The traveler ducked behind an exhibit, extracted the can and set it on its side on the concrete floor. It was weighted to roll to the proper position, and, lying on its side, it would be harder to see. With that done, he pressed the simple mechanical timer and walked away, back into the exhibition area, turning left to leave the building. He was in a taxi in five minutes, on the way back to his hotel. Before he got there, the timer-spring released the valve, and for fifteen seconds the canister emptied its contents into the air. The noise was lost in the cacophony of the crowd. The vapor cloud dispersed before it could be seen.
IN ATLANTA, IT was the Spring Boat Show. About half of the people there might have serious thoughts of buying a boat, this year or some other. The rest were just dreaming. Let them dream, this traveler thought on the way out.
IN ORLANDO, IT was recreational vehicles. That was particularly easy. A traveler looked under a Winnebago, as though to check the chassis, slid his canister there, and left.
IN CHICAGO'S MCCORMICK Center, it was housewares, a vast hall full of every manner of furniture and appliance, and the women who wished to have them.
IN HOUSTON, IT was one of America's greatest horse shows. Many of them were Arabians, he was surprised to note, and the traveler whispered a prayer that the disease didn't hurt those noble creatures, so beloved of Allah.
IN PHOENIX, IT was golf equipment, a game that the traveler didn't know a thing about, though he had several kilos of free literature which he might read on the flight back to the Eastern Hemisphere. He'd found an empty golf bag with a hard-plastic lining that would conceal the canister, set the timer, and dropped it in.
IN SAN FRANCISCO, it was computers, the most crowded show of all that day, with over twenty thousand people in the Moscone Convention Center, so many that this traveler feared he might not get outside to the garden area before the can released its contents. But he did, walking upwind to his hotel, four blocks away, his job complete.
THE RUG SHOP was just closing down when ArefRaman walked in. Mr. Alahad locked the front door and switched off the lights.
"My instructions?"
"You will do nothing without direct orders, but it is important to know if you are able to complete your mission."
"Is that not plain?" Raman asked in irritation. "Why do you think—"
"I have my instructions," Alahad said gently.
"I am able. I am ready," the assassin assured his cutout. The decision had been made years before, but it was good to say it out loud to another, here, now.
"You will be told at the proper time. It will be soon."
"The political situation…"
"We are aware of that, and we are confident of your devotion. Be at peace, Aref. Great things are happening. I know not what they are, merely that they are under way, and at the proper time, your act will be the capstone of the Holy Jihad. Mahmoud Haji sends his greetings and his prayers."
"Thank you." Raman inclined his head at word of the distant but powerful blessing. It had been a very long time since he'd heard the man's voice over anything but a television, and then he'd been forced to turn away, lest others see his reaction to it.
"It has been hard for you," Alahad said.
"It has." Raman nodded.
"It will soon be over, my young friend. Come to the back with me. Do you have time?"
"I do."
"It is time for prayer."
38 GRACE PERIOD
"I'M NOT AN AREA SPECIAList," Clark objected. He'd been to Iran before.
Ed Foley would have none of that: "You've been on the ground there, and I think you're the one who always talks about how there's no substitute for dirty hands and a good nose."
"He was just laying more of that on the kiddies at the Farm this afternoon," Ding reported with a sly look. "Well, today it was about reading people by lookin' in their eyes, but it's the same thing. Good eye, good nose, good senses." He hadn't been to Iran, and they wouldn't send Mr. C. alone, would they?
"You're in, John," Mary Pat Foley said, and since she was the DDO, that was that. "Secretary Adler may be flying over real soon. I want you and Ding to go over as SPOs. Keep him alive, and sniff around, nothing covert or anything. I want your read on what the street feels like. That's all, just a quick recon." It was the sort of thing usually done by watching footage on CNN, but Mary Pat wanted an experienced officer to take the local pulse, and it was her call.
If there were a curse in being a good training officer, it was that the people you trained often got promoted, and remembered their lessons—and worse, who'd taught them. Clark could recall both of the Foleys in his classes at the Farm. From the start, she'd been the cowboy— well, cowgirl— of the pair, with brilliant instincts, fantastically good Russian skills, and the sort of gift for reading people more often found in a professor of psychiatry… but somewhat wanting in caution, trusting a little too much on the baby blues and dumb blonde act to keep her safe. Ed lacked her passion but had the ability to formulate The Big Picture, to take a long view that made sense most of the time. Neither was quite perfect. Together they were a piece of work, and John took pride in having taught them his way. Most of the time.
"Okay. We have anything in the way of assets over there?"
"Nothing useful. Adler wants to eyeball Daryaei and tell him what the rules are. You'll be quartered in the French embassy. The trip is secret. VC-20 to Paris, French transport from there. In and out in a hurry," Mary Pat told them. "But I want you to spend an hour or two walking around, just to get a feel for things, price of bread, how people dress, you know the drill."
"And we'll have diplomatic passports, so nobody can hassle us," John added wryly. "Yeah, heard that one before. So did everyone else in the embassy back in 1979, remember?"
"Adler's Secretary of State," Ed reminded him.
"I think they know that." They know he's Jewish, too, he didn't add.
THE FLIGHT INTO Barstow, California, was how the exercise always started. Buses and trucks rolled up to the airplanes, and the troops came down the stairs for the short drive up the only road into the NTC. General Diggs and Colonel Hamm watched from their parked helicopter as the soldiers formed up. This group was from the North Carolina National Guard, a reinforced brigade. It wasn't often that the Guard came to Fort Irwin, and this one was supposed to be pretty special. Because the state was blessed with very senior senators and congressmen—well, until recently—over the years, the men from Carolina had gotten the very best in modern equipment, and been designated a round-out brigade for one of the Regular Army's armored divisions. Sure enough, they strutted like real soldiers, and their officers had been prepping for a year in anticipation of this training rotation. They'd even managed to get their hands on additional fuel with which they'd trained a few extra weeks. Now the officers formed their men up in regular lines before putting them on the transport, and from a distance of a quarter mile, Diggs and
Hamm could see their officers talking to their men over the noise of the arriving aircraft.
"They look proud, boss," Hamm observed.
They heard a distant shout, as a company of tankers told their captain they were ready to kick some ass. A news crew was even out there to immortalize the event for local TV.
"They are proud," the general said. "Soldiers should be proud, Colonel."
"Only one thing missing, sir."
"What's that, Al?"
"Baaaaaaaaa," Colonel Hamm said around his cigar. "Lambs to the slaughter." The two officers shared a look. The first mission of the OpFor was to take away that pride. The Blackhorse Cav had never lost so much as a single simulated engagement to anything other than a regular formation—and that rarely enough. Hamm didn't plan to start this month. Two battalions of Abrams tanks, one more of Bradleys, another of artillery, a cavalry company, and a combat-support battalion against his three squadrons of Opposing Force. It hardly seemed fair. For the visitors.