Sleeper Cell Super Boxset (57 page)

It had taken years of dedication and hard work to get where he was at. He’d purchased a home in the suburbs in a welcoming neighborhood of Pakistani immigrants. He had since adjusted to his "normal life," and attended a mosque regularly while mostly keeping to himself. But his hatred for the enemy never waned.

The disgust in his heart for "Westernized" Muslims never wavered either. They were even worse than the enemy. For years he heard nothing from his contacts. Not before, during, or after September 11, 2001. Not during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Then came the rise of the Islamic State, or ISIS, split from the very factions of Al Qaeda.

ISIS was waging outright war against the Great Satan. They were going straight to the heart of the beast, and that took guts. Ahmed was honored to join their cause. The leader of the American ISIS sleeper cells was a man named Abu Omar Allawi. Ahmed had never met him personally but had heard recordings of several of his speeches. He didn't know what Allawi looked like; no one did. He was referred to as "the invisible sheikh" by his own followers.

From the smooth baritone sound of his voice, Ahmed pictured a towering man with an impeccably trimmed beard and strong, dark eyes. Sometimes it seemed that Allawi spoke right to him. Allawi, in fact, declared himself the "prophet’s prophet," claiming that the Prophet Muhammad was speaking through him.

"It is our religious duty to strike at the heart of the world's cancer,"
he told his followers in a recorded message.
"The Zionists in Israel believe that the Americans will protect them. But the Americans, they are ignorant and unprepared. Without America, the Zionists cannot exist. To achieve this goal we must strike first at America, the protector. This is strategy, my brothers. This is war."

Then the day came when Ahmed got the call. He met two men, Faisal and Zahid, both members of the sleeper cell, who had majored in chemical engineering. They worked relentlessly for weeks to design the self-releasing chemical receptacle, store it on a fishing boat, and modify the boat to be operated remotely. For good measure, the boat displayed the American flag from its stem, flapping in the air—Ahmed's idea.

From atop his Datsun, he reflected on the significance of their undertaking, the vast network that spread across the entire world. The American military would fight when provoked, there was no denying that, but by then it would be too late. He steadied the controller in his hand while looking down at a disposable phone resting on the hood next to him—the very trigger for the chemicals. Once he made the call, there would be no turning back.

He set aside the remote control as the boat slowly neared the target and he held up his binoculars. The Coast Guard ship had taken interest in the unmanned boat and headed toward the port from at least a half mile away.

"Just a little closer," he said, while looking through his binoculars.

The boat coasted along an open loading dock. Several men in hard hats took notice and began walking toward it as the Coast Guard raced near. Ahmed pitied their foolishness. To him, the men represented the inherent fallacy of the enemy. They wouldn't even know what hit them until their lungs constricted and their eyes burned in pain. Ahmed knew the range of the attack was relatively small, but far more destructive bombs were going to be detonated at various other ports in a matter of moments. For Ahmed and his terror cell, the goal was fear. If they could release an empty 200-gallon water tank filled with sarin nerve gas into one of America's most frequented ports, they could do anything.

The Coast Guard was close. Ahmed's smart phone vibrated. The camera continued to record. He looked at his phone screen and read the text message:

Strike the beast by the grace of Allah.

Ahmed looked up and saw the Coast Guard ship descending upon the boat. The text message was very clear. It was time. He set aside his smart phone and picked up the disposable phone, flipping it open. The empty water tank in the boat was designed to release the gas using a rigged electronic device that, when triggered, would send the deadly vapor flowing through a long pipe out into the open air.

"Allahu Akbar," Ahmed said as he dialed the number.

Inside the boat, roughly a quarter mile from where Ahmed watched, colorless, odorless gas quickly dispersed from the tank into a long tube that ran outside the boat. The tank hissed as people above began to hover over the mysterious boat, blissfully unaware of what was to come. A bearded dock worker wearing an orange reflector vest and hard hat was the first to go down. His co-workers soon followed.

Not a trace of the vaporized sarin toxin could be seen, only the sudden collapse of several people on the dock. Within ten seconds, bodies rolled on the dock, convulsing, gagging, and spewing frothy foam from their mouths. A forklift driver drove by, utterly baffled. His lungs seized. His eyes clenched and watered as a crippling paralysis consumed him. His forklift darted left and right, directly off the pier and into the water. Twenty others nearby saw their co-workers fall to the ground, and before they could make any sense of it, they too fell to their knees, clutching their throats and gagging.

The Coast Guardsmen aboard their ship rolled in agony as their eyes, throats, and lungs burned with an acidic fury. No amount of hacking could alleviate the intense pain consuming their respiratory systems. Convulsions followed.

Vomit burned their throats as it erupted from them like internal geysers. Blood and tears streamed down their faces as they twitched, jerked, and defecated. Paralysis set in, and in less than a minute, their bodies went stiff. Their eyes, mere slits encrusted with gunk, stared above as their gaping, pale faces remained frozen and horrified.

Ahmed watched with keen interest as the figures below dropped one by one. He heard screams from the port; people were catching on. They fled as fast as they could, away from the area of the dead and dying. Some didn't make it far before they, too, tumbled over and began writhing in pain. Ahmed could see the numbers. He was trying to count. More than fifty lay motionless on the port dock.

The gas had spread just as planned. Zahid had explained earlier how the particles of the gas had to be small enough so that they would could be absorbed through the lungs but heavy enough that they couldn’t be breathed back out. That was the trick, Zahid said. Ahmed thanked Allah for the successful deployment of the sarin gas. He had just carried out the first chemical attack on American soil in history.

The port was in chaos. A crane operator, after breathing in a healthy dose, dropped a forty-foot, ten-thousand-pound container, crushing a group of workers who had stood too close by. More screams followed. Mass panic arose, and no one could see or understand why. Private boats fled in panic, but the bodies kept dropping. A silent killer was in the air, mercilessly turning respiratory systems inside-out. A port siren rang throughout the grounds, and a call for evacuation blared from the outside speakers. In their confusion, boaters crashed into each other. The stern of one lobster boat pierced directly through a yacht. A cargo ship rammed into a fishing wharf. With all the tumult, the waves turned violent, and what had once been a normal, busy morning at the port soon descended into chaos.

Drones

On the east coast, methods of destruction differed in both concept and delivery. While most of the other sleeper cells used dirty bombs to attack the ports, Ibrahim had a more ambitious plan in place. A thirty-three-year-old Libyan, Ibrahim was enamored with the Islamic State and its cause. And like Ahmed, he had a unique vision of how to unleash terror upon the Americans. Not just a dirty bomb in a pressure cooker, but something memorable.

His team consisted of three other Libyan men, all smuggled across the southern border for a high price and relocated to a community of Middle Eastern immigrants in Boston, Massachusetts. They were given new identities, fake drivers’ licenses, and Social Security cards—all financed by ISIS. After settling in, they waited.

Sometime later, they were told it was time to prepare. Someone claiming to be Abu Omar Allawi sent them the text message himself under an untraceable name. They wouldn't have even known who had sent it, except for the name "Allawi" at the end of the text.

That morning, Ibrahim rose from his bed and raced to the door of his room, flung it open and began shouting as he sped past the two other bedrooms in the duplex and rushed out to give his group the news. They were in the kitchen drinking coffee, and froze in place, hearing the excitement in Ibrahim’s voice. “The time has come, my brothers!” he announced. “We have been summoned for action.” Details and instructions were soon to come, he told them, barely able to get the words out.

"I cannot wait to meet my new bride!" said Nasser, a portly bearded man. He was the youngest of the group and a handful to look after.

They were under strict orders not to engage in any sinful acts while living among the Americans. That included girls, drinking, drugs, pornography, or any other sinful pursuits so freely indulged in by the Americans. A certain amount of Westernized behavior was deemed acceptable, such as the hipster shirts and designer jeans Nasser wore; justified as being necessary so they could blend in. The young men were promised that if they refrained from forbidden temptations, they would receive brides from among ISIS’s female recruits after the mission.

"Patience, Nasser," Ibrahim said. "We have a job to do first."

"What do they want us to do?" Sean, an American boy, asked. He had recently been recruited from an online chatroom. Twenty-two years old, he had left his home in Dallas, Texas, and volunteered to join their cause. He was eager to please his new group of friends and had subsequently converted to Islam, changing his name to Ali Qaddafi.

"I'm waiting on instructions," Ibrahim said.

Jamal and Mahmud entered the room. Both were tall, lanky Libyan men who didn't look a day over twenty. The group settled down, a few returning to their rooms as they waited in anticipation for instructions. Communicating via cell phone was tricky, so their messages often came from disposable phones, written in cryptic language. They knew all about the NSA and its data-collecting practices. Whatever they were going to be instructed to do, it would most likely be told to them in person.

"Who wants eggs?" Jamal said, slapping his hands together. The anticipation in the air was almost too much to handle, and, as a result, everyone had a hearty appetite.

On the day of the attack, the group parked their black, rusty Ford F-250 outside the busy Port of Boston an hour before the designated hit time. The truck's cargo bed had a retractable cover that concealed anything inside. If stopped and questioned, they would say they were photography enthusiasts; hence the cameras they brought with them. Ibrahim knew they had to be careful because of the mass-transit terror threat, a planned false leak that had the authorities on high alert.

"Why the ports?" Sean asked as they got out of the truck. The group gathered at the tailgate, ready to unleash their attack.

"Because it shows that we are synchronized. That this is a joint operation. That we can strike the same targets all over the country," Ibrahim answered.

He brushed the thick bangs away from his forehead and set down a long, black duffel bag on the ground atop a previously selected mound of pebbles and rocks. Past the barbed-wire fence and the "No trespassing" sign was a vast cargo yard with row upon row of stacked containers and steel-beamed automatic cranes for loading and unloading container ships.

Aside from the loading docks, there was a line of fishing piers, occupied with fishermen casting their lines into the water. A commercial wharf was also in view, with a line of ferries and cruise boats coming and going. If the ISIS masterminds who had conceived the port attacks had learned anything, it was that morning was the best time to strike—when the enemy were just starting their day.

Jamal and Mahmud opened the retractable cargo cover revealing five moderately-sized aerial quadcopter GoPro drones. The group moved quickly and positioned the drones on the ground, knowing that at any minute, authorities could be on the scene. Sean and Nasser stood watch, making small talk. Sean had struggled with giving up the music he loved listening to, but today, such a sacrifice seemed trivial. This was a righteous cause. ISIS had rightly taught him to hate his Westernized upbringing.

"I mean, music was a part of my life, but it’s corrupted me as well. That's what this country does to you. It destroys and corrupts," he said.

"Allah will give you the strength to move past those kind of things," Nasser said.

For the time being, they didn't see any vehicles approaching. It would seem, even with the heightened terror alert in place, that the authorities couldn't be everywhere at once. And that was exactly what they were counting on.

Ibrahim pulled the drone remotes from his bag and handed one each to Jamal and Mahmud, keeping one for himself. Once the drones were armed, each person would control his own. In the back of the truck was a large industrial latch case. Ibrahim had his two counterparts lift the case out and opened it.

Inside were blocks of C4 tightly Saran wrapped together. They taped the C4 to each drone quickly and then did a maintenance check. Nothing would be left of the drones once they were done with them. They had packed just enough C4 on each drone, being careful not to overload or weigh them down. Ibrahim took a step back to admire their fleet. Word had gotten back to him that sleeper cell leaders were very impressed with his ingenuity. Nothing could make him happier.

"Get over here!" Ibrahim called to Sean and Nasser. They eagerly ran over and were each handed a control, similar to the other ones he had handed out. They each had small display screens that captured video from the drones’ internal cameras.

"They'll probably ban drones after this. Like, through the whole U.S.," Sean said to the group. "What do you guys think?"

"Do you remove your shoes before getting on planes?" Nasser answered.