Out of Range: A Novel

by Hank Steinberg

  And now he began to see those faces: the boys and girls in Vienna and Copenhagen, the sons and daughters in London and New York, the brothers and sisters in Tokyo and Sydney.

  What have I done? Byko thought. What have I . . .

  The surging crowd began to diffuse as Charlie and Julie spilled out of the Square and there was finally room to breathe. After a few more blocks, the crowd thinned out and the screaming abated. There were no more gunshots, no sound of bullhorns or tanks or helicopters.

  “Where did the shot come from?” she asked Charlie.

  “I don’t know,” he replied, looking around.

  They paused in a doorway and watched the crowd stream past.

  “Do you think he’s dead?” she asked.

  “I hope so,” he said, searching her face to make sure she felt the same way.

  “Yeah,” she said softly and allowed herself to lean against him.

  Now that they were safe, Charlie’s mind turned to the larger issue. Had Hopkins understood him? Did he believe him? Had his phone died before Hopkins could hear what he’d said?

  If he’d gotten through to Hopkins—and Hopkins had believed him—the information would skate around the globe within minutes. Aircraft would leap into the skies, satellites would vector in on targets, rooms would fill with anxious people watching video monitors . . . and at the tip of the spear, vans full of hard men wearing black helmets and carrying submachine guns would plow into the streets.

  Charlie could only hope those hard men would reach the targets in time.

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Rasul Erekat ran his hand nervously through his short beard and fought the urge to pound on the horn. What was the holdup?

  He had left the safe house garage in the London suburb of Slough at six this morning—seemingly in plenty of time to make it to the target. But there had been construction on the M4 and then a major wreck on the bridge over the Thames had resulted in the entire southbound lane being shut down. So he had cut through the East End—only to find that everybody in London had apparently tried the same trick, clogging up every major artery in the city.

  And now, just blocks short of the target, traffic had completely locked up, nothing moving as far down the street as he could see. He wasn’t even the one assigned to perform this mission. His two assistants, Masun and Sa’ir, were supposed to have delivered the van to the target.

  But they had turned out to be cowards. They were both English Muslims of Pakistani extraction, soft and weak from their Western upbringing. For the past two days they had been whispering and carping and making sarcastic remarks at everything Rasul had said. In the end it had become clear to him that either their nerves would fail in the breach or they would simply slip away and disappear.

  He had taken Sa’ir, the smaller of the two, into the back room of the flat and garroted him with a piece of twenty-two-gauge speaker wire. Then he had walked into the living room where Masun was watching Doctor Who on the tellie.

  Rasul had shot him in the back of the head with a suppressed Glock 17 and it had made quite a mess on the television.

  Rasul had never killed anyone before and he was surprised that it had been as easy as it was, the whole business over in less than two minutes.

  But with both of them dead, the entire mission had fallen on Rasul’s shoulders.

  It was simple enough. In theory. Drive to the target, park the van, press the big red button in the back, and walk away. The problem was, this was supposed to be a two-man operation. The detonator switch was hidden in the rear of the van in case the van got pulled over and searched. That was why Sa’ir was supposed to drive, while Masun was to sit hidden in the back.

  But still . . . Rasul would find a way. Park, throw open the rear door, crawl over the oil-soaked fertilizer, press the red switch, walk briskly away into the gentle southwesterly wind. He’d have two minutes and fifteen seconds, just enough time to escape the blast radius without breaking into a run.

  He hadn’t admitted it to Masun and Sa’ir, but the raid by British tactical police early that morning on the bomb-making warehouse had unnerved him, too. And now MI6, MI5, Special Operations and every cop on the street was probably looking for him.

  He took a deep breath.

  Well, whatever was going to happen, it would be over soon.

  He was almost there. Two blocks ahead on Cannon Street, he could see the large silver letters spelling out liffe. The London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange was a market where commodities such as cotton, oil and metals were bought and sold. Byko had repeatedly made the point—and it was a good one—that money was the lifeblood of the West. Stab her here and her blood would flow into the streets in torrents.

  The back of Rasul’s white Volvo van contained over a ton of fertilizer and fuel oil, making a bomb big enough to bring the entire building down. But that was not the real purpose of the attack. The small glass jar of nuclear material sitting on top of the fertilizer—that was what would make the mission a success. The cloud of dust would rise hundreds of feet in the air and then drift for blocks and blocks, rendering a three-square-mile area of central London uninhabitable for a century.

  Traffic again came to a standstill. And Rasul’s sense of foreboding grew. For a moment an idea flitted into his mind: what if he simply climbed out of the van and set off the bomb here? With the traffic stopped, he might have time to run around and flip the switch before he caught anyone’s attention. And if the bomb blew two blocks short of the target, who would know?

  Byko and Quinn would know, that’s who.

  It had been made clear, once he had committed to the mission, that there was no margin for error. Everything was to go according to blueprint or it wasn’t to go at all. Quinn had not so subtly indicated to Rasul that he knew exactly where Rasul’s father and mother and sister were—that deviation from the plan would not simply result in Rasul being hunted down and killed, but that his entire family would go to the grave with him.

  Rasul gripped the wheel, hands shaking. On the sidewalk, he saw a young woman walking toward the Exchange. She was holding hands with a little boy. The boy was dawdling, pulling his mother’s hand, wanting to stop and pet a dog that was being held by a tattooed girl with her belly showing in the immodest, whorish fashion of the West.

  The traffic started to move in front of him. Almost there.

  Still, Rasul hesitated, not pressing the accelerator. Instead he continued to watch the mother and child in their silent tug-of-war as the boy fought to pet the dog.

  Rasul suddenly felt a wave of emotion as he looked at the pair. If the boy continued to distract his mother, they would probably reach the Exchange at almost the exact moment that the bomb detonated. His own son had been the same age when he was killed by the American bomb, burned to death in the arms of Rasul’s wife—a bomb aimed at an Al Qaeda operative who was briefly visiting Rasul’s hometown in Yemen.

  Rasul smiled as he looked out at the people on the sidewalk. They would die—the mother, the boy, the tattooed girl with the dog—all of these heedless people. They would pay for what had happened to Rasul’s family.

  A horn tooted behind him.

  Rasul released the brake and drove slowly forward. He continued to watch the mother and son in his mirror, barely paying attention to the road in front of him. As he nosed toward his destination, he realized that his hands weren’t shaking anymore. In fact, he felt terribly calm, a sense of utter peace. Nothing could go wrong. A thousand MI6 agents couldn’t stop him now!

  Suddenly the truck in front of him braked hard. He glanced away from the mirror, nearly slamming into the trunk of the larger vehicle. Something was going on up in front of the LIFFE building. But his vision was blocked by the truck and he couldn’t quite make it out.

  Why was nothing moving? Rasul slammed his fist on the horn.

  Again the cars moved, crawling forward. After a moment he saw the source of the problem . . .

  Men in blue uniforms, blockin
g the street. Security guards? Police?

  Surely they couldn’t know about—

  And then, seemingly without warning, there were armed men surrounding his van. Black helmets, bulletproof vests, machine guns.

  They knew! They knew and they were here to stop him.

  Well, no matter. He could still arm the bomb. He would simply have to crawl to the back of the van, dive over the fertilizer and—

  He reached under his seat, took hold of his Glock and fired wildly through the window, hoping to drive the helmeted men back.

  Instead there was a loud bang in reply. Then another. Something hit the side of the van. Another bang. Another. It sounded as though hammers were being thrown at the doors. He wasn’t hit yet—but he would be soon. As he began crawling toward the back and over the soaked fertilizer, he heard a huge blast and suddenly the back doors flew open.

  Six submachine guns were aimed directly at him.

  “Hands in the air! Hands in the air now!”

  But his hands were only three feet from the detonation switch.

  He was overwhelmed by a blinding sense of panic and horror. For all his anger, for all his need to avenge the wrong inflicted on him, he had not signed up for a suicide mission. On the other hand, he wasn’t interested in spending the rest of his life in a Western prison. And if he gave himself up, what Byko and Quinn would do to his family . . .

  He had no choice but to reach for the red button.

  Chapter Sixty-six

  Charlie and Julie settled into their seats on the plane, silently busying themselves with their belongings. Bags, tickets, passports, a week-old copy of The Economist . . . everything seemed so ordinary, so familiar, so routine. Julie had bought a toothbrush and a change of clothes inside the Tashkent airport and now they looked like any ordinary pair of Westerners—albeit ones whose bruised and weary faces indicated that they might have recently been in a car wreck.

  A small television set played CNN from the nearby bulkhead as they belted themselves into their seats.

  “In what was some of the most stunning work by the international intelligence community in recent years,” the reporter said, “terrorist suspects were arrested today in cities across the United States, Europe, Australia, and Japan.” Images of elite antiterrorism units flashed across the screen, arresting bewildered-looking suspects in a variety of different locations. “Apparently a coordinated series of so-called dirty bomb attacks was planned for four p.m. Eastern Time today. In what highly placed sources have indicated was a multipronged, coordinated international operation, executed with clockwork precision, all nine terror cells involved in the plot were simultaneously taken down. No bombs were detonated and all of the low-grade nuclear material held by the terrorists was recovered.”

  The television showed a sequence of shots—men in suits standing at podiums in front of various flags making solemn statements about the superior skill and determination of their respective intelligence services.

  “In an unprecedented gesture,” the reporter’s voice-over continued, “the CIA and MI6 released a joint statement announcing that it was their mutual cooperation and that of their counterparts across the globe which made the sting possible . . .”

  A flight attendant poured each of them a glass of water from a chipped plastic pitcher. The engines began to wind up, the cabin lights dimmed and the little television went dark.

  When the cabin lights came up again, the flight attendant switched off the TV with a clunky remote control about the size of a paperback book.

  Charlie supposed that he ought to be angry that the most powerful intelligence services in the world were crowing about doing something that had actually been accomplished by a pair of amateurs. But he couldn’t seem to muster even a shred of exasperation. Right now he was too damn tired to care.

  He turned and looked at Julie. Now that everything was over, he had no idea how they would begin again.

  Julie knew what Charlie had to be thinking. She had violated his trust and it would be a long road back to regaining it. She looked at him, trying to read how deep the damage went. And when he smiled, her heart nearly broke. Eyes brimming with remorse, she took his hand. “I’m so sorry, Charlie. For lying to you, for not trusting . . . for endangering all of us, I thought I was doing something good, but—”

  “You were,” Charlie conceded. “Look at what we did.”

  “I was going to tell you. That night. As soon as I got home from Disneyland. I was going to tell you everything.”

  Charlie nodded, no doubt wondering what exactly was encompassed in the “everything.” As he looked away, Julie grabbed his face, forcing him to look her in the eye. “I never loved him. Not the way I love you.”

  “I read the emails.”

  “He reminded me of a time and a place. That was all, Charlie. A time and a place. When we were different.”

  Charlie sighed and looked at the blank screen. The plane began taxiing up the runway.

  He thought about all of the ways in which he had let Julie down over the years, what he must have done to drive her toward Byko, what she’d sacrificed to give him the life that he said he wanted.

  “I threw in the towel,” he said heavily. “I left you no choice but to throw yours in, too. And then I never asked you how you lived with it because I didn’t want to hear the answer.”

  Julie grabbed his hand and kissed his palm. “No more secrets,” she said.

  “No more secrets.”

  The engines wound up to a high whine, then the plane lumbered forward and took off. The air was turbulent—bags rattling in the overhead bins, magazines spilling on the floor. Charlie clasped both of her hands in his. Then, abruptly, everything steadied and the plane began to climb as smoothly as if it were on rails.

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  Charlie and Julie deboarded the plane at Heathrow and were met at the gate by a small neatly dressed man with a military bearing and a brush mustache of the sort once favored by British Army officers.

  “Frank Hopkins,” he said, extending his hand toward Charlie. “We’ll need to go over a few things, I’m afraid.”

  “We’re going home,” Charlie said firmly, taking Julie by the arm, then pushing past him toward the American Airlines gate at the far end of the terminal.

  “We have a private plane,” Hopkins insisted. “Eleven hours in the air. We can get it all done by the time we touch down. Then you’ll never hear from us again.”

  Charlie stopped, scowling at the man.

  “Let’s just be done with it,” Julie said.

  Ten minutes later they were airborne again, climbing out of London in a spacious and well-appointed jet bearing Royal Air Force markings.

  “I’ll show you some photographs,” Hopkins said after they’d reached cruising altitude.

  Charlie identified a series of faces, all of them men in Byko’s coterie of personal guards.

  The mercenary in the Escalade.

  “Dead.”

  The driver crushed by the boulder.

  “Dead.”

  Hasan.

  “I shot him,” Charlie said. “But his body was burnt in the missile complex when Byko blew it up.”

  Hopkins paused and looked at Julie curiously. He seemed astonished that some untrained journalist had managed to eliminate all of these hardened killers.

  Charlie felt like telling the neatly dressed spy that anybody would have done the same thing if their wife’s life had been at stake. But then, he supposed, that probably wasn’t true. And sitting here in the comfortable leather chair of the RAF jet, it seemed almost as though it had all been done by someone else.

  There were several more before Hopkins handed him the photo of John Quinn.

  This time, Charlie glanced at Julie before answering. “That one was a joint effort. I’d give Julie most of the credit there.”

  Hopkins looked at her with unabashed admiration.

  “There were some others, ” Julie said. “They were chasing us at the Sq
uare. They must have gotten away.”

  Hopkins nodded, then laid down a picture of a thin boy wearing a gray prison jumpsuit.

  “And what about him? The man who shot Byko?”

  Charlie stared at the photograph. “It was Salim?”

  Hopkins frowned curiously. “You know him?”

  “He was one of the people who helped me. I never would have made it out of Byko’s compound if it wasn’t for him.”

  “As you can see, he was arrested by Karimov’s police.”

  Charlie felt a flash of anger. “Well, you’re going to get him out.”

  Hopkins leaned back in his leather seat. “There are three dozen witnesses who saw him do the shooting. And he hasn’t denied it.”

  “Give me a break!” Charlie said. “Karimov’s thrilled to have Byko out of the way. This should be an easy one for you.”

  Hopkins smiled perfunctorily. “I’ll do what I can.”

  Charlie laughed without humor. “You know, there’s a rumor that CIA was there when Byko’s sister was being tortured . . . that in fact they may have orchestrated it. And that MI6 tipped off Karimov about the Andijan demonstration six years ago, knowing that Karimov would go in with force. You add that up with John Quinn—a former CIA man—being Byko’s operational man . . .” He paused, letting this sink in. “It’d be pretty grim publicity for the security agencies if all that came out.”

  Hopkins looked at Julie as though asking for her help.

  Julie glared at him. “Is it true?”

  “I don’t think that matters to your husband.”

  “It matters to me,” she said edgily.

  “I have absolutely no idea. But we all know that anything is possible,” Hopkins admitted.