constant voice and electronic contact with major intelligence and counterterrorism community players and foreign partners.
Ever since that BOLO (Be On the Lookout) alert had gone out for terrorists in Calexico, and the field office had learned that a fellow agent, Michael Ansara, had been killed, Zarick had been working his tail off, canvassing the area for any leads — and this was the first good one they had. He could barely contain himself when he reached the Field Intelligence Group Office on Aero Drive. He charged out of his car and ran.
By two p.m. Moore and Towers had left the hospital and returned to the conference room. Towers was feeling great after having his shoulder and arm treated. The GSW (gunshot wound) had appeared a lot worse than it actually was, and the doctor had spent some time telling Towers just how lucky he’d been, that he could have had a collapsed lung and so on. They wanted to give him a sling, but he’d refused. Moore had been around many operators who’d been shot, and sometimes even the meanest badasses turned into crying thumb-suckers when they were injured, but Towers was a tough and obviously thick-skinned bastard. He’d wanted no sympathy or special treatment, only a chicken sandwich with french fries, so they’d hit the drive-thru of a KFC. Moore had ordered the same, and while they ate, they watched CNN to see if it had picked up anything else on the Rojas story. At the same time, Moore scanned the intel gathered thus far on the hunt for Samad and his group. The trail ended abruptly at the Calexico airport. They’d checked all the records of all the flights from all the airports within the range of a variety of aircraft. It was needle-in-a-haystack time, and as Towers had pointed out, the FAA had docs for only about two-thirds of all small planes. Witnesses were few and far between, and even if the group had been sighted, Moore figured they’d disguised themselves as migrant workers, who were a common sight and always on the move.
Part of Moore wanted to believe that Samad and his group were just sleepers, that their mission was to live secretly in the United States for years until they would be called into action, and that would give him and the Agency the time they needed for the hunt …and the kill. He could reassure himself with that, but in the next thought he’d imagine what they’d been carrying in those rectangular packs: rifles, RPGs, missile launchers, and, God forbid, nukes? Of course, the Agency’s analysts — in conjunction with more than a dozen other agencies, including DHS, NEST (the Nuclear Emergency Support Team), the FBI, and Interpol — were scouring the planet for evidence of recent arms sales, especially between the Taliban in Waziristan and the Pakistan Army. After dozens of false leads, the trail in that regard had gone cold, and Moore suddenly cursed aloud.
“Take it easy, bro,” Towers said. He reached into his breast pocket and produced a plastic prescription bottle. “You want a painkiller?”
Moore just gave him a look.
At about 4:45 p.m., Moore received an e-mail that took him aback. Maqsud Kayani, the commander of that Pakistan patrol boat and nephew of the late Colonel Saadat Khodai, had written to share some important information he’d been given via an ISI agent who’d been a friend of his uncle’s. The ISI had recently questioned a group of Taliban sympathizers up in Waziristan, one of whom revealed that his brother was on some kind of mission in the United States. The more ironic or perhaps fateful part of the e-mail followed:
The brother was in San Diego.
I want you to know that my uncle was a brave man who understood exactly what he was doing, and I’m hoping this information will help you catch the men who murdered him.
Moore shared the e-mail with Towers, who nearly fell out of his chair as he spotted something on his own computer screen. “We got a good lead from the Bureau, right here on the 302. Three guys at a 7-Eleven, all from Pakistan. Guy who reported them was from Pakistan, too. He got a tag number.”
“They run it?”
“Yeah, came from a rental car place near the airport. Guy who took it fits the description of any one of the 7 -Eleven guys. Looks like his ID was fake, though, and so was his address — whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on now. Holy shit.”
“What?” Moore demanded.
“Airport security just called. They spotted the car in the cell-phone lot on North Harbor. They have orders not to approach.”
Moore burst to his feet. “Let’s go!”
They were out the door in seconds, practically leaping into their SUV, with Moore at the wheel and Towers on his cell phone, talking to a guy named Meyers at the Bureau who already had his Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) unit en route.
“Tell them to hold back!” hollered Towers. “We don’t want them running. Keep them back!”
Moore had the airport programmed into the windshield-mounted GPS, so the unit began showing and calling out the turns: west on Viewridge toward Balboa, hang a left, get on to I-15, then merge later on with I-8. Freeway driving during rush hour left him white-knuckling his way around slower-moving vehicles. The airport was about fourteen miles away, a twenty-minute drive without traffic, but once they got onto the San Diego Freeway to head south, the ribbons of brake lights and hoods gleaming in the sun stretched to the horizon.
And that’s when Moore took to the shoulder and hauled ass, leaving a cloud of debris in their wake. They rumbled as long as they could over fast-food garbage and pieces of tractor-trailer tires until they were forced to weave back into traffic to make their next exit.
Samad’s mouth had gone dry as they pulled into the lot. He checked his watch: 5:29 p.m. local time. He glanced over to Niazi, seated in the van’s passenger seat. The young man’s eyes grew wider, and he licked his lips like a snow leopard before the kill. Samad craned his head back to Talwar, who had the Anza propped on his shoulder and was praying quietly. The van’s engine thrummed, and Samad tapped a button, lowering his window to breathe in the cooler evening air.
He reached into his pocket and unwrapped a piece of chocolate. He examined it as though it were a precious gem before popping it into his mouth.
The piece of paper lying across his lap, the one Rahmani referred to as the target report, had cell-phone numbers handwritten beside each of the cities:
Los Angeles (LAX)
Flt#: US Airways 2965
Dest: New York, NY (JFK)
Departure: June 6, 5:40 p.m. Pacific Time
Boeing 757, twin-engine jet
202 passengers, 8 crew
San Diego (SAN)
Flt#: Southwest Airlines SWA1378
Dest: Houston, TX (HOU)
Departure: June 6, 5:41 p.m. Pacific Time
Boeing 737–700, twin-engine jet
149 passengers, 6 crew
Phoenix (PHX)
Flt#: US Airways 155
Dest: Minneapolis, MN (MSP)
Departure: June 6, 6:44 p.m. Mountain Time
Boeing 767-400ER
304 passengers, 10 crew
