by Gary Ponzo
Silk shook his head in amazement. He was like a kid watching Santa land reindeer on his rooftop. “You can hear what they’re saying?” Silk asked.
“Every word,” Hartwick assured him.
Nick leaned over and grabbed an available headset. He stuck one earpiece over his right ear.
Hartwick looked at him. “You know Kurdish?”
“Somewhat.”
After a few minutes Nick said, “What’s that word mean?”
Hartwick was listening to the same conversation on his headset. “Which one?”
“Sarock.”
“It’s a very respectful term, usually reserved for patriarchs of a family.”
“Could it mean. . leader?”
Hartwick thought for a moment. “It could.”
Nick pulled his headset off. “Who’s in charge of Satellite Patrol?”
Hartwick was adjusting a dial on the panel in front of him. “I think it’s still Stevie Gilpin.”
“Can you get him on line for me?”
Before Nick could finish his thought, Hartwick was handing him a smaller, thinner headset and dialing a number into a keypad to his left. “He usually answers on the first ring, twenty-four hours a day.”
Nick heard half of a ring, then, “Gilpin.”
“Stevie?”
“That’s me.”
“Listen, this is Nick Bracco. Could you add a key word to our scavenger hunt?”
Gilpin laughed. “One word, Nick. You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’m not. I just need the word Sarock added to the list.”
“Do you know which language so I can route it to the proper interpreter?”
“Kurdish.”
“Nick, for you, it will be done inside of thirty seconds. That fast enough?”
“You’re beautiful, Stevie.”
“That’s what everyone tells me.”
Nick hung up with a smile. Between the NSA, CIA, and FBI, there were twenty-two satellites circling the earth. Half of them were video surveillance recorders, the other half audio. The audio satellites were listening to every conversation sent through the airwaves around the world, and were programmed to record every conversation in every language that included any one of hundreds of key words: kill, bomb, nuclear, destroy, murder, etc. Once they were recorded, they were sent directly to FBI headquarters, where a translator would determine whether the conversation warranted any further investigation. Most of the time it was housewives talking about killing time, but every now and then something good happened. Adding Sarock to the list of words probably added a boatload of work for the Kurdish translator and nothing more. But it was worth a shot.
Sal Demenci looked over at the FBI crew with an expression of amazement, “If you guys can hear all of our conversations through windows and doors, then how come we’re all walking around freely?”
Paul again deferred to Nick with raised eyebrows.
Nick shrugged. “Because a lot of this stuff is illegal and inadmissible in a court of law. Believe it or not, Sal, even you guys have rights.”
“How did you guys find out about this house anyway?” Sal asked.
Matt didn’t look up as he responded to Sal’s inquiry. “The INS picked up a young Kurd and brought him in for questioning. His visa was in order, so they let him go. Fortunately, we’ve got a team working over there undercover. They tagged his coat with a tracking device and we followed the signal to this house.”
Sal looked at Nick. “Is that legal?”
“Not always,” Nick said. “This time, however, we had the proper paperwork in place.” The lines of legality were getting blurrier every minute. It was ironic that Nick wound up explaining the law to one of the most lawless men he knew. They were using lions to track down a wild bear running loose in the neighborhood. Not only that, but they were training the lions how to kill a predator more efficiently. This could not turn out well.
Matt placed a finger on the map. “There,” he said. “That’s where we plant him.”
Nick nodded. He gestured to get Paul Hartwick’s attention and the agent pulled one of the headphones away from an ear.
“You still think one of them is leaving?” Nick asked.
Paul held up a finger while listening to the conversation inside the house. “They’re still arguing about it. Apparently this is a bombing crew and they’re supposed to commence their mission at 1:30 AM.”
Nick glanced at his watch. “That’s less than two hours from now. Where does the guy want to go?”
Hartwick didn’t respond. He held his gaze on one of the screens in front of him while concentrating on the voices in his ear. “He wants to get a drink.”
Nick squinted. “What?”
Hartwick nodded. “Yes. That’s it.” He pointed to a line on the blue screen. “Number three wants to get a drink. He wants to go to a bar. Number two is telling him that it’s too dangerous. They can’t afford any attention.”
“You’re kidding,” Matt said, scrambling with the map to find a bar nearby. “Is he mentioning any names?”
“Something about blues.” He smiled at Nick. “Number three wants to hear some blues music.”
“Shit,” Matt said, fumbling with his diagram. “Blues, blues, who’s got blues music?”
“The horse you came in on,” Silk uttered.
Matt and Nick both stopped to look at him.
“That’s the name of the place,” Silk explained. “The Horse You Came in On. It’s a dive, but they’ve got the best blues in the city. It’s down on Thames, shit, walking distance from here.”
“He’s right,” Matt said. “That was my fiancee’s favorite club.”
“Your fiancee?” Silk said. “You have a fiancee?”
Matt shrugged. “A long time ago.”
Nick leaned back behind Matt’s shoulder and shook his head at Silk. He needed to sublimate any thoughts of Jennifer Steele.
Hartwick jumped up from his chair. “He’s leaving.” He stood over the agent’s shoulder next to him and punched a button on the panel. On the screen in front of him a man was seen opening a door, then scouring the street for anything suspicious.
“Can he see us?” asked Sal.
“No,” Hartwick said. “We’re too far away.”
Nick looked at Silk. “You ready?”
Silk stood up and checked the inside pockets of his denim jacket. “Guess it’s time to have some fun.”
Sal grabbed his arm. “You be careful out there. These guys aren’t going to be there to back you up.” Sal looked at Nick for confirmation.
“He’s right,” Nick said. “We can’t be seen escorting you in and out of trouble. Place this in your ear.” He handed a tiny rubber earpiece to Silk, who placed it in his right ear. It was flesh-colored and practically invisible unless you had an otoscope handy.
“We can hear you and you’ll be able to hear us. If we see something that concerns us, we’ll warn you. Other than that, you’re on your own.”
Jimmy Fingers shook his head. “I don’t like this set-up. It stinks. We’re not allowed to back up our own people?”
“Hey,” Matt snapped, “we can scrap this entire project right now if you don’t like the terms.”
Sal held up his hands. “Okay, okay, cut it out. Silk goes out alone, but if we hear trouble, you gotta let us go after him-give him some kind of protection.”
Matt pursed his lips. “If we see it falling apart, we’ll drop you off. But then we disappear. There can’t be any evidence of collaboration.”
“Guys,” Hartwick said, tapping the monitor in front of him. “He’s moving.”
Silk slid open the panel door and looked at Nick.
“Careful,” Nick said.
Silk flashed a thumbs up, then looked back at Sal with a glint in his eye. “This one’s for Tommy.”
They sat there wordless, just the hum of the computers breaking the midnight stillness. Nick looked out the front window and recognized a figure approaching the van. There
was a soft knock on the passenger window and Nick opened it. Agent Dave Tanner stood in the night air with a concerned expression.
“What’s up, Dave? Why are you out of position?”
“Walt called,” he said, staring at Nick with such a mournful expression that Nick could only think of one thing that could cause such a look.
“Julie?” Nick breathed.
Tanner nodded. “You’d better come with-”
Nick was out of the van before Tanner could finish the sentence.
Mustafa Derka sat at a small round table against the brick wall. Besides the candles flickering on the tabletops, the only light in the bar came from the stage twenty feet away. Four young men with messed-up hair and ripped blue jeans swayed rhythmically to the grinding wail of a Muddy Waters song. The guitarist hunched over and slid his fingers up and down the neck of his guitar until he reached a high note, where he bent the bottom string with precise timing to the beat of the drums. Derka sipped Vodka from a short, ice-cubed glass and smiled. Being the boss had its privileges. While his crew was gearing up for tonight’s bombing, he was enjoying the final moments of a set of American blues.
He’d been in America for six months and the one redeeming value he saw with the place was their music. Back in Kurdistan, in his youth, Derka’s ambition to play a musical instrument was ignored. After all, there were so many hardships. Derka’s parents were killed in Saddam Hussein’s mustard gas raid of 1988. In the streets and alleys of his village, Halabja, corpses piled up while Derka played in the hills with his friends. They were fortunate in their ignorance. They remained playing as Iraqi helicopters dropped the chemical bombs on his village. While his Kurdish relatives scrambled into their cellars for protection from another routine round of artillery from the air, Hussein surprised them with the deadly poison. The invisible gas settled down to the lowest point on the ground. The basement.
No, Derka wouldn’t get the chance to play any guitars or drums, but it didn’t lessen his enthusiasm for the sounds they could make. Especially when they stirred the emotions that the blues seemed to bring.
He chewed on an ice cube and sat back in his seat with a gratifying smile. The singer, sweat dripping from his chin, poured his heart out to the dwindling crowd.
Derka became aware of a presence near him and it sent him into attack mode. His hand stretched for his knife. It wasn’t there.
“You looking for this?” A dark-haired man with a purple toothpick dangling from his lip sat next to him. The man was playing drums on the tabletop with Derka’s knife. A drunken smile etched on his face.
Derka assessed the room. Besides the stranger, there were only twenty or so people left. Every one of them was there when he sat down and gave no appearance of association with the stranger. “Who are you?” he demanded.
The man was using his free hand to tap the table opposite the knife-beat to resemble drumsticks. He ignored Derka, lowering his head and moving it to the beat, his eyes closed. He bumped into Derka’s shoulder when he swayed too far left. Derka was pretty sure the man was intoxicated; he knew he was crazy.
“Why are you sitting here?” Derka asked.
“Just enjoying the blues, man.”
Derka glanced at his wrist. It was almost time for him to get back to the safe house. There wasn’t time to deal with the drunk just now. He needed to do the smart thing and leave. But he wanted to be certain this nut sat next to him by chance. He didn’t believe much in coincidences.
Derka turned in his seat and faced the man. He was forceful now, letting the man know he was in charge. “Why did you choose this seat?”
The man leaned into Derka and whispered, “I know who you are.”
Derka cursed to himself. He was going to have to kill this man and it didn’t matter how much attention he drew. He could straight-hand the man’s throat, then work his eyes until they became useless. Permanently. This could be done in less than five seconds. Derka understood his abilities and he knew that Kemel Kharrazi himself wasn’t quick enough to stop Derka’s attack from such a close distance. The man was already dead, but he didn’t know it yet.
“Who am I?” Derka seethed.
The stranger stood up and dropped the knife on the wooden table. “I’ve gotta go to the men’s. Be here when I get back.”
Derka found himself with his mouth open. He watched the stranger strut in between empty tables, snapping his fingers to the bass line of an old Willie Dixon tune. He was beginning to wonder who the man could be. A drunkard pickpocket maybe. He certainly wasn’t a police officer. And what in the world was the men’s?
Derka picked up his knife, discreetly pulled up his pant leg and slid it back into his leg strap. He watched the man enter a hallway that he knew only contained the men’s and women’s bathrooms. The men’s, he thought.
When Derka entered the men’s room, the stranger was swaying in front of a urinal, his head resting forward against the cold tiled wall, his free hand grasping the flushing device for leverage. Derka felt that without the metal handle, the man would be making an awful mess.
The bathroom was larger than expected for such a small bar. Double sinks hung below a single stretch of mirror than ran across both basins. It had two urinals and two stalls. Derka crouched to check the stalls and confirm their solitude. The drunk seemed oblivious. He was murmuring the lyrics to the song that could be heard bleeding through the thin walls.
Derka twisted the dead bolt lock to the room. He bent over to remove his knife and decided to make it quick. He’d taken two steps toward the man, when he heard, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
The drunk had his head turned slightly in Derka’s direction. At first Derka thought the man was standing in an awkward position because he’d lost his balance. After a moment he realized that the man had his arm across his body in front of him. His hand peeked out under his armpit holding a gun. The man pointed the weapon at Derka as if it were part of his body. Something told Derka that the man wasn’t just a pickpocket.
The stranger flushed and zipped without taking his eye from Derka. “Surprised, Mustafa?” he said, dangling an open wallet from between his thumb and index finger.
It took a second, then Derka felt his back pocket and found it empty.
“What kind of name is Mustafa, anyway?” The man appeared sober now, and Derka wondered if he would have acted differently had the man appeared sober from the start.
Derka was still going to kill the man, he only needed one small lapse, a hesitation. “What is it you want?” Derka asked.
The man gestured with his hand. “First, gimee the knife.”
Derka considered doing just that, but the gun deterred him. He bent over and slid the knife across the tiled floor to the man.
“Good boy.” The man took the knife and tossed it into a stall. Derka heard it splash into a toilet.
“What did you mean when you said you knew who I was?”
The man switched hands with the gun while removing his jacket. He draped the jacket over the partition of the stall and unbuttoned the top button of his collared shirt. “You guys killed some friends of mine and I’m here to settle the score.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. You must have me confused with someone else.” Derka couldn’t help himself, the man was removing his clothes. If he were going to shoot him, he would have done it already. “Why are you removing your coat?”
“Because as much as I want to nail you, I’m going to do it with my bare hands. I want you to have hope and I want to see that hope evaporate as I beat the ever living crap out of you.”
Derka watched as the man crouched and placed his gun on the floor under the sink, then sidestep back to the middle of the floor. He couldn’t believe his luck. It was the opening he needed.
While rolling up his sleeves, the man seemed to examine Derka. “I understand you guys are going to bomb the White House tomorrow night. How do you go about doing something like that?”
Derka shook his h
ead. The idiot actually expected an answer. He was looking at the man, but in the corner of his eye he measured the distance to the gun. It was even closer to him than the man was. He decided he wouldn’t need it. He leapt toward the stranger and sprung his foot into the man’s chest, sending him backward against the wall. The man caught Derka’s ankle with his hand and pulled him down on his back.
The man jumped on Derka and squeezed one hand around his neck, the other smacked jabs into his face. Derka was impressed with the man’s abilities. Unlike most Americans, who were used to fighting with high tech equipment, this one seemed to be familiar with hand-to-hand combat. Still, he was no match for Derka.
Derka jammed his thumb into the man’s eye and applied the necessary pressure to force the man’s hand from his throat. For a moment the man rolled to his side and tended to the pained eye. Mustafa looked over his shoulder and realized that the gun was now within arms reach. He grabbed the gun and straddled the man’s chest, digging the barrel into the loose skin under his chin.
“Who are you?” Derka demanded.
The man choked on the pressure the gun caused on his larynx. “Please,” the man said, looking up with his one good eye. “I was supposed to find out how you were going to blow up the White House, then get the information back to the FBI,” the man gasped while Derka enjoyed cramming the pistol deeper into the man’s throat, trying to prevent him from talking any further. “Before you shoot. . at least tell me how you were going to do that.”
A sly grin spread across Derka’s face. Why not, he thought, the secret’s going to die on the floor of this bathroom. He leaned over the man and whispered, “With a missile, from underwater. It cannot be stopped and it cannot be found. Kemmel Kharrazi himself is on his way to our headquarters thousands of miles from here, where he will detonate the device himself.”
“Where’s that?” the man urged.
“You are very curious for a dead man,” Derka sneered. He spat down on the man’s face. Slowly, and with great satisfaction, he pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He pulled it again. Nothing, just a faint snap. He removed the magazine and saw that the gun wasn’t loaded. Sitting on the man’s chest he cocked his head, “You threatened me with an unloaded weapon?”
