Point of Impact (A Brady Hawk Novel Book 3) Read online

  Several of the girls started screaming, prompting Laman to inject their necks with a syringe one by one as the other men held the women down.

  “It’s all for Allah,” Laman whispered to each woman before she collapsed and crumpled to the floor. Laman picked up each lady, kissed her on her head, and handed her over to the two men just outside the door.

  One by one, each woman exited the room. It was an exchange he’d repeat over the next few days as new recruits mixed with the women in shipments destined daily for the San Francisco harbor.

  Within a few minutes, only men remained in the house.

  Laman ordered everyone downstairs into a hidden passageway. They walked through the tight tunnel for ten minutes before they emerged in the basement of another house. Laman escorted the men up to the attic where he’d built a strategic conference area disguised from the rest of the house. With the flip of a switch, the room transformed from a benign attic full of useless junk into a high-tech war room. HD screens shifted into place, while a table rose from the floor. A few of the other operatives who’d been staying at the house already formed an assembly line to position the chairs around the table and prepare for the meeting.

  Laman leaned against the wall while he took in the scene, full of bustling activity.

  Once everyone was seated, Laman sat at the head of the table and eyed each person carefully. The team of eight he’d assembled was finally in place.

  He cleared his throat before speaking.

  “Each one of you is special and have been selected for a very critical mission,” Laman said. “Right now, the war on terror has been one that the Americans have aggressively taken to us. They’ve been ruthless in their tactics, killing our innocent women and children without cause. They’ve attacked us illegally and unprovoked, justifying their cause to eliminate every Muslim due to the acts of a few. No longer will we sit idly by and let them destroy our precious homeland. Today—right now—we will bring the war to their own soil in a way they never imagined possible.”

  He stood up and began pacing around the room.

  “They’ve allowed us to live among them, content to welcome us. They are even proud of their diversity. But we know better. We know that diversity means that infidels roam free—free to live however they want in a way that’s an abomination to everything Islam stands for. But that’s all about to change very soon.”

  A wide grin spread across Laman’s face.

  “We’re going to show them a face of Islam they’ve never seen before. And we’re going to make them pay for all they’ve done.”

  The room erupted in a roar as the men pounded the table with their fists and chanted.

  Laman leaned against the wall and soaked in the moment. He couldn’t wait to unleash the fury of Al Hasib on the city of San Francisco.

  CHAPTER 6

  EARLY WEDNESDAY MORNING, Alex stumbled out of bed, unsure of whether drinking a pot of coffee or taking a hot shower should be her first major activity of the day. With a plane to catch in three hours, she had to move fast—and neither task would move quickly without the other. She opted for the coffee.

  Alex had struggled to get to sleep with all the thoughts swirling around in her head. She’d stayed another hour at Bethany Culbert’s house to get the details about the real Frank Culbert, who was murdered while living in Jordan for the indiscretions he took with a fifteen-year-old girl. Bethany shared how her emotions went from despair to anger to ambivalence in a short period of time as the truth trickled out about Frank’s death. His gruesome murder traumatized her as she witnessed it outside their home. But her anguish turned to rage—rage toward Frank—when she discovered the reason why several local men beheaded her husband. A few weeks later, she convinced herself that she didn’t care, content to believe that Frank got what he deserved for meddling in the affairs of others in a foreign culture.

  But Alex had sensed Bethany wasn’t telling the entire story and questioned her about it.

  “The government suppressed the story from reaching news outlets,” Bethany had said. “They told me to keep my mouth shut and warned me if I ever talked about it publicly, they would ruin me. And I believed them.”

  Alex proceeded to share that she had a friend who worked as recently as a few weeks ago with a Frank Culbert of the Peace Corps in the Middle East, telling Bethany she was trying to track down his family to give him a message.

  “There must be another Frank Culbert,” Bethany had said. “But that’s an odd coincidence.”

  Alex sipped her coffee and stared out the window of her home. She could tell Bethany wasn’t the suspicious type, even though she had every reason to be. After all, her husband told her for months that he was giving one-on-one tutoring sessions—and Bethany never questioned him. Even the threats didn’t give her reason to suspect something sinister at work, swallowing whole the lie that the government fed her about not wanting to start an international incident and giving the Muslim community more recruiting fodder. It sounded plausible enough, especially when an official cited the Abu Ghraib incident to Bethany.

  But Alex viewed the world through an entirely different lens, one that held everything suspect. She wasn’t even convinced that the government official Bethany spoke to was from the U.S. government. Official? Perhaps. U.S. official? That was yet to be determined, at least for Alex.

  Alex’s 5:45 a.m. assessment after a cup and a half of coffee was that Frank Culbert was a plant by someone, utilizing connections within the Peace Corps to insert an operative under the organization’s nose. Alex surmised that quite possibly hardly anyone within the Peace Corps knew about the plight of Frank Culbert, if they knew anything happened to him at all. It was a web of lies best reflected upon after being fully awake.

  On her way to the airport, Alex underwent a briefing from General Johnson, who explained all the details about what she’d be doing in San Francisco.

  “You need to be there to provide support for Hawk,” Johnson said.

  Alex pondered his statement for a moment before firing back with her own burning question.

  “What was wrong with how things were working before?”

  “There are people watching you, Alex. If you stick around D.C. without a proper job, they might grow suspicious.”

  “Can’t you create a cover for me?”

  “Perhaps, but it’s much easier to do that when you work for a company located elsewhere.”

  “So, you’re saying I need to move?”

  “In our line of work, we all make sacrifices, Alex. This is yours.”

  Alex sighed. She’d grown fond of living in D.C. and helping out Hawk from the shadows. Now it appeared as though the shadows might be literal ones as opposed to the figurative types.

  “But what about funding? How will Blunt’s pet project continue on without an income source?” Alex asked.

  “Who says we don’t have an income source?”

  “I just thought that—”

  “We’re endowed, Alex. All the ties to the government’s purse strings are cut. We’re free to do whatever we like, within certain parameters, of course.”

  “And who signed off on this?”

  “That’s not important. The important thing is you are free to continue to do your job until we rid the earth of these scum. Got it?”

  Alex understood Johnson wanted the questions to stop.

  “Got it.”

  “And, Alex? Remember that whatever you do, don’t make physical contact with Hawk.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Have a safe flight.”

  Alex pulled into the Dulles Airport parking lot and went through the rigors of Homeland Security screening. Whenever she boarded a commercial flight anywhere, the process reminded her of why she did what she did. Terrorists encroached on the boundaries of her country and made it unsafe, and now every American who would ever fly in the future would wear this millstone. Jackets off. Shoes off. Belts off. Tiny amounts of toothpaste, shampoo, facial cream only. It
was a litany of rules created to stop what happened on 9/11 from ever happening again. The world would never go back to the way it was, but she was determined to do her best to make sure the burden of everyday life didn’t become even more unbearable.

  Damn you, terrorists.

  She slipped her shoes off and placed them on the conveyor belt then proceeded forward with the permission of the agent monitoring the body scanner. With her hands positioned over her head, she froze while the metal detector mechanically spun around her.

  An hour later, she was gripping the armrests on her chair as the plane lurched upward and rocketed toward the magical altitude of ten-thousand feet where everyone could finally exhale and resume entertaining themselves with various electronic devices. She pulled out her computer and studied the details of her assignment in San Francisco.

  Halfway through the flight, she shut her computer and wandered toward the back of the plane to stretch her legs and use the restroom. She stepped into the cramped galley that was devoid of flight attendants at the time. Grabbing a bottled water, she took a few sips before screwing the cap on tight.

  A man joined her and stared straight ahead at the cabin.

  “Living the dream, eh?” he said.

  Alex cut her eyes toward him. “My dream would be in a private jet where I never had to walk through another security screening for the rest of my life.”

  The man smiled. “It’s good to have goals, Alex.”

  She whipped her head in his direction. “How do you know my name?”

  “Alex, come work for Searchlight. I know you’ve heard of us.”

  She froze. “How do you—?”

  “Look, here’s my card. If you want better assignments, better pay, better protection—come work for us.”

  Alex looked at the card. “This card doesn’t even have your name on it.”

  “My name is not important. What we do is very important—and we’d like you to join us.”

  The lock to one of the doors slid open, and a man sweating from both armpits squeezed out and headed down the aisle.

  Alex looked at the man she’d been conversing with.

  “Hold this for me, will ya?” she said, shoving the bottled water into the man’s hand.

  He took it, and she proceeded to ease into the small bathroom.

  When she was finished, she stepped out and stared at him. He handed the bottle back to her.

  “Just think about it, will you?” the man said.

  Alex grabbed the bottle by the cap and nodded. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Good,” the man said before slipping past her and into the bathroom.

  Alex hustled back to her seat and pulled out her phone. She used an app to scan the water bottle for his finger prints.

  “Gotcha,” she said when the app registered one.

  She turned on her computer and used the plane’s Wi-Fi to connect to the Firestorm database. After a few minutes of searching, she learned the man’s identity was Kade Parker.

  Kade Parker, Kade Parker. Why does that name sound so familiar?

  Then she remembered where she’d seen his name. It was part of the CIA report about the Jessica Thornton incident.

  CHAPTER 7

  HAWK PARKED HIS CAR half of a block uphill from the house General Johnson directed him to watch. Lit only by a few sporadic porch lights, the street remained relatively quiet, which made Hawk’s job easy. Aside from a few dog walkers, the area could’ve easily been mistaken for a ghost town after 9:00 p.m. If any suspicious activity stirred, he’d be able to spot it immediately. In the meantime, the minutes dripped past for Hawk with nothing to keep him company but an angry radio talk show host who warned his audience that the country was on the verge of falling apart.

  Hawk shook his head as one man ranted about the impending collapse of the world’s financial system. Passionate listeners called into the show and joined him in venting about the lack of leadership in Washington. But Hawk wasn’t shaking his head because he viewed the caller as someone who hadn’t taken his meds in a while; Hawk was shaking his head because of how close the conspiracy theorists were to the truth.

  No one will ever believe them, but they’re right.

  A wispy fog blew down the street, dancing and swirling down the hill, while a ship’s horn echoed in the night air. The click-clack of a man’s dress shoes awakened Hawk from the stupor he’d fallen into and made him sit up in his car. Hawk watched as the man, who wore his houndstooth hat snug and shielding his eyes, strode by and hustled up to the steps of the house Hawk was watching.

  The man looked left and then right before rapping on the door.

  A few moments later, the door cracked open and another man stuck his head out. He glanced around the street, forcefully pulling his guest inside by his shirt. Hawk immediately recognized the man who answered the door as Laman Fazir.

  Laman ran Al Hasib’s operations in the U.S., though he’d only been photographed once on American soil. Based on all the intel the government had amassed on him, it would be reasonable to assume Laman had pulled off some devastating attack. But quite the opposite was true. He’d never so much as sneezed in a way that could be deemed detrimental to U.S. interests. Yet, he was still deemed to be a malicious threat.

  Hawk looked up and down the street, wondering how many agencies were staked out in front of Laman’s house. At least two other men sat motionless in their cars closer toward the house.

  Amateurs.

  A few minutes later, Hawk watched another man come from around the corner of the block. With precision, the man used his silencer to kill the other two surveilling agents. Other than the faint clink of broken glass bouncing on the pavement, the stillness of the night air was barely disturbed. The assassin looked around and disappeared from the block. A few moments later, a pair of trucks arrived and carted off the vehicles with the dead men still inside. In less than five minutes, they were gone.

  Hawk smiled, impressed at the professional way in which the assassin handled his business. By the time authorities found the bodies—if they ever would—it’d be far too late to discern when the murders occurred, much less who committed them. And if the bodies were of secret government agents, it’d never even make the evening news.

  Hawk trained his eyes on the home again, hoping Laman would relax his guard for a moment since the two men he thought were watching him were now dead. But another hour passed and nothing moved.

  The buzzing of Hawk’s phone startled him. He picked it up.

  “Alex,” he said as he answered, “to what do I owe this honor?”

  “You’re on a mission, aren’t you?” she replied.

  “Of course, but I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”

  “Well, I’m here.”

  “In San Francisco?”

  “Yeah. And we need to talk.”

  CHAPTER 8

  ON THURSDAY MORNING, Laman stopped on the steps of the house and looked over his shoulder, half scanning the street for surveillance, half admiring the view of the bay. Had he been born in San Francisco, he might have considered it a great place to live. But he wasn’t. He was born in the most wonderful place in the world, the cradle of civilization.

  God would’ve started mankind here if it was better than Iraq.

  He held firm to the passionate belief that to think anything else was evil. This country, the city—it’s all an abomination. And Laman was about to help lay waste to it.

  He smiled smugly and entered the house, convinced that no one was watching.

  Disappearing into his tunnels, Laman emerged a few minutes later upstairs in his hidden war room. All of his operatives were busy at work, preparing for the upcoming mission.

  Mahmod and Habeeb rushed up to Laman, peppering him with questions.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Laman said, holding both hands in the air. “Please, slow down. I cannot understand either of you when you’re both talking at the same time.”

  All he could make out was the wor
d Sabit, which both of them seemed to be uttering.

  “What happened to Sabit?” Mahmod said quietly as he stepped closer to Laman in an effort to keep the rest of the room from hearing their conversation.

  “Yes. What happened to Sabit?” Habeeb added.

  “That is none of your concern,” Laman said. “What’s most important is that you focus on preparing yourself for the upcoming mission. Under no circumstances can we fail.”

  “Sabit was like a brother to me,” Mahmod said, unwilling to let go of Sabit’s sudden disappearance. “I need to know where he is.”

  Laman took a deep breath and stared at his two new recruits. “You have nothing to worry about. He’s safe.” He stared at the ground, pausing before he looked up at them again and addressed them. “You, on the other hand, are in danger. Your inability to follow simple instructions and respond in a manner that demonstrates both competence and obedience could come back to haunt our cause in the end. In the meantime, our desire is for you to do as we ask and prepare yourself for what’s next.”

  Mahmod and Habeeb nodded before returning to their posts. Laman had assigned them to study traffic patterns with various motorcades escorted by the San Francisco Police Department. He wanted to know if they could find any anomalies in previous escorts. Perhaps a sudden turn here or a detour there. He wanted no surprises—even though he’d yet to reveal the full plan to anyone but the highest-ranking operatives.

  “May I have your attention please?” Laman said loudly, attracting the attention of the other men who had been working busily at the long table they all shared. “Our operation will go live in a few days. No questions, no excuses. There is no room for mistakes. We must demonstrate our resolve with precision as we execute our masterplan. If you follow orders, you will be rewarded handsomely—not just in the next life but in this one as well.”

  The men’s eyes lit up, all eager to get to work. Laman could see it didn’t take much to inspire them. They’d all joined willingly, open to any task assigned to them. Laman wasn’t sure if that was the case, but it was what he’d been told. He had a team full of willing participants who’d do whatever they were commanded, even if it cost them their own lives.