The Archangel Project

by C. S. Graham

  Matt grunted. “We managed to get into Fitzgerald’s computer. The password was his boys’ names: benrichard. Right there on his desktop was a file called the Archangel Project.”

  “So what’s in it?”

  “Unfortunately, it’s encrypted and we haven’t been able to break it yet. But there are some subfiles that aren’t encrypted, stuff that looks like it was imported from someplace else. E-mails and shit.”

  “And?”

  “There’s a list called ‘Jamaat Noor Allah.’ I’m told that means the Light of God, by the way. It contains the names of six Middle Eastern men. Tourak Rahmadad…Samir Haddad…any of this ring a bell?”

  “No.”

  “We’ve been in contact with immigration. I’m sending you their files and visa photos. One of them is Lebanese but the rest are Iranian.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “I didn’t think you would. There’s also a flight itinerary. Our boy Fitzgerald flew into New Orleans yesterday morning. But this is kinda weird. He was scheduled to fly out of Baton Rouge early on June seventh. That’s tomorrow.”

  “I don’t understand,” said October, when Jax gave her Matt’s report. “Why would he be scheduled to fly out of Baton Rouge?”

  “Because if someone blows up the Vice President tonight, the first thing they’ll do is close the New Orleans airport.” Jax opened his laptop. The files from Matt were already starting to come through. “Here come the photos. Maybe you’ll recognize one of them.”

  She moved to stand behind him, and the screen instantly froze.

  “Damn it,” Jax swore, hitting the keys. “What the hell happened?”

  She picked up her Nordstrom bag and headed toward the back of the jet. “I’m going to shower and change,” she said.

  Jax watched her walk away. Her skirt was short and flippy enough that it swirled around her toned thighs as she maneuvered into the plane’s bathroom and shut the door. Then he glanced back down at his laptop. And it was the strangest thing. As soon as she moved away from him, the computer unfroze.

  64

  New Orleans: 6 June 5:55 P.M. Central time

  A light drizzle was falling when the Gulfstream touched down at the Lakefront Airport. The day was overcast and sultry, the light flat and dull with the promise of more rain.

  “What time is it?” October asked as they taxied toward the terminal.

  Jax glanced at his watch. “Almost six. The reception starts in five minutes, but T. J. Beckham’s not supposed to put in an appearance until seven.”

  “This last trip is gonna cost you extra, podna,” said Bubba, bringing the plane to a halt. “I had a job down in Guadalajara I’m missing. We’re talking five thousand an hour.”

  “Bubba,” said Jax, unlatching the door. “We’re trying to save the world here and you’re talking about profit margins and overheads?”

  “Hey, I’m a patriot. But I’m also a businessman. You see Halliburton and Keefe donating their services to the war effort? No.”

  “Oh? So you’re going over to the dark side now, are you?”

  “What are you talking about, dark side? Hold on there.” Bubba unbuckled his seat belt and whipped off his earphones. “I’m coming with you.”

  Jax swung around to look back at him. “You’re what?”

  “Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m just protecting my investment. You get yourself killed, I’m never going to collect.”

  The Monte Carlo was still parked where Jax had left it. He’d expected it to have attracted the attention of the local constabulary, since the back window was shot out and it had a few other stray bullet holes. But he guessed that was asking too much of the NOPD’s post-Katrina force.

  “I’ll drive,” said Bubba, lifting the keys from Jax’s hand. “The last time I rode with you, you almost got me killed.”

  Jax laughed. “No I didn’t.”

  “You did.” Bubba eased his enormous frame behind the Monte Carlo’s wheel. “So. How do I get there?”

  “Turn left here, then head for the interstate,” said October. She glanced back at Jax, who’d taken the rear seat. “I read someplace that they now regularly jam cell phones in an area where the president or the vice president is making an appearance.”

  “They do,” said Jax.

  “So how are they going to detonate this bomb?”

  “They probably have an infrared sensor set up. Something that can receive a coded message from a transmitter rigged to a timer. You can jam an electronic frequency, but you can’t jam light.”

  “Or they could be using a suicide bomber,” said Bubba.

  “I can’t see some mercenary for GTS volunteering to blow himself up for the good of the company.”

  “No,” said Bubba. “But what about the ragheads in those visa applications Matt sent you? Where you think they fit in all this?”

  October twisted sideways in the seat to face him. “Tell me, Bubba: do you call Jews ‘kikes’?”

  He glanced over at her warily. “No. What you think I am? A neo-Nazi or something?”

  “Do you call blacks ‘niggers’?”

  “No. My mama raised me better’n that.”

  “Then why did you just call those men ragheads?”

  “Because they attacked us on 9/11. They—”

  “No, they didn’t. Nineteen young men did, and they’re dead. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be held responsible for every sin committed by every American living or dead.”

  “Jax?” said Bubba, meeting Jax’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “Help me out here, podna.”

  Jax grinned. “Sorry, Bubba, but you stepped in that one.”

  “He does have a point, though,” said October. “GTS could have set up the assassination, then tricked one of those students into believing he was a martyr to a higher cause. I have a friend named Gunner who swears something like that happened on 9/11.”

  “The problem with that theory,” said Jax, “is that no suicide bomber would ever get past the security at the door.”

  “So why did Paul Fitzgerald have that list of Middle Eastern men on his computer?”

  “They’re patsies. The ones who have been set up to take the fall.”

  “But why do they need patsies? You remember what Samira Gazsi said. The Armageddon Plan calls for an attack on Iran even if they’re not linked to the next terrorist attack.”

  Jax shook his head. “That might have worked a few years ago. But things have changed. Iraq changed them. The American people have been lied to too many times and they’re starting to get wary. It’s easy to stir them up by talking about fighting to defend freedom and democracy, but they’re not stupid. They see the national debt shooting into the stratosphere. They see young men and women coming home in body bags and wheelchairs from a useless war that has nothing to do with freedom or democracy, and everything to do with politics and oil and big profits for the defense industry. They’re not going to go tripping down that primrose path so easily a second time. They’re going to want to see proof.”

  “So the young Iranians have been set up to be the new version of yellow cake and WMD,” said October.

  “Exactly. Even if there’s no link between the Iranian students and the Iranian government, people in this country will be too scared to be thinking straight. I suspect the Administration would find it easy to make the case for another war.”

  Bubba swept onto the interstate. “I don’t want to rain on y’all’s parade, but how you planning on getting into this reception? It’s not a public event. I heard on the radio comin’ in here that they’ve got the streets blocked off out front. There’s some group of protesters that are pissed off because they’re making them hold their rally a good block away.”

  “Gunner,” said October, sitting forward.

  Jax looked over at her. “What?”

  “Gunner Eriksson. He’s a friend of mine. No one holds a protest rally in New Orleans without Gunner’s PA system.” She turned towa
rd him. “Let me use your phone.”

  Jax handed it over. She started to flip it open, then paused. “What if they’ve tapped Gunner’s line?”

  Jax met her worried gaze. “At this point, that’s a risk you’re just going to have to take.”

  65

  “Hey, Gunner,” said Tobie, when he answered his phone. “It’s me.

  “Tobie? Jesus. You okay? The police have your picture splattered all over the place.”

  “I’m okay. Where are you?”

  He had to shout to be heard over the noise of traffic in the background. “We’re set up at Lee Circle. They’re not letting us get any closer.”

  “Listen, Gunner. You remember our conspiracy theory? Well, believe me, it’s bigger than we imagined. Much bigger. I need to get into this reception at the World War II Museum. How can I do that?”

  “Jeez. That’s not going to be easy. It’s not open to the public. Just Medal of Honor winners and a few select guests. One of our supporters has a cousin in the mayor’s office and managed to get a couple of guest passes we thought we might use to sneak a few people inside. I’d let you use those but she said she’d meet us here at the Circle and she hasn’t shown up yet.”

  “What time do you expect her to get there?”

  “She was supposed to be here half an hour ago.”

  They came down off the interstate at the St. Charles exit. Mist clung to rooftops and the spreading branches of half-dead crepe myrtles dripping with old Mardi Gras beads. This part of the avenue had seen better days, the grand houses that once stood there having long ago been torn down and replaced by rows of dreary office buildings.

  “Now where?” said Bubba.

  “Left.”

  They swept under the interstate, past parking lots dark and sodden from a recent rain. Lee Circle stood just on the other side of the freeway, a broad circular mound planted with grass, dwarf yaupons, and wildly blooming pink rosebushes. In its center rose a sixty-foot column of white marble crowned at the top by a statue of Robert E. Lee.

  The Circle had been on a downhill slide even before Katrina. Now most of its ugly 1950s-era buildings stood empty and boarded up. Of all the graceful old homes that had once fronted the green, only one remained, a decrepit pink turreted house at the corner that had been turned into a bar.

  “There,” she said, pointing to the small group of protestors in rain slickers who’d gathered on the right side of the mound. From here they could look up Andrew Higgins Drive, past the red stone towers of the old Confederate museum, to the concrete and glass ware-houselike bulk of the World War II Museum. There, a different kind of crowd had gathered, men in suits and women in jewel-toned silks and aging veterans in mothballed uniforms. The reception might be limited to Medal of Honor winners and select guests, but the guest list must be mighty long, Tobie thought. The streets in all directions were lined with parked cars.

  Bubba pulled in close to the Circle’s curb, the white pickup behind him honking as he stopped traffic. “It ain’t gonna be easy to find someplace to park in this mess. I’ll meet y’all outside the museum.”

  Tobie looked at her watch. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Bubba. We don’t find that bomb, this whole area could blow.”

  “You don’t find that bomb,” said Bubba, “and I’m never going to get paid.”

  She found Gunner fiddling with his PA system. He’d had to run an extension cord from the Circle Bar across the street to the steps in front of the statue, and the connection didn’t seem to be working very well.

  He flung up his hands when he saw her. “Oh, God; stay back, Tobie. You come any closer and I’ll never get this thing to work.”

  “What’s he mean by that?” Jax Alexander asked, giving her a hard look.

  “I don’t know,” she lied as she stopped and let Gunner walk up to them.

  “Leila got here a few minutes ago,” he said, reaching under his rain slicker to pull out two gray cards embossed with the D-Day Museum emblem and encased in plastic sleeves suspended from black neck bands.

  “Thank you, Gunner.” She hung one of the black bands around her neck and handed the other to Jax. “What exactly are you protesting, anyway?”

  Gunner pointed at the damp white banner they’d stretched across the base of Robert E. Lee’s column. From the size and shape of the cloth, she thought it might once have been someone’s bed sheet before it was donated to the cause and stenciled in big black letters: MAKE LEVEES NOT WAR.

  Lance Palmer had cast a final look around the museum’s cavernous lobby and was heading for the exit when he got a call from one of his operatives.

  “We just intercepted a conversation between the Guinness woman and that guy named Gunner Eriksson,” said the operative. “She’s on her way to the museum now.”

  “We’ll pick her up,” said Lance with a smile. He snapped his phone closed and nodded to Hadley. “We just got lucky.”

  66

  Lance Palmer kept one hand inside his jacket, the handle of his small .380 Sig Sauer cool against his palm as he and Hadley worked their way through the press of sweating journalists and gawking tourists hoping for a glimpse of the Veep or maybe one of the Hollywood celebrities who were expected to put in an appearance.

  The street in front of the museum had been closed to vehicular traffic, but they were letting pedestrians past the barricades. Only a scraggly bunch of unpatriotic lowlifes with a silly rain-drenched banner and a PA system that didn’t work had been banished up a block to Lee’s Circle. Which was a pity, Lance thought; he’d like them to have had a front row seat for the show that was about to take place.

  “How much time we got?” Hadley asked, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the crowd. “We don’t want to be standing here when that sucker blows.”

  Lance glanced at his watch. “Twenty minutes.”

  “There she is,” said Lance, his gaze focusing on a small woman in a pale pink sundress, with a guest pass slung around her neck. He studied the lean dude in chinos and a black polo shirt beside her. “And there’s the sonofabitch who’s been causing us so much trouble.”

  Hadley grunted. “How’d they figure it out, I wonder?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It does if they told someone.”

  “If they did, it doesn’t look like anyone believed them,” said Lance as they cut through the press of onlookers. “I don’t see the cavalry.”

  There was still a crowd of latecomers bunched at the door, held up by the bottleneck of security and metal detectors and X-ray machines. “You take the girl,” said Lance, moving into position. “The asshole is mine.”

  Lance shoved his .380 into the small of Jax Alexander’s back just as Hayden’s fist closed around the girl’s upper arm. “Put your hands in your pockets and keep them there,” Lance said softly, leaning in close to Alexander’s ear. “Your hands come out of your pockets and you’re dead. It’s that simple.”

  They walked down a street of painted old brick warehouses, through moist air heavy with the smell of wet pavement and machine oil. Tobie could hear the steady drone of traffic from the interstate that curled away toward their right and the rattling vibration of a helicopter hovering unseen somewhere in the distance.

  She threw a quick glance at the man who held her, his fingers digging hard into the flesh of her bare left arm. He wasn’t looking at her, and she had a pretty good idea why. She wanted to say something, but her mouth puckered with a bitter taste like old pennies and she knew there was nothing she could say that was going to change what was about to happen.

  “This way,” he said, jerking her around the corner into a street with brick gutters and a massive yellow Dumpster and construction crane that blocked the road, effectively turning it into a dead end. The warehouse beside them loomed some three stories tall, red brick framing old glass windows that showed wavy reflections of the day’s fading flat light. They were maybe a quarter of the way down the block when Palmer said, “That’ll do.”

&nbs
p; They paused beside an ancient portico of columns and an entrance door obscured by heavy bolted iron gates. “If you know who I am,” said Jax, his hands still carefully kept in his pockets, “then you know that every last detail of this little project of yours has been turned over to the CIA and the FBI.”

  Lance Palmer laughed softly. “Right. That’s why they’ve got every bomb squad in the South crawling all over the place even as we speak. You see, I know all about remote viewing. And I know why every intel agency in the country got out of the business more than a decade ago. Because a guy sitting in a darkened room ‘seeing’ things in some unexplained corner of his mind doesn’t produce verifiable information. There’s a difference between accurate and verifiable.”

  “Maybe. But the pieces are there. An idiot could put them together.”

  “Only an idiot would try. If you expect me to be scared, I’m not.”

  Tobie shifted her weight slowly, carefully, her heart pounding so hard the blood surged painfully in her ears. No one was paying any attention as she slipped her right hand into her bag. She felt for the smooth handle of the Glock and found it, her finger curling around the trigger.

  It was awkward aiming through the bag’s canvas side, her elbow crooked out clumsily. She pointed the muzzle blindly at Lance Palmer’s chest and squeezed off two rounds—pop pop—the air filling with the stench of cordite and burned canvas.

  Both rounds hit, blooming red across the man’s white shirt. His body jerked once, twice, his eyes widening in surprise and a desperate hope that was fading even as she swung the Glock’s silenced muzzle toward the man beside her.

  He’d had time to pull his gun out of its holster, but he was still bringing it up when she nailed him. She squeezed her finger over and over again, his body jerking, stumbling backward. This time she was careful not to look into his eyes. But she was close enough that she felt the warm spray of his blood on her bare arm.