Kingdom of the Seven

by Jon Land

  Ahmed El-Salarabi had been sent to New York with a specific task in mind: select and destroy a symbol of American opulence and power. Another group had tried to blow up the World Trade Center and failed miserably. Their failure was laughable. Only six dead … If El-Salarabi had been in charge, the outcome would have been vastly different. Successful demolitions required specialized knowledge of where to plant explosives to achieve maximum damage and effect. And his degree in engineering would have guaranteed that the charges were placed at the proper stress points to insure that the entire building collapsed. Any target could be brought down.

  El-Salarabi’s superiors had suggested the Statue of Liberty as that target, but he had persuaded them that to destroy such a symbol would only produce anger. To provoke true fear and terror, the target selected must be a highly visible part of everyday existence. El-Salarabi had spent four days last month considering various target options.

  Office buildings.

  High-rise apartments.

  A Broadway theater maybe.

  But every bystander he passed during that initial reconnaissance seemed to be holding a shopping bag. His inspiration had come when a rank, pockmarked vagrant with a Bloomingdale’s bag clutched in his hand asked El-Salarabi for his spare change.

  Bloomingdale’s …

  The perfect symbol of the opulence and decadence of Western society. In London the IRA had gone after Harrod’s once with a similar notion in mind. Their mistake had been to leave the building standing.

  Now, one month after his first trip, El-Salarabi had returned to New York determined not to repeat it.

  Almost to Fifty-ninth Street, he fumed at the obtrusive presence of sidewalk salesmen hawking knockoff designer wares piled upon asphalt or tables, which further slowed his pace. El-Salarabi was thankful at least for the tinted glasses that kept the bright sun from burning into his eyes. Three straight hours strolling the floors of Bloomingdale’s and mapping out the store’s interior had turned them sensitive.

  El-Salarabi forced himself to be patient and clutched his brown leather Gurkha briefcase closer to his side, as he prepared to follow the next stage of the plan. The briefcase contained twenty pages of jottings and sketches, scrawled hurriedly but accurately while he was sequestered in a number of rest room stalls. El-Salarabi had learned not to trust such crucial planning to memory, getting everything down while the building’s layout and construction were fresh in his mind. Once his briefcase had been delivered to his liaison, his part in the scheme was finished. Others would carry out the actual bombing according to the specifications his pages detailed. Such men and women were interchangeable. They came and went. He alone was indispensable.

  El-Salarabi grasped the case’s handle even tighter.

  He had phoned his liaison from inside Bloomingdale’s itself. His instructions were to proceed south down Lexington across East Fifty-ninth Street to an outdoor fruit stand set up in front of the abandoned Alexander’s department store just before Fifty-eighth Street. Rest the briefcase against his leg while he inspected the produce and his liaison would stealthily lift it away. Simple as that.

  The force of sidewalk traffic shoving up uneasily against his back led El-Salarabi to disregard the DON’T WALK signal at East Fifty-ninth. He dashed across dodging traffic toward a cavalcade of hucksters pitching replicas of Louis Vuitton handbags, Gucci watches, and Armani ties.

  Pedestrian traffic had thinned enough for him to slow his pace to a casual gait. The fruit stand was directly before him. The collection of oranges, grapefruits, apples, and grapes looked tempting even from this distance. Maybe he’d fill up a bag to improve his cover. Distract the clerk, if nothing else.

  His part in the mission was about to come to an end.

  “Shit!”

  Blaine McCracken shielded his ear, as if afraid a passerby might have heard the gravelly voice of Sal Belamo.

  “Something wrong, Sal?”

  “That fucker Salami just crossed Fifty-ninth against the signal, you believe that.”

  “Salarabi.”

  “Salami, bologna—it’s all the same to me. Just splash on the mustard between some seeded rye and give me a pickle on the side.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Heading toward East Fifty-eighth, boss. Hold on, light just changed. I’m going across.”

  “Keep him in sight, Sal.”

  “He’s slowing down.”

  “Where?”

  “Fruit stand on the sidewalk at Alexander’s. Just stopped in front of it,” Belamo added, as he stepped back up on the Lexington Avenue sidewalk.

  “Indian,” McCracken called, from his position three blocks away on the west side of the block in front of a fountain.

  “Moving now, Blainey,” returned Johnny Wareagle, who was waiting in front of a combination deli and casual clothing shop between Fifty-seventh and Fifty-eighth Streets called Boogie’s.

  “Hang back, Sal. Keep your eyes on the briefcase. It’s the man who picks it up we want.”

  “I played this game before too, MacBalls.”

  “Never the same way twice,” McCracken cautioned. “Whoever picks up the case has got to come toward one of you.”

  The knowledge that El-Salarabi would surely recognize him from their last encounter forced him to keep back for now. Eighteen months before, he had been asked by a friend in Egyptian intelligence to help that organization stem the tide of terrorism that had been launched against tourists. Just hours after arriving, a report that El-Salarabi had been sighted drew him and his Egyptian escorts to Luxor. The terrorist emerged unexpectedly from a crowded mosque and came face-to-face with Blaine. Before McCracken could get a single shot off, El-Salarabi turned into a wild animal. His randomly fired bullets created a panicked rampage amidst the crowd as he bounced from hostage to hostage to keep McCracken from chancing a shot of his own. A repeat of that in the streets of New York today had to be avoided at all costs.

  Two days earlier, McCracken had been contacted by an Arab informant with news that El-Salarabi had paid one visit to New York City a month before and was en route back for a second. The informant knew a major strike was about to be carried out according to the terrorist’s specifications, but insisted he had no knowledge of the specifics. The only thing he did know was that El-Salarabi was staying at the Pierre Hotel. So Blaine had summoned Sal Belamo and Johnny Wareagle to New York to aid him in preempting the strike and apprehending all the parties working with El-Salarabi. Normally a dozen men would be required for such a complex task. Blaine figured the three of them together was close enough.

  Belamo, the ex-middleweight boxer whose primary claim to fame was having his nose broken both times he lost to Carlos Monzon. Wareagle, the mystical seven-foot Indian with whom Blaine had fought in Vietnam and now summoned from his backwoods Maine home whenever the situation warranted. Belamo until recent years had still been active in the intelligence community, but he had freelanced once too often and been banished as a result. Fortunately for McCracken, he managed to take his contacts, which remained the best in the business, with him. Wareagle, meanwhile, never wavered from his stoic, leathery self. In the more than twenty years they had known each other, it seemed to Blaine that the big Indian hadn’t changed at all.

  El-Salarabi had emerged from the Pierre just before noon and come straight to Bloomingdale’s. His presence inside for over three hours made the target for the coming strike clear. El-Salarabi’s briefcase would now contain the building’s structural layout and instructions on where to plant the explosives for optimum effect. The plan at this point was to wait for the pickup to be made and then entrap the courier in a classic bubble. If he headed north, Johnny would move in from the rear while Belamo closed and brought up the front. If the pickup chose south, the roles would be reversed. Meanwhile, McCracken would handle El-Salarabi personally after the exchange was complete.

  “Salami just put the case down, boss,” Belamo reported. “Got it resting against his leg.”

&
nbsp; “Indian?”

  “I’m coming up on Fifty-eighth Street now, Blainey.”

  “Talk to me, Sal,” McCracken said into the miniature microphone wired down his sleeve, frustrated at being detached from the action. The Motorola unit was a step above those used by the Secret Service, featuring an independent earphone that used the jawbone as a pickup mike. No wires that way. Secret Service men didn’t care if they stood out; McCracken could seldom afford to.

  “Salami’s at the fruit stand, boss,” Belamo replied. “Briefcase is still against his leg. Looks like he’s picking out oranges.”

  “Blainey,” Johnny Wareagle whispered, “someone just crossed Fifty-eighth Street ahead of me.”

  “Make him?”

  “I did not see his face, only his briefcase.”

  “Briefcase?”

  “Brown leather, high quality,” the Indian explained. “Identical to El-Salarabi’s, Blainey.”

  “They’re gonna try a switch, boys,” said McCracken. “It’s show time.”

  Crossing East Fifty-eighth Street, Benjamin Ratansky kept his pace slow enough not to stand out. He held his neck rigid to keep himself from looking back so often as to draw attention. Sweat had long since soaked through his shirt.

  Were they still there, lurking somewhere behind him?

  Ratansky felt certain they were, although common sense told him they could not be. His lunge onto a bus just as it began to drive away should have been enough to lose anyone . A stop ten blocks later left him near the subway, and he rode the train to Fifty-first Street. The blocks since then had passed in a blur, his senses showing the effects of going forty-eight hours without sleep.

  He had come to New York yesterday to deliver the contents of the briefcase, but his contact had failed to show up. Terrified, Ratansky had tried the phone number provided again and again without results. Then he spent the night in a run-down fleabag of a hotel on West Forty-sixth Street, sitting up through the neon-broken darkness, facing the door in a wobbly chair.

  This morning the contact number continued to ring unanswered. Ratansky had elected to stay in the city, stay on the move. They might have gotten to the man he had come to New York to meet, but there would be others. His contact was not alone. Sooner or later the line would be answered.

  Halfway across Fifty-eighth Street, he finally let himself turn to the rear. A pair of men had just stepped down from the curb and were weaving their way toward him. His stare met one of theirs and he swung back fast with his breath frozen in his throat.

  It couldn’t be, it just couldn’t be!

  It was them!

  Not any he had seen before, no, but all the same he was certain..The briefcase trembled in his hand as he reached the other side of the street to find his progress stalled by a fruit stand that was sprawled across a good portion of the sidewalk. Would the men at his rear dare try for him amongst a crowd, or could he buy himself time by planting himself before the stand? This question at the forefront of his mind, Ratansky’s gaze captured a man bagging oranges who had laid his briefcase low against his leg.

  A brown leather Gurkha, a virtual twin of his own.

  His next move was decided upon in the shortest moment his weary mind would allow. The contents of the briefcase, after all, were everything. He recalled the long, torturous minutes it took to make a hard copy from the disk. The pages couldn’t spill out of the laser printer fast enough. His heart lurched into his throat every time the slightest sound came from the corridor.

  Ratansky had done it, though, pulled it off—all for naught if they caught him now. The contents of the briefcase had to be salvaged, his own fate of secondary importance. If he moved fast enough, if he moved now …

  He slid toward the tall, dark man bagging oranges and knelt as if to retie his shoe. Barely brushing against him, he placed his Gurkha near the man’s leg and snatched the twin case up in its place. The man looked down, and Ratansky tried for a casual smile that wouldn’t come. The best he could do was bring his new briefcase toward him and stiffly climb to his feet.

  The switch complete, Ratansky started on again just as his pursuers stepped up on the curb in front of the fruit stand.

  Ahmed El-Salarabi felt the slight nudge against his leg and thought at first his contact had made the pickup. Gazing furtively downward, he saw a man fidgeting with his shoes. Their eyes met and something about the man’s stare sent El-Salarabi’s well-honed defenses screaming. He was gone, on his way before the Arab could do anything other than enclose his briefcase between both legs. But the damage had been done, he was certain of it.

  He had been made! The enemy was on to him!

  A pair of well-dressed, dead-eyed men glided through patrons huddled before the fresh fruit. El-Salarabi dropped his bag of oranges and lurched away from the fruit stand.

  The oranges tumbled to the sidewalk. The terrorist grabbed a wooden crate full of them and flung it at the dead-eyed men. Not bothering to gauge the effects, he lunged off the sidewalk straight into the center of Lexington Avenue. Brakes squealed. One yellow cab slammed into another’s rear end, forcing it into a shuddering lurch forward. More cars screamed to a halt, and El-Salarabi rushed back down the street between them, briefcase in hand.

  “What the fuck …”

  “Sal?”

  “Our boy just jumped into the street, boss. Our boy’s running!”

  “He made us!”

  “No! It’s something else, somebody else! Bastard emptied a crate of oranges at a couple guys ’fore he bolted.”

  “Indian, did the man you saw with the briefcase make the switch?”

  “I couldn’t see, Blainey.”

  “Stay with him in case. Sal, you stay on El-Salarabi.”

  “Already am.”

  “I’m on my way,” McCracken said, and launched himself into a dash east across the center of Lexington, precious seconds ticking off in his head.

  “Boss!” Sal Belamo’s breathless voice cried.

  “Here, Sal.”

  “Salami’s off the street! Just ducked back inside.”

  “Back inside what?”

  “Bloomingdale’s,” replied Belamo.

  CHAPTER 2

  Almost to Fifty-ninth Street, Benjamin Ratansky had turned to peer behind him when he felt the thump of impact against someone coming the other way down Lexington.

  “Excuse me,” he started, turning his head all the way forward just as the abominable stink assaulted him.

  He found himself eye level with the chest of a man draped in a black canvas coat half-open to reveal tattered and soiled clothes beneath it. Ratansky gazed up, stunned by the man’s stench, and nearly gagged. The giant’s huge face was bearded and filthy. He opened his mouth for a smile that revealed rows of brown, rotting teeth marred by several spaces. He chuckled and his breath nearly toppled Ratansky over.

  “Hey,” Ratansky uttered when he felt the rank giant’s massive hand seize his elbow. “Hey!”

  The giant’s hair hung in long, oily hanks across his face. The bushy clumps of his eyebrows topped yellow, jaundiced eyes; almond-shaped like a cat’s. His skin was dotted with oozing boils, one of which hung at the very edge of his beaklike nose.

  The giant squeezed harder, flashing what remained of his teeth.

  And then Ratansky knew, felt his insides melt into powerless putty.

  “No.” A mutter. “No!” A gasp.

  He glimpsed the dull, rusty brown blade coming forward, as worn and decayed as the giant who was wielding it.

  “April is the cruelest month.”

  The opening line of T.S. Eliot’s famed poem “The Wasteland” was recited by the vagrant in a raspy voice as the knife swished into Ratansky’s stomach.

  The huge figure’s eyes rolled upward. As his hand jerked up on the knife to finish the kill, he spotted the shape of an Indian slicing through the clutter of the sidewalk en route to the street. The Indian’s attention shifted suddenly from that path, drawn, it seemed, to the huge figure’s s
tare.

  Their eyes locked briefly, before the huge figure slipped away with his victim’s briefcase clutched in his hand.

  Johnny Wareagle froze for the briefest of moments, bewildered by the sight of the shapeless mass of a man twenty feet from him. He was looking into the sun and tried to blink away the impossible. In the scant few moments it took to recover his senses, the figure managed to vanish from the street.

  Johnny bolted for the sidewalk, trying to determine in which direction the massive shape wrapped in filth and canvas had fled. He had caught enough of a glimpse to recognize who it was and to thus believe that his eyes must have deceived him.

  Johnny was almost to the corner of Fifty-ninth Street when the bloodied figure of the man with the briefcase he had seen approaching El-Salarabi back at the fruit stand collapsed against him. Passersby lurched away, shrieking. The man’s dying eyes found Johnny’s as his trembling grasp dug into the Indian’s forearms.

  “Judgment Day,” he uttered, blood and entrails pouring from a tear straight down his abdomen. “Judgment Day.”

  He started to collapse. Johnny crouched to ease his drop.

  “Stop them,” the man rasped, eyes starting to fade as his clench on Johnny tightened. “You’ve got to stop—”

  The man’s mouth locked open, a last puff of breath emerging in place of words. Wareagle lowered him gently to the pavement. He searched the area for the brown leather briefcase and lunged back to his feet when it was nowhere to be found. He darted through the gathering crowd down Fifty-ninth Street, hoping to find the monstrous, tattered figure who must have made off with it.