Foreign Influence

The doorkeeper’s muscles seized up and Casey caught her as she fell forward. She was in the process of removing the woman’s burqa to bind and gag her when she heard Ericsson’s voice over her earpiece, “We’re in the hallway. All clear.”

Casey reached up and unlocked the door. Rodriguez and Cooper helped her secure the doorkeeper in one of the stalls as Ericsson continued to keep watch. Once they had her out of the way, Casey radioed Harvath that they were heading to the basement. Morning prayers would not last long, so they needed to move quickly.

With suppressed weapons at the ready beneath their burqas, they descended the narrow staircase. Casey took the lead, followed by Cooper, Rodriguez, and Ericsson.

On the ground floor they retrieved their shoes and proceeded to the end of the hallway where they found the door al-Fihri claimed led to the basement. Casey reached out and tried to open it, but it was locked.

She stood back and signaled Cooper, who stepped forward, checked the door for any sort of alarm, and then pulled out a lockpick gun. Within seconds, she had the dead bolt taken care of. Nodding at Casey, she stepped away from the door, replaced the lockpick tool beneath her burqa and readied her weapon.

Casey grabbed hold of the door handle and counted down quietly from three. When she said “Go” and opened the door, they followed her into the stairwell and down the stairs.

Their presence on the stairs was greeted with a string of sharp words spoken in Arabic. A young man, no more than twenty-two years old, with a Glock placed on the prayer mat in front of him, demanded to know what they were doing.

“Salam, salam,” peace, repeated Casey in the traditional Muslim greeting as she continued down the stairs toward him.

The man was nervous. The women didn’t belong there.

Had he not had a weapon sitting right in front of him, Casey would have transitioned to her Taser, but her primary duty was to protect her life and those of her teammates.

Don’t go for the gun, she begged him under her breath, but he did. It was a bad decision and the last one the young man would ever make.

Casey fired two suppressed rounds from beneath her burqa, both striking him in the face. It was a very difficult shot, especially having to aim down a set of stairs and firing from behind clothing.

The young man was still alive as they reached the last step, but barely. Pulling out her MP5, she popped him twice, just above the bridge of his nose, finishing the job.

“Contact,” she said over the radio. “Tango down.”

The man had collapsed on his prayer mat and Cooper and Ericsson used it to drag him underneath the stairs before the blood soaked through and stained the floor. Once they had him stashed they all removed their burqas. There was a distinct chemical odor in the air.

With Rodriguez covering the door at the top of the stairs, they got ready to clear the rest of the basement.

The fact that they had encountered an armed man told them two things. Not everyone had gone upstairs for morning prayers, and there was something down here someone felt very serious about protecting. Judging by the odor, whoever was down here wasn’t preparing cookies for the mosque bake sale.

The hallway ran the length of the building above with four doors along each side. The amplified voice of the imam radiated down through the ceiling and vibrated the dusty light fixtures above them.

Casey withdrew a special device with a long piece of fiber-optic cable from her pocket. She hit pay dirt with the very first door. Slipping the cable beneath it and raising the unit to her eye, she saw a makeshift lab, complete with long tables, jammed with glass jars, soldering guns, nylon bags of some sort, and stacks of discarded electronic equipment. She signaled for the team not to move. Beyond the tables, she could see at least six men, prostrated on prayer rugs.

Pulling the cable back out from under the door, she turned to her teammates and drew a quick diagram on the floor.

The room appeared to run the entire length of the building on its south side. It must have been subdivided into offices or separate storerooms at some point as it had four doors leading into it. Casey pla

Moving down the hallway, so she could get a good look at the men from the front, she positioned herself near the last door and fed the cable only partway beneath it.

She noticed that the voice of the imam above was even louder here and figured there must be speakers in this basement room, just as there had been in the women’s prayer hall.

Once again, she counted six men, all of whom had weapons with them on their prayer mats. At the very end, furthest from the door, was Rafiq Wadi. Gone was the beard he’d been wearing in the photo his brother Saud had showed them back at the plumbing warehouse. Like the five other men he was praying with, all were clean-shaven. That was a bad sign that this group had performed the Islamic ritual cleansing rites intended to speed their way into paradise. They appeared ready indeed to go operational.

Casey studied the men, trying to discern who was in charge, but it was impossible to figure out. Carefully, she withdrew the cable and backed away from the door.

The prayer service was almost over. She checked to make sure none of the doors were wired and then quickly cleared the other rooms. They were all being used for storage of one sort or another and one even appeared to be a bike room.

She searched for a fuse box or a circuit breaker, but couldn’t find one. They would have to come up with some other kind of distraction.

Based on the smell and the compounds known to have been used in the other attacks, Casey had no doubt these men were constructing organic peroxide explosives. This was going to be one of the trickiest assaults they had ever conducted. One wrong move and the entire building could be leveled; maybe even the entire block. Their job was made even more complicated by the fact that they needed to take as many of the men inside alive as possible.

Casey didn’t have time to formulate an elaborate plan. They also couldn’t risk using flash bangs for fear of setting off the bombs inside. They were going to have to go in hard and fast and hope that the element of surprise would give them enough of an edge.

She decided to pull Nikki off of covering the door at the top of the stairwell. Though this would leave their rear vulnerable, right now the men in that room posed a greater threat than anyone who might come down the stairs.

The room’s occupants were praying between the third and fourth doors and that’s where Casey decided to hit them. She would take door number four with Cooper, while Rodriguez and Ericsson took door number three. Cooper and Ericsson would be armed with their MP5s while she and Rodriguez, the fastest and most accurate shooters on the team, would be armed with their Tasers. The idea was to incapacitate all of the men if possible. If any of them were able to pick up their weapons, it was up to Cooper and Ericsson to take them out.

When both fire teams were positioned at their respective doors, Casey tightened her grip around the X3, took a breath, and then once again counted down from three.