The giant ranch house was two storeys, plus converted attic. The previous owner had apparently gone bust in the midst of a grand refurbishment project. The exterior mixed new glazing and a marble porch with areas further along where windows were boarded and foundations laid for an unbuilt extension.
The front door was on the latch and Ryan stepped in purposefully, knowing that people are less suspicious when someone looks like they know where they’re heading.
There might have been people in any of the rooms, but all the noise came out of an open-plan kitchen diner. It was a no-expense-spared German job, but wires hung through holes where the ceiling lights should be.
While a $4,000 Swedish-made oven sat by the sliding doors cased in polystyrene, a lively crowd surrounded a veiled teenager who grabbed pieces of chicken from a bucket of marinade and threw them on to a line of disposable charcoal barbecue trays.
‘Ryan,’ Elbaz said, coming out of some sort of cupboard under spiral stairs leading up to the first floor. ‘Did Mumin not ask you to stay in the mobile home?’
It came across more like a straight question than a rebuke, and Ryan had his excuse ready.
‘My dad always takes years in the shower. Flying so long and not eating properly has done my stomach in.’
Elbaz laughed. He didn’t seem like the arrogant man who’d flown out of the Kremlin with them a day and a half earlier. Ryan figured that the change was down to growing confidence as IDoJ’s operation drew nearer to completion.
‘Toilet’s across the hall,’ Elbaz said. ‘Do you go everywhere with your father?’
Ryan nodded. ‘My mother died when I was a baby. Since then we’ve come as a package.’
‘And people don’t suspect you’re a smuggler when you’ve got the kids in tow,’ Elbaz added.
‘We’ve got out of a few tight spots like that,’ Ryan agreed, before pointing at the toilet door. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Better in there than out here,’ Elbaz joked.
Ryan felt tense as he entered a large marbled toilet cubicle with the face of a young Clint Eastwood etched into one mirrored wall. After bolting the door, he sat on the toilet lid and stayed there for about as long as he’d normally take to have a dump. He made things seem real by flushing and washing his hands before exiting.
He walked across to the kitchen, with a backup excuse of wanting to thank Elbaz. But Elbaz had vanished and nobody stopped Ryan striding to the heart of the huge kitchen and standing by the central island between one of the terrorists who’d travelled with them on the plane and the moustached teenager who’d driven the taxi from the landing strip.
‘Grab some chicken,’ the teenager said warmly. ‘It’s good.’
Ryan smiled as he reached across the countertop and grabbed a paper plate and a drumstick stained with the orange marinade. After eating nothing but tinned food and sandwiches for thirty hours, fresh-cooked spicy chicken hit the spot and he followed up by grabbing two lamb skewers off a passing tray.
‘I saw your money when the suitcases arrived,’ the teenaged driver told Ryan.
‘Not my money,’ Ryan said, as he tried the lamb. ‘Wish it was, but I’m just the delivery boy for your couriers.’
There was a lull in the conversation, and although Ryan had worked out that it wasn’t going to be a suicide raid, he thought it might be a good way to open a conversation.
‘So, are you mad bastards gonna be blowing yourselves up?’ he asked.
The teenager scoffed at the suggestion. ‘Yeah, we’re all suicide bombers.’
‘Sorry,’ Ryan said. ‘Just … me and my dad saw all the trucks.’
On the other side of the counter, two guys who were twenty at most recognised each other before exchanging a hug. They called one another cousin and started a How have you been, what time did you get here kind of conversation. Both looked Arab or possibly North African, but their accents were pure Texan drawl.
As Ryan finished his second lamb skewer the taller of the two cousins said, ‘My aunt’s after a sixty-five-inch LCD for Black Friday. I paid a guy to steal her car so that she can’t go out in the morning.’
The other cousin laughed. ‘This your aunt in Houston?’
The guy nodded. ‘Rescued me from foster home when my mom went AWOL. I don’t want her near any shops tomorrow morning.’
‘What about her car?’
‘Gave the guy a key. He’s gonna drive it a few blocks. If nobody finds it before I get home, I’ll tell her I spotted it on my way to visit her.’
Ryan picked up a ton of information about the two cousins, but the thing about the car was crucial: it confirmed that IDoJ would be attacking shops tomorrow morning, that at least one target was in Houston and that at least one bomber planned to be alive after the attack.
As Ryan turned to leave, Elbaz touched his shoulder from behind. He carried a foil tray stacked with barbecued meat, plus salad, rice, serviettes and plastic cutlery. However, his voice had become firm.
‘It’s not appropriate you being in here,’ Elbaz said. ‘Grab a carton of orange juice and take this tray back to share with your father. I must ask you not to leave the mobile home again.’
Ryan acted grovelly. ‘Sorry, boss,’ he said. ‘I came out of the shitter and the smell of food drew me in.’
‘Eat then sleep,’ Elbaz advised. ‘Enjoy the meat and tell your father that I’m grateful for his help.’
11. HOUSTON
Kazakov had taken a shower to give credence to Ryan’s story. He was sitting by the bay window staring at the ball of his foot when the teenager got back.
‘You OK?’ Ryan asked.
‘Splinter off the floor,’ Kazakov said, his face lighting up when he saw the foil tray. ‘That smells decent.’
Ryan put the kettle on to muffle sounds in case they were being bugged, and switched to speaking in Russian, a language skill that he doubted any of Elbaz’s team possessed.
‘Trucks are radio controlled,’ Ryan explained. ‘Ten altogether. I guess they’ll drive them to the target, hop out and use the control unit for the last few hundred metres.’
‘Makes sense.’
‘Targets are shops,’ Ryan said, pouring orange juice into two glasses as Kazakov bit a greasy chicken wing. ‘Looks like tomorrow. The logos painted on the trucks must be a clue about what shops they’re targeting. There were also these two cousins who mentioned Black Friday. I saw it on the newspapers Tracy was reading as well. I wish we could Google to find out what it is.’
Kazakov smirked. ‘Before the Internet, people had this thing called general knowledge. The third Thursday in November – today – is Thanksgiving. A lot of people here in the US take the Friday after Thanksgiving off work to give themselves a four-day holiday. Shops close on Thanksgiving, but open early on Black Friday and put on special deals.’
Ryan nodded. ‘Like in the pull-outs Tracy had in her USA Today. I guess if she’d made it to Atlanta, she’d have been home in time to catch the bargains.’
‘Black Friday is the busiest shopping day of the year over here,’ Kazakov said. ‘The malls are gonna be packed and I think it’s a safe bet that’s what IDoJ is targeting.’
‘We’ve got to get a warning out,’ Ryan said. ‘There’s a tonne of high explosive for each truck.’
‘Enough to vaporise a superstore,’ Kazakov agreed. ‘If it’s packed out, you’re talking thousands of people in each store.’
Ryan nodded solemnly. ‘That’s like the World Trade Center times ten.’
‘And we’ve got a guard watching us now,’ Kazakov said.
Ryan knew better than to turn and look out of the window. ‘Where?’
‘Just caught sight of him moving in the trees.’
‘Elbaz acted cool,’ Ryan said. ‘Gave me the barbecue, but it was clear he didn’t like me wandering around.’
‘Any clue on the targets?’ Kazakov asked.
‘Houston,’ Ryan said. ‘This guy was saying that he’d had his aunt’s car nabbed so that sh
e couldn’t drive to the shops in Houston.’
Kazakov looked surprised. ‘In that case the trucks will be leaving soon. Houston’s five or six hundred miles from here.’
Ryan calculated out loud. ‘Ten to twelve hours’ drive at fifty miles an hour. I guess it depends when they plan to hit the stores.’
‘People turn out early to catch bargains,’ Kazakov said. ‘They’ll want to hit the stores when they’re rammed. People will panic and go home when they hear about bombs in shopping malls, so all ten attacks have to be near-simultaneous for maximum effect.’
Ryan checked his watch and saw that it was about 8 p.m. local time. ‘So if they want to attack a shopping mall in Houston at say nine a.m. tomorrow, the first trucks will have to leave here within the next two or three hours.’
‘And who says Houston is the furthermost target?’ Kazakov asked rhetorically. ‘We need to get the warning out quickly.’
‘How quickly?’ Ryan asked.
‘As long as it takes us to make up a plan.’
‘Our cover’s blown the moment we try something,’ Ryan said.
‘They’ll be less suspicious if we take the money,’ Kazakov said. ‘Might think we were spooked by what they did to Tracy and the change of landing spot.’
‘They’d still kill us,’ Ryan said.
‘CHERUB has rules,’ Kazakov said. ‘No agent is ever forced to do anything against their will. We’ve every reason to believe that IDoJ will let us go free because they want to keep the Aramov Clan sweet. Nobody will hold anything against you if you don’t want to take any more risks.’
Ryan shook his head. ‘Thousands of people could die and there’s been no sign that Dr D’s team knows what happened after we landed. We’ve got to try contacting someone.’
Kazakov cracked a wry smile. ‘I was afraid you’d say that.’ Then he pointed up to a skylight in the ceiling. ‘They’ll spot us leaving through a door or window,’ he said. ‘That skylight’s a possibility, but you’d still have to crawl over the roof and drop down the side.’
‘What if we make some kind of scene?’ Ryan asked. ‘Draw the guard in and twat him.’
‘Could work,’ Kazakov said. ‘But our best bet’s to look for a floor hatch. Mobile homes usually have a connection panel for water and electricity, or access to pipes under the floor.’
‘Whereabouts?’ Ryan asked, as he scanned the floor.
Kazakov headed for the cupboard under the kitchen sink. He opened it up and saw gas, water and sewage pipes running towards the bathroom. ‘Not here,’ he said.
The bulky Ukrainian was almost too big for the tiny bathroom door. He ducked in and less than twenty seconds later Ryan heard a dramatic crack and a sound like plastic snapping.
‘Lifts right up,’ Kazakov said happily. ‘Come look.’
Ryan headed for the toilet, but before he saw anything he breathed a stench of sewage and backed away fighting a gag reflex.
‘Aww that’s nasty,’ he blurted.
Kazakov laughed. ‘You wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in the Soviet Army with that weak stomach of yours.’
Ryan hooked the neck of his T-shirt over his nose before making a second approach. Kazakov’s bulk filled much of the tiny bathroom, but Ryan could see that Kazakov had somehow freed the toilet and the panel behind, making it swing into the adjacent shower cubicle on a hinge.
The gap behind the panel was deep and Ryan watched as Kazakov used a coin to turn a large plastic screw head, freeing a rectangle of flooring.
‘I won’t fit down there, but you will,’ Kazakov said, as he rested the piece of flooring against the sink.
When Ryan leaned over Kazakov, he realised the stench was the result of a slow leak in a sewage pipe. The earth below was soaked in a brown ooze that looked like chocolate syrup.
‘We’re standing on brick pillars, so you can crawl under the floor and come out at the side,’ Kazakov explained.
‘Kill me now,’ Ryan said, as he tried not to heave.
‘I’ll find something to lay over the worst of it,’ Kazakov said, as he followed Ryan’s horrified expression back into the kitchen.
‘It’s a good four kilometres to the highway,’ Ryan said. ‘I can easily run that distance, but I don’t fancy our chances thumbing a lift in the dark.’
‘Our phones might pick up a signal near the highway,’ Kazakov said. ‘But we’d be vulnerable on foot. I was thinking we need some kind of vehicle. What did you see up by the ranch house?’
‘Cars,’ Ryan said. ‘There’s no other way to get here. Most of them looked new. I’m guessing Mumin arranged a bunch of rental cars cos the owners wouldn’t want their own cars to be traced back.’
‘New cars have immobilisers,’ Kazakov noted. ‘With no tools, our best bet is to get a set of car keys.’
Ryan nodded. ‘I’ll crawl out and try taking the guard by surprise.’
‘No time to lose,’ Kazakov said. ‘I’ll stick a couple of sofa cushions down there. If you’re careful you’ll avoid the worst of the muck.’
‘I’ll leave my backpack for you to pick up,’ Ryan said, before doing a double tap on his earlobe. ‘Com check?’
‘Check,’ Kazakov said.
While Kazakov pulled up sofa cushions and laid them over the muck beneath the access hatch, Ryan discreetly moved around the mobile home looking for their guard.
‘He’s not trying too hard,’ Ryan said. ‘I see him sitting on a tree stump across the path. No sign of a gun, but he could be packing heat under his clothes.’
‘He’s probably got a walkie-talkie,’ Kazakov said. ‘You’ll have to take him out before he gets to it.’
As Ryan nodded, Kazakov popped another caffeine pill and offered one to Ryan. Ryan baulked, but Kazakov was insistent.
‘You’ve been awake over thirty hours. The risk from a couple of pep pills is a lot less than going into battle with your brain half numb.’
Ryan swallowed a little yellow pill reluctantly, then took a deep breath and tried blocking the stench out of his mind as he pushed his body through the hole in the ground.
12. BIRDS
The guard was only a few years older than Ryan, face lit by Angry Birds running on his mobile and apparently sulking because his co-conspirators were up at the ranch house socialising while he was out in the dark squatting on a tree stump.
IDoJ was a professional set-up, but Ryan reckoned this guy was a misguided college kid. He’d been drawn in for a big operation and probably didn’t realise that a smooth talker like Elbaz regarded him as expendable.
Ryan didn’t fancy killing him. A truly ruthless operator would have ripped out the kid’s throat, or snapped his head around hard enough to break his neck, but Ryan didn’t want a murder on his conscience, even if incapacitating him involved greater time and risk.
After crawling out from under the mobile home relatively unscathed by sewage, Ryan circled around and picked a couple of pine cones and some willowy branches off the ground. Not only was the young guard playing Angry Birds, he was dumb enough to have left the sound on and the game’s upbeat music made a wildly inappropriate soundtrack as Ryan crept up behind.
‘Gah!’
The phone landed in mulch as Ryan got an arm around the guard’s neck. The guy was bigger, but Ryan was strong from pumping weights at the Kremlin and had no trouble yanking his victim backwards off the log and clamping his jaw to muffle a scream. Once the guard’s back was in the dirt, Ryan pressed his knee on his throat and choked him out.
As soon as his body went limp, Ryan forced a pine cone into the guy’s mouth, then rolled him on his back and dragged him deeper into the trees so that he couldn’t be seen from the path. He tied the cone gag in place using a section of the flexible branch, then used two more bendy switches to bind wrists and ankles.
After testing all his knots, Ryan started on the guy’s pockets. As Kazakov predicted there was a walkie-talkie clipped to the guy’s belt. Ryan took it so that he could listen in to anything ID
oJ was saying. He also took the guard’s wallet and was pleased by a jangle of keys in his jeans pocket.
Ryan dumped a big bunch that seemed to be house keys and stuff, but there was a second ring with a key, a plipper and an enamel fob with a car rental company logo on. Finally, Ryan pulled out a semi-automatic pistol tucked down the back of the guard’s boxers. He checked the chamber and found a full clip.
Ryan double-tapped to activate his com. ‘Dad, you hearing?’
Kazakov’s voice came back inside Ryan’s ear canal. ‘What’s up?’
‘I circled around, there’s only one guard. He’s out cold. I’ve got a Beretta and keys to a hire car.’
‘Nice,’ Kazakov said. ‘Go up to the house and try identifying the car. I’ll grab our stuff and be right up behind you.’
Ryan kept off the path and stayed low as he walked towards a dirt patch beside the ranch house where most of the bad guys had parked their cars. The garage doors had been shuttered, but the sliding glass at the rear of the kitchen was open and the gathering inside had turned more solemn, with a single voice speaking in Arabic.
There were a dozen cars parked on gravel alongside the house: dreary Chrysler saloons and Hyundai mini-vans, all with car rental company stickers on the rear screens. Ryan was about to press the plipper to see which car he had keys for when a voice came through the walkie-talkie.
‘Daniel, where are you, my man?’
Ryan recalled the name Daniel from the ID in the guard’s pocket. He was about to warn Kazakov on the com when a second message came out of the walkie-talkie.
‘Daniel’s been tied up,’ the voice blurted. ‘Tell Elbaz, get some guys down here, stat!’
Ryan grabbed the guard’s walkie-talkie and keyed up, hoping that his signal would stop the terrorists from communicating.
Kazakov’s voice came into Ryan’s ear, sounding urgent. ‘I broke some guy’s neck, but he got a message out first. How’s it going with the car?’
Ryan pressed the plipper and got a flash of indicator lights from one of the mini-vans. As he moved towards it, the single voice inside the kitchen had stopped and there were shouts of outrage. Mumin and two other dudes with M16 submachine guns ran out the front of the house and down the path towards Kazakov as Ryan slid into the mini-van and put the key in the ignition.
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