by Darrell Bain
Motorcycle Martyrs, as they called themselves, were a relatively new phenomenon in the country. Preached to by their Emirs until they honestly believed in Martyrdom to support the undeclared Jihad being waged on American soil, they were very hard to contain or stop. Any intersection, parking lot or downtown street could become a target at any time, and frequently were. Explosives packed in saddle bags or strapped inside shirts and jackets made terribly effective bombs when the young men and women immolated themselves.
“I know, boss. We're trying, but short of confiscating every motorcycle in the country, it's a damnably hard thing to stop.”
“Well, maybe we better start confiscating.”
“Motorcycle riders are a pretty big constituency group,” Phillips warned.
Smith rubbed his chin, then his eyes. In the closed room, the cigarette smoke had become irritating. “Well, we need to do something. Who's working on this, anyway?”
“Munoz in Homeland Security.”
“That wimp. The only reason I nominated him was for the votes in California he controls.
“Well, tell him-no, never mind, I'll tell him myself, at the very next cabinet meeting. Let him explain to the rest of us why he's letting those nut cases blow themselves up on every street corner in America!”
It wasn't nearly that bad, but Phillips wasn't about to correct the President on so minor a matter; minor in his eyes anyway. So far as he was concerned, the more ragheads who blew themselves up, the better. One less in the country, and by God, if he and the President could figure a way to do it, the whole damned Islamic religion would be outlawed in America. Every time he saw a scene with Moslems at prayer, butts sticking up in the air as if they were getting ready to moon God, he became incensed. If someone had to practice a heretical religion, why couldn't they at least be dignified about it, like the Catholics?
Seeing that Phillips wasn't going to join him in railing at the cycleciders, Smith brought up another subject that was preying on his mind. “What are you doing with that missing Uranium? We ought to find a use for it somewhere, especially since those fanatics were planning on using it on us.”
Phillips winced. He had been trying to ignore that subject. “It's a tricky proposition, Mister President. We're still holding on to it, but we're still looking for a way to get it out of the country, and in to somewhere it can be useful. You don't have to worry about it being found. So far as the FBI is concerned, it's like it disappeared down a black hole, but I have to tell you, they do think it's still inside the country. They've got the ports and terminals covered like wool on a sheep.”
“Bullshit. Despite what Munoz says, our borders are still like a sieve. It could have been split up among a dozen or two wetbacks and hustled into Mexico by now. And from there, it could go anywhere.”
“I'll keep working on it,” Phillips offered.
President Smith lit another cigarette. He blew smoke across the table, then leaned forward across it himself, a beatific smile suddenly lighting up his face.
“No, I've changed my mind, Murray. Keep it where it is for now. I think we might have a use for it right here in the United States, by God.”
Phillips didn't say anything. The official story was that the two scientists and three technicians implicated in the theft had all suicided and no other persons involved had been apprehended. It had been a masterful operation, one he still remembered with pride. He doubted that a real bomb could be produced from the uranium inside the country without attracting unwanted attention, but a simple dirty bomb was a different proposition. It wouldn't be all that dangerous, but it could cause a localized panic in a heartbeat. That kind of bomb was very easy to manufacture, given some explosives and the radioactive material. And he had both ingredients now. Through an incredible stroke of luck, his own little cabal had tracked down the gang inserted by Iran years and years ago, capturing the uranium they had stolen and disposing of the bodies after some hurried and bloodily brutal questioning. The only question remaining was whether and when to use the material, which was the President's decision, of course.
“Cat got your tongue?”
Phillips shrugged and spread his hands. “We'll do whatever you say, Mister President. What did you have in mind?” He kept his voice carefully neutral, knowing that there were some things he would do and some that he wouldn't.
“I'll let you know. You're sure that everyone involved in that fuckup is dead?”
“Yes, sir. The ones we didn't capture suicided. You know how they are: become a martyr and get to bang a hundred virgins in paradise or some sort of idiot belief like that.”
Smith chuckled. “I'll bet they were awfully surprised when they wound up in hell facing the Devil.”
“Yes, sir. Well, we're using less and less of their oil. Give us another twenty years and we'll be totally independent of them. After that they can sit in the desert and swap camels with each other for a living; we won't have to worry about them.”
“Except the fanatics. Pakistan and Iran have the bomb, you know. What if one or the others suddenly decide to make martyrs of their whole nation by nuking us? It could happen you know; they're all crazy as Bessy Bugs.”
Bessy Bugs? Phillips hadn't heard that expression before but didn't ask the President what it meant. He would look it up later. “We've got operatives in both countries. I think we'd know in advance if they ever thought about such a thing. I doubt if their leaders ever do. It's only the young ignorant fanatics who do the suiciding. Older men and women aren't so stupid.”
Smith stared at the NSA Director. He was so politically naive. Didn't he know that younger men were always lusting for the power and positions older men held? “There's such a thing as revolution, Murray. Keep a close watch on those two countries. What with a dozen different kinds of fucking jihad being preached nowadays, no telling what might happen. Which reminds me: we've got a meeting with the Joint chiefs in fifteen minutes to go over progress on the missile defenses. Time for one more cigarette, then let's get moving.”
CHAPTER SIX
Shirley drove while Daniel finished his paper. She was distracted and still feeling guilty about placing that tracer on their car as Crafton had instructed her to. It didn't seem right that Daniel shouldn't know, and only her training kept her from blurting it out to him. Crafton had been very specific: Daniel was not to know that their car could be traced wherever it went. She had no idea why he was being excluded from that knowledge, other than the persistent rumor that he and Crafton didn't get along, nor see eye to eye on many issues. That still didn't seem like a reason to distrust him, but then she was just an agent, not a personnel supervisor. Maybe something was going on that she wasn't aware of.
Daniel put down the sports section of the newspaper, which he had only glanced at briefly. He wasn't much of a sports fan. Football was mildly interesting, but baseball and basketball didn't inspire him at all. “Do you want me to save any of the paper for you?”
Shirley took her eye off the winding road momentarily, startled by his voice after his long silence while reading. “No, I'll catch the news on television tonight after we stop. Unless you want to go all the way in?”
“No, our reservations are for tomorrow. Let's stay over at Memphis then go on into Masterville in the morning.”
“Memphis it is. This is some beautiful country, isn't it?” Daniel looked out over a vista sloping down to a farm or ranch, then the next moment it was hidden by a rocky outcrop of slate and granite with heavy forests above.
“It's nothing compared to Colorado or Wyoming. Now there's some country.”
“Is that where you're from?”
“No, I'm originally from back east but I vacationed up in that area one summer with my boyfriend back when I was still in training. We did a lot of hiking and rafting.”
Daniel smiled to himself. He admired beautiful scenery but had little desire to go poking into it. Mountain training with the Marines had cured him of that, and so far as personal fitness, he much preferre
d jogging and inside workouts, practicing hand to hand combat moves and stints with parallel and horizontal bars to keep in shape. He wasn't an accomplished gymnast but enjoyed the exercise whenever he could.
“This is some pretty wild country. I wouldn't want to get lost anywhere in this area,” he remarked.
“According to the map and our briefing, Masterville is situated right in the center of some of the wildest, and off the beaten path besides. We'll be driving on one lane roads tomorrow.”
Daniel hadn't looked that closely at the atlas they carried, but Shirley's mention of how isolated Masterville was, produced a thought. “I wonder if the original inhabitants settled in the area for that very reason?”
Shirley glanced over at him, thinking that she was paired with a very astute agent. “I don't know, but I imagine someone back at the shop is looking into it.”
“Yeah. Crafton and I may not get along as well as we should, but he's no dummy and neither is Phillips. He came up through the ranks.”
“We all know that, Dan. I think he's like Bobby Lee; a bit too far right religiously, but he's a good administrator, and it's nice to have someone running the shop that's one of us.”
“I suppose,” Daniel said, though he wasn't at all sure. While it was helpful for field agents to have the top administrator know something about what it was like in the trenches, it seemed to him that there were positive aspects to having political appointees controlling the government cabinet departments. It didn't stop bureaucratic fiefs and cowboys from running wild on occasion, but he did think it helped to keep a rein on them when the Chiefs changed almost every election year.
“You don't sound like you agree.”
“There are usually two sides to everything. Well, it doesn't matter right now. Let's just concentrate on getting this Op out of the way.”
“Out of the way? You don't sound very enthusiastic. Still having doubts?”
Daniel studied his partner's profile. She was really very pretty and he knew she was competent, having taken the time to get an opinion from a fellow agent who had worked with her once. And so far, there had been no hint of sexual innuendo between them, which was good. But he admitted to himself that there wasn't that spark of comradery present as yet, which would allow him to voice a lot of concerns he had about this Op. Well, maybe it would come, and in the meantime, he would play it as professionally as she was doing. “I just like to know as much as I can on an operation. And we know diddley here. I think we're going to have to be careful about how we ask questions around town. In fact, they might have done better to send in a team versed in psychology and misdirection in order to get the people to talk.”
“Maybe they'll talk anyway.”
“Well, guess we'll see. Hell, maybe we should just treat it as a vacation like we're pretending it is and let-no, I've got a better idea. Why not pose as folklorists? We might get some genealogical information as well as the other stuff we're after.”
Shirley glanced away from the winding road long enough to give him a brilliant smile. “Great idea! I like it. We've both got our Comphones with us; we can record that way without anyone giving it a second thought.”
Daniel thought about it. “You're probably right, but let's pick up some writing material, notebooks and stuff in Memphis as a backup. And go easy recording with the ‘phones until we see how the locals take it, and how many of them do the same thing. Remember, we're going to be in a rural area, even if it is a small city. And if these people turn out to be a ... a clan, so to speak, they might not be really tech savvy.”
“Isn't there a biotech firm there of some sort? And a junior college?”
“You know there is, but they're both private, no government funding at all, so we don't have any data on them.”
“And that's another indication of a closed society. Whoever heard of a school nowadays that doesn't accept government funds?”
Daniel grinned. “The people of Masterville, apparently. You know, this might turn out to be one helluva Op. I'm as curious about those people as cat is about a bird nest just out of reach.”
Shirley laughed, a pleasant sound. She could tell that Daniel was going to be easy to work with, but it was damn strange that he hadn't shown any response to a few subtle flirtations she had thrown his way. In fact, if it kept on, she thought it might begin to be a challenge. And a fun one at that. She liked the way he carried himself, and the sense of quiet competence he displayed. I'll bet he would be a good lover, too, she thought. Maybe later, once they were settled in and she could be sure it wouldn't interfere with their work.
* * * *
That evening in Memphis, after stopping at a Wal-Mart for notebooks and pens, Daniel suggested that they bring takeout to their motel room, another Holiday Inn, and go over their preparations. There was a convenient liquor store near the motel and Daniel picked up a bottle of White Zinfandel to go with the double order of egg rolls each they were going to make a meal of.
Shirley managed to give Daniel a little hip bump as they were carrying their bags, the wine and their prospective meal through the door. She thought he reacted a bit to her closeness, but all he did was apologize for getting in her way.
Daniel recognized the maneuver and also recognized his reaction, a sure sign that sexual tension was building up again. Hormones always bypass the rational mind, he thought. Well, it wasn't that bad yet and this Op promised to take a while. It might turn out that they would get something going eventually, even though he knew it wouldn't be anything permanent. There was another factor, too, which suddenly popped into his mind. They were going to be staying at the Bed and Breakfast place for at least a week, probably longer. Any competent woman, or man for that matter, cleaning a bedroom can easily figure out from numerous little signs whether sexual acts were being performed in the bed and the room. It might turn out that they would have to have sex just to keep up appearances. He set the bottle down on the table in the room as the thought emerged and amplified.
“What's funny?” Shirley asked.
Daniel realized he must have been smiling to himself without noticing it. “Oh, nothing, really. Let's eat while the egg rolls are still warm. I'll open the wine if you'll get them unwrapped.” He went to his bag and fished for the corkscrew he usually carried, then after removing the foil from the bottle, saw that it wouldn't be needed. The wine had a plastic cork. He muttered under his breath at the near impossibility of getting the damn things out without straining a gut, but this one came loose with a minimum of fuss for a change. He got plastic glasses from the bathroom and poured for them both. She already had the food ready, except that they had forgotten to pick up napkins. Shirley solved that problem by removing a plastic carton of wet wipes from her bag.
“I've learned. Any time I travel, I always carry a package of these. You never know when they're going to come in handy.”
“Good idea. I'll get some for myself next time I'm shopping.”
The egg rolls were good and Daniel practically wolfed his down. They had only eaten small hamburgers at some little cafe for lunch. Shirley took longer with hers but was no less enthusiastic. She automatically began cleaning up while Daniel poured more wine. One day, some time in the far future, men will learn to clean up their messes, she thought. She didn't know that Daniel had intended to do just that; he just wasn't in a hurry about it.
Relaxed now, they both settled back in the same old uncomfortable chairs, which Daniel would swear before the Supreme Court were designed by aliens with backs permanently fused angles no human would ever assume. After a bit, Shirley moved to the bed, as she had the previous night and finally Daniel did the same. They faced each other across the short divide between the beds and talked for over an hour, deciding on their roles and a general line of questions they would try to get the citizens of Masterville to answer.
Daniel coded their final decisions into his Comphone with his own encryption rather than the agency's. He wasn't certain why he was doing it that way, other than that he
still had vague misgiving over both the nature of the Ops and the hurried way it had been assigned to them. In his opinion, lack of detailed planning and practice almost always led to mistakes.
The line of investigation agreed upon had to do with such things as where ancestors were from, couched in innocuous comments such as That's an unusual name. Are your ancestors from Germany (or England or France or Russia and so forth); Why couples didn't marry that often, asked after recounting an anecdote of married life and asking, Anything like that ever happen to you; Why government funding was used so little for schools and infrastructure, gotten into by telling of vague notions of perhaps settling in the valley and asking, Are the School taxes very high here? How about property taxes? And so forth. Theoretically, the subject being quizzed would never know it was anything other than casual conversation. There was a real technique to it, taught during agency training. Back then Daniel had been amazed at how much information a complete stranger could be induced to reveal using the right methods.
As before, Shirley took first turn at the bathroom while Daniel polished off the last of the wine; it appeared that she was a very light drinker. As he was sipping the last of it, he heard the door open. He couldn't help but glance up at her as she came into his line of vision. She was wearing the same robe as the previous night but somehow it seemed to cling closer to her obviously well-developed curves. Had she belted it tighter or was he imagining things? Either way, she had gotten a piece of his attention. The vision of her in the robe, long blond hair flowing past her shoulders remained with him even after he was in bed. His sleep was restless, causing him to wake several times during the night.
* * * *
The one-lane road topped the pass between two moderately high peaks. Abruptly, the valley spread out below them, with Masterville resembling a jewel set at the base of a large, sharply rising hill on the left side of the valley. Farms and ranches dotted the floor of the valley in a sweeping panorama to the right, becoming increasingly sparse the farther away from the city they were. A small river, or perhaps a large stream, twinkled in the morning sunlight as it wound among low ridges and forested coves. Its source must be somewhere in the mountains behind them, but it first appeared down below, then disappeared at times beneath growths of pine and hardwood before exiting the valley in the far distance. There was a simple roadside park built in the pass and Daniel pulled over and stopped.
