The Night of the Cobra

11 NEW YEAR: 2014

A gleaming white luxury yacht with VAGABOND painted on the stern loafed at anchor in the warm emerald waters near Jamaica. The billionaire businessman Sir Geoffrey Cornwell, who owned the vessel, would go ashore tonight with his stunning wife, Lady Patricia Cornwell, to celebrate the arrival of the new year of 2014 in grand style. Remaining aboard would be their adopted son and sole heir to the Cornwells’ holding company, Excalibur Enterprises. He was a slim and solitary man with sharp features and close-cut dishwater-brown hair who was in superb physical condition for someone pushing through his forties. His name was Kyle Swanson, and he was a gunnery sergeant in the United States Marines.

He did not particularly enjoy parties. While others might carry the scents of soap and shampoo, Kyle Swanson preferred the smell of gun oil. This latest New Year’s Eve was just another day to him, and he was busy cleaning a new rifle in the ship’s armory. Instead of formal wear, he was in a pair of gray cargo shorts, a stained Red Sox T-shirt, and very worn maroon Nike running shoes with no laces.

“You really should come with us tonight,” scolded Lady Pat. “The party at the Pegasus is always fun.” She was not yet ready and was lounging about in an old blue bathrobe and slippers, with cream on her face and stuff in her hair. She took a drink of single-malt whiskey.

Swanson smiled up at her. “You kiddies go have fun. I’ll avoid the loud music and beach orgies and watch the fireworks from here. I plan to shoot this beast a couple of times at midnight to mark the occasion.”

“And you will be all alone, as usual. Kyle. I swear you drive me mad.”

“Hardly alone, Pat. There are fifteen crew members on this barge. We will eat burgers and drink beer and have a good ole time.” He picked at the trigger-housing mechanism with a small brush.

Lady Pat sniffed. “Are you aware what this year is going to be? Two thousand thirteen becomes two thousand fourteen, and that makes me happy. Do you know why?”

Swanson ignored her. He knew why. He bent closer to his work on the latest iteration of the sniper rifle Excalibur, which he and Jeff had invented many years earlier. The original had set a new standard for superior long-range precision shooting that far exceeded all military standards of that time and incorporated state-of-the-art electronics. It was constantly being modified to meet the future. Many companies made sniper rifles; only a few were awarded licenses to hand-craft the Excalibur.

She continued. “Finally, after about twenty-five years, they are going to force you out of the Marine Corps, and don’t you pretend that I’m wrong. There will be no more Gunnery Sergeant Swanson. Long overdue.”

“Do not count those chickens before they hatch, M’lady. I have been given special exemptions before, and I expect they will give me another one. I will stay in the marines forever.”

“Hah! You’re going to be out on your arse. Task Force Trident is finished, and you are too old for special operations work. You’re a step too slow, and you will be getting no more fruit salad to wear alongside your pretty Congressional Medal of Honor and the two Navy Crosses. This year, you will be all ours, and be the full-time executive vice president of Excalibur Enterprises. I shall find you a nice girl, and the pair of you will produce the wonderful grandchildren that I so richly deserve.”

Kyle put the gun down on a clean white cloth that was stretched tight over a long pad. “You sound like a broken record. You throw this at me at least twice a year. Ain’t going to happen.”

She took another sip of the whiskey and checked the clock on the bulkhead. Plenty of time to finish getting dressed. “I know your problem, Kyle. You’re still in love with Coastie, but she went off and married somebody else, so now you just sulk around, pining oh so nobly and silently. Well, she’s not coming back.” Coastie was Beth Ledford, a Coast Guard sniper who had worked her way into Trident, where she eventually became Kyle’s partner. The petite and vivacious little blonde had a savant’s ability as a shooter and was as cute as a button and brave as a bull. Last year, she had married Miguel Castillo, a captain in the Mexican marines and an old spec-ops comrade of Kyle’s. The two of them were doing the happily-ever-after thing somewhere down in Mexico. He didn’t stay in touch.

Swanson blew out a tired breath. One more time. “Coastie and I were never a couple, and there was never any romance, no sex, and not even hand holding on a moonlit lonely night while out on a mission. Why do you refuse to accept that? We were partners and good friends and I trusted her with my life. Anyway, it’s none of your business. Also and by the way, the woman is a stone-cold killer.”

“Oh, that. I’m a woman. I know all about these things,” Pat said, and a little smile tilted the corners of her mouth. “Coastie and I had some conversations. You don’t know everything.”

“Would you please go away and party with your husband? You look weird with that goop on your face. The helicopter awaits, and the Jamaicans are slobbering with joy, awaiting the arrival of the esteemed Lord and Lady Cornwell and their money. Give me a shot of that booze before you leave.”

“Very well. You know I’m right. About everything.” She poured the drink and left the room, glad to escape the stink of the gun oil. Still, it never hurt to remind Kyle of his responsibilities.

When the bulkhead hatch closed, Swanson pulled the weapon closer, put on a headset that contained a ring of bright LED lights, and leaned in to touch up the scope mount. What did she know? How many times had she played these cards? True, it had been a bittersweet moment to escort Coastie down the aisle last year and give her away to Mickey; part of him did not want to let go. Ah, well. That was that.

Molly Egan remained anchored in memory as his only true love. Even today, his pulse skipped when he saw a pretty redhead with a short haircut. Why would he ever allow another woman to get so close to him, become that special? It was easy to be an acquaintance, harder to be a friend, almost impossible to be a lover of Kyle Swanson’s. Twenty years ago in Mogadishu, his heart had turned into a big block of stone, and it never chipped.

But he had to admit that Pat was right about that other thing — the inexorable march of time. His eyes were still rated as having twenty-twenty vision, which was excellent for a normal man of his age, but not really what he needed as an elite sniper. Other changes were also happening. The long gallops he once did for exercise had become slower runs, not much more than jogs, and he had put on five pounds that exercise and diet had been unable to shed. When visiting Quantico, he admired the effortless workouts of entire platoons of new marines and was glad he did not have to go through that grind anymore.

Swanson had been molded over the past two decades into a one-man weapons system for the marines and his country to use, and in the process he helped create Task Force Trident. The small unit of black operators had carried out missions that were way off the books, some of which had never been acknowledged. Trident reported only to whoever occupied the Oval Office in the White House at the time and had worked out well until a crooked politician had exposed its secret existence and painted Swanson as being the president’s private assassin. Trident was shelved, and its members were scattered to the winds.

Swanson landed on his feet. The Pentagon had long ago lent him to Sir Jeff Cornwell to create the futuristic sniper rifle that had spun into a financial empire under Cornwell’s hand. Kyle had remained involved because the Pentagon liked having an inside track with Sir Jeff’s operations. Now, although still a marine, Kyle also was a senior executive in the privately held corporation. He just rode with it, trained on his own, kept his skill set sharp, and remained an optimist, believing all along that Trident was only resting until the nation needed its special services again. Things would work out just fine. They always did. Trident was too important.

It was nine o’clock. The calendar would change at midnight. Happy New Year to me.

Barlow Hess, huddled on his little yellow tow tractor, asked himself, If there is such a thing as global warming, where the hell is it when I need it? The temperature was minus nine degrees and dropping like a falling anvil in the wind that swept across the Minneapolis — St. Paul International Airport. He didn’t want to go back out on the frozen concrete that was iced to the point of looking like a mile of spilled milk. He wore a heavy sweater and a padded jacket over the weatherized coveralls and wool-lined boots, and big mittens protected his hands while a thick hat with flaps was crushed onto his head. Elsewhere in the Minneapolis — St. Paul area, people were going to parties. Not in the little shed at the airport. Hess waited while a private jet taxied to the parking ramp. The snot in his nose was frozen and brittle, and snow and ice had turned his facial hair into a vanilla confection.

Barlow shivered inside his layers of clothing. He might catch a warm blast from the pair of Pratt & Whitney 305 jet engines before they shut down if he approached the Hawker 800XP from behind, right after it parked. His boss would ream him for the safety violation, but it would be worth it. The yellow tug had chains on its tires to minimize slipping on the ice, but there was no cab protection for the driver. In the summer, it was hot. In the winter, it was so miserably cold that baggage handlers stacked meat shipments outside the terminal to keep them frozen.

Hess had checked the flight-arrival schedule and learned that the midsized corporate jet, with a crew of two, had cruised across the country from San Diego tonight. Why would they do something like that? It was warm and toasty in California. It was not a trade he would make, but then he was the one sitting on a little tractor on an ice floe that a polar bear would envy. He had never even been to California. What did he know?

The white aircraft coasted to an easy stop with its landing lights still blinking, then sat idle for a moment, as if nobody wanted to be the first out into the bad weather. A black limousine drove up to the side, the side hatch opened, and short steps flexed out and down. Someone got out of the car and held open the rear door. Barlow Hess was already out there on his tractor, waiting for the California fellows to get out of the way so he could move the plane to a hangar.

A large man stepped out first. He had an expensive overcoat and a dark hat pulled low over the forehead, while a thick muffler was wrapped around his neck and most of his face. Barlow caught a glimpse of dark skin around the cheeks and a black patch over the left eye, but that was all. A second man, tall and narrow, followed, and they both ducked into the limo parked at the tip of the left wing. The limo driver closed the door and ran around the car to climb inside, his exhaled breath trailing in little clouds. Within a minute, the vehicle left, and Barlow Hess hustled to get the little bird under cover and out of the bitter weather. It had to be serviced and prepared for another charter tomorrow.

“Welcome to Mogadishu on the Mississippi, sir,” the young Somali driver called over his shoulder as he accelerated the stretch limo out of the airport traffic grid and onto Interstate 494. His eyes searched for patches of ice. “And a happy two thousand fourteen!”

From inside his bundle of warm clothing, the large passenger in the rear said, “Turn up the heat! It’s freezing in here.”

The driver pressed some buttons on the panel, increased the fan speed and temperature, and checked the console lights to be certain the heated seat back there was on maximum. “Is this your first time in Minnesota in the winter, sir?”

“Um.” The passenger had never felt such penetrating cold temperatures. It felt like his blood was freezing. Of all the places on earth for the natives from the heat-baked Horn of Africa to resettle, how had tens of thousands washed up here, an arctic sheet where people drilled holes in the ice to fish?

The boy driving laughed. He had no Somali accent. “You’ll get used to it, sir. This is an unusually cold night, but the really bad stuff won’t hit us until February.”

“You like it?” the second passenger asked.

“This is the only place I’ve ever lived, sir. It is home, so of course I like it. My whole family is here. Where are you gentlemen from?”

“Somalia,” the passenger replied.

“Ouch,” said the driver. “No wonder you’re cold. There are some ninety thousand of us here — the largest Somali community in the U.S.”

The big man shifted. It was getting a bit warmer now in the long car, and hot air was blowing on his feet. He asked, “Do you ever think of going back home?”

“Back to Africa? No, sir.” The answer was curt and obviously heartfelt. “Parents threaten to send their children back to Somalia if they don’t behave. My generation prefers going to Disneyland and Cozumel. Somalia, we can visit through Facebook. Young people there also say good things about Disneyland and Cozumel.”

The passengers exchanged a private look. The driver was Americanized beyond hope.

“Are you a Muslim?” asked the thin passenger, pulling off his gloves.

“Of course, sir. Allah be praised.”

“Do you defend the faith?”

“Defend it from what, sir? The American Constitution protects our freedom to worship as we choose, and we have plenty of mosques here.”

“It was my impression that Americans consider all Muslims to be terrorists.”

The boy was relaxed behind the wheel as he steered through the blue-black night. The lights of the city glowed in the cold, and hundreds of automobiles were on the roads. “Most Americans believe that there are fanatics in every religion, sir. We work very hard around here to distance ourselves from extremists. The Christians do the same.”

“Hmmm. Good policy.” The big man stirred. He did not like what he was hearing. The fervor he expected was not there. He changed the subject.

“Have you been driving limousines for a long time, young man?” he asked. “You don’t look old enough.”

“I’m twenty,” the driver said. “My extended family owns three limos, and we specialize in serving the Somali business community, people like you, sir. I’ve been around the maintenance shop and driving for years. But I will quit next spring, right after I get my associate’s degree in science.”

“Then what?”

“I will join the air force, sir.”

“You want to be a soldier?” The big man was surprised.

“Hoo-ah, sir. Uncle Sam has already guaranteed to train me in advanced computer technology for a couple of years; then I will come back home, and my family will help me start my own business. My generation is all about computers and the future, sir, and I want to be like Gates and Jobs and Zuckerberg.”

The Cobra lowered his chin deeper into the coat. He had no reply to that. This boy was already lost, but no matter. There were already enough soldiers on the ground in Minnesota to carry out the plan. Outside the frosty window, it was very, very cold.

12 THE DECISION

Lieutenant General Bradley Middleton, USMC, left the White House in a four-door sedan with no markings on a clear and brisk day in early January. The recently appointed deputy national security adviser to the president of the United States had been at work since six o’clock, weighing a myriad of global hotspots, but his thoughts were dominated with this upcoming meeting at the Central Intelligence Agency. The final part of a thorny problem had to be resolved.

The three-star general had been the two-star commander of Task Force Trident until it was disestablished and sent into obscurity. Middleton had been as frantic as a teenage girl in a shoe store trying to save it, but there was no chance. Trident had become politically toxic.

The chill Washington wind whistled outside the vehicle as it crossed the Potomac and got into the Mixing Bowl’s serpentine highways, following I-95 and branching away on 495. Out here, it did not matter if the shiny vehicle with a driver was carrying a passenger from the White House; every commuter fought for space.

The general mused that he had at least landed good berths for almost all the former Trident operators. Their impeccable service records guaranteed smooth landings. Middleton himself had emerged unscathed. Instead of being put out to pasture in disgrace, he had been given his third star and a small office in the White House. That was no favor, he thought, because the new job sucked up all of his time, and the unending stress was likely going to make his hair go gray by next week.

The final piece of the Trident puzzle was, as always, the unpredictable Gunnery Sergeant Kyle Swanson. Both of them were marines, and, as such, they never left anyone behind. The bond of the Corps was too strong, and they had known and trusted each other for too many years. From his new office, Middleton knew what was going on all over the world, and he also knew that someday Kyle Swanson would be needed again. The man was too valuable to lose, but the commandant himself had ruled that Swanson must either retire voluntarily or be retired.

The general plugged in the earbuds of his iPad and let Beethoven soothe his busy mind. What to do with the best shooter and operator he had ever seen? The general suddenly gave a deep chuckle that was overheard by the driver, who did not comment. If ever someone did not need rescuing, it was Kyle Swanson.

Sir Jeff and Lady Pat had been trying for the past several years to get him to quit and help run their multibillion-dollar industrial complex, Excalibur Enterprises. The gunny had a boatload of money.

The question on Middleton’s plate was how to keep the man who had been publicly tagged as a ruthless killer. Of course he was! That’s what he was supposed to be! Swanson was as smooth as a snake on glass on the battlefield and possessed Sherlock Holmes’s investigative streak. He had been a deadly tool that was unleashed only in very special situations, against very special adversaries. We can’t just throw that away. In the end, the general’s decision was easy. All he had to do was convince the sniper to go with it.

The sedan got to the traffic signal in Langley, Virginia; made the turn; and stopped at the security post. Middleton and the driver handed over their ID cards while guards searched the vehicle from its trunk to undercarriage. A few minutes later, Middleton was stalking across the lobby of the CIA, where there was a big seal of the United States embedded on the floor and a wall of stars denoting fallen agents. The stars bore no names.

A young woman in a dark business suit and white blouse introduced herself as Tracy Packard, the administrative assistant of Martin Atkins, the CIA deputy director of clandestine operations. She was slight of build and had deep brown eyes that matched her dark hair, which was pulled back. She smiled. “Deputy Director Atkins is expecting you, General Middleton. Right this way.”

“Thank you.” They left the public spaces. “Do you know if the third party for the meeting has arrived?”

“Yes, sir. Gunny Swanson got here about ten minutes ago. He and the deputy director are sitting in the office staring at each other and waiting for you. It’s kind of spooky.” She led Middleton to an elevator, pushed the button, and the door slid open, then hissed closed behind them. “The gunny is somewhat of a legend around here, you know? I’m glad I had an opportunity to meet him.”

The general just nodded, but thought, Therein lies the quandary: There is no such thing as a secret legend.

Tracy Packard opened the inner door, and the general walked in and threw his overcoat onto a chair and looked at the two seated men. Swanson did not bother to stand in the presence of the three-star, so Middleton got right into the subject. “Jesus Christ, you two. Get over it.” He moved to a credenza along a wall and poured hot coffee into a thick mug, welcoming the warmth.

“I don’t like this idea, Middleton,” said Atkins. Those were the first words he had spoken since Swanson had arrived. “Why should the Marines’ problem child be shoved off on us?”

Swanson was casual in jeans and a sweatshirt and winter boots, with a hard tan from the time aboard the Vagabond in the Caribbean. He insolently crossed his legs and huffed. “Fuck this. Sir.”

Middleton rubbed a hand through his close-cropped hair and drank some of the scalding brew, then plopped down into a cushioned chair. “I feel your pain. I just left the president, who also feels your pain. As of this moment, nobody gives a shit. The decision is final.”

“Goddammit, Brad!” Atkins’s face was growing red because he was so pissed off. “The CIA is an independent agency. We don’t answer to you or anyone else up the military stovepipe.”

“And I don’t answer to them,” Swanson snapped. “I’m a marine.”

“Shush,” the general said. “Marty, this is the president’s decision. It has nothing to do with the Pentagon. You got a problem, go see the Man.”

He handed Swanson an envelope that contained two documents. “Gunny, here are the documents that terminate your service with the Corps and transfer you to the CIA. You now belong to Deputy Director Atkins.”

“I don’t belong to anybody.” He clipped the usual “sir” at the end of the comment. If he was being kicked out of the marines, screw courtesy.

Middleton drained his cup and clapped it on Atkins’s desk with a firm clunking noise. “This was a tough decision, guys, and a lot of people shaped it. The final call was made in the Oval Office. No matter what you think, it did not just happen, so cut us some slack.”

“Clandestine Service already has all the snipers it needs, General,” Martin Atkins said with a quieter tone. “Our roster is full.”

“Yeah. I taught most of them. I don’t want to work here, General. I liked having two hundred thousand marines at my back. If I have to choose between CIA and Excalibur, then I’ll take Excalibur.”

“Look, Kyle. We have had some differences, but I’m the good guy in this. You cannot just walk out the door. I think when Marty gets used to the idea, he will fit you in to his roster. We have to keep you out of the spotlight but still available when the crap hits the fan, and this may be the only way.”

Swanson stood his ground, although his mind wasn’t as firm as it had been thirty seconds earlier. Instead of a rejection, he would bargain. “Excalibur is better. Full salary and benefits and a slice of ownership.”

“You would be bored within a week out there.” Middleton knew the hook was set. “If you want to stay in the game, this is the ticket. You just don’t wear the uniform any longer. As for you, Marty, CIA gets an operator with off-the-chart experience and ability. You both know I’m right.”

“That’s the final word, Brad?” Atkins asked.

“Signed by the president and agreed to by the few people who need to know, Marty. When the moment comes, you will be glad to have this guy as an asset.”

The three-star general pulled out a cell phone and tossed it over to Kyle, who caught it in midair with the swipe of his hand. “Make up your mind, Gunny. There’s the phone. Call Jeff and Pat and tell them you’re coming to work for them … or don’t. Like it or not, consider this scruffy excuse for a meeting to be your retirement ceremony from the Corps.”

Swanson sat still and knew that Middleton was not hustling him. He really had put a lot of thought into this.

The general got to his feet. “Before I left the White House, the Syrians had done something terrible, Vladimir Putin was being Vladimir Putin, and North Korea announced it will send men to the moon, which could mean their crazy prick of a leader might have a booster rocket that can hit America. Closer to home, my dog is sick and my wife is going through menopause. I don’t have any more time to give you people. Sorry.” He picked up his coat and paused at the door. “Work it out and let me know.”

Tracy Packard was waiting outside the door and escorted Middleton back downstairs and out of the building.

“So we have a shotgun marriage, Swanson.” Atkins shrugged his shoulders. “Shit rolls downhill, and we are both in the valley.”

Kyle needed more coffee. He filled his cup and sat back down. “Marty, we’ve traded favors over the years. Your field people are good, and I don’t want to disrupt them.”

“Aww, can the crap, Kyle. I won’t send you through basic training.”

Swanson laughed. “I will make about a million dollars this year from Excalibur in salary. I really don’t need this job, too.” He hefted the general’s cell phone.

Atkins put one hand flat, palm down across the tips of the fingers of his other hand. Time out. “Then how about we try this? The one thing we do best is undercover and clandestine work, right? I mean, that’s our mission! So let’s say you really do go into the private sector, but when we really need your specific help, we can reach out.”

“Like an outside consultant?” Swanson thought about it. Maybe he could open an Excalibur office in Washington to stay close to the movers and shakers on this side of the pond. Would Jeff and Pat go along with it? Probably.

Excalibur had always enjoyed a special standing with those who mattered over here in the dark world. Sir Jeff had been a colonel with the Special Air Service before a broken leg forced the transition into private business and had never forgotten his SAS roots.

“I get a CIA cred pack, passport, and ironclad alternate identity, but only a few people know of the arrangement?” Swanson raised his eyebrows.

“Need-to-know basis. I swear. You will have everything before you leave the building today, along with a continuation of your top-secret clearance. Tracy will lead you through the paperwork and run through our drop boxes all over the world if you ever need quick access to a smartphone or new IDs or weapons.”

“And when I call here, you answer. Not some middleman.”

“I can to that, too. Tracy will set up a special hotline number. We can make this work.”

There was a final long pause, and Kyle said, “Deal.” He punched a number into the phone in his hand.

A woman answered. “Kyle?”

“You were right. They just kicked me out of the Corps today, Pat. I’m coming home.”

Atkins heard the voice shriek with pleasure. When Swanson terminated the brief call, the CIA officer went to the coffeepot himself, then asked, “A fuckin’ million a year? Really?”

The tension between them was gone. “Those were the recession years. Now? Add in the bonuses and stock options that were held in trust while I was in the Corps, although I used a bit to buy a house in California and an apartment in Washington.”

“You should have quit years ago, you fuckin’ moron, but nobody ever accused marines of being smart.” Atkins extended his hand. “Welcome aboard, Agent Swanson.”

“The Corps has a motto: Semper Fi. Do we have one here in Spookville?”

“Of course,” Atkins said. “Blame it on the other guy.”

13 THE STOREFRONT

The Cobra did not look in mirrors. The bizarre reflection lurking there reminded him of the night twenty years ago when he had lost the most important fight of his life. His left eye was blinded and was now no more than a milky orb. A deep white scar ran from mouth to jawline, and the badly stitched lip twisted at an awkward angle. Another big scar tracked in front of his right ear, and the hair had never fully regrown over the damaged area of his scalp. The Swanson Marine and the old woman and the kid had beaten the hell out of him, and when the tale of the wild attack followed him onto the operating table, no one in the American emergency medical tent at the Mogadishu airport had been gentle.

They had kept him alive, but barely, and weeks later, under heavy guard, he was thrown into an overcrowded prison hole in Kenya to either rot or heal. There never was a trial.

Every day since he began to recover, he had touched his deformed face; each time he did, his thoughts raced to inflicting revenge on the Swanson Marine. Allah the Most Merciful would not let his loyal follower Omar Jama become a martyr before that debt was repaid in full. The first weeks and months were a healing hell, but the Cobra overcame his pain and worked toward the day when he would again be free.

Al Qaeda had saved him. The Cobra would never forget that. General Aidid had sent money, but it was al Qaeda that made the difference. It was a relatively new organization that established itself with daring attacks such as a truck bomb that wobbled the giant World Trade Center in New York in 1993, Omar Jama’s first year in captivity. He had learned that news when the al Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, began sending emissaries into African prisons to recruit men who could help in his war on America. Several of them brought back stories of an exceptional fighter languishing in Kenya. He was known as the Cobra.

Bin Laden was intrigued by the tales. Al Qaeda would need leaders in the future to expand the holy war and keep it going forever. People with money and influence began visiting the special prisoner in Kenya. Doctors tended his body while imams tended his soul, the guards eased up, and his food and living conditions improved.

Omar Jama almost burst with pride on September 11, 2001, when al Qaeda stunned America by hijacking four commercial airliners and crashing into both towers of the World Trade Center in New York and a side of the Pentagon in Washington. With that strike, his patron, bin Laden, changed the world forever. The United States responded to the 9/11 attack by invading Afghanistan, then spun off to invade Iraq.

Eventually, the visitors from al Qaeda deemed him healthy and motivated enough to rejoin the fight. After ten years in Kenya’s filthy system, guards were bribed, and the Cobra simply walked away. He arrived in Pakistan in late 2003, a man who had been totally bred for this new kind of war called terrorism, although it was not in the cause he truly wanted. Omar Jama would fight battles all over the Middle East, where he rose to be a leader, an organizer, and a tactician.

In 2005, Osama bin Laden gave Omar Jama a private audience and was pleased with his creation. The Cobra pleaded to go off and fight his own war. Somalia was still aflame, he said, and he would bring it beneath the al Qaeda boot to create a center where Americans would fear to venture. The jihad of bin Laden would conquer an entire nation.

The lean and bearded leader with piercing eyes agreed with the dream, although he stalled: the time was not yet right. The Cobra would be needed in Iraq and Afghanistan for the immediate future. To temper the disappointment, Osama dispatched him on a rest period, during which he would meet the man who had actually supplied the funding during the Cobra’s prison years.

Faisal bin Turki bin Naif had proved invaluable in the final development of the Cobra. The extraordinarily rich outcast prince of the House of Saud, which ruled the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, lived on a Greek island and was delighted when Omar Jama came for their initial visit. The Somali flung broad possibilities for terrorism into the air like strings of firecrackers, idea after idea after idea. It was marvelous entertainment. The renegade Saudi agreed to provide seed money for a new enterprise. A million U.S. dollars up front would tide the Cobra over during his final duties in Iraq and Afghanistan, during which time Faisal would persuade Osama to grant permission to send the man out on his own. Another nine million dollars would be waiting as a line of credit, to be drawn upon so the violent dreams of Omar Jama could become reality.

That changed in 2011, when U.S. SEALs killed bin Laden, and the Cobra decided that all debts to al Qaeda had been paid in full. His attention returned to Somalia, which the United States had left in the hands of the United Nations and other African armies. The U.N. could not handle the job on its own, America was busy elsewhere, and Somalia had dropped into total chaos. The biggest industry was piracy, and a new wave of fighters had emerged to engage the foreign troops. They were overwhelmingly young and vicious and had grown up hearing stories about the famous warrior from the old days, the man called Cobra. But he was not just a historical figure, and when he appeared among them, the youngsters knew their leader had arrived.

He smelled great opportunity. Someone needed to dream big, just as Osama bin Laden had done, and jump over the little wars in the mountains and the sands of the Middle East. The Cobra wanted to leave a historic mark of his own, and nothing would accomplish that goal better than another major strike within the United States. Then he could come back and tame Somalia and spread revolution throughout Africa.

He decided to start his revolution in the unlikely state of Minnesota, a metropolis in the center of the United States. It was not something he did by chance. The largest enclave of Somali refugees in America had located in the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. His soldiers would be almost invisible there.

Months passed as he laid it out, keeping the details in his head or strictly compartmentalizing them, for the American intelligence services had ears everywhere. As General Aidid had once advised, the Cobra then set out to travel the world and find the right people to help.

He was particularly rigorous in his own intelligence-gathering efforts, for he had a secondary mission that had gnawed at him for many years. When he flew from California to Minnesota, he knew the addresses of the Somali woman from the Irish clinic, of her policeman son, and the places where the Swanson Marine lived. Eventually, he would visit them all, and one by one, he would kill them all.

A lanky Somali man named Hassan Abdi had earned the Cobra’s trust in the streets of Mogadishu, when they were both very young militiamen. When Omar was taken prisoner, Hassan’s wealthy father stepped in to prevent the same fate from befalling his own son, dispatching Hassan to Europe to be educated. Fate had brought the friends back together once again in Somalia, and although Hassan was the one with a college degree, he fell under the magnetic spell of the rough Omar, the one with the dreams. An agreement was struck to go forward together. Since the Cobra’s presence tended to frighten strangers, Hassan would conduct the business conversations. He was the front man.

For a base in Minneapolis, Hassan arranged a one-year rental agreement for office space in a small shopping center, where he established a trading brokerage called Hassan Investments. The name was emblazoned with gold lettering in both English and Arabic on the single wide window, which was darkly tinted. Neat long brown drapes covered the window, and just behind the cloth was a set of vertical blinds that were never opened. That was the front of the building, which one entered through a stubby weatherproof mud room. The office had three cheap plastic chairs and a desk with a computer that was linked to the stock, futures, and commodity markets. Charts flowed across the screen in warm colors.

Behind a separating wall in the rear was an apartment that was a quickie mishmash of Home Depot and Bed Bath & Beyond, a cramped lair that would serve as the Cobra’s temporary home and help him remain out of sight. Although it was small, the apartment was much better than the prison cell in Kenya or the mountain camps of Waziristan. Omar Jama would not be staying there long anyway, for it was almost time to launch the operation, and after that there would be plenty of time to warm up and stretch out back in Africa.

For Hassan Abdi to label his front company an investment business was a stretch. Resettled Somalis earned little money. Many still worked in the commercial chicken factories in Marshall and Faribault that had employed the first waves of refugees, while others depended on public welfare and private charities for subsistence. Overall, the resettlement had gone well, and a middle class had emerged. The people who had lost everything already in their lifetimes were not financial risk-takers. Hassan had earned a series 7 broker’s license and could talk the arcane language of finance. He was not a pushy salesman, because he did not really care if he sold anything. It was only a cover.

If somebody actually wanted to deal a stock or two, Hassan would make the transaction through an online brokerage in his own account and produce an impressive-looking statement. Like his friend and superior, the Cobra, he was not here to make money as a market trader.

On a Sunday evening, two weeks after they arrived in Minneapolis, a bearded man came to the office, and Hassan ushered him inside, made sure the lock was turned and the curtains were drawn, then took him to the rear.

The Cobra rose to greet the visitor, and, although they had never met, they shared a warm hug and traditional greetings.

“Allahu Akbar” (God is the greatest), said Omar Jama.

“Wa’laikum asalam wa rahmattullah wa barakatuhu” (Peace and blessings be upon you), replied the visitor.

In the heartland of America, the two terrorists embraced. One was al Qaeda. The other was al Shabaab.

Special Agent Lucky Sharif of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was using four cars to track the dirty little white Chevrolet Malibu driven by Mohammed Ahmed when it left the Islamic Center mosque after maghrib, the evening prayers. The four-person FBI team flowed in a diamond formation around the subject vehicle — front, rear, and both sides — and stayed in contact by radio.

Ahmed had been a person of interest to the bureau since the previous year, when Islamic terrorists attacked the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, on September 21, 2013. The bloody assault had lasted several days and left several hundred people dead and wounded. Eventually, three of the attackers were traced back to the Minnesota mosque, and Mohammed Ahmed was the suspected recruiter. With the gigantic Mall USA located in nearby Bloomington, FBI and local police were extremely nervous that the man from the mosque might have similar ambitions for an attack closer to home. They were certain he was al Qaeda.

They knew everything about him, which wasn’t much. Ahmed, a resettled Somali, earned a subsistence living as a janitor, wore thrift-store clothes, drove a clunker, was maxed out on a credit card, had less than two hundred dollars to his name, owed money to almost everyone who knew him, and — the only remarkable thing about him — had a long and shaggy gray and white beard. He believed America had failed him, because he could not admit that he had failed himself. The man was steeped in holy words and sacred custom, but too shallow for serious study or organization. The FBI concluded that he was not anyone with real juice but might lead them to a bigger catch.

The trail car slowed when Ahmed arrived at the strip mall, and when he got out, it slid into a parking place at the front of a convenience store on the corner.

“Hard to believe that hairy dude persuaded those boys to go become martyrs,” said Special Agent Janna Ecklund from the passenger seat. “I mean, really: ‘Come on, boy, we will give you an AK-47 absolutely free if you promise to go get killed.’ Keep an eye on the door, and I’ll get us a couple of coffees.”

“I’ll have a Diet Coke instead of coffee,” said Sharif. “As a recruiter, he probably framed the pitch better than you, Janna. After all, he did sign them up.”

Janna got out of the car. She was six feet tall with a thick mane of white-blonde hair that was covered by a pull-down watch cap. She rolled her shoulders, straightened her down jacket to cover the badge and pistol, then went inside. A coffee urn was on a flat counter in the rear, next to a cabinet of stale and crusty donuts and a rotisserie that was rolling a half-dozen sizzling hot dogs. What was coffee without a donut? She grabbed two of the sugared snacks, pulled a Diet Coke from the cooler for Lucky, fixed the coffee, and paid the young man at the register. He was a good-sized kid with linebacker muscles, pink skin, fair and fine hair, and a zoned-out look on his face due to the tunes chiming in his ears. The head bounced in tempo. An older man sat close by, watching the boy through disapproving eyes. No terrorists in here, thought Janna. Just another immigrant family, old-line Swedes, making a living on the tundra of Minnesota. Her people. Guy looks just like my grandfather. “Tack så mycket” (Thanks a lot), Janna said. The old Viking’s face lit up.

She balanced his cargo on one palm and walked back to the car. Sharif took the soda can and a donut. “Thanks. I’m trying to keep my blood sugar high.”

“So what would have been the right sales pitch for those boys, Lucky? How do you get a kid in America to prance off on a suicide mission?” Ecklund took a good gulp of coffee and looked over to the doorway of Hassan Investments. Nothing but a dim overhead light showed at the entrance.

“You give them something to fight for, not just some undefined injustice to fight against. They already have plenty of martyr volunteers in the refugee camps, so they don’t really need to put these out-of-shape kids into the battle at all. They get off on having an American involved. Don’t try to apply logic to an illogical situation.”

“Too bad they all couldn’t turn out like you, Lucky,” said Ecklund, chewing a donut and sipping some coffee.

“I had a lot of help. Modern kids here in the States have to survive among urban gangs and dropouts and drug dealers and tweakers and broken dreams and social media. They’re really just waiting for someone to tell them what to do. That janitor filled that need.”

Janna looked surprised. “Our guy? Mohammed Ahmed? For real?”

Lucky gestured toward the office they were watching. “It’s a little late for a janitor with no money to be discussing his portfolio with a financial professional, and on a weekend, yet. Send a text back to the field office, Janna. Let’s get all over this new guy on the block, Hassan Investments.”

General Middleton was wrong. It did not take a full week for Kyle Swanson to become bored with civilian life. A few days were more than enough, and he had an entire lifetime yet to go. Marty Atkins had promised he would not have to endure basic training again, but time had been required to acquaint Kyle with the intricacies of his new employer. It was, after all, the Central Intelligence Agency. Some of it was dull, like the endless briefings. Of more interest were the locations and contents of emergency lockers available to Clandestine Service agents. An operator on the run almost anywhere in the world could access guns, false papers, cash, and safe hideouts if he or she knew where to look. Strongpoints had been established and maintained for almost a half century.

Closing out his marine life had turned out to be just as difficult, for the government demanded completion of paperwork, which would be filed away electronically and in hard copies, too, and never looked at again. The CIA provided private shooting ranges that Kyle used to break the endless paperwork.

“Do you want me to send you some color swatches?” Lady Pat asked during one of her increasingly frequent calls from London. She had hired a designer to prepare the Washington office.

“I don’t know from colors. Whatever. Nothing girlie.”

“What about the carpet? Any preferences there?”

“No.”

“I’ll put that down as something basic and utilitarian, with a nice big Persian rug centered before an antique desk. Maybe a Berber, just as we have done in Jeff’s office.”

“I’m going to hang up before I puke.”

“You really must talk to Diana about it. She is just a wonderful interior designer, and she really wants to meet you so she can match up the office to your personality. That reminds me. When you get to London, we shall hand you over to the tailor for some decent suits and shoes.” Pat was probably thinking about a basic blue suit in the five-thousand-dollar range. “When are you going to get here?”

Kyle was not eager to jump the Atlantic, because he looked at the trip as his unofficial entrance into middle age, and he wasn’t ready for that yet. But he did not want to hang around here, either, having already said both his good-byes and hellos. He needed some time. “Pat, I will be over in a few weeks. I have to wrap up a few more things because it is hell to get two government agencies to speak the same language over something as common as a minor personnel matter like me. The marines want to know where to electronically deposit my retirement check, and the agency is giving me the whole series of vaccine shots. It never ends.”

She let the conversation fall dead for about fifteen seconds. “I think you’re just stalling. You have to leave the marines. You got fired.”

“No. I retired, and I’m not looking back. I just need to take a rest, Pat. So before I come over to England, I’m heading up to Minnesota for a few days on the way out. We’re working up a surprise party for Deqo Sharif’s birthday next Sunday, a week from now. She’s turning seventy-five. I talked to Lucky about it last night.”

That got Lady Pat centered again. She really enjoyed the company of Deqo, a strong woman who survived the Somali holocaust and raised her grandson alone to become an American FBI agent. “Well. That’s good. Let me know the details so Jeff and I can send her some flowers. That should be a fun party. She deserves it.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve almost decided to go with an eggplant drapery treatment, with sheers, of course, for your office. And a subdued hand-painted silk wallpaper. If you don’t make a decision, then Diana and I will.”

Swanson hung up, wondering how it would be to work in an office the color of an eggplant.

14 THE COFFEE SHOP

Kyle Swanson had decided to drive to Minnesota, welcoming some time alone on the road behind the wheel of a new car. He let Marty Atkins at the agency know his travel plan, confirmed his encrypted cell-phone number, and then, from his apartment in Georgetown, checked by phone with the couple that rented his custom-built beach house in Malibu, California. She was an artist and he was a retired diplomat, and they reported that things were fine out there. The two real estate investments that Swanson had made when the market was in the crapper had reversed when the economy turned around, and both were now in stratospheric price levels. Sunday night, he packed two travel bags, one black and one olive-green, and was asleep before midnight. He was up at dawn the next day.

Waiting for him in the garage was a light tan 2014 Audi A6 luxury sedan that he had purchased as a birthday present for Deqo Sharif. Understated on the exterior, the sleek car was bathed inside with luxury features that Kyle planned to enjoy during the trip that would take him through Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin before he reached Minnesota. Staying within the speed limit was not in his plans, and a radar-warning device was mounted out of sight, ready to squeak a warning if it detected police radar. He allowed the car’s computer to plan the route, and its throaty feminine voice would be his guide.

Swanson had almost convinced himself that making the long drive was the responsible way to break in such a high-performance machine. The car needed an experienced hand at the wheel before it could be handed over to a nice elderly lady. Meanwhile, it was a nice toy for the drive of eleven hundred miles. The engine pounced to life, eager to run. He adjusted seats, mirrors, and temperature controls.

The bland voice said, “Turn left onto L Street Northwest.” He would learn that she never said, “Please.” He rolled away in the early light and was soon leaving behind the city of monuments.

“I intend to put ‘terror’ back into the word ‘terrorism,’” the Cobra proclaimed to Mohammed Ahmed during their second meeting, which took place in the last row of a darkened motion picture theater. It was a midafternoon show that catered to an older crowd, and they had the place almost to themselves. Five other patrons were scattered about, all with gray hair and glasses. Mohammed had been the last customer to enter, and he took a seat halfway down. After ten minutes, when no one else came inside, he retreated to the back row and sat one seat over from the Cobra.

“No American is frightened because some dark-skinned child from the Twin Cities went off to Africa to voluntarily die, for any cause.” Omar Jama had a hypnotic manner of speech that rode just above the dialogue on the screen. Every word seemed to have been considered in advance and dripped with the honey of promise.

“I watched the world from inside my prison for ten years, and then for another ten during my rehabilitation elsewhere in Africa and the Middle East. It gave me a unique perspective,” he told the al Qaeda man.

Ahmed remained silent, believing the Cobra enjoyed hearing his own wisdom. He wondered why a Smith & Wesson pistol was hidden in the large box of popcorn between them, alongside two magazines of shiny bullets. All of the corn kernels had been poured into a little mound beneath another seat. He felt that he outranked the Cobra in the local community, for he was the one who had been recruiting fighters in America.

“It is unfortunate that you are so useless,” the Cobra said, this time with a hiss of menace. “You produced only a handful of men over such a long period.”

“What!” Ahmed cringed at the insult. On the screen, a romantic scene was in progress.

The Cobra turned the one good eye on him “Al Qaeda is yesterday, my friend. I am with al Shabaab, and I want more aggressive soldiers. I hope that you can prove yourself to be more useful.” Omar Jama pushed back in the cramped theater seat, one knee braced on the seat before him.

Ahmed was glad they had a movie on the big screen to distract him from that scarred face. “That is not true. Al Qaeda is stronger than ever! We have evolved to become a political force that will make lasting changes.”

The Cobra chuckled. “You are old men whose time has passed and are living on your reputation. Ahmed, you are more than useless. Where is your financial support? Who are your followers? Who is your new bin Laden? Where are your headlines? In short, where is the terror?”

Ahmed sucked a short breath. “Boston. Our men did the marathon bombing.”

“No. That was not al Qaeda. Those two morons were unconnected to any group and just plucked their bomb-making ideas from the Internet. But there was a great lesson there, for their audacity totally shut down a major American city and shook this huge, rich nation. The television audiences were horrified when the police responded with a military-style manhunt that looked like an invasion.”

“I work for Allah, praise be unto him, Omar Jama. We must cooperate.”

The Cobra shoved the popcorn box and its contents at Ahmed. “Here is the only cooperation I want from you. Prove yourself worthy of my trust. Take this weapon, drive into some small town out in the farmlands tomorrow morning, and find a gathering place. You will shoot everyone in it and create chaos, while praising Islam in the loudest voice. You can martyr yourself with the last bullet, if you choose.”

“Kill myself! Why?” The thought of actually being a soldier of the movement had never really occurred to Mohammed Ahmed. Sending others to fight had suited him well.

“It is your duty, old one. For being the one who struck what will be only the first blow of this new revolution, you will be honored by the followers around the world and rewarded in paradise,” the Cobra said. “Think of this as a rare opportunity to become someone other than the little man who cleans up the shit of others.” The Cobra’s voice had grown intense. “By striking the American middle class in a place they consider safe, you will shatter their confidence. Remember what happened after the 9/11 strikes. You will make America weep.”

“And if I refuse? Do not forget that I lead al Qaeda here, not you. I can get someone else for this task.”

“You accepted money from me to be a fighter. I will take that gun and shoot you in the head if I think that you will not follow your orders. It is important for you to shoulder this load, my brother. You will give them another day to remember as strongly as they remember 9/11. Stay brave in the battle, and your name will be mentioned alongside that of Osama bin Laden. Our prayers will accompany you.”

Ahmed lapsed into silence. Surrendering his leadership to the Cobra was unpleasant, but what difference did the label really make? The new arrival had brutally summed up the failures on the recruiting front and the downward spiral of al Qaeda. Nine-eleven was thirteen years and two wars ago, a very long time. Following the shopping center bloodletting in Nairobi, Mohammed Ahmed was shunned by the younger crowd around the mosque. And the Cobra was right! This grim new offer from al Shabaab would vault him into glorious eternity. He decided. “I will do this thing. Allah be praised!”

“Let blessings flow forever unto you, my brother. Stay here until the end of the film,” said Omar Jama, who unfolded from his seat like a giant shadow, gathered his coat, put on a hat, adjusted his scarf, and left. He had purchased tickets for three movies at the multiplex and went out of the one theater and directly into the covering darkness of his second choice. It was a war movie, and he would stay there for several hours before actually leaving.

Mohammed Ahmed moved early. He maneuvered on the slick highways and headed east out of the Twin Cities and caught I-94 at the ring road outside of St. Paul. He drove carefully, for the ultimate failure would be for a cop to grab him for some minor traffic violation. It was very cold outside, and the little Chevy’s heater was running hard. A bulky blue down jacket kept his torso warm, but his feet were blocks of ice.

Keeping pace, in a loose tail, were the FBI followers, who had no idea where he was going. Ahmed himself didn’t really know. Special Agent Janna Ecklund drove a Ford Suburban, while Lucky Sharif worked the radio to coordinate the other three cars, rotating them. One was always ahead of the suspect’s grime-encrusted Malibu, which was doggedly pegged at the speed limit. The SUV’s big wipers flicked away falling snow.

In less than an hour, the Malibu’s rear blinker flashed for a right turn off of exit 41, where the interstate met U.S. 25 at the town of Menomonie, a major intersection for travelers. Motels and services and restaurants dominated the otherwise flat surroundings.

“He’s getting off. We will bypass to the next exit and come back. Two takes lead watch,” Sharif instructed. “He’s been driving almost an hour, so he probably just wants a pee break or some breakfast. Stay sharp anyway, you guys.” The black Suburban containing Ecklund and Sharif continued on the interstate, and the surveillance was picked up by the trail car, a battered tan Subaru containing two more agents.

The Chevy curved neatly onto North Broadway. Ahmed was looking for a restaurant. He had not picked out Menomonie in advance, but had no desire to spend extra hours venturing much deeper into the sprawling freezer that was the American Midwest in January. All of the little towns out here were the same to him, and he was to make a random choice anyway. The targets were people. Any people would do.

The .45 pistol was a noticeable weight in his right pocket. Mohammed Ahmed did not have a gun fetish, and he knew only how to load the weapon, turn off the safety, and pull the trigger. Anything else was useless. The wipers slapped the snow away.

GRANDMA’S KITCHEN, read the blue lettering on a white awning. As if by the hand of Allah, there were plenty of parking spaces out front, and Mohammed steered into one of the lanes. He shut down the car and unbuckled. He was not at all nervous, for the prospect of becoming a martyr should not make a fighter sweat. After meeting the Cobra, he had accepted this moment as God’s will. He stepped over a thick ribbon of snow piled by the curb and paused beneath the canopy to brush off his coat before pushing open the door.

The FBI watchers coasted to a halt in another space nearby and radioed the location to the other three cars, which closed in to wrap the site in a rectangle of vehicles. The suspect could not possibly leave without being spotted.

A bell tinkled, and the aroma of coffee and pastries assaulted the senses of Mohammed Ahmed. The warmth of the room felt wonderful. He stomped his feet on the mat to kick some feeling back into them. He smiled at the townspeople as his right palm gripped the handle of the .45 while his left hand unsnapped the top of his jacket.

A counter was straight ahead, where two women in gray T-shirts bearing the store logo were busy with orders. A blackboard behind them listed the specials of the morning, and a small swinging gate led into the kitchen. The croissant, egg, and cheese item caught his eye. To his right were a few small tables and a vacant space in which kids could play. A young mother was having coffee while her two-year-old pushed plastic blocks on the rubberized floor.

The entry was the dividing line, and on the left were larger tables, with several people around them. A few glanced his way but immediately discarded his presence. He looked like a guy who needed coffee. The walls were a lemony yellow, decorated with framed art that was for sale, and a rack of coffee urns was at the rear for refills. Next to it was a hallway that led to the bathrooms. Herd them that way, he thought.

The teenage girl at the cash register looked up as he reached the counter while unbuttoning his jacket. “Good morning!” she chirped, riding a caffeine high of her own. “Sit anywhere you want. I’ll be right with you. Start you with some coffee?”

“I don’t drink caffeine. I am Muslim.” He withdrew the pistol and lifted it over a tray of muffins and donuts covered with plastic, and he fired the first shot into her chest. The force of the blast threw her backward, her arms spread wide, through the swinging entrance to the kitchen. Mohammed Ahmed shouted: “Allahu Akbar!!”

Everyone in the boxy restaurant froze at the dreaded war call used by Islamic maniacs. He shifted his aim and expended four bullets on the mother and her playing child. That cleared his right, and he was turning back when he saw the second gray-shirted server woman try to duck beneath the counter. She was covering her head with both hands. He leaned over and shot her twice in the back.

The customers in the seating room were in motion, and a man in bulky overalls dropped his newspaper and got to his feet. The terrorist hit him twice, and the farmer went down hard. Then he pulled the trigger again and again among the screams, quickly reloaded, and resumed firing at the pond of people that had nowhere to go. A young man in a deep green fleece shirt and jeans picked up a chair to throw, and bullets cut through the light wood to kill the man behind it. An older couple at a laminate-topped table seemed resigned to their fate and were wrapped in a hug with their eyes crushed shut when he got around to shooting them. Gun smoke was filling the area, and his shots were deafening. A young woman in jeans and a flannel shirt, with dark hair that flowed to her shoulders, screamed curses at him and hurled a small rack of grape jelly containers. Two torso shots dropped her.

Was that all of them? He had not counted. He moved around the counter and stepped over the body into the kitchen. A back door was open, indicating that someone had fled, which meant the cops would be on the way. He pulled the door closed and locked it, then stalked to the bathrooms, found a middle-aged woman cowering in the single stall, and killed her, too. Head shot. There was no one else for the executioner to kill. He dropped the magazine and counted his remaining bullets. Only four left. He would spend them wisely.

The FBI agents had not heard the first gunshots because their windows were up, the heater was on, and the traffic noise from the interstate droned in the background. Then the cook came screaming around the corner in a grease-stained apron. The agent driving the Subaru jumped out while his partner yelled for help into his microphone, dropped it, and also broke into a run, two steps behind his partner.

“He’s killing everybody inside!” the woman screamed.

“Gun! Gun!” one of the agents called over the radio, even as his partner made a dash for the front door.

Mohammed had anticipated an immediate response and was behind the counter with his pistol steady and pointing outside. When the shape of a man approached, he pulled the trigger, and the entire plate-glass window shattered in a loud crash of glass as the bullet went through and hit the target. A second bullet knocked the man over. Another figure skidded to a stop and dove for cover.

Ahmed could take a deep breath now, for he knew the police would now become careful, since he had put one down. He wiped the menu blackboard on the wall clean with a swipe of his sleeve, and wrote in pink chalk, “God is great.” He used Arabic lettering. Then he roughly hauled the wounded woman server from behind the counter and wrestled her flat onto the top. She was bleeding profusely from her back wounds, and probably didn’t have long to live. That made her a compliant and excellent shield.

Finally, he poured himself a cup of hot water and a took bag of tea from a box, picked up a blueberry muffin, and sat behind the counter to await the end. There were a few cries and moans in the big room, so apparently he had not killed them all. He ignored them. When he heard the first sirens, he was not frightened.

15 THE SHOT

Swanson was riding on fumes. He had driven all night but wanted to get all the way into Minneapolis without stopping at a motel. East of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, the Audi had other ideas. The calm, slightly agitated voice of the automatic navigator said, “We need fuel,” and a warning light snapped to life on the dash panel. “We”—as if there was some relationship between man and machine. It was like a verbal spanking from mission control and actually meant, “You should have filled up one hundred and fifty miles back, you dumbass.”

He refused to ask the GPS lady to name the closest gas station. A green mile marker was coming up, and exit 41 was just ahead, a junction with U.S. 25, which meant there would be plenty of service areas in a little town with the peculiar name of Menomonie. He tried to pronounce it several ways, but nothing sounded right.

Kyle put on his blinker and checked the rearview mirror just as a big Ford Taurus from the Wisconsin Highway Patrol came tearing through the traffic behind him with its flashers blazing and the siren on full blast. Kyle punched the accelerator and twisted the wheel to the left to get out of the way of the oncoming cop car that had cut into the breakdown lane. He tapped the brakes slightly, and the patrol car skidded to a stop across the exit ramp, spraying rocks and gravel and rocking on its heavy-duty springs. The ramp was closed.

Swanson had a high enough angle to see why the trooper was in such a rush. Stretched out below was a carpet of blinking blue and red art, a convergence of police, ambulance, and fire department vehicles with their lights slashing crazily across the buildings in the area. There was obviously big trouble down there, and he had a badge in the pocket of his leather jacket and a pistol on his hip, and felt the familiar obligation to pitch in and help. Then he remembered his badge was that of a CIA operative, and that Marty Atkins had warned him to stay out of civilian law enforcement problems. He was not a cop.

He gave the scene a final glance and drove on. The fuel light was still on, and he punched a button that would let him actually talk to the onboard computer person. She would direct him to a gas station where all hell wasn’t breaking loose. Then take him to the hotel.

Special Agent Lucky Sharif of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had a situation. The terrorism suspect his team had been following had blown through the surveillance net and wreaked havoc inside a roadside café in Wisconsin, and an FBI agent was down from a gunshot wound in front of the place. He did not know if it was a hostage situation because he did not know if anyone other than the shooter was still alive in there. The icy cold stabbed at his exposed skin like needles as he stood in a doorway a block from the scene, working a radio in his gloved hand, deep in thought. His maroon SUV provided cover from the gunman. For the moment, he was a one-man command center.

Sharif did not waste time blaming himself for a tragedy that he could not have prevented. Bad guys never play by the rules, and shit happens. There were things that needed to be done, and the veteran special agent had been trained for just this kind of emergency. Like a test pilot in an out-of-control airplane, he would not let panic take hold. Step by step was the only way to go.

He studied the storefront with a practiced eye. The glass had been blown out of the main window, but jagged points still hung from the top sill. The door just beside it was intact. First responders were still rolling in, and a dozen cops from various agencies were pointing their weapons into the empty space. EMTs had dragged his agent, Burt Loving, away without receiving any more fire and were on their knees working on him.

“Gut shot,” reported Janna Ecklund, who had checked the condition. “Not good.”

“Hmm.” Lucky acknowledged his partner’s comment. Must be twenty cops out around. They could lay down some covering fire to keep the terrorist busy, toss in some flash bangs, then enter. One possibility.

A city patrol car edged to a stop, and a stout middle-aged man with more stars on his collar than Eisenhower climbed out. He asked one of his patrol officers where the Fed was who was directing this fuckup. The man pointed to the SUV. Adolf Dixon had been the police chief of Menomonie for three years and knew everybody in town. Murder, even mass murder, was a local matter. He hoped the Feds would not be giving him a lot of trouble about jurisdiction.

He ambled to the doorway, not very impressed by the two special agents standing there talking. One was a tall woman with snowy white hair that fell back over the collar of her heavy jacket, and the other was a black man who was even taller than the woman.

“Who the hell are you?” the chief asked in a sharp voice.

Lucky replied calmly, “This is FBI Special Agent Janna Ecklund, and I’m Lucky Sharif. We are out of the Minneapolis field office.” They all nodded, but did not shake hands.

“Chief Adolf Dixon.” The cop’s forehead wrinkled. “Seems that we have had multiple murders here in my little town, and the bureau shows up before me? Were you all having breakfast together around here?”

Lucky played nice. “It’s a national security matter, sir, so I’m in charge right now.”

“Maybe not, son. At least not until I know why a bunch of FBIs from Minnesota are over here in Wisconsin at the scene of a crime that just happened.”

Sharif dropped the hammer. “We’ve been following the guy for a few weeks, and we trailed him here this morning. He’s al Qaeda.”

It landed like a punch, and Dixon coughed. “No shit?”

“No shit.”

Dixon looked up at the man. There wasn’t any strain showing on the dark face. “Well, that changes things, I guess. Federal matter, huh?”

“Look, Chief Dixon. We all have to stay on the same page here. We all want to get inside and tend to those victims. Hell, we don’t even know how many there are. You know everybody in town, so it would be a big help if you organized a command and communications center and keep things under control and quiet. We especially don’t want the media on this yet.”

“All my people will cooperate, Agent Sharif. The Dunn County sheriff is sending over his SWAT. What’s your play?”

“I’m working on it, sir.” He did not share with Dixon that an FBI Hostage Rescue Team had already been scrambled. The HRT would trump the county SWAT. All of that would take time, and Lucky knew he was burning minutes when he needed something fast. He had seen it happen repeatedly: if a reaction didn’t happen with speed, the cops would back off and gather their officers, suit up in armored vests, drive up their big armored vehicles, and launch the helicopters. Wait long enough, and lawyers and the press would be involved. With the Hoover Building in Washington now on alert, the bureaucracy would slow things down. Sharif was in charge at the scene and wanted to avoid all of that.

“We’re burning minutes,” he groused.

Police chief Dixon had staked out an insurance company’s office as a command center, then went to an ambulance to talk to Gertrude Prince, the cook who had witnessed the slaughter. He had known Gert for a long time, and she settled down when he appeared, more comfortable with him than with Special Agent Tim Walz, the FBI man who had been questioning her. She was fixing an omelet with a side of bacon when she heard the first shot, and the new server, Caroline, had come hurtling backward through the doorway and landed with wide, dead eyes and a hole in her chest from which blood bubbled like a fountain. Gert had remained rooted in position with a spatula in her hand and eggs sizzling on the griddle until she heard more shots. Then she bolted out the back.

The FBI man asked if the attacker had been wearing a vest of explosives, but the cook didn’t know; she never saw him. The ambulance took her away.

“Say, Special Agent Walz. I got to ask.” He nodded toward Lucky and Janna. “Are they up to this? Seem kind of young.”

“Chief, they are among the best we have. The woman is highly qualified, and the guy, well, Cawelle Sharif is even more qualified. I can’t reveal too much, but he came out of Somalia, soaked up education, got a full scholarship to play basketball for the U of Minnesota, got a law degree, and was snapped up by the FBI. He even served with Hostage Rescue for a few years, did undercover work down in South America, then shifted out here to be a bridge into the Somali refugee community. Lucky Sharif knows what he’s doing, Chief. Our job is to stay out of his way.”

Lucky was tired of standing around with freezing toes. “I got an idea,” he told Janna, and opened the back of the Suburban, then lifted the lid on the emergency equipment box that contained everything an agent might want, from road flares to stun grenades. An AR-15A3 tactical carbine rested snug in its holder, as familiar to Sharif as an old friend. A Colt 4 × 20 scope was already in place above the sixteen-inch heavy barrel.

“You’re going to try to shoot him?” Janna Ecklund’s jaw dropped.

“No.”

“No! Lucky, wait for our Hostage Rescue guys, understand me? You do not have permission to fire. The Hoover Building will go nuts.”

“Is this thing zeroed?” he asked.

“As far as I know, nobody has ever even touched it.”

“Okay, then. Factory zero.” The rifle wasn’t top-of-the-line, but it was more than enough for the job at hand. Sharif would be aiming at a target about a hundred yards distant, so to compensate for the slight drop, the zero would be about one inch up. He checked the load, a magazine of 5.56 NATO rounds, and inserted it, then put one in the chamber. A bullet would spit from the rifle at a muzzle velocity of 3,200 feet per second.

He climbed into the rear seat. “Lower the rear window, Janna? I want to look inside of that restaurant.”

“You have no authority to shoot, Lucky. Think about what you’re doing.”

“Okay. I’ll just take a peek. Maybe I can see if he’s wearing an exploding vest.”

The tinted window hummed down, and Lucky brought the rifle to his cheek and looked through the sharp scope, directly through the destroyed window and into the breakfast place. The carnage swam into dreadful focus. Sprawled atop the counter was the motionless body of a woman in a gray T-shirt that was soaked with blood. The gunman was down behind her, using the body as a macabre sandbag.

He said softly, “I see one body on a long front counter, and in front of it looks like a mother and a child on the floor. Motionless.” Dark blood pooled around the downed victims. Details flooded into his mind: the coloring of the walls, debris randomly scattered, and even the menu board, which now proclaimed the chalked message about the greatness of God in familiar Arabic lettering. Pages of a newspaper fluttered in the breeze coming through the window. It was not strong enough to turn the page, so wind was not a factor at this range. “I don’t see anyone moving.”

Janna climbed into the driver’s seat and was watching through the passenger-side window using binoculars. “More victims are in the room to the left, but we don’t know how many. Little Ahmed did some damage here today.”

While Sharif watched, he saw the top of a head suddenly rise from behind the counter as the assassin took a quick look out, then ducked back down. Lucky remembered the instructions that Kyle Swanson had given him after Lucky had joined the FBI and was training to be a sniper, and the waiting game began. Normal human behavior made it likely that when the shooter looked up again to see what was happening outside, he would lift up in that exact same spot. Lucky wasn’t in Kyle’s league as a sniper, but he was good enough. Plus, he had learned more about precise long-range shooting during long talks with Swanson than he had ever picked up while just pumping rounds down a range. Kyle was the reason that Lucky had wanted to be a sniper in the first place.

“Janna,” he whispered. “Take a flash bang and pop it in the street. Let’s draw his attention.” All he needed was a distraction to tickle the curiosity of that cat inside.

Janna hissed, “YOU DO NOT SHOOT!”

“Of course not.”

Janna Ecklund knew he was lying but fished a flash-bang canister from the equipment box anyway. “HRT and SWAT will be here in fifteen,” she warned. “Wait for them, Lucky.”

“Do it.”

She got out and took two steps forward. Then she called in a loud voice, “Mohammed Ahmed. This is Special Agent Janna Ecklund of the FBI. I want to talk to you. Just talk.”

Nothing at first, then a muted voice shouted, “God is great!”

Janna pulled the pin on an M84 stun grenade, flipped away the lever, and underhanded it into the empty street. It bounced and rolled, then exploded with a blinding flash and an enormous roar that jarred everyone who had watched it go off.

Mohammed Ahmed gripped his pistol, then rose slowly until he could just see over the body along the counter. A woman was standing outside, and Mohammed steadied his pistol.

Lucky watched the tableau unfold in slow motion, and the 4 × 20 scope transformed the actual hundred-yard distance to about twenty-five yards. He had not twitched since coiling into position, and his breathing was slow and steady, with a pulse rate that was only a slow throb that would not jar his aim. The rifle was rock steady, and his world had shrunk to the point of the crosshairs. He eased the slack out of the trigger. The gunman’s forehead came into view, then the eyes and nose rose in exactly the same place they had been earlier. Sharif squeezed the trigger, the rifle fired, and the high-velocity bullet smashed into the nose of the terrorist, plowed through his brain stem and spinal cord, and took off the back of the skull. A bright spray of crimson blood painted the yellow wall behind the counter as the medulla oblongata shot blew through.

16 DEQO

The voice guided Kyle Swanson to a gas station ten miles away, where he filled the tank, walked around, did some stretches, used the toilet, bought a soda and a bottle of water and a bar of quick-energy chocolate, then drove out again, wondering if the better choice would have been to make this a two-day drive. But the Audi was running perfectly, the computer lady seemed satisfied, and a soft bed was waiting up ahead. He turned on the radio as he scuttled on into Minneapolis on I-94. To stay awake, he skipped around the dial to find a top-of-the-hour newscast. There was a brief report about a multiple shooting in the small Wisconsin town of Menomonie, and Swanson recognized the name of the place back down the road where the cop had cut him off and blocked the exit.

An updated report came ten minutes later, authorities confirming only that there had been several people killed when a gunman opened fire in a coffee shop. The alleged shooter was among the dead. The investigation was continuing. Considering the scant information, Kyle thought that it was probably a domestic quarrel that got out of control and the shooter downed his loved ones and some other people, then committed suicide. It happened all the time.

The voice on the GPS finally guided him off of the interstate and into the web of unfamiliar streets of Minneapolis, taking him right to the door of the Graves 601 Hotel. He handed off the Audi to the valet, along with a fifty-dollar bill and instructions to have the car professionally cleaned and detailed and parked in a covered space. It was to be a gift. He could use taxis in the meantime, or he would walk. Minneapolis had about eleven miles of indoor sidewalks. The Skyway that arched over North First Avenue connected his hotel to the massive Target Center. Or, going the other way, he could cross Hennepin to reach the sprawling Nicollet Mall and major shopping. A blizzard could be watched in comfort.

He had the entire day free before Lucky and Janna were to pick him up, so he clicked on an electric blanket to warm the bed while he took a shower. With the light off, and the heavy curtains drawn to darken the room and maintain its warmth, the hotel noises and sounds from the street were muffled. His cell phone on the table beside the digital clock was silent. Everything was quiet, and as tired as he was, Kyle should have fallen to sleep without problem. Instead, he tossed and turned, wrestling with the uncomfortable feeling that something important was missing. He cocked an eye at both of the timepieces on the table. Hours yet. Go to sleep! He rolled onto his left side, punched up the pillow, and finally drifted off.

For half an hour, Chief Dixon, Janna Ecklund, and Lucky stood in a tight group in front of the restaurant, not wanting to track into the crime scene or interfere with the emergency medical teams. The corpses of men, women, and children lay in the undignified angles of death. An older man was on his back, still clutching a newspaper, as if he had been hiding behind it when two bullets ripped through the newsprint and ended his life. The little boy in the front had managed to crawl closer to his mother after being hit and died at her hip. They had all been ordinary people carrying out a morning routine in a tiny Midwestern town, just starting another day, when off the street had come a man with a dark heart and a gun.

“My God,” whispered Janna when she first saw them. A sour taste rose in her throat, and she fought to keep from throwing up.

Lucky was still holding the rifle, less one bullet. He exhaled a balloon of frosty breath, frustrated that he had not taken the fatal shot sooner. Maybe he could have prevented some of this. They could not see the man he had killed, for the target had crumpled back behind the counter when his head exploded.

“That was a nice shot,” Dixon said, as if reading the troubled mind of Sharif. “Are you going to be in hot water about not having permission?”

“The guy was a terrorist who had killed people in that restaurant, had downed one of our own, and was pointing a loaded weapon at my partner. That was all the permission I needed. Are you saying that you wouldn’t have taken that shot?”

“Not saying that at all, son. Glad you did it, but that’s not the point. If someone tries to stomp on you, I’ll back you all the way. Everybody here will, although that damn grenade scared the shit out of us.”

Janna agreed. Her hands were stuffed deep in her jacket pockets. “Some weenies in the media are going to say that if you had been more patient, we might have taken him alive and gotten him to talk. That he could have given us valuable information.”

“No. That guy came here to die, not talk,” said Lucky. “What’s the butcher’s bill going to be in there, Chief? I’ve got to check in with my boss.”

“I’d say eight confirmed dead, and two more about to be. The EMTs don’t think they will make it to the hospital. Plus the killer. You know for sure that he was from al Qaeda?”

“Yes,” Janna Ecklund said. “He was a low-level recruiter who worked as a janitor at a mosque in Minneapolis. Our surveillance was only to discover his contacts. We never thought he would turn violent himself.”

Lucky held up a palm while he answered a new call on his radio. Washington wanted answers, and he drifted back to the SUV for privacy and began his report. Janna joined him, started the engine and the heater, and silently listened while he talked. Sharif suddenly told her to get Chief Dixon, and she fetched him from the crime scene. The veteran officer looked sad.

Lucky hung up his phone and lowered the window to talk. “We’re all going to clear out now, Chief, so we are turning it back over to you. Janna and I have to get back and write official reports.”

“Okay. Got to do the paperwork. I understand. I’m going over to the command center and issue a statement. The media circus is in town.”

“Do NOT use the word ‘terrorism’ yet. Just paint the big picture: a lunatic with a gun, it’s still early, and your investigation is continuing. No mention of al Qaeda, or even the FBI, if you can get away with it. Get them to pay attention to the local angle — names of victims, hospital, that sort of thing. It will fill their notebooks for a while.”

“That charade won’t last very long, son. Al Qaeda attacking a small American town is a big story. Too many people already know about it.”

“Just stall for some time. If the early reports are about common workplace violence, the public won’t panic. This incident is over, and there is no credible threat elsewhere, but the investigation is ongoing. Be honest, but the media is not entitled to everything the police know.”

“I got it. Nice meeting you two. Now get out of here.” He hesitated, then asked, “You think it is really over?”

Lucky shook his head reluctantly. “I don’t know, Chief. Let’s hope so.”

Deqo Sharif lived alone in a small, neat house on Lake Street in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis. She was going to be seventy-five years old in a few days, and looked forward to starting the final quarter of her life. Deqo planned to live to see one hundred, and no one was betting against her. If anyone could reach that impossible number, it was Deqo.

She had left Somalia with not much more than the clothes on her back and her young grandson, with their emergency departure arranged by the U.S. State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. They were placed beneath the protective umbrella of Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota, where her fluent English and nursing skill led to immediate employment with volunteer organizations. Somali newcomers were arriving by the hundreds with heart-wrenching stories of survival.

She and Lucky started off in a single room, each afraid to let the other one out of sight. Deqo slept in a narrow bed while Lucky slept on a tattered sofa in the same room. They were haunted by nightmares, but they were safe.

The man who had made it happen, Kyle Swanson, had remained with the marines in Mogadishu for several months after the Sharifs emigrated, but he never broke contact. He sent at least one letter a week, uplifting notes about what the future might hold. He never mentioned their beloved Molly Egan or the awful attack by the Cobra. Deqo could almost feel the sadness between the lines.

Then Kyle began coming to visit when he was on leave and spent hours with Lucky. The pair of them would take in movies, play ball, talk about tomorrows, and do Lucky’s homework together. As time passed, her teenage grandson grew to worship the marine sniper and wanted to be just like him. Swanson taught him how to shoot and hunt, but he and Deqo agreed that Lucky had already paid his war dues: he should reach for a different star.

Deqo’s hair turned silver, and her face today held channels of wrinkles that mapped her seven decades. Some of the back teeth ached, and her bones were giving way, her spine was bending, and she often used a cane for support when she had to walk outside in bitter weather. She accepted that she was simply getting old, but her biggest worry these days was how to properly program her cellular telephone.

She had decided not to move to Florida or Arizona or any of those sunny places. Minnesota was cold for a few months, and the lower the temperature, the sharper the wind and the nastier the pain, but it was home. All of her friends were here, and she could always get a dog or a cat for company.

Deqo had continued to work at the resettlement center, where it was believed that she knew every Somali in the Twin Cities area. Children who had been terrified little boys and girls when they arrived as refugees had become strong and vibrant teenagers or young adults. At one time or another, all of them seemed to have visited Deqo’s home, for she was everybody’s surrogate grandmother, and her life had been filled with birthdays, graduations, weddings, school plays, holiday celebrations, and football and basketball games.

And Cawelle — Lucky — had prospered with skills of which even he was unaware. In class, teachers pushed him with more difficult assignments. Outside on the fields, a natural athletic ability astonished the coaches.

By high school, Lucky was the lanky pass-catching wide receiver on the football team and a hotshot point guard in basketball. Scholarship offers came from several big-name universities, but Lucky turned them down, refusing to leave his grandmother, and went all the way through law school at the University of Minnesota. It was almost within walking distance from home. After a year clerking for a federal judge, he joined the FBI, which needed all of the insight into the Muslim world it could get. Deqo was so proud.

She puttered around the house, doing some final cleaning and food preparation. The weather people on television were saying something called a “polar vortex” had gripped the area, but she dismissed the ranting. Minnesota just being Minnesota in the wintertime.

Kyle and Lucky and sweet Janna would be coming for dinner in a little while, and she had to be ready.

17 THE VISIT

Swanson was waiting in the hotel bar, watching the television news reports from Menomonie, when Lucky Sharif and Janna Ecklund came in, both still in the hard special agent mode. He got up, hugged Lucky, and got a cheek peck from Janna, whom he had met on several previous visits. From the first look, he realized that his friends had been over there. “You are in need of alcoholic beverages,” he said, and called for the bartender to bring glasses, ice, and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s bourbon.

They sat silently in the curved banquette, watching the TV, which had gone into high gear and already had talking heads analyzing the event, until the server brought the bourbon and left them alone. There were few other people in the bar, and the booth was in the back, so the conversation could not be overheard. While they waited, Kyle noticed the body language when Janna leaned for a moment against Lucky, and Sharif’s tight face relaxed at bit. Kyle thought: Oh, Jesus. You finally gave in and really have something going with her, don’t you? Balancing Deqo and Ecklund and the FBI all at the same time. Is that hard? You poor bastard.

“So, tell me about it. Are you both okay? Was this dude really al Qaeda?”

“It was pretty grim,” said Lucky. “Except for a cook that escaped, the gunman wiped out the entire shop. We had him under surveillance, and he slipped through the net. And, yeah, he’s al Qaeda without a doubt.”

Swanson raised his glass. “Then here’s to good riddance of some bad rubbish. Was he a lone wolf, or was he carrying out an assignment?”

Janna spoke while Lucky took a drink. “One of the many things we don’t know yet.” She glanced up at the TV. “The media is going to run hard on the al Qaeda angle, so the blame game will start soon.”

Swanson looked at her tense face as she glanced over at Lucky. “Blaming exactly who?”

“Him. Lucky took the mutt down.” Her ice-blue eyes did not blink. “A hundred-yard shot, right through the face.”

Kyle had a quick memory of shooting with Lucky when he was a kid. The boy had the gift, as he had proved with the HRT. “Good. Then you did well, young Skywalker.”

“I hope the guys in the Hoover Building think so.” He poured another stiff drink and added some new ice.

“Let it go, Lucky. Nobody knows what a crazy man is going to do.”

“Damn.” Sharif slapped a big fist on the table, making it jump. Janna put her hand on his forearm. “We were all over him, and it still happened. Janna wanted to bring him in for questioning a few days ago.”

“But you were right then, too. There was no probable cause, and a lawyer would have sprung him, you would be roasted for religious profiling, and this shit probably still would have happened.” She tightened her grip.

“Drop it!” Kyle knew the symptoms. “You did what you had to do, Lucky, and now you have to walk away. Deal with it on your own time. I came up here for some fun, and you seem kind of tightly wound.”

Lucky looked at him, surprised at the stern tone, and slowly broke into a smile. He couldn’t expect Kyle Swanson to feel sorry for him. Killing an enemy was second nature to the man he admired so much.

“Yeah. Well.” He felt the smooth ride of the whiskey kick in, and an attitude adjustment took hold as he downed the second drink. “Grandma’s waiting. Let’s go and eat and not talk about trouble. There’s a basketball game on TV, and that woman loves her Timberwolves.”

Kyle agreed. “If they’re playing at home, I can get us all tickets for tomorrow night.”

“Sweet offer, man, but I don’t like her being out at night in this weather. Anyway, Janna and I will probably be busy. You know how it is.”

The dinner and reunion with Deqo had provided a great few hours of distraction, and she was unaware of the Wisconsin murders. They let it stay that way. The woman was possessed with an incredible energy that encompassed everyone around her, and her good mood was infectious. Pictures in scrapbooks of Somalis that she had helped find new roots in America were on every available surface, and small boxes were mounded with notes, letters, and little gifts they had sent to mark her seventy-fifth birthday and retirement from the resettlement center. Several newspaper articles mentioned her. The four of them watched the Timberwolves beat the Jazz on television, and Deqo was a merciless critic of the referees.

What a life she had lived, Kyle thought, and hers had been time well spent. The coming celebration would be a special milestone for her. Despite the trials and tribulations, she had made it. Here it was 2014, they were all twenty years from Somalia, and she was still going strong.

He was back in the hotel by ten o’clock, a little bit jealous of Lucky, who would be bunking tonight with the beautiful Janna Ecklund. In the middle of the night, in the middle of Minnesota, in the middle of a snowstorm, Kyle Swanson had nobody.

The Cobra waited until the ten P.M. news was over, then swept through the cable channels before making his next move. He was stretched out back in a comfortable recliner in his tiny apartment with a blanket over his feet. The media and the law enforcement officials had fenced for hours about what happened in Wisconsin. The cops were trying to portray the slaughter as being the work of a mentally disturbed individual who had left no note, and the investigation was ongoing. They urged everyone to wait for all the evidence to be gathered before jumping to a conclusion. Leaks, however, helped reporters obtain the name of the gunman, which led to the connection to the mosque in Minneapolis, and by midnight the media was flatly declaring the killer was with al Qaeda. The final death toll was ten, plus the attacker, and the story had gone national, which brought in the nonstop chattering social media, which increased the volume of speculation from all points of view.

Omar Jama grunted with satisfaction. He had not been certain that Mohammed Ahmed really had the guts for this attack, but his al Qaeda foil had kept his nerve and done as instructed. Good for him. The ball was rolling. More days of terror would follow.

He tossed aside the blanket and went to bed with the furnace chugging away on a 75-degree setting as he tried to stay warm in this impossible climate. Before turning out the light, he looked at the city map, on which he had located the home of Deqo Sharif. It wasn’t time for that quite yet, but it would come soon. Instead, he dialed a number on his cell phone, and when a male voice answered, the Cobra ordered: “Proceed.”

Abdifatah Farah understood the message. Outside of his motel room, wind chuckled through the streets and the frigid temperatures fell even lower. He slung on his heavy jacket and a rabbit-fur hat with earflaps, laced up his lined boots, and braced himself before opening the door. He was outside only long enough to turn on the engine of his loyal Toyota RAV4 and crank up the heater and defroster, and then he ran back into the room, shivering.

Middle of the night and it was around zero, with no clouds in the sky. Any warmth from the day had evaporated into the clear canopy of space. He waited ten minutes, then went back outside again and turned the little truck off. There was never a guarantee that frozen pieces of metal would work as designed at this temperature, so letting it run for a little while tonight might help it crank in the morning.

People in Minnesota seemed to be vaccinated against bad weather, and Farah was depending on that. Many would be out and about tomorrow morning, carrying on their normal lives, and traffic would be plentiful around the motel at the junction of I-35 and I-90 near the tiny town of Albert Lea, some ninety miles south of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Motels, restaurants, and service centers were located nearby to care for motorists who braved the cold highways and open spaces.

Farah, finally back inside for the night, opened the gun case that he had stowed beside the radiator of his room to keep the actions of the AR-15 rifle and the Glock 19 pistol from freezing, and checked them both. He had purchased them legally two months ago, under his own name, for he was a naturalized American citizen. He double-checked to be sure they were unloaded, then stuffed the weapons into the bed so his body heat would help keep them toasty and operational.

Before climbing between the covers himself, the young Somali propped a compact disc in a plastic sleeve beside the bathroom mirror, along with a few documents. Police would eventually discover the material and watch the final video message of Abdifatah Farah — a martyr for al Shabaab. “God is great!” was scrawled on the mirror with soap.

His heart leapt with joy as he thought about the panicky, nervous television people who talked about a Muslim terrorist who had raided an establishment in adjoining Wisconsin. They were afraid! The entire United States would be talking about it by breakfast tomorrow morning; then they would have something new to talk about. It was the turn of Abdifatah Farah to perform an act that would plant the twin black flags of fear and anger across the entire vast country. He was so keyed up with anticipation that he took two Ambien to help him sleep. He wanted to be fresh.

18 LOWRY HILL

A pair of FBI agents pounded on the door of Hassan Investments in the strip mall at eight o’clock in the morning. Hassan Abdi was already at the desk, in a long-sleeved white shirt and a bland tie under a heavy sweater, and looked up in surprise. He wasn’t expecting any customers this morning, or any other morning. Before getting up, he brushed a button beneath the desk to activate a blinking red light in the back rooms and warn the Cobra to remain silent because they had visitors. A video camera in the ceiling would show him what was happening in the front office.

Hassan was met by the badges of Special Agents Janna Ecklund and Cawelle Sharif. Their faces, one dark brown and the other an almost translucent white, gave away nothing.

“Are you Hassan Abdi?” asked the man.

“Yes. Please, come out of that cold.” He stood aside as they stomped a crust of moist debris from their boots and walked in. Agent Sharif took a chair, but the woman stayed near the door with her back to the wall. She unzipped her jacket and had a white turtleneck sweater beneath. He glimpsed a pistol holster.

“It is unusual for me to meet FBI agents,” said Hassan. “How can I help you?”

Lucky asked, “Do you know a man named Mohammed Ahmed?”

Abdi twisted his brows and flicked his eyes quickly to the ceiling as if in thought. “Has he done something wrong?”

“Do you know him?”

“It is a common name in our culture, as you know.”

Lucky handed a photograph to the broker. “This one.”

It jarred Hassan. The picture showed Mohammed Ahmed entering the Hassan Investments doorway. They had been watching, so he could not deny the information. “Ah,” he said. “Yes. This man. I remember him now. He was a prospective client who walked in off the street. Why are you looking for him?”

“What did you discuss?”

Hassan responded, irked that he only received questions when he asked a question. “I had met him at the mosque, where he works as a janitor. The poor fellow had only nine hundred dollars in savings and desired to invest it into some financial instrument that would magically quadruple in the stock market. I told him that it did not work that way, and advised him to keep his cash in a bank savings account that is insured by the federal government. Frankly, sir, nine hundred dollars was not enough money to interest me, or to help him.”

“How did he take that advice?” Lucky watched closely. Hassan was smooth, but seemed bothered by the questioning.

“He was disappointed, of course. I made sure not to give the impression that I was dishonoring him. I promised that when he had saved at least twenty-five hundred dollars, he should come back, and I would help him.”

“Was that it?”

“Yes, sir. Then he left. Why are you asking?”

Sharif got to the meat on the bone. “Did you know that he had connections to al Qaeda?”

Hassan’s expression turned grave. “No, I most certainly did not, and I find that accusation hard to believe. He appeared to be sickly.”

Lucky looked over at Janna Ecklund, whose expression remained blank. He put a business card on the desk. “Okay, Mr. Hassan. Thank you for your cooperation. If you think of anything else, please call me.” The two agents zipped up their coats and left, heading for the little shop on the corner of the mall to buy some coffee.

Hassan Abdi remained seated. His heart was in his throat. Only a day after the Wisconsin massacre, the FBI had come knocking. They had been following the al Qaeda contact, and even had a picture of him coming into this very place! Were they still watching now? Did they know the Cobra was here? Hassan pretended to work, but checked the exterior security camera screen beneath his desk. He did not move until he saw the two FBI agents come out with their cups of coffee, climb into a large sports utility vehicle, and drive away. Then he dashed into the back rooms.

The Cobra wasted no time in abandoning the little apartment hideaway behind the Hassan Investments storefront. If the FBI had come once, they would come again, and next time they would probably have search warrants to tear the place apart. The safe-house illusion was over. A phone call from Hassan to an intermediary had been all that was needed to temporarily relocate the Cobra beneath protection of the Somali gang culture.

Within thirty minutes of the moment that the federal agents left, a BMW X5 SUV that was the color of freshly poured champagne arrived behind the financial store with an alert Somali youngster at the wheel and a second youth in the rear acting as an armed guard. The Cobra and his right-hand man, Hassan, got in and were whisked away unseen.

The Somali Outlaws, the Somali Hot Boyz, and a half-dozen other gangs had deep roots within the immigrant community and fought for primacy throughout the urban region. Among the few things that the young thugs had in common was a willingness to use violence and the mutual recognition that the Cobra, the man from al Shabaab, was more violent than them all. While they scrapped for territory, he fought for the homeland, and they were eager to watch over and help him do his work here in America.

Omar Jama was soon settled comfortably in a luxurious home that had the appearance of a small stone castle and was located on two acres of private grounds in the exclusive Lowry Hill enclave of Minneapolis. It spread over eleven thousand square feet, had seven bedrooms, nine baths, and a staff of six. The old mansion was more than a century old and currently was the principal residence of a wealthy and creative entrepreneur who went by the name of E-X. The talented performer had found early success as a rap music star and then traded on his flamboyant style and quick wit to create an empire of entertainment, fashion, and television-production companies. He was extremely wealthy, but was best known and envied for being the husband of Fatima, a tall and exquisite supermodel from Somalia who frequently graced the covers of popular magazines.

Fatima and E-X were not political people. They had fled Minnesota temporarily, not to avoid controversy but to get away from the cold by attending a film festival and cruising in warmer climates. The only full-time resident of the big house on the hill in January 2014 was Fatima’s brother, Abdullah, who made up for their political apathy by being an activist with strong connections in the Somali crime world. The Cobra made himself at home.

The al Shabaab assassin Abdifatah Farah slept late at the motel in the crossroads spiral that twisted about near Albert Lea, Minnesota. But he awoke resolute and eager to go to work, to start his holy mission. Breakfast was cereal and milk and some fruit he had purchased the day before, and he made tea from hot water straight out of the faucet. He felt good and spiritually lifted, as if Allah was guiding him.

Farah wrapped the guns in the bed’s blanket, then pulled on his gloves, from which he had snipped off the fingertips. The deep pockets of the down-filled coat would keep his hands warm. Farah doubted that he would live through the day, but he had no intention of freezing to death.

The small SUV roared to life without so much as a groan when he turned the key. That was still another sign that God was with him. The heater had the interior toasty within a few minutes. He arranged the loaded weapons conveniently on the seat beside him. The cell phone had been broken apart and would be scattered from the window along the highway, where it would be hidden by snow and perhaps recovered in the slush next spring. Farah took a deep breath, exhaled, and set out to hunt along the highways.

The roads were not as bad as Abdifatah Farah had feared, and his Toyota RAV4 gripped the pavement with authority. Eighteen-wheelers and people in big cars and pickups went hurtling past, rocking his smaller vehicle. He let them go. Road rage was not on his agenda this morning.

There! A black Ford F150 with a plow mounted on the front was clearing the parking lot of a box store. The strong truck had scraped much of the snow into mounds along the edges of the lot and was methodically giving final scrapes to the lanes between. He worked alone. A few cars were already parked, and their occupants were inside the building.

Farah turned off the highway and drove into the lot toward the moving snowplow, lowering his window and waving his left arm for attention. The truck driver stopped directly beside him, and the driver also rolled down his window, although somewhat reluctant to let any warm air escape from the cab.

“They ain’t open yet, friend,” he said. The man wore a purple wool watch cap with a Vikings team insignia. “Doors open in about twenty minutes.”

Farah had the Glock in his right hand as he nodded in agreement with the man’s comment, then smoothly brought the weapon up and sighted it. He fired three times at the large target no more than four feet away. The truck driver was hit once in the shoulder and twice in the head and slumped back against the seat. The noise from the highway sucked up the gunfire.

Farah put the gun down on the seat, rolled up his window, and drove away. The truck remained where it was, as if the driver were taking a break from pushing the snow around. The Somali decided to drop by a fast-food restaurant a mile back down the road, get a sausage and egg sandwich, and shoot whoever handed it to him at the pickup window. His day was just beginning.

19 THE BUS

The cell phone went ding-dong in Kyle Swanson’s pocket. It did not surprise him. He was up and dressed and was finishing his coffee when he turned on the midmorning television news to catch the updates from the Wisconsin shooting only to find that another slaughter had taken over the airwaves. Another Somali Muslim had killed six people and wounded four in southeastern Minnesota this morning before being shot to death by police after a high-speed chase that ended with a highway wreck and an epic gun battle. Authorities found proof in his motel room that he was a member of al Shabaab.

The call was from his new boss, Marty Atkins, the CIA deputy director of Clandestine Service, who sounded flustered. A task force was being assembled to deal with the attacks, which apparently were coordinated strikes, and the involvement of al Qaeda and al Shabaab automatically slopped things onto CIA turf. A conference with representatives of all affected agencies was scheduled at noon at the FBI building in Minneapolis, and Atkins told Swanson to be there.

“You will be the CIA liaison,” said Atkins.

“This is no clandestine operation, Marty,” Swanson protested. “Surely you have somebody more experienced with agency matters up here.”

“Unfortunately, no, Swanson. You are the only CIA agent in Minneapolis on this fine January day. Believe it or not, the agency does not maintain staff in every city in the United States and abroad.”

“Shit. Well, what do you want me to do?”

“Just be our eyes and ears for a day. An administrative team will arrive tomorrow and take over. Anyway, the FBI will do the heavy lifting on this one, so you can keep a low profile. Call me if you need anything,” said Atkins. “Better yet, don’t call me. Call my assistant, Tracy, who can actually get things done that those people might want. I’m going to be running around for some conferences back here. The White House has eyes on it, and Capitol Hill is all atwitter. Obviously, nobody thinks this is just a coincidence.”

Two mass murders by a Muslim gunman in as many days in the heartland crashed to the front of the news headlines. They could not be ignored or covered up.

At the Hoover Building, the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Director James Hamilton was briefed in detail by the Twin Cities agents, and then he repeated what he knew at a follow-up meeting at the White House. A somber president and his entire national security team listened in silent shock, then asked questions, and finally settled into the frustrated realization that they might be facing a nightmare scenario if these attacks continued.

“There is no doubt, Mr. President, that one of the attackers was connected to al Qaeda and the other was a member of al Shabaab, the newer incarnation of terrorism in Africa. Both gunmen came from the large Somali community in Minnesota,” Hamilton said. “I wish I could say otherwise.”

“Do you have everything you need to deal with this?” the president asked.

“Yes, sir. We have the manpower and the support and are doing everything in our power. The law enforcement agencies throughout the Midwest are on high alert.”

“I will have to issue an official statement, of course, but I don’t want to use the T word.” He passed a meaningful glance at his press secretary. “We don’t want to sow panic nationwide.”

The president checked around the table. The entire National Security Council remained mute. Terrorism had struck on their watch, despite the billions of dollars that had been spent building an impenetrable security apparatus. Two men with guns had raised the specter of 9/11 all over again by killing average Americans in places thought to be safe.

“Is it over, or are there more of them out there?” asked the chief executive. He was the most powerful man in the world, but felt almost totally helpless. There must be something he could do, but ideas were few at the moment.

“We don’t know, sir,” Director Hamilton responded, trying to be accurate but not wanting to go too far. His neck was on the political chopping block. “Our people and the local police are trying to find that out.”

“Dig harder.”

“Yes, sir. One side thing before we move on with the meeting,” the director of the Central Intelligence Agency said. “A minor point about the regional task force conference being held in Minnesota.”

“What about it? Why bring that to my attention?”

“Sir, the CIA representative there right now is Kyle Swanson. Only man on the scene until a full admin team gets there. He was up there on a personal visit.”

The president turned in his chair to face his deputy national security adviser, General Bradley Middleton, who blinked in surprise, and said, “I didn’t know about this, Mr. President.”

The president gave a little sigh and shook his head. “Be sure to strike his name from all reports and keep him the hell away from the media. We’ve got enough problems without them catching scent that Swanson is involved. They would drop that whole Task Force Trident private-assassin subject on us again, and there is no telling what the conspiracy crowd will create on the Net. General Middleton, I had hoped that we were through with that, but Swanson seems to stick to me like a patch of hot tar.”

“I didn’t even know he was up there, Mr. President, but perhaps it is not a bad thing. Kyle Swanson can bring a lot of experience concerning terrorism to that table. Sir, I recommend we keep him there, quietly, of course, until this thing settles down, but under tight rein.”

“On a very, very tight leash, General.” The president looked over at the CIA chief. “The sooner your support team gets there, the better. Meanwhile, tell Swanson not to kill anybody.”

Following lunch of fresh fish and vegetables, the Cobra retired to his bedroom in the big house on Lowry Hill and closed the door. It was much warmer and quieter up here, and he liked being able to look out over the snow-covered grounds of the private estate and not feel cold. He enjoyed having servants. He was quite pleased with the progress being made. If this was a soccer game, the score would be two-nil, against the home team.

There was a light knock, and Hassan entered the room, carrying a sheaf of printouts of news stories that he had downloaded from the Internet. He handed them to Omar Jama. “It is working,” he said. “Just as you promised and planned. Congratulations, my friend.”

The Cobra leafed through the papers and put them aside. “When do you leave?”

“In about one hour. Is there anything more that I can do before I go?”

“No. We are on schedule.”

“I assigned some boys to keep track of the old woman, Deqo Sharif. Do you have any special orders there?”

“No. These other things must come first.”

Hassan Ahmed took off his wire-rimmed glasses and polished them. “I don’t want to leave. You might need my services here. Police attention is growing all around town.”

“Thank you. A few more days, and I will be done here. And we will rendezvous as planned. You need to go and make the final arrangements. It actually is better this way and does not disrupt our plans.” The Cobra smiled at his friend. “The sheep are frightened, and we will not slacken the momentum. Anyway, you are known to them, so you must leave. Go.”

“The two boys who brought you over will take care of anything you need,” said Hassan. “I will see you in Cuba.”

“Safe travels,” said the Cobra, and Hassan departed.

Omar Jama sat and thought in silence for ten minutes, then used another new, disposable cell phone to dial a number from memory and issue another order. He spent a few minutes to become familiar with the remote control that worked a huge curved-screen television that hung on the wall, for he intended to watch the Timberwolves game later.

The special task force hammered at the problem all day. Men and women of the various agencies from several states were jammed into a large conference room at the FBI Minneapolis field office in Brooklyn Center, most of them law enforcement types carrying badges and guns, but also some big fish from the political seas and government lawyers. The conference had become a pyramid of concerned voices, people demanding to be heard and put on the record. Kyle Swanson rested against the wall at the rear of the auditorium, and he thought, Clusterfuck!

There was little to be done that was not already being done. The routine cop work and forensics analysis was still under way, surveillance was being increased throughout the region, and the usual suspects were being questioned. So far, there were no real leads. To Swanson, the long meeting was akin to rearranging the deck chairs on a torpedoed ship: if the ship foundered, then all of these proper, posturing, and patronizing people would have life jackets. The little people would do the dying.

Hugh Brooks, the FBI’s special agent in charge of the office, ran the meeting. He was a middle-aged white man with a wide round face and a slight belly who had conducted many similar conferences and was not bothered by the bureaucrats. He let everyone have their say, within reason.

Swanson was next to Lucky Sharif and Janna Ecklund, both of whom had taken some sharp criticism because the al Qaeda man they had been watching had been the one who stormed the little restaurant in Wisconsin. They just had to sit there and take it. No one had yet been picked to be the sacrificial lamb of blame for the al Shabaab shooter in Albert Lea, but that one certainly did not fall at the feet of Sharif or Ecklund.

It seemed to Swanson that everyone was struggling not to label the incidents terrorism, or even to officially say that they were related. That was absurd. If it was not a coordinated terror attack, he wondered, why were all of these smart people sitting in the FBI headquarters discussing it? Did they think the American people would miss seeing that obvious link?

Another thing that was being raked over in detail was the fact that both of the attackers had come from the local Somali community in Minneapolis. It was an uncomfortable point, for the Twin Cities did not want a valuable community of immigrants torn apart while authorities researched the backgrounds of a few bad apples. A heavy-handed investigation could easily backfire into a wave of xenophobic racism, and the response might be a riot.

Finally, when all the words had been said and all the promises had been made, the meeting ended. Kyle, Lucky, and Janna took a long dinner break. The T-Wolves game was just finishing when they left the restaurant.

Buses were lined in neat lanes outside the Target Center when the basketball game ended, curls of exhaust smoke rising into the night. The drivers were ready to return fans to parking lots outside the city. The Wolves had laid a lopsided victory on the Jazz, and the fans were in great spirits. A young Somali man joined the queue, his bulkiness not an uncommon sight because everyone was huddled in heavy jackets. He paid the three dollars’ fare to board, edged down the middle aisle, and found an empty seat at a window halfway to the rear. An old man settled in next to him, and they ignored each other, although the old man thought it a bit strange that the youngster had not unbuttoned his jacket. The bus wasn’t all that cold.

The suicide bomber said nothing at all, for offering a prayer might draw attention. He had already made his peace with Allah and had practiced his role a thousand times. His right hand was in his pocket and wrapped around a triggering device for the hidden vest that was crammed with explosives. He took a final look out the window at the milling crowd of passengers, at the sky, then pressed the little plunger to close the circuit.

A spark jumped from a small battery, and the detonation blew out the windows and tore off the roof, evaporating him, his seat mate, and everyone else inside the doomed bus. The thin skin of the large vehicle was instantly transformed into razored shrapnel that preceded a spreading, rolling blast and fire.

Kyle, Janna, and Lucky had returned to the FBI building and gone upstairs to the private office of the special agent in charge. Hugh Brooks was still at it, working the phones. He was the one catching heat from Washington, where important people were demanding answers he did not have. He popped the plastic top on a bottle of antacid pills, gobbled two, and then asked, “Did you see anything we missed out there tonight, Swanson?”

“I think every possible base was touched several times.” Kyle scratched his neck as he spoke. “I’m not trained as a crime fighter, but you guys just don’t have much hard information yet. I just know that the Wisconsin thing wasn’t the fault of these two agents.”

“Ah, shit. I know that. The press jumped all over it, so everybody started joining that chorus, not knowing what they were talking about. Janna and Lucky are still running the investigation on this end. You stick with them.” Brooks folded his hands behind his head, stretched, and leaned back. “By the way, I was told by my boss to keep you out of range of any reporters.”

“No worries there. You guys have a question where the CIA can help, I’ll get an answer. Other than that, I’m just an onlooker.”

Brooks looked at a note on his desk. “Janna, how’d that search warrant on the investment place turn out? Did it get served this afternoon? Any luck?”

“A team and some locals went over. The guy we were looking for, Hassan, is in the wind. Our forensic people are working on the office. They found a small living quarters right behind it, but we’re waiting for the reports.”

“Damn. He has to be involved somehow.”

“I agree,” she said. “He lied to us about only meeting briefly with the al Qaeda shooter, just long enough to turn down some business. That would have taken maybe fifteen minutes at the outside, but the surveillance log shows their meeting went at least forty-five minutes. And why was a little-league financial hustler even open on a Sunday night?”

“Too bad. You track him down. Lucky, you got anything else before we call it a night?” Brooks was out from behind the desk, moving toward his suit coat and jacket, which were on hooks behind the door. Everybody was standing.

“No, sir. Street cops are out in the neighborhoods, staying visible and talking to a lot of people. So far, things seem cordial, but my sources say the Somalis are worried.”

“I hear you.” He slid an arm into his coat. “Man, this city is on edge. Can’t you just feel it?”

His desk phone rang, and Brooks was tempted not to answer it, but he did. His face paled as he listened, and he hung up the receiver as if it were made of delicate glass, then looked at the three other people in the room. “A bomb just flipped a Metro Transit bus outside the Target Center after the basketball game. All three of you get over there. Move!”

Janna and Lucky were already heading for the door. Kyle fell in with them. Brooks hung his jacket back on the hook. He would be in his office all night long.

20 CALLS

Clive Wilcox was up to his ass in alligators at the Twin Cities Call, a weekly alternative newspaper. His midnight deadline for the new edition was fast approaching, and the managing editor had everything in place. The Call had no mention of the terrorism threat because it could not compete with the big media. Instead, his lead story was about a toxic-chemicals-dumping case. The little newspaper had built its reputation on such material, and the publisher’s formula was to surround a few offbeat stories with advertisements for everything from rock bands to yoga classes and columns of extremely personal ads. In the age of electronics, the little weekly was still kicking.

He was alone in the small newsroom on the second floor of a rented building. The place was a mess, and, with the windows closed against the outside cold, it stank. His shirt smelled of cigarette smoke and sweat. His telephone chimed with his Superman theme ringtone. “Wilcox,” he snapped.

“God is great!” shouted an anonymous voice.

“Whatta you want? I’m right on deadline.”

The caller was almost yelling. “We are responsible for the bomb.”

Clive automatically grabbed a pen and a piece of scrap paper. He didn’t know from any bomb. “What bomb?”

“The bus at the Target Center, ten minutes ago.”

Clive had not had either television set on, and his computer and his mind had both been clogged with finishing off the Call edition, but he was still a reporter. “Yeah. And?”

“God is great!” the caller shouted even louder.

“You said that already. Who are you? I mean, if you’re claiming responsibility, I need to know who you are.” Clive tried to force himself to stay calm, but was writing furiously. This might be real, and if it was, then maybe it was his ticket out of the weekly ranks.

“We are al Shabaab! A note that explains everything is in an envelope downstairs in your mail receptacle. God is great!” The phone clicked off.

Man, Wilcox thought, putting down the receiver, this was old-school Woodward and Bernstein stuff. He hurried down to the lobby and found a brown envelope on the tile beneath the mail slot. He ripped the top and slid out a note that had been written on an old typewriter. It announced that a martyr, naming some Arab guy, was a member of al Shabaab and had successfully carried out the attack on America. Several paragraphs followed, gibberish about jihad and freedom fighters.

Wilcox ran upstairs, where the front page of the weekly newspaper was still on his screen, about to be transmitted over to the printer’s shop for the overnight run. The weekly probably had been chosen simply as a cutout so the note could not be tracked by the cops. Was it even true? Just because the claim was made did not mean someone actually had cooked off a bomb downtown.

He scrambled for the remote under some paper and clicked on the television set. A camera crew that had been covering the basketball game had gotten to the scene and was showing the carnage in graphic detail as some TV guy stood out in the cold with a microphone.

Bomb! The publisher was going to be pissed, but Clive Wilcox could not hold this until next week. He tore out the toxic-dumping report, then pounded a replacement story about how the Call was the first to know who set off the explosive and reprinted the content of the note. Once he transmitted the edition, twenty minutes late, he telephoned the police.

Omar Jama was at the breakfast table in the big house on the hill, nibbling on fruit and buttered toast and drinking hot tea, feeling like a lord in a castle, better than he had in weeks. Six months ago, his nerves had been stretched, his brain jangled, and worry had plagued his hours, for a hundred thousand things might have gone wrong during the final planning of this intricate operation. Instead, a handful of things had all gone right, and here he sat, safe in a beautiful American home that was so large it even had a special room just for breakfast. He was able to laugh at those past concerns. Everything was working.

The news reports were frantic. Almost twenty Americans had been killed by the bomb blast at the Target Center, and at least fifty were injured. Some of those would die, too. The victims of the multiple attacks were adding up.

Gruesome images were flung across the screen, accompanied by banner crawls and excited proclamations that terrorists were attacking. It was 9/11 all over again! It was exactly how the Cobra had mapped it out, long before he had even arrived in the United States.

The planning had been carried out in the tightest possible secrecy and with the greatest possible care, for the Cobra was fighting this war on a shoestring. In the heyday of al Qaeda, operational funding came from the very deep pockets of Osama bin Laden and his many admirers. They had found many men willing to die for the cause and had enough cash to spread it around to other terrorist groups. After the United States killed Osama, the easy money dried up, and it was every organization for itself.

The line of credit from Prince Faisal in Greece was the Cobra’s only source of income, and he had discovered that a million dollars did not really go very far. He had tried to work with the pirates of Somalia who captured and ransomed cargo ships, but when the world’s navies had effectively blocked most of that enterprise, he discovered that the pirates could not be trusted. They were dishonest, and did not fear him.

Years of banking sanctions by America and European nations had similarly crippled terrorist cash flow.

That would all change when he finished his American trip. Then the money would once again roll in, along with the fame and the arms and military power he needed. He would override the chest-thumping usurpers and their ragtag groups that popped up periodically in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan and stayed busy killing each other in eternal religious squabbles. Some gained temporary notoriety and promised to attack America, but the Cobra was the only one who had actually done so. He would be the one who would be hailed throughout the Muslim world as the reincarnation of Osama.

The Cobra went to a bathroom and washed his hands and face, avoiding the mirror. He already knew what he looked like. Instead of feeling sorry for himself, he was overjoyed by his train of successes thus far. By his continual pushing and pushing, the Americans were now overreacting, just as he had anticipated, and it was time to unleash the final phase, then flee this humbled country, leaving it much worse than it had been when he first entered.

It was also time for him to begin attending to the secondary goals: the personal business. Unlike the primary mission, these had not been planned in detail because he thought that he could squeeze them into the more important timetable. He had never lost his hatred for the three people who had beaten him in Somalia and put him in that fetid Kenyan prison, and his spies had done good work. If he could not kill them this time, then he would kill them later, but kill them he would.

He stayed in the deep background for the major attacks. His victims and the police did not know who he was. But for the personal hits, he intended to unmask himself before the victims went down. They had to see him. They had to know who was killing them. First on his private list would be the easiest target, the troublesome woman Deqo Sharif, who had once fractured his skull with an iron pot.

A fresh prepaid mobile phone that Hassan had purchased in California for this one task was in his traveling kit, and he dug it out. The only number was preprogrammed and the call was answered by a producer at a local television station. The Cobra provided an anonymous tip that the terrorist mastermind behind all of this recent terrible violence was being sheltered right here in Minneapolis, at this very moment, in the home of an al Shabaab sympathizer. He recited the address and then terminated the call, which had lasted less than ten seconds, and destroyed the telephone.

The bus-blast scene was horrific, although Kyle Swanson had seen worse. Actual war and a relatively small terrorist attack differed on too many levels to count. The one that came to his mind first was the hellish scene on Highway 80 heading north from Kuwait and into Iraq, where convoys of the Iraqi occupation army had been annihilated by air power. His memories of patrolling up that six-lane highway of death, walking among countless dismembered human remains and the carcasses of vehicles, helped keep his reactions in check. Here, one crazy suicide bomber had blown up a bus partially filled with civilians. It was a tragedy, but a poor comparison.

Lucky Sharif carried a similar personal frame of reference from his childhood in Somalia. He had grown up in a place where dead bodies were found in the streets every morning and entire villages were laid to waste, along with all of their inhabitants. Swanson and Sharif looked at the bus-explosion scene through the dispassionate eyes of seasoned professionals.

Both of them, along with Janna Ecklund and much of the available law enforcement apparatus in the city, stayed at the crime scene for hours. An emergency command post had been established inside the Target Center, out of the weather. Swanson hung around, watching, but the CIA had no role in this investigation. He kept in touch with Marty Atkins in Washington, who promised the agency admin team was in the air, heading to Minnesota as fast as possible.

Swanson avoided anyone that might be a member of the media and did not go near the Friday-morning press conference, where a spokesman announced the note left at the office of a weekly newspaper. The terrorist group known as al Shabaab was claiming responsibility.

Instead, he called to check on Deqo, but there was no answer.

“She’s probably out in the neighborhood,” said Lucky. He called the resettlement center, but she wasn’t there, either. “I’m sure that she’s out walking around, keeping a lid on things.”

Lucky was stuck at the command center, but Ecklund was free to drive Swanson over to the house and check on her.

As she steered the big sedan through traffic, Kyle asked, “What’s with your all-arctic look, Janna? Every other female FBI agent I’ve ever seen tries to blend in with the male agents. You blend with polar bears.”

She gave a look, then laughed. Kyle had no sense of propriety. “Oh, I wore the dark pantsuits and skirts and jackets for a few years. Then I started taking liberties with the dress code. God, I’m a six-foot-tall Scandinavian, so I decided to be distinctive and use it to my advantage. Actually, I blend pretty well with most of the people in this neck of the country.”

“By scaring the hell out of insecure little men?”

There was a nod and a smile. “That’s their problem, not mine.” She had perfect white teeth, of course, but the mouth settled into a tight line as she drove. She waited for the inevitable question about whether she and Lucky were a couple, but it didn’t come. Kyle had eyes, and nobody was hiding anything.

In the light of day, Minneapolis and St. Paul had assumed the look of cities under siege. It was not martial law, but it was getting close. Security around important buildings was doubled, checkpoints and barricades went up at vital infrastructure facilities, and police roamed in heavy vehicles.

Swanson shifted in his seat, uncomfortable and feeling as if they were driving into a combat zone. He saw cops with sniper rifles and even one manning a .30 caliber machine gun atop a modified military-style Humvee. “I don’t like all of the firepower out there,” he said.

“No. It looks weird.” Something had happened to the peaceful equilibrium of the city. Cops, many wearing helmets, combat boots, and bulky body armor that was festooned with military-style gear, all straps and buckles, were roaming in herds and holding automatic rifles across their chests with slings. Others carried plexiglass shields and riot batons and were ordering — not asking — people to stay in their homes. Some of the vehicles shook the streets as they rolled through on giant bulletproof tires. In all, the picture was one of fear instead of confidence. Two mass shootings and a deadly bomb explosion, with lots of death, had silenced those who would normally speak out against such a show of strength.

The uniformed presence grew stronger as Kyle and Janna neared the Somali neighborhoods, for SWAT and sheriff’s-office tactical units were concentrating in the Cedar-Riverside area. Two blocks away from Deqo’s house, they hit a dead end.

21 THE RAID

The FBI sedan was blocked at an intersection where two cop cars nuzzled against a waist-high barrier, and beyond that was parked the hulking goliath of the police arsenal, an eighteen-ton mine-resistant, ambush-protected, military-style chunk of armored vehicle known as a MaxxPro. The MRAP was ten feet tall, and standing in the turret was a scowling policeman in full armor pointing an automatic M-16 rifle toward the gathering crowd and oncoming vehicles. The behemoth war wagon had a new paint job, police decals, and emergency lights but was a terrifying presence, and the camera crew of a television truck gobbled up the scene as a reporter spoke breathlessly of imminent danger.

All the cops were in total camouflage and looked like brown bushes in the urban landscape. One pointed his finger at Janna and signaled a full stop by holding his left hand high. The right palm rested close to his holstered pistol. More cops in battle gear moved to box the car into place. All had AR-15 rifles dangling from load-bearing web harnesses.

“You ready for this shit, Kyle?” she asked, and her voice had steel in it. Swanson nodded that he was.

She tapped her siren and turned on the flashers. That made the cops twitch and the TV producer curse about the noise that drowned out the live reporter. The window hummed down, and Janna badged the cop and said, “What the fuck, Jack?”

Kyle lifted his own creds to show the cops on the other side. Too tight, he thought. Nervous. Bad ju-ju.

“Sorry, ma’am, but nobody can drive through down there right now.” Despite the overwhelming power at his disposal, the cop looked like a mouse who had wandered up to the wrong cat.

“Officer, I’m Special Agent Janna Ecklund of the FBI and I will go anywhere I fucking please. What’s so important that you guys are building a fort on a city street and pointing guns at civilians? Who’s shooting at you?”

“Ma’am. We received credible information that a terrorist boss is hiding down there. A two-block area has been sealed while we conduct a house-to-house search. Nobody in, nobody out, no exceptions.”

Janna’s icy eyes flared. “Jesus Christ! And you have the warrants to do that?”

“That’s above my pay grade, ma’am. In the meantime, we are asking for cooperation from the residents as we flood the neighborhood with cops. They understand that we are trying to protect them from a killer.”

Janna was out of the car now, bigger than the cop and leaning toward him in anger. She had left the siren screaming so the TVs could not overhear them. “And if someone doesn’t want to open the door? What, you’re kicking it in?”

“I’m following orders, Special Agent Ecklund,” the cop said. “Things are critical here.”

“I just left the FBI office, and we didn’t know anything about this.” She pointed to the television people. “And why are those ghouls right up next to you cops, or are you soldiers now? They’re broadcasting live.”

The policeman stood his ground, tired of being battered by this woman. “You are blocking an operational position. Please get back into your car and move it.”

Instead, Janna turned off the engine and pocketed the keys. The siren whimpered off. “Oh, hell no, Bubba. I’m standing right here and calling my boss, who will have an assistant U.S. attorney general on the horn in about thirty seconds. You are way over your head on constitutional issues here, Officer, particularly on Fourth Amendment rights. Whoever ordered this little show has made a monstrous mistake.”

“That’s bullshit, Agent Ecklund. Our lawyers clear all of that stuff.”

She spat the exact words. “‘The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.’ That’s the exact wording. You don’t have that. So you guys are tromping all over a constitutional guarantee. This isn’t Baghdad. Take my advice and back off.”

The cop looked across the roof of the car as Swanson pushed open his door, taking in the scene. He yelled, “You! Back in the car! Keep your hands up!”

The closest officer took a step forward and gripped the pistol in his side holster. Kyle stared the kid down and badged him. “I’m with the CIA, and I have legitimate business here. I am going to walk through this barricade, right past your silly fuckin’ MRAP, and it would be best for you to quit thinking about trying to stop me.” His voice was hard, and he opened his jacket to show his own heavy Colt .45 that was on his hip. “If you try, I will shoot you. Move aside.”

Janna Ecklund called over. “He will do it, too, Officer. After he finishes, I will arrest what’s left of you.” She turned back to the first cop and lowered her voice to a more reasonable tone. “Somebody issued faulty orders here, Officer, and a legal shit-storm is coming your way as soon as I make that call. Hell, I don’t even have to bother, because that television crew has already let the powers that be know what has happened. The scramble has already started. This is your last chance, or I will bring formal charges against you personally for interfering with federal officers in the performance of their duties. Start thinking about ten years in a supermax. Just like my partner, I am not kidding. Stand down.”

“No. I will not. I don’t take orders from the FBI or the CIA!” replied the cop, but he knew that the situation had been flipped like a flapjack on a griddle. Instead of being the top dog, he had become almost the low man on the totem pole. He holstered his pistol and motioned for the others to do the same. Someone with a higher rank on the other side of the barricade could deal with these two. “Let ’em through,” he called, adding beneath his breath, “Fuckin’ Feebs.”

Ecklund got on the radio to Lucky, and a grim Kyle Swanson climbed over the concrete barriers, skirted the MRAP, and broke into a jog.

The little house was in a line of similar small homes, sturdy little shelters that had withstood time and temperature. A snowman built by children silently watched the drama. Police squads were working through the neighborhood in careful, tactical formations. An armored-up cop in camo was arguing loudly on a front porch that the resident had to open up and allow him and his men to come in and search. A terrorist was on the loose! Three other policemen in protective riot gear were stacked behind him, ready to make a forced entry if the guy continued to refuse permission. At the far end of the street, a small group of residents was yelling at the cops and a line of officers with riot shields and batons blocked that route.

Kyle ran hard, hauling in deep breaths of chill air as snow dripped from the colorless sky. Deqo’s house loomed into view, the front door yawning open and the entrance empty. The big central window was shattered, and the white curtains inside fluttered like flags of surrender. He leaped up the steps, crossed the porch, and plunged inside, calling her name into the residence that had turned ice-cold. It had been trashed.

“DEQO! DEQO! It’s Kyle! Where are you?” He checked the small kitchen and the dining room, where doors had been kicked open and kitchen shelves emptied into piles of broken crockery. The door to the small storage basement had been ripped from its hinges, and her favorite china cabinet was toppled, the contents in pieces. The hunters had not been gentle.

She was in the back bedroom, seated at her dressing table and staring into the mirror, with the remains of a prized ceramic figurine cupped in her hands. Kyle knelt beside her and pulled her close when she turned to him. Tears coursed down the old woman’s face, following the deep wrinkles. “Policemen with guns came. Men I have never seen before,” she said with a hiccup. “I told them to stay out, but they broke in anyway, screaming awful things and waving their guns. They said I was hiding a terrorist.”

He was on fire, but forced himself to stay in control. “Did anyone hurt you?”

“No. They did not hurt my body, no. There are no broken bones. I am okay. What was really hurt was my pride, Kyle. I didn’t think such a thing could ever happen here. They said they were going to arrest me.”

Kyle said, “Come on. Let’s get you over to the bed so you can lie down for a few minutes. I’ll bring a washcloth and make some tea. Then I will get Lucky over here.” He helped her stretch out and pulled a heavy blanket up to her waist. She looked frail. “I’m here now, Deqo. It’s going to be all right. Somebody’s not thinking straight, that’s all.”

“I told them I wanted to see the warrant and just got pushed aside. I fell down.”

Swanson knew that well-intentioned operations can spin out of control with only a taste of panic, but this one could have killed Deqo; her heart wasn’t strong enough to endure another Somalia, particularly in her own home, which she believed was safe. For now, he bit back his frustration. He closed the front door against the weather and any new intruders, half expecting to hear gunfire somewhere out in the street. The lock was broken. Shouting was growing in volume as more people spilled out to protest the raids. A helicopter came chopping low overhead. Kyle put a kettle of water on the stove for the tea.

He retrieved his cell phone and thumbed a call that bypassed regular command loops and was answered by Lieutenant General Bradley Middleton, the deputy national security adviser at the White House. Times like this, back channels worked best.

“No shit?” Middleton had risen to his feet behind the desk, having trouble believing what Swanson was telling him.

“It’s borderline chaos up here,” Kyle said. “Cops are forcing their way into private homes, and some very unhappy residents are clustering in the streets. It is only a matter of time before somebody pulls a trigger. The police are quarantining the biggest Somali neighborhood in Minneapolis, and they even brought in some MRAPs, and the television cameras are broadcasting. Nobody is fighting back, but crowds are forming up. It’s probably already on your television set in the White House.”

Middleton switched on his office TV while he listened. “Got it. Thanks for the heads-up. I need to get this on up the line. Maybe the president will want to chat with the governor, and the governor with the mayor, and the mayor with the police chief. Cops acting like an occupying military force? Ain’t gonna happen.”

“It already has. The FBI didn’t know about it in advance, so maybe just some low-level precinct guy just made a bad choice that has grown out of control.”

“I’m on it, Kyle. Call me later.”

The front door flew open and an out-of-breath Janna Ecklund rushed inside. “Is she all right?” Ecklund winced as if in pain when saw the damage and called out, “Deqo?”

“She’s scared, but okay. In the bedroom.” He stuck his head outside and heard a tide of shouting rising down the street.

“I’m back here, Janna.” Deqo was on her feet when Ecklund reached the bedroom, and the two women almost collided in a hug, Janna being large enough to make two of Deqo. “Don’t you worry,” the older woman said, as if gentling a thoroughbred horse and stroking Janna’s snow-white hair. “I’m good now, with you and Kyle here.”

“Lucky will be here in a minute,” Janna said, and guided Deqo back to the bed and made her get back under the covers. “This is so terrible.”

“What happened?” Kyle asked, bringing in a cup of steaming tea.

“We stopped it, whatever it was,” replied the FBI agent. “The search teams are pulling back and that checkpoint is already being dismantled. Everybody is saying they were just following orders, but that won’t stand very long. Some honcho’s balls are going to be cut off.”

The front door banged open again, and Lucky Sharif stormed in. “Where is everybody?” He was at the bedroom before anyone could respond.

He reached for his grandmother, but Deqo pushed him aside. “I’m getting hugged by too many giants. You’re all going to break me. Now calm yourself down, Cawelle Sharif. I just had a bit of a fright, that’s all.”

Lucky sat beside her. “Did they come in here, too?” His eyes were dark stones.

“Yes,” she admitted, looking around her bedroom. “It looks like an army marched through, doesn’t it?”

Lucky dug out his radio. Every policeman who had entered a private home was to be segregated and taken to separate holding facilities until they could be questioned individually by federal agents. They were to be kept apart to prevent them from getting their stories straight. The FBI wanted answers. Somebody was going to pay.

The four of them spent a few hours picking up, cleaning the mess, and arranging for a string of repairmen and carpenters. A neighbor donated a sheet of plywood to temporarily seal the broken window. Deqo’s mood improved with the work and the feeling that something was being accomplished. The others were still growling, but tried not to show it.

The police net around the Somali neighborhood evaporated, and regular uniforms replaced the camo outfits. The big guns and riot gear were put away, and normal patrol cars took over from the MRAPs. At three o’clock the assistant chief of police, Paul Gottfried, arrived at the house and was overflowing with apologies. Deqo, the person with the most reason to be outraged, was the only one to be polite to him. She even gave him coffee.

Gottfried was the department’s salesman when things got tough. The thick blond hair accented his Nordic features, and his limitless reservoir of energy propelled a gym-fit body and sharp mind. “It was a dreadful mistake,” Gottfried said, knowing the admission of guilt could come back to haunt the city if Deqo Sharif filed a lawsuit. Nevertheless, a truthful explanation was the only way to go. Lucky Sharif, Janna Ecklund, and Swanson would nail him on any lies.

Deqo sat with her hands folded in her lap, a kind smile on her face. She asked, “Why me? Why here?”

Gottfried shrugged and let out a long breath, his look solemn. “That’s the real question, Mrs. Sharif. We already know how it happened. Shorthand version is that a TV news department received an anonymous tip, and the caller was very specific. He claimed the madman behind all of the terrorist killings was hiding at this address. The source claimed that you were a sympathizer with the group called al Shabaab.”

Janna Ecklund rolled her eyes and rested a hand on Deqo’s shoulder. “What a crock. Nobody checked this out?”

“Then what?” asked Kyle. “Why the over-the-top reaction by your cops?”

“Without a shred of proof?” added Lucky.

Gottfried paused to get his thoughts straight, then said, “The TV guy called a friend in our department, the deputy chief in charge of the Special Operations Department. That officer, unfortunately, had lost a six-year-old cousin in the Target Center bomb blast, and he went off the deep end without authorization. By the time the chief and I found out, he had already rolled out heavy, wanting to personally take down the terrorist, if not kill him outright. This man, who had an outstanding record, has been relieved of duty, of course. The officers who invaded your home will be reprimanded.”

“I see,” said Deqo. “That poor man.”

Lucky said, “It’s too bad about his loss, but he did a lot of damage, Chief Gottfried. This entire neighborhood is angry.”

“We’re doing what we can to settle things and rectify an error, Agent Sharif, and we could use your help out there.”

“Forget it,” Lucky shot back.

“Well, I can understand your feelings, but none of us want this community to blow up with a riot when the sun goes down. Think it over, please. Now, back to your original question: why did the caller pinpoint you personally, a woman known to be pillar of the community? We don’t know. Do you have any idea who would dislike you this much?”

Deqo’s back was ramrod straight. “No! I don’t have any enemies at all, as far as I know.” Lucky, Kyle, and Janna all agreed. The woman had spent the last twenty years helping people.

“We have to probe this deeply, ma’am. I consider that anonymous call to be another terrorist attack, and this one specifically targeted you. A team of our detectives and FBI special agents is ready to come over now and interview all of you, maybe get a line on this guy. Are you willing to do that?” His eyes locked on hers, then swept around to the others. “Special Agent Sharif cannot be doing the interview because he is personally involved. I think we all just learned a lesson about how personal involvement clouds good judgment.”

Lucky agreed, and Deqo said, “Yes. Of course. I just can’t think of who might be so angry at me.”

Kyle said, “But not here. This place won’t be ready again for at least a week. Until then, Mrs. Sharif will be staying in my suite at the Graves 601 downtown, and under our constant protection. Have them meet us there in an hour.”

Relief pumped through Gottfried, and he slapped his knees and got up. “Excellent. Again, Mrs. Sharif, I apologize for the shock and the mess our people made. The city will pay for everything, of course, and a general contractor is on his way right now. So, if you will excuse me, I have to get back to work. People are frightened throughout the state, not just here. This whole thing is a nightmare.”

They watched him leave, and Deqo allowed that the assistant chief was a true gentleman.

“I wanted to kick his ass.” Janna was still furious.

“Take a deep breath instead,” Kyle advised. “All of us have to regroup: the cops, you Feebs, and everybody else. We have to stay united and not divide our forces. And Lucky, you really do need to get some Somali leaders into the loop.”

He turned to Deqo. “Now, old woman, get some clothes together so I can get you out of here. I’ve got a suite for you at my hotel, so get some clothes.”

Deqo didn’t want to leave. “I will be fine right here. I have to straighten things.”

“This isn’t a debate. Until things shake out, you stay with me so these children can get back to work. Tomorrow, you and I take a break and go over to the Mall USA, do some shopping, get you a manicure, and have us a nice lunch. You still have a birthday coming up. By the time we get back, your house should be looking a lot better. My guess is that this place is high on the priority list.”

Thirty minutes later, when Janna drove them all away, the FBI sedan was followed by a dirty red Volvo S40. The driver thumbed his mobile phone as he steered and reported to the Cobra.