Tahira fired.
The McMillan TAC-50 sniper rifle in Signora Rossi’s apartment responded. Its single .50-caliber round took less than ten seconds to cross the lake, traveling at 792 mph, faster than a commercial Boeing 747 jet. The half-inch-diameter slug created a small shock wave, but no one at the wedding heard the sound until after the 800-grain bullet struck. It hit the bride’s oldest brother, standing next to Big Jules. Passed through him. Deflected by his shattered bones, it exited his chest and hit the string quartet’s cellist, seated some twenty feet away, bursting through her instrument and knocking her from her chair. Both were dead.
Tahira watched the confusion and panic on the screen. Big Jules dropped to his knees next to his dead nephew. Four Mossad security guards swarmed around him, holding portable black bullet-resistant shields to protect him. Frantic guests ran toward the villa’s open patio doors. Under the chuppah, the bride, groom, and rabbi stood stunned, not yet entirely certain what had happened.
The last person on the patio whom Tahira saw before snapping the computer shut was a woman dressed in a tuxedo, staring through binoculars at the Bellagio shoreline.
Tahira deposited the computer into her backpack and fished out a twenty-euro note. She used a bottle of virgin olive oil to pin it on the table. More than enough to pay the cost of her cappuccinos and amend for her rudeness.
She walked onto the street, tormenting herself with the knowledge that she’d let her father down. Now it was up to him to kill Big Jules.
5:40 p.m.
Three vehicles sped up the winding, half-mile private road that connected Villa Como to the highway.
The Roc watched them approach from near the base of the chestnut tree, grasping a remote controller.
Big Jules’s armored Audi 8 was between two SUVs. As the vehicles neared him, the Roc pressed the remote, launching a drone from the hillside. It was armed with two kilograms of C-4 plastic explosive.
Big Jules’s security team reacted, the front SUV swerving sideways to protect the Audi. The drone slammed into the SUV, exploding with such force that it knocked the heavy vehicle from the roadway, blocking the Audi 8’s path. Big Jules’s driver shifted the Audi into reverse as a Mossad security guard leaped from the second SUV. Its driver also reversed, pulling off the road so the Audi 8 could get by it in reverse.
A second drone appeared from the hillside. The Mossad agent, now standing on the road, shouldered what appeared to be a rifle but instead had a toothy blade that resembled a hedge trimmer attached to its stock. He squeezed its trigger, blasting signals on all radio frequencies at the drone, effectively cutting off the Roc’s remote controller. The second drone fell harmlessly onto the road.
The Roc had expected this. As the Audi started back the narrow road toward Villa Como, he pressed a switch connected to a wire to avoid radio frequency jamming. Buried in the ground, the wire extended two hundred and fifty yards from his hiding spot to a stack of discarded tree branches. Hidden in them: an RPG-32 Russian-designed grenade launcher, powerful enough to stop an Abrams tank. The RPG fired, and its grenade blasted into the Audi’s midsection, causing a deafening explosion. The German sedan was instantly engulfed in flames, an inferno that killed everyone inside it.
Eighteen
“Look!” Mayberry exclaimed. “Isn’t that her?”
Garrett studied the woman walking casually toward the parking lot.
Mayberry tucked her handgun into her waistband and raised her iPhone, feeding a live image to Thomas Jefferson Kim back at IEC headquarters.
“It’s her,” Kim declared. “A hundred percent facial recognition match with the image taken outside Clyde’s of Georgetown.”
Garrett and Mayberry slowly started walking to intercept Tahira before she could enter the white rental van and escape. Garrett was holding his Sig Sauer pressed against his thigh outside his denim jeans, hoping to hide it.
Tahira saw them. Two strangers. Spotted the pistol. She started to run, but instead of entering the parking lot and trying to reach the white van, she hurried to the red Porsche Cayman S sports car parked closer to her on the street, where she’d abandoned it. Scooping its keys from the driver’s floor, she sped onto Lungo Lario Manzoni, a narrow street that ran parallel to Lake Como’s shores.
Garrett and Mayberry dashed back to the Fiat.
“Can you track her?” Mayberry asked Kim.
“Red Porsche?” Kim asked. “Got her. She’s heading into the historic city.”
“She’ll have to slow down,” Garrett said. “Way too many people.”
But Tahira didn’t. She honked at pedestrians, causing them to leap clear. There were shops on her right side, Lake Como on her left. She could only continue straight.
“She’ll have to turn right opposite the ferry terminal,” Kim said from his satellite vantage point. “The street turns one-way after that, and she’ll be driving headfirst into oncoming traffic.”
“If she turns on that street,” Garrett replied, “we’ll never keep up with her.”
The Fiat Abarth could keep up with the Porsche on the narrow, crowded shoreline road, but on a thoroughfare, it would be no match for the German car’s 350-horsepower engine.
As Tahira neared the right turn onto the larger road out of Bellagio, a semitruck pulled in front of her. She checked her rearview mirror. The Fiat was gaining, the truck turtle slow. Tahira accelerated, shooting around the truck, missing the right turn, and driving directly into oncoming traffic.
A motorcycle rider swerved, barely missing the speeding Porsche. A car behind him jerked sideways, careening from the road into a row of decorative concrete barriers protecting a sidewalk café.
“She’s crazy!” Mayberry said as Tahira continued driving toward Bellagio’s famed Hotel Metropole in the heart of the old village. Initially the grand hotel had been confined to the shoreline, but with time it had extended backward into the city, necessitating the construction of a narrow tunnel, only wide enough for a single car, that passed under its second floor into the Piazza Giuseppe Mazzini.
Tahira pounded on the Porsche’s horn, clearing the tunnel of bicyclists and pedestrians, as she jammed on the car’s brakes, bringing it to a sudden stop directly under the historic hotel. The Porsche was now blocking the opening. Flinging open the driver’s door, she stepped clear while raising her Glock 26 pistol.
She fired at the Fiat chasing her.
Garrett and Mayberry had no room to turn. Knee-high concrete barriers lined both curbs along the street to prevent vehicles from striking pedestrians on the cluttered sidewalks.
Garrett downshifted, pushed hard on the car’s gas pedal, and activated the Fiat’s electronic parking brake while turning its wheels. Most Abarths are front-wheel drive, but Garrett had specifically rented one that had been converted to rear-wheel drive, something done in Italy for car enthusiasts who want to drift at rallies. The Fiat’s rear wheels locked, and the car spun. A hundred and eighty degrees.
Three rounds punched into the rear of the Fiat, shattering its tiny window and engine compartment, barely missing Garrett and Mayberry.
Garrett flung himself from the driver’s seat onto the asphalt, twisting midair so he landed on his right shoulder, a move that enabled him to fire his Sig Sauer at Tahira.
She was gone, disappeared into the piazza behind her.
“C’mon!” Garrett hollered, standing.
“Wait!” Mayberry cried. “She doesn’t have her backpack!”
“What?” Garrett asked, pausing.
“Her backpack!” Mayberry screamed.
Garrett turned his eyes away from Mayberry and looked at the Porsche just as it exploded. A fireball shot from under the hotel, knocking both of them off their feet.
On his back, Garrett mentally performed an inventory of possible injuries. His face was singed. He moved his toes, raised his arms, forced himself into a sitting position. Mayberry was on her back some ten feet away from him. Not moving. He crawled toward her. Noticed she was blee
ding from her ears and nose.
“Valerie! Valerie!”
He glanced around him.
The C-4 in Tahira’s backpack had cut a jagged black gash into the second floor of the five-story hotel. Flames were shooting from the structure. Metal fragments and broken glass had been propelled much like shotgun pellets from the exploding Porsche. Only its twisted and charred frame remained.
All around them were the dead and wounded. A bicyclist near the passageway had been tossed through the air onto a sidewalk café’s chairs and tables. His broken body now sprawled facedown on the sidewalk, his clothing and skin scorched from burns. Flying debris had killed at least four more, wounded a dozen. Everywhere around Garrett people were screaming for help. Moans came from the injured.
Garrett heard police sirens. Ambulances. Emergency personnel approaching. On his knees, he looked down at the still-unconscious Mayberry. He noticed blood on his left sleeve. A pencil-thick piece of jagged metal was protruding from his biceps. Still in shock, he had not noticed it before.
“Don’t move!” a voice ordered.
He looked away from Mayberry. Two Italian police officers, guns aimed at him, barking orders that he only half heard.
Garrett suddenly realized he was still holding his Sig Sauer. He released it onto the blacktop. One of the officers rushed him, pulled back his arms, handcuffing his wrists, forcing him to stand.
He looked down at Mayberry and shouted, “Help her!”
Nineteen
Russian oligarch Taras Zharkov locked the double doors to his master bedroom suite and strolled to the centermost bookcase on a wall of floor-to-ceiling shelves. He was careful not to spill the after-dinner liqueur that he was holding as he removed a copy of Eugene Onegin from the fourth shelf.
Zharkov had not read this lesser-known novel by Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, although he had read many of the hundreds of books displayed in his library. Setting his drink on a side table, he removed a leather-bound copy of Father and Sons by Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev from the third shelf. He tucked each book in the other’s spot on the shelves.
As soon as the switch was made, he heard the sound of a motor and stepped back as a section of the wooden bookcase moved forward and sideways, revealing a 650-pound reinforced-steel door. The biometric lock was coded to read Zharkov’s left eye and right-hand thumbprint. It also opened outward, allowing Zharkov to enter an eight-hundred-square-foot safe room whose walls, ceiling, and floor had been constructed with ballistic-resistant materials that could not be penetrated by bullets and could withstand temperatures of up to a thousand degrees.
Zharkov slipped into a high-backed chair modeled for his hefty frame. The wall-size monitor before him—capable of showing as many as sixteen different images simultaneously, or a single one—came to life, automatically sensing his presence. With a swipe of his finger on a handheld control pad, Iranian general Kardar’s face appeared on the massive monitor.
“General,” he said, “have you been successful?”
“The Jew is dead,” Kardar reported. “Killed today, leaving his niece’s wedding.”
Zharkov looked for his tumbler to offer a toast but realized he had left the liqueur outside his hidden chamber.
“Commander Petrov,” the oligarch said, “should be under way in the Golden Fish within the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours. I will share the good news that the Mossad will be too busy burying its leader to disturb him.”
Zharkov waited for Kardar to react, but the sullen general remained stone-faced.
“As you are aware, General,” Zharkov continued, “you have completed the first half of your obligation by making the delivery to my underground base. Now for the second round. Have you found someone willing to detonate the bomb?”
“Not only did I find a jihadist willing to attack the Americans,” Kardar replied, “he will take credit for killing the Jew.”
“A bonus!” a delighted Zharkov replied.
“He is a Palestinian named Fathi Aziz.”
Zharkov typed Fathi Aziz’s name into his control pad. An internet profile appeared on the monitor alongside General Kardar’s larger image.
Fathi Aziz: head of Jihad Brigade, a Palestinian Islamist terrorist organization formed in 1981 whose objective is the destruction of the State of Israel and establishment of a sovereign Islamic Palestinian state. Jihad Brigade is labeled as a terrorist group by the US and its allies. Primary funding from Iran and Syria. Active in West Bank and Gaza Strip. Strongholds include cities of Hebron and Jenin. Operations: suicide bombings, attacks on Israeli civilians, firing rockets into Israel. Much in common with Hamas, with both fighting against the existence of the state of Israel.
Zharkov asked, “You have explained everything to him privately?”
“I have told him what he needs to know.”
“And me? Did you mention my name?”
“No. All Aziz was told is that his brothers and sisters in the fight against the Zionists have chosen him to serve as Allah’s messenger. It will be his reward to kill millions of infidels. He knows Iran cannot be associated with such an attack.”
“You trust him?”
“Trust has nothing to do with choosing Aziz. I am a general who understands what motivates men. In his case, Aziz is a zealot. Martyrdom is his most powerful motivation. Are you familiar with any scriptures found in the Holy Qur’an?”
“Absolutely none. Mine is a Leninist view of religions. I seek my salvation between the legs of young women and a chilled Killian.”
“The Prophet said, ‘Nobody who enters Paradise will ever like to return to this world even if he were offered everything, except the martyr who will desire to return to this world and be killed ten times for the sake of the great honor that has been bestowed upon him.’ Aziz cannot be tempted with worldly pleasures. He has only one desire—to be a martyr for Allah, blessed be his name. When the time is right, he will do what he is told and detonate the bomb.”
“Wonderful for him—and for us.”
“The agreement we have,” Kardar continued, “calls for the payment of a finder’s fee now that I have recruited Aziz.”
“Yes, yes, two million in US dollars. I’ll need you to come to London as my guest to receive it and engage in further discussions about the attack.”
“I expect payment now,” Kardar said.
“We should wait until Commander Petrov is under way for your visit,” Zharkov said, ignoring him. “I will send one of my private jets.”
“My money,” Kardar said, raising his voice.
“My friend, think for a moment. I can transfer the funds immediately into your bank in Tehran, but what would happen if word leaked out to the Grand Ayatollah? How would you explain such a large transfer? Would your religious leaders not be suspect? Better for me to pay you in cash and in person here.”
Kardar was not a man who tolerated having others tell him what he could and couldn’t do, but he realized the Russian was correct. “Have you chosen the six-digit code needed to detonate the bomb?” he asked, changing the subject. “I will require it for Aziz.”
“When you come to London, we will discuss the code. Wait for me to make the arrangements.”
Twenty
Valerie Mayberry heard a voice. She did not recognize it. Slowly it became clearer as she regained consciousness. An angry voice spewing from a television.
“Brothers and sisters,” the voice declared, “the Jihad Brigade has delivered justice to the Zionist invader Julian Levi—a destroyer of our houses, committer of sacrilegious acts against our holy places, assaulter of children and women, and murderer of our people.”
She opened her eyes. Blinked. A television mounted on the wall. It showed a man identified at the bottom of the screen as a Palestinian terrorist named Fathi Aziz. He was sitting cross-legged with the Holy Qur’an on his right, an AK-47 assault rifle on his left, and the black jihadist flag bearing the Shahada hanging behind him—by now the standard background for proclamations
by terrorists.
“Thanks be to Allah. All praise be to Allah and prayers and peace be upon the Prophet and his family and his companions and those who follow him. Our victory in killing this Jew is another revelation of the truth in our actions against the international Zionist agent—America—the sellers of Palestine—England and France—and the Jew invaders. We recognize no borders, no barbed wire or checkpoints, which the disbelieving aggressor has imposed, and no maps which the apostate tyrant has drawn.”
Aziz’s voice became louder.
“By my hand and my people, by the fire of pain I endure as a warrior, I will remain a warrior, I will die as a warrior—until my people are free and rid of the cancerous tumor of Zionism forced upon our people. Great Satan and your Zionist usurpers, hear my words. I will soon deliver a flood over your cities from beneath your oceans, and the wrath of Allah will destroy you.”
Mayberry shifted her eyes away from the television to the rest of the room. Heavy lace curtains. Pale yellow walls. A bedroom. She could see framed photos on a desk. Images of a young girl and her parents. Mayberry tried to raise her crippled right hand. Couldn’t. Same with her left. Still groggy. She didn’t understand until she looked down at her sides. Her hands were bound to the bed with scarves. Silk. Her feet too.
“You’re awake,” a man said as he entered the bedroom, followed by a woman. He produced a penlight. Placed his right fingers around her eyes, forcing them open as he examined her pupils. He checked her pulse. Felt her forehead.
“Vitals normal,” he announced.
“Who are you?” Mayberry asked. “Where am I?”
He exited without answering, closing the door behind him.
For a moment, Mayberry wondered if she were dreaming.
“Valerie Mayberry,” the woman said, “you’re a United States of America FBI agent.”
The woman was wearing a drab olive jumpsuit—a military uniform, but one without any identifying marks. She spoke English without a hint of an accent.
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