"Really? Now our friend here is operational?" Aleem said, eliciting a laugh from everyone in the van that didn't have his mouth taped.
"Just saying," Gupta responded. "Our fingerprints and DNA are all over this biatch."
"Where did you find a gangsta Hindu computer hacker?" Tariq asked.
"He found me, and this is nothing, by the way. He's actually behaving for you guys," Graves replied, turning the van gently onto a crowded urban street.
"Wonderful," Aleem said.
Tariq and Aleem watched the traffic around the van closely for signs of unwanted law enforcement attention. Aleem spotted a three-story parking garage coming up on the opposite side of the road, which appeared to be connected to the Sheraton hotel towering over it.
"Graves, let's pull into that parking garage and find a new ride. We won't last much longer on the road if they successfully issue an APB. There's too much traffic out here," Aleem said.
"I can take care of the APB. I'm tapped into the State Police and local Newark Police network," Gupta said.
"Forget it. You'll lose satellite as soon as we duck into the garage. Start disassembling the gear," Aleem said.
"Can I call you Aleem G? It's so close to Ali G. You know who I'm talking about, right? HBO series?" Gupta said.
Aleem regarded the young Indian man strapped into a swivel bucket seat that had been bolted into the middle of the rear cargo compartment. Both of his hands typed away at one of the keyboards on the metal cargo table. He could see that the heavy-duty table had been welded to the left side of the van at several points. All of the equipment had been secured in custom-made metal holsters and strapped down with industrial-grade Velcro straps. The entire set up, Anish Gupta included, looked like it could survive a multiple rollover accident. It was hard to get mad at someone who looked so ridiculous and so serious at the same time.
"No. To all of your questions," Aleem said.
"Maybe I can just call you G?"
"How about you start getting all of this equipment ready for transfer and I'll think of a name. It'll probably sound a lot like Aleem."
"No sense of humor. Fuck. I get it. Mouth shut," the young man said.
Aleem continued to stare past Gupta, examining traffic through the rear window. He knew the young techie understood the stakes up front, but from behind his computers, this was still more or less a game to him. He didn't see the dead bodies in the mosque, and he wasn't there when they engulfed Hamid's head in flames. And he wouldn't be there when they put a bullet in the terrorist's head. Hopefully, this would continue to feel like somewhat of a game for him. A game at this point that would land him in federal prison as an accessory to murder, among dozens of additional charges related to interfering with a federal investigation and hacking federal databases…and this was only the beginning.
Chapter 14
Special Agent Sharpe hung up the phone and stood up from his desk. Frank Mendoza gave him one of his patented raised eyebrows looks. For a moment, he stared past his friend at the NCTC watch floor. All of the displays full of information, maps and charts gave the impression that they were on top of the situation. Analysts and technicians moved back and forth between stations, trading conversations, which to the untrained eye would appear to be a good sign of productive activity. Sharpe knew better.
The watch floor had been designed to keep analysts and agents at their well-separated workstations, where they could work relatively undisturbed, while still maintaining the critical "we all sink or swim" aura. Most of the agents filling temporary stations were tech savvy and figured out how to make use of the NCTC system within the first few hours of taking their posts. The fact that even the NCTC analysts were out of their chairs meant they didn't have enough to propel the investigation forward. The information passed to him through several phone calls would only make matters worse.
"It's not good, Frank. They lost the van. Disappeared into thin air along with Hamid Muhammad. All right in front of the FBI team assigned to watch the mosque," Sharpe said.
"We had people on that team?" Frank said.
"The Newark field office ran the stakeout. I just spoke with the senior agent at the site, Janice Riehms. Top-notch agent. Sounds like she ran it by the book, but they suffered from some kind of major cyber-electronics attack during the breakout. Completely compromised their communications and digital feed. She said they've never seen anything like this before. All of their vehicles were sent in the wrong direction. She mentioned something about their cell phones being rerouted too. Headquarters is sending a cyber-operations team to Newark to investigate their systems for further evidence of a breach. They're concerned about the level of sophistication demonstrated by this attack."
"Any good news?" Mendoza said.
"Three dead terrorist suspects were found in the mosque. The Newark field office suspects that this was Hamid Muhammad's next batch of recruits."
"Any chance this was the missing cell?"
"No such luck. This is a major setback. Now we have the most radical Imam in America loose with his last terrorist cell. Unfucking real. I need to brief the team. We may have to concentrate more on our True America leads."
"What leads?" Mendoza asked.
"We'll have to start turning over information on every member of True America associated with their militant arm. Anyone ever seen in public or private sector with Jackson Greely or Lee Harding. Maybe we can find a connection to the delivery address in Harrisburg. Right now all we have there is a burned-down house in foreclosure. The owners moved to Florida over a year ago and don't appear connected in any way."
"This is all very thin," Mendoza remarked.
"Tell me about it. If we don't produce something by tomorrow morning, we'll start to have visitors. High-ranking visitors."
Chapter 15
Special Agent Damon Katsoulis opened the front passenger door of the suburban and stepped out into the chilly air. A stiff breeze from the Upper Bay rustled through the young trees across the street, carrying a hint of saltiness over the pollution spewing into the air from the industrial wasteland that defined Bayonne's southeastern tip. Task Force Scorpion's Tactical Group sat quietly in several positions within the neighborhood, waiting for agent Katsoulis's command to pounce on apartment #2B at 98 Hobart Ave. He jogged over to the street corner and joined two tactical agents leaned up against a gray brick storefront that looked like it had been boarded up for years. Weeds poked through the concrete on both sides of the store.
"Anything unusual?" he asked.
"Negative," the agent closest to the corner said. "My only concern is the lighting situation for the approach. There are several industrial-grade sodium lamps directly across from the target building at the back entrance gate to Hamm Brands. Nothing we can do about those, unless we try to contact security at Hamm and get them to douse the lights."
"No. We have an hour until dawn and even less time until civil twilight. We need to hit them now. They'll be up for prayer in thirty minutes or so," Katsoulis said.
"We won't be exposed for long. I'm just concerned that they might have a lookout posted. Two of the apartment windows face the street. Luckily, we have two healthy trees on the street corner in front of the building that partially obscure those windows."
"All right. Two-minute warning," he said.