“Nothing,” Gooey answered.
Tara paused before continuing in the same steady pace. “Is there a possibility of your, maybe… I don’t know… elaborating on your answer a bit, Gooey?”
“Well, Terri, it’s like this: There are three cameras that show directly or peripherally that corridor down by the turf guy’s office, where the last bomb blew. Not one of them was working that night. Three cameras less than a year old all malfunctioning at once-coincidence?” Gooey leaned across the table and slapped his hand on it as he spoke each of his final three words. “I… think… not!” Then he triumphantly stood straight up with his hands balled on his hips, staring at the sky in superhero fashion.
The other three burst into applause at this mighty display of detective genius.
“I work with a bunch of idiots,” Tara mumbled. Then she said to the team, “I want all those videos reviewed again-every single Platte River tape starting with three hours prior to game time. Those two faceless suspects have to be on there somewhere. And I don’t care what database you have to tap into; I want names for both of these guys by the end of the day. Now get to work!”
Tara grabbed her papers from the table again. She walked straight to her desk, dropped the last four caplets from her Extra Strength Tylenol bottle into her hand, and swallowed them dry.
Wednesday, January 14
Barletta, Italy
The hot wind blew in the big cat’s face as he crept through the tall grass of the Namibian plain. A herd of impalas stood two hundred yards ahead. The stealthy feline carefully cut that distance by half. He scanned the herd and picked his victim. Not the smallest but also not the biggest. He wanted to make the effort worthwhile, but he did not want to bite off more trouble than he could chew.
He slowly raised himself into a crouch, his tail end lifting a little higher and wiggling back and forth. Steady… steady… steady… NOW! He bolted across the separation and was two-thirds of the way there before the impalas saw him coming.
Now it was their turn to run. They scattered, trying to confuse him, but he was intent on the single victim he had chosen. The young impala somehow sensed that it was the target. It broke right and made a mad dash for some acacia bushes. Too little, too late.
The cat was within five feet of the animal when something slammed into his side. He let out a yip as he flew sideways and rolled to a halt.
He felt the blood pouring down his fur and knew he’d been shot. This wasn’t right! This wasn’t how it was supposed to be! Panic set in as he heard footsteps coming toward him. He tried to get up but found he couldn’t move-not even to turn his head to see who had shot him. He closed his eyes as pain racked his body. His breathing was rapid and shallow. Then he heard the footsteps stop. He slowly opened his eyes and saw a man in desert camouflage standing above him. On his right arm was a patch of the American flag.
As the wounded cat watched in horror, the soldier raised his rifle, pointed it down at his head, and pulled the trigger.
Hakeem awoke drenched in sweat and nearly hyperventilating. He sat up in his bed and forced himself to take slow, deep breaths.
He had been having the cheetah dreams again ever since arriving in Barletta. The dreams had stopped when his house had been bombed and his family killed so many years ago. Now they were back almost every night, and he loved them. He loved the rush of the hunt and the power of the kill. But tonight, for the first time, his dream had taken an alarming turn.
Hakeem slipped on his pants and walked across the cold cement floor to the hall, taking a blanket from the bed with him. He had been confined to this house and its courtyard ever since arriving in Italy. He couldn’t argue with the wisdom of this decision, but it didn’t make it any easier. After two weeks here, he was going stir-crazy.
The one solace he had found was up on the tile roof of the three-story house that had become his home. The rooftop gave him a feeling of serenity as he looked down at the city around him. In this morning’s darkness the air was chilly and damp from the sea, and Hakeem wrapped the blanket tightly around his body. The Adriatic was much closer to the north, but he still had a more or less unobstructed view toward the eastern seaboard. He turned his face to where the sun would shortly rise as the sky began to lighten.
I’m a different man since coming here, Hakeem thought. Life among my people, and especially around al-’Aqran, has taken away the lingering effects of living so long in America. I am amazed at how soft I had become. I am ashamed at how I mourned for the people and things I left behind. But no more! My edge has been honed again. My barbs have been sharpened. I now live to die. And the days I have left will be days of honor.
The darkness continued to disappear, and the soft edges of the buildings around him became more defined. But what about this dream? I have always been the hunter. Never have I been the prey. What does it mean? Was it just the quzi I ate last night? Or, more likely, the four shots of arrack that I drank, chasing the three bottles of Peroni. What are dreams anyway? It’s silly to be concerned about them. Dreams are meant to be experienced, sometimes enjoyed, and then dismissed. It won’t be long before I am the one standing over the American with the rifle pointed at his head.
Just then, the first glimpse of orange broke the horizon to the east. Hakeem stood and removed the blanket surrounding him so that his body could absorb the warmth. It was a perfect moment-a connection between heaven and earth. The sun’s rays flooded over him, washing away the dream, washing away the past, washing away the doubts. As he stood there, he made a conscious decision to meet from this roof every sunrise that he had left here in Barletta-a number he knew was rapidly diminishing.
Chapter 26
Monday, January 19
Barletta, Italy
For the last six days, Mustang team had made it their lives to know everything there was to know about Via Nazareth-the street that contained both al-Arqam mosque and the house of al-’Aqran. According to the intel from Tara Walsh’s group back home, al-’Aqran was the founder and leader of the Cause.
Tara had given Mustang team some good information about this man, and Riley had used the daily hour-long drive to Barletta from the team’s base of operations in Bari to review the file. By now he nearly had it memorized.
Al-’Aqran, or “the Scorpion,” had been born Abdul Rahman Bey in the Iraqi village of Ar Radwaniyah, just outside of Abu Ghraib. In 1968, at the age of sixteen, Bey had joined the military just months before the bloodless coup that had put Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr and the Ba’athists into power. Saddam Hussein had immediately been made deputy president and had soon become the country’s strongman. As with many in the Iraqi military, Bey’s loyalty was primarily to Hussein. In 1979, Hussein took power by making accusations of disloyalty in the Ba’ath Party and arresting sixty-eight of its members while they were gathered for a meeting. Bey had been part of the team that executed twenty-two of those arrested.
By 1980, Hussein had become concerned about the radical Shiite influence that was spilling across the border from Iran and its newly installed leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini. These ideas didn’t fit well with Hussein’s vision of a secular state. So he invaded Iran on September 22, 1980. Captain Bey was part of the invasion force that entered Khuzestan that first day. He spent the next eight years fighting that war to a stalemate.
Tired and disillusioned, Bey had left the military. His loyalty to Saddam never wavered, but he was concerned about the president’s judgment and tactics. Iraq was a powerful nation, but it was not powerful enough to win a conventional war in the modern era of treaties and alliances. Much later, Bey had watched with interest, but not surprise, as the Western forces easily toppled Saddam’s government during the Occupation of Iraq.