Terminal Rage (18 page)

“Is there anyone else?”

“I know that scumbag.”

Slant nodded. “Don
’
t we all? I called in the LA field office to bring in Iyad Malki, aka Mounif Ilham, for questioning. They
’
re heading there now. If my instinct is right, we
’
re probably not going to find him in Palmdale—I think he
’
s the guy Alex
’
s been talking to all night.”

SIXTEEN

Sunday, November 6, 2011—1:45 a.m.
Palmdale, California

A
gent Sean Rodriguez of the Los Angeles FBI scanned his rearview mirror for the headlights of the other black Suburban driving behind him. Both vehicles penetrated the walls of the sleepy desert city of Palmdale in the dead of the night.

Rodriguez was a tall Hispanic man in his mid-forties with short spiky black hair. He had a dimpled, kind face that didn
’
t give away his real profession. His towering height and strong build could have passed him off as an affable school coach, or a retired athlete turned personal trainer.

He and three other agents soared through the Antelope Valley Freeway in two cars, then exited west toward their destination four miles away on Dalzell Street. Their target was a two-story house in a residential neighborhood occupied mostly by recent Arab and Pakistani immigrants, just south of Air Force Plant 42. The two SUVs snaked in with their headlights switched off and parked at the corner of East Avenue.

When the two agents in the car behind him emerged, Rodriguez and his partner got out and shut the doors quietly. The four men cocked their weapons and walked north on Dalzell where a pungent aroma of ethnic food was floating through the air. A few houses were still lit inside. Some had music playing, and in others the flickering lights of late-night television poured out into the street through their windows.

It was well past midnight, but three boys who couldn
’
t have been much older than six played soccer on the driveway of one of the houses, with shoe boxes as their goal posts. The youngest of his three agents, Justin Fernway, held his finger to his lips and motioned the children to go inside. They scurried back into the house like three little mice.

When they reached Mounif Ilham
’
s house on Dalzell Street, there was nothing about it to suggest this was the residence of a suspected terrorist mastermind, who at that very moment was possibly holding twenty-five people hostage in midtown Manhattan. But Rodriguez knew better. With this job, he was accustomed to finding evil shrouded in innocence. Guns stashed in cribs. Cocaine stuffed in baby formula cans. Horrific terrorist plots to unleash death and destruction handwritten on children
’
s sketch pads, or shelved between preschool learning aides and the holiest of books.

The only thing unusual about Ilham
’
s house was its elegance and understated exterior. There was none of the new-immigrant kitsch like the other houses on the block. No alabaster columns or palm trees. No flag poles on the front yard waving the American flag to overemphasize newly acquired patriotism. And not a neon light in sight. It was a modern, minimalist house with a rendered Cambridge blue exterior and an expensive honey-colored oak door. Ilham was a successful contractor and had probably seen enough bad taste in Palmdale to deter him from committing any similar architectural crimes against his own home.

Rodriguez rang the doorbell, stepped back, and waited. Nothing. His partner and second-in-command, Pete Avakian, had expressive green eyes and a shaved head. He spied through the window of the house. “This place is alarmed.”

Rodriguez peered inside and saw the familiar green blinking light in the midst of the pitch darkness. He turned to Darren Boyer, the third in order of superiority on the team. “Call home base and have them pull the plug on the security system.”

Boyer was in his early thirties with short, strawberry-blond hair and an agile, lean frame. He pulled out his cell phone and speed-dialed the FBI command center in Los Angeles. He instructed them to liaise with the security company to disable the alarm remotely. The FBI has deep contacts with the major security system providers, for situations precisely like this one. Rodriguez had all the necessary warrants to access and search the premises, and to apprehend Ilham if they found him, but a screeching maniacal siren and the flashing lights of a home security system would attract unnecessary attention from the neighbors.

“The alarm system was armed for
‘
away
’
on Friday afternoon. So let
’
s assume there
’
s no one home. Our people at the security company are shutting it down in ninety seconds.”

“Ring the bell one more time, Darren.” He did, and they waited. Nothing.

Rodriguez turned to Justin Fernway, the twenty-nine-year-old rookie in the group, who had a baby face and a recently toned body. “Fernway, go around the back and check it out.”

A few minutes later, Fernway
’
s voice crackled through the radio.

“Sir, all clear in the back. The house seems abandoned, except for a colony of amphibians in the pool. Fucking frogs. Hate
’
em.”

“Find a soft entry point back there and let us in from the inside, would ya?”

“Got one. There
’
s a sliding door leading into the kitchen. I
’
m turning on video.”

Avakian pulled out a tiny flat monitor from his jacket pocket and switched it on so they could watch a live feed of everything Fernway was doing through a camera attached to his glasses. Fernway had a flashlight in his mouth and was fiddling with a small tool that looked like nothing you could buy at the Home Depot. He tampered with the door like an expert burglar until he pried it open, then sneaked into the kitchen.

It was spacious, yet sterile. None of the charm or warmth usually associated with food and eating. Almost no mileage on it, as far as kitchens go. There was a large open pantry extending all the way up to the ceiling, empty except for a vase on the third shelf from the bottom. Fernway stood staring at it for a few seconds.

“Have you seen enough of the fucking empty pantry, Justin?”

“Sorry, boss.” Fernway scanned the rest of the kitchen which appeared dated except for a relatively new brushed aluminum fridge.

“Can you see what
’
s stuck on the fridge door?”

“Zoom in closer, Justin.”

“Better now?” Fernway closed in on a small faded picture of Ilham surrounded by a group of somber-faced bearded men somewhere in the desert. It was hard to tell if this was the Mojave or the Registan Desert. Next to the photo was a prayer schedule and an Islamic calendar. Rodriguez inspected them for a while.

Fernway opened the fridge and took a peek. There was a half-empty bottle of Poland Spring water and a pack of freezer-burned Hebrew National beef franks.

“Stay away from the chow, Justin—it
’
s federal evidence. We
’
ll get you some In-and-Out on the way home.”

“Very funny.”

Fernway found his way to the front door and unlocked it, careful not to make too much noise letting Rodriguez and the other men in.

There was a little chill in the air inside the house, even with the front door closed. “It
’
s kinda cold in here. Heating must be off.”

Rodriguez and his three agents slithered from one room to the other on both floors of the house. There was hardly any furniture, and all of the storage space was empty. They weren
’
t just searching for Ilham or one of his associates, but also combing for evidence to tie their suspect to the Exertify hostage standoff.

The master bedroom was tidy and done up just like a hotel. The remaining four rooms on the second floor were empty. And not one bathroom in the house had so much as a bar of soap or toothpaste, let alone towels or toilet paper.

The only other functional room was a small study on the ground floor adjacent to the kitchen. It had a skeletal home office with a cheap IKEA desk and a brand new Canon inkjet printer, still covered in plastic film. There were a few neatly tied computer cables where a laptop could be docked and an Ethernet port on the wall.

Just like the rest of the house, the garage was also abandoned. No trace of hoarded personal belongings accumulated over the years. Just a dusty white Nissan pick-up truck with flat tires and a few building tools stashed in its bed. There was an empty space near it where a second car could be parked.

When they were done, Rodriguez ordered his team to scan the entire house a second time. But they still found nothing. So they called it a day and congregated at the front door in preparation for exiting. Nothing in the house suggested illegal activities. Just the suspicious emptiness that wasn
’
t in itself a felony. If Mounif Ilham was the man behind the Manhattan hostage standoff, this certainly wasn
’
t the house he had used to mastermind his operation. Rodriguez was disappointed he had nothing for the people in New York, but at least failing to find Ilham in Palmdale supported the theory he could be their guy.

“Let
’
s get the hell out of here.”

Boyer reached out for the handle and pulled the front door open to let the team out, but Avakian froze in his steps and hushed everyone, his hands leaning on the wall. “Did you feel that?”

Rodriguez and the other two agents looked at him with blank faces.

Even though they hadn
’
t spoken, Avakian hushed them again and pointed to their ears. “Listen.”

Justin Fernway shrugged his shoulders and whispered back, “What are we listening for?”

Avakian held his finger to his lips and placed his ear on the wall for a few seconds.

“It
’
s coming from down there.” He dropped down and lay flat on his belly with his ear pressed to the floor. His face lit up and he motioned with his hands.

Rodriguez took the cue and got down on the floor next to him to listen. He couldn
’
t hear or feel anything at first. But it didn
’
t take long for him to pick up on the rhythmic metallic squeaking that had excited Avakian. A gentle vibration barely detectable on the floors and walls of the house. Something was rocking back and forth. The sound was coming from the basement—a part of the house they didn
’
t even know existed, because they hadn
’
t come across any doors that led to it. And the home permits they had pulled off the city of Palmdale
’
s department of building and safety didn
’
t include one. If Ilham had built a basement in his house, he had obviously intended to keep it a secret.

Rodriguez stood up. “Anyone seen a basement door?” Fernway and Boyer shook their heads.

Avakian stood up as well. “There must be a false one or a trapdoor somewhere.”

Fernway
’
s eyes widened. “I think I know where it may be.”

Rodriguez and the other two followed the rookie back to the kitchen. He stopped and pointed to the ceiling-high, barren pantry with the blue vase that had caught his attention earlier. “This could be a door.”

Avakian ran his hand on the pantry. “How do we open it?”

“My mom always said never to trust an empty vase. If there are no flowers in it and it ain
’
t dainty or pretty, then it serves no purpose.”

Fernway removed the wide vase and looked inside. There was a tiny remote control with one button. Without thinking about the perils of operating an unknown remote control, he clicked it. The pantry swung open on a rotating axis, and revealed a staircase going down.

Rodriguez crept down the staircase first, with his men behind him. As they descended to the illegally-constructed basement, the sounds Avakian had first heard were more audible. And there was music playing in the background.

The basement was a spacious L-shape, with freshly painted walls and thick ash-grey fitted carpets covering the floor. Unlike the rest of the house, this self-contained, concealed floor was furnished for living. And it felt warmer, like the heating was switched on. Two La-Z-Boy chairs were positioned in front of a large LED television. The television was switched on
Al Jazeera
Arabic with the volume muted. There was an ashtray on a small table between the two chairs with a nearly-consumed hashish joint in it.

Across from the entertainment center was a kitchenette with a fridge and a full-sized stove. On it were small open pots of recently cooked food—golden scrapes of crusted rice and the remains of a tomato-based meat stew still deliciously fragrant. A few feet away, a small round table bore the messy aftermath of a hearty dinner.

Avakian and Boyer scoured the living and dining area while Fernway and Rodriguez covered their backs. The lead FBI agent signaled to his men to walk back towards the source of noise and light at the other side of the basement. They stopped outside a space sectioned off by a white curtain running from wall to wall to create a separate area.

Rodriguez slid the curtain open, with his gun pointed in front of him. A small table lamp on the floor was the source of light. Next to it a cheap laptop was emitting the tinny music they
’
d heard which sounded like an evocative Arabic love song.

The big shadows cast by the floor-level lamp didn
’
t make it immediately clear who was in the room and what they were doing. Rodriguez stood there for a while, trying to decipher the scene. Until he saw it. A sturdy cast-iron California king bed in the middle of the room—the source of the metallic vibration they had first heard upstairs.