“I understand. Meet me at the warehouse. You can obtain the money there. I’ll have the papers ready for you at Miami International.”
“Outside only.”
“Pardon.”
“Outside, meet me outside with the money, money still owed to me.”
“Certainly.” Borshnik disconnected. He turned to Zakhar Sorokin and said, “Gates will be arriving momentarily. Ambush him.”
“Shall I kill him?”
“No, bring him to me.”
Robert Miller sat in an opulent bar in the Ritz Carlton overlooking the ocean. He nursed a glass of Jameson and watched a news bulletin that appeared on the wide screen above the bar.
A female reporter stood in front of the federal building and began talking. Her brow wrinkled, face animated. Behind her were dozens of fire and rescue vehicles, smoke filtering ghostlike from three blown-out windows on the top floor.
“Turn it up, please,” Miller said to the bartender.
The news reporter pulled a strand of hair behind one ear and said, “The questions investigators now are asking is how did a suicide bomber get access into the federal building and who was he? It’s believed that the bomber is connected to a radical Islamic Jihad sect that may have the highly enriched uranium missing from the German submarine and the cache found on Rattlesnake Island. The body count is reported at nine now with at least a dozen people injured, many critically ….”
Miller sipped his drink and stared at the screen. His cell rang. Mike Gates was furious. “What’d you tell Sean O’Brien?”
“Nothing he didn’t already know.” Miller’s voice was filtered through Irish whiskey.
“You old fool! You didn’t have to say anything. There is no proof.”
“Don’t blame me for your mistakes. The only reason O’Brien found out was due to your carelessness-”
“I leave no trail!”
“Borshnik found you.”
“And O’Brien found you! You’ve cost me everything. I can’t even tell my wife goodbye. I no longer exist.”
“I’m sitting here watching your fuck ups. Half a dozen agents blown to hell and back. Your mistakes are massive, resulting in loss of life and property.”
“That was no mistake.”
“Then you’re sub-human. You belong in-”
“You fucking old hypocrite! You sold this country’s ass to Russia as Hitler was going down. You may be personally responsible for the deaths of thousands, from Korea to Vietnam, and you have the sanctimonious balls to lecture me. Go to hell!”
“I’d say we’re both almost there. It was your choice long ago. It’s a lonely life playing the game. But when you step out of the boundaries, you step into a house of mirrors. What you see reflecting back is whatever illusion you’ve created. Forever begins now, Gates. Hold that point up to the light from hell and leave me alone-”
“They’ll come for you, too. You just got away with it longer. You’ll go down as this country’s worst traitor! They’ll write the name Benedict Arnold over your damn grave. Do you hear me Miller? You fucking hear me!”
The phone went dead in Gate’s hand.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE
Mohammed Sharif sat in the back seat of the rented SUV and spoke Arabic into a satellite phone. “
“We’re within two miles of the U-235,” Sharif said. “Borshnik does not suspect we are en route because he is not aware we know his location. Abdul-Waahid is a martyr. He is in paradise. His death bonds the
Sharif nodded, listened in silence for a half minute and said, “
O’Brien and Eric Hunter watched EMTs load Dave Collins in an ambulance. Dave, conscious, one eye swollen, with its surrounding area the size and color of a plum, looked at O’Brien and asked, “How many dead?”
“I don’t know.”
“Lauren ….”
“She didn’t make it.”
Dave closed his eyes for a long moment, his barrel chest rising and falling. “I’m sorry … find them Sean. You and Eric make a good team. Be damn careful. America’s never experienced anything like this before. It could make 911 look like boy scouts. Bring in Gates if you can catch him.”
“Get well,” Hunter said.
As the paramedics closed the ambulance doors, one of a dozen ambulances carting the injured, O’Brien said, “Let’s move. My Jeep’s in the lot.”
“I’m parked near you. I’ve got a pretty fair arsenal in the trunk. Plenty of rounds. Let’s stop there first. Got a feeling we might need the firepower.”
More than two dozen television satellite trucks lined the parking lot. A herd of reporters and onlookers were kept behind the yellow tape. O’Brien and Hunter had to walk through the pack to get to their vehicles.
Reporter Susan Schulman stepped in front of O’Brien. A cameraman rolled, the tiny red light on the camera an unblinking Cyclops’ eye. She gripped the microphone with one hand, red fingernails like talons of a hawk holding something dead. “Mr. O’Brien, we understand the casualty number could reach as high as perhaps a dozen people. Can you give us a short soundbite? What did you see?”
“Fuck you. Is that short enough?” O’Brien and Hunter continued walking.
“Asshole!” Schulman shouted, turning to her cameraman, “Cut.”
Mike Gates drove across the Fuller Warren Bridge into the heart of Jacksonville. He punched the car’s radio station selector trying to find a newscast. There was an odd sound, like static created by approaching lightning. The sky was clear.
“Bastards!” he grunted. He turned off the exit into West Bay Street and parked his car in the lot adjacent to the Omni Hotel. Gates got out and walked up to a taxi, the driver reading the paper. “Can you take me to JaxPort?” Gates asked.
“Sure, get in.”
Gates got in the backseat and the driver asked, “Where to at JaxPort?”
“The old Pier 13 … should be a warehouse near there.”
“I have an idea where it is,” the cabbie said, pulling out of the hotel lot. “Place is in a rough part of the docks.”
“I’m representing a developer. We’re looking at it purely as a speculative buy. Condos could be in there in a couple of years.”
The cab driver pulled into a service road that led down to Pier 13. He drove slowly past a discolored Chiquita
