Targets of Opportunity (45 page)

“You said you had a guess,” Janssen urged him.

“I do, but I don’t want to distract your men from a broader sweep.”

“Mr. Sandor, I’m Captain of Highway Patrol in this area. If you’ve got an idea, I think we should all hear it.”

Sandor hesitated. “If their plan is to cripple our economy by destroying the largest refinery in the country, what would their next target be?”

“The second largest,” the captain answered.

“That’s my guess, gentlemen.”

“Baton Rouge,” Janssen said.

“Baton Rouge,” Sandor agreed.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

WASHINGTON, D.C.

T
HEY BROUGHT
J
ABER
to the Mayflower hotel. Agent Fitzpatrick drove while Byrnes sat in the backseat of the Lincoln sedan with the former IRGC operative. It was just the three of them, a quiet ride, no one speaking, although the DD retrieved several cell phone messages, one of which he would return as soon as he was done with the Iranian.

“This is it,” Byrnes said as Fitzpatrick pulled their car to a stop at the entrance. Then he gave Jaber the room number.

The Iranian was genuinely surprised. “That’s it? I’m free to go upstairs, on my own?”

“We’ll be waiting for you right here when you’re done,” Byrnes replied. He did not mention the SUV that had tailed them from the safe house, in case there was another attempt to intercept Byrnes’s vehicle, nor the men stationed inside the hotel.

Jaber, however, knew the score. “Of course, there is always the all-seeing eye of your Agency.”

Byrnes nodded. “You don’t have to do this,” he said.

“Do what? Act as your human bait?” Jaber smiled his thin, mirthless smile. “I understand what your superiors want. I have not given you enough information, so now I am being used to draw out my own countrymen, to give you a chance to capture one or more of them and perhaps learn something more about this business with the Venezuelans and North Koreans.” He shook his head. “I have played this game too long not to grasp the situation, Director Byrnes, but in the end you are giving me what I have requested, are you not? I am going to see my wife.” He leaned forward and grabbed the door handle, then stopped and turned back. “Whatever comes of this, I will not forget that you have treated me with respect. And a modicum of hatred, anger, and condemnation, all which were to be expected,” he added with another brief smile. “But always with dignity.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I am,” he replied, then he yanked on the lever, swung the door open, and stepped outside. He took a deep breath, then bent over and looked inside the car. “I really will see you later?”

“You can count on it,” Byrnes told him.

Fitzpatrick got out and accompanied Jaber into the lobby. Byrnes remained in the backseat, where he pulled out his cell and dialed Sandor.

When Jaber and Fitzpatrick reached the bank of elevators, the young agent made a show of stepping back.

“Good-bye, then,” Jaber said.

“You know the room number,” Fitzpatrick replied, then turned and returned to the lobby door.

Byrnes had made a show of removing the security detail stationed right outside Rasa Jaber’s room, but he still had men on hand. One agent was behind the front desk dressed as a hotel trainee and one was working as a bellhop, for which he would be endlessly ribbed back at Langley. He was the rover, moving around the building as needed. A third agent remained in the stairwell on Rasa Jaber’s floor.

Once Jaber entered the building, the black Suburban pulled up behind Byrnes’s sedan and three other agents stepped out. One stayed with the DD while the other two joined Fitzpatrick in the lobby.

The man assigned to Byrnes leaned down and opened the door. “No hostiles in sight,” he said.

Byrnes nodded, said, “You guys know the drill,” then got on his phone.

————

Jaber rode the elevator alone, got off on the fifth floor, and found his way to his wife’s room. It was the middle of the afternoon and the hallway was quiet. He knocked and waited, listening as she had a look through the peephole. She opened the door and they stood there facing each other.

“Rasa,” he said, then they fell into an awkward silence. He wanted to take her in his arms, to tell her how sorry he was, but something felt wrong about that. He looked past her into the room, then asked, “Are you alone?”

“I am alone,” she told him. Then, as if her statement needed confirmation, she swung the door wider. “You should come in,” she said, and he followed her inside.

————

The agent positioned in the stairwell reported that Jaber was inside. Fitzpatrick was standing at the hotel entrance when he got the message. He relayed the high sign to the Deputy Director.

The two men who had followed Byrnes in the SUV now made their way up the stairs.

————

What none of the agents knew was that word of Rasa Jaber’s location had already been discovered and passed to Vahidi. One of his men was already inside the hotel and ready to act on word of Ahmad Jaber’s arrival.

The word had been given as soon as Jaber entered the lobby.

————

Rasa was standing in the room with her back to the window, framed by the Washington skyline. Jaber closed the door behind him and sat in the club chair where his wife had spent so many hours anguishing over what would become of her. Of them.

“You look well,” he said.

“You sound surprised. Is that because you expected that your former friends in the Revolutionary Guard would torture me? Humiliate me? Leave me to freeze and starve while you came here without me to live in comfort?”

“Rasa, I can explain.”

“Of course you can, Ahmad, you can always explain. But can you give an honest answer? I have come to realize that these are two different things. The one is nothing more than an excuse, the other is about the truth. Can you look at me and tell me the truth?”

“I can, but you are angry,” he replied calmly.

“Angry? Why should I be angry? Because you left me to die? Because you put the lives of my sister and her family at risk? Because you have betrayed the memory and honor of our sons?”

“I know you have good cause for your upset but please, sit down and collect yourself. There is much we have to discuss and there may not be much time.”

She drew an uneven breath, his equanimity only further infuriating her. Grabbing the straight-backed chair from the writing table she turned it toward him and sat down. “Go ahead,” she said, maintaining an erect posture as she glowered at him. “I will listen.”

“These men from the IRGC. What did they tell you?”

“What did they tell me, you ask? What do you think they told me? That my husband had defected to America like a traitor and left me behind to suffer for his betrayal. They told me that you were living in luxury while I was stripped of my clothes and possessions and sent to rot in a cell as if I were some sort of criminal.”

Jaber felt himself wince, but he struggled to remain composed. “Did they tell you why I came here?”

The question seemed to take her by surprise. She hesitated, then admitted, “I believe that’s why they let me go. I don’t think even they know. They want me to find out why. For myself as well as for them.”

Jaber nodded. “Then ask yourself, my wife of all these years, why would I have come here without you unless I had a very good reason?”

“I have been tormented by that very question for the past two weeks.”

He stood up and stepped toward her. “I was betrayed and marked for death. I was left no choice but to flee.”

Rasa jumped from her seat so abruptly that he almost fell backward. Then she shrieked at him, in a voice he had never heard from her. “And what about me, Ahmad? What about me? What did you leave me to face? What choice was I given?”

————

Outside, the agent stationed at the far end of the landing remained in the stairwell, out of sight but connected by radio to the rest of his team. Even through the thick walls and substantial door of the Mayflower, he could hear Rasa Jaber scream.

“Ah, married life,” he whispered into his mike.

The man at the lobby desk, hearing him through the earpiece, said, “Are they having a happy reunion?”

“Love in bloom.”

One of the two men in the stairwell announced that they were on their way up.

Just then, the agent on Rasa Jaber’s floor heard the sound of the elevator door opening. From his vantage point to the left, he could see a young man wheeling a tray into the corridor.

“Control, we have company here. Anyone on this floor order room service?”

The man downstairs at the front desk had his eye on a computer monitor. “That appears to be a negative, but we’ll double-check with the kitchen right now.” The agent dressed as a bellhop was on it immediately.

“Should I move or wait?” the agent asked. But before he received an answer the waiter abandoned his cart and began racing toward Jaber’s room. A pistol was suddenly visible in one hand and an electronic keycard in the other.

“Hostile on the floor,” the agent barked into his mike as he burst through the door, “move, move, move!” he hollered to his teammates, but it was too late. He managed to get off three shots, but the man had already used the keycard to enter the room and slammed the door shut behind him.

————

Rasa was wide-eyed with fear at the sight of the slightly built Arab man aiming his pistol at her. The assailant, who could not have been more than twenty years old, glared at her, then turned to Jaber. “You are a disgrace to our great country and to Allah,” the young man announced in a loud, nervous voice.

Rasa was astonished at how impassive her husband remained. She realized, in that instant, that she had never before seen him in action.

“And who,” Jaber inquired, “has filled your head with such lies?”

“Those whom I trust with my life,” he declared.

Before any of the three of them could speak again, they heard a noise at the door. Someone else was coming in, and their assassin had clearly been instructed not to delay.

In that final instant, Rasa looked at Ahmad. “I never called them,” she said, tears filling her sad, beautiful eyes. “They told me to call them, but I swear to you I never did.”

When her husband turned away from their murderer to share a final look with her, she expected to see hatred or anger or at least doubt in his eyes, but there was nothing but kindness there. “I understand,” he said. “And I am so sorry.”

The next few moments passed quickly in a blaze of noise and smoke and blood, and yet for Rasa Jaber it felt like the eternity it would become for her. The young man fired first at Ahmad, three rapid shots, and she watched helplessly as her husband fell onto the bed. She remained frozen as the assassin then aimed his weapon at her and, just as he squeezed the trigger, a large man burst through the door, his gun riddling the young Iranian with shots she did not live long enough to see.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

SOUTHEASTERN TEXAS

H
URRICANE
C
HARLENE WAS
moving with a vengeance now, the rain and winds that augured the arrival of the storm just a hint of what was to come. Breakwaters along the Gulf Coast were already rising, waves crashed above retaining walls and battered the shore, and clouds darkened the skies.

Adina’s men, who had been huddled together in the trailer of their large rig, received instructions earlier that morning to move from the truck stop outside Beaumont to a similar area just south of Opelousas in Louisiana. They proceeded through the torrential rainstorm, barely reaching their new destination when another encrypted message came through.

“It’s time,” Luis told them.

The four men readied themselves, checking their weapons and preparing for the final phase of their mission. They left the truck stop and took a back road that had almost no traffic in the midst of these blinding weather conditions. They turned into a wooded area, donned plastic ponchos, and stepped out into the storm, where they quickly removed the thin, off-white adhesive vinyl sheeting that had been attached to the sides of the trailer, proclaiming the truck M
C
S
HANE
R
EFRIGERATION
. Underneath was a darker, metallic gray color with a logo and stenciled lettering that read F
oster
T
ransport
, another fictitious company. The two drivers also climbed atop the trailer, tearing away the paper that bore one identification number on the top, now displaying another. Then they came down and reentered the truck, removed their rain gear and dried off, then headed for the highway to carry out their orders.

They were to travel east along Airline Highway, across the bridge to Scenic Highway, where they would turn north and head straight until it became Samuels Road and turn off just past Port Hudson. There they would proceed to a specified site on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, north of Baton Rouge, a couple of miles above the large refinery that sat along the shore.

In two crates were the nuclear devices brought from Kazakhstan. They had been secured in the small, lined compartment at the center of the trailer. The other crates held two motorized fiberglass craft into which these suitcase bombs would be strapped, the timers and guiding systems set, then the two packages placed in the river and sent downstream. The sites of the eventual explosions would not have to be precise; it would be enough if one or both of the RA-115s detonated anywhere near the refinery.

Before they armed the two devices, they would detach the trailer and make ready to leave as fast as they could travel once the bombs were activated and their pods launched. Their planned route was east across Louisiana Highway 10 until they hit Interstate 55. They would get as far north as they could before the explosions rocked Baton Rouge. They knew that even with the weather, there would still be more than enough time to get clear, but they were not going to take any chances.

————