“Pulled it out and stabbed him again, just to be sure.”
“Get another robe and let’s clear this joint,” Nate Allen said. He picked up his pistol, checked the safety and rammed it between his belt and his belly.
“I wasn’t followed. I’m sure.”
“People saw you. Get a new robe on and let’s get the hell outta Dodge.”
Both men pulled on robes, made sure their headpieces were properly in place and took a last glance around the room. There were fingerprints, but nothing else. The place was as spotless as careful men could keep it.
Allen jerked his head toward the door, so Ricky Stroud put his ear against it and listened intently. His eyes went to Allen, who had his hand on the pistol under his robe. He shook his head, then pulled the door open.
As the door opened, a man in the hallway rammed a knife into Ricky’s belly, doubling him up.
Nate Allen didn’t hesitate. He jerked the pistol free, grabbed it with both hands and opened up across the doubled-over Ricky Stroud, who was sinking toward the floor. He kept his shots low, waist high, gunning the figure coming through the door and moving the muzzle right and left, firing through the thin wall in a deafening fusillade. The.45 slugs weren’t full-metal-jacket hardball military slugs; they were made of hardened lead so they expanded when they struck flesh. Nate fired the whole magazine, eight shots, as fast as he could pull the trigger.
He ejected the empty magazine and reached in his pocket for another as a high-pitched, keening wail came from the other side of the wall. Someone was thumping the wall, kicking it, it sounded like.
He got the second magazine in and was thumbing off the slide release when a shot came through the wall, tugging at his sleeve. Before he could get the gun leveled, Ricky Stroud’s weapon began hammering. Stroud fired four times, spacing his shots along the wall. A cry and a thud followed when he stopped shooting.
Stroud struggled to rise on one knee, his belly and crotch covered in blood.
“Get out,” he whispered hoarsely. “I’m finished. Won’t be long. Get!”
Nate Allen didn’t hesitate. He stepped over Ricky, glanced right and left. There were four men lying in the hallway. He stepped around them. One of them was struggling to rise. Nate shot him in the head.
As he exited the building he heard a shot behind him. Ricky Stroud had shot himself.
There were people in the street, all facing the building from which the shots had come. Ignoring them, Nate Allen walked through the crowd and kept going.
“Abdul-Zahra Mohammed is dead. The killer used a knife and got blood on his sleeves and chest. He was seen. There were two of them. The brothers killed one, and the other escaped after killing all four of the brothers.”
Abu Qasim’s face was impassive as he heard the news.
The man who delivered the bad tidings shifted uncomfortably. He started in on Allah and his mercy, but Qasim lifted a hand, stopping the sermon.
“How did they find Mohammed?”
“He was dead in the street—“
“No, fool. How did the infidels find him?”
“He rarely left the Old Quarter. Everyone knows that.” The truth was that with no education, limited life experience and a xenophobic outlook, Abdul-Zahra Mohammed hadn’t felt comfortable outside the tiny circle in which he had been raised. This mind-set was so common in the Arab world that it was unremarkable.
“More to the point, how did the infidels learn he was in the movement?”
The messenger had no answer and, wisely, said nothing. So, this man who escaped — where is he now?” Rome. We have him under surveillance.”
Rome was Nate Allen’s favorite city, the one place on earth he loved above all others. It was modern, stylish, very Italian and literally built on top of ancient Rome, which cropped up in ruins and walls and columns when one least expected it. In Rome one got a sense that one’s life was merely an eye-blink in the cosmic experience, and yet one sensed the Italian urgency to enjoy, to savor, each and every moment. There was a woman, too, a dark-eyed slender woman who loved life and Nate Allen.
So Rome was … special.
On pleasant afternoons Nate liked to sit on a patch of grass with other men, most of whom were older, most of whom wore laborers’ clothes, and listen to the Italian language being spoken around him. Some of the men brought wine, and as they smoked they passed the bottle around. Behind them, in the center of this little urban paradise, young men kicked soccer balls around, shouted and laughed and strutted for the girls who paused to eat lunch and watch. It was very pleasant, a world away from North Africa.
Ricky Stroud had screwed up that hit… and paid for it with his life. Damn, that was hard.
Of course, Ricky knew the odds and the risks and signed on anyway, as Nate had. Sitting in the grass in Rome listening to the laughter and watching the girls and boys, the smells and heat and palpable religious frenzy of the Arabs seemed like something from a nightmare, some horrifying thing that had grown in the corner of your mind yet wasn’t real.
But it had been real. Ricky Stroud was really dead. Real damn dead. Of course, so was that murderous asshole Abdul-Zahra Mohammed. Blowing up airliners was his chosen quest. He had never actually been on an airliner — had never been more than four miles from the Old Quarter in which he was born — but the idea of destroying two to three hundred infidels in one stupendous, spectacular, fiery blast appealed to his sense of righteousness. The nonbelievers lived so well, flaunted their sin at the sons of Islam, tempted them with sins of the flesh and spirit— they deserved to die in a horrible, public way. Mohammed knew God wanted it that way, so he did everything in his power to recruit the people and provide the money to make it happen.
Well, he used to. Now he was just plain dead.
Nate Allen took a deep breath of Rome and tried to forget Abdul-Zahra Mohammed and Ricky Stroud, who had given his life to rid the world of a great evil. A man has to make a stand somewhere. Nate had learned that in the U.S. Army as a very young man, and it was the guiding star in his life.
He glanced at his watch. Sophia would be home from work now and cooking dinner. Lord, could that woman cook!
Nate eased himself erect and picked up the sports coat and the backpack that contained his pistol. He draped the backpack over his shoulder and the coat over his arm.
With a last look around the square, he set off for Sophia’s flat. On the way he bought a bottle of wine and a loaf of bread. They didn’t need either one, but it was a private joke.
Humming, he climbed the outside stairs to her apartment, the entrance to which was on the roof of an old building that stood on the side of a hill. This flat had been the building superintendent’s home on the roof here by the water tank until developers condo-ized it.
He paused at the door, the old instinct of caution very much with him. No one in sight was paying any attention to him. He opened the door. Halfway through the opening something slammed him in the head and he felt himself falling. Hitting the floor, trying to move.
A kick in the head, stunning him.
The backpack was ripped from him. Rough hands hauled him erect. His legs didn’t work very well and he almost fell.
As his vision cleared Nate Allen saw her, her mouth taped shut, fear in her eyes, her dress ripped half off. Sophia! Blood covered her torso. The men who held her had knives and had been cutting on her breasts.
There were four of them — two beside her and two beside him.
“Nathaniel Allen,” the man beside Sophia said. He was middle-aged, of medium height, clean-shaven, with short dark hair. In his hand was a pistol, an automatic with a silencer on the barrel. The muzzle was pointed at him. “You need to answer some questions for us,” he said in English. The accent was so faint it was barely there.
Allen said nothing. The horror of the moment had him in its grasp. He could see the fear and terror in Sophia’s eyes, and the guilt hit him like a hammer. He had brought these animals here, to harm her.
The pistol moved a hair, and he saw the muzzle flash as something rammed him in the stomach. A bullet! The shock doubled him over.
The man smiled. “We have many questions. You can answer them truthfully and completely, or we will butcher this woman before your eyes. When she is dead, we will butcher you.” He leaned forward. “You are both going to die. Do you understand? You can die slowly, horribly, or you can answer my questions and have a clean, quick death. Those are your choices.”
Nate Allen felt the pain as the shock to his abdomen wore off. He found he couldn’t stand. As he sank to his
