Act of War by Brad Thor Read Free Book Online Page B

everything. In fact, once in the United States, terrorist operatives had more chance of being discovered by a beat cop or state trooper than they did by an FBI or CIA officer.
    Shi had studied the histories of the Al Qaeda members sent by Bin Laden to carry out the 9/11 attacks and was fascinated by their brushes with the law and how many clues they had dropped in the run-up to that dramatic day. Examining all of the pieces in the aftermath, he was stunned that the United States hadn’t uncovered the attack. Bin Laden had been extremely lucky. Shi’s plan would also require a certain amount of luck. He decided to set the attack for two days after Chinese New Year.
    Once the date had been fixed, he arranged to meet with his colleague who ran one of the PLA’s best hacking units—Unit 61398. It was basedout of a twelve-story building in a run-down neighborhood in Shanghai. Their job would be to populate key jihadist websites with chatter in the run-up to the attack. Anyone investigating afterward would believe all of the signs had been there. Hindsight could always be counted on being twenty-twenty.
    As he put the rest of the wheels in motion, Shi worried about the early February attack date. He was concerned about the weather. Snow Dragon was designed as multiple attacks that would be launched simultaneously. If one cell launched before the others, or if any one of the cells simply failed to launch, the entire operation could be undone. He kept wishing there was a way that the Politburo Standing Committee could be made to reverse its decision and agree to his earlier attack plan. Then, something had happened.

CHAPTER 8
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    N ASHVILLE , T ENNESSEE
    W azir Ibrahim wasn’t stupid. Only a guilty man would ask for a lawyer. If they had anything substantial on him, they would have arrested him already.
    “You know what this is, Wazir?” the young detective asked, holding up an official-looking piece of paper. “This is a police report. Your wife claims you roughed her up. What do you have to say about it?”
    The Somali man took a deep breath and replied, “It is not true.”
    “You’re calling your wife a liar?”
    “She does not speak the truth.”
    “You didn’t beat her?”
    “I did not beat her,” Wazir replied.
    The detective smiled. “I think you’re full of shit. You know that?”
    The Somali had seen this man’s type before. He was angry, coiled tight inside like a snake. He had become a police officer so he could lord his power over others. He had an inflated sense of self. He held himself out to be a protector of the weak when in reality he had pursued his badge so he could prey upon a sea of others with impunity. Insecure men with a patina of authority could be annoying. Give those same men actual authority and they could be deadly. Wazir had seen it time and again in Somalia. America pretended to be better. Wazir knew different. Men were men no matter what country they called home.
    This man named Hoffman possessed a bearing beyond that of a simple police officer, one that he couldn’t immediately place.
    “Does it make you a tough guy to beat your wife, Wazir?” Detective Hoffman asked.
    “I did not beat my wife, sir.”
    Hoffman placed the piece of paper he had been holding back into the folder and removed another. “Does Islam condone the beating of wives, Wazir?”
    It was a rhetorical question. The Somali man understood that well enough to know that the detective did not expect a reply.
    “For an infidel, I thought I was pretty squared away when it came to Islam and wife-beating.”
    Infidel. It was an interesting choice of words. The detective didn’t refer to himself as a Jew or a Christian. He referred to himself the way Muslims would have referred to him. Wazir could now place the officer’s hostility, his bearing. He had served in the U.S. military and had probably seen combat in a Muslim nation. Maybe he had been shot. Maybe he had seen his comrades die. If so, he was much