Premeditated Murder (23 page)

And then he would strike his final blow.

He checked his bearing and saw the small lake that served as his landmark. He banked around to properly orient himself for the approach, dropped into his descent, and landed smoothly. He taxied to the meeting spot, got out of the plane, and unloaded the crate of grenades onto the ground under the wing. Karim was sure to be late again, which is why he never received an assignment with great glory.

But to his surprise, about a minute later, an inconspicuous blue car came into El Amin's view, heading right for the plane. As it slowed, however, he realized that Karim was not the driver. Karim had a fat face, with a heavy beard. This was an older man with a thin face, wearing a baseball cap.

El Amin froze. In his worst nightmares he had not expected that a stranger would simply drive up to him this way. If he got into the plane and tried to fly away, at the very least, he would draw attention to himself. The last thing they needed was for people to be looking for him. The driver of this car would be able to give a description of the plane, and if he had a cell phone, a search might start quickly. El Amin worked best in total anonymity, out in the open, blending in. He did not do well on the run, looking over his shoulder at every turn.

Before the driver got a chance to pull around to the side of the plane where the grenades sat, El Amin took one, put it into the pocket of his jacket, and strolled to the other side of the plane, so he was in full view of the driver. The car pulled up to him. If something went wrong, El Amin would try to use the grenade. But as he peered into the driver's window, he could see that there was no immediate threat. The driver looked like an old farmer, not some government official. The window rolled down, and the driver took a lit cigarette out of his mouth, smiled, and said in a strange accent, “Howdy, there. Run into some trouble?”

At first, El Amin couldn't comprehend the meaning of the question. But then he understood. This man thought he had made an emergency landing, and came to offer help. He had to get him away from here, but without raising suspicion.

“Yes, I got surprised by the weather, and thought it would be best to set it down here, wait for the storm to pass, and then fly back,” he answered, hoping that would satisfy the man.

The man nodded. He looked up toward the cloud cover. “Makes sense,” he said. Then he turned back to face El Amin directly. A troubled look was in the stranger's eyes. What did he see? El Amin slid his finger into the ring of the grenade. The man said, “You're getting soaked. Wanna hop in, wait it out for a while? I'm in no big hurry.”

The rain was coming down steadily now, and El Amin was very wet. That, of course, didn't matter. He was prepared to make far greater sacrifices for this holy mission. But he couldn't tell that to this silly old man. He smiled. He couldn't think of a way to refuse the offer without sounding suspicious. “Thank you,” he said. “That is very nice of you.” He walked around to the passenger side of the car and got in.

The car smelled like an airless ashtray, but it was warm and dry. “Bob McAllister,” said the driver, with another smile, holding out his hand.

El Amin released his grip on the grenade, withdrew his right hand from his pocket, wiped it on his pants, and shook the old man's hand. He'd stay until the rain lightened, then he'd leave the stranger's car and wait for Karim. “Hello, Bob,” he said. “My name is Fred Smith.” He put his hand back in his pocket.

It turned out that Bob was simply a lonely old man. His wife had died two years earlier of cancer. He had been a farmer for most of his life, but had flown single-engine planes for a while in the sixties. Driving over to see if his fellow pilot was all right was at least half motivated by a desire to talk to someone. The old man reminded El Amin a little bit of his father's younger brother. The deep rumble of the car's idling engine, the rhythmic swishing of the windshield wipers, and the monotonous drone of the man's voice made it hard to stay awake.

A tapping on his window startled El Amin, and his hand tightened on the grenade. “Who's that?” Bob asked. A hooded figure stood outside in the rain. Karim.

“I'll see,” said El Amin, opening the door and stepping out into the rain. As soon as he did, Karim grabbed him with both hands and threw him to the muddy ground. “What are you doing?” El Amin sputtered, scrambling to his feet, only to see Karim dive into the car. He was lying across the front seat, with his legs hanging out of the open passenger door. The automobile suddenly lurched forward and began driving erratically into the field, still with Karim's legs hanging out of the doorway. The car started to turn to the left, and then there was a loud bang, and some of the car's windows exploded. The car continued to drift toward the left, but slower now. It rolled to a stop fifty meters from the plane.

El Amin didn't know what to do. The rain continued to beat down steadily. He nervously fingered the grenade in his pocket and reluctantly approached the car from behind. As he got closer, he could hear the car's engine still running. Exhaust was coming from the tailpipe. And Karim's legs were still hanging out of the open passenger door. They were not moving. When he got close enough to look through the rear window, he could see blood splattered on the inside of the windshield. The wipers continued to work against the rain.

He crept carefully around to the passenger side of the car and looked inside. It was a sight of horrible carnage. Bob was dead. He still sat in the driver's seat, but his face and chest were so badly hit with shrapnel and so bloody that they were scarcely recognizable.

Karim was lying with his head and right arm at Bob's feet. His left hand and arm were gone. The left side of his neck had been hit by shrapnel, and blood was still pouring out of him. If he wasn't dead now, he would be in moments.

Obviously, Karim had martyred himself. He was such a fool! Apparently, while El Amin and Bob were talking, Karim had driven behind them, to the plane. He had seen that El Amin was in the car and, fearing that they had been discovered, decided that he had to kill the driver. So he took a grenade from the plane, pulled El Amin out of the car, dove in, and pressed the gas pedal with his right hand while holding the live grenade at Bob's chest.

Yes, now Karim the fool was a martyr. And now El Amin had a tremendous problem on his hands.

Detroit, Michigan

LENA WAS INSTANTLY WIDE AWAKE.

As well as terrified and alone.

After she had run from her apartment, she had gone to an ATM and withdrawn five hundred dollars—the maximum. Then she found a local motel, checked in under the name Amy Kurasawa, and paid in cash. She tried to call her parents, but there was no answer, which meant that they had already started on their trip. She left a message on their cell phone, saying that she was going to be out of touch for a while but that she was okay.

Then she'd tried to call Becca, but she always turned off the ringer on her phone when she went to sleep, so Lena had only been able to leave a message to meet her at room 206 of the Sunset Motel as soon as she could get away from work the next day.

The good news was that she was on to something. Reporters didn't get drugs planted in their homes by rogue cops if they weren't doing something right.

The bad news was that Lena didn't know what she was doing. And she was scared to death. Suddenly everything and everyone was suspicious. Those men had been in her apartment before. She hadn't really moved those newspapers onto the already-read pile in her bedroom the other day—they had. That was the same day she found the remote on top of the TV—the one place she never put it. If they hadn't been there to plant the drugs the first time, what had they come for? What would they have done if she had been there when they broke in the first time?

The second break-in had come just a few days after Lena had ignored Sergeant Kanteros's warning and tried to call his boss. So the Detroit Police Department had to be involved, along with the FBI. Which meant that Lena had to be extremely careful about who she went to for help. She had no idea who in the police force was behind this, and therefore no way of knowing if she went to the police for help whether she'd just be going to a person involved in—what? Covering up totally lame burglaries?

So here she was. Hiding in a seedy motel room at 11:45 in the morning, all alone with her fifty-third cup of terrible coffee. Jumping eight feet into the air every time one of the maids knocked on any door within two hundred feet of her room.

At five minutes after noon, Becca finally arrived.

“So what's the big mystery?” she demanded, as Lena let her into the room, closing the door hastily behind her. “I came as soon as I could.” Then she looked at Lena's face. “Hey. Are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” said Lena, and then, just to make things perfect, she burst into tears.

AS LENA CAME THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR OF Becca's apartment, she came face-to-face with the gigantic poster of Jimi Hendrix that Becca had gotten last week, staring at her from the opposite wall of the tiny entryway. And as soon as she turned into the living room, she had to duck out of the way of the branches of Becca's ficus tree, Ernie, whose tremendous pot sat on a low dolly, which Becca rolled around the apartment, depending on where the light was.

Becca turned on the CD player, which started blasting out a Barenaked Ladies tune. Then she crossed over to her bedroom. “Make yourself at home,” she called over the music. “I'm just going to change my clothes.” Then she closed the door, and another gigantic face, this one of Einstein, stared out at Lena from the back of the door.

In fact, everything about Becca's apartment was oversized, except the apartment itself, which was smaller than Lena's.

But what mattered was that it was a place where Lena could hide and try to figure out what to do. She set down her laptop and slumped onto the couch.

What do you do when you can't go to the police? It had always been a pet peeve of Lena's when characters in the movies got into terrible trouble because they tried to handle things alone instead of just calling the police. What should you do if your house looks like it's been broken in to and had its power shut off? Don't call the police—just blunder around in the dark, until the dangerous bad guys grab you. What should you do if you get accosted by a stranger and told about a terrifying set of things that are going to happen unless you perform some impossible task? Don't call the cops—go ahead and try to disarm the nuclear weapon.

And then smile prettily when Bruce Willis comes crashing through the door seconds before the bomb goes off.

That, of course, was one of the problems. There was no Bruce Willis waiting in the hallway, ready to come save her. And the other problem was that the police were the dangerous bad guys. Which meant that Lena really did have nowhere to turn for help. She was going to have to take care of this on her own.

Becca emerged from her bedroom, wearing jeans and a T-shirt that was so big it came down to her knees, with a message printed across the front:
THAT
's
RIGHT
—
IT
'
S ALL ME
.
DEAL WITH IT
. Then she sat down next to Lena on the couch and said, “I think I figured out what to do.”

SEVENTEEN

Dear Kev—

     There's a lot that I never got to tell you before you died. I used to regret that. I felt like I got cheated out of so much. I never got a chance to talk to you about girls, and getting married, and having kids. About colleges, and what kind of career you wanted to have.

     After the bombing, I did a lot of research and then a lot of investigation into terrorism. And then September 11 happened. Now I wouldn't know what to tell you if you were still alive. It would have been so hard for me to try to explain to you how people can be so single-minded. How can the lives of innocent children be expendable? How can it be acceptable that they are intentionally taken? How would I have explained that to someone like you? No matter what age you were.

     I wasn't very sure of myself as a parent. I didn't know how I was going to talk to you about things like the racism and hatred that this country still manages to generate, and death, and war. But the terrorism that is alive now is so horrible that if somebody cast a magic spell on me, and I could have a normal life with kids again, I don't know if I'd want to have them.

     But I'm glad I had you. Even though it was for much too short a time, I'm so glad I had you.

Love, Daddy

(Letter #41 from Calvin Thompkins to deceased son, Kevin)

Two Killed in Bizarre Collision

Glasgow, Montana. Police discovered the burned bodies of two men today in a field 12 miles north of Glasgow, Montana. The men apparently died in a freak collision between a car and a small airplane, which caused an explosion and a fire that extensively burned both vehicles and the bodies of both victims.