Jihad (29 page)

Penney frowned, then went to find a phone.

ASAD HEARD A hum in his ears, the sound of a loud motor idling. People were moving around him, but they were shadows of people, indistinct blurs. He pushed to get up but he could not.

He struggled to focus his eyes. Finally one of the blurs congealed into the face of an old man hovering above his.

“Can you hear me?” asked the man.

“Yes,” said Asad.

“You seem to have fainted. Can you tell me what happened?”

“I passed out.” Asad’s instincts said that he must escape.

“Did you have heart palpitations? Pains?”

“Pains? Maybe.”

“Are you on medication?”

“I want to leave.”

He pushed to get up. This time, someone helped him—a large man with blond hair standing next to him.

What had happened to Kenan?

“I was with a friend,” said Asad. “Is he here?”

“We can check for you.”

“I’ll check myself,” said Asad.

“You’re still too weak,” said another man, stepping forward. He was a young black man, obviously a doctor.

“No, I can go.”

“Mr. Rahman, I’m Dr. Penney,” said the man. “You may have a heart condition. There are a series of tests we can do, all quite painless, that can determine exactly what the problem is.”

He started to slide off the table. The large blond man grabbed him. Asad braced himself for a struggle, then realized that the man was helping him to his feet.

RAMIL FELT JACKSON’S light touch on his back, a signal to stay back, to keep his face turned away and out of sight. Asad had not seen him, and there was no sense blowing it now.

Do it! He is an enemy to the faith and must be destroyed.

The knife was out of reach, but there was a pair of scissors on the table nearby.

“Are you sure you want to leave? I can’t stress how serious this may be,” Penney said to Asad, helping him toward the hall.

Do it!

Whether it was the word of God or some internal conscience, it was speaking the truth—Asad was a demon, a threat to all. He must be destroyed.

But it was too late. The al-Qaeda leader was gone.

Realizing his hand was wet, Ramil looked down at his fist. He’d squeezed the scissors so tightly that he’d cut a gash in his forefinger, and blood was dripping onto the floor. He dropped the scissors with a shudder, then went to wash his hand in the nearby sink.

CHAPTER 90

“THE CAR is registered to a seventy-year-old in Almont, Michigan,” Rockman told Dean. “It’s not reported stolen. Ambassador Jackson will send someone over there to see what they can find out.”

“What about Kenan?”

“The FBI people are trailing him,” said Rockman. “By the way, that must be some sort of fake name. Doesn’t exist in Detroit. We’re just finished another run of his face through an ID matching program for a Michigan license. No match.”

“He said he was a student at Upper Michigan,” Dean said.

“Yeah, we’re working on that. He doesn’t exist, and neither does the program he claimed to be in. We ran first names, last names, all sorts of variations. He draws a total blank so far.”

Rockman only meant that the name was probably an alias, but for Dean, the comment summed up his take on the kid: a blank looking for something to fill him up. What a waste.

“The FBI people will stay with him,” Rockman added. “You and Tommy remain in the background from here on out.”

“When are we pulling Asad in?”

“Not my department. All right. They’re leaving the clinic. Stay with them until they settle down, all right?”

Kenan drove Asad to a motel outside the city and got a room for the night. The one-story motel’s rooms opened onto a sidewalk in front of the parking lot; Dean had no trouble placing video bugs to cover the room and building front and back. When he was done, Rockman told him that the backup surveillance team was in place, and Dean went up the road to find a place to eat. His best choice seemed to be McDonald’s; he was halfway through a quarter-pounder when Karr came in a short time later.

“About time you found a good restaurant,” said Karr. He plopped down across from him. “Real high-class place our friend is staying in. I heard it got three stars in the Terrorist
Guide.
” Karr pointed at his french fries. “You eating all of those?”

“Help yourself.”

“How long before we bring him in?”

“Maybe pretty soon. The kid who’s with Asad was on the phone confirming a flight out at the airport tomorrow morning.” Karr finished Dean’s fries. “Going to New Orleans, then on to Phoenix. They’re tracking the credit card and that stuff now. No word on the other people at the meeting.”

“How’d Ramil look?”

“The doc?” Karr laughed. “Shaved and dyed his hair. Hardly recognized him.”

“He had a panic attack in Istanbul.”

“Really? Seemed pretty cool when I saw him. You want anything? Your fries got me hungry.”

“No, thanks.” Dean got up. “I’m going to go check on the surveillance team.”

“Suit yourself,” said Karr. “But those guys got to pay for their own food.”

THE TWO FBI agents tasked to watch the motel were parked in an unmarked car that practically shouted POLICE; it had spotlights under the mirrors, big brake lights on the rear deck, and a set of aerials off the bumper so large they’d need red warning lights if the car drove within ten miles of an airport. They were in a lot diagonally across the street from the motel. While they weren’t visible from the small window at the front of the unit, it wouldn’t take much for someone to spot them.

Dean rapped on the side window twice before the occupants lowered it.

“Guys, your car is a little too obvious,” he told them. “We have to do something about it.”

“This is the car we got,” said the man in the passenger seat.

“Yeah, I can see that. So will our friends. One of you come with me. You can take one of our rentals, and I’ll get this out of here.”

“Charlie, your friend Kenan is moving,” said Rockman.

Dean, unsure exactly how much information about Desk Three’s technology the immigration people had been given, pulled his cell phone from his pocket and started talking to the runner. “Where’s he going?”

“He’s going shopping. He said he’d be back in an hour or two. One of the FBI teams is going to stay with him. We’ll have them stay pretty far back.”

“You need these guys here for a backup?”

“Other team should be able to handle it.”

“All right.” Dean leaned back into the car and told them that Kenan was coming out. “I’ll be down the street.”

“We can handle it,” snapped the man in the passenger seat, raising the window.

There was a deli nearby; Dean went in and got himself a coffee, then went back to his car. Flipping through the radio he heard an old Hank Williams song and settled back to listen.

Just then, a police cruiser came down the street. Dean sat up, watching as it pulled into the motel lot and stopped in front of Asad’s room.

“Damn,” yelled Dean, grabbing for the car door.

CHAPTER 91

ASAD HEARD THE call to prayers far in the distance, the eloquent reminder of his faith waking him. He shook off his slumber and started to push himself off the bed, determined to make his devotions to God. As he did, he realized that he wasn’t alone in the room, and that he hadn’t heard the call to prayers at all—that had come from a dream, or a snatch of memory. Three men were coming through the door. They had guns.

The room exploded with light. Asad thought of his trip to Medina two years before, the glory he experienced when he understood the full meaning of the words that had been spoken to the Prophet:
You are a mercy to all creation of the world.

Then Asad thought of nothing and felt nothing, and experienced nothing more of this world.

CHAPTER 92

THE SHOTS SOUNDED as Dean bolted across the highway. He jumped up the embankment from the road, sprinting between the parked cars as the two fake policemen came out of the room.

“Federal agent!” he yelled, dropping to his knee. He braced the Beretta in his hands.

One of the men spotted him and raised his arm to fire. Dean squeezed off two shots, striking the man in the jaw and temple. His companion threw himself back into the room.

“Get the backup people in—Red Lion is down!” Dean yelled to Rockman, as if the runner would only be able to hear him if he shouted. Dean scrambled to the front wall of the building, half crawling as he made his way toward the door. The man he had shot lay a few feet away, sprawled on the pavement, blackish red blood pooling around him.

There was a siren in the distance. The two FBI agents who’d been watching from the car had taken positions a short distance away, their faces ashen.

“Give yourself up!” Dean yelled to the man inside.

The answer was a muffled gunshot.

Dean rose slowly, knowing exactly what the sound meant.

CHAPTER 93

RUBENS LISTENED IMPASSIVELY as Telach told him what had happened. Asad’s death was bad enough, but in the confusion that had followed, the FBI agents who’d been trailing Kenan had lost the youth somewhere in northern Detroit after he had abandoned his car.

“Since he was coming back, we told them not to get too close,” said Telach. “It really wasn’t their fault. We’ve given the local police a description of him, saying a witness saw him at the motel right before the shooting. They’re scouring the city,” she added.

“No doubt,” said Rubens dryly. “We have an ID?”

“No.”

“Asad’s murderers?”

“So far, no IDs. The shooting only took place an hour ago. The police car was stolen from the police garage. It’s likely that whoever killed Asad had contacts on the force, or at least there. The uniforms weren’t legitimate, but they were close, about what you could get at a good costume shop.”

Rubens rose from his desk. Desk Three’s powers might be prodigious, but they were not omniscient, and until now they had proceeded carefully for fear of tipping off Asad or his accomplices. Rubens was confident that Kenan, or whatever his real name was, would eventually be IDed, but the delay was frustrating. The same went for the killers. A trail would be found, tracing the men back to whoever had ordered the murder. Inexorably, the murder plot would be revealed.

The problem was, that wouldn’t necessarily help them determine where Asad had been planning to attack.

“Dean’s taking it pretty hard,” said Telach.

“Understandable.”

“It wasn’t his fault.”

“I didn’t imply it was, Marie.” Rubens walked over to the middle of his small office, rubbing his temples with his fingers.

“The FBI people want to arrest the head of the mosque,” Telach told him. “What do you think?”

“I think that it is unlikely to yield any useful information.”

The Art Room supervisor frowned.

“I will raise the issue with the National Security Advisor,” Rubens said. “As well as Homeland Security. However, technically, the case will be under their jurisdiction.”

“Should I pull Dean and Tommy in? I don’t think they’ll be of much use in Detroit. Ambassador Jackson can work with the police. He and Dr. Ramil are going to retrieve the bug as soon as possible.”

“Have Mr. Dean stay in Detroit to see if he can help locate the young man. Send Tommy—have him take the flight the young man was interested in,” said Rubens. “Have him fly armed, as an air marshal.”

“You don’t think Asad was thinking of hijacking it, do you?”

“At this point, Marie, I’m afraid I have no theories at all.”

CHAPTER 94

THE SCENT OF the disinfectant stung Ramil’s nose and sinuses as he walked with Jackson and the pathologist down the hallway toward the morgue. His eyes felt as if they were being squeezed, and he could already taste the dry heave that waited at the pit of his stomach.

As a medical student, Ramil had worked on or seen literally hundreds of cadavers; he had also served a very short stint with a military morgue when the unit was understaffed. But plunging among the dead always unsettled him. Damage to a living body was one thing; even in the most desperate situation he could focus on the mechanics of the parts, know precisely what must be done, even if in realistic terms it could never succeed. Coming into a morgue was different. It was the enemy’s empire, and entering meant admitting impotence and worthlessness beyond measure.

In this case, the corpse he was to view would rebuke him even more strongly, for it was evidence not only of his limitations as a doctor, but of his failure as a man and as a Muslim. Asad lay dead, but not by his hand; Allah had found another more worthy to purge the sinner.

“I’ve only been in a morgue once,” Ambassador Jackson told their guide.

“I would say once is usually enough for most people,” replied the pathologist. He had the light, ironic chuckle common to his profession.

The NSA had arranged for Asad to be taken here, a breach of normal protocol that would allow for the removal of the bug without prying eyes or embarrassing records. The body had not yet been identified—it would never be, Ramil suspected—and their host referred to it as John Doe 347. It lay on a table almost exactly in the center of a room large enough to hold perhaps another twenty or thirty gurneys. Ramil, his eyes glued to the floor, noted that there was a large drain a few feet away.

A rack with gowns stood near a sink at the far end of the room; the three men dressed quietly, though this was probably unnecessary. Ramil washed his hands, fastidiously scrubbing as if he were going into regular surgery. The cut on his finger he had made earlier with the scissors became a white bead at the center of a thick red line.

Hands dry, Ramil worked the latex gloves down between the grooves of his fingers, snugging them tight. Then he joined the others at the head of the steel table. The dead man stared at the ceiling, his face marked with astonishment.

The assassins had shot Asad in the chest, not only making Ramil’s job easier, but avoiding any conflicts between it and the forensic investigation.