THIRTY-SEVEN
Jack leaned in next to Dvora to look more closely at her monitor. It showed a map of America with little circled numbers and corresponding information points down the right side.
“You know, it feels to me like these attacks might be a smoke screen,” he said. “I suspect that there is some overriding objective, and all of this is meant to obscure that objective.”
“A smoke screen.” Ehud considered for a moment. “Many of those groups are competitors for money and resources. Terror attacks gain them status. Status gets them money, resources, and recruits. They are not going to cooperate with each other.”
Jack lifted an eyebrow. “They would if they didn’t know they were merely a diversion and if the whole thing was promoted to them as a competition of sorts—a chance to show off what they are capable of. A big game day of sorts.”
“Put to them by who?” Ehud asked.
Jack shrugged. “Take your pick. But only a state sponsor would have the weight and authority to be able to bring all these different Islamic terror groups together for a chitchat and convince them to attack at the same time. What if these groups thought they were taking part in an audition of sorts to see who should receive that state’s financial support?”
Ehud hooked a thumb behind his belt. “You’re connecting a lot of dots that we don’t see, at least not yet.”
“Maybe. But it worked to get José to try to blow himself up. He thought he was doing something great. I’m sure they didn’t tell him the truth that they were only using him as a diversion to accomplish something they wanted more—getting rid of Uziel. After all, because of Uziel, we took Wahib captive. I think someone might be doing the same kind of thing here—creating a diversion.”
“I’m listening,” Ehud said.
Jack gestured at the monitor. “These attacks were carried out by different groups. Right? It seems like the coordination and lethality of Islamic terror groups have reached an entirely new level.”
“It certainly has the US up in arms,” Dvora said.
“But could it be a diversion, like José was?”
“All right,” Ehud said, “I like the way you always think outside the box, but a diversion for what?”
Jack thought a moment. “Can you pull up any photos from the American cameras at the border crossings where the attacks happened?”
“Why the border crossings?” Dvora asked. “What about the rest of the attacks? Do you want them as well?”
“For now I just want to see the border-crossing attacks.” Jack gave them both a meaningful look. “José was simpleminded. I think he became more useful to them as a diversion, but when he walked away to do their bidding, he walked away with a bit of plutonium stuck in his shoe. Where would they want to go with plutonium?”
Ehud and Dvora shared a look.
Jack gestured to the screen. “Let me see the photos you have from the border attacks.”
“There’s surveillance photos and video from the Canadian-US border attack,” Dvora said. “The terrorists’ timing was off. They started before the cyber attack brought down all the systems. That means the cameras were still in operation during the attack, so we have some good visuals.”
First, Dvora clicked through dozens of facial-recognition photos of people in cars waiting in line. She stopped at a young couple in a pickup. The woman had a black scarf on her head.
“This is the couple that carried out the attack. The facial-recognition software didn’t hit on them, so they weren’t on a watch list. Nothing about them triggered alarms.”
“A lot of homegrown terrorists don’t show up on any watch list,” Ehud said. “They only become known to authorities after they kill people. That’s why the people you find, like Uziel, are so useful.”
Next Dvora showed Jack a video overlooking the lanes of traffic, with the man and woman’s truck waiting in line a few vehicles back from one of the booths. Suddenly, the man and woman both sprang out of the truck with AK-47s and started spraying bullets at the border agents. The attacking couple looked to have no intention of trying to get away. They didn’t fire from cover. They were there to the death. Jack could see several agents go down and smoke from gunfire off-camera being returned.
They both screamed “Allahu Akbar” as they killed surprised people. Some of the people in cars leaped out and tried to run, only to be cut down. Some people tried to hide in their cars, only to have the couple spray their vehicle with a deadly hail of bullets, killing them where they hid.
They fired their weapons in sequence, alternately switching full magazines for empties while the other fired. That indicated practice and planning. It also kept up constant fire, with lethal rounds going everywhere to make it more difficult to return fire. They stood in the open on either side of the truck, shooting at officers in the booths as well as through the windows of a building off to the side. Armor-piercing rounds went right through the bulletproof glass, vehicles, and vests.
A well-placed shot to the head abruptly took out the man. The woman was wounded in the leg and left arm but kept firing her weapon until she was killed by a bullet through her throat. When she went down, a bomb in the truck went off and took out the camera.
“They weren’t refugees or illegal aliens who had slipped into Canada to carry out an attack,” Dvora said. “They were both identified as children of Syrian parents, both born and radicalized in Canada. They left a lot of online rants. Chatter from American authorities indicates they believe that the woman convinced the man to devote himself to jihad, along with her.”
“What we’re looking for wouldn’t be homegrown terror,” Jack said. “Show me what you have from the Oeste Mesa border crossing with Mexico.”
Dvora pulled up files, then clicked on one of them. It was a video from a surveillance camera that showed a normal day at the border checkpoint. Vendors could be seen in the distance walking between trucks, hawking their wares.
“As you can see, everything looks routine,” Ehud pointed out to Jack.
Dvora nodded. “All the video is from before the cyber attack shut everything down. Everything went dead some time before the attack began, so there isn’t any video showing where the attack came from or how it unfolded.”
She showed him a series of photos of the aftermath. It looked like a war zone in Mosul. Pieces of truck frames, heavy parts like axles and engines lay scattered. The checkpoint facility was in ruins and bodies lay strewn everywhere. Rebar stuck up from broken concrete barriers. All the skeletal remains of the trucks were blackened from the intense fires.
“It was a horrific attack,” Ehud said in a tone of voice that sounded as if it were in reverence for all the dead.
Jack had seen carnage plenty of times. It didn’t tell him anything. “Do you have any of the facial-recognition photos, like the ones at the Canadian border?”
“Sure. But those cameras went down a while before the attack just like all the rest of their equipment, so they don’t show anyone the Americans suspect of being involved. They believe the attack came from people waiting in trucks farther back, before they could be captured on the cameras.”
Dvora started opening files of one face after another of men sitting in their trucks, waiting in line. Nothing Jack saw looked out of the ordinary. It struck him that many of the faces he was seeing of people waiting in line would die that day.
After a few minutes, though, something caught his eye.
“Stop!” He pointed. “Right there.”
Dvora halted on a photo of a driver sitting in his truck. It was a photo similar to all the others taken by cameras at every lane at the border crossing, the same way every truck then had to go through X-ray machines and neutron scanners.
The photo showed a driver who looked Mexican. He was yawning so that you could see that he had a gold molar.
Jack tapped the screen. “There. Blow that up.”
Off to the side of the truck that was the subject of the photo, just barely in frame, was a face in the background. It was a man on the passenger side of the truck behind.
He was sticking his head out the window to try to see what was going on ahead of the truck he was in.
Dvora clicked a key several times, enlarging and centering the face on her screen.
“Shit.”
Ehud leaned in. “What is it?”
Jack pointed at the blocky face of a man with short black hair and beard. “Him. I recognize the trim of his beard above his jawline. It’s not quite cut square. I didn’t see his face at the time, but I’m almost positive that’s the guy who killed Uziel a few weeks back.”
“I wish we had a name,” Dvora said with a sigh.
“We do,” Jack told her. “Cassiel Aykhan Corekan.”
Dvora looked back over her shoulder. “You know who he is?”
Jack straightened as he ran his fingers back through his hair. “Cassiel Aykhan Corekan is one of the super-predators I’ve been trying to find for years. He’s a proficient killer. Like other men I track, he’s a serial killer. Killers like that are wolves. They don’t like being seen by sheepdogs, so he also hunts down and kills people like Uziel—people who have the ability to recognize killers for who they are.
“That rare ability to recognize killers is genetic and usually runs in families, so once Cassiel recognizes one of these people for their ability he will often slaughter their entire family. He has murdered people in several family lines that I’m aware of. I’m sure there must be others.”
“Well, it appears he has taken up a new interest,” Dvora said. “He must be working with this terrorist group that wanted Uziel dead, and who also attacked the Oeste Mesa border crossing.”
“A man named Cassiel a terrorist?” Ehud made a face. “Cassiel is an old Hebrew name. It seems unlikely that Islamic terrorists would trust a man with a Hebrew name.”
“Old Hebrew is its primary origin,” Jack said. “But the name has other meanings, especially in certain countries.”
“Like where?” Dvora asked.
“Like Azerbaijan, where he was born. Azerbaijan is a mix of cultures, but they are a people for whom names hold great meaning. Children are not named because the parents like the sound of a name. Names are given because they are meant to impart a certain nature upon a person. Bravery, health, strength, tenderness, beauty. Babies are expected to grow into their name.”
“So … what do you think is the meaning of his name, if it is not a Hebrew name?” Dvora asked.
“A few old texts sometimes describe ‘Cassiel’ as the angel of tears. He is sometimes regarded as the ruler of the moon.”
“Well,” Ehud said, “he certainly has brought tears to many people.”
Dvora didn’t look convinced. “If it’s typically an old Hebrew name, what makes you think the obscure, alternate meaning ‘ruler of the moon’ applies in this case?”
“Because of his middle name, Aykhan,” Jack said. “ ‘Aykhan’ means ‘king of the moon.’ I think his parents used Aykhan for his middle name to indicate the intended meaning of ‘Cassiel.’ ”
“Okay, so let’s say we believe all that,” Dvora said. “What do you think this business about ruler of the moon means? What did his parents mean him to grow into?”
“I wish I knew.” Jack pulled over an empty chair. “Here, let me use your console so I can get into my files and see what I have on him.”
Jack had a number of super-predators he was trying to locate. He gathered intelligence on them whenever possible and added it to their file. Eliminating any of these killers would save countless lives. But, by their very nature they were difficult to track, and each case was time consuming.
So, he did his best to instead find people with the kind of vision those predators hunted. Sometimes he could help them stay alive. Kate had been like that. Sometimes, though, even when he did his best, he couldn’t help them. Some people didn’t want to face the truth of what would be coming for them.
“Wait—” Dvora said as she started typing. “Let me send the name to some of the other stations, first. The more people looking for information, the more we’ll be able to dig up.”
Ehud snapped his fingers to get the attention of nearby operators. “Dvora is sending you a name. Find out everything you can about this man. We believe he was involved in the terror attacks in America.”
People at nearby monitors nodded as they looked at the name before beginning searches.
“He was born in Azerbaijan,” a man to the right said.
They already knew that, but Jack let the operators search as they would, rather than try to direct them.
“Interpol suspects him in murders in several countries,” another operator said. “He has been questioned on several occasions by authorities in those countries, but there was never enough evidence to charge him in connection with any of the murders.”
Again, Jack was aware of that. He had a few photos of the man from those interviews, and it was clear it was the same man he was staring at on the monitor. After Dvora finished, he typed in his credentials and opened his cloud account.
“He is believed to have killed several members of the Al-Saleem family in Jordan,” a woman two stations over to the left said, “and—get this—eleven members of the Maarouf family in Egypt.”
“The Italian authorities believe he murdered several members of the Constantine family,” another operator said.
Jack paused in his search through files. He looked up. “Constantine … That name rings a bell for some reason.”
He went back to his own search as other agents called out a few names of victims associated with Cassiel.
“Here it is,” Jack murmured to himself as he sat back, staring at the screen. “There was an older couple in New York State who were shot execution style. Twenty-two-caliber bullet in the backs of their heads. My cross-reference tools had pulled up the name of that murdered couple because they had the same last name as the family in Italy that was thought to have been murdered by Cassiel. Last I checked, the police in New York had no clues or leads. The murders are unsolved. That’s why you don’t have a link to them for Cassiel.”
But Jack had a photo in his physical files of Cassiel that the Italian authorities had taken when they questioned him before letting him go. It was a real photo printed on photo paper from an actual negative. Those were like gold for Jack’s particular calling.
“Another one of those troubling coincidences?” Dvora asked. “Cassiel murdered Constantine family members in Italy, and a couple by the same name was murdered in New York State?”
“It’s more than a coincidence,” Jack said, “it’s a connection.”
Ehud rubbed his chin as he frowned off in thought. “But why would this serial killer, Cassiel, be right there as a terrorist attack is about to take place?”
“Beats me. Find out what you can about the Constantine couple in New York State,” Jack said to Dvora as he rolled back out of the way to give her room to get at her monitor again.
“Cassiel is a hunter,” Jack said, “a wolf. He likes to go after families to eliminate anyone with the ability to recognize killers. See if there are any more Constantine family members of the murdered couple in New York.”