Aim And Fire

4

Nate Spencer pushed through the doors of the Customs and Border Protection Office of Field Operations that evening after staying at the parts-shop scene for several hours, making sure every scrap of evidence had been bagged, labeled and processed correctly. He was greeted by enthusiastic applause from most of the day shift, with a few holdouts, notably Billy Travis, glaring at him instead.

Shaking his head, Nate held up his arms to quiet the clapping. “Hey, it wasn’t just me out there, but Hernando, Carter, Ryan and, most of all, Juan Menendez. All of them helped bust these guys and recover more than one hundred kilos of uncut cocaine—the biggest haul this year, I might add.”

“Yes, but unfortunately, it cost the life of one of our own.” Chief Patrol Agent Roy Robertson had been leaning against the door frame of his office, but now he walked into the center of the assembled men and women. “I’m sorry to tell you that Agent Menendez passed away an hour ago after participating in the successful raid on the smuggling ring. The funeral will be held on Saturday, and all off-duty personnel are expected to attend. Agent Spencer, I’ll want your report on my desk by noon tomorrow.”

The celebration suddenly over, Nate caught Travis’s eye, who shook his head with a frown. Reaching up to scratch his cheek, he flipped the other man off, then turned and went to his desk.

A stack of printed e-mails was there, along with a note.

Here you go—the encryption was a bitch! E-files are on your computer. You owe me—Claire.

Nate made a mental note to buy her dinner sometime, then leafed through the messages. It soon became obvious that the device had passed through several hands. Only a few dozen of the messages were from Jesus, the driver they had arrested from the smuggling group. The majority of the e-mails were from a man named Arsalan Hejazi to an address simply titled “freedomfighter” at a common Web address. Several were copied to Jesus at an El Paso e-mail address. Nate read the most recent message.

Dear Yousef,

Our plans are progressing well. Soon we will have everything we need to strike at our enemies. Our men are coming to you soon across the southern border. Be strong, and keep working toward our common goal. Allahu Akbar.

Attached to the message was a list of machine parts and pieces, none of which were immediately recognizable to Nate except for one—the chemical symbol for plutonium. Is this a list of parts for a bomb? he wondered. Nate reread the message, something about it niggling at the back of his mind. The name of the sender—he couldn’t quite grasp it.

He searched through the detritus in his desk drawers, looking for a notebook from one of his older case files. Scrabbling among the copies, he came up with his logbook from the previous year. Flipping through it, he looked through his notes until he came across the entry he was looking for.

Almost a year earlier…another warehouse. Nate had been involved in a large bust that had brought in the FBI and ATF, as well. A fringe group of Muslims had been suspected of stockpiling weapons on the Mexican border in preparation for an incursion into the U.S. An informant had given them the address, and the three U.S. law-enforcement departments had swooped down on the place. But the terrorists had been forewarned, and had detonated explosives inside the building, demolishing it and also blowing themselves up. The ringleader had been a man named Sepehr al-Kharzi, a longtime member of al Qaeda, and a most-wanted member of the organization. Nate had seen him go into the building—had actually looked into the son of a bitch’s expressionless brown eyes, he recalled—before it had vanished in a huge fireball. While they had uncovered evidence of an underground escape tunnel, there was no evidence that anyone had used it, and it was presumed that al-Kharzi had been vaporized along with the other terrorists. However, as Nate stared at a copy of the terrorist’s wanted poster, he saw a familiar name among the known aliases al-Kharzi used—Arsalan Hejazi.

Nate checked the date of the sent e-mail. Three months ago. He leaned back in his chair, absorbing the information. Flipping through the rest of the e-mails didn’t reveal an answer from the mysterious Yousef, nor any more communication from al-Kharzi, Hejazi or whatever he might be calling himself nowadays.

Nate got up and headed to Robertson’s office. His superior was on the phone, and held up a finger while he finished. “Yes, sir…no, everything was done by the book. There won’t be anything of the sort. Yes, sir, I will, sir. Thank you, sir. Goodbye.” He hung up the phone and frowned at Nate. “If that’s your report, it’s the fastest typing I’ve ever seen from you.”

“Yeah, you’ll have that soon enough. Look, I found something in the evidence from the bust, and wanted you to have a look.” He placed the printed e-mail on Robertson’s desk.

His boss picked it up and scanned the brief message. “And?”

“Arsalan is an alias for Sepehr al-Kharzi, the terrorist.”

“Yeah—isn’t he the one that died in the warehouse explosion last year. So?”

“This e-mail is only three months old,” Nate pointed out.

“So one of his cronies has picked up his handle, trying to make people believe he’s still alive. You know this happens all the time, Nate,” Robertson said.

Nate put his hands on the desk and leaned forward. “This doesn’t feel like a fake, Roy. My gut tells me this is the real thing. They’re talking about some mission, and one of the addresses was here in El Paso. And look at this parts list—including plutonium. I think he’s still out there, and still planning something.”

Robertson rubbed his hands over his face. “Shut the door, Nate, and take a seat.”

He complied and returned to the battered chair in front of the chief’s desk. “Look, we’ve just lost three agents in the last twenty-four hours—”

“What, who were the other two? What happened?” Nate asked.

“Early this morning, Agents Morton and Delaney were killed in the line of duty by unknown persons, who also seem to have massacred at least twenty illegals.”

“Jesus, why ain’t I workin’ that case right now?” Nate said.

“Dammit, Nate, you know you’re on administrative leave until your case is cleared. The person I was talking with on the phone was the deputy commissioner, straight outta D.C. Now, I’ve kept as tight a lid as possible on that illegal incident, but the shit’s about to hit the fan, and we’re all standing downwind. What I need from you right now is cooperation, and your word that the auto-parts bust went down legally and by the book.”

“Hell, yeah, it went by the book—the book that says agents will defend themselves when they are fired upon. Menendez got killed, and Ryan is in the hospital right now as a result of our ‘by-the-book’ bust.”

“Right, and the drugs you recovered is the kind of press we need right now to counter this slaughter in the desert. If too much of a big deal is made out of that, everyone’s going to think we’re doing a worse job than some people already do. Our stats are up where it counts in all areas, but it just takes one of these incidents to blow out of proportion, and no one remembers the twenty good things we do every day—they just see the one operation that went wrong.”

“Yeah, I get that ‘the press is our best friend and worst enemy at the same time’ BS. Look, Roy, you know how wide-open the border is, even with the additional men and the National Guard people we have. A lot of guys think that it’s only a matter of time before someone sneaks something more lethal than immigrants through, and this could be it. Do you want that to go down on your watch?”

“Jesus, Nate, you know that’s not fair—I’m doin’ everything I can, but the government wants us to do more with less every day, and I can’t have my men chasing down cold leads just because your gut says something’s going on.” He held up his hand to forestall Nate’s protest. “Look, there’s nowhere I’d rather have you be than out in the field, but that just ain’t gonna happen right now. If you say the bust went down clean, then I’m sure the clearance team will come to the same conclusion. But you know the drill—shots were fired and one of our guys died. Since those incidents with that pair of illegals a couple years ago—where he got shot in the ass, then turned around and sued us—”

“Putting two of our agents in jail for no goddamn reason, too,” Nate gripped.

“Yeah, that too. Anyway, the brass has been breathing down our necks about executing clean operations, and we need to do that as best as we can. So do me a favor—finish your report and get out of here. The minute you can come back, I’ll let you know.”

Nate ran a hand through his crew-cut, salt-and-pepper hair and sighed. “You’re the boss.” He rose and walked back into the office, only to find Travis leaning against his desk.

“Looks like ol’ Shootin’ Spencer was the one who got tagged this time.” Travis smirked as Nate walked around him and sat down.

“If I’d wanted any more shit from you, Travis, I’d squeeze that big greasy pustule you call a head and see what came squirtin’ out. Now get the hell out of here. I got work to do.”

Travis stuck his face right next to Nate’s. “Yeah, you get back to your real important report, buddy. Me, I’m headin’ out to work that slaughter case in the desert. I just wanted to tell you personally. Have fun holdin’ down the fort.”

Nate stared at the retreating back as Travis swaggered out of the office, willing the punk-ass agent to drop dead with his next step, but to no avail. The office was almost deserted, with only a few agents still finishing up their paperwork. Nate blew a breath out and dug in, as well, pecking out his report with two fingers on the ancient computer he had been handed down from God knew where. At least the damn thing had e-mail, although it was balky and slower than hell. He finished his report, then leaned back in his chair and snuck a peek at Robertson, who was still working at his own desk.

Nate considered his options. What do I have to lose by kicking this up the chain? Well, for starters, Roy won’t be too thrilled. But he’d be less thrilled if this turned out to be something, and downright furious if it was something big. What the hell—at least they can’t say I didn’t try.

He found the copies of the e-mails on his computer and attached the one from Arsalan, along with his thoughts on it, in a message to the Department of Homeland Security. He hoped they’d give it to an analyst who’d be able to think at least halfway outside of the box. But this is going to Washington—what are the odds? he wondered. He shrugged and hit Enter, shaking his head as the message flashed into cyberspace.

5

“My God, some days working here is just like any other large corporation, except we’re supposed to be keeping three hundred million people safe every single day,” Tracy Wentworth said as she walked back to her cubicle at the ramshackle headquarters on Nebraska Avenue. She was annoyed after yet another pointless two-hour meeting on analyzing strategic weaknesses in America’s private infrastructure. Everything she’d heard was a repetition of things she already knew. They had just tried to package it in yet another new “assessment procedure.”

Only 1:00 p.m., and already her day was an exercise in futility. Two of her requested follow-ups on what she had thought had been promising leads had been denied due to “lack of feasibility.” This was primarily due to her boss, a politicking butt-kisser who squashed anything he didn’t regard as a “slam-dunk,” to parrot a certain high-level intelligence chief’s unfortunate choice of words a few years back regarding WMDs in Iraq. Since then, Tracy suspected that all of America’s intelligence agencies had become paralyzed by fear—the fear of not connecting all of the dots fast enough, or even worse, getting something wrong, and having the press lambaste them for not doing their job properly. That especially went for the one she worked for, the Department of Homeland Security.

When she had come to DHS two years ago, Tracy had been filled with the desire to join a department that would fight the real threats that America faced. She had hoped this new agency wouldn’t be hampered by the baggage of the Cold War and the continued focus on potential-threat nations and their standing armies. She wanted to tackle fourth-generation warfare and the emerging terrorist networks spreading from the hotbed Middle East to ensnare other countries in their multitentacled grasp of drugs, money and suicidal ideology.

Unfortunately, that had not proved to be the case. From its once-promising beginning, the DHS had rapidly become stuck in the same operational quagmire that hobbled most other government departments. Small-minded career bureaucrats wielded their power like tyrants, rewarding loyal followers and punishing anyone they didn’t agree with almost at whim.

In particular, there was a terrible lack of information flowing from the top officers down, which was, in Tracy’s and many other analysts’ opinions, crucial to effectively gathering intelligence to identify and stop threats to the nation. Personality clashes and conflicting interpretations of rules, regulations and even the DHS’s role in homeland security were everyday occurrences. It all served efforts to get vital programs off the ground.

The department’s creation by squashing together twenty-two separate agencies under one roof meant there was often confusion as to what section would handle a particular project, which led to even more delays. Certain departments, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, operated under severe budgetary limitations, to the point where the agents could not execute their duties effectively. The problem was later revealed to be infighting among various departments for budget allocation. Tracy had heard the horror stories, and had unfortunately been a part of some of them, as well, as she fought for information, access and resources, along with the other 180,000 people in the sprawling department.

When she got back to her desk, she found an e-mail from her supervisor, Brian Gilliam.

Tracy,