Mystery: The Sam Prichard Series - Books 1-4

by David Archer

  “I am near to there, in Las Vegas. There is an exit as you come into the city, Speedway Boulevard. Take that exit to the south and you will see a truckstop on your right. I am there. Call me when you arrive, and we will meet and complete your glorious mission together, and I will sing your praises for allowing me to aid you and go with you into Heaven!”

  “Yes, yes,” Zayan said again. “I will call as soon as I arrive there!”

  The call was over, and Zayan no longer was afraid. Mousif had sent him a warrior to help him, a warrior who would follow his orders and help Zayan to do Allah's will! He reached over and turned on the radio, but there was only news and talk, voices running on and on about the bombs, and how the crisis was almost over.

  He laughed aloud. They didn't know what a crisis was, yet.

  He arrived at the truckstop at a little after 6 p.m., and called Muaz.

  “I am here,” he said. “I am in the big motorhome, white with brown on the sides.”

  “Ah, I see you. Park it near the trucks and I'll come to you. I have a truck, and we can take it the rest of the way.”

  “Yes,” Zayan said, “that will be good.”

  He drove the big machine over to where the trucks were parked, and put it into a place among them. A moment later, a big Ford pickup pulled in beside him on the right, and a large man got out. Zayan opened his driver's door and climbed down to walk around and meet him.

  Muaz came to him and wrapped his arms around him in a hug. “Praise Allah,” he said. “You are an answer to our prayers.”

  “Thank you,” Zayan said. “It is a great honor to serve Allah, and to be given such glory! I give thanks to Him in all of my prayers!”

  Muaz smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “Let's get the device into the back of my truck, and we can go. How much time do we have?”

  It was Zayan's turn to smile. “I have turned off the timer,” he said, “and studied the maps of the dam. Just before we get there, there is a place to pull off. We'll stop there, and I will set it for only ten minutes. Then, we will drive right out onto the dam and stop, then get out and throw it over together. It will be too late for anyone to stop it, even if they dive in and follow it to the bottom of the lake.”

  They went into the motorhome and Zayan showed Muaz the bomb. This one was in a large plastic case, rather than a duffel, with handles on each end. Between the two of them, it was easy to carry it out and slide it into the bed of the pickup. Muaz threw a tarp over it, fastening it down with stretch cords so that it would not blow off.

  Zayan looked at the bomb, there under the tarp, and felt a surge of pride. The device had been intended to cause a little destruction and fear, but now, in the hands of one who was chosen by Allah, it would mean the end of America as a superpower in the world. Once it had done its job, this country would be too busy trying to deal with millions of starving and angry and terrified people within its own borders to ever bother any other nation again.

  Muaz jumped down and closed the tailgate, and Zayan turned to him. “Are you prepared? Do you wish to eat a last meal or anything before we...”

  He barely saw Muaz move, but the pain in his face told him instantly that something was wrong. The great fist had struck him just ahead of his left temple, and his head exploded with agony. It came again, and his head rocked back from the second blow.

  “What...” he cried out, “Why?”

  “You stupid young fool!” Muaz said to him. “You think yourself the hand of Allah? Our plans were perfect, whether or not the bombs went off! The terror we caused in this nation was precisely what we wanted, but you think you know the will of Allah better than we, who have served him faithfully for years?” He struck again, and Zayan went down onto the ground between the truck and the motor home.

  Muaz stepped toward him, and drew a pistol from his pocket. The gun had a silencer on it, and Zayan saw him raise it and aim it—and yet, somehow, Zayan knew that he would not die. A calm came over him, and he looked Muaz in the eye.

  “You cannot harm the hand of Allah,” Zayan said, and it was at that moment that a man stepped into view, a truck driver coming back to his rig after a meal.

  The man saw them, and saw the gun in Muaz's hand pointing at the young boy on the ground. He yelled, “Hey, there, hold on...”

  That was as far as he got, for Muaz shifted his aim to the man and fired. The gun coughed twice, and the truck driver fell to the ground, but in that instant, as Muaz had his attention off of Zayan, the boy reached into his pocket and snatched out the knife, the same knife that had once threatened him in the hands of another boy, the same knife that he had kept and used seven times to end the lives of American whores he had seduced and grown tired of, the knife he had practiced opening and throwing until he could strike with it like a snake! With a flick of his thumb and finger, the blade flashed out, and then his arm whipped back and forward. The knife flew from his hand and flew true, and as Muaz turned back to aim again at Zayan, it embedded itself in his throat.

  Muaz's eyes flew wide, and he dropped the gun as he reached for his throat. Instinctively he pulled out the knife, but that only ripped open his jugular vein even more than it had been, and his blood sprayed out. Zayan scrambled for the gun and snatched it up, then crabbed backward to get out of the way of the life blood that Muaz was spraying onto the ground.

  Muaz looked at him and tried to say something, but his voice would not work, and he reached out with both hands as if he would strangle Zayan, but the boy raised the gun and fired once. A hole appeared in the center of Muaz's forehead, and his eyes rolled up into his head as he fell backward.

  Zayan got to his feet and looked around. There was blood everywhere, and two dead men lay in plain sight, but as always when he killed, there was no one who could see him. He looked quickly into the truck and saw the key in the ignition, so he jumped in and started it, then threw it into gear and drove calmly away from the corpses behind him.

  He looked into the mirror, and saw the marks that Muaz had left on his face. He could barely recognize himself, so severe was the swelling, but it was even and didn't look so much bruised as perhaps just dark. However, what struck him the most was that his left eye was filled with blood. The vessels in it had burst when Muaz had hit him, and his eye was bright and red.

  He drove carefully, keeping the truck just under the speed limit to avoid drawing attention, and so it was exactly seven twelve when he stopped a quarter mile short of the dam and set the timer for ten minutes.

  18

  It was seven fifteen on the dot. Sam and the others had been on the dam for almost four hours, and there had been no sign of Jamal. Sam was wondering if he'd been wrong about where Jamal would go, and was beginning to doubt himself, but he had no other leads. They had not been able to track the phone Jamal was using, and the rad spotter hadn't found any trace of the bomb. Still, Sam waited on the dam, praying that he'd been right, and that this is where the boy would want his last great stand to take place.

  “Anything?” he asked into his walkie-talkie, but all four agents replied that there was nothing suspicious visible.

  “I've got a quartet of girls in a Prius,” Dickens said, at the far end of the dam, “and nothing else at the moment.”

  Sandra Wills, who was stationed at the store, said, “Pickup truck coming past me now. Guy driving it looks a little like our boy, but it isn't him. Face is too dark, and his eye looks odd.”

  Tom Sands, about four hundred feet from Sam, said, “Nobody here.”

  Brennan said something, but Sam didn't catch it. He clicked the mike on his talkie and said, “Sandra? What's that about an eye?”

  “Guy that passed me a minute ago,” she said. “At first I thought it might've been Jamal, but when he got close to me, I got a good look at his face and it's not. This guy's left eye is all bloodshot, bright red, and his face is a lot darker than Jamal's.”

  Sam thought, It couldn't be…

  “Is it the red truck starting across now?” he
asked.

  “Yeah, that's the one,” she said, suddenly sounding worried.

  Brennan said, “I just got a look, and I don't think it's him, either. This guy's face is real fat and puffy, but she's right about the eye. Bright red!”

  Sam didn't say a word, but watched the truck approaching him, keeping his eyes low so that he was looking out from under the brim of his hat. The truck was moving slowly, like every other vehicle that crossed the dam. The speed limit there was only fifteen miles per hour, and stopping on the dam was prohibited, but the only security was at either end, so occasionally someone tried to stop to take a photo or something. A voice over a loud speaker would tell them to keep moving, and if they didn't, then security guards would begin moving toward them. There had been only a few times that anyone was actually arrested, and usually it was just for a bad attitude.

  Sam knew in his gut that this was it. That truck would be carrying the bomb, whether it was Jamal in it or not, and he stepped slightly away from the low wall he'd been sitting on as it came nearer. It was still too far away for him to see the driver clearly, but the dark hair matched. A tingle ran down his spine, the frisson of fear of what he would see when he and the driver came face to face. The others who'd seen him had said he had a red eye.

  Be careful when you meet the man with the red eye, Beauregard had said, according to Kim.

  The truck was almost a quarter of the way across the bridge, and Sam was at its midpoint. In just a moment, it would be right there beside him, and he would know for sure. He let one hand swing nonchalantly at his side, ready to snatch the Glock from its holster. The little thirty-two had done well, but for this, he wanted the gun he knew and trusted.

  Time suddenly went into slow motion, as the truck stopped without warning, and then went into reverse and swung around so that the back end literally bashed into the low concrete wall over which tourists could see Lake Mead. Sam stared as the driver's door flew open and a skinny man leapt out and then hopped right over the side and into the bed of the truck.

  “Jamal!” Sam shouted, and the boy looked up in shock to see him standing there.

  Sam froze, as he saw the bright redness of Jamal's eye, and that moment of hesitation almost cost him his life, as Jamal raised his forty-five and aimed it at him. He squeezed the trigger just as people standing on the dam began to scream and point at his gun, and Sam felt something slam into his left side, spinning him around and knocking him to the ground.

  He'd been shot, he knew, and then he knew he had to get up, he had to kill Jamal before he could throw the bomb into the water. It was all he could do to get a leg under himself, and as he pushed up with his arms, he felt as if his whole left rib cage was being ripped out, but there was too much at stake. The mission was to stop the bomb, and nothing could stop the mission!

  He got to his knees, and when he was able to look, he could see Jamal struggling to lift a box that was clearly too heavy for him to handle alone, but he had one end up on the mangled tailgate. Sam knew that if he got the other end raised just a little higher, the whole thing would slide right over, and the mission would fail.

  He had somehow gotten his Glock into his hand as he'd fallen, and it was still there. He raised it and fired, not even bothering to give a warning, but his first shot missed as Jamal bent down to get a better grip on that end of the box. Another shot came from somewhere else, and Jamal fired once in that direction, but then he was bending again and Sam watched in horror as the box began to tilt.

  To get his end of it that high, Jamal had to stand, and he was almost fully upright, straining to lift the box a little higher, when he turned and looked at Sam once more, and the bright red eye seemed to be laughing at him. Sam fired again, and this time the bullet struck Jamal in his right arm, breaking the bone and making him fall, the box falling back and landing on his right foot. The bones of his foot broke, and Jamal screamed as Sam got to his feet and hobbled as fast as he could to the truck.

  He got to it a moment later, and whipped his gun over the side of its bed to aim it into Jamal's face, but the boy had dropped his own gun and was holding his wounded arm. Sam reached in and got the forty-five, tossing it onto the concrete behind him.

  “Disarm the bomb, Jamal,” he said, but the boy only looked at him for a moment, and then, even through his tears of pain, he began to laugh.

  “It's too late, my friend,” he said. “Even from here, it will do great harm to your country, for the fallout alone will be enough to ruin the water for weeks, perhaps months. And you will die with me, but you will go to hell, and I shall go to Paradise!”

  Sam growled, “Like hell!” as he threw himself over the side and into the truck bed. The box was still at its angle, and Sam looked for a latch, finding it on the opposite side from where he was standing over Jamal. He reached for it and flipped it up, raising the lid, and there was the bomb.

  It was identical to the one he'd seen in Hawaii, and he saw that the timer was down to five minutes and fifty one seconds. He looked at Jamal. “Tell me how to stop it,” he said, “or I'll kill you right now.”

  Jamal laughed. “Then kill me,” he said, and Sam pointed the Glock at his red eye and squeezed the trigger. He almost squeezed it far enough to let the hammer fall and end Jamal's miserable life, but he caught himself and reached for his phone instead, punching for Harry's number.

  “Yes, Sam,” Harry said.

  “I've got the bomb, but the timer has just over five minutes before it goes off. Do we know how to disarm it?”

  Harry could be heard passing the phone to someone else, and another man's voice came on the line. “Sam, is the keypad intact?”

  Sam looked. “Yes!”

  “Enter this sequence: five, one, seven, nine, three, six, two. Watch the timer and tell me if stops after ten seconds.”

  Sam counted off seconds the best he could, but when he reached ten, the timer was still going. “No change,” he said into the phone. “C'mon, man, gimme something, I've got less than five minutes.”

  “Okay, we'll do it the hard way. Do you see the battery? The big gray rectangle on the right of the timer?”

  “Yes, I see it.”

  “Okay, here's where we test your luck. The way the others were wired, there are three wires coming off of that battery, and they were all red wires. Same on yours?”

  “Yes, red wires,” Sam said.

  “Cut them. Cut them all at the same time, if you can, because it's possible that if you don't, the timer could give out one last spark and set off the bomb.”

  Sam stared at the wires. “Cut them, how?” he yelled. “I don't have a knife!”

  “I do,” Sam heard, and turned to see Agent Dickens standing beside the truck with blood streaming from his right shoulder. He fumbled in a pocket and produced a Swiss Army knife that he passed to Sam.

  Sam got the blade open, and then grabbed the wires with one hand while he slid the blade under them with the other. He thought of Indie, of Kenzie, of Danny Jacobs, of his mom and the band and everyone he’d ever cared about, and thought, God, please, let this work!

  He pulled upward with the blade, and felt it slide against the wires, but then they were cut, and when he looked at the timer, it had gone dark. He fell back against the side of the truck as the dam's security people came running up, and he let Wills, Sands and Brennan keep them back.

  “Timer has stopped,” he said into the phone. “It's over.”

  Sam felt a movement to his left and looked up to see that in his haste to stop the bomb, he'd actually laid his Glock down beside him, and Jamal had gotten it. His face was twisted into pure rage as he lifted the gun with his left hand and tried to aim it at Sam's face.

  “You ruined everything!” Jamal screamed, and shoved the gun at Sam as he tried to squeeze the trigger and kill at least this one of Allah's foes, but before his brain could tell his finger to do so, it exploded out the side of his head. Sam thought at first that he'd been shot, but then Jamal's lifeless body fell, and Dick
ens stood there, his face deathly pale, but his gun hand firm and strong, still aimed at the spot where Jamal's head had been a second before. He let the gun fall, and then he looked at Sam and smiled, just before he slid down the side of the truck and onto the dam.

  Sam heard something, and lifted his phone to his ear. It was Harry, yelling for Sam to answer.

  “I'm here, Harry, I'm here. I'm down, and so is Dickens. Jamal shot us both, but he's dead, now.”

  “I'm sending help, Sam, stay with us, son!”

  Sandra Wills leaned over the side of the truck and looked at Sam, and he handed her the phone as he passed out.

  19

  Sam felt something, but he didn't know what it was; a sensation, as if something were touching him, but he had been so long in the dark and without any sensation that it seemed alien and unrecognizable. Then there were the sounds, strange sounds that seemed to be liked beeps and clicks. He knew he'd heard them before, sometime long ago, maybe, but he couldn't remember what they were.

  A new sensation, and he began to realize that he had a body again, and it was in pain. He didn't know why he was in pain, but realizing it brought back a memory of another time he'd been in pain, and those same sounds had been there, then, too. The beeping and the clicking, those were the sounds he'd wakened to when he'd been shot, a long, long time ago…

  “Oh, crap,” he muttered, and then the new sensation became stronger. It was a hand holding his own hand, and then new sounds came, as well.

  “Sam? Oh, God, Sam, please wake up, baby! Sam, I'm here, babe, and I need you, please wake up!”

  Sam managed to listen to the voice, and realized that it was Indie talking to him. He tried to smile, but there was something in his mouth, and he opened his eyes to see Indie there, smiling at him, with tears flowing down her cheeks.

  “Sam? Oh, baby, can you hear me?” He managed a nod, and then pulled his hand away from her to try to get whatever was in his mouth out, but she grabbed it again when she saw what he was doing. “No, babe, you have to leave it alone. They've got a lot of tubes and wires in you right now, but the doctor said he can take them out when you come to. Let me call the nurse, and she'll get him, okay?”