The Guardian

by Marliss Melton

  Jackson summarized the gist of the lesson quickly. It was Mr. Rakeem who needed to offer information, not him. “When is the Day of Judgment?” he tacked on to his last statement.

  The man’s dark eyes glinted. “Is that a question, Abdul?”

  Jackson’s hopes nosedived. “I’m jus’ curious,” he persisted.

  “What you are is a soldier,” the man corrected. “It is not a soldier’s place to know these things.” He clapped Jackson hard on the arm. “We will meet again,” he predicted, moving abruptly away.

  I’ll be there when the judge hands down your jail sentence, Jackson thought as he watched Mr. Rakeem walk away, his chin at a regal angle. Then Jackson cast his gaze about to find Muhammed, Corey, Shahid, and Davis in deep in conversation with their future mentors. Jamal and Hasan had finished talking to theirs.

  If he and Toby didn’t find the evidence needed to indict Ibrahim while searching the imam’s offices tonight, then all seven of Ibrahim’s chosen, himself included, would be initiated into the Five Percent Nation on the last Friday in the program. While Ibrahim hadn’t mentioned it yet, there were severe consequences for trying to leave a gang. Once pledged, new recruits were members for life. Deserters were beaten to death, or drugged and set on fire to burn alive.

  Jackson swallowed the sour taste in his mouth. He could never wish that on the men he’d come to know, least of all on his soft-spoken roommate. All he could was do was try to get Ibrahim incarcerated before that happened. But even jailed leaders were known to wield their positions of power from behind bars.

  Nothing I can do about that, Jackson told himself. His job was to secure the evidence the Taskforce needed to put Ibrahim in jail. Once he’d accomplished that much, he could take some well-deserved time off and spend the remaining weeks of summer with his daughter. What he absolutely would not do was cave into his obsession with Magdalena Xenakis who, despite his best efforts to convince her otherwise, was stubbornly proceeding with her plans.

  Oh, she had given him her trust when she wanted something from him, but the very next day she’d shown up at Artie’s like their interlude had never happened, like his word wasn’t worth shit.

  His blood boiled with frustration. He’d been so certain he’d finally persuaded her to leave town. The fact that she remained, that she refused to trust him, left them nothing to discuss. How stubborn could one woman be?

  Among some of the first men to leave the mosque, Jackson stalked to his dormitory, averting his gaze from the bright lights across the street. Just the sight of Schlesser’s black Jeep parked out front made his jaw ache. And that discomfort was nothing compared to the hollow sensation in his chest or the throb of disappointment in his groin. He had hoped...well, it didn’t matter what he’d hoped. Tonight, her presence was a distraction he couldn’t afford.

  Stripping off his dress clothes, he donned his dark pajama bottoms and paired them with the black T-shirt he would wear in his reconnaissance of the mosque. Corey came into the room shortly after him. Directing an astute look at him that made him feel a flash of transparency, Corey switched on the desk lamp. “Mind if I read?” he asked.

  “Go ahead.”

  Corey parked himself at the desk and buried his nose in a book. Jackson brushed his teeth and rolled into his rack.

  He heaved a sigh. With the light on, he doubted he’d fall asleep any faster than he had the last few nights. Christ, he was tired—tired of this investigation, tired of being away from his daughter, tired of trying to bend Magdalena to his will.

  Rolling toward the wall, he punched up his pillow and closed his heavy eyes. In a matter of minutes, his sleep deficit sucked him straight into an unconsciousness state.

  He slept soundly, for hours, his dreams unmemorable. Then, suddenly, he was back in Fallujah, leading his platoon down a debris-strewn alleyway hemmed by bullet-pocked walls. Their mission: to clear the city of civilians. Every one of his senses was set on high-alert when a bullet whizzed out of nowhere.

  “Sniper!” Jackson shouted, diving for cover. A tingling pain lanced his hip. Oh, shit, I’ve been shot! He looked down at himself in horror. Blood spurted out of him, forming an ever-widening ring around him, despite his best efforts to stem the slippery flow. He could feel himself going into shock.

  Oh, God, Naomi. He’d been terrified that this would happen, that he’d be killed before he could return to her. And now she would have no one but her grandparents to look after her. He’d failed her.

  Tears of remorse scalded his cheeks as the dark screens of unconsciousness began to surround him, shrinking his field of vision like a retracting camera lens. He thought of Lena, whom he’d never get to court, slowly and methodically, the way he wanted to, while relishing every new discovery about her.

  He was going to die in this God-forsaken, war-torn city, and for what? Because he’d put duty to country above his family. Hadn’t he learned his lesson the first time? Hadn’t Colleen’s senseless death taught him anything?

  A tingling in his palm tugged him back toward consciousness. Why was his palm burning when it was his hip that was shot? Forcing his eyes to open, he found himself in bed, one hand pressed over the cell phone in his pocket, which emitted an electrical charge, not too painful, but not pleasant, either.

  Hitting a button on the side, Jackson acknowledged Toby’s silent summons and sat up slowly.

  Above him, Corey mumbled in his sleep. A glance at the room clock showed it to be 2:08 in the morning already. Damn, Toby had probably been calling him for eight minutes now.

  He eased out of bed, wriggled his feet into his tennis shoes, and slipped outside.

  Heavy cloud cover smothered the stars and enveloped the campus in darkness. The night air felt so humid that it dampened his pajamas and muffled the cricket-song as he picked his way through tall grass to the back wall of the mosque.

  As planned, Toby awaited him by the mosque’s rear exit. Dressed in midnight camouflage with his face painted black, Jackson wouldn’t have seen him at all if he hadn’t leveled a glare at him, the whites of his eyes flashing.

  “Little out of practice, aren’t you, Stonewall?” Toby mocked, but then he let Jackson’s tardiness go. “Bossman says the alarm’s disabled, so we’re good.” He handed Jackson a helmet rigged with night vision goggles.

  “Sorry,” Jackson mumbled, setting the helmet on his head. What could he say? He’d been sleeping like the dead, for a change.

  Toby took out a silent, battery-powered picklock, the same tool he’d broken into Artie’s with, and headed down the five steps to the basement door. Meanwhile, Jackson surveyed the deserted perimeter through his NVGs. He heard the picklock purr as it lifted all the pins in the deadbolt. The lock clicked open. Toby cracked the door, took a peek inside then held it open for Jackson.

  Backing down the steps, Jackson leapfrogged his position. Once they were both within the long, basement corridor, Toby secured the door from the inside while Jackson waited at the entrance to the stairs.

  As they’d practiced at Quantico prior to the investigation, they crept up the steps together keeping five yards between them. Arriving at an unlocked fire door on the main level, they emerged just outside the imams’ offices.

  Jackson surveyed the empty hallway through the neon green and gray lenses of his NVGs. It made sense to start their search in Ibrahim’s office, where the evidence was most likely to be found. As far as Jackson could tell, Zakariya seemed to have no affiliation whatsoever with the Five Percent Nation.

  Toby made swift work of unlocking Ibrahim’s door. As they swept inside, Toby headed straight for the computer to install a keylogger, a gadget that would forward every stroke Ibrahim typed on his keyboard to the National Center for Counterterrorism. That would allow Taskforce analysts to record Ibrahim’s passwords, giving them access to all his files.

  Jackson, meanwhile, flipped up his NVGs and riffled through the metal filing cabinet with a penlight.

  Cupping the light to keep its beams from es
caping out the window, he scanned the alphabetized names looking for the file belonging to Mr. Rakeem. “There’s paperwork here from the first year of the program,” he observed, finding the file and pulling it.

  “Seven years’ worth of information,” Toby muttered. “We oughta find something.”

  Seven years. The phrase echoed in Jackson’s head. Seven was a mystical number in Supreme Numerology. It was also the number of years Ibrahim had said the Mahdi would dwell with his people prior to Judgment Day. Coincidence?

  Working his way backward through the alphabet, Jackson looked for references to the Five Percent Nation or any common thread that tied the graduates together.

  With two hours in which to accomplish their search, he took his time to be thorough, making sure he overlooked nothing of significance. He had just finished searching F through N when the distinct thud of a door closing made him freeze. Toby snatched his head out from under the desk. “What was that?” he whispered.

  “Someone’s coming.”

  As the sound of spry footsteps grew louder, both men scrambled up and moved to either side of the closed door. Jackson handed Mr. Rakeem’s file to Toby, who shoved it in the large pocket on his thigh. Catching Jackson’s questioning gaze, Toby shook his head, signifying that he’d never witnessed this kind of behavior while logging the imams’ nighttime rituals.

  “And he tells me not to forget to set the alarm,” a tenor voice muttered.

  Zakariya, Jackson realized, breathing a small sigh of relief. Keys jingled as the imam unlocked the next door over. A weak strip of light appeared at the bottom of the door where the agents remained poised. On just the other side of the wall, the imam scraped back his chair. A faint hum told Jackson he had started up his computer.

  They had to get the hell out before Zakariya realized he had company. Only the imam had kept his door wide open, and it was directly across from the stairs, which meant they were better off leaving a different way.

  Jackson pointed to the window and, with a nod, Toby crossed the room.

  The sound of hip hop music, so unexpected in the sanctity of the mosque, pulsed suddenly through the wall. Jackson hesitated, cocking his ears to listen. With surprise, he recognized the distinct sound of the band, Wu Tang. Why would Zakariya be listening to Wu Tang at this ungodly hour?

  In the next instant, Toby was standing beside him again, conveying with gestures that the windows didn’t open.

  Jackson looked over at the glass panels in disbelief. What was this place, Fort Knox?

  Toby pointed toward the stairs as the closest, most viable exit. Let’s go, he signed.

  But Jackson had just recalled that many hip hop artists professed to being Five Percenters. Nodding absently, he tried to identify the music. Toby, meanwhile, cracked the door. The loud music muffled his footfalls as he darted across the hall and slipped behind the fire door, keeping it cracked for Jackson.

  Jackson was just about to follow, when Wu Tang arrived at the end of their rant and the mosque fell eerily quiet. Freezing, he hardly dared to breathe as he waited for the music to resume. Thankfully, it did, this time with a rap being belted out by Public Enemy.

  Several of the words reached his ears. The lyrics were unmistakably a call to violence. What reason did peace-loving Zakariya have for listening to this stuff?

  With his heart thudding in counterpoint to the beat, he signaled to Toby through the cracked door to wait. He wanted to be able to pick out this song later.

  Toby gestured impatiently. Jackson held up a finger. Just a second.

  War at thirty three and a third, not really live! I’d rather do it at forty five! Went west in the quest for my intelligence.

  He had it. With the refrain memorized, Jackson started furtively across the hall. Suddenly the music stopped again, and in the utter silence, the stealthy tread of Jackson’s sole sounded as loud as thunder. Zakariya whipped his attention toward the door.

  “Who’s there?” he yelped.

  Go! Jackson waved Toby ahead of him and flew toward the closing fire door to catch it. He slowed only long enough to shut it quietly behind him before throwing himself down the dark stairwell, moving so fast his feet scarcely touched the steps.

  In a matter of seconds he had overtaken his partner, who waited at the door below him. “Nice going,” Toby whispered. Light chased them as the fire door above them yawned open.

  “Stop! Thief!” Zakariya’s voice echoed off the cinderblock walls as he and Toby burst out of the basement exit. They tumbled up the back steps without slowing.

  “Go,” Toby urged, snatching the helmet off Jackson’s head. Sprinting in the opposite direction, he was gone from view by the time Jackson arrived at the corner of the dormitory and glanced back. Every light in the mosque was coming on, one by one.

  Hoping to beat the alarm that would be raised at any moment, Jackson stole into his dark room, crawled stealthily into bed, and lay there with his heart thrumming. The fact that Corey wasn’t snoring kept him from feeling any real relief.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Through the open windows of her cottage, Lena heard the crackle of pine needles being crushed by the tires of a car. She glanced at the clock on her laptop and smiled grimly: 10:30 A.M. By now, the parolees were long gone from Gateway. Just as she’d hoped, Peter had arrived too late to photograph Jackson.

  Getting up from the vanity she used as a desk, she went to the door to greet him. The happy grin he sent her as he stepped out of her Jaguar made her confidence waver, especially when he held up his camera and said, “I got what I came for.”

  Her stomach dropped. “What do you mean?”

  “I got to Gateway right when he was walking out with his parole officer. Followed him nine miles down this road to a house on the river.”

  Now she was more confused than ever. “What?”

  He joined her on the front stoop. “The parolees must go home on weekends. I’m surprised you didn’t know that,” he stated with a glint in his gray eyes. “Except Jackson Maddox doesn’t go all the way to Baltimore. He’s renting a riverfront house just down the road.”

  As he nodded in the direction of the river, Lena considered his news and found that she wasn’t too surprised. “Did he see you taking pictures?” she asked Peter.

  “Please.” He shot her a patronizing look. “I’m not an amateur.”

  Implying that she was, of course, since Jackson had seen her taking pictures.

  “Did you get another laptop yet?” he inquired with excitement.

  “Yeah.” She’d bought herself a Mac just yesterday.

  “Come on. I’ll show you the pictures.”

  Lena balked. She’d spent hours trying to find out who Abdul Ibn Wasi really was. Knowing he was a federal agent was enough for her. She didn’t care what his purpose was at Gateway. She wanted nothing to do with exposing Uncle Sam for meddling in the private lives of U.S. citizens. She wished Peter would just go home and leave Jackson alone.

  On the other hand, the prospect of seeing where Jackson spent his weekends was awfully tempting, especially since he’d intentionally kept his distance these past couple of days, punishing her silently for rejecting his offer and giving her plenty of time alone in which to relive the pleasure of his company, both mental and physical. It seemed like an eternity since their interlude in the store room. “It’s in my bedroom on the vanity,” she heard herself admit, and Peter marched into her house like he owned the place.

  In her bedroom, he took his top-of-the-line Nikon from its case, attached it to her laptop, and with a couple of key strokes, uploaded his recent photos, enlarging them on her monitor so they could both see.

  Peter sat on the stool. Leaning over him, Lena feasted her eyes on pictures of Jackson crossing Gateway’s parking lot with his parole officer, getting into a familiar looking Crown Victoria. To her astute gaze, he struck her as tired and listless this morning.

  “I’m sure the other guy’s an agent, too, since they’re staying at the same
house,” Peter commented.

  A couple more shots showed the Crown Vic pulling out on the highway. “This is where I followed him,” he noted.

  The next photos were of a large A-frame structure with cedar siding and expansive windows. The glimmering swathe of blue behind it suggested it stood on a bluff overlooking the Patuxent River.

  “So that’s where he stays,” Lena guessed with a stab of envy.

  “Yep. It’s a rental owned by a real estate tycoon. I determined that much on my way home.” Peter forwarded to pictures of two vehicles parked out front—the agents’ car and a white Volvo. He had zoomed in to photograph the Maryland state tags. “I’m going to call my buddy at the DMV and find out who owns these cars,” he determined, taking out his cell phone.

  As he rattled off the license plate numbers to a guy named Rich, Lena paced the length of her room. “Is that all you took?” she asked when Peter hung up.

  “Nope. Got a few more here.” He continued the slide show.

  The image of a copper haired girl, twelve or thirteen years of age, rooted Lena to the spot. The photos were blurry since Peter had been taking them while turning around at a cul-de-sac, but once the driver’s side window paralleled the yard, the photos came out clearer. The girl had turned to regard him curiously. Her eyes were so strikingly familiar that Lena gasped.

  Peter glanced up at her sharply. “What’s wrong?”

  “He has a daughter,” she croaked.

  “Who? Jackson Maddox?”

  “Yes. She looks just like him.”

  Peter gave a disinterested grunt. He forwarded to the next photo, where the leg, chest and chin of a woman were just visible as she stepped out of the house to join the girl.

  “Who is that?” Lena pointed, but it proved to be the last picture Peter had taken. “Did you see this woman? Is she the girl’s mother?”

  “Probably,” he said, unconcerned. “I bet she drives the Volvo and meets up with her husband on weekends.”