The Blue Widows - [Kamal & Barnea 06]

by By Jon Land

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  Chapter 92

  W

  e’ve got her.”

  Hassan lowered the small walkie-talkie the Immutech people had provided from his ear and nodded toward Layla Aziz Rahani. Word of what had transpired back at the palace had not reached her until she had landed the night before. She had cried for her father, cursing herself for not having Danielle Barnea and the Palestinian killed by Hassan in her presence.

  Why hadn’t she done it?

  Because she couldn’t while her father lay in the room, no matter how incapacitated he was. What if he maintained some flicker of awareness? She had always been a little girl to him; he had proven that much by failing to name her his heir. If only he could have seen her now, if only he could have seen his plan brought to fruition, thanks to her. How proud he would have been.

  He had lived so many of his years in misery and now, perhaps, in death, he would be able to see his final success. Layla’s mother hadn’t just betrayed Abdullah Aziz Rahani; she had betrayed his people and his country, humiliating him in the process. Layla remembered his utter blankness as he bore witness to the stoning of her mother, all the emotion sucked out of him. She had not seen it in his face again until that night in the hospital years later when he pledged the vengeance she was now on the verge of completing in his stead.

  Layla stood behind the glass of the production plant’s second level, watching the vaccine being proportioned into individual-dose vials below.

  At the end of the automated assembly line, those vials were being loaded into cushioned cartons built especially to their specifications. The cartons would then be taken underground via conveyor belt and ferried to the warehouse for a brief stay before being loaded onto trucks destined for the airport. Ten days from now, the first American would receive the vaccine.

  And the end of all things would have begun.

  But not before she had a chance to deal with her half-sister. Ben Kamal’s conversation with an associate in the United States had been recorded, as all calls made from Rahani business telephones were. So Layla had learned not only that Kamal and Barnea were headed here to Immutech, but also that they were expecting help from the United States State Department. Eliminating that help was as simple as eliminating the man making the arrangements. With John Najarian out of the way, Layla would be free to rid herself of Kamal and Barnea once and for all.

  “Is something wrong?” Hazeltine, the plant manager, asked from the monitoring station for the controls.

  “No,” Layla told him. “Everything’s going just as planned.”

  Ben returned to the front gate of Immutech to find Danielle nowhere in sight. He veered to the right and took cover behind the long line of trucks waiting to enter the complex. Peering out from behind a pair of them, he honed in on a pair of burly Immutech security guards joining a third in scanning the area. He longed for a gun. Earlier that morning he’d been able to obtain no more than a razor-sharp armed forces knife at a local store. The clerk insisted on showing Ben how the knife’s handle unscrewed, revealing matches, a tiny compass, razor wire, and a thick knot of twine inside.

  Ben cursed under his breath. Layla Aziz Rahani had somehow gotten to Najarian and must have known they were coming. He tried not to think of Danielle’s fate right now, focusing instead on finding a means to infiltrate the facility.

  The cackle of voices and sound of shoe soles scraping asphalt made him look to his right. He saw that an entourage of media personnel were being led past him onto the grounds. Ben slipped into their midst and melted in among the cameras and microphones, finding himself heading toward a tented area reserved for news personnel.

  The guards brought Danielle through a private entrance into Immutech’s processing plant, bypassing the clutter of reporters intent on turning the initial shipments of the smallpox vaccine into a major media event. She considered trying to escape her armed escorts on several occasions. But they had clearly been warned of her prowess and kept a discreet distance, making it impossible for her to strike at all of them before one shot her.

  She knew she was being taken to Layla Aziz Rahani. Layla’s murderous life that had begun with a stoning and continued with her own rape had turned her into a monster. She could say she was merely completing the work of her father, but Danielle knew that to be only part of it. Layla was carrying out the plot as much for herself as for her father. Turning her hate on others so self-loathing wouldn’t consume her.

  That phone call Layla Aziz Rahani had placed to her father from a London hotel all those years ago was both the ultimate betrayal and the defining moment of her life. Danielle thought of that, thought of Hanna Frank dying yesterday as she had lived. Alone, alone because of what her eldest daughter had done in 1973.

  In that instant, Danielle knew she had to kill Layla Aziz Rahani. As soon as an opportunity availed itself, she wouldn’t hesitate, sacrificing herself just as her mother had.

  Inside the building, Danielle’s escorts led her up three flights of stairs and down a narrow service corridor to a heavy steel door. One of the security guards knocked, and the hulking killer Hassan thrust the door open.

  “Good morning, my sister,” greeted Layla Aziz Rahani from inside the control center. “How nice of you to join us.”

  Once inside the grounds, Ben got his first clear glimpse of what was obviously the plant’s storage facility. The building was flat-roofed and rectangular, outfitted with six loading bays. Trucks had already backed into position in front of all of the bays, others waiting to replace them as soon as they pulled out. Ben pictured the entire warehouse filled with containers holding the smallpox vaccine. The reserves accumulated thus far had to be destroyed, but how could he manage that task, given the circumstances and with only a knife for a weapon?

  Unless . . .

  The idea struck him hard and fast.

  It might work. He would make it work. . . .

  Ben slid away from the cluster of media personnel and headed toward the line of trucks waiting for their turn at the storage depot’s loading docks.

  “I see your lover isn’t with you,” Layla Aziz Rahani continued, her voice biting. She turned to Hassan. “Find him. But don’t bother bringing him here.”

  The giant nodded his understanding and slid past Danielle through the still-open door.

  “Ms. Rahani,” said Hazeltine. “Who are these men, this woman? No one without clearance is permitted in the—”

  Hazeltine stopped when he saw the gun in the hand of one of the fake security guards. He started to back up, and a silenced bullet took him in the chest, slamming him against a wall of monitors and gauges. He slumped down slowly, eyes already glazing.

  “You shouldn’t have killed him,” Layla Aziz Rahani said to Danielle calmly.

  “Is that the best you can do for a story?”

  “I’m not as skilled as you in such matters, my sister, but I’m learning.”

  “Then you should realize your plan can’t possibly succeed.”

  “So you say, my sister. We’ll see.” She beckoned Danielle toward her. “Come and join me, my sister. Come and watch the death of America begin.”

  The Saudi assassins who had come on Karim Matah’s orders to Immutech in the guise of cameramen looked up toward the control room’s view window and saw Layla Aziz Rahani standing sideways to the glass now. One of them raised a cell phone to his ear.

  “Major Matah,” he said softly. “We await your order.”

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  Chapter 93

  T

  he loading process for the first line of trucks was almost completed when Ben slid beneath the chassis of the truck at the far edge of the bays. At each bay, prepackaged crates containing the vaccine rolled down a conveyor belt directly into the truck’s cargo hold, where they were stacked by a trio of men. Ben knew none of these men could see him, but that still left him with the patrolling guards to contend with by pretending to move for the cab of the last truck down. Once there, he had droppe
d to the concrete and shimmied into position.

  Ben quickly located the truck’s gas tank and poked at it with the tip of the knife. Feeling the metal slice with surprising ease, he jabbed the knife harder into the tank, puncturing it in three places.

  The stench of diesel fumes assaulted him instantly. Some of the gas splashed back onto his shirt. Ben stifled a cough and slid out from under the truck, rolling immediately beneath the next one in line.

  Less than five minutes later, he finished slicing the gas tanks of all the trucks backed into the six warehouse loading bays and ducked behind one of the trucks that would be loaded as soon as the first grouping pulled away. There, he unscrewed the cap on the knife’s handle, just as the clerk in the shop had shown him that morning, and removed one of the thick wooden matches.

  The spent fuel would ignite once he lit and tossed it, destroying the containers of vaccine already loaded and, hopefully, spreading into the warehouse to ruin the remaining stores. Beyond him, Ben noticed a few drivers emerging from their cabs, having finally noticed the fuel spreading across the pavement. He ducked around the rear of the truck and struck his match. The flame sizzled, settled, and Ben flung it into the pool of diesel fuel.

  “I should have known you wouldn’t die so easily, my sister,” Layla Aziz Rahani continued, much of her bravado undoubtedly coming from the three guards who still had their pistols trained on Danielle. “But you will die today. Rest assured of that.”

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  “I might.”

  Danielle shook her head, feeling surprisingly calm, judging her chances. Could she take Rahani now, pounce and snap her neck before the guards opened fire?

  “No,” she told Layla Aziz Rahani confidently, “you’re not good enough. You weren’t good enough to kill our mother either. She got the last laugh on you, and you still don’t realize it.”

  Layla Aziz Rahani turned from the production process continuing beyond the glass and faced Danielle.

  “Our mother returned to your home after all these years. She’s been living right under your nose.” Rahani looked at her dismissively until Danielle added a single word. “Marta.”

  Layla Aziz Rahani’s expression wavered. “You lie.”

  “It’s no lie. It was she who covered up our escape . . . and ended your father’s life in the process.”

  “That changes nothing!”

  “Doesn’t it? She rescued Ben and me, and now we’ve come to stop you.”

  At that, the control room seemed to tremble, quake, the distant sound of an alarm penetrating the walls of the production facility. Below, the reporters had become agitated, searching for an exit and for the source of the blast.

  “Where is the Palestinian?” Layla Aziz Rahani demanded. “Where is he?”

  She grabbed Danielle by the jacket and jerked her backward. Danielle turned easily into the move and spun Layla into the gunman at her side, jarring him.

  Now!

  Danielle went for the man’s gun and twisted him into the path of Layla’s other two guards, who converged on her, almost there when the huge glass window before them exploded behind a fusillade of bullets.

  The effects were even greater than Ben had hoped for. The flames had caught instantly, spreading fast across the pavement and ensnaring the six trucks lodged against the loading bays. Men had already begun running in all directions when the first truck exploded, its back end lifted off the ground a moment before its cab disappeared in a fiery blast that came when the flames ignited the fumes in its engine.

  An alarm began to wail, quickly drowned out when the second truck went up in similar fashion, bashing into another waiting for that bay slot and catching it on fire as well. Ben’s nose was stung by the stench of fumes and burning steel, and he peered around the truck behind which he had taken cover. He felt the superheated air sear his skin, leaving it feeling sunburned, and squinted through the smoke and flames toward the warehouse.

  The bay doors were closing, sliding electronically downward, no doubt triggered by the fire alarm.

  Ben threw himself into motion. He held his breath as he skirted the edge of the flames and leaped atop the loading bay. The nearest bay door was two-thirds of the way down when Ben dashed straight for it. He hit the concrete surface beneath a backdraft of flames that left his back steaming and his hair crackling, but managed to stay on the move. Rolling now toward the closing door, shutting his eyes when it seemed he wouldn’t make it.

  Ben dared to open his eyes only when he heard the thwack of the bay door sealing closed. He found himself safe on the other side, inside the warehouse, and pulled himself to his feet just in time to avoid a crate rolling off a conveyor belt. He hadn’t realized the warehouse was fully automated as well. Though the warehouse was sealed now, the automated process had not stopped, and as a result crates began clanging against all six of the bay doors, already bunching up.

  The timing of the machines had been thrown out of whack by the explosions. Across the warehouse floor, some of the loader apparatus’s pincer extensions wheeled madly from the incoming conveyor that ran from a belowground tunnel to the outside with nothing in their grasp. Everywhere automated loaders continued to spin and spin, repeatedly banging into each other in what looked like a robotic war.

  Ben started forward, careful to avoid their flailing arms. Automated forklifts rolled forward, toting massive containers toward nowhere. One drove straight into a wall, filling the warehouse with the sound of glass shattering. He coughed, realizing the warehouse had begun to fill with smoke.

  Ben gazed about, studying the controls for the bay doors, each of them equipped with a manual override safety pull, similar to the standard garage variety, to prevent anyone from being trapped inside in an emergency. Open those doors, let the flames in, and the remaining reserves of the vaccine would be destroyed either by flames, heat, or water once the sprinkler system activated.

  He moved to the first of the bay doors and reached up for the emergency pull, had his hand on it when a bullet sizzled by his ear. Ben heard, actually heard it, before he dropped to the floor beneath the cover of the conveyor belt. Looking back, he saw the huge shape of Sharif Ali Hassan surging toward him, gun roaring.

  * * * *

  Chapter 94

  D

  anielle felt the bullets pound the body of the guard she had ) spun before her. The barrage caught the other two as well, ----spinning both men around violently before dropping them.

  Danielle dove to the floor and felt a fresh spray of bullets surge over her, smashing into the control console and sending a shower of sparks into the air. Assassins in disguise, she surmised, sent to kill Layla Aziz Rahani.

  A few yards away Layla, covered in glass, stirred, moaning softly. Danielle crawled carefully across the floor, feeling shards of glass prick her palms and elbows. The gunfire had stopped, the assassins no longer a threat. Danielle climbed back to her feet before the smoking control panel, lined with video monitors showing the automated production process at varying stages still proceeding.

  This was the chance she’d been seeking.

  Danielle studied the digital readouts and nearby controls that set the specifications for the line. Different medicines meant different procedures, according to container specs. She began twisting the knobs randomly, changing those specifications to confuse the mindless machines in the processing facility below.

  The monitors showed her the results instantly. Clear fluid, the vaccine itself formed of superheated and extracted compounds, began spilling everywhere as machines poured too much of it into vials. And with it perished the deadly ingredient formed from RU-18, the horribly failed birth control drug that held the means to destroy a society.

  Farther up the line, the vials containing the smallpox vaccine were smashed to bits by the automated sealers now programmed to cap much bigger vials. And those vials that had already proceeded through this station were obliterated by the packagers, now trying to squeeze sixty-four dispensers
into thirty-two slots.

  Fresh alarms wailed. Red lights flashed. Someone was banging on the locked control room door.

  Layla Aziz Rahani lay on the floor. “My brother,” she managed to mutter hatefully. “Saed . . .”

  Danielle looked down at her and sucked in her breath sharply.

  Layla Aziz Rahani’s beautiful face was . . . gone, lost to blood and shards of glass still sticking out of it. One of her eyes was closed. Her mouth was swollen open, her tongue swabbing futilely at her quivering lips.

  Layla tried feebly to reach for a pistol pinned under the body of one of her dead guards. But Danielle jammed her foot over the gun before she could grasp it. Layla looked up at her scornfully, tried to speak, then passed out a moment before the control room door burst open and armed security men stormed inside.