Jihad

“I guess so. How long will it take?”

“Are you connected to the Internet?”

“DSL,” said the man proudly, as if the high-speed connection were a status symbol.

“It won’t take very long, I suspect,” said Jackson taking out his satellite phone.

CHAPTER 120

Kenan stood up as the boat approached the tanker. From the distance, the ship’s sides seemed very low in the water. But now that they were close, it loomed above them, larger even than the vessel he had crewed on the year before, let alone the ships he’d trained on as part of the advanced bridge management classes this past summer. It was a modern ship, with a long red hull and a bright white superstructure several stories high. The controls he expected to find on the bridge would allow it to sail with a normal complement of fourteen, and in fact it could be sailed with far less — and would be.

The Aztec Exact had been built in 1996 for a Dutch concern that had gone bankrupt; bought by the Iranian state petroleum company, it had been sold to two businessmen fronting for al- Qaeda. The plan to convert it into a floating bomb had been conceived more than two years before, but logistics — and money — had prevented its use until now.

Kenan braced himself, preparing to reach for the boarding ladder that hung over the side. Suddenly the boat seemed to durch backwards. Kenan recoiled against the thin metal rail, barely keeping himself from falling into the water.

“There is the matter of my pay, senors,” said the boat captain, his English considerably better than when they.started out.

Kenan looked at him, then at the mujahideen who had come in the bus with him from Mexico City.

“You were paid,” said the other man.

“Not enough,” said the captain. “If another hundred dollars cannot be found, perhaps I will forget my promise not to tell others what I have seen. A large boat like this, anchored out here for days — why would that be? Smuggling, perhaps?”

The captain grinned.

Kenan controlled his anger as the other mujahideen took the small shortwave radio from his belt. The greed of Devil People was almost incomprehensible.

“We have no money,” the mujahideen told the captain. “But I will see what I can arrange.”

The captain smiled. Kenan heard the mujahideen say something in a language he guessed was Arabic. Before he could try and puzzle out their meaning, shots rained down from the ship above, and the boat captain had fallen to the deck.

CHAPTER 121

It took Robert Gallo about two hours to download a full copy of the computer drive from the hotel Ambassador Jackson had found. By the time he was done, Angela DiGiacomo had already determined that the man believed to be Marid Dabir had used a fake name and address to register at the hotel. The name — Burkha Akhtar — didn’t correspond to any known alias used by al-Qaeda, let alone Marid Dabir. It did, however, match a name that had been cited by German intelligence in reports two years before of possible al-Qaeda activity in Germany. It was another coincidence, tantalizing but not quite conclusive.

“Kinda like my mom’s meatballs,” said Gallo as he discussed it with DiGiacomo.

“What do you mean?”

“They’re kinda like my grandma’s, but not quite.”

“Any time you want good meatballs, just let know.”

“Maybe I’m overinterpreting this, but did you just invite me to dinner?”

DiGiacomo flushed, but then shrugged. “Maybe.”

That “maybe” powered Gallo for the rest of the day.

* * *

“See, they’d be in two different places at the same time,” Gallo told Johnny Bib, showing the credit card charges for the flights. “Why would you be making reservations to fly from Cleveland to Boston when you’re in Des Moines?”

“You’re sure he’s in Des Moines?”

“Angie checked it out. She called his hotel.”

Johnny Bib turned to DiGiacomo. “True?”

She nodded.

“Maybe it’s his wife or another relative.”

“No wife,” said Gallo. “And his relatives are all back in Texas.”

“We think he gained access to the motel’s computer and took the credit card numbers from there,” Gallo said.

A grin came to Johnny Bib’s face. He snatched the memory stick with the data on it and was about to bolt from the room, probably to tell Rubens, when Gallo stopped him.

“Wait, we’re not done. See, I checked out where the reservation was made from. Turned out to be a computer in a library in Ohio.”

“Good.”

“Another reservation came from there that same day, almost at the same time. This one’s for a flight from Boston to Ireland.”

“Better!” chirped Johnny Bib.

“It’s on there,” said Gallo as his boss flew from the room.

“Do you think he was always strange?” asked DiGiacomo.

“I don’t think he’s that strange,” said Gallo. “Comparatively.”

CHAPTER 122

The noise in the engine room was deafening, but Kenan nodded as the senior engineer showed him and the man who had accompanied him from Mexico City around. The man’s name was Razaq Khan, and he was their leader.

The two engine experts had stayed with the ship when it was left here two weeks before. Kenan could tell from the rush of words leaving the engineer’s mouth that he was starved for company.

“The engines perfect in order,” said the man with his less than perfect English. “They are soldiers of God.”

“Mujahideen,” said Kenan.

The engineer smiled and nodded enthusiastically. Kenan turned and looked at his assistant, a young man no older than he was. The youth had a slightly dazed look on his face, as if he were drugged. Kenan guessed it was the result of the foul air in the engine compartment, which smelled of sea water, fuel, and stale cigarettes.

The ship had been prepared in an Algerian dry dock several months before crossing the Atlantic. The tanks were filled with a liquid explosive derived from rocket fuel, primed to be ignited by a web of plastic explosives surrounding the tanks. The detonator wires ran through the ship to a pair of large control boxes connecting them to a control panel on the bridge. The bomb would be detonated by turning a simple key on the box and moving four levers one by one from neutral to the top position before plunging them together to the bottom. Khan kept the key on a chain around his neck.