the Second Horseman (2006) (37 page)

Brandon bolted into a sitting position, blinking groggily. "What the hell is tha--"

The sound of gunfire brought him fully awake, and he shoved her onto the floor, landing on top of her with his feet still tangled in the sheets. The cheering was deafening now, but there were no more shots as Brandon dragged her to the wall.

"They couldn't be . . . ," he started. "No. No way. They couldn't be out there for us, could they?"

Catherine shook her head violently, trying to clear it. Had they left a trail? Had they missed something? She just didn't know.

Brandon must have seen her helpless expression because he gathered up the sheet twisted around his feet and wrapped it around her. "It's okay. We're going to be all right."

When he tried to stand, she held his arm. This was insane. She had to pull herself together. This wasn't his responsibility.

"Come on, Cath. I have to --"

"No! I'll do it."

"You're not --"

She leaned forward and kissed him, his momentary surprise allowing her to stand and move into a position where she coul
d s
ee through the gap between the shutters.

The street was crammed full of men to the point that they seemed to be a single entity, ebbing and flowing, shouting as though from a single, massive throat.

Almost directly across from their hotel was a man standing on the hood of a car, straining to be heard. Another burst of machine gun fire erupted, and Catherine resisted Brandon's effort to pull her back to the floor. The shots weren't aimed at them. In fact, they weren't aimed at anything. It was just the Arab equivalent of a standing ovation.

The hotel manager flashed his slightly plastic smile as they descended the stairs, raising his voice to be heard over the roar of the crowd outside. "Good morning."

His English seemed perfect, but was really just the result of some narrowly targeted practice. "Good afternoon" and "Good evening" had an equally upper-crust British feel, but beyond that his communication skills were unreliable at best.

Brandon pointed to the closed door at the end of the lobby. "What's happening out there, Hussein?"

The man's eyes widened for a moment, indicating surprise at the question and not just his normal comprehension problems. "You no hear?"

"Hear what?"

"Israel," he said and then made a motion that resembled a baseball umpire designating a runner safe.

Catherine had positioned herself behind Brandon, having learned that despite playing the respectable married woman, Hussein found dealing with her directly rather distasteful.

"I, uh, don't understand," Brandon said, prompted by a jab in his lower back.

Hussein squinted for a moment and then came up with "Israel, bomb. Atomic." Then an exploding noise.

"What?" Catherine shouted, coming out from behind Brandon to face the hotel owner for the first time since they'd arrived.

"Cath -- I've got thi--"

"What did you say?"

She hadn't thought that she had any adrenaline left after feeling nothing when the shooting had started outside their window. Now it was coursing through her again. "Tell me what you said?"

When Hussein just stood there staring, she went for the door.

"No! Danger!" he said, running to block her path.

"Get out of my way!"

"Catherine . . . ," Brandon cautioned.

"Did you hear him? We've got to go, Brandon. Now! He can't keep us here."

Brandon grabbed her by the arm and pulled her out of earshot of their host.

"I heard what he said, Cath, but I'm not sure what he meant. Are you? And what are you going to do about it? Look, I haven't said anything up till now, but you're not thinking straight. We need to wait until things cool down out there and --"

"Then don't come with me."

"Cath --"

"I'm serious, Brandon. Look, I can't tell you how much I appreciate everything you've done. But you should stay here and concentrate on getting yourself out of the country. If I can come, I will. But this isn't your fight."

Brandon went through the door first, with Catherine right behind. She had a death grip on one of his hands and the other was clamped around the cloth belt at his waist.

While Hussein had no real affinity for either of them, he did recognize their value as conduits for American dollars. His hope that his favorite paying customers would live to spend a few more nights ha
d p
rompted the donation of some of his and his wife's old clothes.

The overall effect of Brandon's disguise was mediocre at best, but most of the people on the street were too occupied to pay much attention. She, on the other hand, was almost completely enshrouded, with only a narrow strip around her eyes that made the crowd they were pushing through even more frightening and claustrophobic. She had a purpose again, though, and she used that to shut out everything but getting through the cheering, jostling men around them.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" she shouted in his ear. He didn't answer.

She'd tried to get him to stay behind, but it was just an act. She would have never made it by herself and, even more selfishly, she wanted him with her. Once again, Brandon Vale was trapped in a situation he had nothing to do with. And once again, he'd proved that he was much more than most people would give him credit for.

The sun had finally cleared the rooftops and the air was so humid with sweat that the shop windows were beginning to fog. The crowd moved back suddenly, pinning them to a wooden fence as the speaker continued to speak from the hood of his car. Catherine wrapped her arms around
Brandon's waist and just held on.

She wasn't sure how long they were stuck there, but eventually the mob shifted and they started forward again, slipping through a quickly narrowing gap between men whose barely controlled religious ecstasy had them leaping up into the air with such force that they nearly fell every time they landed.

A few lucky dodges and a fair amount of shoving left them standing in front of the gated door to the Internet cafe they'd been in the day before. Brandon pulled Catherine in front of him and grabbed the bars on either side of her, partially insulating her from the chaos of the crowd. "Is there anyone in there?"

She pressed her face against the bars, then slipped a hand through and pounded on the glass door. A moment later, the owner of the cafe appeared at the back to wave them off. He was about to turn away when Catherine pulled the cloth from her face and hair. The man inside froze for a moment and then rushed forward while Brandon turned to confirm that they weren't attracting any undue attention.

The gate clicked open and they both slipped through. The cafe's owner immediately slammed the bars shut again an
d l
ocked them in place with a panicky twist of his key ring. When he finally faced them, he jabbed a finger violently in the air. "This is insanity! Why are you here? Have you not heard what has happened?"

"I'm sorry," Catherine said in a voice meant to be soothing, but sabotaged by an undercurrent of panic. "Is your connection still working? We need to get on a computer."

He glanced over his shoulder at the crowd now pressing against the increasingly flimsy
-
looking gate. "Take one of the computers at the back. The far back."

The headline on CNN
. C
om was bad, but not as bad as the ever-escalating images Catherine's mind had conjured on her way there: "Israel Threatened by Nuclear Terror."

She skimmed the article, paraphrasing for Brandon while he watched the crowd outside.

"They put one of the warheads in front of a government building in Jerusalem and then called the police and the press. They said they had eleven more --"

"Ten," Brandon corrected.

"They say all of them have been set with three-week timers and that they're hidde
n a
ll over Israel and the Occupied Territories * * *

She fell silent, her initial relief that no one had been hurt disintegrating. There were millions of people in Israel. Thousands of years of human history . . .

"Catherine?" Brandon said. "Come on, stay with me. Why would anyone do something like this?"

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"Cath?"

"There's some Islamic rhetoric about the Jews being a blight on Arab land and an affront to God, and identifying the terrorists as a group no one has ever heard of. Their warning included the serial numbers on the warheads. The Russians are stalling but . . ." She fell silent.

"What?"

"It says that the American government has confirmed that the numbers are valid."

"So? We knew that."

"The quote is from Edwin Hamdi."

"Hamdi," Brandon repeated quietly. "But why would he be involved in something like this? Aren't we friends with the Israelis?"

She leaned back in her chair, the computer screen going slowly out of focus. "Think about it, Brandon. Both the Jews and the
Palestinians think God gave them Israel and neither is ever going to budge. The problem gets worse every year, and every year we get dragged farther into it."

"So you're saying he just decided to get rid of the problem?"

"I don't know. It seems crazy, but there's sort of a twisted logic to it. Give the warheads to a bunch of Muslim fanatics and tell them to destroy Israel . . ."

"But the Arabs want that land! It's all tied up with their religion and history. They'd be cutting their nose off to spite their face."

She nodded. "You just summed up the Arab people, Brandon. And terrorists are even worse. They don't care about accomplishing anything meaningful for their people -- they just like to make grand, pointless statements."

"Then why the warning? Wouldn't it be a bigger statement to just set them off and kill everyone?"

"Hamdi," she said. "I've never met him, but he doesn't have the reputation of being a maniac. He wouldn't want to kill millions of innocent people. He's giving them a choice -- a chance to move on."

Brandon opened his mouth to protest again, but for some reason didn't. "So what do we do?"

She thought about that for a long time, and the more she did, the more her mind cleared. She had almost no chance of stopping this, but now at least she had enough information to try.

"You're going to get out of the country and disappear, Brandon. You're going to run somewhere you'll be safe."

"You mean we. We're going to get out of here and go somewhere safe."

"No."

"Catheri--"

"I can't walk away from this, Brandon. I can't."

Chapter
FORTY-SEVEN

The mix of fear, anticipation, guilt, pride, and so many other emotions was virtually impossible to fully hide, and Edwin Hamdi cast his eyes down whenever he could. There was something hypnotic in the swirling grain of the desk in front of him, something that helped him maintain the carefully constructed aura of calm he had wrapped himself in.

Of course, the operation had not gone entirely to plan -- they never did. Catherine and Brandon were still on the run, probably somewhere in Jordan. Worse, they had one of the warheads, making it necessary to revert to a contingency placement strategy that, while suboptimal, would still leave Israel and the Occupied Territories completely uninhabitable.

In the end, Hamdi was certain that their escape would prove to be little more than an annoyance. They had been powerless t
o s
top the deployment of the warheads, which were all now in place with timers counting down. And there was no reason to believe that Catherine had any knowledge of his involvement.

It was unstoppable now. Inevitable. In three weeks the world would be a very different place. A place where the Jews were scattered and marginalized. A place that he would have the opportunity to mold.

"So this is real," President Morris said. His back was turned and he was standing in front of the large window that looked out over Washington.

"There is no way to be completely certain," Hamdi responded. "But all evidence suggests that it is."

"And you believe that they will make good on their threat."

"I do."

The president finally sat, pointing to the only other man in the room. "What's the CIA's position?"

Paul Lowe folded his arms in front of his chest in a mannerism he displayed only when he was in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with Hamdi. "If they've really got the nukes, they're going to do everything they can to make sure they're detonated. Unless someone stops them, Israel is goin
g t
o take a hit --"

"A hit? Jesus Christ, Paul! We're talking about their complete destruction! We're talking about an environmental disaster that could affect the entire region. Hell, the entire world. How are we going to stop this?"

"I don't think there's anything we can do," Hamdi said. "We're talking about a terrorist cell that we have absolutely no information on. None of our informants have ever even heard of them --"