Carroll squinted his eyes for a better look at the approaching figure.
He just couldn't believe it!
He stared down the street, his eyes smarting from the bite of the wind. He had to make sure.
Jesus. He was sure.
The fast-walking man had a huge puffy burr of bushy, very wiry, black hair. The greasy hair was combed straight back, and it hung like a limp sack over the collar of his black cloth jacket. The man's clothes were soberly black; if he hadn't known better, Carroll would have taken him for a minister of some obscure religious sect.
Carroll knew the man by two names: one was Hussein Moussa; the other was Lebanese Butcher. A decade before, Moussa had been recruited by the Russians; he'd been efficiently trained at their famed Third World school in Tripoli. During the late seventies he'd worked in the European network under the guidance of the supreme terrorist himself, Juan Carlos.
Since then Moussa had been busily free-lancing terror and sophisticated murder techniques all over the world: in Paris, Rome, Zaire, New York, in Lebanon for Colonel Qaddafi. Recently he'd worked for Francois Monserrat, who had taken over not only Juan Carlos's European terrorist cell, but South America, and now the United States as well.
Hussein Moussa halted in front of the Sinbad Star restaurant. Like a very careful driver at a tricky intersection, he looked both ways. Twice more he looked up and down Atlantic Avenue. He even noticed the bag man camped out on the other side of the busy street.
Apparently he saw nothing to fear, nothing of real concern or interest, and he disappeared behind the gaudy red door of the Sinbad Star.
Arch Carroll sat up against the crumbling brick wall of the restaurant. He was stiff, half-frozen.
He groped inside his jacket and produced a stubby third of a Camel cigarette. He lit up and inhaled the gruff tobacco.
What an unexpected little Christmas present. What a just reward for endless winter nights trailing the Rashids. The Lebanese Butcher on a silver platter. His bosses in State had told him not to touch the Rashids without extremely strong physical evidence. But they'd issued no such orders for the Lebanese Butcher.
What was Hussein Moussa doing in New York, anyway? Carroll's mind was reeling. Why was he here with the Rashids?
The firebombing of Pier 54-56 went quickly through his mind. He had picked up strands of information from gossip he'd heard all day long on the street-somebody had taken it into his head to blow a dock and the surrounding West Side area, it seemed, and for a moment Carroll pondered a possible connection between Hussein Moussa and the events on the Hudson River.
He'd heard nothing definitive, though. Gossip, whispers, street rumors, nothing more substantial. Somebody had finally said it was some kind of natural gas explosion. Another street rumor had offered the opinion that the city of New York was now being held for ransom. Mainly the speculations he'd heard were vague. Until he knew more, he couldn't begin to link the Lebanese Butcher to the West Side firebombing.
Arch Carroll had been ramrodding the Antiterrorist Division of the DIA for almost four years now. During that time only a few of the mass murderers he'd learned about had gotten to him emotionally and caused him to lose his usual policeman's objectivity. Hussein Moussa was one.
The Lebanese Butcher liked to torture. The Butcher liked to kill. The Butcher enjoyed maiming innocent civilians…
As he studied the Sinbad Star restaurant, Carroll reflected that he didn't particularly want Moussa dead. He wanted the Butcher locked away in a maximum-security cage for the rest of his life. Give the animal lots of time to think about what he'd done, if he did think.
From underneath newspapers and rags inside one of his shopping bags, Carroll began to slide out a heavy black metal object. Very carefully, peering down close, he checked the firing chamber of a Browning automatic. He quickly fed in eight shells with an autoloader.
A stooped, ancient Hasid was passing by. He stared incredulously at the street bum loading up a handgun. His watery gray eyes bulged out of his sagging face. The old man kept walking away, looking back constantly. Then he walked faster. New York street bums with guns now! The city was beyond all prayers, all possible hope.
Arch Carroll stood up. He felt stiff, ice cold all over. One globe of his rear end was completely numb.
He was getting too old for extended street duty. He had to remember that in the future: it might be very important for staying alive and intact one of these days.
Weaving through the thick, fuzzy night traffic, Carroll only half heard the bleating car horns and angry curses directed at him.
He was drifting in and out of reality now; there was a little nausea involved here, too. The same thing, the same absolutely identical feeling, came to him every time-just the possibility of killing another person was so foreign and absurd to him that it left a bitter taste in his mouth.
A middle-aged couple was leaving the Sinbad, the fat wife pulling her red overcoat tight around bursting hips. She stared at Crusader Rabbit, and the look said “You don't belong inside there, mister. You know you don't belong in there.”
Carroll pulled open the ornate red door the departing couple had slammed in his face. Hot, garlicky air surrounded him. A muffled
The tiny restaurant was infinitely more crowded than it had looked from the outside. Arch Carroll cursed. Every available dining table was filled to overflowing. Every one.
Six or seven more people, a group of boisterous friends, were waiting in the front to be seated. Carroll pushed past them. Waiters wearing black half-jackets hurried in and out of the swinging kitchen doors in the rear.
Carroll's eyes slowly drifted along the back of the crowded dining room.
Hussein Moussa had already seen him. Even in the packed, bustling restaurant, the terrorist had noticed his entrance. The Lebanese Butcher had been watching every person who came in from Atlantic Avenue.
So had the restaurant's owner, an enormous two-hundred-and-fifty-pound man. He charged forward now, an enraged bull guarding his herd at mealtime.
“Get out of here! You get out, bum! Go now!” the owner screamed. The diners were suddenly silent.
Carroll tried to look lost, dizzily confused, as surprised as everyone else that he was inside the small neighborhood restaurant.
He stumbled over his own flopping black sneakers.
He weaved sideways before moving suddenly toward the right rear corner of the dining room.
He hoped to God he looked cock-eyed drunk and absolutely helpless. Maybe even a little funny. Everybody should start laughing. If he did this exactly right, he'd have Hussein Moussa and the Rashids without firing a shot.
Carroll groped down his body with both hands, graphically scratching between his legs. A middle-aged woman turned away with obvious disgust.
“Bayt-room?” Carroll slobbered convincingly, rolling his eyes. “Gotta go to the bayt-room!”
A young bearded man and his girlfriend started laughing. Bathroom humor got the youth crowd every time. This was the success lesson of modern Broadway and Hollywood.
Hussein Moussa had stopped eating and was smiling. His teeth were a serrated blade of shining yellow. He looked like an animal, a brutal scavenger. He apparently thought this scene was pretty funny, too.
“Gotta go to the bayt-room!” Carroll continued a little louder, sounding, he thought, like a drunken Jerry Lewis. But, Jesus, you had to be a decent actor in this line of street work.
“Mohamud! Tarek! Get bum out! Get bum out now!” the owner was screeching hysterically at his waiters.
Pandemonium had completely overtaken the Sinbad Star when suddenly, fluidly, expertly, Arch Carroll wheeled hard to his left. He whipped the Browning automatic out of the ratty, cumbersome parka. It was completely out of place in the family restaurant. Women and children began screaming at the top of their voices.
“Freeze! Don't move!
At that same moment, one of the Lebanese waiters hit Carroll hard from his blind side, spinning him in a fast half-circle to the right. He ruined the drop Carroll had on the three terrorists, and he turned everything into a complete, instantaneous disaster.
Moussa and the Rashids were already scattering, rolling sideways off the red vinyl dining chairs. Anton Rashid yanked out a silver automatic from under his brown leather car coat.
Movies sometimes show particularly violent scenes in very flowing slow motion. It wasn't like that at all, Carroll knew. It was a jumpy collage of loud, shocking still photos. The disconnected photos clicked at him now in random order. They stopped. They started. They stopped. They started again. It was as if someone with the palsy were operating a slide projector.
“Everybody hit the floor!” Carroll screamed as he fired the Browning.
The first bullet brutually uncorked the right side of Anton Rashid's throat, spilling his blood in pools on the floor.
Hussein Moussa's gun flashed; it roared as Carroll dove across the backs of a couple already down.
Seconds later Carroll peered over the table. He fired off three more quick shots. Two of the bullets drove stocky Wadih Rashid hard against a hollow partition wall decorated with black skillets. Twin rat holes opened in the terrorist's chest. The heavy skillets clattered noisily to the tile floor.
“Moussa! Hussein Moussa! You can't get out! You can't get past me!” Carroll screamed.
There was no answer.
Somewhere in the front of the restaurant, an old woman was wailing like an imam. Several people were crying loudly. Outside, distant police and ambulance sirens screamed through the night.
“Give up now, and you live… Otherwise I'll kill you. No matter what, Moussa. I swear it!”
He was breathing hard. One, two, three. Carroll chanced another fast look.
He saw nothing of the Lebanese Butcher this time. Moussa was also under the tables, hiding and crawling, looking for some advantage. He was moving toward either the front door or the kitchen.
Carroll guessed it would be the kitchen. He began to scramble toward it.
“I have antipersonnel grenades!” The Butcher suddenly let out a piercing, high scream. “Everybody dies in here!
Carroll stopped moving; he almost didn't breathe. Straight ahead, he stared at a shaking, very frightened woman curled like a snail on the floor. She looked about thirty years old. She didn't want to die in the middle of her big night out with her husband.
Carroll peeked above the dining tables again, and a gunshot rang out to his immediate left. Things didn't look good.
