Countdown to Mecca

by Michael Savage

  “No, General. Anything that would align our tactics with their tactics merits a big, fat second look.” He put his hand on Morton’s shoulder. “General, you know this is wrong. You know bringing down that passenger plane was wrong. You know trying to kill us was wrong. For God’s sake, stop this now before it’s too late.”

  Morton looked at Jack, then looked away. He didn’t answer, which was his answer. Finally he all but whispered, “Get off my property.”

  The four other people on the sidewalk looked at each other, and then, as if in a funeral march, moved toward the minivan. Jack was the last one to enter. He looked back at General Morton, took out one of his business cards, and tossed it on the front lawn. It looked very small, and Morton looked very alone, in front of his house.

  “Tell your commanding officer I’d like an interview,” Jack said. “Anywhere, anytime.”

  That, of all things, brought a small, irony-filled, smile to Morton’s lips. “You know what’s funny? He’d like that,” the man said softly. “He wanted that.”

  Jack nodded. “Good. And, sir?” He waited until Morton met his eyes. “Another rhetorical question. What if you do this and we lose? What would the world look like then? Think about that, okay?”

  “I will,” said Morton stiffly. Then under his breath, he added, “I have.”

  “Good,” Jack repeated. “Call me anytime, from anywhere, but make it soon. I’d rather settle this than go public with the data and this video.” He nodded toward the man’s house. “There are other lives to consider.”

  Morton said nothing, waiting until the minivan, and then the silent hybrid sedan, pulled away, and disappeared around the corner. He stood there for a few moments more, then wearily retrieved the business card and trudged back to his house.

  As he entered the foyer, he could hear, and partially see out the windows, that the birthday party was still in full swing. It made an incongruous dichotomy with what had just happened. Morton sighed and went to his office to return the gun to its place in the “forbidden” desk drawer.

  He placed the silencer back in its red velvet place, but paused with the gun in his hand. He looked at the powerful automatic, the favorite of SEAL teams everywhere, and thought about the good it had done all over the world. He thought about all the heroes who held it and used it to accomplish honorable goals. He heard the pleading of all the evil people it had vanquished.

  And then, mixing in with the begging, he heard the voices of the people on that Russian passenger plane they had brought down, growing louder and more pitiful, until it drowned out all the rest. Morton looked at the gun as if hypnotized.

  Hadn’t there been a rumor that the commander-in-chief had known of the December 7, 1941 attack of Pearl Harbor, but had let it happen so the entire country would support our entering World War II? In that case, weren’t those heroes who died in the attack the same as the plane passengers?

  No. Even if the rumors were true, the commander-in-chief simply didn’t relay the information to Pearl Harbor authorities. They didn’t plan, or hire someone to carry out, the attack.

  The cries grew louder in Morton’s head as he brought the gun up, rather than place it down in its case. He found his mouth opening and his eyes closing. He felt the bite of the muzzle against the top of his mouth’s palette. The screams of the dying filled his head until he thought he’d hear nothing ever again.

  “Daddy!”

  Morton’s eyes snapped opened.

  “Where’s daddy?” he heard from outside. “He said he was going to give me a big surprise, like, hours ago!”

  Morton blinked, the gun jerking from his mouth. His lips twisted into a shocked grin, and a voice deep inside his head, over the now silent screams, said, “Yeah, this would have been quite a big surprise for your son, wouldn’t it?”

  Morton snapped the gun back into its box and slapped the lid shut with the finality of a coffin. He had done this, all of it, for them, his children. To give them a better world upon which to build. Suddenly he saw it all clearly. It would all be over in just a few days. A matter of a few dozen hours, really. It was too far along to stop.

  Let the clowns and their friends try, he thought. One way or another, Morton had done his job. He had done what he thought right. He had done it for his family, and that, at the end of the day, or at the end of the world, was always what he would do.

  General Montgomery Morton closed and locked his desk drawer, then went out to hug his children. The setting up of an interview, desired by both sides, between Brooks and Hatfield, could wait until after the party.

  25

  “Kinky,” Doc said when he noticed the tag on Sammy’s sleeve.

  “How did you find us?” Sammy asked breathlessly.

  Jack tried not to come down hard on his brother’s foolhardiness. Not now. “Sammy, you knew that the safe house had cameras all over the place. Also, you didn’t erase your cache. We looked where you looked.”

  “And strike three,” Sol explained from the driver’s seat. “All my vehicles have tracking devices that only we can follow.”

  “Wow,” Sammy said. “You’re harder to trip up than the FBI.”

  Neither Jack, Doc, or Sol told him why.

  “I’m gonna kill Ric for this,” was all Sol said.

  No one was sure whether he meant it literally or figuratively.

  “Did you tell Miwa to come onto the poor guy?” Jack asked Ana, in case it was the former.

  “No!” Ana insisted. “She already liked him. She likes nerdy types. She did it on her own.” She looked at Sammy. “We didn’t even think about crashing the party until after they both went to shower.”

  “Did you even have a plan?” Jack pointedly asked.

  “Of course I had a plan!” Sammy answered resentfully. “When we saw on Mrs. Morton’s social media page that she was having a big birthday party for her son, I realized that nobody would question a party clown. It was too good to pass up. By the time I realized that, the party was just about to start. I knew that if we waited and went through the chain of command, we’d miss it.”

  “So you just took off on impulse,” Jack countered.

  “Yeah,” Sammy said proudly. “I suppose you’ve never gone by your gut?”

  “Sure, when there was just me at risk,” he said with a telling glance at Ana.

  “That was my choice,” she insisted.

  “Boys, boys … girl,” Doc said from the backseat. “You can have your pissing contest later. We got bigger fish to fry right now. And data to analyze? Data Sammy and Ana got for us?”

  Jack mentally kicked himself. “Right. Sorry, Sammy,” he quickly apologized. “These guys could tell you, I was so worried when I found out you were missing.”

  “That’s true,” Doc said.

  Sammy’s face shifted from defensiveness to surprise. “Yeah, all right. I’m sorry, too, Jack. It’s just that I thought, carpe diem and all that.”

  “And vestis facit virum,” Doc winked.

  Ana laughed. The others gazed blankly.

  “Clothes make the man,” she chuckled, rocking her thumb between her getup and Sammy’s.

  Everyone smiled at the tension breaker, after which Jack asked to see what they recovered. Ana may have actually blushed, but it was impossible to tell with the clown makeup. Still, she shoved one arm down her pants, rooted around, and her fingers emerged with both a wallet-size, armored, orange, black, and silver hard drive as well as two small flash drives.

  She held out all three to Jack, but he waved them toward Doc. “I wouldn’t know what to do with them.”

  Ana gave them to Doc, who winked at her disguised face.

  “So, from the beginning,” Jack said to them. “Tell me.”

  “I—we thought we might be able to find out what Firebird was, exactly,” Sammy said. “So I came up with the party clown gambit. No way I was going back to my place—”

  “Smart move,” Sol said.

  Sammy beamed.

  “So
we went to a place I know on Haight,” Ana said, “one that caters to the fetish market.”

  “I know the place,” Sol commented. “Fairly close by. One of my mob buddies owns it.”

  “There are clown fetishists?” Doc asked.

  “There are all kinds of men with all kinds of interests,” Ana said. “We cobbled these together from several costumes, actually.”

  “Anyway, we put on the makeup, suited up, and still got to the party in plenty of time,” Sammy said.

  “I snuck in while Sammy performed,” Ana told them.

  The tale she told—Anastasia breaking into the house while Sammy did his clown act—was inspired, completely irresponsible, and criminal, all in one big bite.

  It was also vintage Sammy. Jack could cite a dozen different episodes from childhood where Sammy had gone off with some older kid to pull some prank. He hadn’t been a bad kid, but at times he seemed to have exactly zero judgment. When he had a nutty or ambitious goal in mind, he was a car without brakes.

  “Hopefully, it will have been worth it,” Sammy said. “Maybe one of these things’ll tell us what Firebird really is.”

  “Morton said it wouldn’t,” Jack reminded them.

  “But he has no good reason to tell the truth at the moment, either,” Sol added.

  Sammy had frowned at his half brother, but brightened when Sol spoke. He lunged forward like an eager-to-please sheepdog so he could better engage the mobster.

  “So why don’t you send a bunch of your guys in there and beat a confession out of old Monty?” When no one replied for a moment, Sammy sat back defensively. “I mean, you do that all the time, don’t you?”

  Jack gave Sol a look, which said, “If you want to tell him everything, that’s up to you.”

  “Yes,” Sol said evenly, “when one of our own betrays us, we’ll have a friendly little ‘talk.’ But it would be a different story to confront a highly ranked, decorated member of the U.S. military that way, especially on American soil.”

  “Oh,” said Sammy. “Yeah, right. Of course.”

  Jack exhaled through his nostrils, trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t kick-start his half brother’s defense mechanisms, when Sol put them all in their place.

  “And, on that note, I think we should table this discussion until we arrive back at a location where it is totally safe to speak of such matters.”

  “Wouldn’t you know if your car was bugged?” Sammy asked. “Aren’t there safeguards?”

  “You brought several items with you that haven’t been vetted,” he pointed out.

  Sammy shrunk back like that same sheepdog who had just had his nose whacked with a rolled up newspaper.

  “Speaking of my security arrangements,” Sol concluded for the moment, “I would like to inform both of you that if you even so much as think about doing anything as bold or cavalier or reckless as this again—take your pick—your safe house will instantly become a dungeon. And I can assure you, we are very good at dungeons.”

  The two clowns looked at him, one big red mouth smiling incongruously, the other frowning as it should have been.

  “What you don’t know,” Sol said, “is whether there are eyes on the general’s house. Maybe he has private security. Maybe the FBI or the CIA or the SFPD has drawn the same conclusions we have and are watching him. Maybe they decided to tail us. And you’re not exactly inconspicuous, even with smoked windows.”

  “I thought that’s why you took the circuitous route you’re taking,” Doc said. “Stopping at lights, racing through others, going up and down hills so you can check the rearview mirror.”

  “Exactly,” Sol said. “They were as underprepared as our team on this one.” He looked at Sammy and Ana in that mirror. “Do we understand one another?”

  “Yes, sir,” Sammy said, his Marine training taking over.

  “Understood,” Ana agreed.

  And then they all fell somberly quiet until they were back at the safe house again. The clowns’ darkened moods were broken by the delighted reaction of Miwa and Ritu, who excitedly laughed and talked and made fun of the makeup and outfits.

  “Oh, you should get out of those things!” Ritu chided. “You will attract attention.”

  “So we’ve been told,” Ana replied.

  “Yes,” said Miwa. “You should take a shower. The shower is very nice!”

  She looked over at Ric knowingly, but Ric only looked at Sol with a combination of apology and a willingness to take any reprimand required. When the Asian girl saw the look Ric and Sol shared, she quickly added, “I will help, Ana, if you need me somewhere else.”

  As the girls and a slumping Sammy retired, Sol glared at his assistant. “I don’t have to say anything, do I?”

  “No, sir,” Ric replied with conviction. “You don’t.”

  “Good, then come on.” He motioned for Jack and Doc to follow him as well. As they all neared the secure room, Boaz broke off from what he was doing and joined them. Once they were all inside and Sol had locked the door, he turned, his expression grave.

  “We have a phrase in Israel. ‘Ziyun moach,’” he told them, moving to the coffee machine. “That’s what we’re in now, so you can imagine what it means.”

  “You were wise to point all the pitfalls out to Sammy,” Jack said to Sol. “Sorry, and thanks.”

  “It’s okay,” Sol said. “Actually, it was a decent gamble, kind of ballsy. And I’m sure we weren’t followed. Anyone who saw what went down would be way more interested in the general than in us.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” Doc said. “What about Sammy’s idea? Interrogating the general, I mean.”

  Sol shook his head. “It’s one thing to interrogate one of our hostile neighbors, it’s another to question an American. Even though we know what we know, and worse, fear what we fear, the Mossad cannot risk jeopardizing Israel’s relationship with the American government no matter how correct we turn out to be. I may even have been taking too great a risk just talking with Morton in public. If anyone was to ever find out who I’m actually loyal to.…” His voice trailed off.

  Doc and Jack shared a glance. “You feel like reaching out and touching someone?” Jack asked his old friend.

  “I was just thinking that,” Jack said. “We don’t have the same restrictions as these guys.”

  Doc leaned back in a chair and put his cowboy-booted feet up on the table. “Brother, I don’t have any restrictions.”

  Jack asked Doc to give Boaz the items Sammy had retrieved. He handed them over.

  “Why don’t you and Ric get everything on those drives?” Jack asked. “And I mean everything. I don’t care if the encryptions have encryptions, I want to know everything possible as soon as possible.”

  It only took a glance from Sol before the two men were heading upstairs. Jack then turned his attention to the others. “If Riad al-Saud and Thomas Brooks are in the Middle East, it looks like we’ll have to corner the tigers in their lairs.”

  Doc shook his head with mock regret. “Too bad we couldn’t just plug the guy and have done with it.”

  Minsky yelled, “No. You don’t just crush someone with a steamroller. I worked in Vegas and saw what happened when some lawyer said ‘get rid of him.’ You make a lifetime of trouble for yourself.…”

  The glint in Doc’s eye when he looked over showed he was just kidding … sort of. “Unlikely Brooks’ll be pulling the trigger himself.”

  “Yeah, I figured the process is too far along by now, too,” Jack agreed. “I just think he wants to be there when his life’s work blows sky high. So our job is to stop the bomb before it reaches him.” Jack shouted after Boaz. “Anything new on how the switches got to Saudi Arabia?”

  The safe house manager came halfway back. “We were able to check the shipping manifests at DR Inc., which turned up a listing to the Middle East. One hundred and twenty copy machines are due to be delivered aboard the Malaysian-flagged Flower of Asia, scheduled to dock at Yanbu’ al Bahr.”
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  Jack looked from Doc to Sol. “Any way we can beat it there?”

  It was Sol and Doc’s turn to exchange looks. “We can try,” said Doc, getting his boots back on the floor. “We’ll need transport and translation, ground intel as well if that’s possible.”

  “It’s possible,” Sol assured them. “Let’s confab on transport, Doc. I think, between the two of us, we can come up with something fast and secure for all concerned.”

  “What about translation and ground intel?” Jack asked.

  “I got that covered,” Sol promised as he approached Doc. “Give me two hours.”

  “Good,” said Jack, heading for the door.

  “Hey!” said Doc. “Where are you going? While we’re doing all this, what are you going to do?”

  Jack stopped at the door, his hand on the latch. “Me? I’m going to find out everything there is to know about dismantling a bomb in two hours flat.”

  26

  Jack drove along the 101 toward the airport in the Ford C-Max to the gate at Coyote Point Park. He didn’t have to stop, or even speak. No visitor had to. He gave the uniformed young ranger a wave, then turned right, drove past a gigantic playground that was dotted with laughing children, and parked at the far end of the huge lot beyond it.

  Just as he was told, there was a run-down, rarely used path below it. Checking his watch, Jack started navigating the crumbling, decrepit, otherwise empty trail deep into the park—over and down to one of the most macabre beaches he’d ever seen. He walked carefully around the carcasses of dead crustaceans, bones, broken shells, crushed cans, stubbed cigarettes, and single shoes until he reached the man waiting for him.

  Professor Peters smiled as Jack arrived at the very edge of the fetid water. Jack opened his mouth to speak, but Peters held his right forefinger up while checking his own watch.

  “Fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine,” he counted. “Sixty.” And, at that moment, a jumbo jet at the end of its descent to the neighboring airport appeared overhead like a parade balloon, seemingly floating, as well as hovering, above them. Its roar was so loud it seemed to drown out even Jack’s thoughts. A moment later, it was gone.