War Shadows (Tier One Thrillers Book 2)
Page 32
“Lighting up the target,” Smith said, breathless from the tension and the accident he had just caused. His passenger rose head and shoulders out the SUV’s sunroof, lighting up the Infiniti with his handheld laser designator. “Target is lit!”
“Now, Reaper,” Jarvis barked. “Engage.”
There was no reply, but the triangle on the screen that represented the targeting system of the Reaper flashed. Fire streaked across the lower right side of the screen. A heartbeat later, the blue dot representing the Infiniti flickered and disappeared as the missile hit. The drone feed went gray as the pilot played peek-a-boo again, disappearing the drone back up into the clouds.
“Direct hit,” came Smith’s voice. “Target is . . . um . . . gone. Nothing left but a smoking hole and a couple of wheels. Nice shooting, Mother. No collateral damage from the strike to us or the minivan.”
Jarvis turned to Baldwin. “Get on the horn with the locals—police and FBI—and find someone to help manage this.” Then louder he added, “Bravo One, get the hell out of there.”
“Copy,” came Smith’s reply.
With Seattle safe, and no time to waste, he turned his attention to Dempsey’s feed. On the screen, he realized he was looking at Rafiq al-Mahajer walking through the Old Market in downtown Omaha, a suicide vest beneath his jacket and only moments from blowing himself up.
CHAPTER 45
Old Town Market
Omaha, Nebraska
Dempsey grabbed his partner’s arm and laughed loudly, shoving his mobile phone at the man with his left hand.
“Look at this, dude. I mean how drunk do you have to be to post this on Facebook?”
His right hand was reaching in his bag now, his fingers tickling the cool metal of the Sig 556 and the warmer composite plastic of the grip farther back.
Basher stopped walking and leaned over the screen for a look.
“Oh shit, bro!” Basher laughed, playing the part. “Dude, I know that girl. We used to date.”
Al-Mahajer’s eyes floated over them—then past them—not registering them as a threat. Then the terrorist crossed west to east directly in front of them, heading back toward Twelfth Street on Howard Street.
“We are one half block in trail,” came Hansen’s voice.
“Hold,” Dempsey said softly, then louder to Basher, “Are you serious, dude? No way.”
They let al-Mahajer disappear around the corner, and then they continued walking, crossing to the south side of Howard Street and stopping just past the corner, out of view. Dempsey pressed against the wall and counted to three. Then he stuck his face around the corner and pulled it back again, recalling what his eyes had seen. Al-Mahajer was crossing at the corner to head south on Twelfth Street.
“Wang, where is our secondary tango?” Dempsey whispered.
“One block south of you heading east—toward Twelfth Street.”
“Anything south, Three and Four?”
“Negative.”
Dempsey waited to see if Jarvis—call sign Mother—would chime in. He didn’t.
“Three and Four, move toward Twelfth and then slowly north. Head on a swivel. Whatever is happening is happening soon. Two, move a block south and get behind the secondary. We have the primary.”
Double-clicks from all three teams confirmed his orders.
Dempsey led and Basher followed swiftly down the south side of Howard and Twelfth Streets. He peered around the corner and then pulled back. Al-Mahajer was walking toward a makeshift stage on the east side of the cobblestone street where the first band was already warming up. Dempsey had seen signs plastered all over town for the music festival playing today through Sunday. The city had blocked off two blocks of Howard Street to vehicle traffic. A small crowd had already gathered around the stage, and the surrounding cafés and restaurants with outdoor seating were packed with patrons.
Dempsey knew exactly what al-Mahajer intended to do.
He pulled the zipper on the gym bag over his shoulder the rest of the way back and reached in and gripped his assault rifle, leaving it in the bag. Cries from bystanders would alert al-Mahajer, so he had to time the reveal perfectly. He sensed his partner fanning left, so he drifted right. Then, his stomach sank as the terrorist reached into his bag.
Fuck.
Al-Mahajer was definitely wearing a suicide vest beneath that barn jacket—one undoubtedly packed with ball bearings or washers that would fly shrapnel in all directions when he detonated, dealing death in a wide sphere. Dempsey performed a quick collateral assessment: the band, the crowd, and people dining at the two outdoor cafés behind the stage would be obliterated. With enough shrapnel and a powerful-enough charge, people across the street and even down the block would die as well. So, he couldn’t risk intentionally detonating this asshole under any circumstance, but knowing that didn’t solve the problem of how to prevent an unintentional detonation. If al-Mahajer was fingering a detonator inside that bag, a head shot now would save everyone. But if the terrorist was gripping a dead man’s switch, a head shot would kill dozens of innocents.
“I’ve lost tango two,” said Wang’s voice.
He had no time for that now. Hansen would have to unfuck that.
“Tango two went in the side entrance of a café. Pursuing,” came Hansen’s voice.
Al-Mahajer mounted the steps to the stage, his hand still in the bag. The lead singer of the bluegrass band stopped strumming his guitar and smiled awkwardly at their uninvited guest. Dempsey pulled his rifle from the bag and sighted, putting a floating holographic dot on the back of al-Mahajer’s head. No coin flips today, he told himself. He needed to see the terrorist’s hand: thumb on the button, it’s a dead man’s switch; thumb off the button, a detonator. Before he could take the shot, he needed to confirm the trigger mechanism.
Suddenly, an idea came to him.
“Allahu Akbar, Rafiq al-Mahajer,” he shouted, keeping the floating red reticle on the man’s head and his eye on the hand in the bag.
Al-Mahajer turned, looking furious rather than frightened. As he did, his hand came out of the bag—holding neither a dead man’s switch nor a detonator. Instead, Dempsey identified the object as a compact 9 mm fully automatic assault pistol.
The logic clicked in Dempsey’s mind: the bastard was going to mow down as many people as possible with his machine gun before blowing up those who tried to escape.
“A’salam, motherfucker,” Dempsey said and squeezed his trigger.
“Everyone down on the ground!” he heard Basher scream. “FBI—everyone get down!”
Dempsey watched with satisfaction as his 556 round went through al-Mahajer’s left eye and then exploded out the top of his head, taking with it bone, blood, brains, and a chunk of hairy scalp. The man’s arms flew outward, his left hand empty, the right squeezing the trigger of his assault pistol. A few rounds coughed from the gun into the crowd and then up and over Dempsey’s head.
Dempsey hit the deck and pressed himself to the ground.
People were screaming and scurrying now, some leaping over the fallen and others tripping on them. Instead of heeding Basher’s order to get down, the crowd’s reaction was to panic and run. Dempsey waited for the white light and the searing flash, but it never came. No body parts raining down on him. No blood in his eyes. He waited a slow three count. Then he looked left at Basher, who was also on the deck, looking at him, his head shielded beneath his arms. The man’s eyes were wide, but he managed a smile.
“Still glad you took the red pill?” Basher asked.
Dempsey tried to think of something clever but came up empty. He smirked instead and then pulled himself up to his knees. Then, he raised his rifle and scanned the fleeing crowd around him.
“Two, One, status on the secondary?”
“Lost him in the café,” came Hansen’s curt reply.
“Wang?”
“Nothing from above. I have the crowds to deal with. Easy to blend in. Especially if he changed his shirt or put on a hat.”
About half of the civilian bystanders had fled, but the rest were mostly clustered into a herd about thirty yards away from Dempsey and Basher. Others were standing in ones and twos taking pictures with their smartphones. Dempsey moved cautiously toward the stage, where al-Mahajer’s lifeless body lay leaking blood and other fluids.
Time to call Jarvis.
“Mother, this is Alpha One. Al-Mahajer is down.”
“Alpha One, Mother. Is he wearing a suicide vest?”
“Check.”
“But no dead man’s switch?”
“He didn’t go boom,” Dempsey said, staring at his fallen adversary. Then, with a queasy this-ain’t-over feeling in his stomach, he added, “But I need EOD here ASAP to disarm . . . just in case.”
CHAPTER 46
Zio’s Pizzeria
1109 Howard Street in the Old Market
Omaha, Nebraska
Rostami lost his tail by cutting through the Hyatt Place Hotel at Jackson and Twelfth Streets. He snagged a sports coat from a bellman’s cart and then slipped on sunglasses as he exited the lobby down the hall from the first-floor rooms. At the end of the hall, he exited to the alley that ran between the hotel and the building housing Zio’s Pizza and a seafood restaurant. He entered Zio’s via the side door marked EXIT ONLY and smiled at the couple at the table beside the door, nodding and saying, “Bonjour.” The couple, if they remembered anything about him at all, would remember the happy French Algerian who came in the wrong door. He moved to the main entrance, which faced Twelfth Street.
“Can I help you?” said the young woman at the hostess stand.
“Un moment, s’il vous plaȋt,” he said. He picked up a menu from beside her and perused it as if deciding. He turned his back to her, and looked out the window, just in time to see al-Mahajer sprint up the stairs onto the music stage.
Rostami smiled and backed away from the large window beside the glass door. When he saw the Syrian move his left hand into his coat, he would move back farther and hit the deck, though he might have to do so sooner if the ISIS zealot pointed the machine pistol in his direction.
The crowd started screaming, pushing at one another, but then a voice—a loud, booming voice—screamed something in Arabic from the corner to his left. He couldn’t see far enough around to identify the source.
Rostami moved backward, beyond the hostess stand where the young woman stood. He watched her walk toward the window, mouth open, oblivious to the fact she would soon be riddled with bullets and shrapnel. Rostami dropped to the floor, anticipating the onslaught. Then, a single gunshot rang out, not the burp of the machine pistol he expected to hear. He rose up enough to see al-Mahajer pitch over backward, his pistol firing haphazardly into the air. Several bullets struck the plate glass; the window exploded inward. The blast would come next. Rostami closed his eyes and pressed himself against the floor.
Seconds passed.
Nothing.
He opened his eyes.
Something was wrong.
He got to a knee and looked out the shattered window. Huddled on the floor beside him, the hostess was sobbing, but she was very much alive and intact. She cradled her left arm, trying to stem the bleeding from a laceration that looked to be from flying glass rather than a bullet.
And then Rostami saw him.
The devil himself, moving forward in a combat crouch, looking over a Sig Sauer 556 assault rifle. It was the same rifle. It was the same stance. It was the same fucking man from the tunnels beneath the UN—it had to be. This was the man who’d stalked him in Frankfurt, pursued him to Vienna, and thwarted him in New York. Because of this man, Masoud Modiri was dead, a loss Amir Modiri would never forgive him for.
The devil was waving his left arm and moving through the crowd.
Rostami reached for the pistol under his untucked shirt, rage in heart, intent on putting a bullet in the back of this devil’s head. But then he spied another man behind him, also in a combat crouch that marked him as Special Operations. But how could they have responded so quickly? How had the Americans found them unless . . .
Delilah.
If only he’d gutted the Suren bitch when he’d had the chance.
He left the pistol in his waistband. Allah only knew how many American counterterrorism operators were moving in disguise through the crowd. If he took the shot, they’d pursue him and he’d have no chance of escape.
“Oh my God!” said a restaurant patron, a young man in his twenties who stood beside him and began to film the chaos in the street with his mobile phone. The American devil was only yards from him now. Rostami raised his own phone and began to record. Motion to his right made him turn and he saw several more men, rifles at high ready, weaving through the rising tide of screaming people. Two-thirds of the people ran in all directions, but the other third, like him, stood gawking with cell phones raised above their heads.
Time to leave.
As he joined the panicked throng running north, he focused his phone camera on the American counterterror specialist with the Sig 556. The operator was talking—via a wireless radio system, he assumed—to his command and control. As Rostami passed, he filmed the operator’s face in profile, passing within three meters of him.
I have your face now, you cowboy motherfucker.
Then he looked away and slipped his phone back into his pocket. He scooped up a trampled blue baseball cap off the cobblestone street; it was embroidered in white with the letters KC. He pulled the ball cap down on his head and disappeared into the panicked crowd. As he fled the Old Market, he said a little prayer for the dead Syrian to explode and rid the world of the American devil once and for all.
CHAPTER 47
Georgia Aquarium Lobby
1304 Local / 1204 Omaha
Jacob Kemper smiled.
The past six months had been the hardest of his life, but today he was happy.
For the first time since his mom had dragged him to Atlanta, he saw the move for what it really was—a gift. By leaving Tampa behind, his mom had given him both the physical opportunity and the spiritual permission he needed to start over. He had a new house, a new school, a couple of new friends, and most importantly of all, a new perspective. He now realized that his dad’s death had not been the beginning of his downward spiral, but rather the hard landing at the bottom. He loved his dad, and he missed him, but during his parents’ two-year separation, Jake and his mom had been trapped in a Tier One purgatory—his dad unwilling to commit to them, but also unwilling to let them go. Now, they were free to live again.
“What do you wanna see first, bud?” his mom asked.
He smiled at her. She had started calling him bud about a week after they arrived in Atlanta. At first, it had pissed him off, because that had been Dad’s nickname for him. But once he realized that she was doing it subconsciously and not of her own volition, he actually kind of liked it.
“How about the Ocean Voyager thing,” he said. “I wanna see the scuba divers with the sharks.”
“Fine, but don’t get any bright ideas. Diving with sharks is completely off the table for you,” she said as she presented their admission passes to the ticket checker at the main entrance doors. “Never gonna happen, so don’t get your hopes up.”
Jake shook his head and rolled his eyes—the requisite response of a sixteen-year-old—but he laughed inside. It had practically taken an act of Congress to get her to agree to the scuba lessons. He didn’t dare tell her that the thought of diving next to a shark made him queasy. He liked that she saw him as someone fearless enough to actually dive with sharks.
Someone like Dad.
“We’ll see,” he said, mimicking her favorite line and throwing in a cocky half smile for good measure.
“Oh, we’ll see all right,” she fired back, laughing as they walked into the main entrance vestibule.
To thei
r immediate left, a bright orange information kiosk beckoned.
“How about I ask for directions?” she teased. “I know how you love it when I do that.”
“Don’t you dare,” he said, tugging her by the hand away from the kiosk and toward the Wall of Fish—the tunnel aquarium leading to the massive Atrium. From there, visitors could access all the exhibits, the gift shop, and a cluster of restaurants and snack shops.
They strolled through the tunnel, watching the permit and jacks zoom by, swimming in their endless underwater loop. As they exited into the Atrium, someone shoulder-checked Jake, hurriedly trying to squeeze by on his left.
“Hey, watch it, dude,” he said to the asshole’s back.
“Jake, come here,” his mom said. There was something in her voice that made him uneasy and he turned. She grabbed his wrist and pulled him toward her, her eyes on the dark-haired, dark-skinned man. A second man strode after the first and bore such a resemblance they easily could pass for brothers. Both appeared to be midtwenties and wore canvas barn jackets despite the warm fall day. The jackets, the hurried movements, and the way their heads swiveled nervously around in all directions—sizing up the crowd—made Jake’s inner voice scream with alarm.
Dad used to say—especially right after returning from a deployment, when his gaze still had that dark, faraway thing going on—to watch for certain traits in a crowd. These two guys were hitting all the marks. Suddenly, Jake found himself counting off the exits, scanning the Atrium for shelter, and trying to identify persons who could be of help. It was as if his dad were standing beside him, quizzing him on “the checklist.” Jake twisted his wrist free from his mom’s hand and stepped in front of her.
“I think we should leave,” she said, a trembling urgency in her voice, and he wondered if Dad had also quizzed her on how to spot trouble during their date nights in Tampa.