Day 3: May 17, 0715 Hours, Daylight Saving Time
Leesburg, Virginia
KHALIFAH WAITED AN extra fifteen minutes at the little downtown café, sipping a double espresso and enjoying a chocolate croissant. He’d chosen a table in the corner near the large picture window that gave him the long view down King Street. On the next corner, easily within view, he could observe both entrances to the antique shop that specialized in local 1800s pieces.
Khalifah sipped his espresso, adjusted his taqiyah, and played his mas’baha—prayer beads. His attention was on the intersection a half a block away. Only the antique store’s side-street entrance gave access to the second-floor business office rented to a local attorney some months ago and only occasionally visited. Its double entrance, one into the antique shop and the other to the narrow stairwell leading to the office, shared a wide foyer with heavy oak-framed doors. Once inside the foyer, anyone outside had no view of who entered the shop and who ascended the stairs. Likewise, until a visitor entered the shop’s stained-glasswindowed door and jingled the overhead bell, no one inside the shop would observe visitors to the second-floor office.
It had been thirty minutes since the tall, wiry Iranian and his bulky companion—both dressed in Western business suits—had walked from Market Street up the block and made the turn into the side-street entrance. By the time the two men reached the second-floor offices, they were restless and edgy, pacing perhaps and chancing glances through the window blinds looking for his approach.
With a last glance at his watch and an extra two-dollar tip on his table, Khalifah casually strode from the café and walked the half a block. At the corner, he crossed the street and continued past the antique shop’s side-street entrance. As he strode, he cautiously observed the parked cars and other shop windows and eateries for any rogue surveillance his contacts failed to warn him of.
There was none.
Twice Khalifah crossed the street, double backed, and finally returned to the corner adjacent to the antique shop. There, he waited curbside as though contemplating which shop to visit. As he scanned the street, he saw a gray Dulles airport taxi idling half a block away. He made casual eye contact with the driver, a thin Arab man, before he slowly rubbed his eyes. A second later, the taxi pulled away from the curb and made the turn in front of Khalifah before heading west out of town.
Nothing unusual to see.
Ten minutes later, assured the two Iranians were as jittery as expectant fathers, he double backed, crisscrossed the street twice, and entered the antique shop through the main entrance. Five minutes later, after pondering shelves of old books, he exited into the foyer, and climbed the stairwell to the second-floor offices.
He didn’t knock. He just strode into the partially furnished phantom attorney’s office that bore no name on the front door.
“It is about time, Khalifah,” Saeed Mansouri growled, turning from his position near the front windows. “I do not like waiting. Not even on you.”
Khalifah closed the door behind him and moved to the center of the room between Saeed and his bodyguard. He considered the muscular Persian guard before turning back to Saeed.
Saeed Mansouri was a tall, thin man, even by Persian standards. His shoulders were wide and his arms sinewy and strong. His face was narrow and hard, and he wore a tight-cropped, neatly trimmed beard. His Persian olive skin showed the marks of youth marred by violence. Gnarled, reddish scars adorned his neck and arms and peeked from beneath his tieless dress shirt. The wounds, the remnants of weeks in captivity by a warlord on the wrong side of the Ayatollah. Had it not been for his special benefactors—the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps—his head would have rolled to the ground without mercy. When the IRGC Pāsdārān commandos, “guardian brothers,” rescued him just days before his execution, his first act after quenching his heaving thirst with water was to kill every man who had held him. None escaped him.
His bravery, tenacity, and, above all, brutality earned him his own command in this foreign incursion onto American soil. The dream of every IRGC Pāsdār.
“I care not what you like or dislike. You will wait as long as necessary for me to ensure our security.” He threw a thumb toward the bodyguard. “Is this him? Was he responsible for those at Christian Run?”
Saeed grinned and rolled his hand in the air like a sheik granting a favor. “Yes, this is—”
“Enough.” Khalifah snapped. Then he turned, took two long steps toward the bodyguard, drew a short, narrow stiletto from his pocket and thrust it deep into the man’s ribs just below the heart. His other hand snapped up and covered the Persian’s mouth before his cry erupted. He twisted his blade, first left, then right. With a grunt, he angled it upward into the man’s heart.
“What is this?” Saeed blurted and reached beneath his jacket, but his hand stopped short of his weapon when Khalifah turned on him. He slowly lowered his hand—empty. “Explain this.”
Khalifah cleaned his blade on the bodyguard’s suitcoat before turning back to Saeed. “He was an animal. Killing the mother and father is one thing. We had no choice. But what he did to the little girl was wrong. He was an animal. I do not condone such defiling acts of barbarism.”
“You kill him for this? What difference did the bitch make?”
Khalifah raised his hand for silence. “All the difference. But that is not all, Saeed. He was followed to the mall. He was compromised. We were nearly compromised. Next time, I will come for you.”
Saeed’s face darkened and his eyes grew angry and hard. “Do not tell me how to command.”
“I’ll tell you everything I wish.” Khalifah moved close to him and held his blade level with the man’s chest exactly where he’d plunged it into the bodyguard. “You will listen, Saeed. You will act. You will do these things at my command.”
The air between them was ice.
Finally, after a long contest of wills and unflinching eyes, Saeed raised his chin. “What is it you wanted of me this day?”
“Ah, finally, an intelligent conversation.” Khalifah reached into his pocket and withdrew a USB flash drive. “Your new instructions. You must wait until after noon today before using the passcode, or the information will be destroyed. You may read it once. Then it will be bleached.”
Saeed took the computer drive. “I understand.”
“There are two more families. Two more new targets. You will take Sadik Samaan in Alexandria, first. The second will be a combined effort with our last attack. The instructions are all there on the computer stick.”
Saeed looked at the USB drive. “Baleh.”
“Now, Caine will be ready in three days. You must complete these tasks in that time.”
“Caine.” Saeed stepped back, spit on the hardwood between them, and threw a glance toward his dead bodyguard across the room. “I take my own men a thousand times over him. You put too much faith in that Westerner.”
Khalifah shook his head. “He’s not my man. He is the Foreigner’s choice. But we are in the West. Caine has value.”
“Keep him away from me. If you do not, I may gut him like a pig.”
“No, you won’t.” Khalifah cast his eyes on the Persian. “Now, there is one more thing. Another cell.”
“Another cell? I do not understand. I was told—”
“Plans changed.” Khalifah explained the new mission and watched Saeed’s face contort with delight. “Do you understand?”
Saeed Mansouri couldn’t contain his pleasure. “My friend, yes. This is a brilliant stroke. Brilliant. A fifth attack. They will not see this coming.”
“You have three days. When the time is right, the third attack will begin, and I will facilitate it. Until then, it is yours to develop and ready for me.”
Khalifah turned and walked to the door. “Wait fifteen minutes to leave. I’ll have others come in later tonight and clean up.”
“Of course, Khalifah. As-salamu alaykum.”
“Wa alaykumu s-salām.”
* * *
Earlier, as Khalifah had walked circuitously from the corner café down the block and back to his meeting, he’d noticed the taxi’s departure coincide with his arrival at the antique shop. None of the shoppers and local shopkeepers took notice of anything unusual. Had they, some might have found it coincidental that the taxi’s left turn signal coincided with Khalifah’s itchy eyes. If anyone were curious and watched the taxi closely, they might have seen the thin Arab speaking to no one as he made the turn in front of Khalifah. They would not have seen the driver’s concealed hands-free microphone inside his shirt that was wired to a thin radio clipped on his belt just behind his holstered semiautomatic.
Still, no one’s curiosity had been aroused.
That was what Mo Nassar had counted on.