The Lost Codex (OPSIG Team Black Series Book 3) Read online

  “Yeah, well, keep it to yourself. I have a feeling you’re going to be brought into this sooner rather than later. I tried to convince—actually, I’d better shut my mouth.”

  Shepard twisted his full lips, then nodded slowly. “Fine. Go play spy. Or whatever the hell it is you’re doing. Keep me posted.”

  “I can’t—”

  “Yeah,” Shepard said with a dismissive wave of his right hand. “Whatever. Get your ass outta here.”

  7

  Operations Support Intelligence Group

  The Pentagon

  Arlington, Virginia

  Vail was led through the Pentagon’s river entrance and down a nondescript corridor to a single elevator door. She was instructed to place her hand over a glass plate and a yellow light ran beneath it. The car arrived seconds later. Her escort dipped his security card, pressed the B button, and said, “Someone will meet you downstairs. You can take it from here.”

  Gee, you think? “Thanks.”

  The elevator doors slid apart and revealed a uniformed officer who was tall and broad, with calloused hands and a wind-weathered face. “This way.”

  He brought her down a tiled corridor to a room at the end of the hall. She saw another panel beside the door and did not need to be told what to do. She placed her palm on it and waited for the sensor to scan her print. The electronic lock buzzed and the man turned and left her, headed back the way they had come.

  Inside, she felt like she had walked into a gamer’s paradise: wall to wall flat screens, all displaying satellite or real time surveillance images from around the world. A constant flow of cool air swirled around her ankles, keeping the tech equipment well ventilated.

  People milled about the large, high-ceilinged room, which was dimly lit and had personnel seated at workstations along the periphery, headsets on and monitors perched at eye level on articulating metal arms.

  Uzi and DeSantos were across the way, in a separate glass-walled room that featured an oval conference table. When she walked in, they were talking with Troy Rodman, who was larger than the guy who had led her down the corridor and a shade darker than the rosewood surface peeking through the sheaf of papers scattered across it.

  “Agent Rodman,” Vail said. “Good to see you again.” The last time their paths crossed they were in the back of a van in the outskirts of London, in deep trouble with the British authorities.

  “Troy. Or Hot Rod. We’re a team. Takes too damn long to communicate when we’re on a mission if we’re saying Agent this, Agent that.”

  “Got it.” She gestured to the papers. “What are you working on?”

  “Compiled a list,” Uzi said, “of most likely groups to have the will, wherewithal, and balls to put together an operation like this.”

  “The balls?”

  “Not many have the guts to attack the United States—because we are gonna find out who did the deed, sooner or later. And then they’re gonna pay for it. A select few are willing to take it on the chin in exchange for the points they score in the initial strikes. It buys them a higher profile, makes recruitment easier.”

  “It also requires patience,” DeSantos added, “and coordination—to gather and purchase the materials, bring in the people with the skill set to build these explosives. Not all of them have the resources and network to make this happen.”

  “What about Ekrem’s intel?” Vail asked.

  Uzi grabbed a handful of almonds from a bowl to his right and popped one in his mouth. “We didn’t want to get myopic by focusing on what he gave us—especially because we’ve got no idea if all, or some, or none of his info’s legit.”

  DeSantos pulled a sheet from among the papers containing a scribble of handwritten names and handed it to Vail. She read: al Humat, al Shabaab, al Qaeda, al Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb, East Turkestan Islamic Movement, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, ISIL/Islamic State, Islamic Jihad of Yemen— “Lists like this are okay, but we can make ourselves nuts looking at every Tom, Dick, and Harry.”

  DeSantos snorted. “More like Abdul, Mohammed, and Akbar.”

  Vail gave him a look that said, “I’m not in the mood.” “Point is, we have to focus on the most likely groups.”

  “Like I said, that is the list of most likely groups.”

  Oh. Lovely. “Look, I know you have doubts about this Ekrem guy, but maybe it makes sense to start there and see if we can eliminate Hamas and al Humat. Then we can move on to the rest on this list.”

  Uzi nodded. “Makes sense to me.”

  A trim and curvy woman in khakis with long brunette hair approached with a Bluetooth headset protruding from her ear. “Hector, I’ve got something you should hear.”

  DeSantos introduced her as Alexandra “Alex” Rusakov. “On this case?”

  “Yeah, NSA sent it over, priority one. They normally don’t get to intercepted communications this fast, but because of the potential for impending attacks it was elevated and they—”

  “Audio or video?” Uzi asked.

  “Audio,” Rusakov said.

  Vail set down the list. “Let’s hear it.”

  “It’s in Arabic. But I’ve got a translation.” She handed over a printed page.

  “I’d like to hear the original recording,” Uzi said.

  “Channel five,” Rusakov said as she reached over to the nearest panel and pressed a few keys.

  Uzi slipped on a set of headphones and listened as the others consulted the translation.

  “What are we reading here?” Vail asked.

  “NSA intercepted a cell call from an area in southwest DC to Gaza. They couldn’t triangulate because it didn’t last long enough. The rest is pretty self-explanatory.”

  DC UNSUB:Can’t reach four of our men. Don’t know what’s going on. Someone posted something on Facebook about an explosion on Irving Street. That was where Habib was working. Couldn’t reach him so I called Wahi. He didn’t know anything about it so he called Habib and he answered. Habib said the explosion was close but he was fine. Wahi told him to come to the safe house, but he never made it and I haven’t been able to reach him. I haven’t heard from Osman or Tahir either, so I don’t know what’s up with them.

  Gaza UNSUB:We’ll look into it. If there was a problem, they’ll go off the grid, keep quiet until they think it’s safe to contact us. Everything may be okay, but stay indoors until I contact you. Allahu Akbar.

  DC UNSUB:Allahu Akbar.

  Vail set the paper on the conference table. “No question the guy in DC is one of our offenders.” She turned toward Rusakov, two workstations to her left, and said, “Can the NSA give us anything else?”

  “They’re doubling back to see if they’ve got other captured conversations that haven’t been transcribed yet. There’s a backlog of Arabic language recordings.”

  Vail noticed Uzi was still huddled over the desk, concentrating. She tapped him on a shoulder and he pushed up the headphones. “You’re spending an awfully long time listening to a short conversation. Something’s bothering you.”

  He sat down heavily.

  “What is it, Boychick?” DeSantos asked.

  He ran his tongue from left to right over his bottom lip. “The guy on the phone in Gaza. I think I know that voice.”

  8

  Vail waited for Uzi to elaborate. When he did not, she nudged DeSantos, who shrugged. “Uzi, who is it?”

  “If I’m right, he was a senior al Humat operative when I was”—he hesitated, then turned to Rusakov. “Alex, can you give us a minute?”

  “Boychick, she’s part of OPSIG. She’s got full clearance.”

  Vail examined Uzi’s face—she knew he was uncomfortable with more people knowing his secret. It was one thing for Knox to know, and for her, DeSantos, and Rodman to know—he hadn’t had the choice when it was disclosed. Adding to that list did not see
m like a good idea, and Vail had to agree.

  “Alex,” Vail said, “I think it’d be best.”

  Rusakov squinted dissatisfaction, then nodded and backed out of the room.

  “Where’d you find her?” Vail said as the glass door clicked shut. “The latest Miss World pageant?”

  “She’s tougher than you think. Lethal, in fact. Her beauty gets her close to HVTs,” DeSantos said, using the military acronym for high value targets. “Go on, Boychick. Who does the voice belong to?”

  “When I was in Mossad, this guy was working with Hamas, smuggling rockets and mortars through the Sinai. He designed the network of tunnels they spent years building—sophisticated tunnels with reinforced cement walls, ventilation, electricity. They eventually built hundreds of them crisscrossing Gaza, stretching from the Egyptian border all the way into Israel.”

  “Like the drug cartels,” Vail said, referring to their method of smuggling drugs from Mexico into San Diego.

  DeSantos sat up straight. “Like the drug cartels. Ekrem’s intel—and NSA’s intercept—suggested Hezbollah might be working with the Cortez cartel. What if you’re right, Boychick? What if they showed Cortez how to build their tunnels?”

  “Then we might have problems.” Rodman rose from his chair and walked over to the near wall, where a map of the United States was illuminated on one of the screens. Rodman said, “What if they’ve built a network of tunnels under the US?”

  “It’s expensive and time-consuming,” Uzi said. He thought a bit, then added, “It’s possible to do because they build shafts inside other structures—warehouses, garages, houses—that eventually resurface inside another building on the other side of the border. If they do it well, the presence of equipment and the removal of dirt—and lots of water, because tunnels flood while they’re being built—isn’t really noticed. Still … it’s a tremendous amount of work. They’d need a really good reason to do that.”

  DeSantos joined Rodman at the map. “Like moving one or more dirty bombs around the country without our sensors—which are now in a lot of US cities—picking them up?”

  They were quiet while they pondered that. “Before we get too far down this road,” Vail said, “let’s back up. Uzi, you said you know this guy, the Gaza voice. How about a name, description, some background?”

  “Kadir Abu Sahmoud.” Uzi rubbed at the stubble on his cheeks. “He’s probably about fifty now, bearded, dark complected, about five-nine. He’s a violent psychopath. As if that’s not bad enough, he’s a religious zealot who, like all extremists, interprets the Koran as a violent call to arms. We all know the type.”

  “Got some stuff here,” Rodman said as he scrolled down a page on his laptop. “Comes from a well-to-do Palestinian family. Father a doctor, mother a lawyer. Discovered jihad when he killed a Jewish family in the Golan Heights as they farmed their watermelon patch. He was sixteen years old. With that multiple murder on his resume, he was asked to join Force 17 in Lebanon, as one of Yasser Arafat’s personal bodyguards. That was 1981.”

  Rodman’s eyes moved across the screen. “A year later, Arafat’s PLO was forced to leave Lebanon—but Sahmoud stayed behind and joined Hezbollah. At nineteen he did some training in Iran under the Revolutionary Guard, where he was recruited by Hamas. He rose through the ranks quickly in the early to mid-1990s when he helped plan drive-by shootings and firebombings in Israel. Then the suicide bombings began, and he was one of the lead planners for the Afula attack, along with the bomb maker, Yahya Ayyash, when a teenager rammed a car packed with explosives into a commuter bus.

  “Sahmoud disagreed with Hamas leadership a few years later and formed al Humat with Abu Hassanein, an equally violent former Hamas militant. Their first act was sending a youth into a school with a suicide vest. Fourteen kids were killed, sixty-nine were wounded. Seventeen lost limbs.”

  “I’m already liking this guy as our prime suspect,” DeSantos said.

  “I’ve seen all the general FBI briefings,” Vail said, “but I’m far from a Mideast expert. I know what I read in the papers about Hamas and al—”

  “Bottom line,” Uzi said, “is that the extremists believe their purpose in life is to fight a holy war to kill the Jews and take over Israel. They don’t want a two-state solution. They want a one-state Islamist country.”

  “And that’s the problem with Hamas and al Humat,” DeSantos said. “They shoot rockets into Israel knowing Israel has to retaliate. But Hamas uses women and children as human shields to show a large casualty count. Their operations manual explains the strategy and why it’s such an important tactic. The Gazans, meanwhile, are caught in the middle, used, abused, intimidated, and harassed. Hamas tells them that this jihad is Allah’s will. Instead of focusing on building a future for their people with infrastructure and jobs and commerce, they carry out terrorist attacks using militant violence.”

  “You said their main purpose is to wage a holy war,” Vail said.

  “Two groups, similar philosophies. Hamas has three branches: one provides funding for schools and health care, one deals with political and religious mandates. Then there’s a terrorism-based military unit that gathers information about Palestinians who’ve violated Islamic law and others who are informing for Israel. Their Izzedine al Qassam squads carry out the attacks. They’re organized into small, covert terror cells that operate independently of each other.

  “Al Humat was born from Hamas and shares its religious and political views—violence aimed at destroying Israel and replacing it with an Islamic state. Its virulent hatred of Jews and Judaism is deeply rooted in the anti-Semitic writings of the Muslim Brotherhood—which is where Hamas got its start back in 1987. Hamas is a more militant Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, and al Humat is a more militant offshoot of Hamas. Al Humat doesn’t dabble in politics. Its sole focus is the death and destruction of those who stand in the way of Sharia law.”

  “Like the US,” Vail said.

  “Like all civilized, democratic, western countries,” Uzi said. “Some of its leaders have gone on record saying that democracy is the exact opposite of Sharia law. When they talk about taking over Europe, they talk about converting everything and everyone to Islam. Because no other religion or belief structure can coexist with it.”

  “That’s an important point right there,” DeSantos said. “This isn’t a regional issue. It’s not about what’s happening in Israel with Hamas and al Humat and Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah. This battle’s being fought in dozens of European cities. The scope is global—because their plans are global. And unless something’s done, Europe has about thirty years before it starts turning into a group of third world countries. It’ll fundamentally change the world. It’s the single biggest threat to democracy in modern times. Sharia law will set back civilized society centuries.”

  “So that brings us back to Ekrem’s intel,” Uzi said. “Sounds like he was giving us good information about al Humat’s involvement.”

  Rodman took his seat. “And that brings us back to Kadir Abu Sahmoud.”

  “Yeah.” Uzi swallowed hard. “Sahmoud was the bastard who trained Batula Hakim.”

  Vail knew—as did DeSantos and Rodman—that al Humat’s Batula Hakim was the terrorist who murdered Uzi’s wife and daughter eight years ago.

  She also knew, without it needing to be stated, that if Sahmoud was in any way involved with the current plot, capturing Sahmoud would be a priority—and it had nothing to do with exacting justice. Knowing DeSantos, such a “capture” order may involve lethal force, as it did with Osama bin Laden.

  Rodman glanced at the printed translation. “How sure are you that it was Sahmoud’s voice?”

  Uzi pondered that for a few seconds, then said, “Not enough to hold up in a court of law. I think it is. But I’m not completely sure.”

  “Let’s get a voiceprint analysis,” DeSantos said. “Do you think Mossad has
a clip of Sahmoud on file?”

  “Very likely. I’ll look into it.”

  “The director general is in Washington,” DeSantos said, “meeting with Tasset this week.”

  Uzi’s jaw muscles tensed. “I know.”

  “You could just request a voiceprint through the usual channels within the CIA—”

  “Better to go to the horse’s mouth. Faster, less bureaucracy. No filters.”

  “But I’m sensing you don’t really want to deal with Aksel,” Vail said.

  Uzi pulled his gaze away from DeSantos and took a seat. He leaned back and closed his eyes. “It’s complicated. Let’s just say that Gideon and I didn’t always agree on things. Oil and water personalities.”

  DeSantos tilted his head. When Uzi did not elaborate, DeSantos added, “Among other things.”

  “Then why don’t we just send the request over to Tasset and—”

  “No.” Uzi was on his feet. “I’ll meet with Gideon.” He gathered his black leather jacket off the seat back and slung it over his shoulder. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  9

  Uzi met Mossad director general Gideon Aksel by the Delta security bollards at the west end of Pennsylvania Avenue, across from the Blair House. Because the street fronted the White House, it was under constant surveillance by the Secret Service and Metropolitan police. In fact, two white, blue, and red cruisers were parked in the middle of the roadway at forty-five degree angles to each other, a hundred yards ahead, opposite the White House lawn.

  As Uzi approached, the four agents in the foreign dignitary Secret Service detail perked up. He held up his FBI creds and they relaxed—slightly.

  “Gideon.”

  Aksel tilted his head back and peered at Uzi through his glasses. But he did not return the greeting.

  “Wearing glasses now, Gideon?”

  “I’m getting old. Shit happens.”

  A grin broke Uzi’s face. He surprised himself. Because of all the previous bad blood that existed between these two men, he had been dreading this meet. But it seemed to have gotten off to a nonthreatening start. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that Uzi had saved Aksel’s life a couple of years ago.