“Yes, sir,” Musselman replied.
“I said, do you understand!”
“Yes, sir!”
“Now, sit!”
Musselman dropped into his chair.
Hicks continued, speaking to all who were at the table. “Listen close, because I’m only going to say this once. Effective immediately, there is no Predator team. We are all Mustangs. Do you understand that? We are all Mustang team. Take your assigned number and add eight. If you have a hard time with the math, talk to Scott.”
Now he addressed everyone in the room. “We’ve got a man out there who we’ve got to assume is alive until proved otherwise. Wherever he is, we will find him-together. And if I see any more of you bickering or fighting, you will find yourselves in two weeks’ time gathering sand samples in Somalia. Clear?”
A general murmur of assent answered Hicks.
He turned to Scott. “Get my men rotated into the watch cycle.”
“You got it, Jim.”
The veteran started back to his place at the head of the table, then stopped and looked at Musselman. “And, Scott, why don’t you start right away by putting Brad up on the roof?”
“You got it, Jim,” Scott repeated with a smile.
Hicks sat down at the table, took a long swig of his Peroni, and stuffed another bite of the spicy sausage into his mouth.
Tuesday, January 20
CTD Midwest Division Headquarters
St. Louis, Missouri
The Room of Understanding was in a flurry of activity. That was one thing Tara Walsh appreciated about her little band of misfits: they worked hard, and they were smart. Guess that’s two things, she thought and smiled to herself.
Each member of the team had given her regular progress updates-all except for Gooey, whom she pretty much left to himself. Hernandez had found out the identity of the fourth bomber-Syamsuddin Ibrahim, an Indonesian from Aceh, which accounted for some of their difficulties in tracking him down. Tara walked over to Hernandez’s workstation, where he was continuing to run facial recognition software, searching for a name for bomber one. Hernandez looked up and gave her a quick nod, then went back to what he was doing.
Tara continued toward Evie’s desk. About an hour ago, Scott had called and asked that Evie be pulled away from what she had been working on to start searching for satellite images of some buildings in Barletta. Evie had found a multitude of old shots and was now trying to reposition a bird for some real-time pictures.
“Are you having any trouble with permissions for the satellite?” Tara asked.
Evie shook her head. “No, you cleared the path pretty well. I’ll let you know if anyone starts raising a stink.”
Tara put her hand on Evie’s shoulder and then walked around the conference table to the other side of the room. Joey Williamson was the resident speed-reader at over a thousand words per minute. Tara had asked him to go back over the eyewitnesses’ statements to see if anything had been missed. Looking over his shoulder, she watched as his long index finger rapidly traced the lines down the page. Amazing, she thought as she reached around him to the dish on his desk that held chocolate-covered espresso beans. She popped a couple into her mouth and then paused.
At the end of the room was Gooey’s workstation. It was an unpleasant place for a number of reasons. First of all, Gooey seemed to have some sort of digestion problem, which caused each of them to perpetually burn scented candles at their desks. Second, the place was a pigsty. Papers and trash were spread all around his desk and on the floor. Third, he was as sloppy in his English as he was in his appearance. Every time he spoke to her, she spent most of the conversation mentally correcting his grammar. Basically, what it came down to was that he was the exact opposite of her. Everything she strove to not be, he was.
She crunched down on the espresso beans, letting the taste and aroma fill her senses, then moved toward Gooey’s desk. “How’s it going, Gooey?”
He answered with a wave of his index finger. “One minute.”
Tara began to move away before the aromatic protection of the espresso beans wore off, but Gooey said without turning around, “Seriously, wait. Just one minute.”
Tara sighed and prepared for the olfactory assault. She looked at the monitor Gooey was watching. The video was of one of the Platte River gates. Panicked people were streaming out. People were pressed up against the wrought iron bars. Gooey had a bright circle following the head of one particular person. His mouse clicked a button that recorded that segment. “Get everyone around here, Terri. I’ve got something to show you.”
Tara knew that would be a tough sell to her team. “Are you sure it’s-?”
“Tara!” Gooey said, as he spun his chair around to face her. Something in his eyes told her that this was important. “Trust me. You’re all gonna want to see this.”
“Hey, gang!” Tara called out. “Gooey’s got something he wants to show us.”
A collective groan came from the other three as they stopped what they were doing and walked toward Gooey and Tara. Evie and Hernandez took a detour to Williamson’s desk to grab a handful of beans.
Gooey addressed the gathering. “Okay, the big question is how the terrorists got the bombs into the stadium. With all the security, it’s remotely possible they could get one or two in. But six? Not gonna happen! There’s got to be another way the bomb balls made it in.
“So I’ve been following Kazemi-the Iranian guy-from the time he went into the gates at Platte River. Here he is going in about two hours before the game. Check him out. He’s carrying a souvenir football, and he strolls right past a cop with a bomb dog. Not so much as a tail wag from our canine friend. Conclusion?”
“He doesn’t have the bomb yet,” Williamson answered, popping another espresso bean into his mouth. “We’ve seen this. Can you maybe speed things along?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hang on.” The rate of Gooey’s words was increasing with his excitement. He used his mouse to forward the timeline until a wide shot of the sidelines came on. “So, how did he get the bomb? This was about an hour and forty-five minutes before game time. Way over in the corner here, Kazemi’s leaning over the railing getting his souvenir ball signed. Take a look at who’s signing it.”
A gasp escaped each of them.
Hernandez said, “I know that number! That’s-”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. And look here.”
“That’s al-Midfai getting a ball signed,” Hernandez said.
“And here.”
“That’s Mahmud,” Evie said.
“And here.”
“That’s… new guy,” Williamson said.
“Ibrahim,” Hernandez helped him.
“Yeah, Ibrahim,” Williamson finished.
“All the bombers got their footballs autographed before the game by the same player. ‘But,’ you might ask, ‘how did souvenir balls magically turn into bomb balls? And if they got the bomb balls signed, why wasn’t our friend’s name sprawled across the ball that was recovered from Mahmud?’ Good questions, grasshoppers. Let’s zoom in to the signing process. Here’s our favorite player holding a football tucked under his arm and signing someone’s shirt. Here he’s signing a picture. Now here comes Mahmud, who hands our boy a football. But Mr. Butterfingers accidentally drops it. Now watch carefully… there! Presto, change-o. We have a little ball swap. And, good guy that he is, he doesn’t forget to sign the new ball.”
“He’s turned the pen around!” Hernandez called out.
“Yep, he’s flipping the pen. I guess he didn’t want his name on the bombs on the off chance one of them didn’t go off. ‘But,’ you ask, ‘how did our football friend get the bomb balls into the stadium to begin with?’”
Gooey’s penchant for asking and answering his own questions was working overtime.