Monday Night Jihad (32 page)

She crunched down on the espresso beans, letting the taste and aroma fill her senses, then moved toward Gooey’s desk. “How’s it going, Gooey?”

He answered with a wave of his index finger. “One minute.”

Tara began to move away before the aromatic protection of the espresso beans wore off, but Gooey said without turning around, “Seriously, wait. Just one minute.”

Tara sighed and prepared for the olfactory assault. She looked at the monitor Gooey was watching. The video was of one of the Platte River gates. Panicked people were streaming out. People were pressed up against the wrought iron bars. Gooey had a bright circle following the head of one particular person. His mouse clicked a button that recorded that segment. “Get everyone around here, Terri. I’ve got something to show you.”

Tara knew that would be a tough sell to her team. “Are you sure it’s—?”

“Tara!” Gooey said, as he spun his chair around to face her. Something in his eyes told her that this was important. “Trust me. You’re all gonna want to see this.”

“Hey, gang!” Tara called out. “Gooey’s got something he wants to show us.”

A collective groan came from the other three as they stopped what they were doing and walked toward Gooey and Tara. Evie and Hernandez took a detour to Williamson’s desk to grab a handful of beans.

Gooey addressed the gathering. “Okay, the big question is how the terrorists got the bombs into the stadium. With all the security, it’s remotely possible they could get one or two in. But six? Not gonna happen! There’s got to be another way the bomb balls made it in.

“So I’ve been following Kazemi—the Iranian guy—from the time he went into the gates at Platte River. Here he is going in about two hours before the game. Check him out. He’s carrying a souvenir football, and he strolls right past a cop with a bomb dog. Not so much as a tail wag from our canine friend. Conclusion?”

“He doesn’t have the bomb yet,” Williamson answered, popping another espresso bean into his mouth. “We’ve seen this. Can you maybe speed things along?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hang on.” The rate of Gooey’s words was increasing with his excitement. He used his mouse to forward the timeline until a wide shot of the sidelines came on. “So, how did he get the bomb? This was about an hour and forty-five minutes before game time. Way over in the corner here, Kazemi’s leaning over the railing getting his souvenir ball signed. Take a look at who’s signing it.”

A gasp escaped each of them.

Hernandez said, “I know that number! That’s—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. And look here.”

“That’s al-Midfai getting a ball signed,” Hernandez said.

“And here.”

“That’s Mahmud,” Evie said.

“And here.”

“That’s . . . new guy,” Williamson said.

“Ibrahim,” Hernandez helped him.

“Yeah, Ibrahim,” Williamson finished.

“All the bombers got their footballs autographed before the game by the same player. ‘But,’ you might ask, ‘how did souvenir balls magically turn into bomb balls? And if they got the bomb balls signed, why wasn’t our friend’s name sprawled across the ball that was recovered from Mahmud?’ Good questions, grasshoppers. Let’s zoom in to the signing process. Here’s our favorite player holding a football tucked under his arm and signing someone’s shirt. Here he’s signing a picture. Now here comes Mahmud, who hands our boy a football. But Mr. Butterfingers accidentally drops it. Now watch carefully . . . there! Presto, change-o. We have a little ball swap. And, good guy that he is, he doesn’t forget to sign the new ball.”

“He’s turned the pen around!” Hernandez called out.

“Yep, he’s flipping the pen. I guess he didn’t want his name on the bombs on the off chance one of them didn’t go off. ‘But,’ you ask, ‘how did our football friend get the bomb balls into the stadium to begin with?’”

Gooey’s penchant for asking and answering his own questions was working overtime.

“Here he is walking into the stadium with a couple of other players. Check him out; he’s pulling a standard Mustangs ball bag behind him—eight balls rolling right past security. Just like that, we’ve got our football bomb distribution problem solved. But now for the coop de grass.”

Tara held her breath. She couldn’t imagine anything being more unbelievable than what they had just seen.

Gooey used his mouse to bring up a new screen with some grainy slow-motion footage. “You guys know about the videos shot by those two Zapruder wannabes by the field manger’s office. This is thirty-six seconds prior to detonation. The guy’s holding the camera above his head, trying to capture all the freaked-out people. Now, look who slides into the shot at the bottom left. Check out the jersey; check out the pads. . . . It’s Mr. Pen Flipper.”

“Good find, Gooey,” Tara said, “but we all know what happened to him in that tunnel.”

“Do we now? Let me zoom tight. Watch our player as he turns back toward the camera.”

“Wait! That’s not—”

“No, it’s not. My friends, meet bomber number seven, all dressed up like a football player. My guess is that he was hiding away in the field manager’s office until the fireworks started.”

“But why?” Evie asked. “It makes no sense. I mean, why go through all the trouble of a body double if you’re just going to get blown up anyway?”

“Ahhh, the key word being if, my young padawan,” Gooey answered, fully in his element and wanting to draw out the moment. “If you were going to blow yourself up, it would make no sense. But if you were not quite ready for your one-way ticket to martyrville but you wanted everyone to think you were, then it makes perfect sense. Take a look at this video from gate 5 during the postbomb mass exit. Let me zoom in real close-like to the dude in the overcoat and Mustangs hat. Look familiar?”

Williamson and Hernandez each exhaled matching expletives. Evie just stood there stunned. Tara ran across the room, picked up the phone, and dialed Scott’s secure satellite number.

Tuesday, January 20

Barletta, Italy

The past thirty-six hours had been a nightmare for Riley—or more precisely, a series of nightmares. Dreams filled with betrayal; dreams filled with heartbreak.

Riley is back with the Air Force Special Operations Command. Alpha Team is surrounded. Gunfire pings off the Humvee that is giving him temporary protection. He turns to Scott Ross, his number two, and tells him to order in some air support. But instead of lifting the radio, Scott picks up his Beretta M9, levels it at Riley’s head, and with a twisted grin, pulls the trigger.

Riley half awoke out of that horror into a hazy state. Everything was black; he couldn’t move his arms or legs. His body tried to writhe and twist, but the paralysis kept him locked in place. A gutteral yell escaped his mouth. The throbbing in his head was making him sick, as was the salty sweat dripping into his mouth. The chill on his naked upper body caused him to shiver uncontrollably.

Moments passed, and his mind began to clear. The lack of movement came not from paralysis but from the cords that bound his hands and feet to a chair. The taste in his mouth was not the bitterness of salt but the metallic tang coming from blood that was slowly oozing from where he had bitten his upper lip. His mind rewound, trying to remember how he had gotten to this place.

As he strained to bring clarity to the blurry images in his brain, a door opened and closed. Two sets of footsteps came toward him. Soft Arabic words were exchanged. Riley’s whole body tensed. Then he felt a sharp stab into his arm, and his mind swirled back into blackness.

Riley is back at his parents’ house. It’s Christmas, and earlier in the morning he opened a long package that contained his dream gift—a Crosman 781 pneumatic BB gun. That gift triggered a war that is now taking place on the battlefield of his backyard. For the last three hours, he has been out in the snow, setting up and plinking down his collection of green plastic army men. His boots soaked through a long time ago, and the pain in his toes makes him wince with every step.

“Just one more time and then I’ll go in,” he tells himself. But before he knows it, he finds himself placing the men back up on the soggy, wooden picnic table—targets for another tiny, copper-plated steel ball.

Riley’s post-Christmas morning bliss is suddenly interrupted by a scream from inside the house, followed by two loud pops. Without thinking, Riley runs toward the back door and throws it open. He races through the kitchen without taking off his boots, tracking snow on Mom’s squeaky-clean linoleum floor. He runs through the dining room and grabs the end of the banister, using its stability to reverse his direction. He bounds up the stairs two by two. When he reaches his parents’ bedroom, he stops abruptly in the doorway.

Riley’s mother and father are both lying on the floor, their bodies cocked at strange angles. Standing over them, holding a handgun, is Grandpa Covington. Riley gasps, and the retired airman turns toward him. Grandpa looks at Riley, then nods at his BB gun and smiles. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to bring a little more firepower than that, soldier,” Riley’s childhood hero says as he raises the pistol toward the boy and—

“NO!” Riley screamed as he woke up again. He was shaking all over, and his body was dripping with sweat. “It’s only a dream,” he muttered to himself. “It’s only a dream. It’s only a dream.”

The effects of the drugs gradually wore off. In the darkness behind his blindfolded eyes, he again tried to rewind the tape in his mind to discern how he had gotten here. He made it to the point of the extraction of al-’Aqran. Everything had gone well, hadn’t it? No, there was a problem. Someone—Billy—was missing. He remembered sending the team on its way. . . . Skeeter wasn’t happy. . . . Then there was the house . . . Billy’s body . . . a sound—what was it?—glass; footsteps crunching glass, and then . . . Oh no! Please, no!

The door opened again, and the sound of footsteps echoed in the room—just one set this time. The door closed—a new sound. The footsteps scraped across the cement floor, then stopped. A wooden chair dragged across the hard surface and creaked slightly as someone sat. Silence hung in the air; the only sounds were the visitor’s light breathing and Riley’s own labored breath.

Time stretched on before Riley finally spoke. “Sal? Sal, is that you?”

The question floated without a reply.

“Sal? How could you do it, man?”

The silence of the visitor was exasperating. Riley’s voice began to crescendo with anger and pain. “Answer me, friend. How could you do it? Who are you, Sal? What are you?”

A hand grabbed the blindfold and pulled it violently down around Riley’s neck.

There, twelve inches from Riley’s face, was Sal Ricci. Hate and anger shone in his eyes. “Who am I, friend? I am Hakeem Qasim! What am I? I am an Iraqi! I am a child of Allah! I am a predator, and America is my prey!” Hakeem leaped up out of his chair and began pacing around the room.

Riley’s head dropped over the back of his chair. The room was spinning. He tried to say something but found that no words would come. All he could manage were short bursts of air. What could he say? What possible words would mean anything in this bizarre parallel universe?

“But Megan . . . Alessandra,” he whispered.

Hakeem walked to his chair, turned it around, and straddled it backward. He had regained some of his composure and now seemed almost anxious to speak. But there was still an underlying hiss to his voice. “There is an old Arab proverb: You are in a boat, and your father, your wife, and your child are all drowning. You have room for only one other person. Whom would you save? Not your wife; you can always marry again. Not your child; you can always have more. Would you save your father? Yes. Because you only have one. I have saved my father—or at least I have restored his honor. If it is at the expense of my wife and daughter, so be it.”

Riley shook his head in disbelief. “You can’t mean that. What’s happened to you, Sal?”

His former teammate’s closed fist suddenly exploded across Riley’s left cheek. “I said my name is Hakeem! Sal is dead.”

Riley spit a mouthful of blood onto the cement at the other man’s feet and looked at him with disgust. “Whatever. Hakeem will be dead too, soon enough.”

Slowly, a heart-chilling smile spread across Hakeem’s face. “Right you are, old friend. But I don’t think the circumstances of my demise will be quite what you have in mind.”

“Come on, Sa—Hakeem. What’s left to do? You’ve restored your family honor. Thousands are dead. The PFL is in shambles.”

“The PFL? Oh no, it’s not in shambles . . . yet,” Hakeem said with that same sickening grin.

“What do you mean ‘yet’?” Riley was trying to keep his wits about him, but he felt like he was right on the edge of a downward psychological slide from which he might not be able to recover.

“You know how it is, Riley. No one really cares about the regular season games. They only care about the big ones.”

The sick feeling that Riley had in his stomach was now becoming a sharp pain. His voice became pleading. “You can’t be serious. . . . Please, man. Leave it alone.”

“Leave it alone? Maybe you should be taking your own advice! Maybe if you’d left it alone you wouldn’t be sitting here bleeding all over yourself. What are you even doing here, Riley?”

“I’m tracking down a murderer. I’m hunting for Hakeem the terrorist.” Riley paused. Then he added softly, “I’m avenging the death of my best friend.”

Silence filled the air.

Hakeem stood up again and circled around Riley. “You weren’t supposed to be here, Riley. You’re supposed to be back in Colorado, taking care of Meg and Alessandra.”

“Funny, I thought that was your job.”

A hand came hard across the back of Riley’s head, rocking him in the chair. “You forget your place, old friend!” Hakeem walked around in front of Riley and slowly shook his head. “Why have you come here? This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“Yeah, well, surprise. It did. So are you going to kill me, too?”

Anger flashed in Hakeem’s eyes. “I could have put a bullet in the back of your head in that house. And believe me, I’m the only one that’s keeping you alive right now.”