Sleeper Cell Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Special offer

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Keep reading!

  Other Books

  Copyright © 2017 by Chris Culver

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations included in critical articles and reviews. For information, please contact the author.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Dedication

  To my mom and dad. I wouldn’t be here without you.

  About the Author

  Chris Culver is the New York Times bestselling author of the Ash Rashid series of mysteries. After graduate school, Chris taught courses in ethics and comparative religion at a small liberal arts university in southern Arkansas. While there and when he really should have been grading exams, he wrote The Abbey, which spent sixteen weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list and introduced the world to Detective Ash Rashid.

  Chris has been a storyteller since he was a kid, but he decided to write crime fiction after picking up a dog-eared, coffee-stained paperback copy of Mickey Spillane’s I, the Jury in a library book sale. Many years later, his wife, despite considerable effort, still can’t stop him from bringing more orphan books home. The two of them, along with a labrador retriever named Roy and two young boys, live near St. Louis.

  Get a free book!

  I hope you love the book you’re about to read. This book took me a long time to get right, and I’m incredibly proud of it.

  And if you do enjoy it, I hope you consider reading of my books. In fact, once you finish this book, I hope you’ll consider turning pages until you get to a section called Keep Reading. There, you’ll find an offer that will allow you to get a copy of The Abbey, the first book in my Ash Rashid series, for free. It’s a great book, and I hope you love it.

  All the best,

  Chris Culver

  Chapter 1

  The FBI agent moved with the stiff-legged, halting gait of a man playing a role he didn’t quite understand. It was late May, but the temperature most days already reached into the eighties. The grass outside my mosque bloomed green and lush from spring rains, and the dogwood trees the youth group had planted three years earlier swayed in the warm morning breeze. I should have been at home relaxing. It was the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. Already, hundreds of thousands of people thronged the city for the 102nd running of the Indy 500.

  None of that was my concern.

  I unclasped the firearm at my hip. The rusted hinges of the FBI agent’s truck squealed as he slammed the door shut. It was an old Dodge with sky blue paint that had started flaking along the wheel wells. Water from the air conditioner’s condenser dripped onto the pavement in an intermittent stream beneath the vehicle. Steam wafted from the smoldering pile of manure and black mulch in the back.

  The FBI agent stood still for a moment, surveying the area. He was probably in his mid-forties and had the broad shoulders of an athlete but also the paunch of a man who had stopped exercising in favor of other pursuits. As I watched, he leaned against the side of the truck to light a cigarette.

  This wasn’t his first trip to the mosque. The week before, he had come wearing a uniform from the local water utility. The receptionist let him walk right in and even gave him a tour of the building so he could find the water meter. He wasn’t the only agent assigned to the surveillance detail, either. A second agent came by twice a day, ostensibly to walk a dog. In actuality, he was there to photograph the cars in the parking lot. I had no doubt the owners of those vehicles had their names cross-referenced against and added to internal Bureau watch lists.

  That second agent hadn’t been by yet today, but he would have found the pickings in the parking lot disappointingly slim. In addition to the first agent’s truck, there were two sedans, a minivan, and an SUV in the lot. Two men had parked a pickup truck on the shoulder of the road in front of the mosque. They weren’t watching anybody in particular. It was more like they were waiting for something.

  I had parked on the edge of the lot beneath a basketball hoop to wait for my brother-in-law. I hadn’t seen Nassir since I helped him move out of my sister’s house a month ago. Technically, he and my sister were still married but had separated. I didn’t know how much longer that technicality would keep them together, though. I was in my Volkswagen Golf, and I wore one weapon on my hip and a second in a holster on my ankle.

  I was ready.

  It was six-thirty in the morning and still comfortable outside, so I got out of my car and sat on my hood to read the news on my phone while I waited. Nassir was late, but he was always late. I had expected this.

  As I watched, the FBI agent scooped large shovelfuls of mulch from the back of his truck and carried them to a flower bed near the mosque’s front door. Even if he was spying through the basement’s casement windows, he did make the flower beds look good. I couldn’t fault him for that. If he stuck to the same schedule he had when pretending to be from the water company, he’d go around the back of the building and pull a couple of trash bags from the dumpster next.

  My brother-in-law’s Cadillac CTS pulled into the lot about fifteen minutes after I arrived. Almost instantly, one of the guys in the pickup out front stepped out of the vehicle. He wore a pair of jeans, heavy boots, and a gray T-shirt, making him look like a construction worker. He wasn’t a construction worker, of course. The nearest construction site was at least two blocks away. Not only that, his eyes swiveled around the lot, and he held his left arm out from his chest, presumably so he wouldn’t bump the pistol hidden beneath his T-shirt. I slipped my phone into my pocket.

  Six weeks ago, the body of an undercover FBI agent named Michael Najam had been found floating in the Ohio River near Madison, Indiana. The death wasn’t an accident or a suicide. Najam had been murdered while infiltrating a suspected Islamic terror cell in Indianapolis. The Bureau needed someone to investigate, but it also needed to keep things quiet so it wouldn’t disrupt other related operations.

  That’s why Kevin Havelock, the special agent in charge of the local FBI field office, had come to me.

  As a former homicide detective, I knew how to conduct a murder investigation. As a Muslim who spoke two different Arabic dialects, I also fit into the world the FBI agent had tried to infiltrate. More than any of that, though, I was the brother-in-law of the suspected terror cell’s leader. The Bureau thought I was perfect for the role. Have
lock thought I could waltz right in, ask Nassir what had happened, and be home for lunch. I wasn’t that optimistic, but I thought I could do it.

  The moment Agent Kevin Havelock proposed the assignment to me, I accepted. My wife, though, persuaded me to think about it further. Havelock had leveled serious accusations against Nassir, but his evidence was circumstantial at best. Besides that, if I went undercover to investigate men and women in my mosque and got caught, I’d become a pariah to people I had known my entire life. I’d lose friends, and my kids would be ostracized by the only community they had ever known.

  It took time and a lot of thought, but I eventually made a much more informed choice about what to do. I still wondered whether I had made a mistake.

  Nassir stepped out of his car. He was fifty-three, but he looked closer to forty. He had thick black hair with the barest hints of gray near his temples and a perpetual worried scowl on his face. He shuffled toward me, wringing his hands in front of him. I watched him, but I also kept my eyes on the FBI agents beside the pickup and the FBI agent shoveling mulch. Nobody acknowledged Nassir and me, but they tracked our movements just the same.

  “Ashraf,” said Nassir, holding out a hand for me to shake. I took it and squeezed. He looked down at the ground. “I didn’t expect to hear from you. How’s Rana?”

  “Since you left her?” I asked, tilting my head to the side. He nodded. “Angry, sad, confused, take your pick. You married a strong person, though, and she’s surrounded by people who care for her. She’ll be fine. You don’t need to worry about her.”

  “She’s a good woman,” he said, drawing in a breath. “She deserves good things. I wish I didn’t have to do what I did.”

  “We all wish that. But I’m not here to talk about her,” I said, looking at the FBI agent with the mulch. “I called you because there are a couple of things going on around here that you should know about.”

  Nassir followed my gaze to the supposed landscaper. Then he nodded.

  “Okay. Let’s get some breakfast and talk.”

  “Give me a minute. I’m going to do something I should have done weeks ago,” I said, already walking. “I’m tired of having people watch us all the time.”

  “You don’t need to do this, Ash,” said Nassir, hurrying to walk beside me. “They’re not hurting anybody.”

  “They’re strangers with guns and itchy trigger fingers watching a building my children play in. I’m not comfortable with that.”

  Ahead of us, the FBI agent leaned his shovel against the side of the mosque and stood straighter. A sheepish smile broke out across his face, and he wiped his brow.

  “Hey guys,” he said. “Gonna be a hot one, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” I said, stopping about ten feet from him. Nassir and the truck were to my right. The mosque was to my left. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the two men near the pickup truck. They hadn’t made a move toward us, but they would eventually. “The flowers look nice. Agent Havelock pick them out, or does he leave that up to you?”

  The FBI agent shook his head. “You must have mistaken me for somebody else. Sorry, buddy.”

  Nassir put a hand on my shoulder and gently tugged. “Come on, Ashraf. He’s not worth it.”

  I shrugged my brother-in-law’s hand off and took a step forward.

  “I’m not mistaken, and we both know it. Kevin Havelock, the special agent in charge of your field office, asked you to perform surveillance on this mosque. You’re digging in the front flower bed so you can switch out the batteries on the surveillance devices you’ve hidden near the basement windows. That’s why you’re really here.”

  He chuckled and shook his head. “You’ve got an active imagination, I’ll give you that.”

  “And you’ve got access to trucks from both Duke Energy and the local water company. My daughter takes art classes here. This used to be her favorite place in the world. Now she doesn’t want to come back because there’s a scary man outside who watches her classroom. She’s nine years old. Even she knows who you are. What do you even hope to accomplish here?”

  The FBI agent drew in a breath and stood straighter. “I think it’s time for you to move on, buddy.”

  “It probably is,” I said. “You first, though. Nassir, get the man’s shovel and throw it in his truck.”

  Nassir hesitated and looked at me.

  “I don’t know if this is the best idea,” he said.

  “This man is trespassing at our place of worship,” I said, not taking my eyes from the FBI agent. “We’re asking him to leave. We’re well within our legal rights.”

  Nassir hesitated again and then began walking around the truck to fetch the man’s shovel. The agent took a step back, probably so he could see us better.

  “You two need to really think about what you’re doing,” he said. “This doesn’t need to escalate.”

  “We’re politely asking you to leave,” I said, pulling my sport coat back to show him the badge clipped to my belt. In the process, I exposed my firearm as well. “I’m a lieutenant with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. Neither of us is threatening you in any way. If you’d like, I can call in some patrol officers and have them remove you by force.”

  He looked up and down at Nassir before reaching behind his back. “I don’t like you sneaking up behind me.”

  “I’m not doing anything of the sort,” said Nassir, holding up his hands. The two men near the truck started walking toward us. Nassir took a step back. “We’re not here to cause trouble, my friend. We’re leaving.”

  “I’m going to call in some backup. Please keep your hands where I can see them,” I said, reaching into the inside pocket of my jacket for my cell phone.

  Almost the moment my hand disappeared, the FBI agent whipped out a black semiautomatic firearm. He pointed it at Nassir.

  I didn’t even think. Time slowed. I dropped my hip back and had my own firearm in hand before the FBI agent could get settled. Nassir’s face went white as he dropped to his knees.

  “I’m a police officer!” I shouted. “Drop your weapon.”

  The FBI agents who had pretended to be construction workers sprinted toward us, their own weapons drawn. I pivoted, being sure to keep my firearm pointed at the ground.

  “Police officer. Back off.”

  The two FBI agents raised their weapons simultaneously.

  “Oh, shit.”

  I dove toward the truck’s front wheels as they fired. The first round pinged against the truck, but the second hit the brickwork of the mosque in an explosion of dried clay, shale, and mortar. My heart pounded against my breastbone. Nassir huddled down with his hands over his head. The FBI agent who had once pretended to be a landscaper stared down at the both of us, his weapon pointed directly at me.

  Adrenaline coursed through me. My hands trembled, but I started lowering them to the ground. I wanted to run and scream, but I held my breath instead so I wouldn’t provoke anyone.

  “You don’t need to do this,” I said, forcing my voice to remain as calm as possible. “I’m putting my firearm down. Please tell your friends that we’re surrendering.”

  The FBI agent’s finger slipped from the trigger guard to the trigger. He couldn’t have been more than five feet from us.

  “Please lower your gun,” I said, my heart beating even faster. “Nobody has to get hurt today.”

  He didn’t say a word. He didn’t even open his mouth. He didn’t need to say anything. I read the intention in his eyes. I saw the color of his finger change as he began to depress the trigger, I saw the hammer of his weapon pull back, and I knew he was going to shoot.

  I raised my weapon and squeezed the trigger four times before he could get a shot off.

  His coveralls exploded with red, and his gun clattered to the ground as he fell back. Immediately, Nassir started reciting the Shahada, the Islamic profession of faith. He thought he was going to die and was praying before his death. I should have joined him, but I didn’t have time
to pray.

  I crept around the front of the truck. One of the construction workers saw me and crouched behind the minivan in the parking lot. He fired another round and hit the truck once more. Only a thousand pounds of steel and wrought iron in the engine kept me safe. I couldn’t see the second agent.

  “Nassir,” I said. My brother-in-law rocked on his heels like a Quaker as he prayed. “Nassir!”

  He looked up. He had the terrified eyes of a wild animal caught in a snare.

  “We’re not safe here,” I said. “We’ve got to make a run for your car. We’ll drive to the police station in Fishers and tell them what happened. We’ll be safe there.”

  He couldn’t even focus on me at first, but then comprehension dawned on his face.

  “We tried to talk to him, but he didn’t listen,” he said. “They’re going to kill us.”

  “We’re not going to let that happen,” I said. “Get to your car and drive it back over here. I’ll give you covering fire.”

  He covered his face with his hands for a few seconds but then nodded.

  I crept to the end of the truck so I could see the parking lot. My brother-in-law wore gray slacks, a tailored white button-down shirt, and matte black leather shoes. His outfit wasn’t made for running, but he’d get over that if he wanted to live.

  On the count of three, he sprinted toward his car. Immediately, the FBI agent near the minivan popped up. I fired two shots at him, driving him back.

  Then I found where the second officer had gone.

  He stood up from beside Nassir’s car. I pivoted hard and raised my weapon. His pistol barked twice in Nassir’s direction. I squeezed off three rounds. The FBI agent’s gray work shirt became a mess of dark red. Nassir fell to the ground.

  “Come on, buddy, get up,” I whispered. “Get up, Nassir.”

  Slowly, my brother-in-law pushed up from the ground and ran once more toward his car. The FBI agent near the minivan started running just as Nassir jumped into the front seat of his Cadillac. I lined up the shot and waited.