Heart of the Assassin

by Robert Ferrigno

  A long walk from here to the Bridge of Skulls, particularly if he stayed in the alleys and avoided the main streets. It could easily be dawn before he got there. He hurried on.

  He started up one of the steep stairways toward the crest of the hill, taking the steps two at a time, holding up the edge of his robe so he didn't trip and split his skull. In the distance the new mosque loomed over the city; still only half completed, it dominated the skyline. The largest mosque in the world, seating three hundred thousand worshipers--ibn-Azziz said it would draw pilgrims from across the planet. Rakkim had wanted to know where the money to build it was coming from, which had gotten Jenkins thinking. Perhaps it had been his own discreet inquiries this last week that had roused ibn-Azziz's suspicions.

  Not that he had found out anything concrete. Just that no government was involved, all donations came through individual foundations. What was most interesting to Jenkins was that the idea of the gigantic mosque didn't seem to emanate from ibn-Azziz, whose own ascetic nature rejected ostentation and grandeur. Persons unknown had presented the design for the mosque to him, suggesting that such a grand structure would not only honor Allah, but also shift the attention of the Muslim world from the decadent Arabian Peninsula to the pure Islam of New Fallujah.

  A rat scurried across the steps and into the underbrush on the hillside. Jenkins slowed his pace slightly, his knees aching. The wind kept rising, swirling dead leaves around his ankles. The surrounding buildings were dark, although he sometimes heard the sound of a muffled radio from one of the apartments.

  It started raining, not too heavy yet, but the slick steps were even more treacherous. He quickened his pace anyway.

  More than the sheer enormity of the money donated for the mosque, it was the method of seducing ibn-Azziz that made him think the Old One might have been responsible. Money was irrelevant to ibn-Azziz, even faintly sordid. He was equally immune to love. At one time Jenkins thought ibn-Azziz craved power, but that wasn't the case. Power was simply a means by which ibn-Azziz brought people to Allah. Someone, though, had found his weakness.

  Building the largest mosque in the world would have carried the taint of pride, but building the mosque to turn all eyes to the true Islam...that was precisely the kind of subtle vanity to which ibn-Azziz was susceptible. Such targeted temptation was a mark of the Old One, and setting up a spiritual counterweight to his enemies in the Middle East was a bonus. Jenkins had planned on sending another message to General Kidd, telling him of his suspicions about the Old One, but now such plans seemed as foolish as his decision to stay here.

  Jenkins reached the top of the stairs, stopped to glance up and down the street before continuing. He was going to have to hurry to get to the boat dock before dawn prayers. The streets would be teeming with believers, his picture everywhere after that. He hung on to the railing. Placed a hand on his heart, trying to establish some sort of feedback link to slow himself down before his chest exploded. All the years here, all the close calls...yet here he was, panicked as a woman. One should get braver as one got older...there was less to lose. Why fear man taking what Allah would take soon enough? Easy to say when one believed in Allah. Paradise awaited the faithful. The problem was...he no longer believed.

  The rain came down in sheets now, soaking through his robes. Thunder fumbled through the canyons of downtown. Jenkins looked around, walked calmly across the street, head high, then dashed through the alley. The rain was good for him, limiting visibility, making the city even darker. He ran on, drawing on the reserves of his energy, using his fear to fuel him, block after block, the boat ramp closer with every step.

  Jenkins had been as good a Muslim as any when he first came to New Fallujah. Though the brutality of this brand of Islam had startled him at first, he had quickly risen in the leadership. Adaptability was the highest virtue of the shadow warriors, and he took pride in his ability to shed his personal morality for the greater good of the Fedayeen. "The grand atrocity," he had called it, but his years of cooperating with that atrocity had ground his soul down to a fine gray dust, and with it his belief in Allah. After all the heads he had added to the Bridge of Skulls, the slightest breeze would have been enough to blow away his soul, and there was always a storm brewing in this dead city.

  He splashed through the puddles, blinking back the rain. His black robe was a leaden weight around him, and he was soaked to the skin, freezing, but he pressed on, legs pumping. Faster. Faster. It amazed him that his belief in the Fedayeen had outlasted his belief in Allah, but now...even that was fading. What had Rakkim said? I don't give a fuck about my country. I'm here because of General Kidd. Thunder crashed, momentarily deafening him. The young man would learn.

  He huddled in the alley across from the street leading down to the boat ramp. He listened but there was no way to hear anything over the thunder and rain. No cars on the street. No lights in the windows. Bits of brightly colored paper swirled in the water streaming down the gutters--a birthday party somewhere, gaudy wrappings and bows...a sin among many sins, so many sins he could no longer keep track of them. He watched until the shiny bits of paper disappeared, then walked quickly across the street, into the shelter of the low buildings.

  At the end of the alley, he saw the boats bobbing wildly against the dock. Suicide to try to navigate across the bay in this weather, madness to think he could reach the other side...Jenkins threw off his heavy black robe and started running. He could hardly wait to try.

  He burst out of the alley, slid down the grassy slope toward the docks. As his feet touched the slats of the wooden dock, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye.

  "What's your hurry, Mullah Jenkins?" cooed ibn-Azziz, the cleric bareheaded in the downpour, surrounded by bodyguards.

  "There you are," said Jenkins, bowing. "I hoped to find you here."

  "Hope is a honeyed word, is it not?" Ibn-Azziz turned to his retainers. "Our good mullah finds sweetness in our meeting."

  The bodyguards fanned out around Jenkins.

  Ibn-Azziz tapped his fingertips together. "What else do you hope, Mullah Jenkins?"

  Jenkins took a step back, saw that his path was blocked by more of ibn-Azziz's men. Lightning cracked directly overhead. Jenkins jumped as did the bodyguards, but ibn-Azziz didn't flinch.

  "You are shy, I understand." Ibn-Azziz waved his bodyguards back. "Is that better?"

  Jenkins moved closer to the Grand Mullah, barely feeling the rain anymore.

  "Good," said ibn-Azziz, a black-robed skeleton in the raging storm. "So obedient, Mullah Jenkins, I hardly recognize you."

  Jenkins spread his arms wide, felt his Fedayeen knife against the inside of his forearm. "All your patience has finally paid off. You have tamed my defiant spirit."

  "All blessings be to Allah, not my unworthy self." Ibn-Azziz cocked his head, water dripping off his nose. "Do you have something for me, Mullah Jenkins?" he mocked. "You look like a man with a surprise clutched to his heart."

  Jenkins blinked the rain from his eyes, almost close enough now. The boats banged against the dock, louder and louder, the wind rising.

  Ibn-Azziz cupped his ear. "I can't hear you." He beckoned. "Come closer, and share your wisdom."

  Jenkins flicked the knife into his hand as he thrust forward, but ibn-Azziz was fast, so very fast, the blade slicing through the whirling black robe, but leaving ibn-Azziz untouched.

  Ibn-Azziz danced out of reach as his bodyguards closed in on Jenkins.

  Jenkins cut down one of the bodyguards, then another, trying to break through, but there were too many of them. He kept moving, looking for an opening, a way out. He carved another bodyguard with a flick of his wrist, wishing again that he had gone back to Seattle with Rakkim. He would have liked to see the Egyptian girls dance in the Zone one more time. He fought on. Behind him, he could hear ibn-Azziz praying, screeching away as thunder rolled across the city.

  A hot stone rested inside Lieutenant Miguel Ortiz's belly. Getting hotter too as he led his men
into the outskirts of Corpus Christi, their shadows enormous in the dawn light. They moved like devils through the underbrush, brown crickets fluttering before them as they crept silently toward the white church, crawling now, close enough that Ortiz could hear them singing, greeting the morning with hosannas.

  This was not the first time Ortiz and his eight-man team had infiltrated the Belt. That's what Unit X commandos did. Just last month they had taken out a nest of pirates near Galveston, men who used speedboats to intercept Aztlan pleasure yachts cruising peacefully in the Gulf. Looters and rapists and murderers of innocent Mexicans. Texans with grudges were more dangerous than a swarm of fire ants. It had been a pleasure to creep up on the pirate hideout at dawn, the team's inflatables far down the beach. Sergeant Romo had taken out their single sentry, but it had been Ortiz himself who kicked open the door to the nest, firing his machine gun in short, accurate bursts. They had not left a single pirate alive. The team had sung folk songs on the way back to the mother ship. Today, though...he didn't imagine there would be singing.

  As if hearing his thoughts, the congregation inside the church seemed to raise their voices, the very walls vibrating with the sound of their singing. Up from the grave, He arose... Ortiz knew the hymn. His grandmother sang it on Easter. It was more beautiful in Spanish. There were still plenty of people back home who went to church, prayed the rosary, but most young people worshiped the old religion, the ancient gods of Aztlan. So many gods...it was hard for Ortiz to keep track of them all.

  Sergeant Romo looked at him and Ortiz gave a hand signal, watched as Romo took three men and circled around the church.

  Ortiz was doing a terrible thing. The people inside the church were not pirates, or Lone Star rampagers who attacked peaceful Mexican fishing villages. They were innocent. Which would do them no good at all. He rested his cheek in the sand, still cool from the evening, and wondered if he really was going to do this thing.

  A family raced up the steps to the church, a father, mother and two children in their Sunday best, hurrying, and Ortiz wished their car had broken down, wished a water main had burst and flooded the streets, wished for anything that would have delayed them five minutes. The door to the church opened, the hymn booming louder for a moment--He arose a victor from the dark domain--before it closed after the family.

  Ortiz was aware of the rest of his men waiting for him to give the order. He nodded his head and the three men scuttled forward, placed their satchel charges and incendiaries around the walls, then quickly backed out. Sergeant Romo came around from the other side, placed a charge in front of the door, set the motion trigger.

  The men had been quiet during the insertion, quietly checking and rechecking their gear. No boasts or jokes or talk of what they would do when they got home. They attended to business and avoided looking at him. He didn't blame them.

  Sergeant Romo's men rejoined them, breathing hard, eager to get back to the boats.

  The thin man had come to him two days ago. Ortiz had been drinking in a tavern when a man sat beside him, a thin man who spoke accented Spanish and drew the Unit X sign in the moisture on the bar. The man wiped away the sign, then said he had a mission for Ortiz and his team. Ortiz listened, demanded to know who the man really was. Said Tenochtitlan did not order the murder of women and children.

  The Belt murders our oil minister, Miguel, and you expect us to do nothing? The man ordered another round of drinks for them. Are you not a patriot?

  Ortiz had left the drink untouched on the bar, but he didn't walk away. Ortiz told the man he was a patriot, but not a butcher.

  The man watched him in the mirror over the bar. Said authorization had already been sent. Do your duty, Miguel.

  Yesterday the base commandant had called Ortiz in, said he had gotten orders, and transport would be provided to Ortiz and his team. The commandant didn't ask where they were going or what their mission was--he was used to Unit X operating on their own.

  Ortiz raised a fist to Sergeant Romo and the team scurried back through the underbrush in twos, heading toward their rally point in the pine woods beyond the town. Ortiz was the last to leave, racing through the morning, casting aside all field discipline, scared that he would be left behind with what he had done.

  The charges detonated as he reached the trees, a rapid sequence of explosions, the fireball rising into the sky. Ortiz stumbled forward, almost fell. He blinked back tears, and ordered his men forward to the boats.

  CHAPTER 25

  "I'll take them," said Leo.

  The pale teenage chip jockey behind the armored glass rubbed his thumb and index finger together and Leo counted out $4,000 in hundreds, slipped them through the slot.

  The chip jockey had the emotionless eyes of a crustacean, flat black eyes that should have been mounted on stalks. He lazily recounted the money, dragging out the process, then tucked the bills into his camouflage shorts. His long fingers placed the two new Chinese lithium chips into tiny glassine envelopes while his eyes did something else, maybe ran a salinization test or a plankton quality assessment. The chips slid out the one-way box onto the other side of the glass.

  Leo rechecked the chips through a jeweler's loupe, nodded. "You got a demag case for these? Wouldn't want to scramble the configuration."

  The chip jockey rubbed his thumb and forefinger together again.

  Leo flipped him the finger, started for the door.

  Rakkim waved to the chip jockey. "Good talking with you."

  Leo jerked the door handle, but it didn't budge. He turned to the chip jockey. "Hey!"

  The chip jockey picked his nose. Examined his fingertip. Pressed a button.

  The heavy, metal-clad door hissed as the security bolts slid back into the door frame. Leo flung the door open, stepped out into the narrow alley, Rakkim right behind him. The door shut, the bolts slamming back in place.

  Rakkim turned up the collar of his leather jacket against the light rain, but stayed put.

  Every week it was the same thing. Leo asked Rakkim to come along on one of his buying expeditions in the Zone. The tech galleries along the lower level had the newest whizbang gear in the country, but they didn't open until after dark, and this part of the Zone was dangerous--even the police and tourists kept their distance. Leo pretended he wanted Rakkim along for company, and Rakkim pretended to believe him.

  Every week they made the rounds, but they always ended up at this same chip shop, where the clerk reserved his best merchandise for Leo. Leo always bitched about the price or the condition, but the chip jockey didn't dicker. He didn't talk either. All these weeks and Rakkim had never heard the jockey utter a word. At the end of the transaction, Leo would ask for something. A demag case, a virus tracking number, a glass of water, something that should have been thrown in free after the money he had spent, and the chip jockey would demand to be paid, and Leo would always flip him off. Then Rakkim and Leo would go out for dinner. Rakkim would never understand brainiacs.

  Leo zipped his jacket all the way up, not eager to step out into the rain. "I still wish you'd come with me to Las Vegas," said Leo. "We'd have fun."

  "Yeah, you, me, a conference full of math whizzes, what could be better?" said Rakkim.

  "Being invited to deliver a paper in front of the International Pure Math Symposium is a real honor," said Leo. "Just thought you might want to be there to see it."

  "You said they invited Spider."

  Leo sniffed. "What's your point?"

  "They didn't ask you to deliver an address," teased Rakkim. "They asked your father."

  "My father is too sick to travel. Besides...he'd be the first to tell you I've far surpassed him." Leo started down the alley.

  Rakkim grabbed Leo by the shoulder, pulled him back.

  "What? Oh."

  Two men stood at each end of the alley, the four of them strolling toward them, jaunty as sailors home on leave. One was Kissell, a near-giant that Rakkim had seen a few days ago--Senator Chambers's chief bodyguard, a clean-shav
en thug with tiny eyes and a soft gut. The other three he had only heard about, identical triplets, Black Robe enforcers working out of the Hassan Nasrallah mosque, three slender sadists given carte blanche to keep the faithful in line.

  Rakkim's knife slid into his hand.

  Leo banged on the chip jockey's door. "Hey! Open up!" The cameras over the door swiveled, took in the approaching men. Leo kicked at the armored door. "Let us in!"

  The lights went out in the store.

  "Son of a bitch!" screamed Leo.

  "You looking for work?" Rakkim said to the bodyguard. "I hear the Kit Kat Klub is hiring toilet swabbers. I could put in a good word for you."

  "Keep talking," said Kissell.

  "I didn't think the senator recognized me," said Rakkim. "That's what I get for going easy on him."

  "Chambers didn't have any idea who you were." Kissell had a small voice for such a big man, almost a squeak, as though all that flesh had compressed the sound. "It's Grand Mullah ibn-Azziz who told me your name. He's a little upset. Come along, I'll take you to New Fallujah--you can offer your apologies in person."

  If ibn-Azziz had tagged him for exposing Senator Chambers, then Jenkins had given him up. "No, thanks. I get carsick."

  "It wasn't really a request," said Kissell.

  The triplets unslung shock whips from under their raincoats, slender three-foot flails that could shred flesh.

  "Careful, fellas," said Rakkim. "You don't want to hurt yourselves."

  Two burly workmen started down the alley from the main street, stopped when they saw what was going on, then turned and fled.