24
WASHINGTON, D.C.
GENERAL MIDDLETON, CAPTAIN SUMMERS, Lieutenant Commander Freedman, and Kyle Swanson took a final look at the command center, which was slowly coming back to life. “We’re done here,” said the general.
“Okay,” replied Carolyn Walker. “Thanks for your cooperation.” Her tone was neither warm nor cold, but she was glad to get rid of the secret military unit. Now things could get back to normal and law enforcement could do its job without second-guessing by people who were not trained as investigators.
“Anytime. Just keep us in the loop if you catch a break and when you identify the corpse they think is Juba.” Handshakes all around, and the Trident team left by a side door. “Come on. I’ll buy us all a big breakfast. There’s a good pancake house over in Alexandria.”
They were all tired and frustrated, lost in their own thoughts as they drove over the bridge and into the redbrick section of Old Town, then on west to where the neighborhoods were not as ritzy and there were fewer antique stores, and then to an area that was rather seedy. The sun was bright, and the day was warming as they got out of the car. The restaurant parking lot was half full, mainly pickup trucks among two big rigs, because the eatery was popular among the over-the-road gang. A long wooden trestle table, worn smooth by generations of elbows of hungry working men, was empty in a rear corner by the kitchen, and the Tridents slid onto the benches. Napkins and silverware and a rack of syrup were already on the table. Coffee appeared as if by magic from a passing waitress, followed soon by platters of pancakes, sausage and bacon, warm biscuits, and scrambled eggs, served family style. Everybody ate the same limited, delicious menu here.
“So, none of us believes that Juba is dead, right?” The general stated. “We unanimous on that?”
Everyone agreed.
“Pass the blueberry syrup, please,” said the Lizard. “The communications net is absolutely overloaded, there is probably not an investigator to spare in San Francisco, and the disaster is going to be sucking up all of the resources. If the DHS agents don’t get to it in a hurry, the other officers won’t get around to doing our corpse anytime soon. Juba always seems a couple of steps ahead.”
Kyle refilled his coffee cup. “He is no longer in the U.S. I’m confident of that. The air system was not shut down, and the West Coast airports dump dozens of international flights into Asia every hour. More to Europe. He needed a disguise and new papers, and he had to move quickly, but I would bet he made one of those planes.”
“Mexico? South America?” asked Middleton.
“He doesn’t specialize down there. Maybe he has connections, probably does, but right now he is looking for a comfort zone. As a sniper, he is extracting after completion of his mission. South America would be alien to him.” Sybelle ate a mouthful of eggs while she thought, then continued. “Same thing with most of Asia, from Japan to New Zealand. The only Muslim safe zones would be in the Philippines or Indonesia, and they would not risk the wrath of the United States by knowingly giving him shelter and protection. Maybe North Korea or Iran might shelter him, but he’s a pretty hot potato right now, and they could make points with Washington by turning him in.”
Middleton said, “Know what? I think the final destination for this crazy, murderous shitheel is Iraq. That’s the only place where he can disappear.”
“That’s my bet, too, boss. He is going to hide in the war. And that’s where I am going to find him.”
“Okay. So go get him. Sybelle will go along to keep everything under the Trident umbrella, and the Lizard will do his keyboard magic from our office here. Take whoever or whatever you need, but remember that there are no orders for anything, there is no paper trail, nobody ever heard nothin’ about nothin’. Then be clear on this, Dead Guy: I want Juba’s fucking scalp.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said Kyle Swanson, already feeling the rush. Sniper against sniper. Me and Juba.
AUSTRIAN AIRLINES
FLIGHT 512
Ten hours. Halfway. Juba was feeling talons of claustrophobia seizing his flesh, as if the airplane were shrinking in on him. The spacious first-class seat had narrowed and the bulkheads seemed closer, but he had work to do, so he popped open his briefcase and removed the laptop computer and a single condom in its sealed plastic container.
The diagrams, the formula, and the instructions for assembling the weapon were spread over several files, and he had spent some time in Paris putting it all together for future use. It was in several folders, to meet different contingencies. From the briefcase he removed a tiny memory stick, attached it to a USB port, and downloaded the final file, which included the updated material from the Iranian laboratory, the final step in the process. The folder containing the date for the poison weapon used in London was in a file by itself, called File 999, and contained no indication that it was incomplete. The product would kill, but not do what was done in San Francisco. When the ultimate formula file was downloaded, he sighed with resignation and erased it from the hard drive.
Then he spent time transferring the various bank accounts and codes to the tiny memory stick and erased most of them, too. He pulled the memory stick free and he pocketed it, then stashed the computer.
When he got up to go to the bathroom, his head whacked the overhead storage bin. In the narrow bathroom thirty thousand feet in the sky, Juba washed his face and hands and under his arms and stared into the mirror: The disguise was still good.
He took a deep breath, allowed his bodily rhythms to settle, and then unbuckled his belt and dropped his trousers. Moving swiftly, he tore open the condom packet and removed the lubricated rubber contraception device and slid the computer memory chip in as far as it would go, folded the condom over, and tied the end. Another deep breath and he bent over the sink, spread his legs, and pushed the condom deep into his anus. Uncomfortable, but not impossible. Drug mules did it all the time, so he could do it, too.
He readjusted his clothing, washed his hands and face again, opened the door, and returned to his seat. A movie was playing on a little screen that he could tilt, so he put on the earphones and tuned it in. A tray of food was presented. Lunch. When the movie was over, he pushed up the covering of the window and watched the blue sky that stretched out forever, but he refused to look at his watch.
Halfway. More than halfway there.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
“Middleton is going to be up to his eyebrows in bitching generals. We can’t run this mission as a usual black op because we are going onto other units’ battle space and crossing boundary lines. They don’t know who we are; they could open fire on us.” Sybelle was at her desk in the Pentagon, and Kyle was across from her.
Operating beyond the shadow of secrecy presented problems, but Swanson figured it was worth the exposure because they were going to need the entire might of the U.S. military establishment to make this work. Iraq was a huge country, and they needed to shrink the number of places where Juba could feel secure, which meant using intelligence assets from satellites to local informants. First chase him across continents, and then across nations, then into a city or town or village, onto a certain street, into a specific house. Make the rabbit run for his burrow.
“We’ll work around it. No big deal. How big a package should we field?”
“Do we want mobility or firepower or both?”
