Читать книгу State Of Attack - Gary Haynes - Страница 28

Chapter 19

It was midmorning in Lafayette, Louisiana, and the Somali had to be taken alive. Dan Crane had flown down aboard one of the CIA jets that were on standby 24/7 for just that purpose. The FBI had informed him that they had intel that pointed to the Somali having links with Al-Shabaab, the militant jihadists in the Horn of Africa, who carried out major terrorist attacks in neighbouring Kenya. Crane was there because they also had evidence that he’d travelled both to Syria and Iraq.

But more importantly the man had been sleeping with a CIA woman, a PA, who had been caught downloading a file on the agency’s investigations on Ibrahim, and, as soon as she’d been taken into FBI custody, she’d wept and admitted her treason. Crane thought of her as a rather pathetic and flawed individual, a minor player to be sure, but he was hoping for more from the Somali. He hadn’t been in the field for years, but due to the calibre of the suspect, he’d wanted to make sure there were no fuckups when he was taken, and no hitches after it.

The detached bungalow was set back about twenty-five yards from the residential street. It was surrounded by a rusted mesh fence bisected by a small, wrought-iron gate. The bungalow was wooden, painted olive green. There was a large porch, with a roof, supported by pillars built from cement and inlaid with large smooth stones.

The bungalow had been under surveillance via satellite imagery for three days and nights. Two seasoned counterterrorism agents had spent alternate twelve-hour shifts checking it out on a computer screen in DC, monitoring the comings and goings. A physical stakeout had been put in place as soon as the man’s identity had been confirmed.

The front yard was unkempt. A mass of yellowing grass, clovers, dandelions and wild azaleas, as well as bunches of purple thistles and all manner of weeds. A large Ford pickup truck was parked on the uneven driveway to the right-hand side of the building. There was no garage. The truck was painted metallic red, with customized dragons breathing fire along the doors. The twin exhaust pipes gleamed in the humid heat of the day. Faint, intermittent laughter could be heard from the front room.

Despite Crane’s status and skills, the law stated that the CIA didn’t have jurisdiction in the homeland, something that was frequently ignored, especially when national security was threatened. He crouched now beside an FBI SUV, just far enough away to be outside of the peripheral vision of anyone within the bungalow.

Both ends of the street had been cordoned off by the local PD, with squad cars, rolls of yellow tape stating POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS, and half a dozen officers at either end. A black FBI SWAT truck was moving up the other side of the street to Crane, at about five miles an hour. It stopped and the helmeted, black-clad seven-man team disembarked, carrying bulletproof shields, pump shotguns and Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns. They hunched down, and followed the line of the adjacent property’s low brick wall, which abutted the sidewalk.

Crane noticed that the laughing had stopped, but it didn’t worry him. The intel had made it clear that the suspect could be armed, but unless he had a Gatling gun mounted on the windowsill, he didn’t stand a chance.

Once the team reached the end of the wall, they rushed forwards. The front man opened the gate and the team split apart, as they had rehearsed. Three headed for the front door, two covered the sides, while the remaining pair jogged to the rear.

Crane edged closer, positioning himself behind a parked sedan, within clear eyesight of the events that were unfolding.

Just as the ram man hit the door with the first strike, a chair crashed through the front window, clearly making everyone jittery. Shards of glass rained down on the grass. Then what looked like a grenade landed on the patio.

“Jesus,” Crane said.