forty

Ruth left Donny in the care of a guard and stepped out into the corridor. She found the atmosphere electric, with Special Agent Wright stalking away towards the front of the building and Tom Brasher calling her back.

Wright ignored him and slammed through the door, her shoulders stiff with anger.

Vaslik was standing inside the adjacent room looking nonplussed. Ruth said to him, “What’s going on?”

“She’s going over Brasher’s head to her supervisor to get him to alert Homeland Security and the Department of Defence. She heard what you got out of Donny and told Brasher he had to call it in now and launch a general alert and a major search of the area. Brasher said not yet and she flipped.”

“What set it off ?”

He winced. “Brasher told her those were the questions she should have been asking.”

“He’s right; she totally missed the point. And we’d be crazy to sound a general alert—we have to find these people first. If the authorities flood the area with personnel, they’ll go underground and try again somewhere else.”

“I agree.”

Brasher turned back towards them and sighed in resignation. “I’ll have to let her go. I can’t stop her without locking her in a cell. She might come to her senses once she calms down. I guess I could have handled it better.”

Ruth wasn’t so certain. Under the clean-cut exterior, Karina Wright struck her as one angry and ambitious lady who had already made up her mind and wasn’t about to back down. Maybe being the first to break the news was her way of enhancing a career agenda.

“What was it you wanted to tell me about bids?” she reminded him.

“Well, first off, that was a classy approach in there; you were right on point and got him talking about what he thought he didn’t know. I guess I have to own up to missing that, too.” He composed his thoughts for a moment, then continued. “About six months ago the National Security Agency picked up some chatter about planned operations against Coalition force members. The sources were in the Middle East, but some of the servers being used were in the US and Europe. Some of it was the usual high-minded guff about hitting us where it hurt and teaching us a lesson, but there were some other exchanges that sounded different—kind of off the wall. For that reason they were noted but set to one side because the subject matter made no real sense.”

“Like what?”

“The exchanges were talking about bids, just like Donny said. The difference was, they talked about bidding for ‘strikes.’ It was thought they were using code words but we couldn’t figure out what they meant. The word strikes is clear enough in plain language, but we were thrown by bids. It didn’t fit, no matter which way we threw it in the air.”

“Couldn’t they have been groups bidding to take on a job?” Vaslik suggested.

“That was our initial thought. There’s certainly no shortage of them out there wanting to do something radical. It’s long been known that most of the extremist groups are in competition with each other to hit the headlines and gain a name for themselves. But they appear to be subservient to some of the more powerful groups if something high-concept is being planned, and they back off fast when told to avoid conflicting operations. What threw us—and still does—was that the so-called bids had financial figures attached to them.”

“So where do we go from here?”

“Well, I think Donny just gave us a possible answer. What if the words he overheard alluded to the fact that this Asim Malak has come up with a uniquely modern method of funding his operation?”

“Go on.”

“He sets up the idea to make a major hit on the US, to the point where it looks viable. Then he hawks it around to a number of the wealthier extremist groups and their backers to see who wants a share of the action—in exchange for finance.”

“Like crowd-funding,” said Vaslik.

“Exactly.”

They stood and considered the idea. It sounded crazy and unlikely … yet in the modern world, almost to be expected. If, like Malak, a group lacked the funds to complete an operation, why not go out and sell shares to interested bidders? That way everybody was happy, the attacking group and any others with parallel interests.

“It’s not so stupid,” Ruth said into the silence. “The highest bidder gets to claim the credit for the strike while Malak and his men do the work and remain unknown. It’s insane … but clever.”

“Of course it is,” Brasher agreed. “It’s a win-win for the bidders, too; they don’t have to risk their own people carrying out the operation, but if Malak needs some expendable muscle, they can send in anybody they choose at minimum cost.”

Vaslik nodded. “It makes sense to—” He stopped as a popping sound came from the front of the building, followed by a lot of shouting and the sound of breaking glass.

“Jesus, that’s gunfire!” Brasher cried and turned towards the door just as a whooshing noise came closer, overriding the sound of the gunshots.

A split second later the whole building shook with the force of an explosion, and ceiling tiles rained down on their heads. All the lights went out, and a loud groaning sound came from the walls around them as part of the structure began to give way.

In the distance, somebody began screaming.