Fuse of Armageddon (4 page)

“Yeah,” Frank said. “Let’s get CSI. Maybe they can solve it in an hour.”

Bad joke. Long-standing joke. Anywhere in the department. The Boulder City department, close as it was to Vegas, suffered too because of the hit television series. At least once a week, tourists dropped in, thinking maybe Boulder City was actually part of Vegas, as if they were checking out a rotation of all the stations hoping to catch a glimpse of a star anywhere.
How stupid can people be?
Kate always wondered when they came by.

She paused.
How stupid
could
people be?

She had one answer right in front of her, Kate thought. Stupid enough to find a way to end up dead, upside down in a cube van.

Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip • 14:32 GMT


“You are not Abu,” Mulvaney Quinn said to the Palestinian opposite him at a table.

The hostage exchange took place in a small room as bare and rough as its table—an almost unbearably hot room with a dirt floor and filled with the smell of garlic, like any of thousands of similar rooms in the squalor of the Gaza Strip.

“I am Zayat,” the man said. “Abu takes no risks. He sends me instead. This is my proof.”

The Palestinian dropped a small wristwatch on the table. The man’s dress suggested he’d taken public appearance lessons from the late Yasser Arafat.

Quinn turned the watch over and looked for engraving on the back.
To Crystal
.
Love, Daddy
. The rest of the luxury watch matched the description that had been given by the father: pink leather wristband, extra hole punched in the band because it had been too large for Crystal’s tiny wrist. She was only four, probably couldn’t tell time, and had been given a watch that was worth double what the average Palestinian family earned in a year. Bad luck for her to be an American child in the Middle East, unaware of how much wealth she had on her wrist, how dangerous it was to display that wealth in a public place, and how much Americans were hated, even innocent children.

“Roz,” Quinn said into his telephone headset, “I’ve confirmed the watch.”

Roz.
Out of the entire staff at Corporate Counterterrorism International, only Quinn called Rossett by that name. Here it was a code word, letting Rossett know that on Quinn’s end there were no complications. Yet.

Crystal had been kidnapped, along with her mother, from a Jerusalem side street. Quinn was optimistic that they were still alive; it was very unlikely that the woman and the child had been taken into Gaza, where the kidnappers had demanded this meeting. Security checkpoints were too risky for them to attempt to take the victims outside of Israel. This was simply a safer place for the kidnappers to negotiate, a haven in a territory of lawlessness.

“You know it belongs to the child,” Zayat said. “Now I tell you about the change. You wire the money to a different account number.”

“The agreement was clear,” Quinn said. “No money until the woman and child are delivered safe.”

This wasn’t the place or situation for a business suit. Quinn wore khakis and a white mock turtleneck with short, loose sleeves. Comfort over formality. He was in his late thirties, lean and tanned, a tall man with a face that had forgotten how to smile.

Quinn’s laptop, running on battery power, sat on the table between them. Quinn wore a headset attached to a port on the laptop, which used voice-over-Internet protocol to serve as his phone. The line was open to keep him in contact with the office in Tel Aviv. Every word was being monitored and recorded at CCTI. During telephone bargaining with Abu over the previous few days, Rossett had explained repeatedly that this constant contact was nonnegotiable.

“I give you the new bank account.” Zayat pushed a piece of paper across the table. “Abu is a cautious man. He does not trust what you have set up.” He pointed at the laptop. “You change it now while we wait.”

Quinn did as directed but didn’t like Zayat’s obvious tension and impatience. Things went wrong when emotions got in the way.

Before Quinn could say anything, however, Rossett’s steady voice came through the headset. “The woman and child are safe.”

“Understood,” Quinn said. Adrenaline and stress had been sustaining him through horrible jet lag, and he felt the muscles in his shoulder relax as he let out a deep breath of relief. “Roz, I’ll release the money.”

Quinn spoke to Zayat in Arabic that was flawless except for the Israeli accent. “I’ve just received the first confirmation. The mother and child are safe at the King David.”

Roz was in Tel Aviv, but they’d chosen a Jerusalem hotel for the drop. There would be hugs, screams of joy, and collapsing in relief as the family was reunited in the lobby, but Quinn would permit himself the satisfaction of savoring the triumph later. He tapped at the keyboard on the laptop. “As agreed, one million dollars in U.S. currency are now being transferred to the account number that you provided us. When you’ve confirmed that your men are back on this side of the border, you allow me to leave.”

To make this work, someone needed to provide a guarantee that Abu’s men would not be detained. This was Quinn’s other role today. If Abu’s men were betrayed, Quinn would be held until they were returned, killed if they were killed.

In theory, the Gaza Strip was no longer a concentration camp. But under the Palestinian National Authority and the new Hamas government, this was still theory. The fact that kidnapping Americans could be a profession to fund terrorist cell groups attested to that. Abu’s men would be very safe inside Gaza. Unlike Quinn.

The door opened, briefly flooding the room with sunlight, showing the air heavy with floating dust. Quinn glanced over.

The new arrival was a younger man dressed in a manner similar to Zayat’s, but his face was swathed in black cloth. He moved to stand behind Zayat. In one hand he carried a knapsack, which he set on the floor. The other hand held a machine gun, which he lifted and pointed in Quinn’s direction.

Quinn stared at the man with the machine gun, then made a point of deliberately turning his head to Zayat without showing any alarm. This was business. When terrorists kidnapped rich Americans, it wasn’t about ideology, only money to finance the ideology. Everyone understood that killing negotiators hurt future business. In theory.

“I believe this is personal for you, isn’t it?” the new arrival said to Quinn in Arab-accented English. “Your partner handled the negotiating, but you are the one here in person. You even cut short a vacation to return here from America for this. Las Vegas, I understand—a den of sinners in a country of sin.”

Quinn refused to show surprise at the man’s knowledge. He had seen these situations played out at both extremes. Complete silence until the next confirmation phone call to let both sides know the Palestinians were safe and Quinn could be released. Or endless chatter that was a sure indication of nerves on the other side.

Teflon,
Quinn always told himself.
Be
Teflon. Nothing sticks. Answer in polite, neutral tones with polite, neutral words.
“I represent Lloyd’s of London and the American businessman insured by Lloyd’s. I’m a middleman. Which means it is my job to make the transaction successful for both parties.”

“Yet if I understand correctly,” the Palestinian said, “you lost your wife and daughter to a Palestinian suicide bomber. What, five years ago? The woman and girl matched in age then to the woman and child you just ransomed for one million; isn’t that right?”

Now Quinn was alarmed. This was information the terrorist should not have. CCTI firewalled personal information of employees with the zealousness of guards at Fort Knox.

“I represent Lloyd’s of London and the American businessman insured by Lloyd’s,” Quinn repeated. He was a good poker player, and this was high-stakes Texas hold ’em, where the losers ended up dead. “I am a middleman. This is business. Nothing more.”

“One might guess you are still trying to rescue the family you lost,” the masked Palestinian said with an obvious sneer in his voice. “A futility, is it not?”

Images flooded Quinn’s mind, the images he fell asleep to every night, triggering here and now the same emotions that didn’t seem to lose the edge or rawness over time.

Teflon,
he told himself.
Teflon
.

“Put a hand on the table, palm up,” the masked Palestinian said, still standing behind Zayat.

Quinn raised an eyebrow.

The man raised the machine gun and pointed the barrel at Quinn’s head. Quinn leaned forward and rested his left forearm on the table, turning his palm toward the ceiling.

“Now is your time,” the Palestinian said.

Zayat leaned forward too and clamped his fingers over Quinn’s wrist, holding Quinn’s hand in place. He reached under his leg, pulling out a long knife he’d kept hidden. With savage swiftness, he drove the point of the blade down into the center of Quinn’s palm, pinning Quinn to the table with a thud.

2

Khodaydad Kalay, Afghanistan • 14:33 GMT


Babe. It’s me. I’ve got one minute. Swear on your mama’s grave that you won’t tell anyone about this call.”

It was just past six in the evening local time. As he sent his voice nine and a half time zones back to Sarah and the double-wide he never imagined he’d miss with such intensity, Private First Class Joe Patterson stood in the corner of an abandoned, dusty school yard that had been used for a mass killing by the Taliban on a similar hot summer day a few years earlier.

At the far side, handcuffed and gagged Afghan men were seated against a brick wall, waiting for small pieces of lead to be delivered at terminal speed into their chest cavities. Some wept. Some glared in defiance at the soldiers only ten paces from them. The rest stared at the infinite blue of the clear sky beyond the walls, as if trying to liberate their souls from their bodies before the bullets arrived.

Years before, these same men had been members of the Taliban, thugs who had enjoyed the opportunity to flex power without responsibility. These thugs had been armed with Soviet Dragunov SVD sniping rifles, notoriously poor aim, and sadistic satisfaction at their inefficiency in killing.

Now these former Taliban killers were the ones handcuffed and afraid. Their executioners wore U.S. Army uniforms, and there was nothing casual about their stances as they held tight grips on standard-issue Colt M16s. Though this would not be the first killing for these young soldiers, the tension was obvious on their faces.

Although he stood apart from the others—conversation monitored by the nearby commanding officer—Private First Class Joe Patterson was also in U.S. Army uniform. This was the perfect disguise for the Freedom Crusaders, as all of them had first been army personnel, and all of them had been officially reported dead. Patterson knew that high up strings had been pulled so that commanding officers made sure a rogue unit could operate without interference from the army or the political-correctness police known as the media.

Satellite phone in one hand, Patterson cradled in his other arm the M16 that had been in his possession when he and five other soldiers had supposedly been inside a lead convoy truck exploded by a buried bomb on a main highway twenty miles outside of Kabul.

Today Patterson had been able to make this phone call for one simple reason: the other soldiers were still busy with the remaining pigs. Patterson had helped earlier with the slaughter of the other pigs. But even with a knife in his hand and blood running down his wrists, Patterson’s thoughts had not been on the pigs or the prisoners he had agreed to capture and kill. He’d only been thinking of Sarah.

Sweet Sarah. Blonde, tiny, feisty, passionate. No man had ever been as blessed in finding a woman, and Joe thanked God for her every night in his prayers.

It was driving him crazy to imagine how badly she would be grieving his death. Not even the insurance money would make up for it. With the final pigs almost prepared, Patterson had approached the commanding officer, Del Saxon, a man he’d reported to the first night after the convoy explosion.

“Sir, I’d like to make a call,” Joe had said, pointing at the phone that Lieutenant Saxon had strapped to his belt. “I need to speak to my wife.”

“A call.” Del Saxon was square jawed, square shouldered, and with his brush cut hairstyle, square headed. He was a large man who talked in a growl from the side of his mouth as if he were chewing on a cigar. “You want to make a call. Like you’re waiting in traffic and you forgot what you were supposed to pick up on the way home.”

Private Joe Patterson was big himself. He’d been tough before boot camp and had grown tougher during. Part of the bargain had been that he’d be joining a squad that didn’t treat him like army—the Freedom Crusaders. So he wasn’t going to back down.

“My wife thinks I’m dead,” Joe said. “I can’t stand it any longer. One call and it’ll fix that problem.”

“So I’m supposed to hand you my phone.” Saxon gestured toward the other soldiers, out of earshot. “Then let them take turns to tell people stateside they’re not dead either?”

“That’s between you and them. I want to call my wife.”

“Not part of the deal. She gets money. Nothing else. You knew that at FCU. You put your hand on a Bible and swore to follow this duty.”

Patterson was very aware of this. Over a period of months, as a professor and mentor subtly checked his reliability and ideology for the cause, he had been recruited on the Freedom Christian University campus, inspired with fervent, crusading passion to become a Christian soldier marching forward for the cause of Jesus.

What he hadn’t expected was that he’d fall in love with Sarah. He hadn’t expected that during his last month at FCU, passion would overcome them and lead them into sin. He hadn’t expected Sarah to become pregnant, and he hadn’t expected to marry her before sending her back to Georgia so that his child could at least have his last name.