Fatal Error rj-13

by F. Paul Wilson

  The man broke down and sobbed. "Save my family. Please save my family."

  Jack's throat constricted. The pain in those words…

  He tried to imagine how he'd feel if Gia and Vicky were being held for ransom. Couldn't.

  "Take it easy. Let's sit down and you tell me about it."

  He led Jack past a small, cluttered kitchen, past a room with an inflatable fighter jet hanging from the ceiling and a New York Giants banner tacked to the wall-his son's, no doubt-ending in an office that had probably started out as a third bedroom but was crammed with computers and monitors.

  "This where you and Russ play MMO games?" Jack said, trying to sound knowledgeable.

  "What? Oh, yes."

  He sat at the desk, Jack pulled up a straight-backed chair.

  "It's true: My wife and son have been kidnapped and are being held hostage."

  Jack noted that he didn't say "ransom."

  Russ had sworn the guy hadn't called the cops. Said he was too scared by the kidnapper's threats. Jack believed Russ, but didn't know if he could believe Habib.

  "Why not call the cops? I know it's SOP for kidnappers to tell you not to, but…"

  Habib reached inside his jacket and pulled out some photos. His hand trembled as he passed them over.

  "This is why."

  The first showed an attractive blond woman, thirty or so, dressed in a white blouse and a dark skirt, gagged and bound to a chair in front of a blank, unpainted wall. A red plastic funnel had been inserted through the gag into her mouth. A can of Drano lay propped in her lap. Her eyes held Jack for a moment-pale blue and utterly terrified. Caution: Contains lye was block printed across the bottom of the photo.

  Jack grimaced and moved to the next. At first he wasn't sure what he was looking at, like one of those pictures you get when the camera accidentally goes off in your hand. A big meat cleaver took up most of the frame, but the rest was He bit the inside of his cheek when he recognized the bare lower belly of a little boy, his hairless pubes, his little penis laid out on the chopping block, the cleaver next to it, ominously close.

  Okay. Habib hadn't called the cops.

  Jack handed them back.

  "How much do they want?"

  "I don't believe it is a 'they.' I think it is a 'he.' And he does not seem to want money. At least not yet."

  "Psycho?"

  "I think so. He seems to hate Arabs-all Arabs-and has picked on me." Habib's features knotted as his voice cracked. "Why me?"

  Jack realized how close this guy was to tumbling over the edge. He didn't want him to start blubbering again.

  "Easy," he said softly. "Easy."

  Habib rubbed his hands over his face, and when next he looked at Jack, his features were blotchy but composed.

  "Yes. I must remain calm. I must not lose control. For Barbara. And Robby."

  Jack had another nightmare flash of Gia and Vicky in the hands of some of the psychos he'd had to deal with and knew at that moment he wanted to work with Habib. The guy was okay.

  "An Arab hater. One of Kahane's old crew, maybe?"

  "No. Not a Jew. At least not that I can tell. He keeps referring to a sister who was killed in the Twin Towers. I've told him that I'm an American citizen just like him. But he says I'm from Saudi Arabia, and Saudis brought down the Towers and an Arab's an Arab as far as he's concerned."

  Jack stiffened. The Towers again? Last summer he'd become embroiled in the intrigue and paranoia surrounding their fall. The consequences were still reverberating through his life.

  "Start at the beginning," he said. "Any hint this was coming?"

  "Nothing. Everything in our lives has been going normally."

  "How about someone from the old country?"

  "I have no 'old country.' I've spent more of my life in America than in Saudi Arabia. My father was on long-term assignment here with Saud Petroleum. I grew up in New York. I was in college here when he was transferred back. I spent two months in the land of my birth and realized that my homeland was here. I made my hajj, then returned to New York. I finished school and became a citizen-much to the dismay of my father, I might add."

  "Still could be someone from over there behind it. I mean, your wife doesn't look like she's from that part of the world."

  "Barbara was born and raised in Westchester."

  That surprised Jack. "Not Muslim? I'd have thought that would be against the Koran or something."

  "It's against the law for Muslim women to marry infidel men, but not the other way around. If there's a pre-nup that the infidel woman will convert to Islam, it's okay."

  "So she converted?"

  He shook his head. "No. She's an atheist. Thinks religion's silly."

  "Well, there you go. Sounds to me like your marrying someone like that drove one of these fundamentalist nutcases-"

  "No. Positively not." Habib's face hardened. Absolute conviction steeled his voice. "A true Muslim would never do what this man has done to me."

  "Don't be so sure."

  "He made me… he made me eat…" The rest of the sentence seemed to be lodged in Habib's throat. "… pork. And made me drink alcohol with it. Pork!"

  Jack shook his head. "I take it you're still a believer then?"

  He shrugged. "I don't pray six times a day or go to mosque, but some cultural proscriptions are so ingrained…"

  But still, what was the big deal? Jack could think of things a whole lot worse he could have been forced to do.

  "What'd you have to do-eat a ham on rye?"

  "No. Ribs. He told me to go to a certain restaurant on Forty-seventh Street this past Friday at noon and buy a rack of baby back ribs. Then he wanted me to stand outside on the sidewalk to eat them and wash them down with a bottle of beer."

  "Did you?"

  Habib bowed his head. "Yes."

  Jack was tempted to ask if he liked the taste but stifled the question. Some folks took this stuff very seriously. He'd never been able to fathom how otherwise intelligent people allowed their dietary habits to be controlled by something written in a book thousands of years ago by someone who didn't have indoor plumbing. But then he didn't understand a lot of things about a lot of people. He freely admitted that. And what they ate or didn't eat, for whatever reasons, was the least of those mysteries.

  "So you ate pork and drank a beer to save your wife and child. Nobody's going to issue a fatwa for that. Or are they?"

  "He made me choose between Allah and my family," Habib said. "I chose my family."

  Jack figured if you had a god who couldn't forgive you for that, it was time to reassess that relationship, maybe the whole god thing. But he offered a more circumspect response.

  "Well, I doubt if Allah or any sane person would forgive you if you hadn't."

  "But don't you see? He made me do it at noon on Friday."

  "So?"

  "That is when I should have been in my mosque, praying. It is one of the five duties. No follower of Islam would make a fellow Muslim do that. He is not a Muslim, I tell you. You need only listen to the recording to know that."

  "What recording?"

  "I've been using my answering machine to record the monster's calls."

  "Great. We'll get to that in a minute. Okay, so he's not Muslim. What about enemies? Got any?"

  "No. We lead a quiet life. I run the IT department at Saud Petrol. I have no enemies. Not many friends to speak of except Russ. Barbara and I keep very much to ourselves."

  If that was true-and Jack had learned the hard way over the years never to take what the customer said at face value-then Habib was indeed the victim of a psycho. And Jack hated dealing with psychos. They didn't follow the rules. They tended to have their own queer logic. Anything could happen. Anything.

  "All right. Let's start at the beginning. When did you first realize something was wrong?"

  "When I came home from work Thursday night and found our apartment empty. I checked the answering machine and heard a distorted voice telling me he had my wi
fe and son and that they'd be fine if I did as I was told and didn't go to the police. And if I had any thought of going to the police in spite of what he'd said, I should look on the dresser in our bedroom. The photographs were there." Habib rubbed a hand across his eyes. "I sat up all night waiting for the phone to ring. He finally called me Friday morning."

  "You recorded that?"

  "No. I didn't think about it till later. He would tell me nothing about Barbara and Robby except that they were alive and well and were hoping I wouldn't 'screw up' and not do as I was told."

  "Which was eating the pork?"

  He nodded. "I did as I was told, then hurried home and tried to vomit it up. He called and said I'd 'done good.' He said he'd call me again to tell me the next trick he was going to make me do. He said he was going to 'put me through the wringer but good.'"

  "And the next trick was…?"

  "I was to steal a woman's pocketbook in broad daylight, knock her down, and run with it. And I was not to get caught. He said the photos I had were 'Before.' If I was caught, he would send me 'After.' "

  "So you became a purse-snatcher for a day. A successful one, I gather."

  Habib lowered his head. "I'm so ashamed… that poor woman." His features hardened. "And then he sent the other photo."

  "Yeah? Let's see it."

  Habib suddenly seemed flustered. "It's-it's at my office."

  He was lying. Why?

  "Bull. Let me see it."

  "No. I'd rather you didn't-"

  "I need to know everything if I'm going to help you." Jack thrust out his hand. "Give."

  With obvious reluctance, Habib reached into his coat and passed across another still. Jack immediately understood his hesitance.

  He saw the same blond woman from the first photo, only this time she was nude, tied spread-eagle on a mattress, her dark pubic triangle toward the camera, her eyes bright with tears of humiliation; an equally naked dark-haired boy crouched in terror next to her.

  And I thought she was a natural blond was written across the bottom.

  Jack's jaw began to ache from clenching. He handed back the photo.

  "And what about yesterday?"

  "He called in the morning and said Sunday was a day of rest. That all I'd have to do was go to Saint Patrick's and receive communion. He said he'd be watching."

  "And did you?"

  "Of course. After that, I received no further word all day. I was going crazy. Then he called this morning and said I had to urinate-'take a piss,' in his words-in the street on Fifth Avenue at midafternoon."

  "Swell," Jack said, shaking his head. "Stop-and-go-traffic."

  "Correct. But I would do it all again if it would free Barbara and Robby."

  "You might have to do worse. In fact, I'm sure you're going to have to do worse. I think this guy's looking for your limit. He wants to see how far he can push you, wants to see how far you'll go."

  "But where will it end?"

  "Maybe with you killing somebody."

  "Him? Gladly! I-"

  "No. Somebody else. A stranger. Or worse-somebody you know."

  Habib blanched. "No. Surely you can't be…" His voice trailed off.

  "Why not? He's got you by the balls. That sort of power can make a well man sick and a sick man sicker." He watched Habib's face, dismay tugging at his features as he stared at his desktop. "What'll you do?"

  A pause while Habib returned from somewhere far away. "What?"

  "When the time comes. When he says you've got to choose between the lives of your wife and son, and the life of someone else, what'll you do?"

  Habib didn't flinch. "Do the killing, of course."

  "And the next innocent victim? And the one after that, and the one after that? What if Russ is one? When do you say enough, no more, finis?"

  Habib flinched. "I… I don't know."

  Tough question. Jack wondered how he'd answer if Gia and Vicky were captives. How many innocent people would die before he stopped? What was the magic number? Jack hoped he never had to find out. The Son of Sam might end up looking like a piker.

  "Let's hear what he sounds like."

  Maybe listening to this creep would help him get a read on him.

  Habib slid a combo phone/answering machine across his desk and hit a button. The voice on the recording was electronically distorted. Two possible reasons for that. One: obviously to prevent voiceprint analysis. But he also could be worried that Habib would recognize him. Jack listened to the snarling southern accent. He couldn't tell through the electronic buzz if it was authentic or not, but no question about the sincerity of the raw hate snaking through the phone line. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the voice.

  Something there… something off-key about this guy… a picture was forming…

  7

  "What is that?" Kewan said.

  Hank smiled to himself. He'd asked the same question yesterday when he'd first seen the thing.

  "It's a ray gun. We're going to try it out tonight."

  Kewan toyed with one of his dreadlocks as he stared at the three-foot oblong box with a parabolic reflector attached to one end and a wire coming from another. "Don't look like no ray gun I ever seen."

  Pretty much overnight, Kewan Lyford had moved from nowhere in Kickerdom to one of Hank's most trusted men. Sort of the new Darryl. Except Kewan was black and in better health. Looked like he'd had a tough time with acne as a teen, but he had an infectious smile and an easy way with people. He got along with almost everyone. Hank needed someone like that to deal with the everyday Kickers.

  He'd first come to Hank's attention after the mess last July. Darryl was gone and Hank had been tasered into Jell-O by some bearded guy. He and Drexler had put together a composite drawing of the guy and started passing it around. Kewan had recognized him immediately as "Johnny," an okay guy who'd been into Dormie bashing and always generous with his cigarettes. That had been a little embarrassing-a Kicker. Or maybe not. He'd reminded Hank of a guy who'd posed as "John Tyleski" and roughed him up and stolen a very special book from him last spring. The same? He couldn't be sure.

  Kewan had proved useful in a lot of ways since then.

  Hank pointed to the third man in the room-Nelson Ferron, a balding Dormentalist with a Santa Claus beard and belly. They had the cellar of the Lodge to themselves for this strategy meeting.

  "It's a portable EMP generator."

  Kewan grinned. "I don't need no help generating pee. I do fine all by myself."

  Ferron didn't smile. "E… M… P. It stands for electromagnetic pulse. An EMP is poison for microcircuitry."

  "What's it do to humans?"

  "Nothing, unless you've got a pacemaker."

  "So it's like a microwave?"

  Ferron shook his head. "No. Microwaves only confuse a pacemaker. An EMP will toast it."

  "Then I guess we should make sure nobody coming along tonight has a pacemaker. How's it work?"

  "Just plug it in-"

  "Plug it in?"

  Ferron grinned. "You wouldn't like carrying the battery necessary to power this. That's the beauty part of what you're doing. You use the company's own electric power to do the job. Plug it in, aim it at the servers and routers, and they're toast."

  Ferron seemed to relish that word.

  Kewan turned to Hank. "This is gonna make people unhappy."

  "We're not in the business of making people happy. We're here to make it easier for them to dissimilate."

  Hank had spent the last six months locating and casing Internet exchange points and major data centers. He'd started arranging regular Kicker protests outside them. The protests had been peaceful up till now. Because they'd all been window dressing.

  Tonight's would be different. But even this would be misdirection. Get them looking the wrong way.

  The real targets would be hit at the end of the week. Hank and the Kickers had been ready to go for months. Now all that they needed was for Drexler to hold up his end.

  8
>
  Weezy took a break from her seemingly endless study of the Compendium of Srem to gaze out her eighth-floor window. She could see the triangle where Broadway angled across Amsterdam at 72nd Street, and found the perpetual snarl of trucks, buses, and cars fascinating. Only in the wee hours of the morning did traffic flow smoothly there.

  She loved her apartment. To a decorator it might appear depressingly bare, but she had all she needed for comfort. Every material thing she'd owned had been reduced to ash last summer, and she couldn't see the point in accumulating more stuff. Jack loved clutter. She'd lived with too much of it for too long.

  Her cell phone rang. She checked the caller ID and recognized the number.

  Eddie? How had her brother-?

  Then she remembered Jack had given her one of his TracFones and Eddie had the number.

  She didn't want to speak to him. She'd broken all contact with him since learning he was a member of the Septimus Order. He'd finally stopped calling her-for good, she hoped. So why now, after all these months?

  Maybe it was important. Maybe something was wrong.

  She hit the talk button.

  "What is it, Eddie?"

  "Weezy? I'm so glad you answered. I wasn't sure-"

  "Why are you calling?"

  "We need to talk."

  "I'm listening."

  "I mean, face-to-face."

  "Not going to happen."

  She winced at how harsh that sounded. This was her younger brother. They'd never been terribly close, but still… he was her only living relative.

  But he'd joined the Order, damn it. The group that last summer had hunted her down and tried to abduct her, razed her house, tried to kill her. And if not for Jack, they'd have succeeded. How could he be a part of that?

  He sighed. "Okay. Well, the Order is looking for you."

  She felt a chill in her blood.

  "How… how do you know?"

  "I got a fax with your face on it. If I see you or know your whereabouts, I'm to call it in."

  "When did it come?"

  "Minutes ago."

  Her throat felt dry.

  "Why are you telling me?"

  "Because this isn't right. I've always thought you were paranoid about them, but why would they be looking for you?"