The Insider Threat (17 page)

W
e were closing in on the location of the van when I saw it start to move again. Or at least, I saw the ping on Jennifer’s phone move. I called.

“Koko, what’s your status?”

I got nothing.

“Koko, Koko, status? Acknowledge.”

I heard the dumbest damn thing imaginable. “Pike, the target has linked up with someone and has started to move. We couldn’t maintain eyes on from the van. We’re on foot, and tracking.”

What. The. Fuck.

Aaron was driving our van, with the team in the back. I knew I couldn’t go all ballistic in front of him, but I sure as shit wanted to. I went the team-leader measured-response route.

“Koko, stand down. I say again, stand down. Showboat says the Jords will be rolling in fifteen. We’ve done our work.”

“Pike, these guys are going to attack before that time. They’re going to evade the net. Let us find the bed-down. Get a physical grid location so the Jordanians don’t have to search the neighborhood.”

I forgot about the cool, calm team-leader route. “Damn it, listen to me! Stand the fuck down! Now! If Shoshana wants to wreck things, then get the fuck out of the blast radius. You read me?”

She didn’t respond. I looked at Aaron and said, “This is your damn fault! It’s just like Brazil all over again. Shoshana’s some kind of witch doctor. Jennifer never does this shit, but every time she’s with Shoshana she goes off the reservation.”

Aaron turned into an alley, and I saw the van. Empty. He said, “Pike, trust me, I feel your pain. I’ve had to live with it since she was assigned to me. Shoshana’s a handful, but if she’s working the problem, there’s a reason.”

“Yeah. She wants to cut al-Britani’s head off. And she’s going to put Jennifer in the line of fire in the process. Bloodthirsty little bitch doesn’t care who she hurts.”

Aaron put the van in park and said, “You are wrong. Shoshana is special in more ways than one. She wouldn’t do this if she didn’t think it necessary.”

I slapped the dash and said, “Bullshit. She’d sell her mother if it meant a kill.”

“No. No, she wouldn’t. You don’t see it, but Jennifer does.”

*   *   *

Head covered in a hijab and sunglasses on her face, Jennifer walked slightly behind Shoshana, letting her take the lead. Shoshana tracked the target expertly, stopping and perusing at the markets without ever losing sight. Shoshana was dressed like a local, but Jennifer was wearing cargo pants and a loose-fitting cotton shirt. Man clothes. She felt the stares and wondered if she was going to burn the operation.

She said, “Shoshana, I don’t look Arab.”

Shoshana took her hand and handed her a melon, as if they were shopping. She said, “I’m your guide. Westerners come here all the time. Your hijab shows respect. You think everyone is staring, but they’re not. You blend in just fine.”

They continued their little shopping tour, about fifty meters back from the target. As she watched him walking with his friend, she could see him talking at a frenetic pace. He was wired and on edge, waving his arms around and slapping the friend on the back. But not running anymore.

They stopped at each stand for a moment, but didn’t do any real shopping, making Jennifer wonder what they were doing. Al-Britani had just found a microphone on a man he perceived as a traitor, and had to know he was set up. Had to understand that someone was chasing him, but, after escaping the building a mile away and ordering the attack, he was now stalling.

Why?

Al-Britani talked to a merchant, and suddenly Jennifer understood. It was an act. They were making sure people saw them. Making sure the store vendors knew who they were. They were creating a reality for the future investigation.

And she realized it wasn’t a suicide attack.

He thinks he’s going to get away. And the time he’s wasting will be his undoing.

She looked at her watch and saw they had less than seven minutes before the deadline Pike had given. The Jordanians would be here soon. And he’d be caught.

But there was no Jordanian security on the street. No activity at all.

Where are they?

Pike’s call from earlier had said they’d be here, locking down the block. In between his shouting, he’d led her to believe it would be some sort of Katrina hurricane response, the area flooded with police. But that wasn’t happening.

She wondered if he knew more than her. Wondered if ignoring him was the right course of action, for reasons greater than the tongue-lashing she knew she’d get. She could handle Pike. He was full of bluster, but he understood operational success, and had done the same thing she was doing on multiple occasions. She was convinced she was right, and she was sure Pike would agree—after the operation. The only thing she was unsure of was Shoshana.

The two men turned left into an alley and Shoshana cursed.

“No way to follow them there. No reason for us to be in that alley. They’ll look back as soon as we enter.”

Jennifer pulled out her smartphone and said, “Let’s figure out where they could be going.”

“What, with Google Earth? Won’t work. Too many unmarked alleys. They’ll be gone. Google Earth doesn’t have the resolution.”

Jennifer smiled. “Yeah, I agree. But I’m not using Google Earth. I can see the depth of a pothole with this phone.”

In the last ten years, US reconnaissance satellites had gotten exponentially better, gaining the ability of resolution down to the centimeter, a feat that bordered on science fiction. In the Cold War, the older generation of satellites were called Talent Keyhole, and treated as the crown jewels of US intelligence collection. With the ever-increasing technological capability, the old satellites were overshadowed, and this brought a decision that was about as astronomically bad as the new satellites were good.

The US government, having the new capability, decided to profit on the old. After all, the aging satellites were still up in space, and still working. Why just let them fly around if they weren’t going to be used? Like a man looking at his outdated car in the yard and thinking of a quick buck, the US sold the Talent Keyhole constellation. To Google. And now terrorists all over the world leveraged the Cold War architecture to plan their attacks, using nothing more than a computer with a web browser.

But Google Earth couldn’t see into the rat maze of alleys. That required the next generation. And Jennifer had it.

She manipulated the security settings on her phone, working through the laborious, multilayered process of access, and finally achieved the feed she needed. She swiped the satellite app to the left, accessing the GPS feature of her phone and marking her location. She copied the grid, then swiped right, bringing back the satellite feed. She pasted the grid, then waited as the small processor in her phone went into overdrive, trying to compute the massive instructions it had been given.

The screen slowly resolved, and she was looking at an overhead view that appeared to have been taken from a balloon hovering just above the rooftops. It wasn’t real-time—the image had been taken four days ago—but it was certainly good enough to plan a surveillance route.

Shoshana saw the image form and said, “That is amazing.”

Jennifer realized she was showing a classified capability to someone uncleared, and tilted the phone away. Shoshana scowled, and Jennifer said, “Sorry. It’s NOFORN.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“The capability is top secret. NOFORN. ‘No foreigners’ can see it.”

Shoshana just looked at her, deadpan.

Sheepishly, Jennifer tilted the phone back and said, “Yeah, I guess that’s stupid. Don’t tell Pike.”

Shoshana studied the photo, saying, “That alley goes for a ways. Pull it right.”

Jennifer did. She said, “Go left.”

The screen moved and Shoshana said, “Stop. Right there.”

Jennifer looked at the screen and said, “Yeah. No other exit out of the alley.”

“We can parallel them and intersect at that point. Let’s go.”

“What if they stop before? What if the bed-down is in this alley? We’ll miss them.”

“We neck it down enough to help. We’ll miss them regardless. We can’t go into the alley behind them. This either plays out, or it doesn’t.”

Jennifer nodded, and Shoshana smiled. “It’s going to play out, trust me. I’ve done these hunts many times. You ready?”

“Ready for what?”

“Ready for what destiny is bringing.”

“What are you talking about? All we’re doing is finding the bed-down. Right?”

Shoshana rubbed her waist, feeling the gun, and said, “Right. But destiny has a way of altering plans.”

R
ingo walked down the alley, thinking about the door to the hotel. He had the badge, but he wasn’t sure how to use it. He assumed there was an access panel outside, and all he had to do was place the badge against it, but what if there was a code? What if he waved the badge and the screen blinked, telling him to start typing? They wouldn’t get in, and the plan would fail.

The man he’d met, a
shahid
trained by Omar, held no such fear. All he wanted to do was get into the fight. He didn’t care one way or the other if his actions accomplished anything. He knew he was going to die, and that thought permeated everything. He wasn’t going to wear a bomb, but he was going to die. He could do so shooting outside of the hotel at random strangers, or inside the hotel, killing members of the Gulf States at a conference designed to deal with the very organization to which he belonged.

The man was a simpleton. A robotic killer. He had none of the responsibility that Ringo held. The planned attack had to have maximum impact, and strangers killed on the street wouldn’t do it. But the men in the hotel conference center would.

The Gulf Cooperation Council was meeting in Jordan to discuss a plan to counter the Islamic State. Composed only of members of Sunni-controlled countries, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, they were trying to find a path for eradicating the scourge even as some in their population actively supported it. By holding the conference in the Grand Hyatt hotel, they had become the perfect target.

Ringo and the
shahid
turned the corner, moving down a small, trash-strewn connector alley no wider than a hallway. They broke out onto a larger thoroughfare right next to an outdoor café—patrons sipping espresso or tea and paying them no mind. Ringo studied the surroundings for a moment, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. The rhythms of the street were natural, but he couldn’t assume it would remain that way. He had no idea how far out his pursuers would toss the net, but was fairly sure, since nobody had chased him from the apartment, that he was secure for the time being. But that time was fleeting. They needed to attack. Now.

He had no illusions about what was occurring in the apartment he’d fled. It was probably full of CIA spies and Jordanian Special Forces. All trying to piece together the plan of attack.

Praise be to Allah I never trusted Hussein.

They didn’t know who Ringo was, but they probably knew the target. They would be increasing security. Eventually. He had the magic key, away from the security of the main entrances, and was positive he wouldn’t need to fight to get in. Even so, the increase of firepower could cut their mission short. He needed to beat their decision cycle, and he thought he could. Jordan authorities wouldn’t want to interrupt the meetings. The last thing they would do was tell the GCC that the Islamic State might be attacking and shut them down, and that was only if they knew—which wasn’t a given. If it was a United States operation against him, using Hussein, the morass of stovepipes would be much slower filtering the information.

He did wonder if the badge would work. It was a choke point over which he had no control. At the end of the day, he
was
walking out of this mission alive. Period. He had a team who would die, but he would not. He told himself he had a greater calling than the
shahid
, and even believed it. He wasn’t going to martyr himself, and if the badge didn’t work, the mission was done.

He turned left, moving down the lane, flowing in between the pedestrians milling about. He passed a small table, the farthest one out from the café, dismissing the two women engrossed in conversation.

He jogged across the street with his partner, entering one of the ubiquitous concrete hostel/apartment buildings that dotted the landscape, but this one had been specifically chosen. Jam-packed into the cloistered area of east Amman, it was built next to a hill and was one story taller than the building next to it, so close that the concrete balcony was only five feet from the adjacent roof.

Unlike his frantic run earlier, this had been planned. He needed a way to enter his building, ensuring the clerk at the bottom saw him, then exit without being seen. He’d initiate the assault, letting his team do their deadly tango, then return without ever having exited the front. All the desk would know—and would provide the police, should that become necessary—was that he’d entered, then stayed in his room for the duration of the attack. Thus, he couldn’t be complicit.

That, coupled with his stall shopping a moment ago, should be enough to escape scrutiny. The name he’d used in this building wasn’t in a passport. All they knew was what he looked like, and the fact that he had entered, then never exited.

He walked inside the tiny anteroom, a thin piece of wood to the right making a counter, worn smooth by years of use. Behind it was the custodian. Ringo had no idea what he was paid for, because every request since he’d first rented the suite of rooms had fallen on deaf ears. He walked over and, speaking in Arabic, said, “Did you get the shower on the third floor to function?”

“No. Not yet. I’m working on it.”

“And the sink?”

“No.”

“And the toilet? Does it flush now?”

“No. No, no, no. I’m not a miracle worker.”

Ringo smiled and said, “You’re pretty much nothing at all, aren’t you?”

The clerk, a gnarled older gentleman, stood up and said, “This isn’t London, you little shit. I do what I can. If you don’t like it, leave. Find another place with running water. If you can.”

The man who’d met Ringo outside laughed at the slur against his English accent. Ringo bristled, and said, “Maybe I will. Maybe I will.”

He walked away, aggravated, but confident the clerk would remember the conversation. Remember him walking up the stairs.