Then Marc spotted it too. “The truck.”
“So?”
“It’s almost empty,” Marc said, noting how high the tires ran. “Why does it need a tarp over the back?”
Josh lifted his cap and rubbed short-cropped hair. Instantly two more of his men appeared. He said, “How do you want to handle it?”
“This is your source,” Hamid said. “Your play.”
“It’s your country,” Josh replied. “Make the call.”
“Then I and my men, we take point,” Hamid said. “We approach from the rear.”
“I’ll come with you,” Marc said.
Hamid reached behind his back and came up with a pistol, a Glock nine millimeter. It was a sweet gun, small enough to serve perfectly as a backup weapon. Hamid handed it to Marc and said, “Follow my lead.”
Marc slipped the Glock into his belt and flipped out his shirt to cover it. “Will do.”
Hamid barked an order. His men fanned out. Marc put ten feet between himself and Hamid. Just four more men sauntering past the last of the market stalls and entering the traffic. The sun glinted off most windscreens, making the interiors invisible. Marc felt eyes on him, as tight as a sniper’s aim. He resisted the urge to scratch the spot between his shoulder blades. He did not run. He merely drifted.
Hamid skirted wide around the truck. He did not seem to accelerate, but even so his pace increased enough that Marc was trotting by the time they slid behind a heavily loaded donkey cart. The drover’s eyes widened, but Hamid was ready for that and lifted a flat palm that now held his badge. He barked an order and the drover froze.
Hamid shot a quick glance around the cart, then slipped back and hissed, “Two men inside the truck. Another in back. The one in back, he has wires.”
“Go for the men in the cab. I’ll take the one in back.”
Hamid moved, directing his men with silent finger jabs. Marc jogged forward on Hamid’s heels. The need for subterfuge was gone.
It was just another truck. The flatbed was almost empty. The tarp was spread out wide, like a blanket. The traffic opened and the truck trundled forward. Its right rear tire wobbled terribly. Under the tarp was something the size of a footlocker.
But it was the first empty truck Marc had seen. All the other trucks had been packed.
A young man sat on the footlocker. His head-kerchief was spilled loose around his head, his face streaked with sweat and grime. He held something in his left hand. Wires rose up and became plastered to his chest.
Marc flew across the distance. He did not shout. What was there to yell about? The young man saw him and rose to a crouch. It seemed to take Marc years to cover the final five feet.
Marc leaped onto the flatbed just as Hamid reached the driver’s door. Marc grabbed the man’s two hands, his hold strong enough to crack bones.
Hamid did not bother with the door. He pulled the driver out through the open window.
Hamid’s men pulled the passenger out of the cab and flattened him onto the pavement.
Marc bent the man’s thumbs back so he could not press the trigger Marc imagined this suicide bomber held.
The young man was yelling now. Marc flipped him over and ripped away the device in his hand, pulling the wires free as he did so.
And then he realized it was a portable music player, whose earphones had been removed so they dangled from the young man’s shoulders.
The truck ambled forward, driverless, until its front bumper came to rest on the next car.
All three men from the truck were screaming. As were the people fleeing from cars all around them. On the square’s other side, police raced past the checkpoint toward them. One of Hamid’s men bounced up onto the roof of the car between the truck and the approaching police, flashed his badge, and shouted something. From the way the police froze, Marc assumed Hamid’s man had shouted something like bomb.
The square emptied with the speed of pure panic. Car doors gaped outward like astonished tongues. The market was silent for the first time that day.
Hamid Lahm had his badge out again. He shouted to the police emerging from the station and pointed with his other hand. Directing them to clear the area.
Marc yelled that his man was clean, but Lahm could not hear him.
The young man Marc kept pinned to the truck’s bed was screaming in full-throated rage, as were the two older men from the cab of the truck. Hamid Lahm gave no sign he heard them at all. He walked around to the back and checked the man Marc still held down. Then he flipped back the tarp. He said something. All three men yelled in reply. Gingerly Lahm opened the footlocker.
Inside were a set of carpenter’s tools.
Marc released the man and backed away. The young man bounded to his feet and started waving his arms in Marc’s face.
The gates to the mosque’s outer wall opened. The black-shirted procession began emerging. The singing and the tambourines and the reed instruments washed over them. Marc glanced over to where Josh and one of his men stood on the back of a donkey cart, frowning at the scene. Clearly they were thinking the same thing as he. This would be the perfect time for an attack.
Marc took hold of the truck’s rear post and started to lower himself to the ground.
Then he saw the other car.
“Josh!” Marc yelled, “Hamid!”
But the volume of noise was astonishing. The three men from the truck still yelled at them. And the noise of the procession continued to mount. Not to mention the chorus of a hundred other drivers and passengers returning to their cars and offering their own shrill opinions of the whole charade.
Marc leaped down from the truck and swiped Hamid’s shoulder. The major turned angrily, ready to cuff whoever dared touch him. Marc was already running.
Marc yelled, “Trouble!”
Traffic had backed up several hundred yards. The main road leading into the square was in gridlock.
Only there was one car, too far back to get anywhere near the station and the mosque, which was desperate to get away.
Marc raced through the frozen traffic. Hamid ran with him. And Josh.
The car must have seen them. Because its maneuvering grew desperate. The car banged hard against the vehicle in front, pushing it into the truck next in line. Then it slammed into reverse.
Marc heard the squeal of tires and saw smoke rising as the fleeing car hammered the vehicle behind.
People began emerging from nearby cars and shouting at the driver.
The car rammed its way out of the congestion and mounted the sidewalk. The engine roared its warning, clearing away patrons at an outdoor cafe. The car careened through the pedestrians, sending shopping bags and cafe tables and hookahs flying.
Marc yelled as loud as he could for the people to get down, down. Trainee police from the encampment gaped at him and Hamid and Josh. Hamid shouted something. The police stepped aside.
The car rounded a corner and roared down an alley. Hamid caught up with Marc as they passed the cafe patrons pulling themselves from the pavement. Hamid held a gun over his head. As did Marc. And Josh, who rushed up to Marc’s other side.
They rounded the corner to see the car’s rear end fishtailing its way through the narrow space, sparks flying as it hit structures on either side. The three men stood shoulder to shoulder. Hamid yelled, “Tires! Tires!”
They fired in unison. The car’s left rear tire slumped. More sparks flew. As the car neared the alley’s opposite end, bullets took out the rear windscreen.
Then the alley was filled with fire, a blast, and a hail of metal rain.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
