The voice was right. He and his brother had been sloppy.
“What do you want me to do?”
“You must dispose of all the evidence.”
“I’ve started that process.”
“Good. As soon as you do that, proceed as planned.”
“Even without my brother?”
“It seems that he was not much help when he was alive,” the voice said.
“I can handle it alone,” Marzak said. “I have a score to settle with Hawkins when I see him again.”
“That’s not likely. Forget Hawkins. You’ve had your chance. I already have a backup plan in place.”
“What—?”
The line went dead.
Marzak muttered an oath, then punched out another number on his phone. A man answered. “Yes.”
“This is Gemini jewelers,” Marzak said. “I designed the necklace for your wife.”
“We’ve been expecting your call.”
“Sorry. I had a last minute job. I have some questions regarding the clasp. I would like to discuss them in person with you.”
“Never mind the necklace for now. We’re more interested in the estate items we talked about. We’ve learned that there is another buyer interested in the collection. When can we get together?”
“I can leave as soon as you make arrangements.”
Pause. “I’ll get back to you.”
Marzak called the chartered jet pilot and said he would be at the airport in ten minutes.
As he drove along, he reminisced about Mirko. He and his brother had operated as a single organism, bringing death and misery to hundreds of people since going into the business of mass murder. The killing of his brother was not only a personal affront, it was an insult to his professionalism. And if word of their carelessness got out, it would be bad for business.
It could have been worse. He and his brother had put the final touches on the Prophet’s Necklace plan only days before. They had been working for months on the scheme. Finding a source of sarin had been the most difficult part, and transporting the deadly poison into the U.S. almost as hard. It had given them time, though, to design the dirty bombs that would spread the toxin and figure out where and how to place them.
They had placed the bombs in six major cities stretching across the country from New York to San Francisco. Each city was a jewel in the necklace. They had picked subways, shopping malls, municipal buildings and other close quarters frequented by many people, where the effects of the toxin would be maximized. When the word was given, they would trigger the bombs remotely, one at a time as the sun moved across the country, building a wave of terror and confusion.
The whole thing depended on him now. As he considered the avalanche of challenges that would come down on him as the result of his brother’s death, he could feel the growing rage in his chest. Hawkins. He was angry at his brother for not following the plan. They had underestimated the man, thinking that the 2–1 advantage and the element of surprise would doom their target.
He looked to his right. Like a phantom that is sometimes conjured up by the brain to replace a missing arm, he saw his brother sitting next to him.
The figure he saw in his fevered imagination had substance and sound.
“We’ll know what to expect the next time around,” the phantom said with a smile on its pale face.
Marzak nodded in agreement. He thought of a quote from his favorite poet, William Blake, who had said it was better to murder an infant in its cradle than nurse an unacted desire.
Marzak had murdered infants in their cradles as part of his job, and he had no intention of nursing his desire for revenge, no matter what the computer altered voice had told him about his new assignment.
Marzak would make sure he and Hawkins met again. And when they did, Hawkins would be a dead man.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Terrance Aloysius Murphy probably wouldn’t have set out to kill someone that morning if he hadn’t happened to do some personal banking on his Blackberry just before the call from the States came in with the offer of a big money job.
Although the holdings in his Swiss bank accounts were in the seven figures, Murphy figured that with his transfer home looming he was going to have to do something soon to fill the hole that his losing investments in Florida real estate had dug in the original amount.
Murphy was the leader of a two-man team from the Drug Enforcement Agency’s Kabul Country Office Strike Force. After the call, he had hastily pulled the operation together, saying he had a tip that a drug kingpin suspected of Taliban connections was about to leave town.
The target was already on the hit list, waiting for a go-ahead from Murphy. He had compiled the intel on the compound in preparation for a raid, but he had always managed to divert the DEA’s attention to more promising targets.
The DEA agents and a unit of Marines that included a drug-detection dog and his handler joined up with a six-man team of heavily-armed agents from the Counter Narcotics Police of Afghanistan.
The DEA agents were part of a F.A.S.T team, government shorthand for Foreign Deployed Assistance and Support. With sixty percent of heroin profits going to support the Taliban, and a government riddled with drug-related corruption, the DEA had tried going after poppy growers, but that only angered the farmers and didn’t stop the heroin trade. So the agency had begun to interdict the heroin traffickers using para-military agents like Murphy.
The raiding party set out from the forward patrol base before dawn and took up positions near the compound the drug commander used as his headquarters. The intel file contained the exact lay-out of the compound. Informants had infiltrated the enclosure and identified the placement of IEDs, or improvised explosive devices, buried around the perimeter. Assuming that the booby traps would stop any intruder, the drug traffickers had grown complacent and no one was guarding the gate.
Murphy lay on his belly behind a low ridge. He was still brooding about his diminishing cash cache when someone tapped him on the shoulder. It was the platoon sergeant, a twenty-six-year-old Texas kid named Chavez.
“Five minute warning,” Chavez whispered.
Murphy reached down to the speed holster at his waist and tapped the butt of his Smith and Wesson compact 9 mm. Then he wrapped his fingers around the pistol grip of his Benelli M3 shotgun, making sure the lever was in semi-automatic position.
A pencil-thin beam of red light sliced the darkness.
The Afghan commander had given the signal for the attack. Answering blinks came from the Marines spread out around the compound. The Afghans crawled like crabs over the ridge, then ran, crouched-over, toward the gate. The DEA agents and the dog and handler were behind the Afghan agents. The Marines moved in to establish a cordon around the compound.
The Afghan agents forced the front door of the main building. Shouts could be heard in Pashto, ordering someone to surrender. Moments later the Afghans prodded a short bearded man out of the house. The leader of the Afghan narcs came over to Murphy, frowning like a big-game hunter who had only bagged a rabbit.
“This man says he’s only a caretaker. The one we are looking for isn’t here. Only a few women and children.”
“Keep an eye on the old guy and we’ll check out the house,” Murphy said.
The commander turned the job of room-to-room search over to the DEA and the Marine canine team, who went in first with Murphy and his teammate right behind them. They cleared the building without incident except for some screams as they entered the main living space where some women and children were huddled.