the Second Horseman (2006) (32 page)

The sound of the motors deepened, and he felt a tingle in his stomach that didn't have anything to do with Catherine. They both pulled back and looked at each other, then at the now closed cockpit door.

"Why are we going down?" Brandon said. "Are we there already?"

She shook her head. "It's probably just weather or something. Relax. It's over. We did it."

He shrugged and lay back on the floor, pulling her down on top of him. She propped her elbows on either side of his head, bringing her face to within a few inches of his. "I have to admit, I had my doubts."

"About what?"

"You. When Richard told me we were going to break you out of jail, I thought he'd lost his mind. And when he told me I wa
s t
he one that was going to be responsible for you . . ."

"Yeah?"

"I was so nervous when we met. And then when you jumped out of the car in Las Vegas . . ."

"Sorry about that. I know it made you and . . ." His voice trailed off. It was still so hard to say the name.

"It's forgotten. And I think Daniel would say the same thing."

The angle of the plane's descent steepened and Catherine had to throw a hand out to keep from collapsing on top of him. They both looked at the cockpit door again and Brandon began chewing his lower lip nervously.

"I know you think I'm nuts, Catherine. But does this feel right to you? We've been going down for a long time."

"Like I said, it's probably just weather or something." She pushed herself to her knees and then stood awkwardly. "I'll check."

He wasn't really surprised when the cockpit door turned out to be locked. More like vaguely disappointed.

He propped himself against one of the crates, watching Catherine pound on the door with her fist. Wouldn't you know it was the only solid thing in the entire goddamn plane?

Strangely, he still felt pretty good about everything. Not ecstatic or anything, but it could have been worse. He believed that Catherine sincerely didn't know what was going on. It would have really hurt if she was the one who betrayed him. And Scanlon? He wasn't completely sure, but he had decided to give his old boss the benefit of the doubt and lay the blame for what was going to happen to him at the feet of that creepy bastard who'd had him dragged out of bed in Vegas.

Catherine threw herself against the door, but it was going to take a lot more than the soft shoulder of a hundred-and-twenty
-
pound woman to get it open. Finally, she turned and shouted, "What's going on? Why won't he let me in?"

Brandon shrugged.

"The crates!" she said, steadying herself against a sudden bout of turbulence. "We can slide them into the door."

She teetered over to one and grabbed the edge, but he didn't move.

"What's wrong with you?" she yelled. "Help me!"

"Can you fly it?"

"What?"

"The plane? Can you fly it? Because if not, smashing an atomic bomb through the door isn't going to get us very far."

She couldn't move the crate by herself so she staggered back to the cockpit door and pounded on it some more. "Open the door! Can you hear me? Open the door!"

"Catherine! Sit down! You're going to get hurt. We're landing and there isn't anything you can do about it."

She looked around the windowless fuselage and gave the door one last frustrated kick before sitting down next to him and grabbing hold of a strap securing one of the crates. She stared straight ahead for a few seconds, then looked over at him. "You know something, Brandon. What is it?"

"Don't worry. You're going to be fine. They're just dropping me off somewhere so there aren't a lot of awkward questions."

"Awkward questions about what?"

"If I'm there when your aircraft carrier shows up to get the nukes, a bunch of people are going to see me and recognize me from the news reports about the Fed job. Better for me to go away before that. It makes things simpler."

Her expression of defiance was clear even in the bad light "No way. Not for me."

"I know. But in the end, you won't say anything."

Defiance turned to anger.

"Of course, I'm going to say something! I
--

"Oh, come on, Catherine. Scanlon will hit you with a bunch of words like 'unfortunate' and 'unavoidable' and tell you how millions of lives were at stake. Then he'll hum 'The Star-Spangled Banner' and you'll never give me another thought."

He realized how unnecessarily harsh his words sounded, but he was having a hard time controlling the anger building inside him. He hadn't wanted to die in that cave, but if he had, at least he would have gone down trying to save millions of lives. Now he was dying for nothing more than to keep a few powerful men from being mildly inconvenienced.

"Hey, fuck you, Brandon! You think --"

The wheels touched down hard enough to cause them both to slide helplessly across the floor and into the cockpit door. Brandon wrapped his arms around her as the plane bounced wildly along what felt like a field of boulders, trying to force the crates behind them from his mind. If one broke free, they were going to have a whole new set of problems.

The plane pitched left suddenly, driving Brandon's head into a fire extinguisher hard enough to fill the air with the dull ring of metal. He was barely aware of the plane coming to a stop and Catherine's weight disappearing from him. He blinked hard when a bright light washed over him, but couldn't focus or regain enough equalibrium to sit up.

There was shouting -- a woman's voice, then a man's, then Catherine landed on top of him again. By that time, his vision had cleared enough to see the pilot opening the door in the side of the plane and he squinted out at what looked like an endless blue sky hanging over an equally endless plain.

Catherine stood again, this time grabbing him by the front of his jacket and pulling him to his feet. With an arm slung around her shoulders, he was able to remain upright, but beyond that he couldn't do much more than watch the pilot as he disappeared through the door and was replaced by two Arab-looking men pointing rifles.

Chapter
FORTY

The office was small and barely furnished: a metal desk of a vaguely seventies design, a couple of chairs, and badly painted walls devoid of artwork. If there had been a set of windows behind the desk, it would have reminded Scanlon of a private investigator's office from an old black-and-white movie.

He tested the handcuffs holding him in his chair, only to find that they were just as secure as they had been five minutes ago. He'd considered shouting for help, but at this time of night there would be no one to hear. Besides, the two men who had brought him there were undoubtedly standing just on the other side of the office's only door.

And so he would wait. For what? Hamdi. And death. There was little doubt of that after they'd killed Steve Ahrens. He'd never keep quiet about that. Not if he was still alive.

The real question was why.

He could only assume that the warheads were fakes or the Ukrainians had stolen the money and kept them. Those had always been risks, but Hamdi had no direct exposure to them. Obviously, he didn't trust Scanlon to keep his mouth shut and was going to shut it for him -- severing the only link to him. Very thorough.

The door behind him opened and Scanlon twisted around to watch Hamdi enter.

"Hello, Richard."

"Edwin."

"I'm sorry we have to meet under these conditions."

"Why are we? I understood the risk I was taking. I would have kept your name out of it."

Hamdi closed the door and took a seat behind the desk. His expression was a mix of sadness and resolve, though Scanlon noted that the resolve was etched a bit deeper.

"What happened to Catherine and Brandon?"

"By now, I imagine both are dead."

Despite knowing that would be the answer, the words spoken aloud hit him hard. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to fight off images of Catherine as a young girl. Of her graduation. Of movin
g h
er into her first house. Of the death he'd sent her to.

"I'm sorry, Richard. She was a wonderful young woman. And I'd actually come to admire Brandon."

"What happened?" he said, cutting Hamdi off. "It was all a hoax? Or do the Ukrainians still have them?"

"Neither. We have the weapons. The transaction went perfectly. If anything, the substitution of Brandon probably was a positive development."

Scanlon straightened in the chair, his handcuffs ringing loudly in the small room. "Then what the fuck's going on, Edwin?"

Hamdi frowned and averted his eyes toward the desk in front of him. "One of the most difficult decisions I've ever made was whether to let you die thinking everything had gone to your plan or to tell you the truth. In the end, keeping you in ignorance seemed . . . disrespectful."

Scanlon leaned forward as far as he was able. He'd never fully trusted Hamdi, but that was more the result of his nature than any real reason to believe that Hamdi's motivations weren't the same as his own. "Then I guess you have the floor, don't you, Edwin?"

Hamdi didn't respond immediately, obviously considering his words carefully. "I never intended to turn the warheads over to the authorities, Richard. Right now, they're being hidden in various strategic positions around Israel and the Occupied Territories. They've been modified with timers, and in three weeks they'll detonate. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you -- the truth is that your help in the planning and execution of this would have been very welcome. But, of course, it's not something you would have agreed to involve yourself in."

Scanlon opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. His mind began replaying his long relationship with Hamdi, but he could find nothing that reconciled what he was hearing with the man he'd come to know. Sure, he had no love for the Israelis, but he'd always framed that distaste with logical political arguments and offered equally practical assessments of Arab failings. Had it all been a lie? A cover? After an entire life in law enforcement, was Scanlon so easily duped?

"You're . . . You're telling me that you're just another fucking religious fanatic? Another psychotic anti-Semite? You --"

Hamdi held a hand out, silencing him. "Please, Richard. Of course not. At best I'm a pragmatic agnostic. And in many ways I admire the Jews. They wanted Palestine and they did what was necessary to get it. That kind of determination is what it takes to succeed in the Middle East. What was it you yourself said about the Iraq war? That in order to win, we needed to stop apologizing and go out and kill a hundred thousand civilians, then make it clear that we would kill another hundred thousand if necessary. That when we suspected someone of insurgency, we should kill him, his family, and everyone in his village. But you also recognized that Americans simply don't have that kind of resolve."

"That's not exactly what I said, though, is it, Edwin?" Scanlon said through clenched teeth. "I said we don't want to have the resolve. We aren't butchers, and we aren't willing to become butchers."

"And so we embark on a war in which the primary strategy for victory is hoping that the Arabs welcome their Christian invaders with open arms?" Hamdi shook his head disapprovingly.

"So you're telling me the Israelis did exactly what they had to in order to hold that land, and for that you're going to unleash a nuclear holocaust on them? Think for a minute, Edwin. That doesn't sound insane to you?"

"Don't act as though you don't understand what I'm trying to accomplish, Richard. We both know that in a time of proliferating WMDs, the existence of Israel has become an impossibility. Whether that fact is the fault of the Arabs or the Jews is irrelevant. America and the Jews have become a single entity to the Muslims -- another fact you're fully aware of. So far, we've avoided a major attack on the U
. S
. mainland, but how much longer? How much longer will we allow a few million Jews to hold the safety and prosperity of the entire world hostage? Hard decisions have to be made. The needs of the many must supersede the needs of the few."

"They've pulled out of Gaza, Edwin. They ----.

"Yes, they pulled out. And then they did everything possible to see that the Palestinians failed -- from keeping security provisions in place that would stifle their economy to sending people to fan the flames of hatred between the different Palestinian factions. The Jews are every bit as bigoted and fanatical as the Muslims -- make no mistake of that. They would kill every man, woman, and child in the world to hold the land that they believe God gave them. But again, I'm telling you what yo
u a
lready know."

"Jesus Christ, Edwin! Listen to yourself! Israel has started down the path of peace. They're tearing their country apart trying to find a way to live with the Arabs."

"To no effect, I'm afraid."

"You're going to kill millions of people! You'll be the greatest mass murderer in history. What the fuck gives you the right --"

"In fact, an al-Qaeda splinter group will be the greatest mass murderers in history. My role will be to direct America's policies in a way that creates a lasting peace. In fact, I hope to minimize casualties as much as possible. The Israeli government will be warned, and I've allowed time for evacuation. Obviously, it will be challenging logistically, but certainly possible with the help of the international community."