XAVIER SANDOVAL WAS A nervous man by the time he arrived at the apartment complex. He had run as fast as he could for several blocks, ignoring the chaos creeping behind him, until his breath and limbs began to falter. Traffic had slowed, then stopped as drivers gaped in astonishment at the smoke roiling from the ballpark explosion. He punched one, threw the man out of the way, and jumped behind the steering wheel, hijacking the car. A sharp turn down an alley and Sandoval accelerated from the danger zone, his shirt soaked in sweat.
He parked in the apartment lot and sat still, breathing deeply and trying to convince himself that he had escaped the poison gas. Leaving the keys in the ignition as instructed, he staggered up the concrete stairs and found the door that Juba had designated. When it opened, he almost did not recognize the man.
Juba had showered and changed the color of his hair to midnight black. The hair itself had grown ragged around the edges since he had left Iran, and he had not shaved since entering the United States and had several days’ growth of beard, giving him the distinctive look of a foreigner. He wore owlish glasses with round gold frames. If police were profiling suspects to identify suspicious Middle Eastern males, Juba would have fit the image.
Sadoval came inside and locked the door, then sat on a chair and looked up. “The package was delivered. I will never forget this day.”
“You did a perfect job,” Juba told him with a pat on the shoulder. The man’s courage is slipping. “Almost finished now.”
A television set was on in the corner, showing wide shots of the carnage from a helicopter while reporters who were safe within their studios broadcast the warnings for everyone to avoid the area of the ballpark. It was a poison gas attack, and authorities were saying the material was still in the air. Police had established barricades and were evacuating people as fast as possible. The high camera showed the flashing lights of ambulances, police cars, and fire trucks popping bright colors across a multitude of bodies. Among those fallen at odd angles were the uniformed figures of first responders who had tried to help and transferred the poisonous gel to their own skins. The entire rescue effort had slowed to a crawl until the emergency personnel were ordered into their hazmat suits.
In the apartment, Juba heard sirens wailing, coming to the Saints. “Are you ready?”
Sandoval gulped. “Yes.”
“I have set up this position carefully for you. The rifle is loaded and ready, and you have a clear line of sight. When the ambulances arrive, open fire on the hospital personnel, the patients, the police, bystanders…anyone. We want to create pandemonium in a place that everyone perceives as safe. Keep firing until the clip is empty, then reload and use the second clip, and then the third. Take your time, because no one is going to be coming over here in the face of such hostile action. Then drop the rifle, take the car, and leave.”
“And you, my brother? I do not know about being a sniper, but you do.”
“I’m going to another position higher up and wait until after you shoot. Let them get back to work, thinking the danger is over. That is when I strike. It will be devastating.” He moved to the door as the sirens came closer. “I will be in contact soon. Good hunting, brother. You have done well.”
Sandoval watched a police car roll up, lights flashing, with a bright green fire truck on its bumper, their sirens gliding to a finishing growl. He was hidden in the shadow of the room. The scene was frightening, as everyone was wearing the bulky hazmat suits, some of different colors but moving like awkward ghosts with no faces, helping injured people they had ferried over from the disaster site. Workers in similar protective gear rushed out of the trauma center, facing the problem of working on horribly injured patients without touching them.
Two ambulances came shrieking in, only to find their way to the ER door narrowed by the emergency vehicles. Everything came to a halt for a moment, and Sandoval had his rifle resting on pillows stacked on a small ledge that separated the kitchen and the living area. His eye was at the scope.
Three nurses, an orderly, and a doctor, all in suits, gathered behind an ambulance, and an attendant swung out to open the rear door. A stretcher was pulled free, the wheels popped down, and the doctor leaned over to make a triage decision on a patient who had been lacerated by the car bomb and was bathed in blood. Another patient was taken out of the back of the vehicle, and a second team moved in on him. Sandoval heard more distant sirens.
He pulled the trigger. The first bullet took a nurse in the back and drilled downward from her shoulder, tearing through her heart on the way out the other side. She bounced against the stretcher and slid to the ground. The second bullet slammed into the temple of the doctor and splattered brain matter and more blood onto the wounded patient.
He stopped for a moment. This was easy. Juba had set it up so that he could hardly miss! He ranged over the stunned first responders and shot a firefighter in the throat and another nurse in the stomach.
Then Juba was beside him, pointing a pistol at his head. Xavier Sandoval never heard the explosion of the gunshot that took his life.
Juba left the rifle where it lay, removed Sandoval’s wallet and identification, and walked out the door. The investigating police would find the body, eventually identify it through fingerprints or dental records, and then expend valuable time chasing a false trail toward Mexico.
Juba made his way down to the stolen car. In moments, he was out of the lot, driving north toward Canada.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The command center was in crisis mode, as if it had personally suffered a body blow even though the attack was on the other side of the nation. The United States had finally been attacked again by terrorists, with horrendous results, and everyone in the big room knew that it had happened on their watch! They would be held responsible! They shuffled around or just stood by their desks with their eyes glued to the television screens. All were trained law enforcement personnel, and their sense was to automatically get to San Francisco, get on the ground, and help the victims and find the bad guy. They were stunned and demoralized, and failure clung to them like sweat.
“I can’t believe we let it happen,” said DHS Agent Carolyn Walker, slumped in a chair in the Trident office.
Kyle was at the end of the long table, running his hands back across his head above the ears, frustrated. He could not believe how the civilian professionals were freaking out at the very moment they needed to be at the top of their game. “We didn’t let anything happen, and you cannot undo what has already happened,” he said.
“If we had only moved faster,” Walker said.
“Bullshit,” responded Kyle, growing angry. “Yes, it is a horrible tragedy, and yes, a lot of people are dying, but there is not a goddam thing you can do about it but stay focused. Our job is to stop it from happening again by getting Juba. That goal has not changed.”
Dave Hunt looked across at him, his hound dog face containing even more lines than usual. “And I suppose you have a plan?”
“No, of course I don’t. All I can try to do is to think like Juba, put myself in his shoes.”
Sybelle got into the conversation to prevent it from getting personal and accusatory. “We are looking at this attack from a combat point of view, Agent Hunt. The enemy sniper, for that is what Juba is at heart, stalked his target, picked it out, carefully planned his attack, and then struck fast and hard. That is standard sniper doctrine.”
“So what the hell does he do next, this supersniper that nobody can find?”
“He’s going to get the hell out of Dodge,” said General Middleton. “We should consider San Francisco only to be the place that he used to be. He is going to exfiltrate that area, and he knows that if he stays in U.S. territory, sooner or later he is going to get caught. Hell, your people were closing in fast, and you know what he looks like.”
Another agent knocked and entered the room, handing a message slip to Carolyn Walker as Dave Hunt asked, “Then where would you go?”
Kyle had his hands on his hips, looking thoughtful. “I’d go international again. Run with the purpose of finding a place where I can defend myself.”
Walker passed the message across to General Middleton and told the rest, “Maybe not. We just got word of a sniper attack on a hospital where patients were being taken. Several more people are dead, but cops found the hiding place and IDed the shooter.”
“This says they got him,” the general announced. “Juba’s dead.”
VANCOUVER, B.C.
CANADA
Juba sat in the international departure terminal at the Vancouver International Airport, trying not to look at his wristwatch, nor the clocks on the wall, nor the digital time reminders above the gates. This was the most dangerous part of the trip, a calculated risk that had to be taken. He would be fine in another 24 hours, but until then, the most hunted man in the world was open and defenseless.
There had been no problem getting through the security procedures leading to the departure lounge on level three of the airport because the description being circulated among police and customs officials concerning Juba was of a Briton who had entered the United States as a Dutch businessman. A white man.
He had not shaved since arriving in the United States, had changed his hair color, wore gold-rimmed spectacles, had visited a tanning salon to darken his skin even more, and had put a rubber lift in one shoe to make him walk with a marked limp, which drew attention to his feet instead of his face. No one paid much attention to him in his new identity as a mild, polite college professor from the faculty of agriculture at a university in Damascus. The passport was in order, as were the university identification card and supporting documents such as a lengthy study of Canadian wheat production methods. It had been in place for more than a year, waiting for the time he might need it. The paper about wheat-growing was important to the disguise because it carried the official seal of the Canadian government on the cover, a tacit acknowledgment that he was a trusted academic and accepted by the government in Ottawa about something, even as minor as making bread. That would register on security agents.
Plus, the “terrorist syndrome” had automatically kicked into the consciousness of many people in the airport, albeit subconsciously for a number of them, and they cast suspicious glances at all of the dark-skinned passengers gathering to fly to Damascus, a planeload of Middle Eastern people. Just get them out of here as fast as possible! None of the passengers looked even remotely like a Dutchman.
So Juba sat quietly, on his own, reading a news magazine, waiting for the morning flight to Damascus.
Complementing the disguise was his recognition that the expected security crackdown had yet to materialize. It would come, but he had learned as a sniper how to bank time by leaving destruction and distraction in his wake, and time was what he needed most.
The Austrian Airlines flight was called, and Juba boarded when the courtesy announcement was made to allow first-class passengers to get on first. He pulled out the news magazine and put his nose back into it, keeping his peripheral vision busy for possible threats. The herd in coach boarded noisily; then the doors closed and the plane began to move. Ten minutes later, they were airborne.
He was safe for the next twenty hours on the one-way flight. Would the enemy figure out his ruse and escape route before then, and if so, would the Syrians be agreeable to the anticipated demand to seize him at the airport? Escape and evasion is a step-by-step process that could not be planned too far in advance. Syria was the next step, and he would concentrate on that when he got there.
He ordered an orange juice from the hostess, and it was presented chilled, with moisture still on the glass. Draining it in sips, he then asked for a bottle of water. He had to hydrate. In all, Juba was satisfied with the way the mission had turned out, but that part was now history. The San Francisco attack should not only mollify the bidders for the poison gas who might be restless over the death of Saladin, but they would be eager enough again when his next communication was transmitted to resume the actual auction of the formula. Of course, they would not get it, but they did not know that.
It was time for him to turn to the money option while things were falling apart, put the money in safe and accessible places and then vanish. He had years of learning how to become invisible, and this time it would be easy because he had millions of dollars available for the job.
The only real loose end was Kyle Swanson. Shake would never give up, and Juba could not rest comfortably until he killed the Marine. That was the only true option, because no matter what the other authorities might do, say, or decide, Swanson would never let up.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
“I don’t fuckin’ believe it,” Kyle exclaimed. “How do they know he’s dead?”
“Says here that he wrote his name in blood on the wall of an apartment he turned into a sniper’s hide,” replied Middleton, passing the note around. “Killed a mother and her little boy.”
“Too easy. Another diversion,” Sybelle said as she read it. She handed it to Shake and told Walker, “No identification on the body itself. We need a picture of the corpse to compare with what we have on Juba.”
Swanson grunted a laugh. “So somebody, they don’t know who, snuck up behind one of the best snipers in the world and put a bullet in his head with a pistol? No way. Run the guy’s prints. This stiff ain’t our boy.”
Walker rapped her knuckles on the table, a nervous, repeated gesture. “Yes. I agree. It does seem too convenient. The problem is that with the stadium attack, law enforcement out there is stretched to the limit and snarled beyond belief.”
The Lizard joined in. “Not only that, the entire comm system is becoming jammed. The time stamps indicate that it had been taking about three minutes for a message to get through. Now it’s more, and the delays are climbing fast as people fight for the available cyberspace. Several relay stations are probably going to shut down soon from traffic overload. Even the military channels and backup routes are busy. The governor has called out the National Guard, and the president has declared a state of national emergency. I haven’t seen it this jammed up since 9/11.”
Walker said, “So communications are slow, and everyone with a badge or a crime kit is busy around the stadium. At least two thousand people have been pronounced dead already, and the figure is climbing fast. I will detail a special team to get a firm identification on this body and take over that crime scene and send us a picture, but it’s still going to take time.”
“How much time?” asked Middleton.
“Dunno, General. We’ll move as fast as possible. Realistically, under the deteriorating conditions out there, it will be a while.”
Swanson ripped a page off of the yellow legal pad before him, balled it up, and flipped it across to a trash can in the corner. It hit the rim and bounced onto the floor. He studied it with resignation and said, “He’s gone.”