Dead or Alive

by Grant Blackwood

  “This ought to do,” Dominic said.

  Brian doused the headlights, coasted to a stop, then killed the engine. They turned in their seats and looked at Bari. “What else do you know about this place?” Brian asked.

  “Just where it is, that’s all.”

  “Never been here?”

  “Once. Just to drive by it.”

  “How’d that happen? Just curiosity?”

  Bari hesitated. “In my business, it pays to know who you’re dealing with. I knew Fakhoury answered to Almasi. I thought it might be smart someday to deal directly with him, so I made some inquiries.”

  “Industrious,” Dominic remarked. “So you’ve never been there, never been in the house?”

  “No.”

  Brian: “What about bodyguards?”

  “I’m sure he has them, but I don’t know how many.” Brian and Dominic stared hard at him. “It’s the truth, I swear on my children.”

  “Dogs?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Give me your hands,” Brian said. “Put them on the headrests.”

  Tentatively, Bari did so. Together Brian and Dominic duct-taped his hands to the headrests. “Is this really necessary?”

  “We’re not quite to the trust stage yet,” Dominic explained. “Don’t take it personally. We’ll be back.”

  “And if you’re not?”

  “Then you’re shit out of luck,” Brian said.

  They climbed out, retrieved the tote from the trunk, and sat down in the dirt to sort through their arsenal. In addition to their Brownings, they had four French-made MAB P15 9-millimeter semiautos, and two snub-nosed.32 revolvers.

  “Got sixty rounds from the P15s,” Brian said. “Nine-mil Parabellum. Good fit for our Brownings. If we need more than sixty, it means we’ve fucked up anyway.”

  They reloaded the Brownings’ magazines, then divided up the remaining loose P15 rounds and stuffed them into the thigh pockets of their cargo pants. Finally, they stuffed some odds and ends into their backpacks. Dominic walked to the Opel’s back window. Bari said, “I need some more aspirin.”

  Brian fished the bottle from his backpack and tossed it over. Dominic dropped half a dozen into Bari’s mouth, then gave him a swig from their canteen.

  “Don’t go anywhere, and don’t make any noise,” Dominic ordered. He turned to Brian. “Ready?”

  “Damn straight. Let’s go bag us a big fish.”

  68

  HOW’RE YOU HOLDING UP?” Gerry Hendley asked, as Jack sat down across from the desk. Sam Granger stood to one side, leaning against the window, arms folded.

  “Aside from getting asked that too many damned times, just fine,” Jack replied. “It was just a nick, Gerry. Nothing a little superglue couldn’t handle.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “I know what you’re talking about.”

  “Jack, less than twelve hours ago you killed a man. If you tell me it’s not bugging you, I’m chaining you to your desk.”

  “Boss-”

  “He’s serious,” Granger said. “Like it or not, you’re President Jack Ryan’s son. If you don’t think that gives us pause, think again. And if for a second we don’t think you’ve got your head screwed on right, you’re benched.”

  “What do you want from me? The truth is, my hands still shake a bit and my stomach’s churning. I pushed the plunger on MoHa because he deserved it. This Sinaga guy… I don’t know. Maybe he deserved it, maybe not. He came at me, tried to kill me…” Jack hesitated, cleared his throat. “Did I want to kill him? No. Am I glad it’s him and not me? You bet your ass.”

  Gerry considered this for a few moments, then nodded. “Give it some thought and let me know tomorrow. Whatever you want to do, you’ve got a place here.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sam, ask them in, will you?”

  “Hang on a second,” Jack said. “I already ran this by John and Ding… Remember the birth e-mail we got?” Hendley nodded. “It never went anywhere. No replies, no follows. Just dead air, pretty much across the board. I’m thinking that e-mail was a ‘change the channel’ order.”

  “Explain,” said Granger.

  “We know the URC’s using steganography to communicate. Probably in the banner images on their websites, and they’ve probably been doing it awhile. What if the e-mail was a signal telling cells to switch to some stego-only protocol-call it their version of radio silence.”

  “To what end?”

  “Special ops guys go radio-silent when they’re getting ready to jump off. Maybe the Emir gave the go signal on an operation.”

  “We saw a drop in chatter before Nine-Eleven,” Granger observed. “Bali and Madrid, too.”

  Hendley nodded. “Jack, I want you to glue yourself to Biery. Tear down the dump from Nayoan.”

  “Okay.”

  “Call them in, Sam.”

  Granger opened the door, and Clark and Chavez walked in and took their seats next to Jack. Hendley said to Clark, “You hear?”

  “What?”

  “The charges against Driscoll are gone.”

  “Imagine that,” Clark said with a grin.

  “Kealty’s press secretary announced it yesterday at close of business. Just in time to slide into the weekend. Sam talked to an old friend at Benning. Driscoll’s clear. Honorable discharge, full pension plus disability. His shoulder going to be a problem?”

  “Not unless you’re hiring him to drywall your office, Gerry.”

  “Good. Okay, let’s hear it.”

  “Didn’t find anything in Sinaga’s trailer but a digital SLR camera,” Clark said. “Nikon, medium price range. It had an SD card inside it with a few hundred images. Mostly landscape stuff, but maybe a dozen were head shots.”

  “Passport head shots,” Chavez added. “All men, mostly Middle Eastern or Indonesian, looks like. And one we’ve seen before. Remember the courier we tailed-Shasif Hadi.”

  “No shit?” said Granger.

  “But get this,” Jack replied. “In the head shot Sinaga had, Hadi’s clean shaven. When we were tailing him, he had a beard and mustache. Shave it off, use the new passport, and you’re good to go.”

  Clark said, “That might answer the question of where he went after Las Vegas-at least partially. He left the country.”

  Hendley nodded. “Where and why, though? Sam, what else do we know about Sinaga?”

  “He’s high on the hit parade in Jakarta. I talked to a friend of a friend who’s the station chief in Surabaya. The guy was good. Had a real eye for passports.”

  “Where are we with facial recognition?”

  Jack answered this one. “Biery’s got his system in beta testing, but we don’t know much about the system ICE and Homeland Security is using. Their parameters might be different than ours.”

  “FBI?” Granger offered.

  “Probably the same system. If not, they’ll all be cross-pollinating anyway.”

  “When Dom gets back, let’s have him run up a trial balloon. Since Hadi’s our only known quantity, let’s focus on him first. Find out where he was heading from Vegas. Mr. Clark, where did you leave things in San Francisco?”

  “We’re clean with Nayoan. Left everything as is but downloaded a lot of data. Gavin’s massaging it right now. One thing’s for sure, Nayoan was a big logistics operator for the URC. Money, documentation… Who knows what else. As for Sinaga, we staged a break-in. He lost the fight with the burglar and got killed. Took his DVD player, some cash, to flesh it out.”

  “We’ll keep an eye on the news out there, see if it’s playing. It should. We were careful.”

  “Okay, so we wait until our über-nerd has something. Thank you, gentlemen. Mr. Clark, can you stay for a minute?” Once Jack and Chavez were gone and the door was closed, Hendley said, “So?”

  Clark shrugged. “He’s okay. Whether he’s got a taste for fieldwork only time will tell, but he’s dealing with it. He’s a smart kid.”

  “W
hat’s smart got to do with it?” Granger asked.

  “Okay, then, he’s even-keeled. Just like his dad.”

  “You’d take him out again?”

  “In a New York minute, boss. He’s got good instincts, good observation skills, and learns damned fast. Plus, he’s got a little gray in him, too, which doesn’t hurt.”

  “‘Gray’?” Hendley asked.

  “The gray man,” Clark answered. “The best spooks know how to fade into the background: how they walk, how they dress, how they talk. You pass them on the street and you never notice them. Jack’s got that, and it’s natural.”

  “More Ryan genetics?”

  “Maybe. Don’t forget, he grew up under the microscope. Without even knowing it, he probably picked up a lot from his environment. Kids are savvy. Jack figured out early what those guys with dark suits and guns were doing hanging around all the time. Got his antennae working.”

  “You think he’ll tell his dad?”

  “About The Campus? I do. It’s nobody’s fault, really, but Jack’s living under his dad’s shadow-a damned big shadow at that. Once he figures out what he wants to do here, he’ll find a way to bring it up.”

  With the help of a customs worker, Musa loaded the container into the rear of his rented Subaru Outback, then gave the inspector a wave and drove out the gate. Musa, of course, did not begin his long journey back to Calgary as he’d told the customs inspector, but rather drove fifteen miles east to the suburb of Surrey and pulled into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn Express. He found a parking space directly outside his ground-floor room, then went inside and spent the remainder of the day napping and flipping from one inane television show to another until finally settling on CNN. His room was equipped with wireless Internet access, so he had to resist the urge to log on with his laptop and look for an update. He had a flash drive with the latest onetime pads and steganographic decryption software-neither of which he fully understood-but logging on to one of their satellite sites this late in the operation was unwise. Tomorrow at noon was the next scheduled check-in, and even that would be brief. Failing word to the contrary, he would assume the other pieces of the plan were falling into place.

  Musa stared at the ceiling, let the babble of the television fade into the background, and tabbed through his mental checklist. He knew the distances and routes by heart, and his documentation would stand up to all but the most intense scrutiny. True, the customs inspector at the airport had been a hurdle, but they were nothing compared to security measures within the United States. There police were curious and thorough and hypervigilant. Then again, Musa reminded himself, in a matter of days both state and federal American security forces would find their plates very full indeed, and he would be at his destination.

  He dozed until his watch alarm woke him at seven p.m. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. Through the drawn curtains he could see the last remnants of daylight were fading. He clicked on the bedside lamp. On the television, one of the anchors was questioning some Wall Street type, hashing and rehashing the American economy. “Has it hit bottom?” the anchor was asking. “Is the country moving into recovery mode?” Idiots. America had yet to see the bottom. Soon.

  Musa went into the bathroom, splashed water onto his face, then put on his jacket. He stood in the center of the room, thinking, then went back into the bathroom and pulled a washcloth from the towel rod. Moving backward, he wiped down every surface he had touched: counter, toilet seat, toilet handle, light switch… He finished with the bedside table, the remote control, and the lamp. He had already paid for the room, so there was no need to stop at the front desk. The receptionist had told him he could leave the card key in the room, which he did, first wiping it down, then placing it on top of the television. He stuffed the washcloth into his front pants pocket. What else? Had he forgotten anything? No, he decided. He stepped outside, closed the door behind him, then walked to the rear of the Subaru. The container was still in place. He unlocked the doors, got in, and started the engine.

  Once out of the parking lot, he got onto Highway 1 and headed southeast for twenty-two miles to the Fraser Highway turnoff, which he took east for seven miles to 264th Street. Here he turned south and drove for four minutes. Soon he saw the glow of stadium lights ahead. This was the 13/539 crossing, a cloverleaf-shaped compound sitting astride the U.S.-Canadian border. Musa felt his heart rate increase. He kept going.

  A few hundred yards north of the compound the road split, the left-hand lane heading into the crossing, the right-hand lane curving until it merged with what his map called Zero Avenue and turned west. He pushed the odometer’s trip reset button and glanced in his rearview mirror. No one behind him. He brought the Subaru up to the speed limit, then backed off a tick, then set the cruise control.

  Strange, he thought, that this nondescript two-lane road bracketed on both sides by copses of trees and farmers’ fields was the border between two countries. The only evidence Musa saw of this was a waist-high hurricane fence on the south side of the road. The Americans were fond of their fences, weren’t they?

  He drove for eight miles, watching the sun set and the stars rise. His headlights skimmed over the gray asphalt, the yellow lane dividers disappearing beneath the car, until after what seemed like hours, his headlights picked out a road intersection. As he approached it, he read the sign: 216th Street. Good. He was close now. Next came 212th Street, then 210th. He flipped off the cruise control and let the car coast. Ahead and to his right he saw some house lights behind a screen of trees. He peered out the driver’s window, watching, letting the car continue to slow… There.

  Beside a stand of pine trees, a gap in the hurricane fence. A sign read, PRIVATE PROPERTY. KEEP OUT. Musa looked ahead, saw no headlights, then checked the rearview mirror. Clear. He doused his headlights, tapped the brake, then swung left, across the opposite lane, and through the gate.

  He was in America.

  The road almost immediately angled downward, smooth dirt turning to washboard ruts. To his right, an acre of pine stumps jutted from the landscape. Some logging company had bought up this stretch of forest and had decided to clear-cut it.

  The road grew rougher, but the Subaru’s all-wheel drive handled the ruts well enough. The logging road meandered south and east, downward through the wasteland for another half-mile before reaching a tri-intersection of dirt roads. Musa turned left. The road smoothed out and within minutes merged with another intersection. Here he turned left, heading east again for a few hundred yards before turning south once more. Five minutes later a blacktop road appeared. This would be H-Street Road. He let out a breath. If he was going to get caught during the crossing, it would have happened by now. He was clear. For now.

  He clicked on his headlights and turned right onto the road. Five more miles would bring him to Highway 5, just north of Blaine, Washington. From there he would head south. Three days of easy travel on major highways.

  69

  ALMASI’S HOUSE BACKED UP to a low scrub pine- covered hill, the downslope of which led directly to the gravel quarry. Dominic and Brian took their time, keeping to the rock-strewn gullies that wound their way up the hill. After thirty minutes they reached the ridge. They dropped to their bellies and wriggled forward.

  Down the slope, perhaps twenty yards away, was the rear wall of the barn; to the right of that, the cluster of adobe huts. They saw no lights in the windows. To their left and front was the rear porch of the farmhouse. A single light showed in an upstairs window.

  “Almost three,” Brian whispered. “Let’s hunker down. If Almasi’s got patrols out, we’ll see them eventually.”

  Ten minutes passed, then twenty. They saw no movement.

  “Shake the trees?” Dominic suggested. “Barn first?”

  “Why not?”

  Brian scooted back from the ridge, gathered a handful of stones, then returned. He tossed the first stone in a high arc. It smacked into the barn’s roof, then clattered down the shingles and thumped to the groun
d.

  Nothing moved. No sounds.

  Brian tossed another stone, this time in a flat trajectory. The stone thunked against the barn’s wall. Five minutes passed.

  “Been a half-hour.”

  “The barn first, then the huts?” asked Dominic.

  “Yeah. If there are any reinforcements, that’s where they’ll be.”

  They backed away from the hilltop and crawled to their right until they were directly behind the barn, then went back over the top of the hill and picked their way down the slope to the barn’s rear wall. The wood planking was old and brittle and widely gapped. Brian and Dominic looked inside but saw nothing moving. Brian gestured: On to the huts. I’m on point.

  Hunched over, they moved out from behind the barn and crept along the base of the hill, keeping their heads below the top of the scrub brush. After fifty feet they reached a narrow dirt path. Directly across it lay the adobe huts. Twenty yards with no cover. A hundred feet to their left stood the farmhouse. Above the back porch, the window was still lighted.

  Brian gestured: You go; I’ll cover.

  Dominic nodded, took one more look around, then sprinted on flat feet across the road to the westernmost hut’s outer wall. He checked both corners, then signaled Brian to cross over. He was there ten seconds later. Dominic tapped his ear, then tapped the wall. A few feet above their heads was a horizontal slit window. Through it they heard sounds of snoring.

  I’ll take the two on the north, Dominic gestured.

  They met back up two minutes later. Brian cupped his hand around Dominic’s ear and whispered, “Two men, one to a hut. AK-47 each.”

  Dominic nodded his agreement, held up two fingers, then four. Four total. He drew his thumb across his throat, shrugged his shoulders: Take ’em down?

  Brian shook his head and pointed to the farmhouse. Dominic nodded. With Brian in the lead, they followed the contour of the hut walls to the eastern side, the closest point of approach to the farmhouse’s back porch. More open ground, but only twenty feet this time.