Countdown to Mecca (7 page)

Doc, who had surmised most of the plan, just nodded and said appreciatively, “Sol, someday we gotta compare operations.”

While Jack locked the door that Doc had unlocked, the others headed for the minivan. Sammy helped Ana into the back. Doc and Jack, with Eddie in his arms, took the middle seat while Sol jumped in alongside the driver.

Jack noticed the bespectacled wheelman glance into the rearview mirror. “I'm Ric. What kind of food you gonna want for him?”

“He loves provolone mixed with kibble and carrots. But in a pinch, he'll eat any meat or cheese. Just make sure the meat's got no spices even pepper on it.”

The driver nodded, filing the information away, then put the vehicle in gear and moved slowly into traffic.

The safe house was nestled behind a halfway house for addicts and prostitutes, tucked between the Mission District and Lower Haight. Jack looked at Sol with a question in his eyes. The mob boss nodded.

“Yeah,” he said, “we finance it. Got similar places dotted throughout the state. It serves a variety of uses.”

“I know this place,” Ana said. “It's for girls who did not choose this life. You are so kind.”

Sol just grinned.

Ric hit a button attached to his sun visor as he turned onto Guerrero Street, and the others watched as a small gate opened in front of a fenced alley.

“Dolores Park west,” Sol said as if leading a tour. “Food shops south, theaters north, galleries east, take-out and delivery joints all over.”

Ric pulled into the alley, hitting the visor button again to close the gate behind them.

“I'd like to see your pursuers infiltrate this part of town without getting nailed,” Doc observed.

“You got it,” Sol winked.

Ric jumped out and the others followed, each taking in the dank, quiet area in their own way. The driver pressed a button on his phone and a metal door near the back of the structure clicked open. He led them up a stairway to another metal door on the second floor. Another press, another click, and they were inside.

Jack was surprised to find it to be a simple, but comfortable, loft apartment with sleeping accommodations for eight, a nice kitchen, two large bathrooms, and an entertainment area with a large flat-screen TV, videogame consoles, and four computers on a semicircular desk. Doc noted that the monitor screens each showed a different approach to the building.

“It's the tallest structure in the neighborhood,” Sol reported as Eddie hopped from Jack's arms and happily skittered away to explore. “No one approaches without us seeing them.” He motioned at the windows on each of the walls, displaying nice views of the city. “One-way glass. We can see out. They can't see in.”

At the sound of voices, two beautiful women came from the one bathroom, each wearing T-shirts, jeans, and sandals. Ana gasped to see it was Miwa and Ritu, the two young women she had brought to see Morton, Pallor, and Kid. The three hugged each other and chattered with a mix of relief and concern.

“How—?” Ana asked tearfully.

“Remember when I touched your phone to mine before destroying the SIM card?” Jack said.

“SIM?” the woman asked.

“Subscriber identity module. I got their addresses and gave them to Sol. Since these guys were working so hard to get rid of her, there was no way they weren't going to go after your friends.”

Ana threw her arms around Jack. Sammy looked unhappy. Jack felt uncomfortable. He eased her back.

“So what's next?” Sammy said confrontationally.

“For now, you're going to look after the ladies while we—” he crooked his thumbs toward Sol and Doc, “—get ahead of this thing.”

“Like hell!” Sammy started, but Doc cut him off.

“Cool your jets,” Doc said. His words were gentle but there was menace in the delivery. “I know some things that none of you do.”

“Oh?” Jack and Sol said simultaneously—Jack with curiosity, Sol with envy.

“The Russians have hired me over the years to help them whenever they have a problem tracking missing Soviet uranium and nuclear components,” Doc said. “Dover asked me about something you asked her, Jack, and it fits with a call I got this morning. A call about a missing weapon of mass destruction, what they call ‘F.O.' After a ballet by native son Igor Stravinsky.” The leathery old veteran turned his head toward Jack. “Firebird Ordnance.”

Ana actually gasped. Sammy looked fearful. Jack was too busy thinking to react.

“How're you gonna get ahead of that?” Sol asked.

“I'll tell you how,” Jack said to Sol—to all of them—in a voice that radiated certainty and growing confidence. “By doing what I do best.”

“And what is that?” Ana blurted.

He looked at the young woman. “By telling the truth to those who think they have the power.”

 

6

General Thomas Brooks sat behind the big desk he had earned, beneath the large window he had earned, and glanced at the remnants of a military career he had also earned. Awards, citations, and trophies were everywhere. But they might as well be part of the wreckage of the passenger plane they'd brought down. He actually felt bitterness toward the accolades and perks: he was being put out to pasture and all his achievements couldn't save him. Ever since General Douglas MacArthur had made his retirement speech before the UN all those years ago they had called it “The Big ‘Fade Away.'” And he was being groomed for that by the brass.

No matter,
he thought. That was why Firebird had been set in motion. This achievement was for him, for America, not for the brass.

The plan Brooks had been working on for nearly five years was finally nearing completion. It meant that within the foreseeable future, the world would no longer face the greatest threat since Hitler and Hirohito had threatened to divide the globe in half between them.

It meant, too, that the United States would soon be involved in a war that it did not want, but that Brooks knew it must wage to have any hope of surviving. A war better fought now, while the odds were overwhelmingly in its favor, than in ten years, when they might not be.

A war, also, where millions would die, Americans included, people Brooks knew and respected included. Even he might die. But what greater honor was there for a military man than to die with his boots on? He would die a patriot, keeping America in the spotlight of world history. Brooks did not want to die, but he definitely did not want to die like his hero, General George Patton, who had met his fate after the war in a meaningless car accident.

Despite what he had been forced to do to Steven Reynolds's foot, Brooks was content with how the main event had gone off … and where things were going.

He checked his watch. It was time for an update. He grabbed the high security phone and called Morton.

The lower-ranking general answered on the first ring. “Yes, sir!”

“Report.”

“The men in question have arrived in Yalta, as agreed,” Morton informed him.

“The courier?”

“En route with the package.”

The package was the remaining cash for the job. “All right,” the general said. “And my visit to the labs?”

“Everything has been arranged,” he reported.

“I'll be especially interested in a walk-through on the current projects.”

“Of course.” Morton's voice regained some of its usual professionalism.

“I've also given some thought to next week,” Brooks went on. “I'd like to visit the installation in Mt. Keren, and go on to Riyadh and say good-bye to the monitoring unit there.”

“Mt. Keren? In Israel?”

“Correct. I assume you can handle that.”

“Yes, of course, sir.”

“I expect everything to be in place when I get to San Francisco,” Brooks told him.

“Yes, sir.”

Brooks ended the call. However much they planned, there were always complications, contingencies to deal with, something new waiting in ambush. As long as they weren't stupid, sloppy mistakes like the whores, he didn't mind a challenge. He was content in the knowledge that he would triumph, that he would carry the flag to Bethlehem, then Mecca.

It was the only way.

 

7

Every cop in the squad room knew the two visitors were Feds the moment they set eyes on them. The man may have been six feet tall and built like a linebacker, while the woman could have been a catalog model, but their suits, expressions, and attitude said FBI.

“Field Director Carl Forsyth,” the man told Captain Daniel Jeffreys, the detective in charge, while displaying his credentials. He nodded toward the woman. “Special Agent Dover Griffith.”

“Where is he?” Dover asked without further delay.

“Interrogation one,” said Jeffreys, already leading the Feds in the right direction.

“Where did you find him?” Dover asked.

“We didn't,” Jeffreys admitted. “He just walked in and said he had a story we should hear.”

“He turned himself in?” Forsyth said incredulously.

The detective smirked. “Like a spy running in from the cold,” he said as they reached the room.

“This is priority one,” Forsyth went on with steel in his low voice. “Top secret.”

“Naturally,” Jeffreys said, opening the door.

Forsyth entered followed by Dover and Jeffreys. Jack turned his head and smiled at the sight of the two federal agents.

“Carl,” he said pleasantly, but his voice warmed further as he greeted the other agent. “Dover. It's good to see you.”

“Likewise.”

The two had been lovers in a working relationship turned steamy under the heat of saving San Francisco from weapons of mass destruction.

Forsyth ignored the pleasantries as Jeffreys closed the door of the windowless room.

“Why didn't you just come directly to my office?” the field director scowled.

“You don't get a home court advantage,” Jack said casually.

Forsyth grunted. The two had been at cross-purposes in the past. It wasn't worth a debate. The Fed stopped in his tracks as his gaze settled on a modern, compact, cutting-edge microphone and a small powerful digital video camera resting on the room's one table.

“I thought I said no recordings,” he barked at the detective.

Jeffreys parked his rump on the edge of the table. “They're not ours,” he explained, motioning toward Jack.

Forsyth looked at Jack in surprise. “Explain.”

“I'm doing a news report,” he said.

“About?”

“Secret weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East.”

Forsyth and Dover stared at him. Then at each other. Then back at Jack.

“You care to elaborate?” Forsyth said.

“Sure,” Jack said. “First, tell me what you have about me?”

“You? What is this, one of your games?” Forsyth asked.

“No,” Jack replied evenly. “I'm a reporter. I'm asking questions.”

Dover cut through the testosterone. “We have surveillance video of you, your brother, an unidentified woman, and—” She looked at the detective for assistance.

“A person of interest,” Jeffreys suggested. “We don't have his face or a license number. We're still working on that.”

“He's a pro,” Jack winked at Forsyth. “Careful, secretive.”

Unsatisfied but moving on, Dover said, “We have video from all over Telegraph Hill, the Filbert Steps, and Levi Plaza. We have bullets—about two dozen so far, and eyewitnesses who were too busy ducking to see much.”

“I assume, then, you also have video of the professional hit squad we were defending ourselves against.”

“We haven't done an analysis yet,” Forsyth said impatiently. “We were hoping you could save us some time.”

“Sure.” Jack calmly looked at the camera lens, then into the eyes of each man in the room, as if he had been waiting for the question. “I believe something very big and very bad is going on.”

“Here?” Detective Jeffreys asked.

“In your city for starters,” Jack said.

Jeffreys looked at Jack with more respect than Forsyth was giving him. The police captain had been at the Golden Gate Bridge years ago. He had been in Chinatown for the cleanup last year. He had even watched
Truth Tellers
during his ascension through the ranks. He wasn't sure whether to nod encouragingly or ask for an autograph.

“Carl,” Jack said, “I know you need more than my say-so to launch a big operation. So here's what you have to do. Get positive identifications of the men who attacked us, and as much evidence as possible that the operation we stumbled on—‘Firebird'—could be the code name for a mass-destruction materials project that brought down a Russian passenger plane.”

“Your shoot-out was related to the crash in the Black Sea?” Forsyth said dubiously.

“Terrorism has gone global, or haven't you noticed?”

“What else aren't you telling us?” Dover asked.

He grinned at her. She knew him well. “We have sources saying that smuggled, enriched uranium may have been taken from that downed plane. Do you have any sources that suggest likewise?”

“Who are these sources?” Forsyth asked.

“Not now,” Jack said.

Forsyth was about to call for corroboration, remembered the camera, did not bother retrieving his phone from his jacket pocket.

“Suit yourself,” Jack said, aware that Forsyth was also a political animal who kept his cards facedown. “But I've already got people working on this. You don't help me, I don't help you.”

“You'd rather have weapons of mass destruction at large?” Dover said.

“Ask your boss,” Jack replied. “He's the guy who's not sharing.”

There was a thick, sudden silence.

“We'll see what we can dig up on the hit squad, Mr. Hatfield,” Jeffreys said, standing, and putting his hand out.