The Patrick Bowers Files - 05 - The Queen (44 page)

“Rejects it.” Now Abdul Razzaq Muhammad's tone had turned cold and spiteful, and Terry could hear the man's venomous hatred for Jews coming through loud and clear. “There is no greater calling than spreading the will of God to those who would scorn it or mock it or fight against it! Allahu Akbar!”

The rhetoric didn't impress Terry, nor did the reasoning persuade him. As far as he was concerned, Islam was a religion of violence and totalitarianism. How else could you explain the deafening silence of the majority of its adherents to the daily suicide bomb attacks against civilians that their fellow Muslims carried out? How else could you make sense of the international outrage, protests, and deadly riots when someone drew a caricature of Muhammad or threatened to burn a Qur'an?

Even to Terry Manoji, for a religious person to place books and cartoons above human life was unfathomable. Sharia law? That wasn't surrender to God; that was fascism.

But as long as he got his money, as long as he got his freedom, Terry didn't care about their warped reasoning or their sophomoric and fustian ways of justifying violence in the name of religion.

And then, there was the matter of Israel's response. Over the last few years, Israel had not been at all shy about their right to preemptively attack Iran if they thought Iran had nuclear weapons.

And of course, if there was a nuclear missile heading straight for the heart of Jerusalem, Israeli leaders would not hold cabinet meetings and forums, they would assume it was fired from the country that had repeatedly threatened their very existence.

Iran.

Even if the US claimed the missile had been fired by hackers or terrorists, Israel would presume who was responsible.

And they would retaliate.

Terry could only imagine how much damage they would do to that country in the eleven minutes between the time the
Louisiana
's missile was fired and when it actually struck the heart of their capital.

It would certainly be a memorable day, that much was for sure.

“It's a deal,” Terry had said simply.

Now, with less than 150 minutes left before the ignition sequence would begin, Terry said to Abdul, “All right. You told me the consequences if I don't deliver what I promised, now I'm going to tell you the consequences if you don't.”

“And what are those, my friend?” Abdul's voice did not sound friendly.

“Jerusalem will not be the only city lying in ruins. Mecca will become one giant crater and Allah will welcome 1.7 million more ‘martyrs' home. Do we have a clear understanding here?”

“Yes, Mr. Manoji. It is quite clear indeed.”

Solstice was pleased.

The hydraulic lines that powered the lift in the concrete shaft had been disabled. All was set. The base was secure. No one would be coming down to interrupt them.

Although Equator had identified increasing chatter on JWICS about US nuclear subs, nothing specifically related to her mission or the ELF station had come up, which, given the obvious FBI interest in the site, did surprise Solstice a bit.

Since taking over the base, her team had carefully and strategically placed nearly half of the TATP ordnance, leaving, of course, one of the tunnels free of explosives so that no one would be trapped down here when they detonated.

Well, that's what they thought, but in reality only one person was going to be leaving this base. Solstice had decided it would just be too inconvenient leaving any survivors to tell the story or to point the finger in her direction.

“Finish with the TATP,” she said into her handheld radio. “And then I want Cane, Gale, and Squall back down here so we can film that video.”

7:24 p.m.

1 hour 36 minutes until the transmission

The murder videos were viscerally disturbing.

When you watch things like this, knowing that they really happened, that the images weren't created by computer graphics or by using special effects, it's terrifying and unnerving.

I'd been at it for over an hour, but I knew that tonight I wouldn't have time to watch all the videos in their entirety, so I played some parts but fast-forwarded through others. I recognized each of the victims' faces from the cases I'd worked over the years as I'd tracked Basque—either while I was a detective in Milwaukee or during the last six months when he reemerged and started right where he'd left off, torturing, slaughtering, eating.

Basque was visible in all of the videos, doing his work on the women. Occasionally, I could hear slight laughter from the person filming the crimes, but interestingly enough, Basque's partner never appeared on screen. The only indication that it might have been Reiser was the fact that we'd found the videos in his trailer home.

But that, of course, was merely circumstantial.

Reiser's lungs were gone when they found him this week.

Gone.

Basque only abducted women.

Careful, Pat. As far as you know, Basque only abducted women.

My ringing phone interrupted my thoughts, and I received word from Angela that the Defense Department had approved raising the threat level on our fleet of nuclear subs. “I can't find Director Wellington,” she told me. “She must have left for the day and she's not answering her cell. But I sent an official expedited request through to the Pentagon for the schematics.”

“How long will that take?”

“They assured me you would have them as soon as possible.”

I cursed under my breath, hiding my frustration from Angela. I wanted a time frame—like maybe five minutes ago.

“I know, Pat,” she said, reading my silence. “Believe me, I made sure they know how urgent it is.”

“All right. Keep me posted.”

Shortly after I hung up, Tait updated me that his officers had found nothing at the cabin, the Schoenberg Inn, or any of the residences or buildings in the area I'd suggested they focus their search; neither had Alexei shared any information or made his one phone call. To make matters worse, when I contacted Antón Torres for an update, he told me his SWAT team had gotten caught behind a truck accident on Highway 8 that shut down the road. Antón figured they were still at least two hours out.

I went back to the Reiser case. Bypassing the videos for now, I spent some time studying his residential history and comparing it to the locations of the crimes. I realized that, while he could have traveled to commit the murders and follow the news stories, the locations didn't overlap like I would have expected.

Reiser was killed Tuesday night . . .

DNA from two missing people was found on his knife—a man from Milwaukee, a woman from DC . . .

Clippings were found from the
Rockford Register Star
newspaper . . .

The facts revolved, spiraled through my mind, but I was mentally exhausted and couldn't seem to sort them out. I rubbed my head, stood, and stretched my back.

I hadn't noticed before, but now I overheard Lien-hua and Amber talking in the living room, and I found myself being thankful, since the more understanding there was between those two women, the better off everything between me and Lien-hua was going to be—at least that's what I hoped.

Sean was outside, shoveling the driveway so that we'd have our vehicles available in case we needed to get out of here. Earlier when he was getting his boots, I'd suggested he snowblow it, but he told me he didn't own a snowblower, and then added in no uncertain terms, “Three things real men don't do: they don't tweet, they don't wear Velcro shoes, and they don't snowblow their driveways.”

Nope. No arguing with that.

As far as I knew, Tessa was still downstairs reading.

I tapped my spacebar and saw the frozen image of Basque, scalpel in hand, leaning over a dying woman in Monona, Wisconsin, and decided I needed a break from this, even if just for a few minutes.

It occurred to me that with so many things in play all day long, I hadn't really had much of a chance to talk with Tessa, and, to put it mildly, our short conversation at the motel before I went to meet Chekov hadn't ended especially well. I had a feeling things were only going to get more complicated from here on out tonight, and I might not even be around the house, especially if we located Kayla, so if I were going to get any chance to connect with my stepdaughter, now was the time to do it.

Besides, I still had the pills Amber had given me to pass along to her. I hadn't yet come up with a good way of broaching the topic of Tessa's undisclosed prescription—honestly, I hadn't thought about it at all in the last hour—but regardless, it was something I needed to at least address.

Going downstairs, I found her lounging on the couch, rereading Richard Brautigan's
Revenge of the Lawn
, a book she'd described to me once as “an underground, anti-establishment creative nonfiction classic.” She looked like she was really into it.

“Hey,” I said.

She looked up. “Hey.”

“How's the book?”

“Sick.”

“Sick.”

“Yes.”

“Isn't that supposed to mean gross?”

“It's a versatile word.”

“Now it means, what, cool?”

“Sure. It's like stupid. If I say, ‘That was just
stupid
,' it means it was awesome, righteous, wicked.”

I looked at her curiously. “But if you say, ‘That's stupid—'”

“I mean it's stupid.”

“Oh. So, stupid means brilliant and sick means sweet.”

“Pretty much.”

“That's stupid.”

A tiny smile. “Now you're catching on.”

Tessa set down the book.

She was totally curious about what had gone down last night between Patrick, Amber, and Lien-hua, and she wanted quite badly to ask him about it but wasn't exactly sure how to bridge into the topic.

Patrick took a seat on a footstool across the room from her. “Are you still mad about earlier today, at the motel when I had to leave?”

“Naw. It's all good.”

“So the winter session class at U of M, that was, what, kind of stupid—in the stupid sense of the word?”

“Yeah. But it was nice to see some of the spots Mom used to visit. Dad too.”

Ask him about Amber.

No, start with Sean.

The lights in the house flicked off then on, and a moment later Amber's voice floated down from the top of the stairs. “Sean? We should really bring in some more firewood, in case the electricity goes out.”

“He's still shoveling,” Patrick called up to her. “But I can get some for you.” Then he made eye contact with Tessa, and she realized that was probably not a good sign. “Tessa and I will get some.”

“Seriously?” she said unenthusiastically.

“Seriously. Come on.”

A few minutes later she was dressed for the weather and meeting him outside the patio door. He was wearing his snazzy new camo jacket. “Promise me you'll leave that here when we go back to Denver,” she said.

“Deal.”

He clicked on his flashlight, and they started trudging through the driving snow toward the woodshed.

After a few steps she said, “Patrick, what was it? Whatever happened between you and Sean?”

“What do you mean?”

“Something happened. It's always there, between you two. A wall. Was it an argument or something?”

He didn't answer right away. “It wasn't an argument.”

“What then?”

“Life,” he answered vaguely. “Schedules, work. His family and my career. Hey, I was really hoping we could talk about—”

“That's weak.”

“Weak?”

“Every family has that stuff. You either choose to stay close through it all or you don't.”

For a few moments he walked in silence through the night, holding his flashlight steady against the weather. “I guess we never did.”

“So you're saying
you
never did, or that
you both
never did?”