Pursuit Of Honor (16 page)

BUTLER went on to explain what they’d discovered. The other two cells had stayed in contact with al Qaeda’s senior leadership during their training. They sent back regular reports and received orders from their commanders. Targets were adjusted and modified based on the success of the training and the ability to smuggle explosives and weapons into America. “But this third cell,” Butler said, “they went dark. No one had heard from them in months. That is, until the bombs started going off last week.”

Rapp wasn’t here to punch holes in his colleague’s stories, but on this point he couldn’t resist. “That’s normal operational security.”

“For us, yes, but there is always a failsafe. We always keep in place a way to contact each other in case the mission needs to be modified or scrubbed.”

“We verified,” Cheval said, “that they had such protocols in place. We also verified this past week that they feared the third cell had been intercepted months ago.”

“Why?” Rapp asked.

“Because no one had heard from them,” Butler said. “They went completely dark. No communication whatsoever.”

“What about finances?” Rapp asked.

“We found the account. It hasn’t been touched in five months.”

Rapp shook his head with a bit of skepticism. “We all know how expensive it is to run an operation like this. To move men and materials into position… to bribe people to look the other way… we’re talking a significant amount of cash.”

“I agree,” Butler said as he reached under the table and retrieved a file of his own. Instead of manila this one was brown, but every bit as worn as the one Cheval had on the table. “And I think I know where they got it.”

“South American drug money,” Rapp said, still not buying it.

“Yes.” Butler tapped the file and with a dire expression said, “Mitch, I can’t stress this enough. I trust you. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have boarded a plane this afternoon and flown down here.”

“But?”

“What I have in this file is extremely sensitive. It is information that you need to see, but how it came into my possession is one of my government’s most closely guarded secrets.”

Rapp thought he knew the cause of Butler’s cautiousness and nodded. “You’re worried about exposing your source.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me how you want me to handle it?”

“For starters, nothing gets put in writing. At least nothing truthful.”

Rapp smiled. “Create a false source-Cuban, perhaps?”

Butler hadn’t considered going that far. He was thinking more of a misdirection play, but he instantly liked the idea of creating a ghost. It would unnerve the Cuban intelligence service and force them to dump resources into chasing a mole. “We can talk about that later, but let’s go over the background material first. I’ve checked on this first part. You can confirm this information with your Drug Enforcement Agency. This past week, while the world has been focused on the attacks in Washington, a minor drug war has erupted in South America. It started in a remote jungle region of the Triple Frontier and has spread to a half dozen cities. The estimates of those murdered is in excess of one hundred people and while they can’t seem to agree on who started it, they all agree on the single event that caused the spark.”

Butler retrieved a pair of black-rimmed reading glasses and put them on. He opened the file, withdrew a satellite photograph, and then closed it. He slid the image to the middle of the table so Rapp could see better and pointed at a line of brown in a photo that was filled with green. “Jungle landing strip operated by the Red Command Cartel out of São Paulo. It serves as regional distribution center for their cocainemanufacturing operation. Local peasants cultivate the coca crops, make the cocaine, and then they bring it to this strip where it is gathered and shipped out once a week.

“Three days before the attack on Washington, the facility was hit. It hasn’t been easy to get exact numbers, but we think approximately eight of the cartel’s men were killed and the entire week’s shipment was stolen. Again, there’s all kinds of rumors floating around, but the estimated street value of the stolen merchandise is somewhere between ten and twenty million dollars.”

“That’s a lot of cocaine,” Rapp said.

“The Red Command agrees. They have offered massive rewards. They want their drugs back, and they want the guilty party punished. They played nice for a few days last week and then when no useful information turned up they began hitting the rival cartels and all hell broke loose.”

“You don’t think it was a rival cartel?” Rapp asked.

“No. I think it was the third cell.”

Rapp nodded. “I’m listening.”

“This is where it gets tricky. What I’m about to tell you is for your ears and Irene’s only.”

“Understood,” Rapp said. They could figure out the best way to disburse the information later.

“The same day that the distribution center got hit a plane showed up in Cuba, with nine men and two pallets of cocaine. They were met by a colonel in the Cuban army and a small contingent of soldiers who helped them off-load the cocaine and transfer it onto two speedboats. This particular colonel was given 10 percent of the shipment in exchange for his help. Somewhere between one and two million dollars in product.”

Rapp digested the information and said, “Cuba isn’t exactly my area of expertise, but from what I’ve heard this isn’t an uncommon thing.”

“It happens to be one of my areas of expertise, and there’s more.” Butler withdrew another satellite photo. It was another shot of the jungle but instead of a rectangular clearing this one was square. An analyst had taken the time to label the various features. “We’ve all seen this before. Barracks over here, obstacle course here, this square area here used for PT, and a firing range here.”

“Training camp?”

“Yes.”

“Where is it located?” Rapp asked

“Next valley over from the airstrip. About ten kilometers away as the crow flies.”

“So you think these guys hit the distribution center, loaded up a plane, flew it out of there, and landed in Cuba?”

“That is precisely what I think.”

Rapp was skeptical. “I know a little bit about the Red Command. They’re some of the most ruthless bastards on the planet. I find it hard to believe they haven’t already figured this out. This is their backyard, after all.”

Butler looked over the top of his black reading glasses and said, “Yesterday afternoon… in the Triple Frontier town of Ciudad del Este, a mosque was firebombed and burned to the ground, killing eighteen people.”

Rapp swallowed hard. “What else?”

“My source in Cuba tells me that the nine men who came in on the plane looked more Mediterranean than South American. And then there’s this last part that you are probably aware of. The day after this plane landed in Cuba, two speedboats approached your Florida Keys. Your Coast Guard scrambled a helicopter to intercept. It crashed at sea. Your rescue divers located the wreckage and discovered fifty caliber bullet holes in the engine.”

Rapp was slightly embarrassed that he hadn’t already made the connection. Thousands of data points had passed in front of him in the last week alone. Emails, text messages, voicemails, briefings, internet searches, off-the-record conversations with his counterparts at a half dozen foreign intelligence agencies, FBI reports, and of course, the not-so-little side show with Glen Adams. Rapp was suffering from sleep deprivation and information overload at the same time. It was time to strip it all away and start over.

He rubbed his eyes for a moment and then said, “All right, you’ve convinced me. What else do you have?”

Butler slid another sheet from the file. This one was white and had a sketch of a man’s face on the front. “This was the advance man who set everything up in Cuba.”

Rapp studied the drawing. The man was handsome. He looked to be in his late twenties. His hair was wavy and a little long but not mangy. “This was done off a photo?” Rapp said, referring to the sketch.

“Yes.”

“You really are sure about this source?” Surveillance photos could be analyzed by experts who could tell you with amazing accuracy where the photo had been taken. By having an artist sketch the image one ensured that all those background clues were no longer a concern.

“Again, this is between the three of us. Nothing gets put in a file. My source in Cuba… I recruited him myself a long time ago. I would do anything to protect him.”

Rapp and Cheval nodded. They had both been in similar situations before.

“Do we have a name to go with this face?” Rapp asked as he looked at the artist’s sketch.

Cheval smiled and said, “Have you ever known us to waste your time?”

“No.”

Cheval tapped the artist’s sketch and said, “George sent this to me and I had my man show it to a few of the prisoners. Two of them recognized him. Would you like to guess his nationality?”

Rapp looked at the drawing. It was black and white so it was impossible to pick up any skin tone. The nose and the cheekbones offered some clues, though. “If I had to guess I’d say Saudi or Yemeni.”

Cheval nodded and said, “Saudi. We don’t have precise dates but we think he fought in Afghanistan for at least a year. They said he was very cosmopolitan.”

Rapp frowned. Cosmopolitan was not often a word used to describe jihadists fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan. “How so?”

“He liked to read… especially American authors. He had traveled to your country before. And Cuba as well. His favorite writer was Ernest Hemingway. He talked of going to his house in Key West and in Cuba as well. As far as we can gather, he left the fighting a few months before the teams had been assembled. It was rumored later that he had been sent ahead to scout out potential targets.”

Rapp’s doubt was quickly dissipating. “Name?”

“Hakim al Harbi. Grew up in the town of Makkah, Saudi Arabia.

And here is the really interesting part. As you know, most of these fighters sign up in groups. Hakim joined with his best friend, a man named Karim, who in a very short period gained a reputation as a fierce and capable fighter.”

Butler said, “One source says that he was barely one week in the fight when the Taliban mixed it up with an American hunter-killer team that had staked out a mountaintop position. The local Taliban commander ordered three assaults on the position… each one a complete disaster. This Karim and his fresh group of Saudi fighters were ordered to lead the fourth assault. Rather than lead his men on a suicide mission he shot the Taliban commander on the spot and took over.”

“Nice way to receive a battlefield promotion.”

“And that’s exactly what happened,” Butler continued. “Apparently this Taliban commander was a bit dim. The al Qaeda leadership was looking for an excuse to get rid of him and without their lifting a finger Karim took care of their problem. The Taliban didn’t make a stink, because this particular commander had made a habit of burning through fresh conscripts.”

“Anything after this incident?” Rapp asked.

“We’re working on compiling and checking the stories, but he was known to be a tough and disciplined commander with a wicked temper.”

Cheval said, “And apparently wasn’t afraid to engage in a little self-promotion.”

“How so?” Rapp asked.

“He gave himself a nickname.”

Butler asked, “Care to hazard a guess?”

Rapp was used to connecting the dots, and this was something he should have picked up on several minutes ago. With a shake of the head he said, “The Lion of al Qaeda.”

“Exactly,” Cheval answered.

Rapp looked at Butler’s file and then Cheval’s. “Please tell me you have one more photo to show me. We’ve been after the Saudis but they haven’t given us shit. They’re denying that he’s even one of them.”

“That does not surprise me,” Butler said. “Sorry to disappoint, but we have no photo at the moment. I promise you, though, we are throwing a lot of resources at the problem.”

HAKIM came to, and the first thing he noticed was a lack of movement. There was no gentle swaying back and forth and the occasional bounce. They were either on a very smooth road or they had stopped. His head moved to the right and then the left. He felt fluid sloshing around inside somewhere and then a stabbing sensation in his ear. He knew instantly his left eardrum had been burst. After clenching his jaw for a long moment he opened his eyes and looked around the bedroom in the back of the RV. The shades were still drawn on the two windows, but a bit of light still managed to make it through.

Something felt oddly different this time. To say that he had been a bit out of it would be a huge understatement. Hakim had no real sense of time, but it felt as if he had slept on and off for most of the day. Occasionally something would hurt so badly he’d come to for a moment, and then things would get hazy again. His memory was foggy, but at one point he seemed to remember Ahmed sticking something in his arm. That image jogged a few things loose and he suddenly realized he was really thirsty. He tried to sit up, but it was too painful. A few ribs were surely broken.

Reaching out, he managed to get hold of the curtain that separated the bedroom from the kitchen area. He moved it a few inches and saw Karim sitting in the booth talking to Ahmed. Maps were spread out on the table and they were talking in hushed tones. Karim sensed he was being watched. He lifted his dark eyes and looked through the gap at the man he had pummeled earlier in the day.

Hakim did not look away. He stared back at his friend with his sliver of a left eye, the right one still puffy and closed. He wanted Karim to have to look at his battered face. He wanted Karim to know exactly what he had done to his supposed friend.

Ahmed realized Hakim was awake and quickly slid out of the booth. He yanked open the door to the half-sized refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water. He quickly brought it over to Hakim and after gently cradling his head, he pressed the bottle to his swollen lips.

Hakim took several sips and after a long pause a few more. When he felt he could speak without his voice cracking he asked, “Where are we?”

Ahmed looked over his shoulder and Karim reluctantly nodded for him to go ahead. He looked back at Hakim and said, “We are not sure.”

“Not sure. You mean we are lost?”

“Yes.”

Hakim didn’t know if he should laugh or cry. “How could you be lost? Where is the GPS device?”

Ahmed did not answer. From behind, Karim announced in a quiet but noticeably angry voice, “It was left in the house.”

Hakim looked up at the ceiling and laughed silently. He had taken so many precautions. How could they have screwed it up? He wasn’t worried for a second that they would remain lost. He had driven all over this part of America. He had spent more nights than he could ever recall sitting in lonely roadside motels poring over maps, so many that he imagined he could win nearly any geography competition in the country. “What time is it?”

Ahmed looked at his watch. “Almost five in the evening.”

“When did we leave the farm?”

“Around nine.” Ahmed added, “I think.”

“It was eight-forty-seven,” Karim announced with confidence.

“Do you know what state we are in?”

Ahmed sheepishly said, “I thought I knew, but now I am not sure.”

Hakim was dumbstruck. The states in the middle of America were huge. “How can that be?”

“The river,” he said as if that would explain everything. “It turns like a snake.”

Now Hakim understood the confusion. The Mississippi River acted as a state line for almost all of its twenty-three hundred miles. The RV had two gas tanks, which Karim knew held seventy-five gallons. He also knew the tanks were full because he had topped them off with the reserves he had stashed at the farm. If they’d been on the federal interstate highway system and had driven at the posted speeds they could have traveled as far as seven hundred miles without refueling. That was almost ten hours of driving, and they had been on the road just eight. “How much fuel do we have left?”

“We are low.”

“How low?”

“Barely above empty.”

Hakim was hit by a pang of fear. How could that be? He had gone over the escape plans with both men. He had drilled it into their thick heads that if anything should happen to him, they should follow one of two escape plans, either to Chicago or Houston, and stick with whichever one they chose. Both involved getting on the interstate and blending in, getting as far away as possible, as quickly as possible, with the least chance of something going wrong. Like getting lost. “What happened to the escape routes I gave you? They were simple to follow. Even without the GPS.”

Ahmed made a gesture with his eyes as if he was looking over his shoulder while not wanting to turn his neck.

Hakim understood. “Karim, why did you not follow my plans?” He wished Ahmed would move so he could see the pained expression on Karim’s face.

“I made a tactical decision. When I looked at recent developments I decided we must adapt.”

“And how did that work for you… deviating from the plan?” Hakim asked, not caring if he upset him again.

After a long pause, Karim said, “I do not need your help. I can figure this out without you.”

“Is that why we are stopped? We should be halfway to Houston or safely parked under a bridge in Chicago if that were the case. You chose to ignore all of my hard work and once again, look where it has gotten you.”

“Ahmed, move!” Karim ordered.

The big man got up and walked to the front of the RV.

Karim gave his old friend a long, hard look and said, “I will not hesitate to beat you again. I do not have the time or the patience to deal with your hurt feelings.”

“And I no longer have the time or inclination to condone your arrogance and stupidity.”

Anger flashed across Karim’s face. He pulled back his untucked shirt, showing the handle of a pistol.

Hakim smiled, his once-perfect set of teeth now ruined. “You talk of mission and faith and doing what is best for the jihad, but you can’t humble yourself for even a second.”

“I am your commander. It is not my place to humble myself before you.”

Hakim said, “Who gave you the rank of commander?”

Karim started to draw the gun.

“You gave it to yourself. I was never part of your little group that you trained in the jungle. You may have deluded yourself into thinking that I was, but deep down in your heart you know I am speaking the truth.”

“I am sick of all your talking,” Karim shouted as he stood.

Hakim remained calm. “And you think that justifies killing me.”

“On the battlefield it certainly does. Discipline must be kept.”

Hakim started to laugh, but it hurt too much and quickly turned to coughing. He spat up some blood that dribbled down his chin. His face was so bruised and numb, though, that he didn’t even feel it. He asked, “What would Allah think of this? You say that everything you do is to please Allah. How will your murdering me please Allah?”

Karim held on to the gun so tightly he began to shake. “Allah wants this mission to succeed. That is what will please him. You and all of your Western ways disgust him. Allah cares nothing for you. He would award me for ending your life and sending you to hell.”

“Now you claim to know what Allah thinks. I am truly in the presence of greatness. Maybe you could ask him where we are.”

“I have heard enough.” Karim raised his pistol and pointed it at Hakim.

From the front of the RV, Ahmed called, “Sir, please, may I have a word with you?”

Karim turned to find Ahmed standing ramrod straight, his hands at his sides, his chin pointed slightly up and his eyes looking straight ahead as if he was on the parade grounds waiting inspection. “What?”

“In private, please, sir.”

Hakim lay there on the bed wondering briefly if he had lost his senses. Why provoke an unstable man who had killed and would gladly do it again rather than admit he was wrong? The answer, he guessed, was that he didn’t care. He watched Karim hesitate and then yield to

Ahmed’s request. The two men stepped outside and closed the door, leaving Hakim alone in the RV wondering if he would have the courage to leave these two on their own. Let them fend for themselves. That would be poetic justice. Let the egomaniac rely on his inflated opinion of his own skills. He wouldn’t last more than a few days.

Ahmed came back into the RV by himself and closed the door. He moved carefully to the back and sat on the edge of the bed. In a quiet tone he said, “I know this hasn’t been easy for you. That jungle changed him. It changed all of us.”

“That is no excuse.”

“No, but it is a cause.”

Hakim thought for the first time that Ahmed might not be as dimwitted as he seemed. “Be that as it may, he is not my commander.”

“You may think that, but you will have a hard time convincing him.”

“Then there is nothing to talk about.”

Ahmed made a calming gesture with his hands. “I think you need some time away from each other.”

“Please, by all means… drop me off at the next town.”

Ahmed ignored him. Lowering his voice to a mere whisper he said, “I have offered to deal with you.”

“Are you my superior officer now? We must keep the chain of command in place,” Hakim said in a mocking tone.

“No. I want to save your life. I think you are a good man. And I think we need you. Please help us.”

Hakim thought about it for a long moment and then said, “In the rear luggage compartment on this side,” Hakim pointed over his head to the starboard side of the vehicle, “you will find a black Oakley backpack. Bring it to me.”

Ahmed left and a minute later returned with the backpack. Karim came back into the RV and stood just behind Ahmed, his gun still in his hand. It occurred to Hakim that he was keeping an eye on him in case he drew his own weapon from the backpack. Instead he unzipped one of the pockets and withdrew a Garmin hand-held GPS device. He fumbled with the device for a second and then pressed the power button. As the unit powered up, Hakim looked at Karim with his one squinty eye and said, “All you had to do was ask. I have a backup for nearly everything.”