There was a long pause. “Just about the time Sadir was executed,” Deion said. “He hightailed it to Syria to speak with Nazer, then got wasted by our unknown friends.”
Eric nodded. “Sounds right. We know that Al-Qaeda has cells in Somalia and Yemen. I’m putting Karen on this. If anyone can find something, it’s her.”
They were still discussing the implications of Al-Hakim’s location when Karen appeared on the screen, her eyes flickering with intensity.
She really needs to lay off the coffee.
“I’ve backtracked Al-Hakim’s location to within a couple hundred yards in Ely.” The location appeared on the map, highlighted in red. “We’re talking a mile inland of the Gulf.” The map zoomed in to the southeast. “This is the port where the pirates moor their motherships. After they hijack a ship, they take the prisoners inland while anchoring the vessels offshore or in coves farther north. There are currently twelve ships still being held by pirates, and over fifty different men being held for ransom.”
“Does JSOC have intel on this?” Deion asked.
“Of course,” Eric said, reappearing on screen. “The negotiations are delicate. Somalia has a collection of warlords instead of a functioning government. JSOC vetted numerous plans to invade and wipe out the pirates, but Mogadishu spooked the international community. Plus, millions are starving. The aid groups are hard-pressed to feed them, and the CDC is monitoring outbreaks of dozens of diseases. A full-blown invasion gone wrong would cause an international backlash.”
Everyone at the table shook their head in disgust. Deion knew about the pirates… local fisherman who were furious that large shipping vessels dumped pollutants into the Gulf of Aden, causing massive fish kills. They had first organized as a make-shift coastguard, trying to bring attention to their plight, but soon found that ransoms paid more than fishing. Pirating was a lucrative business, ran by a cartel of warlords and kingpins, the work farmed out to the poor and desperate young men of Somalia, many of them stoned out of their gourd on khat.
The pirates blocked shipments of food and medicines the rest of the country needed for survival. It was a vicious circle. Starving Somalis emboldened the pirates… but the more ships hijacked, the less supplies made it to the people, leading to more piracy.
Eric vanished and the map appeared, this time zooming out into the Gulf. “Here’s where it gets interesting,” Karen said. A blob of red appeared. “This is a South Korean cargo vessel, the MV Rising Star. Watch.”
The red blob approached the eastern edge of Somalia.
“I don’t understand,” Deion said.
“It appears it was hijacked,” Karen said, “but it was too far out for the speedboats from Ely. The only way it could have been hijacked was if the speedboats were launched from a mothership, and there was no mothership nearby.”
“So, it wasn’t hijacked?” Deion asked.
“It would appear not. This was the day before John’s mission in Syria.”
“Where’s the Rising Star now?” Deion asked.
“It’s nearing the southern tip of Somalia, but moving very slow.”
Eric’s face reappeared on the screen. “I think it was carrying the nuke.”
“What do we know about the ship?” Taylor asked.
The screen split, showing both Eric and Karen. “It’s owned by a South Korean company, The Jade Group, only the Jade Group isn’t real. It’s a shell corp, and the deeper I dig, the more dummy paperwork I find. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Deion let that sink in. A shell corp that Karen, one of the smartest data analysts on the planet, could not track. “Am I alone in thinking this is way beyond Al-Qaeda?”
“What kind of player has that kind of resources?” Mark spoke up. “Staying with Islamic fanatics, it would have to be some state-backed group. Iran, maybe? If it’s a private group, it would have to have deep pockets. A member of the Saudi royal family?”
Deion was impressed. Mark was a good Operator with a wry sense of humor, but he also possessed a keen mind.
“It gets worse,” Karen said. “We have new information about Nashville. We’ve analyzed the traffic cameras and Dewey found malware built into the integrated circuits. They phone home to an IP in China, an IP I’ve been unable to hack.”
The goofball with the TV fixation? “How hard is it to put malware into an IC?”
“We’re talking either serious money or nation-state backing,” Eric said. “It gives them a backdoor into so many devices that it boggles the mind. They assassinated Sadir, then used the backdoors to turn off the video surveillance in Nashville. The same enemy probably killed Nazer and Al-Hakim. We’ve got no idea who it is, what kind of resources they have, or what their motivation is.” He scowled. “We have to face facts. We are at war.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Kong greeted him with, “There were complications. The Americans.”
“Not unexpected. We have planned for such an event.”
“Yes. Everything is in place.”
Their operation was reaching the tipping point. “Good. I have faith in you. Proceed.”
Kong bowed his head and terminated the video call.
Huang Lei stood and approached the thick glass window. Below, the city stretched to the water’s edge. He peered down, watching people in their early morning commute, no more than specks as they bustled among the streets, off to their jobs in the dawning light.
How could it come to this?
The Americans. Always the Americans. They wielded their influence, outsized as it was, without thought or discretion. They lumbered from crisis to crisis, spilling blood around the world, wrecking lives and destroying economies with dismal results.
That will soon end. Order will be restored. The world will emerge from madness and my people will finally flourish.
The dream. Always the same dream. He stood on a roof a hundred yards from the Red Cross building in Fairfax, Virginia. It was January, a blustery Tuesday, and the wind knifed through his thin jacket. He pulled his hat low with one hand, readjusting his binoculars with the other, and watched in horror as the yellow school bus pulled into the parking lot. He wanted to scream, to get their attention and wave them off. He wanted to save them, but knew he couldn’t.
Because that’s not how it happened.
The children piled out of the school bus, and even from his distant vantage point he heard their shrieks, their banter, the playful sounds of youth. They were happy to be on a field trip, visiting one of the fathers who worked there. None of them paid any attention to the white Ryder truck only thirty feet from the entrance.
He felt rising panic, a black void of dread that threatened to swallow him. He couldn’t stop what was about to happen, no matter how much he wished and no matter how hard he tried.
A part of him whispered in the back of his head.
This is desperation. This is insanity. You deserve this, you monster.
His heart raced, thump-thumping so hard he thought it might burst. He tried to turn away, to shield himself from the carnage below.
It was too late.
It wasn’t like in the movies. There wasn’t a slow roil of fire that blossomed out, creating a yellow ball of flame that grew and grew until it struck the building.
It wasn’t like that at all. It was sudden, so sudden.
The truck disintegrated in a cloud of smoke. The blast-wave struck the bus, ripping it to pieces. Children were blown apart in a jumble of arms and legs and heads and blood. It happened so fast he couldn’t quite grasp the image, then the building shook and the front erupted in a billowing cloud of concrete and debris. He saw the front of the building collapsing through the black and gray cloud, then the shockwave slammed into him and knocked him to the rooftop, his body sliding through the loose gravel as the roar of sound hit, hammering him senseless.