Black Flagged Apex

Chapter 14





12:57 AM

National Counterterrorism Center

Washington, D.C.



Special Agent Sharpe hung up the phone and stood up from his desk. Frank Mendoza gave him one of his patented raised eyebrows looks. For a moment, he stared past his friend at the NCTC watch floor. All of the displays full of information, maps and charts gave the impression that they were on top of the situation. Analysts and technicians moved back and forth between stations, trading conversations, which to the untrained eye would appear to be a good sign of productive activity. Sharpe knew better.

The watch floor had been designed to keep analysts and agents at their well-separated workstations, where they could work relatively undisturbed, while still maintaining the critical "we all sink or swim" aura. Most of the agents filling temporary stations were tech savvy and figured out how to make use of the NCTC system within the first few hours of taking their posts. The fact that even the NCTC analysts were out of their chairs meant they didn't have enough to propel the investigation forward. The information passed to him through several phone calls would only make matters worse.

"It's not good, Frank. They lost the van. Disappeared into thin air along with Hamid Muhammad. All right in front of the FBI team assigned to watch the mosque," Sharpe said.

"We had people on that team?" Frank said.

"The Newark field office ran the stakeout. I just spoke with the senior agent at the site, Janice Riehms. Top-notch agent. Sounds like she ran it by the book, but they suffered from some kind of major cyber-electronics attack during the breakout. Completely compromised their communications and digital feed. She said they've never seen anything like this before. All of their vehicles were sent in the wrong direction. She mentioned something about their cell phones being rerouted too. Headquarters is sending a cyber-operations team to Newark to investigate their systems for further evidence of a breach. They're concerned about the level of sophistication demonstrated by this attack."

"Any good news?" Mendoza said.

"Three dead terrorist suspects were found in the mosque. The Newark field office suspects that this was Hamid Muhammad's next batch of recruits."

"Any chance this was the missing cell?"

"No such luck. This is a major setback. Now we have the most radical Imam in America loose with his last terrorist cell. Unf*cking real. I need to brief the team. We may have to concentrate more on our True America leads."

"What leads?" Mendoza asked.

"We'll have to start turning over information on every member of True America associated with their militant arm. Anyone ever seen in public or private sector with Jackson Greely or Lee Harding. Maybe we can find a connection to the delivery address in Harrisburg. Right now all we have there is a burned-down house in foreclosure. The owners moved to Florida over a year ago and don't appear connected in any way."

"This is all very thin," Mendoza remarked.

"Tell me about it. If we don't produce something by tomorrow morning, we'll start to have visitors. High-ranking visitors."