Rick Mofina - Every Second

Valachek removed her glasses.

“I advise against it. He’s been heavily sedated since he arrived. He’s just coming around now, in and out of consciousness. It’s touch and go, he might not survive his wounds.”

“We understand the situation. But Doctor,” Tilden said, “we need a statement from him, anything at all to help us because-”

“I’m aware of the gravity of the situation with his family.” The doctor tapped her pen on her clipboard as she considered. “Okay, I’ll allow you a few moments with him- after you put on some protective gowns and coverings.”

“Thank you,” Varner said.

Valachek escorted them past the others and into the room.

The soft beeping and rhythmic hum of the equipment next to Dan’s bed offered an air of calm in the dimly lit room. His blood pressure, heart and other vitals were monitored on the small screen above him. The doctor nodded to the nurse at Dan’s bedside, who moved an IV pole so Varner could get closer.

An oxygen tube was fixed to Dan’s swollen face, which was laced with cuts and bruises. His eyes were closed. Varner turned to Valachek, who nodded. Tilden stood at the other side holding a small recorder.

“Mr. Fulton. I’m Nick Varner with the FBI. Please, let us know if you can hear me?”

Nothing but stillness in the room, but then a slight change in hum of the monitoring equipment.

“There,” the nurse said. “He moved his right fingers.”

“Thank you, Dan.” Varner held up his phone. “I need your help with a few questions. Please, if you can, hold up one finger for yes, two for no. Do you remember what happened to you today?”

Slowly Dan’s right index finger lifted.

“Do you know the men who shot you?”

Dan lifted two fingers.

Varner cued up a photo on his camera.

“I’m going to show you picture number one. Can you tell me if this person was involved?”

Dan opened his eyes to Varner’s phone at a photo of Jerricko Blaine. Dan looked into the face long and hard as if searching for something more, something greater beyond it. After a long moment, nothing happened. He raised no fingers.

“Okay, I’ll show you picture number two.”

Varner showed him a photo of Jake Spencer. Again he and Tilden looked at Dan’s hand for a response, but nothing happened. Then the beeping of his monitor increased slightly.

“I don’t think we should proceed any further,” Valachek said.

“Just another moment, please.”

Varner cued up a third photo. This time, Dan shut his eyes and tears rolled down the side of his face as he moved his fingers. His index finger went up.

“Yes?” Varner was hopeful. “You recognize number three as the person who shot you?”

Then Dan extended his thumb at a forty-five-degree angle with his finger, confusing Varner, who looked to Tilden.

“A gun?” Tilden asked.

Dan lifted two fingers.

“I’m not sure what you’re trying to tell us, Dan,” Varner said.

Valachek’s eyes flicked to the monitor. The beeping was increasing.

“Maybe an… L ,” Tilden offered.

Dan lowered his thumb, leaving his index finger extended-that meant yes.

“ L for Lori ?” Varner asked.

Yes.

“You want to know about your wife and son?”

Dan moved his index finger for yes and the beeping increased.

“We’re searching for them. We believe we know where they are-”

The beeping got louder, faster.

“I’m ending this,” Valachek said as the beeping evolved into a loud squeal. “Out-now!” Valachek slammed a palm on the alarm button over the bed. “Susan, get the cart! He’s going into arrest!” She swiveled to face the investigators. “I said leave!”

Varner and Tilden left the room as emergency staff rushed in.

Springfield, Massachusetts

Through the image of his rifle scope, the sharpshooter locked on to the living room window of the one-story house on Eddywood.

The tree-lined street was deathly still, except for the chirping of birds and the quiet work of Springfield’s SWAT team. It was responding to a lead in the bank robbery abduction in Queens, New York, and Dan Fulton’s shooting in the Catskills.

New information concerning a looming attack somewhere in the United States pointed to a suspect in Springfield.

At the perimeter of the scene, FBI agent Marilyn Chase, from the Bureau’s Springfield office, was giving play-by-play updates over her phone to Nick Varner, the case agent.

At the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Virginia, operations officer Shane Hudson had connected more dots between the NSA intercepts from England and new incoming data from an array of top-secret networks in the US. He broke down the new analysis on the chatter by YLOI leaders in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Kuwait and, aided by security agents, they’d tracked calls to a key US suspect: Todd Dalir Ghorbani of Springfield, Massachusetts.

Ghorbani’s name had surfaced in several highly classified databases of potential terrorist suspects. He was thirty, an American citizen who was born in Tehran, Iran. He’d been a toddler when his parents had been killed in 1988, while traveling in a commercial jetliner traveling from Tehran to Dubai. A US warship had mistaken the aircraft for an enemy fighter, shooting it down with a guided missile over the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf.

“His relatives brought him to America to raise him after his parents were killed but they never told him the truth about the tragedy,” Chase told Varner. “Our cyber people say he found out three years ago while going through family papers after his adoptive father’s death.”

“That must’ve been a trigger for him,” Varner said.

“It was. The revelation traumatized him. He used an alias and began blogging about his story, finding sympathy with extremists, including Nazihah Samadyh. Our people say that she’d recruited him online.”

Ghorbani had a PhD in chemical engineering from MIT. He worked as a forensic scientist for a global company that specialized in investigating fire and explosion incidents around the world.

In examining the most recent chatter, the CIA and NSA tracked snatches of encrypted satellite phone transmissions between Ghorbani, Jake Spencer, Nazihah Samadyh and senior leaders of the YLOI in the Gulf and Middle East about “wedding plans” and the special gift from the “clock maker.”

The FBI’s ongoing execution of warrants tied Ghorbani and Spencer to Jerricko Blaine, Doug Gerard Kimmett and Adam Chisolm Patterson. However, no criminal history or fingerprints surfaced for either Kimmett or Patterson.

Drawing on further analysis of the chatter, US intelligence had now identified Ghorbani as the “clock maker” and that the wedding gift was a bomb that he’d constructed. More recent chatter involving Spencer’s satellite phone had been intentionally scrambled and was still indecipherable. NSA technicians would need more time to extract the content of the transmissions.

Given what local justice officials called “exigent circumstances,” law enforcement in Springfield took immediate action on Ghorbani’s home and work addresses.

An intense debate among the FBI and national security officials ensued on whether to release photos and information on all the suspects. Going public could force the suspects to halt their plans, go underground and destroy evidence, making it difficult for prosecution. Investigators pleaded for more time to capture their subjects before information was released.

Calls to numbers associated with Ghorbani went unanswered. At the plant where Ghorbani worked, his supervisor told investigators that he’d called in sick that morning. The option of using a ruse to lure Ghorbani outside his home and arrest him was considered but ruled out. The option of using a robot to breach the door, out of concern that explosives may be present, was ruled out as it removed the element of surprise.