6
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
For two days, Ellis Shafer sulked.
He and Wells had been through the wars together. Okay, Wells had been through the wars. Shafer had been through headquarters, the occasional trip to Tokyo or Paris notwithstanding. Still, he’d risked prison for Wells, saved Wells’s life more than once.
How had the man paid him back? By falling for the first bauble Duto threw his way. Julie Tarnes. Even more than most guys, Wells was a sucker for pretty women. The normal explanations didn’t hold. Wells wasn’t insecure, and he was plenty handsome, one of those lucky men who’d gotten better-looking past forty. No, Shafer blamed another part of Wells’s personality. Wells might not believe he could make much difference, but he couldn’t stop trying. He was a romantic, though he’d never describe himself that way.
Maybe seeing himself as a knight-errant, a modern Don Quixote, was the only way Wells could survive his past. But that chivalry colored the way he reacted to women. They liked him, and he liked them. Especially the good-looking ones. Like Julie Tarnes.
Duto was nothing if not an acute observer of human nature. He’d known what he was doing when he put Wells with Tarnes. And Wells had plenty of excuses to dump Shafer. The agency was sick of Shafer. Shafer was years past mandatory retirement age. He hung on because his hunches were right more often than they should have been. But no one did him any favors. If Wells needed quick help in the field, Shafer wasn’t his best bet.
But the obstacles weren’t new. And they had never stopped Wells from working with Shafer before. Until now. Wells had pretended to agonize over Duto’s offer. In truth, he’d dropped Shafer fast. Especially once he met Tarnes.
Worst of all, Duto knew Wells’s disloyalty would eat at Shafer, and Duto was just nasty enough to get a charge from tearing up their friendship.
For forty-eight hours, Shafer stewed in silence in his office, skimming the reports coming out of Dallas. No one asked his opinion on the investigation. He wondered if he should resign.
But on the third day, Shafer’s fever broke. He woke up angry. With himself. For letting Duto manipulate him and try to push him out. For his absurd sentimentality. He wasn’t quitting. Not now, not ever. Forget Julie Tarnes. And Wells, too. Time to focus on Dallas.
That day, the next, and the next, Shafer stayed at Langley past midnight. Fast as he read, he couldn’t keep up with everything the FBI and the intelligence community produced. Forensic reports, intercepts, gossip—thousands of pages already, hundreds more every hour. Still, Shafer did his best. He focused especially on the FBI 302s, the summaries of witness interviews from the Bureau’s agents.
But the more he read, the more puzzled he became.
The police had killed three jihadis inside the arena. The fourth man had driven the attackers’ car. He hadn’t gone inside. Video showed him reaching into the trunk when the bomb inside detonated. No one knew why. Maybe the timer had failed. Maybe he’d wanted to have the glory of causing the explosion.
The blast had obliterated his body completely, but the cameras had caught the car’s license plates. It was a Hyundai registered to Ahmed Shakir, a cousin of one of the other jihadis. Shakir’s face matched the video surveillance of the fourth man, and no one had seen Shakir since the attacks. Thus—as Duto had told Wells days before—the investigators assumed Shakir was the fourth attacker, most likely the leader.
The theory was plausible. But it raised even more questions, and no one had answered them.
El-Masry and the other attackers had left online traces of anti-American views. The FBI had them in what it called its T4 database, the broadest of its terror lists. The database included anyone who had ever followed a known Islamic State account on Twitter and made statements supporting terrorism. The FBI didn’t have enough agents to track all sixty-two thousand people on it. The Bureau used it as an early warning system. If local police arrested someone on it for a crime, even one unrelated to terrorism, the database was supposed to alert the FBI. That way agents could ask the local cops about the arrest and interview the suspect, if they chose. But el-Masry and the others hadn’t ever been arrested, so the FBI had never spoken to them.
Further, as broad as that watchlist was, Shakir didn’t appear on it. He’d been a cleanskin, agency jargon for an operative who’d offered no hints of his terrorist sentiments before he attacked.
To unravel the mystery, the Bureau had sent eighty of its best counterterror agents to Dallas. They’d paired with a hundred ten Dallas police detectives and officers. The group had torn apart Shakir’s house and car, scoured his phone records, credit cards, bank account. The NSA had cracked his only known email account, though it hadn’t officially shared that information with the FBI to preserve the Bureau’s ability to make criminal cases against other conspirators, if any were found. Investigators had interviewed Shakir’s neighbors and friends. His high school classmates. The mechanic who serviced his car. The pet store owner who sold him cat food.
Within hours of identifying him, they learned of his cocaine dealing. Within days, they convinced a couple of his buyers to talk. The Drug Enforcement Administration was trying to trace his upstream connections, so far without success.
Yet the investigators still had no idea who or what had driven Shakir to attack. If he had ever expressed anti-American or pro-terror views, no one had found them. Not online, and not in real life. The NSA had found no evidence that he had talked or emailed with anyone inside the Islamic State, much less been an active jihadi taking orders. He’d never tried to go to Syria or Iraq. He didn’t even have a passport. Nor did he seem particularly religious. Unlike the other three attackers, he had never belonged to a mosque.
As far as the investigators could tell, Shakir had been assimilated into American society, a small-time drug dealer with a Facebook account and a cat. Until a few months before the attacks, when he cut off his friends and clients while spending more time with his cousin. That investigators found that decision suspicious. Shafer agreed. It was really the only suspicious move Shakir had made. But the investigators couldn’t find evidence that he’d met any jihadi recruiters or made any other preparations for the attack. His electricity and credit card bills and phone records showed he still lived in his house in East Dallas. He vanished in plain sight.
Until he, his cousin, and two of their buddies went to a basketball game and killed three hundred people.
The Bureau had investigated the other attackers thoroughly, too, of course. Agents had talked to the imam and congregants at the South Dallas mosque where they prayed, as well as their families and neighbors. But they interested Shafer less. They fit a more standard jihadi profile. They’d expressed anti-American views for years. They belonged to a conservative mosque. They were poorly educated foot soldiers. Throwaways.
Shakir held the key.
Jihadis had “self-radicalized” and come out of nowhere before. But never on this scale. Further, the deadliness of the attack—and the fact the jihadis had used C-4—suggested that Shakir and the killers had received substantial training. Terrorists normally made bombs from TATP, triacetone triperoxide, an explosive any college chemistry student could make in a kitchen. But TATP’s volatility made it as dangerous to bombmakers as to their targets. It had a nasty habit of blowing up on its own. C-4 was far more stable, the reason the American military used it. But buying or stealing C-4 was nearly impossible. Making it required expensive equipment.
Where exactly had Shakir gotten hundreds of pounds of it?
The FBI had concluded the four attackers had acted on the orders and with the help of an as-yet-undiscovered Islamic State cell inside the United States. Which raised the most uncomfortable question of all: Were other attacks in the works?
His murky status at the agency notwithstanding, Shafer had every classified clearance the government offered. Now he wanted to see Ahmed Shakir’s last moments for himself. Shafer didn’t even have to leave his office to watch the videos. The FBI had uploaded them to servers at its headquarters. Fiber-optic cables went to Langley, Fort Meade, the White House, and the Pentagon, a private Internet solely for classified traffic.
Of course, the Bureau wouldn’t have been the Bureau if it hadn’t added fifty hours of video from every conceivable angle. Quantity over quality. But Shafer eventually found what he was looking for, cuts of Shakir’s Hyundai turning off the highway . . . making its way through the game-night traffic . . . Parking close to the arena . . . el-Masry and the other two jihadis getting out the car . . . Shakir following a few seconds later . . . The other three grabbing assault rifles from the trunk . . . starting to shoot, muzzle flashes clearly visible . . . moving quickly away from the car before it blew . . . A silent horror movie that turned Shafer’s stomach.
Unfortunately, the video coverage wasn’t great. The cameras outside the arena focused on the pedestrian plaza, not the roads. More than a dozen cameras had caught the shooters as they approached the turnstiles. But only three showed the car itself. Only one had a direct angle on Shakir as he went to the trunk. None offered a view of Shakir’s hands inside the trunk. The entire sequence lasted barely forty seconds, start to finish. Still, the video mesmerized. Shakir stepped out . . . looked around . . . went to the trunk . . . reached down . . .
And the screen went white.
Shafer watched it a dozen times. And a dozen more.
With every viewing, he became more puzzled. The video was black-and-white, and the camera had been about fifty yards away, so the resolution wasn’t great. Shafer couldn’t make out Shakir’s facial expressions clearly, much less read his lips. But he could see which direction Shakir was looking. As Shakir stepped out of the car, he didn’t go directly to the trunk. In fact, he took two steps the other way. Then he stopped, looked around. Not just around. Up. Like he was looking for a plane. Or a helicopter.
Only after el-Masry yelled to Shakir did he move to the trunk. The other men quickly reached inside, pulled out the AKs. Not Shakir. He froze again. As the shooting started, he shivered. Jumped, really. The others moved and fired. Shakir stayed in place, almost crouching, looking side to side. He still seemed to be waiting for someone. After another five seconds, he tilted his head as if he’d heard something. Finally, he came out of his reverie. He turned back to the trunk and reached inside.
In their report on Shakir, the FBI’s profilers had noted his odd behavior. They’d dismissed it as the last-second panic of a suicide bomber. A CIA/Mossad analysis of suicide attacks had found that one in three bombers failed to pull the trigger. Most analysts believed the percentage would have been higher if not for bomb belts that were remotely detonated and thus blew even if the attackers changed their minds. After a brief hesitation, SHAKIR detonated the bomb, the profilers wrote.
But when Shafer watched the video cold, pretending he didn’t know Shakir was involved in the attack, reacting only to what he saw, the scene played out differently. Shakir seemed scared, yes. But he also looked surprised at least three times. First when he stepped out of the car and didn’t see whatever he was expecting. Then when his cousin started to shoot. Finally, just before he reached into the trunk.
Why the surprise? He’d surely known what was about to happen.
Unless he hadn’t. Unless one of the other three had tricked Shakir into driving them over. But how would they have explained the AKs or the bomb in the trunk? Or had they fooled him into loaning them the car while they loaded it up? Shafer couldn’t find an answer that made sense. He knew the FBI didn’t care much about Shakir’s last seconds. It was focused on tracking his contacts, building cases against anyone who might have known about the attacks.
But Shafer found himself desperate to understand Shakir’s psychology. Maybe he’d read too many Agatha Christie mysteries growing up. He found himself imagining Hercule Poirot, the little Belgian twirling his mustache . . . My friends, back to the mind of the killer. For it is there we find the answer. Yes, there.
Shafer returned to the interviews of Shakir’s friends and family. Small-time coke dealing was lonely work. Lots of fake friends, few real ones. His parents had died years before. He didn’t work in an office, so he didn’t have coworkers to check up on him.
As a result, his vanishing produced little reaction. His clients found new dealers. The employees at the bars where he dealt claimed they’d hardly noticed. A waitress at a fine-sounding place called the Dirt Hole told agents she assumed Shakir had been arrested.
Of course, considering what Shakir had done, people might be playing down their relationships with him. But for the most part, they talked to the FBI willingly, and agents reported they were cooperative.
Then Shafer saw a new 302, one that had landed only a few hours before.
JEANELLE PITTS, date of birth September 9, 1995, was interviewed at DENNY’S, 4400 NORTH CENTRAL EXPRESSWAY, DALLAS. After being advised of the identity of the interviewing agent and the purpose of the investigation, PITTS was asked why her name repeatedly appeared in AHMED SHAKIR’s mobile phone records. She stated the following:
She dated SHAKIR between mid-June and October of the previous summer. The relationship was sexual but not exclusive—
Oh, those relationship experts at the FBI. Shafer read on. Pitts met Shakir at a bar in June. They had sex that night. Over the next four months, they saw each other a handful of times, always at her apartment. She believed he dated other women but had never asked him. She knew he dealt cocaine but claimed she had never used it with him or seen him use it. He had never spoken about Islam to her, never seemed in any way religious or expressed any political views at all.
Then the surprise:
PITTS stated that in October, SHAKIR told her they would need to stop dating for an indefinite period. SHAKIR stated he had gotten in “law trouble” and would need to stop dealing drugs for a while but that everything would work out. SHAKIR said she should not contact him but that he would contact her. When PITTS asked SHAKIR what he meant by “law trouble,” he declined to answer, and later asked her to “forget it.”
PITTS stated she believed SHAKIR meant he had been arrested when he referred to “law trouble.” She expressed disbelief when she was informed that SHAKIR had not been arrested in the previous five years. She said SHAKIR might have invented the story as a way to break off their relationship but that she did not believe so. She and SHAKIR had always agreed either of them could end the relationship at any time.
PITTS stated that she had not seen SHAKIR again. She did not know his exact address, and, in any case, preferred to respect his wishes—
Again Shafer had to smile. He’d hand in his resignation this afternoon if Pitts had used the phrase respect his wishes. The rest of the interview offered nothing of note. Pitts had not seen Shakir again. She was shocked when the police said he had been one of the attackers. If she remembered anything else, she would call the agents, she said.
The 302 concluded with a somewhat unusual note. Following the interview, the agents had rechecked arrest records in Dallas and nationally. They found no arrest reports for Shakir. The Bureau pulled Shakir’s fingerprints and DNA from his home. It would have found him in the national arrest database even if he’d used an alias.
PITTS appeared willing to aid the investigation; it seems likely that SHAKIR lied to her in order to end the relationship.
Another plausible theory. The FBI had interviewed more than a hundred people who knew Shakir. Pitts was the first to mention an arrest. She was surely wrong.
Unless . . .
Shafer pulled up the report from the waitress at the Dirt Hole. Lauren Hobart. She said she assumed Shakir had been arrested. The 302 report didn’t indicate if the agents who interviewed her had followed up. Probably not. They knew Shakir dealt, and they knew Hobart knew. They’d figure she had mentioned an arrest as the best explanation for his disappearance. Sooner or later, drug dealers got busted and went to jail.
But what if Hobart had a specific reason to believe Shakir had been arrested? What if she’d seen something at the Dirt Hole that made her think he’d been targeted?
Shafer considered calling the agents, asking if they had pursued that thread. But they wouldn’t talk to him without an okay from someone senior at FBI headquarters. Talking to Hobart and Pitts face-to-face would be faster and easier.
Unfortunately, the last Washington-to-Dallas flight of the day took off in less than ninety minutes. Between D.C. rush hour traffic and the security lines, Shafer had no chance of making it. So be it. He could fly out in the morning. Knocking on doors at midnight was a mistake, anyway. Better to wait.
He booked a flight and headed home to tell his wife, pleased with his progress. Wells wasn’t the only one who could handle the field. Shafer didn’t need Julie Tarnes to run interference for him either. So while Wells sunned himself in Bogotá . . .