Interdiction, W.Addison Gast [room on the broom read aloud .txt] 📗

decided to join this group. He would not fail and he would make his parents proud. That last thought made Haydar wonder how his mother would know of his accomplishments?


Chapter 9

Nawabshsh Pakistan University Laboratory

Badra Husana had all the appearances of the dedicated assistant to the research director. She put in many hours of work and frequently stayed over after Doctor Sadaqua Altaf and others had gone home. Badra had no family or friends in this area and absolutely no social life here. That aspect of her life was without concern to her. She was a dedicated member of the Talabanni el Assid. This was a very covert organization within the Taliban organization that used women and especially young girls to perform deep intelligence operations that were known only to the supreme leader and a close cadre of wealthy educated Afghans. Badra had been somewhat envious of her leader Adib because of his open travel and opulent and frequently lavish social life. Posing as an international banker. They had attended the same schools at different times but were close in their assigned missions but never too friendly or openly affectionate of each other. This was not difficult for Badra to portray because in reality, she despised Adib as a man. He was the typical chauvinist that most men his age were as a result of centuries of religious thought that women were just not equal. She would complete this mission and then return to her friends in Sweden and await her call again to duty when the occasion arose. She had been an excellent choice for this mission because of her education and background. Now, tonight she would show Adib that she possessed the ability of a master spy by processing a quantity of the lethal substance known as X437 in this laboratory and putting it in the hands of her countrymen for use in America. She must be concise. She must be absolutely positive that the substance she would produce here would do the killing and horrible disfigurement she had seen in the lab animals. It also had to be possible to simply manufacture this in the most basic of laboratories again once the formula was passed to operatives who would use this to strike terror in the minds and hearts of the infidels that were responsible for her parent’s deaths.
The process to make the X437 was not a rapid procedure. Badra had jokingly compared the process to making Afghanistan kufdra or sourdough bread. It required a starter compound that was then used in the following batches to produce the bio progression of the red cell oxygen deprivation within the victim. Badra had carefully set aside over the past month, the quantity needed for this evening’s project. The container that Adib had given her to place the shipment as he called it was nothing more than an exotic small mason jar used for caning fruit. There was a big difference between this container and the average fruit jar. This container was made of quartz-not glass. Quartz would not show the fluid inside the container when placed in an airport security X-ray machine.
Badra had slowly poured the contents into the special container when she saw the lights in the parking lot. It was a car. She did not want to go to the window to look out onto the parking lot because she was still dressed in the bio-protective clothing and that would surely bring suspicions into the mind of anyone seeing a person working alone in the lab at this time of night. All she needed now to finish her mission was to put the formula onto the CD diskette for the operatives to use to manufacture the bio-weapon. She was looking for a blank disk when the laboratory door opened and a startled Dr. Sadaqua Altaf entered.
“What are you processing? Why do you have the Bio protective gear on and am I being exposed to something right now?” Sadaqua was livid. She was yelling.
“Doctor, Doctor. Do not be alarmed. I have found a means to control the fluctuations of the speed in which the cells are attacked.” Badra was getting up from the computer and removing the protective bio gear. Why not? She thought? She was finished with her intended mission and would be gone when everyone else came to work in the morning. Badra was very calm and collected as she convinced the unsuspecting doctor to come and look at the computer model of the adjusted chemical she had used.
The doctor sat her purse and car keys she had been holding down on the bench beside the work table.
“The computer model shows only the charting of the compounds used at present but if you look here in the electron microscope, you will see the cells accelerating movement away from the plasma base.”
“I see only the usual absolute devouring of the cells by the fluid which I take is X437.” The doctor was looking and adjusting the eyepiece on the microscope when the scalpel entered her right side of her throat. A twist and with a strong pull back and the doctors head was almost removed from her body. There was no sound. Only the sound of a lifeless body falling to the floor.
Now, there was no time. Badra must act quickly or everything that her brother Taliban had worked for would be lost. She quickly removed the disk from the computer and then moved to the directory on the hard drive that had the employment files. There it was; Husana, Badra assistant to the director. The file had a photograph that was taken several years ago and intentionally used when she applied for this position. Badra deleted the file and all images. Then as deftly as a computer engineer, she removed the backup files from the drives and inserted a short line of script that read *.* Delete all. The computer faithfully began eating itself alive.
Badra then left the building unnoticed and with her clothes and sparse belongings in her small VW wagon she headed toward Mazar I Sharif with her prized quartz jar beside her.

Chapter 10

Homeland Security Arlington Va.

The DOCIS office main communications center had
All the toots and whistles of the CIA center over at Langley and then some. Technicians sat in front of large thirty six inch monitors watching events and locations all over the world from this room. One complete floor of the building was dedicated to operational command of their UAV Predator. From this location the technicians could view enemy activity from twenty five to fifty thousand feet. The UAV would permit these operators, sometimes an entire continent away to read a license plate or lettering on a moving vehicle with a DLTV television that had a variable 955mm zoom lens. Predators were becoming more useful in covert operations throughout the world because of their stealth characteristics and use of IR detection the unmanned surveillance could go on for forty hours continuous. This was way beyond the capability of a U2 manned aircraft with its human limitations. The small bird would fly unobtrusively over an enemy position usually in the middle of nowhere and report back everything from images to conversations and data transmissions. It was not unusual for one of these to fly unnoticed over a training camp and hover for hours conveying every word, data transmissions, GPS positions within three feet and an image of the individuals in the camp that walked outside the buildings or tents. If necessary this small aircraft could also become very lethal with its AGM-114 Hellfire missiles. One of the recent testimonials of its capability was on the news describing where and how it took out a known terrorist riding in a SUV deep in the Iraqi desert.
On the top floor of the building was located the satellite tasking group. With the advent of the UAVs into the surveillance system the duty of the satellite crew changed to a larger geographical format. Tracking of ship movements and aircraft as well as vehicles could be accomplished in such a detailed operation that a known target could be moved several hundred miles from the original contact and recognized.
In the center of the building was the main conference and briefing room. This area was electronic wizard’s dream come true. It was also a multi media fantasyland. Large surround sound speakers dominated the ceiling and walls. Sliding video monitor screens that could be grouped to make the picture showed as large as ten foot by twenty feet. The resolution of this projection plasma engineering miracle actually made the image three dimensional. The entire room was made of glass walls. You could see out from just about any position in the room at the conference table to the cubicles in the outer office. The glass had a state of the art technology that enabled the glass to block out all light and make it impossible to see inside the room when onscreen presentations were being made that were secret or classified.
North side of this floor consisted of several smaller glassed in offices with cubicles. These rooms were the home to the encode people and language technicians.
Brigadier Jacobs office was next to the media and conference room. It was small by bureaucratic standards for the D.C. area but retained a definite image of authority and leadership. There was no doubt that the head honcho did his magic from this office. The receptionist and the General’s aide shared an area between the lobby and the Generals office.
As Brigadier Jacobs and his son Lt. Jacobs entered the building the two sentries beside the main lobby reception desk came to attention and saluted. The General returned the courtesy and turned to his aide who was also his driver and instructed him to take DJ into the pass and ID office and get him processed.
“I want Lt. Jacobs to have credentials for access into every area of this building. If you run into problems processing my request, please call my office immediately. DJ-meet me in the conference room as soon as you have those credentials. Have Capt. Walsh here escort you through the building until you get the proper identification. I expect you to be there within the next forty five minutes. Understood? The General was a General now, not DJ’s father. It was a very subtle way of reminding DJ he was a junior officer and could be expected to be treated as such in this area.
“Yes sir, I’ll expedite the process as rapidly as possible Sir.” Was his serious reply. Captain Walsh withheld an urge to grin.
Processing DJ’s entry card and photograph did not take long. His eye and finger images required the longest processing. When the technician wanted to take a small blood sample from him, DJ commented; “My blood type is A positive—its on my ID card here.” The master sergeant processing his paperwork smiled at DJ and looked over at Captain Walsh and said; “Its not for your blood type sir, we establish your DNA chart here for more positive ID.”
The conference room was a beehive of activity as Lt. Wesley Jacobs; recent graduate of West Point entered the room. Several individuals in civilian clothes and one or two enlisted were mixed into the group of very busy people. There was a Navy Captain and a Marine Major.
The General spoke;
“Max, I want that data feed from Mazar I Sharif sent here real time and have the leader of that surveillance group on the horn ASAP. What is his name again? Sergeant Prestin? Code name Cowboy-right?”
Things started happening rapidly. A video image appeared on the large screen of a mud hut or stucco building with nothing around