The Tenth Circle

by Jon Land

  “Amen!”

  “Let them know our wrath!”

  “Amen!”

  “Let them know we shall not weaken in the face of their onslaught …”

  “Amen!”

  “… and for each of our lives they strike down, they shall pay a millionfold!”

  “Amen!”

  “Because their time has passed, my brothers and sisters, while ours fast approaches!” Rule finished, smiling smugly at the prophecy to be realized in a mere five days’ time, when the storm of his making finally arrived.

  Five days …

  When it had taken even God one day more than that to create the world.

  CHAPTER 14

  Washington, DC

  “The Reverend Jeremiah Rule,” Folsom finished.

  “Never heard of him,” Blaine said, having expected to hear something else entirely.

  “It’s not surprising; he’s not exactly a household name, just a damn dangerous one, out there burning Korans and every other symbol of Islam. He’s gathered a million signatures on a petition to have all American Muslims declared enemy combatants and placed in internment camps or deported. That means he’s got followers, lots of them of the same mind, and that’s ended up unifying the Islamic radical world. They’ve activated all their sleeper cells and utilized every means they can find to infiltrate the country. It’s all-out war, McCracken. They’re pulling out all the stops, which means we must too.”

  “That normally means me.”

  Folsom didn’t nod or respond at all. “Glad you see my point.”

  “Why not just arrest the whack job?”

  “Rule hasn’t broken any laws.”

  “How about accessory to murder?”

  “We prefer to handle this internally. Outside the system.”

  “That normally means me, too. But this vengeance thing is new to me.”

  “Then don’t look at it that way, McCracken.”

  “You got a better idea?”

  The men fell silent, the remark hanging in the air between them until Folsom leaned back.

  “You took out Natanz to save lives down the line, maybe millions of them.”

  “What’s your point, Hank?”

  “Same thing here. Jeremiah Rule is a walking nuclear bomb. He doesn’t go quietly into the night, lots more innocent folks get dropped into rivers and the body count keeps climbing.”

  The remark stung McCracken, Folsom surprising him with such uncharacteristic directness. Then again, the situation called for it.

  “I’m just not sure being a bigot with a big mouth makes a man worthy of assassination,” Blaine said finally.

  “Tell that to this kid you know who fell into the Missouri River. Check the calendar, McCracken. These days a man can do a lot more damage with a bullhorn than a bullet. Jeremiah Rule lobs words as if they were bombs, and they’re taking out innocent people every time they land.” Folsom stopped to await a response, resuming when none came. “I know I don’t have to draw you a picture, because you’ve already seen it up close and personal.”

  McCracken rose to his feet. “I’ve got lots of frequent-flier miles to use up, Hank. Just tell me where I can find Jeremiah Rule and forward the intel on.”

  Folsom stood up, rattling the table slightly as he joined him. The two of them looked out the nearest window toward a street that should have been crammed with lunch-hour pedestrian and vehicular traffic. But cars buzzed on without much delay and figures bundled up against the harsh winter winds passed outside only sporadically. Washington, and most everywhere else in the country, was paralyzed with fear over where and when the next attack would come. Sheltering in place.

  Then a sputtering car’s backfiring sent some pedestrians lunging for cover and others fleeing in all directions. Cars swerved wildly, brakes squealing, the sickening crunch of metal on metal signaling a chain collision had occurred just beyond McCracken’s view. Sirens, incredibly, were already sounding, rushing to respond to nothing at all.

  Folsom’s phone buzzed and he looked down to check the text message, his expression paling and then turning grim. “Better make it fast, McCracken.”

  CHAPTER 15

  San Francisco: Twenty minutes earlier

  The Golden Gate Bridge was a mess. In both directions. Accidents everywhere, the worst of which had happened at virtually the same moment at the ends of both the east and west spans to keep commuters sitting just as they were. An average of 120,000 cars crossed the bridge every day and at that moment it seemed they were all stuck at once.

  No one going anywhere. Because there was nowhere to go.

  Even when an SUV centered on the eastern span and a minivan centered on the western one opened their doors to allow a half-dozen gunmen to spill out of each. Sheathed in masks, helmeted visors, black commando gear, and heavy body armor, they looked more like robots than men. Their assault rifles shined in the morning sun, the cacophony of their automatic fire disturbing the quiet breached moments before only by car horns. There were plenty of screams too, desperate and horrible, along with the screech of metal on metal as panicked commuters accelerated with no room to maneuver. Some shoved other vehicles forward with them. Others got nowhere at all before their windows were pierced by fusillades that were terrifying in their randomness and devastating in their destruction.

  The gunmen ejected spent clips, exchanging fresh ones in their place while missing nary a beat in their relentless fire. Their targets were anything and everything their bullets could hit, picking up their pace only to cut down those commuters trying to flee on foot. All the blood made for a strange contrast with the orange of the steel girders and supports, its smell strangely like the bridge’s ever-present rust as it dried quickly in the sun.

  When it was over, the gunmen shed their armor and gear to melt into the throngs fleeing in panic. A strange and uneasy silence, broken only by sobs, whimpers, and cries for help, settled over the bridge until the wail of sirens began. The sounds of those sirens bled into one another, even as the sun streamed through the pockmarked windshields, dappling the dashboards through the bullet holes and splaying onto the victims trapped behind their wheels.

  CHAPTER 16

  Istanbul

  Zarrin’s fingers flew across the keyboard, in rhythm with the air and the world beneath the huge concert hall’s golden lighting that reminded her of the setting sun. In moments like this, she surrendered herself to the music, so much bigger than any one artist whose job was not to play the notes but to channel them. Do justice to the composer.

  Today’s performance featured Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto no. 1, among the most famous and greatest piano concertos ever composed. An immensely challenging piece given that it had been played and tried by every great pianist in history. The bar, then, was set understandably high, which suited Zarrin just fine.

  Located along the shores of the Golden Horn, the Haliç Congress Center in the middle of Istanbul had long been one of her favorite venues in which to perform. Zarrin had arrived for her performance right around sunset, in time to see the sun’s rays reflect off the Horn’s waters in a way that cast the world in a golden glow. Parks and promenades rimmed the center on its other three sides, creating the perfect setting in which to let the beautiful music take possession of her. Surrender to it so that all else in the world seemed insignificant by comparison. So few were blessed enough to be a master of a single craft, never mind one as challenging and exacting as a concert pianist.

  But Zarrin was actually master of two.

  A smartphone rested in her lap, tuned to a video broadcasting an image of the road D.885 from Syria to Sanliurfa, Turkey, fifty miles north of the border. A group of rebel leaders had set out in a convoy after dark to attend a secret meeting concerning a final assault on Damascus at Urfa Castle. They were coming to plead with their Western allies for air support.

&n
bsp; But they were never going to get there. Earlier that day, Zarrin had installed a speed-lowering rubber rumble strip across the road approaching the checkpoint at Akçakale. The thin layer of rubber concealed fifty pounds of plastic explosives she’d packed inside the hollowed-out rumble strip. And an application installed on her phone would tell her the speed of the convoy as it passed the camera she’d set up a half mile short of that spot. From there Zarrin needed only to calculate how many seconds it would take for the vehicles to get there, before pressing another key on her phone to trigger the explosives.

  All routine, as was playing the concerto.

  But then Zarrin’s hands betrayed her, unfortunately routine recently as well. She pictured the keys her fingers needed to grace, but was unable to move them as she needed. The sense, in that ever so anxious moment, was of a painless cramp that turned into a spasm. Her hands going off on their own against her mental instructions to the contrary. To play at this level meant that action needed to flow ahead of thought. Thinking about what you were doing meant you weren’t doing it, weren’t surrendering to the music and letting it dictate all. But even Tchaikovsky could not dictate to fingers suddenly twitching and caught in spasm. The audience seemed not to notice as Zarrin’s rhythm with the keys sputtered and slowed—just an infinitesimal change, yes, but one that separated the music from her being and left her playing it instead of it playing her.

  Her cell phone beeped softly, the rear of the convoy passing before the camera by the time she glanced down. The number 105 was flashing on screen, giving her the convoy’s speed in kilometers, the calculation of the trigger point in her mind coming dangerously slow, slow enough to risk the entire operation.

  Zarrin felt her fingers begin flowing smoothly again, enough in that moment to restore her full concentration, her training and experience doing the rest. At 105 kilometers per hour, she estimated it would take twenty-eight seconds to travel the half mile to the explosive-laden rumble strip.

  The clock in her mind told Zarrin seventeen seconds had already past. Her right fingers were twitching madly and left had gone rigid by the time she reached the final sequence of the concerto. Her phone was programmed with voice commands, so she let the seconds count down in her mind until she reached three.

  “Activate,” she said downward, as her fingers struggled across the keyboard, finally managing to complete the concerto’s finale at the very same moment her explosives should have destroyed the convoy and killed the rebel leaders.

  The standing-room-only crowd erupted in applause, lurching to their collective feet, the hall rumbling and quaking as she stood and bowed with hands clasped tight behind her. In her heart, Zarrin felt the rhythm and beat of the concerto still pulsing. In her mind, she saw the bodies of the Syrian rebel leaders strewn in pieces across the road to Sanliurfa.

  Before her, the standing ovation continued and Zarrin took another bow.

  CHAPTER 17

  Istanbul

  She opened her dressing room door to more applause, two broad-shouldered figures standing over a third smaller one seated on the bench set before the piano placed here to facilitate her preparations.

  “Bravo!” the smaller man said, rising to his feet. “Bravo! Your performance was brilliant tonight, truly masterful.”

  “Thank you, Colonel Kosh.”

  Kosh stopped clapping and tapped at the keys to produce a harmonic drivel. He had a large round head, much too large for his small frame, clean-shaven so it looked like a basketball. “I always wanted to learn how to play. Perhaps you could give me a lesson.”

  “I’m too expensive for you, Colonel.”

  Kosh tapped two different keys at the same time, listening to the contrast between their respective sounds. “Money can be no object if you wish to work with the best.”

  As head of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and National Security, also known as VEVAK, Kosh had long provided Zarrin with an endless stream of missions, for which she was paid exorbitantly well. She tightly clenched the fingers of both her hands to keep them from trembling, as he tried to string his tapping into an actual melody.

  “It’s not as easy as it looks,” he reflected.

  “Few things are. Being the best at anything requires an extraordinary amount of practice and commitment.”

  “So you think I’d be wasting my time with lessons.”

  “I do.”

  “But someone taught you, didn’t they?”

  “I was different.”

  “And why is that, Zarrin?”

  “Because I pursue perfection, not mediocrity.”

  “A fact much in evidence tonight,” Kosh complimented. “Here, as well as in Syria. Congratulations are in order.”

  “You normally don’t stop by to give them personally, Colonel.”

  “As I said, I was thinking about taking lessons.”

  “Why don’t you try some Tchaikovsky, Colonel?”

  Kosh laughed. “A bit beyond my skill level, I’m afraid.”

  “Would you like to know the primary reason why? There’s almost no rest at all in his concertos, like the one I played tonight. But it’s become too much even for me, given that I’m not as young as I used to be.”

  “But equally skilled, I trust. Just more selective with your performances. Amazing the things you can learn growing up in a Palestinian refugee camp.”

  “Where the closest thing we had to a musical instrument was a stick banging against tin cans,” Zarrin said, stiffening at the memories. “Except for a single legless piano.”

  “On which you learned while being raised there as an orphan after witnessing the Israelis murder both your parents,” Kosh continued. “Rescued and trained by a legendary Palestinian intelligence official, trained himself by the Soviets at the height of their power. The legendary Zarrin, specialist in every weapon, but renowned for making use of objects that aren’t weapons at all, allowing for close-in kills utterly impossible for all others who practice your trade. Then, of course, there is your expertise with explosives, thanks to which the Syrian rebels are now looking for new leaders and Iran’s interests there will remain secure, at least for the time being.”

  “What do you want, Colonel?”

  “I have another job for you.”

  Zarrin flexed her hands, pushing the blood back into them and hoping Kosh wouldn’t notice, lest she appear vulnerable in any way. “I’m not interested.”

  “You haven’t heard about the job yet,” Kosh said, extracting a picture from his pocket and unfolding it. “You are familiar with this man?”

  Zarrin regarded the picture without taking it in hand. Something changed in her expression. “Blaine McCracken. I thought he was dead.”

  “Then it must have been a ghost who destroyed Natanz and our country’s dreams along with it.”

  Zarrin moved to her dressing table and eased both her hands into ice-laden, frigid water. The agony waned quickly, leaving her hands numb and still. Every day a bit worse than the day before.

  “Name your price, Zarrin.”

  “I already said I was too expensive for you.”

  “An example must be set,” Kosh told her, thin shoulders stiffening. “Otherwise we stand for nothing.”

  “Then that will be price for McCracken: nothing.”

  Kosh’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the catch?”

  “How many of your operatives did I kill all those years ago on behalf of the Iraqis?”

  “I lost count.”

  “Sixteen. I want a million dollars for each of them. Consider McCracken a bonus.”

  “And what would an artist like yourself do with so much money?”

  Zarrin finished her mental count to thirty and yanked her hands from the ice bath. She dried them with a fresh white towel and looked back at Kosh.

  “Maybe I’ll buy a villa in the Mediterranean.”
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  “Why not your own private island, Zarrin? But then who would you perform before?”

  “Myself, Colonel. In the end, that’s the most important person to please.”

  “I’m sure Blaine McCracken feels the same way.”

  “Not for long,” Zarrin told him.

  CHAPTER 18

  Mobile, Alabama

  “Brothers and sisters,” the Reverend Jeremiah Rule greeted, his voice booming over the crowd of 750 gathered around the fire pit in Crawford Park, “welcome to your future. Welcome to salvation by renouncing the heathens among us, who have infiltrated our culture to besmirch His word. They would try to weaken us by slaying the innocent, but their efforts only make us stronger, toughening our resolve.”

  McCracken watched and listened to the service from the adjoining road, high up in the bucket of a utility truck, an unfamiliar feeling tugging at his insides and leaving them knotted. He couldn’t look at Jeremiah Rule without thinking of Andrew Ericson, as close to a grandson as he’d ever have, missing in the frigid waters of the Missouri River in the wake of the terrorist bombing inspired by this madman’s rants. Blaine kept imagining he’d spotted Andrew in the crowd, only to shake off the vision as cold sweat rose to the surface of his skin.

  He wanted to kill Jeremiah Rule so much that he could feel his hands clenching and unclenching, the same way they did in the moments before he readied fire with an assault rifle. Wanted to do that so bad now he could feel himself quivering. An altogether foreign feeling.

  McCracken rotated a smaller version of standard binoculars to better view the festivities and had come equipped with a laser microphone rigged to an earpiece to better listen to them. He’d chosen this spot mostly for the vantage point it provided the sniper rifle that looked, at first and second glance, like a sophisticated camera equipped with telephoto lens. It fired not a bullet, but a tiny dart loaded with a potassium-rich toxin that would bring on a heart attack within minutes to an hour.