Treason (13 page)

Major Brooke Grant's farmhouse

Near Berryville, Virginia

A
t the same moment Walks Many Miles was speaking to the FBI's Wyatt Parker, a Dodge minivan approached the two security guards stationed at the highway turnoff that led to Major Brooke Grant's Victorian farmhouse. The woman driving the minivan lowered her window and asked: “Is this the road to where a Major Brooke Grant and a girl named Jennifer Conner live?”

Both guards noticed the driver was wearing a hijab and immediately became suspicious. The male security guard approached the minivan slowly while his female counterpart positioned herself at the front of the vehicle's passenger side where she rested her palm on the butt of her holstered Glock 22 pistol.

“Who are you?” the male guard asked when he reached the lowered driver's window.

“I'm from the doctor's office. They sent me to collect blood and urine samples from a Miss Jennifer Conner. They're routine tests we do because of the powerful medications she takes. This is my first time coming here. Is this the driveway to her house?”

As she spoke, the woman nodded at the winding gravel path in front of her vehicle that snaked its way up a tree-covered hill. From the highway entrance, she couldn't see the farmhouse.

“Lady, I'm not telling you anything until I see some identification. Plus, I'll need to know the name of the doctor's office so I can call to verify that they sent you here.”

“Are you doing this because I am wearing a hijab and am a Muslim?” she asked.

“Absolutely,” he replied unapologetically. “The last time I checked, the only men and women who were Islamic terrorists were Muslims.”

“That's profiling,” she replied in an irritated voice.

“Yeah, so sue me. Do you have a driver's license?”

“Of course, it is in my purse and my purse is on the floor. Don't shoot me when I bend down to get it.”

As he watched, she unbuckled her seat belt and leaned forward to retrieve her purse.

From the line of trees atop the hill about five hundred yards away, Akbar fired his Dragunov sniper's rifle. Because he had attached a suppressor to its barrel, the male security guard keeping a close eye on the woman driver didn't realize his coworker had been fatally shot in her head until she collapsed on the driveway at the front of the vehicle.

Akbar had shot her first because she had both of her hands free. The male guard was holding a clipboard and pen. Akbar fired again. This shot hit him in his throat, above the protective vest that he was wearing, severing his carotid artery.

Through his scope, Akbar watched his victim fall. “Aludra,” he said quietly into the headset that he was wearing. “You can sit up now and drive to the house.”

Aludra heard him through the earpiece under her hijab and sat upright in the minivan's seat.

Akbar said, “From where I am hiding, I can see another guard outside the house's front entrance. Drive up to the house now and I will kill him when he walks out to question you.”

“The woman you just shot is blocking the road,” Aludra replied. “I'll need to move her body.”

“No! There's no time. Just drive over her. Others may be on the way here.”

Aludra pressed down on the accelerator, causing the minivan to bolt forward over the woman's corpse.

The security guard stationed outside the farmhouse was sitting inside a Ford pickup parked near the front door chatting with his girlfriend on his cell phone when Aludra's minivan came up the hill. Because the farmhouse was set back from the highway entrance, he hadn't witnessed the two murders there.

“Hold on a second, babe,” he said, lowering his cell phone and picking up a two-way radio.

“Hey, did you guys let a minivan pass without telling me it was coming?” he asked into the radio. When there was no response, he put down the microphone and spoke to his girlfriend.

“Got to go, honey, something screwy might be going down here.”

He reached for an AR-14 semi-automatic rifle, opened the driver's door and positioned himself behind it. Using it as a shield, he pointed his assault rifle at the approaching van. Aludra smiled through the windshield and waved at him.

“I'm from the doctor's office,” she hollered through the open driver's window when she stopped the minivan about a dozen feet in front of his truck. Thrusting her empty hands out the window, she added, “I'm alone and just a nurse.”

The guard relaxed his grip on his rifle and stepped out from behind his truck's door.

It was an easy shot for Akbar. The guard dropped dead beside his truck. Aludra raced from the minivan to the house's unlocked front doors. She was holding a 9mm pistol in front of her.

The living room to Aludra's left and parlor on her right were empty, but she heard laughter coming from the rear of the farmhouse and picked up her pace as she rushed down a hallway toward the kitchen. Jennifer Conner and Miriam Okpara were sitting at a table having a snack of apple slices smeared with peanut butter.

Okpara was the first to see Aludra coming toward them with a raised pistol. Rising from her chair, Okpara said, “Don't you hurt this child!”

“Be quiet and sit down,” Aludra returned, but the nanny remained standing. She was a tall woman, standing about five foot ten inches, and strong.

“What do you want with us?” she demanded.

Aludra appeared uncertain about what she was supposed to do next. “Be quiet and sit down,” she stammered.

“No! You need to get out of this house now! Go!”

Okpara started to come around the rectangular table that separated her from Aludra but stopped when she saw a second figure running down the main hallway toward them.

“Get the girl,” Akbar ordered as he slung his sniper's rifle over his shoulder and took the pistol that Aludra had been pointing at Okpara.

“You're not taking this girl,” Okpara declared, stepping between Jennifer and Aludra, who had started to walk around the table. Okpara grabbed a paring knife from the table that she'd been using to cut apple slices. Its blade was only an inch long, but she raised it in front of her.

Aludra stopped, but Akbar didn't hesitate. He stepped past Aludra, pushing her aside and said, “Put that knife down or I will shoot you!”

“I'm not letting you abduct this child.” Okpara lunged at him.

Akbar fired the pistol. The round pierced Okpara's right breast but it didn't stop her. She swung the knife upward, aiming at his neck, but Akbar flinched and the blade pierced his shoulder, barely missing his right collar bone. Their faces were now only inches apart. Akbar could feel the warmth of her breath and she could see the hatred in his eyes. He pushed the handgun against her chest and fired again. A look of intense pain swept across Okpara's face as she released the grip on the knife, leaving it impaled in his shoulder. In the final moments of her life, she turned so she could look at Jennifer, who was still seated at the table. Okpara tried to speak, but no words came out as she fell, hitting the kitchen table and then collapsing on the tile floor.

Jennifer's entire body began shaking.

“Stand up!” Akbar ordered as he pulled the paring knife from his shoulder and tossed it on the floor. It hit the tile and bounced against Okpara's lifeless body.

“Give me a piece of duct tape,” Akbar told Aludra. She ripped off a four-inch piece of the tape that she had brought with her from the minivan. He gave her the pistol to hold, opened his shirt and slapped the tape on his puncture wound to stop the bleeding. Satisfied, he took back the pistol and shouted at Jennifer.

“I told you to stand up!”

Jennifer rose on shaking legs.

Aludra slipped around Akbar and peeled another strip of duct tape from the roll.

“Put your hands together,” she ordered Jennifer.

As Aludra was binding the teen's wrists, Akbar said, “Put it on her mouth too so we don't have to listen to her.”

“Her mouth?” Aludra asked. She glanced at Jennifer, who had started to cry. “Are you going to scream?” she asked her.

Jennifer shook her head, indicating no.

Glancing at Akbar, Aludra said, “I don't think we need to tape her mouth.”

Akbar backhanded Aludra. Tucking the pistol in his waistband, he ripped a piece of tape from the roll and slapped it across Jennifer's lips. Akbar removed a second piece, grabbed Aludra's head, and put a piece of tape over her mouth too. “That will teach you to keep your mouth shut too.”

The Madeleine Thackeray School for Girls

Potomac, Maryland

T
he Madeleine Thackeray School for Girls catered to wealthy and prominent Washingtonians and was known internationally as a gateway into the nation's most exclusive Ivy League universities for accomplished young women. Its campus was located north of D.C. in a curve of the Potomac River dotted with multimillion-dollar estates. The scenic area was ranked as the fourth most affluent community in the nation.

Eleven-year-old Cassy Adeogo was a day student who'd been offered a scholarship because she was the sort of African American the administration welcomed. Representative Rudy Adeogo's daughter was a focused high academic achiever, mature beyond her years, and a perfect fit for the school's diversity recruitment program.

Cassy had just changed from her school uniform into her brown horse riding breeches, tall black boots, and long-sleeved top in preparation for a ten o'clock riding lesson in the school's arena when a commercial van turned into the campus. Giant black ants and red termites were painted on the van's side panels along with the redundant motto:
WE KILL BUGS REALLY DEAD
. The FBI would later confirm that the van had been stolen from the parking lot of a nearby extermination business. The van parked near the double doors that led inside the riding arena and four men wearing black ski masks darted from it into the cavernous dirt-floored showground.

“Stop riding!” the leader of the intruders yelled, waving a pistol through the air.

The equitation class teacher calmly eyeballed the gunmen as the two student assistants near him and their half dozen charges brought their mounts to a standstill. “Ladies,” the instructor said, “remain where you are while I ask why these men are interrupting us.”

Because of widespread school shootings, the administration had held emergency drills but those practice runs had focused on steps that students in classrooms were supposed to take. No one had thought through how students on horseback should react if armed attackers burst into the arena. The instructor—an Englishman in his mid-sixties—nudged his steed toward the four men.

“Sir, what is your business here?” he asked.

The lead terrorist fired his handgun into the instructor's face. Students screamed as their instructor toppled from his horse, landing with a dull thump on the ground. His well-trained horse didn't flinch.

Pointing to the three black girls in the riding class, the gunman said, “You three take off your helmets. We only want Cassy Adeogo.” As the girls slipped off their helmets, he quickly compared their faces to a snapshot of the Adeogo family that had been published in a Minnesota newspaper after Rudy Adeogo had been elected to Congress.

“You,” he hollered, as soon as he recognized Cassy. “Get down.” Two of the other intruders hurried toward her. For a second, Cassy thought about trying to flee on her horse, but decided that would be pointless since the arena openings used by the animals were closed. She slipped off her saddle.

The two men approached her, grabbed her thin arms, and led the eleven-year-old across the arena and outside through the double doors. They shoved her into the back of their panel van, and while one of them was busy binding Cassy's wrists and ankles with duct tape, his comrade started to return to the arena. At the same moment he reached its entrance, the school's director of security came speeding into the parking lot. He was coming to investigate reports of what had sounded like a gunshot.

“Captain Charlie,” as the girls knew him, had spent twenty-five years working as a Washington, D.C., police officer before retiring and taking the head security job at the girls' school. Most days, he kept busy putting warnings (but never tickets) on cars parked illegally or ferreting out the occasional bag of marijuana that found its way onto campus. The school didn't allow him to carry a handgun because administrators felt it sent students and parents the wrong message—that the campus wasn't safe. But Captain Charlie kept a .357 Smith and Wesson revolver in the glove box of his campus vehicle, and when he spotted a gunman about to enter the riding arena, he grabbed it, leaped from his car, and began shooting.

His first round missed, but the next two shots struck their mark and the terrorist buckled and collapsed with his back resting against the arena's double metal doors. The former police officer moved toward the arena slowly with his pistol still pointed in front of him. When he reached the entrance, he bent down and felt the fallen attacker's neck for a pulse to make certain he was dead. Next, he peeked through the upper half of the doors, which had solid bottoms but were glass from the waist up. He could see two additional gunmen inside guarding eight students who had been forced to dismount and were standing in a line in front of their horses.

Captain Charlie dialed 911 on his cell phone and was about to explain what was happening when a bullet pierced his spinal cord. He'd been shot by the terrorist who had been inside the van duct-taping Cassy's wrists and ankles. He'd slipped unnoticed from the van when he'd heard gunfire.

Captain Charlie was still breathing but was now lying paralyzed next to the terrorist whom he had fatally shot moments earlier. Rushing forward from the van, his attacker fired two more rounds into the security director, killing him.

The gunman shoved both bodies out of the way, threw open the doors, and yelled a warning to his buddies. They reacted quickly. Turning, they began firing their weapons at the eight girls, who seemed immobilized by fear. All but one was cut down immediately. The girl who ran only made it ten feet from the others before she was murdered. The sound of the repeated gunfire spooked the horses. They ran in circles around their fallen riders.

Having gotten what they had come for, the three terrorists carried their dead jihadist to the van where they dumped his corpse next to a traumatized Cassy in the rear of the vehicle.

As the men fled from the school grounds, one of them checked the time. Their attack, the murders, and the abduction of the congressman's daughter had taken a total of seventeen minutes.