Sleeper Cell Super Boxset (6 page)

“Agent Cooper!” A very large, very green, mustached behemoth waved his arm. She walked over to him, and after their introductions, he gestured over to the boat and crates being lugged off. “At first we thought it was cocaine. You know how bad the drug problem is, but before I could explain it to the Homeland agent that I got on the phone, he transferred me over to the DEA, saying you guys handled any smuggling.”

Cooper peeked inside one of the crates being lugged off and slipped on her gloves. “Well, this is a little out of our norm, but we’re always willing to expand our services when needed.” She’d spent the last six years of her life doing undercover work, learning every drug-traffic trick in the business. Along the way, she’d dealt with her share of guns and explosives. “How many crates?”

“Two dozen.”

Cooper turned around, raising her eyebrows. Each device was about the size of a large purse, easily concealed, and could be placed anywhere.

“What’s that attached to it?” Diaz asked.

“Bomb squad said it’s radioactive material.”

Both Cooper and Diaz turned to each other, and Cooper immediately backed away from the crate. Deputy Falls gave a light chuckle. “Oh, don’t worry, they said you can’t catch anything unless it goes off.”

“Christ.” Cooper glanced around the rest of the dock and made her way over to the boat. “I need to speak to the crew.”

“Well, there’s only one here right now. The other two were sent to the hospital,” Falls said.

“Where’s the one that’s here?” Falls led Cooper over to the squad cars, where a young man who couldn’t have been older than twenty kept his face buried in his hands. She leaned into Falls and asked his name. “Billy?” The boy looked up at her. “I’m Agent Cooper, and this is my partner, Agent Diaz. I know you’ve been through quite a bit already, but we need to ask you a few questions.”

“Do you know how Mark’s doing?”

Diaz started jotting down everything that was said. Cooper squatted down to her knees. “Is that one of the guys you worked with on the boat?”

Billy nodded. “He was first mate. Kind of a hard-ass, but a smart old guy. They shot him.” Billy kept staring into his hands, which were still covered in dried blood. “Those guys, they… they were evil. You could tell just looking at them. I knew something was off. I knew it the moment we sidled up to them when they popped that flare. I didn’t say anything, though. Mark had been hounding us all day to keep our mouths shut. He just got tired of me and Tank—” The boy cut himself off with a lump in his throat.

“It’s okay, Billy.” Cooper placed her hand on the back of his head. “Can we get a towel and some water over here?” Falls nodded his head then rushed off, his uniform jiggling with each bounce. “Billy, what did these men look like? Did they say anything to you about what they wanted?”

“They wore masks.” Billy wiped his nose, the snot turning some of the dried blood liquid again, which smeared on his nose. “Only one of them took the mask off, but I didn’t get a good look at him.”

“What kind of masks? Halloween masks? Hockey masks? Ski masks?”

“No, it was like a, um, the things that you wrap around your head in the desert, to protect yourself from the sun.”

“That’s good. That’s helpful, Billy. What else? What else can you remember?”

Falls returned with a bucket of water and set it between Cooper and Billy. He handed the boy a towel, and Billy took it absentmindedly. “Hurt.” The words came out as soft as a whisper. “They said they wanted to hurt us. Make us hurt,” he corrected himself. “They wanted to make us hurt.” Billy looked up at Cooper with tears in his eyes. “They killed Tank and tossed him overboard like he was a carcass. Like some rotten piece of fish!”

“We’ll find them, Billy,” Cooper said, rubbing the boy’s shoulder. “I promise.” She left the boy to wash up and pulled Diaz away from Falls’s earshot. “This has terrorist plot written all over it. As much as I would like to steal the glory, we’re in over our heads here. We’ll have to get back in contact with Homeland, let them know there’s a threat.”

“On it,” Diaz said then turned to make the call.

Cooper grabbed the attention of Falls, who had let his eyes wander back over to the squad cars where Billy was being held. “I need the name of the hospital where the captain and first mate are.”

***

The waiting room was filled with hospital announcements over the intercom and a whole lot of whispers and silence. Dylan bounced his knee up and down nervously, trying to figure out what happened. He checked his phone. Still no returned calls. He had to fight calling Evelyn again, but he knew she’d see the message when she woke up. Whether she actually listened to it was another story.

“Mr. Turk?” A doctor with a clipboard in his hand and his glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose stepped into the waiting room.

“Yes?” Dylan asked, jumping from his seat and rushing over. “How’s Mark? Is he gonna make it?”

“He lost a lot of blood and has some broken ribs, but we think he’s going to be all right.”

Dylan let a long, slow breath escape him, and he bent over to rest his hands on his knees, letting the feeling return to his stomach. “Thank God.”

“We’re going to keep him for a few days, make sure there aren’t any complications, but he should be able to go home by the end of the week.”

Dylan shook the doctor’s hand. “Thank you. Thank you so much.” The doctor nodded then disappeared. Dylan slumped back into his seat, and the exhaustion from the past twelve hours permeated through his body. He rubbed his eyes then made his way over to the coffee pot tabled on the opposite end of the room. The black liquid was still hot, and it piped steam from the Styrofoam cup as he poured.

“Dylan Turk?”

Dylan rested the coffee pot back on the burner, and when he turned, individuals dressed in DEA uniforms had their badges out. “Can I help you?”

“We need to speak with you about your boat, Captain. We have a place set aside where we can chat in private.” The female officer grabbed Dylan by the arm, but he jerked it back.

“I’m not going anywhere until I have some answers.” Dylan’s voice rose, and he watched the woman’s partner circle him. “Those men killed one of my crew then tried to kill me.”

The woman glanced around the room, and Dylan became aware that the other people in the waiting room were becoming wary.

“Mr. Turk, we need to speak with you about this in private.” The agent pulled him in close, lowering her voice, and Dylan started to get the impression that whatever they found on his boat wasn’t drugs. He let them lead him into a small conference room and shut the door. “My name is Agent Cooper. This is my partner, Agent Diaz. We just spoke to one of your crew members. A Billy Costagan.”

“How is he?” Dylan hadn’t given much thought to how the young man was feeling. The events of what happened were a lot for anyone to take in, let alone some kid on his first trip out at sea.

“He’s fine,” Cooper answered. “What can you tell us about the men that attacked you?”

“Foreigners. Arab, from what I could tell. Not sure what language they were speaking though.” He looked over to Diaz, who copied everything down. “What’d they smuggle on my ship?”

Cooper ignored the question and took a seat at the small square table opposite Dylan and crossed her arms. “You lost a member of your crew out there. Tank?”

Dylan nodded. “He, uh—” The image of Tank’s death flashed in his mind. The bullet through Tank’s skull, the bargaining with the pirates, the mixture of the scent of blood, water, and lead. The bullets, mortars, and knives that played a hand in trying to kill him.

“Mr. Turk?”

Dylan shook his head, trying to remember the question that was asked. “I’m sorry. I just… it’s been a long day.”

“Just tell us what you can. What you remember.”

Dylan nodded and reached for the coffee. It had cooled enough to where he could sip on it. He let the caffeine help re-control his nerves, and he cleared his throat. “We were about one hundred twenty miles from shore when I saw a flare off the starboard side of a vessel two hundred yards northeast from our position. We approached, and neither of the two men on board spoke any English. We tied off to the vessel once I determined there wasn’t any structural damage, and when we boarded, they took two of my men hostage.” Dylan took another sip of coffee and shut his eyes. “Their leader showed himself. He spoke English, and he wanted my ship. I never learned what was wrong with theirs, but I managed to get the leader in a choke hold. I tried to get him to let us go, but he was going to kill Tank, so I let go.” Dylan’s grip around the Styrofoam loosened, and he watched the light ripple of coffee inside the cup. “Once he was free, he shot Tank in the back of the head and tossed him overboard.”

“And what happened after that?” Cooper asked.

“Christ, you people don’t waste any time do you?” Dylan looked up, his eyes red with frustration. “What’d you find on my boat?”

“Enough bombs to blow up all of downtown Boston,” Cooper answered.

“Boston?” The words left his lips in a whisper. He immediately reached for his phone, apparently a little too quickly for the two agents’ tastes, as they reached for their weapons but immediately holstered them when they saw he was dialing. He got up from his seat and paced around the room. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.”

“Mr. Turk, you need to sit down. There are a lot of details we still need to go over.”

The phone reached its eighth ring and went to voicemail again. Dylan slammed the old flip phone shut and clenched it in his shaking fist. He walked to the door, where Agent Diaz was blocking him. “I need to get my family.”

“Sir, you need to calm down.” Agent Diaz placed his right palm on the pistol and his left on Dylan’s chest, pushing him backward.

“My family, they’re in Boston.” Dylan turned to Cooper. “Please, if there are bombs, then they’re not safe.” Sweat poured from Dylan’s face and neck. He could feel the clingy fabric of his shirt. His now dried clothes were once again becoming wet. “I have to get them.”

“Hey,” Cooper said, trying to calm him. “We will.” But before either of them got another word in, a man, escorted by at least a dozen men behind him, pounded on the door and slapped his badge onto the small window into the room. The man pulled it down faster than Dylan could read, but once Diaz opened the door and he marched in, the announcement made it clear.

“Deputy Director Perry, Homeland Security.” Unlike the DEA agents, Perry was dressed in a suit, with a folder tucked under his arm. The men flanking him, however, looked like members of a SWAT team. “Mr. Turk, you’re free to go.”

Before Dylan could move, Cooper stepped between him and the exit. “Agent Perry, I don’t think that it’s a good idea to let this man go. You don’t have all the fact—”

“I have all the facts, Agent Cooper, more than your clearance will grant you. Mr. Turk, leave. Go be with your family.”

Despite Agent Perry’s words, Cooper didn’t move, so Dylan sidestepped her and disappeared out the door. He didn’t know what was happening. All he could focus on was getting to his kids. That’s all that mattered.

Chapter 5 – 7:00 a.m.

The sun had finally made its way all the way up past the horizon. The light warmed Kasaika’s face. He closed his eyes and drew in a breath. “
Bismillah.
” After the words left his mouth, he walked back over to the dilapidated structure, past the rusting gas pumps, over the cracked concrete with grass and weeds poking through, and into the garage, where Sefkh, Zet, and the others waited. “He’s late.” Kasaika took a seat next to the piles of explosives.

“Patience, brother,” Sefkh replied. “Your changes in delivery have affected some of our times. Our men will show up.”

“Every second we waste is another for the Americans to catch up,” Zet said, spitting at the ground. “Now was not the time for changes.”

The room grew tenser with each moment that came and went. And then, carried by the wind, a light rumble came from down the road. Kasaika quickly grabbed his rifle along with the other fighters, and the men stood guard behind the crumbling structures as the sound grew louder. A lack of punctuality for a mission like this was cause for concern, and while the location was remote, there was always the chance that an unwanted guest could stumble across their path randomly.

The front of a garbage truck revealed itself as it bended the corner, and Kasaika felt himself let out a sigh of relief, and his body went slack. He lowered his weapon, but the rest of the men did not. They kept their guard up until the garbage truck parked itself and the driver got out. Once they determined the cause of his absence and checked the truck for any wires or traps, they lowered their guard.

Sefkh must have noticed the look on Kasaika’s face, because a few moments later he felt his hand on his shoulder. “We cannot be too careful, brother. Every single one of us understands what will happen to us if we fail or if we are caught. We have all accepted this fate, just as you have. But that doesn’t mean we are willing to fall into traps so easily.”

“Of course,” Kasaika said. “It’s smart, Sefkh. Well done.” The bombs were loaded from the back of the vans into the garbage truck, with the small unit of men that would be placing the bombs around the city. With the time of day and the current disguise, even if the United States intelligence had found something by the time they were in the city, it would be too late.

“They know the routes like the backs of their hands,” Sefkh said. “And we confirmed earlier this morning that all of the markers are still in place for the explosives’ deliveries.”

Zet checked his watch and rounded everyone up. “We need to move. We have less than two hours before the next phase.” The other modes of transportation that they arrived in were doused with gasoline and set ablaze. The fires burned hot behind them as they made their way through the backwoods, wading through thick swamps on their march.

Kasaika turned to look back one last time, watching the smoke from the fires go up. By the time the authorities showed up and tried finding anything, the city would be locked down. No one would be allowed in or out, keeping the populace vulnerable for the bombs already in place.