Unholy Code

Chapter 9

Lana stared at “The Today Show” in the corner of the kitchen. “Do you believe this?” she asked Don and Emma, who were eating the blueberry waffles she’d cooked from scratch.

A shaggy-headed young guy in a Hawaiian shirt, khaki chinos, and flip-flops was walking onto the set.

“Gimme a hug,” he said in a southern drawl as he hauled Matt Lauer out of his seat.

“Well, you know who this is, don’t you?” Lauer said to the camera, breaking the clinch with an awkward smile. “Jimmy McMasters, the brave young man who fought ISIS, and our show’s new terrorism expert.”

“Reality is getting so bizarre that I don’t see how satire can survive anymore,” Lana said, shaking her head.

“How can they say he’s a terrorism expert?” Emma asked, wolfing the last of her waffle. “He looks total surf punk to me.”

“Maybe that’s what we need nowadays, if we’re going to get serious about terrorism,” Don said.

Lana threw him a startled look but Don was already giving in to laughter.

She’d fixed breakfast with him especially in mind, solicitous of Don since FBI Agent Robin Maray had rekindled old emotions yesterday. Penance for the guilt she was feeling.

“He reminds me of someone,” Don said, studying McMasters.

The TV tête-à-tête was well underway: “So what do you make of those bad sunburns the terrorists got?” asked Lauer. “You’d think they would have been prepared for that. One of them’s in the infirmary at Camp Blanding with what’s being reported as sunstroke.”

“That’s some bad stuff,” said McMasters. “I guess the sun’s our first line of defense down on the bayou. And out on the Gulf, man, it’s brutal.”

“From what you saw, did those terrorists have any shade?”

“Nope, not much. Their boat was super crowded.”

Don’s right, Lana thought. McMasters reminded her of some fifteen-minutes-of-fame guy. Who? It was starting to drive her crazy. The tip-of-the-tongue that won’t let go. Then it did:

“Kato Kaelin,” she blurted. “He’s the Kato Kaelin of this case.”

“Exactly,” Don said.

“Who’s Kato whatever?” Emma asked.

“You don’t want to know,” Don answered.

“A footnote to a nightmare,” Lana added. “So you’re going to head out with Dad?”

She and Don had urged her to go with him to look over the dogs they were considering, though Emma appeared to have voted for school with her attire: short skirt, sleeveless summery top, heels.

“I can’t,” Em said, rinsing her plate and sticking it in the dishwasher. “I’ve got three AP classes.” Advanced Placement. College credit, if she did well. “The only reason you’re pushing me to go is Dad can’t stalk me today so you want me with him.”

“First, you’re right, we want you covered,” Don replied. “Second, you’re a smart kid. You can miss a day. And third, I really would like your company.”

“If you’re not stalking me on the way to school, who’s going to protect Sufyan?”

“His uncle. Trust me, he’s got Sufyan’s back,” Don said. “Don’t you think?”

Emma had to agree. “Okay, but I better go change.”

Lana grinned at their back-and-forth, relieved they got on so well. Don was lucky to have reentered his daughter’s life when he did. Another year or two and he might have missed the boat entirely.

Missed the boat? She wondered whether he did miss his forty-four-foot sloop on which he’d plied the Caribbean. She was deeply grateful to have him back — and felt just the opposite about the undeniably disturbing presence of Robin Maray.

She didn’t even think about the agent again until she backed her Prius out of the garage and saw him parked in front of a neighbor’s house in the Charger.

With a quick wave she acknowledged him as she drove down the sunlight-dappled street, making an effort to put aside any intrusive memories. She had far too much on her mind with the workday looming ahead.

Lana pulled into her spot in CyberFortress’s underground parking garage and hurried to the elevator. An armed security guard stepped in behind her and pushed the button for the lobby.

“Good morning,” Robin said, slipping in as the doors began to close.

Lana replied in kind with an effortless smile, then remembered her guilt.

For what? she challenged herself. It’s not going to happen again.

But the fling two years ago felt as near as yesterday when Robin had walked into Holmes’s office.

Robin let her exit the elevator first. She felt peered at from behind and acutely aware of her body. She’d dressed modestly, as she always did for work, but after brushing out her shiny black hair she’d dabbed on Byredo’s Seven Veils, a scent she adored. She hadn’t even thought much about it till now. She’d just done it. Like a few other things that you’re now regretting.

“Ask Maureen Henley to come to my office,” Lana said to Ester Hall, her new executive assistant, an amateur tennis champion at fifty who smiled when Robin came into view.

Lana closed her door to him. He understood that he would not have access to her office or the war room, while young Maureen Henley was escorted in moments later by Ester.

“Have a seat,” Lana told the MIT grad whose senior thesis on the economics of scale in the development of macro cybersurveillance systems had landed her a prestigious position at CyberFortress.

Maureen settled and shifted her silky red hair off her long graceful neck.

“This is a first,” Maureen said.

“A first what?” Lana replied with her eyes on her inbox.

“The first time I’ve been in your office for a one-on-one since you interviewed me for the job.”

“I think I’m about to disappoint you. What I need will call less on your cyberskills than your analytical ones. I want you to systematically review the posts of Steel Fist’s followers. Hack where you need to, but you should start with the public sites because they’ll be the most heavily trafficked. I’m guessing they’ll also be on private sites, on social media, in chat rooms, all that stuff. I’m not interested in the threats against my family and me or Sufyan Hijazi, unless they depart from the usual fare. I want to know what’s the story here, and, more importantly, I want to know when the story changes.”

Maureen read at more than one thousand words a minute, even faster than Lana who clocked in at about eight hundred. So while the assignment was daunting, given Steel Fist’s ten million subscribers, Maureen could race through the cyberclutter faster than anyone else in the war room.

“The first idea that strikes me,” Maureen said, “is to construct a filter to screen out the typical neo-Nazi stuff. The n-word, Jews, kill, murder, gas, that kind of stuff.”

“That might work. I’m not going to micromanage you. I just know we can’t overlook the most easily accessed info.”

“I’m on it.”

Before Lana turned to Steel Fist’s website, she knew she had to look as closely as possible at Tahir. She was back to triaging terror again.

And hack where you need to, she thought, echoing the advice she’d just given Maureen.

Don and Emma headed north in the old pickup. She busied herself texting Sufyan until school started, then bemoaned her boyfriend’s unwillingness to stay in touch during class time. “He’s so serious!” she complained, putting aside her phone.

“You are, too, taking all those AP classes. Does he take any?”

“All of them, including AP physics.”

“No kidding.”

“He’s really smart, Dad.”

“I guess. That’s all college-level stuff, right?”

She nodded. “And I’m guessing you weren’t like Mom in school.”

“If you mean 4.0 and all that, you’re right.” He shook his head. “I’m a terrible role model.”

“Not so bad now.”

“Thanks, Em. That’s generous. My biggest regret was missing so much of you growing up.”

“Better late than never.”

She put her earbuds in and propped herself against the passenger door.

Don looked over to make sure it was locked, then glanced at the road ahead before checking the side- and rear-view mirrors. He’d been keeping a discreet eye on them while he and Emma talked, though he expected no problems today; by heading north to meet the dogs they were breaking all the driving patterns Steel Fist had put up on his website. And Don’s pickup hadn’t gained any notice yet. Nevertheless, he had the compact Glock in the door pocket next to him. It was far less cumbersome for travel than the shotgun.

Once they escaped the grip of morning traffic, the trip took less than two hours. The kennel was about seven miles southeast of Hagerstown, Maryland, not far from the Pennsylvania border, marked only by three numbers on an eight-foot steel gate. It closed off a formidable stone wall that might have hailed from colonial times.

Don had to call the kennel to announce their arrival. Then Emma and he waited a few more minutes before a dusty SUV pulled up and the gate opened.

A portly middle-aged man in a Baltimore Orioles cap checked Don’s driver’s license.

“I was kind of surprised there were no guard dogs to greet us,” Don said.

“They’re too valuable. I had one killed in a drive-by shooting about five years ago, and that was the end of that.” The man stuck out his hand.

“Ed Holmes.”

Don introduced himself and Emma.

“You can follow me in,” Ed said.

The kennel grounds spread out over more than a hundred acres. As Don drove they heard gunshots. Emma tensed.

“They’re training dogs, Em. Dogs for the military and police work are exposed to gunshot sounds from a pretty young age. You don’t want them freaking out over live ammo.”

“How do you know that?” she asked.

“Google.”

Ed led them to an open, large white barn with cyclone fence kennels along both sides. Don could see that each kennel extended indoors via a dog door.

The breeder and trainer walked up to the pickup as Don and Emma climbed out. “How much experience do you have with dogs? You grow up with them?”

“I did,” Don said. He glanced at Em, who shook her head.

“Security dogs?” Ed asked.

“No. Just an old mutt,” Don replied.

“Time for a primer then. Our home security dogs are very different from the ones we train for the military or police. They’ve been socialized a lot. My wife has personally taken Jojo into Hagerstown from the time he was six weeks old. We wanted to make sure he was comfortable around people, unusual sounds, alarms, all that city stuff. So he’s good that way. But he’s still very much a guard dog and we’re going to show you just what that means.”

“I thought you had three dogs for us to check out today, including Jojo,” Don said.

“Not after my dad briefed me about who you are and what’s going on with you folks. I was sorry to hear all that, but I knew Jojo was the right one for you. He’s the brightest, the biggest, and, I gotta say, the baddest.”

Ed smiled. Emma laughed.

As the trainer led them along the kennels on the right side of the barn, a Malinois with white whiskers and graying facial fur joined them. The close resemblance to a German shepherd was clear at a glance.

“Who’s he?” Emma asked. “He looks old.”

“Oh, he’s old,” Ed said. “He’s got the run of the place. He’s retired now.”

“From what?” Em asked.

Ed paused and looked at her. “The navy.”

“They have them on boats?”

Ed shook his head. “No, not boats. This guy was really famous once, but not too many people know his name.”

“That sounds like a riddle,” Emma said. “How could he be famous if not many people knew his name?”

“You could be known to most folks as ‘the dog’ on a secret mission that became international news.”

“Was he Cairo, the Malinois that went on the bin Laden raid?” Don asked.

“I could never say that,” Ed replied.

“Could never or would never?” Don asked.

“Could never,” Ed said. “But a right-thinking man or young woman might be okay coming to that conclusion.”

“Really?” Emma said. “My father was telling me about that dog just last night.” She looked closely at the old hound, sounding awed when she spoke again: “So he’s that hero dog?”

“He’s the real deal. I would not mislead you.”

“Is he safe here?” Emma asked.

“You bet. Nobody knows where he’s living out his life in peace. And look at him. He’s not the spry young guy he once was. But you guys don’t strike me as suicide bombers or paparazzi. And your mom knows how to keep secrets,” he said to Emma. “So I’m guessing you can, too. Promise?”

“Yes. Can I shake his hand?”

“Sure. The President did. So did the First Lady.”

Emma reached out, but the old dog lifted his paw and pushed it toward her for a high-five.

“He prefers that,” Ed said.

Emma high-fived him.

A beautiful young black and tan Malinois stood just inside the gate peering at Ed with a look of eager anticipation.

His master opened the gate and ordered Jojo to heel. He minded immediately, coming to Ed’s left side, keeping his eyes on him. The older dog wandered off.

Without looking down, Ed said, “Jojo, sit.”

He turned to Don and Emma. “Let’s walk away.”

Jojo stared intently at the departing trio.

Ed stopped after they’d moved about twenty feet. “You notice I didn’t say ‘stay.’ Just ‘sit.’ This is as basic as it gets, but that’s where we have to start. If you command him to sit, he’ll sit. Don’t confuse that with the stay command. If you order him to lie down, he’ll lie down. The same goes for all basic obedience commands. Forget ‘stay.’ That’s always his default mode.”

“Can I pet him too?” Emma asked. “Or is that off limits?”

“Absolutely you can pet him. Say, ‘Jojo, come.’”

Emma complied. The dog raced up and sat right in front of her.

“Go ahead and pet him,” Ed said.

Emma surprised Don by stroking Jojo’s head confidently, then using both hands to rub his scruff.

Ed ran Jojo, Emma, and Don through the rest of the dog’s basic obedience, which included the command “quiet.”

“What you need to know about the Malinois,” he added, “or a breed like the German shepherd and Doberman pinscher, is that most will naturally protect their families. What we do with our dogs destined for that kind of duty is evaluate them in this regard.”

“How do you do that?” Don asked.

“Oh, you’ll find out soon enough.”

That must have been the cue, because a large man in a protection suit stormed around the barn and ran toward them. Jojo raced toward him and bit a camouflaged protection sleeve — and hung on. The man stopped resisting.

“Stand down,” Ed commanded.

Jojo released his bite and stared at the man.

Ed put Jojo in the heel and went on. “We evaluated him for the first time when he was about nine months old. That was precisely how he reacted when one of my trainers launched himself at me. So we knew he had plenty of natural drive for protection. That’s when we started working on the stand-down command.”

Without warning the man in the protection suit ran toward them again. Jojo raced toward him. Ed shouted “Down.” Jojo dropped to all fours.

“That’s critical, too,” Ed explained. “You’ve got to be able to stop his attack.”

“He’d protect me like that?” Emma said.

“He’d give his life for you,” Ed replied. “Usually we want to work with you for at least two long sessions before turning over a family security dog. We don’t have that luxury with you. You need help as in yesterday, as I understand it from my father. That’s one of the reasons you’re getting Jojo. He’s got a great temperament. We’ve tested him at each stage of his training. You’ll also get a manual that you’re going to have to study. Your mom, too,” he said to Emma. “This is serious business. By the way,” he added to Emma, “he likes you.”

“I’ll bet he likes all the girls,” Em replied.

“Only the one’s he’s going to be protecting.”

“What about my friends, if we’re horsing around and I shout or something?”

“That’s an excellent question. He’ll be good with them. They can pet him, but you’ll notice he’s standoffish around them.”

In the next two hours, Ed ran them through all the advanced obedience, which included hand signals for each command. Then he put Jojo through his security-dog paces, including preventing a suspect from moving by barking aggressively at him from about three inches away, backing a suspect up, and chasing one down.

By mid-afternoon Don and Emma had worked with Jojo for several hours and fed him for the first time.

“You two and your wife will be the only ones he’ll take food from. We always worry about poisoning. He’s poison-proof. But you guys can’t let anyone else feed him. If someone tries to give him a treat, it won’t be an issue because he won’t take it. But to keep him poison-proof, you guys have to be the ones to feed him. If you have to leave him for a vacation or for any other reason, you leave him with us.”

“I’m guessing you have a lot of demand for dogs like him these days,” Don said.

“A lot of demand is right, but we’ve always sold every dog we’ve bred and trained, unless they were unfit for service. And we’re still very careful about who gets them.”

Don leaned over to pet Jojo. He could’ve sworn the dog was looking right through him. When he straightened Don saw the old dog wandering back up, as if to say good-bye.

“How old is he?” Don asked.

“Old as the hills. He’s got some health issues. He’s not going to be around much longer, I’m afraid.”

“That’s so sad,” Emma said. “Can I give him a hug?”

“Nope. Sorry,” Ed replied. “Good you asked, though. That old salt was trained for much harder stuff than hugging, so we don’t push our faces into theirs. Family security dogs are different. You can hug Jojo. But this old guy?” Ed shook his head. “He’s just not the cuddly type. You can high-five him good-bye.”

Emma and Don both did. Then she asked for a picture of her with the dogs. Ed nodded his approval and Don took it with his daughter’s phone. Ed snapped one of father, daughter, and Jojo.

It was now Don’s turn to take the lead, this time to Bethesda. Jojo shared the pickup cab with his new owners.

Don wasn’t the only one watching their backs now.

Lana settled into researching Tahir. She had Maureen combing through the posts of Steel Fist’s fans, Galina trying to penetrate the NSA’s military-grade encryption, and Jeff Jensen back to his primary role of insuring CF’s own cyberdefense, a constant struggle.

Lana found it easy enough to check on Tahir’s record in the U.S. It was in all the papers he’d submitted for political asylum, along with his background in Sudan. He’d run an import/export business there, as he had since coming to the States. He’d done well enough by Sudanese standards to have been considered a successful entrepreneur in sub-Saharan Africa. He now had a small shop in a mini-mall on the outskirts of Bethesda, where he sold African artifacts, carpets, and hand-carved furniture. Not bad for a man whose home country’s chief exports were little more than peanuts and impoverished people.

He was Nubian from Khartoum in the north, Sudan proper, as opposed to South Sudan, which had been established after two civil wars had torn the country apart. Khartoum was the city to which Tahir had threatened to return with Sufyan. Lana didn’t believe he’d actually do that. He was clearly devoted to the boy’s future, and Sudan was plagued by the same problems afflicting much of the sub-Sahara: poverty, drought, hunger, war, inadequate medical care. Misery appeared to penetrate every realm of Sudanese life.

As she looked at Tahir’s history, she was reminded immediately that Osama bin Laden and the core of Al Qaeda’s leadership had headquartered in Sudan from 1991 to 1996. Bin Laden himself had been instrumental in seeing to the construction of two hundred miles of highway in the largely roadless land.

But what really grabbed Lana’s interest was when she read that in addition to a construction company and massive farms, Al Qaeda had helped support itself by setting up an import/export business. How many people in Sudan could have been involved in that line of work back then? There were also news reports that in the pre-9/11 era, Al Qaeda had used the cover of legitimate businesses to smuggle weapons. She would have been surprised if they hadn’t. But had Tahir been involved with that? An even more critical question concerned Tahir’s import/export business now. Carpets, cabinets, and chests could be used to move bomb-making materials, including weapons of mass destruction.

But surely the CIA and FBI had vetted him for any kind of nefarious activity. Which had Lana asking herself whether she really wanted to re-invent that particular wheel by doing research that likely had been done by others. If the NSA knew about any of that, she should have been informed of it. She also knew that if she penetrated the NSA defenses right now, she would have some cover: Holmes himself wanted to see how porous the agency’s cyber perimeter had become.

But that was for domestic surveillance files.

Correct, but she knew that a lot about Tahir could fit under that rubric.

She chose to share none of this with Galina, undertaking her own efforts in her quiet cubicle just feet from the industrious Russian émigrée.

Using codes she had been privy to in the past, Lana accessed the NSA system with ease. This was no violation of the spirit or letter of the law. As a prime contractor she was well within her purview. What she found in the next hour was ample official attention on Tahir, which came as no surprise. What she couldn’t grasp was why — if he warranted so much focus — he’d even been permitted into the U.S. But as Lana worked, each step along the cyber highway became slower and more difficult to take. She did manage to unveil pertinent data repositories, which led her to a surprising keyhole. She hesitated only briefly before entering it.

More like a black hole. For Lana was swept in a nanosecond into the CIA network. But there she faced dense encryption.

“Aha,” she said to herself softly when she realized the formidable security was a variation of code she’d written under contract for the NSA. A smile widened her face.

Adjusting quickly, she navigated for another twenty minutes before unearthing Tahir’s CIA files. The revelations proved stunning.

In situ agents and their intrepid informants had linked Tahir to Al Qaeda in Khartoum in the two years preceding bin Laden’s arrival. Tahir, in fact, appeared instrumental in setting up the terrorist group’s import/export business, exactly as she’d suspected at first glance. He’d even rolled his own firm into what became Al Qaeda’s.

But what chilled Lana to her fingertips and left her staring dumbfounded at her screen was learning that in 1996, when bin Laden and his two hundred closest supporters fled Sudan for Jalalabad, Afghanistan, Tahir and his brother went with them—and stayed with Al Qaeda as the group established itself as the guests of the Taliban.

It was from that base of operations that Al Qaeda had launched its September 11 attacks five years later. Both Tahir and Sufyan’s father were full-fledged members of America’s sworn enemies. American bombs then killed the brother when the U.S. struck back at the Afghan militants who’d provided safe haven to those who had organized, trained, and dispatched the box-cutter brigade. So, in fact, his brother hadn’t been killed in their home village but by U.S. warplanes. Ample cause for anger.

But the rabbit hole Lana had plunged into then took an even more unexpected twist. In the month after his brother perished at American hands, Tahir became a CIA asset, providing information to an agent whose name was not revealed in the file.

Tahir had switched sides.

Or had he? People who changed their loyalties worried Lana. How pliable were their beliefs? Most jihadists who’d lost loved ones became more determined than ever to defeat their kuffar enemies. But according to these documents, Tahir had embraced the U.S. Did he do it because he felt deep responsibility for his brother’s son and wife, which was certainly part of his Muslim and Nubian traditions? Or was Tahir playing a longer game?

Whatever the reason, the U.S. had soon paid a huge price to protect him, Lana learned when she began to read a file earmarked “Top Secret.” It reported that Tahir had been among the Al Qaeda members, led by bin Laden, that had been run to ground by U.S. military forces at Tora Bora near the northwestern Pakistan border. The failure to deploy an adequate force of U.S. troops to tear the raggedy remains of the terrorist group from those mountain caves had long been the subject of great criticism and speculation. While two hundred jihadis were listed as killed, bin Laden and his key lieutenants, including Tahir, had escaped into Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Scores of commentators in the U.S. and abroad had wondered openly why the U.S. could possibly have let the reviled terrorists slip away. Lana now stared at the answer: to protect Tahir Hijazi, a spy for the U.S. in the fight against radical Islamic terrorism.

According to the top-secret report, Tahir had been prominent among bin Laden’s advisors in urging the retreat to Tora Bora and, therefore, had come under deadly suspicion by his fellow jihadis when their forces were attacked at the infamous cave complex. Tahir saved his own life, and the lives of his nephew and sister-in-law, by contacting an agency operative and hammering out a deal — quickly approved by the highest U.S. military command — to let the shredded Al Qaeda leadership escape to Pakistan. That deal protected not only Sufyan and the boy’s mother, but preserved Tahir’s invaluable role.

In exchange, though, he also had to agree to the devilishly tricky role of becoming a lifelong double agent under deep cover, a commitment to the agency that had saved the three of them. In the years that followed, Tahir’s loyalty turned him into the most important spy in the U.S. War on Terror. It also placed Tahir firmly in CIA hands. He could never waver from his assignment without risking the lives of those he loved most.

But he’s reneging on that now, Lana thought. He’s backing away from whatever he once agreed to. No CIA asset threatens the life of a young woman who’s the daughter of a major player in the country’s intelligence community, not if he’s trying to become a good citizen of his newly adopted land.

Maybe there were other motivations for Tahir’s desire to return to the Sudan. And maybe because of her personal link to him, she’d glimpsed a whole lot more of what he was really up to than the CIA operatives who were running him now.

Lana wondered if Bob Holmes knew. If he did and had hidden it from her, it would only reinforce the veracity of what she just read because it would strongly indicate that Tahir was known only to the highest echelon of the intelligence community.

And if that’s the case, he’s not going to confirm anything.

But Lana had known Bob for more than two decades. She might be able to read the old spymaster’s reaction.

Donna Warnes put her right through to her boss. Bob sounded as tired as he’d appeared when she’d seen him yesterday.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Fine, fine,” he replied quickly, always dismissing any interest in his health. “Do you have Galina trying to hack into this place?”

“I do.”

“Good. Don just picked up my son’s best family-security dog. I told Ed to send the bill to us.”

“I appreciate that.” A fully trained adult Malinois could easily cost more than $25,000.

“They’re on the way home now, in case you’re wondering. Ed sent me a photo of Emma with her new dog. She looks really happy. What’s up on your end?”

“It’s Tahir Hijazi. Do you know anything about him being a CIA asset?”

“Only that it sounds possible. Why do you ask?”

“Because given where he’s from, and where he’s ended up, it makes sense that he could have been, or still is, on the payroll.”

“I could look into it.”

“Would you? I’d also like to know if it was ever confirmed that he was Al Qaeda.”

“I’ll see what I can find out.”

She wondered if Bob were phrasing his answers carefully, or just as casually curious as he sounded. “It’s important,” she went on, “because he threatened to kill Emma yesterday afternoon if she keeps seeing his nephew.”

Bob groaned. To Lana he sounded like a man who’d just learned that someone he’d had on a short leash had just bolted away. But she couldn’t challenge him further without heightening the risk that he would figure out what she’d found. Besides, if the deputy director were dancing around his replies, pressing him harder would achieve nothing. So she tried to sound concerned, but companionable:

“I know. It scares me, too.”

“Don’t let Emma out of your sight.”

“That’s hardly practical, Bob. But we’re doing all we can to try to keep her safe. Don’s on the job. Thanks for rushing through his license.”

Lana ended the call and sat back, wondering…

But not for long: Maureen, though only across the room at her workstation, sent her a screen shot from Steel Fist’s website. A photo had been posted showing Em with the dogs in front of a barn. Don’s pickup and an SUV were parked in the background.

The message below the photo read:

“Lana Elkins’s daughter, Emma, just got a guard dog from a CIA-connected breeder and trainer in northern Maryland. Look at the plates on the pickup and SUV. The pickup is registered to the girl’s father, Don Fedder, a convicted drug dealer who just got out of federal prison. He’s back living with the kid and his ex-wife, Lana Elkins. The SUV belongs to Ed Holmes, the breeder working for a government that can’t keep you safe, but is doling out thousands of dollars for a damn dog to protect the daughter of a drug pusher and her black Muslim boyfriend. Holmes is the son of Robert Holmes, a deputy director of the NSA. These people are all in bed together in every possible way.

“So the Elkinses now have a dog at your expense. Look at that kid. Don’t you want to just wipe that smile right off that rich bitch’s face? You can because we don’t need a dog that can bite. We’ve got bullets!

“Ammo up!”