Swift Vengeance

29

The traffic was heavy back to San Diego. Holiday shoppers and travelers, a pileup in Tustin. Interstate 5 took us down through Camp Pendleton, my days as a Marine tackling me with their usual blunt force. Out the window I saw the “Afghan village” set up on the bluff overlooking the Pacific, tan “mud” huts with my young combat-clad brothers going door-to-door. Helicopters hovering. A simulated fight for life. I knew that every man and woman out there was eager for the real thing. Their chance to fight. I’d been. Couldn’t wait to get out there and do what I’d been taught. Lots of training. Weeks and months. Still wasn’t expecting that clenched gut or those cold rattling knees that carried me into my first action.

When I came back from Fallujah in 2004 I knew that someday soon Saddam Hussein would hang, and the new Iraq would flourish, and the Middle East would retreat from war. I knew that no more of my friends would die or be mutilated in that blistering desert. Then the ancient hatreds took over. The sudden chaos. And from its flames rose men far more primitive, resourceful, and bloodthirsty than any I’d dreamed of in nightmares. To found their state. State of fear. State of terror. State of death.

“Do you remember every minute of it, Roland? Fallujah?”

“I used to. I let it go.”

“But look at all those young Americans who can’t,” she said, looking at the magnificent new Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Hospital, towering mirror-bright in the east. “Look at that, Roland. What we bring them home to. Our children. I wouldn’t trade one American finger for the whole country of Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Or any other place.”

“I didn’t know you were a peacenik, Joan.”

“I’d nuke ’em before I sent one more American over there. I really would. You probably don’t have the stomach for that, do you, Roland?”

“Not at the moment.”

Just the hum of the air conditioner as we passed the hospital and the traffic broke up and we headed south for the city.

“I respect that,” she said. “Your non-bloodiness. You seem to have a good heart.”

From the periphery I saw her look my way, dark aviator lenses on a white face.

“Although,” she said. “There is the psychologist you blew out of the sky last year, who burned like a match in your front yard. And it’s safe to say you spilled blood in Fallujah.”

“Guilty twice, Your Honor.”

“Don’t,” she said. “Only you can judge yourself. None of Joan Wayne’s goddamned business, that’s for sure.”

The sun got lower and the shadows longer. We sped past North County streets with pretty names: Vista Way, Las Flores, Tamarack, Poinsettia. Taucher’s silence was like Justine’s used to be — hyperactive and eager to break itself.

“I think Ben Azmeh is Caliphornia,” she said. “Beyond the circumstantial evidence, he feels right and he’s acting right. Conflicted upbringing — born Arab in America. Bright kid, but always reminded he’s different. Chip on shoulder gets heavier and heavier. Worships father, father the strong, father the good. Father slaughtered by infidels. Loner on a faith quest. He’s physical enough to do what Caliphornia has done, too. Strong and balanced and fast. He likes the risky stuff — rock climbing and martial arts. Likes knives, for the holy sake of Christ. He’s got motive, means, and opportunity. But...”

She checked her phone, dropped it back into her jacket pocket and looked out the passenger window. “But I still do not have proof. If I take this hunch to my superiors, what will happen, Roland, is this. First, we apply to FISA for a warrant to track Ben Azmeh’s cell phone. Probably granted, possibly not. But if Ben resorts to burners, we won’t get far with a phone tap. Whatever FISA decides, we’ll have a long, drawn-out huddle about how we proceed. Lots to consider. Many moving parts. For instance, what the lab comes up with on all that evidence from the apartment. Take him down or watch him? A week of twenty-four/seven surveillance takes twelve agents and thousands of dollars, and if you think we’re not on a budget, you’re wrong.

“I love football. It broke my heart when the Chargers jilted me and the rest of my city. So let me put this in football terms. Once San Diego FBI has finally agreed on an action, we run the ball off tackle, up to Los Angeles Division for approval. More layers. There’s not only the special agent in charge but an assistant director in charge. Possible fumbles everywhere you look. But say we’re lucky. They like the plan. That means we throw a long bomb all the way to Washington. Where the ball bounces fingertip to fingertip and ends up in the hands of our beloved director, who must eventually lateral to the DOJ so the whole fed bureaucracy can legally CYA before flipping the ball to the White House. Hoping somebody’s home. In the end? Everyone is professional, meticulous, thorough, and slow as a tortoise tied to a tree. So the clock will run out on us. Caliphornia will kill Lindsey and Voss and use his guns and ammo on innocent people. I feel it. I know it. Son of a goddamned bitch, I know it, Roland.”

“Or?” I asked.

“We keep Ben to ourselves and nail his ass fast.”

“If it is Ben, Joan.”

“Christ, Roland, of course if it is Ben.”

“I still like Alan’s anger,” I said. “It’s up front and real.”

“He’s a family man.”

“So was bin Laden.”

“Okay, then I like Alan as brother Ben’s right-hand man. I like him as Caliphornia’s Zawahiri.”

“Brothers in arms,” I said.

“It makes perfect sense.”

I drove into the carpool lane and set the cruise control. My thoughts were on the move again, in and out of light and shadow like Clevenger’s coyotes in the floodlit night.

“The money,” I said.

“I think so, too.”

“Ben asked Marah for money,” I said. “Twice.”

“I heard it,” said Taucher. “Loudly. So if the brothers are in this together, we only need one. I vote Ben. We approach him online, just like Islamic State would. Get him on the encrypted apps, offer the money through an IS or al-Qaeda sympathizer. Remember, Caliphornia is already on high alert. He’ll be very careful. But if we bait the hook just right and he takes it — game on.”

“You memorized Ben’s cell number when you asked Marah to see his text.”

“Crafty old Joan,” she said.

I thought it over. Taucher going rogue, with my help. After suspects we could not identify with certainty and had little physical evidence against.

“If it goes wrong, the Bureau will bust you down,” I said. “And cook me for obstructing a federal investigation.”

Taucher stared out the windshield, then folded her hands back over her purse. “Yeah. They’d find me a desk somewhere quiet and miserable. Make room for the new. They’ve been wanting that for a while. San Diego’s a plum with a history and I’m part of it. Just yesterday the SAC told me I might find a change of territory refreshing. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. And told him so.”

She made no acknowledgment of my own risk here. Not that I needed it. I wasn’t close enough to Taucher’s world to discern the fine borders between leadership and manipulation, insight and paranoia, fear real and fear imagined.

My first responsibility was to Lindsey Rakes. My second was to Voss and the thousands of other people who could receive one or more of the bullets delivered by Hector Padilla to Caliphornia. Probably Caliphornia. My third was to keep myself out of federal prison long enough to complete missions one and two.

“We’re a good team, Roland.”

“I’m glad I don’t work for your people.”

“Mostly they’re good people and in the right,” she said. “We stand for the rule of law and we protect the innocent.”

I weighed Joan Taucher’s smallness within that great Bureau against the bigness of her spirit and her fight.

“Now, help me compose a solicitation to Ben Azmeh,” she said. “From Raqqa Nine — an extremist organization offering him money.”

“Zkrya Gourmat’s recruitment network?” I asked, remembering Leising’s story.

“As re-created and updated,” said Taucher, with one of her small dry smiles.

“By you,” I concluded.

“Of course.”

Our fearsome Bureau, I thought, trolling for terrorists.

I pondered my mission for a moment. Then ad-libbed: “‘Dear Mr. Azmeh,’” I said. “‘We are Raqqa Nine. We operate in the spirit of Allah and Zkrya Gourmat. As you know, we finance terror in America against the infidels. How can we help you succeed?’”

“That’s good,” said Taucher. “But if Ben is driving around an SUV full of ammo, taking routine evasive action on Interstate Five, he is very wary. And now that Marah and Alan have probably both told him about their terrible experiences with the FBI today — he’s even warier. Suddenly, Ben gets a solicitation for free money, just for being called a promising young jihadi? No. It has to be something that will speak directly to Ben Azmeh-Adams-Anderson.”

I thought about that a moment. “Okay. ‘We are Raqqa Nine. We seek to finance homegrown terror in America, against the infidels. Your name has come to our attention through a mutual friend whose brother died at IH-One in Aleppo in April of 2015. I cannot reveal his name at this time. However, the link below is to an encrypted app where we can communicate securely. We can arrange to meet at a time and place where ideas can be exchanged, cash can be transferred, and security is without question. Sincerely... Warrior of Allah.’”

Taucher turned and raised her sunglasses to stare at me unfiltered. “It’s beautiful. I love the ‘Warrior of Allah’ touch. I can have it to Ben Azmeh as soon as I get home.”

Home, I thought: where she can keep her confederates in the digital dark. I was surprised at her crude guile.

Taucher’s email to me arrived one hour and forty-five minutes later. I was upstairs in my home office. She had logged the property from Ben Azmeh’s apartment into evidence, then “sped” home and sent him a Telegram “Secret Chat” message from the Warrior of Allah, offering support, enthusiasm, and money for his jihad.

On her email to me, she had signed off: