Free Enemies Within by Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman Page A

making it equal in population to Saint Louis and Pittsburgh. A man named Mohammed Wali Zazi was renting the apartment, and the email address was registered in the name of Najib Zazi, the nickname of Mohammed’s son, Najibullah. There was no mistake.
    For their part, the FBI agents at the table had seen cases like this before, and they didn’t always pan out. A surprising number of stupid but ultimately innocent people send emails to al-Qaeda addresses that they find online. Then there are the fantasists who trawl jihadist websites and talk tough in emails but who the FBI quickly determines are all talk. Everyone at the table agreed this was different.
    Davis leaned forward in his chair. At nearly six foot ten, he cut an imposing figure. He had dark hair, a baritone voice, and the build of a basketball power forward. Though friends joked that he couldn’t string a noun and a verb together without some variation on the word fuck , he was even-keeled and easygoing.
    “I need you to tell me if you have any reason to believe this isn’t what it appears to be,” he said, looking around the table. Olson from the task force was there. So were two assistant special agents in charge, Mike Rankin and Lisa Rehak. And, of course, the two CIA men. They all shook their heads. Nobody could offer an alternative explanation. And Zazi was closing in on New York.
    “Okay,” Davis said. “We’re all in.”
    The Denver office oversaw ten satellite FBI locations in smaller, far-flung Colorado cities such Pueblo, Grand Junction, and Glenwood Springs. Call them in, Davis said. Open up the command center. Until further notice, this was the most important FBI case in Colorado. Two time zones away, at the FBI in New York, Don Borelli was giving the same command to his team.
    For both men, it was an order that carried risk. Like all large organizations, the FBI operates by the numbers. An agent is judged by thequantity and quality of his cases. His supervisor is judged by his squad’s numbers. Redirecting people, even temporarily, inevitably meant putting other investigations on hold. In some instances, the delay would mean that agents missed their window of opportunity, and investigations would wither and die. If too many cases don’t pan out, the supervisor might be passed over for a promotion.
    The first order of business in Denver was finding someone to relieve the surveillance team that had been on Zazi’s tail since early that morning. On prairie highways, truck drivers and road trippers can activate cruise control, flip on the radio, and zone out for a few hundred miles. Surveillance, however, is exhausting. An agent hiding in plain sight on an empty interstate can never shut off his brain. The team of four to eight cars following Zazi had to choreograph everything but appear entirely unscripted. They had to keep pace with the speeding car without looking like they were trying to keep up. If Zazi slowed down abruptly, the agents couldn’t slow down with him. They had to be part of the anonymous flow of traffic zipping by. But they couldn’t let him fall too far behind and slip away.
    Sometimes, like when the FBI is following a suspected spy, surveillance teams can keep a close tail because the target already assumes he’s being watched. In Zazi’s case, the agents didn’t want to be spotted. If he realized he was being followed, he might abandon his plan, and the FBI wouldn’t know who else was involved. So they needed to tail him, but not too closely. Even day-trippers with nothing to hide notice the car in the rearview mirror that won’t pass.
    If a target pulls into a rest stop, someone on the surveillance team has to be close behind. Two minutes alone can be enough to meet a contact, get instructions, pick up someone, or drop off a package. If a target uses a pay phone, one of the agents has to be the next person to use that phone. She’ll call an FBI number, introduce herself, and tell the voice on the other end that