Extreme Faction (19 page)

“Much like his chemical weapons program for the Soviet Union had?” It was a mistake to bring that up, and Jake regretted having said it.

“Yuri did what he was told,” she sneered. “Those pigs used him during the best years of his life. They worked him to death. And for what? To build more and more weapons that would kill more efficiently. He wasn't a murderer. He was a gentle man. He loved life. Especially since the break-up of the Soviet Union. He always considered himself Ukrainian. He spoke Russian only when necessary.”

Jake was certain now that Petra had more than a passing admiration for the man. She had loved him. “Tell me about the new pesticide.”

“We were working with beans.”

“Beans?”

“Yes. It was incredible. We would synthesize the beans in an alcohol-based solution, along with other chemicals. The result was a highly toxic, yet stable, solution much like sarin that would kill any bug that came in contact with it. Interestingly, some of the bugs would not die right away. They would carry the strain to others and infect the entire peripheral population.”

Jake thought about the isopropyl alcohol he had smelled at Tvchenko's apartment prior to the explosion. “So what you were dealing with was sort of a cross between Sarin and Ricin?”

She gazed at him incredulously. “You know about these things?”

“A little,” Jake said. “I have a background on some of the more common nerve gas agents and poisons.” He quickly shifted gears back to the research. “So, then Yuri was sort of using his former research for commercial purposes? But how did he plan on keeping the strain safe for civilian populations.”

She finished her tea and set the cup on a small table. “Ahhhh...that was the difficult part. Because the bean base mutated and spread, it affected some bugs differently than others. Some bugs would live for days flying or walking around like normal. Then boom. They were dead. They would twitch and shiver and shake, become completely immobilized, and then die. We tested the bugs after, to see why some had been affected differently, but still had no answer. Yuri had his suspicions, though.”

Jake thought about watching Tvchenko die right in front of him, twitching much like she had described. “What were his suspicions?”

She sat back farther into the sofa, as if she were a turtle hiding inside its shell.

Jake turned quickly toward the door. He thought he heard something.

A clicking noise.

He started to turn his head toward Petra, when the door burst open.

Jake dove to the ground, drawing his Glock.

Two men with silenced Uzis started spraying the room. Bullets hit the wall with thuds.

Jake returned fire, emptying half a magazine.

One man dropped, the other backed away.

Jake rolled across the floor behind a chair and listened, but all he could hear was ringing from the shots he had fired in the close quarters.

He rose quickly and made it to the side of the door, peeked around the corner, his gun pointing the way.

Nothing.

A door down below slammed and he could hear a car pulling away, its tires squealing. He turned to check the man lying on the floor on his back. He had a bullet in his forehead and another had taken out his mouth. A third bullet had penetrated his chest.

Then he remembered Petra, and he ran back inside.

Petra lay slumped back against the arm of the sofa, her hair covering her face. Jake checked for a pulse, but she was dead. She had been hit at least three or four times. It was hard to tell with all the blood.

Now Jake thought of Helena. She would be awake, hiding, frightened.

“Helena,” he called out. “It's Jake. I'm coming in.”

He went into the bedroom, and she ran and collapsed into his arms.

“What happened?” she asked.

Jake tried to find the words to say that Petra, her best friend, was dead in the other room. “Helena, I'm sorry. Petra is gone.”

She peered up to him. “Someone has taken her?”

He shook his head. “No. She's been killed. I'm sorry.”

She didn't believe him. She hurried to the living room and went immediately to Petra. She sat next to her friend, placed Petra's flaccid head on her shoulder. “You're all right,” she said. “I'm here now. Everything will be fine.”

Jake stared and became angrier with each moment. How could someone do this? She was a scientist's assistant. Whatever it took, he'd find the other man who did this, and especially the one who had hired them.

TEXAS

By now Baskale guessed every road in west Texas had been cut off. Which is why he had driven to the dirt airstrip, parked the Suburban alongside the twin engine Beechcraft, and was preparing for take-off.

The airstrip wasn't on any map, since it belonged to the Chihuahua drug dealer. The dealer had used the private airport to run product across the border, and to fly in American goods that he couldn't find in Mexico. The dealer had told Baskale about the place and given him the keys to the plane just prior to being shot. Baskale couldn't have someone staying behind and giving up his position. Especially someone as weak and pathetic as Kukulcan.

His three men had helped load the bomb onto the plane, and then they had split up into two teams. Baskale and the biggest of his men would fly off in the plane, and the other two would leave in the Suburban, quickly ditch it for a tiny car, something that could never carry a five hundred pound cluster bomb, and then meet again at the predetermined location. The authorities were looking for four terrorists in a large truck with a deadly bomb. Now the two in the small car would be a couple of Israeli tourists touring the American west. At least that's how their passports would read. Baskale and his most trusted man had become Americans. They had drivers' licenses with a Dallas address, social security cards, Visa and MasterCards, and even pictures of wives and children, which they surely didn't have. They were entrepreneurs who had opened a business five years ago, where they converted old homes into stately estates, at a considerable profit. They had just bought the plane off an old man who had lost his pilot's license due to his eyes. Their cover wasn't perfect, but then Baskale didn't think he'd have to explain it to anyone.

In a few moments they were airborne, and Baskale watched the other two men driving away in the Suburban. He would beat those two to the next location by a good four hours, maybe more. He only hoped they wouldn't run into any trouble.

●

Nelsen was dumfounded. He had cruised up to Interstate 10, was driving east at sixty-five miles per hour and listening to reports across his radio that they had still not found the men. He was beginning to question his own insight. Perhaps they had stopped somewhere to wait it out. Sit tight until dark, hide the bomb, split up into four directions, and return later for their precious nerve gas bomb. Or, worse yet, they could break open the bomb and split the bomblets four ways. It was possible, but not likely. So far they had kept on moving, staying one step ahead of him. He didn't think they would change their pattern. They were in a hurry to go somewhere. But where? And why? That would take some thinking.

Garcia had hitched up the laptop computer to the cellular phone and was accessing everything the Agency knew about the Kurds. Perhaps they would get lucky and figure out why they were in Texas with a nerve agent. His fingers clicked along across the keyboard.

“You're pretty good at that,” Nelsen said.

“My mother is a journalist,” Garcia said. “She taught all of us to type before we could even scribble our own names. I must admit, it's come in handy over the years writing up reports and searching databases.”

“What you coming up with on the Kurds?”

He clicked a few more times, and then punched the enter button. A history of the Kurds blinked onto the screen. Garcia scrolled up to more recent history, from 1980 to the present. On the right of the screen was a side bar with general statistics. “I had no idea there were so many Kurds. Shit, twenty million?”

“That's right,” Nelsen said. “I don't think most people realize that. I spent some time in Turkish Kurdistan while working out of the Ankara office. The Kurds are a hardy lot. Goat and sheep ranchers mostly. Mountain people. The Turks simply called them Mountain Turks. They denied them their own language. They aren't allowed to officially speak or write the language. But they do, and there's not a damn thing the government can do about it. I scouted the area once after Turkish troops were sent in to stamp out a minor uprising. The Turks got their asses whipped trying to fight in the mountains. The Kurds are a tough people. But we've got the advantage here. They don't know Texas and America like we know it. They're on our turf.” He hoped he could believe his own words.

Nelsen slowed the truck slightly as they ran into light traffic at the Fort Stockton exits. He noticed that there were city police blocking the on ramps, just as Nelsen had ordered.

Garcia clicked away on the computer. “I guess they've got this area blocked off.”

“Yeah, but they could be anywhere. Think. Think. What would you do?”

Garcia shrugged. “I don't know. Sit low. Assuming I don't have to be someplace at a certain time.”

Nelsen thought about that. He had been puzzled for the last few days on where the Kurds were going, what they were trying to accomplish, and he had been stumped over the entire case. There was no logical reason the Kurds should want to bring terror to American soil. Yet here they were. But just maybe... “Ricardo, punch up the Gulf War time frame.”

In a few seconds the screen blinked the information. “What do you want to know?”

“What does it say about after the ground war? March 1991. I seem to recall that the U.S. pulled up short, to the displeasure of many, and tried to let some of the internal forces finish off Saddam Hussein. It didn't work of course, because Iraq had secretly held back and withdrawn some of its best trained Republican Guards. Hussein knew he was beat and didn't want to have the coalition completely destroy his best army. I visited some of the safe havens set up within Iraq after the Kurds had been forced to retreat. It was a total zoo.”

“That's almost exactly what it says on the Agency database,” Garcia said.

Nelsen smiled. “That's because I helped write that portion. But in light of that knowledge, what could you conclude about the Kurds?”

Garcia studied the screen as if he'd missed something. “I don't know.”

Nelsen slammed his hand against the steering wheel. “Dammit. I've been such an idiot.” He shook his head. “Me of all people. I should have figured it out.”

“You want to let me in on your little secret?”

“Bush. They're after former President George Bush. He lives in Texas. Houston.”

“Why would they want to kill Bush?”

“Because they're pissed off at him. Bush let the Kurds down. Everybody knows it. He should have intervened when the Kurds were being pushed back into the mountains of Turkey and Iraq, but he just let the situation take its course. He thought the Kurds were stronger than they were. Didn't fully realize that Hussein had kept his best troops standing by. He didn't respond to their plight until thousands had frozen and starved to death.”

Garcia still looked confused.

Nelsen jammed the accelerator to the floor. Then he grabbed the cellular phone, switched it back to voice, and punched in a number. He called CIA headquarters and was holding for the assistant manager of external operations. It was true that they were now operating on the turf of internal operations, but it had started outside the U.S. so they had first authority. In the old days, the FBI and CIA would be butting heads now. But now they were all on the same playing field. Internal and external would work as one. At first the assistant DO had thought that Nelsen's story was incredulous, to say the least. But slowly, as Nelsen articulated his position, he shifted toward his field officer's reasoning. It was incredible to think of terrorists trying to assassinate a former American president on U.S. soil with one of its own nerve gas bombs. Incredible, but highly likely.

When Nelsen was off the phone with CIA headquarters and concentrating on the road, thinking about how they should proceed, a smile came to his face.

“What's so funny?” Garcia said.

“The Kurds. They have an ironic sense of humor.”

“How's that?”

“Face it. They could have easily just flown a few terrorists to Houston, armed them, and sent them loose after the former president. But they don't. They go through this elaborate scheme stealing a nerve gas bomb, killing a whole bunch of people in the process. Then they spend almost a week on the high seas, probably puking their guts out, and land in Mexico. Then they drive north with the bomb leaving bodies in their wake. Why? It seems like an awfully complex assassination.” Nelsen smiled and raised his brows at his partner.

Garcia considered it. “So, they want to kill Bush with his own weapon?”

“Exactly.”

As they cruised along the nearly deserted highway, Garcia gazed off to the scrub brush and sage to his right. Then he turned to Nelsen. “What if we're wrong?”

Nelsen gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. “I'm not wrong.”

ODESSA, UKRAINE

Jake had hurried off with Tully O'Neill's Volga and Helena in tow. After driving just a few blocks, he abandoned the car and slid onto a city bus, watching to see if they had been tailed. He got off near the train station and stole a cab waiting outside, while the driver was drinking coffee at a small kiosk. He had no idea where he was heading, only that to stay in one place wasn't an option. He still wasn't certain how the gunmen had known they were at that apartment. He was sure he wasn't followed. Yet, somehow the men had found them, and he didn't want to take any chances with Helena. The gunmen had to assume Petra had told Helena something, and they couldn't chance leaving her alive. The same went for him.