“So why did he send the message, if that is indeed what happened?”
“A diversion. It is a sniper’s habit to make pursuers chase their tails instead of him. He took an action with minor risk that caused you people to have a major reaction.”
Dave Hunt came back into the room. “We now have him in the domestic air system, flying from Washington to Tampa.”
SAN FRANCISCO
Juba’s warning antenna was quivering. He had rented a spacious, fully equipped automotive garage in a small industrial park on the outskirts of San Francisco, and while he was working, he kept an eye on a small black-and-white television set perched on a workbench. His picture was on part of the screen, and he walked over, wiping his hands on a greasy rag, to turn up the volume. A colorful SPECIAL ALERT logo was imprinted below the woman news reader giving the report. National security authorities had issued a request for all citizens to watch for this man, Jeremy Osmand, a known terrorist believed to be somewhere in the United States at the moment. Do not approach him by yourself, she said. Call the police.
Juba had purchased a 2004 Ford Excursion, the biggest sport utility vehicle ever produced in the United States, for a 20 percent cash down payment and his signature on a lot of legal papers. It shone dull silver beneath the overhead lights of the garage, where he had been clearing out everything behind the front seats to create a long, flat deck. Now he got in, rolled up the big front door, and drove to his motel, a nice mid-priced facility. He parked two blocks away and walked down a narrow alley, with a dirty 49ers cap tilted low on his face. At the corner, he went into a health food store, bought a cup of vanilla chai, and sipped it as he scanned the area.
He had been there for two nights but had only been seen by the night clerk. Had the young man already recognized the picture on the screen and called the authorities? It did not seem that way, because there were no unmarked police cars in the neighborhood, no vans with tinted windows, and no strong young men pretending to do work. No cops, but they would find this place sooner or later. He had to take the chance.
The pistol was snug in the waistband of his jeans, beneath the floppy T-shirt, but he needed the contents of a plastic bag that he had left in the bathroom and the big gun that was hidden in the air-conditioning vent of his room.
It was difficult to buy a good weapon in the People’s Republic of San Francisco, but back in the late 1980s, American law enforcement had turned a blind eye toward al Qaeda representatives who had made many open purchases at gun shows around the country. Those guns were believed to be for export to Afghanistan and the war against the Soviets, but a number of them went into secret caches such as the one that had been stored in northern California. He had picked up an Armalite civilian knockoff of the famous.50 caliber Barrett, which had been purchased from a gun show in Sacramento. There was a little.22 Bushmaster, too, but Juba wanted the big kick.
He dumped his drink and circled the block to approach the motel from a direction that could not be seen by the front desk, sauntered up the single flight of stairs, and was quickly into the corner room. The maid had already been by to clean up and prepare the bed, and the room had fresh towels and the smell of pine aerosol. He stole the towels and pushed them into the plastic bag with the box of Clairol Nice’n Easy hair coloring, then unscrewed the wall vent with a tiny screwdriver on his army knife and pulled out the Armalite in its carrying case. Four minutes after entering the room, he was out. Time mattered now, and he still had chores to do.
A hospital located twenty miles from the baseball stadium was commonly known as “the Saints.” It had been founded by Mormons as a business and charitable venture; the Latter-day Saints sold it to the Catholic Church in 1993, and it was renamed St. Mary’s Hospital. Sick people did not care which saints were in charge as long as the doctors and nurses took care of them. The Saints encompassed four floors of a modern building and had earned a reputation as a top-rated trauma center.
The previous day, Juba had picked out an apartment about two hundred yards away from the Saints, and now he drove there and parked in an empty space behind the low building. He went up the inside stairwell and needed only thirty seconds to pick the lock. It was the middle of a sunny afternoon, and the dead bolt had not been engaged by the young mother watching television. She only had time to turn in surprise when she heard the door open; Juba shot her before she could scream. He carefully went through the apartment and found a little boy playing in a bedroom. The kid looked up just before the trigger was pulled. Juba pulled the dead woman into the light blue bathroom that smelled like daisies and dumped her in the white bathtub. Her four-year-old son was placed atop her body. The gunman dipped a washcloth in the boy’s blood and wrote his name on the tile: JUBA.
In the refrigerator, there was some leftover chicken in a covered bowl, which he heated in the microwave and brought into the living room with a dish of cold potato salad. As he ate lunch, he studied the unobstructed view from the window: a large white sign with EMERGENCY ROOM printed in large blue letters and a concrete ramp that jutted into the driveway to allow ambulance drivers to back right up to it and wheel their gurneys smoothly from the vehicle and straight into the trauma unit.
Then it was back to the garage.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
“About seven hundred and fifty million passengers flew on some eleven million flights from U.S. airports last year,” said Lieutenant Commander Freedman, surging around the Internet. “That’s a lot of faces for the computer to look at, and they won’t find anything if he rented a car and drove somewhere.”
“Damn, Liz. Don’t even think like that,” said Sybelle Summers. The Trident group was bored. They liked answers crisp and quick. The coffee was stale and so was the air.
“We have people on it down in Florida,” said Carolyn Walker. “If he’s there, we’ll find him.”
“That means Juba has split our resources yet again,” Kyle said. “First Boston and now Tampa-St. Pete.”
“Not much down there,” said Walker.
General Middleton looked up from working the New York Times crossword puzzle. “Right. Nothing at all. Just sunshine and MacDill Air Force Base and the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, which runs the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’ve jacked security to the max around them.”
The doorknob turned and Special Agent David Hunt came in. “He is still on the move. Flew from Tampa to Denver.”
Middleton swept the newspaper from the table and stood up. “Oh, fuck,” he growled. “That’s Cheyenne Mountain. Lizard, get me a secure voice link to the Joint Chiefs at the Pentagon so they can lock ’em down.”
Walker knew the incredible importance of the system that was the electronic heart of the nation’s defenses. “That facility is buried two thousand feet underground. It’s heavily guarded and can be completely sealed off. Those people are totally safe from any gas attack.”
Kyle Swanson grimaced. “Their families aren’t. Even so, I can’t see that as the attack point. Not a big enough crowd, and the security level is always high throughout that area.”
“Then where is he going to hit?” asked Walker. “What is drawing him to these places?”
“Think about targets,” Kyle answered. “Juba wants a huge splash, something bigger than London. We don’t see it yet, but he does. He is not moving at random.”
SAN FRANCISCO
Xavier Sandoval found the garage address without difficulty, stopped the yellow Diablo Gourmet truck, and honked his horn. Juba pushed a button inside and the main garage door rolled back. Sandoval steered the truck inside and parked beside a huge SUV.