After she put the kids down for a nap, Melanie joined Jazz on the patio.
“Whatcha reading?”
“Service records.”
“Isn’t that a little creepy?”
“Nah, it is important to know who I’m working with. I’ve just been reading about Ball. What did you say his wife’s name was?”
“Jeanine, but she goes by Jeannie.”
“Yeah, anyway, he seems like a good guy. Hell, they are all good people. They wouldn’t get into EOD if they weren’t.”
“Who else do you have in the det?”
“Well, apparently this is a period of personnel transfers. There’s a Senior Chief Reed who is leaving soon. He came here from the shore det in Earle, New Jersey. I’ve got a Chief Keating who I met today. He is good to go, a very experienced diver. There’s a guy named Quinn, a guy named Sinclair, and an SK who I met today named Delgado.”
“A Storekeeper?”
“Yeah, I thought that strange too. I guess it is a source rating. Anyway all three of them came here right from EOD school, but not recently. Delgado is coming up on two years. The others have been here longer.”
“Was the Warrant in today?”
“No, most of them were on a Secret Service mission in Houston.”
“Ooh, 007 stuff,” Melanie said sarcastically, with a smile.
“You really don’t care about this stuff do you?”
“Not impressed in the least. I told you before, I’m proud of you, but not impressed by what you do. What makes me happy is seeing you excited about this. That’s what is sexy.”
“Don’t use that word around me right now.”
“Sex?” she giggled.
“Please I can’t take it.”
Melanie stood up, leaned over and kissed Jazz softly.
“Care for a nooner, 007?”
“Hooya.”
TWELVE
Nasih decided to check his email messages one more time before his meeting with Gabriel.
From: smit1941
To: bb6
Subject: toolbox
I looked in my basement and my toolbox was not there. The wife must have sold it at a yard sale or something.
The message angered him so much that, screaming with rage, he ripped the monitor from its cable and threw it across the room.
“Toolbox” was the codeword for the weapons that he was importing into the United States. By using “basement” in the email as well as the phrasing, the author was telling him that the shipment was lost. “Wife” meant that the American’s captured it at sea.
The United States Navy boarded and searched Green Leon. Her cargo, weapons and explosives intended for his operatives in America, were confiscated along with the ship.
Nasih’s mission was just postponed two years, but his dignity could not wait that long. Now he would be unable to supply his cells, he would have to move only with his insurgents. Suddenly, Gabriel and his friends grew in importance.
I will still be able to count on the Italians, he thought calming himself down.
Nasih descended the stairs from his apartment above the Army-Navy store in Aransas Pass. The manager was coming toward him from the front of the building.
“Is everything alright, hon?”
“Oh, yes, Mrs. Shields. I was moving my monitor and I dropped it. I’m fine really.”
Nasih was adept at creating plausible lies. He smiled at his landlady as he got into his Land Cruiser.
Nasih had long ago decided that his intelligence was a curse. He resented the fact that his wealthy father had the ability to send him to the best schools. It indoctrinated him in the faith, but the analytical ability it provided also led to his removal from the battlefield.
He knew that something special was going to happen when he was summoned to the council from the position where he was fighting the Soviets. There were rumors that he was going to the Balkans to be a leader in the jihad planned there. He would never forget what his leader said that night in the dessert.
“I want to say before the whole council that taking you from the battlefield in this case is not an insult. It is an honor. In fact you have been chosen because of your ability for a different battlefield, one that is far more dangerous and that requires more courage and more cunning….”
Nasih was still disappointed. For fifteen years now he trained cells of the faithful, in Libya, Afghanistan, the Sudan, and Yemen then inserted them in Europe, especially the Balkans, and finally the United States. In the last six years, he also trained and guided insurgents, members of the local populations whose means satisfied Nasih’s ends. Only in the Balkans did he have any real effect. He needed something big to happen in the United States. Nobody thought of him as a warrior any more.
Nasih tried to re-focus his thoughts as he drove the quiet road slicing through the length of the barrier island named Mustang.
Soon there will be hotels here, he thought.
He was certain that the cancer of alcohol and debauchery that accompanies western beach resorts was spreading from South Padre Island even now. Unless something changed, it would only be a matter of time before these sand dunes would be soiled with western sin.
The notion reminded him of Dubai, where he was assigned to work in a shop that catered to the British ex-patriots and oil company employees so that he could learn English and begin a study of the great adversary. While he was there he watched miles of pristine oceanfront become scarred with skyscrapers, plush hotels and condominiums.
Nasih gripped the steering wheel of his Land Cruiser, recalling that the buildings themselves actually angered him. He was certain that western corporations, and really the Jews, were behind it all. It was clear in their design. Their height was a western symbol of power, with no attached practicality in the Middle East. Why build a seventy-story high-rise when there is plenty of open desert to spread into?
Ironically Dubai’s behemoths lay mostly dormant. Their only real attraction was their own luxuriousness and they were priced for only the wealthiest of tourists. They did not even employ the local population; the staffs were imported from Pakistan and the Philippines.
Nasih wondered how many local businessmen put their life savings into the hotels after being assured by the aristocracy that their investment would return ten-fold. How many herders’ sons were lured away from their father’s house, only to be cheated out of their wages? To make matters worse, those footing the bill and watching the progress from the air conditioning of their luxury limos did not care if it all collapsed. The wealthy knew before it began that their cousins in government would subsidize them. If the elite did not make their money from the bending backs of the herders and merchants, they would make it from their taxes.
While he watched all of this happen, Nasih patiently did as he was directed; he learned English and bided his time.
He turned left, leaving the pavement and crossed through an access road cut through the dunes onto the beach. The wind was still today, a pleasant surprise. Once reaching the beach proper, Nasih turned left again and headed north with the sea on his right.
In a short time he saw the mile marker that he was looking for. Nasih stopped the truck and got out. He walked north a little more, surveying his surroundings. As far as he could see, there were only two other vehicles stopped on the beach. Both appeared to be older men fishing. There was some traffic, but it was light. Most people were still working on this early Wednesday afternoon. Nasih determined that there was only one vehicle passing on the beach before him every ten minutes.
He walked up one of the dunes for a better vantage and to ensure that there was nobody on the other side. It was clear.