Black Flagged Apex

Chapter 10





9:11 PM

National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC)

McLean, Virginia



Sharpe sat in a chair next to Special Agent Hesterman, vying for room to examine his screen. Even with three wide-screen monitors at the station, there was little room for him to see around Hesterman. He wasn't even sure how O'Reilly could see the screens through the massive agent. He must have been a linebacker at Michigan.

"Eric, can you shift about thirty feet to the left? I can't see the screen on the right."

O'Reilly immediately laughed. "How do you think I feel?"

"I feel like I'm being harassed again," Hesterman said, staring intently at the screen.

"Bring it up with the director if you're not happy. I hear he's looking for an agent-intern to work out of his office. Be a great career move," Sharpe said.

"Shit. I'd rather lick one of these crime scenes clean than hang out in his office for the day," Hesterman said.

"Speaking of crime scenes. Anything new with any of the addresses?"

"Well, I might have something. One of the new addresses is different. It's a small apartment with only one occupant listed on the lease, and Mr. Abdul Mohammed Abusir was not found with his brains adorning the walls."

"That makes two missing terrorist cells," O'Reilly stated.

"And still no sign of the virus canisters. Wonderful," Sharpe muttered.

"Whoever hit Al Qaeda didn't leave a trace, beyond Mr. Grimes removing his mask in front of our cameras," O'Reilly said.

"Still no sign of Grimes?"

"Negative. We're watching his house and the Best Buy in Union, New Jersey. I think half of the customers in the Union store right now are federal employees. The phone tap on his house hasn't produced anything useful. His wife has placed several worried calls to friends and family, but nothing that would indicate that she knows his current location. We're checking out anyone she called for a possible connection to True America," O'Reilly said.

"This is not good. Shelby's been all over me to make some progress here. If we don't shake something loose soon, I might consider…"

One of the screens at the workstation suddenly displayed an incoming high-level alert, which stopped him from completing his sentence. The appearance of the message coincided with the buzzing of the NCTC mobile phone on his hip. He could hear several nearby phones buzzing, especially O'Reilly's, which was sitting on the workstation desk. Oddly enough, the buzzing was almost equally as annoying as the ring tones he had forbidden within the watch floor. Another damn "emergency alert," the thirtieth of the day that the White House situation room had relayed, containing information they already knew or didn't need to know. At least they were actively participating, instead of simply demanding updates all day.

"It's started!" yelled one of the NCTC analysts at a nearby station.

"Homeland Security just received an alert from the Morris County Sheriff's Department. The pump station at Mount Arlington was attacked by three suspects at roughly 8:45 PM. The suspects killed two Mount Arlington police officers stationed in the parking lot and one Morris County SWAT officer before they were gunned down and killed by SWAT. Two Morris County Utilities technicians were found shot inside the pump station. They found three of the canisters at the scene."

The room burst into a hectic cacophony of questions and phone calls as Sharpe read the rest of the report.

"The canisters were empty. Jesus," he said, turning around to face the Homeland Security station. "The canisters are empty!" he said to Salvador Guerrero, Homeland's NCTC liaison.

"They know. Everyone's already moving on this. DHS, FEMA, Homeland…everyone," Guerrero said.

"Eric, inform Agent Moriarty immediately. I want one of our investigative teams out there as soon as possible. Dana, put me in touch with whoever is in charge at the scene. We need to make sure they know this is our show. They've lost officers, and emotions will be running high. I need them to preserve the evidence for our own crime scene techs."

He reread the dispatch on the screen, but didn't see any reference to the suspects' physical characteristics. O'Reilly spun her chair to face Sharpe.

"I have Lieutenant David McKay on the line. You can pick up the call on your phone," she said and spun back around.

He took his phone out of the holster on his belt and pressed the green button to accept the transferred call.

"Lieutenant McKay, this is Ryan Sharpe with the FBI. I'm in charge of the task force responsible for finding the rest of the canisters and preventing more attacks. I'm really sorry for the loss of your men. I can't imagine how devastating this will be to the families involved. Let me know if there is anything I can do in the future to make sure they're taken care of. This is technically a federal operation, and I want to make sure they get the proper recognition. I don't know what to say beyond that," Sharpe said.

"Thank you, Agent Sharpe. I'll take you up on that offer if necessary, and I appreciate the fact that you didn't start off the conversation telling me how I'm no longer in charge here."

"I can't tell you how relieved I was to hear that we had a lieutenant on scene. I can't go into details, but I need the scene preserved. I'm sending one of our crime scene units and several investigators out to the pump station. Right now I need to know if the suspects looked Arab."

"The only way these three could look more Arab was if they had wrapped towels around their heads. They look like stand-ins for the 9/11 hijackers. Why wouldn't they look Arab?"

"I can't talk about that right now. Thank you, Lieutenant. I wish we could have headed off this attack. I feel terrible for the families of the men lost tonight."

"Men and women. One of the Mount Arlington officers was married with three kids. She and her partner were riddled with bullets sitting in their cruiser. F*cking savages," McKay said.

"Savages indeed. It's going to be a long night. Thank you in advance for the hospitality out there. I wish it were under better circumstances."

"Me too. I'll keep an eye out for your people."

The call disconnected, and Sharpe patted Hesterman's right shoulder.

"How are we doing?"

"Moriarty is assembling the team as we speak. She hopes to have them out there before 10:30. She's keeping Demir in Newark to continue working Al Qaeda."

"Good. Mount Arlington might generate a lead, but it will likely direct us right back to Newark. I still haven't heard a word from Justice about getting people inside the mosque. My biggest concern right now is that this attack may have just made our jobs even more difficult. There's no way the White House will be able to contain this. They'll have to declare Morris County a disaster area and go door to door to keep people from drinking the water. I don't know how they're going to figure that out."

"Kind of makes our job not seem so bad," O'Reilly said.

"Except we'll be the ones that get blamed for not stopping the attack, or any future attacks," he said.

Salvador Guerrero had managed to sneak beside them unnoticed. His voice startled Sharpe.

"They can shove the blame right up the administration's ass. One car with two officers guarding the pump station? What the f*ck do they expect?"

"They're looking at too many points of vulnerability to guard. Water towers. Pipelines. Some towns have multiple pump stations. Every law enforcement officer in America would be occupied. The president activated the National Guard and Army Reserve, but the attack came too fast," Sharpe said.

"They could have directed state and local authorities to properly defend these sites while the Guard and Reserves mobilized. Wait until you see what happens next. Once this hits the media, they'll start stationing infantry platoons at each site. Standby for operation knee jerk. This is going to be a complete fiasco by the time we wake up tomorrow."

"Who said we'd be going to sleep?" Sharpe said.

"Good point. Let me know if there's anything I can do on my end. The best we can do is figure out how to stop the next imminent attack. There's still one more terrorist cell missing," Guerrero said.

"We're still missing fifty-five canisters. I hate to say it, but one missing Al Qaeda cell is the least of our problems," Sharpe said.

"True. But I get the feeling we'll have some time before we have to worry about the majority of those canisters. The cell that hit Mount Arlington either panicked and struck early, or was given last minute orders based on the near elimination of the entire network. My money is on the latter option. The remaining cell could be out there right now casing their target…or targets."

"Hopefully, we'll get something from Mount Arlington that will put the last Al Qaeda cell out of business, so we can concentrate on the extent of True America's involvement," Sharpe said.

"You know that group better than anyone in this room. If True America is involved, we have an even bigger problem. Only God himself knows what they might have planned for those canisters."

"My hope is that they plan to hand the canisters over to the government. The best-case scenario is that they orchestrated this as a huge publicity stunt to show the American people that they are truly America's new heroes. We have an election year coming up, and the word on the street is that they are consolidating political power to make a move in 2008."

"What's the worst-case scenario?" Guerrero said.

"The worst-case scenario is they are planning to destabilize the country through terrorism."

"Which one is your money on?"

"Somewhere between the two, leaning toward the worst-case scenario. True America's spin-doctors have done a great job distancing the movement's public face from the group's original founders. Just five years ago, Jackson Greely and Lee Harding regularly took to the streets decrying government tyranny and demanding a quick, violent overthrow. We found literature published by these two going back decades. They've been on Uncle Sam's radar for a long time as domestic terrorist threats. Over the past three to four years, the two have faded into the sunset, orchestrated by the more savvy visible leadership currently cruising around the country in their True America tour buses."

"Why would they agree to step down if this was their movement from the beginning?"

"My sources say they haven't stepped down from anything, aside from the podium. True America's political action arm takes in millions of dollars in grass-roots donations every month. There's a sea of people hungry for the kind of change at the core of True America's manifesto, but Greely and Harding's visions of a violent overthrow kept the organization pinned to the ground. Wallets have a tendency to snap shut when either of those two appears in front of the True America banner. If Greely or Harding is behind the theft of the virus canisters, I wouldn't expect True America to hand them over in an expression of good will."

His cell phone buzzed in his hand, and he glanced at the message on its screen.

"Any word on the mosque request?" read the message sent from Callie Stewart.

Sharpe glanced up at the black metal catwalk and saw Stewart leaning on the rail, smiling down on him from a distance and waving with her phone. He shook his head and typed a quick response. He hadn't heard anything from Justice. Two additional requests had been sent up through their NCTC liaison, but nothing had come back. Maybe the recent attack on the Mount Arlington pump station would loosen their interpretations of the Patriot Act. He looked up at Stewart again, secretly wishing he could authorize her to send some of Sanderson's operatives into the mosque. He hated himself for thinking this, but he had an extremely bad feeling about the next few days. Mount Arlington had the potential to be the very beginning of a national nightmare.

He felt slightly lucky at the moment. There was little they could have done to prevent the attack, and the emergency response was out of his hands. He didn't envy the task lying ahead for the state and federal agencies responsible for safeguarding the lives of the citizens who might have been exposed to the contaminated water from the Mount Arlington station. His job was to prevent the next attack.