A Long Gray Line Read online

  “Any chance we could be on it?” Mike asked.

  “I hate surprises,” the Colonel said, “and you two spooks are exactly that. I’d be happy to make sure you have seats on the next flight out, even if I have to boot the ambassador himself.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Opatovac Refugee Camp, Croatia

  Samir al-Julani, crouched behind a parked police vehicle, held the knife upside down with the blade pointing downward. He couldn’t wait to feel the sharp blade of his knife enter the lower back of one of the guards watching over the exit of the refugee camp. Why was security so light? Two guards only? Both were armed, but only with pistols.

  He slowly got up from behind the vehicle, careful to keep the knife out of sight. He limped toward the officers who were chatting while smoking cigarettes. The camp had fallen asleep about two hours ago. With the exception of a few people walking back and forth to the latrines, it was quiet. The full moon provided all the light needed for his operation. Al-Julani dragged his right leg behind him, the crunchy noise of his foot against the gravel attracting both guards’ attention. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of his men exiting the shadow. His name was Zaman and al-Julani had picked him because he was the only man in his group who had never killed before. Tonight was his ultimate challenge.

  “Hello,” the tallest of the guards said to al-Julani. “What can I do for you?”

  “Cigarette?” Al-Julani asked, mimicking what a smoker would do.

  Al-Julani saw the guard hesitate, probably wondering what would happen if he said yes to one refugee. Al-Julani smiled. “Please, one cigarette.”

  It was the other guard who acquiesced first. As his hand moved to the pocket where his pack of cigarettes was, Zaman Douaa stabbed him from behind. The other guard spun around to see what was happening and al-Julani plunged his knife in his lower back while whipping his other hand across his mouth so as to stifle any noise. Al-Julani twisted the knife again and again and watched the guard writhe in pain. When the guard’s knees finally gave, al-Julani slit his throat. The two ISIS men then relieved the guards of their pistols and extra magazines.

  “Help me hide the bodies in the vehicle,” al-Julani said to his man, grabbing the legs of the guard he had just killed. He knew the rest of his team was watching him and Douaa. Al-Julani had ordered them to stay behind in case other guards showed up unexpectedly.

  The trunk of the police car was too small to accommodate two bodies so they had to place one of them on the backseat. Once both corpses were secured inside the vehicle, he signaled the rest of his team to come out.

  “Now we go,” he said to them. “Mouin Bashi will personally pick us up less than one and a half miles north of here.”

  _________________________

  Al-Julani was relieved when he saw the navy blue Mercedes van parked exactly where Zebar Selam had promised it would be. The short walk from the refugee camp to the exit ramp of the A3 motorway took them less than an hour even in the darkness.

  A man he recognized as Mouin Bashi was standing under a lamp post and next to the already opened back sliding door of the van. The two men embraced.

  “Thank you for being here,” al-Julani said. He had never met Bashi in person but like most ISIS fighters, he had heard of him. It was said that Bashi was a fierce fighter and not a man to be crossed.

  “You need a shower, brother,” Bashi replied. “Have a seat.”

  Al-Julani sat in the front next to Bashi. Once they had reached the motorway, Bashi said, “There are sandwiches and canteens with juice in the back. Then you and your men can sleep. It will take us three and a half hours to reach Zagreb, maybe more.”

  Neither al-Julani nor any of his men would say no to a few hours of sleep. Their journey from Syria to Croatia hadn’t been an easy one. “Thank you.”

  “Rest well, Samir, because once we’re in Zagreb,” Bashi continued, “we go to work”.

  CHAPTER 21

  IMSI Headquarters, New York

  Mike and Lisa were standing next to Mapother and they were all watching Jonathan Sanchez scroll furiously through the notes the analysts had sent him.

  “Holy shit!” Sanchez said. “What do you want to do?”

  Mapother looked at Mike and said, “I can pull another team from whatever they’re doing if you guys are too tired.”

  Mike and Lisa had landed in New York fewer than twelve hours ago but Mike had the feeling they were about to get deployed again. It had taken IMSI’s analysts only six hours to break the encryption on the flash drive and even less to crack the laptops’ firewalls.

  “We’re good,” Mike said. He didn’t even need to look at his wife to know she wouldn’t miss an opportunity to get in the field again.

  “What do we know about this guy?” Lisa asked.

  Sanchez pressed a few keys and the picture of Samir al-Julani appeared on a fifty-inch monitor on the wall.

  “We don’t know much, I’m afraid,” Sanchez said. “The guy on the left is Samir al-Julani. He’s a former Guantanamo Bay detainee. We believe he’s the man in charge.”

  Another one. The number of former detainees who immediately joined the ranks of either ISIS or al-Qaeda after their release appalled Mike to no end. The head of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was one of them. Will we ever learn?

  “We know he fought in Iraq. A Special Forces team captured him after he planted an IED on a road used by our troops. After his release, he flew to Syria and joined the Islamic State. We believe, and this is somewhat confirmed by this email, that he’s now a cell leader.”

  “And his cell was just activated,” Mapother added. “From what our analysts can understand from the data collected on the flash drives and the two laptops, the cell was given the green light to proceed with an attack on Croatian soil.”

  “More specifically, the Israeli embassy in Zagreb,” Sanchez said.

  That was news to Mike. “Why the Israeli embassy?” he asked.

  “That we don’t know, Mike,” Sanchez replied. “What we do know, however, is that at least four refugees escaped from the Opatovac refuge camp a few hours ago.”

  “What do you mean by escaping?” Lisa asked.

  Refugee camps used to be sparsely guarded. The understanding was that the refugees were grateful that a foreign nation would come to their help. But that dynamic had changed in recent months as more and more refugees grew disillusioned with what they could expect from the host nations. Some of them had broken free and taken it upon themselves to reach countries they believed would look at them more favorably. Mike couldn’t blame them. Spending months in a tent that leaked every time it rained while watching one’s children going without education must be awful, especially if you know that your own government destroyed your home, the place where you had been born and given birth to your own children.

  “Two Croatian police officers were found stabbed to death, their bodies hidden in their car,” Sanchez replied.

  “And you think this is linked?” Mike said.

  “We do,” Sanchez said. “The cell phone used to receive Zebar Selam’s message was last used inside the Opatovac refugee camp.”

  “Is it still on?” Mike asked.

  “It’s not,” Sanchez said, “But it doesn’t matter. We have its IMEI number.”

  “And that stands for…?” Mike asked. He had never heard of an IMEI number before.

  Both Sanchez and Mapother looked at him as if he’d been born yesterday. Lisa was quick to come to his defense. “Okay, smartass, what does it stand for?”

  Sanchez shook his head, but smiled. “It means International Mobile Equipment Identity,” he said. “It’s a unique identifier for any mobile phone.”

  “And you can find someone by using this?” Mike asked. It seemed like a stretch to him, but once again, he wasn’t the most technologically advanced guy in the room either.

&n
bsp; “You can’t simply use the IMEI with any app in the market but it’s useful if you have the right tools. And we do,” Sanchez explained.

  “How does it work?” Lisa asked. Mike could see his wife was genuinely curious. He didn’t care much about this geek stuff, but her questions had revved up Sanchez’s brain.

  “It’s quite easy actually,” Sanchez started. “We simply have to hack into the phone company’s network and act as if IMSI is the actual operator. It will allow us to pinpoint al-Julani’s phone by identifying which of the network’s cell towers manages to detect it. Then, by triangulation, we’ll know where the nearest tower is by its signal strength. It’s basically measuring the angles to it from identified known points, like the antennas of the network operator. Got it?”

  Lisa nodded but Sanchez must have sensed that Mike wasn’t getting it. But instead of stopping, he continued with his explanation. “Shit, man. Think about it. The first known point identifies the distance to the cell phone, then the second known point narrows down the location and the third point is then used to identify the exact spot.”

  “Thanks, Jonathan,” Lisa said looking at Mike, “We got it. I think.”

  “Mike,” Mapother jumped in, “What Jonathan’s trying to say is that once you’re in Croatia, we’ll be in a position to let you know where to go to intercept al-Julani.”

  “That’s all I needed to know, buddy,” Mike replied, his comment directed at Sanchez. Then he looked at his wife, “Wanna go to Croatia?”

  “I heard they’re great winemakers,” his wife answered.

  Mapother pick up the phone next to Sanchez’s desk. “It’s Charles,” he said into the receiver. “Mike and Lisa will take the Gulfstream to Croatia. Fill out a flight plan.”

  That was their cue. Mike shook Sanchez’s hand before following Lisa out. He’d always wanted to visit Croatia. He just never thought it would be to stop a terror attack.

  _________________________

  Once Mike and Lisa were gone, Mapother sat next to Sanchez. “We need to let our partners know about this, Charles,” Sanchez said.

  Mapother wished the IMSI could take care of all the threats but he knew that wasn’t possible. What they had found on the seized computers’ hard drives was chilling. He hadn’t said a word to Mike or Lisa because he knew it would have distracted them from their mission.

  His team had uncovered the location of one of the cells embedded amongst the Syrian refugees, but if he was to believe the data, there were six more just like this one.

  “I know,” Mapother said after a moment. The scary thing was that these cells all seemed to be embedded within different waves of Syrian refugees all over the European continent. Yes, they could track the cell phones, but did that mean that the jihadists were there too?

  Sanchez was right; he had to let DNI Richard Phillips know. This was much bigger than they had anticipated. But there was one man he needed to contact prior to calling the DNI.

  Meir Yatom.

  Yatom was the head of the Special Operations Division of the Israeli Mossad. He and Mapother went back a long way. It was true that Yatom wasn’t keen on sharing intelligence with anyone and that the last discussion between the two men had ended badly but still, with such an imminent threat against Israeli interests, Mapother had to extend an olive branch. He hoped Yatom would have done the same.

  “To what do I owe the displeasure?” Yatom said after picking up on the first ring.

  The fact that he had actually taken the call was a good sign. It wouldn’t have surprised Mapother if Yatom had let his call go to voicemail.

  “You’re a grumpy old man, Meir, you know that?” Mapother replied.

  “You missed my birthday again,” Yatom said.

  “This isn’t a personal call, I’m afraid.”

  Meir Yatom might have been more than five thousand miles away but Mapother felt the shift in the old spy’s demeanor.

  “I’m listening.”

  “I’m about to call our Director of National Intelligence Richard Phillips to let him know there are at least seven ISIS cells embedded amongst the various Syrian refugee camps across Europe,” Mapother said.

  He heard Yatom snort. “I hope this doesn’t come as a revelation to you, Charles,” the Israeli said. “You and I both know this was bound to happen. It would have been very naïve to think otherwise.”

  Mapother agreed wholeheartedly but he hadn’t called Yatom to discuss politics. “I wanted to let you know that we’ve identified the leader of one of the cells,” Mapother said. “His name is Samir al-Julani and his—

  “Wasn’t he in your custody at some point?” Yatom asked.

  “You’re correct, Meir,” Mapother acquiesced, impressed with the Israeli’s ability to remember anything or anyone who might ever pose a security risk to the state of Israel.

  “You were saying?”

  “His target is your embassy in Zagreb?”

  Yatom didn’t reply right away. Finally, he said, “Why Zagreb?”

  Mapother was conscious that the question wasn’t directed at him.

  “I have a team on the way to Croatia, Meir,” Mapother said. “I’ll keep you posted.”

  “Give me more than that, Charles,” Yatom pleaded. “You know I can’t go to the director with this.”

  But Mapother wasn’t duped. He actually considered what he was going to say next very carefully. He sought to help the Israeli but he didn’t want to burn Mike and Lisa either. He knew how Yatom operated. With him, the ends always justified the means, and Mapother wasn’t ready to let Yatom use IMSI’s assets to do Mossad’s deeds.

  “My team will be on the ground shortly,” Mapother said, making up his mind. “We’ll take care of this for you. But just in case we can’t, we’ll send you what we have shortly.”

  He’d give Mike and Lisa twenty-four hours to neutralize the threat before sending anything Yatom’s way. Then he’d have to pull his team out of Zagreb; he didn’t trust Yatom when it came to collateral damage in the name of Israel.

  CHAPTER 22

  Split, Croatia

  “Do we have an understanding?” asked the Sheik.

  “We do,” the Russian president replied, “as long as you fulfill your promises.”

  His contacts within the Russian government had come through, hence the call from Vienamin Simonich. Not only would Simonich personally guarantee his safety, but he would also employ the Sheik as his go-to man in his quest to avenge his country from what he felt was the betrayal of the international community. The economic sanctions against Russia combined with the sharp decline in oil prices seemed to have hit Russia the harderst.

  “I always do, Mr. President,” the Sheik said before hanging up. He was confident he could deliver what Simonich wanted.

  The deal was pretty simple and didn’t cost the Sheik much in terms of manpower. The only thing he had to do was to leak the locations of his six remaining embedded cells to the proper Russian officials who would in turn leak them to sympathetic media outlets. It would take some of the international pressure off the Russians. It appeared clear to the Sheik that the Russian president had a long-term alliance in mind and probably some type of plan to strike back at its enemies.

  It was too bad he had to leave Mouin Bashi behind, but he had served his purpose.

  CHAPTER 23

  Rijeka Airport, Croatia

  Lisa would have loved to work with a support team. Unfortunately for her and Mike, the support team assigned to them had lost their team leader during the raid on the Sheik’s yacht. Since then, James Cooper had taken over their support team but they weren’t yet ready for a deployment.

  The Gulfstream had to refuel in Reykjavik before continuing on its way to Rijeka. The flight plan had originally indicated Zagreb as the final destination but Mapother thought it would attract less attention to have the Gulfstream
land in Rijeka, as this was the airport used by many private jet charter companies. Located about one hundred miles southwest of Zagreb, Lisa calculated it would take them approximately two hours to reach Croatia’s capital city. Customs was a non-event and Lisa picked up the rental car while Mike organized the gear they had hidden in a secret compartment of the Gulfstream.

  “You got everything?” she said over the secured frequency. Their encrypted communication devices were voice-activated and were directly linked to the IMSI headquarters.

  “Meet me in front of the terminal,” Mike replied.

  “Copy. I have a gray Renault Megane.”

  Lisa parked the rental car curbside and waited for Mike to exit the terminal. She spotted him in her rearview mirror and pressed the trunk release button when he reached the rear bumper.

  “No issues?” she asked her husband once he was in the passenger seat.

  “None whatsoever,” Mike replied. “There’s a special line for private aviation clients. I told the pilots to be on a ninety-minute notice.”

  As they drove away from Rijeka, Lisa couldn’t help but notice how beautiful this particular region of Croatia actually was. Like a lot of locales she had visited with Mike since they joined the IMSI, she wished there might be a time when they could come back as a couple instead of operators. Was it too much to ask?

  “Are we gonna take the new motorway?” Mike asked. “Or will we stick with back roads?”

  To take back roads would have been fun but they weren’t here for sightseeing. A ninety-mile long motorway linking Zagreb to Rijeka was finalized in 2008 and this was what Lisa had decided they would take.

  “The motorway,” she replied. “But next time we’re here, we’ll take the back roads.” She placed her right hand on her husband’s thigh and he covered it with his own.

  “Once we’re done here, we take a break,” Mike said, squeezing her hand. “I need it.”