“Religion of peace like hell,” he snarled.
Shouldering the rifle and picking up the AK-47, Ward ran to the ATV he’d left in the foliage. It would have been faster to take the other ATV but he wanted whoever was above to see that it wasn’t the terrorist leaving.
Before he started the engine he turned on the headlight and stood in it so they could see him. Then he yelled along the valley, “I’m riding over partner—don’t shoot!”
There was no response.
“You can answer now—the danger’s neutralized,” Ward said with a slight smile.
“Okay!” Dickson shouted. “I won’t shoot.”
Ward sped to Dickson’s position and pulled up without dismounting. “I’m going to follow those SOBs. Wait in the cave and keep an eye on that punk. He’s only got two working limbs but they still want to fight.”
Dickson nodded. “Thank you,” he said.
“For what?”
“For making me feel like a man again,” Dickson said.
Ward lay a hand on the man’s shoulder then raced off. He had already decided he wasn’t going to play nice with the other guys. At four-to-one, he had to lower the odds by any means possible. He would be coming at them from behind and he intended to use that advantage.
Rounding the turn in the mountain, Ward was abruptly forced to change his plans. Two of the riders were racing toward him at high speeds.
What the hell?
They came charging toward Ward from about 400 yards away. He braked on the narrow trail, skidding out of control and riding up several of the smaller boulders to his right, along the mountain wall. He doused the headlight and leapt from the lopsided ATV as gunfire rang from its metal side, ricocheting among the rocks.
Ward returned fire above the oncoming lights, where he expected the riders to be hunched low. The two windshields shattered and he heard the scraping of bike-against-bike as the vehicles collided. The headlights suddenly veered in wildly different directions. He heard an ugly crack as the bikes careened off one another, one propelled to the north against the mountain and one to the south into a gulley. The motors continued to hum but it was the only sound coming from the two wrecks.
Ward ventured from his spot just as a third ATV came shooting up the trail. It weaved left and right for a short distance before slamming into the ATV that had tipped into the gulley. Both vehicles smacked together loudly, their strong chassis preventing them from crumpling altogether. The rider, however, was thrown over the wreckage. He landed on his back, his left side in the ditch and his right side on the trail.
Ward did not hear the fourth biker. He continued forward, the tableau a surreal display of three zigzagging white beams, upended vehicles, and three immobile bodies. The nearest, the one on the road, was peppered with blood.
Why were you coming back? he wondered.
Ward didn’t venture too near the ATVs until he made sure there were no sparks or leaking fuel. As he walked back and forth some ten yards from the upended vehicles he noticed two small lights coming toward him.
What now?
They were too high and slow for ATVs. He ducked behind the vehicle that had gone up the mountainside. The lights were bobbing. They didn’t seem threatening.
“This is John Ward!” he shouted. “Who’s there?”
A woman’s voice answered from the gulley side of the trail. “Tessa Dunson and Vito Antonini.”
Papa Vito?
Before he could answer, Ward was distracted by a sudden noise in the gulley, a familiar ca-chunk. The sound was lost in a loud pop as a flare erupted at the woman’s side. Ward instinctively hit the ground, straining the goodwill of those bandages; the Muslim who had been pumping his shotgun from the tangle of ATVs was not so lucky. He was visible now, splayed across the handlebars.
When it became clear the third man either would not or could not move, Ward rose.
“We’ve got the fourth guy back at the bat cave,” the woman said. “He was smart enough to surrender.”
“After you shot him,” Vito said.
“Yeah, they tend to do that,” she replied.
The two horses came into view now, their riders probing the wrecks with their flashlights, looking at them for any sign of life. They saw the third rider bent in an ugly manner beneath his ride. His eyes were open and quite lifeless.
“That expression does not belong to a man who is looking out on Paradise,” Tessa remarked.
“No,” Antonini agreed soberly. “It’s just a dead kid who found a group that let him hate and kill. I seen a lot of that in my life.”
Ward was walking toward them slowly, mindful of his ribs. “I assume Randolph and company were up on the cliffs?”
“Yes sir,” Tessa said. “He wanted us to maintain a roadblock, but when we heard the ruckus—”
“The flashlights were a good idea, but these guys were nice enough to light the road for us coming in and going out,” Antonini added.
“What about the training camp?” Tessa asked.
“Secure,” Ward told her.
The detective stopped walking. He was beat. Tessa handed her reins to Antonini and came around the destroyed ATVs. She was carrying a canteen and handed it to Ward. He thanked her and drank, then found a flat boulder to sit on. It was cold. Nothing in Manhattan was ever butt-chilling like this. Heat came from every grate, every sewer. Then again, he never had backup blow someone away like Tessa just did.
Life is a succession of compromises.
Tessa called Randolph to report on the situation. That reminded Ward of the call he had received earlier. Fishing his cell phone from his pocket and finding it intact, he checked the message from Police Chief Brennan. It was a text, and it was not the yelling-at he was expecting.
The message was short and chilling:
Trouble.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Ward left on the ATV he’d been riding. The uneven mountain road didn’t do his ribs any good, but compared to where he’d been perching, the seat felt comfortable, and it was warm.
He felt bad leaving Tessa and the others to lock down the site. Randolph had phoned to let her know he’d already called Dr. Stone to get him on-site. He knew that transporting the wounded Muslim in the cave, by ATV or horseback, would be problematic. Tessa said he could deal with the others when he arrived.
Tessa also told Ward, as he was leaving, that the cover story was going to be the terrorists attacked them when they discovered the training camp.
“On a night ride?” Ward asked Tessa as he rolled the vehicle back to the trail then walked it through the wreckage.
“On a tip from Scott Randolph that something funny was going on out there,” she replied. “They fired first. We had no choice but to defend ourselves.”
“I feared for my life.” Ward thought. Well, it was more or less the truth. It was the story he’d give about Saeed. Plus the tire iron would probably link the punks to the attack on Randolph’s farm. Then there was the training camp itself, an enemy base on federal land. The boys who survived were not in an enviable legal position.
But Brennan’s text message was still front and center in his thoughts as he spit dust and stone and headed back down the trail.
Ward was in the hyper-alert state that comes from no-sleep and a short, intense period of activity. From experience, he knew he had a few hours of good, strong edge left before he crashed fast and hard. Whatever the trouble was, he hoped it was almost upon them or would have the decency to leave room for a power nap.
It was still dark when he rolled into Basalt and drove to the police station. The town seemed even quieter than before; or maybe it was the woozy sense of general well-being that came with waking up from surgery. One tumor, at least, had been cut out.
The door to the station was locked. It hadn’t been before. Ward pressed the night buzzer but Brennan was already on her way. She was wearing her uniform and a look of grave concern. She let Ward in then locked the door behind him.
�
�We under siege?” he asked only half-joking as they walked to the back, to her office.
“We had a deal, I thought.”
“The situation evolved.”
“No. You pushed it. Who do you think you are, Richard the effin’ Lionheart, the flaming sword of two cities? You were supposed to take me to the camp.”
Brennan was angry. Fair enough. She was the police chief. Ward said nothing.
“Dr. Stone called to let me know he was going out to treat a gunshot wound,” she went on. “I sent Hawks with him. Then he got word there were more wounds, probable fatalities.”
“Muslims,” Ward replied. “The first guy was one of the gang that attacked me, and probably Randolph. He was carrying a tire iron—”
“Circumstantial reason to shoot him—”
“Plus he had a gun and he was trying to torch the place,” Ward told her. “The others attacked me. At least two of those four are dead, one of those in an ATV wreck. They were running a terrorist training camp, Chief Brennan. The evidence will back that up. We formed a posse. We took it out.”
Brennan looked at him with worried eyes. He didn’t blame her. This was popping out of control, bursting the lid she had tried so hard to keep down.
“As a citizen I am relieved,” she said. “As the police chief, I cannot condone vigilante action against alleged terrorists.”
She was right. She should be arresting him and they both knew it. But he didn’t care. What he’d done was right.
“I suppose the killings were in self-defense,” she went on. “That is correct, isn’t it?”
“Actually, it is,” he replied. “We’re not the animals they are. Look, I’m sorry if this is going to create problems for the town and for you. But maybe it’ll also wake up the nation to a danger in their midst. God knows those guns and training equipment were real, and the desire to draw first blood was strong in those kids. And the money feeding them from overseas, fueling the operation—that was us helping.”
“You know where it was coming from?”
“Dickson was in a sharing mood.”
“Did you hurt him?”
“Didn’t need to,” Ward said. “He had his reasons.”
Brennan chewed her cheek thoughtfully, then turned abruptly. “Come.”
They entered her office. The desk sergeant and a patrol officer just in from his rounds were the only other people present. They followed Ward with angry eyes. It wasn’t a look of disapproval but of kids who had been benched during the big game.
“Where are Officers Pawley and Miles?” she asked before entering her office.
“Just got to Elk Circle,” the desk sergeant informed her.
“I want an update asap,” she said, shutting the door. She went to her desk and flipped open the laptop Ward had taken from the cave. She remained standing. The detective stood beside her.
“First, there’s nothing in this computer to tie Gahrah or his community center to the training camp or any other activities,” she said. “Unless you’ve got something else, he and his people are still clean.”
“Dickson will pin his ears back,” Ward told her.
“What happened to Earl? Why’s he suddenly so chatty?”
“They assaulted his daughter this afternoon as a warning.”
“Who did?”
“One of the kids, working on orders from Fawaz. He decided to fight them. He had my back in the valley tonight.”
She was still stunned. “Earl was part of the firefight?”
“Up to his assets.”
That seemed to soften the police chief’s unhappiness with Ward. “Well, that brings us to the second, and frankly, more troubling matter. The laptop is full of plans to the Aspen airport.” She began clicking through the files. “Also photos. According to the time stamps, they were taken during the evac they had there last week.”
“So they were behind that,” Ward said.
“Apparently, but why?”
“Dickson thinks the money he launders comes in by private jet, packaged inside Korans.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Brennan told him. “The private jet, I mean. Aspen runs on jet-setters, and with the sour economy, more and more of them are coming from abroad. Customs is not about to subject them to the third degree.” The police chief’s phone beeped. She hit speaker. “Go.”
“Sir, the officers report that the vehicles are all gone,” the desk sergeant reported.
Ward was watching the police chief. Her face seemed to pale a little.
“Thank you. Notify state.” She clicked off and looked at Ward. “That, Mr. Ward, is the sound of a clock ticking.”
“I don’t follow.”
“After Randolph was attacked, we collected the license numbers of all the Muslim kids from DMV. Just in case any surveillance video caught them heading to or from the farm. Nothing turned up, but we kept the numbers.”
“Five of the kids were up in the mountains,” Ward said. He nodded toward the phone. “You just found out the rest of them are not at home. State troopers are going to check the highways.”
Brennan nodded.
“But you know you won’t find the vehicles because they moved out hours ago,” Ward said.
“That’s the problem of having a loose cannon,” she said.
“You think I caused this, that they scattered when they didn’t hear from their night watchman?”
“You have a better theory?”
“I do. Today will be a week since the evac. With maybe slight variations, the same crew will be working at Aspen today that were on the ground last week. They will react the same as they did last week. I think you’ve got this bass ackwards. The Muslims ramped up their activities, against the bank, against me, even hitting Randolph, in preparation for today. They wanted to put us in the hospital or on an airplane or in prison.”
“Why? In preparation for what?”
“Exactly,” Ward said. “They’ve been running cash successfully through customs for months now. Private jets coming from different countries where, let’s just say, Iranian or Saudi money was bundled in Korans. Jets whose contents get just a cursory look-see at customs not just because the owners are going to spend money in Aspen, but because they’re Muslims who’ll raise a stink if their books are fingered by infidels. They’ve got a sweet setup. Why change that now?”
“Because you busted their operation in the valley?”
“We stopped some kids,” Ward said. “And maybe Earl can take Gahrah to prison with him. Those are acceptable losses to these guys. There’s something else going on here.”
“Earl will spill on their airport operation. It can’t be that.”
“I’m not so sure,” Ward said. “What do you know about the imam?”
“Not a lot,” she replied. “Low profile here, rarely seen outside the community center. When he was still back in Chicago, he attended one of those Holocaust-as-myth seminars in Tehran, but so did hundreds of other imams who carried that message out into the world.”
“Typical,” Ward said.
“What is?”
“The anonymity, the blend-in. The imam who shot off his mouth in New York about the Ground Zero Mosque—look at all the bad press he got. The Muslim radicals saw that as a textbook case of what to avoid.
“We did a five-year anti-terror study in New York, all very hush-hush so as not to offend the New York Times,” Ward went on. “It told us that unlike imams throughout the Middle East and Far East, clerics in the U.S., Britain, France, and Germany have what they call ‘blank-grounds.’ They’re selected because there’s nothing to flag ’em once they get to their new communities.”
“So you could have radicals in your community and not know it,” she said.
“Not ‘could,’” Ward said. “It’s insidious. At worst, they want to take us down. At best, too many of them are silent. What we have here, I’m afraid, is one of the former. Who do you know at the airport?” Ward asked.
“Head of Security, Natal
ie Ford.”
“Have you talked to her?”
“Not yet,” Brennan said. She looked at her watch. “It’s not even four a.m. and I wouldn’t know what exactly to tell her.”
The desk sergeant informed her that Major Crockett was on the phone.
“Thanks,” she said. “Have Officer Webb bring his car around. He’s taking Mr. Ward to the airport.”
“Not again—”
“I’m not asking you to leave,” she said. “You’re gonna help me finish what you started. Major Crockett runs the State Patrol, Northwest District. We need eyes at the airport that know who to look for, what to look for. I’ll call Natalie at home, tell her you’ll explain. She’s tough, will probably bust your chops. I’m guessing he hasn’t slept much the past week trying to puzzle that whole thing out.”
“You going to meet me there?”
She shook her head. “I’ve got no jurisdiction and I’ve got next-of-kin calls to make here. You want Webb to stay with?”
“Might be useful,” he said. “He’s seen these kids too, I’m guessing.”
She nodded and offered her hand. “I’m still pissed at the way you lied and cut me out, but good luck.”
“We’ll need it,” he said.
“Why? Is there something else you didn’t share with me?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “There were a lot more pegs on the gun board than there were guns or grenades.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Ward napped for the entire ride—if passing out and then being jarred awake twenty minutes later can be called a nap.
State Police didn’t come up with any sightings of the vehicles registered to the community center or any of the kids whose identities were known. Again, not a surprise; if there were some kind of plot against the airport, the perpetrators would either hide the ATVs and steal a car or take public transportation. At this hour, getting any kind of information from bus companies was difficult; no cabs had gone from Basalt to the airport, but that didn’t mean anything. The kids could have gone somewhere else first to throw the police off.
“Or they could’ve had motorcycles stashed in garages for this purpose,” Officer Webb pointed out after updating Ward. “They could have trucked them in from out of state and ditched them somewhere close by.”
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