Suicide Mission (9 page)

“The car matches, and so do the plates,” Clark went on. “Now all we have to do is find him in the next—” He checked the time on the phone. “Five minutes.”

“It won't take that long,” Bill said as he looked at a group of people headed toward the chapel. “There he is now.”

The man wasn't actually with the group, but he was trailing along close enough behind them that a casual glance might mistake him for one of them. The chattering tourists were all fairly young, in their twenties and thirties, a mixture of Anglos and Hispanics, and the man Bill and Clark were looking for could certainly pass for Hispanic.

He wore jeans and an untucked, knit short-sleeved shirt, and there was nothing odd about that, either. Actually, he didn't look the least bit threatening, and for a second the wild thought went through Bill's head that they had made a mistake and there was no bomb, no plot to wipe downtown San Antonio off the face of the earth and kill a bunch of innocent people.

Then Bill's eyes narrowed as he spotted the slight bulge at the small of the man's back. He had some sort of weapon hidden there, most likely a gun or a knife. Again, not necessarily concrete evidence, since Texas was still a concealed-carry state despite the best efforts of the gun-grabbers in Washington to piss on the Constitution and disarm law-abiding citizens.

But they couldn't afford to take a chance. Bill and Clark started walking after him, not running or even hurrying too much, but closing in without any wasted effort. The guy was looking around, trying not to be obvious about it, but Bill could tell that he was nervous.

Anybody who was about to disappear forever in a flash of nuclear fire would be a little anxious, even the most dedicated, fanatical terrorist.

The man stopped short, and so did Bill and Clark. They stood in the shade of a tree that grew next to the sidewalk and looked like a couple of guys taking a walk on their lunch hour, Bill hoped. Bill even put his hands in his pockets and leaned a shoulder against the tree trunk.

The pose was a lot more casual than he felt.

“Turn and face me like we're talkin',” he said quietly to Clark. “I'll keep an eye on the mark.”

“We could go ahead and jump him,” Clark suggested tensely as he turned to face Bill.

“He might have activated some sort of dead man's trigger.”

“He doesn't have anything in his hand.”

Bill straightened and said, “He does now. He just took a cell phone out of his shirt pocket.”

Clark started to turn again.

“That's it,” he said, his voice hollow. “We've got to jump him.”

“Hold on,” Bill said. “He's turnin' around and holdin' the phone up . . . doesn't look like he's punchin' in a number . . . Good Lord. He's takin' a picture of himself standin' in front of the Alamo.”

“So he can email it back to all his buddies in the sandbox and they can broadcast it all over the world when they claim credit for this,” Clark said.

“Yeah, that's a good guess.” Bill's pulse was so loud now inside his skull that he could hardly hear himself think. “He's sent it. Now he's turnin' back toward the Alamo.”

“It's noon,” Clark said. “We can't afford to wait any longer.”

“If we're wrong about him, we're dead, and so are a lot of other people.”

“We're all living on borrowed time now, anyway.”

Clark was right about that. The guy had his back to them. Bill broke into a run toward him. They couldn't see the phone anymore, couldn't tell if he was still punching a number into it . . .

Some instinct must have warned the man. He jerked his head around to glance over his shoulder and saw the two grim-faced men running toward him. He twisted and groped for the weapon at the small of his back, which was actually a good thing because while he was doing that he couldn't push any more buttons on the phone.

And since the world hadn't come to an end for everybody in downtown San Antonio, that meant the detonator hadn't been triggered yet.

Bill launched himself into a flying tackle just as the man pulled a small-caliber revolver free and thrust it out in front of him. The gun sounded like three firecrackers going off one right after the other as the man jerked the trigger.

Bill didn't feel any of the bullets hit him during the second that he flew through the air. Then he smashed into the man and drove him backward. Both of them slammed into the sidewalk.

Screams and shouts filled the air in the wake of the gunfire. Panic erupted in the plaza as people tried to get as far away from the shooter as they could.

Bill had landed on top of his quarry, hoping to knock the breath out of the man and stun him. The man was still conscious, though, and alert enough to slash at Bill's head with the pistol. Bill ducked the blow and brought up his knee, driving it into the man's stomach.

He had hoped to jostle the phone loose, too, but that effort had also failed. The man writhed on the ground and brought the elbow of his gun arm around to jab it under Bill's chin and lever him partially off.

That gave the man the opportunity to squirm away. He rolled onto his side and desperately thumbed another number into the phone.

Bill lunged and brought the side of his hand down on the man's wrist. This time the blow did the trick. The phone slipped out of his fingers and went skittering away on the sidewalk.

Clark was waiting for it. He scooped up the phone, being careful to get his fingers underneath it rather than grabbing it and taking the chance that one of his fingers might push just the wrong button . . .

Seeing that Clark had the phone, Bill hammered a fist into the terrorist's face. The man still held the gun, but when he tried to bring it to bear, Bill caught his wrist and twisted hard enough to make bones grind together. The man cried out in pain and dropped the gun.

Bill hit him again and again, smashing the man's face into a crimson ruin. All the tension and danger of the past twenty-four hours exploded out of Bill in the savage blows. All the outrage he felt that somebody would want to commit such an atrocity drove his arm up and down like a piston. He didn't stop until a couple of Clark's agents grabbed him and pulled him off. They dragged him a few yards away on the sidewalk while more agents swarmed over the senseless terrorist.

“Wild Bill,” Clark said. He was breathing heavily, too. “Some things sure haven't changed.”

Bill willed his rampaging pulse to slow down. When he trusted himself to speak, he asked, “Where's the phone?”

“We slabbed it just like it was. I had an agent standing by with the box.”

Bill nodded. Under the circumstances, the safest thing to do was to not touch any of the buttons on the phone's keypad. Slabbing it meant putting it in a specially constructed container with enough layers of electronic baffling to keep any signal from getting out. As long as the phone was in the box, it was incapable of sending a signal to a detonator.

By now the panic-stricken crowd had cleared out of the plaza, meaning the only ones left in front of the Alamo were federal agents and the prisoner.

But wailing sirens filled the air and Bill knew the San Antonio cops would be arriving at any moment in response to the emergency calls about a gunman in Alamo Plaza.

“You ready to deal with the cops?” Bill asked.

“I don't have to deal with them, they have to deal with me,” Clark said with a touch of the smug arrogance that all federal bureaucrats felt, even the good guys like him. “But under the circumstances, I don't mind.”

“Yeah, nothin' blowed up real good,” Bill said. “That means it's a mighty pretty day.”

Even with the power of the federal government behind them, dealing with the local authorities was a long, drawn-out, frustrating process. Bill lost track of how many times he and Clark had to tell their story.

But the most important thing was finding the bomb, and that didn't really take long because they knew what kind of car they were looking for. Once they located it a block and a half from the Alamo, the specialists moved in with all their high-tech equipment. The device might have all sorts of fail-safes built into it, redundant systems designed to set it off if anyone tampered with it.

It was a hell of a job, but downtown San Antonio was evacuated for two miles around the Alamo.

It was nightfall by the time the bomb was dealt with safely. It had been removed from the car and transported to a secure location at Fort Sam Houston, the sprawling military base on San Antonio's north side. Once that was done, a task force comprised of the Department of Homeland Security, the National Security Administration, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the San Antonio Police Department began allowing citizens to return to downtown.

It was nearly ten o'clock before Bill found himself sitting in one of the little cafés below street level beside the San Antonio River, which, like the Los Angeles River, had been converted from a natural stream into a concrete-lined, man-made one.

Unlike the L.A. River, though, this one was a tourist attraction. The famous Riverwalk, which stretched for a dozen blocks, was lined with everything from snack bars to gourmet restaurants, pricey art galleries and antique shops to deliberately tacky souvenir stands.

Bill sat on the patio of an open-air Mexican restaurant, a mug of beer on the wrought-iron table in front of him as he waited for Clark, who had promised to be along as soon as he finished talking to his bosses back in Virginia.

The tourists had flocked back to the River walk tonight, which sort of surprised him. He thought they might be cowering in their hotel rooms, brooding over how close they had come to dying.

The authorities had managed to shut down a lot of the story before it ever got out, though. People knew there had been an attempt at a terrorist attack on the Alamo, but they weren't aware of the sheer magnitude of what had almost happened.

That was the way it needed to be, Bill thought. Letting them know the truth wouldn't serve any real purpose. People were better off not knowing just how many metaphorical bullets they had dodged over the years . . .

Luckily, the real bullets fired by the prisoner hadn't struck anyone in the plaza. The only injuries resulting from the incident were the accidental bumps and bruises and a few broken bones that befell people as they tried to flee.

An air of desperate gaiety hung in the air. Folks might not know the truth, but they knew that
something
bad had almost happened, and tonight they were celebrating the fact that they were still alive and could continue their vacations. Knowing there had been a near miss of some sort just made them more eager to seize the moment and enjoy themselves.

With that going on, nobody paid much attention to the lean, craggy-faced, graying man who sat nursing a beer. Bill had made an effort not to let the media know that he had played any part in the drama. Tonight he was just another tourist.

He saw Clark coming toward him. His old friend looked tired. Clark heaved a sigh of relief as he reached the table and sank into one of the empty chairs.

“I was startin' to worry you weren't gonna make it for that enchilada dinner I promised you,” Bill said.

Clark glanced around, then keeping his voice pitched low enough he wouldn't be overheard easily, he said, “I had to talk to the White House.”

“His own self?”

“Yeah.” Clark grimaced. “He wanted to make sure we hadn't done anything to offend any foreign governments. Then he asked if we had any foreign nationals in custody, because if we did, the State Department would have to be involved.”

Bill made an effort not to let the disgust he felt show on his face.

“What did you tell him?”

“I said I'd look into the matter immediately and get back to him as soon as possible.” Clark looked around, caught the eye of the attractive blond woman working behind the bar at the edge of the patio, and pointed first at Bill's beer, then at himself. The woman smiled and nodded.

“So you're on a fact-findin' mission now?” Bill drawled.

“Something like that. Have you eaten here before?”

“No, but the food's supposed to be mighty good.”

“We'll find out.”

When their server brought over a beer for Clark and a fresh one for Bill, they ordered their dinners, then sat back to wait.

“This fella that may or may not be in custody,” Bill said. “Has he done any talkin' yet?”

“No, not a word. But we have a tentative ID on him. We think he's a Pakistani named Tariq Maleef. Comes from money, educated in Saudi Arabia and England. There are indications that he's part of a loose-knit organization of terrorist groups. Those medieval bastards all hate each other, but they're willing to work together because they hate us worse.” Clark took a sip of his beer. “We think Maleef's organization is behind Barranca de la Serpiente.”

“Snake Canyon,” Bill said. “The little terrorist university they set up.”

“Yeah. In fact, there's a good chance that's where this whole New Sun plot was hatched. It's not just a training camp. It's a . . . think tank, I guess you'd call it. A seminar for bloodthirsty thugs who want to kill us.”

“Sounds like a place that ought to be put out of business before something even worse comes from there.”

Clark leaned back in his chair and nodded slowly.

“I've been thinking the exact same thing,” he said, “and I think I know just the man for the job.”

Bill sat up straighter and frowned.

“I hope you don't mean what I think you—”

He stopped short as he spotted a woman coming along the River walk toward their table. He wasn't the only one watching her. Nearly every male eye was on her, and so were a good number of the female eyes.

“Catalina,” Bill breathed.

Clark twisted in his chair to look back at her. He grinned as he said, “Yeah, I told the agents with her that this was where they'd find us. They're close by, keeping an eye on her.”

“I thought she was in Dallas.”

“As soon as she heard that everything worked out all right down here, she made her minders turn around and bring her back.” Clark chuckled. “From all reports, she's a very forceful young woman. Used to getting her own way.”

“Yeah, she's all of that,” Bill agreed. “Pretty good car thief, too.”

Clark raised his eyebrows.

Bill ignored that and got to his feet to meet her. Catalina ran the last few yards and threw herself into his arms. There was nothing romantic about it; at least Bill didn't think so. It was just the grateful embrace of two friends, two comrades in arms who had thought they might never see each other again.

Catalina stepped back, rested her hands on his shoulders, and said, “It's all over, Bill?”

“Sure,” he answered without hesitation, but even as he said it, he knew that might not be true. He remembered what Clark had said about Barranca de la Serpiente and knew there was still work to be done.

But not tonight. Tonight was for being grateful that they were still alive and that the nation hadn't been wrenched even further off its moorings.

“Hope you're hungry,” Bill said with a grin. “You got here just in time for a late supper.”

 

 

Tariq had been praying almost nonstop since he was captured, praying for Allah to deliver him from the hands of the American infidel dogs. He couldn't believe he had come so close to achieving his glorious destiny, only to have it snatched away from him.

Two more seconds and paradise would have been his.

Instead he was stuck now in this dreary cell, aching from the beating the old infidel had given him, locked away on the American military base behind layers of steel, concrete, and barbed wire. He was sure that he would be spirited away to some even more secret prison, possibly out of the country, where he would be tortured and humiliated by the blasphemers.

The little room contained only a bunk and a toilet. The light fixture was set into the ceiling where it was impossible for anyone to get at it. One wall was concrete, the other three impenetrable steel, as was the door, which had a small window set in it, the shatterproof glass laced with wire inside, and a slot where food could be passed into the cell.

The hour was late, but Tariq had spent a long time being interrogated. He hadn't told them anything, of course, not even his name. The only words he had spoken had been to call on Allah for help.

The slot in the door opened, the panel that formed it rising from some sort of electronic signal. A tray of food appeared. Finger food, small sandwiches and pieces of fruit, because he wouldn't be trusted with utensils of any sort.

Tariq wanted to refuse the food, but his stomach rebelled. He hadn't eaten that morning, and by now he should have been dead for almost twelve hours. As much as he might have liked to, he couldn't ignore the prodding of the flesh.

He stood up, took the flimsy cardboard tray, and returned to his bunk to eat. As he chewed a bite of one of the sandwiches, he paused suddenly as he came across something small and hard inside it. His tongue explored the object. It was a capsule of some sort, he decided.

He immediately thought that someone had smuggled it in to him so that he could take his own life. But that would accomplish nothing. While Tariq had no objection to hurrying his own passage to paradise, he wanted his death to
mean
something.

With the next bite he took, he slipped the capsule out of his mouth into his hand. He was sure that a camera was hidden somewhere in the cell to observe his every move. He kept the capsule concealed so that the watchers would remain unaware of its existence. It might come in handy later on.

Sometime during the night, the light went out so that he could sleep. When it did, he stood up from the bunk, went to the door, and used the faint light that came through the tiny window to examine the capsule. He twisted the two halves, breaking them apart.

The capsule didn't contain powder or a liquid. Instead, hidden inside it was a small piece of paper rolled into a very tight cylinder. Tariq unrolled it, and a smile appeared on his face as he read the words printed on the paper in English, the only language he had in common with the man who had sent the message.

When he had committed the words to memory, he rolled the paper up again, inserted it into the capsule, and swallowed it without hesitation. He knew now that it contained not death but the promise of life.

Life . . . and vengeance on the Americans who had ruined everything.

The message had read:
Be ready. We will get you out. Sanchez.