Nomad

by James Swallow

  * * *

  Gina’s Place had stood by the side of the highway since the 1950s, and although it had changed hands a dozen times since it was built, none of the owners had been able to bring themselves to strip away the old airstream shell around the truck stop’s frontage. A generous critic might have suggested that it added to the place’s charm, but it was an understatement to say it had seen better days. The diner was too faded, too beat-up to be considered kitsch or retro. Booths lined the walls, patterned in pale wood, and stools with red vinyl heads marked out the distance along a bar in front of the serving area.

  Gina’s was just hitting the dawn rush, populated by overnight truckers who kept themselves to themselves, sipping bottomless coffee or working their way through fry plates with their noses in the sports pages. Halil came in, almost colliding with a gumball machine and a rack of tourist leaflets. A bell over the door rattled, drawing the attention of the waitress on duty. She flashed a plastic smile, not really registering the young man, and continued to top off the drinks of two weekender bikers from upstate New York who looked to be heavy tippers. It was busy enough for him to become lost in the noise of the place.

  In another time, Halil might have just stopped and stared at the inside of the truck stop, at this slice of Americana that seemed pulled through time from the country he knew from faded old books and the heavily-dubbed sitcoms that made his father laugh. But now the place seemed threatening and scary. It was so different from the world he knew. Fear had taken away the bold and adventurous child Halil had once been. Now, all that was left was a young man lost in his own desperation.

  His eyes fell on the doors at the back of the diner, spotting the stick-figure sign for a men’s room, and he moved quickly in that direction. Halil passed a rank of payphones and his hand reached for one of them. He pulled it back and frowned. Who would he call? The police? They would arrest him for entering the country illegally. They would be deaf to his pleas. American policemen were no different from those at home, bellicose men with guns and corrupt souls. A doctor, then? But doctors in this country were like shopkeepers. They would not even consider looking at a dying man unless he had a fistful of money.

  Before anyone could question him, Halil went into the restroom. He almost fell into the closest toilet stall, locking the door shut behind him. Inside, it reeked of pine disinfectant.

  He removed the bandages, unwinding them from about his body. Halil wadded them into a ball and stuffed it down the back of the cistern. His swollen, livid belly hung uncomfortably against his belt. Now he was aware of what had been done to him, he seemed to weigh twice as much as before. Halil fingered his lips and wondered if it might be possible to induce vomiting, to bring up whatever was inside him; but then he pushed the thought away. Throwing up outside had done nothing.

  He thought about the school bus passing him on the highway as he sought cover under one of the big tractor-trailers. Khadir had threatened to leave behind anyone who did not obey orders, so was that to be Halil’s fate?

  Was he safe here, surrounded by these foreigners? Would Khadir come looking for him? Had he doomed all these people just by walking into the diner?

  Halil rose shakily to his feet. I have to warn them, he told himself, and for the first time in too long, he felt his mother and his father at his shoulders. They were telling him it was the right thing to do. He could not allow his fear to put others in danger. He had to tell them. He had to ask for help. Halil slipped the latch on the inside of the stall and pulled it open.

  The dead-eyed man filled the doorway, a ghost of curiosity in his expression.

  His other hand came swinging around and Halil took a punch in the chest that threw him back. He collapsed on the toilet seat, gasping in pain.

  Without betraying any flicker of emotion, the American forced his way into the cramped stall with the youth and locked the door. He held his hand around Halil’s throat in a vice-like grip to stop him crying out.

  The man pulled a plastic case from his pocket with his other hand, and opened the clasp with his thumb. With quick, dextrous motions, he plucked a narrow syringe from inside, and used his teeth to remove a safety cap covering its needle.

  Halil’s eyes widened and he put all the effort he could muster into a call for help, but then sharp pain flared in his neck where the dead-eyed man stabbed him with the hypodermic.

  A creeping chemical chill washed through him, spreading out from his throat. His thoughts became slow, each sensory input growing sluggish and detached. The cold filled his body, and Halil fell unconscious, dreaming that he was being covered in frost.

  * * *

  “Cops are gone,” offered Teape as he approached the parked bus. He paused for a long draw on his take-out strawberry milkshake. “Saw the cruiser go north.”

  Khadir stood on the steps of the bus, glowering back at him. “I told you to be quick.”

  Teape shrugged and stirred the dregs of his drink with the straw. “Had to make it look normal.”

  “Where is the boy?”

  “Men’s room, back of the truck stop,” he replied. “Gave him enough to put him down for at least an hour.”

  The other man considered that. “How far away will we be in that time?”

  Teape shrugged again. “Depends on the traffic.” He lost interest in the milkshake and threw away the remains. “Outskirts of Baltimore.”

  Khadir nodded and drew out his cell phone. The application displayed there had many settings, multiple functions that could allow him to activate any number of the weapons at any time, provided they were within communications range. From the phone, it was a simple matter of selecting a length of timer, a start point, and then pressing SEND.

  He selected a single weapon, designated on the display as Number Seven, then dialed in a countdown of one hour and thirty minutes. He tapped the key and the phone gave an answering beep. A clock display began to spool down, and Khadir watched the seconds as they began their slow march toward zero.

  To simply murder the traitorous youth would have been a waste of effort and material. Now, although it deviated from the agreed plan, he would serve a useful purpose by sowing confusion among the enemy, by misdirecting them. When the moment came, it would at first seem like a tragic accident—a gas explosion perhaps—and by the time the authorities got a scent of the true nature of the weapon, the endgame would already be in motion.

  “So, we should probably get going,” Teape offered. “Unless you wanna stick around to watch.”

  Khadir slipped the cell phone into his pocket. “Drive,” he said.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The rain drummed on the raised tailgate of the Toyota SUV, and Lucy leaned in to stay out of the wet. It was moot, really; their sortie across the deck of the Santa Cruz had soaked her to the skin, and even after dropping her sodden vest in the trunk, she still felt heavy and cold.

  A pair of police cruisers rushed past as fast as they dared on the slick turnpike, making for the Port of New Jersey. From where the SUV was parked near a disused warehouse, she could see a tinge of orange glow in the belly of the storm passing overhead, most likely the spill of light from the fire aboard the freighter.

  “Why are we sticking around?” she said to herself.

  Delancort looked up from the back seat, his face lit by a laptop screen. “This day is just getting started,” he told her. Lines of cables connected the computer to a pair of metal boxes as big as house bricks, and on the screen there was a flickering jumble of video images. The angle of the display meant that she couldn’t get a clear look at it, but Lucy could just about make out that the footage was a grainy surveillance camera feed from the docks.

  “How’d you get those, anyway?”

  He nodded at the silent man in the driver’s seat. “Malte recovered them from the Port Authority security office. I sent him in while you were boarding the freighter. It seemed like a good idea.” Delancort indicated a wireless antenna module clipped to the roof. “The New York office ar
e in the loop. They are running real-time analysis of the imagery.”

  “Right.” Lucy had guessed as much. Solomon leased several floors at the top of an expensive glass tower off Park Avenue, and as well as dealing with the minutiae of the Rubicon group’s more mundane corporate interests, there was also a “crisis center” there—a vague name for a department staffed with technicians, hackers and other specialists with skill sets that skirted legality. Those people had been called in at oh-dark-thirty to provide backup for the operation on the Santa Cruz.

  Delancort glanced at a text feed in the corner of the screen. “That confirms it. The local authorities have been alerted, fire and police only so far. Which is good. If luck is on our side, it will take hours for them to get to the heart of what happened on the ship.”

  “By then this will all be over, one way or another,” Lucy said grimly. She glanced away and found Marc, standing off to one side under a corrugated steel awning. The Brit was staring out into the rain, his expression unreadable.

  “D’accord,” said Delancort. “But still. We cannot afford to waste time. The police arriving on the scene reported men fleeing from the ship, some of them possibly armed. Those are likely mercenaries in the employ of the Combine.”

  Lucy thought about Grunewald, and she couldn’t keep a sneer from her lips. He had fallen to his death by the time she reached the edge of the cargo bay, and as she stood there next to Marc, peering over the side, she asked the question. What happened?

  I got what we need, he told her, and that was all he had offered, aside from parroting the dead man’s description of the school bus to Delancort.

  The French-Canadian was still talking. “If one of those runners reports in to their masters, this could end before we can find the bus. They may pull the plug.”

  “That’s the smart call,” Lucy agreed. “But I don’t know if these guys are into being smart over making their statements.”

  Delancort agreed. “All the more reason to act swiftly.”

  She nodded and fought off a shiver. “Which brings me back to my first question.”

  Delancort looked up at her. “This is not waiting, this is regrouping. I am certain you would be the first to agree that what you found inside that ship was not what any of us expected to discover.”

  “Yeah,” replied Lucy, thinking of the smell of blood and machine oil. “You pass that on to the office too?”

  “Mister Solomon has been informed.” Delancort’s expression grew bleak. “This is quite the horror our English friend has led us to.”

  “How long d’you think someone could live with…” She fumbled at the words. “With those implants inside them?”

  “Not long.” The answer came from Malte, who looked back at her in the rear-view mirror. “Two days?”

  “Which means the attack will happen in the next twenty-four hours, if not sooner.” Lucy pushed away the sickened sensation inside her gut and tried to think like the men behind this vile matter. “You got your weapons primed, you want to deploy them as soon as you can.”

  A bell-chime drew Delancort’s attention back to the computer and he clicked open a window on the screen. A stream of still images shuffled themselves across the display. He scrutinized a text attachment and muttered under his breath.

  “What is it?” Lucy leaned in to get a better look.

  He showed her. “It seems our friends from the ship have planned this very carefully. There is some partial video of a vehicle matching the description Dane gave us exiting the docks. The image analysis team extrapolated possible locations inside the port complex where it could have been waiting. The driver clearly knew the sweep patterns of all the security cameras down to the second.”

  She saw shots that seemed empty, until one looked closer and noticed that each contained a fleeting glimpse of a moving vehicle—a flash of taillights in one, the blur of movement in another, but nothing distinct.

  “Our people are very good, though,” added Delancort. “Look here.” He brought up a still of a length of dockside, and just visible in the edge of the shot was part of a warehouse. “That’s where the school bus was waiting. Out of sight.”

  “How do you know?”

  Delancort tapped a key and the still image came to life. “Watch.”

  For a moment, the black-and-white footage showed nothing of note, just the jerky motion of strung cables between light poles shifting in the breeze. Then there was a sudden tug of movement at the extreme edge of the picture. A figure came into shot, moving with difficulty. A gangly kid, Lucy guessed, judging by the motion of his arms and the too-big sweatshirt he was wearing. He walked like he had been hurt. For a second, the youth looked up into the air and the camera got a good look at his face.

  “The New York office are running recognition protocols on him as we speak,” noted Delancort. “But he’s likely a clean skin.”

  “He’s scared out of his mind, is what he is.”

  “He has good cause.” Delancort pointed at the screen, back to where the youth had first appeared. “Keep watching.”

  A second figure appeared, a bigger man in a baseball cap, and in less than two frames he was on the youth, grabbing him firmly. There was a ham-fisted scuffle and the cap came off. Lucy’s lips thinned as she watched the youth get beaten down and dragged away, out of camera. The man snatched up his hat and put it back on, but not quickly enough to stop the video from capturing a shot of the side of his face. “Who’s the tough guy?” she asked.

  “Someone we know.” Delancort dragged up another window and showed her the facial match. “There is an eighty-one percent chance that is Omar Khadir. Extremist militant, known terrorist and the most active combatant in the Al Sayf organization.”

  Lucy’s mouth went dry. She knew Khadir by name, had been briefed on him when Rubicon had begun to suspect that Al Sayf were involved with the Combine. This was the first concrete evidence of his presence. The man had a reputation for pitiless action and unerring focus. If he had dared to enter the United States, it was only because he had an atrocity planned.

  She thought about the HMX, the operating room and the nauseating possibility of the “body-bombs” Marc had described. “Maybe Dane was right. This is getting out of hand. We should talk to Rubicon’s contacts at Langley. Get them on this. Khadir is on the Central Intelligence Agency’s most-wanted list. They should be told.”

  Delancort eyed her. “Do you want to make that call? Do you want to read out the long list of laws we have broken to get to this point?”

  She shot him a hard look. “There comes a time when saving lives becomes more important than protecting your own ass.”

  Another police car sped past and Delancort cocked his head. “Then by all means, flag down the next officer you see. If you’re right about the timeline … And from my experience of working with you, you usually are … You will still be in a holding cell when Al Sayf’s latest act of violence happens.” He cocked his head. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

  Lucy sucked her teeth in irritation. “You’re not wrong.” She sighed. “Okay. I’ll need copies of all that.”

  “Already in motion.”

  “Car is here,” said Malte.

  She turned to see a sleek Ford Mustang slowing as it approached. Black and shiny, the muscle car sported some silver trim and a feral-looking grille. Lucy raised an eyebrow; the car looked like some rich man’s plaything—and she realized it was precisely that, one of Solomon’s large stable of high-end vehicles.

  The sound of the Mustang drew Marc from where he had been brooding, and he gave the vehicle a measuring look. “What’s all this?”

  “Our ride, I guess.”

  The Mustang’s driver climbed out. She was a slight Chinese girl wearing a Bluetooth headset, a glossy red jacket and matching skirt. “Delivery,” she said, with the hint of a local accent, rattling the keys in her hand. “This okay? They said you wanted something quick.”

  Delancort peered out from inside the SUV, not wanting to get
out into the ongoing downpour. “Lucy. Take the car, follow the school bus. They cannot have more than a couple of hours headstart. Interstate 95 tracks along with the coast for hundreds of miles, so you have a good chance of catching up to them. Just try not to get caught breaking any speed limits.”

  “What about you?” asked Marc.

  “We are going to the office in the city. We have to coordinate with Mister Solomon. In the meantime, if you make contact, call me immediately.”

  “Hey. I’m Kara.” The girl in the red jacket nodded at the car. “There’s clean clothes in the back, weapons and some ammo.” She pulled a thin wallet from an inner pocket and handed it to Lucy. “This is for you.”

  The wallet turned out to contain very good imitations of a federal agent’s badge and identity card in the name of Tracy Reese, one of Lucy’s snap covers. She pocketed it before Marc could ask any questions.

  Kara produced two thick smartphones and passed one to Lucy and the other to Marc. “Compliments of Mister Solomon, so you don’t need to fret about running out of minutes. Intel data has already been uploaded.”

  Marc turned the phone over in his hands, studying the featureless black slab. “No manufacturer’s marks…” He paused to reach into the Toyota’s trunk to grab his weather-beaten backpack.

  “That’s right,” Kara was opening the door of the SUV. “More SpyPhone than iPhone. Both got face-pattern keys so they won’t unlock for anyone but the designated user, just look at the screen and you’re golden.” She flashed a grin. “You’re MI6, right? It’s virtually identical to the ones you guys give your field officers.”

  “How do you know that?” asked Marc.

  “Because we copied the design from a stolen one found on the body of an FSB agent.” Kara tossed a set of keys toward Lucy.

  With a speed she didn’t expect, Marc’s free hand shot out and snatched the key fob from the air before it could reach her. “This time, I’ll drive,” he said firmly.

  Kara’s grin faded. “Does he know how to handle an American car?”