Hardbingers rj-10 Page 13

  Probably as legit as Jack's license.

  "Why the gag?"

  Not as if the guy was going to yell for help.

  Miller said, "Couldn't stand listening to any more of his Allah bullshit."

  Allah…

  Jack knelt and ripped the duct tape from the guy's face, taking a fair amount of beard with it.

  "Hey! Shabbir! You with Wrath of Allah?"

  He spat at Jack. "I am a soldier of God! I am of the Omar Sheikh Martyr Brigade!"

  "Never heard of it."

  Davis said, "Omar Sheikh is the animal who beheaded Daniel Pearl on videotape. The Pakistanis sentenced him to hang for it, but they haven't got around to it yet."

  Jack stared at Shabbir. "How can he be a martyr if he's not dead?"

  "The traitors are offering him up to appease America!"

  Jack shook him. "Forget that. Wrath of Allah—the ones who gunned down those people at LaGuardia. What do you know about them?"

  "They too are soldiers of God! They are heroes!"

  Jack remembered the litter of dead he'd seen around the baggage carousel—remembered one death in particular—and wanted to throttle this piece of crap. With no little difficulty he resisted the impulse and jammed the duct tape back over his mouth.

  "What do we do now?" Zeklos said.

  "We?" Miller shook his head. "There is no 'we' as far as you're concerned. Just me and Davis."

  "Don't forget Jack," Davis said.

  A glare was Miller's only reply.

  "I don't know about you guys," Jack said, "but I think the best course is to tape him up, take off, and call the feds."

  Miller sneered. "Yeah, right. So they can take him to the Gitmo Country Day School and give him a special diet and a Koran and a cleric and an ACLU asshole to hold his hand. You know how I'd handle these guys—the few who somehow survived? They'd get a cinderblock box smaller than this, no window, and a hole in the floor. And special diet? They'd get a special diet: Every day I'd whip them up bacon for breakfast, sausage for lunch, and pork chops for dinner—no substitutions, please. Eat or starve."

  "You wouldn't get any argument from me," Davis said. "But we're not at Gitmo and this guy obviously isn't working alone. The feds can use him to find the rest of his posse."

  "We don't need to find his posse." Miller waved his arms at the drums. "We've got their toys, and without their toys they can't play."

  Jack said, "The Oculus saw them stuffing vests with plastique."

  Davis pointed to the corner. "They're over there. Six of them packed full, salted with one-inch wood screws and ready to go. But that's small-time stuff. Take a look at this."

  He led Jack to the nearest drum and lifted its lid. Jack looked inside. He saw reddish gunk up to the three-quarter level. A cell phone lay on top. A wire ran from the phone into the gunk.

  Jack felt a jolt of alarm as he leaned over the rim. He knew that wire led to a detonator or two.

  "I hope to hell that phone is turned off."

  "It is. Every barrel's rigged like this. And don't worry, I made sure all the phones are off."

  "Then they're all set to go."

  Jack could see how it would go down. They load the drums into car trunks, stall the cars on bridges near a support or midshaft in a tunnel or two, hitch a ride away, and then call the rigged cell phone. The ringer sends a current to the detonators and BLAM!—collapsed tunnels, and bridges with severe structural damage.

  And rampant panic.

  Jack said, "The Oculus saw suicide bombings, but these are rigged for remote detonation. Which means they're probably saving the suicide vests for the buses and subways, after they've blown the cars."

  Davis was nodding. "And that means they don't have bodies to spare. They've got half a dozen vests here. Probably means only half a dozen in their cell."

  "Smart," Jack said. "Keep it small. Keep it tight. Fewer chances of a leak or a screw-up."

  Davis turned back to Miller. "Jack's right. This is way too big and too well planned for our little crew. We're stretched to the limit as it is. We've got to turn him in."

  Miller shook his head. "I'm sick of jawing about this."

  He kicked the Arab onto his belly and stomped hard on the back of his neck. Jack heard the crunch of shattering vertebrae. The guy twitched once and then lay still.

  "Now you're a martyr," Miller said.

  Jack felt nothing for the terrorist. He didn't know how much blood he had on his hands when he died, but he'd have been bathing in it if he'd had his way. And if Jack had found out that he'd been part of the LaGuardia Massacre, his own foot would have been on that neck.

  "For Christ sake. Miller!" Davis shouted. "That's the second time—!"

  They all jumped as the dead man's cell phone began to ring.

  "Must be Allah calling to tell him he ain't getting his seventy-two virgins."

  Davis was still fuming. "Why the hell did you do that?"

  Miller's lips parted into what he probably thought was a beatific smile. Not quite.

  "I just want peace is all. You know how I hate arguments. And now there's nothing to argue about."

  This is why I work alone, Jack thought.

  11

  Jack listened to Davis and Miller dicker to a compromise: They wouldn't call the feds yet; instead they'd watch the storage area and make the call when the terrorists showed. Miller wanted a vantage point far enough away that they wouldn't be seen and scare them off.

  "That way we nab them all," Miller said. "I'll feel better about that." Jack was thinking about how long it would take the agents to get to Staten Island from the FBI field office in downtown Manhattan. On a Sunday night, with flashers going, pretty damn quick. Even quicker with a copter.

  After surveying the lay of the land they decided the best watch nest was the roof of a ten-story apartment house about half a mile inland. It promised a clear view of the storage lot and of this cubicle in particular.

  If tomorrow was indeed detonation day, the terrorists would have to load up today or tonight. More likely tonight.

  They left Miller to watch the cubicle while Jack, Davis, and Zeklos raced to Red Hook for field glasses and food for the surveillance. Jack pulled his handy-dandy tool kit from his trunk, then the two of them headed back to Staten Island sans Zeklos.

  "I had to side with Miller this time," Davis said. "Zek's not going to contribute anything to the surveillance, so he shouldn't be along."

  Jack said nothing, but the lost look on the little man's face had followed him all the way back to the car.

  The apartment building was a brick-faced, low-income box. Getting in was easy: Someone had broken the lock on the front entry doors and so they waltzed right through.

  The door to the roof, however, presented a problem.

  NO EXIT ALARM WILL SOUND

  Jack checked its edges and found the magnetic contact sensor along the top. It had been crudely installed, leaving the wires exposed.

  Davis grunted. "Probably works about as well as everything else in this place. That is, not at all."

  "I wouldn't want to count on that," Jack said. "This is too important."

  He heard a metallic snikt! behind him. He turned and saw that Miller had flicked open a knife. The overhead light reflected off the four-inch blade.

  "Just cut the wires and forget about it."

  Jack grabbed his arm as he raised the knife.

  "That'll only work on an open-circuit model. This is probably closed."

  Davis frowned. "So what?"

  "Open circuit means there's no flow-through of current. The circuit is held open by the magnetic contact on the door. Opening the door removes the magnet and the circuit snaps closed, sending a signal to the alarm. Cutting the wires works just fine for them. But the closed-circuit model has continuous flow-through. Cut the wires and you're busted. Almost everything's closed circuit these days. How come you guys don't know this?"

  Davis shrugged. "Stealth isn't a big part of our MO."
<
br />   "So what do we do?" Miller said. "Stand around with our thumbs up our asses while those Islamic turds load up their cars?"

  "We can jump the wires, but that takes time. So let's try this."

  He opened his tool kit and checked through the side pockets until he found a quarter-size disk. He held it up.

  "This little doodad is an NIP magnet—don't ask me what the letters stand for. The important thing is there's ten pounds of lift in this baby."

  He slipped the disk between the magnet and the sensor. It snapped up against the sensor, keeping the circuit closed. Jack pushed open the door.

  "We're in business."

  He turned to find Davis and Miller gawking at him.

  Davis pointed to the tool kit. "What's that? A Felix the Cat bag? What else've you got in there?"

  "This and that."

  Miller's eyes narrowed. "You've got your uses, mister. But where'd you learn so much about burglar alarms?"

  "Heir School. Let's go."

  12

  Jack adjusted his stiff, cold fingers around the field glasses. His eyes burned from staring through the powerful lenses. Davis had brought along a Leica Duovid model. The 12x magnification gave a clear view of the Arabs' unit but the image swam with the slightest movement. He had to rest his elbows on the parapet to steady the binocs.

  Six hours of taking turns watching the storage farm and still nothing. The sun had quit early, but the half moon in the cloudless sky gave aid but no comfort. A chill wind had sprung up, ferrying damp salt air from Newark Bay, making surveillance a frosty chore. So much so that they took half-hour shifts on the parapet, with the off pair huddled on the stairwell to keep warm.

  At least the cold would keep Shabbir's body from stinking. They'd stowed it under a blanket in the rear of the Suburban. Didn't want the discovery of his earthly remains to spook Allah's henchmen before the feds could catch them.

  If not for the cold he might have enjoyed the view. Not for what he could see of Staten Island, but what was around it: the Statue of Liberty and the glow of Lower Manhattan… sans the Trade Towers. Despite the years, Jack still hadn't acclimated to their absence. And here he was, on the lookout for members of the same tribe of shits responsible.

  He shook off the rage. That wasn't the way to go now. Anger was a great fuel but also a distraction. No cowboy stuff tonight. They had to do this right.

  Jack checked his watch: nine minutes to go before his turn for a warmth break. He rubbed his eyelids, then fitted them back into the eyepieces. He'd become so used to seeing no activity that it took a few seconds for his brain to register the battered sedan pulling into the self-storage lot.

  It did two slow circuits under the lights of the empty lot before stopping. A short, swarthy male got out and looked around.

  Jack adjusted the focus. This could be it.

  After a moment or two the guy started up one of the lanes, but not the one with Shabbir's unit. Jack wasn't ready to give up on him. The guy was playing it smart, moseying around to see if he had company. The unanswered calls to Shabbir had to have shaken up the cell.

  Jack watched the guy wander up and down a number of aisles before stopping at the unit in question. More furtive looks around and then he bent over the combination lock. Seconds later he was rolling up the door.

  Got him. But only one. Had to be at least four more to account for the six vests.

  The guy stepped inside. A flashlight beam flickered on and off a couple of times, then he stepped back out and got on a cell phone.

  A minute later three more rust buckets wheeled into the lot.

  Had to be them.

  Jack trotted over to the door to the stairwell and pulled it open.

  "They're here."

  Miller was the first out. He grabbed the binocs as he dashed past. Jack and Davis followed him to the parapet.

  "Well, well," Miller said, peering through the Leica. "Will you look at this."

  "I'd love to," Davis said, "but you're bogarting the glasses."

  Miller didn't seem to hear. "We've got four dune monkeys walking toward our deceased friend's bin where a fifth awaits."

  "How're they acting?" Davis said.

  "Real cautious." Miller lowered the glasses and handed them to Davis, then fished in his pocket. "Time to call the Fibbies."

  "Tell them to hurry," Davis said as he peered through the glasses. "We might have to step in if they don't get here in time."

  Jack glanced at Miller and watched him hold down a single button on his phone. He'd put the FBI on his speed dialer?

  And then Jack realized what was going down.

  He reached for Miller's phone. "Miller! No!"

  But too late.

  The night sky turned to day as a deafening blast shook the building and almost knocked them off their feet.

  Jack watched a ball of flame mushroom into the sky, lighting up the whole north shore and Bayonne as well. The self-storage farm looked like Ground Zero. He could feel the heat from here.

  Miller grinned into the flames. "Oops."

  "You son of a bitch!" Davis shouted.

  Jack saw how it had gone down. While he'd been waiting alone Miller had turned on one of the phones, copied down the number, and entered it into his speed dialer.

  Jack's shock yielded to fury.

  "Do you have any idea how many innocent people you just killed, you bastard?"

  Miller shrugged. "Maybe a couple, maybe none. It's Sunday night on Staten Island's North Shore. Think about that."

  "Even one is too many."

  In the fire's glow Miller's expression was serene. "Hey, we're making a world-saving omelet here, know what I mean? You gotta step back and see the big picture. You can't do that, you don't deserve to be the Sentinel."

  Davis bared his teeth. "You shit!"

  Jack wanted to take Miller's head off.

  "You just vaporized five assets that could have been squeezed for intelligence—could have led to more creeps like them. Might even have given up info on Wrath of Allah."

  "What's with you and this Wrath of Allah? That's like the third or fourth time you've brought them up. You got some kind of hard-on for them?"

  Jack wasn't about to explain. He didn't owe Miller anything.

  "You remind me of them—killing noncombatants for what they think is a higher cause."

  Miller sneered. "Now I know you're not the Heir. You're too much of a pantywaist to be the Sentinel."

  Jack stepped closer to Miller. Davis grabbed his arm.

  "Don't. That's just what he's looking for."

  Jack shook him off. Miller's opinions meant nothing to him.

  "I'm cool." He stopped a foot or two before Miller and looked up into his flat gray eyes. "Tell me something, Miller. You've said a couple of times that you thought the Heir should come from the yeniceri, right?"

  "Yeah."

  "Let me guess which one of the yeniceri you think it should be. You?"

  Miller's expression lost some of its bravado. "Maybe."

  "Okay, Miller. Tell you what: You can have it. I don't want it. It's yours. I now officially declare you the Heir."

  Miller looked even less sure of himself. "It doesn't work that way."

  "Really? Okay, then, here's a deal: Find a way to transfer it from me to you and it's yours. No strings. How's that sound?"

  Miller's mouth worked but he had nothing to say. He looked flummoxed, as if he couldn't conceive of anyone not wanting to be the Sentinel. Pretty obvious he hadn't expected anyone to offer it to him.

  "My only reservation about giving it to you is I worry you'll be worse than the Adversary."

  Miller telegraphed his move by a shift in his gaze and a tightening of his lips. Jack ducked the roundhouse right and kicked him in the left knee. Like kicking a concrete pillar.

  "Hey-hey-hey!" Davis said, jumping between them. "Maybe there's a time and a place for this, but it's not here! We're done. Let's get back Home."

  Jack eyed Miller and Miller gl
ared back. Davis was right. Not the time or the place. Jack wondered if there was any right time or place to face this behemoth. His bulk made him slow, but it also made him hard to hurt.

  But not impossible.

  Jack noticed with some satisfaction that he showed a trace of a limp as they took the stairs down from the roof.

  13

  Davis smacked his lips as he slammed down his empty beer mug.

  "Man, did I need that."

  The ride back to Red Hook had been tense and silent. Along the way Jack had called the FBI. He gave them the address of Shabbir's apartment and fingered him as being behind the explosion.

  After dropping Miller off at Home, Davis wanted to go out for a beer. Jack's first impulse had been to refuse. The night had left a bad taste in his mouth and he wanted to get back to his apartment and be alone. He'd had

  1

  enough of yeniceri and visions and weirdness for one night. But Davis had practically begged him, saying he wanted to talk. Jack liked Davis, sensed a core of dedication and decency in him, so he finally gave in.

  They drove separate cars back to Bay Ridge and found a pub down the street from Shabbir's place. The widescreen TV over the far corner of the bar was running a continuous stream of aerial video of the blast area. No football tonight.

  They chose a window booth where they could watch the local frenzy of activity.

  The whole block had been taped off. Dozens of FBI-labeled flak vests milled through a delirium of flashing lights.

  Jack finished his own beer. He'd needed one too.

  "Let's do that again."

  As Jack signaled the waitress for another round, Davis leaned across the table and lowered his voice.

  "The Fibbies will be all over that place. Make CSI look like a food fight. You and Zek didn't leave any trace they can latch onto, right?"

  Jack shook his head and took no offense.

  "Kept the cigarette butts outside, wore gloves inside. Taught me that in Heir school too."

  Davis didn't smile. "Good. If the Oculus's vision was accurate—about loading the vests there—they should find traces of Semtex in the apartment. They can analyze its composition and maybe trace it to the source."

  "So? Five'll get you fifty it's Iran." Abe had told him the Iranians were turning out Semtex like pita dough. "What help is that?"