The Enemy Within

To Jeanne and Mennette, with all our love

We would like to thank Dwin Craig, Don Gilman, Dave Hood, Mennette Masser Larkin, Don and Marilyn Larkin, Colin and Denise Larkin, Ian, Duncan, and Chris Larkin, Erin Larkin-Foster, Kay Long Martin, Elaine Meisenheimer, John Moser, Bill and Bridget Paley, Barbara Patrick, Tim Peckinpaugh and Pam McKinney-Peckinpaugh, Thomas T. Thomas, Tom Thompson, and Brad Ware for their assistance, advice, and support.

Author’s Note

After four books, you get to know a fellow pretty well. While there is still much to learn about Pat Larkin, I can honestly say that in ten years of working together he has always been a good friend and an excellent writer. He is good at his craft, and I’ve got to work like crazy to keep up with him.

Anyone who’s read one of our other books knows that these are joint efforts. If this is the first one you’ve picked up, know that these truly are the work of two minds. This book is just as much Pat’s as it is mine, and he deserves as much credit as I do for its success.

We both hope you enjoy it.

JANUARY
15

Benicia Industrial Park, California, Near San Francisco.

The accident scene looked real even to Shahin’s skeptical eyes. A crumpled Toyota Corolla sat sideways across the narrow on-ramp to Highway 680, surrounded by fragments of smashed safety glass and puddled oil. Four emergency flares cast a flickering red light across a spiderweb of concrete pillars and rusting railroad bridge supports rising above the freeway entrance. As a final touch of authenticity, the sharp, sweet smell of leaking gasoline hung in the chilly night air.

The short, bearded man nodded to himself, satisfied that his deception would hold for the brief time required. He moved off the road and into the shadows beneath the overpass.

His cellular phone buzzed softly. He flipped it open. “Yes?”

The muffled voice of Haydar Zadi, his lookout, sounded in his ear. “Two minutes.”

“Understood.” Shahinslid the phone back inside his windbreaker and checked the pistol in his shoulder holster. Their first target, their chosen weapon, was on the way.

Perched high in the cab of his big rig, Jack Briggs saw the flare-lit wreck up ahead in plenty of time. He swore once and braked smoothly, coming to a complete stop near the foot of the ramp.

Like most independent truckers, he preferred making his runs at night and in the early morning to avoid the Bay Area’s god-awful traffic.. It was a routine that worked well usually. But not tonight.

Still growling to himself, he peered through the windshield. At least the Toyota’s driver didn’t seem hurt. The man had glanced around once when the rig’s headlights hit him, but then he’d gone right back to staring down at his car’s smashed front end. Might be drunk, Briggs decided. It was near closing time. Hell, only a drunk would wander off the main road into the little town of Benicia’s deserted industrial park at this time of the night.

He shook his head angrily. Well, tanked up or not, the clown was going to have to help push that Japanese pile of junk off the ramp and out of the way.

Pausing just long enough to square up his battered, oilstained baseball cap and shut off the engine, the trucker yanked his cab door open, jumped down, and started across the glass-strewn asphalt in long strides. He was still several feet from the Toyota when the other man suddenly turned to face him, bringing the pistol he’d been concealing on target in one smooth, deadly, flowing motion.

Briggs stared at the weapon in shock. His mouth fell open. “What the ”

A single 9mm bullet caught him under the chin, tore upward through his brain, and exploded out the back of his skull.

_ _

Shahin knelt, retrieved the spent shell casing from the road with one gloved hand, and dropped it into his pocket. Neatness was a habit that had saved him so many times over the past several years that he indulged it without thought. There were many others in the HizbAllah who were less careful, but none who could match his record of operational success. He rose to his feet and turned away without giving the American he’d murdered more than a single disinterested glance.

Another pair of headlights swung across the scene and steadied as a small car, an old blue Nissan Sentra, pulled up beside the dead man’s truck. Shahin stood motionless in the sudden dazzling brightness, waiting for the two other men who made up his special action cell to join him.

Haydar Zadi was the first out of the car. The lookout grinned in clear relief, showing a mouthful of yellowing, tobacco-stained teeth. “It went perfect, eh? Like clockwork!”

“Yes.” Shahin nodded curtly, biting down an urge to snap at the older man. Didn’t the fool know they had no time to waste? At most they had only minutes to clear away all signs of this ambush and move their prize under cover inside the warehouse they’d rented nearby. But Zadi was a “casual” a fundamentalist radical recruited out of the local immigrant community for this one mission. Snarling at him would only make him more nervous, more prone to panic. Instead, the Iranian gestured toward the dead truck driver. “Toss that thing in your truck, my friend. We’ll dispose of it later.”

Zadi’s smile vanished, wiped away by his first good look at the murdered man. In the glare of the headlights, the blood pooling around the American’s shattered skull glistened black. He swallowed hard and hurried to obey.

Shahin shook his head in disgust. He disliked being forced to rely on a squeamish amateur, but he had no choice. The HizbAllah was one of the Middle East’s largest and deadliest terrorist organisations, but outside of New York its network of covert operatives and sympathisers was still too poorly organized to support and conceal a larger force. He swung away and stalked over to the only other member of his small team.

Ibrahim Nadhir was the youngest of them all, barely twenty. Taller than his superior, smooth-shaven, and slender, he stood staring up at the giant vehicle they had captured.

Shahin clapped him on the shoulder. “You can drive this monster, Ibrahim?”

“Oh, yes.” Nadhir reached out a single hand and actually caressed the side of the big rig. His eyes were dilated. “It is a beautiful machine. A perfect machine.”

Shahin suppressed a shiver. Tehran’s revolutionary mullahs had refined the brainwashing techniques originally taught them by North Korean and Vietnamese instructors. He understood the value of what they had done to Nadhir. But surely no man could be at ease in the presence of one remade into the living hand of Allah.

He followed the younger man’s fixed, adoring stare and smiled for the first time. The truck itself was nothing. Anyone with money could buy or lease such a truck. No, the real prize for this night’s work was the big rig’s cargo: a massive, cylindrical steel tank full of ten thousand gallons of highgrade gasoline.

Highway 101, north of San Francisco The Marin County commuter tide was in full flood shortly before the sun rose. Tens of thousands of cars crept slowly south along Highway 101, inching through San Rafael, up the lone incline above Sausalito, through the Waldo Tunnel, and downhill toward San Francisco. Headlights glowed a ghostly yellow through the fog still shrouding the approaches to the Golden Gate Bridge.

Two vehicles ground forward with the rest. Four cars behind the lumbering gasoline tanker truck driven by Ibrahim Nadhir, Haydar Zadi gripped the steering wheel of his old, battered Nissan, darting occasional, frightened glances at the quiet, angry man seated beside him.

Shahin scowled at their slow, snail-like pace. As their local contact, Zadi had been responsible for scouting this section of their route. But nothing in the older man’s reports had fully prepared him for this halting procession of luxury sedans, sports cars, and minivans. It was grotesque an evil display of wasted wealth and power. Though a child on foot would arrive in San Francisco sooner, not one of these decadent, arrogant Americans could bear the thought of parting with his prized automobile.

Inside the Iranian, contempt warred briefly with envy. His scowl grew deeper. These people worshipped their creations of steel, chrome, fiberglass, and rubber above all other things above even God Himself.

So be it, Shahin thought with grim finality. The HizbAllah would teach these idolaters a harsh lesson a lesson scrawled in fire and blood. His dark eyes settled on the gasoline tanker truck up ahead. “How much further?”

“Two kilometers. Perhaps less,” Zadi answered. He cleared his throat nervously. “The last exit before the bridge is very near.”

Shahin nodded, ignoring the fear in his companion’s voice. The old man would have to hold his cowardice at bay a while longer.

He leaned forward to get a better look at their surroundings. The steep hillsides of the Marin Headlands rose to the west black masses still more felt than seen through the last remnants of night and fog. To the east, the ground fell away into the dark waters of San Francisco Bay. Distant lights twinkled along the eastern horizon, slowly fading as the sky paled before the rising sun. Ahead to the south, the Golden Gate Bridge’s massive towers and suspension cables were already visible, rising out of the mists
CHP
Unit 52

Inside a sleek black-and-white cruiser parked just off Highway 101, California Highway Patrol Offficer Steve Dwyer sat sipping the last cup of coffee from his thermos, studying the cars streaming past him through bleary eyes. He yawned, trying to get some oxygen into his bloodstream. After a long shift spent scouting for drunks, joyriders, and other lowlifes, the steady crackle of voices over his radio and the lukewarm coffee were just about the only things keeping him awake, Dwyer stifled another jaw-cracking yawn and ran a hand over his scalp, frowning when his fingers along skin where only months before there had been hair. This god damned job was getting to him, he thought. Hell, he was only thirty-two way too young to be going bald. Maybe he could put in a stress claim and get the department health plan to cough up for some of that Rogaine stuff before he started hearing Kojak jokes and finding lollipops taped to his locker.

The sight of a gasoline tanker mixed in with the traffic streaming past him brought the
CHP
officer fully awake. For safety reasons, tankers and other carriers of hazardous materials were banned from the bridge and its approaches during rush hour. Everybody knew that, didn’t they? For damned sure, every trucker who wanted to keep his license knew that. Everybody except this idiot, obviously.

Dwyer plucked his radio mike off the dashboard. “Dispatch, this is Five-Two. I have a HazMat rig trying to cross the Gate.” He squinted into the slowly growing dawn. “Plate number is Delta, Tango, Two, Nine, Four, Five, Three. I’m making the stop now.”

With its lights flashing, the
CHP
cruiser pulled onto the highway.

Highway 101

Shahin cursed as the American police car suddenly slid in right behind Nadhir’s truck. The Iranian bent down to tear open the gym bag between his feet. He tugged a Czech-made Skorpion machine pistol out of the bag and checked its twenty-round clip. Satisfied, he flipped the weapon’s folding wire stock into place and looked up. “firing that close to that police car!”

When Zadi hesitated, the Iranian lifted the Skorpion’s muzzle, aiming it casually at the older man’s stomach. His eyes were cold. “Do it,” he said softly.

Horrified, Haydar Zadi swerved left into the next lane and accelerated. Horns blared in outrage behind them.

Shahin ignored the noise, his eyes fixed on the patrol car still trying to pull Nadhir off the road. He could hear the policeman using his loudspeaker now. That was a wasted effort, he knew. The younger Iranian didn’t speak or understand any English.

Weaving slightly under Zadi’s unsteady hands, the Nissan drifted up alongside the black-and-white police cruiser. Still pinned by heavy traffic, neither vehicle was moving more than twenty kilometers an hour. Shahin held his breath, waiting for the right moment. Closer. Closer. Now.

The two cars were less than two meters apart.

He poked the machine pistol above the door frame, took careful aim, and squeezed the trigger.

The Skorpion stuttered wildly, bucking upward in Shahin’s hands as he emptied a full magazine into the other vehicle at point-blank range. Sparks flew off torn metal, and glass shattered, smashed into a thousand fragments by the hail of gunfire. Blood fountained across the police car’s dashboard. Still rolling forward, the black-and-white slowly veered off the highway, spun around until it bounced into the hillside, and came to rest with its lights still flashing.

Inside the Nissan, Zadi flinched, panicked by the sudden deafening noise. He yanked the steering wheel left again and then back hard right, narrowly missing another car. More horns sounded angrily behind and all around them.

“Fool!” Shahin snarled. He glimpsed a road sign ahead and off to the right. They were practically right on top of the last exit before the bridge itself. They had done their part. They had brought Ibrahim Nadhir safely to the brink of Paradise. Now it was time to pull away to live and fight and on another day. He grabbed Zadi’s shoulder and pointed. “There! The exit! Go! Go!”