The stooges in the mall were not quite as easy to identify. One was now confetti, strewn across the hall. The other two gunmen had no IDs, and an extensive check of their fingerprints and faces—badly mauled by the explosion of their comrade—would eventually lead nowhere. They wore new Levi’s, Nikes, and T-shirts with NYPD logos; whoever dressed them had a sense of humor.
Was it Shadow? I sensed that he was in the distance somewhere, even though my guys weren’t able to spot him. Every passing helicopter, every screech of tires, even a motorcycle in the distance—had my head turning. Tickle someone by the short hairs until sweat starts pouring from his pores and he can’t calm down enough to take a leak—that was Charlie’s tactic in the jungles. For something like thirty years now, it had been mine, too. Shadow was trying to turn it back around and screw with my head.
Doom on you, asshole.
“I really thought he was the guy Trace caught down in the city,” said Danny as we made way for the state police’s crime scene people. “But if these guys were still taking orders—”
“We haven’t gotten Shadow. He’s too good. As good as I am.”
“Never heard you admit that before.”
“Lot of people have been as good as I am. They just haven’t worked with as good a bunch of people around them.”
“Maybe he was the jerk who blew himself up,” said Danny.
I knew that wasn’t true—not Shadow’s style, unless I was right there in his face—but I didn’t bother saying anything. My cell phone—a new one, certified clean by Shunt and his consultants—rang after I finished looking over the container trailer about a half hour later.
“Thank God you’re okay,” said Karen as soon as I clicked the phone on.
“I’m okay. How did you hear what happened?”
“I didn’t,” she said. “But I just got a fax. It’s a picture of you shot through a gun sight. You look like you’re inside a mall or something, on TV.”
In case you’re wondering, I peed just fine when I hit the head a short time later.
The state troopers, with the help of the ATF strike force and the local security people, searched the entire mall and surrounding property without finding anyone or anything they could tie to the terrorists. Still, the live trucker and the dead bodies represented a potential treasure trove of information. Everyone wanted custody of the trucker—ATF, the state police, customs, Treasury, the FBI, CIA, and us. Hell, the DAR and IBM probably wanted a piece of him, too. The troopers had a barracks not that far away where he could be held and questioned. Even better, they had access to some professors in New York City who could help translate Serbo-Croatian, if that’s what he was talking. But what really clinched it for me was the late arrival of the FBI, Wannabe himself in the lead. The troopers, with help from Danny, whisked out of exit number one as the Federales Who Believe in Insanity whisked through entrance number two. Wannabe and I were getting to be old friends, and he was so happy to see me he started yelling and screaming even before his car stopped.
“What the hell are you doing here, Marcinko? Is that a container truck? What the hell is going on?”
“They’re having a special on suicide bombers inside the mall today,” I said. “My guess is they planned to lock some of the doors and set off gas near the others so everyone would panic. Then the suicide bomber was going to ignite himself in the middle of the place. Just a guess. They didn’t seem all that bright, so they may have figured on doing it the other way around.”
Wannabe said something to himself that included a lot of four-letter words and stalked away. J. Edgar Hoover would have been very proud to fire his ass on the spot.
Knowing that Shadow was around somewhere nearby, I told my people to make their own way to Rogue Manor, where we’d rendezvous the next afternoon for PT and planning. Shunt had landed at Stewart Airport and had to return the airplane to D.C.; I told him to do it on his own. Then, after checking with Danny at the trooper barracks—the driver wasn’t saying much, and what he was saying remained indecipherable, even to the alleged translators—I began making my way home alone. I made it as obvious as I could that I had no bodyguards or companions. I drove my rental so slowly that even old ladies in Buicks passed me. Around seven, I stopped for dinner at a Denny’s. I took a booth at the far end of the restaurant, surrounded by nothing but empty tables. At ten o’clock, somewhere in Pennsylvania, I pulled into a cheap motel, got a room, and left on the light.
Anybody who wanted to could have shot me through the curtains. If they’d aimed well, their bullet would have gone right through my shirt into the pillow I’d stuffed it with. And I’d’ve seen them from the opposite roof where I was hiding.
No one came.
Rogue Manor looked comfortably inviting when I arrived the next afternoon. The house itself looked comfortable. Karen, dressed in a silky shirt and business skirt, was even more inviting. She pulled me to her, folding her arms around my shoulders. We retreated to my private quarters to reacquaint ourselves with each other’s contours. When we emerged two hours later, the house was already filled with team members. Doc and Tiffany had returned from France the night before and came armed with souvenirs of red wine and eyes irritated by jet lag. Danny’s police frown creased his brow. Sean looked like he’d spent the night studying Danny’s expressions and perfecting his own version. Hulk was Hulk, quietly sipping a beer. Shunt sat on the couch talking to himself in geekese, and the newer shooters were quiet and watchful, as nuggets should be. The only person missing was Trace, who was still down in Texas trying to get information out of His Swarthiness. After everyone was brought up to date on yesterday’s adventure, I outlined the situation at the LNG port.
“I’ve been asked to roam the area as a human watchdog,” I told them. “As a security measure, I’m not sure how much value it’ll be. But it will give me a better chance to find my friend Shadow. He’s been pretty close to me lately.”
I dropped the faxed picture on the table in front of me where everyone could see it. Shadow had taken a shot of one of the TVs. I could tell now where he must have been standing. If he’d been there when the bomb went off, he would have been splattered almost as badly as the suicide bomber himself. He’d missed it by no more than a minute, if that.
“I think it was the suicide bomber,” said Danny.
“Probably someone he knew,” I told him. “But I don’t think that was Shadow. He would have run up and made sure I was in his face.”
“No one got out of that mall,” said Sean.
I pointed out that there were plenty of people around the scene immediately after the explosion: security people, volunteer firemen, customers who hadn’t been able to get out of the traffic jam and then came back in out of curiosity or a sincere desire to help out. We had the names of some, but not of anyone who looked like he might have belonged there—as Shadow undoubtedly would have.
The phone rang as I finished. With his impeccable timing, it should have been Shadow. But it turned out to be Trace.
“They’re not getting anything out of him down here, Dick,” she complained. “And it’s hotter than hell. A hundred and ten in the shade.”
I let her bitch for a few minutes, then told her she could come home if she wanted.
“Good,” she said. “Because I’m calling from the airport.”
Typical Trace. What wasn’t typical, though, was what she said next: “I want you to watch your ass the next few days, Dick. I had this weird dream about you involving coyotes.”
“Since when do you dream?”
“This is serious. The coyotes walked on two legs and they were right behind you, waiting for you to fall.”
“Well if I see any coyotes like that, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
Back inside, Doc and Danny began lining up a plan to patrol the harbor around the natural gas port and watch for Shadow at the same time, basically setting up a bear trap with me as the bait. The idea was for me to take a boat out near the LNG carrier, sail parallel to i
t for a while, and then go back toward an isolated part of the port area where it would be easy for someone to ambush me. The trick was finding a spot where it would be easy to ambush the ambusher.
“The thing that’s not clear to me,” said Doc, “is whether Shadow is just on your butt or calling the shots on the other operations as well.”
“Has to be calling the shots. He was in the mall,” said Danny.
“Not necessarily. He could have had someone else take the picture.”
“Yeah, I don’t mean him personally,” said Danny. “But he would have gotten the picture from someone in the mall. That means he’s the one calling the shots.”
“Not really.”
I agreed that didn’t mean Shadow was in charge—but that was certainly a reasonable conclusion. But it seemed to me the attempted strike on the mall was different than Shadow’s earlier adventures. Those seemed designed to tweak me rather than create an actual incident. But Danny pointed out that the train and bridge incident would have been similar had we not happened on it.
“Maybe Shadow was pissed that we screwed up his party,” said Danny. “He taunts us in Illinois, but otherwise he’s sticking with his own game plan. The mall had to be targeted quite a while ago. First he had to find it—a place close enough to New York City to get major media coverage but far enough away so they didn’t have the infrastructure to deal with it. You saw how long it took the police to get over there. It’d be different in the city. Then he had to work out the plan, get things in place—months of work, at least.”
“I don’t disagree that this must have been in place for a long time,” said Doc. “I just don’t want to jump to conclusions about where Shadow fits. It could be two different operations. Or parallel operations that intersect every so often.”
Or that happened to intersect with me. Doc’s French sources saw the terrorist network as a series of isolated beehives whose inhabitants came together very rarely but had the same aim—a general war against the West. One or two might have their own separate agendas—like making my life miserable—but still be part of the overall game plan.
Tiffany added more details from the French, describing a pair of cells they had broken up in Tours several months back. The cells didn’t know each other or details of other missions, but both had been trained to strike at the same elementary school on the same day from different directions. Only at the last minute were they alerted to the fact that another cell was involved. The French had managed to round them up bare minutes before the plot was supposed to be launched.
The setup was not particularly unique, but Tiffany wasn’t old enough to know that. The most important ingredient in such a decentralized organization wasn’t communications—as the French had claimed when explaining their theories to her, no doubt over several bottles of wine—or even money or manpower. Having a few very bright if twisted people of the caliber of an Osama bin Laden was helpful, though not critical, either. The most important thing was faith. You had to follow the orders you received without doubt or hesitation, even if—especially if—those orders were for you to kill yourself. That’s why religion was such an important part of the equation.
It’s not politically correct to talk about the connection between religion and terrorism these days, but you can’t understand how a lot of the fanatical Islamic cells operate without understanding it. That isn’t the same thing as saying that all Muslims are terrorists or that the religion breeds terrorism. If you want to call me a bigot, go right ahead, but you’re not paying attention. During the Vietnam War, every so often Buddhist monks would immolate themselves with gasoline to prove their point, not to mention pollute the air. Saying that their religion had a role in that helps you start to understand what the fuck they’re about and up to; it makes no comment on the religion itself. Same way with Islam. God forbid you talk about it, though.
The dangerous terrorists weren’t poor fucks stuck in poverty so deeply they couldn’t afford to eat. Poverty’s bad, but it’s not the reason for terrorism, despite what the papers and TV commentators usually claim. The really dangerous terrorists—and the people involved in 9/11 are a good example—are the kids who tasted something they thought was an alternative to God, got lost, then refound Him as the Answer. Most of the people who share the assholes’ religion know that the “Him” they found wasn’t the real Him, but that’s who they found. And “He” helped them figure out the way the universe was supposed to work. In return, they were willing to do whatever “He” wanted, including blowing everything up.
But why come after me? Was Shadow pissed off because we screwed up his fun, as Danny suggested? Or was it some psychological mumbo jumbo bullshit reason—Big Daddy who has to be killed by Baby? The representative of all that is good in the world taken down by the representative of all that is evil?
Fuck you very much.
Personally, I like simple and obvious. Shadow and I had probably tangled before, and he wanted me now. Throwing the Vietnam crap in my face was either a signal or a misdirection play; take your pick. Either way, he could fuck himself if he thought it was going to give me the creepy crawlers. I’d play along with him until I found a way to put it back on him. Then there’d be payback. Which everyone knows is a bitch.
We worked out an agenda for the next five days, beginning with a scoping session at the port and surrounding waters on Friday, which was tomorrow. Then we scattered, a few to bed, a few to R&R at some of the local R&R venues, a few to their nearby homes.
And me to work. The vice admiral’s staff working on the LNG task force had called several times now, apparently thinking that I was going to give them a written report on my findings. It may have been that they just wanted something that was easy to throw in the trash can, but I ended up sitting down at the computer, and, with the help of some all-purpose Bombay lubricant, smashed out a coherent memo on what they should watch out for. I was hunched over the keyboard when Karen found me. She began kneading my neck and shoulders, which were knotted from working the keyboard. It was a good thing that I had already finished the memo, because her therapy demanded my full and proper attention.
“Las Vegas?” she murmured later, after we’d had an opportunity to fully relax.
“What Las Vegas?”
“You’re supposed to go to Las Vegas for the parade Monday.”
I looked up at her. My head was not exactly in Las Vegas.
“The Independence Day parade in Las Vegas,” she repeated. “You said I could come.”
“I totally forgot about it. Shit.”
She frowned. I hate frowns on a pretty face, but there was nothing I could do about this one.
“We’ll still be on the port. I’m going to have to cancel.”
“Oh.”
“Well, you go.”
“Not without you. They don’t want to see me in the parade.”
I love Vegas; it’s one huge adult amusement park. Even better, the people out there have a real friendly, live-and-let-live attitude, which fits perfectly with my own philosophy of life. You want to rebuild the Egyptian pyramids a stone’s throw from a super highway and fill it with gambling machines? Hey, go to town. You want gondolas and guys in striped shirts singing “Mamma Mia” for tourists in the middle of a desert? Why the hell not? You can get just about anything you want in Vegas, and plenty of things you didn’t know you wanted until you got there, too. The nice folks in town had invited me to come out and be one of the guests of honor in the grand Independence Day Parade they were planning, the Strip’s first ever. It was a typical Las Vegas extravaganza, set to happen near some of the newest hotels, including Vegas Starship, which supposedly looked a bit like a UFO that had plopped down between the Venetian and the Wynn. Very big, very brash, very Vegas. The parade committee planned a giant fete, and little ol’ moi was supposed to be one of the guests of honor.
Duty, alas, took precedence over pleasure. Story of my fucking life.
I picked up the phone and called up the event orga
nizer, who picked up on the second ring. It was one of the few times I’d used the phone that I actually wished I’d gotten voice mail. Telling him I had to cancel was not the highlight of my day. He accepted graciously, as Vegas people always do, and even offered a rain check.
“They offered to send a plane just for me,” I told Karen when I hung up. “They’re really great people.”
“Did they want you to jump out of it?”
“As a matter of fact, they did.”
They’d originally suggested that I parachute from an aircraft and skydive into a moving car after the parade began. Had to turn that one down—the “S” in SEAL does not stand for stupid.
“They even offered me a rain check,” I told her. “Said come to town anytime.”
“I hope you said yes.”
“Well…”
She slugged me on the shoulder. “You better. And take me, too.”
“We’ll see.”
“We’ll see?”
“All right, I will.”
“Promise?”
“I promise,” I told her. We proceeded to seal the promise. The last few days had left me drained and, given the circumstances, an early bedtime seemed in order. I was drifting off to sleep a while later when the phone rang. I let the answering machine pick up, but Shunt’s voice carried a tone I’d never heard before, at least not from him—alarm.
“Dick, Dick, Dick! Pick up! Pick up! Pick up!”
“Shunt, what?” I asked, grabbing the receiver.
“Danny! He has a virus on his laptop.”
“I thought you ran an antivirus program this afternoon,” I told him, instantly annoyed that he was so hysterical and that I’d picked up the phone.
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