by Tom Clancy
* * *
Zaheer recalled the turns he’d made before, recognized the factories and corporate signs.
With the motorcycles behind him still, Zaheer pushed his foot against the accelerator, believing he would now have an advantage… if only an advantage of a few minutes. He had taken this route before — would the same be true for them?
A handful of minutes, yes. All he would need was minutes to hold them off. Minutes, and he could trigger the Dragonfly cannon.
Zaheer barreled down a street to his left, then took a right, a second right, another left, and at last saw Raja’s employee lot ahead. The evil droning song of the motorcycles had briefly grown fainter at his rear as he’d left the turnpike, but he could hear it growing louder again, and knew he would have no chance to reach the intersection with the abandoned gas station.
It did not matter.
Allah would give him what he needed.
As he sped up to the parking area’s entrance, he swung the U-Haul in past the factory workers’ cars to the chain-link fence dividing the outdoor lot from the HF storage area.
And then they were there before him, the tank clusters with their serpentine pipelines.
Zaheer spun the van around in a full circle, backed up to the fence, slammed his brakes.
Through his windshield, he could see the motorbikes turning into the lot. A single uniformed security guard jogged toward him from the factory to his right — fat, unsuspecting, that one posed the least threat of all.
Shifting the van into PARK, Zaheer started to reach for the Zastava pistol he’d stored in the glove box, but then changed his mind, choosing instead the MP5K submachine gun under his seat.
* * *
“Yo, mister!” the guard yelled, trotting up to the driver’s side of the van. “That’s a restricted area, can’t you read the signs?”
Able to hear him shouting through his window, Zaheer noticed he did not have a hand anywhere near his gun.
Fat. Complacent. They would not learn their lessons.
The guard had heard the buzzing of the cycles now. He turned his head briefly toward the parking area’s entrance, saw the motorcycles, looked back at Zaheer again.
“What the hell?” he said. “What the hell is this?”
Zaheer had no time to waste lowering his window — the cycles were approaching. He raised the MP5 and fired two three-round bursts directly through it into the guard’s face, wiping him from his sight.
Then, heedless of the shattered window glass that had blown over him in slivery piles, he slung the submachine gun over his shoulder, clambered back into the cargo section, threw himself on his stomach, and turned the cannon’s turretlike beam director toward the tanks.
* * *
Cutting across the lot in a straight line, the bikes broke formation as they reached the front of the stopped van, Ricci and Glenn swooping to the left, the two other remaining Sword ops taking its right flank.
Ricci hooked his bike around toward the rear section and had time enough to see that the cargo hatch was already raised, opened from within, before fans of gunfire began pouring out of it. He wrenched his handlebars, tailing away from the van to avoid the volleys, but one of the ops on its other side was slower by a hair to react. Bullets cut into him and he went into a tailspin, spilling from his seat as his attack cycle crashed into the divider fence.
Enough, Ricci thought. No more.
He halted the bike at the side of the van, booted down its kickstand, and lunged off his seat, crouching low, pulling his variable-velocity snubnose automatic from under his leather jacket, switching the weapon to its lethal setting. Beside him, another motorbike also braked to a stop.
“Glenn?”
“Yeah.”
“Count of three, we get around back, open fire.”
“With you.”
“One, two—”
“Ricci.”
“What?”
“Check it out.”
“Check wha—”
“Look.” Pointing.
Ricci looked. And realized what Glenn had been trying to get him to notice.
The firing from the rear of the van had stopped, and a submachine gun… an MP5, Ricci thought… lay on the ground behind its back bumper, its black grip glistening wet with blood.
Ricci turned to Glenn, made eye contact with him through his visor, nodded in silent communication.
Slowly, guardedly, their weapons at the ready, they edged along the side of the van with their backs flat against it, then hooked around to the open cargo section.
The driver lay sprawled over what looked like a small cannon turret on a mount the size of a small valise. He was face down on his belly, a pool of crimson underneath him, crimson all over the turret, all over the hand hanging limply from the open bay door. Mounted inside the cargo section were three readout and control panels, their flatscreen displays blank.
Ricci looked at Glenn.
Glenn looked at Ricci.
“Done,” Glenn said.
And they both lowered their weapons to their sides.
EIGHT
NEW YORK / PAKISTANI CONTROLLED KASHMIR
“Guess it ain’t too tough to figure why I’m here,” John Earl said, trying hard to stay on his feet a little longer.
Hasul Benazir looked at Earl from behind his desk at the Kiran office.
“Our deal,” he said.
Earl nodded.
“Our deal,” he affirmed. “Fifty grand up front, fifty on completion—”
“Succeed or fail,” Benazir said.
Earl nodded again, hands stuffed in the pockets of his coat. As always the office was silent around him except for the sounds of pumped and filtered water in the octopus tank in the wall.
He waited. Hard, hard as hell, keeping his feet under him… though it didn’t help that Zaheer’s bullet was still floating around in the red muck between his ribs, probably just about to give his heart a last cold kiss.
Hush baby, you hush.
Yeah, Earl thought, the old fire-engine-red truck he’d driven for so long would be ditching off the highway of life any time now. He had stuffed the hole in his chest with fistfuls of gauze more than once, wrapped himself around with fresh bandage tape before showing up at the office, but all that had done was soak up the blood under his shirt and coat — well, the coat, anyway — and keep it from gushing out of him like water from a bathtub spout.
Now Benazir rose, came around the desk, stood in front of Earl.
“The money will be yours without condition,” he said. “I would, however, wish to know how you managed to escape what has just begun to trickle its way into the news. Those men on motorcycles…” Benazir shrugged, let the sentence trail. “How?” he said.
Earl remained very still. If he took even a single step forward, backward, or sideways, he figured it would leave him flat on the floor. Of course, it wasn’t his feet he had to be able to move.
“Well,” he said, and pulled his Sig nine from his pocket, “it went kind of like this.”
Benazir’s face barely showed any reaction. After a few seconds he blinked slowly, let his eyes stay shut for another span of seconds, and released a long breath as he opened them.
“You never did think you’d have to pay up the balance, did you?” Earl said. “Never thought I’d be around to ask for it.”
Hasul shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I never did.”
Earl looked at him with his gun between them, tightened his lips to hold back a cough. No sense messing the carpet with what would come out of him.
He motioned toward the aquarium with the pistol.
“Gonna give you a choice, Hasul,” he said. “You can let your poisonous friend Legs give you a tickle or you can deal with my friend Siggy here. Either way, it ought to be quick.”
Benazir remained nearly expressionless, staring at him with his dark brown eyes.
At length he nodded, strode toward the tank, removed the wood-venee
r feeder panel from the wall above it, and set it down on the floor.
“I believe I knew,” he said softly, and turned his head to look at Earl as he rolled up his shirt sleeve.
Earl grunted.
“Kinda believe you did, too,” he said. He raised the gun a notch higher, his finger around its trigger. “Now go on, Hasul. Say hi to Legs for me… and I promise, I’ll see you by-and-by.”
Hasul stared at him another moment, gave him a nod, and then turned and slipped his hand into the aquarium.
Darting from its habitat cave, the octopus was quick to wrap its venomous tentacles around him.
* * *
The vid-conference between Megan Breen in San Jose and Noriko Cousins and Tom Ricci in New York took place almost immediately after the federal agents left Noriko’s office.
It was no coincidence that their visit to Sword-Manhattan, and the reasons for it, were the main subjects of discussion.
“It boggles me that you let this happen,” Megan was telling Noriko. “A threat of the magnitude you uncovered… how could you not immediately report it to the authorities? The list of protocols you violated is so long, I can only begin to list them from memory. NYPD, the FBI, Homeland Security — all of them should have been informed.” She paused, shook her head. “This was a Code Red national-security emergency. Millions could have died—”
“But they didn’t die, and the reason they didn’t is because we didn’t wait to move,” Noriko said. Her lips tightened. “All it cost was the lives of two of my men.”
Megan looked at her from across the country.
“I’m not questioning the actions you took,” she said. “It’s the notifications you should have — and could have — made when they were taken.”
Noriko stared at the video screen from her chair at the conference table, glanced over at Ricci, glanced back at the screen. Started to say something, then stopped. And then stared at the screen some more.
“I had reasons that I can’t share,” she said simply.
Megan looked at her.
“Reasons,” she repeated.
Noriko gave a nod.
“Reasons,” Megan repeated a second time, incredulous. “Noriko, listen to what I’m saying—”
“She can hear you,” Ricci said abruptly. “You want to put this on somebody, put it on me.”
Megan shook her head.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“My source gave me his tip on the condition that we handle everything ourselves,” Ricci said. “He wanted time to get himself out of the city before it went into lockdown, and I told him he could have it. Better that than have him leave without talking.”
There was a prolonged silence. Megan inhaled, exhaled.
“This mysterious source you’ve mentioned… you could have told him whatever you wanted for his information,” she said. “Do you really think letting him have things his way was worth putting UpLink under fire? Our reputation, our contacts… were they worth jeopardizing for him?”
Ricci looked at her with his icy blue eyes and merely shrugged.
“No,” he said. “They were for my promise.”
* * *
“Yes, sir, may I help you?” the salesman said from behind his counter.
Malisse nodded.
“The cocobolo rosewood humidor,” he said. “The one in your window, with the beveled glass lid…”
“I know which you mean,” said the salesman, looking sharply down his nose at Malisse. “It is a one-of-a-kind.”
Malisse tugged at his earlobe.
“I see,” he said. “Well, I’d noticed it earlier, and was wondering about its price”
The salesman looked at him, and quoted a dollar amount with what appeared to be delighted scorn.
Malisse tried not to choke on the exorbitant figure. With his flight back to Antwerp booked for the morning, he had returned to the tobacconist’s on a whim… and a foolish whim it had been to think he could afford the cigar case.
Indeed, Malisse thought, he was probably undeserving of it. Certainly undeserving. He had failed to determine anything conclusive about the sapphires. He had not learned whether they were authentic or fakes. He knew nothing more than before about their origins, or the identity of the scoundrel in the outback coat who had doubtless been set to meet the late, unfortunate Hoffman before his fall. He had done nothing, nothing of consequence in New York City but sample its sweets and return a briefcase full of money to Hoffman the middleman’s bereaved widow.
Yes, Rance Lembock would offer to pay him despite his disappointment. And no, Malisse would accept nothing but expense money from the old survivor of genocide. How could he presume to justify the purchase of the humidor to himself?
“Ah, sir… if you don’t mind?”
Malisse looked at the salesman, plucked from his reverie.
“Don’t mind what?” he said.
“I have other customers waiting,” the salesman said with a wave toward some presumably invisible person at a counter where Malisse had thought himself standing alone. “So unless there’s something more—”
Malisse snapped up his hand, a finger pointing skyward.
“Yes, my friend,” he said. “Yes there is! Bring me the humidor, a carton of Davidoffs to fill it… and have the whole package gift wrapped quickly, as I have a plane awaiting to carry me away from this cold city.”
The salesman’s eyebrows arched. His scorn transformed to surprise, he turned to bring the valuable goods.
Malisse watched him, guiltless about the decision that had struck him like a bolt out of the blue.
Sometimes, he thought, a man must not be rewarded only for success.
Sometimes just trying one’s best was worth a gift.
* * *
The seven dead bodies had been lined one beside the other on their backs, naked, stripped of their dog tags, their Indian army uniforms buried deep under the snow elsewhere on the mountainside.
Siphoned of emotion, Yousaf looked down at them. It was too late to second guess himself, yet he knew his decision not to radio out a message to his buyers had in all probability cost them their lives… and crushed his hopes of ending this night as a very rich man. While the border patrol uniforms the men had worn — and identification they’d carried — had gotten them past the Indians on the other side of the Line of Command, it had not stopped them from being ambushed by Ahmad’s scouts here on the mountain pass.
Cold and pale under the moonlight, they might have looked like their own ghosts had it not been for the single, red, seeping bullet hole Yousaf could see in the middle of each man’s forehead.
As far as he knew, bloodless spirits did not bear the marks of a gunpoint execution.
He turned toward one of the LeT scouts that had led him to the bodies, trying to maintain his presence of mind. “Tell me again when these whoresons were caught.”
The scout looked at him.
“Two hours ago,” he said, and gestured toward a nearby rock overhang. “We spotted them earlier. Came up the other side of the mountain and took them.”
“And you say it appears they had been waiting here for some time?”
“There are signs, yes.”
Silence. Several paces away, just out of earshot, a Bakarwal guide waited near his mule, holding the beast’s rope in his hand as it snorted steam into the icy night air.
Yousaf glanced over at him and thought a moment. The prospect of wealth might be lost to him, at least for now. But there was still more of the game to play, another deception he must turn to assure the scout’s suspicion did not instead turn his way.
“The nomads,” he said in a lowered voice. “It can only be that they betrayed us. Conspired with these troops so we’d be caught before making our rendezvous across the border.”
The scout continued to eye him.
“That might be easy for me to believe,” he said. “India’s government and military generals would pay a high price for the Dragonfly cannon.
”
Yousaf nodded.
“Enough of a fortune to satiate even a Bakarwal’s greedy soul,” he said. “My intelligence is that only two complete units have been produced. That the other remains with our brothers in Americ—”
Yousaf became aware of someone stealing up behind him far too late to avoid the arm that had suddenly locked around his throat — and the cold press of a blade across it.
A harsh voice in his ear: “Judge no one else’s soul. Not when it was you who sent one of your own operatives to his death in the wastes between here and Chikar.”
Yousaf tried to shake his head in denial, felt the knife press more tightly against his throat, and stopped.
The scout in front of him, meanwhile, had taken several long steps forward.
“Did you think Ahmad would not have you watched from the beginning, little pig?” he said. “That he would not have eyes among the men in your convoy? A voice to inform him that you’d started across the mountains with another? Or can it be you’ve already forgotten your good companion Khalid?”
Yousaf swallowed silently and the steel edge of the blade met his Adam’s apple.
“Cast blame wherever you will, it was you who arranged for your mule train to encounter these troops… if actual troops they are,” the scout said to him, bringing his face close. “I suspect them to be something else. Khalistani fighters disguised as soldiers. Or Nagas. Or Punjabi rebels.” The scout’s face came still closer. “Brothers sometimes compete most fiercely, do they not? And there has been much competition for the weapon among our professed brethren in India.”
Yousaf swallowed again. The blade broke skin.
“Let me speak to Ahmad,” he grated in desperation. “I can prove you’re wrong—”
“Ahmad,” the scout repeated. A mocking grin had spread across his face. “Tell me, little pig… how can you be sure that my men and I are loyal to Ahmad? That we do not have our own buyers for the cannon? What makes you so certain of its destination — its intended targets — in a world of constant uncertainty?”
Yousaf looked at him, his mouth forming a circular grimace of surprise.