The Lost Codex (3 page)

As they led the perp away, Uzi nudged Vail. “Nice job.”

“Thanks,” Vail said, seating the Glock in its holster.

“Bullshit, that was horrible. What the hell were you thinking, Karen? You drew down on him. You had the guy dead to rights. He was five feet away. And you let him run you over?”

Vail ground her jaw. “We needed to question him, not kill him.”

“You don’t really want me to respond to that, do you? With all the experience you’ve had?” He looked her over. “Did you freeze?”

“I told you. We needed him alive so we could sit him down, sweat him. Can’t do that if he’s got a chest full of .40s.”

“Yeah, well, we need
you
alive too. So do Jonathan and Robby.”

I hate it when he’s right.

“Don’t do that again. You were lucky.”

“I was not—” Vail stopped herself. “You’re right. I was lucky.”

Uzi gave her a long look, then nodded.

3

D
ouglas Knox walked into the briefing room at the Hoover Building, a.k.a. FBI headquarters, or in Fed-speak, FBIHQ. Agents dubbed it the Puzzle Palace because its hallways and doors all looked the same. Getting lost or turned around was a regular occurrence.

An oblong walnut table dominated the space. Water bottles—and nothing else—were set out at each seat. No pads and pens. No laptops or tablets.

Vail instantly knew why. This was a classified meeting and no record of its proceedings would be created. Notes were forbidden. In essence, the gathering never happened—officially or unofficially.

Given what she had just witnessed, with OPSIG operators cloaked in nondescript black tactical uniforms and explicit instructions to keep Metro PD and Fire away, this did not surprise her.

As Knox took a seat at the head of the table, he combed back a lock of gray hair that had fallen across his forehead. To his right sat defense secretary Richard McNamara, and to McNamara’s right was CIA director Earl Tasset. At Tasset’s elbow was the secretary of Homeland Security, Laurence Bolten.

Across from the men were Vail, DeSantos, and Uzi.

“Hector, give us a sit-rep,” Knox said, using operator-speak for situation report.

“We’ve got one dead tango at the location of the explosion on Irving Street. Bomb-making equipment was found in the nearby building, enough to make several suicide vests, along with materials for constructing corresponding explosives. We don’t have an ID on the body yet—or what’s left of it—which isn’t much.”

“Anything of use to us?” Bolten asked. “Papers, manuals—”

“We’ve got a team standing by, ready to comb the apartment for intel, but our EOD unit is making sure it’s clear of booby traps and defusing existing bombs that were in various states of construction.”

Glad they’re doing that
after
we were in there.

“We have two in custody?” McNamara asked.

“Right.” DeSantos leaned forward in his seat and turned to his colleague. “Uzi?”

Using his tongue, Uzi shoved a wood toothpick to the side of his mouth. “While we were doing a once-over of the bomb factory, the deceased perp’s cell phone rang. The caller ID was in Arabic. I’m fluent in Arabic, so I answered it.” He recounted how they found their way to the apartment in southwest DC and what happened when Alpha Team entered.

“This hidden room,” Earl Tasset said. “How many were in there?”

“At the time,” Vail said, “I only saw one—but I never had a clear view. When I pulled open the door, the ass—the
perp
charged me and ran out of the house. I pursued, but he managed to escape.”

Knox frowned. “So we’ve got one tango in the wind. Did you get a good look at him?”

Vail struggled to maintain eye contact. “No sir. Average height, five foot nine or five-ten, about a hundred seventy-five, dark hair, darker complexion. In his twenties. No distinguishing marks that I could see. But in all honestly, I engaged him for only a split second before—before he got away.”

Knox tilted his head back and sighed.

Hey, no one’s more disappointed than I am.

“Another escaped through the adjacent townhouse,” DeSantos said, “and it looks like he had a driver waiting. We shot up their car pretty good, but they both escaped. So that’d be
three
in the wind. As far as we know.”

“Get a plate on the SUV?”

“Just make and model.”

“That’s just dandy,” Tasset said. “Good work.”

Uzi, not a fan of Tasset for personal reasons, tightened a fist on his lap. Vail glanced over, then placed a hand atop his.

“And then?” McNamara asked. “Agent Uziel apprehended the first suspect?”

“Actually, Agent Vail did,” Uzi said, pulling his hand away. “Which wasn’t easy because he definitely did not want to be captured alive. She put herself at risk to make sure we had an intact suspect to question.”

“I’ll withhold my applause for now,” Tasset said, eyeing Vail. “You did your job. That’s why you’re on this team.”

Actually, I’m on this team because I’ve got no choice, thank you very much
.

“The suspect is being questioned,” DeSantos said. “I expect it’ll take a while to learn anything useful from him. He’s been processed but his prints aren’t in any database. I have a request out to Interpol.”

“What about the other suspect we captured?” Bolten asked.

“Older, mid-fifties. He hasn’t said much. He’s missing two fingers on his left hand and the side of his face is scarred over from a bad burn, so I suspect he’s the bomb maker and that he’s been at it awhile.”

Uzi set his water bottle down after taking a gulp. “Based on the clothing and dishes in the apartment, we believe there were four men living and working there.”

“So,” McNamara said. “What are we doing to find the ones who escaped?”

“Sir,” Uzi said. “As head of the JTTF in DC, I’m compelled to recommend that in order to effectively pursue these men, and to investigate this case, I need to assign agents and bring Metro—”

“There is no
case
,” Knox said.

“No case?” Uzi glanced around at the people seated at the table. “All due respect, a suicide bomber exploded in the middle of Washington. We found a bomb-making factory with multiple devices in various stages of assembly—this isn’t going to be a one-and-done. We need to raise the threat level. The public needs to be notified that we’re under attack.”

“No,” Knox said. “They don’t. Not yet.”

“Sir. I—”

“Agent Uziel, who is behind the attack?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“What was the target?”

“We’re still inves—”

“Are other attacks planned for the district? For anywhere else in the country?”

“I don’t know—”

“That is the point, isn’t it? There isn’t much we
do
know. We have very few facts. And dozens of questions. The media will have even more. We don’t want a panic on our hands, do we?”

Uzi leaned forward in his seat. “Of course not. But we can’t keep this a secret.”

“The president has asked us to keep it quiet, for now, until we have a better understanding of what’s going on.”

“We know what’s going on. A terrorist cell of suicide bombers has set up shop in DC and we thwarted one attack before they could act. Isn’t that the intel you got from our Turk informant, Cüneyt Ekrem?”

“As you said yourself, Ekrem is unreliable. That’s why we have to be careful and methodical and keep our eyes and ears open. We need to verify what he told us and not jump to conclusions. At the moment, we have no confirmed intel.”

“But—”

“Remember the panic the DC Sniper caused?” Bolten asked.

Uzi sat back. “Of course.”

“That’s what the president wants to avoid.”

“Agent Vail,” Knox said, “tell us what you know of suicide bombers.”

Vail folded her hands in front of her as she gathered her thoughts. “The study data is all over the place and often conflicting, but the lack of correlation reflects where that research was done, which political and religious ideologies were involved, and which populations were studied. The acts of a bomber in Iraq, for example, are going to be quite different from one operating in Sri Lanka.

“Generally speaking, operationally, the first goal of the bomber is to inflict death and destruction on a specific target. The second goal—which is his overriding motivation and purpose—is to inflict emotional pain and injury on innocents who witness the carnage—and who wait, on edge, for another bomb to go off. Basically, the idea is intimidation, fear and, well, terror.

“That’s an important point because the data is more cut and dried regarding the victim population’s point of view. The victims are frightened. They’re scared. They alter their ways of life. That’s why the terrorists are doing it, right? It’s not the people they’re killing that are affected—they’re dead—it’s those who live in the community, not knowing when another strike is going to happen—or where.”

“Like the DC Sniper,” Bolten said.

“Yes. In a sense, suicide bombings are similar to the terror that snipers inflict on their victim populations: you never know where they’re going to strike next. And it involves an attack on everyday citizens, who are the victims of a political agenda or revenge against people who have nothing to do with the initial ‘offense’ or perceived slight supposedly inflicted on the attacker.”

“Suicide bombings can be an effective tactic in scoring wins during wartime,” Bolten said. “At West Point, we studied the Japanese kamikazes extensively. They had nothing to lose—their objective was to die—so they could be more daring, and penetrate enemy territory more deeply and more effectively, by taking greater risks.”

“Right,” Vail said. “Along those lines, suicide bombings are also used as an asymmetric tactic to counter a stronger fighting force. An example would be the Palestinian bombers hitting civilian targets in Israel. A vast majority of those attacks came at the hands of Hamas, although some were carried out by its rival, al Humat.”

Vail glanced at Uzi and saw his jaw muscles contract—and for good reason: an al Humat operative murdered his wife and daughter.

“There are multiple MOs to their approach,” she continued. “The most common is an explosive belt or vest, though two exceptions would be Richard Reid, the shoe bomber on Flight 63, and the attack on the Saudi prince where the bomber placed the explosives inside his body. Car bombs can also be effective—like the Beirut barracks bombing in ’83 when a driver plowed his truck into the building. Or boats loaded with explosives, like the USS
Cole
in Aden. I don’t have to elaborate on how jets can be flown into buildings. But that’s just another form of suicide attack. Less popular tactics involve forcing a driver to crash his bus, like the Palestinians did in Tel Aviv, or driving a car into a crowd of people.

“Given what evidence we’ve discovered tonight, it looks like they’re going the more conventional route—a vest—but since we don’t know specifically who we’re dealing with, or why they’re doing what they’re doing, we can’t rule out any of these other methods. Because of that, I do support Agent Uziel’s recommendation to alert—”

“Noted,” Knox said.

Keep your mouth shut, Karen. Just move on.

“Did Ekrem say what group was behind the planned attacks?” Uzi asked.

Knox rose from his chair and began pacing in front of a white board at the head of the room. “I’m reluctant to repeat what he said until we have verification.”

“Sir,” DeSantos said, “time is obviously critical. If we’re going to figure out who’s behind this—and stop them before they implement their plan—we need to know what you know. We can cut through the bullshit and figure out if his intel is on target.”

Knox stopped and leaned on the back of the leather chair. “Al Humat. Maybe in coordination with Hamas. He wasn’t sure. He also suggested Hezbollah played a role, but he wasn’t clear on that.”

“So,” Vail said, “let’s assume, until proven otherwise, that Ekrem gave us good info and there’s an Islamist angle to the planned bombings. These terrorists were speaking Arabic, so we’re in the right ballpark at least. Let’s look at this from a behavioral perspective. We know there’s a religious element to it, a political element to it, and some good old peer pressure—to help the cause, to do what your friends are doing, to sacrifice oneself for the good of the group.”

“Groupthink,” Uzi said, moving the toothpick around with his tongue.

“Right. These people are intent on destruction—but they’re also motivated by strong religious and political beliefs, as well as their own moral reasoning.”

“
Warped
moral reasoning,” Earl Tasset said.

“We know that Arab bombers are featured on posters and in videos as martyrs,” Uzi said. “There’s a financial angle—the bombers’ families are well compensated. Hamas has gone on record that depending on who takes responsibility for the attack, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al Humat, or the Palestinian Authority pays out a lifetime stipend of $400 a month to families of male bombers and $200 per month to families of female bombers.”

“Apparently,” DeSantos said, “the corporate world isn’t the only place women are paid less than men.”

The attempt at humor fell flat.

“In the Koran,” Uzi continued, “Allah promises martyrs heavenly rewards. We’ve all heard about the dozens of virgins a male bomber is told he’ll get. According to a Palestinian bomber who did not go through with the attack, female bombers are told they’ll become the purest and most beautiful form of angel, at the highest level possible in heaven.”

“We’ve been approaching this as if our tangos are all male,” McNamara said. “But I do remember some cases involving female suicide bombers. Chechnya, I think.”

“Correct,” Uzi said. “But they’ve also been used against civilian populations in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Israel, France, Sri Lanka. The best known case out of Iraq was the one where Samira Ahmed Jassim recruited about eighty women for suicide attacks—and sent twenty-eight of them to their deaths.”

“Must be one persuasive lady,” DeSantos said.

“Not persuasive. Evil. She would arrange for women to be raped, and then convince them to commit suicide attacks as a means to atone for the shame of being raped.”

McNamara shook his head. “I remember that.”

“If I’m not mistaken,” Vail said, “the women who choose to become bombers on their own, their motivation is not political—opposite of their male counterparts. Most common reason is that the women are grieving the loss of family members and they’re looking to punish the person they consider responsible.”

“Revenge killing,” Bolten said.

“Yes. But there are also other female bombers who wanted to martyr themselves for reasons we could never figure out.”

“What are the odds women are involved here?” Knox pushed back from the chair and began pacing again. “We may need to adjust our approach. And obviously that expands our dataset quite a bit.”

Vail nodded. “It’s been a while since I looked at the statistics, but I think women make up about 15 percent of all suicide bombers—at least within groups that use females. Now if we’re talking about assassinations by suicide attack, women were responsible for about 65 percent of those. A fifth of them had the objective of assassinating a specific person—compared to only 5 percent for male attackers.”