THERE: I-64, next exit. Mustafa was tired enough that he might have given the driving over to Abdullah, but he wanted to finish himself, and he figured he could handle another hour. They were heading for a pass in the next range of mountains. Traffic was heavy, but in the other direction. They climbed up the highway toward . . . yes, there it was, a shallow mountain pass with a hotel on the south side—and then out onto a vista of a most pleasant valley to the south. A sign proclaimed its name, but the letters were too confusing for him to get them into his head as a coherent word. He did take in the view, off to his right. Paradise itself could scarcely have been more lovely—there was even a place to pull over, get out and take in the sight. But, of course, they had not the time. It was fitting that the drive was gently downhill, and it changed his mood entirely. Less than an hour to go. One more smoke to celebrate the timing. In the back, Rafi and Zuhayr were awake again, taking in the scenery. It would be their last such opportunity.
One day of rest and reconnaissance—time to coordinate via e-mail with their three other teams—and then they could accomplish their mission. That would be followed by Allah’s Own Embrace. A very happy thought.
CHAPTER 13
MEETING PLACE
AFTER TWO thousand-plus miles of driving, the arrival was entirely anticlimactic. Not a kilometer off Interstate 64 was a Holiday Inn Express, which looked satisfactory, especially since there was a Roy Rogers immediately next door and a Dunkin’ Donuts not a hundred meters uphill. Mustafa walked in and took two connecting rooms, paying with his Visa card out of the Liechtenstein bank. Tomorrow they’d go exploring, but for now all that beckoned was sleep. Even food was not important at this moment. He moved the car to the first-floor rooms he’d just leased, and switched off the engine. Rafi and Zuhayr unlocked, the doors, then came back to open the trunk. They took their few bags in, and under them the four sub-machine guns still wrapped in thick, cheap blankets.
“We are here, comrades,” Mustafa announced, entering the room. It was an entirely ordinary motel, not the more luxurious hotels they’d become accustomed to. They had one bathroom and a small TV each. The connecting door was opened. Mustafa allowed himself to fall backward on his bed, a double, but all for him. Some things were left to be done, however.
“Comrades, the guns must always be hidden, and the shades drawn at all times. We’ve come too far for foolish risks,” he warned them. “This city has a police force, and do not think they are fools. We journey to Paradise at a time of our choosing, not at a time determined by an error. Remember that.” And then he sat up, and removed his shoes. He thought about a shower, but he was too tired for that, and tomorrow would come soon enough.
“Which way to Mecca?” Rafi asked.
Mustafa had to think about that for a second, divining the direct fine to Mecca and to the city’s centerpiece, the Kaaba stone, the very center of the Islamic universe, to which they directed the Salat, verses from the Holy Koran said five times per day, recited from the knees.
“That way,” he said, pointing southeast, on a line that transected northern Africa on its way to that holiest of Holy Places.
Rafi unrolled his prayer rug, and went to his knees. He was late in his prayers, but he had not forgotten his religious duty.
For his own part, Mustafa whispered to himself, “lest it be forgotten,” in the hope that Allah would forgive him in his current state of fatigue. But was not Allah infinitely merciful? And besides, this was hardly a great sin. Mustafa removed his socks, and lay back in the bed, where sleep found him in less than a minute.
In the next room over, Abdullah finished his own Salat, and then plugged his computer into the side of the telephone. He dialed up an 800 number and heard the warbling screech as his computer finked up with the network. In another few seconds, he learned that he had mail. Three letters, plus the usual trash. The e-mails he downloaded and saved, and then he logged off, having been on line a mere fifteen seconds, another security measure they’d all been briefed on.
WHAT ABDULLAH didn’t know was that one of the four accounts had been intercepted and partially decrypted by the National Security Agency. When his account—identified only by a partial word and some numbers—tapped into Saeed’s, it was also identified, but only as a recipient, not an originator.
Saeed’s team had been the first to arrive at its destination of Colorado Springs, Colorado—the city was identified only by a code name—and was comfortably camped out in a motel ten kilometers from its objective. Sabawi, the Iraqi, was in Des Moines, Iowa, and Mehdi in Provo, Utah. Both of those teams were also in place and ready for the operation to commence. Less than thirty-six hours to execute their mission.
He’d let Mustafa do the replies. The reply was, in fact, already programmed: “190,2” designating the 190th verse of the Second Sura. Not exactly a battle cry, but rather an affirmation of the Faith that had brought them here. The meaning was: Proceed with your mission.
BRIAN AND Dominic were watching the History Channel on their cable system, something about Hitler and the Holocaust. It had been studied so much you’d think it’d defy efforts to find something new, yet somehow historians managed every so often. Some of it was probably because of the voluminous records the Germans had left behind in the Hartz Mountain caves, which would probably be the subject of scholarly study for the next few centuries, as people continued to try to discern the thought processes of the human monsters who’d first envisioned and then committed such crimes.
“Brian,” Dominic asked, “what do you make of this stuff?”
“One pistol shot could have prevented it, I suppose. Problem is, nobody can see that far into the future—not even gypsy fortune-tellers. Hell, Adolf whacked a bunch of them, too. Why didn’t they get the hell out of town?”
“You know, Hitler lived most of his life with only one bodyguard. In Berlin, he lived in a second-floor apartment, with a downstairs entrance, right? He had one SS troop, probably not even a sergeant, guarding the door. Pop him, open the door, go upstairs, and waste the motherfucker. Would have saved a lot of lives, bro,” Dominic concluded, reaching for his white wine.
“Damn. You sure about that?”
“The Secret Service teaches that. They send one of their instructors down to Quantico to lecture every class on security issues. The fact surprised us, too. A lot of questions on it. The guy said you could walk right past the SS guard on your way to the liquor store, like. Easy hit, man. Easier’n hell. The thinking is that Adolf thought he was immortal, that there wasn’t a bullet anywhere with his name on it. Hey, we had a President whacked on a train platform waiting for his train to arrive. Which one was it? Chester Arthur, I think. McKinley got shot by a guy who walked right up to him with a bandage around his hand. I guess people were a little careless back then.”
“Damn. It’d make our job a lot easier, but I’d still prefer a rifle from five hundred meters or so.”
“No sense of adventure, Aldo?”
“Ain’t nobody paying me enough money to play kamikaze, Enzo. No future in that, y’know?”
“What about those suicide bombers over in the Mideast?”
“Different culture, man. Don’t you remember from second grade? You can’t commit suicide because it’s a mortal sin and you can’t go to confession after. Sister Frances Mary made that pretty clear, I thought.” Dominic laughed. “Damn, haven’t thought of her in a while, but she always thought you were the cat’s ass.”
“That’s ’cause I didn’t screw around in class like you did.”
“What about in the Marines?”
“Screwing around? The sergeants took care of that before it came to my attention. Nobody messed with Gunny Sullivan, not even Colonel Winston.” He looked at the TV for another minute or so. “You know, Enzo, maybe there are times when one bullet can prevent a lot of grief. That Hitler needed his ticket punched. But even trained military officers couldn’t bring it off.”
“The guy who placed the bomb just assumed that everybody in the building had to be dead, without going back inside to make sure. They say it every day in the FBI Academy, bro—assumptions are the mother of all fuckups.”
“You want to make sure, yeah. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice.”
“Amen,” Dominic agreed.
IT HAD gotten to the point that Jack Ryan, Jr., woke up to the morning news on NPR expecting to hear about something dreadful. He guessed that came from seeing so much raw intelligence information, but without the judgment to know what was hot and what was not.