Brad Thor - Foreign Influence

The man was silent as he pieced together what his protégé was saying.

“It will take me less than five hours to go and come back.”

“Why Wisconsin?”

“Because Illinois requires a firearms identification card to buy reloading supplies and Wisconsin doesn’t.”

“It seems like a great risk to me this close to the attack.”

Rashid looked at him. “I’m going to break up the purchases at three different locations. I’ll get the reloading machine at one, powder and primers at another, and the rounds and jackets at the third.”

“What about video cameras?”

“I’ll be careful.”

“What if you get stopped?”

“I’m not going to get stopped, Marwan. But even if I do, my driver’s license has my Christian name on it.”

“I want Fadim and Uday to go with you.”

“That’s a great idea. I think we should all wear turbans and Islam is a dynamite religion T-shirts. How about that?”

“I’m in no mood for disrespect,” Marwan snapped.

“Those two get enough looks here in Chicago. If I take them with me to Wisconsin we’re going to raise a lot of eyebrows, or a lot of unibrows in Fadim and Uday’s case.”

“This is why people in our organization are uncomfortable with you.”

Rashid raised his hands, palms up. “Because of my sense of humor?”

“No. It is your belief that you know better than everyone else.”

“I do when everyone else is not using their heads. C’mon, Marwan. The first thing people think of when they see Fadim and Uday is terrorist. You can’t walk them into a store that sells guns and not expect to create a stir. I thought the idea was not to draw attention to ourselves.”

“That is the plan,” replied Jarrah. “I am sending them along for your protection. They will ride in a separate vehicle and keep an eye on you. You will not go armed and I do not want you using your cell phone. Is that understood? You go buy the items you need and you return immediately.”

“You don’t want me using my cell phone now?”

“Sheik Aleem is concerned that the network may have been penetrated.”

“Because of what happened in London?”

“Because of London and Amsterdam.”

“Amsterdam?” said Rashid. “That’s the site of the final European attack?”

The man nodded.

“What happened?”

“There were six bombers. Only one successfully detonated. Sheik Aleem is correct to be concerned that the network may have been compromised.”

“Then all the more reason to put our plans on hold.”

“No,” replied the man. “It is more important than ever that we succeed. That’s why I agree with you about the ammunition and why I am letting you go get the things we need.”

“But without my cell phone and with Fadim and Uday keeping me company.”

“For once, Shahab, would you do something without arguing with me? That’s all I ask.”

Rashid bowed his head. “I’m sorry, Marwan. We’ll do it your way.”

“Good. Thank you. Now we need to talk about the police officers we are holding. They’re a liability and need to be dealt with.”

“I agree.”

Jarrah was taken aback. “You do?”

“Yes. No good can come from holding on to them.”

“So then they should be disposed of.”

“Yes.”

The man smiled. “This is very good, Shahab. I’m pleased that for once you see things my way. I’ll let you, then, decide how to handle it.”

“I already know how I want to handle it,” said Rashid.

“How?”

“They are going to be martyrs for our cause, and they will take many of their fellow officers with them.”

WEDNESDAY

It took Mike Dent about three hours to get Harvath the information he needed. Within forty-five minutes of Dent’s call, he and the remaining Athena Team members were on a Citation X to Chicago.

It was a tough decision to leave their teammate behind in the hospital, but they knew Rodriguez would have wanted them to finish the job.

From that point forward, the Dutch took over the interrogation of al-Yaqoubi, though Harvath doubted they’d get much more out of him.

Meanwhile, Carlton’s people were still working on Adda Sterk. She was producing only small amounts of intel, much of it not very useful. The same could be said of the controller for the London cell who had been broken by Ashford’s team. Whoever had assembled this network had done a very good job. Everything was compartmentalized and cutouts had been used all along the way. It was only when you got closer to the top, as they had with al-Yaqoubi, that the payouts began to get bigger.

The last piece of information Harvath had harvested from the accountant had been the most terrifying. Whatever “Yusuf” had planned for America, it was set to begin in the next forty-eight hours.

Per Mike Dent, Yusuf was actually a furniture importer in Chicago named Marwan Jarrah. He had fled Iraq during the 1980s and eventually became a U.S. citizen. He was an influential member of the American branch of the Islamic Relief Foundation, or IRF, a Saudi Arabia-based charity and member of the Conference of NGOs. The IRF had conducted multiple projects with the World Health Organization, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, and the World Food Program. Prominence in this organization had provided Jarrah cover to travel anywhere he wanted. It was no coincidence that the greatest hotbeds of terrorism and radical Islam were in the same parts of the Muslim world so keenly focused upon by the IRF.

In order to prevent Jarrah’s relatives from tipping him off, Dent had arranged for the ones he had questioned to be detained until Harvath okayed their release. For the first time since this operation had begun, Harvath felt that he had been able to take more than just one step forward before getting knocked on his ass.

He had to block the scenes from Amsterdam from his mind or he wouldn’t be able to focus on what still needed to be done. Along with the pit of children from Fallujah and the little Iraqi boy who had died in his arms, he tucked them all into the iron box he kept for the unpleasantness of his job and shoved it back into the deepest recesses of his mind.

He tried to think of something positive, something he could look forward to, and was surprised when Riley’s image bubbled up in his mind. It made him feel disloyal to Tracy, and Tracy brought him back to the issue of having children; the exact thing he’d been sitting on his dock thinking about when all of this had begun.

As quickly as thoughts of Tracy and the hard decision he needed to make about his relationship with her came to mind, they were pushed aside by the work he had yet to do.

There had been some debate as to how the team should proceed once it landed in Chicago. They had no arrest or law enforcement powers. Acts of terror plotted and committed on American soil were treated as criminal acts, which Harvath had always thought a big mistake. By not treating them as acts of war, the United States government was only inviting escalation, greater bloodshed, and exponentially greater loss of life. The jihadists were at war with America, yet American politicians refused to go to war with them. They saw them as petty criminals to be tried and given all the benefits of the American legal system. The Department of Defense, though, saw it a different way.

The entire idea behind the Carlton Group was to protect America and her citizens, period. That was where things were now very sticky. Harvath and his organization had knowledge of pending terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. They also had intelligence regarding the man they believed to be in charge of those attacks inside the U.S. It could very well be argued that the information should have been shared with the FBI. But that was not how Reed Carlton or the small cadre of men to whom he answered inside the Pentagon saw it.