Cloudburst (26 page)

“I hope it’s clean,” Graber said.

The master sergeant smiled. “It will be. Guaranteed.”

They were forty feet from the setup. There was no cover other than the knee-high berm, and none of the soldiers took any further cover.

It sounded like a sledgehammer coming down on a metal beam, followed by a hiss that ended the initial clang. Four sheets of whitish smoke expanded outward from each side of the new square hole in the aluminum. The piece blown free shot only a few feet straight up, with little force, and bounced off the canopy, landing just to the side. It stuck, corner first, in the damp dirt.

The master sergeant waved away a cloud of the dissipating smoke that came his way. He took a flashlight from the corporal and shone it at the center of the white cloud. “C’mon.”

They walked through the artificial mist to the test setup.

“Clean.” The master sergeant tentatively touched the bolted-down aluminum. It was warm at the outer edge—the center was cooling from an orange-red.

McAffee squatted under the setup, then stood through the hole. “This is fine. Good size.”

Graber pointed to the blown-out section. “That could be a problem.”

The master sergeant looked at it, then up at the canvas canopy. There was a four-inch tear where the square had pierced it after being blown free. “Yeah. That could cause a helluva headache. No problem. Just a minor addition on one side.”

“I thought you couldn’t adjust the power,” Blackjack said. He rotated his body a full three hundred and sixty degrees in the opening, checking for clearance.

“We can’t, but we can add a few more charges to throw the balance off.”

McAffee and Graber understood. Beyond that, they trusted the NCO implicitly. His work had proven itself before, in critical situations where a misfire would have been disastrous.

The major lifted his lower body through the opening, then swung both legs back to the ground. “Captain?” He offered Graber a try at the lift. He shook the suggestion off.

“You want just the two, Major?” the master sergeant asked.

“That’s all we need,” Blackjack answered.

“Got it. At the hangar in twenty minutes.” He turned to the corporal. “Check the wiring one more time.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

A minute later McAffee and Graber were alone. Blackjack set the stubby MP5 on the metal slab. “We go with pistols.”

Graber agreed. “Let’s go with a double load.”

“Good thinking,” the major said. Each man would go into the assault with two pistols, a necessary safeguard against jamming. With the sub-machine guns left behind, a backup weapon would be the answer. “Let’s get back. You get the practice going with those grenades as soon as they get here.”

“Inside…right?”

“Absolutely, Captain.” It had to be real, the major knew. The bad guys’ bullets would be.

Los Angeles

Art wanted a bacon-chili-cheese dog, but Pinks was twenty minutes away. The thought had crossed his mind to send someone down to pick up a couple for him, but there were reasons not to. Each of the cholesterol bombs probably took a day off his life, and half the reason the dogs were so good was the fun of eating them at Pinks’s sidewalk counter.

“Come on, Arthur,” he implored himself, and a half a minute later he was at the hallway fruit vending machine. He chose a banana, peeled it, and swallowed half before walking back through the door to his office.

“Boss.”

Art’s head came up mid bite. “Ed. I was thinking about Pinks a minute ago.”

Eddie sneered at the fruit. “Great substitute. We have the stuff from Chicago.”

Art hurried over to the desk. He stood in front of Eddie, leaning over to examine the information. “Who got all of this?”

“Lomax.”

“It figures,” Art commented. “He’s always in on the action, no matter where it is. Okay, fill me in.”

The junior agent turned his head. Art’s turned to meet it. “It’s starting to stink, Art. Real bad.”

“Go ahead.” It was strange, and had to be serious, Art knew, or Eddie wouldn’t have called him by name.

“PFC Sammy Jackson looks like our gunrunner. Guess what his post is at Rock Island?” Eddie didn’t allow time to answer. “Armory clerk. Lomax talked with Sammy’s commanding officer, and they do have all the shit used in L.A. in the armory. He has access to all of it, but the CO doesn’t see how he could have gotten any of it off the base. He said it would have been near to impossible.”

“ ‘Near to,’ ” Art scoffed. “Comforting.”

“He’s nineteen…just a kid. And from what his CO said he’s not too big in the brains department. Kind of simpleminded and a real mousy sort. The CO added some other reason, but I think he’s got it wrong on that one.”

“Why?” Art turned half around, leaning on his desk.

“He said Sammy’s pretty dumb because he usually volunteers for armory duty. It’s pretty dull, according to him, and they almost always have to assign someone to it—except when Sammy’s feeling generous.”

“He’s just such a nice guy,” Art said mockingly.

“I asked Lomax to get the duty records from the CO.”

“Yeah. Let’s see just how generous our little friend has been. Those crates from the storage place had to walk out of the armory at one time or another. Some record somewhere has got to show those crates as part of the inventory, and ten to one they still show as present.”

“I’ll bet on that.”

Art balled up the banana peel and tossed it into the wastebasket. “Two points.”

“Kareem’s still got a foot on you.”

“So, we have our source for the weapons. What about the other brother?”

Eddie handed one of the sheets to Art. “That’s Ernie’s history. This stuff wasn’t on his record because of some court decision, but the Chicago office had a file on him.”

That was strange. No major federal record, but the FBI office in Chicago had an
individual
file on Ernest Jackson.

“Guess.”

“Look, Ed, it’s late and I’m dreaming of chili dogs, so spill it.”

“Ernie has some affiliations that fill an interesting hole in this puzzle. He is a known member of El Rukn—remember them?”

“The street gang; the ones Qaddafi warmed up to.”

“Right. He warmed up real cozy to them. Before he ‘adopted’ them as his own American terror group, they were just a bunch of violent, racist street thugs. They only numbered about twenty at their peak. That whittled down to fifteen when things started getting serious with the Libyans.”

“I remember. He tried to ship some shoulder-fired SAMs to them.”

“SA-7 Grails. Russian-made. Two of them made it over from Qaddafi’s European contacts, but we intercepted both. They were planning to shoot down a big jet taking off from O’Hare. Can you imagine?”

“The airline industry would have loved that,” Art said, rightly. It would have scared off tens of thousands of travelers, some for good. TV would have played the carnage live.

“Lomax says Jackson’s a ‘passive’ active member of the gang, meaning they’re supposedly no longer in existence, but reality and prison scuttlebutt say otherwise.”

Art smiled his first true smile in days. It was one of satisfaction. “An honest-to-God family business. The pieces come together nicely.”

“I thought you’d be pleased.”

The plan, as it must have sounded to the Jacksons, came together in Art’s head. “First, we have a leak somewhere—probably in England—that lets on that there’s going to be a meeting between the F.M. and the president. We know that the F.M.’s good friend from World War Two is the manager of the Hilton, and that he always stays there when he’s on the West Coast. That wouldn’t be hard for someone to figure out and piece together. Next, someone in the terrorist infrastructure makes contact with Ernie. The resources would be well known to them, so the three brothers probably just fit into the plan by number and convenience.”

“Sure,” Eddie agreed. “Three bodies—anyone would do.”

“I’d bet this all started some time back. How long has Sammy been in uniform?”

Eddie checked the enlistment record. “Eighteen months.”

“See, Ernie gets him to enlist, and that puts him in close proximity to any weapon they’d need. It’d take some doing, but they were determined, so getting the stuff was possible. And final bro Marcus is already in L.A. That probably made the trio an attractive choice for whoever recruited them.”

Eddie’s head nodded exaggeratedly. “And with Ernie’s El Rukn contacts…”

The silence lasted but a second. “We knew it could have been international—now it looks like that’s for sure.”

“This thing has tentacles. Where’s it going to stop?”

Art thought about that. It could be right on the money, but there was a notable exception. “Every set of tentacles has at least one head. We’ve got to concern ourselves with the tentacles here. And its head: Marcus Jackson. He was the initial contact here—everything points to that. His brothers were just tools. As for who deals with the head… I’d say it goes back through El Rukn to the Middle East, probably Libya. I don’t want to get into that political crap. The director will want to know what we think, but our aim is here, and our targets are the Jacksons.”

“We have two of them under watch,” Eddie said, stacking the report square and neat with a few taps on the desk.

“What did you work out with Chicago?”

“Lomax is going to set up a team to move on Sammy when we give the word. The CO is aware, and he’ll keep it quiet. They’re also going to have Ernie segregated at Joliet.”

Something sparked a thought in Art’s mind. “You know, we still have to find Marcus.” He paused, looking down at the gray carpet. “Ed, why do you think they did it? From the gut?”

He thought that over. “None of them seem to have any real brains, which eliminates any ideological reasons. Ernie’s a tough, Sammy’s a weasel, and Marcus, he looks to me like part of the other two. Ernie’s up for parole in a year; his record inside is good, so he may get out. I say he’d want something to look forward to.”

“Money.” It was what Art had been thinking.

“Yep. Ernie sets this up after being recruited. There’s a money drop—I’d guess with Marcus—and he and Sammy take it and lie low until Ernie gets out.” Eddie caught an error in his analysis. “But then we’d be focusing on Ernie for sure. Once Marcus disappeared both of the others would be under the microscope.”

“True,” Art said. “But if they had any brains they’d have figured that much out. So, who has the perfect alibi of all of them?”

“Ernie.”

“Which means Sammy must be planning to hit the road,” Art proposed. “If Ernie was the head of all this he wouldn’t want his parole jeopardized. If Sammy was picked up he’d probably crack, if the profile of him is correct. That would screw Ernie.”

“You think he’ll run, then?”

“I would.” Art knew they would either have to pick Sammy up, or let him run and hope he would lead them to Marcus. He stopped in mid thought. There might be some possibilities in that. “Ed, do you think Sammy’s a little skittish?”

“Probably. Why?”

“When you’re nervous about something, where do you turn?”

Eddie’s face showed a Gestalt realization. “The familiar.”

“Exactly. Maybe we can stir young Sammy up a little.”

The framework of the plan formed over the next ten minutes. Soon thereafter it was passed over to the Chicago office, who would have the responsibility and pleasure of carrying it out.

Al-‘Adiyat

The sun had been up for nearly two hours. Muhadesh wiped the last of the water from his short hair and ran a hand over it, smoothing the thinning black strands flat. A shower immediately following his morning run always soothed his heated muscles. It also was a form of cleansing—and not of soil or sweat from his body. He stood under the steamy streams far beyond the time for mere bathing. There was more than that which was visible that he tried to rinse from his body. Still, it never seemed enough. By the end of the day he felt completely soiled.

He hung the towel on its hook near the door between his quarters and office. There was work to be done. Today, however, would have an agenda different from any other before.

Lieutenant Indar knocked and entered at the same instant, coming to attention a foot from his superior. “Sir! A message from Colonel Hajin.”

Muhadesh took the paper, eyeing Indar, whose stare was straight ahead and solid. He read the short dispatch to himself. “An attack by the Americans is expected. Well.”

Indar’s mouth opened slightly, his stare changing to almost human as it found his commander’s downcast eyes. “An attack, sir!”

“Do not get excited, Indar. Remember, attacks have come before. All this says is that we should prepare for any attack that might come. This is not a certainty.”

“But the Americans will surely attack us.” Indar’s unprofessionalism showed whenever passion or emotion entered his person.

This worm.
Muhadesh had things to do, and his lieutenant would be underfoot to…
Possibly…yes.
“Lieutenant,” he began, as if speaking in normal conversation, “I am charging you with preparing the camp to repel any attack.”

There was a wet sound from Indar’s mouth as a gulp of air was pulled rapidly into his lungs. “But…sir, did Colonel Hajin…”

“Indar!” Muhadesh’s voice boomed, matching his stance. He quickly calmed, perfect in the portrayal. “You will be in charge of the defenses. That is my order. Do you understand?”

Indar’s body went rigid again, looking to be at a very forced state of attention.

“Lieutenant.” Muhadesh put a hand on his aide’s elbow.
This terrifies you: real responsibility
. “This is a challenge for you. A real opportunity to use your skills of command and strategy, and I am confident that you will perform superbly.” The lie seemed to work, as the fear left Indar’s eyes and his chest stopped heaving.

“I will not fail you, sir.”

“Do not fail the Third. About your duties, Lieutenant.”

Indar gave his usual crisp salute as he left.

Muhadesh stood motionless for a full minute after his lieutenant left, just letting the coolness of the morning that invaded his office chill him. It awakened him fully.