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“It’s the FBI, Mitch. Someone realized after the fact that we didn’t have a search warrant. They’re all freaked out. They think a judge will kick all this evidence.”
“So they’re going to come out here and take over the interrogation?”
“I think so.”
“Fuck that. Let ’em try.”
“If I were you,” Harris said, leaning in closer, “I’d do whatever you need to do in the next thirty minutes.” Backing away, he added, “If you know what I mean.”
Rapp grabbed his forehead and moaned, “Does it ever end? This is the same type of bullshit that got us into this mess in the first place.”
“Let me handle the interrogations. I’m the one who fucked this thing up.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?”
“If I’d brought Johnson to your attention sooner, maybe this whole disaster could have been avoided.”
Rapp grabbed him by the arm and led him into the corner. “Shut the hell up.”
“But…”
“But, nothing. A disaster is when a hurricane hits. You can’t stop God or Mother Nature. This,” he pointed at the big board, “was going to happen sooner or later. There was no way we were going to be able to hold these guys off forever. Especially when we’re playing by all these Mickey Mouse rules. If you had pulled Johnson on Monday like Chuck and Rob had told you to, we wouldn’t have these four right here. We haven’t arrived at this spot by being too careless. We’re in the middle of this shit storm right now because we haven’t taken enough risks. This Johnson thing sucks, and when the time is right we’ll honor him, but that’s not now. We can’t let up for a second. The Feds are going to come in here and throw their weight around, and Mirandize these pieces of shit. They’re going to get lawyers, and a couple of years from now they might actually go to trial.
“I don’t give a shit about any of it. It’s all a fucking sideshow. You know what two of those guys smell like?”
“No.”
“Barbecue, Mike. They smell like burnt meat. How much do you want to bet they’re the ones who fucking torched Johnson?”
Nash looked up at the balcony where the four men had been taken and said, “Let’s get this done before the suits show up.”
CHAPTER 68
AN ashen-faced analyst stood outside the conference room door and tried her best to ignore the loud but muffled noises that were coming from inside the room. She’d been asked by Mike Nash to stand there and wait. She’d asked him, “For what?” and his reply had been a simple one-word answer: “Information.”
It had been five minutes, and while she had no sympathy for the man who was being interrogated, it was very uncomfortable to know that it was her boss in there who was doing a good deal of the shouting and God only knew what else.
Suddenly the door opened and Nash appeared with a piece of paper. “Run those names through TIDE and call me on the conference room phone as soon as you get a hit.”
TIDE was the database they operated. It stood for Terrorist Information Datamart Environment.
“Hurry up,” Nash ordered, before closing the door. At the far end of the conference table Aabad bin Baaz was sitting in a chair with his hands still bound behind his back, tears streaming down his cheeks, his thick black hair sticking out in different directions.
Rapp put both hands on the table and said, “Aabad, I swear to you, the biggest computer in the world is chewing up those names right now, and if it comes up empty…the arm is coming out of the socket.”
“I have not lied. Those are their names. You can go ask them.”
“Of course I could go ask them,” Rapp said in a reasonable tone, “but how do I know they’re not going to give me some bullshit name that you guys have agreed on?”
“I am telling you the truth. It was just the four of us.”
Without any warning, Rapp wound up and cracked him across the back of the head with an open hand. Aabad let out a yelp like a scared dog.
“I told you,” Rapp warned him, “every time a lie comes out of your mouth, I’m going to smack you. Let’s go back to last night. During evening prayer you said you found my guy poking around in the basement of the mosque. Rashid, the big, stupid idiot, offered to torture my guy and you took him up on it.”
“Yes.”
“You then found out he was CIA, so Rashid killed him, rolled him up in a prayer rug, stuffed him in a trunk, drove him to an abandoned lot, and lit the thing on fire, but you weren’t there for that part.”
