Assault on America

By Michael S. Pendergast

Al-Qaeda and its allies scored two magnificent victories. The first when they took down the WTC towers in New York and the second when they suckered the US into a war in Iraq. Unfortunately for them, the US went from dismay and shock to shock and awe, beating the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and then Sadam Hussein into the ground in record time. Now the survivors need a way to seize victory from the jaws of defeat and an evil mastermind in Iran is sure he has found the way to do so.

Suddenly one morning as America wakes, it finds rural hamlets and small towns have been ravaged during the night and hundreds murdered in their own homes. All by terrorists who have disappeared into the shadows before sunrise.

Is there any hope to stop this assault? Of course there is, for there is always FBI special agent Philip Calvert, who is easily bored and quite unable to handle the most routine assignments. When it comes to high-pressure crises where everything is on the line, however, he is unique. And now he and an ad hoc team of agents, cops, and Marine sharpshooters he puts together are on the job.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9781467045049

Michael S. Pendergast

Michael Pendergast is a retired B-52 aircraft commander and acquisition engineer, as well as a former instructor of philosophy at a well-known Mid-western Christian university where he taught logic, introductory philosophy, and ethics. A philosopher and theologian, Major Pendergast holds degrees in engineering physics (including a minor in astrophysics), administration, international affairs, and philosophy. Widowed with three grown children, and now remarried, this graduate of Cornell University, Siena College, and the USAF Air War University lives and works in northern Maine, where he devotes much of his time to research and writing. The method to his research and writing is to establish a gestalt to understand the whole rather than merely parts (as an example, that science, philosophy, and theology are ultimately one), with the goal of finding the real meaning of life. His prior works include academic texts in philosophy (The Philosophy of the Human Soul and The Philosophy of Love) and theology (Lord of the Impossible) as well as science fiction and fantasy (The Beginning of the Beginning).

Book preview

Assault on America

32444.jpg

Michael S. Pendergast

US%26UKLogoB%26Wnew.ai

AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2011 by Michael S. Pendergast. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 10/21/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4670-4505-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4670-4504-9 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011917984

Printed in the United States of America

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Author’s Note

Characters

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

MAPS

BOOKS BY MICHAEL S. PENDERGAST III

FICTION

The Beginning of a Beginning

The Chosen Peoples

(in work)

Assault on America

The Assault Continues

(forthcoming)

PHILOSOPHY

The Philosophy of the Human Soul

The Philosophy of Love

THEOLOGY

The Lord of the Impossible

Abraham’s Children: Jesus and Mohammed

(forthcoming)

POETRY

(under the pseudonym Michael Mann)

The Boat Rocker

The Bell Ringer

(still forthcoming)

DEDICATION

This book is for the men and women who are on the front lines in the war against terror and evil—the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines in America’s armed forces, the agents in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and all the others in the myriad of other departments and agencies that are dedicated to protecting the citizens of this great nation—or, as the oath I once took put it, protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic. But it is especially for those few who actually struggle with the monumental task, a juggling act to be sure, of balancing that protection with the liberty and freedom that this great document of ours was meant to provide for all us without allowing it to become a mutual suicide pact and a path to destruction. Thank you—and may God bless you as you sacrifice much endeavoring to do your duty.

Author’s Note

For the sake of crafting a good, hopefully believable story, the general method of the attacks described in this novel were drawn from history, namely from raids by Arab terrorists on Israeli kibbutzim that started in the late 1940s and some terrorist attacks that have taken place since then.

All the towns (as well as the major roads and highways, lakes, rivers, etc.) described in this story actually exist, and other data the tale is based on is also accurate—though all were taken from somewhat dated sources, for a reason. Some liberties have also been taken for the sake of the story, and in addition, I have deliberately engineered in some errors—few in some places, more in others (and part of the fun of reading this story may be for readers to try and discover these). The reason for these designed in flaws is simply to try to prevent this story from ever being used as an actual plan of attack that any terrorist group could simply pull from the shelf and use without duplicating my research, updating it, and—most importantly of all—editing out those errors.

On the other hand, in an effort to make the story more realistic and believable, the research used a variety of sources so that readers can get a decent picture of the targets that the assault groups attack in this story: Yahoo and Google maps primarily (but not exclusively), aerial photos from a variety of sources (NASA and KH-1 satellite imagery at the top of that list, but also those from various federal and state agencies, such as conservation and agricultural departments), and topographic maps (primarily from mytopo.com). In addition, a host of other data sources were also used, including those found by perusing the web sites of the various towns and villages, police departments, and other facilities (schools, churches, etc.) or agencies described in this book.

I hope you, dear reader, enjoy this fictional tale—and tremble to realize how possible the scenario it describes really is.

Michael S. Pendergast III

New Sweden, Maine

26 Jun 2009-8 Nov 2010

Characters

(a partial list, not in order of appearance)

The Enemy

The Movers and Shakers

The Ayahtollah (unnamed)

The Planner (unnamed)

A Saudi imam of the Wahabi sect, feared by the House of Saud (unnamed)

An old Palestinian warrior now fighting in Afghanistan (unnamed)

An anonymous phone caller (the final cut-out between the Planner and the leaders of the six assault teams)

The Terrorists

Assault Team #1

Albert Khalid Hastings—Khaled Ali bin Haj, British leader of the northeast assault team who will abandon the Hastings alias after two nights and assume the name Alfred Ali Gordon

Robert Nash—Abdul Rahim al-Nashiri, the Saudi Second-in-Command who will later go by the name Bob Woodward

Tobias Ellwood—Abbas al-Janabi, Khaled’s Iraqi driver and partner on the command fire-team, who will later go by the alias Thomas Ellington

Shailesh Vara—Omar Caliph, the Egyptian leader of the second fire-team, later to be known as Shelby Jones

Brian Neville-Jones—Abdul Abn Saad, an Egyptian on the second fire team, later known as Benton Neverfield

Quintin Hogg—Mohammed Saleh, the Egyptian leader of the third fire-team, later known as Quincy Black)

Rab Butler—Abu Mohammed al-Masri, a Lebanese on the third fire-team, later known as Robert Thomas Baker)

Enock Powell—Hamidou Laanigri, the team’s Moroccan sniper, who will later assume the alias Hamilton Ham Alexander

Assault Team #2

Malcolm Harbour—Hilal Jaber al-Assiri, the Saudi leader of the mid-Atlantic assault team, who will abandon the Harbour alias after two nights and then go by the name Michael Havre

Desmond Swayne—Mohammed Abdul-Rahman, the Egyptian Second-in-Command, who will later go by the name David Swanson

David Lidington—Abu Hoq (aka Nirj Deva), Harbour’s Iraqi driver and partner on the command fire-team, who will later go by Dean Lawson

Alun Cairns—Mohammed Rashid Daoud al-Owhali, the leader of the second fire-team who will later assume the alias Albert Cain

Nick Ramsey—Salah Suleiman, an Iraqi on the second fire team, later to be known as Noel Ramsgate

Brynle Williams—Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, the Kuwaiti leader of the third fire-team, later known as Bruce Wythe

James Arbuthnot—Sarhane ben Adbelmajid Fakhet, the second member of the third fire-team later known as John Amberton

Philip Davies—Hassoun Mohammed, the team’s Kuwaiti sniper, who will later assume the name Phineas Dogan

Assault Team #3

Alan Hazelhurst—Midhat Mursi, the Egyptian leader of the southeast assault team, who will abandon the Hazelhurst alias after two nights and then assume the name Arthur Hines

Alexander Douglas-Home—Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, the Saudi Second-in-Command, who will later go by the alias Albert de Lessups

Edward Heath—Omar al-Bashir, Hazelhurst’s’s driver and partner on the command fire-team, later to be known as Ernest Havenhurst

Gustavo de Aríistegui—Zakariya Essabar, the Spanish leader of the second fire-team, later known as Augustus Gus Arnez

Murdo Fraser—Saad al-Sharif, a Saudi on the second fire team, who will later go by the name Samuel Mac MacDougal

Chris Grayling—Saif al-Adel, the leader of the third fire-team, later known as Charles Greystoke

Peter Ainsworth—Ahmed Chalabi, an Iranian on the third fire-team, later known as Paul Able

Albert Abbie Frazier—Abdullah Azzam, the team’s Jordanian sniper who will later tahe the alias Albert Abbie Farnesworth

Assault Team #4

Michael Portillo—Yusuf Galan, the Spanish leader of the northern plains assault team who will abandon the Portillo alias after two nights and assume the alias Joseph Portafina

Charles Villiers—Jamal Zougam, the French-speaking Moroccan Second-in-Command, who will later go by the alias Vincent Charbineau

Jacqui Lait—Zacarias Moussaqui, Portillo’s French-

speaking Moroccan driver and partner on the command fire-team, later known as Jacques de Tours

Philip Agular—Pharouk Hussin, the Philippino leader of the second fire-team, later known as Felipe Magellan

Pervez Mushariaf—a Pakistani on the second fire team who will later assume his first alias, Paolo Montalban

Armand Kharside—Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Afghani leader of the third fire-team, who will later be known as Armand Diaz

Khareem Mohimar—Khalfan Mohammed, a Tanzanian on the third fire-team who will later go by Cassius Karst

Jamal Israel—Jalmaah Islamiya, the team’s Nigerian sniper who will later go by the name Jamie Royale

Assault Team #5

Artur Munoz-Baiza—the Spanish leader of the northwest assault team, who will assume the alias Arturo Montaverde on the third night

Eduardo Zoplana—the Spanish Second-in-Command, who will go by the name Edward Escabar on the third night

Felipe de Vigo y Montajo—Artur’s Spanish driver and partner on the command fire-team, known later as Philip Cadez

Inigo Méndez Aznar—the leader of the second fire-team, later known as Enrique Arnez

Jośe Maria de Henares—a Spaniard on the second fire team, later known as Jośe Herrera

Miguel Tajada—the leader of the third fire-team, later known as Miguel Garcia

Jośe Blanco—a Spaniard on the third fire-team, later known as John Guzmann

Angel Botella—the team’s Spanish sniper, who will later go by the name Angelo Adolpho Brown

Assault Team #6

Gregorio Marañón—the Spanish leader of the southwest assault team, who will switch to the flamboyant alias of Hernán Cortez on the third night

Gustavo Escabar—the Spanish Second-in-Command, who will assume the alias Gustavo Garcia on the third night

Ana Palacio—Gregorio’s Spanish driver and partner on the command fire-team, later known as Amelia Cortez

Miguel Batasuna—the Spanish leader of the second fire-team, later known as Miguel Garcia

Cristina Colom i Naval—a Spaniard on the second fire team, later known as Maria de Santos y Cortez

Santiago Portillo—the leader of the third fire-team, later known as Santiago Ortiz

Elena Acebes—a Spaniard on the third fire-team, later known as Elena Garcia

Yolanda Rodriguez—the team’s Spanish sniper, who will later go by the name Yolanda Garcia Ortiz

The Americans

Members of the ad hoc FBI Task Force

Philip Calvert (Gadget), FBI Special Agent—trouble shooter and trouble maker

Claire Trevette (Coaster), psychologist and behavioral analyst at the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit

Clarence Brutus O’Sullivan (Mr. Black), FBI Special Agent and an ex-Force Reccon Marine

Richard K. Aston (Mr. White), FBI Special Agent from Quantico and an ex-Navy SEAL

Zabrinski (Zeb), FBI Special Agent from Quantico and an ex-Army Special Forces member

Cathy Montague (the Snake Doctor), an ex-hacker enlisted by the National Security Administration

Gunnery Sgt Stephen M. Crockett (Cheiron), USMC sniper

John Carter (Mr. Tanney), FBI Special Agent from the Washington, DC office

Sam Cavanaugh (Mr. Brown), FBI Special Agent from the Baltimore office

SSgt. Jake Fischer (Saggit), USMC sniper trainee

Hank Storm (Mr. Red), the Indian cop at the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota and an ex-Marine

Bud McNally (Mr. Blue), Maine State Trooper

Thomas Nick Nicholson (Mr. Gray), Alabama State Trooper

Other Police and Government Officials

The President of the United States of America (unnamed)

Uriah H. Osgood, the White House Chief-of-Staff

The Director of Homeland Security (unnamed)

Jonathan Myers, the Attorney General

Charles Whitey Whiting, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

David Ross, the former FBI Special Agent, recently named FBI Deputy Executive Assistant Director for Counter-Terrorism who is placed in charge of the terrorist manhunt

Ross’ secretary (unnamed)

Maximilian Williams (Mr. Tibbs), Resident Agent in charge of the FBI’s Burlington, Vermont office

Two of William’s special agents, identified only as Focus and Concave

Four agents of the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms office in Burlington, Vermont, identified only as Atmosphere, Earth, Fire, and Water

Taylor Gregory, Chief of Police of St. Alban’s, VT

Norris Robertson, Sheriff of Franklin County, VT.

A Franklin County deputy sheriff stationed in Swanton, VT (unnamed)

Joey Vandervort, Poweshiek Country Sheriff, headquartered in Montezuma, IA

Amy Yarmouth, dispatcher at the Montezuma headquarters of the Poweshiek Country Sheriff.

Several unnamed customs agents at the Blaine, Washington border crossing.

Jean Claude René, a captain in charge of the customs on the Canadian side of the border across from Blaine, WA.

An unnamed customs agent at Lukeville, AZ.

Captain Anthony Daniels, head of the airport police at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport

O’Reilly, an airport policeman at Sea-Tac

Military Personnel

Lt. Colonel Cecil Carpenter, USAF, aircraft commander of a VC-11 in the Presidential Airlift fleet

Captain John Tremayne, USAF, Carpenter’s co-pilot

Colonel Jeremy Werth (Tipper), Mission Commander of an Air Force E-8C Joint Stars aircraft (call sign: Mike Foxtrot)

Chief Master Sergeant Harold Horatio Harkness, senior NCO on the E-8C

Army Specialist First Class Thomas Kincaide, a radar specialist on the E-8C

Colonel William Billy Coblentz (Cowboy), Mission Commander of an Air Force RC-135 V/W Rivet Joint aircraft (call sign: Red Eye)

Lt. Colonel Buford Jackson, Coblentz’s Deputy Mission Commander

Lt. Joyce Davies, electronic intelligence (ELINT) specialist on the RC-135 V/W

SSgt. Pieta DeMio, ELINT specialist on the RC-135 V/W

Technical Sergeant Isaac Thomasson, an army guardsman at the Sault Ste. Marie border crossing

Other Sundry Civilians

A unnamed truck driver who makes a night-time stop in Allgood, AL

An unnamed Alabama State Trooper who checks out an eighteen-wheeler parked where it shouldn’t be in Allgood

Insomniac Joseph White Elk in Riverdale, ND

Janette Cyr, the school bus driver in Medford, ME who found the first bodies

Mrs. Espling, a resident of Medford worried about family members

Hank Storm’s cousin Aaron, who discovered the first of the terrorists’ victims in Riverdale, ND

A couple out for romance in a pickup just outside of Minersville, UT

Robert Nordstrom, a short-order cook in Medina, ND

Jason Green, the Medina town constable

A panicked man trying to call police in New Hope, KY

An unnamed Kentucky State Trooper who is rushing to New Hope’s aid

James Francis Marion, a good ol’ boy in French Camp, MS

Brent Axelrod, a CNN morning anchor

Richard Evans, a resident of Franconia, NH, who filmed the disaster there on a cell phone

An unnamed FAA Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) controller at the Philadelphia Center

William White Eagle, an old hunter living in Fort Apache, AZ

Dwayne Daniels, a police officer from Globe, AZ, who is rushing to Fort Apache

An Arizona Highway Patrol officer (unnamed), also enroute to Fort Apache

Joe Smith, a deputy sheriff, in Montezuma, IA

Karl Johannes, an engineer for the Illinois Central Railroad

An unnamed school administrator in Bokoshe, Oklahoma

Barbara Kies Nowatny, Principal of the Montezuma Combined Schools

A Protestant pastor in Montezuma, IA (unnamed)

A therapist in Montezuma, IA (unnamed)

Jack Wyatt, the Principal of the Dufur Combined School in Oregon

Lee Tibbets, a bus driver for the Dufur Combined School

Mike Kramer, a tenth grader at the Dufur Combined School

Jeannie Dixon, a bus driver for the Dufur Combined School

Clive Owens, a deliveryman with the Airborne facility at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

Bernie Castorini, the operations manager of the Airborne facility at Sea-Tac

Chapter One

AHALF AN HOUR before the clock-radio’s alarm was scheduled to sound, the phone beside it on the bedside table began to ring. It’s shrill announcement was quite effective in dragging Khaled from his peaceful sleep.

Fumbling with the handset, he placed it to his ear. ’Ello, ’ello, he said with a sleepy British accent.

Is Ginny there? an unknown voice inquired. I need to speak with her now.

After a second’s pause the man still lying in his warm bed answered. Sorry, mate, nobody ’ere by that name. You’ve got the wrong number.

After a longer pause the voice responded, Oh… sorry. Then Khaled heard a click and the dial tone.

He held the humming handset for a moment, looking at it curiously before placing it back into the phone’s cradle.

Then he simply lay back onto his pillow, but not to sleep. He was now wide awake. His was mind fully engaged.

He’d finally received the message that he’d been awaiting for months.

That cryptic message was short, sweet, and full of meaning. Ginny… now.

Khaled thought about all the previous missions the organization he was a small part of had run or sponsored. They had all been missions he had not been privileged to partake in, some because he had simply been too young at the time, and others because his superiors had by then decided that he was destined for something… else. Something different.

For a long time that had made him angry and dissatisfied. He’d chaffed at the grueling but infrequent training regimen that had never culminated in a real mission against the infidels. Training on this holiday or that vacation and then… nothing. Nothing but boring, uneventful months of running or exercising after work to keep fit.

For almost as long, he had not been told what that something different that he was intended for was. And like most young men, Khaled had been impatient. He had wanted to make a difference, to do something great. But for month after month, year after year, he had done nothing but prepare and wait, and wait, and wait.

Then six months ago, his superiors had told him what his destiny was to be in one of their infrequent get-togethers. And after hearing his orders and finally learning what he had and was being groomed for, he suddenly found that the training regimen—which had been stepped up—was invigorating as never before. And the running and exercise, the only part of that regimen that he could do in public, was no longer a means to bleed off frustration, but a pleasure that built anticipation and savour with each step.

Finally Khaled could lie in his warm bed and contemplate his destiny and what it had taken to bring him to this point with patience and a measure of approval.

He thought about the strikes against the USS Vincennes and later the one against the Cole. Those had come and gone while he was still a young, ignorant boy chaffing at what was being done to his people.

The mission against the Vincennes, he had learned not so long ago, had been piloted by an Iranian Air Force officer, but his plane—a civilian airliner carrying hundreds—had been shot down short of the point where the pilot could have nosed it over and sent it plummeting straight down into the American warship patrolling the Persian Gulf.

Unfortunate.

Unfortunate, but not unexpected. And though the warship had survived, Amerika—Khaled always thought of it that way, Amerika, the infidel nation that had sent its Navy to interfere in matters that didn’t concern it—had suffered a great black-eye in the world’s court of opinion by murdering hundreds of innocent passengers along with their not so innocent pilot.

And then, as it had years later when the USS Cole had a huge hole blown into the side of its hull in a Yemeni port, in a slightly more successful attack, Amerika threw off the insult and went back to its apathetic but interfering infidel ways.

The bombings of Amerika’s troops in Saudi accomplished a little, as did the murder of more of its people in embassies across Eastern Africa, or the execution of Western journalists, or the killing of decadent tourists across North Africa. But nothing done to them seemed to get through to the Amerikans or hold their attention for long.

And certainly the murders of Brits in London, Spaniards on a train outside of Madrid, and hosts of others across the East all the way into the Pacific basin didn’t hold the infidel nation’s attention or cause the least change in its corrupt ways.

But those actions held his, for by then he was a member of the cause, though still an ignorant boy, chaffing at being held back as he was secretly trained but not employed.

And then came the spectacular destruction of the fabled Twin Towers in Amerika’s own financial capitol—New York City—live and on TV for all the world to see. That should have done it. That should have awakened the infidels and told them how they had to change to survive.

And it did—awaken them that is—for a while. And a few caught a part of the message, mostly liberal journalists and some Western liberation theologists—You can’t oppress us and not suffer the consequences. But even they couldn’t grasp the greater part, the part opposing the oppressive, corrupting export of the decadent Western morals that most offended Islam, the part that abhorred the West’s tolerance and even approval of materialism, pornography, and deviant lifestyles that lifted women and gave them unheard of rights even as it corrupted them and ground them into the dirt of civilization.

Yet even that glorious feat—the destruction of almost three thousand souls and more, the destruction of the twin towered monument that was the material, financial heart of that city—hadn’t held Amerika’s attention for long.

Oh, sure, it woke Amerika, but not in a way that caused it to reform. Instead it had struck out into the Afghan provinces. He knew that after Afghanistan and the Taliban had fallen, his superiors had striven mightily to get Amerika to invade Iraq, sure that they could make that miscalculation into another Vietnam for the trouble-making infidel meddler.

His superiors were sure that they could finally destroy Amerika in the desert wastes there, along with their sometimes accommodating enemy, Iraq, after the two had savaged each other.

But somehow they’d been wrong, as Amerika ate up Saddam and Iraq in mere weeks.

Al Quaeda had then assembled its people from around the world and infiltrated them into liberated Iraq—and then, for the most part, they had watched them destroyed there.

Stupid Iraqis fools! Khaled though savagely of the Iraqi people. Preferring Americans and Brits and electricity and voting to Islam. Of course, too many inhabitants of the Middle East, including Kuwaitis, Saudis, and even many Iranians felt that way too. Despicable!

Then someone—Khaled didn’t know who—but someone had reminded some of the movement’s leaders that Amerika had had real problems in Vietnam. Not because of the North’s great armies and its magnificent weapons, for they’d had none of those things. And not because of the glorious battles the Viet Cong had won, for there were none. Even the Tet offensive had been a disaster for the North Vietnamese—until the West’s own journalists had twisted the story to make Amerika’s victory into a loss, demoralizing their own citizens.

No, what had turned the trick for the Communist infidels had been the terror they had spread through the countryside with a few men armed with AK-47’s. Kill a village elder here, rape a headman’s wife there, abduct a few children from prominent persons somewhere else, and nothing—nothing Amerika could do—would win the hearts and minds of the populace, for their hearts were captive to terror and their minds already focused on doing whatever they could to safeguard their real treasure—the family members they loved and their own little plots of land.

With that a new plan rapidly began falling into place. One that finally involved Khaled.

That plan was something more deadly than the recent, expensive, flashy raids on hotels in Pakistan or the bombings of resorts in the South Pacific and Egypt. Those only killed the prominent and wealthy—and the common people half a world away forgot about them in minutes. They’d never have the chance to luxuriate at such places, so the lesson did not strike deep into their hearts. They remained at home, working hard in Nowhere USA—and in Nowhere, USA they were safe.

They wouldn’t be when Ginny arrived.

Ginny. Cute play on words, Khaled thought in an apparent nonsequitor, appreciating the irony, for the cause had made sure that he was quite well educated. Ginny. Genesis. Beginnings.

And beginning when? Now!

Still Khaled decided to allow himself the pleasure of his warm bed for a few more minutes, for now actually meant the start of the next preplanned cycle of opportunity.

Then his clock-radio decided that was not to be and began screaming at him to get up and get moving. It was a work day.

Khaled slapped the alarm off and sat up. He looked over at the calendar on the wall above his desk. The next preplanned cycle of opportunity—the next new moon—was seven days away. Operations would start in six days. Infiltration two days before that.

That gave him and his team members three days to leisurely pack, disappear, and then reappear to catch flights to Amerika under assumed names long ago planned for.

Then, after a day to rest a little and shake off the jet lag—Strike!

Satisfied with that thought and finally able to do something that would have a real effect on Amerika and the West, Khaled sat up, swung himself out of the bed, and rose for the day.

He hurried for he suddenly found that he had a little extra work to do.

He smiled at the thought and stood up.

At five foot eleven inches and 185 pounds, brown-eyed, dark haired Khaled Ali bin Haj looked almost every bit like any other Englishman—a little taller and thinner perhaps than average, but not noticeably different.

And yet he was, for the seemingly unremarkable thirty year old man who’d been born in Suffolk, the son of well-to-do but not wealthy Saudi emigrants (they had tried hard to fit into the English way of doing things), was not at all enamored with the English way of life. That didn’t show—he kept it well concealed. But what did show was the slightly more ruddy complexion he’d inherited from his parents.

That, however, was slight, no doubt thanks to genes inherited from a paternal grandmother and a maternal grandfather, both of whom had been British and both of whom had been so enamored with Arabs—a British peculiarity Khaled long resented—that they’d married them. He didn’t particularly like the fact that he had English blood in his veins, but the fact that he did meant that he could walk the streets and be mistaken for a typical Englishman, and that would now be useful. Quite useful.

Forty-five minutes later, Khaled Ali bin Haj had showered, shaved, eaten a breakfast of bangers (Kosher, of course) and mash, and then dressed for his lower mid-grade administrative duties at the Ministry.

He picked up his umbrella, opened the door of his small flat, and went down the stairs, and out into the morning air. It smelled wonderful and Khaled felt free.

Today he walked—normally he took the tube—in the direction of the government office he shared with dozens of others who looked more or less just like him.

But they weren’t like him, for along the way, Khaled stopped here and there—each time careful to make sure that he wasn’t being followed or observed. There was no way to absolutely guarantee that, but the odds were good since he’d striven for so long to fit in—first to please his parents and later, and more importantly, to obey his superiors.

At each stop—he made seven—he made a quick call at a different phone booth.

Each time the message he gave was the precisely the same as the one he’d received earlier that morning: Is Ginny there? I need to speak with her now.

*  *  *

In five other European cities, cities in England and Spain and France, five other similar young men had already received precisely the same message, word for word. And those five were doing exactly as Khaled was doing—going to work as they did everyday. That and passing on a very special message which they had never before done—and most probably would never do again.

None of the men—and women, for there were a few—on any of the teams knew the members of any of the other teams. All they knew were the members of their own team. That and that there were other teams that they would act in conjunction with. How many other teams there were, that too they did not know, but they knew there were several. That was the word that had been communicated to them. Several. More than one or two. At least three or four, surely, maybe even five. But less than many.

They further knew that the existence and operations of the other teams’ would somehow provide them with a measure of mutual support by dividing their enemy—the minions of the Great Satan.

Knowing that they wouldn’t be alone in their efforts was a source of some comfort. Knowing that their efforts would strike at the heart of America in a way that America and the world could not and would not shake off and forget—ever—was more comforting and satisfying still. Their efforts—and perhaps even their sacrifice, their martyrdom—would change America and revitalize their cause forever.

Of that they were quite sure.

Thus, as Khaled walked to work in London, apparently unconcerned, so also did Midhat Mursi and Mohammed Abdul-Rahman in other places in Great Britain. And across the channel, so too did Hilal Jaber al-Assiri in the Arab quarter of Paris, and two more men in Spain—outwardly Spaniards—who had been known as Artur Munoz-Baiza and Gregorio Marañón for so long that sometimes even they had trouble remembering what their real names had once been.

The only thing each of these six men—and all their team members, in fact—had in common was that they looked exactly as if they were what they purported themselves to be—Englishmen or Frenchmen or Spaniards who spoke and behaved exactly as they would have had they actually been Englishmen or Frenchmen or Spaniards.

All of them were within a few inches in height of the norm for the countries they lived in. All were within five or ten pounds of the weight normal to that height, though some tended to be a little more stocky and others a little thinner. And all were fit—quite fit—though none of them seemed to be unusually so when hidden in a business suit or running togs.

And every one of them were smart, educated men, many—most—with college degrees that could have led to successful careers in business or engineering. They were all on that path—but every one of them had also been educated in other ways that weren’t apparent to the other Englishmen or Frenchmen or Spaniards who shared the streets with them, or worked in the offices they occupied Monday through Friday, or called them for this, that, and the other from within the countries they hid in, right out in the open.

Everyone they worked with and dealt with in person or over the phone knew that they were ordinary Englishmen or Frenchmen or Spaniards toiling at making a good life for themselves.

But they weren’t ordinary Englishmen or Frenchmen or Spaniards. Their non-ordinariness wasn’t something that was visible in their outward appearances or behaviour. It wasn’t something presented to the world, but rather something that was normally hidden in their hearts and souls—an utter submission to radical, fundamentalist Islam. That and an undying hatred for the Great Satan and its allies.

An undying hatred of their enemies.

That and the will to make them die. To kill them. To eradicate them from the face of the earth,

*  *  *

Four days later Khaled caught an early tube to Heathrow International.

He traveled there alone, but was scheduled to meet one of his team members at the airport. There was even a remote chance that he might even see one or two of his other six men there, if the flight schedules became bollocksed because of weather or maintenance problems. But except for the person he was meeting—Abdul Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi national who looked and sounded enough like a pure-bred Brit that he should arouse no concern from the bobbies here or TSA in the states—he would ignore them totally, just as they would ignore him.

At least for the present.

Khaled Ali bin Haj also ignored who he had been for so many years, for he was now bearing a British passport under the name Albert Khalid Hastings. He couldn’t quite pass as a perfectly born and bred Brit to anyone trained in security, after all his coloring was just a shade too dark. He could, however, pass for one of the not innumerous Brits who had some Arab blood in them, as he did. After all, even before T. E. Lawrence had forged the diverse tribes of Arabia into the House of Saud, many Brits had fallen in love with the Middle East and the Arabs. And some, like two of his grandparents, had even gone so far as to actually marry Arab women (or, the scandal, men!) and bring them into their shocked middle and upper-class families (while others, unlike his daring ancestors, had simply enjoyed their visits to the Middle East to the fullest—and left behind a small host of half-breed bastards).

Besides, openly acknowledging his heritage—at least in part—would explain any reaction on his part if a chance meeting occurred and he was called Khaled or Ali. He didn’t expect to meet anyone who knew him—other than team members, of course, who would not have a slip of the tongue—but who knew for certain?

Nasty little buggers, those boys at Eton and Cambridge. Always teasing me, calling me Khalid or Ali… or something worse… instead of Albert, he’d say with a laugh to show he’d outgrown any resentment and considered such hazing pranks so childish as to be beneath remembering.

Ostensibly he was now a middle management account executive—Albert Hastings—traveling with another member of his firm on company business. That other member was Abdul, who of course had his own perfect passport in his pocket.

It should be perfect for Her Majesty’s government had issued it not two years ago.

The government’s only mistake was in thinking that Abdul Rahim al-Nashiri was one Robert Nash. That, however, was understandable, for Abdul—an actual half-breed in whom the Brit genes predominated—looked like someone whose name should have been Robert Nash. They could see the result of the genes. What they couldn’t see was the Arab passion that remained burning in his heart.

Besides, Abdul had all of the documentation necessary to prove that he actually was Robert Nash—though little Bobby had died some thirty years earlier, without ever seeing his first birthday.

So between his good looks, his perfect British-accented English, his carefully selected middle-class but aspiring to upper-class suit—expensive, but not too expensive—and, of course, his perfect documentation, Abdul-Robert served as the perfect legitimizing companion for the just slightly less than perfect Khaled.

They would say, if asked, that they’d worked together for years since joining their consulting firm—a real firm that specialized in international marketing (though it had never heard of either of them)—which was now trying to expand its operations into the states. They had their cover story down pat.

And with that preparation, Khaled and Abdul suddenly ceased to exist.

Only Albert and Robert, two typical British businessmen hard at work for their corporation, remained (though, if things went right, those aliases too would soon have to be discarded and yet others, also carefully planned for, assumed).

Shortly after arriving at the airport, Khaled-Albert made his way to the departure gate where he and Bob would catch a Lufthansa flight to Boston, Massachusetts.

Abdul-Robert was already waiting for him. He’d arrived earlier, as planned, to check out the airport and insure that there was no unusual surveillance waiting for any of the team members who’d use this airport to infiltrate the enemy’s borders.

Khaled-Albert received no wave off signal, so he walked straight to his traveling companion and greeted him in a friendly, but very polite and reserved British manner.

Good morning, Bob. How are you this fine day?

Fine, fine, Albert. And you?

Then, not waiting for a response, Abdul-Robert launched into a preplanned masquerovka: I picked up the final printouts last night after you’d left work, he said as if a dutiful and just slightly more junior executive. Here, let me show you. There are a few changes you should be aware of before we meet with the management of…

Khaled-Albert only listened with half his attention. He knew the script and what Abdul-Robert was about to tell him, so he let his eyes discretely conduct his own surveillance.

Nothing to be concerned about he observed as the two junior execs killed the time remaining before check-in and boarding by playing out their scripted roles.

Khaled never saw any of his other team members, for the other two traveling to Boston like themselves, were scheduled on a different flight—there had been no weather or maintenance problems—and the remaining four others would be traveling to Manchester, New Hampshire from a totally different airport in the United Kingdom.

*  *  *

In this and other locations, other team chiefs and their team members, in ones and twos—and in one case as a whole vacationing party—had already boarded flights to Las Vegas, Nevada, or Denver, or Minneapolis, or Milwaukee. Or they were awaiting flights to Philadelphia or Atlanta or Nashville. A few would even be headed for that citadel of evil itself—Washington, D.C.

And all of them were being very, very careful to appear as if they were precisely who they were pretending to be, which was, for the most part, young, mid-level managers from a score of different European corporations whose business was taking them to someplace or the other in America.

None of them would be especially interesting to America’s Department of Homeland Security, for none of them ostensibly represented firms having anything to do with specialties—like pharmaceuticals, chemicals, or engineering, and especially not weapons—that might indicate a knowledge of things that could be harmful. These travelers all professed to deal in consulting, or advertising, or investments and banking.

In short, they were pretending to be the sort of people who wouldn’t know how to cock a gun, let alone how to hit anything with it. They were just people who appeared as if they didn’t know how to use any weapon more sophisticated than a cricket bat or a soccer ball.

They were playing the part of people who—it was hoped—would be so boringly innocuous that they would go unseen and unremembered by the crowds of travelers, airlines employees, and especially the airport security people that surrounded them.

The sole exception to that was the Spanish team from Barcelona. That team too was composed of die-hard Muslim fundamentalists, but they were, for all intents and purposes, doing their best to appear to be four married—or allegedly married—Spanish couples. And those couples were doing their best to set off on a vacation to the American west in the most boisterous manner possible.

Because of that they were not dressed in business suits, but were instead wearing colorful clothing, laughing and carousing, and even dancing in the aisles, and thus attracting so much attention that no person watching them—especially no security agent—would ever suspect their real intent. After all, would any group with sinister plans dare risk attracting the attention that these folks were garnering? Of course not!

But this flamboyance was merely a different form of masquerovka. A different mask, a different form of camouflage.

And all were successful. In time the members of all six teams, in their different styles of camouflage (that they all fervently hoped was perfect), safely boarded several dozen different flights here and there across Europe and began winging their way to America and destiny.

*  *  *

Chapter Two

FOR SEVERAL YEARS following 9/11—September 11, 2001—the leaders of Al Qaeda had tried to engineer other even more impressive and awesome events to strike at and demonstrate the impotence of the Great Satan and its allies. They’d striven to bring about events designed to cause the Great Satan to withdraw into itself and cease troubling them and their agenda in the Middle East and around the world.

Sadly, at least for the Al Qaeda leadership and others who hoped for their success, the reverse had happened.

The plot to simultaneously hijack a dozen of airlines and use them to take down skyscrapers in Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Dallas, and other cities of the west had been discovered and neutralized. A handful of other grandiose schemes were similarly discovered and as ignominiously ended before they could bear the least bit of fruit.

Even smaller operations aimed at America were discovered and eliminated before America could suffer the slightest indignity.

And then—in almost no time at all—those leaders didn’t have the time to plot and plan and organize grandiose schemes, for America’s overt strike into Afghanistan (and other places, in a more covert manner), gave them other concerns.

At first, remembering history and the defeats of the British a century earlier, and the Soviets only decades before—and forgetting that the defeat of the Russians had depended in a not inconsequential manner on the support they’d received from America—the Taliban and al Qaeda councils simply assumed that America too would break its teeth trying to chew on the mujahedin.

It hadn’t worked out that way, however. Too many Afghans were too independent and too intent on leading their lives as they chose and not in the way some swaggering self-styled imam of the Taliban wanted to decree. The result was that the Americans seemed to be, for the most part, succeeding among many of the Afghan people. Too many of them.

And now the leaders—the future of Islam—were fleeing for their lives.

The Al Qaeda leaders, for the Taliban were by then largely dead or running in other directions, decided to engineer a wider war, suckering America into Iraq where their always enemy but sometimes accomplice, Saddam, would break their enemy for them.

They succeeded in getting the war they wanted.

That, however, didn’t work either.

Only weeks after the start of the larger war, on grainy TV screens hidden deep in dark caverns, senior Al Qaeda officials saw the great statue of the Baathist leader—their enemy no longer—toppled. And not by American GIs or marines, but by the common Iraqi people themselves.

Traitors!

What had the world come to when they couldn’t even count of the hatred of Muslims for the Great Satan and its uniformed minions?

Now at about that time, an old Palestinian warrior who’d come to fight with his Afghan brothers griped to one of the senior Al Qaeda leaders that in his time they hadn’t needed great airliners or tons of oil-soaked fertilizer—and they certainly hadn’t needed to engineer wars in other, distant countries—to kill those dogs in Judea.

"All we needed, he had observed with a mixture of sourness and pride, were a few men, some old rifles, and a dark night to sneak across the border. Then the next morning… and many other mornings as well… all the pigs in the IDF found was a kibbutz inhabited by dozens… hundreds… of corpses, all rotting in the morning sun.

And no sign of the heroes who’d slaughtered those dogs and their women and children! And we lived to do it again and again! he said, forgetting that in the end they too had been defeated and Israel born.

At that moment, as the memory of the old warrior reminded the leadership of how things had once been, a new, scaled-down, cut-rate war plan was born.

*  *  *

Now that plan had been put into operation. All the slow, pains-taking preparations had been completed. All the intelligence had been gathered. All the supplies acquired, piece after piece, and then cached in self-storage units across America, waiting for someone to pick them up and use them.

Soon someone would, for now all the teams were in the air, coming closer and closer with every passing minute to bringing war to the common men and women of America.

And in just a few days—a few days with a little more luck, for thankfully none of the counter-terrorist agencies of America and its allies seemed to have even a hint of what was coming—that plan would begin bearing fruit so sweet that it would sour America’s stomach and leave it struck low and vomiting up its own guts for years to come.

Over the remaining hours of that day, from flight after flight, the team members got off their planes all across America. Many of them arrived as individuals, alone. Others arrived in pairs and occasionally as threesomes.

And all—praise Allah—arrived safely. As they should have, for none of those arriving had ever before been allowed to take part in an operation and possibly compromised. Security had been strict.

So from dozens of aircraft scattered from one end of the country to the other, men and women who seemed innocuous though they were intent on harming it as much as they possibly could streamed into America.

The first team members deplaned in Denver and Minneapolis and, after connections here or there, Milwaukee. They had departed Europe on the earliest flights. Now, safely through customs, they immediately made their way to rental car agencies to pick up vehicles already arranged for them in order to put as much distance between themselves and the airport—with its concentration of security personnel—as was humanly possible.

Soon others arrived in Atlanta and in Nashville. They’d left later, but hadn’t had as far to travel or as long a trip.

Still later the members of other teams began trickling into Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, and a little later Manchester, New Hampshire.

Finally, as the day was drawing to a close, a tired group of eight vacationers arrived in Las Vegas. Drained from partying during the long, long flight, these now subdued tourists wearily collected their luggage, signed for their waiting rental cars, and then made their way the luxurious casino-hotel rooms reserved for them.

None of those weary partiers—and none of the others, mostly masquerading as businessmen, though a few traveled as vacationers, that had arrived in their own motel rooms earlier in the day—slept.

They all had other, far more important things to accomplish, like getting their bodies adjusted to the new time zones they were now in. Time zones in which they needed to function at peak performance in the dead of night, rather than in the light of day.

It wasn’t until the next morning that each of the six teams’ members finally got the chance to sleep.

They’d stayed up late the previous evening to acclimatize themselves to the time frame in their operations would occur in. But it wasn’t wasted time, for all had used those long, tired hours for reviewing everything they needed to know and do, rehearsing their next moves as quietly and thoroughly as they could, and thinking about what they would do if a glitch showed up here or there. Planning was the key and so they planned well until the sun was high in the sky.

Then they finally got a chance to sleep. And by then sleep was a blessing from Allah that they could not refuse.

They slept soundly in the hotel and motel rooms they had inhabited until it was late in the afternoon.

Then, for the most part, they abandoned those rooms.

When they left, they didn’t check out. And they didn’t need to. The rooms were all prepaid through safe sources. They’d be left behind as distractions, each containing a few difficult to discover, but highly misleading clues, in the unlikely event that the authorities that would soon be looking for them ever found those rooms.

So each of the teams simply left, some apparently on the business they’d come to America to conduct and others for pleasure.

And in every case the time and manner of their quiet departure caused no comment.

Once out of the sight of the motel’s staff and guests, however, things changed.

The team members each went methodically to work to complete their assigned tasks—tasks that had to be accomplished successfully before they met up again.

And meet up again they did—hours later in cities far from where they had spent their first night and day.

*  *  *

Khaled-Albert was riding in the passenger seat of a dark, nondescript sedan, when his thoughts were interrupted as his driver—Abdul-Robert Nash—pulled off the main road into the parking lot of a moderately large motel just past the mall entrance on Bangor, Maine’s north side. The high volume of traffic generated by the mall—and the fact that this was a major stop on the interstate for travelers and truckers—would help to cloak their presence in the area.

Hopefully it would also leave any of the few people they would have to interact with—motel attendants, gas station and convenience store clerks, and the like—with so little information that they would be practically useless should any local, state, or federal authority ever question them.

Emerging from reviewing for the thousandth time his team’s plans, and contingency plans, and back-up emergency plans, Khaled-Albert worried that somehow some of his people—or the pre-positioned supplies those people had spent the last hours gathering up—wouldn’t show up. Or worse—that some had actually been discovered, caught, and were now being interrogated by the enemy.

He let out a long breath, relieved that apparently that wouldn’t be the case, for there at the far end of the motel’s parking lot he spied a small United Parcel van. Khaled-Albert now knew that at least part of his team—and the most important of the supplies they would need later that night—had arrived safely.

He and Abdul-Robert got out of the rental, gathered the traveling bags so prominent in the rear seat, and went in to register. They left the two dull, olive-colored duffle bags they’d collected from a self-storage facility in Augusta earlier that day safely hidden in the locked trunk of their sedan.

Those would be retrieved—and thoroughly inventoried—only after night had fallen and it was dark enough that no chance passerby would be able to really see or understand what was going on.

Inside the desk clerk almost ignored the two Brits as they claimed the rooms reserved for them. They were just two more bodies among all the others he’d checked in and besides, it was almost six o’clock. The clerk’s day shift was almost over and his mind was already focused on how he would relax for the night.

Inside the motel, Abdul-Robert unlocked the door to his room, threw his bags on the bed, and then turned back to Khaled-Albert. He chatted about their business plans until both men were quite sure that the hallway was empty. When they were certain that they weren’t being observed, he closed the door to his room.

The two of them quickly and quietly disappeared into Khaled-Albert’s room.

A few minutes later Hamidou Laanigri—a Moroccan going under the name of Enock Powell—knocked.

Abdul-Robert checked the peephole and then admitted the man dressed in an almost immaculate UPS uniform. He’d only worn it for a few hours. He also had a UPS jacket tucked under one arm

Over the next hour or so, they were joined by Abbas al-Janabi from Iraq, three Egyptians—Omar Caliph, Abdul Abn Saad, and Mohammed Saleh—and Abu Mohammed al-Masri, who was Lebanese. They were going under the names Tobias Ellwood, Shailesh Vara, Brian Neville-Jones, Quintin Hogg (who despised his alias once he learned that hog was a name for a pig), and Rab Butler.

All of them were fluent in the English of the former Empire and traveling as either businessmen, vacationers, or persons visiting relatives in the states. All were dressed accordingly.

As the door closed behind the last man to arrive—Quintin Hogg—he breathed a sigh of relief at seeing the other seven men already there awaiting him.

We made it, Khaled, he breathed softly and gratefully.

It was not Khaled, however, who responded. It was Albert. Or at least the man going by the name of Albert, however much he was passionately enlivened with Khaled’s spirit. Albert! the team leader said in a quiet, harsh tone. Don’t make that mistake again, Quintin.

No, sir, Mohammed-Qunitin mumbled. A slip only. It will not happen again, Albert.

Khaled-Albert paused and then nodded, satisfied. He understood the relief that Mohammed-Quintin felt that had led to the slip—he felt it himself—but their lives were now on the line. And more important still, the success of the mission was on the line.

Now, however, came one of the most stressful parts of that mission—waiting again and doing nothing whatsoever that might generate suspicion.

Waiting until darkness fell.

*  *  *

Over those same several hours, similar reunions occurred in quiet motels in disparate places across the United States. Motels in which the parking lots each contained at least one panel or box truck, like the UPS van in Bangor. A small DHL truck in Morgantown, West Virginia, a Fedex stepvan in Gadsden, Alabama. In Grand Forks, North Dakota, a beat up box truck with US Postal Service markings, and in Miles City, Montana another UPS van.

Only in Las Vegas did a team (the only one which remained in the same hotel, for Las Vegas was a perfect place to hide in) not yet have their cargo vehicle in hand. A USPS stepvan (or, at least, a truck that looked like one) was hidden just outside the city waiting to be picked up later that evening.

And in these same locations, in one motel or another, members of the six teams tried to rest—some sleeping like babies while others nervously faked a calm they didn’t feel as they pretended to laze—while they waited for darkness to fall and free them to begin their deadly missions.

Then, as the skies slowly darkened from blue to indigo and then to black over eastern Maine, first one and then another of the team members came fully awake. Each watched their leader, Khaled-Albert, as he pretended that he did not feel the same tension that his men felt.

None checked their watches, however,

Reviews for Assault on America

[Emmanuel Isaiah Smith · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is an extremely entertaining read! There are pieces of this document that really stood out as informative national information on war, the military industrial complex, and the consequences of mismanagement of taxpayer resources.