Patriot by M.A. Rothman (macos ebook reader txt) 📕

of its ways. The infidels cannot hide from his vengeance. Not now.”

“When will you arrive?”

“I don’t know. That will depend on how much work we need to do to make the weapon operational.”

“This is a glorious day, Mohammad,” Abdullah said. “A glorious day indeed!”

Connor wrote Mohammad next to Unknown Male One.

“No,” Mohammad said. “This is merely a first step. The glory will come on the day the infidels burn.”

“We will speak again when you arrive.”

“I’m sorry, my friend, we will not speak again,” Mohammad said. “We cannot take that chance. The infidel has many eyes and ears. You must ensure that my passage is secured.”

“I’ve taken care of everything for you,” Abdullah said. “Don’t worry. Allah has turned his eyes upon you, my friend. You can’t fail.”

“And the world will praise Allah when the Great Satan falls. Goodbye, my friend.”

Chapter Three

After the phone call ended, Connor sat for a long moment, processing what he’d just heard. Unlike the upset Chinese businessman, this call had sent a prickle up and down his spine.

These two players had suddenly risen to the top of his list.

He replayed the recording, focusing on any background noises he could make out. “Sounds like they’re at sea,” he said aloud. And the sound of a thunderstorm echoed in the background.

The third time he played it he focused on what the two men were saying. Then he played it yet again, focusing on how they were saying it. It was odd that they weren’t speaking in code, which most terrorists did. They all knew the CIA and the NSA listened to their phone calls; they all knew the world wasn’t as secure as the normal citizen believed.

And although conversations like this one weren’t uncommon, the finality in Mohammad’s voice didn’t suggest a man just making idle threats. He seemed devoted to his cause, not posturing for effect. He wasn’t virtue-signaling to his friend by spouting verses of the Koran or hyping up his friend to embark on a jihad. He was speaking strategically, matter-of-factly, as if what he was planning was well-considered and already a certainty.

Wondering what the call’s destination was, Connor ran a signal trace, running the connection through Summit’s database. “New York, huh?” he mused, watching as the system continued to chew on the number, narrowing his search results. “A domestic number calling from the East China Sea to New York.”

By law, the CIA had no jurisdiction over anything that occurred on domestic soil—all of that was handled by Homeland Security and the FBI—so if he found anything incriminating in the message, he’d be forced to hand it off. But… because the call originated outside of the continental US, this was a gray area, and one he’d venture into for a little bit.

He clicked through to the voice profile system, dumped the track in, and let it work. Then he leaned forward and brought up the radar images from the approximate region the call had originated from. Heavy cloud cover. With a few keystrokes, he learned that there were heavy seas and thunderstorms.

The voice-mapping program chimed, and its results appeared on Connor’s screen.

Voice # 1 Analysis Complete: 0% MATCH FOUND

Voice #2 Analysis Complete: 92% MATCH FOUND

Name: Hakimi, Mohammad

Known Associations: Hezbollah, Hamas, ISIS

Location: Unknown

“Nothing on Abdullah, but we’ve got a Mohammad Hakimi,” Connor read aloud. He hit print and pulled off his headphones.

Out in the Bullpen, junior analysts were busy working through their day’s tasks, chatting back and forth about cases, or listening to their own call queues. Connor opened his office door, panned his gaze across the room until he found who he was looking for. “Hey, Morgan!”

A blonde woman in her early thirties looked up from her dual monitors. Her neon pink shirt contrasted with the rest of the office’s neutral colors, but that was the way she liked it.

She lifted her glasses off her nose and rested them on her forehead. “Yeah?”

Christina Morgan had joined the agency last year but was quickly becoming Connor’s “go-to” on anything even remotely related to Middle East terror groups. She’d written her master’s thesis on Islamic radicalization and violence, a feat that had not only gotten her noticed by the agency, but had also resulted in her near ex-communication from the University of California-Berkeley. A fact she wore as a badge of honor.

Connor held up the printout. “You got a minute?”

Christina grinned as she walked over and snatched the paper from his fingers. “You know it’s not even nine o’clock yet?”

“Well, I’ve been here since before six.”

“Some of us haven’t even started our second coffees.” She waved the paper at him. “What is this?”

Connor nodded toward his office. “Come on, I want you to listen to something.” He held the door open for her, then closed it as she slid into one of the two chairs in front of his desk. “You should try it some time,” he said.

“What?”

“Getting up before six.”

“To hell with that,” Christina said. “I can’t go to bed before midnight. It’s against my religion.”

Connor laughed and dropped into his chair. He motioned to the paper Christina still held. “Got a hit out of the East China Sea this morning, a call to New York, by some guy named Hakimi. Ever heard of him?”

“Hmmm.” Christina tucked one foot under her rear and leaned back in the chair. “Yeah, it kind of rings a bell, but I’m not sure why. What’s he doing in the East China Sea?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. From the sound of things, they found something out there. Hard to say what though.”

“Have you put a query through Utah yet?”

She was referring to the National Security Database out of the Utah Data Center, one of the largest intelligence databases in the world. The Utah network had the ability to cross-reference billions of pieces of information, no matter how unrelated, and put them together into a coherent picture. Like taking a stack of hay and organizing the individual pieces by age, size, and weight.

Connor shook his