by Scott McEwen
Al-Rashid sat back, watching Faisal twisting on the hook. Then, after he felt the man had twisted long enough, he pulled him into the boat. “Enough arguing now, Muhammad. You know it can serve no purpose. In the coming weeks you will go to Germany to meet with our Chechen brothers in the Riyad us-Saliheyn Martyrs’ Brigade. It has all been arranged.”
That conversation had taken place five months ago, and Faisal had been in their pocket ever since, having no choice but to provide whatever funding they required . . . drinking more than ever, gambling more than ever . . . and losing more than ever. And since the New Mexico Event, he had slipped into an even deeper depression.
He stood at the window of his hotel suite overlooking the Great Sphinx, whirling an ice cube around the bottom of an empty whisky glass.
“What’s the matter, Muhammad?” asked his chief bodyguard, Ma’mun, also a minor member of the Saudi royal family. “I’ve never seen you this way.”
“Kashkin and al-Rashid have been lying to me,” Faisal said. “There have been two bombs since the beginning. That’s why they wanted so much money so urgently.”
“Should we leave the city? Are we in danger here?”
Faisal gave him an ironic smile. “To destroy Las Vegas would be more like a bad joke than an act of terror.”
Ma’mun thought about that a moment. “Yes, I agree.”
“We’re as safe here as anywhere,” Faisal assured him. “All we can do is hope the city doesn’t wither on the vine after the American economy begins to collapse . . . which will surely happen after the second weapon is used. These are a panicky people. They have been spoiled by too many years of safety and isolation. Look how they act already. Martial law in their major cities? Please. Do you believe the Jews would react this way?” He wagged a bony finger. “They would not. No, the lives of the Jews would go on as normal. And when the bomb finally went off, they would mourn their dead and begin to rebuild . . . their faith in their Jew god even stronger than before.”
Ma’mun nodded grimly. “For all that is bad about them, yes, the Jews are very brave. I do not deny it. But I think no braver than the Americans.”
Faisal took a seat on his Italian black leather sofa and kicked off his slippers. “You forget, my friend. The PlayStation generation controls here now.” He sighed then. “But we shall soon see which of us is right.”
Ma’mun took out his iPhone, running his thumb over the apps. “The lease on the hotel suite is up for renewal this week.”
“Renew it.” Faisal lit a cigarette and sat pondering his own words about the Jews. It was true they would not be so easily panicked. They were very accustomed to living with the knowledge that every day could be their last. Perhaps it was time he took a lesson from them and began to live his own life the same way.
“Arrange a game for tomorrow evening, Ma’mun. Also, call the agency and be sure there are enough women available. I think it’s time for me to resume my winning ways.”
At last Ma’mun had reason to smile. “Na’am sayyideti.” Yes, sir. He turned and left the room.
19
CHICAGO
Crosswhite and Tuckerman sat in a holding cell in one of the local police precincts now being utilized by the 82nd Airborne as a forward operating base. On the front of the building was a sign that read Fort Apache. They had been cooling their heels there for the last eight hours, and Crosswhite was beginning to wonder what the hell was going on. It shouldn’t have taken more than a few hours for the Pentagon to renounce them for the liars they were and order them turned over to the Chicago police. The division was preparing to withdraw from the city by order of the president, so it was remotely possible that he and Tuckerman would just be left behind for the police to take charge of when they reoccupied the building. Still, it was odd that the major in command of the FOB hadn’t come to tell them what was going on or even just to chew their asses for having lied. He’d been a pretty big prick upon their arrival.
The guards who checked in on them from time to time claimed to know nothing.
Crosswhite let go of the bars and turned to look at Tuckerman, who sat on his bunk against the wall, clearly unhappy in the knowledge that he was destined to spend the rest of his life sleeping on such a bed. “Does this make any sense to you? We should have heard by now.”
Tuckerman looked up at him. “We’re not exactly a priority, Dan. We’re just a couple of two-bit criminals. Be careful you don’t go believing your own bullshit.”
Crosswhite frowned. “That’s not the point.”
Tuckerman smirked. “As if there is a point. Sit down, will ya? You’re making me nervous. What’s your hurry, anyhow? You’re gonna spend the rest of your life in a fucking cell. At least here we don’t have to put up with anybody’s bullshit.”
“I ain’t giving up that easy,” Crosswhite said. “The next time they open this door, we’re making our move. We may not get away, but we can at least go down fighting.”
“Not me,” Tuckerman said. “I didn’t get into this to kill GIs. I did the crime. I’ll do the time.” He tilted his head back against the wall. “Wonder if anybody will ever find that money. Maybe it’ll still be there if we ever get out. If I get out first, I’ll leave your half.”
“You’re fucking dreaming,” Crosswhite said. “They’ll never let us out. People are dead, remember? And it doesn’t matter they were shit bags. The law’s the law.”
“Yeah, but we also saved that little girl. We might get parole in twenty or thirty years.”
Crosswhite rolled his eyes and turned to grip the bars again. “Hey!” he shouted. “We need some food back here, guys!”
A steel door opened, and the sound of boots on concrete came echoing from around the corner. Sergeant Naples appeared and stood staring at him. “Guess what,” he said.
Crosswhite stared back. “Don’t tell me . . . the bomb went off in some other city.”
Naples shook his head. “I made some calls of my own. Turns out you’re not even active duty anymore. Word is you got run out of Delta.”
Crosswhite let out a heavy sigh and turned to lie down on his bunk, putting his boots up on the bars. “So what’s that tell ya?”
Naples scratched his head. “Tells me the brass musta been pretty pissed about you getting the Medal of Honor for making them look bad.”
“None of it was as it appeared, believe me.” Crosswhite laced his fingers behind his head and lay staring up at the ceiling. “Why don’t you do us a solid, Nipples, and unlock that door before you guys pull out, huh? You got my word we won’t make a move until after you’re gone.” He lifted his head. “Don’t just leave us to the local yahoos.”
Naples shook his head. “You’ll be gone long before we pull out. We just got word your CO is on the way to pick you up.”
Crosswhite stole a startled glance at Tuckerman and sat up on the bed, turning to put his boots on the floor. “Come again?”
“About an hour ago, Major Byard got a call from some guy named Pope back in Langley. I’m guessing you know him? Anyhow, Byard still can’t believe you guys are actually attached to SOG.” This was the Special Operations Group of the CIA. “I told him last night you were the real deal, but he didn’t believe me, and now he’s out there feeling stupid.” He chuckled, clearly enjoying the major’s embarrassment. “This Pope said to tell you your orders have changed and that you’ll remain here under protective custody until a Colonel Shannon arrives.”
At that, Tuckerman turned and put his boots on the floor. “Colonel Shannon.”
“Right,” Naples said, shaking a cigarette loose from a box of Marlboros and lighting up. “I don’t know what the hell your original orders were, but it doesn’t sound like SOG is too happy with you two. Byard was ordered to keep you under lock and key until the colonel gets here.”
Crosswhite stared across at Tuckerman. “What do you wanna bet the asshole sh
ows up looking like Sam Trautman from Rambo? Just to rub my nose it.”
Tuckerman went slack in the jaw. “He wouldn’t.”
“Fuck he wouldn’t.” Crosswhite bummed a smoke from Naples and lay back on the bunk again, resting an arm across his forehead. “One thing is for sure . . . if Pope pulled him off that ranch of his and away from Marie, you can bet your jockstrap he won’t show up here happy.”
“What the fuck is going on anyway?” Naples wanted to know. “I put my ass on the line for you guys last night. The least you can do is cut me in.”
Crosswhite sat back up, drawing deeply from the cigarette. “Nipples, I’d love to cut you in—but I have absolutely no idea what the fuck is goin’ on.”
Naples grinned at him, clearly believing that he was lying. “You SOG guys are all alike. Sorry I can’t let you out, Captain.” He turned to walk away.
“Hey, how about a couple of MREs?” Crosswhite asked. “I don’t know where you’ve been the past eight hours, but these jamokes haven’t given us anything to eat all day.”
Naples chuckled. “I’ll see what I can do. Sit tight.”
When the door slammed, Tuckerman opened his mouth to speak, but Crosswhite sat up and put a finger to his lips. “Be careful, Conman. The gods are obviously smiling on us. Let’s not risk saying anything to piss them off.”
Tuckerman nodded, getting up to take a leak in the stainless steel toilet mounted to the wall between the bunks. “Roger that,” he said over his shoulder. “I do feel safe saying this much . . . if you hadn’t found that little girl—well, I ain’t religious, but I figure some things were just meant to be. Know what I mean?”
Crosswhite nodded, exhaling smoke through his nostrils as he considered how jacked up his life had been ever since receiving the Medal. “All I know for sure is that I’ve felt like a runaway train ever since I got rotated back from the Sandbox—with no way to put on the brakes.” He drew hard from the cigarette, wanting to alleviate his surging anxiety. “Now there’s a loose nuke to worry about, we’re locked up in this fucking cage, and Colonel Shannon is apparently coming to save our asses.” He flicked an ash into the walkway. “Fuck, you must be right. How is this not meant to be?”
20
MONTANA
Trooper Trent Logan was a badge-heavy cop, no two ways about it, and Montana wasn’t exactly a crime-saturated state, so he treated every traffic infraction, no matter how minor, like the Lufthansa heist of 1978. Post command received at least five complaints a month from motorists traveling the stretch of I-90 between Billings and Bozeman, and Logan had taken a lot of ribbing during his first year on the job for being such a gung-ho rookie. But after hitting the mother lode one Sunday afternoon, he received what he considered to be the ultimate vindication.
He stopped a seventy-year-old woman driving a yellow, near-mint-condition 1985 Cadillac Eldorado for a simple “lines and lanes” violation just outside of Big Timber. No other state trooper in the nation would have stopped her that day for swerving to miss a chunk of splintered two-by-four on the highway, but Trooper Logan was no other state trooper. He lived by a code, and that code meant there was no room on his interstate for road raging old ladies, no matter what their excuses. So he pulled her over and cited her for the lines and lanes violation, brusquely admonishing her to abide by the traffic laws of the sovereign state of Montana. Then, as he was giving back her license, he noticed for the first time that she was supposed to be wearing corrective lenses while driving, and he asked where her glasses were.
“Oh, I broke them a few days ago,” the lady said. “The new ones will be ready next week. Here, see?” She dug the LensCrafters receipt from her purse and offered it to him.
But Trooper Logan had no interest in receipts. A crime had been committed.
“Ma’am, you’re driving while impaired. Please step out of the vehicle.” He placed her under arrest and cuffed her hands behind her back. Then he put her into the backseat of his cruiser and called for a “hook.” It was during the vehicle inventory, which he conducted during his wait for the tow truck, that he discovered a gym bag containing ten pounds of methamphetamine in the trunk.
The elderly lady was successfully indicted two weeks later on the felony-one charge of transporting with intent to distribute a “super bulk” amount of a controlled substance—a crime that would likely ensure that she spend the rest of her life in prison—and then Logan went on a tear. Convinced that every motorist in Montana was running drugs, no matter how innocent his or her appearance, he began routinely making traffic stops for infractions as petty as one mile an hour over the speed limit, never hesitating to call for the canine unit on the slightest suspicion. His fellow troopers quickly grew tired of this beyond-gung-ho approach, and the friendly ribbing turned into open and often unpleasant criticism. Trooper Logan didn’t pay them much attention, though. As far as he was concerned, he was operating on a whole different level of law enforcement, and if his fellow officers couldn’t appreciate that, screw ’em.
So when he clocked a green SUV traveling in the opposite direction doing seventy-two in a seventy-mile-an-hour zone, Logan didn’t hesitate to hit the strobes and “shoot the median.” The SUV was already pulling over when he cleared the grassy median and got the cruiser back onto the highway, but this didn’t stop him from giving the siren a short burst as he pulled up. He stepped out of the cruiser and adjusted the brim of his Smokey the Bear hat to eyebrow level as he strutted up on the passenger side of the vehicle, the heel of his hand resting on the butt of his Sig Sauer P229 in .357 caliber.
“Good evening, sir,” he said in an impersonal tone of voice. “Driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance, please.”
The fifty-three-year-old man behind the wheel handed him a German passport, an international driver’s permit, and the rental agreement for the car.
Trooper Logan had never seen a German passport, nor had he seen an IDP. “Do you know why I stopped you, Mr. Jaeger?”
Nikolai Kashkin looked at him with his pale blue eyes and smiled. “I assume I must have been speeding,” he said with a German accent.
“Do you know how fast you were going, sir?”
Kashkin shook his head. “I’m sure you know better than I, officer. I’m not about to argue with you.”
Logan especially distrusted the really cooperative ones, believing that most people hated cops. “You’re a long way from home, Mr. Jaeger. What brings you to the United States?”
“I’m making a tour of your national parks,” Kashkin said enthusiastically. “I’m on my way up to Glacier now.”
“Uh-huh,” Logan said, paging through the passport, attempting to make heads or tails of the many stamps and dates. “How long do you plan to be in the US, sir?”
“A couple of months,” Kashkin said. “Possibly longer. Mount Rushmore was closed when I tried to see it a few days ago, and I would like very much to see that before I return home.” He had actually only just heard of the monument’s closing over the radio the hour before.
“Well, it might be a while,” Logan said. “I’m sure you’ve heard that terrorists have smuggled a nuclear weapon into the country. Rushmore’s been closed as a precaution.”
“Yes, that’s very terrible,” Kashkin said sadly. He thought it insane that anyone could believe he would waste the weapon on a useless rock in the middle of nowhere, but he did enjoy hearing over the radio that thousands of American tourists were being disappointed all across the country due to the closing of so many national monuments.
“Wait here, sir.” Logan returned to his cruiser and sat behind the wheel, digging out a reference manual to foreign passports and identification from the bottom of his gear bag sitting on the passenger seat. So far he had only ever used the manual to look for reasons to hassle Canadian tourists, whom he often referred to as—quite cleverly, in his opinion—“Mexicans who spoke good English.”
Since hitting the mother lode back in April, he’d succeeded in convincing himself that he had a sixth sense about people, and this evening he believed that sixth sense was telling him there was something wrong about this kraut tourist. He wanted to search the German’s vehicle and find out what he was hiding, but he didn’t have probable cause, so he decided to ask for permission, knowing from his extended experience with harassing Canadians that many tourists didn’t realize—as many Americans didn’t realize—they had the right to refuse a search request in the absence of probable cause or reasonable suspicion.
He left Kashkin’s ersatz identification on the seat and walked up on the driver’s side of the SUV. “Mr. Jaeger, do you mind if I search your vehicle? It’s just routine, sir; a service we like to perform on all traffic stops after sundown.”
Kashkin went on alert, seeing the veiled suspicion on the trooper’s face. He knew there was nothing wrong with his passport or his IDP, both of them issued legitimately by the German government under the name of a dead German citizen whose identity he had managed to assume with the help of a fellow RSMB member working inside the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The SUV was rented with a legitimate credit card and the vehicle properly insured. So what was making this young cowboy so distrustful? Had there been a leak somewhere? Was the US government onto him specifically? Or was this something else? He would have to find out one way or another before continuing with his mission.