Monday Night Jihad (31 page)

Two houses away now. Khadi saw the slightest of movements on a rooftop down the street. As she watched, the barrel of Murphy’s M24 slowly slid into view.

One house. Khadi’s whole body was tense. Her thumb was poised over the detonator button.

Now! Her thumb went down. Up the street a fireball mushroomed into the air, followed by a thunderous noise.

Khadi didn’t take time to watch the fireworks. She dropped the detonator, picked up her rifle, and got her target in the sights. Just as they had planned, his attention was on the explosion. Khadi drew in her breath and depressed the trigger. Three hundred fifty feet away, her target dropped out of sight as her bullet found its mark. She dropped the rifle and made her escape toward the vans.

Hakeem had been eating breakfast when the windows of the kitchen blew in. He ran out the front door, his face and bare feet bleeding from the glass. Across the street, a car was engulfed in flames. Hakeem thought of the snipers and looked up in time to see the head of one of them all but disappear from his body.

He ran back into the house and threw his body against the doors of the cabinet that held al-’Aqran’s guns. The wood shattered against the blow. Hakeem reached in and grabbed an AK-47. As he did, he heard the sound of gunfire outside. He inserted a clip into the automatic weapon and stuffed three more into the waistband of his loose pants. Then he ran back through the broken glass and into the street.

Riley and Skeeter stood right behind the door so as not to get hit by flying glass. Posada and Scott were outside on the north side of the house, and Li and Logan were on the south side. When the car blew, they all rushed at once. The eyes of the bodyguards were turned toward the explosion, so they never saw the men who put the short bursts of 28 mm rounds into their bodies.

Riley and Skeeter went right for al-’Aqran. The jolt from Riley’s Taser dropped the terrorist immediately. Skeeter snatched the man off the pavement and threw him over his shoulder. Quickly, the team scanned the street and saw no one coming toward them. They turned and ran around the house to the vans out back.

As they reached the vehicles, they heard the distinctive clatter of an AK-47. Just then Khadi arrived out of breath from up Via Agostino Samuelli. Skeeter threw al-’Aqran into the rear of the first van, and Khadi and Scott scrambled in with their captive. Logan jumped in the driver’s seat as Posada circled around to the other side. Riley, Skeeter, and Li stood outside the van while Riley did a mental head count.

“Murph,” Riley said. “Where’s Murphy? He should have been here by now!”

They waited for thirty seconds, guns at the ready, watching for Murphy to come between the houses. Finally Riley said, “I’m going after him. Skeeter, Li, you two go with Scott and Khadi. I’ll follow you with Murphy in the second van.”

“I ain’t leaving you, Pach!” Skeeter said.

Riley grabbed the front of the man’s shirt. “Skeet!” he yelled. “I don’t have time to argue! The team can’t afford to lose you, so I am ordering you into that van! Now go!”

Skeeter stood for a moment, glaring at Riley, then dove into the van along with Li.

As Riley ran toward the house, he could hear the sound of tires squealing on asphalt. He went through the back door and crossed to the front of the house. He stopped as he reached the still-open front door and blown-in windows. In the middle of the street, Murphy’s twisted body lay in a pool of blood. He must have been hit running across the street from his position.

Riley knew he had to get him, but he also knew that there was someone else out there with a gun—probably more than one by now. As he contemplated his course of action, a footstep crunching glass caught his ear. He spun around in time to see a surprised look of recognition, a rifle butt driving toward his head, and then blackness.

Tuesday, January 20

Bari, Italy

Hicks heard Gilly Posada of the Mustang team radio from the roof of the safe house as the vans that carried Predator team rounded the corner. A minute later, the newcomers barged inside.

It had been twenty hours since Billy Murphy had gone down and Riley Covington had disappeared, and the eight Predator team members had spent all but two of those hours either on a plane or in a van. Hicks was exhausted.

Scott met them inside the door. “Guys, welcome. Jim, thanks for coming so quickly.”

“Sure. So what’s the status?”

“We’ve been working like dogs trying to get information. But first, before we get to business, why don’t you guys sit at the table? We’ve got some bread, and Kim’s cooked up some Italian sausages.”

For the first time Hicks noticed the smell of onion, garlic, and bell pepper that hung heavy in the room. He felt a twinge in his empty stomach but declined the offer with a wave of his hand. “I didn’t come here to eat, and I didn’t come here to socialize.”

“Maybe not,” Scott countered, “but you’re going to be an even bigger pain than usual if you don’t get some food in you.”

Hicks gave in. “Fine, Weatherman, serve the food.”

The members of Predator team gathered with him around the scratched table. Hicks sat at the head, then clockwise around the table sat Jay Kruse, Carlos Guitiérrez, Steve Kasay, Chris Johnson, Brad Musselman, Kyle Arsdale, and Ted Hummel.

While the plates were dished out, Hicks scanned the room disapprovingly. It was sparsely furnished and looked like it hadn’t had a good spring-cleaning since Mussolini was in power. Li, the one with the tattoos, brought over plates of food and bottles of Italian beer; the Mississippi giant, Skeeter, sat guarding the front door. “Where’s Khadi?” Hicks asked Scott.

“She’s sleeping in the near bedroom. Logan’s crashed over there somewhere too. Gilly’s scouting up on the roof.”

“What about your prisoner?”

Scott pointed to a dark corner of the large room, where a blanket covered a lumpy shape on the floor. “Mr. Scorpion was getting to be a little too high maintenance, so we shot him up with some happy juice and dropped him in the corner. He should be awake in a couple of hours. So far we haven’t been able to get much out of him.”

Hicks cut off a piece of sausage and stuffed it in his mouth. The flavor of the sauce was incredible, but the spice of the sausage had him reaching for the bottle of Peroni that Li had placed in front of him.

“Beer at four in the morning? Classy, Jim.”

Hicks followed the voice to the bedroom, where Khadi leaned against the doorway. She was still wearing her black outfit from the operation. Her hair was held up with a clip, and she hadn’t applied even what little makeup she usually wore. All eating at the table stopped momentarily as everyone took a long look at her. Khadi shifted on her feet uncomfortably, then walked to the kitchen. She grabbed a bottle of Suio sparkling water and sat by Skeeter.

Hicks turned back to his sausage. “Yeah, well, it’s four in the afternoon somewhere in the world.”

“Pago Pago,” Scott said.

“What?” Hicks asked.

“Pago Pago, American Samoa. It’s four in the afternoon there.”

Hicks just looked at him.

“Hey, sometimes it’s a blessing; sometimes it’s a curse.”

“Yeah, well, what do you say you keep your curse to yourself.”

The team ate a little more in silence. Scott walked over to where al-’Aqran was bunched up on the floor. He lifted the blanket to make sure the terrorist leader was still breathing. He was. Scott dropped the covering and returned to the table.

Brad Musselman finally broke the silence. “So, how do we know the football hero isn’t dead?”

Everyone in the room tensed at the question, and Skeeter’s chair audibly shifted on the wooden floor.

“First of all, the ‘football hero’ is the operational leader of Mustang team or Mustang Two,” Scott said forcefully, “and you’ll refer to him and address him with respect accordingly. Understand?”

Musselman waved his fork in a noncommittal gesture.

“Nevertheless, it’s still a good question,” Scott continued. “The answer is that we don’t know for sure. However, we ‘borrowed’ a witness on his way home from work who told us that there was one dead guy who stayed stretched out on the street until the police came. Obviously, that was Billy. But he also said there was a second guy who was carried out of a house on another man’s shoulder. They went into al-’Aqran’s house, and our witness didn’t see either of them come out again. Our assumption is that if Riley had been killed, he would have been left for the police like Billy was.”

“Any thoughts on where he is now?” Steve Kasay asked.

Khadi answered, “About an hour ago, Tara Walsh’s contact here—the guy who told us about the mosque and al-’Aqran’s house—informed us about three warehouses that members of the Cause have been seen frequenting. Two of them are down by the port, and one is closer to the railroad tracks. We were waiting for you guys to arrive before staking those buildings out for activity. Tara’s team is also working on some satellite surveillance. We don’t want to move on one of them without being sure that Riley’s in there for fear that they’ll kill him if we choose wrong.”

“I just don’t understand how Captain America was fool enough to get himself captured,” Musselman said quietly to his plate.

In a flash Skeeter’s chair went rattling across the floor and he was racing for the man. Scott intercepted him just as Musselman jumped up to meet Skeeter’s onrush.

Hicks rose next, and he raced around the table. “Skeeter, get back to your post! Now!”

Skeeter looked at Scott, who nodded. The big man glared at Musselman, who defiantly returned the stare. Skeeter slowly turned around and found his chair, which was now missing a leg. He threw the broken chair across the room and returned to stand in his place by Khadi.

Hicks watched him all the way.

Musselman chuckled and turned to sit again.

Hicks grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around. “Did I say sit down?”

Musselman looked surprised. “Well . . . uh . . . no.”

“You don’t sit down until I tell you to sit down! You want to know how Covington got himself taken? I’ll tell you. He was going after one of his men. That’s what real soldiers do; they take care of their own. That’s what I would do if one of my men was lying in the middle of the street—even . . . you.” Hicks accentuated these last two words with his index finger poking hard into Musselman’s chest. “And what real men don’t do is sit around sipping their beers, criticizing other men’s acts of bravery. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Musselman replied.

“I said, do you understand!”

“Yes, sir!”

“Now, sit!”

Musselman dropped into his chair.

Hicks continued, speaking to all who were at the table. “Listen close, because I’m only going to say this once. Effective immediately, there is no Predator team. We are all Mustangs. Do you understand that? We are all Mustang team. Take your assigned number and add eight. If you have a hard time with the math, talk to Scott.”

Now he addressed everyone in the room. “We’ve got a man out there who we’ve got to assume is alive until proved otherwise. Wherever he is, we will find him—together. And if I see any more of you bickering or fighting, you will find yourselves in two weeks’ time gathering sand samples in Somalia. Clear?”

A general murmur of assent answered Hicks.

He turned to Scott. “Get my men rotated into the watch cycle.”

“You got it, Jim.”

The veteran started back to his place at the head of the table, then stopped and looked at Musselman. “And, Scott, why don’t you start right away by putting Brad up on the roof?”

“You got it, Jim,” Scott repeated with a smile.

Hicks sat down at the table, took a long swig of his Peroni, and stuffed another bite of the spicy sausage into his mouth.

Tuesday, January 20

CTD Midwest Division Headquarters

St. Louis, Missouri

The Room of Understanding was in a flurry of activity. That was one thing Tara Walsh appreciated about her little band of misfits: they worked hard, and they were smart. Guess that’s two things, she thought and smiled to herself.

Each member of the team had given her regular progress updates—all except for Gooey, whom she pretty much left to himself. Hernandez had found out the identity of the fourth bomber—Syamsuddin Ibrahim, an Indonesian from Aceh, which accounted for some of their difficulties in tracking him down. Tara walked over to Hernandez’s workstation, where he was continuing to run facial recognition software, searching for a name for bomber one. Hernandez looked up and gave her a quick nod, then went back to what he was doing.

Tara continued toward Evie’s desk. About an hour ago, Scott had called and asked that Evie be pulled away from what she had been working on to start searching for satellite images of some buildings in Barletta. Evie had found a multitude of old shots and was now trying to reposition a bird for some real-time pictures.

“Are you having any trouble with permissions for the satellite?” Tara asked.

Evie shook her head. “No, you cleared the path pretty well. I’ll let you know if anyone starts raising a stink.”

Tara put her hand on Evie’s shoulder and then walked around the conference table to the other side of the room. Joey Williamson was the resident speed-reader at over a thousand words per minute. Tara had asked him to go back over the eyewitnesses’ statements to see if anything had been missed. Looking over his shoulder, she watched as his long index finger rapidly traced the lines down the page. Amazing, she thought as she reached around him to the dish on his desk that held chocolate-covered espresso beans. She popped a couple into her mouth and then paused.

At the end of the room was Gooey’s workstation. It was an unpleasant place for a number of reasons. First of all, Gooey seemed to have some sort of digestion problem, which caused each of them to perpetually burn scented candles at their desks. Second, the place was a pigsty. Papers and trash were spread all around his desk and on the floor. Third, he was as sloppy in his English as he was in his appearance. Every time he spoke to her, she spent most of the conversation mentally correcting his grammar. Basically, what it came down to was that he was the exact opposite of her. Everything she strove to not be, he was.