19

 

When Katie drove into the parking garage Tuesday morning, Josh’s car sat by the exit nearest the computer science building. A few spaces away, a man sat in a mid-sized sedan with the window down. Something about him was familiar—the Seattle Field Office. That’s where she had seen him. One of Peterson’s men.

Katie had slept in much later than normal. Maybe it was the lingering effect of the drugs.

After hacking the laptop in Whistler and the attempted abduction, how much longer would the conspirators wait before lighting the fuse on their terror bomb? It was time to bring Josh up to speed, all the way up. Then they needed to do some serious brainstorming and pray they found some evidence to support her conjecture.

Pray. Would Josh ever rely on God enough to do that? That was something she needed to pray about, harder than she had ever prayed about anything.

Please help me with this. And don’t let me walk off a cliff.

When she reached her desk, Katie slid her laptop out of her pack and fired it up. She pulled out her flash drive and noticed Josh walking toward her. She inserted the flash drive in the USB port.

“Is that your backup database?” His tone was accusing and he hovered, looking over her shoulder.

“That it is, and good morning to you too, Josh.”

“But Kate, you told Peterson—”

“No. I didn’t tell him. He told me.”

“So, you’re not backing off?”

She didn’t answer.

He sat beside her. “Then give me one good reason why I shouldn’t call Peterson right now and tell him what you’re doing.”

“Because I would never let you kiss me again for as long as I live.” Katie looked at Josh, studying his eyes.

“Kate.” The eyes of a hurt puppy, abused by its beloved master, looked back at her.

Josh’s expression almost brought tears to her eyes.

Then one eye overflowed. Darn it! She quickly wiped her cheek. “I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry, Josh.”

“As long as you live? That might not be very long, Kate.”

She turned toward him, took one of his large hands in both of hers. And met his gaze. She would plead with her eyes, and with her words, that he would understand. “Josh…I’ve done some thinking about the other parts of this conspiracy. A lot of people might not live very long if we just drop it. By the time the FBI gets as far into the investigation as we are—”

“You mean as far as you are, don’t you?”

“No. As of today, it’s we, Josh.”

He smiled a warm, capitulating smile.

She had won. Katie looked into his warm, brown eyes. She had lost. It was we. No matter what she chose to do with Joshua West, in her heart she would always think of them as we.

She squeezed Josh’s hand. “This isn’t Katie’s little game of counterespionage. Hack and see if you can catch the bad guys. What we’re seeing here is big, bold, and bad. Very, very bad.”

“Would you care to elaborate?”

“I’ll tell you everything I know—everything, Josh—if you’ll promise to help me. If we don’t figure this out soon, a lot of Americans are going to die.”

“You’re not just saying that to get me to give my word to help, are you?”

“I’m saying it because I believe it’s the truth. But if it’s not enough, maybe I’m willing to bribe you.”

He raised his eyebrows and the corners of his mouth turned up. “Oh? This is getting interesting. But you know something, Kate? Anything you would bribe me with, well, I believe you’d be getting just as much out of it as me…a freebie.” He smiled and slowly shook his head. “Either way, you’re going to win.” He threw up his hands. “OK. I surrender.”

“You won’t regret it. You’ll see.”

“The only thing I regret is that I should’ve accepted the bribe before I caved.”

“If things…uh…go well, maybe we won’t miss out on anything.” Why had she added that? It was true, but…

“We, Kate?”

This verbal sparring before the knockout punch, or kiss, or whatever, was getting out of hand. “I need…we need to change the subject.”

“Time to get serious, again?”

She was serious. All of it was serious. Confusing, but serious. “Let’s deal with a terrorist conspiracy now and the we stuff later.”

“I won’t let you forget, Kate.”

Josh probably didn’t realize it, but ‘we’ was becoming such a big, troublesome thing that she could never forget. If only Josh and Katie shared the same beliefs, but…

“What concerns me most about the collaboration we’ve discovered so far is that we’re seeing cooperation between Sunnis and Shia Muslims at a very deep level in this organization.”

“And so?”

“So you don’t know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites?”

“Enlighten me.”

“There was a big split between the Sunnis and the Shiites during the Middle Ages. The Shiites insisted that their leader, the caliph, must be a direct descendent of Mohammed and that the religious leader should also be a political leader. The Sunnis think the leader should be the best person available, provided he is Muslim. And there are some differences as to whether prophecy is ongoing, or was complete with the prophet Mohammed.”

“Sort of like Catholics and Protestants, but more serious and with some violence added?”

She shook her head. “That’s not the best analogy. Both sects hold to the Muslim scriptures, and those scriptures say a Muslim should never kill another Muslim. However, Sunnis and Shiites have been killing each other since their existence.”

“So how do they justify that?”

“Each side says members of the other side are not true Muslims.”

“That makes it rather hard to cooperate, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. Unless you’re talking about their common and most hated enemy, the United States.” Katie continued. “It appears that the cooperation in this conspiracy is only with regard to the timing. Each cell, for lack of a better word, has specific responsibilities and reports up a chain of command to either a Shiite or Sunni leader. Coordination only occurs at a high level. Only the leaders have to make religious compromises in order to pull this off.”

“Sounds like politics in the USA.”

“Only in that one aspect. But we have seen Sunnis and Shiites cooperating in the Western Hemisphere for several years. I guess living among the enemy changes their perspective on what a good Muslim is.”

Katie fired up the web server on her laptop, then her browser, pointing it at the URL for the IP address display. “I wrote a CGI script that plots the locations of the members of this conspiracy using our IP address database and the collaboration we’ve detected. I added lines to show the paths of communication. Come and look at this, Josh.”

Josh stood and stepped behind her, placing his cheek against hers.

“Josh? You’re supposed to be watching the paths of communication.”

“I am.”

“You are?”

“Yeah.”

“You are…very distracting.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Josh, this is serious. Watch the screen.”

“Sorry, Kate. You’re rather distracting, too.”

“Back to the map. The Shiite side of this collaboration looks like it’s headquartered in Iran.”

Josh sighed into her ear.

“That’s more than distracting. You need to stand up.” She put her hand under his chin and pushed up.

Josh straightened and stood directly behind her, resting his hands on her shoulders. “One line goes from Tehran to Nicaragua, Kate. Is that a glitch in your program?”

“I wondered about that, too. I’ve bookmarked a set of intelligence sources on the Internet. All unclassified information, of course. But several sources verified that Hezbollah is using a base in northern Nicaragua to train terrorists. And, get this, Tehran is funding the entire operation. Of course, a lot of other things are happening there, too. Cooperation with drug cartels, smuggling of weapons. Well, you get the idea.”

“So we have Shiite terrorists almost at our backdoor?”

“Almost. Then, of course, we have Hezbollah in Columbia and Venezuela. Even with Chavez gone, that’s not going to change.”

“So what are the Sunnis up to?” Josh asked, his hands gently massaging her tense shoulders and neck muscles.

“Thanks to the Arab Spring and the unrest in Nigeria, Al Qaeda is strengthening ties with Boko Haram. Bringing some new blood into their organization. But that region is so unstable…I wonder if Al Qaeda will actually rely on Boko Haram to carry out any important part of this plan?” His strong but gentle hands were sending her thoughts into disarray. She laid her hand over one of his. “That’s enough. It was very nice of you, but you are becoming a big distraction.” Katie took his hand, kissed it, and removed it from her shoulder. She sighed and tried to concentrate on terror groups, though Josh was a much more interesting subject.

Josh sat beside her again. “I don’t see any lines from Nigeria or Mali to the Western Hemisphere.”

“That’s right. No Boko Haram tie-in yet. But that could appear at any time. So we need to be watching.”

“So what’s the line from Israel to South America?” Josh asked.

“It’s not from Israel. It’s from the Gaza Strip. Hamas.”

“Isn’t Hamas just a few poor Palestinians?”

“See the line from Saudi Arabia to the Gaza Strip? That’s where Hamas usually gets its money. But I’m not sure if the communications from Saudi Arabia to Gaza represent funding, operational control, or both. Regardless, Hamas is active in Paraguay and in Northern Argentina.”

“So we have three trouble spots, Nicaragua, Colombia, and the Paraguay—Argentina area.”

“Which is called the Tri-Border Area. And there’s the unknown piece that might belong to Boko Haram. I wonder if the shooter at Key Arena was somehow related to Boko Haram’s role. If so, the unknown line of communication may come to the United States.”

“Or to Whistler?”

“We haven’t tied Whistler to any one of these groups yet. Although they have to tie-in, somehow.”

“If we have four trouble spots, that would mean four separate, but coordinated, attacks.”

“Exactly. Forest fires, and three other things that you and I need to identify.”

“Kate, shouldn’t we go to the FBI and show them what you have?”

“We have a little more time. Not much, but a little. I want to have a solid case to present when we do that.” She turned and looked into Josh’s eyes. “We’re almost there, Josh. With your help I think we can get there in three or four weeks, max.”

“But that takes us into July. It’s the beginning of the high fire danger in Western forests. Sometime during the fire season they have to pull the trigger on this operation.”

“And that’s why you and I need to keep our nose to the grindstone. So, are you with me on—”

“Kate, you should know that I am.” His eyes softened again. Josh hadn’t a clue how that look affected her. Or, maybe he did. Josh was no dummy.

“You know a lot about Islamic history, beliefs, and what’s happening among terrorists groups. I asked you once about being an agent in training, or—”

“Mom is still under contract to NSA, though she only works part time because of the twins. I ask her a lot of questions. She answers what she can. Some questions she doesn’t answer. That’s when I go to my intel sources on the Internet.”

“How much can you really learn from unclassified Internet sources?”

“There are think tanks on terrorism. Many of them issue unclassified reports and place them on their web sites. Also, some of the right-wing organizations run web sites. You have to weed out the conspiracy theorists from among them to get anything useful. The conspiracy guys ask all the wrong questions, come up with a mixture of right and wrong answers, and, voila, a conspiracy is born. I’ll export my bookmarks for you and let you import them into your browser.”

“When do you have time to do all of this extra-curricular research, Kate?”

“I do most of it after I go home.”

“Sometimes you’re here pretty late. When do you sleep?”

“Sleep?” She looked up at Josh and grinned. “What’s that? But lunch, that’s another matter. Let’s take a lunch break and brainstorm when we get back.”

“Brainstorm what, Kate?”

“What these people plan to do other than start a bunch of forest fires.”