“Louis, trying to escape?”
Massina stopped. “Jimmy? Hey.”
A tall, broad-shouldered man stepped through a cloud of cigar smoke and thrust a beefy hand toward him. It was Jimmy Gorman, former district attorney, former mayor, former party chairman, now just a big muck behind the scenes.
“What the hell are you doing at this soiree?” asked Gorman. He pounded Massina’s back so hard he nearly coughed.
“Thought I’d see where they were spending my money.”
Gorman laughed. “Want a cigar?”
“Nah.”
“How about your friend?” asked Gorman, gesturing to Johnny.
“This is Johnny Givens. He works for me.”
“Yeah, I see his pin.” Gorman smirked, then turned to introduce Massina to the others he’d been standing with. Two were state senators whom Massina had met briefly in the past; the others were business people — donors, he guessed.
Everyone nodded politely. Massina was about to leave when Gorman pointed his cigar in the direction of the Patriot Hotel across the street.
“You want to go for a look?” he asked.
“What’s to see?”
Gorman shrugged.
“Johnny helped rescue the hostages,” said Massina.
“No shit.” Gorman stepped over and clapped Givens on the back. Johnny gave him a very uncomfortable smile.
“So,” said Gorman to Massina, “you wanna take a look?”
“Sure,” decided Massina. “Sure.”
There were no less than three dozen police officers and twice that many National Guardsmen scattered around the block, with half a dozen cops blocking the entrance to the Patriot. Gorman tossed his cigar into the gutter and walked up to the sergeant in charge of the hotel detail; the man waved them in.
“How long before it reopens?” asked Massina.
“Don’t know. They still have their investigators running in and out,” said Gorman. He waved toward the bank of elevators. “They do a complete DNA vacuum thing or something in each of the rooms, pulling out all sorts of DNA, you know, hair and saliva and that stuff. Looking for any sort of clues. Seems like a hell of a lot of work to me, but they know their business. I’ll show you the ballroom.”
Massina remembered the hallway from the surveillance video, but it was difficult to map that memory on the wide space he walked through now. In the video, it was dark and grainy, foreboding. Now, even though it was night, the hall was bright and inviting, the walls a delicate mauve, the sconces polished, the hardware gleaming.
The doors to the ballroom were open. Gorman ducked under the yellow evidence tape still strung across them and walked a few feet in. Massina hesitated, then followed.
“They took out the carpet and the wallboard for evidence,” Gorman said. “That’s where the massacre took place.”
He pointed to the area where the men had been slaughtered. Studs and insulation were all that were left.
“That’s where I danced with my daughter,” said Gorman, pointing near the stage. “On her wedding. Not five years ago.”
Massina looked around. He’d been at that wedding.
“Wanna see upstairs?”
Massina caught a glimpse of Johnny’s ashen face.
“I think this is enough,” Massina said. “But thanks.”
“Difficult,” said Gorman, leading them out.
He stopped when they reached the front lobby, pensively retrieving a cigar from his pocket and cutting it with fastidious precision. Retrieving a silver-shrouded torch lighter, he slowly warmed the end before setting it afire and taking a puff.
“Bastards,” said Gorman. “We can’t let them keep us down.”
“They won’t,” said Massina.
“No. I wonder, Lou — I wonder if maybe you might want to do me a favor.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m getting together some people to make a statement, public, you know? On a stage. TV. Tell the fuckin’ world we’re not taking this shit on the chin. I know you don’t do this sort of thing, but it would be good for us. People respect you.”
“I’ll do it. Send my assistant the details.”
“You got it, bro.” Gorman swatted him on the back.
Bro? thought Massina. He’s getting hip in his old age.
“Home, boss?” Johnny asked, climbing into the driver’s seat.
“No. I have some things to do at the office.”
“All right.”
“What’d you think?”
“Think of what?” asked Johnny.
“The hotel. Did it bother you? Being inside again?”
“Nah. Just a place.”
“We’re going to get them back,” said Massina. “This sideshow in Libya, it’s got nothing to do with what’s really going to happen.”
“Really?”
“We’re lending the government some gear. I need volunteers to—”
“If there’s some sort of action involved,” said Johnny, “I’d like to be part of it.”
“I was hoping you’d think that way,” said Massina. “I’ll make it so.”
26
Everywhere he went, they hailed him as a hero.
Even at four in the morning, on a dusty airstrip in eastern Syria, Ghadab was well-known. “Emir!” they called him, bowing their heads and striking their chests. Ghadab, in theory traveling in secrecy, was accorded every honor and luxury the Caliphate’s soldiers could afford.
Objectively, this wasn’t much — fresh water as he stepped from the plane, a blanket against the cold of the truck, which had sat at the edge of the airstrip for nearly three hours, waiting for the plane. But he appreciated it nonetheless.
Escaping from Libya had been difficult. It wasn’t just that the Americans were bombarding everything that had even the slightest connection to the Caliphate. The group that had been sheltering Ghadab split into several factions and began attacking each other, making it dangerous even for Ghadab to travel. He’d had to use his influence with two of the rebels to institute a cease-fire so he could meet the plane to Sudan.
Getting from Sudan to Egypt and then Syria was another odyssey. The Jews had spies everywhere, and he’d had to lay over in a gas station in Abri for five hours, at one point pretending that he was the attendant when some men in suit jackets arrived. They turned out to be Saudi businessmen, but could just as easily have been Mossad or even Egyptian GID, who would have shot him and sold his body to the Americans.
Getting into Syria was easy by comparison: a commercial flight in heavy disguise to Jordan; from there, a private plane deposited him in Syria. The truck ride that followed was long and uncomfortable, but not dangerous — the center of Syria and much of bordering Iraq was Caliphate territory.
Located in central Syria, Palmyra was a sleepy town organized around an oasis that made it possible to grow crops. It had been settled for millennia; monuments to old pagan regimes, an outrage to the true God and all that was good, still stood near the town. Its airfield and barracks abandoned at the start of hostilities, it had been one of the first places taken by the Caliphate and had withstood the infidels’ many counterattacks. At the moment, the hostilities there were largely dormant here; the puppet Assad was too busy concentrating on his weaker enemies to the northwest to bother with Caliphate strongholds.
Assad’s caution bothered Ghadab. The end time would never arrive if their opponents were so cautious.
He was especially disappointed in the Americans. True, they had attacked in Libya, and quite fiercely, but they had not brought their army back to the Levant as the Word declared they would at the start of Armageddon. The prophecy implicit in the words of the Koran had not been fulfilled.