Why use a John Doe from Baltimore to fake a shootout with police in South Carolina?

Sheppard found the beginning of an answer to the question in less than two minutes. Charleston was a small town, especially by metropolitan Baltimore standards, and even more helpful was the fact that their citizens didn’t often get into police shootouts.

He was only halfway through the first newspaper article he’d pulled up on Google when he knew what his next move would be. Mark Sheppard was going to have to go to South Carolina.

MEXICO

It was a crappy little café in a crappy little Mexican town, but it had halfway decent sandwiches, cold beer, and, unbelievably, a high-speed internet connection.

“Progress,” Philippe Roussard mumbled to himself as he wiped the lip of his bottle of Negro Modelo with his shirt and entered his password.

The setup was quite simple and had been around for quite some time, but with all their technology the Americans had yet to find a way to crack it. Which was why it was perfect.

Roussard and his handler shared a free, web-based email account. Instead of posting cryptic messages on an electronic bulletin board, or risking being undone by sending emails back and forth, they simply left brief notes for each other in the account’s draft folder. As soon as the other read the message, it was deleted. No trail, no trace, and no chance of anyone monitoring their conversations.

Roussard did what he had to do, logged off, and then dragged the cold bottle of beer across his forehead. What a country, he thought to himself. High-speed internet, but no air-conditioning.

The bottle felt good across his face and along the back of his neck. Earlier this morning he had stopped for gas, found the men’s room, and shaved. It was one habit he practiced religiously each day. He could thank his mother for his dark features. Stubble only made it worse. While some had told him over the years he looked Italian, that wasn’t how the majority of the world saw him. Roussard couldn’t escape his breeding. He looked like what he was-a Palestinian.

For all diplomatic intents and purposes, he was French. He spoke the language and carried a French passport. He even harbored a strong dislike of Americans, which meant he fit in perfectly when he was in France. But the reality of the situation was that he hadn’t been there for years. The war in Iraq had kept him quite busy.

Being Juba, being everywhere and nowhere, striking down Western imperialist soldiers one by one with a crack from his rifle was an all-consuming affair. Then he had gotten caught.

Between intensive interrogations, Roussard had had time to think-lots of it. And in that time, certain things had become clear to him. America ’s time was drawing near.

It wouldn’t happen in months or even years, but in a matter of decades, America would fall. It was already happening. It was happening right before the eyes of each and every American, yet they were too fat and happy with their Big Gulps and satellite television to see it.

Roussard was amazed at how a nation once so proud could fall so far so quickly. The fabric of American society was in tatters. All one had to do was to pull at any one of the threads and it disintegrated even faster. If it wasn’t so arrogant, America might have been worth pitying. It had achieved much, but like Rome, its gluttony for power and world domination was already hastening its drumbeat to the grave.

Roussard was anxious to get back to work. The plagues were a brilliant idea. It added an extra element of torment to what Scot Harvath would be made to suffer. And after he was finally done with Harvath, Roussard planned to return to his work in Iraq. Though the Islamic Army of Iraq had trained and deployed excellent sniper teams, the fear they struck into the hearts and minds of their enemies was not as profound as that which Juba had been able to create.

Juba was a nightmare. Juba the sniper who struck without warning kept American troops awake in their beds at night wondering if they would be next. Juba was the angel of death who decided who would live and who would die. As soon as this assignment is complete, he told himself, I can return to my brothers in Iraq. Then once more I will be home.

SARGASSO INTELLIGENCE PROGRAM

ELK MOUNTAIN RESORT

MONTROSE, COLORADO

It was late afternoon when Scot Harvath reconvened in the Sargasso conference room with Tim Finney, Ron Parker, and Tom Morgan. The resort’s chef had prepared a late lunch and the men made small talk as they ate.

Once the meal was finished, Morgan began the presentation. “I want to do a brief overall primer and then get to specifics. Agent Harvath, I am assuming you may know a lot of this, but I think Mr. Finney and Mr. Parker will benefit.”

Harvath politely signaled for Morgan to proceed.

“In the wake of 9/11, a lot of people got rolled up in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. According to my sources, detainees come from more than fifty countries, only forty-one of which have actually been released to the press.

“The largest number of detainees come from Saudi Arabia, followed by Afghanistan and then Yemen.”

“No surprise there,” responded Finney.

“Indeed,” agreed Morgan as he activated his laptop and the screens throughout the room glowed to life with the first slide of a hastily assembled PowerPoint presentation.

“How does Mexico tie in?”

“For some time, both American and Mexican intelligence agencies have been aware of highly specialized, paramilitary training camps throughout Mexico, a number of which are located within a day’s drive of our southern border.

“The camps are operated by a group of former Mexican military special forces troops, known as the Zetas, who deserted in the mid-1990s to work as enforcers for high-paying drug cartels.”

Morgan advanced to the next slide-a collage of surveillance photos. “The camps are frequented by a variety of Arab as well as Asian nationals, including Thais, Indonesians, and Filipinos.”

“Representatives of all the world’s Islamic radical hotspots,” remarked Finney. “It’s a regular terrorist Disneyland down there.”

Morgan nodded and advanced to his next slide. “I have a colleague in D. C. who has said for years that via the Zetas, terrorists are exploiting the ability of the drug cartels to smuggle men, weapons, and explosives across our porous border with Mexico. As investigations continue, I think someday in the future we will be able to prove that men and materials involved in the attacks on Manhattan over the Fourth of July weekend came into this country via our southern border.”

“If we knew about all of this before, why didn’t we do anything? Build a fence, take out the camps, anything but just sit here while we were being invaded?”

Morgan grimaced and said, “For that kind of question you need a political analyst. As far as American intel people and a few enlightened members of Congress are concerned, the barbarians aren’t at the gates, they’ve already blasted their way through. In addition to Al Qaeda cells in northern Mexico, we’ve seen activity by Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, among others. They’re all down there.”

The former NSA man advanced to his next slide. “Not only are they down there, but they have absolutely no fear of anyone moving against them. Their balls are so big they’ve actually begun building mosques like this one outside Matamoros, Mexico -only a few miles across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas.”

Harvath had heard all of this before and had seen the evidence. The congenitally corrupt Mexican government had neither the desire nor the guts to take a stand against the Zetas and the drug cartels. They couldn’t care less about the clear and present danger the two groups posed to American security.