Enemies Within Read online

  At last report, Knowlton had been a lifelong Southern Baptist and rock-ribbed conservative who shared his forebears’ trend of voting for Republicans, airing his patriotism in annual addresses to the local chapter of Veterans of Foreign Wars while home on leave. No one had ever heard him say a kind word about Islam, much less seek to convert and aid its most radical faction as a terrorist.

  So what had happened to him, then?

  The file on Knowlton held no clue—unless, perhaps, it was an ambush he had led against a small al Qaeda faction active in Nigeria. Knowlton had personally slain three of the terrorists that day, discovering after the smoke cleared that the eldest of them was sixteen years old, the other two, twelve and thirteen. They were already seasoned killers, but had something in the act of killing them caused doubt to germinate in Knowlton’s mind or heart?

  If so, he had concealed it well until he’d followed Major Darby and four others in defecting from the Rangers and declaring war on the United States.

  More questions lacking answers. So far, while the dossiers helped Bolan come to know his enemies, at least in part, the service photos staring back at him were blank, stone-faced, inscrutable.

  Third up, in order of descending rank, was Captain Walton Tanner Jr., son of a Marine Corps veteran who’d won a Congressional Medal of Honor during the invasion of Grenada, code-named Operation Urgent Fury in November 1983. At age thirty-one, the captain seemed to be almost a carbon copy of his hero father, other than the service he had chosen as his military path. He’d won a Bronze Star Medal in Afghanistan, another in Iraq with an oak leaf cluster to denote additional awards, and claimed a Purple Heart on his third tour of duty in the sand, after he’d taken a sniper’s bullet to one leg. The Medal of Honor still eluded him, but there was every chance he might have earned one, with a fourth foreign deployment in the wings when he had suddenly and unofficially departed from the Rangers, trailing Major Darby and Lieutenant Colonel Knowlton into their small group without a name.

  As with the others, Tanner’s file offered no clue to his defection, nothing to suggest he harbored any Muslim sympathies. He had been born and raised Episcopalian, and had earned a bachelor of arts in history from George Washington University in DC, then dropped out of its master’s program to become an Army Ranger. What followed was a virtual replay of the preceding files Bolan had scanned: Afghanistan, Iraq and, for a smidgen of variety, Operation Freedom Eagle in the Philippines, combating the Abu Sayyaf Group and Jemaah Islamiyah Muslim militants. The latter tour had sent him home with a Distinguished Service Cross, Homeland Security Distinguished Service Medal and a Purple Heart for minor shrapnel wounds.

  If he had ever mentioned Islam publicly, no record of his comments was preserved in military files. He’d gone to chapel on most Sundays, when his scheduling permitted, and had showed no deviation from his faith or military oath until he went over the wall one night, with Darby and Knowlton. What drove him to that action, as with his companions, still remained a mystery.

  One note and worth considering—Tanner had lost his mother and his only sibling, sister Lucie, in a random auto accident some eighteen months before his ultimate decision to defect. The good news: Bolan thought he could gain access to Tanner’s father, the true-blue leatherneck, and maybe get some kind of private insight missing from the dossier. MPs would have been after him first thing, Bolan presumed, but if they’d taken any notes from that interrogation, nothing showed up in Brognola’s file. Bolan would find out what he could, waste no unnecessary time, and then move on.

  To number four, Lieutenant Tyrone Moseley, twenty-four, the rogue group’s only African American recruit. He’d been the designated “smart one” at his high school in Newark, New Jersey, taken a fair measure of shit for it, then learned to stand his ground, avoiding gangs and throwing hands effectively against the unaffiliated hallway thieves and bullies. A suspension for fighting prevented him from standing as his class valedictorian, but Moseley had still graduated second in his class of seven hundred. Eventually he’d found his way to Fort Benning and into Ranger school.

  From there, his dossier was much the same as the others Bolan had perused, with private twists and turns that made no time for war abroad. Cancer had claimed his mother’s life during Moseley’s first tour in Iraq. His father, grief stricken, was made of weaker stuff than either of his sons, committing suicide with an unregistered firearm while Tyrone served a second tour in Iraq and brother Jesse pursued a bachelor’s degree from the Newark College of Engineering.

  Could Bolan, a white stranger, hope to gather anything from Jesse Moseley? He had doubts, but reckoned it was worth a shot—perhaps his only shot at learning any more about the wayward elder son.

  None of the Moseleys had professed any religion, least of all Newark’s Black Muslims, aka the Nation of Islam. Tyrone’s maternal grandmother had been a “Shouter Baptist” at a storefront church in Newark, but she seemed to have left no imprint of her faith on her late daughter, son-in-law or grandchildren. In fact, she had been gone so long, a casualty of the 1967 riots, that her only legacy was bitterness against police whose random fire had cut her down in her tiny apartment.

  Could latent hatred of authority have colored Moseley’s ultimate decision to defect with Darby, Knowlton and Tanner? It seemed unlikely, given that he’d joined the Army and the Rangers voluntarily, served three tours in the sand, and never said a word to indicate he was dissatisfied.

  No, Bolan thought. It must be something else.

  But as to what...

  Dossier number five revealed the rogue group’s only verified Muslim, Staff Sergeant Afif Rashid. According to a footnote in the file, his given name translated from the Arabic as “chaste,” “pious” or “pure.” That might have indicated a religious zeal, but nothing in his background seemed to lean that way.

  Rashid’s parents had come to the United States as refugees from Operation Desert Storm, bringing their only child—then nine years old—in February 1991. With government assistance, they’d acquired a small convenience store in New Rochelle, New York, and died when skinheads robbed the place in June 2000, two weeks after Afif graduated high school and joined the Army, distinguishing himself in Ranger school after boot camp.

  Had the double murder of his parents, still unsolved, jaundiced Rashid’s view of America and set a time bomb ticking in his gut, while he acquired the martial skills to look for payback, somewhere down the road? If so, he’d kept it to himself and uttered no complaint about three tours of duty in Afghanistan, plus one deployment to Soto Cano Air Base, Honduras, where Rangers teamed with local forces to train antidrug units and counter transnational threats. On that leg of his journey through the hinterlands, Rashid had earned a Silver Star for aiding wounded fellow Rangers under hostile fire.

  And through it all, no hint suggested that Rashid was a jihadist in disguise.

  That left two dossiers on Brognola’s DVD, the next one for the Ranger outfit’s low man on the ladder in terms of rank. Sergeant Ernesto Menendez was twenty-four years old, a young man who’d enlisted after trying and rejecting one semester at a junior college in New Mexico. Like all the rest, his record with the Rangers was exemplary until he’d gone AWOL: two tours of duty in Afghanistan, one in Iraq, a Commendation Medal with a bronze “V” device denoting heroism in combat, ranked at a lesser degree than required for awarding a Bronze Star Medal. Specifically, Menendez had covered the withdrawal of medical corpsmen with five wounded Rangers in Kandahar Province, sustaining a flesh wound that added a Purple Heart to his résumé. The file logged thirteen kills to his record that morning, holding his ground till the others withdrew and called in air support.

  Raised Catholic, another orphan with no siblings, Sergeant Menendez seemed to have no more in common with Islamists than he did with the Man in the Moon. A note in his file said that he had recently become engaged and his fiancée was a woman named Juanita Alvarado.

 
What drove him to associate with Darby’s outlaw band remained, as with the rest, a mystery.

  Reviewing briefly, Bolan noted that a common theme among the rogue Rangers was lack of living family. Among the six, Captain Tanner had a father still above ground, Lieutenant Moseley had a brother whom, according to the MPs and the FBI, he had not contacted in the past two years, and Menendez had a fiancée. Was isolation part of it, somehow? And if so, how could loss of loved ones drive a polyglot collection of career soldiers into the arms of militant Islam?

  Bolan tried to make sense of it, got nowhere, and finally decided that his best hope lay within the final dossier, its icon labeled “Manifesto.”

  Whatever he expected from that file, though, Bolan came up short. It read:

  Declaration of War in the Name of Allah

  Today, we former Rangers of the US Army stand united in a state of war against the Great Satan, America. We dedicate our skills and training to destruction of the country that has waged relentless war against Islam since 1953, with its coup restoring the corrupt Shah of Iran.

  Additionally, decades of unjustified support for Israel has defied the will of Palestinians and other Muslims who comprise the vast majority of Middle Eastern residents, while bilking US taxpayers to bankroll Tel Aviv, its flagrant theft of native lands from the West Bank and elsewhere, falsely declared the result of “legitimate electoral process.” Without US financing, military support and favoritism in the United Nations, Israeli aggression would long since have ceased to exist, thereby eliminating impetus for freedom fighters waging their guerrilla wars against America, mislabeled “terrorism” by the media.

  Accordingly, we hold these truths to be self-evident. The long American crusade against Islam must cease, forthwith. No further action on that front shall be permitted. We, the beneficiaries of elite training, shall use all skills and tools available to bring this resolution into being. As you read this, we have supplied one relatively minor demonstration of our power, to be replicated as required until our plain and common-sense demands are met. America must change its course, and quickly, to avert a holocaust at home beyond the scope of anything authorities at home have thus far faced or can effectively control.

  We are the best. Ignore us at your peril from now on.

  To victory!

  * * *

  And that was all. At first, Bolan thought a page had been omitted from the manifesto’s file, but it read smoothly, start to finish, even if it spoke in generalities and uttered only vague demands, impossible to quantify.

  Reverse the course of US history connected to the Middle East since 1953, or even farther back, since Israel was created as a Jewish state in 1948? Impossible. Indeed, ridiculous. The juggernaut could not be slowed, much less completely stopped, with strong support for Israeli in the White House, Congress and in nearly every state from coast to coast. Six Rangers couldn’t do it in a hundred lifetimes, and they had to know that.

  So...what?

  Bolan removed the DVD from his laptop, shut down the computer and retrieved his cell phone from a pocket. He had Jack Grimaldi’s number on speed dial and got an answer on the second ring.

  “Big guy. Long time.”

  “You heard from Hal?”

  “I did.”

  “So, how about a little hop?”

  Chapter Three

  Barclay, Maryland

  “Did I read that sign right?” Grimaldi asked. “One hundred twenty people? Can they even call a place that small a town?”

  “It’s flexible,” Bolan replied. “I’ve been to smaller ones.”

  “I guess this jarhead likes his privacy.”

  “He won’t be getting much of it, considering the last couple of days.”

  “You think he’d bail on us?”

  “The CIA says they’ve got eyes on him, up high. Nothing since the MPs came by, except his normal mornings at a local coffee shop and shopping one time at the Farmer’s Market.”

  “Good old country living.”

  “If you like that kind of thing.”

  “I could get used to it,” Grimaldi said.

  Bolan had trouble picturing the flyboy settling down, particularly at the outset of another mission. They were rolling north on Maryland Route 313, from where Grimaldi’s chopper had touched down at a private airstrip outside Goldsboro. The Stony Man pilot was at the wheel of a Ford sedan from Dollar Rent-a-Car, holding the four-door Focus at a solid 80 miles per hour, not a cop in sight. They had the rural home of Walton Tanner Senior spotted on the Ford’s GPS unit, no neighbors nearby and no idea what they’d be walking into when they got there.

  Figure it would be a bitter pill for Walton Sr. to ingest, learning his son had left the Rangers to become a terrorist in hiding. He’d have questions that the MPs couldn’t answer on their first pass, and he wouldn’t know anything about the Rangers who’d gone down fighting while his son and five fellow deserters had slipped away to parts unknown. Perhaps he knew more than he’d told the CID first time around, and might be more forthcoming when he saw the Homeland Security ID cards Bolan and Grimaldi had obtained from Stony Man’s documents mill.

  Or maybe not. Maybe he didn’t know a thing about his son’s activities or his companions who’d declared war on America.

  Still, it was worth a try. In fact, coupled with Tyrone Moseley’s brother in New Jersey and Menendez’s fiancée in Roanoke, it could be the only game in town.

  “Looks like the place,” Grimaldi said. “White clapboard siding on your right, Jeep Wrangler in the carport.”

  “Got it.” Bolan scanned the verdant countryside surrounding Tanner’s place, looking for watchers, spotting none so far, although it wouldn’t take much to conceal a man or two amid the smooth alders, dogwoods, red mulberry and blackjack oaks.

  Pursuant to their cover, they pulled in and parked. Before they’d cleared the Ford, a slender man with grizzled hair was on the porch to greet them, hands empty, eyes wary as he checked them out.

  “More CID?” he asked before they had a chance to speak.

  “Homeland Security,” Bolan corrected him, approaching with credentials on display.

  “Both of you?” Tanner asked suspiciously.

  “Yes, sir,” Grimaldi said, palming his own ID from Stony Man.

  “I guess things have ticked up a notch since I had visitors last time.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Bolan. “I’m afraid so.”

  They’d decided to be candid with him, more or less, running the plan past Brognola while they were airborne and receiving his okay. They would recount the failed arrest attempt, in the hope of jarring something loose from Walton Sr.’s memory this time around. And failing that, if the former Marine had contact with his son he wasn’t copping to, maybe he’d keep the covert channel open, try to talk him backward from the point of no return.

  Inside a modest living room, they sat on well-worn furniture, declining Tanner’s offer of coffee or “something stronger,” undefined. Their host went for a double dash of Early Times bourbon and settled on a 1980s vintage couch, saying, “All right. You’d better let me have it straight, then.”

  “Six special agents from the CID caught up with him yesterday morning, early,” Bolan answered.

  “And the other men he runs with now?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where at?”

  “North Carolina, on the coast.”

  “But they aren’t here to see me now.”

  “No, sir. They walked into a trap. They won’t be seeing anyone again.”

  “So, it’s murder, then.”

  “Murder at least,” Bolan agreed. “And likely treason.”

  “Jesus, Lord.”

  “It’s bad,” Bolan replied. “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, I’ve had naught to do with him since they were out here grilling me,” Tanner repl
ied. “Don’t take my word for it. I gather someone has been covering my phone and watching what I do from time to time.”

  “A safe bet,” Bolan said.

  “In fact, you ought to know I haven’t seen or spoken to my boy in going on six years.”

  “Homeland Security,” Bolan stated, “hopes that something may have slipped your mind.”

  “I wish it had,” Tanner replied. “I’m getting on in years and drink a bit. No point denying what’s so obvious. But no, sir. Nothing slips my mind. Not birthdays of the living or the dead, not groceries. Nothing.”

  “Okay,” Bolan replied. “We had to ask.”

  “Of course you did. And now I’ll ask you one,” Tanner said.

  “Feel free. I’ll answer if I can,” Bolan told him.

  “Now that you’ve eyeballed me, are you planning on leaving people here to watch me, backing on the taps and drones and whatever your people have eavesdropping on me as it is? Seems like a waste of time. My tax money at work, and all.”

  Grimaldi chimed in, saying, “We came alone, sir.”

  “Oh?”

  “That’s right,” Bolan confirmed, feeling the short hairs bristling on his nape.

  “No guys sitting on motorbikes among the trees, black visors on their helmets, covering their faces?”

  “No, sir.”

  Tanner quaffed his bourbon and reached out for the bottle, asking both of them at once, “So who in hell are those guys parked across the street right now?”

  * * *

  “Your old man look the same as you remember him?” Tyrone Moseley inquired.

  “It’s been five or six years,” Tanner Jr. answered.