He focused on the dossier of a former Navy SEAL who had come to prominence in the past few years due to a book he had written and several television appearances he’d made chronicling his days in the teams.
Looking through the dossiers, and then looking through Google on his laptop, al-Matari realized this man had become an actual American celebrity.
The man was staying for a month at a five-star hotel in Los Angeles, overseeing the shooting of a film about his exploits on a raid in Libya against the ISIS affiliate Ansar al-Sharia.
Al-Matari knew instantly that this would be a perfect target for the Santa Clara cell. They were currently based in San Francisco, but could send a couple of cell members down to L.A. tomorrow, to be ready to act the next day. A retired military man moving between a film set and his hotel sounded like a ridiculously easy mark, and the man’s prominence here in America would give al-Matari a large return on the relatively low risk to his mission.
In the next dossier he found an immediate operation for a couple of members of the Fairfax cell and then, a few files into his reading, he found another worthy target located within a day’s drive of Detroit.
With a lot of moving his men and women around the map of the United States, there were immediate, attainable targets for every last one of his cells. He decided he would keep Chicago out of the first round of activity. He needed them to serve as his protection force, to keep his safe house secure, and to continue providing Algiers and Tripoli with the raw materials for explosives they were constructing for the teams.
But the other four would go to work now.
He decided, after some time looking at his cleanskins and the locations of the targets on the map, that the biggest move of the first wave of attacks would be the Detroit cell. He’d need a few of them, three or four to be safe, to get on the road to the D.C. area, because he’d have the Fairfax team working on two other missions in that part of the country.
After al-Matari had decided on his initial victims and those assigned to terminate them, he picked up his mobile and opened Silent Phone, which allowed him to send files to the secure mobile devices held by each of the other cells, and he went to work. He delivered individual targeting packages and orders to Fairfax, to Santa Clara, to Detroit, and to Atlanta, along with orders to each unit leader to choose the right number and mix of cell members for each job. They would act at first opportunity, and they were to communicate with him if they had any questions, concerns, or information he might need.
At the end of each message, he typed in additional orders. Just before beginning each mission, al-Matari ordered the operators on scene to broadcast live video of the action through another app that allowed end-to-end encrypted live streaming. He told his leaders he wasn’t expecting Hollywood-level films, but he wanted some record of the events so that the Global Islamic Media Front, the propaganda arm of ISIS, could use the clips to whip up the frenzy of excitement for the operations here in America.
Abu Musa al-Matari did not mention any other reason that he wanted to see a live broadcast of each operation. But there was a second reason, and it was much more important than the first. He’d keep that to himself, for now, and with luck, none of his twenty-seven cell members would ever need to know that the suicide vests they wore could be command-detonated by al-Matari if a cell member was captured and decided against detonating the vest themselves. This would ensure a higher body count when first responders came upon a scene, as well as an additional level of operational security for the mission.
The twenty-seven cleanskins should have had enough fervor for the cause to martyr themselves, but if they hesitated for an instant, al-Matari would do it for them from afar.
His plan in America did not allow for any of his people to be taken alive.
26
Barbara Pineda and her burgundy Toyota Camry were stuck in traffic, par for the course on a workday afternoon.
As a civilian who worked at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, in the southeastern part of the District, she knew that every commute at the end of the day involved at least a half-hour of gridlock. If there had been no traffic, the thirty-one-year-old would already be home in Vienna, Virginia, leisurely getting ready to go out on a date with the new man in her life, a firefighter named Steve she had met at church.
Instead, this afternoon would be exactly like all others during the workweek when she had important plans. She’d screech onto her driveway late, dash from her car through her front door, fling off her business attire, and take the stairs three at a time to her bedroom in her underwear. There she would dress, rush into her bathroom to touch up her makeup, and come downstairs only at the last moment, if not a few minutes after, when Steve arrived to pick her up.
And on top of all this, this afternoon she had an extra stop to make on the way home.
Barbara was an employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency, where she served as an all-source intelligence analyst in the Directorate for Analysis. Before this she had served eight years in Army intel, joining up after high school, and earning both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees online at American Military University while enlisted. She’d done a significant amount of her coursework while serving in war zones, and now that she was out of the Army, working as a civilian at DIA provided her a smooth transition from a decade of near-constant deployments.
During her time in the Army she served in Afghanistan or Iraq, or else she was in training or supporting others deployed in the Middle East. Now she spent her days looking over intelligence matters relating to the U.S.’s fight with ISIS, a perfect match for the important but niche skill set she’d learned in the Army.
Barbara was happy enough with her work. She knew she probably wasn’t going to change the world, but she sure as hell was doing her part for her nation, even at her relatively young age.
Still fifteen minutes from home, she pulled off the 495 and into the suburb of Falls Church, happy to be on the more open residential roads and out of the bumper-to-bumper traffic. She parked on the small driveway of an attractive zero-lot two-story house, climbed out with her purse, and fumbled for the keys.
An old Army friend of Barbara’s who now worked in pharmaceuticals lived here, but she was away on vacation at Disney World with her family, and Barbara had offered to swing by every afternoon after work to water the plants, to feed the kids’ hamster, and to flip on and off a couple of lights to make the place look as lived in as possible.
As she headed up the drive she remembered she also needed to check the mail, so she turned around and headed back down the little driveway, still trying to find the right key for the front door.
A neighbor walking her dog on the sidewalk across the street waved to her, and Barbara waved back as she pulled down the door to the mailbox.
And as she did this Barbara Pineda’s world erupted in a flash of bright light and earsplitting noise.
The explosion had been command-detonated, meaning Fairfax cell members Ghazi and Husam were parked right up the street, close enough to see Barbara at the mailbox. They’d talked at length about waiting until she took the four-pound package containing the bomb out of the mailbox, or else just pressing send on their phone, activating the detonator’s wireless number, the instant she opened the mailbox door. They finally decided on the latter, thinking the force of the blast might be heightened and therefore penetrate deeper into the woman’s body from the mailbox, as if shot out of the barrel of a gun.
It was the theory of laymen with no understanding of their powerful weapon. The mailbox utterly disintegrated in the explosion, so there was no barrel for the explosion to travel down. But it didn’t matter. The bomb had been constructed by Tripoli in the back of the SUV while traveling from Georgia to Virginia for the dropoff of the weapons, and it contained two and a half pounds of store-bought galvanized two-inch nails. When the plastic explosive detonated, it sent the nails in all directions, along with the shock wave of the explosion, large chunks of shrapnel from the aluminum mailbox, and even bits of the brick post. Much of the shrapnel and shock wave slammed into the chest and face of Barbara Pineda.