One Rough Man

He moved to the front, gave out a lame excuse to the driver, and convinced him to pull over. Climbing on the roof, he pretended to mess with their luggage, passing one bag down, then pretended to struggle with the other. The driver killed the bus, not wanting to waste the gas, something Bakr was waiting for. Working swiftly, he securely taped a piece of twine to the test tube, then measured out the length of one of the fan blades in the roof of the bus. He cut the twine, tied the loose end at the hub of the fan, then laid the test tube on the edge of the mount. Now, once the bus started back up, the fan would jerk the tube off the mount and smash it against the frame, shattering the vial. Once that happened, Bakr hoped the poison would be blown into the bus by the rotation of the fan.

He retrieved his bag, climbed down, and called the driver to him — wanting to make him walk back to the bus to give them more time to increase their distance before it was started. He gave the driver a tip and thanked him, then began walking back the way they had come. The driver shook his head and moved back to the bus, muttering about crazy foreigners as he went.

Bakr and Sayyidd were walking as fast as they could when they heard the bus start up. Turning around, they watched it begin driving away. It moved about forty yards down the road before it began weaving back and forth. Then it lazily crashed into the wood line on the edge of the road, never getting up over twenty miles an hour. Nothing happened for a long five seconds, then the back door exploded open and two people fell out, clawing at their necks and writhing on the ground as if they were trying to scrape off ants covering their bodies. From the inside of the bus Bakr could hear what sounded like a group of pigs grunting, and could vaguely see arms and legs thrashing about, like a nest of snakes.

“Allah the Merciful,” Bakr said in a subdued whisper. “It works better than I would have ever dreamed. And faster too.”

48

Jennifer and Pike checked into their rustic villa in the small village of Punta Gorda, Belize. With Pike gone to sniff around the town, Jennifer was finally able to take off the filthy clothes she’d stolen. She filled the sink with cool water, soaked a rag, and blotted her face. She felt a sharp sting on her right cheek. She jerked her hand away like she’d touched a hot stove. Damn, that hurt. She leaned forward and looked at her cheek in the cracked mirror above the sink, seeing two small gouges ripped out, each about the size of a popcorn kernel. She had no recollection of how she’d sustained them, and hadn’t even noticed the cuts when she’d cleaned off at the hotel in Guatemala last night. She leaned in closer. Shit… that’s going to leave a scar. Matches my nose.

She was the only one who could still see the small white line across the bridge of her nose, a trophy from her childhood of competing with her older brothers. She thought of the tree she had fallen out of. Like lightning jumping from pole to pole, her thoughts went from that summer day, to her brothers, to her mother, ending with her uncle. And what had happened to him.

Uncle John’s dead. Up until now, she hadn’t had the luxury of dwelling on his loss. The thought hammered home for the first time. She felt the grief roil her like a wave, fighting to take control. She closed her eyes and leaned forward, resting her head on her arms. Not now. Later. Think about this later, when you’re home. She took off her sweat-soaked undergarments and washed them in the sink, a mindless chore to keep her busy. She then stepped into the shower, trying to keep moving to prevent her mind from returning to the sorrow. Ten minutes later she toweled off and put on the simple floral print dress and leather sandals she had purchased. Picking up the stolen pants and shirt, she turned to throw them in the trash when a small bit of paper fluttered to the ground. Curious, she picked it up.

* * *

I came back from exploring the town and entered our room, calling out to Jennifer. She came out of the bathroom freshly scrubbed and wearing her new clothes. I was a little surprised by the transformation. She had a couple of cuts on her cheek and a little swelling around her left eye, but she certainly wasn’t ragged anymore. Huh. She’s a damn hammer. How’d I miss that before?

“What’re you looking at?”

“Uh… nothing. I was just surprised to see you without those Arab rags on.”

“Well, speaking of Arabs, have you thought about what we talked about earlier?”

And she’s crazy…. What is it with her family and conspiracy theories?

“Man, you’re like a dog with a bone. I told you I’d think about it, but we can’t do anything until we get to the U.S. anyway. Let’s focus on that right now.”

“I found something in the shirt. A bunch of e-mail addresses and passwords. I think we need to tell someone sooner rather than later. They may have already robbed the temple and smuggled out the artifacts.”

I paused, torn because I wanted to stomp this latest request, but intrigued by the find.

“How many addresses?”

I knew that terrorists used hundreds of e-mail addresses to communicate, a move and countermove continually fought between intelligence agencies and Al Qaeda. AQ switched addresses so frequently it made me wonder how they knew which ones to use, but somehow they did.

“Six different addresses, with six different passwords.”

“Well, that will be something we want to turn over to whoever we talk to in the States. When we get there.”

“Pike, please, I think this is important. We need to tell someone now. Can’t we go to the U.S. embassy? Won’t they do something with it?”

I shook my head. “Unfortunately, no. They would listen to us, but they wouldn’t do anything with the information. It’d be put into some report and buried in a ton of other information. You wouldn’t believe the amount of reports that embassies get on crime and terrorism. We’ll get quicker action by flying to the States first.”

I could tell she didn’t believe what I’d said. “Nobody in the embassy deals with crime? Who gets called when an American citizen is a victim of something?”

“The legal attache. He’s the representative of the FBI at the embassy, and if we go to him, he’s going to be more concerned with the death and destruction we’ve done than any story of a temple vandalism. They’d listen to us for about five seconds. Then they’d put us in handcuffs. Remember, we don’t have any proof of what you think. The only thing we have in concrete is that I’ve killed folks both in the U.S. and in Guatemala. Going to them isn’t going to get the action you want. It’s just going to get us in trouble.”

“Well, couldn’t we talk to the CIA? Wouldn’t they listen to us?”

“Jennifer, trust me on this. I have a lot of experience working with country teams. We wouldn’t even get in to see the CIA. They won’t have a sign out front saying, ‘Spying Done Two Doors Down.’ They aren’t acknowledged publicly. If we went to the embassy and said, ‘We’d like to talk to the head spy,’ we’d be shown the door.”

“Look, how about this? We go to an Internet cafe and check out these e-mail addresses. If we see something in them that leans toward some type of illegal activity, we take that to the embassy. How does that sound?”

I gave up. “Okay, fine. We’re safe here. We can either take some time out walking the beaches and seeing the sights, or we can waste our time trying to figure out this giant conspiracy theory. First can we get some lunch?”

“Sure. I’m hungry.”

We practically ran to the first taco stand Jennifer could find, where I watched her suck down fish tacos like she was in some kind of competition. We finished in fifteen minutes, with Jennifer tapping her foot while I paid the bill. A little later, we found a tourist store with two ancient computers in the back. For the small price of twelve U.S. dollars per five minutes, we were allowed access. Sitting down, Jennifer went to the first e-mail account listed, at Yahoo.com. Putting in the password, we saw that the account was empty. Looking in the sent file, Jennifer saw one entry. She clicked on it, pulling it up.

“Look! It’s in Arabic! This account is used by the guys staying at Miguel’s.”

“Great. We already know they’re Arabs. All this proves is that they’re e-mailing their family to tell them what they bought as tourists.”