Black Flagged Apex

Chapter 15





4:22 AM

Corner of East 4th Street and Hobart Ave.

Bayonne, New Jersey



Special Agent Damon Katsoulis opened the front passenger door of the suburban and stepped out into the chilly air. A stiff breeze from the Upper Bay rustled through the young trees across the street, carrying a hint of saltiness over the pollution spewing into the air from the industrial wasteland that defined Bayonne's southeastern tip. Task Force Scorpion's Tactical Group sat quietly in several positions within the neighborhood, waiting for agent Katsoulis's command to pounce on apartment #2B at 98 Hobart Ave. He jogged over to the street corner and joined two tactical agents leaned up against a gray brick storefront that looked like it had been boarded up for years. Weeds poked through the concrete on both sides of the store.

"Anything unusual?" he asked.

"Negative," the agent closest to the corner said. "My only concern is the lighting situation for the approach. There are several industrial-grade sodium lamps directly across from the target building at the back entrance gate to Hamm Brands. Nothing we can do about those, unless we try to contact security at Hamm and get them to douse the lights."

"No. We have an hour until dawn and even less time until civil twilight. We need to hit them now. They'll be up for prayer in thirty minutes or so," Katsoulis said.

"We won't be exposed for long. I'm just concerned that they might have a lookout posted. Two of the apartment windows face the street. Luckily, we have two healthy trees on the street corner in front of the building that partially obscure those windows."

"All right. Two-minute warning," he said.

Katsoulis reached up to his vest and depressed a button that opened his communication channel to the team leaders.

"Back Door, this is Lead. Two-minute warning for the approach. Advise when in position, over."

A clear voice replied in his headset, acknowledging the warning order. Katsoulis peeked around the corner and saw what the team leader had described. The entire street corner formed by the intersection of George and Hobart was bathed in an artificial orange glow from several lights set along the gate and two-story structure. He could imagine that the residents loved having twenty-four hour daylight compliments of Hamm Brands.

He pulled his head back and swung his M4 Carbine around to a ready position along his chest. He started to check all of his equipment, while the three SUVs double parked along East 4th Street emptied ten additional SWAT agents into the quiet neighborhood. The agents started assembling near the corner, checking their own weapons and communications gear, while making sure they had unhindered access to flashbang grenades and spare ammunition magazines. A similar scene would unfold somewhere down George Street, putting over two dozen heavily armed tactical agents at his command for the takedown.

Finishing his personal check, there was only one more thing to do. Katsoulis checked his weapon's safety, ensuring that it was engaged, and chambered a round with the charging handle. The sound of his rifle's bolt slamming home echoed against the concrete, signaling for the rest of the team to do the same in rapid succession. "Front Door" was ready for action.

He saw several investigative agents exit their cars and start to wander toward the corner, keeping their distance. They would stand guard over the cars and wait for him to give the "all clear" signal over the communications net. At that point, the tactical team would be charged with transporting the prisoners back to the field office, where legendary FBI interrogator Gregory Carlisle would start the long process of extracting useful information. Katsoulis imagined that Carlisle would start with the fact that people from their own community had turned against them.

The Newark field office had received an extremely detailed, late-night tip regarding three young men who just recently moved into an apartment that had remained conspicuously unoccupied for thirteen months. Three dark-skinned men, "definitely Arab and new to the community," had arrived yesterday morning, wearing only backpacks. The caller requested to remain anonymous, in fear of possible retribution by more conservative members of "their community." Caller ID at the field office and FBI phone tracing efforts placed the call to the apartment directly above the suspects.

Investigative agents quickly pieced together what the caller meant by "their community." Bayonne, New Jersey, was home to a small but robust Muslim community that had successfully integrated with the rest of the immigrant groups in the area years before 9/11. The last thing any of them wanted was a group of suspected terrorists to tarnish the community's reputation, though the caller pointed out that not everyone in the community shared the same view. The field office also suspected that the call was motivated by the late-night coverage of the "possible terrorist attack" in Mount Arlington. Media coverage of the safe house attacks had so far been successfully avoided, but word of what happened in Mount Arlington was quickly spreading. It was a little hard to conceal the fact that authorities were trying to keep nearly one hundred thousand citizens from drinking water provided by the Morris County Municipal Utilities Authority.

He glanced at his watch and saw that nearly two minutes had elapsed.

"Back Door, Lead. Proceed to breach position," he said, receiving an immediate response.

"Let's go," he whispered to the team leader standing next to him, slapping the man on the back.

He watched the twelve men file past, carrying a variety of weapons and breaching gear. They all wore full Level IIIA body armor, fitted with hardened ceramic plates capable of stopping armor-piercing rounds. Despite the impression of invulnerability, the body armor couldn't protect the men from every type of round at every angle. There were plenty of gaps and seams for mindless bullets to penetrate, leaving the wearer severely wounded or dead. The plates were designed to intercept the most probable center mass hits in the back or chest and would do little to stop an impact outside of these zones. Still, the ceramic plates remained a statistically good bet, since data supported the fact that most shooters under stress will aim for center mass and hope for the best.

When the last agent turned the corner, he joined the line, which snaked down the cracked sidewalk under the harsh orange glow cast by the overpowering sodium vapor lights. The tactical team traversed the distance between the two street corners, arriving at the front door in less than twenty seconds. The agents stacked up against the front wall of the apartment, crouched below the barred first-floor windows, and waited for the breach team to analyze the front door. He monitored their hushed conversations over the tactical net. Both the front and side doors were locked. Katsoulis walked up the line of agents pressed against the vinyl siding and kneeled behind the team leader. He didn't say a word.

A tense minute passed while the agents tried unsuccessfully to pick the lock. The team leader discussed options with the agent manipulating the tools for a few seconds. He whispered orders into his headset, bringing one of the agents out of the stack with their portable battering ram. The agent trying to open the lock felt confident that the door would give in with a low intensity hit from the battering ram. Katsoulis wondered if they might be better off with a full strike, leaving nothing to chance.

The target apartment was on the second floor directly above them, so any level of impact might alert the suspects, which would leave them with little time to reach the apartment and gain entry. Unfortunately, the last minute nature of the "anonymous" tip had prevented them from setting up the best possible surveillance of the target building. They had agents with powerful night vision equipped optics watching the windows from cars on the street, but beyond that, they had no way to tell what was going on inside the apartment.

The team leader turned to him and whispered, "Upon hitting this door, it'll take us less than ten seconds to get flashbangs into the target apartment. This team will reach the apartment first, based on the location of the stairs. We won't have any time to assess the apartment door. We'll use shotgun breach loads and the ram at the same time. I don't see a way around this. It's a gamble on which door to use. My assumption is that the windows right above us are for a common area. They're bigger than the side windows above my other team. Based on that assumption, hitting this door will put the impact sound furthest away from the bedrooms."

"It's your call. Sounds like a solid plan based on what we were given. As long as they hit the door upstairs fast and furious, we'll surprise the shit out of them," Katsoulis said.

The team leader wasted no time continuing the conversation. He had over twenty agents exposed on the street.

"Back Door, this is Lead. Front Door will breach using the ram. Your breach will be delayed to keep the element of surprise. We suspect that the bedrooms are right above your door. Send four men around to secure the front entrance and have the remaining eight ready to immediately breach the side door to back up the primary assault team."

"Lead, this is Back Door. We just got the door open."

"Roger. Forget that plan. Proceed with entire team to target door and wait for me to arrive. I'm sending a backup team around the side to cover the entrance and street," he said and turned to face Katsoulis.

"We caught a break. We'll have the element of surprise on the target door. Agent Pruitt, I'm taking the last three from your stack to cover the side door. I'll open your door from the inside prior to the main breach. Keep half of your team here to secure the door and send the rest up as backup. Got it?" the team leader said.

Pruitt acknowledged the team leader's order by immediately briefing his team. The three agents from the end of the line along the building jogged to meet Katsoulis, who was already around the corner.


**

Jafal el-Sharif had finally fallen asleep in the extremely uncomfortable wooden chair that he had dragged from the kitchen table to his bedroom. His head leaned precariously against the paint-chipped window framing, half shaded by the orange light that invaded his family's apartment. His head twitched within moments of his eyes closing, slamming his head against the sharp edge of the wood frame and causing him to briefly cry out in pain. Fortunately, his wife and children were not in the apartment to hear him. He had sent them to stay with her sister after receiving a strange request from a member of his mosque.

He had been asked to watch the street around his apartment for any suspicious law enforcement activity. With the recent discovery that the New York City Police department had been profiling local Muslim communities, activists within the Bayonne Muslim society had started to vocalize their opposition to further cooperation with local police. The man had told Jafal that his assistance was critical to proving that the federal and local law enforcement agencies were illegally targeting Muslims for discrimination.

"They" suspected that a major operation was underway in Bayonne, possibly in his own neighborhood, and they wanted to send the media down to intercept the police at the scene. He had been warned to be especially vigilant at night, when the police liked to terrorize members of the community, before disappearing back into the night. Some members of the community had supposedly vanished in these raids, only to reappear behind bars in Guantanamo Bay. Something had to be done to stop this harassment, and Jafal would be their first line of defense. He had a cell phone number to call if the police showed up on his street.

He shook his head from the impact and cursed himself for falling asleep. He figured he had only been out for a few seconds. He took a deep breath and leaned forward to take in more of the street. His eyes caught movement to the far right, and he immediately inched forward in the chair. What he saw nearly caused him to fall onto the floor in front of the window. Two heavily armed police officers disappeared into the side door of the apartment building on the opposite side of George Street. They were right! They moved so quickly and quietly that he had almost missed them. Allah had woken him at just the right moment! He grabbed the cell phone resting on the windowsill and dialed the number he had programmed into his phone.

"Allahu Akbar," he whispered gleefully, hoping to strike a small blow against the oppressive American regime.


**

"We have a possible problem," Anish Gupta said.

He leaned forward, staring at a lone laptop screen set on a folding table at the safe house in New Brunswick. They had moved all of the computer equipment from the van into the house, where it would remain until they acquired a new van with the required internal configuration to continue mobile field operations. Anish had been confident that they could carry out the necessary surveillance from the small house. Once Graves and Tariq had positioned themselves on the roof of a nearby Hamm Brands warehouse, all he claimed to need was uninterrupted high-speed internet access and his decked-out laptop.

The surveillance post was close enough for their wireless signal mapper to detect and pinpoint passive cell phone transmissions within the vicinity of the target building. It could also transmit enough power to perform a few highly classified snooping tricks. Thanks to Hamid Muhammad's confession, they had been able to turn one of the terrorist's cell phones into a bug. Hamid didn't think any of the previously known numbers would be active, but one of the men had apparently violated strict security procedures and kept his old phone. This had been one of the ways they had corroborated Hamid's information. One of the cell phone numbers matched an active phone located at 98 Hobart Avenue, which was where Hamid swore they would find the missing terrorist cell.

"What's up?" Aleem muttered, physically exhausted from the evening's activities.

"I have two cell phones operational within fifty feet of each other. I can hear one of them ringing from our co-opted phone in the target apartment. The other is located across the street. I think it's a lookout. We're live with Tariq and Graves," he said, pointing to a microphone mounted on the table.

Aleem sat up at the dining room table, his mind scrambling to figure out what they could do to covertly assist the FBI SWAT team. Hamid didn't think they would be armed with much more than knives and pistols, but he also wasn't sure to what extent the cell would be supported by his loyal followers within the Bayonne Muslim community. The apartment had been secretly rented by Hamid a year earlier and kept vacant for the purpose of temporarily hiding a cell in plain sight. He had given the apartment key to one of his followers to deliver to the cell's leader, with sealed instructions. This had been followed by another sealed message to be carried to his contact in Bayonne. He had been forthcoming with this information, clearly wanting to avoid a sudden inferno engulfing his head again. Aleem had no reason to believe that Hamid knew about the lookout in the adjacent apartment. In any event, he would use this information to further terrorize the Imam.

"Tariq. Can you see any movement on infrared? You should have a clear line of sight to the apartment's front door," Aleem said.

Aleem had wanted the surveillance team to transmit the feed to their safe house, but Graves didn't want to overcomplicate the communications rig they needed to erect on the warehouse roof in order to support mission essentials. The anonymous tip to the FBI had been placed before the surveillance team had figured out how they would get into Hamm Brand's sprawling complex and onto the roof of the massive building. The trip back to Bayonne from the safe house in New Brunswick had put them on a tight schedule.

"Nothing yet. SWAT teams are in the front and side doors. Hold on. Shit, I have multiple heat signatures in the common area. They're up. I have no way to engage," he heard on the speaker.

"There's nothing you can do. Anish, can you provide a distraction? Ring their phones?"

"I can ring the number we have…or I can activate the camera's flash."

"Do both. Coordinate the flash with SWAT's countdown," Aleem said.

Gupta had scanned all active VHF frequencies before and after the FBI SWAT team's arrival, quickly determining which frequencies were used for the tactical team's P25 Digital Encrypted radios. He had access to an extremely proprietary brute-force key-recovery program that could provide him with the encryption key, and in an act of sheer desperation, he could try to "rekey" all of the radios using a program that Graves had acquired from sources that Gupta had worried about more than Sanderson. Neither of these methods had been necessary, since their illicit access to the multiple FBI networks provided them with the "key" used by Task Force Scorpion's tactical units. He had enjoyed using the same technology to co-opt the Newark field office's radios during their escape with the Imam for Masjid Muhammad.

Gupta typed furiously at the keyboard, while monitoring the SWAT team.

"Three second countdown. Damn they moved fast. Two, one…"

"I just saw a flash," Tariq said.

"The phone should be ringing too. Wow! I just lost my hearing," he said, snatching the headphones from his head.

"Three flashbangs. Windows shattered. No gunshots. Lots of yelling," Tariq reported.

"You just heard the bang part of the flashbang," Aleem said.

"Thanks for the warning."

"Imagine what it's like on the receiving end."

Gupta replaced the headset and listened intently to the radio chatter. He didn't hear any transmissions indicating a "man down." He started to hear reports of "clear" from several team members.

"I didn't hear any gunshots, but they could have been mixed in with the flashbangs," Tariq said.

"From what I can tell, no shots were fired. They recovered four canisters. The HAZMAT truck should be pulling up any second," Gupta said.

"Looks like it just arrived," Tariq added.

"Nice job, Anish. You probably saved an FBI agent's life today," Aleem said.

"Maybe. But that life would have never been in danger if we didn't place the call in the first place," Gupta said, obviously mulling over his own logic.

"I'm not getting into another logic trap debate with you. This day has been long enough. Good work. Leave it at that. Let's send everything we have to Insider," Aleem said.

Insider was their codename for Callie Stewart within the NCTC. Sanderson's plan to accelerate the investigation on behalf of the FBI had only just begun. The next phase sounded dicey in Aleem's opinion, but might help them skip a few steps and bring everyone closer to finding the remaining virus canisters. Hamid Muhammad might live to see another day.