THE WAVE: A John Decker Thriller (13 page)

“And then what, Yuri?” El Aqrab said. “You will come tumbling down. Control will fall back to the Labor party, the liberals, the weak. And we wouldn’t want that, would we?” said El Aqrab. “When it rains, the water seller goes hungry. We have a common interest, after all, Yuri, a common enemy. It is called pity and forgiveness. It is called hope and reasonableness. Today it is embodied in the PLO’s Abu Mazen. But tomorrow . . . ” He laughed. “What you need is something to make the Americans veer away from peace. Something abominable. Something that will make what happened to the World Trade Towers seem like the work of children. Soon, Yuri. Soon, you will be forced to let me go. In a few days, not much more. Less than a week. You’ll see. Then all will be revealed.”

Friday, January 28
– 8:38 AM

The blast blossomed like a fiery rose, clawed at the sky, and ripped the rear door of the railway car completely off its hinges. A moment later, as the smoke cleared, two objects sailed into the opening. There was a dull click as they hit the deck in unison, an agonizing moment – like the space between two frames within a motion picture – and the grenades exploded.

Gulzhan waited for a few more seconds before he leapt into the breach, his Kalashnikov nestled in his arms. His eyes pierced the gloomy darkness. The car was deathly still. Of the three guards, two were ragged heaps, and the other lay motionless, blood streaming from his nose and ears.

Gulzhan smiled. He motioned to his men and they began to clear the rear car of debris. Gulzhan reached into his jacket, removed a compass, and took a careful reading. When he had marked off the direction, he plucked his prayer rug from the pack that Uhud carried on his back. He spread it out across the floor. Then, grabbing a pair of crates, he began to build a makeshift
minbar
.

Uhud and the other men wired the railway car with explosives. Gulzhan watched them as they worked. Uhud moved like a dancer, lithely, with none of the mechanical precision with which the others went about their tasks. He bent over like a river reed, like a willow in the wind, picked up the charges and mounted them carefully around the base of the four walls, following the directions on the diagram in his hand. Uhud was a pleasure to watch. He always had been.

In a few minutes, Gulzhan had finished stacking up the crates. He climbed up on the second highest step, turned toward his men, and said, “In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Ever Merciful, all that we are about to do we do in Your name.” Then he quoted from the Qur’an, saying, “‘Oh ye who believe, equitable retribution in the matter of the slain is prescribed for you: exact it from the freeman if he is the offender, from the slave if he is the offender, from the woman if she is the offender.’”

He paused and looked at the men about him. They stood in rapt attention. Even Uhud the Beautiful was captivated by his words. Gulzhan continued, saying, “‘Allah has the Power; Allah is Most Forgiving, Ever Merciful. Allah does not forbid you to be kind and to act equitably towards those who have not fought you because of your religion, and who have not driven you forth from your homes. Surely, Allah loves those who are equitable. Allah only forbids you that you make friends with those who have fought against you because of your religion, and have driven you out of your homes and have aided others in driving you out. Whoso makes friends with them, those are the transgressors.’”

With that, Gulzhan descended from the pulpit. He smiled at Uhud, looked about the car, at the way the charges were laid out, the punctilious contour of the lines, when he glimpsed something out of the corner of his eye. He turned. The wounded soldier stirred. He inched his hand along the deck, his fingers clenched about his weapon. He was aiming it at Uhud’s back.

Without a moment’s pause, Gulzhan pulled out his knife – curved as a scimitar – and brought it down across the soldier’s neck. The severed head flew like a soccer ball across the car, spinning and spurting blood. It came to rest at Uhud’s feet. The men jumped back. Uhud raised his gun and fired into the bodies of the remaining soldiers. They jumped and rattled. They bounced in the hail of bullets as if they’d been electrocuted. Then, everything was still. Smoke lingered in the air.

Uhud looked up at Gulzhan. His eyes were wide, charged with emotion. Gulzhan just smiled and knelt down on his rug. He began to pray. Uhud stepped back. He looked down at the headless, bullet-ridden soldier. He kicked him once, with uncompromising violence, between the legs. Then he moved quickly to the rear of the car and signaled to his men to follow.

Set in a corner of the railway car was a large metallic container. Two of the men lifted the cover with difficulty. Uhud pulled out a pair of heavy leather gloves from his satchel and slipped them on. When they had removed the top of the container, one of the men handed Uhud a shiny metal cylinder, pipe-like, with a machined lid made to screw down tightly to create a seal. Uhud took off the lid. Then, with painstaking concentration, he reached into the kiln-like container with a ladle and began to remove the powdered material. Little by little, he filled the cylinder. When he was finished, he screwed the lid back on the tube and gave it to the man beside him. They handed him another cylinder, identical to the last. Once again, he reached into the container and began to fill the second cylinder. It took him only a few minutes to complete the job. He screwed the metal top back onto the tube, tightening it carefully. Then he turned toward Gulzhan, saying, “It is done.”

Gulzhan looked up from his prayers. His eyes were dreamy, distant. “Allah is merciful,” he said, rolling to his feet. Uhud handed him the second cylinder. Gulzhan stared at it for a moment, turning it in his hands, and then stuffed it into his vest. He looked at his watch. They were precisely on time and this filled him with both satisfaction and pride. He smiled at his men. The operation was going like clockwork. He loved this feeling. Nothing could compare: No money; no woman; no house; no food. Nothing. This was what he lived for, when the world hummed perfectly, when everything he’d dreamed of finally came to pass. In an imperfect world, this was the closest thing to heaven. “You have done well,” he said and his men puffed up with pride. Gulzhan was parsimonious with praise. Those four simple words meant more to them than their lives. He had seen to that. He had worked hard to make it so. “It is time,” he said and leapt from the rear of the train.

Uhud followed him with the rest of the men. When they had gone about fifty yards down the tracks, one of the guerrillas erected a video camera on a tripod. The remainder of the men took up their positions in the rocks. In only a few minutes, everything was ready. Gulzhan gave the signal at exactly 9:00 AM, Uhud hit the switch on the transmitter, and the railway car disintegrated in a wave of light, strange pirouettes of fire, bright Arabic calligraphy and illuminated scrolls of flame. It was all being captured on tape, Gulzhan knew. Digitally imprisoned. El Aqrab would be proud.

As the smoke cleared, Gulzhan and Uhud came together, hugging like father and son. “Be careful,” Gulzhan said. “I’m sure you must be tired after your journey.”

“You worry too much. You’re like an old woman,” Uhud replied. “Everything’s as it should be.”

Gulzhan nodded. He stared at his lieutenant. He patted him gently on the shoulder. “As it should be. You’re right,” said Gulzhan. Then, without another word, he started back along the path to where they had parked the trucks.

Gulzhan climbed up into the nearest MB-814. Two of his men got in beside him. He watched as Uhud and the rest of the guerrillas mounted the second truck, another battered Mercedes Benz. “Wait,” said Gulzhan. “You have the tape?”

The man beside him nodded, patting his jacket.

Uhud’s truck began to crawl along the narrow track that paralleled the snowy pass. Gulzhan watched it gradually recede. “‘Lord, Thou dost comprehend all things in Thy mercy and knowledge,’” he prayed, ‘“so grant Thy forgiveness to those who repent and follow Thy way, and safeguard them against the punishments of hell.’”
Then he turned and looked out the window. He stared at the snowy ground, the whiteness of it all, the crystalline perfection. “Allah, forgive me,” he said.

* * *

Uhud’s truck made its way along the circuitous road down toward the Caspian Sea. As it neared the town of Zhetybay, across an open plain, an armored car materialized from behind a stand of boulders and crashed against the old Mercedes-Benz. Uhud felt his face smash up against the windshield. A moment later, as the truck careened into a ditch, he glimpsed the soldiers in the fields around him. He pulled at the handle but the door was jammed. And then the truck tipped over and the earth rushed up to meet him.

When he awoke, Uhud was lying on the ground a dozen meters from the truck. Soldiers were streaming over the tipped MB-814, like ants around an anthill. He started to rise but someone held him down. He could taste blood in his mouth. Somehow, this reassured him. If he could taste blood, it meant he was still alive. He looked about the plain. His comrades were heaped together in a nearby ditch. Their faces were gone but he recognized them from their clothes. A great shout rose up above the ringing in his ears. The soldiers on the truck began to jump about. And then a solitary figure stood atop the cab, waving an object in his hand. It was the cylinder. Uhud could see it glinting in the sun. Suddenly a wave of nausea overcame him and Uhud threw up across his legs and thighs. Somebody laughed. He looked up. A Colonel stood above him. He was smiling. He reached down and pulled him to his feet. It was only then that Uhud realized he was bound. His hands were lashed together, behind his back. The Colonel said something. Uhud felt himself pushed roughly from behind. He started forward, stumbling. But he didn’t fall. They had not bound his feet, he realized. He looked down. He could see himself walking. He could see the way each foot moved, one before the other.

The Colonel herded him along the road. When they had reached the boulders, the Colonel kicked him and Uhud went down, onto his knees. He could not see the truck anymore. It was behind the boulders. He could not see the soldiers either. He looked up and the sun stared down at him. His face felt warm and wet. The Colonel was talking. Uhud could see that now. He was talking into some kind of field phone with a long antenna. He was saying something but the words were indistinct. Uhud couldn’t make them out above the ringing in his ears. The ringing in his ears. It would not go away. And then he saw the Colonel reach down for the handgun on his hip. He pulled it out. He aimed it at Uhud’s face. He smiled. He had a black mustache and coal black eyes. He was a handsome man. He held the phone out in his other hand.

“What?” said Uhud.

The Colonel kept on smiling. He pressed the gun to Uhud’s face. He brought the field phone closer. The ringing was unbearably loud. The Colonel mumbled something.

“What? I cannot hear you. What do you want me to say?”

And then the Colonel laughed and mouthed the word, “Goodbye.”

* * *

Gulzhan hung up his satellite phone. He looked out through the windshield at the deserted stretch of road. It seemed to unroll indefinitely across the open plain. “Uhud is dead,” he said.

The two men beside him in the cab did not respond. He could feel their bodies tense up for a second but the truck didn’t veer a centimeter from its path, didn’t slow or pick up speed. The old Mercedes-Benz moved on relentlessly.

Gulzhan closed his eyes. With Uhud’s team captured, they only had eight kilograms of Highly Enriched Uranium left – just shy of the “significant quantity” threshold as defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Yet enough to make a nuclear device with a one-plus kiloton yield. A very respectable bomb. El Aqrab was wise.

Friday, January 28 – 2:34 PM

It had been a long, frustrating day. Decker had gone out with Williams, Kazinski and Warhaftig just after sunrise to interview drivers at the Imperial Taxi Company in Queens. Although generally thankless duty, Decker had had to almost beg Kazinski to let him tag along. Another pair of watchers had been assigned to the squat in Long Island City. He was available, Decker had told them. And his language skills might prove useful.

Truth was, it was meant to be a day off for Decker; he had a number of vacation days stacked up. In fact, he should have taken some time off during his transfer from Chicago to New York, but the days had somehow been misplaced, along with his favorite Nikes and that T-shirt from Key West, like so many other things in the move from Illinois. Johnson insisted Decker take his vacation time immediately – standard practice whenever a partner died. On the other hand, the SAC had shuttled down to Washington, D.C. that morning. He wouldn’t be back until the following day. Decker just wanted to help out, he told Kazinski. He just wanted to be part of the team, to be of service. He could take his vacation any time.

In the end, Williams and Warhaftig had felt sorry for him and – over Kazinski’s protests and better judgment – let Decker come along. And it was a good thing too. The drivers were already suspicious. Many of them had been interviewed by the authorities before and they knew what to expect. They sat in the back office, looking churlish, drinking cold coffee, trying hard not to understand English.

After about twenty minutes of watching Kazinski stumble through one interrogation after another, Decker got up and left the room. What was the point? He didn’t know how Williams and Warhaftig could put up with it. Each time he tried to interject, to translate some tidbit he thought might prove important, Kazinski shut him down. He might as well not have come.

Decker moved out into the main garage, sat down on a bench, and began to examine the pool. About a dozen or so men were sitting or standing about, smoking cigarettes, checking their cars, punching out. There appeared to be a new shift coming in. It didn’t matter where you were – from corporate boardroom to high school cafeteria – the same set of characters always seemed to map out each new territory, in exactly the same way. There was always a dominant male, the Alpha wolf, usually a tough but not altogether large man, in some corner, flanked by a large enforcer. Around him stood intelligence, a few omega wolves, and on the outside, the snitch, the connection to the other groups and individuals who spun about the social solar system. In this case, the snitch wore blue jeans and a cowboy shirt. He had a swarthy round face, friendly eyes and a soft rather petulant mouth.