Terror Rising: Book 0 – The Insurgence (14 page)

Assad stopped in front of the doors and
stepped out of the Gator. Salah patiently waited, satellite phone
in hand, eager to get to the bottom of whatever had gone wrong with
the pickup in Del Rio. He had yet to grill Mohammed. He wanted to
speak with both men and get the full story. Mistakes happened, that
much Salah understood, but what he did not have patience for was
carelessness. Such lapses were often met with swift and brutal
retribution.

Assad spun the combination wheel back and
forth until he heard a gratifying click. He then pulled open the
creaking doors and walked inside. The car port had an extremely low
ceiling, just high enough to fit a standard vehicle. Crates lay
about the room under the low light of a few ceiling bulbs powered
by several energy-saving generators, which made the underground
dwelling livable.

A pallet of fuel cans sat in the corner of
the room with another pallet of MREs, meals-ready-to-eat, across
from it. Salah had been living off the grid for some time. It was
necessary for operations and not much different than his conditions
in Syria, where he had commanded rebel teams in similar covert
surroundings.

He saw a station wagon parked in the center
of the port with Hakeem sitting on the hood in his cowboy outfit.
He felt even more simmering rage than when Mohammed had entered his
room with a pathetic look of shame across his face.

Bosra and Nabil approached the station wagon
with their rifles slung around their shoulders, staring Hakeem down
and then taking positions at the rear of the vehicle. They never
left Salah’s side for any reason, it seemed.

Hakeem jumped off the hood and greeted Salah
as Mohammed stood to the side with his eyes down, full of dread.
Two large green military-issue generators hummed on both sides of
the car port, in rhythmic unison in the otherwise dead silence.

Salah offered only a deep stare in return to
Hakeem’s friendly greeting. The tension was as obvious as it was
regrettable, and both Hakeem and Mohammed seemed to feel unjustly
blamed and at a loss for words.

“
So, tell me now,” Salah began. “What
happened?”

Both men looked at each other, hesitant to
speak up. To this Salah smiled. “Relax, brothers. Whatever it was,
Allah will show us the way.”

“
We were ambushed,” Hakeem said. “Two
American agents. Maybe more. They came out of nowhere and just
started shooting at us. Sayed was hit. Hussein next. They would
have killed us. They would have killed us all if we didn’t get out
of there.” He spoke fast, running over his own words, eager to
shift the blame. “I don’t know what happened. We were exactly where
we should have been. I didn’t pick the location. Neither did
Mohammed. We did the best we could. We’re sorry, my leader. We’re
very sorry.”

“
Relax,” Salah said calmly. “Did you
get the material?”

At that question, Hakeem froze, but the
worried look on his eyes told Salah everything he needed to
know.

“
You didn’t…” Salah said, answering
his own question.

“
Please forgive us,” Mohammed said,
speaking out of turn.

Salah turned to him with a stern, serious
expression. “You were both armed, were you not? Why run? Why not
stay and fight?”

“
Because… because, we…”

“
You didn’t want to die,” Salah
said.

“
Yes, my leader,” Mohammed
said.

Salah took a step back, examining the
dust-covered station wagon. He began to walk in a slow circle
around the vehicle, crouching and looking underneath as Hakeem and
Mohammed stayed in place.

“
They saw the vehicle, yes?” Salah
asked them with his back turned.

Hakeem looked at Mohammed, urging him to
answer.

“
We-we left right when they fired at
us. I’m certain they didn’t get the license plate.”

Salah turned around and approached the men
slowly as Bosra and Nabil stared them both down, hands on their
rifles. “And you drove it all the way here. Right to our main
operations hub?”

Neither man had an answer. Salah raised one
arm and leaned against the passenger side of the car. The sleeve of
his white robe swayed in the air. “Too many mistakes. And I’m sure
you’ve heard by now that the Americans triggered the explosives in
the vehicle.”

Both men’s eyes widened as Salah smirked in
disbelief. “Surely, if I’ve heard the news living twenty feet
underground, both of you are aware if this, no?”

“
The car has no radio,” Hakeem said.
“And we’ve had little signal on our cell phones out
here.”

Salah nodded. “I appreciate your honesty in
coming here empty-handed, despite the fear you must have felt for
your failure.” He paused and held a finger to his bushy chin. “That
is why I will only make an example of one of you. I’ll let you
decide who deserves it more.”

Both men glanced at each other in panicked
desperation.

“
I’ll give you a few minutes to decide
who that may be,” Salah said. Suddenly the satellite phone affixed
to his pistol belt buzzed, its digital screen glowing. “Excuse me,”
Salah said to the men, walking away and holding the phone to his
ear.

He answered the phone to an urgent voice,
crackling through the static. “What is it?” he said, not prepared
for more bad news.

“
We captured an American,” the voice
said.

“
What are you talking about?” Salah
asked.

“
About a mile from the safe house in
El Paso. He was all alone. Maliki thinks he was trying to find our
tunnels.”

“
Who is he, FBI?” Salah
asked.

There was a pause. “Border Patrol. All
alone. Just him. He was on a dirt bike.”

Salah felt his heart beating rapidly. One
American there, and who knows how many at the pickup site. They
were closing in. “Find out what he knows,” Salah said. “We may have
to push operations up. Unleash Phase One before more come.”

“
Yes, my leader,” the man said. “By
the time I’m done with him, he’ll tell us everything he
knows.”

The Fury

Angela stared out the window into the night
sky, where a blanket of tiny lights flickered forty thousand feet
below. They had been in the air for nearly an hour, and El Paso was
in close range. Rattling vibrations shook both bench seats in the
back of the helicopter, and everyone on them. A red bulb above
illuminated the hatch with an ominous glow.

While the agents continued to communicate
through headset mikes, Angela hadn’t said a word, and even if she
had, it wouldn’t have mattered. The helicopter’s rumble, combined
with her earplugs, made it difficult even to hear herself think.
She did, however, have plenty of time to do just that.

Her cell phone was almost dead and losing
signal, but she managed to send some messages to Doug telling him
that it would be a late night. She observed the tight-knit FBI team
around her, wondering what had happened to some of the others,
Special Agent MacLachlan among them. She did feel a certain
acceptance from them but wondered just how much they expected of
her.

Thaxton had this air of guarded mystery
around her, a face that never gave anything away, and a motive not
clearly known. The presence of lights below was fleeting. They were
flying deeper into the rural desert bordering El Paso. Shadowed
mountain ranges came into view, eerily reminiscent of any Middle
Eastern landscape.

Fort Bliss, one of the state’s largest
military bases wasn’t too far from their current location. Angela
could understand why military reserve units had often mobilized
there during the height of the Iraq war. The extreme heat and cold
mirrored the climates of Iraq and Afghanistan, along with the
mountainous terrain.

The boldness of any terror cell setting up
camp within the vicinity of a major military base was something to
grapple with. Then something struck a nerve in Angela. Fort Bliss
could very well be one of their strategic targets.

Captain Martinez’s words came back to her.
He had mentioned the safety of his family as well as hers as one of
the reasons they needed to be vigilant as border agents. It seemed
as though terrorism had always been a part of Angela’s life,
whether during her four years as a civil affairs officer or her
first year with the Border Patrol.

But after two long wars, it seemed that
there were more terrorists than ever. It was a new normal in the
vein of crime statistics and traffic jams. Though the FBI agents
around her appeared to be hell-bent on doing something about
it.

Sutherland, seated next to her, turned and
spoke loudly while holding his hands up, fingers spread. “Ten
minutes!”

Angela nodded and gave him a thumbs-up. She
would have been lying to claim she didn’t feel nervous. Martinez
seemed to have stumbled onto something big, and for whatever
reason, he didn’t want the FBI involved. But the very fact that she
was with a high-ranking FBI team in pursuit of terror cells had her
convinced she was on the right side.

As the helicopter descended slightly, Angela
felt the push of gravity against her insides. She turned around to
see the back of the pilot’s helmet. His dashboard was fitted with
dozens of lighted gauges and tiny glowing bulbs. In front of the
empty passenger seat, Angela noticed a ten-inch screen displaying a
thermal image of the land below, labeled with coordinates and radar
tracking. She was curious why no one sat up front but then saw the
agents glued to the screen of Lynch’s open laptop as it rested on
his knees.

Angela turned around again to look at the
screen near the pilot. The grainy image displayed a white land
mass, with shades of gray and black indicating mountains, canyons,
and hilltops. The body heat of anything living was yet to be seen,
but she watched in anticipation nonetheless. The helicopter
descended another couple hundred feet. Angela turned around to see
the FBI team huddled together viewing the laptop, pointing and
talking.

She unclipped her seat belt and rose with
one hand pushed up against the ceiling for balance. “What’s the
plan?” she said loudly as she moved toward the others.

Thaxton took notice of her and said, “We
land soon,” but not answering the question. She leaned in closer,
her helmet strap fastened tightly under her chin, and continued.
“If the coordinates are correct, we should be able to find Captain
Martinez before he puts himself in any danger.”

“If he’s already been captured, then we’re
looking at a rescue mission,” Sutherland said with one hand cupped
at this mouth.

Oh great,
Angela thought to herself. She then turned and
walked back to her seat, feeling the pressure of the situation in
all of its enormity. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes as
the pull of gravity intensified with their further
descent.

She wanted to know what she had gotten
herself into. She wanted to know why the FBI seemed so personally
concerned with Martinez. She wanted to know everything and more.
The answers, however, were not currently within her grasp.

***

Martinez’s private team was well aware of
his activities and waiting on an update, but he wouldn’t be calling
this particular team at the station, or talking with Chief Drake.
The FBI wasn’t included on the list either. Martinez’s team was a
militia group he had linked up with, mostly made up of vigilantes
disillusioned by government inaction on the border.

The self-proclaimed Outlaws were also known
as the Texas Border Recon Group. They had taken refuge in the area
to control the influx of illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and
terrorism. They weren’t authorized to use force, but their leader,
a man named Buck, did things his own way and had made an enemy in
the U.S. government.

Martinez had reached out to an old friend
who was high up the ladder of the FBI. He hadn’t spoken to
Assistant Director Jennifer Thaxton in ages. But when he reported
his recent findings of terror activity to her in a hasty
eleventh-hour call, she seemed much more interested in what he knew
about the Border Recon Group than anything about terrorism.

Martinez then spoke to another friend from
the academy, Victoria Swanson, who had been demoted to a clerical
position with the FBI. The revelation had surprised Martinez. He
recalled Victoria as being very smart and able.

“
Don’t ever cross Jennifer,” Victoria
told him one day over the phone. “She’s ruthless. Trust me, I know.
You simply can’t trust her.”

During their revealing phone call, Victoria
confided in Martinez. “I don’t even know what this agency is doing
any more. The growing number of all these sleeper cells. The lack
of arrests, warrants, and everything else. It’s staggering.”

Before getting captured, Martinez had
watched the valley below through his long-range binoculars. The
compound was hidden, but he wanted to get a better look.

He left his position, climbed down the
mountain, and traveled under the cover of dusk, low to the ground
and closing in on the strange cement structure in the middle of the
Sierra de Juarez desert. No one knew a thing about his mission
beyond his inner circle. Buck, the gruff middle-aged leader of the
Outlaws would receive word in due time.

He mounted his night-vision goggles to his
head and fastened them. His grainy surroundings could then be seen
in an illuminated bright green. He unzipped his leather jacket
about halfway and pulled out his pistol while carefully creeping
ahead.

The air was quiet except for a distant
coyote howl and the rumble of an unseen airplane in the sky. A long
black snake slithered past, startling him, and burrowed into the
ground. Martinez kept his eyes forward while staying low to the
ground. There hadn’t been a flicker of light, and he wondered if he
had imagined it from the get-go.