“No, actually, I’m shopping,” Shaw answered, still agitated as he pulled a chair up close to the young chemist’s table with a cup of hot coffee.
“You must switch to tea, preferably green tea, with honey. You’ll find it settles the stomach and soothes the nerves.”
“My nerves are fine; but they’d be a whole lot better if you got a cell phone, so I could reach you when I needed to. Here, I’ll even give you one,” Shaw said as he pulled one of his remaining burner phones out of his pocket and slid it across the table to Sameer.
Sameer caught it and slid it back just as quickly. “You know they can target you with a Hellfire missile if you use one these abominations? Or listen to every word you say, if it is in the same room with you.”
“You’re paranoid.”
“And I’m still alive,” al-Karman answered. “So what are you shopping for?”
“Another twenty pounds of your witch’s brew.”
“My witch’s brew? We Muslims believe in jinn, not in witches. But personally, I often refer to it as silly putty when the children are around.”
“Children? No wonder you need money.”
“I have four — three girls, who will bankrupt me, may Allah have mercy, and one boy, the youngest,” Sameer said as he cocked his head and leaned closer. “But did I hear you correctly, Professor? You said you want twenty more pounds? In addition to the ten?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” Shaw glared at him. “Actually, thirty more pounds would be better. Now stop questioning me.”
“I meant no offense. I assumed my hearing had gone bad, since I have not heard a string of new explosions around town since we last met. What are you going to do with it?”
Shaw shrugged. “I understand it makes an excellent modelling clay.”
“A very expensive one.”
“My problem, not yours. As I said, I want twenty more pounds and I’ll pay you $150,000 for it, in cash. Better still, I’ll make it $200,000 for thirty pounds.”
Sameer blinked as the wheels whirred around inside his head. “That is most generous, I must admit,” he said as images flashed in front of him of all the things he could do with all that money.
“Think of it as a down payment on four college educations,” Shaw told him.
“Only one college education, my friend, for my son. You see, my wife’s family is very traditional, and school is not what the girls are for in my culture. They are very cute and cuddly when they are young, but they require prodigious dowries and huge weddings, what we Arab men call the Islamic retirement fund.”
“Of course, how silly of me.” Shaw smiled. “There is one catch, however. I must have your ‘silly putty’ by tomorrow night.”
Sameer groaned as he looked down at his thick chemistry textbooks. “You will flunk me out, Professor. You will flunk me out.”
“Can you do it, or not?”
“I think so, but it will not be easy…” Al-Karman continued to consider the problem. “Yes, of course I can, but I will need a substantial advance to purchase the materials I need.”
Shaw reached under his chair and placed a McDonald’s bag on the table. “There’s $75,000 in there. Saturday night, same place, and let’s make it ten p.m. this time. If all goes well, I’ll even give you the Big Mac that goes in the bag. And if it doesn’t, I’ll want the money back, Sameer. Don’t try to run on me; you can’t go fast enough or far enough.”
“Is that a threat, Professor?”
“Of course it is… my friend.” Shaw smiled at him with little alligator teeth.
At the far end of the cafeteria, around the corner from the dish line, was a fire door with small wired glass panels. If you stand on the other side in the dark stairwell, you can look inside the brightly lit cafeteria and see most of the seating area and everything that is going on, particularly along the side of the room where Henry Shaw sat talking to a young Arab man. The dark window was the perfect place for Mergen Khan to watch “the professor” and see who it was he was dealing with. The question was why? And for what? Was he one of his recruits, or a source for his guns or the explosives?
When Shaw finally walked away and the young man turned back to his books, Mergen slipped inside the cafeteria and pretended to be looking at the desserts in the food line. He circled the room until he was certain no one else was watching. Finally, he walked over to al-Karman’s table, sat down in the chair opposite, and glared at him. The chemist looked up at him and stared back, but he said nothing. He was cool, Mergen had to give him that much. Very few men sat under the glare of a Khan and didn’t at least start to sweat and squirm. Finally, Mergen turned his eyes on the covers of the textbooks lying between them. Chemistry books. He saw the thick McDonald’s bag, and he smiled.
“You are the chemist, aren’t you?” Mergen asked in Arabic.
“And you are?” al-Karman answered in the same language.
“I am the man with the $300,000 dollars.”
Al-Karman smiled and leaned closer. “He told me it was $150,000… or $200,000.”
Mergen also smiled. “It would appear we are both being cheated.”
“Yes, it would. What is it you want?”
“I want you to come with me.”
Al-Karman looked down at his books and shrugged helplessly. “I have a test…”
“And I have the rest of the money and a 9-millimeter automatic. Come.”
It was 4:00 p.m. before Henry Shaw returned to the Muslim Student Center, a good time to check on his “students,” he thought. As he expected, most of them were lying around the first-floor lounge, but he didn’t see his two current favorites: Shahid Halabi or George Enderby. Halabi was a Saudi from the ruling government class, the spoiled youngest son of a bureaucrat in Riyadh, and as arrogant as they come. As best Shaw could see, his only interest in attending the college to begin with was to keep his student visa, stay away from the desert, and stay away from his father’s wrath. Shaw’s specialty wasn’t psychology, but even an introductory freshman course in that subject would be enough to conclude that Halabi was the perfect choice for a very specific task that Henry Shaw had in mind.
George Enderby, however, would prove to be far more broadly useful to his plan.
Like the late, great, sergeant-now-busted-to-private Farrakhan Muhammad, and unlike most of Shaw’s other recruits, who were Arabs, George Enderby was an African American and a soldier in good standing in the American Army. He was a thoughtful young man who had converted to Islam several years before after two tours in Iraq. Shaw met him four months before at the mosque, and the conversion and the mosque were about as far as Enderby’s similarities to Muhammad went. The latter was a big, fat, stupid loudmouth who was barely qualified for even the limited tasks Henry Shaw had laid before him, such as shooting unarmed Army officers in the back and placing explosive charges for Shaw to detonate. Enderby, on the other hand, was a tall, thin Sergeant E-5, a Squad Leader, who served in the prestigious 82nd Airborne Division, had fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and had all sorts of Army badges and ribbons on his green dress uniform that a Marine reject couldn’t care less about. One thing was certain, however, George Enderby was a good leader and he knew exactly what he was fighting for. Why he turned against his own country and his own Army was his business, but Shaw needed him more than all the others combined, because Enderby had actually led small groups of men in battle, an experience and skill of which even Henry Shaw knew little.
Even George Enderby could wait until later, until this evening, however.
For the moment, it was this irritatingly egocentric young Saudi, Shahid Halabi, whom he needed to attend to. Henry Shaw finally found Halabi sitting on the basement floor of the Muslim Student Center playing the new Mortal Kombat X video game on the Play Station 4 the Department provided for them. It was hooked up to the lounge’s sixty-inch HD TV, which the Department had also provided. Halabi was sweating and screaming at the screen, his thumbs flashing back and forth on the two-handed conso
le like a maniac, so engrossed in the game that he was totally unaware that Shaw had even entered the room, until Shaw walked over to the wall and pulled the Play Station’s plug from the outlet.
The TV screen suddenly went black and Shahid Halabi almost jumped out of his skin.
“What?” he screamed as he turned his head. “Who the hell… Who did…?”
“Get up, Shahid,” Shaw told him.
“But I…” Halabi sputtered. “I was almost up to Level 5, and I…”
“Grow up! You and I have important work to do today and I need your full attention. Are you with me, or not?”
“Yes, yes, Professor, but…”
“No buts, Shahid. Get up. Do you still have that old Toyota car of yours?”
“Yeah… uh, yes, it is out back.” Shahid nodded suspiciously.
“Good. First, I have some things in my car trunk we need to bring inside, and then you and I are going for a little ride.”
Shaw had parked his Peugeot between Halabi’s Toyota and the rear basement door of the Center. When they went outside, he took a long moment to look around the small parking lot, the nearby street, and the adjacent buildings before he popped the trunk; but he saw no one watching them. “Hold out your arms,” he told the young Saudi. Halabi did as he was told, and Shaw placed a blanket-wrapped, heavy bundle across them.
“Whoa.” Halabi wobbled under the strain and almost dropped it.
“Man up, Shahid, they aren’t that heavy,” Shaw cut him off.
“But what are…”
“Automatic rifles,” Shaw snapped. “Now stop complaining and get them down the rear stairs to the basement broom closet while I bring the rest. Go!” While Halabi stumbled down the stairs, Shaw picked up a cardboard box full of pistols, the ones they had taken from the rednecks at the truck stop, plus the ones Muhammad had bought with the rifles. He placed the box on top of two olive-drab Army ammunition cans and followed Halabi into the basement.
Halabi stood in the basement hallway outside the storeroom door, straining not to drop the heavy wrapped bundle, as Shaw set the cardboard box on the floor outside the door. It had a stronger hasp and a very heavy, hardened-steel padlock. Shaw pulled a key from his pocket and opened the door, telling him, “We’ll put them in here,” as he took the bundles of rifles off Halabi’s arms and stacked them against the side wall, following with the boxes and the ammunition cans.
“These are the new American M-4 rifles, are they not?” Shahid asked wide-eyed. “Allah be praised, where did you get them?” He picked one up and quickly examined it.
“The Americans gave them to me. They said, here, Professor, why don’t you go shoot some people for us… What do you think?” Shaw asked, wondering if this stupid Saudi was smart enough for the job, after all. “We now have enough guns and ammunition to arm at least a dozen men and strike fear into the Crusaders like they’ve never felt before. Is all this too much for you, Shahid? Are you still with me?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” the excited young Saudi answered.
“Then don’t ask all those stupid questions, and do what you’re told.”
“Yes! Yes! I will, and I am with you, Professor Shaw.”
“Good, because you and I have a very important job to do this afternoon. You shall have the honor of making the first strike, Shahid. It will make you a legend, but we must hurry,” he told him as he looked at his watch. It was now 4:15. “The FBI and CIA are after me. They want my blood, and we only have a half hour to get this done.”
Back in the parking lot, Shaw glanced around, and then went back to his Peugeot. “Open your trunk,” he told Halabi as he picked up the cardboard box with four plastic quart bottles of Castrol from his trunk and carried it to Halabi’s car. His trunk contained a pair of muddy soccer shoes, two badly scuffed soccer balls, and a dirty sweat suit. Perfect, he thought as he shoved them aside, and sat the motor oil box inside, toward the front of the trunk.
“This is not motor oil, is it?” Halabi looked inside the box and asked suspiciously.
“No, it’s six pounds of C-4 plastic explosive.”
Halabi’s eyes widened, unsure as to whether Shaw was being sarcastic or not, until he saw the look in the professor’s eyes. “In my car? What… what are you going to do with it?”
“You must trust me, Shahid. You must trust the Caliph and your faith.”
“Yes, yes, of course, Professor,” Shahid answered nervously. “But riding in my trunk like that… it won’t explode, will it?”
“No, of course not.” Shaw smiled to try to put Halabi at ease. The last thing he wanted to do was scare this moron away at this critical juncture in his plan. Shaw pulled his cell phone from his pocket, opened it, and showed the young man. “It won’t do anything until I detonate it. Now get in your car and follow me.”
“Where are we going?”
“Didn’t you look on the class schedule and see today was a museum day?” Shaw asked him with a wicked smile.
“The schedule? … A museum day? I don’t…” Halabi stammered, not getting it.
“I’m just joking, Shahid. Haven’t you ever been to the Airborne and Special Operations Museum in town?”
“Do you mean that new white building west of downtown?”
“Yes, it’s the wonderful new shrine that the Crusaders erected to honor the soldiers who they sent to kill our brothers.”
“Why would we ever want to go to such a hateful place?”
“Why? To blow it up, of course.”
Halabi’s jaw dropped. “Blow up a museum?” he almost whispered.
“It’s not merely a museum; it’s a symbol of everything that is trying to destroy us. But if we can destroy it, we will strike a massive blow at their egos and their morale, and drive a wedge between the local community and the Army post. Between this and what we did the past few nights up at Fort Bragg, they will know that there is no safe haven, no place they can hide, nowhere that we won’t seek them out and destroy them. That’s why we must go, now. Follow me. It closes at five o’clock and we only have minutes left to strike.”
They drove south on Murchison, crossed under the 401 Beltway, and soon found themselves approaching the modern, new Airborne and Special Operations Museum, with Shaw’s Peugeot in the lead and Halabi’s Toyota following. The museum was one of the crown jewels of Fayetteville and Fort Bragg. It was located in the perfect place, at the intersection of two busy streets adjacent to downtown, the train station, and the central police and fire stations, at the beginning of Fort Bragg Boulevard, where it had become a tourist magnet for the city. Approaching the museum from the north, as soon as the modern, white building came into sight, Shaw pulled off to the side of Hillsboro Street, stopped, and motioned for Shahid to join him in the front seat of the Peugeot.
“When you go around the bend up ahead,” Shaw patiently explained to him, motioning with his hands, “the road will pass between the side of the museum and the railroad tracks. You will see a short service drive on your right that leads to the building’s loading dock. It’s behind the museum’s bank of air conditioning units. I want you to drive up there and park your car as close to the building as you can get. I’ll be across the tracks in the railroad station parking lot. You are to leave your car there and walk across the tracks, where I’ll pick you up. Once we are safely away, I’ll set off the bomb. Is that clear?”
“Yes, but… what about my car, my Toyota?”
“It’s a piece of junk, Shahid. I’ll buy you a new one tomorrow. Is that okay?” The young Saudi finally smiled and nodded his head. “Now go, it’s almost five o’clock.”
“But what if they stop me and search the trunk?”
“Let them. What are they going to find in there? Some dirty sports clothes and a case of motor oil. What could be more normal?” Shaw smiled. “Besides, no one’s going to stop you. Simply park by the museum’s loading dock, get out, and walk away, not too fast and not too slow. ‘Easy, peasey,’ as they say.”
“Easy,
peasey,” Shahid mumbled, his voice totally lacking conviction as he opened the car door to get out and then looked back. “You aren’t the one driving around with all that C-4 in your trunk, Shaw.”
“Shahid, Allah, Praise be His Name, gave that honor to you, not to me.”
“Yes, yes, Praise be His Name,” the younger man repeated, still not sure.
“You shall be the one striking this blow for your people, hitting the enemy where it hurts the most. Millions of the faithful around the world will be praising your name tonight, praising Shahid Halabi. Your father and your whole family will be proud of what you do today.”
Shahid gave him a quick, uncertain look, but he finally got out and closed the door. As Shaw watched, he walked back to his Toyota and both cars resumed their drive south. Shaw turned left at the next corner, crossed the railroad tracks, and drove down to the train station, while Halabi continued south to the museum.
Shaw swung into the railroad station parking lot and found a choice space up against the tracks where he could look directly across them and Hillsboro Street to the backside of the tall, beige and white Airborne and Special Operations Museum. It was only a few hundred feet away, so he slid down in the seat. He could see the loading dock area over the dashboard, and waited. Less than a minute later, Shahid Halabi’s Toyota came slowly down Hillsboro. When he reached the service drive, he turned in, ever so gently, and drove up the short incline to the loading dock. Carefully, Halabi swung his car under the protective concrete overhang that covered the truck dock, and parked. As Shaw watched, Halabi got out of his car and stood there for a moment, glancing nervously around. Shaw shook his head. It was a good thing there were no guards on duty at this museum. Even from this distance he could see the young Saudi fidget and sweat. That was all Shaw needed to see. As Halabi took his first tentative step away from his Toyota, Shaw made his decision. The young Saudi was too unreliable, too much of a risk. This time, Shaw was not about to let his bomber walk or crawl away and live to talk about it, not this time.
Burke's Revenge: Bob Burke Suspense Thriller #3 (Bob Burke Action Adventure Novels) Page 29