“A sensible philosophy, Sameer, but I need the ‘soup.’ Where shall we meet?”
“Assuming you have the money we agreed upon, I’ll have it packed and ready for pickup at midnight. Trust me, I do not want it in my possession one minute longer than is absolutely necessary.”
“Understood. Why don’t we meet in the parking lot of the Science Building at midnight?” Shaw suggested. “You bring your ‘Chicken Noodle,’ and I’ll bring the money.”
Al-Karman smiled at him again. “Actually, I was thinking of a more public place. How would the front parking lot of the Provost Marshall’s office sound? Or the parking lot of the FBI building on Morganton Road near the mall? Those would offer both of us a great degree of mutual security, don’t you think?”
Shaw smiled. “I think not, but just north of there is a McDonald’s restaurant on Morganton at the Expressway. It’s open until midnight and is always busy. Why don’t we meet in their rear parking lot at 11:45. The exchange shouldn’t take more than a minute or two.”
“Agreed. McDonald’s is an excellent compromise… just don’t expect me to eat any of their food.”
“No, but perhaps we can begin to trust each other again.”
“Trust?” Sameer smiled. “I think that extends about as far as your money.”
“True. And thanks for mentioning the FBI building. I’ll have to remember that.”
Sameer looked at him for a moment. “I am beginning to worry about you, Professor.”
“As well you should. 11:45. Don’t be late.”
Outside the Student Union, Henry Shaw pulled out his cell phone and called Army Sergeant E-5, George Enderby. He was a tall black man in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, a decorated and experienced infantry squad leader who had served two tours in Iraq. He was by far Shaw’s most prized recruit, and the man he put in charge of finding as many more like himself as he could. Whether in the barracks or in the mosque, Shaw needed men who knew how to handle weapons and were not afraid to use them. He could find plenty of “true believers.” They were a dime a dozen in the mosque. But as he himself learned in Marine boot camp at Parris Island, they wouldn’t be enough. He needed men who could kill.
When Enderby answered, Shaw wasted no time with small talk. “Enderby, how many men have you been able to pull together?”
“Twenty, including five from the mosque.”
“Are they worth anything?”
“I guess we’ll see. I can speak for most of the men in green, assuming we can get them weapons. How are you coming on that?”
“My source got me twelve rifles, M-4s and M-16s…”
“That’s a good start, but what about the others?”
“We’ll get more, George. We also have a dozen pistols of various types. Besides, I don’t see using more than a dozen men at one time at the moment. Can they shoot?”
“The men from the post? Oh, yeah. The others, not so much. I took them all out in the woods and let them shoot. But they’re antsy, Professor. If we don’t strike soon…”
“We will. Be patient. Tell them to be patient. We will strike very soon.”
Teaching a class you’ve previously taught three or four times in far better academic institutions than Blue Ridge College to wealthy but poorly educated, glassy-eyed post-teens who couldn’t get admitted to a bad junior college was a sign of how far Shaw had fallen. Not that the Army facilities were inadequate. The classrooms in their Training and Education Center were every bit as good as Blue Ridge College, in fact. Standing at the lectern, he pretended to be his usual wry, sarcastic self. Inside, however, he was seething. He should be standing on the stage of a large lecture hall at Harvard, Stanford, or Chicago teaching the elite, not buried here in Andy Griffith’s Mayberry RFD. There was only one reason why he subjected himself to this continuing humiliation: teaching a class in the Army’s continuing education program gave him a gate pass and free access to Fort Bragg. If it weren’t for that, he’d blow the college building up right now.
By 8:15 p.m. Shaw’d had all he could stomach of the class, and they had probably had all they could stomach of him. “Sociology and Human Interaction” was a class they needed to punch from a laundry list of required courses. It wasn’t something they gave a damn about. It was probably this or a class in Victorian English Literature, American History to the Civil War, or Economics 101, and their friends probably told them that Shaw was an easy grade. Those who weren’t sleeping made no secret of their boredom by reading magazines, listening to music on their headsets, or staring back at him with blank expressions that looked like they’d recently had lobotomies. It was like being trapped in the classroom scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. “Anyone? Anyone?” he said, mimicking Ben Stein, but no one in the class got it. Well, if they were barely going through the motions, so was he.
“All right, that’s all for tonight, Ladies and Gentlemen,” he added sarcastically and the class suddenly came alive again like the Zombie Apocalypse. “For Thursday, read chapters three and four, answer the questions at the end of each, and turn them in. And be ready for a test next Monday.”
None of them knew it at the time, but all their moaning and groaning was for naught. There would be no test Monday. This would be his last class, and theirs too. And if he had enough C-4 left over, Thursday’s class might blow up in their faces.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Fayetteville
It was 8:55. Henry Shaw sat alone in his Peugeot in the parking lot of the Papa John’s pizza restaurant on Butner Road in the northwest quadrant of Fort Bragg when the passenger side door opened. Farrakhan Muhammad, still dressed in his Army ACUs and combat boots, cranked the passenger seat back as far as it would go but still had a struggle to squeeze himself into the seat next to Shaw.
“Thought we wuz gettin’ some pizza.” Muhammad frowned.
Shaw shook his head. “Maybe later, after we take care of another job, and after we take care of your engineer.”
“Don’t know if thas gonna work no mo’. The MPs were all over dat engineer company right after I talked to you. Ah’ll bet dey’s sweatin’ his ass off right now.”
“Do you think he’d rat you out?” Shaw asked.
“A dude like that? Ah don’t know, man. Maybe.”
“All right. We’ll worry about him later. For now, there’s a another job I want you to do.” Shaw reached into the back seat, picked up a heavy paper bag, and dropped it in Muhammad’s lap. The sergeant opened the top and peeked inside. “Hey, man! Thas a whole damn block ’a dat C-4, ain’t it? Damn! Ah don’t want dat stuff sittin’ on me!”
“You won’t have it there for long. And don’t worry, it won’t go off,” Shaw tried to reassure him. “Part of my mission is to train you to replace me, to teach you how to do what I do, so you can take over the cell.”
“Yeah? Well, uh, thas cool, but ah still don’t like dat stuff, Shaw.”
“It’s just there for safekeeping. Meanwhile, I want you to take your car and drive over to the FORSCOM Headquarters Building.”
“You mean dat big sucker over on Randolph dey jes opened?”
“Yes, it’s our next target.”
“FORSCOM? You kiddin’? Dat place got guards.”
“It’s perfect, Farrakhan. It’s right across the street from my classroom building, and I’ve been watching them. It’s the last thing they’d expect.”
“Yeah, but you cain’t get close wif no car. Dey built perimeter walls and put all dem concrete bollards around the place. You’d need a tank, man.”
“No problem. You’re in uniform and your car has all the right bumper stickers. You can park in the front turnaround and walk right up to the glass doors. They won’t stop you.”
“No? Well, if’n it’s such a good idea, how come you don’t do it?” Muhammad scowled and tried to hand the bag back to Shaw.
“Like I said, you’re in uniform. I’m not,” Shaw answered as he pushed the bag back into Muhammad’s lap. “All you need to do is stop you
r car in front of the bollards and get out, like you’re there to drop something off. Walk up to the front doors. Try to open them. They’ll be locked by then but you can pretend you’re looking inside the building and then drop the bag in a trashcan or set it behind a pillar.”
“And what if them doors do open?”
“All the better. Go inside, maybe look at the building directory, and then find a trashcan in there. The trick is to look natural, like you’re not hiding anything. It will be just like the Post Exchange job.”
“Yeah? And where you gonna be?” Muhammad bristled.
“Back in my office at the Education Center. Two cars would draw too much attention.”
Muhammad frowned as he thought that over. “And what if dey got guards this time? What ah supposed do then?”
“There’s no reason for them to stop you,” Shaw said as he handed him the .45-caliber Colt automatic. “If they do, just point and shoot. They won’t be expecting that. Then, get back in your car and drive away.” Muhammad wasn’t happy and he stared down at the .45 lying in his lap as if it were a dead rat. “Go on,” Shaw continued to encourage him. “It will be our biggest strike. After we’re done, we’ll go take care of that engineer and you’ll be home free.”
Muhammad wasn’t very happy about it but he finally got out of the car carrying the paper bag and the semiautomatic pistol, which he tucked behind his back, and walked over to his battered Honda Civic. As Shaw watched him, he thought to himself, “What a moron!” There were a dozen obvious flaws with what Shaw had just told Muhammad, yet he hadn’t realized any of them. No wonder the American Army couldn’t win any wars. Shaw figured he was doing them a big favor by culling out the deadwood. Even the Marines would toss him out.
Shaw watched as Muhammad drove away. He then got in his car and followed, staying well back, as the Honda drove across Butner Road and south on Knox Street. The front façade of the big new FORSCOM Headquarters building soon appeared on their left. It looked like a modern corporate office building, not a sterile government building — four stories tall, it contained almost three quarters of a million square feet and had a curved front façade with horizontal bands of red and beige brick, and two front entrances. FORSCOM was a new organization and this new headquarters building had only recently opened. Shaw sighed. What a shame to mess it up, but it had a huge staff now and was responsible for the training and operation of all the Army Reserve and National Guard units across the country.
The building was set back perhaps two hundred feet from the road, screened by low “decorative” walls, thick concrete bollards, and a long semicircle of steel flagpoles bearing the colorful flags of all fifty states, something you wouldn’t normally find on a commercial building. While walls, bollards, and flagpoles might look nice, they were built to stop cars and trucks carrying bombs, not to be another artsy design feature the architect threw in to pad his fees. Shaw had watched the site many times from one of the lounges on the top floor of the Campus Education building down the street. Those concrete bollards were much thicker than normal, the size of fifty-five-gallon oil drums, set four feet apart, reinforced with steel, and sunk deep in the ground, midway between the parking spaces and the building. Muhammad was right. No doubt you could bust through them with a tank, Shaw conceded, but that was the least you’d need. What they weren’t designed to stop — Shaw chuckled to himself — was a “dumb bomb,” like a big, overstuffed Army sergeant carrying a paper bag full of C-4.
While he was still a block away, Shaw pulled over to the side of Knox and pulled out a small pair of “birdwatcher” binoculars. He had a clear view of Farrakhan Muhammad as he parked his Honda in front of the bollards, took the bag, and walked gingerly up the wide front sidewalk toward the left front building. Watching him reminded Shaw of the old Halloween trick he and his neighborhood pals used to play. They’d put a bag of dog poop on someone’s front steps, set fire to it, and ring the doorbell. When their target opened the door and tried to stamp out the flames, things got very messy, very quickly.
To his credit, Muhammad didn’t stop. He continued walking on a straight line toward the building’s left-side front doors. He got halfway there when two uniformed men wearing helmets and body armor, black MP armbands, and carrying automatic rifles at the ready came around the side of the building and saw him. Muhammad kept walking toward the revolving front door, now only twenty feet away, but the two guards picked up their pace and began to head him off. Shaw saw them call out to Muhammad. He had no idea what they said, but Muhammad turned his head and said something back to them. They had their arms resting across the automatic rifles. Before long one of the MPs pointed his finger at the bag Muhammad was carrying and Shaw could see an argument beginning. Muhammad gestured at them and they gestured back. Clearly, they had told him to stop and weren’t going to let him go any further until they had a look inside the bag. Finally, Muhammad set it on the ground at his feet, probably as they told him to do. Oh well, Shaw thought. He had hoped Muhammad would get right up to the building before Shaw detonated the bomb but it really didn’t matter. This would be the end of it. The fat private had figured out a way to terminate himself. Finis!
Shaw had another of his new burner phones ready. He pulled it out of his pocket and found the number in his speed dial. As he did, he saw Muhammad reach behind his back for the Colt .45, turn his head, and glance back at Shaw. At that distance, Shaw wasn’t sure whether the big black man was looking for help or whether he had finally figured out what was about to happen. Whichever, he decided to run. Not exactly fleet of foot, he turned, took two quick strides, and raised the Colt, pointing it in the general direction of the MPs. He began shooting at the same time they did, which was when Shaw pushed the green “Send” button on the burner phone.
A split-second later, a blinding flash of light and a loud Blam! lit up the front of the FORSCOM Headquarters as the full pound of C-4 exploded with the sharp crack of a door slamming and the blinding flash of a lightning bolt. It blew a two-foot-deep hole in the sidewalk and sent chunks of concrete flying in all directions. The explosion and flying debris shattered the building’s revolving front doors, all the big floor-to-ceiling lobby windows in the center of the first floor, and most of the office windows above them on the second and third floors of the four-story front façade. That sent a million shards of razor-sharp glass flying into the lobby. If this had happened at noon or 5:00 p.m., it would have been a bloodbath inside. Fortunately for the worker bees, the lobby was empty at this hour. On the other hand, the building was still standing. Most of the damage appeared to be purely cosmetic, as he expected. It would take a lot more than a pound-and-a-quarter of C-4 to bring it down, but through the smoke Shaw could see it would keep all the glaziers and carpenters in southeast North Carolina busy for a few weeks.
He couldn’t tell whether Muhammad or the MPs had managed to kill each other before the bomb went off. That became somewhat irrelevant when all three men were blown backwards across the sidewalk and obscured by the smoke and flying debris. Dead or alive? Shaw couldn’t tell from this distance and didn’t particularly care, but if the big black sergeant managed to live through that explosion, Shaw would start calling him Houdini.
The professor put his binoculars away and put his Peugeot in gear. Slow and easy, he continued driving down Knox Street the short distance it took to reach the parking lot of the Education Center, and returned to the same space he had parked in previously. It was only 9:45 p.m. He still had two hours before he was to meet Sameer al-Karman and this wasn’t particularly a good time to be seen driving around so he went up to his office. He could already hear the sirens as they began to converge on the FORSCOM building, and that would just be the beginning of the parade of MP cars, EMS ambulances, and firetrucks. The safest thing for him to do was to take his briefcase and course materials and find a comfortable chair in the second-floor faculty lounge for the next hour and a half or so. The lounge faced north toward the bomb site. He could have a nice cup of tea,
read a magazine or book, and have a ringside seat as the Army’s emergency response sprang into action below him. Too little, too late, he thought, as usual. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men weren’t smart enough to catch Henry Shaw before it was too late.
By 11:30 p.m., Shaw had seen more than enough. In the first quarter-hour, what had to be every fire truck, police car, and a half-dozen ambulances from the post and Fayetteville converged on the site. In short order, they picked up the three bodies lying in front of the building and drove them away, sirens screaming, to the big Womack Army Medical Center a half a mile away to the west. Even before that, a small army of MPs had roped off the area and begun a systematic search of the building, the vehicles parked there, and the site and surrounding property. After that initial burst, the activity appeared to fall into a dull, repetitive routine. And they said sociology was boring, he laughed to himself as he continued to watch.
Oh well, all good things must end, he decided. Time to go. He put his class materials back in his briefcase and went outside to his car. As he drove out of the parking lot onto Knox, he encountered the first of several security checkpoints, as four heavily-armed MPs surrounded his car.
“Can we see some identification, Sir?” one of them asked sternly as the other three pointed their M-4 rifles and a shotgun at him. Shaw smiled as he pulled out his wallet and handed the young man his driver’s license and Special Services Continuing Education Faculty ID. While the MPs carefully looked them over and radioed it in, Shaw turned his head and appeared to take notice of all the flashing lights down the street.
“Wow! What’s going on, guys? I was in the back of the building working on some notes for my next class and had no idea what was going on out here.”
“You’ve been in the building the whole time?”
“My class began at seven o’clock and ended about nine o’clock, then I started working on the notes. So yeah, I guess so,” he replied innocently.
Burke's Revenge: Bob Burke Suspense Thriller #3 (Bob Burke Action Adventure Novels) Page 22