Rise of the Beast: A Novel (The Patmos Conspiracy Book 1) Page 11

  He was living in a great part of town and the happening spot to be for his age. In exchange, all he had to surrender was his privacy, dignity, and reasonable access to a shower and toilet.

  He did well with his accounting degree from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He couldn’t wait to finally leave the state. New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Houston were his preferred destinations. He got his top pick. The Manhattan office.

  But he couldn’t have graduated at a worse time. The economy was in the dumps. He got the first job easy enough. He had frat brothers who hadn’t landed anything for a year or two. But he had expected a lot more. His starting salary was sixty-four thousand dollars, which might have sounded like a lot in his hometown of Winchester, Tennessee, but didn’t go far in New York City. He spent two years doing sixty-hour workweeks to pay his dues, but all he had was a small stepping-stone promotion and a raise of ten percent. So he quit KPMG to get an MBA at New York University and improve his marketability. Two years later, the economy was still in recovery. Recovery? Right. The tailspin had hit bottom. So after a couple dozen job interviews—including one with the FBI, which would not be a lucrative a career, but still sounded pretty good to his southern fried patriotism, he hired back with KPMG, just one small stepping stone above square one, with another fifty grand in student loans.

  At least he was out of audit and in the consulting division. His next promotion would be a good one.

  Keep telling yourself that.

  He was tired of waiting.

  Time to go back to Knoxville? Give Nashville a try? Something’s gotta give.

  He keyed himself into the small Spartan lobby of his building, walked past the single elevator, and hoofed it up ten flights of stairs, two steps at a time. He wasn’t fat, but he had put on fifteen pounds in the past four years and wasn’t exactly thin anymore. He had to start getting more exercise. And start drinking less. Booze was a major reason some of his Sigma Nu brothers had taken longer to enter the workforce.

  He passed five doors, fumbled to get his key in the deadbolt, turned the lock, and entered the small common room of his apartment. He stopped in the threshold and stared. Two middle-aged men in dark blue suits were sitting on the couch, looking as if they owned the place. Maybe they did.

  “Patrick Wheeler?” one asked as he stood.

  “Who is asking?” Patrick asked back, not feeling as confident as he hoped he sounded.

  The two men were on their feet and both pulled leather holders from pockets and flipped back the front flaps to reveal shiny badges that said FBI just as clear as day.

  I filed my taxes on the simple form. I don’t have a car so there isn’t a drawer filled with tickets. I haven’t had sex with anyone underage because I haven’t had sex in months. I pay my student loans on time. I have health insurance. What does the FBI want with me?

  “I’m agent Greene and this agent Rasmussen,” the man closest to him said.

  “Okay.”

  An awkward pause.

  “Uh, what do you need from me?”

  “We need a couple hours of your time,” Greene said.

  “And you came by my apartment to tell me that?”

  “Yes, we did.”

  “I have a phone.”

  Neither man responded. There was another awkward pause. Wheeler pulled out his iPhone and hit the calendar icon.

  “When were you thinking? I’m at client offices all week.”

  “We need to meet with you right now,” Greene said.

  “Seriously? Now?”

  The two large men didn’t feel the need to answer.

  “This is crazy,” Wheeler said. “You can’t expect me to drop everything and just go with you.”

  “That’s exactly what we expect and that’s exactly what’s going to happen, Patrick,” Greene said. “Let’s stop wasting time. It is time to roll.”

  “It’s nine o’clock,” Wheeler protested. “I just got off work. I have an early start tomorrow.”

  “I apologize for the inconvenience, Patrick, but we need you now. I should have mentioned, you will be compensated for your time.”

  “Is this a job interview?” Wheeler asked. “I did put in an app with the FBI but never got a call back.”

  “I’m not authorized to tell you the exact nature of this meeting,” Greene said.

  “I can’t miss my morning meeting,” Wheeler stated with all the bravado he could muster. “This can’t go longer than two hours. Tops.”

  “It’ll take two hours if that’s all the time we need from you,” Greene said. “If it takes longer, that’s life.”

  “I just told you I can’t miss my morning meeting.”

  “You might have to,” Agent Greene said. “If that becomes necessary, we’ll make appropriate arrangements with your employer.”

  “They may not take kindly to that,” Wheeler said. “We’re behind schedule on a big project.”

  “Don’t worry about KPMG, Patrick,” Greene said. “They’re a big company and can handle your potential absence just fine.”

  True. But can I?

  What was going on?

  “Do I have time to grab a bite?”

  “We’ll have food brought in,” Greene said with ill-concealed impatience.

  “Do I need to bring anything?”

  “We have everything you need,” the agent answered. “It’s time to roll. Now.”

  Greene was giving an order, not a suggestion. Did he have a choice? Could the FBI do this? If this was a job interview, there were better ways to make a great first impression.

  He did another quick inventory of his boring existence. No fights. No money laundering or fixing books for KPMG clients. No political activity. Nothing. He wasn’t being arrested he didn’t think, which couldn’t always be assumed post-Patriot Act.

  Why in the world does the FBI need me? I wish I knew something from the corporate world that would rise to the level of an FBI investigation. Is this a job interview?

  “Can I see those badges again?” Wheeler asked, stalling for more time to think.

  The two men looked at each shrugged and held out their badges and identification again.

  Wheeler shrugged. How would he know if they were legitimate or not?

  “Let’s get this over with,” he said in surrender.

  He locked the deadbolt and followed the men toward the elevator.

  Greene slid in the backseat next to Wheeler. Rasmussen drove. Greene wasn’t impressed. The kid might be smart but he was definitely naïve, he thought. Neither description mattered. That’s not why the kid was needed. There was an old saying, it’s not what you know that matters most; it’s who you know. In this case, Wheeler had hit the mother lode with whom he knew. He probably didn’t even know it.

  Greene and Rasmussen weren’t actually in the FBI. Wheeler didn’t need to know that either.

  25

  Los Angeles, California

  ZORAIZ, DRESSED IN BLACK ATHLETIC garb from head to toe, stepped from the Navigator with his three companions. Some in his position would resent having to execute the task at hand. It was a job for younger men—men like Fahad at Wonder World— expendable men. But this was a particular mission he savored for himself. He would not miss it for all the fleeting pleasures of the world. If he fell in service to Allah, he would enter Eternity as a martyr. His director would be unhappy that he had to find someone to take his place to handle their West Coast operations—but he would ensure that holy duty was accomplished successfully. The other operations would not be jeopardized if he were dead. He had carefully trained and vetted his young lions and panthers for their assignments. They would not falter.

  He cut down a side street, his three lieutenants in tow, to the secluded location he had selected to observe the Islamic Center of West Los Angeles.

  His instructions were simple. Let Southern California know the face of true Islam. He had meticulously planned a week of events that could not be ignored. Wonder World was the climax a
nd would strike terror in the general population. What he was about to do would kindle the embers of fear into a blazing flame in the Muslim population— the barely-Muslim population, he snorted. So many men and women who presumptuously claimed the name Muslim—slave of God—had wandered from the faith. This act would announce that comfort and compromise were no longer acceptable. Turn to Allah in true devotion and obedience—or die.

  Imam Tashbeed Nasif, a professor in the sociology department at UCLA and a leading moderate voice for peace in the Muslim community—a kafir—a dog who would burn in the deepest pits of hell—a man who met with Christians and Jews as equals—had been invited to deliver a speech on bringing peace in a pluralistic culture.

  Dog! Whore! Enemy! Kafir! You are no true Muslim.

  The main meeting room held 300 seats and was expected to be filled with Muslims, Christians, Jews, godless atheists, and other enemies of Allah. How could Nasif even be called an Imam?

  A handsome movie star would be present to introduce the Imam. He was married to a political activist who claimed to be Muslim but was nothing more than a tool of the West, a follower of Satan.

  He nodded and the three others moved to their pre-assigned places. Timing was everything.

  The crowd outside the center was beginning to thin as the time for Nasif to speak ticked down. He would wait for one particular limo— the one carrying the handsome movie star and his beautiful wife— before he gave the signal to move.

  Each of the four men carried an Uzi that could discharge 600 rounds in a minute. He didn’t like to use anything made in Israel, but it was the best weapon available for the assault. The men carried enough magazines to discharge 9mm Parabellum ammo continuously for three minutes. No one would be left alive. If a few miraculously survived, that would be fine. They would be shattered witnesses of what happens to those who betray the Prophet.

  The gleaming black Escalade pulled up even with the door. Just a driver. No personal security—they trusted the rent-a-cop agency hired by the Islamic Center. Big mistake on the couple’s part. The men in ill-fitting blazers with shield-shaped patches sewn on the chest would pose no problem. One of the men, the supervisor for the evening, in fact, worked for Zoraiz. His job was to know where the other security men were and shoot them if they posed a threat to the assault.

  A couple of news stringers shot photos as the actor took his wife’s arm to escort her up the steps and into the building.

  Now was the time to wait for everyone to be seated.

  Zoraiz reached for a cigarette and reminded himself that no matter how anxious and excited he became, he couldn’t do anything to reveal his presence. He stuck a piece of gum in his mouth.

  After five minutes of shifting from foot to foot and chewing every last trace of flavor from the gum, he saw two flashes of light, the signal from his man inside the conference room. The people were seated. It was show time.

  “Move,” he hissed into the mouthpiece.

  He didn’t even look to see if his instructions were being followed. He and one of his men would go through the front door, the other two men through side doors. All were to be unlocked.

  Zoraiz began firing in the entrance hall, taking down stragglers who had to make a trip to the bathroom or finish a drink—what had the world come to with an open bar in a supposed center dedicated to Allah? He could hear shots and screams as he entered the back doors of the auditorium.

  Two rear exit doors and two side exit doors, each was blocked by an Uzi-wielding attacker. There was nowhere for the crush of people to run, even though the sheep being slaughtered tried vainly to escape, creating a riot of writhing and collapsing humanity. The four men calmly and methodically moved up and down the aisles, blasting bodies in striped motions to make sure no one escaped judgment.

  The actor, his wife, and the event organizers were already dead. Only Nasif stood alive on the stage. He stared with hatred at Zoraiz.

  “Kafir!” Zoraiz shouted at him.

  “Fool!” Nasif bellowed back. “You are so foolish you don’t even know what you have done. You bring shame on your faith. You kill your own people and friends of your people. Countless more will die because of your depraved anger. You dishonor the Prophet.”

  “All I do is for the Prophet. All you do is based on your own honor, your own comfort, your own twisting of the Koran.”

  Zoraiz was ready to say more, but a single shot exploded from behind him. A red, white, and gray crater erupted in the center of the Imam’s forehead. He stayed erect for another two heartbeats, and then crumpled, his head bouncing off the podium as he careened back on top of the handsome movie star.

  Zoraiz whirled to see which of his men robbed him of his thunderous honor. It was his man with the security company.

  “You must go now. Police are on the way. Go now!” shouted his inside man.

  Zoraiz’s muscles tensed. His face was a mask of rage. He lifted the Uzi and loosed a staccato barrage of bullets into the man, obliterating his features. Killing him was already a potentiality in order to sever connections to him. But when the man stole his glory and dared order him to move, it was inevitability. Zoraiz prayed that Allah would not look kindly on the man’s insubordination.

  Paradise is not for such as him.

  The three men looked at Zoraiz warily. He nodded and they moved to the back exit quickly.

  They were back on the street where the car was parked in three minutes, leaving the bloody, mangled carnage behind them. Sirens wailed as police responded, but they had pulled away from the curb of the scruffy suburban street before the first responder arrived.

  That was almost too easy, Zoraiz thought, his eyes gleaming with the last traces of the adrenaline rush.

  As Zoraiz pulled to a stop sign, he looked down quickly and hit send on a text that had already been composed: Job done. Allah be praised.

  Zoraiz drove through a couple of intersections and made two quick turns. He then pulled the Navigator to the curb of the side street he had turned on. He climbed out and dropped the cheap prepaid Nokia cell phone to the ground and used the butt of his Uzi to smash it into a thousand pieces. He kicked the pieces through the grill of the drainage opening to the sanitary sewer. He got back into the SUV and drove away.

  He dropped each of the men at his home in silence, thinking about Wonder World and other fireworks he had planned for the sprawling, godless City of Angels.

  He hoped his young protégé, Fahad, the Panther, was ready for his assignment.

  Zoraiz had big plans for Fahad.

  Chicago, Illinois

  ALAN JOHNSON WAS AT DINNER with his wife and kids in a crowded restaurant. Feeling the vibration, he glanced down at his phone, read the screen, and smiled. He apologized profusely for using the phone during family dinner and reminded his children that this was bad manners. He dabbed at the corner of his mouth with a white napkin and picked up his fork to finish the mouthwatering piece of carrot cake he ordered for dessert.

  If Zoraiz Tariq knew who he was really working for his head would explode. Johnson frowned.

  Do I know who I am working for?

  26

  Boston, Massachusetts

  WAITING HAD ALWAYS BEEN ONE of Dr. Rodger Patton’s main strengths. You don’t become a research scientist if you are impatient. His scientists were still still busy at work, but his job at the moment was to watch and learn from what was about to unfold.

  Patton decided to leave the office early—it was only a twelve-hour day—and return to his home on Beacon Hill, where he would go to the basement and release tension on his rowing machine while watching CNN, BBC, and Al Jazeera on the three TV monitors set up to kill the mind-numbing boredom of exercise.

  Dr. Rodger Patton, a Ph.D. in cellular and molecular biology from Harvard University, could barely contain his elevated heart rate.

  I must exercise.

  The first two major beta tests from his laboratory were underway. One was designed to test kill efficacy. The second was desi
gned to disable and distract. Both were designed to create conflict.

  He didn’t know details of the Patmos military initiatives, but they were designed for the same purposes. From the standpoint of an observer, he was curious if biological or traditional warfare would hold the key to achieving the Patmos goals. With what they hoped—and needed—to accomplish, he didn’t care. But still, he couldn’t help but cheer for the triumph of applied molecular science.

  Disruption of the food supply would be devastating, but would take longer to work. That’s what intrigued him so much about the flesh-eating plague led by Dr. Dolzhikov, which was being delivered in the enhanced form created by the work of Dr. Claire Stevens.

  The beauty of the Sana’a Ebola test was not the number of evil people it would kill—they were releasing only a whisper of Mariana—Claire Steven’s quaint name for the chimera was first scoffed at and then adopted for its charm. It was the number of moderate people it would kill that mattered, moderate being a relative concept in the Middle East. If you bombed a terrorist camp, the entire Islamic world would publically react with anger and calls for revenge. But the vast majority of Muslims would secretly be relieved that radicals were dead. Radicals were as dangerous to them as they were to the West. Of course, terrorists would be replaced by new recruits, but a more immediate danger would be eliminated.

  But kill men that minded their own business and caused little to no trouble and the outcry would be widespread and come straight from the heart. It would provoke true emotion and action. Even if the kill ratios in Sana’a were below expectations, he was certain the beta would be a success.

  Stevens’ enthusiasm for the immediate success of the virus was contagious—no pun intended—and despite misgivings about her petulant temperament, he hoped she was right.

  Patton switched off the lights in his office, locked the door, and punched in the security code across from the receptionist’s desk before exiting the suite. He took the elevator down to the garage level, mulling over the pluses and minuses of the brilliant and temperamental Claire Stevens.