He stared down at the commuters three hundred feet below him. They scurried about like ants, living their small, godless lives. He had been told that he needed to infect at least two hundred people to achieve a proper dispersal pattern, but he thought he could do many more than that before he himself was overwhelmed by the effects of the virus. He would be able to pass the virus to more than a hundred just by riding the subway; the rest he would find in the quintessential American institution: the mall. He had found a large upscale mall only three blocks from a mosque, and it would be there that death would find him.
For three years, he had not prayed publicly. When he had first arrived in Los Angeles, he had tried to carry on all the Muslim traditions and prayers, but quickly found that his thoughts colored his actions, so he forced himself to stop. He had to be anonymous, the typical American: baseball, barbecues, and beer.
He looked out to sea and tried to find the exact spot where the blue of the ocean touched the blue of the sky. He had never seen the ocean until he came to Southern California. It reminded him of the mountains in his native Afghanistan. The wind, the isolation, the freedom, and nature’s total disregard about whether you lived or died; things he had felt as a child in the White Mountains of eastern Afghanistan, and again as an adult in a small sailboat not ten miles from here.
His mind drifted back to his small village. He wished he could see it once more before he died. He wished he could see his father and tell him what he had really been doing these last five years. He knew that at some point, after he had gone to paradise, someone would. A Mercedes, or perhaps a BMW, would drive up the dusty streets where he had once played soccer. A man would get out, and because of his Western clothes, he would at first be viewed with suspicion. After introductions, he would be greeted warmly and invited in as an honored guest.
“Izhac,” he would say. “Your son died bravely in the service of the Almighty. He suffered much for Allah, but never once wavered. I am humbled to be in the presence of a man who raised such a perfect servant of God.” The meeting would end when his father was presented with an envelope full of more money than he had ever seen in his fifty-one years.
Izhan Ahmed, also known as Joseph Rider, closed the laptop and slid it back into its case. Something must have happened to the German, he thought. No matter — he had well insulated himself from Reisch. He was beyond suspicion. It was a supremely ironic twist of fate that, quite legitimately, he had risen to a position in which he was now the individual most responsible for protecting the citizens of Los Angeles from people like himself.
Chapter 42
William McDaniels wasn’t paid to track down terrorists, he was paid to kill them before they reached American soil, but he had an idea that wouldn’t go away. He strummed his fingers on the small file labeled Rachel Hill. The information was new, and therefore subject to error, but he thought he saw the outlines of a pattern. According to Amanda Flynn, as many as eleven parasites had burrowed deep into the body of the United States, and each was armed with a dose of the original virus. Avanti had called it the Hybrid for some reason. Then, there was the fact that over the past three years, databases and storage facilities of the FBI, the Army Medical Corps, and the CDC had been systematically altered and plundered. Now, a spy had turned up in one of those very places.
There had to be a connection. On the other hand, just how big of an operation could Jeser mount and still stay below the collective radar of the Western world? Did they have the resources to both infiltrate American society undetected and separately invade its secure areas, all without their existence being confirmed?
He picked up his phone and dialed the director of the FBI. It took him two minutes to get him on a secure line.
“Good morning, Bill,” said Kyle Stanley.
“Well, it certainly is a morning,” General McDaniels growled. “I want to run an idea by you. Yesterday, we found a spy working in the CDC, and I’m guessing she works for Jeser.”
“That’s fantastic! We have to interrogate her as soon as possible.”
“We’re on our way to pick her up now. Listen, I have this nagging thought that these eleven infiltrators may also be responsible for some of the computer chaos we’ve experienced over the last couple of years? This woman assumed the identity of a college coed who had gone missing six months earlier and then turned up working at one of the sites that got hit. Maybe some of them are still on Uncle Sam’s payroll using the identity of a missing person, just as she did. I was hoping that you had a way of cross-referencing the local police files with the federal employment files.”
“It’s an idea, but the federal background checks should have kicked those out from the start.”
“Even if it’s just a missing person report?”
“You know, I don’t know that. My guess is that it would, but let me check. I’ll call you back in five minutes.”
Five minutes had stretched to two hours, and McDaniels had moved on to the more mundane business of returning Iran to the Stone Age. In nine hours, the fury of the United States of America was going to be unleashed on Iran’s military apparatus. Already, the Iranians had tested America’s resolve by sending two waves of ancient Phantom and MIG fighters towards the wounded Eisenhower. Ike had responded by sending her own modern fighters towards the oncoming Iranians. Score: Ike 22, Iranians 0. Apparently, some of the American pilots had pursued the fleeing Iranian jets almost all the way back to their bases before destroying them over Iranian soil. They had used their nose cannons, which were a pilot’s equivalent of looking someone in the eye as you stab them in the heart.
A discreet knock on the door disturbed the planning meeting. “Sir, the director of the FBI is returning your call.”
“That will be all, gentlemen,” said McDaniels, and the two three-star generals and a rear admiral filed out. “Kyle, that was a very long five minutes.”
“And that was a very fine idea you had. It seems that not all missing person reports are treated the same. Fact is that in my hometown of Charlotte, if an individual can provide enough documentation, the report just goes away. Want to know what constitutes enough documentation? A photo ID.”
“Damn,” McDaniels answered.
“It gets worse. For years, when queried, most jurisdictions have simply reported whether the applicant has a criminal record or not. That all changed a year ago.”
Years ago, after 9/11, Congress had mandated that all authorities, federal and local, tie into a single master law enforcement database. In typical Washington style, it had taken them nearly five years to fully fund the simple project, and then almost another five years to complete it.
The director continued, “In my hand I hold a sheet of paper that has a paltry 161 names on it. These are the names of individuals who have at one time in their lives been reported missing, and then later, miraculously reappeared, applied for, and were granted federal clearance. Technically, these 161 people are still missing, but they’re not going to be missing much longer. We’re rounding them up as we speak.”
“Did you find Rachel Hill?”
“Number eighty-nine. Excellent work, General. Now go blow those bastards up, and we will take care of this.”