Repairman Jack [10]-Harbingers (18 page)

"Sorry about the smog," Jack said with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "My sister won't let us smoke in her place."

She said nothing as she locked her door and hurried past them to the stairs.

Jack crossed 5C off his mental list.

Halfway through cigarette number six, with Jack's tongue taking on a funky feel, his TracFone vibrated. He pulled it out and checked the readout: Abe.

Must be important. Abe usually left voice mail unless he had something that couldn't wait.

"Gotta take this."

Why not? He wouldn't say anything meaningful to anyone else.

Zeklos shrugged.

"Hey, Abe. What's up?"

"Just heard from my Balkan associate. Tuesday's the day."

"So soon?"

"Why wait? You want I should put him off? May be a while before he can line up all these ducks."

"No, I guess not." The day after tomorrow. Scary. "Tell him to expect me."

"Your first leg starts at six a.m. The location of the dock slip I'll give you later. The reason I'm calling is you'd better make plans to fly out tomorrow so you can be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Tuesday morning."

"Okay, Abe. I'm a little tied up today."

"On a Sunday you work? You should be resting for your trip."

"Bye, Abe."

As Jack cut the connection, a swarthy type with a close-cropped beard stepped out of 5A. Jack gave him a careful once-over. The guy wore a snug blue nylon warm-up. No telltale bulge of a loaded vest.

He closed his door and glared at them.

"You are not to be smoking out here," he said with a thick accent.

Jack decided on a more New York response than he'd offered the waitress.

"What's it to you, pussy face?"

The guy flinched as if he'd been slapped, but quickly recovered.

"You could start a fire."

Yeah, he thought. Bet you're extra worried about a fire.

"Yo, Achmed, I'll start a fire in your ass you don't shut up and get outta my sight real quick."

The guy's lips tightened but he said nothing. Instead he double-locked his door and stomped down the stairs.

"Hey," Jack said, nudging Zeklos. "What say we order some takeout?"

Had to be careful what he said because his words would echo down the stairs.

Zeklos caught on immediately. "Of course. Pizza would be very good at this time."

Jack dialed Davis's number.

"Yo, Angelo's? Need a large pie to go."

"What?" Davis said. "Jack?"

"Yeah. Pie to go. You deaf?"

"I assume you're telling me someone's coming down."

"You got it."

"We'll be ready."

"Okay. And don't lose my order."

Jack flipped his phone closed and stared at the door to 5A.

Zeklos whispered, "We should go in?"

Jack thought about that. "Let's wait a little. Maybe someone else will show."

9

After twenty minutes of nothing but thinking about his impending trip to the Balkans he decided the time had come to give the door a try.

He signaled Zeklos to draw his weapon and crouch to one side of the door. Glock ready, Jack crouched opposite him and knocked.

No response.

He knocked again. Harder.

Nothing.

One more time: "Hello? Falafel-gram!"

Had to be empty. Who could resist that?

He pulled on a pair of thin leather gloves. Time for the autopick.

The two Yales yielded quickly. Now what?

Zeklos raised his eyebrows. "Booby trap?"

Jack shrugged. Made sense: Blow up their explosives if the wrong person found them. But would the door be boobied, or just the explosives inside?

Jack thought back to the bearded guy as he'd come through the door. He hadn't been particularly careful as he'd shut it. He'd even jiggled the knob after keying the locks. A good sign, but it didn't mean a whole helluva lot.

Had to risk it. The stakes were too high.

He waved Zeklos away. "Get back by the stairs. I'm going to peek inside."

Zeklos shook his head. "No. You get by stairs. You are Heir."

No time to argue about it. Jack turned the knob and eased the door in a fraction of an inch, then another, and another…

Finally it opened enough to allow a sliver-view of a ratty couch. A little further and he saw the whole couch, then the window. He stepped to the side and gave the door a gentle push. It swung in on creaky hinges, revealing an empty front room.

Jack signaled to Zeklos and they both went in low, pistols before them. Two bedrooms to the left—empty.

Except for pizza boxes, burger wrappers, and scattered papers, the damn apartment was empty. No sign of explosives, no primers or timers.
Nada
.

Jack prayed they were in the wrong place.

He positioned himself before the window and looked out. He saw the north edge of the Verrazano to the left, the drape cornice of the brick building across the street, just as the Oculus had described. But no plastique-stuffed vests.

Zeklos pointed to the side wall. "Look at this."

The scrawl had registered with Jack as he'd entered but he'd had other things on his mind. He checked it out now.

Giant-size Arabic script had been scribbled with a black Sharpie. It meant nothing to Jack.

"You read that gibberish?"

Zeklos shook his head. "I have enough trouble with English."

Jack pawed through the debris looking for diagrams, photos, timetables, a list of names, a computer, anything that would provide a hint of whatever they'd planned. But these weren't amateurs. They knew better. Keep it in your head.

But Jack kept rummaging. Wouldn't feel right if he blew off any possibility.

He came across a pair of calendars—last year's and this. He flipped through the first and found occasional time numerals combined with Arabic scrawl. Probably meeting times. No help there. In the later one the January page had a few notations in the first two weeks, then a blacked-out box.

The fourteenth.

And no notations after that.

Jesus!

"Tomorrow's the day! Got to be. They're out there with their vests and their car bombs right now."

Made sense. Monday morning rush hours were the worst of the week. If you wanted to wreak maximum panic and damage, that was the time to do it.

Shit.

Jack thumbed the recall button on his phone. Davis answered.

"That guy who left here," Jack said. "Tell me you're still on him!"

"Better than that. We've got him—as in Miller's standing here with his foot on his neck."

"He wearing a vest?"

"No. What's the problem?"

"The apartment's empty."

"That's okay. He led us to the stash. You wouldn't believe what they've got here."

He gave Jack an address on Richmond Terrace in Staten Island.

10

"Guy didn't have a clue he was being followed," Davis was saying. "No decoy maneuvers, nothing. Led us a straight shot over the bridge to here. Even unlocked it for us." He gestured around him. "You believe this?"

Jack didn't want to believe what he was looking at.

He and Zeklos had headed for the island as soon as they found a cab. Something about the Richmond Terrace address rang a bell, and then Jack remembered that one of last year's more interesting customers had a business there.

Richmond Terrace ran along Staten Island's north shore. A heady mixture of brine and fumes filled the air. At its southernmost end it started off scenic and well kept, with waterfront promenades and views of the Manhattan skyline. But it rapidly deteriorated from there, devolving into junkyards and chop shops and plumbing supply warehouses sprinkled among the piers and dry docks. Between the tugboats and through the forest of cargo cranes along the waterfront, the northern stretches offered a breathtaking view of Bayonne's tank farms just a short hop across the river.

A truly desolate stretch of road—overgrown fences, rotting wharves, graffiti-scarred buildings, potholed pavement—a place where small businesses come to die.

Jack's instincts had told him it might not be a good idea to have the address logged in the cab's record, so he'd told the driver he didn't have an address and to cruise Richmond Terrace until they saw the place they were looking for. When they'd passed the address—a self-storage cubicle farm—he let the cab drive on until they reached Sal's Salvage, Inc. They'd got out there and walked back.

North Shore Self Storage occupied a waterfront plot that used to be a dry dock—some of the docks and bays still remained. After finding the yeniçeri-mobile in the parking lot, he and Zeklos had searched around until they spotted Davis standing in front of one of the units. He'd rolled up the corrugated steel door to let them in, then rolled it three-quarters down after them.

Jack instinctively reached to remove his new sunglasses and realized he didn't have to. They'd adjusted to the lower light.

He stared at the four black, fifty-five-gallon drums arrayed on the concrete slab, then turned to Davis.

"Tell me they're not full of—"

Davis nodded. "Yeah. Semtex A."

Zeklos gasped. "
Dumnezeule
!"

Jack didn't know what that meant, but it probably echoed his own shock. His gaze wandered to the bound-and-gagged figure on the floor. Miller stood over him.

"What do we know about him?"

Davis shrugged. "His license says he's Shabbir Something-or-other at the address where you spotted him. But who knows if that's legit."

Probably as legit as Jack's license.

"Why the gag?"

Not as if the guy was going to yell for help.

Miller said, "Couldn't stand listening to any more of his Allah bullshit."

Allah…

Jack knelt and ripped the duct tape from the guy's face, taking a fair amount of beard with it.

"Hey! Shabbir! You with Wrath of Allah?"

He spat at Jack. "I am a soldier of God! I am of the Omar Sheikh Martyr Brigade!"

"Never heard of it."

Davis said, "Omar Sheikh is the animal who beheaded Daniel Pearl on videotape. The Pakistanis sentenced him to hang for it, but they haven't got around to it yet."

Jack stared at Shabbir. "How can he be a martyr if he's not dead?"

"The traitors are offering him up to appease America!"

Jack shook him. "Forget that. Wrath of Allah—the ones who gunned down those people at LaGuardia. What do you know about them?"

"They too are soldiers of God! They are heroes!"

Jack remembered the litter of dead he'd seen around the baggage carousel—remembered one death in particular—and wanted to throttle this piece of crap. With no little difficulty he resisted the impulse and jammed the duct tape back over his mouth.

"What do we do now?" Zeklos said.

"We?" Miller shook his head. "There is no 'we' as far as you're concerned. Just me and Davis."

"Don't forget Jack," Davis said.

A glare was Miller's only reply.

"I don't know about you guys," Jack said, "but I think the best course is to tape him up, take off, and call the feds."

Miller sneered. "Yeah, right. So they can take him to the Gitmo Country Day School and give him a special diet and a Koran and a cleric and an ACLU asshole to hold his hand. You know how I'd handle these guys—the few who somehow survived? They'd get a cinderblock box smaller than this, no window, and a hole in the floor. And special diet? They'd get a special diet: Every day I'd whip them up bacon for breakfast, sausage for lunch, and pork chops for dinner—no substitutions, please. Eat or starve."

"You wouldn't get any argument from me," Davis said. "But we're not at Gitmo and this guy obviously isn't working alone. The feds can use him to find the rest of his posse."

"We don't need to find his posse." Miller waved his arms at the drums. "We've got their toys, and without their toys they can't play."

Jack said, "The Oculus saw them stuffing vests with plastique."

Davis pointed to the corner. "They're over there. Six of them packed full, salted with one-inch wood screws and ready to go. But that's small-time stuff. Take a look at this."

He led Jack to the nearest drum and lifted its lid. Jack looked inside. He saw reddish gunk up to the three-quarter level. A cell phone lay on top. A wire ran from the phone into the gunk.

Jack felt a jolt of alarm as he leaned over the rim. He knew that wire led to a detonator or two.

"I hope to hell that phone is turned off."

"It is. Every barrel's rigged like this. And don't worry, I made sure all the phones are off."