But as soon as he was in the shopping center parking lot, another car pulled up beside him. He opened the passenger door and got in. This second car drove away, and the first one was left at the bank, with no one paying any attention to it.
At a post office a few miles away, another dark-haired man parked in a handicapped spot right next to the door. A bright blue handicapped parking hanger dangled from the rearview mirror of the van that the man drove. He got out, not appearing to be disabled, but of course it was possible that he had heart trouble or some breathing difficulty or some other medical condition that wasn’t readily apparent. Certainly, none of the people going in and out of the post office challenged his right to park where he did.
Once inside the building, he didn’t go to the busy counter, but remained in the lobby area instead, where several alcoves full of post office boxes were located, along with coin-operated stamp machines. He went to one of the machines and studied it for long moments as if he were trying to make up his mind exactly what he needed to buy. Finally reaching a decision, he fed coins into the machine, pushed the appropriate buttons, and took a book of stamps from the trough at the bottom where they had been dispensed. He slipped the stamps into his pocket and walked out of the post office.
A car pulled up at the curb. The man climbed into it and the driver drove away. The van with the handicapped hanger on the mirror was still parked beside the post office’s front door.
A few miles from the post office, the morning rush was over at the Little Friends Day Care Center. A few moms who were on later schedules would be dropping off kids throughout the morning, but for the most part the children were already there. None of them were supposed to be picked up until nearly lunchtime. The center wasn’t as full today as it usually was, since some of the parents had the entire Thanksgiving weekend off from work and had kept their kids at home today or taken them with them on short trips, but still, there were about sixty children inside the building, along with five workers.
None of them noticed the man who pulled his car up at the end of the building at nine thirty-five and then got out and walked away quickly, leaving the vehicle there. There were no windows in that end of the building. If anyone had been inside the enclosed playground at the rear of the center, they might have noticed the man or the car, but the playground was empty at the moment. The kids would come out later, once the temperature had warmed up some.
At least, that was the plan.
At nine forty-one, yet another man pulled into the parking lot of a drugstore across the street from a Fort Worth Police Department substation in a busy retail and residential area not far from Loop 820. The car being driven by this man was the only one involved in the plan that would not be left behind and triggered by remote control. He knew the American police were dolts, but even they might become suspicious of a vehicle parked in front of their building and then quickly abandoned. The chance of that happening, slim though it might be, could not be taken.
And so the driver’s life was now numbered in mere minutes. Four…no, three.
Three minutes from paradise. Three minutes from a reward so glorious that he could barely conceive of it. And he would die, too, with the knowledge that he was striking a blow for Allah as a soldier in the holiest of wars. The trunk and the backseat of the car were packed with enough explosives to level the entire building. All the infidels inside would die. All he had to do to accomplish this was to drive the car right at the entrance to the police station, crash through the glass doors and on into the lobby, and trigger the detonator that he held in his right hand. He pushed down the button with his thumb and set the switch, so that now all he had to do to cause the massive explosion was release the button. If he was injured in the crash, or if the police managed somehow to shoot him, it wouldn’t matter.
Allah’s will would still be done. Allahu akbar!
Less than two minutes now. With his left hand the driver wiped away the sweat that had sprung up on his brow. Even though he was willing to die…no, anxious to die…ending one’s own life was a hard step. He knew that Allah would give him the strength he needed to carry out his mission, though. He hadn’t turned off the car’s engine. Now he put it back in gear and drove carefully to the exit from the drugstore parking lot. He looked both ways along the four-lane street that ran between the drugstore and the police station, waiting for the traffic to clear. This was a busy boulevard, and the driver grew impatient as he waited for a clear enough opening in the oncoming cars. He had to build up some speed before he hit the entrance doors, which were probably more reinforced than they looked.
Where were all these damned Americans going? he asked himself. It was nine forty-five on a Friday morning. The road shouldn’t have been this busy. Even though the explosion wasn’t timed to the second since he was going to detonate it manually, he was eager to get on with it. The dashboard clock in the car now read nine forty-five. The other three bombs would be going off now. He had to do his part. He couldn’t fail, he just couldn’t.
There were virgins waiting for him in paradise!
Sweat drenched his face. His lips pulled back from his teeth. His desperate eyes spotted a gap in the traffic. With a muttered prayer, he jammed his foot down on the accelerator.
He never saw the cement truck coming from the other direction. It had just pulled out from a side road and hadn’t been there the last time the driver looked that way. The truck hadn’t built up much speed, but it was moving fast enough. The terrorist heard brakes screaming and started to turn his head in that direction, but even as he did a terrible impact smashed into him and engulfed him in more pain than he would have dreamed was possible. In his last coherent moment he was aware of his thumb slipping off the detonator button; then there was a blinding flash and he knew that it heralded his arrival in paradise.
But if that was true, where were the virgins? Why did everything still hurt so bad? Why did his body blaze as if it were burning with a never-ending fire?
No one heard his scream. The explosion that disintegrated car and driver and flung the massive cement truck into the air as if it were a child’s toy drowned out everything else.
CHAPTER 32
“When was Dad gonna call us?” Ronnie McCabe asked as she and her mother made their way along a crowded aisle in the craft section. Terry was looking for some needlework that she could use as a spare present if she needed one. You never knew when somebody extra, a visiting aunt or somebody like that, was going to show up at a Christmas party.
“He said he’d call and find out where to meet us when he gets through making that delivery,” Terry said. She glanced at her watch. “It’s nine forty-five already? He should have been here by now.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”
“Well,” Terry said with a shrug, “he must’ve been delayed for some reason. You saw how terrible the traffic was earlier. It’s probably worse now. He may be sitting out there on the highway in his truck, not even able to get into the parking lot yet.”
“So we just wait for him to call?”
Terry smiled. “We haven’t even gone through half the store yet. I think we still have enough shopping to keep us busy for a while.”
That was certainly the truth. Once you were inside the cavernous store, it seemed endless, as if you could wander around in here for days and still not see everything there was to see.
“Hey, there’s Allison,” Ronnie said a few minutes later. “Oh, look, that lawyer guy is still hanging around her.”
Terry looked where her daughter was pointing and saw Allison Sawyer making her way toward the shoe department, which was next to crafts. Ellis Burke was still with the younger woman, smiling and talking to her. Terry thought that Allison looked a little distracted and annoyed, but she was trying not to show it.
Earlier, when they first made it through the doors into the store, Allison had attempted to go her own way, thanking Burke with a finality in her tone that made it clear that despite the gratitude
she felt toward the attorney for his help in recovering her purse, that was the end of whatever relationship they had.
Burke had been oblivious, though. Or rather, thought Terry, he had chosen to be oblivious. He was going to continue his single-minded flirting with Allison no matter what she said or did.
It was at that moment Terry had decided that she and Ronnie would stay with Allison, too, in hopes that Burke would get tired, give up, and leave them alone. Things hadn’t worked out that way, however. The UltraMegaMart was so crowded that Terry and Ronnie had gotten separated from Allison and Burke in the press of people. It was all they could do to keep up with each other in that mob.
“Let’s go see if we can give her a hand,” Terry said now that they had run across Allison and Burke again.
Ronnie nodded in agreement. “Yeah. I guess Mr. Burke’s a nice enough guy, but the way he’s following her around and all but drooling is a little creepy.”
They slid along the aisle, winding their way around customers’ baskets, and intercepted Allison and Burke. “Hello again,” Terry said to Allison with a bright smile.
“Hi,” Allison said, looking relieved.
“Hello, ladies,” Burke added, a smug grin on his face.
Terry nodded to him. “Mr. Burke. Did you find what you were looking for, for your daughter?”
“No, not yet,” Burke replied. “I’ve been busy helping Allison here with her shopping.” He hefted the armload of toys and clothes he was carrying.
“Yes, Mr. Burke’s been very helpful,” Allison said.
“Ellis. I told you, call me Ellis.”
Allison forced a smile. “All right. I don’t know what I would have done without your help today, Ellis.”
He beamed, obviously pleased, and said, “Well, I’m just glad I was here to lend a hand when I was needed. First with stopping that purse-snatcher and now being your pack mule.”
“Ronnie and I could help Allison carry her things,” Terry offered. “That way you could get on with your own shopping, Mr. Burke.” She reached for the merchandise he was holding.
“No, no, that’s not necessary,” he said as he turned to put the stuff out of Terry’s reach. “It’s no bother at all, I assure you. I’m in no hurry. I have all day.”
“But what if that toy sells out that your daughter wanted?” Terry asked.
For a second, a worried frown crossed Burke’s face. Clearly, he hadn’t considered that possibility. But then he shook it off, saying, “If that happens, I’ll just get it somewhere else. I might have to pay more for it, but that’s all right. I can afford it. I’m a lawyer, you know.”
“Yes, of course,” Allison said, and Terry thought she was trying hard not to grit her teeth.
“You know, there’s a restaurant in the back of the store,” Terry said. “Why don’t we go sit down and get a cup of coffee or something? I wouldn’t mind getting off my feet and out of this mob for a while.”
“Sitting down sounds good,” Allison agreed, “but I don’t think we’ll get away from the mob. I’ll bet the restaurant is just as crowded as the rest of the store.”
Terry laughed. “You’re probably right. Let’s go find out.”
The four of them started toward the rear of the store, and as they did, Terry’s cell phone rang in her jacket pocket. Ronnie said, “That’s probably Dad.”
“If it is, I’ll tell him to meet us at the restaurant,” Terry said as she reached for the phone. “That’ll be a good place to rendezvous.”
Before she could open the phone and answer the call, though, someone began to shout nearby. Terry turned her head, recognizing the sounds of shock and fear, and knew instinctively that something was very, very wrong.
CHAPTER 33
The traffic surprised McCabe by continuing to move fairly well. Not fast, but at least the mass of cars and trucks wasn’t at a dead stop anymore.
Telling himself to be patient, he turned the radio off when he got tired of sports talk and drove in silence, thinking about the leftover-turkey-and-dressing sandwiches that Terry would make for supper tonight. Sometimes, McCabe thought that the leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner were better than the dinner itself.
It was nine fifty when he pulled around the rear corner of the UltraMegaMart and drove along the back of the store toward the loading docks and the service entrance. He’d planned to pull right up to the entrance, but two trucks were already backed up to the docks, where they were being unloaded.
McCabe found a place to park and climbed down from the cab. With his hands in the pockets of his jacket, he walked over to the stairs that led up to the docks and the service entrance. “Got another one for you,” he called to the guy who seemed to be bossing the unloading operation.
The man rolled his eyes. “Lord, is it ever gonna stop?” He consulted the little handheld computer he carried and checked some numbers he saw there with the numbers on McCabe’s truck. “Okay, I got you here. We’ll get to you as fast as we can, but it’s gonna be an hour at least before we get that truck unloaded.”
“Doesn’t matter to me how long it takes,” McCabe said with a shrug. “I’m done for the day. My boss is sending somebody else to pick up the truck later.”
The loading dock supervisor grunted. “Lucky man. I’m not sure I’ll even get time off to fart today, let alone go home and see my family. Hang on, lemme print out some paperwork for you.”
McCabe followed the man through the service entrance into the huge stockroom at the rear of the store. The man printed up a delivery ticket from another computer, signed it, and handed it to McCabe.
“There you go, pal. It’s our worry now, not yours.”
McCabe nodded and tucked the paperwork inside his jacket. As of now, he didn’t have any worries. “Good luck,” he said as he lifted a hand in farewell and walked toward one of the sets of swinging doors that led into the store itself.
Just before he got there, the doors swung inward and a man walked quickly into the stockroom. He wasn’t wearing a MegaMart vest, which struck McCabe as strange since only employees were allowed back here, but maybe he was a customer who had gotten turned around and was looking for a restroom. Things like that happened all the time. McCabe brushed past him and shouldered through the doors without giving the man another thought. He took the cell phone from the clip on his belt, opened it, and thumbed the speed-dial button that would connect him with Terry’s phone.
Just as he heard the ringing on the other end, people started to yell nearby. He wasn’t far from the electronics area, and as people started to run in that direction, McCabe swung his gaze after them and saw that the two dozen or so television sets lined up in display rows on shelves were all tuned to the same thing.
The screens, including several large high-definition plasma units, all showed flames and a cloud of smoke, shot from a high angle that told McCabe the video feed came from a news chopper. His jaw tightened. Something bad had happened. Really bad.
Terry hadn’t answered her phone. McCabe closed his. Still holding it, he reached out with his other hand and grasped the arm of a man who was hurrying past him, away from the display of TV sets.
“What’s going on?” McCabe asked.
The man had a frantic look on his face. “Explosions all over the north side of Fort Worth,” he said. “Some sort of terrorist attack. They said on TV that a bank had been blown up. My wife works in a bank! I’ve gotta call her!”
McCabe let the man go. Poor bastard was scared out of his wits, and McCabe couldn’t blame him. Obviously, this news story had just broken, and there wouldn’t be many details available yet. Chances were the guy’s wife was all right—there were dozens of banks in the area, maybe more than a hundred—but right now he couldn’t be sure of that.
Screams and sobs came from the people gathering in front of the TV sets. McCabe forced his way through the crowd, getting close enough so that he could see the crawl going along the bottom of the screen on one of the big plasma units, under the footage
of a burning building with a debris field around it that looked like something from a war zone. McCabe stiffened and sickness punched into his gut as he read that there were reports of a post office and a day-care center being bombed, too, as well as the bank. There had also been a fourth explosion near a police station.
McCabe’s jaw was tight with anger and horror. He had spent long years of his life fighting the bastards who did this sort of thing, but ever since 9/11 they had kept their cowardly acts on their own turf. Now they had brought their madness back to American soil.
Of course, there was always a chance that the terror was domestic, not foreign. McCabe hadn’t forgotten Oklahoma City. But every instinct in his body, all of them honed by his experiences in the shadow wars, told him that these atrocities were the work of Islamic terrorists. The multiple strikes, timed to go off together, the choice of soft civilian targets…those were the hallmarks of an attack planned by Al Qaeda or one of the other Islamic groups. McCabe had been out of the loop long enough so that he wasn’t sure which bunch of psychotic bastards represented the biggest threat to the United States these days.
And it didn’t really matter who had done it. What was important was that they had hit us again, McCabe thought, feeling like he wanted to puke. What would we do about it this time? That was the question. Would the liberal politicians and the mainstream media get out of the way and stay out of the way while the people who were trained and equipped to deal with threats like this did their job?
McCabe doubted it. Based on the evidence of the past decade or so, the country had lost its will to stomp the snakes that needed stomping—and knowing that made McCabe almost as sick as the thought of all the innocent lives that had been snuffed out this morning in a burst of insane hatred.
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