Dead or Alive

fountain. Not that it mattered.

Of the three targets they’d told him to prepare for, this one offered the greatest potential for massive casualties. What was that American saying? A turkey shoot?

The maps he’d used in his preparations had been easy to obtain, and several of them he’d even gotten at the town’s visitor center. The topographical map he’d downloaded from a popular hiking website, and while he had no interest in the local trails, the elevations and distances were clearly marked, and a stroll around town with his portable GPS unit had confirmed their accuracy.

Once he was sure he had all the necessary data, he’d simply punched the numbers into the appropriate equations and come up with the settings.

Now would come the hard part: waiting. He would pass the time by practicing setting up and dismantling his equipment.

Musa’s second day of driving was relatively short, taking him from Toppenish, Washington, to Nampa, Idaho, whose only claim to fame, according to a sign on the outskirts, was that it was not only the largest city in Canyon County, Idaho, with a population of 79,249, but also the fastest-growing. Yet another sign along the road, less than a hundred yards from the first, proclaimed that Nampa was also “a great place to live!”

When planning his route from Blaine, Musa had decided his overnight stops must be in medium-sized towns-not too large that the police force was aggressive or particularly well trained, and not too small, lest the arrival of a dark-skinned stranger provoke any undue curiosity. Toppenish, with a population of only eight thousand, might have fallen in the latter category if not for its close proximity to Yakima. Of course, his encounter with Willie, Toppenish’s nosy chief of police, had placed a seed of doubt in Musa’s mind. The situation hadn’t escalated, of course, nor would it have, even if the cop questioned him further. Like the non-burned bogus documentation he’d shown the customs inspector in Vancouver, Musa was now armed with business cards, letterhead, and forms bearing the seal of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His cover story was essentially the same: a wealthy and neurotic horse owner in Bellingham who didn’t trust his local vet’s X-ray equipment.

It was mid-afternoon when he pulled off Highway 84/30 and into the parking lot of the Fairfield Inn & Suites. He shut off the ignition, then opened the travel atlas sitting on the passenger seat. He’d written nothing down, nor made any marks in the atlas. There was no need; he knew the route and distances by heart.

Six hundred forty miles to go, Musa thought. If he wished, he could start out early tomorrow and probably cover the remaining distance to Beatty, Nevada, in one day. It was tempting, but he decided against it. The Emir had been adamant in his orders. He would follow the timetable.

77

DESCENDING THROUGH twenty thousand feet on their way into Rio de Janeiro, Chavez and Dominic could see the pall of oily smoke hanging over Sao Paulo two hundred miles down the coast from Rio. North of Sao Paulo, the Paulinia fires were still raging. On the way to the airport the night before, they’d heard on the news that firefighters and rescue workers in the area had changed their strategy, focusing not on extinguishing the refinery inferno but on evacuation and containment. Ethanol had stopped spewing from the pipeline within an hour of the initial explosion, but in that time some ten thousand gallons of fuel had spilled into the refinery, and while some of that was still burning, it was now the dozens upon dozens of blending and storage tanks that were involved. The conflagration would eventually burn out, but experts both in Brazil and in the United States disagreed on how long that would take. Some predicted four days, others two weeks or more. What no one disagreed on, however, was the environmental toll the disaster was taking. Already oil soot was blanketing fields and homes as far south as Colombo. Emergency rooms were overflowing with patients complaining of respiratory problems.

“If that’s not hell on earth, I don’t know what is,” Dominic said, staring out the window.

“No argument there. How you feelin’?” While Ding had dozed on and off for much of the flight, Dominic had been dead to the world until an hour ago.

“Better, I think. I was ass-kicked.”

“In more ways than one, mano. I know I already said this, but sorry about Brian. He was a good troop.”

“Thanks. So when we touch down, what’s the plan?”

“Call home and check the news stations to see if Hadi’s information has hit the airwaves. If it has, we go hunting. If not, we hunker down and wait.”

Once off the plane and cleared through customs, they went straight to the Avis desk and checked in. Ten minutes later, they were standing at the curb, waiting for their Hyundai Sonata to be brought around. “Air-conditioning?” Dominic asked.

“Yeah, but manual transmission. Can’t have everything.”

The dark green Sonata came around the corner. The attendant climbed out, had Chavez sign a form, then nodded and walked away. They got in and pulled out. Dominic retrieved his sat phone from his carry-on and dialed The Campus.

“We’re down,” he told Hendley, and turned on the phone’s speaker.

“Good. You’re on speakerphone. Sam and Rick are here, too. Biery’s on his way up.” Dominic heard a door open, then the creaking of a chair. Biery said, “Dom, you there?”

“Yeah, both of us.”

“We’re in business. We cycled through ten online storage sites before we got a hit. He’s using a site called filecuda.com. Just like Jack figured, Hadi was using a variation of his e-mail for the log-in. The password we cracked in ten minutes. There’s nothing in the account’s inbox right now.”

Rick Bell said, “We’ve put together a message we think will get Hadi moving in our direction. Sam will give you the details.”

Granger came on. “We’re a little worried that the news leak will really spook Hadi, so we’re going to go with baby steps, move him from one place to another. He’ll be on guard, so we figure if he moves to the first spot and doesn’t get ambushed, he’ll start getting more comfortable with the idea. Once we think we’ve got him hooked, we’re going to tell him to meet a contact in the Rocinha-”

“The what?”

Ding answered. “It’s Portuguese. It means ‘Little Ranch.’ Down here, slums are called favelas, and the Rocinha’s the biggest one in Rio.”

“We figure we’ll move him two, maybe three, times before sending him to the Rocinha. Depends on the tone of his responses. I’ll e-mail you a list and timetable.”

“Why there?”

“The Rio police don’t go in there unless they absolutely have to. Be easier for you to operate.”

Dominic asked, “When are you dropping the dime on Hadi?”

“In about forty minutes, by fax to Record News. We put together our own sketch and description-hopefully, close enough that Hadi’ll recognize himself but vague enough that he won’t get nabbed right away.”

“How sure are we they’ll use it?” Chavez asked.

Hendley said, “Survival of the fittest. They’re a news channel, and they’re fighting for market share during the biggest disaster in Brazilian history. They’ll take the tip like a gift from God.”

“Gotta love cutthroat journalism,” Ding replied.

“We’re tuned in to all the channels here. As soon as it hits the airwaves, we’ll call you.”

Dominic hung up. To Chavez: “We hunting?”

“Damn straight we are. Need to make a stop first. I know a guy who knows a guy.”

“Who knows where to get his hands on some guns?”

“You got it.”