Ground Zero Page 7

  Mummar read the messages, which were coded, considered what they said, then replied briefly—also in code. He then deleted all messages from his in-box and sent box before closing his account.

  There was work to be done. He smiled. At last, it would begin.

  * * *

  SECURITY WAS SUPPOSED to be tight at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, more so than Dulles, according to the publicity handed out by the airport itself. There was certainly a presence within the main terminal, and those heading for departures would find themselves subject to some strict searches.

  Despite that, Mack Bolan couldn’t help but look at the overt show and wonder if it was a good thing. A little more discretion may lull potential threats into a false sense of security. It may also make them more inclined to take risks. As it was, you cut out one source of traffic but only by diverting it to another route. A little discretion and craft, and maybe a potential threat could be nullified.

  It was just a thought the soldier had as he sipped his coffee and waited for the latest arrivals. A quick consultation with Aaron Kurtzman and his crack cyber team had given the soldier a number of leads to illegal arms dealers in the Washington area. Given the lockdown on security that had occurred post-9/11 and continued to the present, it was unlikely that an attempt would be made to bring in a large cache of weapons or explosives. It was much more likely that any enemy would attempt to use local dealers and local knowledge to piece together a cache from within the immediate area.

  So far, even with the best cipher skills of Akira Tokaido on hand to help, Kurtzman had found it difficult to crack the codes that were used in some of the material found on the laptop and tablets that Bolan had retrieved in Somalia. It was a stroke of luck, therefore, that the pirates allied to al-Shabaab were careless and lazy when communicating with one another. It had been frustrating, like reading fragments of a document that had almost been burned to ashes, trying to piece together the whole and fill in the gaps. It had also made his blood run cold.

  An attack on the Capitol building, striking symbolically at the National Mall and also the Smithsonian, would mean an assault on both patriotic pride and American culture, with it being the precursor to an attack on the White House.

  The most alarming part of the situation was that the NSA had no indication of any such impending attack. There were two cells mentioned in the Arabic sections, both of which were located in the greater D.C. area. No names had been used, but from references that were translatable, it appeared that one cell was composed of four men, the other of five.

  So his task was to track down nine men, none of whose identities were known, in a population of just over six hundred thousand within the metropolitan area. Still he scanned the arrivals as this played through his mind. A steady stream of people, few of whom were paid much attention by security, flowed past. Most of the recent arrivals had been from internal flights, which made security less inclined to expend much time on them. There was an assumption that they were not carrying anything dangerous, as stringent procedures were carried out at point of departure. It was also assumed that any persons of a dubious or suspicious nature would have been cherry-picked similarly.

  That was all well and fine. It did, however, depend on whether they were known to the authorities in some way. The fact that both cells had sprung up under the radar made that unlikely.

  The third arrival in line was from New York City. That was the one he had been waiting for. Bolan had a list of known arms and explosive dealers in the D.C. area—from the smallest crackhead dealer with a spare gun to those who dealt in larger items—but to work through them methodically would take time he didn’t have. So take a quantum leap of logic...

  Undetected men would not have been resident in the D.C. area very long. They may have radical and fundamentalist links, but this would make them more traceable. They may be ordinary guys. But suppose that they had been recently converted, and that they had only been in the area for a short while.

  One source to examine were the criminal records of men who had been inside prison in recent times and had links to gangs and factions within the prison system that were known to be radical Muslim. Narrow that down to those whose affiliations were not just with Muslim gangs, but with those who had affiliations with al Qaeda sympathizers.

  It was an almost daunting search through the database, but Aaron Kurtzman’s cyber team would be up for the challenge. It was amazing how swiftly the Farm came up with a dozen names, one of which was the man Bolan was waiting for right now.

  Bolan pulled up the information on his smartphone. Edward James Heider. Looked like a true blue-eyed, blond Aryan. Any other time Bolan would have had him marked down as a natural for the far right. Sometimes assumptions just didn’t cut it. Heider had been a radical on the left all his life, and had been jailed for his part in a raid on a liquor store that was intended to “fund” his group’s activities. He believed in freedom and equality—except, apparently, for the Indian liquor store clerk who had been too slow to hand over the cash and had been blown away by one of Heider’s associates. Heider had been the driver, which was the only reason his sentence had been lighter than the two men with him when he was picked up. Closed-circuit TV revealed that he hadn’t been in the store when the clerk was killed.

  Still, at his trial he had been fingered as the brains behind the “fund-raising” schemes that the group pulled off. Once incarcerated, his resentment at what he saw as his political imprisonment had radicalized him even further, causing him to convert to Islam as he wanted to demonstratively turn his back on the Western world and its ways.

  He came out of prison as Shakur Abu Dalir. Was he really a radical now, planning to bring his previous criminal experience to his new zealotry? Kurtzman’s research suggested he was. Heider had been to New York City for a week and was resident in D.C. He lived in Columbia Heights, which, despite the gentrification and attempts to rid it of its old image, was still a dangerous place if you wandered onto the wrong block. While he was in New York, he had been untraceable. Prior to that, he had held down a job in a print shop but spent a lot of his time either mixing with his new community or going back to those he had associated with as a leftist lawbreaker. His very presence gave a concrete link between the two communities. Local knowledge could not tie him to any known fundamentalist or extreme groups in the area, so he had not been considered a threat.

  Heider walked through arrivals without drawing a second glance. Dressed in a sober windbreaker and jeans, he didn’t look like a radical terrorist. He made straight for the link to the Metrorail station that would take him from Arlington into the heart of the city. Bolan drained his coffee and waited a beat or two before rising and following.

  There were enough people in the terminal making their way toward the Metrorail to make following Heider without being spotted a relatively easy task. There was no outward sign that Heider was anything other than a man returning from a trip and going about his everyday business.

  Maybe that’s all he really was. Bolan hoped not. Time was too short for that.

  Once they were on the Metrorail into D.C., the soldier kept some distance from his target. Heider showed no signs of awareness that he was being followed. He sat down and pulled a book from his pocket, becoming engrossed in it to the exclusion of all else.

  The man alighted in the Mount Pleasant district. To come straight from a flight from New York, without even hand baggage, and go directly somewhere before his Columbia Heights home was not suspicious in itself. To come here did, however, make sense if Bolan’s suspicions had been correct. Mount Pleasant was one of the districts of D.C. that had a high percentage of ethnic populations, mostly South American, particularly Salvadorian. The latter group contained some of the ordnance dealers on his list. That was one hit.

  The clincher was that Mount Pleasant also housed the small percentage of D.C.’s population that w
as of Somalian origin. Now, that would be a major coincidence under the circumstances.

  Bolan followed Heider for two blocks before the blond, bearded man stopped in front of a grocery store, where he was greeted by two African Americans and one Somali, all with beards. Their clothes were Western, but were oddly plain and devoid of logos. It was a leap of deduction, perhaps, but it did seem that any fundamentalist avoiding traditional dress in order to stay in cover would still find it uncomfortable to wear commercial logos and symbols of the society they despised. Trained agents would force themselves to do that; these men were not trained agents. They may be zealots, but they had found their own way, for the most part.

  The four men went into the grocery store after making a show of picking over the fruit and vegetables on display outside. That gave Bolan a chance to catch them all on his smartphone before messaging the video and screen grabs to Stony Man along with a request for any identification and known associates.

  The soldier noted the address of the store, running through the addresses in his head of arms dealers who were known and listed.

  It tallied with one man: Samir Younis, a Somali who had been resident in the United States for fifteen years and had served time for minor offenses before keeping his nose clean for the past decade. Officially he was also a federal informant and dealer in arms to a couple of the local gangs, information about which had kept the heat off his back.

  Bolan figured that had been shortsighted. Younis was either moving in bigger and nastier circles than his handler realized or he had genuinely gotten in over his head. Either way, Bolan made note to deal with him personally before too long.

  It had started to rain heavily, and the crowds thinned out as people sought to escape the deluge. It was harder for the soldier to be as inconspicuous in front of the store, so he made the decision to go around the back to investigate.

  Crossing the road and avoiding traffic, he walked along the storefronts until he came to an alley that ran between the two blocks. At this time of day there were no deliveries or pickups under way, no garbage collections. The only risk was from workers coming out the rear of any of the stores. He kept an eye out for that and was able to make swift progress to the rear of the grocery store. A small yard was walled in, with a gate for entry that was locked. He scanned the windows that stared blankly out at the buildings opposite. There was no sign of life here.

  The wall was only three yards high, and he used a garbage bin to scale and mount it with ease. He paused for a moment at the top of the wall, then dropped into the yard. It was strewn with rotting fruit and vegetables, some spilled from boxes, others in pallets that were piled a few feet high. The yard was slippery underfoot from the filth and was devoid of any visible security devices. There were no cameras, no trips of any kind. In the pocket of his raincoat Bolan had a monocular night-vision headset that carried infrared and heat functions. He palmed the device and slipped it on briefly to take a quick recon to see if there was anything going on that he should know about.

  Nothing. Younis was either careless with security or kept his stock at a separate location. The soldier tried the rear entrance to the building, knowing that it would be locked but hoping maybe he would get lucky. Not this day. There was a fire escape hanging down, but he didn’t want to chance the ladder being rusty and noisy. Better to use the drainpipe that ran the length of the building. He risked being seen, but it was a chance he was willing to take.

  He scaled the pipe quickly and with ease, sure-footed on the slick metal. A couple of the bolts on the brackets that kept it to the wall had seen better days, but thankfully they held.

  On the second floor, he could hear voices muffled through a closed window. He had a small listening device in his pocket, and he fished it out. A dexterous move of the fingers and he had an earpiece inserted while the unit amplified the voices once the sound pad was directed correctly. The voices were overlapping and hard to distinguish, but the gist was clear enough.

  “...five hundred pounds of GPU each. Claymore mines, man, they shoot shit like ball bearings or shrapnel. That can do a lot of damage, man, and to anyone fool enough to get in the way...”

  “Yeah, and how are you gonna get a five-hundred-pound bomb close enough, eh? You’d need to put that in a car, and no way are you gonna get a car that close—”

  “Who needs a car? We’re doing this for greater glory, man. We carry it on us.”

  “You asshole, what are you, Samoan? How are you gonna carry that weight? Even if you could, how’s that not gonna look suspicious? You’re gonna look like some kinda clown in a fat suit, man—”

  “Stop arguing about it, and keep your damn voices down. You can talk about GPU all you want. You aren’t getting it off me ’cause I don’t have it, and I can’t get it without arousing more suspicion than I’d want. You want that, then you’re going to have to find someone else. Semtex and fragmentation grenades I can sell you. You could put together something lightweight and nasty enough with a combination of those.”

  “Okay, if it has to be that—” this last voice had authority, and Bolan had little doubt it was Heider, the man with experience in jobs like this “—then we’ll need to arrange delivery and payment.”

  “How soon?”

  “Twenty-four hours.”

  Bolan stopped listening. So that was how long he had. Younis could wait until that night. The other men in the room could be traced and identified via Stony Man. The first thing he should do was take out Heider without the others being aware of it.

  With luck, he had at least one cell identified here. If he was really lucky, there were representatives of both present.

  Bolan descended quickly, reaching the back wall and scaling it without being seen before making his way back to the front of the block, so that he could watch the front of the store.

  It was still raining hard, and in spite of his raincoat he was soaked through as he entered a café opposite the grocery store. He ordered a coffee and waited.

  He didn’t have to wait too long until the four men began to emerge from the grocery store. They left individually, each clutching a grocery bag as though they had simply been shopping. Heider was third to leave, and Bolan got up and followed.

  Heider made his way back to the Metrorail and traveled to Columbus Heights. It was less crowded on the trains as the early evening rush of commuters had not yet begun, yet it seemed that Heider had little interest in whether he was being followed. Bolan couldn’t make up his mind if this was amateur hour or arrogance. Certainly, it was no bluff as Heider kept his head buried in his book and alighted at his stop without paying any attention to whoever left the train at the same time.

  Bolan kept a few hundred yards behind him. He knew where Heider was headed because his address was listed. Sure enough, within a few minutes’ walk in the now-dry evening, they were at the run-down apartment building where Heider called home. The soldier watched him go in from the other side of the street. His apartment had a front-facing window, and Bolan saw a light go on.

  The soldier felt conspicuous; his raincoat and black pants made him stand out in a street where older people were dressed poorly and younger people were almost entirely in brands. He also knew the reputation of this part of Columbus Heights. It hadn’t been tamed like some other sections, and the last thing he wanted was for his appearance to provoke some kind of action that he would have to answer in kind. He would come out on top, no doubt, but at the expense of becoming more visible than he would like.

  Bolan made his way across the street and entered the building. He used the stairs to get to the floor where Heider had his apartment. The stairs reeked of urine and cheap disinfectant, and they were littered with garbage and drug paraphernalia. The noise from the thin-walled apartments seeped into the stairwell. He was glad when he reached the right floor.

  The hallway was empty. He could try to break in,
but that might alert Heider and might be difficult if the door had a number of locks. The direct approach might just be disarming enough. He rang the bell and waited.

  He could feel Heider looking at him through the peephole. He heard a muffled “What is it?” and held up an ID card quickly.

  “I’ve come about your telephone.”

  “I don’t have one,” he heard through the door.

  “I know. That’s what you ordered and why I’m here,” Bolan replied. He might have to get violent on the door if Heider suspected anything. But if he wanted to keep a low profile, then he might just open the door.

  There was a click of locks and slide of bolts, and the door opened a crack. Two heavy chains kept it in place, and Heider’s face was visible in the crack.

  “I haven’t ordered anything. I don’t have a phone and I don’t want one. Are you sure you have the right address?”

  Bolan reeled off an address from the next block, and looked suitably surprised when Heider corrected him. “Ah, so I have the wrong address. But you are Mr. Heider, right?”

  The bearded man was momentarily caught off-guard by that, which was all the opening that the soldier needed. His Tekna knife was spring-loaded on his forearm, and a flex of the muscle brought it to his hand. As the weapon slid into his palm, his arm was already following through. The blade slipped into Heider’s abdomen, under the ribs, and tore across as Bolan jerked it savagely.

  Heider’s mouth dropped open in shock, and the momentum of Bolan’s thrust tilted him backward. He fell to the floor, blood spilling around him, allowing the soldier the space he needed to reach around the door and slip the chains from their mounts. He slipped inside and closed the door behind him, pausing to look back through the peephole and see that the hallway was still clear.