by Tom Lowe
“We’re within two miles of the U-235,” Sharif said. “Borshnik does not suspect we are en route because he is not aware we know his location. Abdul-Waahid is a martyr. He is in paradise. His death bonds the umma, the brotherhood. He walked into the face of the infidels and removed at least nine of them. The FBI, CIA and the rest are in a state of chaos. I have given orders for the girl to be taken alive today. Her father will do as we order. Within a few days, we will have an atomic bomb here on American soil. Now they will learn a lesson as we do much more than bloody their noses, the same noses that they stick in the world’s affairs, hamdulihhah.”
Sharif nodded, listened in silence for a half minute and said, “Inshallad, it will be done. Allah akbar.”
***
O’BRIEN AND ERIC HUNTER watched EMTs load Dave Collins in an ambulance. Dave, conscious, one eye swollen, with its surrounding area the size and color of a plum, looked at O’Brien and asked, “How many dead?”
“I don’t know.”
“Lauren … .”
“She didn’t make it.”
Dave closed his eyes for a long moment, his barrel chest rising and falling. “I’m sorry … find them Sean. You and Eric make a good team. Be damn careful. America’s never experienced anything like this before. It could make 911 look like boy scouts. Bring in Gates if you can catch him.”
“Get well,” Hunter said.
As the paramedics closed the ambulance doors, one of a dozen ambulances carting the injured, O’Brien said, “Let’s move. My Jeep’s in the lot.”
“I’m parked near you. I’ve got a pretty fair arsenal in the trunk. Plenty of rounds. Let’s stop there first. Got a feeling we might need the firepower.”
More than two dozen television satellite trucks lined the parking lot. A herd of reporters and onlookers were kept behind the yellow tape. O’Brien and Hunter had to walk through the pack to get to their vehicles.
Reporter Susan Schulman stepped in front of O’Brien. A cameraman rolled, the tiny red light on the camera an unblinking Cyclops’ eye. She gripped the microphone with one hand, red fingernails like talons of a hawk holding something dead. “Mr. O’Brien, we understand the casualty number could reach as high as perhaps a dozen people. Can you give us a short soundbite? What did you see?”
“Fuck you. Is that short enough?” O’Brien and Hunter continued walking.
“Asshole!” Schulman shouted, turning to her cameraman, “Cut.”
***
MIKE GATES DROVE ACROSS the Fuller Warren Bridge into the heart of Jacksonville. He punched the car’s radio station selector trying to find a newscast. There was an odd sound, like static created by approaching lightning. The sky was clear.
“Bastards!” he grunted. He turned off the exit into West Bay Street and parked his car in the lot adjacent to the Omni Hotel. Gates got out and walked up to a taxi, the driver reading the paper. “Can you take me to JaxPort?” Gates asked.
“Sure, get in.”
Gates got in the backseat and the driver asked, “Where to at JaxPort?”
“The old Pier 13 … should be a warehouse near there.”
“I have an idea where it is,” the cabbie said, pulling out of the hotel lot. “Place is in a rough part of the docks.”
“I’m representing a developer. We’re looking at it purely as a speculative buy. Condos could be in there in a couple of years.”
***
THE CAB DRIVER PULLED into a service road that led down to Pier 13. He drove slowly past a discolored Chiquita Banana sign, long ago faded from salt air and time.
“Park by the dumpster,” Gates said. “I’ll be down by the water. Wait for me.”
“I can’t stay too long, understand? Got other customers—”
“Here’s a hundred.” Gates tossed the bill on the front seat. “Wait for me. I won’t be long. Then you can take me to the airport.”
The driver stuck the money in his shirt pocket. Gates climbed out of the car and walked toward the rusted and broken Pier 13. The place looked creepy, he thought, including the old pier, which slept derelict-like by the dark water. He glanced at his watch, lit a cigarette, and watched a tanker leave the port across the wide river, heading for the Atlantic Ocean.
The cab driver watched him. He pulled the hundred dollar bill out of his pocket and held it up in the fading sunlight.
There was a noise. Maybe a rat in the dumpster. The cabbie looked toward Gates standing by the dock as the rubber lid on the dumpster flew open. A shotgun blast fired directly into the open window of the cab. The cabbie’s face was blown off. His jawbone propelled out the passenger window.
Zahkar Sororkin pointed the barrel at Gates. “Hands up! Drop your gun!”
Gates did as ordered. Sorokin climbed from the abandoned dumpster, 12-gauge shotgun aimed at Gates’ chest. “Kick the gun away from you.”
“No! What’s going on? Borshnik and I have a deal.”
“Kick the gun!” Sorokin yelled, stepping closer. “Do it or this shotgun will take your head off. They will find pieces of it in the river. The catfish will eat the soft parts.”
Gates dropped his pistol. “I want to see Borshnik.”
“And he wants to see you.”
***
MOHAMMED SHARIF AND HIS caravan were less than five miles from the docks. He made a call. “The boat must be there in half an hour. The Americans will block all roads. They will not think to monitor their ports and Intracoastal Waterway … they never do.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR
O’Brien drove his Jeep up I-95 at almost ninety-miles-per hour. Hunter sat in the passenger seat, holding the GPS in his lap. He said, “There is no movement from Gates’ car. He’s in downtown Jacksonville, near the river.”
“Maybe that’s the location. Could be something there, a building, store, auto body shop, whatever.”
“Or he could have found out we’re tailing him and left his car in a parking lot.” Through his dark sunglasses, Hunter looked at the GPS screen. He punched in a satellite image of a map, scaled closer. “Looks like Gates is at Riverside Avenue. I’ll start making the calls. We’ll bring in F-16’s if we have to … they won’t crawl out of there.”
“First, we bring Jason out alive.”
***
ROBERT MILLER HAD JUST ordered his third Irish whiskey when his cell played the first few bars from Mozart’s Requiem. He lifted the phone from the bar, looked through his bifocals and saw that it was security calling from his condo. “Mr. Miller, this is John in security at—”
“Yes, what is it?”
“You’d asked me to call, sir, if anyone was inquiring about you.”
“Yes, what do you have?”
“Well, sir, two men were here. Said they worked for the government, but they didn’t show ID. Looked like FBI types. Told them you weren’t in, and they left”
“When?”
“About ten minutes ago.”
“Thank you.” Miller pressed the disconnect button and looked up at the bartender, a woman in her mid-thirties. He asked, “Do you have children?”
The bartender smiled. “Yes, a son. He’s seven.”
“What’s his name?”
“Andy.”
“As you raise him, give him confidence and humility. It’s often difficult to do. Many people can’t connect the two. But, together, they are powerful attributes.”
The bartender thought for a beat. “Yes sir, they sure are.”
“Can you make arrangements for me to stay here tonight? At my age, capacity for fine drink isn’t what it used to be. A nice sleep would make a world of difference.”
“Would you like a lower level room, or something near the penthouse?”
“Why go near the penthouse when you can go to the penthouse?”
“I agree.” The bartender smiled.
Miller slid a platinum America Express card toward her. “Put everything on there, and while you’re at it, give yourself a two-hundred dollar tip.”
&nb
sp; “Yes sir! Thank you!”
“Oh, by the way,” Miller gestured toward the pool beyond the smoked glass windows of the bar. He looked at an older woman sitting alone at a table beneath an umbrella surrounded by royal palms in a lush tropical setting. She had long gray hair, which she wore in a braid over her shoulder. “The lady out there, the one about my age … .”
“Yes sir?”
“Do you know her?”
“Yes sir. That’s Mrs. Lewinski. She lives in one of the condos across the street. Comes over here sometimes. Husband used to come with her. But he died about three months ago. She always orders a mint julep. She likes a view of the beach. Nice lady.”
“I imagine she is,” Miller said, watching the woman under the umbrella. “Send her a dozen of the hotel’s finest red roses mixed with sprigs of mint. Put it on my card.”
“Yes sir.”
***
MILLER ENTERED THE PENTHOUSE, the Atlantic wide and blue beyond the large veranda. He fixed a drink from the bar and opened the French doors to the veranda, the salty breeze from the ocean warm against his face. He set the drink on a glass table near fresh-cut flowers, and braced his hands on the railing. He glanced at his hands. They looked like old claws with age spots the size of dimes. The taste of diseased tissue rose from his lungs to his throat. The wind tossed his white hair as he stared out across the Atlantic. Heat lightning pulsed through a tumbling stretch of purple clouds over the horizon.
“You do give up your dead sometimes,” he mumbled. He looked down at the parking lot twenty-five floors beneath him. Robert Miller climbed on a chair and stepped up onto the ledge, felt the wind in his face, looked at the sea one final time before plunging off the balcony and free-falling like a fledgling bird toward the dark asphalt.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE
A glass of cold water splashed across Mike Gates’ face. His head pounded. Gates was groggy, his vision blurred as if he’d opened his eyes wearing a dive mask underwater, a surreal perspective around him. He was strapped in a metal folding chair, stripped to his underwear, his feet in metal buckets filled with water. Wires ran from his ankles and wrists. He shook his head. This wasn’t happening.
Standing in front of him was Boris Borshnik. Seven heavily armed men stood at the windows and doors. Two men sat at folding tables, three laptop computers on the tables, the canisters of HEU lined on the wooden floor, a small video camera trained on them. Twenty feet to Gates’ left, Jason Canfield was tied to a chair. The kid had dried blood around his mouth, one eye swollen shut.
Gates looked up at Borshnik and said, “We had a deal! We had an agreement!”
“So did my father with your FBI in 1951!” Borshnik roared.
“That had nothing to do with me.”
“Yes it did! Because the man who lied to my father trained you, and you lied to me about Robert Miller. You told me he died of cancer. Now I know otherwise. You denied me that retribution years ago.”
“I’m more valuable to you alive than dead.”
“You have no value. You made a mistake, said something that should only be said if the other side knows it. You understand the game, but in your haste, you told me you had been exposed. The only value you have to your government now is in making you an example. I shall save them the cost, most generous of me. Don’t you agree? Probably not, because for you, it has always been about the money.”
Borshnik pulled a roll of one hundred bills out of his pocket, shoved them between Gate’s teeth and tied the bills in his mouth using a small piece of rope like a bit and bridle for a horse. He nodded and one of his men plugged the wires into a 210 volt power outlet. The force of the electricity threw Gates back in the chair, his head slamming against the brick wall.
Gates screamed, his voice like frightened growls from a muzzled dog. His body convulsing and shaking as the electricity burned into his nervous system. Smoke coming from his wrists. His neck corded in veins and muscles. His heart pumped in erratic beats, his bladder collapsing and urine soaking his underwear.
Jason Canfield looked the other way, tears seeping from his swollen eyes.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX
Andrei Keltzin stood by a dirty window on the north side of the room, looked out and saw Mohammed Sharif’s three vehicles turning into the parking lot. He said nothing as he watched Borshnik move away from Gate’s body and speak to one of the men sitting behind the bank of laptop computers.
Keltzin stepped back from the window. “Shall I dispose of the corpse?”
Borshnik looked at Gates burned body. “I wonder what they did with my father’s body. Probably fed it to American hogs. Yes, remove it.”
Keltzin nodded, began untwisting the wires from the charred flesh. “Could Zahkar help me?”
Borshnik said, “Be quick.”
***
ON THE GROUND FLOOR, Keltzin said, “We can carry him to the end of the dock and let him go in the water. It is probably deep. The body should stay down for a while before it floats. You will be back in Russia by then.”
“And you return to New York to await further instructions?”
“Yes. Let us share a cigarette first. I have some very good ones made in Pakistan.” Keltzin reached inside his jacket and pulled a knife, the movement a half second blur. He sank the knife to the hilt directly into Sorokin’s heart. The man fell like a steer in a slaughterhouse.
Keltzin turned and waved toward Mohammed Sharif’s vehicles, directing him to park on the far side of the warehouse. Sharif got out of the car, nine men following him.
“We can go though the freight elevator entrance,” Keltzin said. “I just took out one of his men. That leaves seven including Borshnik. They are on the third floor, the northeast corner of the building. Go up the steps and turn right at the top. The room will be less than twenty meters down the hall.”
Sharif gestured with his head and one of his men handed Keltzin an oversized black attaché case. Keltzin lowered it to the ground and opened it. The case was filled with stacks of hundred-dollar bills. Sharif said, “We do not have time for you to count it.”
Keltzin grinned. “I trust you.”
Sharif touched his cheek and said, “That will be your last big mistake.” One of his men raised a Beretta with a silencer and shot Keltzin through the back of the head, blood and brain matter scattering across the green of the money.
Sharif looked across the river. “Our boat is approaching. Proceed upstairs. You know what to do. Today, some of us will enter paradise. Inshallad.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN
Eric Hunter nodded his head, anxious for the caller to finish. “Thanks,” he said disconnecting.
O’Brien asked, “What do we have?”
“Cab dispatcher said his driver reported that he’d taken a customer to Pier 13 on Jacksonville’s northeast side, not far from JaxPort. It’s a warehouse area.”
O’Brien squealed the tires racing out of the parking lot, almost hitting a man unloading golf clubs from the back of a car. “Did the driver leave after he dropped off the man?” O’Brien asked.
“Dispatch doesn’t know. The driver isn’t answering his radio or his cell.”
“Which means we can’t get a description of his customer.”
“Yeah.”
“How far is this place?”
Hunter looked at the GPS. “About eight miles. Take Bay to 95, then to 105 and follow it to Hecksler. I’ll start calling for backup as soon as I get a satellite image of the area.” Hunter punched in the coordinates for the Pier 13 area and watched a satellite image appear on his hand-held screen. He zoomed in to about five-hundred feet above the buildings. “If they’re in a warehouse directly in front of the pier, we can have the snipers on the two buildings to the east and west. Maybe catch the hostiles in crossfire. Plenty of cover even for ground forces.”
O’Brien shook his head. “To catch them in crossfire is to wait for them to come out. They’ll be more cautious leaving. We don’t know if the winning bidder will com
e there to pick up the HEU, or if Borshnik’s men will leave it in storage for the buyers, especially if the winning bid is from overseas.”
“Could be from Mohammed Sharif’s camp. And they are somewhere in Florida.”
Hunter made a quick series of calls, creating a plan of attack with federal agents and local SWAT. “Remember, chief, there can be no sirens. Nothing but stealth, and we’re calling the shots.”
***
MOHAMMED SHARIF USED HAND signals to direct his men as they came closer to the door. Each man carried a side weapon and held Berettas or modified AK-47 assault rifles. At the door, he reached down and carefully turned the handle. It was not locked. The Russians expected no one. Sharif pushed open the door. They stepped in, firing.
Two Russian guards died instantly. The rest returned fire. Bullets ripping through flesh, splattering blood across the gypsum walls of the old warehouse.
Jason looked in horror as a bullet hit one Russian in the throat, his body falling across Jason’s lap and tumbling to the floor, the sound of gurgling drowned by gunfire.
Two of Sharif’s men died within five seconds. But the Russians, caught off guard had nowhere to retreat. Bullets exploded the computers, ricocheting off the brick on one wall. Borshnik fired three bursts from his Makarov before a bullet caught him square in the chest, his body falling against the chair where Gates was electrocuted, water from the buckets splashing across the floor.
In less than a half minute it was over. Eight Russians lay dead. Three jihad members were dead. Sharif’s shoulder was bleeding. Heavy smoke and the smell of gunpowder, blood and death seemed trapped in the room.
Sharif looked at the HEU canisters. “Take them to the boat. We must be out of here in seven minutes.” Sharif stepped over to Jason. “Are you Canfield? Are you the son of the American hero who lost his life on the USS Cole?”
Jason looked up at the man through puffy, swollen eyelids. “Yes.”