breach, which further unnerved Sharpe. Why would Sanderson go out of his way to help him like that? Blackmail further down the line, or a sense of duty to protect the good guys? He couldn't begin to guess, let alone spend time worrying about it. Still, the seed had been planted, and every once in a while, it dominated his thoughts. Right now, he couldn't shake the feeling that Sanderson was pulling all the strings.

He patted O'Reilly on the shoulder and walked toward his office. All of their marching orders had been issued. They would start searching for commonalities between all sixteen True America operatives. Travel patterns, purchase history, friends, email, phone records…everything. Interrogation of the survivors would begin immediately. Agent Carlisle eagerly awaited their arrival at the Newark field office, though he would only have one customer tonight. The other two would need medical treatment and rest before they could be questioned.

He hoped they could turn up the heat on the prisoner at the field office. Collating and analyzing data for trends could take too long. He had no doubt it would yield valuable results, but he needed something
now
. Carlisle's interrogation tonight would be their best hope for moving things along quickly. Part of him wished they could divert the van carrying the prisoner to Sanderson's people. An even darker part of him hoped that this plan was already in the works. He knew Sanderson's people were capable of taking down a prisoner transport van without causing friendly casualties. They had done it before. He erased the thought as quickly as he had formed it, angry that he had even let it slip through his moral safeguards.

Chapter 24

11:21 PM

Hilton Hotel

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Jackson Greely had penned a few changes to the speech he'd given to the University of Pennsylvania Libertarian Association earlier that evening in Philadelphia. The event had been well attended by university alumni, students and members of the greater Pennsylvania Libertarian Party. He also recognized a few familiar faces from his own organization at the dinner. Typical of his university appearances, campus political organizers had protested his talk, citing many of his "old" talking points as reasons to ban him from the institution. Of course, he steered clear of these topics, playing to the crowd of libertarians who shared many of True America's core beliefs, but shied away from True America's concept of isolationism.