by Sean Parnell
His father’s gun felt better for closure.
Two hundred meters away, atop a small embankment covered with tall wild grass, Dalton “Blade” Goodhill packed up his Remington 700 sniper rifle and Leupold VX-Freedom scope. He was wearing a camouflage Gore-Tex suit, but he’d been lying prone and immobile for over two hours, and his old bones were a little stiff.
He’d been covering Steele all morning. Steele didn’t know he was there.
And for the entire time of Meg’s visit, he’d had her face right there in his crosshairs. He was glad he didn’t have to kill her.
Chapter 43
Alexandria, Virginia
The large ugly warehouse on McConnell Avenue was the most run-down building in the neighborhood.
Just down the block from Zeke Hookah Lounge and the Kabul Kabob House, it was a soiled white structure 150 feet long, 100 feet wide, and two stories high, and had the minimum number of windows required by local fire codes, though they were all soiled and oily and boarded up from the inside. A commercial black-and-orange sign was hung on the street side above the double entrance doors, which were padlocked with a heavy chain. It said not for rent or sale.
The sign didn’t matter, however, because the warehouse was thoroughly uninviting to any passersby. But it was the perfect staging area for Lila Kalidi and the ten men who, in fewer than twenty-four hours, were going to kill everyone attending President Denton Cole’s funeral at Washington’s National Cathedral.
Inside the musty, damp, unheated workspace, all of the remaining detritus left by the previous tenant, a fly-by-night trucking company—fuel lines, spare carburetors, and tires—had been pushed to one far corner at the rear, and the floors swept clean. Now the place looked very well organized for the upcoming slaughter at hand.
At the front the assembled model of the National Cathedral sat on a sheet of white butcher paper atop an eight-foot-long folding table. On the paper, Lila had drawn a schematic of the surrounding avenues and neighborhoods, with street names and tactical points of interest marked. Notably, there were large red arrows pointing to avenues of attack, but no such arrows indicating avenues of withdrawal. No one was expected to get out alive.
Next came a row of ten metal folding chairs facing the model in a semicircle, so all of Lila’s attendees could have unobstructed views. On the left and right flanks of those chairs were four more long tables, two on each side, upon which suicide vests were being carefully assembled. The tabletops were OCD neat, with tin shears, wire cutters, spools of white and red fourteen-gauge electrical wire, solid pack electric Dyno Nobel blasting caps, miniature twelve-volt batteries, All-Bond dental glue, and waterproof plunger switches with ring-pin safeties. It all looked like an assembly line for toys in Santa’s workshop, except that Lila was Mrs. Claus and her elves were from hell.
The vests were standard black, police-type, armored plate carriers. Inside each wide pocket (one in front, one in back), the ceramic plates had been glued with sheets of molded C-4 plastic explosive, facing out and embedded with steel ball bearings and lug nuts. The plates would protect the wearer from incoming rounds, which wouldn’t detonate the C-4, but when he pressed his plunger switch, anyone within a fifty-foot radius would be shredded to bone and blood, and the imploding plates would launch his severed head to heaven.
Beyond the chairs and assembly tables, on a wide patch of open floor space, were ten slim foam sleeping mattresses, ten neatly rolled sleeping bags, ten small embroidered prayer rugs, ten boxes of Halal-certified Meals Ready to Eat, and a battery-powered boom box sitting on a wooden stool. The box was playing Hawaiian big man Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwo‘ole’s ukulele version of “Over the Rainbow”—much more calming than a white noise machine, and equally as effective for defeating listening devices.
Finally, toward the back of the warehouse, a heavily armored Lenco BearCat SWAT truck sat hulking like a crouching tiger. It was shaped like a swollen alligator head, painted flat black, weighed nine tons, and had multiple gunports, a roof hatch like a tank, and an upthrust steel snorkel for air circulation and deep-water crossings. Its armor was half an inch thick, and in addition to the two driving crew up front, ten more SWAT operators could squat on the benches in the back.
The BearCat was ubiquitous with police departments all across the United States. This one had been purchased, for cash, by one of Lila’s men—posing as a buyer from a movie production company prop house in Atlanta—from a Georgia PD that had become the beneficiary of government surplus MRAPs used in Afghanistan (Mine-Resistant Armor-Protected vehicles; overkill for SWAT teams, but they looked cool to chiefs of police). Its fresh decals were still drying. The ones near the nose said metropolitan police, then the MPD silver shields graced the side armor, and e.r.t. (Emergency Response Team) was in bold white caps on the back.
It was a beast. You’d need an M1 Abrams tank round or a Javelin missile to stop it.
Lila’s ten brothers-in-arms sat in their folding chairs, listening attentively to her briefing. They were dressed in black tactical SWAT uniforms, head to foot, and had Smith & Wesson AR-15s in their laps, modified to fire full auto, some with suppressors, and Sig Sauer P226 pistols in their thigh holsters. They all had black MICH helmets, headsets, and MBITR radios lying in front of their US Patriot SWAT boots.
They were all of the Muslim faith, but you couldn’t have discerned that by looks alone. Three of them were Chechens who looked like Muscovite Russians. Three more were Palestinians from the West Bank, but of Jordanian Circassian descent, which gave them their reddish-blond curls and green eyes. The last four were Spaniards, the sons of light-skinned, freckle-faced Berber immigrants from Morocco. They were all members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and had come to the United States on bona fide student visas—some of them “sleepers” who’d arrived more than two years prior—and every piece of equipment in the room, including the weapons, had been legally purchased.
Except for the C-4 and blasting caps. Those had been hijacked off a truck that was delivering the explosives from a demolition company based in Chicago to the Bingham Canyon Mine in Utah. The ATF was still looking for that lethal stolen stash, and they weren’t going to find it.
“Aichwaihti,” Lila said in Arabic. My brothers. Then she switched to English because the Chechens weren’t fluent. “I trust you all had good evenings.”
The men dipped their heads once but didn’t say anything. Lila had released them for their final farewells, but it was none of that cliché nonsense about strip joints, beer, and hookers in which the 9/11 hijackers had allegedly indulged. These men were all married to pious young women who knew nothing of their extracurricular activities, and the men had spent the night with their wives in various hotels and Airbnbs in the Washington area. Lila almost smiled, because she imagined those wives had gotten quite a workout.
Half of the couples also had young children. After the men’s deaths their families would be cared for via life insurance policies held in Gaza, which all had waivers for “martyrdom.” The premiums were paid for with American tax dollars from a fund intended for Palestinian humanitarian aid. Lila loved irony.
Today she was wearing a full-length black woolen dress with long sleeves, and a gray hijab. She didn’t want the men distracted by her figure, and the garb also gave her the aura of a stern schoolmarm. She clutched a long elementary school pointer and tapped it on the butcher paper as the men craned their necks.
“So, these are your two optional assault points,” she said. “The first would be a frontal assault, directly from the west off of Wisconsin Avenue, across the park grounds and into the cathedral’s main entrance right here.” She flicked the rubber pointer tip against the model’s ornate front doors, then back to the butcher paper. “The second option would be to continue north along here on Wisconsin, past the entire grounds, take a right on Woodley Road, then another hard right on North Road—which turns back into the church’s flank—and cut west again right across this large oval of grass and into the tourists�
� side entrance. Now, why am I suggesting this second course of action?”
One of the young men raised a hand.
“Yes, Tarek?”
“Because the front lawn and the circular drive will be completely blocked off.”
“Correct, most likely with mobile water-filled barriers, as well as the armored limousines of the current president, the Israeli and British prime ministers, the German chancellor, and so forth. There will also be media vans. Your vehicle might make it partway through, but not close enough.”
“Excuse me, ha’sheihkuhtee,” another man said, using the respectful term for my mistress. “But won’t the side tourist entrance up there also be blockaded?”
“Yes,” Lila said, “but not as thoroughly as the front. These security protocols are practical, but also for the benefit of media.” She cradled the pointer in the web of her left hand and jabbed it at the model’s side entrance like a pool cue. “I am confident that even if you cannot smash through these double doors here, you will get very close. We are not trying to drive this beast right into the church, although that would be wonderful for your legacies.” She smiled and received a few back in kind. “Our objective is to use it as an Armored Personnel Carrier, as with armored infantry.” She lanced the pointer at one of the men. “Dasha, repeat that plan.”
“I will be the first to exit the vehicle from the rear,” the white-blond Chechen said. “I will detonate at the entrance doors, killing as many of their Secret Service as possible, and then the rest of the comrades will disembark and rush inside.”
“Very good.” Lila raised a warning finger. “But, comrades, make sure you do not exit the beast along with Dasha in your enthusiasm, because his blast will kill you as well. Wait for his results.”
They all nodded and someone clapped Dasha on his shoulder. Lila pointed to one of the Spaniards.
“Ricardo, you will be operating the drone from the front passenger seat, correct?”
The curly-headed handsome young man nodded and gestured off toward one of the assembly tables, where a large black “air spider” hulked.
“The transmitter range is a mile,” she continued, “so if you can get a good overhead picture of the target before you all arrive on scene, you’ll be able to make a last-minute tactical decision about where to breach. But if for whatever reason that flying machine fails, ignore it and proceed with option two. Are we clear?”
Ricardo grinned and gave her a thumbs-up. Another of his comrades raised a hand.
“Yes, Yassir?”
“What if the access roads are blocked? They do that sometimes with their police cars for such an event.”
“Drive around them if you can, but note that if you do so, they will immediately radio their command center at the cathedral. So, if you are not close enough yet, they will all be alerted to some sort of threat, despite the markings on the truck. I’d prefer that you kill them all with your suppressors, push their vehicles out of the way, and continue. That will buy you some time.” She looked at her watch. Evening was falling outside past the oily warehouse windows. “My brothers, I am certain that you all will do well. Be brave, be determined, be swift and with violence of action.” She touched the top of her chest and headbowed. “I wish that I were going with you, but someone must continue to lead this struggle, and engrave your names in glory.” She raised a fist and said, “For Al-Quds.” It was the jihadi war cry to never forget Jerusalem.
“For Al-Quds,” the men intoned. They were too smart to shout it.
“Good. Continue with your vests. You still have much work to do.”
The men rose from their seats and went back to the tables to work on their suicide vests. Lila walked over to her private table and began her own preparations for the evening. She was going to need at least two hours, much of it in front of a mirror, and for once she was grateful for America’s politically correct culture, because even a truckers’ warehouse had men’s and women’s bathrooms. She began sorting through boxes of hair color, then looked up from her worktable at the throng of young, virile, handsome men who would soon be blowing themselves into fogs of gore.
She felt a bit sorry for them. She didn’t expect them to get anywhere close to the cathedral’s entrance, and they would probably all die on the front lawn.
They were nothing but decoys.
Chapter 44
Washington, D.C.
Eric Steele rarely got drunk, and whenever he did, no one could tell but his mother. He had a rare ability to imbibe all sorts of alcoholic substances without them having any visible effect, which meant that he could outdrink a Ukrainian arms dealer in some backwater dive in Sevastopol without secretly tossing his vodka into a planter. It was like a chemical switch he could flip in his head. However, turning it off again wasn’t so easy. It made it really hard to just let go and get wasted.
Tonight, he was going to do his best to defeat it.
Meg was done with him, and it looked like she meant it. The Program was shut down, probably for good. The quest for his father had dead-ended in a Russian blizzard and a pile of corpses.Lila Kalidi was gone, which for most other men would have been a good thing, but it sucked because he very badly needed to kill her.
He wanted to smoke two very fine Arturo Fuente cigars, make quality time with a full bottle of Knob Creek 120 Proof Single Barrel Reserve bourbon, and pass out long enough to miss Denton Cole’s televised funeral. Sounded like a plan, and he decided to start it all off with a decent steak.
Actually, the idea had been prompted by Mike Pitts, who’d texted Steele over his Program smartphone, which hadn’t yet been recalled by the outfit’s quartermaster (she was a meticulous young woman named Penny whom Steele called “S,” from the military term for her role, “S-4”). It was Pitts who’d suggested that both of them needed a bitch session, and the Lost Society steakhouse in northern D.C. on Fourteenth Street and U might be a good spot. Steele had been there once or twice before. It had a rooftop bar, a red-brick interior facade, butcher block tables, brown leather chairs, and sort of a dark retro vibe, like some joint from a Mickey Spillane novel. He said okay, because what else did he have to do? Nothing but laundry.
Strange thing was, Pitts never showed up. Steele got there first, just before their reservation at 8:00 p.m., and was led to a corner table that looked out over the street, up on the second floor. He sat, as always, facing the door, or in this case the access stairway that rose up from below and emerged next to the bar. It was raining lightly outside, and in the high arched windows he could see the restaurant’s electric sign flickering like some noir film from the 1940s. At 8:13, Pitts texted him with an apology: “Sorry, my man. Twins are sick. No go tonight. Rain check.” Steele texted back an “okay” icon and ordered his first round of bourbon. The evening was panning out just like the rest of his current life: stood up by a one-legged spook.
The waitress was friendly, in a quiet way, but he only noticed how pretty she was when she came back with his first tumbler of golden gasoline. She had on clunky waitperson shoes, a mid-thigh black skirt, a baggy white button-down shirt, and her Lost Society apron. She had a short blond pixie haircut, big blue eyes behind librarian glasses, high cheekbones, full lips, and no makeup. She was in her mid-twenties and seemed to be one of those people who have no idea they’re attractive.
“Here you go, sir. Knob Creek, two rocks.” She put the tumbler down on a coaster and met Steele’s eyes for only a moment, then took out her order pad. He noticed she had a short plaster cast on her right wrist, but her fingers were free.
“I’m not sure what I want yet,” Steele said.
“You mean in general? Or in terms of food?” The waitress giggled at her own joke, blushed, waved her fingers in front of her face, and added, “Sorry. I’m new.” She had a slight southern belle accent.
He smiled in spite of his foul mood. “Food, but maybe in general too. Looking for a new job.”
“Oh?” She cocked her hip and put her left knuckles on it. “What’d
you do before?”
“Demolitions.”
“You mean you blow stuff up?”
“Or knock things down.”
“That’s so exciting. I’m just studying nursing.”
“Well, that can be exciting too.”
“Only if I marry a rich old senator, give him a heart attack, and take all his money.”
Steele laughed and sipped his magic potion. “How’d you break that wrist?”
“Rollerblading.” She rolled her eyes. “I know, dumb, but it’s great for sympathy tips.”
He was still smiling. “What’s your name?”
“Maxine, but most folks call me Max. What’s yours?”
“Eric.” He almost gave her his cover name, but it was the same as hers so it would have been weird.
“A pleasure, suh,” she said like Scarlett from Gone with the Wind and made a little faux curtsy. “I’ll leave you the menu. Take your time.”
Steele watched her walk back to the waitpersons’ station at the far end of the bar, where she almost T-boned a waiter carrying a full tray of drinks. He always assessed any friendly conversation as a potential ambush, but in this case confidence was extremely low. He’d made a random reservation at one of the hundreds of D.C. restaurants, this girl was an employee, and besides, she was a klutz. He kept on drinking and tried very hard to do less thinking.
He ordered the twelve-ounce Sirloin Herb Butter, rare side of medium rare, and had finished his second bourbon by the time Max delivered it along with mashed potatoes and pan-fried mushrooms. She was waiting on three other tables nearby, so she couldn’t linger long to chat, but she entertained him with surreptitious eye rolls about one older couple who kept changing their order, and an exasperated mime of cutting her own throat when another customer sent his chicken back to the chef.