Marika crossed her legs, wiping a fleck of dirt off her jeans. She hadn’t taken the time to change. Hadn’t seemed like a priority at the time.
“No. I’m following up on a lead,” she replied, favoring the S-A-C with a cold glance. “What do you have to lose? Las Vegas was on your potential targets list. If Russ and I can confirm that…we’ve just found your needle.”
Buhler ran a hand across his forehead. “They warned me that you were a pain in the butt.”
Her face never changed. She had heard it all from men at the Bureau over the years, every name in the book and quite a few too obscene to be put in a book. Didn’t matter.
At length, he looked up, realizing that his comment had failed to provoke a reaction. “Fine,” he relented, a heavy sigh escaping his lips. “But I can’t spare a chopper — they’re all combing the mountains. You and Russell will have to take the next commercial out to McCarran. If you go off the reservation again…well, it will be Powers’ problem, not mine.”
“Powers?”
“Trent Powers, the Vegas S-A-C. Give him my best.” Buhler smiled. “On second thought, don’t mention me as being responsible for sending you. He still owes me drinks.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Marika responded, rising from her chair. She knew Buhler’s type — politicians all the way. Comfortable so long as nothing threatened their bureaucracy.
“Good hunting.”
Indeed.
“We’ll approach from the north entrance,” Tarik Abdul Muhammad noted, tapping the map with a forefinger. “You have everything in readiness there, don’t you?”
“Yes,” came the imam’s reply. “Your concern will be getting your weapons in.”
“That shouldn’t take long,” Jamal replied, the confidence of the college student asserting itself. He could feel the eyes of the shaikh on him, listening to his words. “The entire floor is handicap-accessible — so that wealthy old Americans can gamble away their children’s inheritance. Gambling…a work of Satan, as it was written of the Prophet.”
“You had a point, Jamal?” Abu Kareem asked, clearing his throat.
Jamal flushed, feeling the unspoken rebuke. “Yes. What I have are the cylinders of the nerve agent rigged with explosives surrounding them — each of them weighing roughly twenty pounds. Hard to handle while fighting our way in, but we can roll them quickly across the casino on one of the hotel’s luggage carts. Only one man needed for their transportation.”
The shaikh smiled. “Well done, Jamal. That will be advantageous. The Americans have security at the door — here, and here. We will need to take them down before advancing on the theatre.”
“Time?” Jamal looked behind him to see one of the mujahideen speaking. His English was rough, but he was an experienced fighter. Jamal had even heard whispers that he had been involved in the planning stages of Lashkar-e-Taiba’s assault on Mumbai.
It was a crucial question.
The shaikh glanced at his watch. “From the moment the first shot is fired…we need to have secured her within two minutes. They will make an effort to lock us out of the theatre — we have to be prepared for that.”
“We will be,” Abu Kareem interjected, the older man’s countenance taking on a look of serenity. “Insh’allah.”
The sun was setting, slipping behind the clouds in the west — a chill wind blowing off the water. Bernard Kranemeyer stood off to one side, his dress shoes half-buried in the silty mud of the beach.
The glare of a crime scene investigator’s flashbulb briefly lit the gathering darkness, all eyes focused on the body lying there in the mud. Michael Shapiro.
“On the face of it, looks like he washed in with the tide,” the DCS observed, speaking to an FBI agent standing nearby.
“That it does.”
“Who is going to have jurisdiction of the investigation…the Bureau? Or D.C. Metro?”
“We will,” the young man replied without blinking. “National security.”
Indeed. “Make sure you keep me in the loop on this one, all right?”
“I’m sure you’ll be informed on a need-to-know basis,” came the stiff rejoinder.
Kranemeyer took a step into the agent’s zone, his dark eyes snapping. “Mike…was a friend. More importantly, his death leaves me the acting director of the CIA, serving at the pleasure of the President. I need to know everything. Am I making myself understood?”
“Loud and clear.”
“You know what you are supposed to do, right?” Harry asked, glancing in the rear-view mirror above his head.
“Yes,” Thomas replied from the backseat of the car. “I do. All too well, matter of fact.”
Harry shook his head. “We’ve been over this, Thomas. It’s the only way to establish contact.”
“I know.”
Carol cleared her throat from the passenger seat beside him, her words clipped. “According to her Facebook wall, she left for the grocery store fifteen minutes ago. I can monitor Foursquare, but that’s not gonna give us her location in real-time. You need to get in there.”
A nod from Thomas and he stepped out onto the sidewalk as the car slowed.
A roll of the dice. That’s all this was, Harry realized, watching in his rear-view as he pulled back out onto the road, heading out of the housing development. Long odds.
“What did you mean?”
He took his attention off the road for a brief moment to glance over at Carol. “About what?”
“You said that you needed me.”
He’d known the question was coming, didn’t mean that he was prepared to answer it…honestly. It felt as if there was a wall between them, a wall he had erected.
A wall that had to come down.
“Once this is done…I have to get out. Leave all of it in the past. Everything I’ve fought for — I have to experience it for myself. I want to have a normal life. A family. Kids.”
The American dream. He could feel her eyes on him, felt as if he was naked before her. Stripped of the lies.
Suddenly vulnerable.
It was a long moment before she spoke again, and when she did, her voice was soft. Barely above a whisper. “Do you think you can…leave it all in the past, I mean?”
The impossible question, and his heart whispered a lie. Yes. The easy answer, what he wanted to tell her.
The truth…was never so easy.
His headset crackled with static before he could respond. Han’s voice, intruding on his thoughts. Drawing him back to the reality at hand. “We’re at the back door. Prepping for entry.”
“Roger that,” Harry replied, his mission voice returning. “Standing by.”
Nothing. Marika ran her calloused thumb over the phone’s screen to remove the “No missed calls” message, cursing under her breath.
So much for hope. She looked up to see Russ emerge from the line behind her, a bag over his shoulder. “Flying two days before Christmas…never a good idea.”
It hadn’t been. Buhler had been forced to pull strings even to get them seats. “No calls.”
“I don’t know if you should have expected one,” the negotiator replied, his voice calm. Gentle, even. “Do you really have a plan, Marika?”