JUBA WAS CERTAIN THAT no one was following him because the explosion would have turned all eyes toward the disaster. He hoped Kyle Swanson was buried in that smoking debris. Swanson was supposed to be dead, but there had been no mistaking that angular face that had absolutely no fear on it when they were trading shots in the stairwell. Maybe Shake really was dead now, a thought that made Juba smile. The only man who ever really beat me.
Juba used his time well before the flight to America. An executive hotel near the airport rented rooms by the hour for businessmen in transit, and Juba used a Dutch passport to get a room and clean up. Downstairs, he got a close shave, then had a stylist trim his hair to a neatness that would be welcome in a company boardroom. He had her put in a little lighter color, joking that he wanted to look younger because of the competition for a new vice presidential opening at his finance firm. A clothing store furnished new slacks, shirts, underwear, socks, and a blue sport coat with gold buttons. What he did not wear fit snugly into his large briefcase. Unfortunately, he would not be able to take his weapon, but there were plenty of guns waiting on the other end of the flight. As a final move, he bought a disposable cell phone with plenty of prepaid minutes.
Carrying only the briefcase and the computer bag, he passed through security without a problem and took his seat in the first-class compartment of the British Airways flight to Washington. A hostess brought a glass of chilled water for him while the rest of the plane loaded, and once the plane was moving, gathering speed, and lifting as the wheels left the tarmac, Juba let himself relax. There was no danger now, so he stretched his seat back and ordered himself to catch some sleep. The quiet, steady hum of the engines helped him relax. He dreamed of Scotland.
A special ops team of American Marines had been pitted in a war exercise against a similar team of Royal Marines, and Color Sergeant Osmand was in his element. He had racked up a couple of mock “kills” and then decided to take the game to a higher level.
For a full day he and a spotter tracked the American Blue Team, then slithered through their sentries and lookouts and set up an invisible hide on a low ridge that overlooked the enemy headquarters and a road the Americans would have to use the following morning. He hoped a general would turn up in his sights. The two of them spent several hours erasing all traces of their passage and improving their hide, then shared a tin of cold meat and drank some water as the night closed around them like a starlit glove.
It was raining, but that meant nothing on a mission in Scotland, where it was always either raining or about to rain. Juba was on watch during the early morning hours while his spotter caught a nap, and it was not only wet but cold, too, and absolutely silent. A fire to warm his hands, of course, was out of the question.
Instead, he remained still, the thistles and weeds sprouting from the slits of his ghillie suit turning him into just another bush on the rugged Scottish landscape. Dawn would come in two hours, and the American Marines would begin moving around. Color Sergeant Osmand intended to slaughter as many as he could and possibly even capture their headquarters, which would give him bragging rights forever over the vaunted United States Marine Corps.
Something even colder than the night, the barrel of a pistol, touched his neck just below his ear, and a quiet voice whispered, “Bang, asshole. You’re dead. So is your partner there, Sleeping Beauty.”
Osmand spun around to see the grinning, blackened face of the sniper they called Shake, Gunnery Sergeant Kyle Swanson. “I thought you two were never going to get settled. Sounded like a couple of elephants stomping around. You almost stepped on me when you came up,” the American said, casually putting the weapon away. “Come on. Let’s go down there, get warm, and have something to eat.”
On the British Airways plane flying across the Atlantic, a hostess noticed the first-class passenger twitching in his sleep. A dream. She lightly spread a blanket over him.
The dream shifted to what had just happened a few hours before in Paris, when again Swanson had gotten the better of him, ambushing and killing Saladin right under Juba’s nose. He vividly recalled hearing the shots and seeing the body of his spiritual father sprawled on the courtyard stones, and that brought sadness and a flare of anger. What now? When his mind started tugging at that question, he woke up.
Right now, Juba could disappear. Eight bidders were seeking the formula, at ten million dollars each, nonrefundable. All of that money had already been rerouted to other banks, hidden beneath folds of false accounts in smaller accounts, and he had those account numbers and access codes. His own personal investments were worth about five million dollars and there was still about another ten million in the reserve and operations accounts that Saladin had organized. That meant that Juba could put his hands on almost a hundred million dollars, a life-changing amount.
With so much money, there was no need to continue as a professional killer or as a bringer of death to masses of people. He could go anywhere in the world and buy anything he wanted. With Saladin dead, the entire scheme was compromised and carried much greater risk. The bidders would still want the formula, but now they would be more willing to use guns rather than their checkbooks to get it. They also would want their deposits back.
It would be best to take the money and leave now. The Middle East was afire with Islamic fanatics to carry on the fight against the Crusaders. There was no real reason for him to try to run a one-man reign of terror.
In the end, he decided there were three reasons to continue. The first was that Juba still had the gas, the formula, and several factories in which it could be manufactured. It was he who handpicked the undercover operators to support the attacks, personally distributed the weapons, and communicated with the terrorist cells. Few of the others had ever heard of Saladin before the London attack and the auction. They answered to Juba and would still obey his orders. Second, he did not really believe Kyle Swanson had died in the explosion, which meant the two of them were on an eventual collision course. If Swanson was after him, the man would never give up the chase. The American was an insufferable pest. Third, Juba knew he would get bored sitting around doing nothing.
Why not use it? The attack on the United States would be spectacular and bloody, and he would expand it for years to come with strikes all over the world. Carrying out the demonstration that had been announced by Saladin would cause the bidders to fall back in line.
That left Swanson, and Juba realized just how badly he wanted to kill the sniper. The threat of the man would always be present, like an unwelcome shadow. No matter where Juba went, he could never relax as long as Swanson was alive. On top of that, the Marine had murdered the one person who really understood Juba, and the death of Saladin could not go unavenged. Kyle Swanson had to die.
He adjusted his seat and brought the laptop from beneath his feet, placing it on the adjacent aisle seat. The first-class cabin was only half full, and the hostess came to ask if he wanted a meal. He ordered vegetarian, put on a headset, and found some classical music, which helped his thoughts roam free. He had an attack to plan. Preparation of the weapon was already under way in Mexico, and he would call later today to make certain the work would continue. All he needed was a target, and he needed to decide quickly.
Las Vegas was a good possibility, a city of sin that tainted the society of the entire world, beckoning to him like the painted harlot she was. Numerous Muslim men had been corrupted by that impure city and its gambling and whores. Juba considered Las Vegas loathsome and cheap, glowing like a carnival in the desert night, and destroying it would have been a personal pleasure. Satisfying but not very effective, for he believed that not many people would truly care. With its flashy girls, card players, and high-rolling rubes, its destruction would not gather much sympathy after the first week of headlines. Hotel entrepreneurs would just bury the dead, then build new casinos right outside the contaminated radiation zone, close enough to let tourists view the destroyed city through powerful telescopes, for a small price.
He would not waste the weapon by killing the wrong people. After all, he remembered, look at New Orleans. A major city was destroyed by a hurricane, and the United States government wrote it off after only a few months. New Orleans was populated by poor residents who did not have political power, so Americans just continued going to the malls and movies as if nothing had happened. The city was still rebuilding.
He finished the meal, placed his computer on the little table, and scrolled through the news sites. Not much yet about Paris, but London was still going on. Kill the right people! He checked the international news, where the lead story was a typhoon pulverizing Bangladesh, and then went to the sports results, for he was still a soccer addict.
Juba read with interest about how violence had broken out at a stadium in Germany during a match, and the idea came to him as the camera panned around to show the thick crowds of fans surging onto the field or fleeing for the exits or just standing around watching. Thousands of people. Thousands of targets.
A sports arena would be an ideal place for the gas attack, for it would bring confusion, destruction, mayhem, and televised horror. It was baseball season in the United States, and he could turn a big game into a nightmare. The Internet let him study the details of every major league baseball stadium in the States and look at the upcoming schedules. Although he did not follow the sport, there were several obvious possibilities. Still using the Internet, he made a flight reservation.
When he arrived in America, Juba lingered at the U.S. Customs portals until he found a place in a line just ahead of a Turk with dark skin and a beard who was wearing a suit with a shirt buttoned at the neck and no tie. The eyes of the authorities were focused on that man, a ceramics trader out of Istanbul, and not the European businessman in front of him. The Turk looked like a possible terrorist. Juba showed a well-used passport, was cordial to the customs officer, and passed through with astonishing ease. A camera recorded his arrival.
Clear of the final barrier, he strolled out into the waiting area, which was crowded with families and friends and business associates welcoming the flood of people who were arriving from abroad. Rental limousine drivers waved hand-printed signs that bore various last names, but he ignored them and made his way all the way to the curb to catch a cab.
He had the cab drop him at a Metro station and used the subway to get out to Reagan National, where he used an American Express card in one of the lobby computers to obtain his e-ticket for a domestic Delta Airlines flight from Washington to Florida. Juba had never seen a major league baseball game and was looking forward to the experience.
OVER THE ATLANTIC OCEAN
Kyle Swanson returned to consciousness slowly as the drugs ran their course. He had no idea how much time had passed, and his last memory was getting ready to ride the subway and then…sudden pain, people yelling, followed by an empty nothingness. No dreams. He remained still, eyes closed until his mind cleared enough to suppress the automatic fear of the unknown.
It was not completely dark when he cracked his eyes just a bit. Some light penetrated the area to give shape to objects, but he remained essentially blind, so he allowed his other senses to sort out whatever available information he could gather. He had a slight headache, a hangover from the sleeping drug, but felt no wounds.
The first thing to make itself clear was the steady whining of jet engines and a slight shaking that told him he was in an airplane. He could almost smell the nearby bulkheads, and there was a chill on his skin that matched the hum of air-conditioning. Not a prison cell but a controlled environment. Whoever had him was taking him somewhere in a small, modern jet.
Using his body, he tried to explore further but quickly concluded he was lashed to a small bed. His fingertips told him that he was naked but covered with a blanket. Abnormal. Not the treatment usually given a prisoner in foreign lands. A condom-like device pinched on his penis, a motorman’s friend that would let him urinate into a tube. Some thin wires touched his skin. Electrodes for heart and pulse monitors.
For a few moments on first awakening, he had thought terrorists might have snatched him, which would have meant some pretty uncomfortable times ahead. As he lay there on the soft mattress without moving, he could hear muffled voices from a nearby compartment: English. Kyle concluded that he was a prisoner of the United States government. They weren’t going to kill him, so there was nothing else he could do at present. There was an almost inaudible click, and another dose of the drug flowed through the IV and into his veins. He controlled his breathing and let it tug him back to sleep.
“This guy is a damned ghost,” said FBI Special Agent David Hunt, the man who had watched Swanson through his binoculars back in Paris. He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. DHS Agent Carolyn Walker was seated across from him in the Gulfstream, studying some papers on the table between them. More than four hours had passed since they had grabbed the assassin, and there was still nothing in the way of a solid identification.
The man who was drugged and strapped down in the rear cabin had carried no credit cards in his old black wallet, just some five hundred dollars in cash and an Arizona driver’s license that was a phony. There was no Social Security number. Empty pockets. They had photographed the face, full on and both profiles, digitally enhanced it, and transmitted it to Washington along with the fingerprints to be run through the government’s entire computer base. So far, the computers were throwing up blanks. Nothing.
Walker spread out the digital photographs that had been taken of the suspect while he slept. “His body gives us the only real information we have. No tattoos or other identifying marks, but those scars are from bullet holes, knife wounds, and medical operations. Battle wounds.”
“Which means military.” Hunt started pacing. “Okay. Active or ex? A merc? Damn, Carolyn, we don’t even know if he’s American.”
She chewed a fingernail. “My gut feeling is that he’s one of ours, because nobody has the ability to scrub an identity from U.S. databases so thoroughly without help from the inside, and that presents the real problem. We have pictures of him shooting Saladin in the head with a pistol, which indicates he also was the one who fired the kill shot with the rifle. He assassinated the man, and that is not sanctioned by our country. That’s why we are hauling his ass back home. That’s where the answer is.”
“Doesn’t make sense,” Hunt said. “Even if he was on the inside, we should have known about him snooping around in Paris. He is as sterile as they come. That’s no accident.”
ANOTHER GOVERNMENT GULFSTREAM WAS also streaking back to Washington that evening, and its only passengers were Captain Sybelle Summers and Lieutenant Commander Benton Freedman. Both were worried. Swanson had not turned up at the designated rally point, and according to protocol, they abandoned the plan after waiting fifteen minutes.
They saw the smoke plume and drove toward it, viewing the destruction of the house with a fear that Kyle might have been buried inside. The debris was mostly confined inside the grounds, as the building had been brought straight down, one floor pancaking upon another, but damage was visible on surrounding buildings, too. Windows were shattered, and bricks littered the sidewalks.
Sybelle had hopped out of the car and moved to the Peugeot, then dropped into the open manhole. No one in the gathering crowd had paid her any attention because the main attraction was across the street. She walked a hundred meters in each direction down the tunnel. No Kyle.
Their orders were to bail out if the mission was compromised, rather than risk getting caught on foreign soil, which would only make things worse. They hated to obey, but they had no idea where Swanson was or what had happened to him.
The Lizard took them to a military airport, where their Gulfstream was being readied. Once they had taken off, he filed a brief report in code to General Middleton in Washington. There was an acknowledgment that the message had been received, but there was no other reply.
All they could do now was get back home as fast as possible.