A Murder of Crows by Terrence McCauley Page B

each suspect in the state or country where OMNI had tracked them. All of the men were dark complexioned, bearded, and wore glasses. Their ages ranged from thirty to fifty-five, but the thick beards made it difficult to guess how old they were based on their appearance. Hicks knew part of it was for religious purposes but part of it was by design. A common appearance made it more difficult for Westerners to casually identify them.
    Fortunately, OMNI didn’t do anything casually.
    Hicks began typing in the commands directing OMNI to bore deep into the digital lives of each man on Bajjah’s list. Phone records would be analyzed, contents of emails and text messages would be scanned, online search histories and social media activity would be scrutinized for anything that might link these ten men together. OMNI would also delve into travel patterns, real estate holdings, and bank account balances to determine if there were any common purchases or payments or expenses. Even the cars they drove would be identified and tracked from now on.
    Over the next several hours, OMNI’s search would burrow into the lives of each man, revealing more about these individuals than they knew about themselves. Hicks hoped all of this data would help him not only make connections within Bajjah’s network, but the network’s connections to other terrorist groups throughout the globe.
    Hicks finally took his whiskey as he sat back and watched OMNI dig. There was no way the in-depth search would be done before the conference call with the Dean, but it would be underway.
    Hicks sipped the whiskey as he watched hints of lines between each subject’s photo begin to appear on the map. They represented a vague connection between the men at best. It was to be expected. Since they were all on at least one terror watch list, they’d been on the same extremist email lists or visited the same blogs. Perhaps they’d been in touch with similar people.
    But some of the lines became a lighter gray, showing OMNI had found a more solid connection between various men. Soon, each photo became connected to each other as a web of gray lines slowly spread across the digital globe. The lines gradually lighten to white, and yellow, as evidence of the connection between the men on Bajjah’s list grew deeper.
    He sat forward as he watched the lines on the map suddenly turned red and began to blink.
    Roger cheered and almost spilled his drink.
    OMNI had found a rock-solid connection between each name Bajjah had given them. The Moroccan had told him the truth. He’d given them his network.
    Roger toasted the screen with his glass. “Boom. Got the sons of bitches.”
    But Hicks set his whiskey on the table. OMNI wasn’t done yet. “Wait.”
    A single gray outline of an image appeared in the upper center of the map’s Atlantic Ocean. Hicks had seen this icon before. It was the default location for a suspect OMNI hadn’t been able to locate. An equally generic gray outline of a head appeared, the standard graphic for a suspect OMNI hadn’t yet identified. The system had found a common connection between the men and an eleventh party. It was working to define it.
    The name appearing beneath this icon brought Hicks out of his chair. It wasn’t the standard ‘Subject Unknown’ or an established screen name.
    The icon was associated with a profile already in the OMNI system. A profile without a photograph on file, but a profile existed in the database of every major law enforcement and intelligence agency in the world.
    It was a profile of the most wanted man alive.
    The name beneath the icon: Jabbar .
    Roger let out a long whistle as the dark gray line between the ten suspects and the Jabbar icon brightened. “Well, look at that.”
    Hicks knew not even OMNI could decipher the myths from the facts of the Jabbar profile. No two people who had admitted meeting Jabbar had ever given the same description of the man. No one had any idea about how tall he was, how old he