Running Down Terror

By Jim Ricca

RUNNING DOWN TERROR
A timely new thriller by Jim Ricca
Professor Tom Carazo felt relatively secure knowing the U.S. government had the terrorists on the run. They were killing Al Qaeda and other terrorist leaders by the bushel, with drones, Special Forces teams and air strikes. But one evening, while having a few drinks in a Philadelphia, neighborhood bar, he overhears several men discussing their plans to destroy the United States from within. Tom urgently tries to convince the FBI, Homeland Security and the CIA that an attack is immanent, but his warnings fall on deaf ears. Frustrated over the ignorance and arrogance his report receives from the people sworn to protect the country, he and a few friends decide to track down and eliminate the terrorist cell on their own, but they soon realize that the scale of the attack is far beyond anything they or anyone else could possibly imagine. Millions upon millions would die as a result of the unthinkable and horrendous attack if Carazo and his friends fail to find and prevent the terrorists from their cataclysmic assault on western civilization.
Running Down Terror details just how easy it would be for a group of terrorists to legally enter the country; transport their weapons of mass destruction to many large cities, and then unleash hell on earth.
If you feel certain our country is immune from a catastrophic terrorist strike, and are positive it could never happen, read, Running Down Terror...and guess again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Ricca
• Release date: Oct 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311289094

Jim Ricca

Jim was born and raised in Philadelphia, and lived there until drafted into the Army in 1971. He served a total of 18 years between the active Army and reserves as a Military Policeman, Artillery forward observer and in the Mechanized Infantry. He attended college on the GI bill and earned a B.A. in Political Science, International Relations from LaSalle University. He held middle and senior level management positions in the transportation, printing/publishing industries and plastics manufacturing field. Jim also served several years as a Special Agent/Special Investigator for a Federal agency. Jim is the author of the four book, Circle of Wounded Souls series, in addition to, Legacies; an American Journey, Hunting and Hunted in Alaska, The four book Alien's Reward series with Journey to Another Earth. In addition to, Der Schatten Teufel, The Shadow Devil, and Running Down Terror has been released along with: The Replacement Priest, and Escape from the Asylum. Jim resides in Maryland's Eastern Shore where he divides his time between writing and fishing the Chesapeake Bay and surf fishing along the shore..

Book preview

Running Down Terror

By

Jim Ricca

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2016 Jim Ricca

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

This book is available in print at most online retailers

Discover other titles by Jim Ricca on smashwords.com

The Alien's Reward

The Alien's Reward II The Alliance

The Alien's Reward III Insurrection

Legacies, An American Journey

The Circle of Wounded Souls, Book One

The Circle of Wounded Souls, Book Two

The Circle of Wounded Souls, The Circle of Survivors, Book Three

The Circle of Wounded Souls, The Broken Circle, Book Four

Kathryn's Summer

The Replacement Priests

Der Schattenteuful The Shadow Devil

Alaskan Paybacks Hunter and Hunted

PROLOGUE

On February 26th, 1993, and again on September 11th, 2001, the World Trade Center was attacked by Islamic militants, with the later event completely destroying it, and the lives of over three thousand people, in addition those lives lost in Pennsylvania and the Pentagon. There were also the attacks on the USS Cole, the embassies in Africa and other terrorist attacks that caught our nation and our many intelligence agencies completely by surprise.

Our civilian and military intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies do their best to prevent future terrorist attacks. We can be sure they have, but the hundreds of thousands of men and women, and the hundreds of billions of dollars spent to keep the people of the United States safe will not guarantee human frailties, egos, preconceived ideas and profiling won't allow other groups of determined terrorists to commit even more horrific acts of mass murder.

We once felt safe with the mistaken belief the two oceans would protect us from attack until Pearl Harbor shocked us into modern reality. We felt safe in thinking our NSA, FBI and CIA would protect us from attacks by terrorists, but 9/11 proved us wrong once again. And now, we may even presume the no-fly lists, electronics eavesdropping devices and web of intelligence gathering agencies will keep us safe. And we couldn't be more wrong.

1CHAPTER ONE

If there’s anyone I really hate, it’s an arrogant idiot who thinks he’s got all his shit in one sock. You probably know the type I’m talking about; the guy who goes into a bar and just asks for a double scotch on the rocks, or the idiot who orders scotch neat, no brands specified,. Even worse, you’ve probably heard the asshole who tries to impress everyone by asking for a whiskey; again, no brand, and they end up drinking some swill the bar owner found at a discount booze outlet. But the people who really piss me off are the ones who ask for a Granddad, and when they do, they always have this stupid half-assed, sick grin on their face, as if someone just stuck an enema hose up their butt.

Of course there’s the Jack and Coke jack-offs, or the pussy-lipped, front-office-weasel nattering in his nasal voice, I’ll have a martini, extra-dry.

Whenever I hear these asinine, I don’t know shit about booze, requests; my first impulse is to slam a heavy glass ashtray into their mouths, scatter their broken and bloody teeth across the floor and then stomp the living shit out of the ignorant bastards.

I’ve been able to maintain an even strain up to this point, but my nerves have been wearing thin.

Every honest, red-blooded American male with a set of hairy nuts between his legs, and truly educated in the ways and means of alcoholic beverages, knows you go eyeball to eyeball with the barkeep and calmly but firmly ask for a Wild Turkey Bourbon. As they turn to retrieve that magic elixir, you clearly state, just loud enough for the bartender to hear make sure it’s the 12 year old, buddy. If the unfortunate bastard turns back and says, I don’t have any 12 year old sir, just tell him you don’t mess with underage girls or booze, and then walk out. If he claims he doesn’t have any Turkey at all, feed the cheap bastard a quick knuckle sandwich, and walk out scattering any tables and patrons that get in your way. After all, a man’s gotta have a solid moral code and high ethical standards.

Bourbon is one of the few, truly honest American drinks. Almost all other alcoholic beverages were brought over from one country or another by our immigrant forefathers; which was okay two-hundred or more years ago, but now we have Kentucky’s best distilled spirits. Bourbon is best aged to at least 12 years, and Wild Turkey’s charcoal filtering provides it with a highly refined smoothness and polish, comparable only to the gleam found on the barrel of a new, high-powered rifle, or the incredible shine on a pair of drill sergeants’ combat boots.

The world is full of assholes, and a review of the Bush administration and congress proves my point beyond all doubt. How did a handful of draft dodging, hypocritical, intolerant, self-righteous, lying sons of bitches get away with starting a war based on lies? Then they have the balls to think they actually knew how to run it better than our military leaders, who trained all their lives for just that purpose. That fact that the idiots in the Bush administration were re-elected proves the old adage, there are more horse’s asses than there are horses. We have become a nation of idiots and we've got the government we deserve. Forget democracy; we’ve become an idiotcracy.

At least with Obama, we now have a president who can speak above a fourth grade level and string comprehensive sentences together with words consisting of more than one or two syllables.

But I must apologize; I haven’t always been this bitterly opinionated. I was once a tenured Fulbright Professor of International Relations at a prestigious university in Philadelphia, and generally known by my friends as a nice guy and a damn good educator. My books on U.S.-Japanese relations, Middle Eastern and Central Asian Politics are currently used as standard texts at many colleges and universities.

There I was, living the good life on my salary, and combined with my book royalties; I was able to spend my summers roaming the Pacific coasts of Canada and Alaska, hunting, fishing and exploring the St Elias Mountains. That is, until some pimply faced, pencil-necked punk on the verge of flunking my course, went crying to his politically connected daddy with some outright lies, claiming I was brainwashing the class with liberal anti-American propaganda.

What really occurred in my class was a discussion of current American foreign policy in relation to the war in Vietnam. We went into detail on the alleged Gulf of Tonkin incident and the subsequent lies, half-truths and outright treason committed by Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara and the incredibly powerful military industrial complex. The punk didn’t do his research on the subject matter and subsequently failed the mid-term. He thought if he could eliminate the professor, he’d stand a better chance at passing the course with my replacement.

He was right on the first count and wrong on the second.

My replacement was a wild-eyed, red flag waving, gibberish screaming, left wing commie pinko, who cried real tears when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989. Unlike yours truly; he brooked no opposing views in his class and the punk scored a solid zero point zero for the course.

But what really ground my ass during the railroading of my career, was the way the chancellor whined and cried how the school couldn’t afford to lose government funding, and they’d rather take a chance firing me than risk upsetting the federal tit that flowed with cash that balanced the school’s budget. The limp-dick desk jockey weakly claimed he was alarmed after hearing I was teaching anti-American rhetoric, especially when we both knew he ran to Canada and participated in numerous anti-American, and anti-war demonstrations while I was fighting to survive in the jungles of Vietnam.

What a two-faced, lying, thoroughly corrupted, coward of a pussy he turned out to be, but then, what else should I have expected from a draft dodger.

My union and fellow professors backed me to the hilt, not necessarily out of friendship, although I could claim at least a quarter of the staff there as such, but many were also tenured, and they knew if the school got away with screwing me out of my position, they could be next. My attorney took the administration to court, proved the terms of my tenure were violated, in addition to proving this august institution of higher learning blatantly violated my first amendment rights, and just for shits and grins, he threw in age discrimination and slander.

There would have been no hard feelings if I’d been fired for dipping into one of the coeds, vandalizing the limp-dick Dean’s office or did something I brought down on myself, but they never gave me a chance to defend myself. It was a kangaroo court and they found me guilty without any viable evidence of wrongdoing. We caught the school flat-footed with strong arguments, bullet-proof case histories and a very sympathetic jury; primarily populated by college educated professionals, veterans, and one feisty old grandmother. By the time we were finished with the management of the university; those assholes could have slapped swastikas on their arms, and the Nazi Party would have sued them for defamation of character.

I was awarded my full salary up to the average retirement age for professors, which is around seventy-five, and I'd just turned fifty. The jury also awarded punitive damages with a multiplier of five, plus all legal fees. The wise and sage jurors were also very generous ordering that I receive fully paid benefits until death do us part, because someone in the school provided me with several, very bad reference when called by other universities inquiring about my teaching abilities. When all was said and done; the university eventually paid me and my attorney almost double what they would receive in federal grants over the next ten years, and we're talking millions!

So, as far as I’m concerned, they can eat shit and die in writhing agony. I was now a multi-millionaire and loving every minute of it. The only problem was; I couldn’t fly on a commercial airline. It seems the little asshole’s complaint to his big asshole daddy was forwarded to the FBI and my name was placed prominently on the TSA’s no-fly list as a routine precaution. My attorney claims this is a tough nut to crack since no one will admit to having such a list, so I’ve been chartering planes for my trips, which is damn expensive, but very convenient.

It was getting on to about ten or so and the bar was almost empty when an acquaintance, Daniel, strode in with a few people I'd never met before. He waved and signaled the bartender to refill my drink, then sat with his buddies at the far corner table. I signaled Ed, the bartender to set up Daniel and his buddies with their first rounds, which he did taking a look at the remaining amber liquid in my bottle. He left it in front of me to finish off the two or three shots left in the bottle. I knew he wouldn’t charge for it, so I removed the cap and knocked it back in one big gulp.

Damn! That’s what I love about Turkey, the last one goes down as smooth as the first; how many there were in between those two, I seemed to have lost count.

Ed came over and told me he was going to close up early, but I could stay on if I wanted; I just had to move my dead ass to a table in back so no one passing by would see me at the bar and try to get in. He had people coming in a few minutes to play poker in the back room and he’d be too busy with them to tend the bar.

Before I could answer him, a kid from the Italian restaurant down the street walked in with a stack of pizzas, several bags full of hot Philly cheese-steaks and what smelled like fresh hoagies. Ed grabbed the top pizza, handed it to me then walked another to Daniel’s table, taking a moment to explain the situation to him. When he returned, Ed asked if I preferred a hoagie or a cheese-steak to chase down the pizza. I gratefully accepted a hoagie, knowing the kid’s parents were from Sicily and knew what a real hoagie was.

They used real Italian bread, not the cheap, spongy crusted shit they pass off as Italian or French in most stores. This was real bread with a crust you had to have strong teeth to bite through. It had a flavor all its own and you could make a meal of it just by itself. And they knew what ingredients it took to build a Hoagie; that’s right, you don’t just slap a hoagie together like a sandwich, you build it with fresh imported meat slices and the best imported cheeses; pour in some extra-virgin olive oil, maybe a little mayo and a sprinkle of oregano, some leaf lettuce, fresh picked tomato, onion and a few other items to taste. A key piece of critical information to keep in mind; a sub is not a hoagie. If someone tries foisting a sub on you and says it’s the same as a hoagie, haul off and kick them as hard as you can, right in the nuts.

Not wanting to impose on Daniel and his friends, I ambled over to the table next to theirs and went to work on my late night dinner. Knowing there was going to be some really weird dreams and toxic emissions when I slept that night, I made a mental note to down a couple antacids before I turned in.

About halfway through my first slice, Daniel leaned back and introduced me to his friends. Omar, of obvious Middle Eastern origins, was somewhat familiar to me, having recently seen him around the neighborhood a few times. He seemed friendly enough, but only marginally. Muhammad was a stranger and said hello with barely suppressed hostility; his brother Ibrahim just stared at me with evil venom in his dark hooded eyes.

After a few moments, Daniel got up from his table and sat next to me, explaining, My friends have just arrived in this country and were given a hard time by the Customs and Immigration people, so they are still a little angry. They are going to enroll in the fall semester and hope to take a few of your courses.

I hated to tell him I was no longer a professor, but what else could I do? I hadn’t seen Daniel in several months; he’d been away on a business trip to Lebanon where he and his family ran a very successful international engineering firm. At the same time, I was away on my own trip; a mercy mission to the Bahamas, where I worked hard with rod and reel to reduce the number of dangerous sharks and other large fish in their waters.

He was really shocked to hear of my firing. Daniel was a civil engineer, had a real thirst for knowledge in other disciplines and often audited my courses. Too bad he wasn’t in the class for a grade; he was an excellent student, a lively participant who provided an outsiders view and opinions of events and political theory. He would have aced any of my courses with his extremely well written papers and essays.

We weren’t exactly close friends, but we were still friends and found each other’s ideas intriguing and had some great conversations at the bar. Ed liked to listen in and eventually he turned off the TV and had us conduct our conversations facing the tables so the other people could listen and join in on the conversations and debates. To my surprise, our discussions would go long into the night with more than a few of the other patrons engaging in incredibly intelligent and well thought-out discourse on any number of subjects. This was no college bar. This was a neighborhood taproom, frequented by the local blue collar, working class people; the salt of the earth, the hard working people who built and died for this nation. They were just my kind of people.

Daniel went on to say, My friends and I are going on a cross country trip next week so they can see the rest of the country and meet more Americans. I hope this trip will help my friends feel more comfortable by the time classes start in September.

September was two months away.

I hope they lighten up a little, my friend, I said half joking, if they have that kind of an attitude when they meet other people here, they may just regret ever coming here in the first place.

They will improve once we get on the road and they see some of the things they want to visit, Tom, Daniel explained. My friends are also engineers and they have plans to inspect much of the infrastructure across your country before they begin studies for their advanced degrees.

I’ll be doing some traveling myself, Daniel. I need to stock my freezer with some fish and meat for the winter, so we probably won’t meet again until November.

Tom, my friend, if you need food, you need not go out in the wilds to catch it, you need only to mention it and I will be honored to help you, he said this with sincerity as he reached for his wallet.

I laughed and held up my hand, No Daniel, I’m OK financially, and it is I who is deeply honored you would offer to help me. Although I lost my job at the university, they have provided me with more than enough money as a severance package. I really was impressed he thought that much of me.

A barked word of Arabic from someone at his table ended our brief conversation. Annoyed at the interruption, Daniel moved back to his friends. My Arabic was a little rusty; so rusty I was afraid to try it on Daniel for fear of insulting him. I learned my two foreign languages the hard way, by spending time in Egypt and Japan while I was in the Army. What I’d learned of these languages at first was not to be used in polite society, but with help from tutors and tapes, I actually got pretty good at both, but as with any skill, if you don’t use it, you lose it.

Just to test myself, I began listening in on the conversation as I chowed down on the rest of the pizza. It took a few seconds to get the gist of the conversation. Daniel’s Arabic was a little difficult to comprehend since he was from Lebanon, and had what sounded like a heavy accent, but his friends; they were much easier to understand and after only a few minutes, it all came back. I discovered they were not Lebanese, they were Egyptians.

Daniel’s alleged friends were giving him a hard time for having an infidel as a friend. I was more than a little shocked upon hearing this; Daniel never said anything negative about anyone’s religion. He believed as I did; there were good and bad people in every religion, and if you stuck with the basic tenets of your faith, you were OK. No religion condoned murder, war or intolerance. It was the hypocrites leading the religions who perverted people’s faith and led them to commit murder and atrocities.

Daniel seemed to be trying to defend his friendship, but he was being verbally beaten up by his three companions.

Does the stupid infidel understand our language?

Of course he doesn’t, another Egyptian answered, these dogs are too ignorant to learn other tongues.

Daniel, He is not ignorant or stupid; he is a good man...

Are you defending the defamers of Allah?

No…

Then you must denounce this dog and make him our first victory in our effort to bring the jihad to this accursed land.

Daniel started to express his amazement and shock at their announcement of starting a jihad in this country, but didn’t get a chance to complete his statement. The others at the table began stating he was expected to drive them across the country in his van. They went on to explain they would stop in selected cities and other vulnerable points of interest along the way where they would sabotage critical infrastructure points. Since they were all engineers, they could kill hundreds of thousands of people along the way, and make it look like terrible accidents or failures of decaying infrastructure, as one jihadist claimed with an evil laugh.

Daniel wasn’t having any of it, and was very emphatic these blaspheming murderers leave at once because he was calling the police to put a stop to their evil plan.

A chilling voice reminded Daniel that he still had family in Beirut.

No more was heard from the table.

Chair legs scraped across the floor, and I dug into my last slice of pizza to avoid their suspicion. Afraid for Daniel and his family, I knew if he attempted to interfere with their plans, they wouldn’t hesitate to kill him and pass along word to their terrorist buddies to eliminate his family. I’ve seen pictures of his extended relations and they appeared to be very nice people, especially his sisters and female cousins.

As they passed my table, I made an extreme effort to not appear too pissed-off when I said good night to Daniel and his shithead associates. Daniel did not shake my hand as usual upon parting company for the day, nor did he say, May Allah’s Peace Be with You, My friend.

He looked very pale and frightened. I’ve never seen him like that before and my first impulse was to jamb my boot into the groin of the closest asshole, and the table ashtray into the face of another one. I figured Daniel could keep the other one busy till I could get around to him. But I couldn’t do a damn thing; if anything happened to these scumbags before Daniel could ensure his families safety, some innocent people would die needlessly at the hands of these cold blooded murders.

They left by the side door, and after giving them thirty seconds to get clear of the building, I jumped behind the bar and used Ed’s phone to call the FBI.

It was almost midnight, and the agent who answered the phone sounded very irritated to be awakened by someone with such a trivial matter as terrorists planning to kill as many Americans as they could.

Call back tomorrow morning after you sober up, the agent stated angrily before slamming down the phone on me.

Well fuck you too, I growled at the dial tone before calling the local police.

Unless a crime has been committed, the on-duty desk sergeant replied, there isn’t much we can do, sir. I suggest you call the FBI or Homeland Security because they’re better equipped to handle things like this. If you’ll hold on, I’ll give you their numbers.

The numbers he gave me were for the DC offices of the two agencies, and the people answering the phone were only a bit more interested, but they both advised I’d be contacted in the morning after taking down my name, address and phone number.

I parked up the street from Daniel’s house, waited a few minutes before slowly walking past it, checking for anything out of the ordinary. He lived on a quiet street, populated by identical, post-WWII two-story brick houses. They all sat on quarter acre lots with a single driveway separating each property, and a simple garage located at the end of the drive at the rear of the property. An alley-drive ran between the rear of the properties, and I used it to check out Daniel’s house from behind. I couldn’t be seen by neighbors as I crept up to his back door and listened for anything like violence. The house was quiet so I went home and spent the next hour carefully writing down every word I’d overheard at the bar, plus what I knew of my friend, in addition to descriptions of his alleged friends since it may be of interest to the agencies investigating my report.

It was almost three pm the following day before the FBI called, and the agent couldn’t have been more dismissive. Mr. Carazo, the agent stated with distain, I ran your name through our system and it seems that you have a history of your own. You were fired from your university job for making repeated un-American rants to your students; failing those who professed to be patriots or disputed your anti-American rants, in addition to suing your ex-employer after they fired you for misconduct. I’m afraid we can’t lend much credence, time or precious resources investigating complaints from subversives like you.

You stupid goondick, I replied, if I was a subversive, why in the hell would I be reporting a threat to my country? If you had bothered to check a little further back in my history, you would have discovered that I was a Military Policeman and was awarded a silver star. So how…

The line went dead. The ignorant bastard simply hung up on me, but I had his name and a recording of our conversation. When the shit hits the fan, someone was going to blow some serious smoke up his ass; if they even bothered to listen to me then.

I placed another call to Homeland Security but was put on hold, and after thirty minutes I hung up, called again and went through the same process…five more times. Then I had an idea…

My congressman sat on the house’s intelligence committee, and we were old friends. I left messages on his home and office phones; briefly describing my encounter the previous night, the FBIs response and failure to get through to HSA. Hopefully he’d call me back or light a fire under somebody’s ass before innocent people died. As it was, a full day was wasted, so I went over to Ed’s bar by way of Daniel’s house.

His red Chevy custom van was in the driveway along with his BMW, so he was still home. I thought to stop to say hi, which wouldn’t be out of the ordinary, but decided to avoid causing problems with his so-called cousins or friends.

I ran into an old friend at the bar; Joe Merlino or Doctor Merlino, according to his degree in medicine. He came from the same area of Philly I did, and we even graduated from the same high school. He enlisted in the Navy at about the same time I was drafted into the Army. While I was running convoys to various firebases, Joey spent his time chumming his way across the Atlantic and Mediterranean on an anti-submarine destroyer. We met again shortly after we were discharged, and Joe told me he became seasick the moment he stepped foot on his ship and didn’t get over it until the day he received his discharge.

Man, I was seasick for the entire time I was at sea, and although I wished I’d died; I didn’t, but those bastards never cut me a break the entire time, he laughed.

Joe, like me, went to college on the GI bill and then went on to med school, while I earned my PhD in Political Science.

I’d originally intended to work for the intelligence community, but President Carter put a freeze on hiring for all the agencies, and I had to take a job as an adjunct professor teaching bored, pimply faced kids who had to take the course as part of their curriculum.

Joe hung his shingle after completing his internship and quickly discovered he could practice defensive medicine or heal people. After hassling with insurance companies, bullshit malpractice lawyers and people seeking drugs, he got fed up and shut down his practice. Since he was a heavyweight boxer while in college, he accepted a job as a bodyguard for a very popular rock group. Joe toured the world with them and when their candle faded, he started a landscaping business. His company was doing very well, but he needed to have discourse with people who spoke English and had familiarity with subjects other than engines, booze, drugs and broads.

I could count on seeing Joe at the bar at least two or three times a week in his off season and maybe once or twice during the warm weather months. He was a solid guy and I’d trust him with my life although his political leanings were so far to the right, he claimed Attila the Hun was a gay hairdresser.

Joey, I’m glad you’re here tonight, I said while signaling Ed to bring us each a round. You know my buddy Daniel may be in a shitload of trouble.

What did he do; get caught humping an underage camel? Joe’s humor was just as bitter as mine, and I knew he was just going for a laugh.

He has these three guys from the Middle East staying with him, and he brought them in here last night. They were kind of ignorant if not downright hostile toward me…

So why should they be any different than everyone else, Joe remarked.

"Fuck you too, buddy. Daniel told me they were civil, chemical and structural engineers here to earn advance degrees and certifications so they could work in the US. As you know, I understand Arabic and I overheard them telling Daniel they were here on a jihad, and intended to travel around the country causing all kinds of trouble by sabotaging or blowing up things, but do it in a way so it