Countdown to Mecca (36 page)

“
Pazhalooysta
,” he replied in Russian.

Brooks appeared not to have noticed. “You've become very valuable to me, Pyotr. You and your people. I'll be counting on you in the future.”

Andrews grinned thinly—both at the general thinking it right to use his actual name, and at the mention of his people. “I am glad to hear it.”

“The future will be terrible,” Brooks continued, almost to himself. “Difficult. I assume you've gathered that, from everything you've been involved in. You're not a stupid man, not a simple one.”

“The two do not mean the same thing,” he said.

“I'm sorry?”

“A simple man may have strong but limited guidelines that serve him well through life,” Andrews said. “A stupid man is one who has no guidelines.”

“I see,” Brooks said. “Yes.” The general wavered at his desk, and then finally found his attention distracted by the amply stocked bar in the corner of the room. He started to wander over to it. “So, back to the matter at hand. We have a little problem that needs to be contended with. It's my fault, really,” he said. “I thought I could control him, use him. He's a journalist. It's ironic.” Brooks paused as he searched for a bottle of bourbon. He found it, poured a shot into a glass. “Most journalists—I'd say just about all—are so easy to read, easy to deal with, easy to control. They want access to newsmakers. Their careers are built on that, not on the merits of the news itself. In exchange for that, they will print any pablum they are handed.”

“We are the only ones left with any integrity, it would seem.” Andrews had intended that, too, to be ironic.

“That is very true,” Brooks said. But he was in a pensive mood and still talking—mostly to himself, like a man taking stock of his life. “A lot of those reporters hate me. Hate the military. I would imagine you don't have quite the same problem in Russia. The media all work for the state.”

“Yes, but that forces them to be clever,” Andrews disagreed. “Their readers are not educated but they are astute and literate. They read a great deal, unlike Americans. Russians have learned to say things subvocally—in their inflection, not in their words—or to select language in print that communicates ideas a fast-reading bureaucrat will miss.”

“I suppose that's all true,” said Brooks absently, hardly hearing what Andrews was saying. “But it's worse than being merely illiterate or incurious. In my country, they hate patriotism in general. And religion. It's all lumped together as some kind of radicalism. The hyphenates rule—the African-American, the Asian-American, the Gay-American. I am an American. Period. And these reporters—” he snickered—“they pander. Everything is softened with euphemisms. ‘The N-word.' ‘The F-bomb.' People know what they're saying—why not say it? The way Jack Hatfield did.”

Brooks seemed almost sad when he mentioned the man's name.

“Hatfield,” he said as if Jack were an estranged son. “I thought you would understand. I thought you would see.”

Brooks's voice trailed off, his train of thought hopelessly mired in disappointment. He took his drink and sat heavily on the sofa. He looked up to see his event coordinator approaching, a beneficent smile on his face.

“Put that aside, General,” he said. “I understand your disappointment. It was a noble effort.”

“I thought I had him, dammit,” he said quietly.

“You want this Hatfield taken care of, yes?”

Brooks tried to think it through. That which he could not win over must be punished. It must be destroyed.

“Yes,” he said, the sibilants at the end of the word stretching out. “But he's not stupid, and he has help. He must be dealt with aggressively. Can you do it?”

“Of course.”

“Good, good.”

Brooks took another slug from his glass. He felt his mind seemingly cycling back toward the desperation he felt trying to convince Hatfield. The drive was contagious, spilling over its boundaries, infusing everything. He wanted to win. He intended to win. He looked down into his glass as if he couldn't recognize something so simple. He felt a pain in his stomach again, only this time it also radiated into his head.

“Would you like another drink?” he heard. He looked up, almost in surprise, to see Andrews leaning over him.

“Yes, yes,” he said, struggling for normalcy. “But only if you're having one.”

Andrews took the general's glass and walked to the bar. “It is against my religion to drink alcohol,” he said.

Brooks shook his head. What was that about religion? He looked up again as Andrews chuckled, and approached, holding out the glass.

“I know, I know,” Andrews soothed. “You are getting close to the moment you have always dreamed of, but you don't know how to deal with that.”

Was that it
? Had he piled all his drive on conquering Hatfield, now that the end of the race was here, victory in sight.
Old soldiers never die, they just look for a new war,
he thought. But what if there wasn't one?

Andrews looked off to the windows and the doors, making sure all was in readiness. “I saw this sort of thing in Chechnya once, when a commander I respected was about to lead an attack on a Russian police station. The commander had planned and planned and planned. Yet as the time got closer, he became so excited that he couldn't actually get dressed to carry out the assault.”

Andrews made sure the general had a firm grip on the glass before he finished his story. “So I shot him in the head. It was an act of mercy. I pray to Allah, the one true God and creator of all things, that I will not be like that when my cherished moment comes.”

Brooks frowned. Andrews's words had finally trickled through his own self-absorption.

“Wait—w-what are you saying?” stammered Brooks. He thought back to the comment about drinking. He looked up with an uneasy blend of confusion and concern. “You're—Muslim?”

Andrews's reply was a slow, proud nod.

“But you're Russian,” insisted Brooks. “You come from Moscow.”

Andrews stepped to the side of the couch. He slipped his left hand inside his sport coat and ran his finger along the lining, finding the handle of the syringe.

“You are
Russian
,” repeated Brooks. The reality dawned an instant before Andrews spoke it.

“Actually, I am from Chechnya,” said Pyotr Ansky. He saw his moment but waited. He wanted to enjoy this.

“No.”

“Enjoy your drink, General.” Pyotr slipped his finger into the lining, breaking the loose thread and taking the hypodermic in his hand. The needle was made of carbon, but was as sharp as the finest surgical steel. “I imagine it's going a long way toward settling your stomach.”

“But I checked you and your people out.” Brooks squinted, as if trying to visualize whatever piece of paper or computer screen he had seen declaring the rebel mercenary group Pyotr headed as bona fide and anti-Muslim.

“It's really funny to hear you say that,” Pyotr said.

“I don't understand.”

“I believe that, which is tragic,” the Russian said. “You, who have relied so much on your gut, so much on instinct, bet everything on
data
. That which is so easily, so commonly falsified, is what you rested the entirety of your undertaking on. Did your heart say nothing about me?”

“It warned me,” he admitted.

“Not just your ordinary caution, no?”

Brooks shook his head. His mind was racing now, trying to figure out his next move. “No. You were—too violent.”

“Not violent,” Pyotr said, his mood darkening. “Thorough. Unsentimental.”

Brooks started to rise and Pyotr swung his fist into the general's face, catching him off balance and sending him backward over the couch. This was inconvenient; not only did it make noise but it put the general out of easy reach. But Pyotr was too focused on his mission to worry about any danger, or even to pause. He moved over quickly and plunged the hypodermic into Brooks's neck.

Then he reached down and pulled the general back around to the couch. Just under eight milligrams of Tetrodotoxin were now finding its way into Brooks's bloodstream, added to the sedative he had laced the coffee with.

“Yes, Hatfield's a journalist,” Pyotr hissed, checking Brooks's eyes. “And who thought an American journalist wouldn't want coffee? I thought all Americans were hooked on caffeine!”

Brooks looked wonderingly at the man he had depended upon, the man who had killed whoever he had ordered him to, and tried to comprehend his mistake. His eyes widened and his mouth gaped.

“No matter,” Pyotr decided. “I was hoping you'd all be unconscious by now, but no matter. It's too late.” He watched Brooks closely. “You seem to be having trouble, General,” said Pyotr. He slipped the now empty syringe back into his jacket. “Don't you care to continue our conversation?”

“Somma bitch,” slurred the general.

“Interesting. I've never seen the mouth react so fast. The neurotoxin I placed in your system, synthesized in this case from an octopus, is an extremely potent neuro-poison that acts on the voltage-gated sodium channels, blocking the muscles and not allowing them to contract. This has numerous effects very quickly, the first of which was paralysis of the voluntary muscles—those in the legs and arms, but also the diaphragm and those needed for breathing.”

All General Thomas Brooks could do was stare, bug-eyed.

“Little wonder,” said Pyotr. “The dosage is, in fact, some sixteen times what is needed to kill a human. I have done that for two reasons.” He held up his fingers. “One, because I thought I might have to pour it into a drink, in which case the poison would not be as effective, and, two, the volume necessary was so small.”

When he was sure the general was all but paralyzed, Pyotr put his hands on the back of the couch and shoved his face into Brooks's. “So General, the great war you're looking for? It's already begun. It's been going on now for forty years. It will take several more. But you know what the outcome will be. Despite your ludicrous behavior, you are not a stupid man.”

Pyotr smiled at the irony. “As for your Mr. Hatfield, yes, he found our diversion. But it wasn't for him. It was for you. And yes, he killed my men there, but I can always get more.” Pyotr sneered directly in Brooks's face. “There's never a shortage of people who love to kill Americans.”

Brooks began to gasp. The poison could take up to twenty minutes to actually kill a man, though as a rule victims were comatose much sooner. Pyotr actually would have preferred waiting around to see him die—he never grew tired of admiring his artistic work—but there were many things to do. But there was no doubt that he would die: the poison had no known cure.

“Do you have any last words, General?” Pyotr hissed in his ear. “No? Then I have some for you. Some you can take with you to whatever hell will have you. You'll be pleased to know that your one and only bomb will still be put to good use … just not in the place you were planning. No, it will be used in the place you should have wanted all along.…” Pyotr stepped back as the general's hands moved sloppily to his throat. He would be in cardiac arrest in another minute. Pyotr took a look around the room, then went to the door and opened it.

“I think the general is having a heart attack!” he shouted.

As the others rushed in to help, Pyotr took a tentative step into the hall, the sort of step one might take when he didn't know what to do or where to go. He took another, glancing at the security man at the far end of the hall. The man was eyeing him. Pyotr threw out his hands in an expression of confusion, and coaxed him forward.

The man ran forward. Pyotr thought of knocking him across the back of his head, but he had so much to do today, and that would potentially be counterproductive.

“A heart attack! Get a doctor!”

The man rushed into the suite. Pyotr took a step back, then, after making sure he was out of eyesight of the suite interior, he turned and headed quickly for the elevator.

“Hey, wait a minute!” yelled someone.

The elevator door closed as two of the security people ran out of the suite, guns drawn. Pyotr pressed the lobby button, then threw himself to the floor as a precaution, but there were no gunshots.

A lucky break. He could not count on another one. But he wouldn't need one. He punched the button for floor 11. As the elevator slowed, he hit every other button on the panel.

The doors opened. Moving quickly, Pyotr walked down the corridor to the emergency stairs. He trotted down to the landing on the tenth floor, and walked to the door. He opened it, saw the hallway was clear, then stepped across and grabbed the fire extinguisher. Back in the stairwell, he began to descend quickly, opening the extinguisher as he went.

The extinguisher had been emptied of its fire-killing contents; it was now a mankiller. Instead of powder, an MPG-84 submachine gun sat inside. A descendant of the famous MAC-10, the submachine gun was used by a number of forces, most notably the Peruvian military, often in security details. Its main value to Pyotr was its size and easy breakdown, which had made it possible for it to be hidden and quick to reassemble.

He had it together by the time he reached the fifth floor. Now free to concentrate on where he was going, Pyotr took the steps two at a time, his right hand against the wall and his left holding the gun. He went out on the third floor, which was just above the two-story lobby and main reception desk. Pyotr held the gun down at his side—if you walked quickly enough, he had learned years ago, most people didn't notice. Few of those who did would attempt to stop you.

He'd reached the escalator and was already eyeing the door when two black-suited members of the general's security detail crossed toward the main entrance below him. They'd obviously been stationed downstairs. Unsure of how many others there might be, Pyotr hesitated for a moment, but only a moment. He raised the gun and quickly put a half-dozen 9mm bullets apiece into the men's bodies.