Three Weeks in Washington, page 4
part #3 of Titus Ray Series
“No, that’s not all. As usual, you’ve jumped to a conclusion without having all the facts.”
“Is that right? Well, my father told me the exact same thing just a few hours ago. And I might as well tell you, when the Senator presented me with the facts, I still came to the same conclusion.”
I remembered Carlton had told me Mitchell had been in D.C. when the shooting occurred at the Navy Yard. If he’d been spending time with the Senator, then I certainly understood why he might want to take out his frustrations on Felipe.
“Were you enjoying some quality time with your father?”
He gave a short laugh. “Enjoyment is not a word I’d use to describe the breakfast my father and I had together this morning.”
“Did the Senator give you a hard time?”
He nodded. “Somehow, he’d heard the DDO had offered me a position as an analyst, and I’d turned it down so I could remain in Operations. Naturally, he still tried to convince me to reconsider.”
“I’m guessing he didn’t convince you.”
He shook his head. “No, and before I left his office, I made sure he knew I was on my way over to Langley to be briefed on a new assignment. It was gratifying to see how much that information galled him.”
“What’s the new assignment?”
“I never made it back to Langley to find out. Salazar called me a few minutes after I left the Senator’s office and told me to get over to the Command Center and hook up with Homeland Security.”
“Did Cartel Carlos give you any hints about your new assignment?”
“No, but ...” A look of understanding suddenly appeared on his face. “Does my new assignment have anything to do with why you’re back at Langley?”
“It does.”
“Did the DDO reinstate you?”
“He did.”
“Did Carlton give you some new intel about Clear Signal?”
“He did.”
“Does this new intel have anything to do with students running around Washington shooting people?”
“It does.”
Chapter 5
Douglas Carlton had called to tell me about the new intel less than a week after my arrival back in Norman. His phone call had interrupted an intimate dinner with a very beautiful woman.
“I’m calling about The Caracas Document.”
That had been it.
No greeting.
No “how are you?”
Nothing.
I didn’t have a clue as to what The Caracas Document was, but I wasn’t about to let him know that. Had I been alone, I might have tried harder to make a connection, but, when he’d called, I had been preoccupied by the sight of Detective Nikki Saxon sitting across from me.
When I finally realized he was calling about Agency business, I quickly excused myself from the table and walked out on the patio.
“What about The Caracas Document?” I asked.
“I found it very troubling, that’s what. Didn’t it disturb you when you read it?”
“Yes. Yes, it did.”
Just then, Stormy, my yellow lab, came over and dropped an orange tennis ball at my feet, and I picked it up and threw it out towards the lake located on my property. Afterward, I sat down in one of the Adirondack chairs on the patio and tried to concentrate on what Carlton was talking about.
He said, “I’m not as concerned about Roberto Montilla’s statements not matching up with the document, as I am by what he’s saying in the document itself.”
Finally, I realized The Caracas Document he was referencing must have been the name the Agency analysts had given to the statement Roberto had typed out for me at the safe house in Caracas.
Even though my interrogation of Roberto had been recorded, I’d given him a laptop and asked him to type out everything his Hezbollah contact, Rehman Zaidi, had told him.
Zaidi, who was a member of Hezbollah’s inner circle, had told him a lot.
He’d bragged about his relationship with the Iranian regime, and he’d claimed to know all about their plans to attack the U.S. with the chemical weapons Hezbollah had acquired.
When I’d given Roberto the laptop, he hadn’t put up much of a protest, and the last night at the safe house, he’d even stayed up late editing his document.
The next morning, he’d mentioned he’d added a few more details to his account, but since I’d been preparing for Ahmed’s visit, I hadn’t bothered reading a word of what he’d written the night before.
In the rush of wrapping up the operation, I’d given the laptop to Wylie, who’d promised to send the encrypted file to the Ops Center for analysis.
Evidently, according to Carlton’s statement, once the analysts had transcribed the tapes of Roberto’s interrogation and compared them with what he’d said in the written document, they’d discovered some discrepancies.
I decided it was time to confess I hadn’t actually read The Caracas Document.
“Full disclosure, Douglas. I never did get around to reading Roberto’s written record.”
“You didn’t read it?”
He sighed. It was a deep breathy sigh, and I felt certain he’d wanted me to hear it.
“I admit that surprises me, Titus. You’ve always been so insistent on knowing the minutiae of an operation.”
“Events got a little crazy at the safe house towards the end.”
“Oh, you mean when Ahmed was killed?”
“Yeah, that.”
“Then maybe your failure to read the document is understandable. Sometimes things get overlooked when situations go sideways during an operation. Of course, there was also that equipment failure when the Ops Center didn’t get an audio recording of what went down when Ahmed got shot.”
“That was regrettable.”
“It was.”
“I appreciate your understanding, Douglas.”
“I do understand, Titus. Make no mistake about that.”
At that moment, I knew Carlton wasn’t just talking about my failure to read The Caracas Document. Somehow, he’d figured out I hadn’t been the one to pull the trigger in the Ahmed shooting.
He knew I’d lied to him about the operation.
Stormy arrived back on the patio clutching the orange tennis ball in his mouth. He was soaking wet, and he gave me an accusatory look, as if he knew I’d deliberately thrown the ball in the lake.
Now, I regretted my actions and wondered how I could make it up to him.
I felt inside my pocket and pulled out a treat.
Once Stormy saw it, he quickly forgave me.
I doubted Carlton would do the same, with or without a treat.
* * * *
Mitchell listened carefully as I told him about the new intel I’d received from Carlton, but every once in awhile, I saw him glance over at the French doors just to make sure Felipe hadn’t managed to free himself from his restraints.
Although I told Mitchell about The Caracas Document, I didn’t mention I was having dinner with Nikki Saxon the night Carlton had called me. No one at the Agency knew about Nikki, and I planned to keep it that way as long as possible.
After summarizing the discrepancies the analysts had uncovered in The Caracas Document, I said, “When Roberto told us Hezbollah was embedding Muslim extremists in cities across the United States, Roberto failed to say why they were doing this.”
Mitchell shook his head. “I disagree. I distinctly remember Roberto saying the recruits had been trained in chemical weapons at that phony youth camp on Margarita Island, and Hezbollah was planning to use them to smuggle the canisters across the border and into the United States.”
I nodded. “That’s what he told us verbally, but then he added more details to that statement in the document itself. He said some of those recruits would be used to perform other tasks before the chemical weapons were used on the population.”
“What did he mean by that?”
“He said a few of them would be asked to make dummy runs as passengers on airlines, while others would be told to probe security reactions when a city’s power grid went down or when a bunch of people were killed in a movie theater. And then, in order to test law enforcement’s potential reaction to the event itself, some would be asked to make the ultimate sacrifice before a major operation.”
Mitchell thought about what I’d said. “You mean they’d be asked to give their lives in order to carry out a dress rehearsal?”
“That’s what Roberto wrote in the document.”
Mitchell glanced over at Carlton’s study again.
“Is that what you think Felipe and his friend were doing at the Navy Yard this morning? They were there to martyr themselves at Hezbollah’s request?”
“That’s what I think.”
He shook his head. “I can’t believe—”
“Wait a minute, Ben. Before you disagree with me, hear me out. The other big discrepancy found in The Caracas Document was what Roberto told us about Hezbollah using chemical weapons on several key cities in the U.S. In the document, Roberto said they weren’t targeting several cities. He said they had their sights on just one city. That city was Washington, D.C.”
Mitchell thought about what I’d said for a moment, and then he slowly nodded his head. “Okay. I get it now. When you heard about the shooting at the Navy Yard this morning, you thought the two shooters were part of some advance team being used to gauge how law enforcement would react to a terrorist event around the Beltway.”
I nodded. “You saw the massive response to the shooting incident this morning. There were hundreds of officers from Naval Security, the Metro Police, Capitol Police, FBI; not to mention all their SWAT teams, plus the helicopters and tactical teams on the rooftops. Didn’t you notice how all of them were concentrated within a six-square-block perimeter?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. Are you saying it was overkill?”
“I’m saying anyone watching the news feed this morning was given a lesson on what might happen if a couple of shooters showed up anywhere in the D.C. area.”
Mitchell rubbed his forehead as if he had a massive headache. “You’re right. The response teams this morning would have been sitting ducks if someone had decided to introduce sarin gas into that scene.”
“And think about—”
Before I could finish my thought, my Agency phone vibrated, and when I saw the caller ID, I answered it immediately.
“They’re looking for you,” Carlton said.
“Already? They must have found my Range Rover.”
“No. I took care of your vehicle. It’s sitting over here in the Agency’s west parking lot right now.”
“Did they identify me because of the CCTV cameras in the area?”
As soon as I mentioned the cameras, Mitchell gave me a disgusted look and got to his feet.
“No. It was Frank Benson.”
“Benson? He actually took some initiative? Good for him.”
“I was told the agent who got you through the 9th Street gate phoned Frank when you didn’t show up at the Command Center. She said you’d made some flimsy excuse to stay behind once you were inside the compound. Evidently, she also told Frank you weren’t very friendly toward her.”
I decided to ignore what Renee thought about my personality. It wasn’t relevant, and besides, Carlton knew what she said couldn’t possibly be true.
“How much time do we have?”
“You need to wrap things up there pretty quick. I’m bringing some friends of mine from DHS out to The Meadows in about two hours.”
“Two hours? How can I possibly extract all this man’s secrets in two hours?”
“Use your winsome personality.”
* * * *
The moment I hung up, I told Mitchell the Department of Homeland Security would be arriving at The Meadows to take Felipe into custody and escort him back to Washington.
Mitchell, who’d been pacing back and forth in front of the patio table, looked over at me. “Are you sure they’re not coming out here to take us into custody?”
“I’m sure.”
“Weren’t you also sure there were no CCTV cameras at the Navy Yard?”
“Right now, the only thing we need to be concerned about is how to get Felipe to talk to us before Carlton and his company arrive.”
“Did I hear you say we’ve only got two hours to get that done?”
“That’s right. Anything about Felipe jump out at you?”
On our run into Caracas together, I’d observed how good Mitchell had been at reading people, and while it had been disconcerting when he’d pointed things out about me, his ability had been useful when we’d interrogated Roberto Montilla.
He shook his head. “One thing’s for sure. He doesn’t seem to be grieving over his partner’s death.”
I walked over and stared at Felipe through the small glass panes in the French doors. He appeared to be extremely uncomfortable in the wingback chair where Mitchell had restrained him.
However, unlike most Jihadists I’d seen in similar situations, he looked defeated, and there was no fire in his eyes when he saw me staring at him.
I walked back over to Mitchell.
“There’s not much fight in him. When you were at the Command Center with DHS, did you pick up anything about the other shooter?”
He shook his head. “Not much. They put me over in a corner of their trailer with a couple of FBI guys and told all of us to stay out of their way. The only thing I heard them say was that Valario had probably had some weapons training, and he was a good marksman.”
I thought back to when I’d first seen Felipe with the rifle. “I’m not so sure that’s true of him.”
“Maybe it’s time we took a look at the backpack he was carrying.”
I nodded. “You’re right. While I’d prefer one of the guys from the bomb squad examine it first, there might be something in there we could use to get Felipe to talk.”
Both of us were quiet for a few seconds.
Finally I said, “Give me the keys to the Suburban. I’ll go take a look at it.”
Mitchell dangled the car keys in front of me and didn’t say a word.
Apparently, he wasn’t about to volunteer to handle the backpack himself.
Had he offered, I wouldn’t have let him do it anyway.
He probably knew that.
That’s what I told myself.
Chapter 6
I took some precautions before opening up Felipe’s backpack. First, I drove the SUV away from the house and parked it further down the road. Second, I made sure I had a clear pathway away from the vehicle, just in case I saw something inside the bag—something with a timing device attached to it—and I needed to make a quick run for it.
Although I hadn’t jogged in years, I knew I could set a record in the 100-meter dash, especially if I were trying to outrun an exploding backpack.
Having done everything I could to protect Gladys’ magnificent house and my fragile body, I placed the backpack in the drainage ditch beside the car and loosened the straps.
Seconds before lifting the flap, I voiced a short prayer.
It wasn’t an instinctive act on my part, and, until recently, I’d never uttered a single prayer in my life.
However, while hiding out from the Iranian secret police in Tehran, I’d been forced to live for three months with some Iranian Christians. That experience had changed my life. Their faith and commitment to the teachings of Christ had sparked a feeling of discontentment in me and had fueled my own desire to have the same sort of peace they exhibited.
Shortly before being smuggled out of Iran, I’d made my own decision to follow Christ, and the first prayer I’d ever prayed had been the words Javad, my host, had told me to repeat after him.
Now, my words were just as simple. “God, I’d like to go on living, but if it’s my time to go, please make it quick and easy.”
I lifted the flap and peered inside.
Seconds later, with one quick motion, I turned around and started to sprint away.
But then, I stopped and took another look inside the bag.
What I’d assumed were bricks of Semtex—a pliable plastic explosive—turned out to be several large bags of compressed heroin. Ultimately, though, what had caused me to take a second look inside the backpack had been something I hadn’t seen there.
I hadn’t seen a cell phone or a trigger device.
While it was entirely possible for someone to detonate Semtex using a different device, most terrorists used a cell phone to trigger the explosive material. There wasn’t a cell phone inside the bag, nor had Felipe had one on him when I’d frisked him at the Navy Yard.
In addition to the missing cell phone, I’d also noticed items in the shooter’s bag that didn’t seem to belong there.
There were at least a dozen small bags of cookies, a box of crackers, some potato chips, and an assortment of oranges, apples, and bananas, plus several bottles of water.
I lifted one of the packs of heroin—wrapped in yellowed wax paper—out of the bag and looked it over. It probably weighed about a kilo. I quickly estimated the street value of the four packs of heroin at around a million dollars.
Had I been wrong about the shooters? Was the Navy Yard shooting just another drug deal gone bad?
My gut said no, and my gut premonition—as Carlton liked to call it—was seldom wrong.
It wasn’t always right either.
* * * *
I drove back up to the house, and, as I entered the foyer, I found Mitchell just coming out of Carlton’s study.
I nodded towards the door. “Everything okay in there?”
“Everything’s fine. I told Arkady to keep an eye on Felipe while I came out to check on you.”
He gestured toward the backpack in my hand. “I see you survived.”
“It was a harrowing experience, but I made it through.” I tossed the backpack over to him. “Take a look inside.”
He sat down on a wooden bench in the entryway and placed the bag on the floor between his legs.
He looked up at me after examining its contents, and I could tell he was beginning to question whether my suppositions about the two shooters were correct.
