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  REPRISAL!

  THE EAGLE’S CHALLENGE

  CLIFF ROBERTS

  Copyright © 2016 by Dusty Saddle Publishing

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

  Thanks to my wife, Donna, who puts up with my writing obsession.

  Inspiration:

  Write what you know, write it with passion; set the world on fire with your dreams!

  Cliff Roberts

  Everyone is a writer. We write the story of our lives through living it every day. What kind of story are you writing?

  Cliff Roberts

  PROLOGUE

  The task force, code named Surprise Package (someone thought they were being cute), began assembling at three-thirty a.m. at the Sunoco Logistics and Storage Facility on South Dix Avenue in the far east end of Melvindale, Michigan. The raid was scheduled for five-thirty a.m. Its target was a suspected terrorist hideout just over a mile away on Canterbury Street, just south of the intersection of Vernor Highway and Dix Avenue in the far east end of the neighboring community of Dearborn. The team met up behind the pumping station, which sat right on the Rouge River, across from the world famous and historic Ford Motor Company’s Rouge Complex. At one time, back in the nineteen-thirties, forties and fifties, it was the world’s largest factory complex. They made steel and built at least four different Ford vehicles within the complex. Now, it had been broken up into several different sections and sold off to individual companies or as industrial parks, providing homes for hundreds of small independent companies.

  Today’s raiding party consisted of officers and agents from Homeland Security, the FBI, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the Michigan State Police, Wayne County Sheriff’s Department, the Detroit Bomb Squad and the Dearborn Police Department. A total of more than sixty-five officers and agents were involved.

  Many of the agents were Arab-Americans, mostly Christians, but several of the Dearborn officers were Muslims themselves. Ali Husain, a Christian Caldean and a captain on the Dearborn police force was co-commander of the raid. He was also an old friend of Bill Richland. Richland was a former FBI director and current vice president of Kilauea Corporation, the multi-national computer company owned by Steven Howard.

  Captain Husain was the officer who found the planning guide in the East Dearborn restaurant called “The Soup Kitchen” on Michigan Avenue, a block east of Shafer Avenue and next door to the Four V’s Bar and Grill, which served the best burger in Dearborn, if not the whole Detroit area. He discovered the planning guide lying on a bench ten days ago and promptly brought it to the attention of the Detroit office of the FBI. It was that cooperation that had earned him the co-commander position, and the fact the raid was taking place in his jurisdiction.

  After reviewing the duties and procedures, the raiding party moved out to their operational staging points on the edge of the neighborhood at four forty-five a.m. Homeland Security officers were there to observe the raid and to coordinate communication between the various policing agencies, as well as to provide the scrambling device to knock out cell phones and computers, thus isolating the suspected terrorists. The Wayne County Sheriff’s SWAT team was to be the first team to breach the building with the FBI SWAT team backing them up. The Michigan State Police were there to help back up the SWAT teams. The Dearborn police were in charge of traffic control along with the INS. The main function of the INS was to handle the initial on-scene interrogations and to conduct the search of the building for additional occupants and intelligence.

  The building was the typical East Dearborn brownstone. The building housed four apartments with a large front porch on both the upper and lower levels. The porches spanned the entire front width of the house. There were two front entry doors centered on the front of the building at ground level. The one on the right accessed the two main floor apartments. The one on the left led up a flight of stairs to the two upper apartments. The building also had four rear doors, two of which exited onto the balcony off the second floor apartments and were accessible via a set of exterior stairs meant to provide egress in case of a fire. The two main floor rear entry doors each had individual sets of steps that led to a small porch.

  At five twenty-five a.m., the different teams began reporting in to Captain Husain. “SWAT one is in place; SWAT two is in place; INS is in place; MSP is in place.” All seven assault teams called in their readiness.

  “Everyone move up to ‘go’ positions. Move up!” Husain directed. Husain was located in the backyard of a house one street over. He was watching the front of the suspected terrorists’ lair through binoculars, while his counterpart from Homeland Security was behind the house doing the same thing. There were also four additional spotters posted on the roofs of neighboring buildings, trying to see into the building through the windows for any sign of activity.

  “FBI ready to roll,” the SUV-mounted SWAT team reported.

  “Spotters, any movement?” Husain asked.

  “All clear,” was the response of all four spotters.

  Rapidly, all the different teams gave their final situation reports, confirming they had reached the final staging positions and were waiting for the go signal from Husain.

  The SWAT team members began creeping up to the suspected building in two groups. One group moved in from the front and one from the rear. In front, they came up the street from both ends of the block, hugging the buildings on the same side of the street and trying to stay in the shadows as much as possible.

  In the rear, the SWAT team members approached in much the same way, except they used the alley to move to within a house on either side, using the garages as cover. When all the team members had reached the last garage, they signaled Captain Husain that they were ready. When the go signal was given, it would be an all-out charge to both front and back doors.

  After a brief moment of contemplation, Captain Husain felt the time was right.

  “Go, go, go!”

  The Wayne County SWAT teams raced to the doors and used battering rams to bust through the front and rear doors, less than a second apart. The FBI raced up the street in four bullet-proof Suburban SUVs and pulled right up onto the front lawn, exited their vehicles, and followed the Wayne County SWAT teams in. The Michigan State Police and INS agents took up positions outside to provide cover and lessen the possibility of escape in case someone managed to elude the SWAT teams. As the homes were breached, the Dearborn police quickly set up barricades at both ends of the block and stationed four heavily armed officers every hundred feet down the block to help discourage any of the neighbors from lending assistance.

  The attack was swift. The first wave of SWAT met no resistance from the ground floor occupants, but the SWAT teams breaching the second floor met heavy resistance. Upon battering down the door to the apartment on the left, the first officer through was struck with a blast from a twelve-gauge filled with buckshot. Thankfully, his body armor and face shield saved his life. The second officer to enter shot and killed the shooter as he was backing into the kitchen.

  “We have an officer down. Repeat, officer down! Rear breach.”

  It seemed that this wasn’t going to be as easy as they had planned it.

  “First floor secured. Going to second floor to assist,” the first floor SWAT commander called out as INS moved in and took control of the eight prisoners on the first fl
oor. They had caught all eight men asleep.

  Even though the two SWAT teams, front and rear, breached the second floor apartments simultaneously, they were both met with a hail of bullets. The team assaulting the apartment on the right was met with AK-47 fire. Luckily, it was wide and over their heads as they had crouched down to enter the apartment. After firing a dozen rounds, the shooter ducked behind the sofa, apparently thinking it would provide some protection. He was mistaken. The SWAT officers simply shot through the piece of furniture, killing the gunman as he crouched there.

  In the apartment on the left, the SWAT team met with the heaviest resistance of all. The shooter with the shotgun was backed up by four men who were lying on the floor on the far side of the room opposite the door. With the limited light at that time of day, they went unnoticed by the first wave of SWAT officers. The officers were caught completely unaware when the men opened fire upon them. The suspects had waited to fire until there were six SWAT officers inside the door. The shooters had MP-5s loaded with armor-piercing rounds. They shot two officers in the legs, driving the rest of the team back out of the door. They then shot through the wall at the officers, forcing them to cower in the stairwell behind their plastic shields. The wild, random shots cut through the wall, striking two officers in the back and legs in the other apartment.

  “I have two more officers down. Two more officers down!” The call for help came in as the SWAT team began returning fire through the walls.

  The officers who entered through the rear door were met by two men barricaded behind the refrigerator, which they had turned on its side and then fired blindly over the top. Two of the six officers were hit by the random spray, but their body armor protected them from serious injury.

  “We’ve got two more officers down at the rear of the building. Two more officers down!”

  “Let’s get some backup in there. Go, go, go!” Husain called out over the radio, and immediately two officers ran up and shot tear gas through the front and rear windows of the upper floor. The INS and Michigan State Police raced up to the house en masse but were stuck outside due to the limited space in the building. The apartments were quickly inundated by the tear gas, but the terrorists refused to give up. They lay coughing on the floor while continuing to fire randomly through the walls. The officers in the hallway and on the balcony tossed in flash bangs from both doors. The noise and the flash helped to disorient the gunmen, and that was when the final assault took place.

  The SWAT officers burst through the front and rear doors and spread out across the room as much as possible, firing at the last known positions of the shooters as they went. It proved to be extremely effective. All eight men on the second floor were killed. In the two small bedrooms between the kitchen and living room, the teams discovered a bomb factory, which immediately necessitated bringing in the bomb squad. The INS then quickly ushered the wounded officers and their detainees out of the building and into waiting vans and ambulances. After two hours, the site was deemed all clear, and the forensic teams took over.

  All told, eight terror suspects were killed. Six officers were wounded, but all were expected to recover, and over three hundred pounds of PETN was taken off the street. Three hundred pounds of that stuff was enough to level the entire east side of Dearborn. If they had made any mistakes while creating their explosive packages, it would have made for a hell of spectacle. If they had managed to get the explosives to Chicago, it would’ve made for a devastating attack.

  The eight men found on the first floor claimed to know nothing about the men on the second floor. Their story almost held up, until finished bombs were found hidden in the box springs of all eight beds on the ground floor, taking another three hundred pounds of PETN off the street, as well as eight more terrorists.

  The FBI, along with various local law enforcement agencies, raided thirty locations from Chicago to Detroit that morning, including two locations each in Battle Creek, Kalamazoo and Jackson, MI., arresting every member of the Chicago Conspiracy listed in the planning notebook Captain Husain found in the Dearborn restaurant.

  After the successful completion of the raids, President Starks held a press conference to announce the arrests. Surprisingly, he credited the FBI and Homeland Security for their professional investigation and the interagency cooperation that was shown in stopping the attack before it could be executed. He also explained that the Justice Department felt the evidence was so airtight that prosecuting the dozen or so suspects in custody would be a slam dunk.

  Then the directors of the FBI and Homeland Security both praised President Starks for his help in directing the agencies’ operations and for providing both insight and leadership to the investigation. It was an all-around love fest with no real substance, which the print and broadcast media reported about glowingly.

  The radio talk show hosts like Rush, Hanity and Beck went ballistic over the president’s comments classifying the evidence as extremely strong, making it an open-and-shut case. His comments had opened the door to a defense known as a tainted jury pool. With the president’s comments so egregious and so widely reported, the defense lawyers claimed the defendants could never get a fair trial anywhere in America. Thus, they should simply be deported, rather than prosecuted for a crime their clients were claiming they were not a part of. At their first news conference, the defense attorneys for the suspected terrorists began making outrageous claims that a rogue government group had framed their clients for political purposes. They claimed it was all planned with the oversight of the president.

  The pre-trial antics were in full swing the moment the government, through President Starks’ news conference, announced the stunning dawn raid on homegrown terrorism. The arrests were headline news for every newspaper and news magazine in the country, plus half the world. The radio talk show hosts across the country were placing bets with their listeners that the Starks administration would end up deporting these terrorists rather than risk being called unfair by the leftwing America haters.

  President Starks, despite his squirreling of the arrests, was pictured on the cover of Time and Newsweek in the same week. They both boasted that he was the most security conscious president in a hundred years. No one in the mainstream media, whether print or television, mentioned how he had forced Congress to cut military spending in half the week before and had ordered the withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan, while reducing the number of troops in Iraq by fifty percent before a July 1 withdrawal date. They also failed to mention the number of casualties in Iraq had doubled after the first two combat battalions had been shipped out to aid Germany in the cleanup of Hamburg, after the terrorist attack there. Nor did they mention that President Starks had also cut the budgets for the Coast Guard and the Border Patrol by simply not signing the spending bills that contained their funding. Additionally, they failed to mention that he ordered the navy to stop patrolling the Arabian Sea and the Straits of Malacca for pirates, claiming the countries bordering these waterways had complained the United States was interfering with their sovereignty. Yep, he was a real security conscious guy, all right!

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Good evening, Mr. President!” Roger Bascome greeted as he strolled into the Oval Office for his usual end of the day briefing. Roger had been waiting almost a half-hour after having spent the day on Grand Cayman Island, where he made new banking arrangements regarding Jason Combs’ accounts there.

  For the first time in months, the president didn’t have a photographer in tow. When he arrived, he barely acknowledged Bascome with a glance and a nod, making his way behind his desk. “Well, let’s hear it!” he stated tersely as he sat down heavily in the overstuffed executive chair.

  “I know you’re fully aware that we’ve handled that little issue with staff, and I took the liberty today to make arrangements for the donation of the items in question to the proper accounts.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Get on with it,” Starks grumbled.

  “I haven’t anything on the domest
ic front. You’ll need to hire a new chief of staff for that. However, if it infringed on foreign affairs in some way, I have tried to at least briefly touch on it.”

  “Okay, get on with it,” Starks snarled.

  “Anything I can help you with?” Bascome inquired.

  “I doubt it,” Starks replied curtly.

  “A bit touchy today, aren’t we?” Bascome teased.

  “Don’t push it, Roger. I’m not in the mood. I didn’t think I’d care that Combs crashed his car. After all, he deserved to crash it the way he raced around the beltway like an idiot. But it does bother me. He was with me a long time, and I was starting to think of him as a son.”

  “A son… who was cracking up and was about to drag you down with him,” Bascome commented.

  “Yeah, I know. It was necessary. But I lost an old friend, and that is always hard to live with.”

  “I’m sorry you’re troubled by the way things have worked out, but we have a country to run. Now our energy bill has stalled in Congress over the refinery guidelines, and there are fears that our deals with Mexico and Venezuela will leave us too dependent on foreign sources. Even the Vermont delegates are refusing to support it, though for different reasons than the Texas and Louisiana delegations. The delegation from Michigan is now reported to be working with the Texas and Oklahoma delegations to add exception riders to the bill that would allow the refineries that were damaged or destroyed to be rebuilt at the old standards as a national security issue.

  “They are running ads for Christ’s sake, telling anyone they can that if we don’t allow the refineries to be rebuilt under the old standards, they won’t get rebuilt, and our economy will collapse. The Michigan delegation’s argument is, if gas prices continue to soar, cars sales will continue to plummet even further and the economy will collapse!” Bascome explained. “To counter them, I suggest that you have economics experts from Treasury on every news show there is. I’d include the Sunday talk shows and, in the larger markets, the local talk shows, as well, if you hope to save the gas deals.”