“These are the marks of the martyr I wear proudly, for they are ccourtesy of the Nigerian Special Police,” Kamal said. “I don’t think of them as wounds. I think of them as honors won in our ongoing campaign against the infidels. The men who gave them to me are half a world away and have nothing to do with our purpose for meeting here today.”
Hicks had to admit he was impressed with Kamal’s ease with bullshit, but Omar didn’t sound totally convinced. “You should be in hospital, receiving care.”
“Perhaps, but our uncle’s concern about the well-being of your noble cause exceeds any concerns about my condition. Your request drew his attention, my brother, and his interest.”
“And, I hope, his support?”
“His support depends entirely upon what you have to show me today.” Hicks heard something, maybe the bag of money he’d given Kamal, slide across the floorboards. “But he does hope you will accept this gift as a small token of his praise of your noble efforts.”
Hicks clapped his hand against the wheel. That’s it.
Hook him and reel him in.
Omar was quiet for a moment as Hicks supposed he looked in the bag. “It appears to be most generous and very humbling,” Omar said, though Hicks heard disappointment in his voice.
Kamal must’ve heard it too because he said, “His support will be far more generous once we learn more about what you propose to do.”
“Our uncle’s concern is both appreciated and justified. As you will soon see, his support will be vital to the success of our cause.”
“Although I don’t doubt the sincerity of your words,” Kamal said, “our uncle has heard many such claims about many ideas. He remains dedicated to supporting Allah’s work against the infidels, but he must also be cautious.”
Hicks swerved as he got cut off by a moving truck as he tried to get off the highway.
Good for you, kid. Keep pushing him. Don’t kiss his ass. You’ve got the money he needs.
“You will see evidence of this and more this very day, my brother. And I am sure you will agree that our efforts will bring great glory to our uncle and to Allah himself, all for very little expense. Our plans are grand in scope but humble in their execution. But I’m afraid that we must take certain precautions.”
“What kind of precautions?” Kamal asked.
“My people did not ask to search you when you got in their car as a courtesy to you and our uncle. But I’m afraid now I must insist. I must also insist that you not only leave your phone here but you dismantle it as well.”
Hicks prayed:
Don’t let them smash that fucking phone. Don’t…
“I will remove the battery and leave it here as you ask,” Kamal said, “but as it is my only contact with our uncle, I suggest that you instruct your people to not destroy it.”
Omar seemed to agree. “Then I will make sure my men leave it alone, but it must remain here.”
Hicks remembered to breathe. Now that he had them isolated, he could program OMNI to track their thermal signatures wherever they went.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t near his computer and the traffic was moving too fast for him to program OMNI himself. He could’ve eyeballed them as they left the building, but he was still eight miles away and Kamal needed protection now.
Hicks activated the car’s speakerphone and said, “Communications Department.”
OMNI recognized the command and dialed the pre-programmed number over the secure private network.
A bland male voice came through the Buick’s speakers. “How may I direct your call?”
Hicks used the standard Urgent All-Clear (UAC) code. “This is Professor Warren and I need to speak to a supervisor, A.S.A.P.”
“I happen to be a supervisor, Professor. What is your emergency?”
“I need a thermal tracking protocol established on an Asset. I’m in transit and can’t do it by myself.”
Hicks heard the click of the supervisor’s keyboard. He knew he was pulling up Hicks’ surveillance profile so he could see what Hicks was seeing. An icon appeared on the lower right hand corner of his dashboard screen, showing him the Communications Department had logged into his system. By then, Omar and Kamal had gotten up and headed for the door. The screen switched to thermal.
“Are these the two signatures you want to track, sir?”
“I need them tracked and his phone to stay recording as well. The phone doesn’t have to be a live feed if bandwidth is a problem. Thermal tracking of the subjects is the priority.”
He heard the man’s fingers clicking across a keyboard. “One moment.”
A space between two cars opened up on Hicks’ left side. It wasn’t much, but just enough and he floored it, shooting the gap and getting around the ass-dragging son of a bitch in the Prius in front of him. He was only halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge and needed to make up time if he was going to be of any use to Kamal. Omar and his men might be taking Kamal upstairs or on a three hour drive some place. OMNI would track where they went, but couldn’t do much remotely if shit went sideways.
A bus drifted from the left lane into the center lane without signaling. Horns blared and tires screeched. Hicks floored it and shot past the whole mess, hoping to gain precious seconds to Midwood.
The supervisor asked, “Are you okay, sir?”
“Worry about securing that tracking protocol, ace. I’m fine.”
More keys clicking and then, “Protocol is up and good. Passive surveillance on the cell phone is continuing. Are you watching the feed live?”
“In between avoiding getting run off the road by a fucking bus, yeah.”
“Very well. OMNI will also send you an alert if the targets separate. We’ve got a heavy demand on the feed today, so we may not be able to track two of them live at the same time.”
Hicks didn’t like it, but saw no point in arguing. He could remember a time when they had three satellites parked over the US alone. Now they only had four spread out throughout the globe. Luckily, one was all his.
“Identify the larger of the two men. He’s my Asset. Make sure the satellite tracks him as a priority. We can’t lose him.”
“Understood, Professor. Will you require Varsity assistance with your research?”
The last thing he wanted was those gung-ho assholes kicking in doors and killing off leads. “Not at this time, but I’ll let you know if I do. Thanks for the assist.”
Hicks killed the connection and went back to passively watching the drama play out on his dashboard screen while he kept an eye on the traffic.
He tapped the screen and changed it to the standard GPS view. OMNI tracked Kamal and Omar as they left Midwood—just the two of them in the car according to the satellite. That fit with Omar’s cautious nature. The system tracked them as they drove to a building near the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Hicks followed at a distance.
He tapped the building they’d entered, which automatically called out an information bubble that gave him details of the structure. Who owned it and when it was built. It’s general purpose. It was a former warehouse that had been converted into a modern self-storage facility a few years before.
Omar obviously had something to show him. Something that had to be kept away from the place where they’d just met. Something that needed to be protected under lock and key.
Hicks tapped the screen and changed the satellite settings to read radiological signs from the building, but OMNI wasn’t picking up elevated radiation levels. That didn’t mean it couldn’t be in a lead container. It just meant that if it was radiological, it was well protected.
Without Kamal having his cellphone, Hicks couldn’t hear what was going on, but he could still track them from above. He switched the screen from radiation detection to heat signature and over-laid that image with an X-ray of the building’s structure. The floors appeared to be solid concrete, so the satellite wouldn’t be able to give him a definitive lock on their position once they were inside. It was a minor setback. He would just have to wait until he debriefed Kamal to learn what he’d seen.
So close, but yet so far should be the motto for intelligence work.
Kamal and Omar had been in the facility for twenty minutes by the time Hicks was able to find a parking spot around the corner from the storage facility. There’d been no sign of them since they’d gone inside and he was beginning to get worried. He tried to access the facility’s security systems, but the system—if they had one—wasn’t hooked up to the Internet. The place also didn’t have Wi-Fi because he couldn’t find a trace of a signal. The facility billed itself as state of the art protection for its customers’ valuable goods. The place hadn’t been state-of-the-art since Reagan had been president.
But as the amount of time that Kamal had been inside began to drag on to thirty, then forty minutes, Hicks began to think maybe he should call in a Varsity squad to at least seal the place up and raid the unit before Omar could get away. Omar could be showing Kamal a tactical nuke or a dirty bomb. He could be showing him plans for the bomb they wanted to build if they had the money for parts and someone who could help them build it. He could be torturing him right now, but there was no way for Hicks to know. And a lack of knowledge could get you killed in this business.
Hicks knew Omar was protecting something; something that was in that facility. He needed to know what it was, but he couldn’t let the Varsity come in and kill his one true lead before he knew more. Roger’s ego aside, interrogation was always a risky choice.
Forty minutes became an hour and the satellite image hadn’t changed. Just a bland image of the bland roof of the bland storage facility hundreds of miles below the satellite’s lens. Hicks watched people walk by the building via OMNI, only to see them cross the street in front of him a few seconds later. He could remember when VCRs were cutting edge technology. Now he could watch someone walking in front of his car from space at the same time as he saw them in real life.
Hicks could also remember a time before all this; back when many things had been new to him. When he used to think people were basically good and had the best interests of their fellow man at heart. But gradually, he learned that people generally only had their own interests in mind and would often do anything to further their own goals. Whether it was to get in good with their boss or bang some girl or get a thumbs up from Allah, people were often willing to do whatever it took to get what they wanted. It didn’t matter if you were after a better job or better karma or forty virgins in paradise; it was all about getting that shiny medal at the end of the race.
And once Hicks had come to understand that’s how people worked, he was able to see the world for what it really was: a cold and desolate fucking place.
Hicks checked the time on the satellite feed. It had been over an hour and their car hadn’t been moved. There also hadn’t been any other vehicles anywhere near the place. No one else had gone in or out of the facility, either.
Then, the image on his dashboard screen blinked to life as the satellite picked up Kamal’s and Omar’s heat signatures as they walked out of the building. Hicks changed the zoom on the camera and switched it from heat signature to tactical. He focused in on both men.
Kamal had kept his beard, but shaved his head completely bald and wore a white skull cap. He looked nothing like the federal fugitive Hicks had seen the day before. Instead, he looked like a slightly underfed man who had something on his mind.
Omar’s appearance never changed. He was a slight man and walking next to a bruiser like Kamal made him look even smaller. He was bone skinny and bug-eyed. The few teeth he still had were small and crooked. His black skin was marked with lighter patches and pockmarked from acne. He had the haunted, hunted look of a man who’d been held down most of his life, probably because he had been.
In Somalia, Omar had been an orphan who didn’t have any friends and he’d never had any formal education, at least none the University could verify. Yet somehow, this man—who’d been forgotten since childhood—had managed to scrape together enough money to leave his country and head to America. He’d started his own business and now wanted to be a major player in the jihad against his adopted country.
Men like Omar scared the hell out of Hicks because they had nothing to keep them going except the hatred that fueled everything they did. That hatred gave them strength and motivation and purpose. God help whoever found themselves on the other side of men like Omar, because the only way to stop them is with a bullet in the brain.
And Hicks would be glad to put a bullet in his brain, but only after he found out what he was doing.
As he watched Kamal and Omar come out of the storage facility, he looked to see if either of them was carrying anything or had anything tucked under their shirts. Both of them looked completely normal, except for Omar, who was fiddling with something in his hand, probably his car keys. He switched to the thermal feed to see if they were carrying anything that had changed their heat signatures. A bomb or something chemical but nothing abnormal came up.
They looked like two regular guys getting back into a car on a quiet Brooklyn morning. Kamal rode shotgun while Omar climbed in behind the wheel, started up the car, and pulled away. The car was a faded blue Corolla from the late nineties with a good amount of rust where the paint had shipped away. Hicks saw they were heading his way, so he quickly ducked, making like he was looking for something in the glove box.
Hicks knew OMNI would track them wherever they went, so there was no need for him to follow too close behind. Besides, he had other things to do.
He tapped the dashboard screen and rewound the OMNI footage to get a closer look at what Omar had been holding in his hand when he left the storage facility. Hicks stopped the playback at the point where Omar and Kamal had first left the building, then zoomed in on Omar’s hands. The image was blocky and pixilated at first, but Hicks knew the software would scrub the image until it became much clearer.