Fueling the Rage Page 17

  Bryan was always a difficult child, but no one had expected this near perfect family to face the trials that he had brought them. When he was twelve years old, he sampled a drug called speed or methamphetamine and he was truly happy for the first time in his life. With meth, happiness comes at a very high cost. No matter how hard his parents tried, they could not control him. His mother started to notice little things missing from her home.

  She was not a worldly woman, but she had a prize pearl necklace that was worth a thousand dollars. When it went missing, she put the necessary facts together to accuse Bryan. With a Bible in her hand, she entered his room and confronted her thirteen-year-old son.

  She was a small woman. The confrontation escalated and she slapped his cheek. Bryan was not able to control himself and attacked her. As she lay unconscious on his bedroom floor, he emptied the family savings box of six hundred and fifty nine dollars, took her car and drove away. He was stopped by a state trooper for speeding on Interstate 70, about one hundred miles west of Topeka near Salina, Kansas. Bryan knew that under the front seat of his mother’s car was a loaded pistol. He thought that if he only could get passed this trooper, he would be free to go to California and start a new life.

  The trooper had clocked the car at 78 miles per hour. He ran the plate. The well-known preacher, Reverend Washington, owned it. He decided to give him a warning. Bryan had lowered the window and waited with the pistol in his right hand. The trooper approached the driver’s window and Bryan fired a single 38 slug into his chest. He drove off with warm splattered blood on the door of the car. The bullet penetrated the trooper’s right lung and exited his back. The impact knocked him to the ground, but he was able to push his radio alarm before losing consciousness.

  Salina, Kansas does not like criminals that shoot law enforcement officers. The trooper recovered, but faced a long and difficult rehabilitation. At a roadblock in Edson, Kansas thirteen-year-old Bryan Washington was arrested for attempted murder. The community and his church supported Reverend Washington and his family, but were slow to forgive Bryan for beating of the preacher’s wife. A jury convicted Bryan as a juvenile and the judge sentenced him to a juvenile facility in Topeka until the age of eighteen.

  On his sixteenth birthday, Bryan received a weekend pass. His family considered it an opportunity for reconciliation, but Bryan thought of it as a way to get some speed. He took his father’s billfold with one hundred twenty five dollars in it, stole his car and bought speed. When he ran out of drugs he attempted the strong-arm robbery of a convenience store, but the store manager held him at gunpoint until the police arrived. They arrested him and he was tried and convicted, this time as an adult. He received a thirty-five year prison sentence. After the second crime and his long sentence, the Washington family stepped away from any relationship with him. On certain occasions, like funerals and Sunday afternoon family dinners, his parents thought about him, but as time passed, the occasions became farther apart.

  Bryan was a lot like the Prince. He was in some ways very clever, but nothing inside him guided his actions. He was likeable, but had no real friends. In a strange way, he was happy in his small cell. He blamed his parents for his problems. At first, he kept track of his remaining prison time and even looked forward to his first parole hearing. The state trooper that he had shot attended the hearing and Bryan realized that the system would find a way to keep him in a cell. He would do his thirty-five years, and then kill his parents and the state trooper. His mind locked on the process of killing them, and it became a common dream. He would go home, kill his parents, and wait beside their bodies until the state trooper came to arrest him. This time he would shoot him in the head and the heart.

  For some reason this dream made him calm and the guards thought of him as non-violent. After a few years, his good behavior earned him a job in the prison library. He liked the job because he could follow instructions without much contact from the prison staff. They gave him a list of books to deliver to the inmates. It took him about one hour to pull the books, one hour to deliver them and about two hours to file the returning books. That would give him four hours to sit at his table in the library and perfect his dream.

  Six other inmates worked in the library and they constantly interrupted his dream. To reduce these interferences, he read textbooks to look busy. One day he read a book on automotive bodywork. Maybe it was the color photos, but he liked the book and started studying it. He then memorized seventeen automotive repair books, and the library administrator reported this interest to the warden. Bryan received a transfer to motor pool.

  Bryan was 27 years old when he heard Malcolm’s cleric for the first time. The lecture on Islam did not draw him to the faith, but the secret of Jihad mesmerized him. In many ways, his dream was similar to the cleric’s dream. Raised as a Christian, his faith was almost imperceptible, but nonetheless it was there. He pretended to be a good candidate for Islam, because it might allow him to live his dream. If Malcolm really knew Bryan, he would not consider him for the position of soldier. The drug addict and potential family killer broke Malcolm’s rules, but he concealed his unacceptable traits and admitted attacking the state trooper. He could fix cars and had a scheduled parole hearing. Possible availability made him desirable and his ability to keep a secret put him to the head of the line.

  The trooper was still intensely opposed Bryan’s parole, but this time things were different. The Muslim community, a prison chaplain, and the warden supported his release. The supervisor of the motor pool praised for his work and the librarian testified on his dependability. An assistant warden disclosed his perfect five-year record. Bryan remained calm as the trooper tried to explain the brutality of his crime. The cleric countered with his youth and added his conversion experience. A Muslim community organizer demanded justice for the man of peace. The parole board agreed that he could be a productive citizen of Kansas. The prison system dressed him in a cheap suit and paid his three hundred eighty nine dollars in back wages. Bryan moved to the mosque and began working eight hours a day at Kansas Truck.

  A cleric revealed membership requirements to one of the earliest recruits. He accepted their terms to become a soldier, and killed and beheaded a homeless man. The clerics had begun the cycle, but needed to build separation between the killings and the mosque. They realized that headless bodies in Topeka would quickly become a problem, so they purchased a funeral home and crematorium.

  A cleric gave a private lecture to the soldier, “Instruct Bryan on the requirements to become a soldier. If he hesitates kill him, and then invite the most senior recruit with the same terms. In addition, clean up after the killing. Take the body and the head to our crematorium and dispose of the remains. There must be no discussion of the requirements at any other time. Report your success to me.”

  Bryan received his invitation and accepted. He decided to kill a white prostitute. For two nights, he watched a short, plump blond accept rides in customers’ cars. The next night he stole a car, stopped and made her an offer. She entered his trap, and Bryan drove a few blocks to a dark alley. He had sharpened a machete for the task, and with a single backhand swing almost decapitated her. She slumped forward, and he finished the job. He used his cell phone to call the first soldier, “I completed my requirement.”

  “Pick me up at the mosque.”

  They drove to the crematorium, placed her in a cardboard container and in the dead of night converted her into a small pile of ashes. The first soldier told Bryan, “Your next task is to invite the next recruit. Remember if he hesitates, kill him, and invite the next recruit.” He handed Bryan a 38-caliber revolver. “Pass it on. Take this car to a bad area and burn it. We will never talk of this event!” The first soldier walked one mile back to the mosque and knocked on the door of the cleric.

  The cleric opened his door, but prevented him from talking in the hallway, “Meet me in my office in twenty minutes.” He quickly dressed, and went to his office. He withdrew a silenced 32-caliber r
evolver from a drawer and waited for the first soldier.

  He soon entered the office and shut the door behind him. “Bryan is now a soldier.”

  “Does he know that I invited you?”

  “No, I followed your instructions completely.”

  The cleric pointed and fired the pistol at his heart, “My faithful soldier we will meet in paradise, and I will ask for your forgiveness.” The soldier fell backwards to the floor, and his lungs still gasped for air. The cleric walked around his desk, placed the end of the barrel between the soldier’s eyes, fired again, removed a body bag from his closet, and reverently packed the body. He made a trip to the crematorium, and watched the body disappear into the flames. He said aloud, “I have cut the ties to the killing, Allah Akbar!”

  The Topeka clerics watched Bryan’s leadership ability grow and they recommended that Malcolm interview him for one of his key positions. Malcolm visited Topeka and the cleric arranged a meeting with Bryan. Malcolm and Bryan could have been brothers, and they both felt that Jihad rescued them from wasted lives. Malcolm needed help, and this man would fight to the death for Jihad, “I am planning a Jihad and you can be part of it.” Bryan listened to Malcolm’s dream, and understood the plan that Henry had concocted and Malcolm had perfected. “I need you to build and test a bomb.”

  Bryan was a big thinker, “I will need money and a safe location. Somewhere I can make a little noise. Maybe we could buy a farm.” They both laughed.

  Malcolm picked up a newspaper from the cleric’s desk. “There are a lot of farms for sale.” He saw one that seemed interesting, call the agent and told her, “We will meet you at the farm in one hour.”

  Malcolm purchased a rundown four hundred acre farm 30 miles north of Topeka. The farm was on Highway 16, north of the Potawatomi Indian Reservation. A half-mile drive down a narrow dirt road hid an old farmhouse, a large dilapidated barn, and several small out-buildings. “It is perfect. You can live in the farmhouse. I will order a large steel building for our project.”

  Two days later, an engineer from the steel building company arrived at the farm, and he and Bryan picked out the structure. They pulled the permits, prepared the site, and poured the concrete. A week later the building arrived on three flatbed trucks with a six-man construction team. Two weeks later the building was finished. Bryan followed the construction and worked side by side with the supervisor. He asked Malcolm if he could supervise their next building.

  Agriculture business required fertilizer and diesel fuel, and when properly mixed they became a bomb. Bryan needed to determine the mixture for optimum explosive performance. He referred to this perfect experimental mixture as soup, and to make the soup an effective explosive he needed a detonator that operated remotely. He needed a system that did not expose his work with explosives. He had an idea. If a device can remotely control a model airplane, maybe it can remotely detonate my soup. He purchased a remote control airplane kit and used its parts to build a detonator. His next step was to cause an explosion.

  He called Malcolm, “Can you come to the farm to see my first test of a remotely controlled explosion?”

  Malcolm was on site for a major test of five pounds of the explosive. Bryan pushed a red button and from fifty feet Malcolm could feel the heat and percussion. Bryan looked at Malcolm and smiled widely, “You’ve done it! That was less than a gallon of the mixture! Can you scale this up to a fifty five gallon drum and give it another test?”

  “That will be about four hundred pounds of the explosive. I believe that much may alert authorities, even if we do it out here on the farm.”

  Malcolm answered, “We can put twenty-four tons of explosive mixture into a pumper fire truck! What would that do?”

  “Twenty four tons from a single source would be the largest ground level non-atomic explosion ever done on American soil, and I believe I can improve the yield thirty percent with a catalyst, and a second oxidizer. Let me think a little while about our next test.”

  *****

  The CIA received disturbing information from Iran. The Supreme Leader of Iran was near death. There were two possible replacements and one of them was Ayatollah Meslem Ali. The Group was once again called to Langley for a meeting. They took their seats and the DCIA stood and addressed them, “We have irrefutable information that the death will occur within a month. If we are going to kill our ayatollah, it must be very soon. I believe he will not leave Tehran before the death and that means we must kill him there. I know that is a difficult assignment, but that is what we need to do.”

  Sam stood and reported, “The Swiss Visa worker told me that he returned to his apartment complex. If his security hasn’t changed, I believe I could get him there.”

  The DCIA ended the meeting, “Go back to Mac Dill and make the plan.”

  *****

  Bryan focused on his dream whenever he was alone. As he worked on his project, he had an idea. Why don’t I use a couple of barrels of soup to stop my dream? Then he built his simple plan. It was a chance for him to complete his dream, and he was going to do it. He had four barrels of explosive soup ready to go. First, he needed to find where the trooper lived. Ten minutes on the Internet gave him an address. The next day he drove his company car to Salina, Kansas, and found the trooper’s home, a neat ranch style home on a cul-de-sac. It was late afternoon and his patrol car was in the driveway.

  Bryan thought. How easy this will be. The next evening he drove downtown and parked his company car in a three-story parking garage. He walked six blocks and saw a black Ford F150 pickup truck parked on the street in front of an apartment building. A sign clearly marked the area as requiring a permit for overnight parking. He would steal the truck and return it in a few hours. The owner would never know. He stole the truck and took it to the farm. This will upset Malcolm, but there is no better test. I will use two barrels for each site. I will first get the trooper then drive to Topeka and get my parents.

  Bryan had delivered his explosive soup to both targets. He was able to hear the explosions, but was well away from the actual sites. He added the missing fuel, carefully cleaned the bed, and returned the stolen truck to its original parking place. It is possible they will never discover I stole it. He walked six blocks to his parking garage, retrieved his company car, and returned to the farm. I wish I could see the results of the explosions. It will be on the news tomorrow. He went to sleep for the first time in his total memory, he had a dreamless night.

  *****

  The Group was at Mac Dill developing a plan to kill Ayatollah Meslem Ali. Sam spoke, “I could dress as an Iranian policeman and simply ambush him and his party as they entered the apartment complex. I believe if I stay cool I could simply wait for a crowd and walk away.”

  Bill objected, “Not without me you won’t. There may be too many for you to take out alone. We will need to stand watch for him. Besides, by yourself you may miss him or you may become a suspicious figure and get arrested. No, it’s better if we do this as a team and I speak better Farsi.”

  “It may be that simple. Sam you have been there. Work out the details with Bill. We will start on your support. This needs to be a very tightly held mission. Do this next week. I’ll talk to the DCIA.” The General closed the meeting.

  The next day the DCIA got approval from the President. He then met with his Select Intelligence Committee and briefed them. It was a rancorous meeting, but they agreed to approve the mission. They informed the DCIA that he would take the fall if the plan failed or became a national liability. He was a professional and his agents were routinely at great risk. He told them, “I am prepared to fall on a sword if this mission does not work out.”

  The DCIA climbed into the back seat of his car and headed back to Langley. He thought about his statement. That is the least of my worries. Meslem Ali is plotting an attack on American soil. I wonder if it is too late to stop it. All my leads are cold, but cold does not mean gone. Meslem Ali murdered Junior for some reason and he owns American businesses. The
FBI is trying to locate them. I am missing something.

  The driver looked back at him and asked, “Are you all right?”

  George Clinton had chauffeured and protected the DCIA’s driver for ten years. The DCIA was always on the attack. His game had changed from offense to defense and he was worried about an attack on his country. There were literally hundreds of thousands of possible bad people within the country’s borders. They lived our good life, but hated everything America stood for. He knew it was not his job to go after them. His friend at the FBI had that job, but his friend did not have the free hand of the CIA, or the political will for danger.

  The DCIA was an historian and had done his PhD dissertation on the American Indian wars. Two hundred years later the image of soldiers killing Indians was no longer heroic. Like the Indians, the terrorists would gain supporters, and with the right marketing, a tiny part of the population could change America history.

  “George we are going to Mac Dill. Take me to Andrews.” The DCIA dialed his secretary, “Get my plane ready. George and I are going to Mac Dill. Call The Group and have them stand by for a meeting. Ask the DFBI to join us tomorrow. We are on our way to Andrews now.”

  “Yes sir.” It took about ten minutes for his secretary to set his new plans into action.

  “We must stop them.”

  George answered, “In this traffic it will take an hour to get to the plane. Can I call the state police for an escort?”

  “No, this must be secret. Just do your best.”

  Mary alerted the DFBI about the request for a meeting. He called the DCIA’s secure line in his limo, “What’s up?”

  The DCIA replied, “MD.” That meant to use as few words as possible.