Every Second

44

McLean, Virginia

The National Counterterrorism Center, one of the country’s most vital security facilities, was located at the edge of Washington, DC.

The fortified glass and stone complex rose several stories in a hilly wooded Virginia suburb northwest of the capital. In this building, analysts and agents from government branches such as the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency used the most sophisticated intelligence gathering systems in the world to analyze threats to national security.

The point of control was the Operations Center, a cavernous room whose far wall was dominated by huge screens listing known terror threats and incidents. All were coded by priority and analysis. Other large screens displayed every major US news network and those in countries around the globe.

Below the screens, on the tiered floor, there were twenty workstations where intelligence officers worked together 24/7 to break down the constant flow of information received by the center. They examined data that might otherwise seem unrelated to pursue leads.

It was challenging work; more than seven thousand reports poured into the center every twenty-four hours. They came in from intelligence sources, embassies, police departments and the general public.

On any given day, those reports could include a suspicious package at a mall, an anonymous 911 call promising “something’s going to happen,” or an airline reporting strange comments or behavior of a passenger. And the nonstop flow of reports was merely in addition to analysis already being done with ongoing files.

Operations officer Shane Hudson took a drink from his bottled water and resumed work at his desk. Hudson, the son of a US diplomat, had grown up in the Gulf States. He was fluent in several languages and had a degree in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard. He sat before three computer monitors. On one, he’d cued up a video to replay.

He’d been analyzing a report submitted by FBI agent Nick Varner through the Guardian database. Varner was overseeing the live investigation of a quarter-million-robbery-abduction case out of New York. He’d requested further analysis of the names Jerricko Blaine and Malcolm Jordan Samadyh, two American-born men, and their mother, Nazihah Bilaal Samadyh, born in Afghanistan and married to now-deceased American Andrew Blaine.

After Hudson submitted the names to the highly classified Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, the central database on known or suspected international terrorists, he made other inquiries.

While awaiting responses, he replayed the video, which opened tight on a placard: America Murdered My Son! Death to America!

The sign was written in English. The woman in the video was waving it during a large-scale anti-American protest that had taken place in Kabul, Afghanistan, a year ago. The demonstration raised a number of issues, but this one was a concern and flagged for assessment.

The woman holding the placard was Nazihah Bilaal Samadyh.

Suddenly, one of his monitors began to flash with urgent NSA intercepts from the US base in Menwith, England-apparently there was concern about the potential for a planned attack. The summary showed communication originating from an active jihadist group. The conversations were disguised to focus on “a wedding with many gifts from many guests resulting in a glorious celebration.” Decrypted, that stood to mean an attack with many victims. The intercepts had been tracked for the past six months out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, Athens and London. But they’d grown more active with the most recent series of calls, bouncing from Syria and Yemen to individuals somewhere in the United States.

Hudson needed to assess the intercepts against other data.

He took another swig of water as a new alert flashed with information coming in from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. It concerned Malcolm Jordan Samadyh and his activities while an inmate at the California Correctional Institution at Tehachapi.

While serving three years for robbery at the prison, he’d converted to Islam but soon gravitated to a rogue prisoner group of extremists that called on Muslims to violently attack nonbelievers and infidels who were the enemies of Islam.

The CDCR and the California Justice Department were moving fast to provide more background on all known members of the fringe group and their affiliations.

Hudson let out a long breath. There was a lot of information in front of him but no clear proof that any of it was connected.

He glanced to one of his monitors and the latest news reports on the Queens case. Every minute that passed put the hostages at greater risk.

It’s time to get to work.