Through the window, Julius could see several hundred pallets of water bottles stacked inside the bay, which appeared much deeper than he had initially estimated. Based on what he saw, the building must extend at least a hundred feet back. A few men appeared in the bay and hopped down from the concrete loading platform. He could barely believe he was now a part of an even more secretive arm of True America.
"Everyone out. They'll take over from here," the driver said.
Julius opened the van door and was immediately greeted by an intense glaring Caucasian man he had never seen before. In the faded light, he could see that the man had a military-style tattoo on his right bicep, partially visible underneath a black polo-style shirt.
"Mr. Grimes, my name is Michael Brooks. Head of security. Your identity has been compromised, so it looks like you'll be joining us here. This site will be extremely busy over the next few weeks, and we can use another set of hands."
"How long will I have to stay? I was told that my family might be able to join me; I didn't really have this in mind," Julius said.
He was starting to feel like more of a prisoner than an elite member of True America's militant arm. He could be stuck here indefinitely without seeing his family.
"We know that your family is under surveillance. Since the FBI hasn't approached them, we can only assume that they are waiting for you. We suspect that you may be their only lead at this point. Consider yourself lucky."
"Lucky? To be imprisoned here indefinitely?"
"To be alive. Work hard, and keep your mouth shut here. You won't be given another warning. Understood?"
Julius thought about the pistol he still had tucked into his jeans. Nobody had suggested that he surrender the Beretta, so he'd kept it near him at all times. He wasn't sure what he'd do if they asked for it.
"Understood. Where exactly am I?"
"At our lab, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Let's head inside and get you situated."
Julius followed Brooks to a door on the right side of the loading bay. Two more men jumped down onto a concrete strip below the bay's lip. The security man opened the windowless door, exposing a well-lit room. He gestured for Julius to enter and stood back a few feet. A small set of concrete stairs led Julius to the door and into the room. When he saw his team leader standing inside the empty space, his heart sank. He knew exactly why they had brought him to the middle of nowhere. He remembered back to the beginning. One of True America's key tenets was "we take care of our own." The saying had more than one meaning. He had been constantly reminded of this in the early phase of his recruitment, when the question of his loyalty had yet to be fully answered.
He turned and leapt out of the doorway, landing on the moist, root-infested dirt with two feet. He reached for the Beretta secured against the small of his back and started sprinting toward the darkness. If he could make it to the woods, he could hide until he figured out his next move. His only thought at the moment was to just survive. He cursed himself for not trusting his earlier instincts.
Looking around as he ran, Julius extended the pistol toward Brooks and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He faltered in his run, pulling the pistol's slide back to chamber another round. He did this flawlessly, watching the unfired bullet eject from the pistol before he depressed the trigger again. Brooks stared at him and shook his head. Julius stopped running in the middle of the dirt field. He repeated the process, aiming at Karen Nadeau, who had appeared in the doorway, blocking most of the light from inside. The hammer fell, but the pistol failed to discharge.
"We took the liberty of replacing your Beretta while you were deep in a drug-induced sleep at the safe house!" Brooks yelled.
Julius tried one more time, aiming at Brook's head. He wasn't sure how they drugged him, but sleep had come easily enough. He had no reason to doubt what the man had said, so he tossed the pistol to the ground.
"This is your version of gratitude, Mr. Grimes? Fuck up one of the most important jobs we can give you and shoot your way free when the terms of your punishment aren't acceptable?" Brooks said.
"Should I have dug my own grave for you too? Or is a pre-dug hole part of the 'we take care of our own' motto."
"Grave? Kathy's not here to kill you, Grimes. I took your entire team out of circulation to minimize the damage. Ward Young is here as well. I can't take the risk of the possible connections."
Both of his teammates stepped down from the building and stood near Brooks. He whispered something to them, and they started walking over to the loading bay. Julius stood there, stunned by the revelation.
"Now I have a real problem, Julius. I can't trust anyone on this team anymore."
Kathy Nadeau and Ward Young stopped in their tracks and turned their heads toward Brooks. Before either of them could protest, suppressed automatic weapons fire erupted from the loading bay and smaller doorway, puncturing their bodies and dropping them to the recently cleared forest floor. Aerosolized blood mist from their exit wounds lingered in the air above them, illuminated by the door's light fixture.
"Go fuck yourself. I get the distinct feeling nobody is going to leave this compound alive. Good luck to the rest of you! This is how True America rewards loyalt—"
A single gunshot passed through his head, putting an end to a line of reasoning that Michael Brooks didn't want him to continue in front of too many people.
Chapter 13
Aleem Fayed sat in a chair they had dragged down from the classroom attached to the prayer hall. He faced Hamid Abdul Muhammad, who sat unharmed on a small wooden stool they had found in the basement. His hands and feet were tied to the stool, to prevent him from doing anything more than hurt himself if he should try to stand up. The basement had proved to be the best possible location they could have secured on short notice. They could have rented a hotel room by the hour in one of the seediest sections of town, where strange noises and even screams wouldn't raise any eyebrows. Or they could have used the rental house that had been secured this morning in an equally questionable part of town. The house had a basement and might become their only option if the Imam proved resistant to their accelerated mental and physical torture routine.
He suspected that they would have more success with physical torture. The Imam had grown soft in America, having expanded his waist at a rate that must have alarmed his handlers in the Middle East. When he arrived to preach hate and recruit terrorists eight years ago, he looked slim and fit in his traditional white garments. Now, he more closely resembled a bearded version of the late John Belushi. His white prayer robes must have gone through several alterations to cover the man sweating in the chair in front of them.
They hadn't spoken a word to him since finding him jammed into a cabinet in his upstairs office. He had left the basement door open, hoping to trick them into hastily plunging down the stairs, but Tariq had noticed two formidable slide bolts on the back of the door. If they had thoughtlessly rushed into the basement, Hamid could have easily barricaded the door and tried to escape. The single, bare light bulb in the basement was controlled from a switch inside of his office, which would have compounded their problem. They would have been locked inside an unfamiliar, pitch-black basement with the success of their mission now hinged upon the three technicians sitting in a van two blocks away. Sanderson would have never forgiven them if they had lost the Imam.