Mystery: The Sam Prichard Series - Books 1-4

by David Archer

13

  Sam's phone was ringing, and he reached for it, but there was no nightstand. He raised his head from the pillow and looked around, realized he was in the cabin loft with Indie, and grabbed the phone from where he'd laid it on the floor. A glance at it told him it was only four AM, and he answered groggily.

  “Hello?”

  Harry's voice came through the line. “Sam, I'm sorry to wake you, but something has happened, and I knew you wouldn't want to wait until morning to be told.”

  Sam sat up, wiping furiously at his eyes to shake off the effects of too little sleep. “I'm up, Harry, what is it?”

  Harry sighed. “Sam, I felt I should be the one to tell you. Your friend, Detective Jacobs, is dead. He was killed while sitting in his car in the parking garage, watching the bomb for us.”

  Sam almost fell forward onto the floor, but caught himself. Indie was sitting up behind him, but all he could say was, “How?”

  “He was shot once in the head, Sam, at very close range. The bullet was a forty five caliber.”

  Sam's mind was racing. He'd left Danny to just keep an eye on the bomb, make sure no one moved it, and he knew Danny was the type who wouldn't take his eyes off it for a second. The only way a shooter could have gotten close enough to kill him up close would be if he had no reason to consider the shooter a threat, and the only one he might not have worried about was…

  Jamal. Sam had told him that the kid was being forced, and wasn't a problem, but he had a forty five.

  “The bomb?”

  “Gone. We've got no idea who may have done it, or where they may have taken the bomb, Sam, and the chopper that can find it is already gone.” He sighed. “We may lose this one, son.”

  “Jamal,” Sam said. “The kid I got the info from about Mahmoud, is there any sign of him? He was their guy to watch the bomb—he was sitting out front of the building in a little Buick.”

  “No, no sign, not of him or his car. Right now we're assuming he killed Jacobs and took the device, but that doesn't tell us much. We checked with his mother, and she and his sisters swear they haven't seen or heard from him at all. Is there anything you can think of that might help?”

  Sam said, “Yeah. I can find and kill that little son of a bitch!” He hung up without another word, and was surprised when the phone didn't ring again.

  “Sam? What's wrong?” Indie asked.

  “That kid I trusted, last night,” he said. “He killed Danny Jacobs and took the bomb, and I gotta go find him.” He pulled a pair of jeans out of his suitcase on the floor, then grabbed a shirt and began getting dressed. Once he had them on, he slid his feet into socks and shoes, then began transferring things from the clothes he'd worn the night before. He took the watch and glasses, then the Geiger phone and its earpiece, thinking he might need them if he found Jamal. Last, he picked up the silenced thirty-two and his own Glock forty; he'd left the revolver he'd taken from Mahmoud in his truck.

  Jamal, he thought, and reached for his phone. “Indie, if I give you a cell number, can you find it? Find out where it is?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, I can get its GPS.” She rolled out of the bed and pulled on her nightgown, then went down the ladder ahead of him. By the time he got to the ground floor, she was powering up her laptop. Sam glanced at the couch and saw George, Harry's driver, sound asleep, and breathed a short prayer of thanks that the car was still there.

  “What's the number?” Indie asked, and he looked at his phone to give it to her. A moment later she looked up. “It's on I-70, heading west. It went past Frisco about twenty minutes ago.”

  Sam kissed her. “Keep that on, and let me know if he changes his route. Call me if you see anything I need to know about.” He walked out the door and ran to the Ridgeline, jumped in and fired it up. A second later he was on the gravel road and driving fast.

  Jamal was going west, and from where Indie had said he was, he was about an hour ahead of Sam, but not for long. The Ridgeline was designed with an electronic speed limiter set at a hundred and twelve miles per hour, but Sam had installed a Magnum Tuning Programmable Chip and boosted it by twenty percent, so he had plenty of power. The only question was how well the truck would take some of the curves on I-70 at high speed.

  He made almost eighty miles an hour up most of Route 9 to Frisco, and got on the Interstate. Flooring the big V6, he felt himself pressed back into his seat as all 250 Horsepower opened up, and he was doing a hundred and twenty before he knew it. He called Indie.

  “Got a location for me?” he asked.

  “Updating now,” she said. “He's about ten miles past Copper Mountain. I'd say he's doing about the speed limit, maybe a little more.”

  “Okay. I'm pushing this thing, so I'm gonna concentrate on the road, babe. I'll call you again in a bit.”

  “Okay,” she said, “but Sam—be careful. I love you.”

  “I'll be fine, baby. This is just something I have to do. I love you, too.”

  He cut off the call and watched the road, once again amazed at the lack of any traffic. At the speed he was moving, he should be able to catch Jamal within the next hour or ninety minutes, and that was his goal.

  The road was full of twists and curves, but most of them were long and gentle. Sam had to slow to just under a hundred a couple of times, but he was still making incredible time as he flew along the interstate highway. When he'd been on the road for half an hour, he took out his phone and called Jamal, just to see if he would answer.

  “Hello, my friend,” said the young voice, and Sam felt a rage wash over him.

  “Hello, Jamal,” he said through clenched teeth. “So—you put a good one over on me, didn't you?”

  “I'm sorry, my friend, but it was necessary. I knew you would get rid of my uncle if I told you how to do it, and then I knew you would make him talk and get rid of the rest. They were fools, all of them, and not worthy of the glory they were given. I am the chosen one to bring glory to Allah with this bomb, and I have known it for weeks, but I didn't know how it would be delivered into my hands. When I met you, Allah spoke into my heart and told me that you were His chosen instrument, and that you would make it possible for me to do as He commanded me to do!”

  “So, you killed my friend, and now you've got a nuclear bomb that you’re taking to—where?”

  Jamal laughed. “Perhaps I will take it to Washington, and blow up the White House, or your Pentagon. Perhaps I should take it to New York, to take out Wall Street. I could go to Los Angeles, and destroy its docks, to keep ships away, or to San Francisco, or a hundred other places, but there is one place where Allah's punishment can be most complete at this time, so that is where He wants me to go. Alas, but that place is not for you to know, my friend. I do the will of Allah, and you cannot stop me.”

  Sam bit his tongue to keep from screaming. “Oh, I plan to stop you, Jamal. Remember what I told you? If you betrayed me, I would hunt you down and kill you? Well, when I said that, it was an empty threat, just something I said to scare you and make you do what I wanted, and you played along just beautifully, I admit that. You had me fooled, so fooled that I led my best friend into the trap that got him killed.” His voice was getting higher, so he took a deep breath to calm himself. “Well, it's not just talk, now, Jamal. I'm going to find you, and I'm going to kill you.”

  Jamal laughed. “The sad part of this is that you truly believe your own words, but they are empty. You have no power over me, for I am in the hands of Allah, and He alone shall have power over my life. It is His, for He gave it to me, and He may take it as He sees fit. But you will not find me, my friend, for I know the ways that you policemen and agents work. Goodbye, my friend.”

  The line went dead, and Sam looked at his phone in frustration. He had let off the gas a bit as they had talked, and so he shoved his foot to the floor. The speedometer went back to one twenty, and then crept up to one twenty-five, and one thirty. That was as far as it would go, but Sam watched the world speeding by as he tried to gain on the Muslim who
was out to deliver his god's wrath to an unsuspecting world.

  His phone rang, and he knew it would be Indie before he answered.

  “The phone is dead, right?”

  “No, but it's stopped moving, and I'm guessing he threw it out the window, because it seems to be laying right on the edge of the west bound lane.”

  “Yeah. I called him and told him I'm coming for him, so he thinks getting rid of the phone will save him. He's wrong. Dead wrong.”

  Indie sighed. “Sam—don't let him bring you down to his level.”

  “Babe, if I'd taken him into custody last night, Danny'd be alive, but he's dead because he trusted me, and I trusted this monster. He's got the bomb, and says Allah told him to take it where it will best deliver punishment to the world. I'm guessing he means Vegas, so that's where I'm headed, unless I spot him along the way. If I don't, then I'll find him there. Somehow, I'll find him, and I'll stop him. I love you, baby, I do, but I have got to do this.”

  Indie sounded as if she were crying, but all she said was, “I love you, too, Sam. I understand. It just—who is this kid, anyway? Maybe I can find something on him that will help.”

  Sam smiled. “That's my girl. His name is Zayan Jamal, and he lives on Pecos. Anything you can find on him will help, I'm sure, so let me know if you get anything. Give Kenzie a hug for me, and tell her I love her, too.”

  He ended the call without saying anything else, keeping his speed up and watching every car that appeared ahead of him to see if he had caught up to Jamal. None of them were Buicks, but he looked closely every time he passed one, just to be sure the kid hadn't switched cars on him.

  The road and the mountains kept rolling by and he passed Vail, then Glenwood Springs as he watched constantly for the next car on the road ahead. By the time he got to Parachute, the sun was trying to fight its way up over the mountains behind him, and he knew that he'd either passed Jamal in a different vehicle or at a gas stop.

  Of course, it was possible the boy had left the highway, taken another route, but Sam thought he was still on the road. He called Harry.

  “He went west on 70,” Sam said when the old man answered. “I'm on his trail, but I'm not certain of his vehicle. Has his Buick turned up?”

  “Not that I've heard about, and I would have. That doesn't mean he isn't in a different car, though. There were four that were reported missing overnight in our area, and I've got APB's out on all of them.”

  Sam thought for a moment. “I got him on his phone for a few minutes, but he pitched it. One of the things he bragged about was knowing how the police track people, so he won't be in a stolen car, I'm sure. He'll be in one that won't be missed, or one that he had a key to for whatever reason. Can you see if Mahmoud Imports had any other vehicles registered?”

  “Give me credit, Sam, I already did, and while they had two other cars, they're both accounted for. So far, we can't find any other vehicles this boy would have access to.”

  Sam chewed his lip for a second. “Of course, just because a car won’t be missed, doesn't mean it isn't stolen, it only means it hasn't been reported. That could mean he found one that was abandoned, or the owner just hasn't noticed it's gone.”

  “Or he's jacked someone in their own car, and still has them.”

  “Yeah, good point. If we could find his car, we could look for missing persons in that area, or missing vehicles; we might get some idea of what we're looking for, or at least some leads to follow.”

  Harry sighed. “That's true. We've got cops everywhere looking for it, so hopefully it'll turn up soon. Sam, I'm an old man, and I've got to get some sleep, I'm afraid. I'll keep my phone with me, but if I don't answer, please leave me a message.”

  “No problem, Harry, go rest. I'll handle this.”

  “I have every confidence, Sam, boy, that you will.” He was gone as soon as the words came through.

  Sam kept driving, frustrated. If he hadn't called Jamal, he might still have the phone, and Indie could track him, but he'd let his anger get the best of him. That was a mistake, he knew, but it was done, and there was no taking it back. He'd have to think of another way to find the boy.

  Will I actually kill him? Sam asked himself. God knows I'm mad enough, but I don't know if I can do it, not just out of revenge. God, Danny, I'm so sorry! At least you weren't married, and didn't have kids—God, what am I thinking? My best friend has lost his life, and it's all my fault!

  The miles rolled by under him. At the Grand Junction exit, he stopped and filled up again; it was either that, or he'd have been walking within five more minutes. He grabbed some doughnuts and coffee, and got back on the road, crossing into Utah a half hour later, and was struck by the fact that there was suddenly more traffic on the road.

  Of course, when he thought about it, he'd seen more traffic for the last hundred miles or so; he just hadn't paid as much attention because he had thought of himself as being in pursuit. Now that he'd stopped and walked around, eaten something and guzzled some coffee, he was in a different mindset. Now he was on a manhunt, not a pursuit, and he wasn't sure which one was more intense.

  Greater traffic meant that he couldn't drive as fast as he had been, but by following a semi truck that was doing eighty, he managed to keep up a good pace. Truckers knew where the cops would be, so when the driver slowed, so did Sam. While his HS identification would get him past any problems, he didn’t want even a few minutes' delay, so it was better to avoid being stopped at all. When he thought about it, he realized he'd been lucky not to have been stopped so far.

  Sam felt tired, but not as exhausted as he thought he should, and he figured that his adrenal glands were working overtime. He kept driving, basing his continued route on Jamal's words, that he had an opportunity to “deliver Allah's punishment,” and to Sam, that meant the place that many people, even Americans, considered “Sin City,” the place where all your favorite sins and vices could be had for a price, and where you could leave your guilt behind you when you left. “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” as the old saying went, meaning that once you left, you could always pretend that whatever you did never happened.

  If “Allah” wanted to punish America, Sam thought Vegas would be the ideal place. He pushed the accelerator down harder, willing the truck to get him there ahead of Jamal.

  14

  Zayan Jamal was no fool. Though he was only twenty years old, he'd been watching his uncle and the men who ran the cell for several years, and he felt that there was no logic to their actions. They did not pray to Allah before they made their decisions, and they put little thought into what they could do to bring greater glory to Allah, or to themselves. Now that they were out of the picture, he could step up and serve Allah the way he was meant to.

  How odd it had seemed when the stranger came to him in his car, and made his threats. Almost as soon as he had seen the man's face, something inside him had said that this was the one Allah had told him would come, this was the man who would deliver glory to him. When Ibrahim had come, Zayan had briefly thought of testing the man, letting him kill Ibrahim right then and there, but Allah had told him in a dream that the man who would come to give him his glory would kill no one. It is wrong to test Allah, he knew, and so he had done what he could to avoid their confrontation.

  Using his mother and sisters had been a stroke of brilliance, and he had already given thanks for the idea several times, but he knew he would again. Those whores were of no consequence to him, not when he had known for more than a year that he was the chosen of Allah, the glowing star who would bring true punishment to the heathen Americans. He, and he alone, Allah had said, would be given the means to wreak true havoc, to destroy the wretched self-love of the proud Americans. What had only begun in New York on Nine Eleven would be finally perfected in the strike that he, Zayan Jamal, would deliver for the glory of Allah!

  The man who had delivered this glory to him was no fool, either, but he did not understand how wonderful were the ways of Allah, nor how
perfect were His works, even His works of punishment and retribution. The man thought he could stop what Allah had set in motion, but that was the pride of these people that made him think so, nothing more.

  He would have known that Zayan was driving west, of course. American television and movies were delighted to show off how the police and government officials could track you with a cell phone, and that was why he had kept it as long as he had. When Allah had told him to kill the policeman who was watching over the bomb, Zayan had realized that it was a perfect way to throw the man off his true path. He would be so angry over the death of his good friend that he would want to find Zayan, of course, and he would use the cell phone to do it.

  Zayan had waited for the call that he knew would come, and then he had destroyed the phone. He had said enough to make any American cop think he was going to Las Vegas, and he was sure his ploy had worked on this one. The pride, the arrogance, of Americans made them easy to manipulate. Zayan had done it a thousand times, whether it was to get money from them, to seduce their women—no matter what he wanted, he was always able to use their arrogant pride against them, and it had never failed him.

  Las Vegas was in the right direction, but it was not where he was going, and since they had no idea how he was traveling, there was no way they could find him. As soon as he had thrown away the phone, he had gotten off of the Interstate and found a place to stop and sleep for a while, knowing that the American would keep driving, hoping to see him so that he could stop him and kill him. He had slept for three hours, and now he was a refreshed as if he'd slept for a whole night. He could drive for many hours, and would be in place at the right time to set off the bomb.

  He knew how to do so, how to reset the timer on it and make it go off when Allah willed. He had begged his uncle and Ibrahim for days to let him learn about the “devices” they whispered about, so that he could one day serve Allah as they were, and like the Americans they were becoming, their own arrogance and pride had played right into his hands. They treated him like a child, which he used against them all the time, and when he had done something that made them proud, they had asked him what he wanted as a reward. He told them, and Ibrahim had called Dawid and gotten permission to bring him over to see the bombs. Dawid had liked him, this “Little Zealot,” as he named Zayan, and told the bomb men to show him what they were doing as they got them ready last week.