King felt good to be getting back to who he really was. He also knew how lucky they were to find a lead in that apartment.
They would need a lot more luck if they hoped to stop the magnitude of what they knew must be coming.
37
King opened the door for Sam. The obnoxious music poured out of the bar.
“Couldn’t have picked a place with better music?” King shouted as he followed behind her.
It was evident he hadn’t been in a hot spot like B327 in a while. Not too long ago, he and Kyle would have reveled in the loud music, dark vibe, overpriced drinks, and underdressed women. Now, every aspect of it offended his senses. The dark part, however, would work in their favor.
There had already been a lot more walking traffic on the streets since they’d entered Fred’s apartment, so the bar was crowded. Sam and King weaved through people holding cocktails and conversations. The DJ in the back was playing hip hop music, which had lost its luster for King in the last couple of years. Either he was getting old or the music just wasn’t as good as it used to be.
The two of them walked around the bar so they could grab the only two seats facing the front door. King could tell by the look on Sam’s face that she didn’t much care for the vibe of the place either. She’d never liked these sorts of places, at least as long as he’d known her, but he once met a friend of hers who revealed that Sam had been quite a handful in the clubs back in the day. King had tried desperately to get some juicy stories on his favorite girl, but the friend closed up like a vault when Sam gave her that “don’t you dare” stare.
A cute bartender finished pouring a beer from the tap and bopped over to the two of them. She tossed a couple of cocktail napkins down. “What can I get for you?” she shouted over the thump of the bass.
Sam held up her hand to say nothing for her. The bartender looked at King.
“She’s driving,” he said with a wink. The wink fell flat. She just stared at him waiting to take his order. He had never felt older. So he ordered like the old man he must have seemed to her. “Old-fashioned. No water. Top shelf.”
The bartender moved to her station and began working on it.
“For a former spy, you sure don’t know how to blend in,” King said to Sam.
She kept her eyes glued on her phone. King glanced up at the door. No one had come in behind them yet.
King fished the notebook from his pocket. “Now’s a good time to see if anything’s in here.” He tapped Sam on the arm, but her gaze didn’t falter. “Sam!”
Sam held her phone just inches from his face. It was an update sent from the deputy director of the CIA. A lump formed in King’s throat as he began to read. It was a note letting all available agents know about an all-hands-on-deck situation: a commercial airliner had just crashed into the Miami Marlins baseball stadium, right in the middle of an exhibition game.
King looked away, anger pulsing through his body. Sam brought his attention back to her phone. She pointed a little farther down in the note. King couldn’t believe what he read. A Twitter account created in the last twenty-four hours had two tweets, both with the hashtag #MiamiMarlins. The first went out an hour ago. It read, “It’s a great day for a game.” The second Tweet went out just minutes after the plane crash. “That was for father.”
King was sick. He knew there would be retaliation for Husaam’s death. He had no idea it would come in such a massive way. The reported number of the deceased in Miami was already well into the hundreds. The bartender sat King’s drink in front of him, and he took it down in one gulp. It lay sour on his stomach.
“It’s him,” Sam shouted over the music. “It’s Saajid. If he’s ticking off attacks for the people he’s lost, there’s at least a couple more coming for his sister’s daughter and for his brother.”
King’s jaw was clenched. He hadn’t realized he was still holding his glass; it shattered in his hand from his squeeze. Luckily, it only nicked him. He wiped the blood on the cocktail napkin.
“Go find something in that notebook,” he told Sam. “If he’s close, we have to find him. Tonight.”
Sam left her seat for a better-lit area of the bar. King was stewing as he stared at the door, praying one of Hammoud’s men would come looking for them. Finally, a man walked in who fit the bill. King rose from his seat. The man was scouring the bar with his hands in his pockets. King rounded the end of the bar, his hand on the grip of his pistol at the small of his back. The man was about halfway to King when they locked eyes. King began to pull his pistol as the man was removing his hands from his pockets.
Suddenly a woman jumped in front of King and threw her arms around the man. King stopped dead, tucked the pistol back in his jeans, and took a deep breath. He needed to get a grip. The last thing he needed was to let his anger about what was happening in Miami force a bad decision.
The door to the bar opened again. This time two men walked in, and they were in a rush. King slid over to his left and tucked himself in between two people standing at the bar waiting to be served. He pulled his phone from his pocket and pretended to be typing intensely. He glanced around the head of the woman in front of him, and the men were walking his way, their heads swiveling. These were Hammoud’s men. With a cooler head, King could feel it.
This time, however, he would be patient.
38
The DJ played the song “Good Feeling” by the rapper Flo Rida. The beat thudded in King’s chest. Immediately the people all around him began to dance. It was perfect timing—he had a good feeling he could take these guys out. The dancers gave him cover as the men walked right by where he stood at the bar. As soon as they passed, he put away his phone, grabbed his knife while his hand was in his pocket, and followed right behind them.
It was too dark to see any bulge from a concealed weapon, so he had to wait patiently while they made their way to the back of the bar. When they didn’t find what they were looking for, they exited the main room to the hallway outside the bathrooms. King had watched Sam go this way to read the notebook, so if they checked the bathrooms, King needed to be right on their heels. Fortunately, they had yet to look back. But he was ready if they did.
Moving into the hallway to the restrooms was a bigger problem than King expected. Mirrors starting waist high stretched all the way up to the ceiling. There was no hiding. King glanced back over his shoulder. A couple more men dressed in black walked through the bar entrance. Hammoud had sent an entire team.
King moved fully into the mirrored hallway. His instincts told him to go ahead and kill the two men. But after almost pulling a gun on a civilian just a minute ago, he had to wait until he had absolute proof that these men were there to do harm.
He didn’t have to wait long.
The man in front noticed King following close behind them in the mirror he was walking toward. Before turning, he tried to reach subtly for his weapon, but King’s focus was sharp; any movement of the sort was going to get the man killed.
King jabbed the blade of his knife directly into the jugular vein of the man directly in front of him. As he pulled the knife out, he front-kicked the same man in the back, sending him crashing into the man reaching for his gun. The force of the bleeding man knocked the other over, giving King the chance to advance. He kicked the gun from the hand of the man on the bottom, stepped on his arm, then jabbed the blade twice into the man’s neck.
There was no need for King to wait around, as he knew these men were dead. The ladies room was on his right, so he pushed inside. Sam was reading the notebook as she leaned against the wash counter. When she looked up and saw blood running from King’s blade, she didn’t even flinch.
“I’m assuming you found Hammoud’s men then?”
“Two more coming from the entrance. Probably more waiting outside the back of the bar.”
Sam tucked the notebook in the back pocket of her black jeans, pulled her Glock 17, and chambered a round. “We should probably wait here for them.”
King nodded. “Anything good in the notebook.”
“Plenty, but we can chat about it later.”
The muffled beat from the music made it impossible to hear much out in the hallway, but the scream from a woman who’d apparently found the bleeding men on the floor rose above the noise. Then more screams followed. King knew the bar was about to empty out. This would be their best chance to escape—moving with the sea of people rushing the exit. He exchanged his knife for his gun and leaned his shoulder against the door.
“We need to go now,” Sam said, confirming his thought.
“Stay with me,” King said as he pushed open the bathroom door.
He held his gun at eye level as he entered the hallway. He knew that anyone swimming upstream toward him would be the two men in black who had entered the bar, because everyone else would be running away from the bathrooms. That’s why the instant he saw a black-haired man walk around the corner, only a few feet from him, he was able to hit him twice in the head. The gunshots were deafening in the enclosed space. And the blasts took the crowd from scared to panicked as they raced for the exit doors. The music continued to play as more screams of panic erupted. When King squeezed the trigger, he stopped in his tracks, expecting the other man he’d seen earlier to follow close behind. Out of the corner of his right eye, in the mirror, he saw the reflection of that man just outside the doorway, turning to run.
King understood the flight mentality the second of Hammoud’s men had after seeing someone get shot, but he also knew it was a mistake. There was no way the man was going to get through the crowd to the door in time to escape King. Though his odds were terrible either way, they would have been better if he’d held his ground and fired back. These are the calculations that untrained terrorists never learn, and it’s the reason they aren’t a lot more dangerous than they are. It’s also the reason they bomb people in secret, because they could never fight an actual war.
King gave chase, sprinting through the bar. The man had already run into a sea of people crowding the exit. He would turn to shoot in desperation at any moment, putting a lot of innocent people in danger. King surged forward, and just as the man turned, King greeted his forehead with the butt of his Glock. The man dropped hard onto the floor. King looked back, and just as he knew she would be, Sam was watching the back exit.
Most of the people in the bar were quickly clearing out. Their window to escape amongst the crowd was closing. King rushed over to Sam.
“Does the notebook give us Saajid’s location?” he shouted over the music.
In the dim light Sam smiled and nodded.
A shot of adrenaline coursed through King’s veins.
“Then let’s get out of here!”
King turned for the front door. There were about twenty people still shoving to get out. The panic had died down a bit, which wasn’t good. The man King had taken out in the crowd, who was still unconscious on the ground as he stalked by, changed all of that. As the people noticed him and went into hysteria once more, King made a hole through the middle, and Sam followed. A few seconds later they were running outside in the middle of a crowd. The street was packed with the usual morons who just had to see what was going on, even though there were gunshots coming from the bar. It didn’t bother King. It merely further complicated the situation for anyone who might be looking for him and Sam.
King tagged along behind a couple holding hands as they raced to get away from the scene. The man held a set of keys in his left hand, and it seemed the most promising way out, so King stuck close behind. Sam had her hand on King’s back to let him know she was with him so he wouldn’t have to keep checking on her. One of the thousand little things a professional like her did to keep things moving optimally. Only things you could learn with years of experience.
Every detail mattered.
They crossed the street with this couple, and in front of them the lights on a four-door sedan blinked twice. The couple took their places in the front seats, and King slid in the back before the man could lock the doors. The woman screamed when Sam shut the door behind her. King brandished his Glock the moment the man was behind the wheel.
“We’re the good guys,” King said. “Just drive us out of here and we’ll leave you alone.”
The man’s face softened under the yellow light of the interior. He said something in Greek to his girl, then started the car. Maybe the fact that King was an American put him at ease; King could tell they didn’t speak English. Whatever it was that helped them trust him, it didn’t matter, because the car was moving away from the chaos, and that was what was important.
As they drove away from the bar, toward the unknown, the only thing playing in King’s mind was that airplane crashing into the crowded baseball stadium in Miami. And he couldn’t help but worry what they might hear next.
39
Rafina, Greece
“What do you mean they got away?” Saajid was furious at Rayan, his head of security.
“We had them pinned down in the bar. I sent four men in after them. When the shooting started, it was chaos. They escaped with the crowd.”
Saajid paced the produce area located above his operations bunker. He had a strict curfew in the isolated village he’d created, so other than his sister who was coordinating the attacks in the US, he was the only one around. He needed the fresh air after being below ground the entire day.
“I’m sorry, Saajid,” Rayan said. “I failed you.”
Saajid began processing.
Fred Johnson had been getting way too close to discovering that Saajid was the head of the organization in Athens and even where his compound was located in Rafina. When Saajid had him killed a week ago, he knew torturing him for information would pay off. The man had sung like a bird, handing over call signs and passwords in order to save his life. It had worked to intercept the meeting with the female agent who was staying at the hotel. Sending someone who looked like Fred Johnson to meet her was brilliant, and making her think Fred, though he’d been there two years, had found nothing on the “terrorists” in the region was the icing on the cake. It had effectively thrown her off the scent. But Husaam had stirred the hornet’s nest by attacking her despite Saajid telling him not to. So Saajid knew the female agent would seek out Fred Johnson to see why he had flipped on her.
Rayan should have taken her out at Fred’s apartment. But she had help with her. Honestly, that was the thing that was bothering Saajid more than anything. Who was assisting her? He was already past Rayan’s failure. He couldn’t think backward. He was focused only on what to do next. His people in New York City were almost in place. That was what was important. But he also needed to find out the identity of the man with the female agent who was after him in Athens. Saajid was 99 percent sure who the man was; he just needed a final confirmation.
“Did you see his face?” Saajid said. “Is it him?”
In his office Saajid had been focused on determining whether the man in the London video was the same man in the videos that were now viral on YouTube showing Husaam’s fight in the Plaka. Once he was able to determine they were the same person, he could take it a step further and compare a still photo from one of the videos to a picture he’d kept for the past year of the news coverage in Washington DC. The story was about the man from Kentucky who died the same day Saajid and the Maragoses attempted to assassinate the president of the United States.
Alexander King.
The man who stopped Saajid’s plot to kill the president had also killed Saajid’s childhood friends, Anastasia and Gregor Maragos, that week, and he was lauded by the United States with a funeral ceremony fit for a hero.
Now, that same dead man who killed Saajid’s friends looked exactly like the man in the video who had just murdered his brother. And he had to know for sure.
“Well?” Saajid said, raising his voice. “Is it the same man who murdered Husaam?”
“It is,” Rayan said with confidence. “And now he’s disappeared.”
&nb
sp; Saajid slammed the phone on the ground, then stomped on it for good measure. Jamila came up from the underground facility.
“What is it? What’s happened?”
“It’s him.” Saajid paced the floor. The wood beneath his stomping feet rattled and shook the covered produce from their baskets.
“Him who? What are you talking about? It’s getting late. You’ll wake the entire village.”
Saajid turned toward his sister so fast he nearly fell over. Her face was aglow in the light of the moon, and he could tell by her frightened look that his eyes must have been on fire.
“I don’t give a damn if I wake up all of Greece! The same man that killed Anastasia and Gregor killed our brother today! And he was standing beside Althea when she was murdered as well! Your own daughter!”
The color drained from Jamila’s face.
Saajid continued his rant. “This is such an American thing to do. Fake the death of an agent, only to send him in the shadows to steal what’s left of our family!”
Jamila wiped the tears from her face, took a deep breath, and tried to think forward. “Where is he now?”
“Rayan had him and lost him. This man is like a cockroach. But I’ll burn the entire city down if I have to.”
“At least we’re safe here. No more harm can come to our families.”
“Right, because other than us, they’re all dead!” Saajid was seething. “Now it’s our turn to hit back again. Even harder. I want every American to fear for their lives the way our families have feared for theirs for decades now.”
Jamila cleared the emotion from her throat. “That’s what I came up here to tell you. New York City is ready.”
“All six of them? And they know their sacrifice?”
“All six, and they all are happy to die for what is right.”
Saajid knew that while the plane that had crashed into the baseball stadium in Miami would frighten Americans from flying, what was coming next would scare them from moving from their homes at all. His people in New York City had been scouting the subway systems for months. Now, six of them were headed there with backpacks full of explosives, and every five minutes, for a half an hour, they would detonate them as the trains came into the stations. It would be the most terrifying thirty minutes in America’s history. The way social media worked today, by the time the third blast went off, all of New York, and the world, would be watching while the next three blew up in their faces.
The Secret Weapon Page 18