by Milt Mays
Rocca left, Sam got back in and Rachel drove off. It was 6:40 a.m. Two hours and Rocca would be off. If not, there was a later flight. He was a big boy. Could take care of himself. She knew that, but still wanted to drive back and wait with him. Tired. That’s what it was. What a worrying momma-jomma she was turning into.
There was a delay getting out of Terminal 2—construction. She sat and ticked her fingernails on the steering wheel.
Sam glanced at her. “He’ll be okay. He’s not stupid.”
“Yeah.” The wind buffeted them. She thought of the view of the lake as she’d driven up I-90. Hazy and humid, like the Brazilian lab where everything had started on the Amazon River. She craned her neck and looked at her face in the rearview. Yep. She was getting too old for this shit.
#
Jabril watched as Rachel and Sam dropped off Rocca.
How entirely wonderful. His nemesis, the man who had followed him across the globe and nearly killed him was here, and unsuspecting. Though Rocca still carried himself as erect as any soldier, and didn’t look to have an ounce of fat under his tee shirt, the lines of age had crept into his eyes, around his mouth, and the stubble of hair next to his ears caught the light at times and shone in grizzled splendor. He could be taken so easily. All Jabril had to do was wait. But why? From his foray yesterday in Virginia, he had discerned that his ultimate prize lay in Rachel Anne Lane. He should go after her. Forget about Rocca.
Yet there was a deep part of Jabril that could not leave this man; this man who in 2001 had tracked him from Jakarta all the way to Colorado Springs and ultimately been responsible for his hypothermic suspended animation in the vault and subsequent repeated painful biopsies. And besides, Rachel was already gone. Rocca would reveal where she was after an extended session of Jabril’s claw, a tool he had used so well yesterday in Virginia . . .
#
Finding the old woman outside Richmond had been an enjoyable hour, and fruitful—he discovered a way to cripple the infidels, possibly forever.
While in the city of Richmond, he first stole two credit cards—easy to do in Richmond’s shopping mall—lots of wealthy elderly women. He used the map feature on the cell phone and located the ramshackle house near the James River, twenty minutes south of Richmond. It appeared to be two miles from the nearest neighbor. His tongue touched an eye tooth. If Juwani Moc’s daughter was there, how delicious, a young woman and so isolated no one would know. His first after over fifteen years.
He found a Walmart, purchased a razor, white shirt, navy blue tie, a pair of dark chinos and slip-on penny loafers. At the checkout, he chose an extra forty dollars in cash. In the Walmart bathroom, he shaved, cleaned up and dressed in his new clothes, putting the old in the garbage can. Scrutiny in the mirror revealed a svelte but properly attired FBI agent. He went back into the store and with the other credit card, bought gum and got more cash, a hundred in two fifties.
He drove to a truck stop store and turned in the tens for ones, rubber banding the fifties around the ones—a nice wad of seeming fifties to entice the woman to let him in the door, hopefully enough to compensate for him not being a Caucasian FBI agent.
Driving on, he stopped at another shopping mall. Inside the mall he found a photo fun booth and took head shots. He inserted one into a driver’s license from one of the dead guards in D.C. and glued the black letters F B I in one corner.
A short drive later, he found the greedy woman’s dilapidated cedar-siding home at the end of a long dirt road. There were no other houses for miles. Perfect. He knocked on the paint-chipped and peeling screen door. A gnarled female hand separated the curtains from the long, narrow window beside the door. Two glittering eyes inspected him. “What do you want?” The same voice, no mistake.
He flashed the fake ID. “I’m James Latrell. I called earlier.” With his other hand he held out the thick wad of money.
The curtains remained parted and the eyes flickered back and forth from money to ID. She disappeared. He waited. No movement.
The lock unlatched and she opened the door and pushed the screen door out, hinges creaking. “Come in, sir.”
Inside, most of the curtains were drawn and a few scattered lamps offered little illumination into musty corners. He felt as if he’d stepped back into books about the Old South. Cream-colored doilies with tan, curled-up edges covered mahogany tables. Wing-backed Queen Anne chairs were spotless, though worn through close to the seams. He stood in the foyer on a very thin, tattered oriental rug covering a dark wooden floor that creaked with each step. There were no other rugs. This one was probably to impress those who got this far. Hard to give up the last vestige of wealth. Once there had been money, but except for the rug it was long gone. All that was left was pride and greed.
He was so busy inspecting, he lost sight of the woman. There was the unmistakable Ka-shak of someone pumping a shell in a shotgun. Cold metal tubes pressed against his left flank, so hard he thought they might cut him.
“What in the hell do you take me for, mister? I look like I was born in the corncribs?”
“Ma’am?” He tried to sound dumbfounded, but his anger grew, and so did the tickle under his fingernails.
“Check him for a gun, Izzie.”
Of course he had no gun or knife. Why would he need one?
The lovely daughter of Juwani Moc, Izzie, short for Isabelle he was sure, slipped out of the shadows and began patting him down for a weapon. She had strong cheekbones, and though her nose was too long, she was lithe and her pale skin as flawless as new snow on an Afghan meadow. She kept her long-lashed eyes averted. The feel of her slender hands on his thighs, under his arms, and the smell of her recently shampooed, thick, auburn hair made him so hard he ached.
Then a man, perhaps better described as a bear, walked in from the kitchen.
“Ma, what’re ya doin’ to this nice man?” His voice sounded dull and deep and as slow as a mentally retarded boy Jabril had known in school. A huge man, he ducked coming under the kitchen doorway, and turned sideways to get through. There was a bit of a paunch, but mostly he was solid, with arms like trees and hands like baseball gloves.
“Never you mind, Lonny. You get that cable in the corner and wrap it around him. He’s come to find Juwani.” She cackled, her laugh a high-pitched ugly sound.
The big man slowly shook his head and smiled. “He won’t find Mr. Moc, will he, Ma. He went to Milwaukee.”
“Shut up, boy. Get the cable.”
Jabril felt his body change almost instantly, engorged muscles filling the dress shirt to capacity. The old woman gasped. He spun around and grabbed the shotgun. It went off, blasting one of the lamps. Wanting to save the hag for questioning, he tapped her on the skull with a fist and she crumpled like a broken pretzel.
The big man was slow in the head but fast as a cat on his feet. He had Jabril in a bear hug before he could react. “You hurt Ma, mister. That ain’t right.” He squeezed.
The air whooshed out of Jabril’s mouth. Ribs cracked. Before he could think, he reacted and the rest was a blur. The bear was on the floor, a gaping wound coursing from neck to belly, blood gushing and him crying out, “Oh, Ma.” He gurgled once and his body went slack.
The beautiful pale-skinned girl cowered in the corner.
“Come here,” Jabril said, his voice a foreign, eerie monotone.
She shook her head and he was on her in two leaps. It had been too long, much too long. A rope inside was so tight he felt it might snap. Her auburn hair was long and coiled about her neck. He breathed in her aroma and wanted to howl. With one clawed finger he flipped her hair back and cut off her blouse and bra. Her breasts were small, but as beautiful and perfect as two pink budding roses, reminding him of the Persian roses they raised in Iraq. She screamed.
Somewhere deep in what might once have been his conscience, too far away to really matter at this point, a very tiny alarm went off. This was wrong, it chimed. He ignored it. The screaming was wrong. He clapped a hand over her m
outh, and gathered her to him. A roar of red and black pulsed in his head. No. Yes. No. Yes, yes, yes.
It seemed like only seconds and it was over. Her dead eyes stared at the ceiling and her neck pumped crimson from a ragged gash. In the heat of the moment, his clawed hand must have slipped off her mouth. He withdrew from her and pushed her away. She hit the wood floor, thin bones knocking like apples in a sack, head rapping like a green coconut. His mouth twitched in a smile. Another infidel was dead. How joyous, how wonderful. Yet he was sorry she was dead. He wanted another round, this time slower so he could savor it, remember it.
The old woman moved and her eyes fluttered. His laughter stopped like a fist hitting a cement wall, swallowed by the ancient room, mocked by the dead eyes of the young woman. His chest constricted. Isabelle was not an infidel. He had raped a Believer’s daughter, the beautiful hope of a fellow-in-arms.
He vomited, retched over and over, then pulled up his pants and went to the kitchen sink. Wash. Yes, that would help. He scrubbed his hands with soap and splashed water on his face. Doing this calmed him, and his claws and fangs retracted, bulging muscles receded. He found a brush under the sink and scrubbed his fingernails, his hands, hard. Harder. A sigh of relief escaped, but only lasted a second, his mind whirling in confusion.
What had he become? He could see his mother’s disapproving frown after he came back from an extremist meeting with his father, wondering why he could believe what they ranted. Yes, he had doubts then, too. But after the infidels killed her? No. If this is what it takes, this is what he will give. After all, this daughter was no longer a Believer. She had been raised in the infidel’s way. A pinching behind his left ear and he was sure. Another dead infidel. Move on. The hag would have information he needed.
He toweled off most of the blood from his face and hands and returned to the old woman. The shirt hung on him in tatters.
Mrs. Jasper sat, wide eyes staring.
“You’re right, Mrs. Jasper. I am not from the FBI. But I do need all the information you have on Juwani Moc.”
She had good lungs; must have been a singer with such a loud scream. But there were no close neighbors, and being old and weak she gave up quickly. He was also very good with one claw.
The information she spewed surprised him. She had an excellent memory, very detailed. Would have made an especially useful accomplice, had she not been so weak. Or perhaps he had been too forceful. At any rate, before she died, she confirmed what had been roaming around inside him, a plan so close to his heart, it was as if he had already thought of it. How could that be? Had those mice somehow connected him with the GMO network? He’d also heard an Ambrosia commercial on the radio and perhaps that suggested it: Ambrosia—food for America, food of the gods.
Chapter 15
Before she died, she had blurted, in between screams and sobs, a few important points about Juwani’s research. It boiled down to the type of food Americans ate. Except for the ten percent of people who now lived in rural areas, most of America lived close to a big-box grocery store that got their foods from big conglomerate growers like Ambrosia. An even smaller percent of holdouts grew their own food in rural areas, so GMO plants had become 95% of the American vegetable diet, and 99.9% of the animal feed. The foods were like him, DNA mutations, Genetically Modified Organisms. And in a very small percentage of these mutations something had gone amiss. He could identify with that. Yet errors could sometimes lead to wonderful endings. He looked at his fingers, yearning to feel the claws again.
He brought his concentration back to what the old woman had said about the GMO foods. Something had gone amiss in a minuscule percentage. Yet that errant percentage, a tiny amount compared to the entire production, caused people to hemorrhage internally and die.
Ah yes, he thought, the news he’d seen on the TV of people in Wisconsin.
The hag had babbled on about Juwani laughing at how it took only three little molecules to screw up thousands. Jabril put this together to mean three amino acids in thousands of sequences that caused the health problems. All he had to do was make sure that error became the norm and was spread throughout the USA. And it would be so wonderful. Blood everywhere.
Though he knew of the amino acids in DNA, he knew nothing of DNA sequencing. He needed more information. The old woman was obliging. The company responsible for these GMO’s was La Riva Labs. Who in La Riva? The crone had repeated two names over and over, unchanging despite his insistent claw: Dr. Rachel Anne Lane and Dr. Alex Smith. Juwani had been hired as a lowly research assistant at La Riva in D.C., way back in 2000, before everyone was so suspicious of Muslims. He helped doctors Lane and Smith in their project creating a variant of corn, wheat, and rice extremely high in vitamins A and C, having twice the protein content of standard grains, and tasting delicious. A perfect food to feed the poor nations of the world. Like Iraq.
Jabril lost focus on his victim, withdrew the claw. Rachel and Alex were good people; people Muslims should revere, not hate. His mind spun. He wanted to hate Rachel, torture her and her lover, his enemy, Alex. And then a memory surfaced and he lost his grip on the old woman. She slid from his hands, a woman he could not afford to lose, a woman with answers.
The memory had been hidden since Alex had tried to save Jabril over the Royal Gorge Bridge. It concerned Jabril’s grandmother, Alexandra. She had saved Alex’s parents from the Nazis. Why was Jabril so bent on killing Alex? And Rachel? His mother would have invited them to evening meal.
A pain rocked him. Hit with such fire and lancinating agony, he fell to one knee. He reached to his left ear, wanting to claw the pain away. But his hand could go no higher than his shoulder.
The pain ceased. His thoughts were clear again. Where was the old woman?
She had made it to the next room and was reaching for the shotgun. He interrupted her, and, in minutes, discovered the rest of the story, or at least what she could tell him before she died. Juwani had gone to Milwaukee. Yes. Wisconsin first, then Bagdad, Florida.
Now Jabril was on track again. Find Juwani and the plants. Though that had become the back-up plan. He must find Rachel and Alex. They would know how to modify the DNA for all the rest of the plants. They knew how to make the plants even more dangerous, to where they killed 50 percent of the people who ate them. In the end he would have to find a way into Ambrosia’s production plant to mass-produce the killer foods.
Inside him it felt like an egg broke and the yolk spread in a soothing infusion. This was the mission he’d been feeling but not completely sure of before. This was why he was going west. Rachel, Alex and Ambrosia. Rachel knew the error that caused the foods to kill and would be able to reproduce it. He could control her by controlling her husband. He could control Alex by controlling her. They would lead him to the secrets of Ambrosia, the secrets that would finally destroy the infidels. His teachers had been absolutely right. The 9/11 attacks may not have ended the infidels, but the jihad would keep going, keep coming at them until one day the last of the infidels would perish.
This was that day.
Another thought fluttered. If he could tap into Alex’s thoughts, he could find Rachel.
He stood in the midst of the dead in the old Southern wealth and closed his eyes, concentrating on a psychic connection to Alex, a connection that had materialized seventeen years ago. He was rewarded. Another lucky break: Alex was asleep, at his most vulnerable, so Jabril could probe his recent thoughts. Jabril and luck had always been partners. But even in sleep, Alex resisted, keeping Jabril at bay. The only hint Jabril got was flashes of white mice with fangs scurrying around Rachel’s feet, their view of a building with the words “Medical College of Wisconsin.” There was also snow falling outside of an old, beat-up, white pickup truck driving through deep snow, surrounded by mountains. And there was another place, fields of corn, music, and . . . a hint of another one like Alex. It was a deeper connection to Alex, like Rachel only different. Alex’s child?
Everything went blank. A giant claw se
emed to peel back part of his occipital skull. Alex must be causing the pain. Jabril squeezed his eyes tight and clutched the back of his head, hoping to end the connection with Alex.
As quickly as it started, the pain was gone. He opened his eyes and sighed deeply. A pickup truck in mountains? Fields of corn and music? He would have to think about that. But the mice with fangs rang a bell: mice attacking people in Milwaukee. Rachel must be going there. It felt right. That was where he needed to go to get the GMO foods and mice.
Could Alex and Rachel have a child? Ahh. More leverage. He wondered if the child was a daughter. Could she be blond? Mmm.
The Internet on the cell phone should help him. But the 4G coverage became spotty. A small red dollar sign icon in the upper corner reminded him he needed to deposit another hundred dollars or his coverage would run out in thirty minutes.
He walked around the house and found one room with good coverage. There were no flights to Milwaukee where the Medical College of Wisconsin was located. But there was a flight to Chicago from Richmond, a red-eye that left at 1 a.m. He could steal a car and drive the one hour north to Milwaukee. That would work.
The next problem was getting on a plane. He could not use the guard’s ID. They would be looking for that. Downtown Richmond should offer a wealth of people with IDs he could use.
He took a shower and found clean but old clothes in a back bedroom, jeans that were too large, and a tee shirt with “Redskins” in block red letters on the front. The drive to Richmond was short. He parked in the Downtown district and began his search walking southeast on West Cary Street on the right side of the road. He passed Francesca’s Café and Coffee Bar and a slate sign with a message written in chalk advertising a going-out-of-business sale for Premier Costumes. Some strange looking people coming out of there. In the next block, he found what he wanted. La Paris Wine Bistro. He waited around the corner of the building at an alley. It did not take long. An elderly man, white hair and beard, thin and hunched, came out and sauntered down the street, right by Jabril. He snared the man into the alley and broke his neck, not wanting any blood to damage his clothes. The man’s clothes fit well and his driver’s license was perfect. Another bonus, there was a large amount of cash in his wallet. Luck. Again, and again.