Chapter Eight

 

          “Good morning, gentlemen, and welcome to the Terrorist Watch Special Service Team. I haven’t introduced you to each other yet, but don’t worry, you’ll get to know that man in the chair next to you very well in the next few weeks, maybe better than you’d even like.”

       Carter was sitting at the end of a row of four identical metal, wood, and plastic student desks, on a contour seat that didn’t quite fit his butt. In front of him was a small calendar notebook, a clipboard with several sheets of blank paper, a pencil, and a pencil sharpener. Next to him were three men roughly between the ages of twenty and forty, seated in desks that, by the way they could be seen to be squirming from time to time, didn’t fit their butts, either.

        “You all know me already, Lawrence Brightman, and sitting behind you over by the window is Colonel John F. Daniels, formerly of the U.S. Army Special Forces, now attached to our organization by special order of Donald Rumsfield. I recruited you, I’ll be evaluating you, but he’s the man who’s going to train you, and I guarantee you’ll be getting to know him better than you’d like.”

          They all turned in their seats. At the open window, slouched in an easy chair, foot propped up on one knee, wearing an ancient but new looking Vietnam jungle camouflage uniform and a green beret over his graying pony tail, was a big man of about sixty, smoking a cigarette. He glanced over at them, gave a casual wave with his cigarette, and returned to looking out of the window. They turned back to Brightman, who was now leaning forward over the desk in front of him, supporting himself with two outstretched arms.

          “In this room you will learn everything you need to know to complete your current assignment. You will learn about surveillance, wiretapping, how to enter and exit a locked room without leaving the slightest sign that you have been there. You will learn how to interpret coded documents, follow suspects without detection, communicate with hand signals, and ....” He stopped here and gave them a wry smile. “....microwave a pizza.” A couple of the men snickered. Brightman pushed himself back from the desk, and walked around in front, his smile fading, serious again. “You will learn the rudiments of disguise, bomb disposal, high performance driving, suspect detention, interrogation –” He looked down at where one of the men, a young guy with his baseball cap on backwards, was scribbling furiously on his clipboard. “At ease, twister two. You don’t have to write this down.” He put his hands back and hopped lightly onto the desk behind him. “You will learn how to recognize suspicious individuals and their languages, Arabic, Farsi, Korean, Urdu, et cetera. By their posture, their dress, their tastes in food. Before you leave this room, the smell of a fucking shishkabob will put you into a state of high alert.” He hopped off of the desk, so suddenly that two of the men dropped their pencils on the floor in surprise. A slight smile flickered across his face. “A great part of your training will be in combat techniques. Armed and unarmed self defense, knife throwing, the use of exotic weapons. You will learn how to deal with two or more opponents at the same time, to fight off a mad dog, to kill a man with a can opener.”

          Carter was bolt upright in his chair, quivering with attention. This is it! he was thinking. The real thing! Both hands were wrapped around his pencil, gripping it so tightly that it was about to break. This is what I was made for. There wasn’t the slightest doubt in his mind. This is where I belong.

          “But most important,” Brightman was continuing, “will be small arms training. The care and use of handguns, the Special Agent’s primary line of defense. Everything from the tried-and-tested forty-five caliber Colt model 1911-A –” He suddenly whipped a pistol out of the shoulder holster beneath the coat of his gray three piece suit and pointed it directly at the man in the chair in front of him, who looked like he was going to shit in his pants.

        “Steady, Twister Three, steady.”

        Just as suddenly he reached into the shoulder holster on the other side and produced another pistol, pointing it at the ceiling. “.... to the ultra-modern all plastic state-of-the-art Glock ten, able to pass through airport security doorways completely undetected.” He expertly twirled the guns around the index fingers of both hands and slammed them back into their holsters. “You will learn to draw like Clint Eastwood, shoot like Annie Oakley, and to disassemble and reassemble these weapons blindfolded, and with both hands tied behind your back.” He stepped forward to Twister Three, who was sitting with his mouth open and both eyes bulging out of his head, and clapped him on the shoulder. “Well,” he said, chuckling, “maybe you won’t get that good, but you’ll definitely know your way around the pistol range, at least.”

          Brightman turned and stepped back to the rear of the desk.

          “All of this will be starting soon, very soon, courtesy of Colonel Daniels and myself, and believe me, gentlemen, if you don’t hate our guts by the end of the next few weeks, you are some fucking unusual individuals. There will be no breaks for basketball, no Saturday night passes to the canteen, no visits from your girlfriends. Not that it will be all work. No, there will be boring downtime to contend with as well. Lots of hours keeping your eyes glued to windows where nothing whatsoever is going on, lots of Gilligan’s Island reruns on the teley, lots of cabin fever, stale pizza, and lukewarm coffee. If you can take it, gentlemen, all the hard training, hard knocks, and just plain bullshit of this life, if you pass evaluation and are admitted as permanent members into the ranks of this, the most secret, esoteric, and elite group of agents ever created by this great country of ours, all I can promise you is more hard training, more hard knocks, and more bullshit. For future assignments, you will be expected to know how to fly a plane, disarm an atomic bomb, and beat the shit out of Steven Segal. You will have to make James Bond look like a goddamned faggot aerobics instructor, if you really want to be part of this team.”

          He stood up straight now, crossing his arms.

          “But I can promise you this .... this I can promise you .... you all have the potential, you all have what it takes to make the team. I found you, I recommended you for admission, and you are four out of many that I have recruited in the last two years. I got this job because I am good at what I do, and I keep this job because, so far, I have never been wrong about a recruit. I know you can handle it, you can take it, you can deal with it. The rest is on you. Gentlemen, don’t let me down.”

          It was the most inspiring speech, Carter was sure, that he had ever heard in his life.

 

 

 

          It was the biggest load of crap, Sonny was sure, that he had ever heard in his life. I test these guys, Yaro had said. Well, that was clear. Anybody who could swallow this line of bullshit was definitely ready for the rubber gun award. Where the hell did he even find these guys? Sonny was watching them from the window, sitting up in their chairs, backs straight as ramrods, looking like they were about to get a blow job from the fucking Queen of England. The hardest thing about this job was going to be keeping a straight face.

          Fortunately, intelligence was not a major requirement for shooting guns. Vietnam had taught him that. He looked down at the creases in the old jungle camo outfit, which he hadn’t worn for at least thirty years. If the boys in the recon team could see him now, would they get a laugh. Colonel John F. Daniels. That was a good one. Sonny thought he had a fair idea what the F stood for. But at least it would be easy to remember. And he’d always wanted to be a colonel.

          He glanced across the street through the slotted louvers in the window shade, turned down to keep anyone from seeing in too clearly. There was somebody coming out of the brownstone across the street, a woman. He turned the telescope away from the second floor apartments, where it had been focused, and checked her out. Middle aged, oriental looking, wearing a simple house dress and carrying a shopping bag, empty. Pretty good looking old broad, Sonny was thinking, kinda classy. It must be the Lebanese woman from the falafel heads, he figured. Supposed to be just her and the three guys, Yaro had said, and the delivery boy. They had guns, he was sure from analyzing the sounds he’d heard while listening through the microphone fastened to the wall separating their apartments. Rifles, he’d said, probably Kalashnikovs. He was probably right about that. Yaro did know his guns, Sonny had to admit. There was a good chance, given the element of surprise they’d have by coming through the sealed door that used to connect the two apartments into one, that they could get the drop on the whole group. They’d be busy checking out the shipment, paying attention to the front door. Even if that didn’t work, Sonny had made sure all the pieces they were going to use had silencers, and if the falafel heads were smart, they’d have the same. Hopefully, even if there was some shooting, it would be quiet enough to keep from attracting the cops. He watched the broad round the corner at the bottom of the hill and disappear from sight, and turned his attention back to Yaro.

          “.... to eighteen hundred, and twister four from eighteen to twenty-four hundred. Surveillance and telephone monitoring will be twenty four – seven, gentlemen. Get your important personal business out of the way before your shift begins, and if you need to take a piss, this –” Yaro held up a McDonald’s Dixie cup, “- will be your portable pissoir. Each man’s sack time will begin exactly nine hours before the beginning of his shift, so you’ll have an hour to have breakfast and get your shit together before going on surveillance duty. We want you alert and rested when you’re keeping watch, because believe me, it’s going to be booooring, tedious work. You’ll be writing up detailed reports in the notebooks you have in front of you on your desks, even if those are elaborate reports of nothing more than somebody scratching his ass. There is a camera attached to the surveillance telescope, which you are to use if you think there is any reason to use it. Wiretaps are already in place. Preliminary analysis indicates most of the conversations will be in a language none of you understand, and will have to be analyzed personally by me. I’ll be moving on after this first assignment of yours, and we like to keep our teams together as much as possible, so in the future one or more of you will be in for a trip to Monterey.

          “Finally, please use the paper in front of you to draw up maps of where your cars are located, and put your keys on the desk. We’ll be reparking them daily to avoid suspicion, and making duplicate keys for you all, so that you can use each other’s vehicles in case of emergency. Now, if there are no questions, I think it’s time to introduce the members of your team. First, Twister One, Derek Cosak. Derek, stand up and let the men get a look at you.”

        Derek looked to be in his early thirties, of somewhat nervous disposition, lean and mean, with a hawk nose and beady, penetrating eyes.

        “Derek is a master of Wing Chun, the most effective martial art known to man. No bullshit philosophy, no fancy pajamas, no phony super powers. Just realistic, practical techniques. He’s fast as a cobra and twice as deadly. Derek will be handling situations where guns might be too loud or messy, and giving Colonel Daniels a hand with your weaponless combat training. When you shake his hand, don’t leave yours out there for too long. It might come back a bloody stump.” Derek acknowledged this with a quick jerk of his head and sat down.

        “Next, Twister Two, Frank Bouchet.”

        Twister Two stood up, smiled, and put his hands on his hips. A little younger, he had a baseball cap on backwards, and a T–shirt that said Kill ‘em all, and let God sort ‘em out.

        “Frank is already expert with small arms, knows his way around the firing range, and can give you some tips on how to wear your shoulder holsters and care for your weapons, which will be issued to you this afternoon.” Frank waved and sat down.

        “And here’s Teddy Larsen, Twister Three.” Larsen seemed about forty, slightly overweight, with a slightly receding hairline. “Teddy knows all there is to know about locks, safes, and security devices. You’ll learn to rely on him to get you in and out of surveillance targets without any unwanted interference. And last but far from least, Twister Four, Carter Pearls, expert marksman. He’ll be your sniper cover for lots of dangerous situations, so make friends with him, boys, your lives could depend on it.

          “Alright, take a break, take a piss, smoke if you like, get acquainted with each other. First names are OK here in the apartment, but all phone communication will be in code. I’ll see you here in the operations room in half an hour for a look at our target for this mission. After lunch, Colonel Daniels will get started familiarizing you with the wiretap recorders and surveillance equipment. You’ll have the rest of the day to get into your sleeping patterns, and watches will start at six hundred hours tomorrow morning. After that, one of you will always be at that window, and another will be sleeping. The other two will be acting as support or training with Colonel Daniels.

        “That is all, gentlemen. From this moment on, each of you is a Twister. Act like one.”

 

 

 

         Mirna paid the girl at the counter for her purchases and put everything into the shopping bag she had brought with her from the house. Just outside the door to the market was a pay phone. She stepped inside, put her groceries on the floor, and took a large coin purse from her handbag. Then she placed a call to Beirut. After shoving quarters into the box for over a minute, she waited as the connection was made, and then while the phone rang several times on the other end. When Ali answered she asked him to call her father to the phone, listened as the sound of his footsteps on the marble floor receded into silence. A few moments later she heard her father’s voice, speaking in Lebanese.

        “Mirna? Shall I call you back?”

        “Yes.”

        “The usual number?”

        “Yes.”

        There was a click as the connection was broken. Mirna pulled down the hook with her free hand, continuing to hold the receiver to her ear. Outside someone had stepped up to wait for the phone, and she waved him away. He made an exasperated gesture, waited for a moment, then hurried off. The phone rang once, and she let her hand off the hook.

        “Father?”

        “Yes. Are you well, daughter?”

        “Yes. I explained the situation to the others.”

        “And what did you decide to do?”

        She gave a short version of the conversation, omitting Botrass’ reactions, and outlined their proposed course of action.

        “I approve. What was Rimone’s opinion?”

        “He also approves. He said it is clear that I am your daughter.”

        She could hear her father chuckling on the other end of the line.

        “Tell him when the current situation is resolved, I will bring him to Beirut for a visit. I miss our games.”

        “I will tell him.”

        “Call me again in two days. I have an idea that will make things easier for you, but I must speak to Amar about it first.”

        “Alright.”

        “And how is my granddaughter?”

        “She says she is in love.”

        “Again?”

        “She is older now. I think this time it is more serious.”

        “Have you met the man?”

        “She says she will bring him for dinner this week.”

        “I will be anxious for your opinion.” There was a pause. “Is there anything else?”

        “No. I will call you in two days.”

        “I will wait for your call. I miss you.”

        “I miss you, too.”

        “Goodbye.”

        “Goodbye.”

        She hung up and left the phone booth. On her way up the hill to the house, she noticed that there were blinds on the front window of the apartment across the street, the one that had been vacant for over a month. She would be sure to mention it to Rimone.

 

 

 

        “Gentlemen, this is your target.” Yaro clicked the remote control for the slide projector and slapped the screen behind him with his wooden pointer. On it was a picture of the brownstone across the street, with the delivery truck parked in front, the “Falafel Dreams” sign plainly visible.

        “Two weeks ago, one of our Twister scout teams noticed some suspicious activity in this window.” He pointed to one of the windows on the second floor. “We’ve had the family that occupies the second floor of this building under watch for quite some time. They are clearly Arab-type individuals, operating an apparently innocent falafel catering service for the past few years, obviously a perfect cover for a dangerous sleeper cell. Conscientious surveillance, involving frequent drive-by filming, finally yielded this highly interesting still.” He clicked the remote again to show a close-up of the window. A white robed figure was partially visible, with his back turned to the camera, smoking a cigarette and holding a telephone receiver to his ear. “We naturally ordered increased surveillance, surveillance that came up empty, until three days ago.” He clicked the remote again. The angle had changed, now shooting from slightly above, showing the surface of a table near the window. “Gaining access to the roof of the building we presently occupy, one of our operatives got the picture you see here, which, after magnification and computer enhancement, revealed this.” A new picture appeared on the screen, slightly grainy, an obvious close-up of the table, where now a photograph could be made out. The slide projector cycled once more, and the photograph jumped to fill the screen, grainier than before, but with a clear image of the Golden Gate bridge.

        Yaro let this remain on the screen for a few more moments, and then shut down the projector.

        “At this point,” he said, snapping on the lights, “your team was notified and wiretaps were installed. Nothing of importance has been noted on the wiretap tapes as yet, but now, with your team on the job, surveillance will be twenty four – seven, and we have a much better chance of catching these bastards, if they are in fact up to something. These are our suspects.” He handed each of the men, who were seated again at their desks, an envelope with four pictures inside, of Mirna, Rimone, Botrass, and Ghassan. “Study these pictures carefully, men, memorize these faces. Put them up over your beds. In the terrorist watch business, these are your Playboy centerfolds. Get your gut instincts working. One day you’ll be able to sniff out a terrorist as easily as Frank, here, can spot a kleptomaniac in a department store.” He sat on the edge of the desk. “We are not sure of the identity of the figure in the bridge photo, but we think that he is not one of the family, or, if he is, a very special member. The rest never seem to appear in his part of the apartment, indicating that it has been somehow reserved for his use alone. Our previous surveillance shows no family members wearing this kind of traditional Arabic dress. Keep this in mind on your various watches. Pay special attention to this part of the apartment in your surveillance. Try to become familiar with the posture, walk, and general somatic attitude of the family, and, if this guy in the jalaba appears again, try to determine if, in fact, the family is harboring some more clandestine individual within their walls. My remark before about someone scratching his ass was not a joke. Even the most subtle behavior patterns can be important in this kind of work, so look sharp and be on your toes. As I told you all before, the last thing we want to do is trample on any honest American’s civil rights, whatever race, creed, or religion he, or she, is part of. We will need much more substantial evidence to back up our suspicions before anything more invasive will be attempted. It’s your job to get that evidence. Only then can we move to phase two of Twister protocol. Remember, in the terrorist watch business, morality is our middle name. Are there any questions?”

        There were no questions.