“We’re not supposed to believe in breeding over here, Dave,” Tom Davis observed.
“Numbers is numbers, Mr. Davis. Some people have a good nose, some don’t. He doesn’t yet, not really, but he’s sure heading that way.” Cunningham had helped start the justice Department’s Special Accounting Unit, which specialized in tracking terrorist money. Everyone needed money to operate, and money always left a trail somewhere, but it was often found after the fact more easily than before. Good for investigations, but not as good for active defense.
“Thanks, Dave,” Hendley said in dismissal. “Keep us posted, if you would.”
“Yes, sir.” Cunningham gathered his papers and made his way out.
“You know, he’d be a little more effective if he had a personality,” Davis said fifteen seconds after the door closed.
“Nobody’s perfect, Tom. He’s the best guy they ever had at justice for this sort of thing. I bet when he fishes, there’s nothing left in the lake after he leaves.”
“No argument here, Gerry.”
“So, this Sali gent might be a banker for the bad guys?”
“It looks like a possibility. Langley and Fort Meade are still in a dither over the current situation,” Hendley went on.
“I’ve seen the paperwork. It’s a whole lot of paper for not much hard data.” In the business of intelligence analysis, you got into the speculation phase too rapidly, the point when experienced analysts started applying fear to existing data, following it to God knew where, trying to read the minds of people who didn’t speak all that much, even to each other. Might there be people out there with anthrax or smallpox in little bottles in their shaving kits? How the hell could you tell? That had been done once to America, but when you got down to it everything had been done once to America, and while it had given the country the confidence that her people could deal with damned near anything, it had also given Americans the realization that bad things could indeed happen here and that those responsible might not always be identifiable. The new President did not convey any assurance that we’d be able to stop or punish such people. That was a major problem in and of itself.
“You know, we’re a victim of our own success,” the former senator said quietly. “We’ve managed to handle every nation-state that ever crossed us, but these invisible bastards who work for their vision of God are harder to identify and track. God is omnipresent. So are His perverted agents.”
“Gerry, my boy, if it was easy, we wouldn’t be here.”
“Tom, thank God I can always count on you for moral support.”
“We live in an imperfect world, you know. There isn’t always enough rain to make the corn grow, and, if there is, sometimes the rivers flood. My father taught me that.”
“I always meant to ask you—how the hell did your family ever end up in goddamned Nebraska?”
“My great-grandfather was a soldier—cavalryman, Ninth Cavalry, black regiment. He didn’t feel like moving back to Georgia when his hitch ran out. He’d spent some time at Fort Crook outside of Omaha, and the dumbass didn’t mind the winters. So, he bought a spread near Seneca and farmed corn. That’s how history started for us Davises.”
“Wasn’t any Ku Klux Klan in Nebraska?”
“No, they stayed in Indiana. Smaller farms there, anyway. My great-grandfather shot himself some buffalo when he got started. There’s the biggest damned head over the fireplace at home. Damned thing still smells. Dad and my brother mainly hunt longhorn antelope now, the ‘speed-goat,’ they call it at home. Never got to like the taste.”
“What’s your nose say on this new intel, Tom?” Hendley asked.
“I’m not planning to go to New York anytime soon, buddy.”
EAST OF Knoxville, the road divided. I-40 went east. I-81 went north, and the rented Ford took the latter through the mountains explored by Daniel Boone when the western frontier of America had scarcely stretched out of sight of the Atlantic Ocean. A road sign showed the exit for the home of someone named Davy Crockett. Whoever that was, Abdullah thought, driving downhill through a pretty mountain pass. Finally, at a town named Bristol, they were in Virginia, their final major territorial boundary. About six more hours, he calculated. The land here, in the sunlight, was lush in its greenness, with horse and dairy farms on both sides of the road. Even churches, usually white-painted wooden buildings with crosses atop the steeples. Christians. The country was clearly dominated by them.
Unbelievers.
Enemies.
Targets.
They had their guns in the trunk to deal with them. First, I-81 north to 1-64. They’d long since memorized their routing. The other three teams were surely in place now. Des Moines, Colorado Springs, and Sacramento. Each a city large enough to have at least one good shopping mall. Two were provincial capitals. None were major cities, however. All were what they called “Middle America,” where the “good” people lived, where the “ordinary,” “hardworking” Americans made their homes, where they felt safe, far from the great centers of power—and corruption. Few, if any, Jews to be found in those cities. Oh, maybe a few. Jews like to run jewelry stores. Maybe even in the shopping malls. That would be an added bonus, but only something to be scooped up if it accidentally offered itself. Their real objective was to kill ordinary Americans, the ones who considered themselves safe in the womb of ordinary America. They would soon learn that safety in this world was an illusion. They’d learn that the thunderbolt of Allah reached everywhere.
“SO, THIS is it?” Tom Davis asked.
“Yes, it is,” Dr. Pasternak replied. “Be careful. It’s fully loaded. The red tag, you see. The blue one is not charged.”
“What does it deliver?”
“Succinylcholine, a muscle relaxant, essentially a synthetic and more potent form of curare. It shuts down all the muscles, including the diaphragm. You can’t breath, speak, or move. You’re fully awake. It’ll be a miserable death,” the physician added in a cold, distant voice.
“Why is that?” Hendley asked.
“You can’t breathe. Your heart rapidly goes into anoxia, essentially a massive induced heart attack. It won’t feel very good at all.”
“Then what?”
“Well, the onset of symptoms would take about sixty seconds. Thirty seconds more for the full effects of the drug to present themselves. The victim would collapse then, say, ninety seconds after the injection. Breathing stops completely about the same time. The heart is starved for oxygen. It will try to beat, but it’s not delivering any oxygen to the body, or to itself. Heart tissue will die in about two or three minutes—and will be extremely painful as it does so. Unconsciousness will happen at about the three-minute mark unless the victim had been exercising beforehand—in that case, the brain will be highly infused with oxygen. Ordinarily, the brain has about three minutes’ worth of oxygen in it to function without additional oxygen infusion, but at about the three-minute mark—after onset of symptoms, that is; four and a half minutes after being stuck—the victim will lose consciousness. Complete brain death will take another three minutes or so. After that, the succinylcholine will metabolize in the body, even after death. Not entirely, but enough so that only a really sharp pathologist will pick it up on a toxicology scan, and then only if he’s prepped to look for it. The only real trick is to get your test subject in the buttocks.”
“Why there?” Davis asked.
“The drug works just fine with an IM—intramuscular—injection. When people are posted, it’s always faceup so that you can see and remove the organs. They rarely turn the body over. Now, this injection system does leave a mark, but it’s hard to spot under the best of circumstances, and then only if you’re looking at the right area. Even drug addicts—that will be one of the things they check for—don’t inject themselves in the rump. It will appear to be an unexplained heart attack. Those happen every day. Rare, but not at all unknown. Tachycardia can make it happen, for example. The injector pen is a modified insulin pen like the kind Type I diabetics use. Your mechanics did a great job of disguising it. You can even write with it, but if you rotate the barrel, it swaps out the pen part for the insulin part. A gas charge in the back of the barrel injects the transfer agent. The victim will probably notice it, like a bee sting but less painful, but inside a minute and a half, he won’t be telling anybody about it. His most likely reaction will be a minor ‘Ouch’ and then rub the spot—if that much. Like a mosquito bite on the neck. You might slap at it, but you don’t call the police.”
Davis held the safe “blue” pen. It was a little bulky, like a third-grader might use on his first official introduction to a ballpoint pen after using thick-barrel pencils and crayons for a couple of years. So, as you approached your subject, you took it out of your coat pocket, and swung it in a reverse stabbing motion, and just kept going. Your backup hitter would watch the subject fall to the sidewalk, maybe even stop to render assistance, then watch the bastard die, and get up and go on his way—well, maybe call an ambulance so that his body could get sent to the hospital and be properly dismantled under medical supervision.