“Then would you like to tell me the mission? Or should I guess?”
“You won’t guess.” Qais was much more relaxed now that Khadri had given Wells his okay.
“The CDC? Centers for Disease Control?”
“No.”
“CNN Center? The Coke building?”
“No. Anyway, Omar likes Coca-Cola. It’s all he drinks.”
“Me too,” Wells said. “The Georgia Dome? Turner Field?”
“I don’t even know what those places are,” Qais said. “Look, it’s only you and me and Sami. And this isn’t a martyrdom mission. Omar needs us alive.”
“Then…it must be something simple. An assassination.”
“Very good. Who?”
Wells had no idea. The mayor of Atlanta? A CDC scientist? One of the senators from Georgia? Nobodies. And anybody really important would have a ton of security.
“You’re right, Qais. I can’t guess.”
“You’ve heard of Howard West? The general?”
Howard West had run the army’s black ops and counterterrorism units during the 1990s. Wells had met him once, at a memorial service for a Delta officer who’d died. West had spoken briefly, then disappeared into a helicopter to do whatever it was that three-stars did.
He had retired a few months after that — Wells couldn’t remember exactly when. Now he worked as a “consultant.” That meant he collected six-figure checks from companies that peddled spy gear. In return, he connected them with his old friends at the Pentagon. He kept a low profile. Wells hadn’t even known he lived in Atlanta.
Attacking him was a brilliant way for Qaeda to declare its equality with the United States. You hunt our leaders? We’ll hunt yours. And since he was retired, West would have much less security than an active general. But killing West wasn’t the big job that Khadri had planned, Wells thought. “Omar needs us alive,” Qais had said. The assassination was a diversion. The drawbridge was only halfway down. Khadri was offering Wells a bargain: Kill West, or die trying, and I’ll trust you. Kill West and you’re in. If not, you’ll never see me again.
An ache creased Wells’s back. He felt like a puppet whose strings had been pulled too hard. Khadri had outsmarted him again. But maybe he could find a way out.
“We can get to West,” Wells said to Qais. “It’ll take some planning, though. When does Omar want it done?”
“Tonight.”
“Tonight.” As he said the word Wells felt the trap snap shut.
12
WELLS OPENED HIS apartment door to find that Sami had laid out his arsenal on the kitchen table, the guns and knives an invitation awaiting an answer. Aside from that, the place looked undisturbed, which didn’t surprise Wells. Like Qais, Sami was a professional, a former Jordanian cop.
“Shall we say the
“What about your neighbors?” Qais said. Through the walls they heard a television blaring in the next apartment, the jokes and canned laugher running together monotonously.
“Wendell’s almost eighty,” Wells said. “And almost deaf. As long as we’re quiet.”
He laid out a rug, and the three men said their evening prayers. Then they ate. On the way home Wells had stopped at a 7-Eleven and bought premade sandwiches and quart-sized tankards of coffee. He was ravenous, and he figured Qais and Sami must be too. But he felt no pleasure as he chewed his stale turkey hero, just the knowledge that the clock was winding down. He swallowed his last bite and looked at his watch. Nine o’clock. He had four hours, six at the most. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t see a way clear. He couldn’t kill West. Yet Khadri would never trust him if West lived.
With a week of notice, even a day, he could have warned Exley. Then the agency and the FBI could have set their own trap. They could have snatched up Qais and Sami and let Wells go. They could even have announced that Qais and Sami had been killed in the house, and that West had been shot and wounded. Khadri would have to accept that; he had no way to check.
But Wells couldn’t get a warning to West now. Qais and Sami weren’t going to leave him alone tonight. They knew that the real point of the mission was to test Wells’s loyalty. Of course, he could just kill Qais and Sami now. But then he would lose whatever information they had, and the trail to Khadri would end. Turning them in would be better, but that was no sure bet either. They wouldn’t exactly sit back and smile if he picked up the phone and called 911.
Wells wondered whether he should just let West die, pull the trigger himself if Qais asked. This was a war, and West had been a soldier once. Not just a soldier. A general. He was close to seventy. He had lived a full life. He might even understand.
Wells shook that thought from his mind. He had to make sure West lived tonight. For his own sake as much as the general’s. There were some lines he could not cross. He couldn’t murder the people he had been charged with protecting. He couldn’t play God and sacrifice one of his countrymen in the hopes of saving others. No. He had to save West without blowing the cover he had worked so hard to build.
YET HE COULDN’T see a way out, no matter how hard he tried. Call 911? Can’t. Shoot Qais? Can’t. Kill West? Can’t. Warn West? Can’t. Call Exley? Can’t. Call 911? Can’t…
He pulled his attention back to the kitchen as Sami spread a street map of Buckhead over the table. Technically, the area was part of Atlanta, the northwestern corner of the city. In reality Buckhead was a lush suburb where the city’s corporate gentry lived in oversized houses set back from winding tree-lined streets. Wells had done lots of landscaping work there.
“He’s here.” Sami pointed to a red sticker, a few hundred feet from the intersection of Northside Drive and Mount Vernon Road.
Qais slid a manila folder from his laptop case. “The property records say he bought it for two point one million dollars in 2001,” Qais said. “Three floors, with a guest cottage on the side.”
“Two point one million? The army pays better than I remembered. Do we have pictures of him?”
Qais pulled out pictures of West taken from the Internet. Wells recognized the general, a tall, bald man with thick, rubbery lips and a mass of wrinkles for a forehead. “How do we know he’ll be there tonight? He must be on the road a lot.”
Qais looked at another paper. “He’ll be there. The Georgia Defense Contractors Association is giving him its lifetime achievement award at a dinner tonight. A town called Roswell.”
“That’s north of here.”
“And tomorrow afternoon he’s speaking at the City Club downtown. He’ll be home.”
Wells couldn’t disagree. “What about bodyguards?”
“Only one,” Sami said.
“You sure?”
“I’ve been watching him. When he’s out he rides in a Jimsy”—Arab slang for a GMC Suburban. “The driver doubles as his bodyguard and sleeps at the house.”
“More likely in the cottage,” Qais said.
THE GLIMMER OF a plan took shape in Wells’s mind. Maybe he could split Qais and Sami up, after all.
“Yeah,” Wells said. “Probably in the cottage.” He turned back to Sami. “You’re sure West doesn’t have more protection?”
“I’ve only seen one guard ever.”
Khadri really did want them all to survive, Wells thought. He was surprised that West had so little security,
