“Don’t,” and Robby smiled and put all his weight into his heel. Omar kicked against the floor and a terrible wet half-gasp slipped out of his mouth as he tried to breathe through the useless blocked straw of his crushed windpipe, until he finally gave up and died.
Then Robby found a chair and sat and wiped the spit off the side of his boot. Most of the televisions had been destroyed in the attack, but a couple still played, and Robby tilted his head to watch Man City and the Spurs until the cops finally showed. He knew he shouldn’t have killed the Arab, but he didn’t have the strength to care. He wondered vaguely if he’d go to jail.
But of course the world didn’t see it that way. He was a hero, Robby Duke. He’d saved at least twenty lives and killed a terrorist. In the days to come, the BBC and
YET EVEN WITH ROBBY’S last-minute valor, Omar and his team did terrible damage. The Bahraini police found the bar so covered in blood and brains that they asked the Fifth Fleet to send a hazardousmaterials response team to sterilize it. Forty-one people were killed that night, not counting the four attackers. Six more died over the next two weeks. And the attack on JJ’s wasn’t even the deadliest terrorist attack on the Arabian peninsula that night. In Riyadh, the Saudi capital, a car bomb tore off the front of the Hotel Al Khozama, killing forty-nine people. And just off Qatar, fifty miles east of Bahrain, a speedboat filled with explosives blew itself up beside a supertanker loaded with millions of barrels of Saudi crude. Fortunately, the attack failed to ignite the oil. But it killed four sailors, breached the tanker’s double hull, and spilled one hundred fifty thousand barrels of crude into the Gulf.
Even before the sun rose on Saudi Arabia the next morning, a claim of responsibility arrived at Al Jazeera and CNN from a previously unknown group — the Ansar al-Islam, the Army of Islam. The group’s spokesman wore a mask and gloves, and stood before a black flag painted with the Islamic creed.
“Our warriors protest the endless corruption of King Abdullah,” he said in Arabic. “He and his supporters live as infidels. They steal the treasure that Allah has given all Muslims. They desecrate the Holy Kaaba”—the cube- shaped building inside the Grand Mosque in Mecca that served as the center for Muslim prayer. “We reject them. And make no mistake. We will never stop fighting until we drive them from these sacred lands.”
CHAPTER 3
WELLS AND GAFFAN SPENT TWO DAYS TRAILING THE DEALER FROM Margaritaville. They didn’t know his name, so they were calling him Marley. He drove a black Audi A4 with tinted windows and a roof rack for surfboards. He lived in a gated community in the hills east of Montego, near the Ritz-Carlton and other four- hundred-dollar-a-night resorts. The development, called Paradise East, was still under construction, half its lots empty. An eight-foot brick wall, landscaped with ivy and topped with razor wire, surrounded the property. Two security guards patrolled around the clock with German shepherds.
Given his line of work, Marley had a remarkably stable life. He followed the same routine both days. He surfed in the mornings, had lunch at home. At around three p.m., he drove to Margaritaville and disappeared into the club, emerging at about two a.m. Going home, he headed east on the A1. After about twenty miles, he turned right onto an unmarked road that led up a hill to the gatehouse for Paradise East.
Like the development, the road was unfinished. The first quarter and the last quarter were graded and paved. But the middle stretch was a mix of gravel and red clay. Trees hemmed it in on both sides, leaving it barely wide enough for two cars to pass. It was a carjacker’s dream.
Wells intended to take advantage.
WELLS HAD OUTLINED HIS plan in their hotel room that afternoon. When he finished, Gaffan shook his head. “What if somebody else comes up the road?”
“Hasn’t been a problem the last two nights.” The fancy neighborhoods outside Montego shut down after midnight. “And it won’t get loud if we do it right.”
“We don’t know if this guy knows Robinson.”
“He does. He’s smart, and he’s been around awhile.”
“We don’t even know his real name.”
“Obviously you’re not sold. It’s all right. I can do it myself.”
“I’m thinking out loud, is all.”
“We can’t touch him in Margaritaville. His house could work, but if something goes wrong we’re stuck inside the compound.”
“What about the other thing? The badges.”
“I’d rather keep that in reserve. It’s high-profile, and we can only do it once.”
“We could keep working the town, find Robinson ourselves.”
Wells felt his temper surge. Gaffan was younger than he was, less experienced. Gaffan had no right to question his judgment. Was this a glimpse of the future? These ops were a young man’s game, and Wells was more middle-aged than young. He wasn’t old, not yet, and he was in great shape, but the Gaffans of the world would keep coming. Their suggestions would get louder, until they turned into orders. And eventually he would lose the fight. An old lion forced to give up his territory. The young had no idea how relentless they were.
“How old are you, Brett?”
“Thirty-three. I know you have about a thousand times as much experience as I do. I’m trying to help, John. Work through the options. Didn’t mean to piss you off.”
Wells was embarrassed. He was fighting with himself, not with Gaffan. He hoped Gaffan didn’t know why he had overreacted. “I’m used to making my own mistakes, is all,” he said. “And yeah, we can keep cruising the bars, looking for Robinson. But now this dealer has us made. Sooner or later, he’s going to see us. I’m always in favor of moving, holding the initiative. Not saying it’s my way or the highway—”
“Yeah, you are—”
Wells smiled. “Maybe I am.”
“We could always call the FBI in.”
Wells didn’t feel like explaining what had happened in the 673 case, how Vinny Duto had made a fool of him for his puny efforts to follow the rules. “No.”
“Then I’m done arguing. Let’s go get us a couple of cars. And whatever else we need.”
AT 2:15 A.M., WITH a light rain falling, Marley’s Audi rolled past the Esso station on the A1. Wells was hidden in a rented Econoline van with tinted windows. He pulled onto the road and called Gaffan, who was five miles ahead, on a disposable phone.
“I got him. He’s alone. Giving him plenty of leash.”
Ahead, the Audi pulled away, its red taillights disappearing into the mist. Wells stayed back. No reason to make Marley nervous, especially since Wells had slapped a GPS tracker with a radio transmitter on the Audi four hours before.
HALFWAY UP THE NAMELESS road that led to the Paradise East guardhouse, Gaffan sat in a dented Daewoo minibus that he’d stolen from a McDonald’s parking lot four hours before. The Daewoo had seen better days. Its odometer read 243,538, and even in kilometers, that was a long way on Jamaican roads. It was high-sided and square, and had a gash along the left side painted over in beige paint that didn’t match the original. It had a manual transmission whose handle was covered with a worn tennis ball. It reeked of stale pot even with the windows open.
Gaffan still didn’t understand why Wells was insisting on catching Keith Robinson without help. He didn’t understand much about Wells, what drove him. But he trusted Wells. Wells had been everywhere and done everything. Gaffan had been with him the night he’d found the nuke.
