Kill The President's Women (Joe The Magic Man Series Book 2) (2 page)

“Right, I need names. Start with the father that got killed.”

Hamid looked back at the smiling cripple and said, “Please, wait one moment while I negotiate a price.”

“Hamid pay the man, I want those names now!”

Hamid pulled his wallet out and walked back to Yusuf with some money in his hand saying, “Yusuf my dear friend, I need names. Start with the father and if my editor thinks he can use the story. There could possibly be more.”

He handed over the money, and heard the urgency in Mustafa’s voice as he shouted over the phone. “I really need those names now!”

Yusuf had enough money in his hand for his wife to shop for a week but he kept his hand held out for more as he spoke, “The father’s name was Mohamed Haddad and the son that got killed was Said Haddad. The younger son that I overheard is Ali. The other two sons going to America are Malek and Hadj.”

Mustafa the antique dealer was working for the British Consulate in Algeria, and any information about terrorists had to be checked out and entered into his database. He tapped in a password on his computer and was linked up to MI6 in London. He had access to the database for all known terrorists throughout the world, and he discovered that Mohamed Haddad had been very active on it before his death. Alarm bells suddenly went off in his head.

He found his way into the Houari Boumediene Airport flight schedule and found out that Malek and Hadj had caught a flight to Paris three days ago. Continuing to track them this way, he found out that Malek and Hadj had caught another flight to San Francisco.

Mustafa hung up the phone abruptly. “By God, they’ve been in America since yesterday!” he said to himself.

He quickly made out his report and sent it to H.Q. with the tags “Urgent” and “Please advise”. Within two minutes, he had his reply. It was an order: find out what Ali Haddad knows and where he lives.

Mustafa dialed Hamid’s phone number, and Hamid found out from Yusuf that Ali would most likely be watching the football match in Omar’s café at that very moment. Mustafa knew that a little information handed down from one person to another just like that, could sometimes lead to bigger things, and MI6 would definitely look into it.

By the time Yusuf limped out of the hospital grounds with his money at 8:45pm, MI6 had already acted on the information and passed it on to the CIA in Washington D.C. By the time Yusuf had got home, the MI6 had a man watching Ali as he watched the football match on TV in Omar’s café.

1615hrs

Homeland Security office, Washington D.C.

The CIA had handed the information over to Frank Brubaker, Deputy Director of the FBI and he immediately took charge of finding Malek and Hadj Haddad. He had Homeland Security working the terrorist cells to find out what they could.

“Okay, listen up everyone.” Frank had come out of his office and was in the control room. “Our British cousins from across the pond have just given us a tip-off that there could be two Muslim brothers in the USA, on a mission to kill the President’s women.”

Frank had to stop as his agents sighed at the news. “Yeah, yeah, I know how you all feel,”– he held up his hand for quiet – “and I’m sure you all have lots of questions to ask, as I do, but we’ve got to work on the information that we’ve got so far, and find these two guys as fast as we can.”

Frank held out the report he had been given. “This is the information we’ve been given by MI6: a young man named Ali Haddad was overheard saying that his two older brothers were coming to America to kill the President’s bitches.”

The uproar started again, with questions being shouted more than asked.

“When they say bitches, does that mean the First Lady and her daughters?” someone shouted.

“We are going to assume that,” Frank said. “Also, the President has been informed and so has the Secret Service for the security of his family.”

He looked at his report and read it out loud. “The two brothers have had five months training in Afghanistan in an al-Qaeda camp. Their father and older brother were Islamic Freedom Fighters, and were killed by the French soldiers in a shootout at the B.P. Plant in January.”

“If the French soldiers killed their father and brother,” one of the staff interrupted Frank, “why seek revenge here, why not take it out on the French?”

“Good question,” Frank said, “and when we catch them, I’ll definitely ask them because at the moment we have no idea what they are going to do. But if they have had training with al-Qaeda for five months then we’ve got to assume the worst – that there are two suicide bombers out there, that want revenge and for some reason are planning on killing the President’s family.”

There was a lot of talking going on and Frank had to call them to order again. “Okay guys, let’s get our shit together and catch these two before they can get organized. We know they’ve been in this country for twenty eight hours so they have a head start. They landed in San Francisco and we’ve already got two agents from our field office over there checking the airport, and hopefully we can find out where they are staying and nip this in the bud. MI6 have already told us that Malek and Hadj Haddad used their proper names to get passports, so that could tell us one of two things. Either they’ve used their proper names because they want to be known as martyrs back home or they’ve got friends here that can get them false identities when they arrive. If the latter is true, then they could well be in hiding already.”

One of the agents put his hand up and said he would double check the passports.

Frank nodded and went on. “Who have we got in Algeria that can find this Ali Haddad and his mother? We need to find out the background of these two terrorists and what makes them tick.”

Another hand shot up. “I’ll see to that, sir.”

“If they’ve got friends here helping them, then I want all known terrorist cells to be watched more closely. Ask if there’s talk out there of two new boys. Someone will talk for the right money; spread the word that there will be a reward for their capture or any information leading to their capture.”

Quietly they were all given tasks to do, and Frank went back to his office.

Fifteen minutes later, one of his agents knocked on his door and walked in.

“What is it?” Frank asked, without looking up.

“Good news sir, the agents at the airport have got clear video clips of them going through the airport, booking a taxi outside and handing the driver a slip of paper with an address. It seems they speak a little English. They also spoke French at Customs where they said they’re here for a two-week holiday to visit friends.”

“Let’s find out who their friends are then,” Frank said.

“Our agents are tracking down the taxi driver presently, sir.”

“Good, keep me informed.”

An hour went by before Frank received any additional report. Two of his agents walked in and one of them said, “Not-so-good news sir; our agents found the taxi driver and he gave out the address of where he had dropped the brothers off. It’s a Thailand restaurant and the owner told them they had booked a room above the shop for two weeks, that they had booked it a month ago, and that a young Pakistani man had come in to pay the deposit. The thing is, a car came early this morning and picked them up. The same Pakistani that paid the deposit was the driver. The owner couldn’t give a proper description of the car, other than it was black and big with blacked out windows. He said he thinks they are going to New Orleans; they told him they had friends down there.”

Frank Brubaker shook his head. In his experience, terrorists didn’t leave clues, they were a tight-lipped lot. “If our two terrorists can hardly speak English, and yet they managed to tell the owner they were going to New Orleans, then I think they’re leaving a false trail. But follow it up anyway, and find out if the First Lady or her daughters have got any engagements in or near New Orleans in the next few weeks. And get a sketch artist to that restaurant; I want to see what that Pakistani looks like.”

“On it, sir. Do you think they’ll drive all the way to New Orleans? It’s a pretty long drive.”

“I’m not sure they’re going to New Orleans, and that restaurant was just a stop point.”

Looking at a map of the USA, Frank shook his head and said, “I think they’ve been moved to a safe house by a terrorist cell. But check all bus depots, railways and the goddamn airport. Again!”

One of the agents volunteered, “I’ll check the traffic cameras on all the roads out of Cisco for black cars with blacked out windows... but that’s just as bad as looking for a white van.”

Frank nodded in agreement. “Still, you may get lucky. Keep me informed.”

By 6:15pm, there had been no new development and Frank knew it in his gut that the two terrorists were under the wing of a terrorist cell. It was imperative that he found out which cell it was quickly. He hoped a strong lead came in soon and decided he’d just go home and start fresh, bright and early in the morning.

He had gotten up, grabbed his coat and was just about to leave when one of his agents handed him a report that had just came through from the CIA. It was a report that had been sent to them, in turn by MI6. Frank sat back down to read it and when he was done, said to himself, “Well, well, well, our British friends seem to be busy over in Algeria.”

Frank walked over to the control room, the number of staff had dropped but there was still a sizeable amount of manpower.

“Listen up guys, when our terrorists said they were going to kill the President’s bitches, they didn’t mean the First Lady and her daughters. They were referring to our congresswomen. The father of these boys had an intense hatred towards women who spoke out or in public. He hated the likes of Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Clinton, Maderlin Albright and Condoleezza Rice who spoke on TV. When their father was still alive, he swore he would kill any Western woman like them, if they ever came to his country.”

At the mention of congresswomen, one of the agents went on his computer. After a quick scan, he said, “Sir, there are 98 women members of congress.”

“Then I want you to find out what all their agendas are for the next few months or so!” Frank declared. “Every one of them! Find out if any of them are going to speak publicly, even if it’s just going to give some kids at school a pep talk, or open a new shop, or present awards somewhere.”

Frank saw the disappointed look on his agents’ faces, and realized they had already done more than a ten-hour shift. “You’ll need a lot of help with this so don’t be shy to ask for it. I’m going to put these congresswomen on our red alert list until we find out more. The British Secret Service has informed us that Ali Haddad specifically said his brothers are going to kill American women who talks politics.” Frank glanced at the MI6 report.
“The two brothers have said their last farewells to their mother and family; they are going to give their lives in honor of their father.”

“Sounds like your typical suicide bombers to me, willing to die for the cause,” a particularly tired-looking agent remarked.

“Not necessarily bombers,” Frank said, consulting his report once more. “It says here that Ali is proud of his brothers because they’ve been trained to strip down AK-47s and other guns that he hadn’t even heard of. It seems they’ve learnt to tactically drive a car, make bombs and speak a little English, all of which Ali was proud of. He said his brothers did twenty weeks in Afghanistan, and that they were there when Thatcher died – it was a huge, freaking celebration.”

“How did the British agent find all this out?” one of the agents asked. “Did he have the house bugged?”

“Who knows, maybe they sent 007 over there to charm it out of them.”

There were a few giggles and Frank said in the middle of it all, “Right, let’s make these congresswomen a priority without scaring the shit out of them. Try and get their work schedule off their secretaries, without letting on that they are in danger. And I want to see all that on my desk when I come in tomorrow morning so get busy.”

With that, Frank went back to his office, put on his coat and left.

0600hrs.

The next morning, Frank Brubaker was the first of his dayshift to arrive at the office. He hadn’t slept much through the night, and no one had phoned him with an update on the terrorists, so he wasn’t expecting much.

“I need an update somebody,” he said to no one in particular, as he walked through the main office.

One of his agents fell in step with him and walked with him to his office. “We’ve managed to get the agendas of the entire congresswomen sir; they are on your desk.”

Frank was a little taken aback and he raised an eyebrow to express his surprise. He wasn’t expecting that particular result overnight.

He could have put forward a commending remark but instead, he asked, “What’s the latest on the terrorists?”

“Nothing yet, sir. We’ve looked at all the traffic around that time and we got nothing.”

“They’ve ‘gone to ground’, as they say. So how are we going to dig them out?”

The agent knew he had done well by the latest report he had dropped on Frank’s desk but he knew that whatever brownie points he earned could easily be retracted so he said slowly, nervously, “We’ve got agents checking all gas stations on the roads from Cisco to New Orleans with photographs of the two suspects, along with the artist’s sketch of the driver but at the moment, we’ve had no luck yet, sir.”

“And where’s the artist sketch?”

The agent fumbled through a file in his hand, clumsily going through a mass of documents he had previously arranged neatly. Arriving at the artist sketch, he pulled it out and handed it to Frank.

After studying it briefly, he said, “If they are in a car travelling with blacked out windows, then they’ll be kept out of sight, and as for that sketch of the driver it could bloody well be any youngster.”

Walking into the anti-terrorist section of the main office, he stood in the doorway and said sarcastically, “We’re looking for extra activity associated with these cell groups. We need this information maybe tomorrow, next year...”