Violence of Action, page 12
They’re watching you . . . surveilling you right now, the voice in his head warned.
Let them watch, he fired back, silently arguing with himself. I’m just a Muslim man visiting an Afghan import shop to buy some spices.
He exhaled, relaxed his jaw, and walked up to the entrance of the modest ground-level storefront. The trilingual sign above the door displayed Afghan Importers: Spices & Goods in English, Arabic, and Pashto. Bells jingled and rang as he pulled the shop door open. A fragrant aroma hit him a heartbeat later. Notes of cumin, coriander, turmeric, black pepper, cardamom, clove, and paprika—the principal spices of Afghan curry—flooded his nostrils. As he inhaled the savory mélange, a powerful wave of nostalgia washed over him and a once-forgotten childhood memory of his mother cooking and laughing with his sister, Saida, filled his mind.
“As-salāmu alaykum,” a middle-aged man of medium stature said, walking up to greet him, ruining the flashback. The man was dressed modestly in a gray sweater and blue jeans and kept a full but neat pepper-gray beard.
“Wa-Alaikum As-salām,” he replied.
“May I help you?” the shopkeeper asked in Pashto.
“Yes, I’m looking to buy some spices.”
“You have certainly come to the right place, my friend,” the man said, flashing him a mouthful of tea-stained teeth. “We sell bulk spices and blends. What are you looking for?”
“I’d like five hundred grams of the Anousheh blend,” he said and saw a flicker of something chase across the man’s face at the mention of the al Qadar code word.
“This is a very special blend that originated in the Pashto region, not known by many people. Very spicy and very delicious. Are you from the region?”
“Yes, my mother was from Mihtarlam and she was an excellent cook,” he said, adhering to the challenge-response script he’d memorized to validate his identity and gain access to the secret operation in the basement.
“Ah, yes, I know this place,” the shopkeeper said, nodding, and then asked Qasim a third and final challenge question. “In the town center, there is a sculpture if I’m not mistaken. Have you ever seen it?”
“Yes, it is twenty meters tall, so difficult to miss. At the pinnacle, there’s a globe with an eagle perched on top,” Qasim said and watched the shopkeeper’s shoulders relax as they completed the protocol.
“Come,” the man said and waved for Qasim to follow. “I wish to show you where the spices are blended.”
Qasim strode after the man, careful not to bump into the merchandise displays crammed into the tightly packed store. In addition to spices, the little shop sold most everything one might find in a typical Afghan bazaar—handmade jewelry and trinkets, scarfs, pakol caps, Quran boxes, charms and keychains, and chai sets. The shopkeeper disappeared behind a maroon-colored curtain that hung in an opening at the rear of the shop beyond the cash register. Qasim had to duck his head under the curtain rod to pass through the low doorway. When he emerged on the other side, he locked eyes with a young Muslim sitting in a chair in the corner holding a semiautomatic pistol in his lap. He did not recognize the young man glowering at him, but why would he? The truth was, he knew little about the breadth of the al Qadar network and how many soldiers the terrorist prince had enlisted in his ranks. Admitting to himself how little he really knew about Hamza’s army and all his master’s plans made Qasim feel out of his league.
He nodded at the glowering man with the gun, who didn’t reciprocate any goodwill, and returned his attention to the shopkeeper.
“This way,” his host said and gestured to a dark cement staircase leading down to a cellar.
Qasim had to hunch and duck his head all the way down because of the low sloping ceiling. He took his time, not wanting to miss a step as his eyes were still trying to adjust to the blackness. At the bottom, they stopped at a small landing beside a metal door. The shopkeeper used his body to block Qasim’s view while he entered a six-digit code into a keypad. An instant later, the keypad beeped, and he heard the lock mechanism disengage. The shopkeeper pulled the door open and stepped to the side to give Qasim room to pass.
“When you are ready to leave, ring the buzzer on the inside of the door and I will escort you out,” the shopkeeper said.
Qasim nodded but his attention had already moved on. He counted a half dozen black hats working in a space lit almost exclusively by the glow of the computer monitors they were seated behind.
“Gazaaa!” a familiar voice exclaimed loudly as Qasim stepped into the room, the shopkeeper shutting the door behind him.
“Fun Time?” Qasim said, shocked to see the Chinese Uyghur hacker he’d worked with during his first prolonged engagement with al Qadar in Pakistan. Truth be told, Qasim was surprised to see the exuberant black hat alive. “I thought you . . .”
“You thought I dead?” Fun Time said in heavily accented English. Then, with a laugh, added, “I told you last time, I’m a badass Uyghur from Turkestan. No way no how no Navy SEALs ever catch me.”
Qasim chuckled and walked up to shake the hacker’s hand, but the stout Uyghur wanted a fist bump instead.
“Welcome to my operation,” Fun Time said, his head bobbing to what Qasim could only imagine was some imaginary beat track playing in the kid’s head. Qasim followed Fun Time’s extended index finger as he introduced the other hackers in the room. “That’s Tweem, Gru, Abdul, Kimchi Love, and The Prophet.”
They were all men except for Kimchi Love, a young woman in a black hijab who looked to be of Malaysian descent. Only Abdul acknowledged Qasim’s existence with a nod; the others ignored him completely as they typed away at their workstations, which were arranged in a horseshoe configuration. On the far wall at the bowl end of the horseshoe, three large flat-screen TVs mirrored select monitor feeds.
“Looks like you have quite the operation running here,” Qasim said, following Fun Time into the middle of the horseshoe where he could see all their screens.
“I’ve been waiting for you for long time, Qasim,” Fun Time said unwrapping a lollipop and popping it into his mouth. “Where you been?”
“Doing my job,” Qasim said, not liking the insinuation implicit in the hacker’s question.
“Hamza tell me your Facebook idea. It’s good. We make it happen yesterday. We do like Russia, fuck the Americans on social media. Make them so crazy,” he said with a grin that would have made the Cheshire cat proud.
“You’re certain the Americans can’t trace the Facebook account to us here?” Qasim asked.
“I never certain,” Fun Time said, talking with the ball of his lollipop stretching out the side of his cheek “That’s what make it fun time.”
Ah, so that’s where the nickname came from, Qasim thought, smiling and shaking his head.
“If you say so,” he said and scanned the monitors of the other hackers to try to glean what they were doing. From a cursory sweep, every one of them was working on something different. “What are you guys working on?”
“Many things. Gru trying to hack USCENTCOM. Tweem building a database of all American Navy SEALs, where they live, who they marry, where they deployed, and hacking email and accounts. Abdul and The Prophet phishing at big defense contractors, and Kimchi Love running fake Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram operation. Multiprong attack, baby.”
Qasim could not help but marvel at what he was seeing. Yes, he was a professional programmer. Yes, he was in charge of avionics software integration for the Valkyrie stealth UCAV program at British Aero. But he was no black hat. What these people did down here in the basement of “Afghan Importers” was as foreign to him as playing cricket would be to a basketball player.
“Hey, tall guy, you pay attention now,” the hacker said, waving his lollipop at Qasim. “Hamza like your idea. He wants a big PsyOps job from us. But he also want more.”
“Okay, what do you need from me?” he asked.
“Hamza wants to hack America drones. He wants to track them. He wants to hijack the data stream. Every op they use a drone we can influence.”
Qasim shook his head. “We tried that before, remember? We couldn’t crack the security on the satellite feed.”
“You are programming drones for British Aero?” Fun Time asked.
“Yes, but I program the avionics software. I have nothing to do with uplink and downlink data transmission or ground unit command and control.”
“Hey, buddy, you smart, you go figure out.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Qasim said, his voice a tight chord. “If I start snooping around areas outside of my responsibility, it’s going to raise red flags. The program is tightly compartmentalized. I don’t have unfettered access to all information.”
Fun Time bit the ball of his lollipop in half with a loud crack and growled, “Then get me access to British Aero servers and I do it myself.”
Qasim had never seen the ebullient hacker angry before. “And how, exactly, am I supposed to do that?”
The hacker reached into his pocket and retrieved a USB thumb drive. “Insert in any computer behind firewall, open zip file, and install program. I do rest from here.”
“What if they trace it back to me?” he said, accepting the hacker’s cyber hand grenade.
Fun Time laughed and clapped Qasim on the shoulder. “Relax, okay. You can do it. This is fun time, remember?”
“Maybe for you,” Qasim murmured as he grudgingly shoved the USB key in his pocket. Just the thought of trying to smuggle the hacker’s Trojan horse into British Aero sent fresh, twin rivulets of cold sweat streaming down from his underarms as he turned to leave. When he reached the metal door, he pressed the buzzer just as he’d been instructed to do. A moment later the door opened and the shopkeeper greeted him with that toothy tea-stained smile of his.
“Time to go?” the man asked in Pashto.
Qasim nodded and followed him up the concrete stairwell, this time bumping his head on the low ceiling and then cursing himself for being distracted. When they reached the top, he didn’t even bother glancing at the young sentry with the pistol. And why should he? This man was beneath him, nothing more than a guard dog. The shopkeeper pulled back the curtain leading to the store and a blaze of light made Qasim squint hard and reflexively raise a hand in front of his face.
“This is for you,” the shopkeeper said and handed Qasim a plastic shopping bag.
“What is it?” he asked, accepting the sack.
“Spices, of course,” the man said with a cautious smile. “You don’t go shopping here and leave empty-handed. That would be suspicious.”
Qasim thanked the man and let himself out.
I really need to get my head in the game, he thought, silently chastising himself for not thinking of that as he turned north on Greenfield Road. Because things are about to get much, much more dangerous.
CHAPTER 13
joint special operations compound
northeast corner of the joint air base erbil
erbil, iraq
Chunk paced the tiny break room like a caged tiger at the zoo.
“Dude, what are you doing?” Riker said from the sofa where he was playing a game on a Nintendo Switch.
“Pacing,” Chunk said.
“I can see that, but what’s lighting this particular fire under your ass?”
“Just waiting on the spooks to get us a target, bro . . . I don’t understand what’s taking so long. I mean these assholes couldn’t have gone far. Seriously, what’s so difficult?”
“Damn it,” Riker growled, and Chunk heard the sound effect for Riker’s character dying in the game. “You killed me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You distracted me.”
“I thought you were a steely-eyed frogman who was incapable of being distracted?”
“Let’s go for a run,” Riker said, tossing the Switch console onto the cushion next to him. “We could both use it.”
“I don’t wanna go on a run.”
“Yes, you do. Hell, you’ve probably paced three miles already; what’s another couple at speed?”
Chunk sighed. “You’re probably right. A run would clear my head.”
Riker popped to his feet. “I’m dressed and ready, how ’bout you?”
“Yeah, let me just grab a ball cap,” Chunk said and followed Riker out of the break room toward their temporary berth at the end of the hall.
“Hey, Chunk,” a voice called behind him, “you got a second?”
He turned to see Watts leaning halfway into the hallway from the office she was squatting in while they were here.
“Sure,” he replied. “Whatcha got, Heels?”
She didn’t answer just beckoned him with a come-hither curl of her fingers and disappeared back into her office. He followed her inside, leaving Riker leaning against the door frame looking in. On her desk, Chunk saw she had a hand-drawn pencil sketch of a man’s face.
“This is the picture Edwards drew for me of the man with the ruined face,” she said and handed him the drawing.
He’d heard plenty about the whole comic art fiasco, so when he saw this picture his first reaction was to chuckle. But on closer inspection, he changed his tune. The headshot sketch, while still graphic novelesque in its flair, was pretty damn good. “This ain’t half bad,” he said, holding it up to show Riker.
“Shit, that’s good even for Edwards,” his LCPO agreed.
Chunk handed the paper back to her. “Helluva lot better than anything the rest of us could draw. Lucky he was the one to shoot this dude, I guess.”
“Yeah, it’s a huge improvement over what I had before. He really tried to give me what I asked for,” she said, not taking the page from him and instead gesturing for him to hold on to it. “Please take a long, hard look at it, Chunk, and tell me if the face looks familiar. You too, Riker. You said before that you guys breached from the same side of the safe house as Edwards, right?”
“Yeah,” he said looking at the sketch. “Truth is, I didn’t really see this guy until after Edwards capped him,” Riker said.
“How about you, Chunk? Do you recognize this face? Does it look like the man you saw?”
Chunk shook his head and set the paper down on the desk. “It was pop, pop, pop and over. Sorry, Watts, I wish I could be more helpful.”
She nodded, propped her hands on her hips, and stared hard at it. “I took a digital photo of it and ran it through the database, but I think it’s a little too generic. I’m getting too many returns,” she said, deflating. “I just wish there was some way to take this and turn it into a photo-realistic CGI image.”
Chunk scratched at his neck. “I might know a guy . . .”
She looked up to meet his gaze. “Really?”
“Yeah,” he said, slow-nodding. “Did you happen to meet our new neighbors on the Tier One compound at MacDill before we deployed?”
“You mean the people working in that crappy trailer they brought in and set up on the other side of our little redneck barbecue courtyard?”
“Yep,” he said.
“Can’t say that I have. Who are they by the way?”
A conspiratorial smile curled his lips. “They don’t exist . . .”
“Uh-huh,” she said and folded her arms across her chest. “Sorta like this unit doesn’t exist.”
“Exactly . . . but way beyond JSOC-level secrecy. These dudes don’t exist even at the highest levels of government. They are deep, deep dark.”
“So, you’re not going to tell me who they are? Is that what you’re saying?”
He chuckled. “Shit, I’m not sure I’m fully read in on these guys. Me, Riker, Saw, and Trip have done a couple of righteous ops with them. I’m surprised we haven’t augmented them on anything since you got here, to be honest.”
“Probably because we’ve been a little busy, Chunk—or haven’t you noticed?”
“Oh, they don’t care about that,” Chunk said, remembering how he and his guys had once been pulled out of high-tempo combat operations to augment a black op into Iran. It seemed like both forever ago and just last week.
“Is it some sort of blacker than black, off-the-books task force?”
“Yeah. They’re called Task Force Ember. Super elite. Tiny footprint. You’ll like them. Hell, I probably shouldn’t introduce you or they’ll try to poach you from us.”
She smiled and shook her head. “I doubt it, but go on . . . you think they can help me with my facial rec problem?”
“If anybody can, they can,” he said. “You got your secure sat phone on you?”
She didn’t answer just squatted down behind the desk to root through her backpack and after a few seconds handed him the phone.
He dialed a number from memory. The call connected on the first ring and a serious male voice answered: “Ember Security Systems, Limited.”
“Ian Baldwin, please,” he said.
“Who’s calling?”
“Lieutenant Commander Keith Redman.”
“Just a moment,” the voice said. He heard three clicks on the line and then the elevator music rendition of “Margaritaville” began to play.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“It’s the little things,” he said, shaking his head and laughing. “You’ll see when you meet them.”
Several minutes passed, then three more clicks on the line.
