The Vengeance of the Tau (2 page)

Part One
The Dig

Alexandria, Virginia: Monday, two P.M.

Chapter 1

THE PRESIDENT’S LIMOUSINE
swung off Eighteenth Street and turned toward the entrance of the Crystal Gateway Marriott. Abu Al-Akir turned away from the television broadcasting the limousine’s arrival over CNN and brought the rifle back to his eye. Getting used to the heft of the Weatherby, the way it felt against his shoulder, was crucial. Since there had been no opportunity to test-fire the weapon, he would have to rely on feel and instinct to provide the mandated minute adjustments. He had killed many men in his time, but the kill he was going to attempt today was by far the most challenging. He would be firing a blind shot through a mezzanine window ten stories below at a target speaking in a room off the lobby yet another floor down.

Well, not quite blind …

The president would be addressing a crowd of chamber of commerce representatives from all over the country in the Marriott’s Lee Room. The only question now was whether the door to the room would be open or closed; his choice of bullets depended on what CNN showed him.

The sole bit of furniture in this twelfth-floor apartment that had been rented for him weeks before within Crystal Towers was a television perched upon a stand. It was set against the wall in a way that required him to turn his head only slightly to watch the screen. In a few minutes CNN would be carrying the president’s speech live. Al-Akir cringed at the memory of how the preliminary team had forgotten to have the apartment’s cable switched on, not realizing that the all-news network couldn’t be picked up otherwise. Al-Akir himself had uncovered the oversight and the activation had been completed only yesterday.

The remainder of the logistics had proven brilliant in every respect. The preliminary team had cut a hole in the bedroom window just large enough to accommodate the very tip of his sniper’s rifle. With the president’s guards concentrating their efforts inside and around the Marriott, there was no way they could possibly notice such a slight anomaly. Beyond that, it was extremely unlikely that anyone could have foreseen the type of shot Al-Akir was going to attempt.

He had practiced it a thousand times on a replica of these conditions with a twin of this Weatherby .460 Magnum, chosen for its legendary flat trajectory, which was a prime requisite today. Of course, precise weather could not be factored in, but today’s air was cool; low humidity and very little wind. In other words, perfect. He would be firing the bullet through the glass of a Marriott mezzanine window on a downward trajectory for the Lee Room and the president’s head, timed off with the help of the CNN broadcast five feet to his right. The logistics were stored in his memory. Minor alterations would be programmed into his computerlike mind. Both varieties of his custom-made bullets accounted for a pair of twelve-shot clips. Guided by the CNN picture, Al-Akir guessed he could squeeze off a minimum of seven and still avoid capture.

On the screen, the president was shown being ushered through the Marriott lobby for a speech that he was now fifteen minutes late for.

Al-Akir lowered his Weatherby back to the floor. He had picked up the rifle only that morning, the final safeguard of the plan. Al-Akir knew the Americans were looking for him, and one man in particular. The trick was never to wander into their, or especially
his,
grasp. Never surface to make a drop or a pickup. Everything was conducted through intermediaries, a long chain that, if broken, would mean the cessation of his mission. Al-Akir took chances, but very few risks.

Along with Abu Abbas and Abu Nidal, he was one of the world’s most wanted terrorists. While these others had grown fat living off their reputations, Al-Akir had stayed sharp, never straying from his deadly trade. The order to kill the American president came from high up in the movement, but it was only part of the reason why he was in the country. From here he would travel to San Francisco on the most crucial mission of his life. The Arab people were about to seize their own destiny. The means were at last at hand. The death of the president would mark Day One in a new and fateful calendar.

Al-Akir turned his attention back to the television. He had already turned the volume off so that it would not distract him. Seconds later he watched the president enter the Lee Room and shake an army of hands en route to the lectern. He took his place behind it and waited for the applause to die down. Al-Akir waited for CNN to cut to a camera angle that included the door.

Initially he had been worried that the bullet’s path would be distorted by the thick glass of the mezzanine’s window, not to mention the inch and a half of wood forming the Lee Room door. As difficult as it appeared, though, Al-Akir had managed it in practice on a replica ninety-two of his last hundred attempts
on the first try.

On the television screen, CNN had cut to a side angle of the president that pictured a pair of Secret Service agents standing in the
open
doorway of the Lee Room.

Al-Akir reached into his pocket for the proper clip: it contained long-grain platinum tips, instead of the full metal jackets he would have needed for better penetration. He snapped the magazine home, returned the rifle to his shoulder, and pushed his eye against the sight. The night before, another of the team members had marked the precise spot he was shooting for on the Marriott’s mezzanine glass with a marker visible only to the kind of infrared sight he was using. It resembled the variety devised for night shooting.

The assassin turned his head ever so slightly toward the television picture. The president was standing directly behind the lectern, and Al-Akir adjusted his rifle accordingly. Once he fired, he would turn instantly back to the television to guide his next shots if they were necessary. If not, he would be gone from the area before the Crystal Towers were even sealed off. His primary escape route actually would take him through the huge underground shopping mall that began beneath the Marriott. He had learned long ago that escape was best managed by fleeing
toward
the point of attack where the chaos was greatest. “Follow the bullet” was the common way of putting it.

Al-Akir pawed the trigger. There was no reason to wait any longer. He slowed his breathing by taking several large breaths, then exhaled slowly and deeply, his right eye cocked toward the television set.

The president was smiling. He had just made a joke.

Al-Akir returned to the sight and pulled the trigger between heartbeats.

His last thought was that the recoil was greater than it should have been—far greater indeed, since the entire weapon had exploded with the pulling of the trigger. The blast shattered the weapon’s stock and turned the splinters into deadly projectiles rocketing backward. Al-Akir’s head was sliced jaggedly off at the neck and, thanks to the angle it had been cocked at, it slammed into the television screen that he had been watching just an instant before. The glass shattered in a spiderweb pattern. Al-Akir’s head bounced once on the floor and came to a halt still staring at the remnants of the screen.

Fazil was right on schedule. The escape route Al-Akir had worked out was intricate, and his was the first and most important step. The car was hidden in the garage halfway down this alley in the Anacostia section of Washington, and Fazil arrived at the exact time Al-Akir had specified.

He checked his watch. By now the president of the United States would be dead. The greatest holy war of all time would have begun.

Of course, if all Al-Akir needed was a vehicle, Fazil’s presence would be superfluous; he had a much more important role to play at this point. Fearing capture, Al-Akir had given him an envelope, with specific instructions where to take it if he did not arrive as planned. Fazil had no idea what the envelope contained; he knew only that the means to continue the holy war were inside.

Fazil entered the alley with the envelope tucked in his pocket. The alley at first glance looked deserted.

“A hundred bottles of beer on the wall, a hundred bottles of beer …”

At the sound of the slurred voice, Fazil’s spine tensed. His hand dipped for the pistol wedged in his belt. The homeless were everywhere in this part of Washington, which accounted for Al-Akir’s choosing it.

“You take one down, pass it around, ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall …”

The bearded bum sat on the stoop of a long-abandoned building the garage had once been a part of.

“Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of—” The bum suddenly noticed Fazil. “Hey, ’the fuck you doing in my alley?”

Fazil was reassured by the man’s beery voice. He reached for his knife. No need for the gun with this one.

“Hey,” the bum said, the knife out and swooping down.
“Hey!”

Fazil drove the blade forward. But the bum was gone, just air in the spot where he had been. Fazil saw the blur of a shape whirl before him, and suddenly his wrist wasn’t his own anymore. His frame followed it sideways and then over, as the bones snapped with a grinding
whap!
Fazil gasped and tried to cry out, but a steellike hand slammed into his throat and choked off his breath.

“Been a long time, Fazil,” Blaine McCracken said.

Twelve years before, McCracken had been working with the British Special Air Service when a plane was commandeered at Heathrow Airport. The bureaucracy had taken hold, and a hundred and fifty passengers had ended up losing their lives. To show his displeasure, Blaine had gone promptly to Parliament Square and machine-gunned the groin area of Churchill’s statue there. The incident had earned him the now infamous nickname “McCrackenballs” and a banishment from the intelligence community. Subsequent investigations conducted over the years, though, had revealed that the perpetrator of the Heathrow hijacking was none other than Abu Al-Akir, whom McCracken had been pursuing off and on ever since. So when word reached him that the terrorist assassin was in-country, Blaine went right to work.

The calling in of countless favors and grilling of a number of Arab informants revealed the monstrous scope of Al-Akir’s mission. Ultimately, Blaine was able to tap into the killer’s network. But this meant little, since Al-Akir was never anywhere long enough to be caught. No one ever saw him. If they waited around, he wouldn’t show up. He always worked alone.

From his inside sources, McCracken learned the drop point for Al-Akir’s rifle and ammunition. If he had merely intercepted and retrieved them, however, the terrorist would have disappeared once again. Blaine calculated that, all things considered, this would be the best chance he would ever get to dispose of Al-Akir once and for all. And once he devised the technological specifics of the plan, McCracken was certain that the president would never be at risk. Pretty simple stuff actually. Inlay some plastic explosives through the rifle’s butt and stock and then rig all of the bullets in both clips, on the chance Al-Akir reordered them, to backfire.

Word of Al-Akir’s demise had reached him only minutes before Fazil’s arrival in the alley. It was time to finish this chapter of his life once and for all. Johnny Wareagle was always saying life was a circle. Well, maybe this proved it.

“McCracken!” the terrorist uttered, struggling feebly. His eyes darted toward the head of the alley.

“Al-Akir’s not coming,” McCracken said. He had tousled his close-trimmed beard and oiled his wavy hair to better look the part of a wino. The scar through his left eyebrow caused by a bullet’s graze twenty years before further added to the disguise. “You helped him with Heathrow, Fazil. It’s only fair you join him now. In hell.”

The terrorist gasped again as Blaine readied the quick twist that would snap his neck.

“Wait,” Fazil managed to utter.

“Sorry. No can do.” But he had let up the pressure.

“I want to deal!”

“You have nothing to deal with.”

“No! Please!
Listen!
”

Fazil grabbed as much breath as he could. McCracken’s hold had slackened enough for him to peer backward. He looked into Blaine’s eyes and nothing but black looked back; the whites of them appeared to have been swallowed. McCracken’s complexion was ruddy. His beard showed some gray, but Fazil didn’t know if this was part of his disguise or not.

“In my jacket pocket, there’s an envelope,” he continued.

“So?”

“Inside it is something to do with the most crucial element of the holy war.”

“Which has been going on futilely for two thousand years.”

“It is different this time: we have found it.”

“Found what?” Blaine asked, curiosity getting the better of him.

“A gift from Allah—that is what Al-Akir called it. A force that will allow us to destroy our enemies at last. A force that makes whoever holds it invincible.”

Force …

The word stuck in Blaine’s head. Not a weapon.

A force …

He spun Fazil around and slammed him against the building. The terrorist’s one-hundred-and-eighty-pound frame was like a playtoy in McCracken’s hands. He was still pleading when Blaine yanked the envelope from his pocket.