The Last Prophecy - [Kamal & Barnea 07]

by By Jon Land

  “No finals?”

  “No need,” Fisher said and started to turn back for the door.

  “You guys hiring for the summer? I could use a job.”

  “You’d have to pass a drug test.”

  “That’s a problem.”

  “We’ll see if we can get you a waiver,” Fisher promised.

  Suddenly an alarm began to wail, filling the corridor beyond with shrill screech.

  “What’s that?” Jake asked.

  “Probably a drill,” Fisher said, stiffening as he moved for the door.

  “Wouldn’t you know it if there was gonna be a drill?”

  “Just keep the door locked,” Fisher instructed, as he started to close behind him. “And don’t open it for anyone but me.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 88

  T

  he plane cut through the choppy air on descent for Miami. With no flight attendants on board, or even a working PA system, Ben and Danielle simply refastened their seat belts out of habit.

  “I have a cargo plane going out tomorrow morning. Bound for Miami with Panamanian registry and flight markings,” Salgado had explained when they were safe within the confines of his walled fortress the night before. Ben and Danielle had both showered, eaten, and had their wounds cleaned and bandaged by an on-site doctor inside the compound.

  “In that case, I’ll need to make that phone call now,” Danielle told Salgado.

  Major Tom Spears was still in his Pentagon office when she reached him.

  “Working late as usual,” she greeted. “It’s—”

  “Don’t say your name,” Spears ordered. “This isn’t a secure line. It’s not safe.”

  “Arguayo’s murder...”

  “You and your Palestinian friend were part of tonight’s security briefing. They’re done via e-mail now. Allows for easier dissemination of photos.”

  “How did I look?”

  “This call might be monitored.”

  “Fine, then whoever’s listening can hear that Ben and I are innocent. Arguayo was alive when we left him.”

  “That’s not what the report says.”

  “You believe it?”

  “Of course not, and that’s what scares me more than anything.”

  “It should, Tom. Your country’s about to be hit.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “Fifty terrorist cells, totally independent of each other and all scheduled to strike tomorrow. One per state. Soft targets and hard.”

  Danielle left it there, listened to the dead air on the line through the long pause that followed.

  “You have proof of this?” Tom Spears finally asked, his voice low. She could hear his breathing after he had finished.

  “What do you need?”

  “Just tell me what you’ve got.”

  “Confirmation from a ranking Iraqi operative named Moussan in custody at Guantanamo that the plan used to be his, part of Al Awdah.”

  “Used to be?”

  “Set in operation just before the start of the war. But someone else has taken it over, picked up where Moussan left off.”

  “Who?”

  “A deep-cover Soviet mole left over from the Cold War.”

  “Relics don’t destroy nations, Danielle.”

  “They do when their hate, their obsession, has never gone away, when they see the chance to finish the assignment they’ve never abandoned.”

  Danielle listened to Spears breathing rapidly on the other end of the line as he digested the information.

  “All right,” Spears said finally. “It’s late, but I’m going to call around. See if I can find out who ran the original operation that knocked Moussan out of the box.”

  “It was German based.”

  “But I’m betting the intelligence was home grown. You want me to call you back?”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “Give me an hour.”

  Danielle hit the Redial button exactly sixty minutes later.

  “All right,” Spears greeted. “The man who ran the operation that took this German cell down twenty-five days ago is a Homeland Security spook named Delbert Fisher. If anybody knows how to find these fifty cells, it’s him. Man had plenty at stake that made things personal: he lost his brother and sister-in-law in the Bali nightclub bombing.”

  “And they still let him take point?”

  “That’s the thing, Danielle. They didn’t know, because he didn’t tell them. Soon as they found out, they transferred Fisher out of Washington into Homeland Security’s northeast regional headquarters out of Nashua, New Hampshire.”

  “So he’s there now.”

  “As far as I know. But it’s not that simple.”

  “It never is, Tom.”

  “I’m talking about the Nashua substation. I’m talking about Delbert Fisher.”

  “I’m listening,” Danielle told him.

  * * * *

  Chapter 89

  E

  ven Pablo Salgado lacked the resources to get Ben and Danielle safely beyond Miami. As soon as the cargo plane landed, they climbed into khaki-colored uniforms that matched those worn by airport maintenance workers. That way, once the plane completed its taxi, it would be easy for them to meld in with the other personnel loading trunk-sized wooden crates from the storage hold into a pair of rented Ryder trucks. Neither Ben nor Danielle bothered to consider what was contained inside those crates, or whose interests on this end were supported by those of Pablo Salgado’s Colombian cartel.

  They slipped away at an opportune time, still unsure what their next step could be. Salgado had supplied them with credit cards and plenty of cash. But they couldn’t buy their way to Nashua, New Hampshire, and a Homeland Security operative named Delbert Fisher, especially with their pictures being freely circulated among law enforcement personnel. The worker disguise would hold for a while, though, even stand up to close inspection.

  “This way,” Ben said suddenly, tugging on Danielle’s arm.

  “Where?”

  “I’ve got an idea,” he continued, and gestured across the Tarmac toward a freight area where FedEx jets were being loaded.

  Ben and Danielle climbed onto an unattended luggage cart and drove it to follow the yellow lines that swept safely around the runways. They worked the plan out on the way, using a steel clipboard found hanging from the cart’s dashboard to help create the effect of a random inspection. The FedEx loaders, having nothing to hide, had no reason to suspect anything amiss and cooperated fully, providing unfettered access to the planes and loading area.

  A glance at a manifest yielded the information that a New York-bound jet, still in the hangar, would be leaving in three hours’ time. Ben and Danielle separated, then slipped away into that hangar where the plane was waiting. They climbed on board and hid themselves amidst the heaviest cargo concentrated in the hold’s rear.

  The heat proved oppressive until the climate control system was switched on once the jet was towed out onto the Tarmac for final loading. Ben and Danielle held their breaths through the early stages of the process until it became clear that the workers were only loading smaller packages that rolled up the ramp, organized geographically throughout the front sections of the bay.

  Finally the doors were closed, plunging the hold into total darkness, and soon after the FedEx jet began to taxi toward its assigned runway.

  “Next stop, New York,” said Ben.

  * * * *

  Chapter 90

  J

  ake’s ear actually hurt from keeping it pressed against the door for so long. He’d lost track of time now too. At first, after Del Fisher had left, he had heard sounds of commotion and running, a few muffled shouts. Then nothing, and nothing since.

  Finally he eased the door open, just a crack, and peered out into the hallway.

  Nothing. Not a soul in sight. No signs of some titanic struggle. Just a murkily lit hallway.

  Jake took a deep breath and emerged from the office they had given
him. His moccasins pattered softly across the tile and he felt the frayed edges of his jeans dragging sloppily. He stopped long enough to crouch to cuff them, bouncing back upward and brushing the hair from his face when he heard a door slam somewhere on another floor, followed by the heavy stomp of footsteps. He looked up, then down. Hard to tell where the slamming door had come from until more footsteps echoed directly overhead.

  “Del,” Jake called softly, feeling immediately stupid. Here he was doing exactly what Fisher had told him not to do, as if the guy could hear him anyway.

  Jake continued to walk, no idea what floor he was on and whether he should be heading up or down to get out, even whether he should be getting out at all. He passed plenty of offices, all of them empty. Not just empty, but cleared of equipment and supplies. No computers or even telephones.

  “Del,” Jake called again, not caring how it felt.

  He smelled coffee, strong and stale. Figured it must be coming from inside a room just over on the right, the door to which was cracked open. He liked iced coffee, not hot, and the smell was so sickeningly strong Jake couldn’t wait to get past the room. Even picked up his pace a little, until a hand snaked through the door and grabbed his arm.

  “Keep quiet,” Delbert Fisher ordered, clamping his other hand over Jake’s mouth to muffle his scream.

  “What the fuck, Del?” Jake rasped, as Fisher yanked him into the coffee room and sealed the door softly behind them.

  It was then Jake realized why the stench of coffee was so powerful. Pots of it had splashed everywhere: on the walls, the floor, and most on the head of an unconscious man whose whole face was red and blistered. He lay on the floor next to a second form in an identical dark suit, the second man’s face indistinguishable amidst a sea of dried blood flecked with bits of glass from a shattered pot. Fisher had used extension cords to bind both men’s hands behind them. Duct tape covered their mouths. Del himself, meanwhile, looked to be in bad shape. His face was battered and one arm hung awkwardly from its shoulder.

  “We haven’t got much time,” he said, breathing hard. “They’ll be back.”

  “Bad guys,” Jake said. He thought of the offices he’d passed en route to the coffee room, desks gathering dust and cable leads with no computers to connect with. “What about the good guys, Del?”

  “That’s the thing. There aren’t any. Well, me and a couple others, but they’re already down.”

  “I don’t think I heard you right.”

  “This installation’s been mothballed. So have I.”

  Jake tried running it all through his head, too much to make sense of. “What about the SWAT team that raided my dorm room?”

  “Locals. My ID still pulls some weight.”

  “Then all this ...”

  “I had my reasons, and I was right, more right than I ever dreamed.” Fisher stopped and swallowed hard twice. “That’s why I needed you.” He lowered his voice, sounding almost embarrassed. “And why I couldn’t turn the tech work over to my ‘staff.’ “

  “I guess this means I’m not getting straight As for the semester.”

  Del Fisher smiled in spite of himself, then shrugged apologetically.

  “They traced us here, didn’t they?” Jake asked him. “Whoever’s behind those fifty terrorist cells.”

  “I should have listened to you, what you said about leaving an electronic trail.”

  “Don’t sweat it, Del. Nobody ever listens to me.”

  “I’m sorry, kid.”

  “What happens now?”

  “We’ve still got to get word out about what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” Jake agreed. “So let’s get our asses out of here and do it.”

  “There’s a problem. I can’t walk, kid. My ankle may be broken.”

  “That’s a problem all right.”

  “But I can guide you out. Rear door, not far from the woods beyond the fence line. You can make it.”

  “That’s another problem, because I’m not leaving without you. And what would I do if I did?”

  “I can give you routing points, contact numbers. . .”

  Del Fisher stopped speaking when the doorknob twisted back and forth. He reached out and pulled Jake Fleming to the floor behind him, both of them utterly silent. The knob stopped moving. They looked at each other, still afraid to breathe when the door burst inward, shattered at latch level. A huge man stood in the doorway, silenced pistol grasped combat style in both hands. The man hesitated, unsure, it seemed, which of them to sight down on first. He steadied the pistol on Jake, started to curl his finger inward.

  “No!” Delbert Fisher screamed.

  The gun exploded with a roar. Jake felt his head go numb, eyes squeezed shut. Something all wrong, because no second shot came from the pistol. Jake opened his eyes just as the big man toppled over like a felled tree to reveal a woman standing in the hallway clutching a smoking gun in her hand. A man stood alongside her, holding a submachine gun.

  The woman stepped through the coffee room’s doorway.

  “Which one of you is Delbert Fisher?” asked Danielle Barnea.

  * * * *

  Chapter 91

  U

  pon landing at LaGuardia Airport in New York, Ben and Danielle had made their way into the passenger terminal and boarded the first bus bound for the Port Authority Station in Manhattan. They learned another bus was leaving in just minutes for Boston, and they used a small portion of the cash Pablo Salgado had provided to buy a pair of tickets.

  The ride ended five hours later in downtown Boston within walking distance of a Hertz rental car agency where they rented a car with one of Salgado’s credit cards. The car came complete with a NeverLost navigation system to guide them to the former northeast regional headquarters of Homeland Security in Nashua, New Hampsire, where Delbert Fisher had been summarily reassigned to a mothballed facility. There, according to Spears, he had been given a token title and placed in charge of a skeletal staff just to keep him on the payroll.

  It was past midnight by the time they reached the complex. The guardhouse was empty, the front gate swaying back and forth in the breeze. Ben climbed out to open it wide enough to allow their car to pass through.

  “Chain’s been cut,” he said, closing the passenger door behind him.

  “Got to figure Fisher would’ve had a key,” Danielle noted.

  They left the car on the road and proceeded inside the grounds on foot. Whoever had arrived before them had left a bay door accessing an underground parking garage open. Ben and Danielle crept down the ramp and found a quartet of innocuous sedans, three clustered together and one off by itself.

  “The engines are all still warm,” Danielle said, after running her hand along the hood and grille of the three cars near each other. “I figure eight, maybe ten men.”

  Footsteps echoed down a stairwell and Ben and Danielle took cover beneath the nearest car. She signaled him with her eyes, directing Ben to the man approaching from the right, talking busily into a cellular phone.

  Danielle lurched upward when the two men reached the car one over, launching herself over the roof upon the other man while Ben circled quickly around the trunk. The second man had just separated the phone from his ear, swinging when Ben pounced. Ben then stood guard over their unconscious frames, while Danielle bound and gagged the men, using sliced strips of the seat belt and shoulder harness assemblies.

  “Down to six,” she said. “Maybe eight.”

  Armed now, they stayed together once inside the building, taking another three men totally by surprise before coming upon the huge gunman looming in the doorway of what looked like a staff lounge. Danielle hadn’t intended to shoot until she saw him sighting down on the two figures huddled on the floor. The shot scorched her ears, and she was ready to follow up with a second when she saw the big man keel over.

  Danielle noted two more of the attackers sprawled on the floor not far from the condiment table, bringing the count to eight. “Which on
e of you is Delbert Fisher?” she asked the two men who had been the big man’s targets. One of them, she realized, looked more like a boy.

  “That would be me,” said the older one, his face badly bruised and his shoulder hanging free of its socket.