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Mclean, Virginia
“How many do we have? How many inbound passengers at McCarran did NOT depart to date?”
“A little more than 2,000,” came the response.
“Come on people! I’m not asking for estimates here. I want to know the E-X-A-C-T number.” The Director of the National Counterterrorism Center was on his game. That meant his staff were not.
“Exactly 2,087.” The precise response came from the same young man in the elevated seats who offered the original suggestion to go down this line of inquiry.
“Now we’re getting somewhere. Break‘em down. Give me the stats.”
“There were 211 passengers whose surnames suggest Middle Eastern ethnicity. Only 23 were not U.S. Citizens.” The analyst paused awaiting the ‘go ahead’ from the Director to continue. He got it.
“There were 326 passengers whose surnames suggested a Ukrainian ethnicity. There were another 428 of either Indian or Pakistani ethnicity. Only 7 passengers were from the Caucasus.”
“And?”
“Approximately 1,015 passengers with other surnames, all of whom are U.S. citizens.”
“Approximately? If I’m doing my arithmetic correctly, it’s exactly.”
Another pause, since no pattern was jumping out of these numbers.
“How many of the passengers didn’t depart McCarran because they live in the greater Las Vegas metro area?
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Chicago, Illinois
Detective Lt. Donovan was the Executive Assistant to the Chicago PD’s Chief of Detectives. It was a job he never pursued and didn’t want.
After ten years with a gold detective’s shield, too many stakeouts, two divorces, and too many other dismal statistics to think about, Donovan decided he wanted to climb the hierarchy and stop wearing down the shoe leather, and get a hefty pay raise. He took and passed the Sergeant’s examination, waited another two years and passed the Lieutenant’s exam. He expected to be assigned his own precinct squad of detectives where he could see police life from the comfortable side of the desk.
No such luck.
Instead, he was picked to be the COD’s EA. He grabbed coffee and doughnuts, made appointments, and tried to anticipate the COD’s next move. He was a damned fancy secretary who was starting to think about early retirement for the first time in his career. Eight more years of this shit-for-shinola detail and he wouldn’t be fit for anything else.
Last night was typical.
He finally got a few days without making the COD the center of his life. The fat bastard was stuck supporting Superintendent in the city’s budget hearings. Donovan made it home each of those days at a decent hour. He took a hot shower, changed into comfortable clothing, and finished off the leftover seafood salad and a great bottle of wine.
Next thing Donovan knew he was trudging through knee high snow making his way to the COD’s luxury apartment building to “fetch” SIM registration cards for some burners. The COD actually said “fetch,” when he ordered him out into the cold and miserable night. It was a bunch of burners given to him by the building’s Super.
Arriving wet and cold, Donovan found the SIM cards waiting at the front desk. The COD didn’t want to see him, just fetch.
Taking a deep breath, he marched back out into the blowing snow and freezing late night temperatures to trudge the mile back to his not-so-luxury apartment. He had two ex-wives who bled him dry with their monthly support payments, and a COD who treated him like a dog.
Fetch.
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Mclean, Virginia
“Hurry people. Let’s do the math today. The taxpayers don’t pay us to sit on our collective ass in this beautiful building to while away the hours playing Sudoku.” The Director’s staff looked worse for the wear and smelled worse than they looked. Some hadn’t been home in days, and hadn’t showered or changed their clothes. It was a toss-up which smelled worse, the staff or the growing volume of trash on the floor of the pit. Builds character, he told himself. This is war. War isn’t pretty. The taxpayers expect them to win. Hell, the President told him exactly that several weeks earlier.
“Director!” from the junior analyst up high in the cheap seats. “I’ve found something interesting.”
“’Interesting’ don’t feed the bulldog, son!”
“Yes, sir, I know that, but this is...I can’t overlook this relationship. And—“
“Okay, okay, O-K-A-Y! Spit it out.”
“We have a Todd Adams—Dr. Todd Adams—flies in from Chicago on Southwest, spends one night in Las Vegas and returns via Salt Lake City on Delta.”
“Real doctor? Physician?”
“’Real,’ sir? He has a Ph.D. I have a Ph.D.”
“Yes, son a real doctor. Not some pencil jockey. So?”
“Adams is a physicist with a doctoral thesis in nuclear weaponry. Searching the social media archives told us he’s an entrepreneur in Chicago with a ton of VC funding pushing some up-scale mobile shopping app.”
“Son, there are a few words in all of that blather I can’t even understand. What do you find so interesting about the good Dr. Adams? What justifies the critical time you may already have wasted? Well?”
“Yes, sir. The social media and press archives tell us he has a dead Middle Eastern girlfriend whose father supposedly died during extraordinary rendition. In in one of our prisons in Poland. But the father is in Gitmo very much alive. And his best friend, also a Ph.D. in Physics, lives Las Vegas.”
“Names? Son, give us the background color. What are their names?”
“Girlfriend, ugh, dead girlfriend is—make that was—Leyla Hufnawi. Father, Khaled Hufnawi, formerly of Amman, Jordan. Now residing in Gitmo—too compromised to send to trial here in the U.S. Friend is Achmed Al Hami. Al Hami works for Safety-Keep in Las Vegas.”
The Director stood. His back to the junior analyst. “Christ, Gloria, can you get the damned cleaning crew in here and clean up this god-awful mess!” Turning back to the junior analyst, “You people certainly like to live like pigs. We should have puzzled this out days ago. Son, there are some who’d say, ‘Good Job.’ Me, what the hell took you so long?” With that, the Director exited the room.
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Chicago, Illinois
Donovan finally made it back to his hovel. Pouring himself two fingers of only a fair single malt whiskey—he couldn’t afford anything better—removed the rubber band holding the pack of identical SIM registration cards. He dialed one of the numbers on a lark. The call immediately went to a generic voice mail greeting. The phone’s owner hadn’t yet activated the voice mailbox.
Moving the SIM registration card to the back of the deck, he dialed the next telephone number. This time, the phone rang repeatedly.
Three of the Santa figures remained intact. All three watching over the intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard and Flamingo Road. The first Donovan dialed already detonated in the basement of the frat house. The second he dialed had a defective detonator. One in thousand detonators fail. No way to know which would, or would not, except to try.
Two Santa figures remained untested.