Reporters shouted questions, but Adeogo and Dheeh quietly returned to the safety of their house.
“This is absolutely stunning news,” Ebio Kattan proclaimed, when she reappeared on the television screen. “The only Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress has just revealed his youngest brother was one of the most hated men in AmericaâAbdul Hafeez, a high-ranking member of Al-Shabaab who declared war against his own country. So who was Abdul Hafeez?”
In a somber voice, Kattan warned viewers that Al Arabic was about to broadcast video that was so disturbing it was not suitable for children. “I will wait fifteen seconds before continuing if you wish to remove them from the room.” The image of Kattan seated behind a news anchor desk without uttering a word added even more drama to the broadcast. When the fifteen seconds elapsed, she announced, “The figure you are about to see was identified as Abdul Hafeez by U.S. intelligence officials based on voice recordings.”
Video of a masked man dressed in black filled the screen. He was clutching a long knife while standing over an American diplomat who was being pinned to the floor by two other masked jihadists. The hostage's outstretched hands had been forced onto a cement block before him. As Hafeez brought down the knife, the network used pixels to hide the amputation of the man's hands but did not mute his screams.
When the camera returned to Kattan, she was holding an eight-by-ten-inch photograph of Hafeez with his arm around the shoulder of his older brother, Rudy, which had been taken when they were youngsters.
“Representative Adeogo's office has released a family photograph that shows Rudy Adeogo and his younger brother Georgeâwho the congressman has just acknowledged was Abdul Hafeez. This photo was taken several years before Hafeez traveled to Somalia and before Rudy Adeogo was elected last year to the U.S. Congress. It shows both men as young, carefree boys. The brothers severed all contact after Hafeez joined Al-Shabaab.”
Inside his OIN office, Omar Nader muted the television and hurriedly dialed Mary Margaret Delaney's cell phone.
“Do you call this controlling Rudy Adeogo?” Nader demanded, barely able to control his anger. “He has told everyone about his brother! Now Americans will think that every Muslim has someone in their family who is a terrorist.”
“How was I supposed to know he'd go on national television and confess?”
“You should've known! You pushed him too hard. You went to his house rather than talking to him discreetly. Reporters saw you at his house, didn't they?” Nader snapped. “Now those same reporters are going to be suspicious of why he made his announcement. Some of them will remember your visit. They may see a link, a connection. I told you the OIN cannot be tied to any of this.” There was genuine fear in Nader's voice. “It would ruin me and the OIN if the word leaked out that we gave you documents so you could blackmail Adeogo. You have put the OIN and me personally in grave danger.”
“Calm down,” Delaney replied. “Adeogo doesn't know how I got his brother's records.”
“How do you know that Adeogo will not make another public statement? How do you know that he will not tell the world that you tried to blackmail him?”
“You're overreacting. He's not going to say anything and as long as you and I keep our mouths shut, no one will trace this information back to the OIN and your sources.”
“You can't guarantee this, given that he's just told everyone about his brother. I cannot have your actions traced back to the OIN.”
Neither of them spoke for a moment, and then Delaney said, “Listen, I did what you asked me to do, which means that the OIN still owes me a retainer fee. You understand that, don't you?”
Nader couldn't believe her gall. He felt as if he were about to explode. But he calmed himself and hid his outrage when he replied. “Yes, I understand.”
When he ended the call, Nader felt physically ill. Circumstances had shifted under his feet. He'd provided the damning information about Adeogo's family to Delaney thinking that together they could manipulate the congressman. But Rudy Adeogo had outed himself and now, with Chairman Stanton raising questions about the loyalty of Muslim Americans, Adeogo's confession would only feed mass Islamophobia. Nader had miscalculated. He'd made a major blunder.
His private cell phone rang and when he saw on the caller ID that it was coming from Saudi Arabia, his hand began to tremble. He answered it.
“Yes,” Nader said obediently into the phone receiver. He listened without comment and when the caller finished speaking, Nader said softly, “I agree that she is a problem. I will handle her.”
Mountaintop, Virginia
Allegheny Mountains
A
ludra needed to act quickly. Akbar was pumping gas and had sent her alone into a general store, the only grocery in this tiny crossroads town.
The store itself was more than a hundred years old and still displayed its groceries, dry goods, and hunting and fishing supplies much as they'd always been shown. It was not the store's supplies or the plaques on the walls warning customers to “Be nice or leave!” or “Our Credit Manager is Helen Waite. Want Credit? Go to Helen Waite” that interested Aludra. Near a public restroom at the rear of the building was a pay phone.
Aludra had memorized a hotline tip number the night before when it had been shown at the bottom of the screen during a newscast about the abduction of Jennifer Conner and Cassy Adeogo. That number had appeared under a mug shot of Akbar which U.S. officials had taken when he'd been a prisoner at Gitmo. Thankfully, they had not shown her photographâassuming they had one of her in their records. There was a $500,000 reward for any information that helped lead to his capture.
Before today, Akbar had always insisted that Aludra stay behind with their two hostages at the cabin in southwestern Virginia near the state line whenever they needed supplies. But because of last night's broadcast, he had become wary of being seen in public. He'd remained outside the store at the gas pump wearing large sunglasses, a baseball cap, and hooded sweatshirt.
Akbar had permitted her to dress in western clothes without wearing a hijab. She was supposed to blend in, like any other traveler who'd stopped to buy locally raised buffalo meat or ask about the area's colorful history. It had once been home to Cherokee Indians who used red clay from nearby rivers to make pottery and also donned it as war paint.
Aludra, a short and pudgy woman with dramatic dark eyes, a strong chin, and beautiful caramel colored skin, hurried to the pay phone near the store's restroom but realized when she lifted its receiver that she needed to deposit a coin in order to make a call, even though it was an 800 number. She didn't have change, so she returned to the cashier near the front door.
“I'd like change for a phone call,” she explained, handing the clerk a crumpled dollar bill that she had kept hidden from Akbar.
“We're probably the only folks around who still have a pay phone,” the older woman replied, taking her money. “Everyone has cell phones now. Even my grandkids, and they're not even ten years old yet. But it's hard sometimes to get signals here in the mountains, so people come in to use our landline.”
Aludra glanced through the store's front windows outside where she could see Akbar still standing at the gas pump. She needed to hurry. The clerk followed her eyes outside.
“Your husband waiting, dear?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“You should tell him to come inside and look around. We got lots of man things in here, like bait and lures, and stuff you don't see in most stores anymore, like a pickle barrel.”
“A what?”
“A barrel full of pickles and you pick out whichever pickles you want to pick? Try saying that seven times.” She chuckled. “Does he hunt or fish at all?”
Aludra scooped up the change. “After I make my call, I will tell him about the pickles.”
She walked to the phone and dialed the hotline number. The person who answered was skeptical when Aludra first asked to speak to Major Brooke Grant whom she'd seen being interviewed on television. Only after Aludra had correctly described what Jennifer Conner had been wearing when she'd been abducted did he agree to immediately connect her to Brooke.
Even so, it took several moments for Brooke to come on the line, ratcheting up Aludra's stress. She couldn't risk having Akbar come inside the store looking for her. If he saw her using the phone, he would know she was betraying him and kill her and the chatty clerk. He had a pistol under his sweatshirt and an assault rifle under a blanket in the backseat of the car.
“Is this Aludra Aba-Jihaad?” Brooke asked the moment she came on the line.
Aludra knew the FBI had identified her, but hearing her name was unsettling. “That is not my last name, but I am Aludra. I did not take Akbar's name when I was forced to marry him.”
“Where are Jennifer and Cassy?”
“In the basement of a cabin.”
“What cabin?”
“It's named Perfect Hideaway. Look on the Internet. VRBO. Mountaintop, Virginia. Only Akbar and I are there with them. But you must come now. Tomorrow will be too late.”
“Why? Is Akbar going to kill them?” Brooke asked, in an alarmed voice.
“No. He beats them. But yes.”
“I'm confused. Yes, he's going to kill them?”
“No, rape them. He can't behead them until he gets an order.”
“Rape? They're children!” Brooke exclaimed. “Who's giving him orders?”
“A man in Washington. I have to go. I can't talk now. He will kill me if he catches me.”
“Wait, why are you helping us?”
“I want out. I want to be rid of him. An American prison is better than being his wife. He is an animal who rapes and beats me.”
“Here is my cell phone number,” Brooke said, telling her the digits.
Aludra had been keeping an eye on the grocery store's front door, and she hung up the phone at the exact moment Akbar came through it, causing a tiny bell on the doorframe to ring.
Forcing a smile, she hurried toward him. “I've taken too long but I needed the toilet,” she said.
He looked at the back of the store at a sign.
REST ROOM
. But she couldn't tell from his eyes if he'd noticed the pay phone outside it.
“Where are the groceries?” he asked.
Aludra felt a renewed sense of panic. She couldn't risk having the talkative clerk asking her about her phone call in front of him.
“Akbar,” she said, her voice a whisper, “you don't want the woman at the cash register to recognize you. You must return to the car.”
He studied her face before handing her twenty dollars and exiting the store.
She quickly gathered up the supplies they needed and took them to the checkout counter.
“Did you get that call made, dear?” the clerk asked.
“Yes, to my sister. We are going to visit her at the Virginia Technological University. We've always wanted to see the mountains so we are driving through them to Blacksburg.”
It was a plausible explanation that she and Akbar had devised in case anyone questioned why they were in this remote area.
“My daughter went to Radford,” the clerk volunteered while slipping the groceries into thin plastic bags. “It's right next door to Tech. It's a lovely drive from here to there.”
“Thank you,” Aludra said. “I like your store. It's quaint.”
“Honey, it's old, just like me,” the clerk replied. “Nothing quaint about that.”
Aludra was opening the door to leave when the clerk called after her. “Hey, you forgot about the pickles. When your husband came in. You were supposed to tell him about the pickle barrel.”
“Yes, how many pickles can you pick.” She forced a laugh.
Akbar was waiting with the car engine running. “What did you say to that woman?” he demanded.
“Nothing. She wanted me to tell you about pickles.”
“Pickles?”
“Foolish woman talk.”
“Why didn't you wait to use the toilet at the cabin?” he asked suspiciously.
She removed a box of tampons from the grocery bag. “This is allowed,” she said, referring to an edict by their Imam that permitted women to use them. Her explanation quieted him.
For the next twenty minutes they drove in silence until they reached a cabin in a heavily wooded area. Aludra had rented the cabin online on VRBO, and it was appropriately called the Perfect Hideaway. It was a newly constructed log cabin that was built on three levels. Jennifer and Cassy were bound with duct tape in an unfinished storage room on the cabin's ground floor. A wraparound porch surrounded the main floor, which contained the kitchen and a great room with a huge river rock fireplace. The cabin's owners had mounted a bear's head over the mantle. In a framed letter posted for renters, the owner explained that he had killed the bear about a mile from the cabin while bow hunting. An open staircase led to two upstairs bedrooms. The cabin was built into the mountainside so that three of its ground-level walls were covered with earth. The one that wasn't contained a double glass door that looked out onto a clearing to the immediate west of the cabin.
As the couple neared the cabin on its gravel road, Akbar suddenly stopped, jammed the car's transmission into park, and reached back into the rear seat for his assault rifle. The house's front door was wide open.
The moment Brooke finished speaking to Aludra over the phone, she hurried into Wyatt Parker's office inside the Reston command post and together they found the location of the Perfect Hideaway rental cabin on VRBO. Parker passed that address to the FBI's elite Hostage Rescue Team in Quantico, Virginia.
“I'm going there with them,” Brooke declared.
“No, you're not,” Parker replied. “I'll get us a separate chopper. You would be in their way, just as I would. We must let them do their jobs.”
Brooke knew he was right but she didn't like it. The special agents selected as HRT tactical “operators” were among the most highly trained in the country. They were capable of launching a rescue anywhere in the United States within four hours. It would not take them that long to reach the Perfect Hideaway cabin, which was tucked between Potts Mountain and Peters Mountain, about 250 miles southwest from the Washington, D.C., area.
“HRT's motto is
servare vitas
,” Parker said reassuringly, as he and Brooke drove to nearby Dulles International Airport to a waiting FBI helicopter. “That's Latin for âto save lives.'”
Brooke was familiar with the HRT motto, but her mind was on other matters. She was thinking about Jennifer and Cassy, and what Aludra had told her.
What kind of man raped young girls and then wrapped himself in religious purity?
As they neared the helicopter, she thought of a story that she'd heard about the origins of the FBI's HRT. Legend had it that former FBI director William H. Webster had embraced the HRT concept after witnessing a rescue demonstration by the Delta Force, the military's most elite special force. Webster had noticed during the show that the anti-terrorism operatives didn't carry handcuffs and had asked why. “We put two rounds in their forehead,” a team member quipped. “The dead don't need handcuffs.”
Brooke liked that approach.
Once airborne, Brooke and Parker listened through headphones to the FBI base commander directing the HRT. The rescue plan was straightforward. The HRT's specially equipped helicopter would hover over the trees far enough away from the cabin that it would not be detected but close enough so that rescuers could fast rope down into the woods and quickly hike there. They would surprise and neutralize Akbar and rescue the two girls. No one believed Akbar would surrender. There would be no need for handcuffs.
With his finger on the trigger of his assault rifle, Akbar entered the Perfect Hideaway cabin and moved cautiously from room to room before he returned to the front porch and waved to Aludra to come inside from the car with their groceries.
“One of the girls has escaped,” he hollered angrily as Aludra climbed the front steps. “She can't be far. I'm going to find her.” He left the porch, heading in the direction of the clearing to the southwest of the cabin as Aludra hurried inside, depositing the bags of groceries on the kitchen table. She rushed down a flight of stairs to the ground floor and into the storage room where she found Jennifer Conner lying on the tile floor still bound with duct tape.
“How did she escape?” Aludra asked the teen.
Jennifer didn't answer.
Aludra noticed Cassy's black riding boots lying nearby. They were still tied together with duct tape at the ankle, which meant that Cassy had slipped her feet from inside them.
“She couldn't break the tape you put on her wrists,” Jennifer said quietly. “She went upstairs to get a knife and must have heard your car.”
“Akbar will catch her, and when he does, he will hurt her bad. He will beat all of us.”
“He's a bad man, but you aren't. Can you help me escape?”
“We wouldn't get far. You must be patient.”
Neither Jennifer nor Cassy had been wearing hoods when Akbar and Aludra had left earlier to get groceries, but now Aludra placed a hood over Jennifer's face.
“This is best,” she said. Dropping her voice to a whisper, she added, “The FBI is coming and they will know you are a hostage if you are wearing a hood. Just be quiet and wait.”
“The FBI is coming!” Jennifer exclaimed.