Excellent work. Wyrick liked this guy's line of thinking. Go on.
"What would that message be?" Brewer replied.
"Look at all the facts. Four other men were killed on the street in the minutes before Barwani's public execution. It might be simple. We're coming for you." FBI leaned back in his chair. "Something like that."
And there you have it. Preacher did his job and then some once again. Kill a terrorist or two or five. Make a splash. Send a message.
Now, what did Preacher and Fuchs have up their sleeves next?
Chapter 34
"The concern is among the largest in the world, you know."
"I wasn't aware. Do you mean among the largest Saudi construction companies?"
"No, not just Saudi. The Bin Laden Group is one of the largest construction companies in the entire world."
The government official shook his head ever so slightly. "That's big."
"Very." Abdullah Al-Salhi nodded his head while rubbing his beard.
The two men were seated at a table in a private room in one of those very private, hush-hush Washington D.C. eateries that caters to discretion for the rich and powerful and elected.
The US government official took this meeting because Al-Salhi was known to make things happen. Things always associated with money, lots of money. Saudi Arabian oil money. Do it right and that money can wind its way through various donors and companies and end up funding vital activities.
"So, how can I help you?" he asked.
"Not even finished with your steak and ready to talk turkey." Al-Salhi smiled and took a sip of tea.
"I appreciate a great piece of meat and this one was fantastic. I also enjoy pleasant and insightful conversation." The government man took a sip of wine. "But I also appreciate knowing the agenda of every meeting."
Al-Salhi's smile broadened. "And I agree. Every meeting, make that every good meeting, has a defined and agreed-upon agenda. I must confess I did not view our dinner as a meeting."
"Hmm. Just dinner?" Brewer asked before slicing off another piece of New York Strip and taking in the juicy morsel.
Chapter 35
Slamming into and bouncing off the steel wall, he burst forward then left, ducking below a low girder. Not quite pitch black, but not much better down here. He planted his left foot in a slippery puddle on oily concrete and shot to the right again ducking below another metal girder supporting a raised walkway floor above, and the building above it. He wiped the blood away from his squinting right eye. The gash two inches over the eyebrow in his hairline the result of a piece of rebar swung from the dark by the dude up ahead.
Going to leave a scar.
Fine. Another scar.
He reached up and grasped gloved fingers on the next girder and flung himself forward. He rolled, dove to the right then back to his feet. The gasping of his prey, now only 20 feet in front of him, was audible, rhythmic. The only light slipped through slats in the rusted metal floor plates bolted to the girders.
The guy up ahead had been at it for nearly eleven minutes now. From an alleyway four blocks over, through a first deserted warehouse and now this one. He had a good set of lungs, was in excellent shape. That's because when not killing or planning the killing of others, the prick was a world-class distance runner. He'd competed in events in which only the most elite runners were invited. But here, he was running away like a scurrying rat.
Preacher drifted. He'd been doing it more and more lately. In the endless space and time between ragged steps and heaving breaths, he drifted out there. Up there. They were just flashes. Micro-moments illuminating dark recesses. He smiled and shook his head to leave the flash behind and duck under yet another girder. He chose to dive and roll again. Back on his feet he leapt forward like a leopard on all fours and closed the gap.
His echoing footsteps now only a couple of paces behind his target elicited a gasp, a worried whine. Good. Shouldn't have chosen this building, this route down below. The only chance the guy had was keeping this thing a straight up foot race. Anything through alleys and tunnels and obstacle course dilapidated and derelict warehouse buildings gave the advantage to his pursuer.
Only one of the two individuals in this race, this life and death chase, was a chameleon, a cat, panther. Only one of them hunted humans through jungles, down mountainsides, down from skyscrapers to New York streets below. Only one preferred to kill with hands, with blows, instead of bombs. The active question in this current equation - who is the terrorist here?
But up ahead, escape loomed. The underworld the rabbit had chosen opened up ahead. Preacher could almost reach out and grab him, but not quite. He needed eight maybe ten more seconds. Alas, not to be for the moment. His target reached the opening where this sub terrain ended and all before them was open concrete floor for another 200 feet. Preacher reached this open space a second and a beat later. The only light broke in through high glassless windows up near the top of 25-foot walls.
That second between them saved the runner. Once up and on his feet and full height, full gait, he was off like the human gazelle he was. Preacher also bound to full length and stride but could not close the gap. Precious feet separated them. It was like the feeling he had in a track meet a decade and some time ago back in high school. Heart, chest and head pounding, legs pistons, feet stretching out every stride it was no use. He couldn't reel in that fella in front of him.
He was the white whale, the yeti, a shiny black bucket of gold at the vanishing end of the rainbow. That runner was a somewhat famous Native American from a rural Oklahoma high school who so dominated the 330 hurdles, they basically named the race after him by the time he was a senior.
And that's who Preacher could only watch up ahead. No matter how he accelerated through the 19 steps between hurdles. Didn't matter how much he jammed, flexed, powered through the leaping jump over each barrier. Upon landing, he made up no ground on the living legend who never lost a race from freshman year to senior state champion.
He watched the elegant stride, the impressive gait of the runner currently in front of him and felt that same frustration.
But.
Time had passed. Muscle had been added. At 31, Preacher was quite simply in the best shape of his life. Bullet-riddled, stabbed, broken bones and all. He'd added more than 25 pounds of muscle this past year. He could feel the strength, the power in each of his strides. He bore down, tucked his head. Within three steps he was in full sprint. He gained on his prey. Each step, each second brought them closer together.
Forty-feet ahead, the door out into the night stood open. He was within three feet of his formidable quarry at the doorway. And that was as close as he got.
Something. No telling what.
Maybe it was years of doing this stuff. Preacher slowed, just a little. This slowing of his pace just feet before reaching the door out into the night paid off. He let his fleeing prey be the first one out with a distance of 15 feet separating them.
As the two runners exited the door. A barrage of gunshots rang out, splattering, echoing off the surrounding metal and brick buildings. Within the atom-split of a second, Preacher ducked, pivoted, dove to the right. Nowhere to hide out in the open. He stayed on the ground and rolled back toward the doorway. No time to think of or care in the least about the terrorist a few feet away whimpering, crying, dying.
Back at the door, Preacher grabbed the casing and spun his way back inside as shots came and bullets blew through and clanged off the metal above and beside him. He continued his rolls a few more revolutions then got onto his belly where he military-crawled back into the open area, staying low, as the occasional bullet burst through the corrugated metal siding of the warehouse and whizzed over his head before ricocheting off the concrete floor and whatever metal surface it found.
Back into the center of the open warehouse space he and his rabbit sprinted across just a minute before, Preacher got back to his feet and ran forward, crouched. But this time, instead of going low, going into the
underworld, he bound up a set of metal stairs on the left and came onto the raised floor. Looking down into the center of the building as he raced along the walkway he could see the why. A large rail system sat derelict down there in the middle of the building. It wasn't a warehouse. It was a manufacturing facility. Whatever product the place produced in its prime, and it was big by the general size of the space under roofspan, obviously moved along on the rails until it ended out in the open space. If he were to spin around and go back to the other end of the building, he guessed he would find two very large doors that slid open sideways to allow the massive finished product to be brought out and loaded onto a train.
Even with his shoes making a hell of a ruckus slamming down on the plate metal floor screwed and welded onto the girders, Preacher kept his head cocked and heard what he expected, someone had made their way to that open door and stepped in, firing blindly into the darkness in the process. Bullets from the automatic weapon sprayed into the cavern-like darkness, ricocheting off walls and poles and anything they struck. The lightning explosion of the gunshots blasting out of the weapon flashed like a chaotic disco strobe all around him.
Mid-step, he closed his eyes and returned to the scene of the crime of murder 51 seconds earlier. Outside the facility's door, in the open area between this building and the next, there was a fence. That's where the shots came from. Two guns. The muzzle flashes in the dark pinpointed their location. He shot up 1,500 feet into the night sky to look down on this warehouse and manufacturing district. The alley, where he first encountered his target and was whacked in the head with a piece of rebar iron, was four large city blocks over.
In-between the blink of an eye, he traced the route he tracked his prey through streets, more alleys, over fence and into the building below. No time to ask whom these new players were. He'd get to that.
Back in his head. Sprinting to the end of the raised deck walkway, Preacher reached a set of stairs at the other end, grasped the handrail and hurdled, pivoted in air and dropped to the concrete below. He was right back at the spot he'd dove into a whole four and a half minutes earlier. Strange the distance runner chose to go low under the raised walkway instead of up the stairs. But people running for their lives do strange and unexpected things.
Preacher remained crouched there, beside the stairs, just outside the tunnel under the raised deck. If his intuition was right, and it almost always is, we should be seeing someone or several someones enter through the door he followed his rabbit into the building five minutes earlier.
Wait.
Listen with eyes closed. See the sounds.
Don't drift. Stay here.
Damn.
Static, then voice. Low, but discernable in the silence of night as sound waves forever radiate and crash and splinter into new transparent ripples in space and time.
Take them in. Triangulate.
A radio. A voice asking a question. Moments later, a whispered reply.
It came from just inside the doorway 70-feet from Preacher's current location. Tough to make it out, but it looked like two silhouettes had entered.
He crouched lower, onto knees, then down onto his belly. He reached his gloved right hand into his jacket and pulled the Sig Sauer 9mm pistol from an inside pocket above his left breast. He liked this tight jacket with its snug pockets because it kept the weapon in its place without requiring a holster or having it loosely tucked into the belt of his pants on his lower back.
He'd been in the process of reaching and pulling the Sig back in that nearly pitch black alley 17 minutes ago when his prey turned attacker and struck him with the rebar rod. It was one of those moments he'd seen and lived dozens of times over the past decade. In the micro-split of second he spotted the approaching blow and adjusted. In this case, it was about an inch and a half duck of the head while the iron rod completed its arc toward his head.
Preacher thought about the wound this particular injury would leave. It definitely split skin and likely tore through muscle and fascia, probably down to the bone of his skull. This would almost certainly result in a gnarly scar. Rebar, used primarily as support structure inside poured concrete, was ribbed metal. The impact on skin is a ragged tear with a somewhat straight line with tiny pockmarks sticking out all along the line. Basically a Frankenstein's monster scar.
His younger brother fell onto a piece of bent rebar sticking out of the freshly poured foundation of a house down the street from theirs' back in Fort Worth. Lucky that piece was bent because if it had stuck straight up, his brother would have been impaled. Instead, he was left with a beast of a scar on his right side. It looked a little bit like a railroad track running across his lower ribs. Probably should have been treated by a medical professional, but then mom would have learned about it and been pissed beyond pissed that her two young boys returned to the construction site to play after being told, basically threatened, to stay away from 'those damn construction sites.'
A smile slipped out of his mouth. Hadn't thought about his brother and their antics for some time.
Footsteps, inching closer. Two sets of them on each side of the open area. Preacher lay prone, eyes closed, letting the sounds escaping from the fall of rubber soles on concrete, the scruff of clothe across skin, the inhalation and exhalation of air. Static and another whispered voice on radio.
It all came to him through constantly crashing waves of sound. One of his favorite subjects of study as a 16-year-old. He read up on the subject. They're not really waves. It is pressure, compression and propagation. All around, pressure increases and decreases as sound is produced by virtually anything that moves, anything that disturbs the atmosphere. Deep understanding of the physics of sound propagation gives one an advantage over others. But there's more.
Being able to essentially see these pressure sound waves coming at you changes this equation. Now, don't be silly, a human can't see sound. But a human with a certain kind of messed up brain that thinks it can step out of it's human skull and wander the world from above, now that is different.
Lance was up there right now. Thirty or so feet in the air looking down on the dark and dank insides of an abandoned manufacturing facility. He was looking down at his body lying prone on the dirty concrete just beside the raised walkway on the side of the building. He was watching two gents make their way closer to him on either side of the structure.
Preacher just needs to see something, anything, to be able to put himself in it or better, up above it; looking down with his screwy satellite vision on the mind map he creates. Never thought much about it. It is just there. Always there.
Crazy? Probably.
Back in his head with his breathing under control and calm flowing through him like his favorite mountain stream up above Ouray, Colorado, Preacher opened his eyes.
He rolled to the left, once, then twice then a third time. He rose up on his left elbow and brought his feet up under him, placing his body in a tight little crouch. Or better, a tightly compacted and compressed spring ready to explode.
Times past, long ago now, Preacher used to feel the tiniest modicum of regret for his actions - either those in the past or those he was about to commit. But not anymore. He left regret, sympathy, empathy of any type behind. Years ago now.
He waited in the dark recesses near the raised walkway for the creeping dude on his left to get close.
Now.
Like the compressed spring released from its compact prison, Preacher exploded forward and up. A violent nuclear reaction, both mass and speed. Everything in the way would fall or suffer a painful end.
Left elbow cocked, he rose up in three powerful rocket-propelled steps, blasting off into orbit with the final one. Inside of a second, he reached his newest target and delivered a wicked blow to the unprepared recipient. Might as well have been a George Foreman left hook propelled by a 70-ton train engine. Because Preacher never stops at the point of impact, pushing through, he literally lifted the poor murderer up off the ground as point of elbow made cr
ushing contact with nose cartilage and skull behind the annihilated cartilage. Massive damage. Out. Cold. Down. Likely for good, forever.
On the way down, Preacher grabbed the barrel of the guy's compact automatic rifle to keep it from clattering on the concrete. He bent a knee, stuffed the 9mm back in his jacket pocket and reached into the guy's pockets feeling for one of the radios he'd been hearing them talk to each other. Found it. Nine whole seconds from the moment he exploded up into his target, he stayed crouched and continued along the wall to reach the set of steps going up onto the raised walkway. He knelt and waited.
Not long. A brief burst of static from the radio in his hand erupted from the device 12 seconds later.
"Was ist los?" The question posed in German. What is happening?
"Ich kann ihn night sehen." Preacher depressed the button on the side of the radio and whispered. I can't see him. Preacher took a couple more steps to where he was exposed out from the underbelly of the walkway he had dove into chasing his original target seven minutes ago. He bent down to his right knee and then raised the automatic rifle up into firing position.
He depressed the button and whispered again in German, "I think I see him underneath. Come help."
In the near distance, he could barely make out the figure of the guy on the other side of the open space at this end. The fella had made his way along the wall, almost to the stairs for the raised walkway on that side of the building. He watched as the gent began to come his way across the open space between the two elevated walkways.
The real reason Preacher stepped out from behind the six-foot metal wall covering the walkway was so that he might spy both the guy coming his way and down the length of the building where more than likely two other armed men were headed his way. He closed his eyes and listened for telltale sounds of their approach. They were there, footsteps in the hidden dark of the long building.
The Perfect Teacher Page 16