NORTHERN GEORGIA,
AUGUST 14, 8:55 P.M. EDT
Georgia state trooper Jim Benton sat in his cruiser along I-85 as early evening began to fade to night.
For Benton, dusk was approaching literally and figuratively. The twenty-eight-year veteran of Georgia State Patrol was approaching retirement, and although he hadn’t set a fixed date, he suspected he probably wouldn’t finish out the year. He’d had a fine career. Commendations and awards aplenty. But the cumulative breaks, strains, and bruises were catching up to him. In fact, his current detail was his third light-duty assignment in as many years, the latest a consequence of injuries received in a tussle with a trucker he’d pulled over for a moving violation who happened to have a load of methamphetamines in his trailer.
Benton was one of the sharper knives in the drawer of Georgia law enforcement. Not only was he experienced, but he had the innate intelligence and eye for detail of a physician, the occupation chosen by his two older brothers and sister. Benton had also seemed destined for a career in medicine, but physiology intervened; not the class, but his own. He was six foot four, 260 pounds of muscle softened only a bit by age—dimensions that had steered him toward a stellar college football career as a defensive end for the Georgia Bulldogs, as well as a preference for a physical, action-oriented profession. So, after college and a brief stint as a Cobb County deputy, he became a Georgia state trooper, resisting numerous attempts by superiors to steer him into supervisory roles that could desperately use his talents, preferring to remain where the action was.
Thus, the most overqualified traffic cop in the state of Georgia was sitting in an idling cruiser on the right berm of the highway shielded from the view of drivers by the pillars of an overpass, scanning traffic for speeders, DUI, and other suspicious activity.
To this point it had been an unremarkable evening. But as the first stars began to appear in the darkening eastern sky, a southbound gray 2015 Ford Transit van caught Benton’s eye. Not because it was speeding, driving erratically, or had an expired tag, but because it was a Ford Transit. Benton could recall seeing few, if any, of that make and model along the highway. So as the vehicle approached from the rear at a steady sixty miles an hour, his gaze rested a second longer than usual on the front-seat occupants.
And that was all it took. It was only a glimpse, partially obscured by the head of the person in the passenger seat. But enough for the shrewd, experienced eye of the veteran trooper to send a signal to his brain. Not of alarm or concern, but of curiosity. That signal pulled up an image from a page with a series of photographs—head shots of certain suspects drawn from the sprawling terrorist screening database on the basis of sightings or reports suggesting such subjects might be in the northern Georgia area.
Benton hesitated a moment before shifting his vehicle into gear, restrained if only for a second by the hours upon hours of training and admonitions against profiling and cautions about implicit bias. Many officers, some of them good friends, had gotten into trouble for acting on hunches that politicians, lawyers, and activists maintained were fueled by racial stereotyping—enough that almost every law enforcement person he knew paused before acting on the instincts developed by years of experience as a good cop.
But while some community activist might have counseled Benton to take that moment’s pause to reconsider his implicit bias, chastise himself, and stand down, Benton used it to call for backup, giving a reason, location, license number, and description of the Ford Transit before placing his car in gear and accelerating into the right lane approximately a quarter mile behind the van.
Abu al-Basri. That was the name Benton had given dispatch. And although he remembered the name, he couldn’t remember the man’s alleged infractions—just that he was on the terrorist watch list and had been engaged in some type of violence. Benton knew under such circumstances his call for backup, even unsupported by outstanding warrants, would trigger a quick response. If he was wrong, his retirement might be moved up involuntarily.
Within a few seconds, Benton had overtaken the van, pulling even with the driver’s-side window in the left lane. Glancing over at the driver, Benton felt a pang of uneasiness. The driver resembled al-Basri, but there were no definite telltale markings. A plaintiff’s lawyer would claim that the only reason the driver had been pulled over and humiliated was because Benton had engaged in racial profiling.
But Benton’s unease lessened a bit when, looking behind the driver, he detected what appeared to be several men who appeared to be of Middle Eastern origin. The instincts that had served him well for three decades told him something was amiss. Benton radioed his findings, and dispatch reported that the van had been rented from Avis by a Seamus McCourt of Augusta. Ignoring the many hours of sensitivity training he’d received over the last decade, Benton noted that the driver looked nothing like a Seamus McCourt.
Benton saw that the driver continued looking straight ahead, not casting even a glance at the state trooper. In his rearview mirror, Benton caught two cruisers, light bars flashing, vectoring onto the highway from an on-ramp. Benton lit his light bar also, capturing the attention of the driver, whom he motioned to pull over.
The driver complied, coasting to a stop on the berm, the police vehicle behind him.
Benton resolved to be alert but courteous in the event, as was reasonably probable, the driver was simply an ordinary citizen motoring down the freeway. Three troopers, including Benton, got out of their vehicles, Benton approaching the driver’s-side door with his hand on his weapon while the rest remained in tactical positions to the rear. Stopping several feet behind the door, he called for the driver to get out of the vehicle. Almost immediately, the door opened and the driver stepped onto the berm. A second later Benton heard the sound of the passenger door opening also, the occupant appearing around the front of the van as he approached the driver’s side.
Cops hate sudden movement and surprises. All three began shouting for the passenger not to move. The passenger raised his palms outward and upward in a display of confusion and innocence but continued moving toward the driver, his movements phantomlike in the twilight. The cacophony of shouting grew louder and sharper, the troopers converging, pistols drawn, upon the Phantom.
Benton’s last conscious memory was of the Phantom’s eyes. Wolf’s eyes. Predatory. Then a telescoping baton materialized in the Phantom’s right hand and with astonishing speed struck a vicious backhanded blow across the bridge of Benton’s nose, sending the big man crashing unconscious to the pavement. Before the converging officers could react, the Phantom pivoted toward them and with grim precision swung the baton first at the trachea of the approaching officer to his left and then backhanded toward the trachea of the officer to his right. Each collapsed helplessly to the pavement, gasping desperately for air through crushed and useless windpipes, eyes wide in pain and terror.
For several seconds, the only sound in the approaching twilight was the idling of the vehicles and the futile gurgling of the officers writhing on the asphalt. Then there was a metallic clicking sound as the Phantom collapsed the baton, which disappeared as if by magic into an unseen pocket in the Phantom’s loose-fitting cargo pants.
The driver stood frozen next to the van. The other nine occupants sat rigid in the gloom of the rear of the van, stunned by the cold efficiency they’d just witnessed.
They saw the Phantom disarm one of the officers.
Nine methodically placed shots rang into the hot Georgia night, two in the torso and one in the head of each of the troopers.
The assassin could hear the crackling of the patrol car radios. He knew he must now abandon the van. He looked down the highway. He needed to and would procure another vehicle for the group.
They were still on schedule for the event. Later generations would say that the world had never seen anything like it before.