Dead Shot (16 page)

The burgundy leather briefcase was beside the table, and he pulled it up and opened it, dumping out the contents except for travel documents and some passports bundled with a rubber band, along with a stack of American hundred-dollar bills that was in one corner. He put the small computer inside and closed the case.

The room was littered with documents and other computer gear that needed to be destroyed, but there was no time to individually shred or burn the items. The entire house would have to go. Juba had spent quite a bit of time planning for just such an emergency, and blocks of explosives were planted at key support points throughout the structure and wired to a detonator connected to a wall switch. He slapped the switch closed without hesitation, which gave him five minutes to leave the house before it blew up.

The noise of three soft, coughing shots came from the courtyard. Juba took the briefcase in his left hand and carried the pistol in his right. He went out, paused at the top of the landing, and snapped off some quick shots downstairs to discourage the intruder.

Juba spun around and headed down the back stairs, putting solid walls between himself and whoever was at the front of the house. In thirty more seconds, he would be clear of the area and in his car that was parked around the corner. With luck, he could make the 5:55
P.M.
British Airways flight to Dulles International in Washington. He looked back over his shoulder, up the stairwell.

K
YLE
S
WANSON PUSHED HIS
pistol around the corner of the front staircase and fired blindly, twice, then charged up the stairs as he heard the pounding of running feet, retreating in another direction. He took
the stairs two at a time, his weapon in front of him, searching for a target.

A door slammed in back and he went that way, noticing the pile of papers in the living room, wondering if the magic formula was among them. Saladin was dead, and that formula was the remaining part of the mission, but he first had to be certain there was no other threat. Whoever was on the run had not continued the suppressing fire, but the footsteps were growing faint. Kyle kicked open the rear door and dove onto the landing of the staircase so the fleeing man below would not have a clear view. He was on his back and then rolled onto his belly with his Glock grasped in both hands as he looked over the top step. The wrought-iron supports for a long railing hindered his view.

Their eyes locked for an instant, and Juba and Shake recognized each other.

“You!” screamed Juba, who was already disappearing around the outer door. He put his back against the concrete wall, reached around and emptied his clip at Kyle.

“Goddamn!” shouted Swanson, off balance and ignoring the bullets as he also started to shoot, although the angles were wrong and his target was out of view.

Bullets whanged against marble and stone, and chips of rock ricocheted in the tight confines of the rear stairwell. Each man knew his opponent’s capabilities, so there would be no more headlong charges, for any rash move would be suicide.

Juba dashed through a small gate and disappeared around a corner.

Swanson heard him leaving but edged down the stairs, wary of deception and places that danger might be hiding. He had to suppress his reflex to go after Juba and bring him down. The mission was still unaccomplished. Those papers on the main floor had to be examined, and he had to be gone himself before the cops came. He holstered his weapon with a curse: a golden opportunity missed.

Kyle hurried back into the main room, where papers were strewn wildly across the furniture, the sign of someone who had left in a hurry. They were bound to contain the secrets, and Kyle was about to call for
Sybelle and Freedman to come around with the SUV when his peripheral vision caught the blinking of a tiny red light on the wall. He stopped.

The detonator had only two minutes left and was steadily counting down. Any attempt to disarm it would take longer than that, and Kyle knew that Juba had probably rigged it to a booby-trap alternate igniter to protect the explosive sequence.

He ran. The door at the bottom of the stairs seemed a mile away as he rushed toward it, counting seconds as he went. Minute-thirty. In the distance, he heard the dipping whine of sirens that meant the French cops were coming. He jumped over the body of Saladin, went out of the gate, crossed the street, and crawled back into the manhole. A minute. The stinking sewer system was his friend now, for the blast could not reach him belowground, and it would be a while before the police discovered the open manhole cover. Every step he took got him farther from the blast zone. Forty. Thirty.

At fifteen seconds, he found a small side room where workmen could store their tools and used his Glock to shoot the lock. The door wobbled, and he hauled on the heavy wooden panel with all of his strength, pulling it open far enough so he could burrow inside and kneel, opening his mouth so the blast would not rupture his ears. He hoped the cops had not arrived.

It went off with an earthshaking roar in a repeated series of explosions as Juba’s booby traps blew up in deadly sequence, one after another, and the big house crumbled and shattered. The blast wave knocked down the old walls of the courtyard, clawed at the nearby brick buildings, and ruptured the neat lines of parked vehicles. The shock wave came pounding down the sewer openings and raced along the main trunk line, tearing down everything in its path, pushing aside debris, causing a small tsunami in the sewer water itself, and slamming the door to the room in which Kyle was crouched. He was knocked to his side and bounced hard against some large equipment.

When it was done, he lay there for a minute, dazed and catching his breath in the darkness. Then he struggled to his feet and opened the
door to see a thick cloud of dirt and dust hanging in the tunnel like a curtain. Slapping his handkerchief to his mouth, Kyle was about to leave the little room when he noticed the object he had been thrown against was really the steel rungs of a ladder built into the side of the concrete, leading upward. He climbed and found another door, an entrance to the service tunnel.
Why didn’t I find this before?
He moved into the sunshine and looked back over his shoulder at the huge, rising ball of flame and smoke behind him.

Then he walked away, and each stride convinced him that he was uninjured. By the time Swanson arrived at the Fort d’Aubervilliers station, he was walking normally. He would catch the Line 7 train for the five-minute trip north to the next stop at La Courneuve/8 Mai 1945. Nearby, Sybelle and the Lizard would be cruising in a car out in front of the sprawling and popular Air Museum tourist attraction.

T
HEY TOOK HIM AT
the station when the train rushed up to the platform in a howl of screeching brakes, pushing a blast of air ahead of it. The crowd moved almost as one toward the doors, jostling for position while trying to avoid being touched.

Two needles of a Taser X26 penetrated Swanson’s jacket and shirt from the rear, and multiple pulses of electricity totaling thousands of volts hit him with volcanic pain and rendered his motor systems useless. Kyle toppled toward the dirty station floor, aware of a man kneeling beside him, on the left, calling out in English, “Hey, this guy’s had a heart attack!”

As the subway doors closed and the train moved out, two ambulance attendants trotted down the stairs. Kyle was placed on their rolling stretcher, where he was again hit with the Taser to keep him immobile while one of the attendants jammed a needle in his arm.

Commuters parted to let the stretcher bearers exit, carrying some man lashed to the gurney to the ambulance waiting up on the street.

J
UBA WAS CERTAIN THAT
no one was following him because the explosion would have turned all eyes toward the disaster. He hoped Kyle Swanson was buried in that smoking debris. Swanson was supposed to be dead, but there had been no mistaking that angular face that had absolutely no fear on it when they were trading shots in the stairwell. Maybe Shake really was dead now, a thought that made Juba smile.
The only man who ever really beat me
.

Juba used his time well before the flight to America. An executive hotel near the airport rented rooms by the hour for businessmen in transit, and Juba used a Dutch passport to get a room and clean up. Downstairs, he got a close shave, then had a stylist trim his hair to a neatness that would be welcome in a company boardroom. He had her put in a little lighter color, joking that he wanted to look younger because of the competition for a new vice presidential opening at his finance firm. A clothing store furnished new slacks, shirts, underwear, socks, and a blue sport coat with gold buttons. What he did not wear fit snugly into his large briefcase. Unfortunately, he would not be able to take his weapon, but there were plenty of guns waiting on the other end of the flight. As a final move, he bought a disposable cell phone with plenty of prepaid minutes.

Carrying only the briefcase and the computer bag, he passed through security without a problem and took his seat in the first-class compartment of the British Airways flight to Washington. A hostess brought a glass of chilled water for him while the rest of the plane loaded, and once the plane was moving, gathering speed, and lifting as the wheels left
the tarmac, Juba let himself relax. There was no danger now, so he stretched his seat back and ordered himself to catch some sleep. The quiet, steady hum of the engines helped him relax. He dreamed of Scotland.

A special ops team of American Marines had been pitted in a war exercise against a similar team of Royal Marines, and Color Sergeant Osmand was in his element. He had racked up a couple of mock “kills” and then decided to take the game to a higher level.

For a full day he and a spotter tracked the American Blue Team, then slithered through their sentries and lookouts and set up an invisible hide on a low ridge that overlooked the enemy headquarters and a road the Americans would have to use the following morning. He hoped a general would turn up in his sights. The two of them spent several hours erasing all traces of their passage and improving their hide, then shared a tin of cold meat and drank some water as the night closed around them like a starlit glove.

It was raining, but that meant nothing on a mission in Scotland, where it was always either raining or about to rain. Juba was on watch during the early morning hours while his spotter caught a nap, and it was not only wet but cold, too, and absolutely silent. A fire to warm his hands, of course, was out of the question.

Instead, he remained still, the thistles and weeds sprouting from the slits of his ghillie suit turning him into just another bush on the rugged Scottish landscape. Dawn would come in two hours, and the American Marines would begin moving around. Color Sergeant Osmand intended to slaughter as many as he could and possibly even capture their headquarters, which would give him bragging rights forever over the vaunted United States Marine Corps.

Something even colder than the night, the barrel of a pistol, touched his neck just below his ear, and a quiet voice whispered, “Bang, asshole. You’re dead. So is your partner there, Sleeping Beauty.”

Osmand spun around to see the grinning, blackened face of the sniper they called Shake, Gunnery Sergeant Kyle Swanson. “I thought you two were never going to get settled. Sounded like a couple of ele
phants stomping around. You almost stepped on me when you came up,” the American said, casually putting the weapon away. “Come on. Let’s go down there, get warm, and have something to eat.”

On the British Airways plane flying across the Atlantic, a hostess noticed the first-class passenger twitching in his sleep. A dream. She lightly spread a blanket over him.

The dream shifted to what had just happened a few hours before in Paris, when again Swanson had gotten the better of him, ambushing and killing Saladin right under Juba’s nose. He vividly recalled hearing the shots and seeing the body of his spiritual father sprawled on the courtyard stones, and that brought sadness and a flare of anger.
What now?
When his mind started tugging at that question, he woke up.

Right now, Juba could disappear. Eight bidders were seeking the formula, at ten million dollars each, nonrefundable. All of that money had already been rerouted to other banks, hidden beneath folds of false accounts in smaller accounts, and he had those account numbers and access codes. His own personal investments were worth about five million dollars and there was still about another ten million in the reserve and operations accounts that Saladin had organized. That meant that Juba could put his hands on almost a hundred million dollars, a life-changing amount.

With so much money, there was no need to continue as a professional killer or as a bringer of death to masses of people. He could go anywhere in the world and buy anything he wanted. With Saladin dead, the entire scheme was compromised and carried much greater risk. The bidders would still want the formula, but now they would be more willing to use guns rather than their checkbooks to get it. They also would want their deposits back.

It would be best to take the money and leave now. The Middle East was afire with Islamic fanatics to carry on the fight against the Crusaders. There was no real reason for him to try to run a one-man reign of terror.

In the end, he decided there were three reasons to continue. The
first was that Juba still had the gas, the formula, and several factories in which it could be manufactured. It was he who handpicked the undercover operators to support the attacks, personally distributed the weapons, and communicated with the terrorist cells. Few of the others had ever heard of Saladin before the London attack and the auction. They answered to Juba and would still obey his orders. Second, he did not really believe Kyle Swanson had died in the explosion, which meant the two of them were on an eventual collision course. If Swanson was after him, the man would never give up the chase. The American was an insufferable pest. Third, Juba knew he would get bored sitting around doing nothing.

Why not use it? The attack on the United States would be spectacular and bloody, and he would expand it for years to come with strikes all over the world. Carrying out the demonstration that had been announced by Saladin would cause the bidders to fall back in line.

That left Swanson, and Juba realized just how badly he wanted to kill the sniper. The threat of the man would always be present, like an unwelcome shadow. No matter where Juba went, he could never relax as long as Swanson was alive. On top of that, the Marine had murdered the one person who really understood Juba, and the death of Saladin could not go unavenged. Kyle Swanson had to die.

He adjusted his seat and brought the laptop from beneath his feet, placing it on the adjacent aisle seat. The first-class cabin was only half full, and the hostess came to ask if he wanted a meal. He ordered vegetarian, put on a headset, and found some classical music, which helped his thoughts roam free. He had an attack to plan. Preparation of the weapon was already under way in Mexico, and he would call later today to make certain the work would continue. All he needed was a target, and he needed to decide quickly.

Las Vegas was a good possibility, a city of sin that tainted the society of the entire world, beckoning to him like the painted harlot she was. Numerous Muslim men had been corrupted by that impure city and its gambling and whores. Juba considered Las Vegas loathsome and
cheap, glowing like a carnival in the desert night, and destroying it would have been a personal pleasure. Satisfying but not very effective, for he believed that not many people would truly care. With its flashy girls, card players, and high-rolling rubes, its destruction would not gather much sympathy after the first week of headlines. Hotel entrepreneurs would just bury the dead, then build new casinos right outside the contaminated radiation zone, close enough to let tourists view the destroyed city through powerful telescopes, for a small price.

He would not waste the weapon by killing the wrong people. After all, he remembered, look at New Orleans. A major city was destroyed by a hurricane, and the United States government wrote it off after only a few months. New Orleans was populated by poor residents who did not have political power, so Americans just continued going to the malls and movies as if nothing had happened. The city was still rebuilding.

He finished the meal, placed his computer on the little table, and scrolled through the news sites. Not much yet about Paris, but London was still going on. Kill the right people! He checked the international news, where the lead story was a typhoon pulverizing Bangladesh, and then went to the sports results, for he was still a soccer addict.

Juba read with interest about how violence had broken out at a stadium in Germany during a match, and the idea came to him as the camera panned around to show the thick crowds of fans surging onto the field or fleeing for the exits or just standing around watching. Thousands of people. Thousands of targets.

A sports arena would be an ideal place for the gas attack, for it would bring confusion, destruction, mayhem, and televised horror. It was baseball season in the United States, and he could turn a big game into a nightmare. The Internet let him study the details of every major league baseball stadium in the States and look at the upcoming schedules. Although he did not follow the sport, there were several obvious possibilities. Still using the Internet, he made a flight reservation.

When he arrived in America, Juba lingered at the U.S. Customs portals until he found a place in a line just ahead of a Turk with dark
skin and a beard who was wearing a suit with a shirt buttoned at the neck and no tie. The eyes of the authorities were focused on that man, a ceramics trader out of Istanbul, and not the European businessman in front of him. The Turk looked like a possible terrorist. Juba showed a well-used passport, was cordial to the customs officer, and passed through with astonishing ease. A camera recorded his arrival.

Clear of the final barrier, he strolled out into the waiting area, which was crowded with families and friends and business associates welcoming the flood of people who were arriving from abroad. Rental limousine drivers waved hand-printed signs that bore various last names, but he ignored them and made his way all the way to the curb to catch a cab.

He had the cab drop him at a Metro station and used the subway to get out to Reagan National, where he used an American Express card in one of the lobby computers to obtain his e-ticket for a domestic Delta Airlines flight from Washington to Florida. Juba had never seen a major league baseball game and was looking forward to the experience.

OVER THE ATLANTIC OCEAN

Kyle Swanson returned to consciousness slowly as the drugs ran their course. He had no idea how much time had passed, and his last memory was getting ready to ride the subway and then…sudden pain, people yelling, followed by an empty nothingness. No dreams. He remained still, eyes closed until his mind cleared enough to suppress the automatic fear of the unknown.

It was not completely dark when he cracked his eyes just a bit. Some light penetrated the area to give shape to objects, but he remained essentially blind, so he allowed his other senses to sort out whatever available information he could gather. He had a slight headache, a hangover from the sleeping drug, but felt no wounds.

The first thing to make itself clear was the steady whining of jet en
gines and a slight shaking that told him he was in an airplane. He could almost smell the nearby bulkheads, and there was a chill on his skin that matched the hum of air-conditioning. Not a prison cell but a controlled environment. Whoever had him was taking him somewhere in a small, modern jet.

Using his body, he tried to explore further but quickly concluded he was lashed to a small bed. His fingertips told him that he was naked but covered with a blanket. Abnormal. Not the treatment usually given a prisoner in foreign lands. A condom-like device pinched on his penis, a motorman’s friend that would let him urinate into a tube. Some thin wires touched his skin. Electrodes for heart and pulse monitors.

For a few moments on first awakening, he had thought terrorists might have snatched him, which would have meant some pretty uncomfortable times ahead. As he lay there on the soft mattress without moving, he could hear muffled voices from a nearby compartment: English. Kyle concluded that he was a prisoner of the United States government. They weren’t going to kill him, so there was nothing else he could do at present. There was an almost inaudible click, and another dose of the drug flowed through the IV and into his veins. He controlled his breathing and let it tug him back to sleep.

“This guy is a damned ghost,” said FBI Special Agent David Hunt, the man who had watched Swanson through his binoculars back in Paris. He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. DHS Agent Carolyn Walker was seated across from him in the Gulfstream, studying some papers on the table between them. More than four hours had passed since they had grabbed the assassin, and there was still nothing in the way of a solid identification.

The man who was drugged and strapped down in the rear cabin had carried no credit cards in his old black wallet, just some five hundred dollars in cash and an Arizona driver’s license that was a phony. There was no Social Security number. Empty pockets. They had photographed the face, full on and both profiles, digitally enhanced it, and transmitted it to Washington along with the fingerprints to be run through the
government’s entire computer base. So far, the computers were throwing up blanks. Nothing.