Hans strolled into the room they were using as the meeting room and general room for those not stationed here to work from time to time. He was shocked to see the Brit in the room, but not surprised the man in the suit hadn’t made it yet. For a man who did international operations, he was picky about what countries he set foot in.
There wasn’t much to this meeting. It was a “Hello and thanks for coming” meeting, really just to ensure everyone knew where the new temporary headquarters was, the satellite phone numbers it was using, and who else was on this team.
Hans looked at the Brit and said, “The man in the suit not coming?” He knew he was punching a button, but best to punch it in front of the others so they would all be aware of this guy’s temper. It took a lot to set him off, but when you finally did, he went off like a fuel-air bomb, burning long and hot.
“No,” responded the Brit. “The little bugger is not coming! He is still in Pakistan waiting for Pakistani intelligence to get done picking up all of the body parts they can find at the other communications hub. They are never going to find anything. Satellite photos show a crater roughly fifteen feet wide. Anything inside was scattered half a mile down the hillside if it wasn’t incinerated at time of detonation. He just doesn’t want to bloody come here.”
Some of the other team members had never met the Brit. The ones who had sat there with smirks on their faces. They knew what he said was true and they knew he was just getting started. This kind of anger would brew in him all day. If you didn’t suddenly become a focal point for it, the spectacle could be entertaining.
Hans interrupted, “For those of you who don’t know him, we call this man ‘the Brit.’ He will be assisting you in processing the email communications. Those who know him know he was instrumental in our previous email hub operation.”
The Brit gave a distracted wave to the room.
Hans began passing out slips of paper to everyone. “These are the sat phone numbers to this place. We only have two. I don’t expect we will be here that long.”
The Brit piped up, “Inside of three weeks we will know if this is a long haul or a short grab.” Everyone looked at him, so he continued. “If they send someone new to the trainer, then the thinking is that this is really all they have left for whatever reason. We will take it out and blind them for a while. We won’t have enough on the new hub operator to try and turn them as we did before. We couldn’t get lucky enough for al-Qaeda to choose someone that spineless again.”
“What if they do send someone?” asked one of the team members.
“Then we have to grind this one out, taking down every cell they lead us to and searching for some link across communications networks. Other than the first hub we worked in Pakistan, we haven’t found another hub handling cells in America. The cells these two are handling seem to have all come from that first hub in the mad dash to restore communications lines.”
“So, they either have very few operatives in America, another hub, or home-grown cells that don’t communicate with the leaders here,” Hans continued. “Within three weeks we should at least have an answer for these two hubs. We may not be able to help the Americans further.”
The Brit started speaking and Hans just stepped out of the way. “Yes, I will be helping you decipher emails and track them back to point of origin. I will be one of several doing that. Our real focus needs to be on the trainer, though. Forget watching where the new hub operator goes and what he does. He is working too close to the trainer and handling far too big of a load to still be under his wing.”
One of the team piped up. “I have just been hired at his company and he will be my boss there.”
“Good,” said the Brit and Hans in unison.
The Brit continued “Without being obvious, we need to find out if he has any health issues like a bum ticker, etc. We need to rule out a biological reason for him passing the reins.”
The other team members hadn’t really thought about the big picture. They weren’t normally included in such discussions. The Brit was gaining credibility in their eyes.
“And if he plays soccer with us during lunch?” “Then we really have to look at him. He is either moving out or moving up,” said the Brit.
“Up?”
“We have been using wet erase boards with little hierarchy trees on them to try and map this organization. That doesn’t work. Once you get beyond bin Laden and his inner circle there is no tree. All of the cells are autonomous. If the inner circle of al-Qaeda chooses not to bless and fund an operation they will simply get the blessing and funding from some cleric,” continued the Brit.
“Perhaps you guys haven’t been watching the news lately, but coalition forces have blown up a few people who used to be in the inner circle. There is no clear line of succession. Basically someone already in the inner circle must select you to become a part of the inner circle and the others or bin Laden must agree. The replacement members could come from anywhere in the bloody world.”
This realization floored most of the room. Hans had to admit he hadn’t entertained that idea and he hadn’t heard such an idea from Vladimir. The Brit was on a roll, though, and he kept going. Since the roll was informative, Hans didn’t try to choke it off.
“We know that some time ago bin Laden lost his head geek. The man was arrested and interrogated. He’s not a lot of use to anyone now. This method of using email operators was probably a pilot or fledgling idea when he was nabbed. That trainer may have been tapped as a replacement simply because al-Qaeda needs this method of communications and he is the only one left who knows how it worked. If they pull him back and move him up, it will most likely be because they know they need to redevelop this idea and deploy it on a larger scale. Satellite communications tends to attract a lot of missiles, which shortens their life span.”
The room got a good chuckle out of that one.
“OK,” started Hans. “This was a meet and greet today. Just needed you all to know where the place was and how to reach it. If anything goes wrong here, we don’t have friends in government. There are a couple of choppers not far from here, but they won’t be able to stick around for long. Is there anything not in your written status reports that needs to be on the table now?”
Everyone looked around.
“Good. Get back to work. Fill in your teammate who is still at work with the new hub operator. Those of you handling email circle around the Brit.”
Hans then sat down and dashed an email off to Vladimir with this new possibility. He copied the suit on it out of politeness.
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