or a bus. If they could find him, it would be better to be a moving target. The greatest risk was the station itself. If something wasn’t leaving immediately, he would be vulnerable while waiting around. It was a chokepoint that he’d have to risk.
100
I crushed Kurt’s beeper underneath my boot, having just confirmed that’s how we’d been tracked. The man known as Lucas had pretty much spilled his guts in an effort to keep his ass from getting torn apart, and the beacon information had come as an unwelcome surprise. I didn’t need any more. I squatted down, getting eye-to-eye with the man.
“You guys are like a bad rash. You keep coming back no matter how much I think you’re done. Is there anyone else in this country looking for us? Anyone else we have to worry about?”
“No. Nobody else. Trident Global Threat Analysis is my company. I’d know if someone else was here. You killed everyone I had over here.”
“All right, shithead. We’re leaving here. If you’re lying and we get in a gunfight, I’m going to pretend you’re a principle I’m protecting so that I can kill you in my own sweet time later. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Lucas nodded, but he didn’t look particularly scared.
“I don’t know where Carlos ran off to, but he can’t possibly have a ton of different safe houses here to choose from. My bet is he’s either running to a hotel, or running to the bus station. Either way, the station’s our first priority. If he’s not there, we can stake it out to ensure he doesn’t show up later, then begin working the hotels. What do you think?”
“What about the airport?”
“I don’t think he’ll go there. He won’t risk being on some watch list after he’s seen me.”
“Sounds good to me. We need to get moving, though. We can’t prove a negative. If he gets on a bus or train before we get there, we’ll never know it and spend the next month trying to find him here in Sarajevo.”
I bent down and jerked Lucas to his feet, showing little compassion for his discomfort. Knuckles called the team into the foyer and gave them the next potential mission at the station. I took over, giving the best description I could of Carlos, to include the pack he carried.
We left through the back of the house, the men falling into an easy perimeter around Lucas. We reached the vehicles just as four police cars, sirens screaming, flew by us to the location of the firefight.
Bull opened the trunk of one. I told Lucas to climb in. Lucas hesitated for a brief moment, starting to say he wasn’t a threat and would behave. I gave him a straight punch right into his mouth, splitting his lips against his teeth. Before he could recover, I grabbed him by the throat and shoved him into the trunk. Bull slammed the lid.
Riding the tram back to the bus station, Bakr scanned outside, looking for a threat. Pulling into the station, he saw two cars drive into the parking lot out front. One continued to the far side of the parking lot, the other stopped short about seventy-five meters from the entrance. He saw the men from the cars fanning out, two headed toward the train station up the street and two headed into the bus station. He saw the man from Guatemala. He began to believe the man was the devil. He began to sweat.
He told the tram driver he had forgotten something at his hotel, then sat in the back, behind the crush of people boarding. Riding back to the city center, he considered his options. Beyond anything else, he didn’t want to waste the device. Using it here would only kill several hundred, mostly Bosnians or other Eastern Europeans. He’d be lucky to kill a single Zionist. The impact would be minimal. Even so, the thought was growing in his mind. It was an eventuality that had to be considered. The man from Guatemala wasn’t going to stop, and somehow he seemed to know wherever Bakr went.
He left the tram one stop early and proceeded north into the city, pulling out the number Juka had given him. Maybe someone would answer and get him out of here. He listened to the phone ring, then go to voice mail. He hung up without leaving a message.
He reached a walking promenade filled with people, all moving to the west, and remembered the ceremony. A germ of an idea began to form.
“Any ideas?” Knuckles asked.
“Not really. Maybe it’s time to pull in the Bosnian authorities.”
“How the hell are we going to do that? And not give up the Taskforce? What are we going to tell them? ‘Be on the lookout for a swarthy man with a backpack’? We don’t have a picture and we don’t even know his real name.”
We had finished our search of the bus and train station, and Carlos was nowhere to be found. I was certain he hadn’t come here, and now we didn’t have a thread to pull.
Knuckles said, “Maybe he went to the airport after all.”
“Maybe, but once he got there he’d see all of the security for the dignitaries and go away.”
We both stopped and looked at each other, a terrible truth dawning on us.
“Shit — he’s got a perfect target right here. We need to find out about that ceremony.”
Knuckles called the pilots and had them get on the SATCOM to the rear for some answers. Within minutes, his phone rang. When he hung up, I knew it was going to be bad.
“It’s a formal ceremony for the fifteenth anniversary of the Markale mortar attacks. They’re putting up a monument. France, England, and Germany will all have representatives here.”
Knuckles continued. “Worse than that, the secretary of state is representing the United States. He’s on the ground now.”
“What? How could you guys deploy here and not know that? Jesus.”
“He wasn’t supposed to come here. He’s supposed to be with the president on a goodwill tour. I’ve got that schedule and this isn’t on it. Apparently, it just came up.”
“Is it just him? Is the president here as well?”
“No, it’s an entourage, but the SECSTATE’s the biggest name.”
“If this is someone’s late-breaking good idea, the Secret Service didn’t have a lot of prep time for security. When’s the ceremony?”
“It’s going to happen within the next hour.”
Before I could say anything else, the phone we had taken from the safe house began to ring inside Knuckles’s backpack.
Bakr stopped a passerby, asking, “Who’s coming to the ceremony?”
“A lot of people. President Silajdzic is going to speak.”
“So it’s all Bosnians? Why all the security?”
The man looked at Bakr with contempt. “Of course not. France and Britain have representatives here. The American secretary of state is speaking. The world understands the importance of this day.”
All Bakr heard was the guest list, his mind now working in overdrive. He began following the crowds to the west on the Ferhadija promenade, plotting his options. He knew that the odds of crossing into Israel were now slim. They were probably on high alert. Even if he could make it, he had no way to implicate the Iranians. He would make the news, but little else.
The deciding factor was the man from Guatemala. He was relentless, and Bakr felt in his heart the man would find him sooner rather than later.
He made up his mind. An attack here would have more symbolism. He could strike at least three leaders of the far enemy. His weapon would mainly kill Bosniak Muslims at the ceremony, but that in itself would be symbolic. They were cozying up to the far enemy and literally thanking the Great Satan for his so-called help. Because of this, they invited
