drew the sharp smoke deep into his lungs. He had picked up the package and paperwork at a repair shop near the airport. He didn’t know what was in the container, nor did he want to know. His only job was to deliver it to dock 24 west.
No problem, except that he had been paid too much cash, which made him suspicious, and he had been warned not to deviate from the route laid out for him or else someone would come for him and his family.
He’d almost turned down the job, but he needed the money and his mullah had asked him to do it as a personal favor. It was nearly time for afternoon prayers and then supper. That and the monetary windfall was all he could think about. Even the terrific heat didn’t bother him today.
A couple of minutes later the inspector came back with another uniformed officer and a large black dog on a leash. Azzabi tossed his cigarette away, and it was all he could do to keep from pissing in his pants. It was drugs back there. He was suddenly convinced of it, and he was going to jail for the rest of his life. Why else would they have brought out the dog?
He started to get out of the truck to come clean, tell them about the money, when the customs inspector came over.
“Did you pick this up for repairs yourself?” the inspector asked.
Azzabi had no idea what the man was talking about. But he bobbed his head. “I don’t remember.”
“Well, it says on the order that it was you.”
Azzabi stole a glance in the rearview mirror. The dog’s forepaws were on the back of the truck bed and he was sniffing the fiberglass container.
“Is this the same cargo that you picked up from dock 24 yesterday or isn’t it?”
Azzabi bobbed his head again. “Yes, of course it is,” he said. His bladder was very loose.
The customs inspector signed the forms and handed them back. “Okay, you’re clear.”
Azzabi just stared at him for several seconds. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the other officer heading back to the customs shed with his dog.
“Is there something wrong with your hearing?” the inspector shouted.
“No, sir,” Azzabi said, and he drove out onto the crowded docks busy with the activities of loading and unloading ships of all sizes, shapes and descriptions, his truck just another delivery van among literally hundreds.
The 694-foot container ship M/V Margo was in the final stages of loading the last of more than two hundred containers on its wide cargo deck when Azzabi went up the boarding ladder and found the load master The huge man glared at him. “What do you want?”
Azzabi handed him the papers. The load master glanced at them, then looked down at the truck. He said something into a walkie-talkie, then signed the receipt, handed it back and walked off, shouting something at two men perched atop the stack of containers towering six high.
By the time Azzabi got back to his truck the package was gone. “Good riddance,” he muttered with relief and drove off, wondering if he should tell his wife the full extent of his windfall or keep a little for himself.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ahmad sat forward as Kathleen McGarvey’s gunmetal gray Mercedes 560SL convertible came off Laurel Parkway and headed south on Connecticut Avenue toward the city. He got a good look at her as she passed and he was mildly vexed that she did not seem distraught.
The dark blue windowless van with government plates came right behind her. The driver’s eyes slid casually past Bahmad behind the wheel of the Capital City Cleaning van at the stop sign on Kirke Street, and then he was gone in traffic.
“Was that her?” Misha bin Ibrahim asked from the back. He and the other one, Ahmad Aggad, who had come down from Jersey City, were idiots, but they would do as they were told and they were expendable.
“Yes, we’re going in now,” Bahmad said. He waited for a break in traffic then crossed Connecticut Avenue and headed up Laurel Parkway.
Her house was at the end of a cul-de-sac. In the two days it had taken Bahmad to arrange for the help, the van and the other equipment they would need, he’d spot-checked the neighborhood and done some phone calling.
On both days Kathleen McGarvey left her house around eleven in the morning and returned between two and three. Presumably she’d gone out to lunch. It was only slightly bothersome that she’d apparently not yet learned about her husband’s death, but things like that often took time, and it might not be something the CIA wanted to make public so soon.
Both days she’d been followed by the same van. None of the databases he’d run the tag numbers through were more specific than to list them as General Accounting Office, which could be anyone. Most likely the CIA for special domestic operations, or even the FBI’s counterespionage division.
He got lucky with his phone calls. The problem was watching her house until the daughter showed up without alerting the woman or her watchdogs. But the house two doors down from Kathleen McGarvey’s would be unoccupied for another two weeks. It was a break. He’d phoned each of the houses on the block and when he’d called the one at 15 Laurel Parkway a recorded announcement was kind enough to inform him that the Wheelers would be out of the country on vacation until July third.
“I don’t understand if we’re going after the daughter, why not watch her apartment?” bin Ibrahim said.
Bahmad glanced at him in the rearview mirror, cowering in the back with the white coveralls. “Because she has moved out and we can’t be certain when she’ll return.”
“How do you know she will come to her mother?”
“She’ll show up here, leave that part to me. Your only responsibility for now is to keep watch for her yellow Volkswagen and call me the instant it shows up.”
“Then we will kill her?”
Bahmad nodded.
“We have no problem with that, brother, but what about afterwards? I do not want to spend the rest of my life rotting in some jail cell.” “Nothing will go wrong,” Bahmad said. “If you follow my orders no one in the neighborhood will even know that anything has happened until we’re long gone the same way we came in. By the time they find this van you’ll be on a plane for London, and once you get there you’ll be in the pipeline on the way home.”
“If I see a clear shot I’m taking it,” Aggad said contentiously. He’d been in the States for five years and he was used to being his own boss.
“You’ll get yourself caught and shot down.”
“No way, man. I’d be long gone before the cops even got the call.”
Bahmad looked at him in the mirror, his expression completely bland. “I’m not talking about the police, Ahmad,” he said softly. “I’m talking about me.”
The two in the back fell silent.
“You will do exactly as you are told if you want to get paid, and if you want to live to spend your money. Do you understand?”
They nodded resentfully. They knew nothing about Bahmad except that he came highly placed in bin Laden’s organization. But in the few hours they’d been with him since he’d picked them up at the Greyhound bus station in Baltimore they’d come to respect if not fear him. He exuded extreme self-confidence and competence. In this business that almost always meant extreme danger to anyone who might cross him.
The neighborhood was quiet when they backed into the driveway of the two-story Tudor. Bahmad keyed the variable frequency garage door opener, and the door came open. He backed the van inside, and while bin Ibrahim and Aggad were unloading their weapons, surveillance equipment and supplies, he defeated the house alarm system and let himself in through the kitchen.
The house was quiet, the curtains drawn. A quick check of all the rooms revealed that the family was truly gone.
