Dark City (Repairman Jack - Early Years 02) (28 page)

“Right.”

“And which is your way?”

Bertel shrugged. “I’m assuming they’re heading back to New York. After I drop you off I’ll prowl the northbound turnpike till I catch their signal, then see where they take me.”

Bertel and he had eased back onto better terms during the trip. But even if they hadn’t, Jack didn’t want to see him getting caught up in something he couldn’t handle.

“It
is
a trap, you know.”

“Don’t worry, Jack. I won’t be walking into it. I don’t need to be in direct line of sight for this gadget to work. They’ll never see me behind them.”

“Still … why?”

“Just scratching a curiosity itch.”

“You know how that ended for the cat.”

“Won’t end that way for me. But you never can tell what will happen to them.”

Jack looked at him but his expression was set in stone.

“What’s that mean?”

“Well, that Reggie guy did order Tony killed.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Just keep driving.”

*   *   *

“Answer, dammit,” Reggie muttered. “Answer!”

While Kadir was using the men’s room, Reggie had bought a coffee and plunked the change into one of the wall phones. At least this time he hadn’t had to climb a bunch of goddamn stairs to reach them.

Finally al-Thani picked up. Reggie gave him a quick rundown of the cop stop.

“And you asked why he stopped you?”

“Yeah, but the guy was as talkative as a rock. Said he’d had a report of a rental truck hauling contraband and picked us at random, but I don’t buy it.”

“How long were the rear doors open?”

He sipped his coffee.

“Less than a minute. I got them closed ASAP.”

“Did many cars pass while they were open?”

“Hell, yeah. But it don’t matter how long they stayed open or if anyone who matters passed while they were. If the guys you’re looking for—”

“Choose your words carefully.”

“What? Oh, yeah.” Mobile phone. Right. “What I’m saying is, if these guys dropped a dime on us, they didn’t have to see nothin’. The fact that we’re still on the road tells them all they need to know.”

“Only if they made the call. Since we cannot know that, we will proceed as if it was truly a random stop.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Do you know your final destination?”

“Yeah, your little buddy showed me. That’s like the ass end of nowhere.”

“Precisely why it was chosen. When will you arrive?”

Well, they sure as shit wouldn’t be hitting any traffic toward the end of the haul—not at this time of year.

“We lost about half an hour with all this. Add that to the last ETA.”

“One
A.M.
then. We shall be waiting.”

Reggie hung up, with a lot more force than necessary. Shit. This was turning into one major clusterfuck.

*   *   *

Bertel had swung through one of those “
Official Use Only
” turnarounds to put them back on the turnpike south so he could drop Jack off at the Clara Barton Rest Stop. After feeding Ralph a full tank of gas, Jack continued the half dozen miles or so to the end, then turned around and headed north again.

He felt a pang as he saw signs for Exit 4. So easy to cruise down Route 73 into Burlington County, take 70 to 206 South to Johnson. Roll up to the driveway of his old house, pop in the door and say, “Hey, Dad, what’s up?”

Home again …

No, he couldn’t go home again. That would undo the clean break he’d made, undo the new life he was constructing for himself, the new person he was fashioning.

He put his foot in the tank and accelerated. As the exit ramp slid by on his right, he found it hard to swallow past the sudden lump in his throat.

Where had that come from?

But it got worse farther north as he approached that overpass … the one where the now dead Ed had dropped the cinder block that crashed through the window of the family car, crushing the life out of his mother.

Hadn’t even noticed it on the way south. So intent on following Reggie and the Arab in their Taurus that he’d breezed under it without realizing.

But now, following his own course, with no focus outside his own ragged thoughts, it hovered ahead, seeming to glow in the darkness.

He turned on the radio—AM only in this old car, but anything was better than thinking about that day, that moment, hearing again the smashing glass and his mother’s final whimpering, agonized breaths. He never listened to AM so he twisted the tuning knob at random, looking for something, anything to distract him. He got a nice sampling of static, but as the overpass loomed large in his windshield, he found a clear signal playing “Surrey with the Fringe on Top,” and almost lost control of the car.

He managed to guide the Corvair onto the shoulder and stop. That song. He’d always hated it. Mom had been a rabid Broadway fan. Hardly ever got to see the plays but always bought the sound tracks. The Muzak of Jack’s boyhood memories was a parade of Broadway tunes. Many he came to appreciate for their melodies and lyrics—like
My Fair Lady
and
South Pacific
—but he never cared for the
Oklahoma!
tunes, and “Surrey with the Fringe on Top” least of all. A dumb, dumb, dumb song, and he’d always begged his mother to put on another Broadway LP—
any
other Broadway LP—but she loved
Ooooooklahoma!
and wouldn’t hear of it.

They’d never been all that close. She was Mom and she was
there
, would
always
be there as a nurturing presence in his life. He’d always been her “miracle boy” who could do no wrong. The story behind the “miracle boy” designation, when he’d finally learned it, had left him with a feeling of vague unease, but he’d gotten over it. His father had been the central figure in his life. He’d been the one Jack had wanted to please. Mom was on his side, period. And maybe because of that he’d taken her for granted.

Damn, how he wished he’d appreciated her more while she was alive. He never got to say good-bye, never got to tell her what a nourishing, steadying influence she’d had on his life. Never intrusive, but always
there
. Someone he could count on—forever, he’d thought.

And then, that day in the car, one moment she was alive and well in the front passenger seat, the next she was gone.

He felt a pressure build in his chest and he began to sob.

Christ, what was wrong with him? Was he going crazy?

Had to remember to stay the hell out of Jersey.

WEDNESDAY

1

Nasser al-Thani let Mahmoud do the driving. After all, he operated a cab for a living. If he could navigate Manhattan traffic, surely the Montauk Highway in West Islip in the wee hours of the morning was nothing.

Besides, it gave Nasser time to think.

From the outside, everything looked perfect. Ali Mohamed had put a minion named Saleem Haddad in charge of setting up the auction—renting the house, notifying the interested parties. To prevent an accidental slip of the tongue, Nasser had instructed Kadir and Mahmoud to tell no one connected with Al-Kifah that the auction was a ruse and would never take place. He had been gratified to learn that Kadir was ahead of him—he already had told Ali Mohamed the same.

So, word of the auction had gone out through the pederasts’ clandestine and supposedly secure channels, the same as last time. The buyers were assembled in a rented house in a mostly empty neighborhood, the same as last time. Reggie, a man who had run children before, was behind the wheel of a northbound rental truck, the same as last time. The situation was ripe for a hijacking, just like the last time.

But from the inside, where al-Thani sat, everything looked far from perfect.

He still didn’t know how the hijackers had located the transfer site last time. Had they followed the truck north or had they followed the limousine Tachus had hired for the transaction? Since he couldn’t know, he had gone to a lot of trouble to send Reggie and Kadir south to pick up an empty truck. He’d also rented a limo just like Tachus had done, and made it as obvious as possible that it contained only two men. The limo had come equipped with its own cellular phone and an extended-range antenna, which might come in useful, considering the remote location of their destination.

“Make a right up ahead,” he said as they reached the Robert Moses Causeway.

Mahmoud nodded but said nothing as he turned onto the bridge that would take them to the barrier islands protecting Long Island’s south shore.

Nasser had researched the location carefully. This causeway was stop-and-go traffic in the summer months, but the barrier islands were virtually deserted at this time of year. And why not? Strips of sand dunes and sea grass and a cold wind blowing off the endless expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. No place to be in early March, but the perfect spot for a clandestine exchange of human contraband.

And an equally perfect spot for an ambush.

To the unimaginative, only two routes led to the transfer spot: this causeway from the north and east, and lonely Ocean Parkway running the length of the thin barrier island from the west. If, by some stretch of the imagination, the hijackers had learned the location of the supposed exchange, they would be watching those two approaches. But if they were, they would see no truckload of jihadists arriving to take up positions from which they could ambush the would-be ambushers. Because the gunmen would be arriving by a third route.

Mahmoud followed the causeway across a couple of miles of Great South Bay’s choppy water until they reached Captree Island, little more than marsh and scrub with a few houses on its south shore. Then over a narrow channel to Captree State Park at the easternmost tip of one of the barrier islands. If they’d kept going they would have crossed more water and then landed on Robert Moses State Park. Instead Mahmoud headed west on Ocean Parkway for three miles to the edge of Gilgo State Park, then turned south onto a sandy path with the unlikely name of Sore Thumb Beach Road. Nasser had seen it on a map and the beach did indeed stick out like a thumb, but it didn’t look sore. He had never understood the English expression “stick out like a sore thumb.” Really, whatever did that mean?

“Stop here,” he told Mahmoud just after he made the turn.

“Are they on time?” Mahmoud said.

Nasser checked his watch: 12:22.

“They should be appearing any minute.”

Drexler had arranged for two boats to ferry a dozen jihadists from a Babylon marina. Its owner had been suspicious, but Drexler had convinced him that it was a religious thing for the Muslims—that and a thick wad of cash had been enough. Nasser had the man’s mobile number. He called him.

“They’re not there yet?”
the man said.
“Could be the chop. The wind’s really picked up in the last hour. We’ve got a front moving through. If you don’t see them in the next ten minutes, get back to me.”

And you’ll do what? Nasser wondered as he hung up.

He watched through his sideview mirror and needed to wait only minutes before he saw movement atop the dune on the far side of Ocean Parkway. Mahmoud popped the trunk and the two of them stepped out of the limo to wave them forward.

When the twelve newcomers were clustered around the car, Mahmoud lifted the trunk lid and began handing out Kalashnikov AK-47s. They all knew how to use them. He directed them to positions in the dunes lining each side of the sandy road.

Nasser took as much of the icy, cutting wind as he could, then slipped back inside the limo. Growing up in Qatar had left him ill-prepared for these conditions.

When the jihadists were hidden from view, Mahmoud took the wheel again.

“Did you hammer home that we need those men alive?”

Mahmoud nodded. “They know. They will aim for the legs if it comes to that.”

“Good.”

They drove to the beach at the end of the road and parked. When the hijackers arrived—
if
they arrived—they would not be able to leave without passing through the jihadist gauntlet.

If
 … a big if now that the truck had been stopped and searched. If the hijackers knew it was empty, this would turn out to be a long, cold night with no return.

But no loss, either. Only some disgruntled pederasts. And that was hardly worthy of concern. A gain of sorts, in fact. With that thought nestled in his brain, Nasser al-Thani settled down to wait.

2

Over the phone, Black had told him to turn off 27 onto County Line Road east of Massapequa and park in the visitor lot of South Oaks Hospital. Less than a minute after Jack had killed Ralph’s engine, he showed up in a beat-up Chevy Suburban and drove them south through Amityville.

“Where’s the Mark Seven?”

“A little too memorable.”

Jack thought of Ralph. Same problem.

“Where we headed?”

“The auction house.”

“What’s the plan there?”

“Plan B.”

“What happened to A?”

“Plan A was freeing the kids. We suspected from the git-go the Arabs might make the run with an empty truck, but just the possibility that it could contain kids narrowed our options. Forced our hand, really. We would have had to make a play—either where the truck ended up or here at the auction house. But your call changed all that.”

“I hope that’s a good thing.”

“Oh, it is. Now that we know no kids are involved, who cares where the truck goes?”

Jack knew one person who did, but didn’t mention Bertel.

“So Plan B is…?”

“Hit the pervs. That’s where the money will be. Whoever’s waiting for that empty truck won’t have any money on them. Just lots of guns in the hope of getting their money back. But
here
…”

Hit the pervs
 … Jack remembered all the shooting at the Staten Island marsh last year.

“Hit them how?”

“Relieve them of their assets. They come prepared to bid for kids. No checks or credit cards accepted, so they bring cash.”