Burying the Past (John Taylor #4) - Chapter 6

It had taken them a while to get back, with a two hour stop at the hospital so the kid's cuts and scrapes could be cleaned and the one broken leg set in a cast. He also had a broken rib and some nasty bruises, but considering he’d been literally blasted out of a second story window, he’d gotten off lighter than he could have.

They’d used the time well, pulling fingerprints and all the records they could find on him, from his visa and schooling in the US to online purchases and phone records.

Crawford kept saying he wished they had a little more time to work up more information before interrogating him since we hadn’t even known this kid had existed till right before the traffic stop on his roommate. Taylor wasn’t one to object to thorough planning. In Special Forces training, they’d spent as much time teaching operators how to plan as they did teaching tactics.

Qasim, however, was out there and planning something, and right now this kid was their only lead, which didn’t allow them the luxury for long prep times. As soon as the docs released him, with a suggestion of bed rest that all of them knew wasn’t going to happen, they headed straight to the local Bureau offices.

A pall hung over the FBI offices. People were still bustling back and forth, working on whatever it is the Bureau’s foot soldiers worked on in the middle of a case, but the way they did it was very telling to Taylor.

While none of the Bureau guys had died, one of the ESU guys hadn’t made it. Taylor was reassured to see they were taking the death and injuries among the locals so seriously. In the Army, if another unit, even an allied nations unit, took casualties when on joint ops, it would affect all the soldiers involved regardless. From how territorial the various law enforcement agencies he’s seen so far were, he hadn’t been sure that would be the case here.

They followed one of the local guys through to a row of windowless doors, each with a number on it, interspaced with other doors without numbers. Their guide pushed the kid into the room and shut the door behind them as Crawford held up a hand for them to wait outside.

“Who’s gonna go first,” he asked, looking at Whitaker.

“Let me and Taylor take a shot at him.”

“You sure,” he said, looking sideways at Taylor.

While he’d been warming to Taylor since they’d gotten back from Tucson, Taylor wasn’t surprised he still wasn’t considered fully part of the team. This was closer to how he’d come to expect agents to act.

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

One last glance in Taylor’s direct and Crawford shrugged, saying “Ok, go ahead.”

Crawford headed to one of the unlabeled doors while Whitaker and Taylor headed for the door the kid had been pushed through.

The kid was at the table, one arm cuffed to the table top. The agent who’d come in with him was leaning against the wall next to the door, arms crossed over his chest. Once Taylor and Whitaker walked in, the Agent headed out and closed them in the room.

“John, this session will be videotaped for use in a trial, so ...” she said to Taylor, letting the sentence drift off suggestively.

Not that he needed much explanation. She’d seen him interrogate people before. While Taylor knew his methods were more realistic in getting the answers they needed, he also knew it wasn’t the Bureau’s way. Despite this kid killing US citizens, they had to make nice with his rights. Taylor understood the basic principle behind that, but he found the idea of interrogations being limited just to protect the life of someone who’d shown contempt for the society offering those protections a little silly.

“I’ll be a good boy,” Taylor promised.

“Uh-huh,” she said doubtfully, turning to the kid.

“Ali, I’m Special Agent Loretta Whitaker. You were informed of your rights by the other agent?”

The kid just stared at her. We’d already confirmed he spoke English, so he was just playing tough, which wasn’t surprising.

“I see,” she said, settling back in her chair. Taylor took a spot on the wall behind the kid, not blocking the mirror he was sure Crawford and maybe one of the local agents were observing through.

“Don’t worry about him,” she said when the kid turned and looked at Taylor over his shoulder.

Taylor knew exactly what the kid was thinking, and it’s why he chose to stand behind him. Where he came from, this interview would have gone very differently. A lot of these kids were hammered away at with the idea that America was way more brutal, disappearing people into CIA torture chambers, and told the stuff they saw on American TV and movies was just propaganda.

“So you’re name’s Ali Al-Amari. You’re here on a student visa and were Saeed Antar’s roommate and attend the University of Tennessee, right?”

The kid still said nothing, just glared at her.

“You should talk to me, Ali. I don’t think you realize how much trouble you’re in. We have you at the scene making bombs. Your friends killed a police officer. Any Judge in the country will agree you’re a terrorist. I could put you on a plane to Gitmo right now, and no one would say a word.”

The kid snorted.

“That’s funny?” she asked.

He said something in Arabic, a sneer on his face. Whitaker looked up at Taylor.

“He says our prisons are a joke.”

“I think you’ll find Gitmo a different story. The current administration has ok’d several more rigorous forms of enhanced interrogation.”

The kid just sneered again.

“After they get as much as they think they can get out of you, of course, you’ll be tried for the murder of a police officer. You know Tennessee has the death penalty, right?”

The kids sneer sagged. He’d signed up to be some kind of suicide bomber, or something similar, but in Taylor’s experience, that was abstract to many of these kids. They didn’t put actual thought into it when they first signed up. It’s why they had to be really worked up into a frenzy before they were sent off to actually blow themselves up.

“I can’t remember how Tennessee does it these days,” she said, looking at Taylor. “Are they doing just the shot, or do they still do gas here? Also, didn’t one state bring back the electric chair as an option?”

“I remember reading that,” Taylor added helpfully. “Although for his sake I hope that wasn’t this state. As I understand it, it takes a bunch of seconds for it to actually kill you. Before then, you can feel yourself cooking from the inside out. There’ve also been those cases where it didn’t actually kill the person, and they had to throw the switch a few times.”

“I mean, even the shot isn’t so great. They ‘say’ they put you to sleep first, but I heard really they just paralyze you so you can’t yell out or complain. Really though, you apparently awake the whole time, as you’re heart and lungs are stopped, and you slowly suffocate.”

The kid's face was now completely blank.

“When did you meet Qasim?” Taylor asked in Arabic.?

The kids head started to whip around to look at Taylor, only to stop halfway as he checked himself. He turned back and stared straight ahead again.

They kept hammering at him for another hour, but the kid didn’t say anything else and wouldn’t respond to any questions. Taylor tried to surprise him a few more times, asking about Tucson, about Saeed, about Qasim’s group of terrorists, Aikhtar Al'Islam, but nothing else sparked a reaction again. Whether that was because he didn’t actually know anything, or he was just ready for it this time it was hard to say.

Eventually, Whitaker waved for them to both go outside. Crawford came out of the observation room as they exited the interrogation room.

“We’re getting nowhere,” Whitaker said.

“Not nowhere. You caught him off guard on that first question,” he said, looking at Taylor. “We have confirmation these guys were working with Qasim. That’s something.”

“We already knew that before,” Taylor said.

“No, we thought that might be true, but we didn’t have confirmation. We would have worked as if it was true, but we’d also have had to expend resources on avenues if it wasn’t true, just in case we were wrong.”

“I guess that’s policy,” Taylor said, eliciting a grumble from Whitaker, who knew he meant that as a complaint.

“Yes, it is. Now, we don’t have to waste that manpower on dead ends, and can put it towards tearing this guy’s life apart. You know as well as I do that this kid, and probably none of his roommates, were the point man on their cell. They’re all canon-fodder, meant to blow themselves up for the glory of whatever. Someone set them up here, and someone gave them their instructions. Any interaction they had with Qasim or any of his men was through someone else. We just have to find that connection and follow it.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“This is what we do,” Whitaker said. “The FBI is the best in the world at tearing apart someone's life and digging through everything and everyone they’ve ever known. If there’s a connection, I guarantee we’ll find it.”

“I hope so.”

Taylor sounded doubtful, but in actuality, he agreed with Crawford’s assessment. His ability to dig through someone’s life and find that one clue that leads you to the next one that leads you to who he was looking for was what had allowed him to close all the personal cases he’d taken since he’d started his new gig.

“Some of the locals will take a swing at your friend in there while we get started,” Crawford said, turning and heading to another part of the offices.

Taylor wondered if all FBI offices were laid out the same or if Crawford had been here before since he seemed to know where he was going. What was stranger is Crawford had been introduced as being from Homeland Security, not the FBI, which made his knowing the layout stranger. Taylor started to follow him when his cell phone buzzed.

“Taylor,” he said in a somewhat quiet voice, trying to not break the library like quiet that was this part of the FBI offices.

“Mr. Taylor, it’s Loren Dashel. Do you have access to a secure line?”

Taylor’s mental antenna snapped to! The only reason Dashel would call him is because the Senator was looking for him, and her wanting to talk on a secure line meant this was serious.

“I’m in the Memphis FBI offices at the moment. I’m sure they’ll have something set up here.”

“Great. I will text you a number now. Could you call back on that secured line as soon as possible.”

“Yeah, I’ll call as soon as I can find where to do it from,” Taylor said, hung up, and half jogged to catch up to Whitaker and Crawford. “Hey, Crawford, do you have a secure phone around here?”

The man’s eyes narrowed as he paused in answering. Taylor had already figured out the big man was sharp, in spite of being a bureaucrat. He knew Crawford was putting together the thoughts of Taylor having some kind of high-level connection and the need for a secure line. He wondered how much he should try and keep the Senator’s identity secret, or if that was possible. Loren’s calls to Taylor’s cell was enough for Crawford to work it out unless Dashel had called from a secure line on his end or one not connected to him or the Senator.

Still, he’d make Crawford work for it, at least.

“Yeah, follow me.”

They turned and headed towards another area of the office, where Crawford opened a door and motioned Taylor in.

“Ask one of the people out here when you’re done, and they’ll bring you to where we are.”

“Sure, Thanks.”

Crawford gave him another appraising look, gears turning, before he closed the door, leaving Taylor along.

Taylor looked at his text messages and dialed the number Dashel had sent.

“Mr. Taylor?” the cheery assistant’s voice said after a single ring.

“Yeah.”

“Hold for the Senator.”

Taylor had dealt with secure lines in the past, so he wasn’t surprised by the drawn-out silence while he waited. He remembered the first time he’d had to make a secure call while still in the service, and he’d hung up on their colonel, thinking the line had gone dead.

“John,” the Senator said when she finally picked up.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

He heard a soft snort from her end at what had started to become their own private joke.

“We have a problem, John. The person who took your picture the other day sold it to one of the papers, and they’re digging into you. They probably won’t get everything, since so much of your record is classified, but they’re going to get something. By the end of the week, they’re going to know who you and Loretta are.”

“I see,” Taylor said, his mind trying, and failing, to come up with what his options were. He was trained for a lot of things, but this definitely wasn’t one of them. “What should I do Ma’am?”

“There’s not a lot you can do to stop it, John. You’re going to end up with reporters showing up at your doorstep at some point. Loretta’s a public servant, so there’s going to be a lot they can find on her. You’re going to be a bit of a black box for them, since so much of your background will be closed off. It’ll make them want to dig into you even more. I’m sorry about this, I really am.”

“It’s fine Ma’am. I knew it was a possibility when we stayed in touch with Mary Jane, and considering your job and what job you’re running for. What about Kara?”

“That’s my big concern. It’ll be hard for them to get any actual information aside from her visa and adoption and citizenship proceedings. Her life before then will be even more of a mystery than your background. Which, again, will wind them up even more.”

“Do you think they’ll find out about her past?”

“I’d like to say no, but ... it’s possible. They can track her back to Russia. If they ask enough people the right questions, then yes. They might.”

“I see,” Taylor said, his voice going flat.

“I’m really sorry about this. I will do what I can for you, but it’s going to get rough I’m afraid. For now, anyone who talks to you, just refer them back to my campaign and walk away. They’ll chase you. Please ... please control your temper. Trying to physically stop them will make things much worse and make it harder for me to protect you.”

“I’ll do my best, Ma’am.”

“Ok, well, I just wanted to give you a warning of what’s heading your way.”

“Kara’s at home alone while Loretta and I are out here working on this thing, do you think you could...”

“Yes, of course. We’ll take her in until you get back.”

“Do you think it’d be better if she stayed with you until this blows over?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll think about it and talk to some of my people about it. I promise I’ll do whatever I can to help her.”

“I know you will, Ma’am. We trust you.”

“I know for you that means a lot more than when someone in my profession says that. I’ll try to live up to your faith in me. Well, I need to get back to things here and see about getting Kara picked up. Good luck out there.”

“Thank you, Ma’am.”

She said goodbye and hung up. Taylor set the receiver down and leaned against the desk, thinking. He really was out of his depth and would have to trust the Senator to protect them as best she could. He wasn’t worried so much about Whitaker or himself, but he could just imagine what reporters would start hitting Kara with if they found out about her. If it came to that, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to hold onto his temper.

Since there wasn’t anything he could do about it now, he pushed the thoughts aside with a shrug and walked back out into the main room, flagging down one of the agents Crawford had indicated. The younger woman led him through a series of corridors to a conference room with several laptops sitting open on the table. There were four other people in the room beside Whitaker and Crawford, all staring intently at their computer screens.

Whitaker gave him a questioning look when he came into the room, but Taylor just shook his head. She gave a slight nod, understanding he’d talk to her about it later. Taylor did notice that Crawford hadn’t missed the byplay, but thankfully he didn’t ask any questions.

They walked Taylor through several of the databases they were looking through. Travel schedules, records on the vetting that had been done for their student visas, DMV records, School records. Pretty much anything that involved these kids that ended up in a computer was looked at, down to their Amazon purchases.

Two of the people Taylor hadn’t been introduced to were looking at videos running facial recognition. He didn’t recognize any of the places in the video, but if he had to guess, it was places they knew Ali or one of his roommates had passed through, probably looking at people they connected with.

Taylor stared at a wall, leaning back from the laptop Crawford had set in front of him, his breathing slowing as he focused.

Crawford stood to one side, arms folded on his chest, and stared for ten full minutes, his foot slowly tapping. Eventually, he backed up to the other side of the room where Whitaker was working.

“What the fuck is he doing? He hasn’t touched the computer and hasn’t moved in forever. I thought he was some kind of hot-shot private detective or something. I was hoping he’d help at least sort through some of this stuff.”

“Leave him be. He’s terrible at this part anyway. He gets the need for meticulous record searches, but he doesn’t have the patience for it.”

“Then what the hell good is he?”

“You’ll see. Trust me, the first time we worked together, I doubted him, but I’ve seen him do this a bunch of times. He calls it ‘Working the Problem.’ He’ll sit there for a while, just staring, and then sit up and say ‘I need to see this thing,’ and it’ll turn out that was the key to getting to the next step.”

“So he just thinks his way through it?”

“Pretty much. When he explains his thought process, it seems simple in retrospect, but it’s one that would take me weeks of digging through the clues piece by piece to get to.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Just let him do his thing. I promise you it’ll be worth it. We’ll just keep doing our thing, and see if we can beat him to the punch.”

Crawford frowned at her choice of wording, but went back to what he was working on, glancing up from time to time at Taylor, who was sitting still, thinking.

After about an hour, Taylor sat up and turned to Whitaker, who had looked up when he'd moved.

“We need to look at their school schedules.”

Whitaker came over to him and started to type on the laptop in front of him, pulling up the records he’d asked for.

“Why?” Crawford asked.

“Because whatever their connection to Qasim’s plan is, it’s there.”

“How in the hell do you know that?”

“It’s the only place where they’d have anything Qasim would need,” he said as if it was obvious as saying what time it was.

“Again, how the hell do you know that? You haven’t looked at a single thing since you walked in here.”

“Look, it’s simple. Anything from their time in Yemen that the State Department had, wouldn’t be terribly useful. The places that would really interest us aren’t covered by video, probably have no human assets, and pretty much anything they did there, won’t be in any databases. There are a lot of places, places preferred by terrorists, that are practically throwbacks to the middle ages. They make sure it stays that way cause they know it’s a key to doing an end-run around our technical advantage.”

“I get that, but we have records from their schooling in Yemen, their visa records, their interviews for visas...”

“None of which will tell us why Qasim needed them. I’m certain the bombs they were building weren’t connected to Qasim. His plans would be bigger than a couple of kids wearing suicide vests. Since all this cell seemed to be involved in was the explosive making, I’m betting that was their initial mission here. Qasim came along later and drafted off of them for logistical support.”

“Then why at the school?”

“Well, what bothers me is I can’t figure out what support they’d actually be able to offer Qasim. He wouldn’t have used them in any operational capacity, I’m certain of that. A bunch of kids who all came in around the same time, on student visas, from a middle eastern country; and all ended up at the same school, living together no less? That's the wet dream of what you guys would be looking for. One false step that brings them any scrutiny, and warning bells would gooff from their profile alone. Qasim would have known that, and wouldn’t have risked using them in any significant way.”

“I guess.”

“So the question remains, why did Qasim need them. It wasn’t for financial support. Qasim has great financing. If anything, part of the reason he was allowed to use cells already in the US, was that he could give them additional financing. It seems pretty obvious that these kids weren’t well financed. If they were, they wouldn’t have held onto the card that they’d used to buy the rental in Tucson. I mean, that or they’re just idiots. While these kinds of kids aren’t picked for their brains, they’ve managed to operate for almost a year in the US. If they were just dumb, they wouldn’t have made it this long. So he needed them for something else. These kids do nothing but go to school and go back to their apartment from what I was able to see in the initial intel we had on them. Since Qasim isn’t interested in their little bomb factory and he didn’t need their money, then what’s left is something at their school.”

“So what are you looking for at their school then?”

“No idea, but I’ll know it when I see it. Something at their school is notable.”

“You hope.”

“No, I know. Qasim is connected to them for some reason, the only thing they have that isn’t ruled out is at their school, so something at their school is needed by Qasim.”

“That simple, huh?”

“I told you,” Whitaker said.

Taylor waved her away and said, “We still need to find out what that thing is.”

“Here are their class schedules,” Whitaker said, pointing at the screen.

“They don’t have any classes together,” he said after clicking through a few screens.

“What about sports or clubs?”

He paused and looked through more of the information on the screen, “They don’t seem to be in any sports. I’m seeing a couple of clubs. These two are in an engineering club. This one’s in some kind of ESL club thing.”

“What about that,” Whitaker said, pointing at the screen.

“Huh, seems a bit on the nose.”

“Yeah, Ali and all of his roommates are in it. Saeed too.”

“What?” Crawford asked.

“It’s called Justice in the Middle East. Meets every Thursday night.”

“You’re right, that’s a little bit on the nose. We should pull everyone in that group in.”

“No,” Taylor said.

“What do you mean no? You just said the connection was at the school and here’s some Middle East peace thing, just about screams connection.”

“Yeah, but we don’t want to spook anyone until we know more. It might be someone on the periphery of the group. All we have are the names of kids signed up to a school-sponsored club, and a faculty sponsor. We don’t know enough to say it’s someone actually signed up for the group that’s the connection.”

“How about we go talk to the faculty sponsor,” she said, having pulled Taylors laptop in front of her and quickly tapping out a bunch of commands.

“He’s never traveled out of the country, went to college in Georgia, and other than this group doesn’t seem to have any leanings that suggest he’s involved. Odds are he’s just what he seems to be, the person who sponsored the group.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Fine,” Crawford said, not happy about being teamed up on, “but I’ll do the talking.”

“Sure,” Taylor said, obviously not meaning a word of it.