Project StrikeForce (18 page)

They found no refuge. The chain guns tore into
them and left a pile of useless meat in their wake.

Four Delta Operators were positioned in the doors
of each helicopter, two per side, their feet resting on metal platforms. When
the chain guns stopped, the men spooled ropes from the helicopters and dropped
to the street. The eight heavily armed Operators took up positions as the MH-6’s
returned to base. Within seconds of their departure, a Blackhawk swooped over
the intersection long enough for eight Rangers to rappel to the ground.

His radio squawked. “Things get a little hairy?”

He smiled at the familiar voice. “You just saved
our ass, Redman.”

The lead Operator approached the building,
entering carefully, two others following. “Fuck, what a mess,” Redman said.
“Steeljaw, your people are secure. You owe me one, brother.”

“Add it to my tab, brother,” Eric said. “Thanks
for the assist.”

Deion and Neil shoved aside the debris on the stairs
and exchanged positions with the pair of Delta snipers that relieved them. They
joined Nancy, who was checking on Valerie.

“She’s alive,” Nancy said. She tossed aside the
bricks covering Valerie’s leg. An Operator with a shaggy red beard lifted
Valerie up and carried her outside.

Deion watched, numb, then looked around. The house
was utterly destroyed, the front room exposed to the street, the walls pocked
with bullet holes. The wall that separated the front room from the kitchen was
nearly destroyed and Deion gave silent thanks that the house hadn’t collapsed.

Jaabir lay dead in the corner. Shrapnel had taken
his right arm off at the shoulder and his ribs and chest were split wide, blood
and organs spilled on the dirty floor. Deion knelt and took a moment to pray
for the kid in whatever afterlife he would find.

“He stayed with the fight,” Neil said behind him.

“Yeah,” Deion said. He looked for a rug or blanket
to cover Jaabir’s body but the room was empty.

“We need to check on Koshen,” Nancy said.

The trap door in the floor was covered in rubble,
but Redman helped him clear the biggest pieces until they could open the door.
Redman handed him a flashlight and followed him down into the cellar.

The room was quiet. Koshen dangled from the back
of the wooden chair Deion had sat in only a short time before. His pato was wrapped
around his neck, his sightless eyes starring off, the charred leather journal
resting in his lap. The other chair lay in splinters.

Nancy joined them. “Valerie’s going to be okay.”
She saw Koshen’s body and her face fell. “Shit.”

“He tipped himself over, broke the chair, then
hanged himself,” Deion said. “That’s a hell of a lot of determination.” He
turned to Nancy. “I want to talk to you.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t bother.”

He gaped at her. “Don’t bother?”

“I know,” she growled, starting back up the
stairs.

“We’ve lost our only asset that knew anything
about Abdullah. What next?”

She shrugged. “We go home.”

“This isn’t the end of this conversation,” he
said. “We’re going to talk about this.”

“No, we’re not,” Nancy replied, as she left the
basement.

* * *

Area 51

Karen was getting lunch in the
cafeteria when she saw Eric sitting alone, head down. She had watched as Eric’s
team struck out in Denver and then as he worked to save Deion and Nancy in
Afghanistan. She approached and cleared her throat. “Is this seat taken?”

He glanced up. “Help yourself,” he said, shoving
the chair out with his foot.

She took the offered seat. “How’s the CO doing?”

“Just fine,” he said. “How’s the hunt?”

She paused, her fork loaded with broccoli.
“Nothing so far. There’s so much data to process, it’s—”

“Like finding a needle in a haystack?”

She laughed. “That’s a dumb cliché. Every piece of
data we gather is available and searchable, but there’s just so much of it….”

He leaned forward. “How do you do it, exactly? I
mean, I know the basics, but how did you learn to analyze it?”

She noticed his eyes, a mottled bronze, and felt a
warmth in her cheeks. She loved her husband. Brad was a good man and a good
soldier, but Eric was intriguing as hell.
God, he
’s handsome.
“I
took the ASVAB in high school and scored a perfect 100. I didn’t think much of
it until the recruiter called. It was right after 9/11. I joined up, went to
basic, then I was asked to take a new test. It was weird—random paragraphs and
contextual analysis. I thought I’d bombed. Then I got sent to Ft. Meade and
wound up working with some NSA crypto geeks. That’s how I was recruited into
the Office.”

She took another bite of her broccoli and regarded
him. She could see in his eyes that the failed missions weighed heavily on him.

His smile widened and his face softened. “That’s
how you got here, but how do you do what you do?”

“It’s hard to explain, really.” She stabbed at her
blueberries. “I call it the Pattern. When you look at the data, it’s a stream.
You’re seeing pieces of it here and there, but you can’t stop and take a drop
from the stream. Someone dies and it triggers emails, phone calls, a ripple in
the stream. Or, a blockbuster movie comes out and everybody’s talking about it.
They call their friends, who call their friends, and so on. Another ripple.
Those ripples don’t amount to much.”

He leaned forward. “Then what does?”

She searched for the correct words. “Say IBM buys
a company in Taiwan. Taiwan and China are not on the best of terms. What kind
of tech does the company make? Is it commercial? Does it have a military use?
Could it impact the US, now or in the future? The people that work there, are
they loyal to the company? What kinds of friends do they have? Are they
dissidents? Where does the money flow? That’s a big ripple. Even then it’s just
a ripple. You can’t get caught up watching the ripples and lose sight of the
stream. Our job is to keep an eye on the stream, looking for the Pattern.”

He nodded as she spoke, but the look on his face
was puzzled. “Tell me about the Pattern.”

“It’s not something I can teach. Trust me, I’ve
tried. Once the event happens, anyone can see it. The trick is to see the
ripples coming together. If we see the ripples starting to merge, we can see
the Pattern before it’s fully formed. That’s when the Office can take action.
Take 9/11. All the ripples, all the threads of data, split across so many
different agencies. The Office didn’t have a full blown data center like we do
now, just case-officers sorting through reports, trying to find the Pattern.
Obviously they failed. It’s easy to look back now and see the Pattern, but why
didn’t we see it then? Because there’s a whole stream. When it’s just one small
eddy, it’s hard to see before it becomes a full blown Pattern.”

She paused, and licked the juice from the
pineapple on her fork. “My coworker, Cassie, has been analyzing commodities
manipulation for the past several months. She specializes in economic threats
that threaten the world economies. She sees some ripples. She’s trying to
figure out what they mean. Is it insider trading? You’d be surprised how few
wealthy individuals control the world economy. She’s got a computer model of a
couple hundred people who are in control, directly or indirectly, of sixty
percent of the world’s wealth.”

Eric started to speak, but she shushed him. “I’m
not saying that’s good or bad, but what’s the impact of having so few people
control that sum of money? Wars have been fought over less. Look at the world today.
OPEC is an ally, sometimes, and sometimes a danger. Putin seems to have an
economic plan for Russia, and that includes the energy sector, but the Russian
presidential election is only a few years away. Who knows what happens then?
They don’t have as much wealth, but Russia can still poke us in the eye.
There’s so many ripples, and the possibilities of not acting to prevent another
Pattern from emerging—”

“Another 9/11,” he said, grimacing. He shook his
head and ran his hands through his short brown hair.

She looked down at her empty plate. She knew that
every officer felt the same, since 9/11, but she voiced it anyway. “If I could
stop something like that and didn’t….”

Eric reached across the table and cupped her hand
in his. “I learned a long time ago not to worry about things I can’t control.
Second guessing yourself robs you of energy.”

She grinned. “Isn’t that what you were doing when
I came in?”

Eric shrugged. “Nancy and Deion were lucky. It
almost ended differently.”

“But it didn’t. Don’t second guess your decisions,
right?”

He tilted his head, frowning. “I should have been
there,” he said.

Karen squeezed his hand. “You see your own
Pattern. I get that. At least you can do something about it.”

He gently pulled his hand back and stood to leave.
“Thanks, Karen. I needed a pick-me-up.”

“No problem, boss.”

She watched as he left, his stride powerful and
focused. Brad would understand if she slept with him, hell, he would encourage
her, but it would be better if she waited. With the OTM on alert, there was too
much at stake. The last thing she wanted was to distract her CO. But, once
things settled down….

She smiled to herself.
Eric Wise, you
’re
going to be one hell of a lay.

* * *

Landstuhl, Germany

Abdullah stood on shaky legs, smiling
at the blond-haired man who opened the cargo container. “Peace be upon you,” he
said.

The young soldier returned the smile but his eyes
darted around the dimly lit aircraft hangar. “We have to go, sir. I’m sorry for
the rush, but you’re not safe here.”

He led them from the camo-green cargo container to
a waiting Humvee. Abdullah and Naseer climbed gingerly in the back, their
muscles and joints still knotted from ten hours spent hiding in the metal
container.

The soldier threw an oil-stained tarp over them. “Stay
still and don’t make a sound.”

They huddled under the tarp while the Humvee
rumbled off, eventually coming to a long stop. They heard voices questioning
the young man and the man answered, then the truck accelerated.

“Can we trust this American?” Naseer whispered.

“Yes. He is committed to Jihad.” Naseer snorted
softly. “These people are vital to our plans.” He bristled at Naseer’s casual
dismissal of the American’s good intent. These precious few Americans had
risked everything transporting them out of Afghanistan, hiding them in the
cargo-plane from Bagram. He marveled at their ingenuity, sneaking them on the
base in Bagram and then out again at Ramstein Air Force Base.

The Humvee finally stopped and they heard the
young man open his door, slam it shut, then their door opened and the tarp came
off. Abdullah strained his eyes to see in the dark hangar as the young man led
them to a small white car.

“In the trunk,” the soldier directed.

They struggled to fit themselves into the trunk of
the compact car, pushing and shoving to squeeze in place.

“There’s air holes under the seat, you’ll be okay,
we tested it ourselves. We’ve got one more checkpoint to go through and then
we’ll be safe.”

They struggled to breathe in the trunk as the car
accelerated, the whine of the tires making further conversation impossible. The
car stopped and started as their driver navigated them through the base, until
he finally yelled, “We made it!”

When the car finally stopped, Abdullah breathed a
sigh of relief. The trunk opened and they staggered out. The car was parked in
an alley, packed between the two apartment buildings, and situated to block the
view from the street. They followed the young man into an apartment where two
young Americans waited.

The first, a thin black man with chocolate brown
eyes, shook his hand. “We’re so glad you made it. Peace be upon you.”

Their driver turned toward the door. “I’ve got to
get back.” He nodded to the two young soldiers who smiled nervously. “They’ll
take good care of you.” He shook Abdullah’s hand and left.

Abdullah turned to the young black man. “You are
Shahid?”

The man nodded. “I’m Terrill, but now I go by
Shahid.”

Abdullah smiled. “There is nothing to be ashamed
of, Shahid. You have chosen to commit yourself to Allah. It is a great honor to
meet you.” He turned to the squat, coppery-skinned man next to him. “And you
are Mahbeer? Your family is from Mexico?”

Mahbeer smiled. “Mexican by way of Los Angeles.
Name’s Hector. You speak very good English. You got almost no accent.”

“I studied in America,” he said. “I was forced to
learn English. Naseer is not so lucky.”

Naseer nodded politely as if following the
conversation.

Shahid stuck out his hand. “You’re safe here.”

Naseer shook it and Abdullah did the same.

“Excellent,” Abdullah said. “Do you have tea? We
are very thirsty.”

Mahbeer nodded and went to fix tea. Abdullah and
Naseer sat back on the soft brown couch as Shahid explained the preparations.

Abdullah’s heart lightened, and he nodded as the
plan unfolded. “You have the truck?”

“Yes,” said Shahid. “Just like you requested. I’ve
got the C4, too. I’ve been covering the paperwork.”

Mahbeer returned with tea and Abdullah drank, then
turned his attention back to Shahid. “Tell me, what made you chose to follow
Allah? You were not born a Muslim, I take it?”

Shahid laughed. “No. I grew up in Cabrini Green,
Chicago. Joined the Army after 9/11, then got sent to Iraq. Nobody cared about
them people. They just wanted some payback. There were these kids. Some of our
guys were mean, laughing at them.” He paused. “We were on patrol and I saw this
kid. He just wanted a bottle of water. A guy chucked a bottle of water, hit him
in the head, the other guys laughing like it was the funniest shit in the
world. It wasn’t right. They had some stuff on the base, learn the culture kind
of thing, and there was a copy of the Quran. I started reading it. Found
something in it. It was like—”