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| panda-like calm through fiction | |||||||||
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False Flag
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They were in a dark room. They had never met before, and had been encouraged to remain silent. The room was concrete on all sides, the door heavy steel. Each man glanced nervously at the other, saw their darker complexion. It had to be a mistake, they thought. All this secrecy. They couldn’t have been caught up in a terrorist dragnet.
The steel door opened fast and loudly, smashing into the concrete; the distinct lack of a doorstop seemed to have as a purpose maximum noise. A slight man in a suit entered, and before either man could catch his breath began speaking, looking down at a file. “A computers specialist from the National Security Council and a doctor from the Centers for Disease Control- I swear to God that if I so much as learn one thing about how my body or desktop works, I will spill scalding coffee on your crotches- repeatedly. I will be subsequently proven to have early stage Parkinson’s. Do not test me on this.” He sipped from a cup, his fingers shaking, perhaps for more than dramatic effect. “The idea is simply that if terrorists work largely in disjointed cells, a way to catch them might be to operate similarly; pitting small groups of isolated, disparate loners forbidden by Sharia law or by me from self-pleasuring against one another. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll blame it on any one of my subordinates and bury you in a folder marked “my eyes only”- and never look at that folder again.” “The concept is that we work similar to a body’s immune system. The lymph nodes don’t declare martial law just because they think they’ve been invaded- they have a targeted response. They’re calling our response a Cellular Counter Terrorist Initiative, the CCTI; we were supposed to have something with more syllables in it but none of the non-scientists could pronounce it. It’s a cross-agency, cross-disciplinary small teams task force nominally operating under the auspices of, I think it’s the NSC this week, but Lord take my anal virginity if I know for certain.” “You’ll operate as a team, largely independently. Your tentative assignment of the moment is that we’ve heard of a group of enterprising Jihadists looking to implement basically Facebook for terrorists, and the current scuttlebutt is that this plan is being paired with an international biological weapons collective. If that hurts your brain, think of it as terrorist colleges sharing research into making better bugs.” “Our Lebanese friend is a gifted technologist, focusing on social media, but I can’t take much credit for him since he comes directly from the NSC. But finding someone to work on the biological threat coming out of Yemen, I did what they said couldn’t be done- I found a Yemeni virologist. Who already works for the government. I am a magical bureaucratic genie- and co-eds will fellate me!” He raised his arms in expectant triumph. When women did not appear from nowhere to pleasure him, he lowered his arms, and whispered, “perhaps later,” then walked out the door, mumbling, “I may have to summon them with my telephone and credit card again.” The Yemeni doctor spoke first. “He’s clearly evil, and insane; no one should be that chipper while being that horrible.” “Really? The bosses at the CDC aren’t all that miserable? I don’t suppose you could put in a word for me.” “I’m stuck here, with you.” “Oh. Right. You piss somebody off?” “God, apparently- since I can assume it’s his fault I was born in Yemen.Faisal al-Raee, by the way. Doctor, I guess, though not the kind that pays well or gets respect of any kind.” “Neat. Nabih Hariri, Lebanese-American. Raised in Boston- though thank god the accent didn’t really take. Can you imagine that? Look like a terrorist, sound like an asshole.” “Is it still racist if you’re profiling yourself?” “I have no idea- but I do feel a little less racist for the fact that the FBI’s most wanted terrorists looks like us- and the one guy who looks like my and Harvey Kietel’s white trash love child.” “I think ‘white trash’ might be racist, too, like the white N word- though by the description I do know exactly who you’re talking about.” Nabih sat forward, and didn’t scrub any of the irritation from his voice when he said, “Seems like he left files here, with our names on them. Lovely.” He picked up the folders, handed one to Faisal. “Crap. We’ve got an appointment tonight. No rest for the wicked.” “Wait. I’m a virologist. What the hell is this about undercover work?” “You didn’t think you’d been recruited for your Petri skills, did you?” “I feel a little foolish, now that you’ve asked the question like that, but yes.” That night, they met outside a dive in the seedy motel district (a few blocks south of the normal motel district). “Wait, if these are hardcore fundamentalists, why are we meeting them in a bar?” Faisal asked, shifting uncomfortable in clothes that did not suit him. “It’s not a bad cover, when you think about it. At least at a glance, Muslims who hang out in dive bars aren’t likely to be the self-immolation type- though it would fall apart under the scrutiny of even a lazy field op with someone watching the only group of men in a bar sipping chocolate milk.” The men they were meeting were sitting in the rear of the bar, in a booth with a burnt-out light. Faisal followed Nabih to the table, but stared a moment too long at the brown liquid in one of their glasses, and the ice cubes floating in it, the squeezed lemon wedge resting on the top. “It’s tea,” one of the men said, a crazy, angry fire in his dark eyes. The man obviously in charge stood up. “And we don’t have time to wait here all night while you sip at it like an old, toothless woman.” The third man laughed. “Come. We have a place nearby for a discussion. We will take our van.” “Wait,” Nabih said, “are you seriously suggesting five Arab men leave a bar together in a van?” The one standing said, “We are not Arab; Muslim, but not Arab.” His eyes might have been kind, had it not been for the thick stubble on his face. “Ah,” Nabih said, “it took me a moment to place the accent. You’re Turkish.” “Correct.” “Neat. But I don’t think Joe Bacon Bits cares if you’re Turkish. The five of us in a panel van, we might as well be wearing matching pink belly shirts with ‘Will bomb for Allah’ printed on them.” The tea drinker’s eyes widened, and his face flushed. Their leader sighed. “Would you prefer to take a separate car?” “I’d prefer if the decision never made it far enough to get to me,” Nabih’s mouth was almost a snarl, “but on the off chance anybody’s watching, it’s less suspicious to leave with the ones we came with, rather than pretending the three of you have swept us off our feet.” Faisal was tense as he got into the beat up burgundy charger they’d been given for the assignment. “That was insane. You were antagonizing professional murderers.” Nabih started the car. “Two things. One, terrorists are amateur murderers- though they sometimes get lucky. And two, in my experience being a jackass is conducive to selling an undercover stint. At least for me. I’m a jackass; they’re going to see that in my smile and in the glint in my eye, and if I’m holding that back, they’ll sense it, and it makes people nervous when they think you’re hiding something. Besides, I’m a Lebanese-American; any deficiency I have they write off as western corruption. I’m at worst a cautionary tale. Usually, there’s a clause in my contract, unspoken, of course, that they can kill me at the end since I’m not a real Muslim.” They followed the van at a discreet distance; Nabih was careful not to be too good at it, since he wasn’t supposed to be a trained agent, just your run of the mill innocent-killer. His jaw dropped when they pulled into the parking lot of a Motel 6. “I should have dressed up like Urkel, to fit in; I’ve plainly not been amateur enough.” “Jeez. Just don’t mention it. I think you’ve drawn enough attention to yourself as it is,” Faisal said, stepping out of the car. But Nabih couldn’t help himself. “A Motel 6? Really?” The man with the stubble looked sheepish. “They, didn’t require a credit card.” “Well you remembered to ask the front desk for Qurans and a ‘Do not disturb bombmakers’ placard, right?” The other man’s face turned red, but he turned when he heard the door to their rented room open. He beckoned for Nabih and Faisal to follow. Faisal had barely shut the door behind him when the one with the angry eyes slammed a weapons case on the bed; his eyes went wide with panic as he wondered what the rough treatment might start off inside. The stubbled man opened the case, and did a Vanna White hand wave. “American armaments. Stinger missiles. Light anti-tank weaponry. Shape charges. I did not know what you might require, so consider this a starter kit.” “What the hell is this?” Nabih asked. “You… are not here to buy our weapons?” “I was told you needed computer expertise.” “What about him? Is he here to buy guns maybe?” Nabih’s head dropped backwards from the force of his eyes rolling. “He’s a virologist. And you jag-offs are U.S. intelligence, aren’t you.” They looked confusedly from one to the other, until Nabih pulled out his badge. “You were a honey pot op, right? Well all you caught was some friendlies- which doesn’t make any sense, because we were supposed to be easing into undercover.” They were trying like crazy to stay in character, until the one with the stubble said, “Shit.” Angry eyes tried to shush him. “Bill, shut-” “No, I told you something was fishy. Goddamned idiots lined us up against some of our own. Thank crap he made us, or we’d have spent the next three months stinging our own guys. You two aren’t new to CCTI are you?” “Yeah, why, are we being hazed?” “Don’t think so. But Ellis is a manic despot with several drug problems- so God only knows what might have happened here.” “Do you think there’s time to head back to the bar and get hammered?” “I don’t know,” Bill said, “but I’m game to find out.” The next morning, Ellis stood in a conference room with all five men. He tossed new dossiers onto the table. “That was a mistake with the files. Someone doctored my cocaine. Johnson from counter-ops is researching it; the culprit will be found out. The Turkish Trio have a meeting next week with some former Taliban elements, looking to franchise in the hemisphere like they work for fucking McDonalds. The doctor has a meeting this afternoon; you, you unfortunately, missed your date yesterday. But do not fear: an incident has been worked into the police blotter- profiling, very racist behavior on the part of the officer, you were ticketed, detained; the ACLU has pitched a hissy fit news conference about it. You are even more of an insurgent now; consequently your auto insurance will likely increase; perhaps you could switch to Geico. Now leave me, I have dried leaves to crush to powder.” As if he hadn’t heard his own last pronouncement, Ellis left the room, hurrying quickly down the hall for his office. “Son of a bitch,” muttered Nabih, “I already have the lizard insurance.” |
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