by Tom Lowe
“I found Robert Miller. He sends his regards, but not his regrets.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
Andrei Keltzin smoked a cigarette outside the old warehouse, pacing nervously, glancing up at the second floor and wondering if Yuri Volkow was looking down at him beyond the glare and dirt on the glass. Keltzin propped his AK-47 against the building and dialed his cell. Mohammed Sharif answered. “Yes.”
“I will give you the location. The rest of the money when you arrive.”
Deputy Ronald Hobbs opened a door leading directly from the serving room to the command center. O’Brien looked up, seeing the movement of the caterers in the background, the smell of red pepper and Cajun sauces floating in the air. Over Gates’ shoulder, he saw a cook in a light white jacket.
Gates looked at O’Brien without any noticeable reaction and said, “Robert Miller, what a career. We could use his expertise today. If you see Bob, give him my regards.”
“When I see Boris Borshnik, a.k.a. Yuri Volkow, shall I tell him the same thing?”
Gates’ jaw muscles popped, his eyes had a snake-like coldness, no emotion beyond indifference and a minuscule allusion of subliminal madness. He smiled and said, “I’ll ignore that comment because I know you’re under extreme duress to find your friend, Jason, and to recover the HEU that you introduced to the crazies.”
“One of those crazies is your contact Mohammed Sharif. You’re busted, pal-”
“And you’re under arrest!” Gates looked at his watch and then the digital clock. “Hold him, Eric. I have to take a conference call with the director and the vice president. I’ll address your comments in fifteen minutes. In the meantime, Sean O’Brien, you’re in federal custody. Do not attempt to leave this room or you will be shot.” He stood to leave, his eyes holding onto the movement of the caterers through the open door in the adjacent room. He licked his dry lips and left through the main entrance.
Lauren said, “Okay, now what?”
“He knows Borshnik personally,” O’Brien said.
“But you can’t prove that.”
“He just did,” Hunter said.
“You agree?” Lauren asked.
“Yeah, I do. Gates is very good, but there was something in the way he looked, or maybe it was the way O’Brien was looking at him, but the truth was hitting Gates right between the eyes, and he flinched.”
“Now,” Dave said, “what are you going to do about it? Arrest him?”
“Let’s bring in Robert Miller,” Lauren said.
O’Brien said nothing. He watched the door that Gates had exited. Then he looked at his watch. 11:56 a.m.
Lauren said, “Food smells good. My blood sugar’s down. I need a quick bite.” She smiled, got up and walked into the serving room, followed by a few agents.
Hunter said, “O’Brien, how long have you suspected Gates?”
“How long have you been watching him?”
“Was it that obvious?”
“Only once.”
Hunter smiled and shook his head. “And one day you’ll tell me when, right?”
Dave said, “Maybe you can talk Sean into joining the Agency.”
O’Brien said, “Right now we’ve got to find Borshnik. For all I know, Gates is outside, smoking a cigarette and calling Borshnik-” O’Brien felt his words tighten in his throat. From across the room, under the flat light of the fluorescents, he could see directly into the service room. The man in a white windbreaker turned and looked up at the ceiling, his body facing east. O’Brien saw the man talking to himself. Or was he praying? Praying to Allah.
“NO! DOWN!” O’Brien yelled.
“What-” Dave uttered.
“There!” Hunter pointed.
Lauren came across the threshold, a plate of food in her hands, a smile on her face. O’Brien felt the world stop. Time measured in disjointed increments of human movement. The numbers on the digital clock-frozen.
The click of Lauren’s heels-silent.
The drone of the command center-gone.
The man in the white jacket opened his eyes. Prayer finished. His right hand slipping inside the jacket in a faltering movement, like film caught in the gate.
Lauren’s smile dropped. Her mouth made an O. She turned her head to look behind her as the jacket disintegrated into a ball of white heat. The explosion turned the wall separating the rooms into dust. The force of the bomb knocked O’Brien to the ground, heat radiating through the command center like a blast furnace.
O’Brien was flat on his back, ceiling tiles raining around him. Electricity arching through shattered wires, fire sprinklers gushing water. The smoke billowed forcefully as if it were an angry cloud in extreme weather. Visibility zero. Pain seared from his left shoulder, the heat of his blood trapped between skin and clothes.
O’Brien could hear nothing. Then a ringing swelled in his ears. It faded and he heard the sounds of agony, pain and imminent death rise up from the smoke and charred furniture, walls and floor. A woman made inhuman grunts and shrieks. A man whimpered and begged for his mother. Sobbing meshed into wailing. O’Brien crawled on his hand and knees. He found Dave Collins knocked out cold. A pulse, but faint, blood oozing from his forehead.
A cough. Eric Hunter held his shoulder with one bleeding hand. His hair was covered in a white powder, pieces of dry-wall sticking to it.
“You okay?” O’Brien asked.
“Think so,” Hunter said.
“Dave’s out. He’s breathing, but his pulse is weak.” O’Brien kept low, face near the floor, crawling in the direction he’d last seen Lauren. His hands slipped in blood and wet brain matter scattered like red oatmeal on the floor. He could smell coppery odors mixed with the scent of C-4, gun powder, and burning electrical fires.
A woman moaned. “Lauren! I’m here!” O’Brien crawled fifty feet though rubble and the sticky heat of blood and body parts. Lauren was on her back, one leg bent at an awkward right angle. Her white blouse ripped, the remaining fabric soaked red.
O’Brien knelt over her. His hands trembled as he wiped the blood from her face, gently pushing hair from her eyes. Her breathing raspy. She looked up at O’Brien, her eyes filling with tears. “Hold me, Sean. I can’t feel my legs … hold me.”
O’Brien lowered his body to hers, his cheek touching her face, his hands holding her shoulders. He could feel the warmth of tears run from her eyes and down to his lips. He could hear the labored breathing, the erratic muscle spasms of her body.
Sirens screamed in the distance. “Hold on … help’s coming. You’ll be in the hospital in a few minutes.”
“Sean, it’s okay-”
“Just breathe … easy … you’ll be fine-”
“I can’t see you. Sean ….”
“I’m here. Just breathe easy. They’re coming. Stay with me, Lauren!”
She coughed. O’Brien leaned up and wiped blood from her lips. “Don’t let Gates get away with it. He’s hurt too many people ….”
“Don’t talk … rest.”
She reached up with one hand. O’Brien held it, squeezed gently, hoping to somehow squeeze full life back into her body. “Find Jason ….” Her smile quivered. “You’re a good and decent man, Sean. You care about people … and I’ve always cared deeply for you and ….” Lauren’s chest heaved, gasping for air.
“No! Help’s coming! Lauren! Just breathe easy. Fight it!”
She stopped breathing, her blue eyes open, the light fading in the dust and smoke.
O’Brien held her hand. He leaned down to kiss her forehead, a single tear falling from his eye and mixing with her blood.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO
Mike Gates drove the speed limit, stopping for the convoy of police and emergency vehicles streaming toward the federal building. The only visible anxiety was the size of the sweat stain, which had grown into large, dark patches on his blue dress shirt. The odor of garlic from last night’s meal mixed with adrenaline and rose in an acrid blend from his pores. The taste in his mouth
was like metal, hard water and rust. He used his cell phone.
“Yes,” Boris Borshnik said.
“I’ve been exposed!”
“How?”
“O’Brien! The fucking ex-cop! I don’t know how. I have to leave the country within the hour. I need asylum in Russia, with a guarantee I’ll be left alone.”
“No problem. You can be on an Aeroflot jet and routed from Miami to Moscow.”
“I’ll need papers, passport and money.”
“I understand. Meet me at the warehouse. You can obtain the money there. I’ll have the papers ready for you at Miami International.”
“Outside only.”
“Pardon.”
“Outside, meet me outside with the money, money still owed to me.”
“Certainly.” Borshnik disconnected. He turned to Zakhar Sorokin and said, “Gates will be arriving momentarily. Ambush him.”
“Shall I kill him?”
“No, bring him to me.”
Robert Miller sat in an opulent bar in the Ritz Carlton overlooking the ocean. He nursed a glass of Jameson and watched a news bulletin that appeared on the wide screen above the bar.
A female reporter stood in front of the federal building and began talking. Her brow wrinkled, face animated. Behind her were dozens of fire and rescue vehicles, smoke filtering ghostlike from three blown-out windows on the top floor.
“Turn it up, please,” Miller said to the bartender.
The news reporter pulled a strand of hair behind one ear and said, “The questions investigators now are asking is how did a suicide bomber get access into the federal building and who was he? It’s believed that the bomber is connected to a radical Islamic Jihad sect that may have the highly enriched uranium missing from the German submarine and the cache found on Rattlesnake Island. The body count is reported at nine now with at least a dozen people injured, many critically ….”
Miller sipped his drink and stared at the screen. His cell rang. Mike Gates was furious. “What’d you tell Sean O’Brien?”
“Nothing he didn’t already know.” Miller’s voice was filtered through Irish whiskey.
“You old fool! You didn’t have to say anything. There is no proof.”
“Don’t blame me for your mistakes. The only reason O’Brien found out was due to your carelessness-”
“I leave no trail!”
“Borshnik found you.”
“And O’Brien found you! You’ve cost me everything. I can’t even tell my wife goodbye. I no longer exist.”
“I’m sitting here watching your fuck ups. Half a dozen agents blown to hell and back. Your mistakes are massive, resulting in loss of life and property.”
“That was no mistake.”
“Then you’re sub-human. You belong in-”
“You fucking old hypocrite! You sold this country’s ass to Russia as Hitler was going down. You may be personally responsible for the deaths of thousands, from Korea to Vietnam, and you have the sanctimonious balls to lecture me. Go to hell!”
“I’d say we’re both almost there. It was your choice long ago. It’s a lonely life playing the game. But when you step out of the boundaries, you step into a house of mirrors. What you see reflecting back is whatever illusion you’ve created. Forever begins now, Gates. Hold that point up to the light from hell and leave me alone-”
“They’ll come for you, too. You just got away with it longer. You’ll go down as this country’s worst traitor! They’ll write the name Benedict Arnold over your damn grave. Do you hear me Miller? You fucking hear me!”
The phone went dead in Gate’s hand.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE
Mohammed Sharif sat in the back seat of the rented SUV and spoke Arabic into a satellite phone. “Salaam alaikum,” he said. The SUV stayed below the speed limit as the driver’s eyes darted from the road to the mirrors. Another man sat in the front, one in the back next to Sharif, and two minivans loaded with heavily armed jihad soldiers followed.
“We’re within two miles of the U-235,” Sharif said. “Borshnik does not suspect we are en route because he is not aware we know his location. Abdul-Waahid is a martyr. He is in paradise. His death bonds the umma, the brotherhood. He walked into the face of the infidels and removed at least nine of them. The FBI, CIA and the rest are in a state of chaos. I have given orders for the girl to be taken alive today. Her father will do as we order. Within a few days, we will have an atomic bomb here on American soil. Now they will learn a lesson as we do much more than bloody their noses, the same noses that they stick in the world’s affairs, hamdulihhah.”
Sharif nodded, listened in silence for a half minute and said, “Inshallad, it will be done. Allah akbar.”
O’Brien and Eric Hunter watched EMTs load Dave Collins in an ambulance. Dave, conscious, one eye swollen, with its surrounding area the size and color of a plum, looked at O’Brien and asked, “How many dead?”
“I don’t know.”
“Lauren ….”
“She didn’t make it.”
Dave closed his eyes for a long moment, his barrel chest rising and falling. “I’m sorry … find them Sean. You and Eric make a good team. Be damn careful. America’s never experienced anything like this before. It could make 911 look like boy scouts. Bring in Gates if you can catch him.”
“Get well,” Hunter said.
As the paramedics closed the ambulance doors, one of a dozen ambulances carting the injured, O’Brien said, “Let’s move. My Jeep’s in the lot.”
“I’m parked near you. I’ve got a pretty fair arsenal in the trunk. Plenty of rounds. Let’s stop there first. Got a feeling we might need the firepower.”
More than two dozen television satellite trucks lined the parking lot. A herd of reporters and onlookers were kept behind the yellow tape. O’Brien and Hunter had to walk through the pack to get to their vehicles.
Reporter Susan Schulman stepped in front of O’Brien. A cameraman rolled, the tiny red light on the camera an unblinking Cyclops’ eye. She gripped the microphone with one hand, red fingernails like talons of a hawk holding something dead. “Mr. O’Brien, we understand the casualty number could reach as high as perhaps a dozen people. Can you give us a short soundbite? What did you see?”
“Fuck you. Is that short enough?” O’Brien and Hunter continued walking.
“Asshole!” Schulman shouted, turning to her cameraman, “Cut.”
Mike Gates drove across the Fuller Warren Bridge into the heart of Jacksonville. He punched the car’s radio station selector trying to find a newscast. There was an odd sound, like static created by approaching lightning. The sky was clear.
“Bastards!” he grunted. He turned off the exit into West Bay Street and parked his car in the lot adjacent to the Omni Hotel. Gates got out and walked up to a taxi, the driver reading the paper. “Can you take me to JaxPort?” Gates asked.
“Sure, get in.”
Gates got in the backseat and the driver asked, “Where to at JaxPort?”
“The old Pier 13 … should be a warehouse near there.”
“I have an idea where it is,” the cabbie said, pulling out of the hotel lot. “Place is in a rough part of the docks.”
“I’m representing a developer. We’re looking at it purely as a speculative buy. Condos could be in there in a couple of years.”
The cab driver pulled into a service road that led down to Pier 13. He drove slowly past a discolored Chiquita Banana sign, long ago faded from salt air and time.
“Park by the dumpster,” Gates said. “I’ll be down by the water. Wait for me.”
“I can’t stay too long, understand? Got other customers-”
“Here’s a hundred.” Gates tossed the bill on the front seat. “Wait for me. I won’t be long. Then you can take me to the airport.”
The driver stuck the money in his shirt pocket. Gates climbed out of the car and walked toward the rusted and broken Pier 13. The place looked creepy, he thought, including the old pier, which slep
t derelict-like by the dark water. He glanced at his watch, lit a cigarette, and watched a tanker leave the port across the wide river, heading for the Atlantic Ocean.
The cab driver watched him. He pulled the hundred dollar bill out of his pocket and held it up in the fading sunlight.
There was a noise. Maybe a rat in the dumpster. The cabbie looked toward Gates standing by the dock as the rubber lid on the dumpster flew open. A shotgun blast fired directly into the open window of the cab. The cabbie’s face was blown off. His jawbone propelled out the passenger window.
Zahkar Sororkin pointed the barrel at Gates. “Hands up! Drop your gun!”
Gates did as ordered. Sorokin climbed from the abandoned dumpster, 12-gauge shotgun aimed at Gates’ chest. “Kick the gun away from you.”
“No! What’s going on? Borshnik and I have a deal.”
“Kick the gun!” Sorokin yelled, stepping closer. “Do it or this shotgun will take your head off. They will find pieces of it in the river. The catfish will eat the soft parts.”
Gates dropped his pistol. “I want to see Borshnik.”
“And he wants to see you.”
Mohammed Sharif and his caravan were less than five miles from the docks. He made a call. “The boat must be there in half an hour. The Americans will block all roads. They will not think to monitor their ports and Intracoastal Waterway … they never do.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR
O’Brien drove his Jeep up I-95 at almost ninety-miles-per hour. Hunter sat in the passenger seat, holding the GPS in his lap. He said, “There is no movement from Gates’ car. He’s in downtown Jacksonville, near the river.”
“Maybe that’s the location. Could be something there, a building, store, auto body shop, whatever.”
“Or he could have found out we’re tailing him and left his car in a parking lot.” Through his dark sunglasses, Hunter looked at the GPS screen. He punched in a satellite image of a map, scaled closer. “Looks like Gates is at Riverside Avenue. I’ll start making the calls. We’ll bring in F-16’s if we have to … they won’t crawl out of there.”
