Michigan, U.S.A.
It wasn’t just about the money.
He turned left off the interstate onto State 5, the road to Langdon. An expanse of night sky now showed through the tattered clouds. The wind streamlined the clouds and gave the exposed heavens the appearance of a long, ragged black flag dotted with thousands of stars and a haunting crescent moon.
He had never believed.
Allah and Jesus were just two more storybook characters for the instruction of children and fanatics, like the people in the caves along the Afghan-Pakistani border. Or Mr. Ashcroft in his marble cavern at the Justice Department. Their faith reminded him of the Solomon Islanders who formed the cargo cults, who still believed building fires on their jungle mountaintops they could summon the jet airliners down from the stratosphere to land in their midst and deliver wondrous presents.
The jihadists, for their part, believed that if they started a big enough fire in America, it would bring back the Middle Ages. In the end, they would fail. And when they failed, people would want rational answers again, and men like himself-like George Khari-would come back into style. Until then, he would watch for opportunities to make himself useful.
If the price was right. Without the incentive of a payday, he wouldn’t be traveling this road. He wondered who would be there. FBI? Local police? Maybe the military? The woman Joe had mentioned, the one Dale coveted-would she be there?
Getting closer; less than half an hour. George shook his head. He hoped Joe was getting Dale out of town. Dale. The brilliant, invaluable fool. He had picked the target. Anyone remotely Middle Eastern could never gain this sort of access.
Parts of Dale were clearly missing. George believed that he was the real fundamentalist, the way he took Holy Writ literally and quoted the Koran to them:
Dale came up with the idea to put the explosives in one of his machines.
At first the task had seemed impossible, how to make it work? Specifically-how to design the explosives? The answer was in the big tires. They didn’t inflate with air. They were injected with antipuncture foam that hardened. It didn’t go in an air nipple, like on a car tire, but in a large valve, about five inches across.
So when Dale bought the machine at auction in Winnipeg he also bought a new set of tires. Because they were cheaper in Canada. The tires were empty when they came off the shelf.
It had been one bitch of a job that took them most of a week, working in a rented garage in Winnipeg. The charges had to be configured in a symmetrical pattern. They’d used cheap garden hose, slit it down the middle and opened it up. Then they stuffed it with the Semtex in a continuous chain, taped up the hose, connected the pagers and blasting caps, and fed it in with this big glob of epoxy on the end so it’d stay anchored to the wheel hub. Then they’d jack up a tire, spin it on the hub, and reel the hose inside. They did that four times. Then they programmed the pagers, inflated the tires with foam, and capped them up.
Eventually there were six separate charges, placed to avoid detection. All rigged to detonate simultaneously.
He looked up at the sky. And the crazy sensation came back: that he was trapped inside the biggest slot machine in the world. Spinning round and round with millions of numbers.
Those six separate pagers would be activated by a single group number he had committed to memory.
He just had to laugh. He was a ruthlessly pragmatic man hoist on the petard of the thing he most dreaded: chance.
The pagers were in place, activated, awaiting his call. All he had to do was press seven digits into his satellite phone. But not until the weapon was in position.
And it wasn’t in position.
What were the chances of some fool out in the big American night accidently tapping in the wrong number?
His number.
The weapon would detonate prematurely. In which case, there would be no grand reward. No triumphant story attached to his name. He would just be a nobody again, a nobody who had failed.
So he had to hurry this thing along. He had to take Dale in hand himself and make it happen. George stepped on the gas.
Chapter Twenty-nine
They were taking one-hour shifts, perched on top of the pile of air conditioners, keeping watch on the Missile Park. Gordy’s blue F-150 arrived at the bar and parked around back. Nina and Broker marked time, sitting side by side in a mist of mosquito repellent. She lit a cigarette to discourage the bugs. He got out his rough wraps.
“When did you start smoking again?” he asked.
“About the time this thing picked up speed.” She put out her hand in the graying light and squashed a mosquito on his cheek. It left a small dot of blood. Then she patted his waist. “So, where’s your club?”
Personal joke. He was at best a competent shot with a handgun, and usually packed a.45 for its utility as a hefty “tamer,” for close-in thumping. “Don’t say anything,” he said softly, “but I think your Indian lifted it from under the front seat when I was parked across from the bar.”
She laid her palm along his cheek. “Broker, Broker.”
“Yeager brought an extra shotgun, in the back,” he said.
“You won’t need it. Holly’s crew will handle any rough stuff.” She leaned back, then said, “So, did Kit get home okay?”
Broker grimaced. “You know, I never called once this rolled out.”
Nina nodded. “We’ll call tonight, if it’s not too late.”
Just ordinary talk, like little building blocks. Repair work. Due diligence. Broker nibbled lightly on his cigar. After several false starts, he said softly, “I’m glad you’re all right.”
She turned away, almost nervous to be close to him after so long. What if he really did see her in the window with Ace? She turned, faced him.
“Ouch.” He drew back.
She cringed. Wrong hand.
“You were never one for hand jobs,” he quipped.
“Not like Jolene, huh?” she came right back.
“Jolene, as I recall, had three hands.”
They moved closer to each other so their legs and shoulders touched.
Yeager passed around water bottles and energy bars from Jane’s bag. They ate, they smoked, they were bitten by mosquitoes as the light faded to dusk and then to darkness.
Then Jane’s urgent whisper cut through the bug-spray stink: “He’s on the move.”
She hopped down from her perch and said, “Okay, I’ll drive. Yeager rides shotgun. Nina and Broker can neck in the backseat.” They walked swiftly to Broker’s Explorer that was parked in the tall weeds a few yards away. As they got in they could see the headlights on Ace’s Tahoe swing as he turned onto the highway.
Yeager said, “Give him a hundred-yard lead, then pull on the road. No lights.”
“What’s the deal?” Nina asked.
“Yeager is guide. He knows the roads,” Broker said.
“But how do we follow a guy in the dark on a deserted road without being seen?”
“Trust me,” Yeager said. “Let’s go.”
Jane put them on onto the road, following the tiny red dots of Ace’s running lights. Then he hit his break lights and turned left just before he came to the town limits. North.
“Keep going, past where he turned,” Yeager said.
“We’ll lose him,” Nina said.
