Countdown to Mecca

by Michael Savage

“Far as I know, but I don’t know much and I don’t know anyone else who does.”

  Jack wasn’t just listening to the man’s words, he was listening to his tone. He didn’t seem like a man who was disturbed or concealing something.

  “No worries, Ray. Thanks for your help.”

  “Anytime Jack,” Paxton said with bemusement.

  Jack smiled as he disconnected the call, acknowledging that the waters they were all swimming in now were deep and murky. And when the waters got this rough, there was only one man to call.

  Kevin Dangerfield answered on the first ring. “Hello?”

  “Jack Hatfield, Kevin.”

  “Jack Hatfield. Again? That means you’re in trouble or the world is. Which one?”

  “Probably both,” Jack said. “There was a theft of uranium or a biological pathogen in Russia about a week ago. I’m trying to find out who took it.” Jack waited about five seconds. “Kevin?”

  “Now come on Jack, you know I can’t confirm or deny. I can’t even comment on what may or may not be stored there.”

  “Let me help,” Jack prompted. “Material was taken out of Kazakhstan two years ago with U.S. help. Army, I believe.” The following silence told Jack he’d nailed it. “Where do you think it went? More to the point, where do you fear it went?”

  “Jack.” Dangerfield drew a deep breath. “You know I like you—”

  “And I like you, too, Kevin. It would be a shame if our friendship or maybe a city disappeared in a flash of light.”

  “Stop jumping to conclusions, Jack.”

  “I’m assuming this much,” Jack pressed on. “Iran already has weapons-grade uranium, so I’m guessing someone else would want it—if that’s what we’re dealing with. Who and how would it be transported? Come on, help me help you. At least tell me what I’m looking for!”

  “Jack—stop. You know I can’t answer.”

  Jack did stop, knowing Dangerfield never said anything unnecessarily. He had to stop asking him questions Kevin couldn’t answer and start asking questions he could.

  “I wonder,” Jack said. “How would it be transported? Radioactive material is—well, dangerous. But there are ways of making it safer to transport.”

  “Just for the purpose of—oh, conversation—radioactive material and even biological agents are not all that dangerous.” Dangerfield said it blithely, as if they were just two old buddies shooting the breeze.

  “What do you mean it’s not that dangerous?”

  “Raw material doesn’t make a bomb,” he explained. “So just possessing the stuff doesn’t hurt you if it’s properly sealed, and it doesn’t help you in that form.”

  Jack waited, but Dangerfield left it at that. “Kev, I could use a nudge in some direction.”

  “Jack, you’ll need to talk to someone else.”

  “I already have.”

  “Who?”

  “A scientist. With connections.”

  “Obviously not the guy you need,” Dangerfield said.

  Jack cursed inwardly. Outwardly, he asked, “Any suggestions?”

  “Gotta go, Jack. Thanks for calling.”

  The line clicked off abruptly. Jack’s shoulders slumped. Frustrated, he flicked on his CD player. A CD from the Blue Note: Collector’s Edition was in the tray. Jazz in general calmed him; this set in particular, with Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Dexter Gordon, Donald Byrd, John Coltrane, and others, worked miracles. Fittingly, it was Sammy who had given him the album as a birthday present over a year before

  “You okay?”

  Jack jerked in his chair and nearly bleated in surprise, which elicited a laugh from Dover Griffith. She stood in front of the apartment’s front door, which she had already closed, holding a bag of take-out food.

  “Sorry to scare you,” she said, stifling a further chuckle. “Chalk it up to the stealth training the Bureau is giving us now.” She headed toward the kitchen table, accompanied by Coltrane’s mellow sax, giving Jack time to take in her jeans, running shoes, T-shirt, and denim jacket. Always a jacket. Had to put the gun and holster under something. “‘Hi’ would be nice,” she suggested.

  “Sorry,” he said with a mix of embarrassment and pleasure. “I didn’t hear you come in. My head is somewhere else.”

  “Evidently,” she said, removing containers from her shoulder bag and placing them on the table. “I took a chance that you’d be here. Used my key but I don’t think you would have heard it if I had kicked the door down.” She looked up at him with warmth as he neared. “Do you even know what time it is?”

  Jack glanced at the digital clock on the stove. It was almost five P.M. As usual, time flew when he was working.

  “I saw Doc at Spumante’s, hoping you’d be there, too,” she told him as she finished putting out the food. “He said you had donned your monk’s habit, so I figured you’d need something to eat when you finally broke your vow of silence.”

  He smiled, rose, and gave her a hug. She hugged him back, tightly. He was distracted by the aroma of Bruno’s exceptional cooking.

  “Wow,” she said as he leaned over her shoulder. “Makes a girl feel wanted.”

  “I’ve got Italian and you,” he said. “My life is perfect.”

  “Is it?” she asked, nodding toward his desk and the laptop.

  “There are some shortcomings in the professional side of things,” he admitted.

  “Join the dead-end club.”

  Jack took a seat at the kitchen table and opened the container closest to him.

  “Carl thought ID’ing those guys in Levi Plaza would be easy,” Dover said as she got utensils and napkins and pulling up a chair beside him.

  “Nothing in the database?” he asked around a mouthful of eggplant parmesan, no cheese, a Hatfield special, now on Bruno’s menu.

  “Not us, nor TSA, nor Interpol, nor even the Mukhabarat el-Khabeya.” She took her own bite of creamy potato gnocchi.

  Jack recognized the name of Egypt’s Military Intelligence Service. “That could mean the hit squad hasn’t done something like this before,” he mused, chewing.

  “The fact that one of ’em got clipped by a trolley is evidence of that,” Dover said. She regarded him carefully. “You’re really worried.”

  “Yeah.” Jack took a moment, grateful for the food and her presence and the chance to decompress. “The last two times I was going after the bad guys. This time they’re also coming after me and those around me.”

  They both fell silent for a few moments. The only sound was their chewing. When Dover spoke again, her head was down and her tone was hushed.

  “I want to do something,” she said. “I came here to pool our resources off-the-record. I want to help you find that ‘someone else’ I overheard Kevin Dangerfield refer to.”

  Jack put down his fork, went over, and kissed Dover full on the mouth.

  “You know something?” he asked when they broke.

  “What?” she smiled.

  He smiled back. “That’s the best-tasting gnocchi I’ve ever had.”

  While they were locked together in the primal entanglement Jack sought to stare straight in her eyes. He didn’t look away. Dover was different. Slim to the point of skinny, her slender muscularity turned on neurons he didn’t know still existed in him. With her like this it wasn’t solely the sexual contact and release that kept him hooked. It was her being itself that drew him in. As their writhing entanglement reached its point of frenzy Jack’s brain heard Horace Silver’s horn reaching for the impossible note. Just as Silver had maxed his lungs in “The Natives Are Restless Tonight,” seeking that impossible note Jack felt something almost snap as he sought the perfect bond with Dover. She pulled at him with her athletic strength “Jack, Jack…” and a small tear. Jack thought, It doesn’t matter if you hit that note. All that matters is reaching with all your talents.

  12

  “Captain?”

  Dan Jeffreys looked up from his computer screen to see Officer Victoria Burnett in her “work�
�� clothes: a low-cut, skintight minidress, visible garter belts, black stockings showing off a swash of thigh flesh, and black high heel boots. As if the visual evidence wasn’t enough to clue him in, he already knew she was working the vice squad’s latest sweep.

  “Yes?”

  “Glad you’re still here,” said the brunette.

  He gave her a “where else?” look. In addition to the usual mix of crisis and red tape, there had been a shoot-out in his city that climaxed with a trolley accident. That meant attorneys and union officials, a flood of e-mails, interview requests, and jurisdictional battles with the FBI. No way he was going home until he got a better handle on all that. Besides, Burnett was obviously vamping—in her case figuratively and literally—and had probably argued with herself for some time before appearing in his office doorway. The least he could do was hear her out. And rest his eyes on something worth resting them.

  “What can I do for you, Officer Burnett?”

  “You said you wanted to know about any unusual street scuttlebutt, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Word is that some Russian guys are looking for some very specific escorts.”

  That snapped his attention away from the garters. “Oh?”

  “An Asian, an Indian, and some Nordic type with ‘ice eyes.’”

  He stood. “You sure these guys are Russian?”

  The officer nodded.

  “How many?”

  Burnett frowned. “Not sure. The details keep changing—sunglasses, regular glasses, hoodies, hats, even different mustaches, but the template remains the same: youngish, about six feet, slimly muscled, blond.”

  “So it could be one guy or a dozen.”

  She nodded.

  “Good work,” Jeffreys said. “Last contact?”

  “About an hour ago.”

  Jeffreys looked directly into Burnett’s brown eyes. “Is your shift over?”

  Burnett shook her head. “Just taking a quick break.”

  “Okay. See if you can track him down and keep in constant touch. If he’s anything like the ones who tried to deep-six ‘ice eyes’ at Levi Plaza, he should be considered armed and extremely dangerous.”

  Burnett nodded, turned.

  “Hey,” he said. “You haven’t got room for Kevlar under that getup. Don’t be a hero: call if you think you see him.”

  She winked, back in character, before closing the door.

  13

  “That’s him.”

  As Ana spoke, Ric looked over and Sammy looked up. Her ice eyes, however, were still locked on the images on the computer screen before them. Miwa and Ritu heard her, too, and came over from the sofa where they had been flipping through magazines. Personal cell phone use was not permitted, in case they were being monitored. Eddie, who had been sleeping between them, remained there.

  “Yes,” said Miwa. “That is him.”

  Ric studied the face of the Asian girl before turning back to the computer screen. They had been at this all day while Ana’s escorts had been down in the public safe house, occasionally advising, but mostly listening to the life stories of the occupants of the halfway house. Ritu, the more sensitive of the pair, had needed some coffee breaks to have a cry, while Miwa had become noticeably more contemplative. Earlier in the day, Ric overheard the girls talking how horrible it was to be a hooker by necessity, not by choice.

  Sort of like being forced into a life of crime instead of choosing it, he thought, reflecting on his own life. Ric had been a ball collector at a golf club where Sol was a member. The gangster saw him swing a club in anger one day and offered him a new line of work—using the same club. Ric rose quickly through the ranks, becoming the mobster’s trusted driver.

  They were now all looking at Sammy’s screen where the image from a San Francisco online newspaper’s society page showed One-Star General Montgomery Morton, his wife, Cynthia, and their two lovely children—Thomas, five, and Brook, seven—at San Francisco’s Flower & Garden Show, held annually at the San Mateo Event Center.

  “Nice going,” Ric exclaimed, clapping Sammy on the shoulder.

  “Thanks,” Sammy said, grinning with pride.

  One of the reasons they had been going at this all day was that the U.S. military had become extremely cautious and particularly secretive since September 11, 2001. Finding personal information on army officers outside specifically chosen public relations representatives or high-ranking political appointees had become increasingly difficult. It had been Sammy’s idea to scour horticultural sources simply from Ana’s mentioning that Morton had smiled at a vase in the suite after Ric had her recount her experiences in as much detail as she could remember. She could, it turned out, remember a lot.

  “So we’ve got a name and we have a face,” Ana said. “What now?”

  “We also know his immediate family,” Miwa said.

  “You’re both right,” Ric said. “But none of that is important at the moment. Let me tell you what happens when the cops nail a wise guy. The first thing they do is look into ‘known associates.’”

  “What does that mean?” Ritu asked.

  “It means we start looking out who his pals are,” Sammy said, his fingers already moving across the keyboard. “For instance, who served in the special forces, who’s been mustered out, who lives or recently arrived in San Francisco.”

  With that lead, more information came quickly. One of the first things they found was Morton’s name in the West Point yearbook. Once they knew he had graduated from that august academy, they trolled the yearbook pages, seeking out any clubs he frequented.

  “There!” Ritu suddenly cried, pointing. “There!” They all looked to where she was pointing. It was a picture of the archery team, where Morton had been an advisor.

  “Whoa!” Miwa said.

  “What?” Sammy asked.

  “There,” Miwa said, wagging her finger. “The gold medal winner. Isn’t that the ‘Kid’?”

  They all looked closer. “It could very well be,” Ana concluded.

  “Okay,” Ric enthused. “Looks like we’re on the right track.” He checked the names in the caption. “Andrew Taylor,” he read. “Let’s see where his name leads us.”

  Within minutes, Sammy leaned back, his eyes widening. “Sweet mother of Mary,” he breathed.

  There, on his screen, was a video of Captain Steven Reynolds in a hospital bed, flanked by his sniffling wife, Mary, and his best friend, Colonel Andrew Taylor, apologizing for a shooting accident that occurred at their alma mater just a few hours before.

  “This was an unfortunate accident for which I’m totally responsible,” he was saying on a raw local news feed. “There is no reason to pursue an inquiry any further and I apologize for whatever inconvenience or discomfort anyone may have suffered as a result of my personal, actions.”

  “That’s Pallor!” Miwa cried.

  “Another of our clients,” Ana clarified.

  “You sure?” Ric double-checked.

  Miwa nodded. “He’s paler than before, if that’s possible, and a little gaunt, but yes, I’m sure. That’s Pallor.”

  Both Sammy and Ric looked to Ana for corroboration. They had all come to depend on her for the final word regarding the girls and the men who were both hunters and quarry. She nodded.

  “It’s funny, though,” Ritu noted.

  “What is?” Sammy asked.

  “He sounds like a robot.”

  Sammy returned to the computer keys to find any other information on the shooting. Ric watched his progress.

  “It’s not on any of the local websites, buried,” Sammy said.

  “Most of them are joking it up, using it to slam recreational shooters,” Ric said disgustedly. “Like when Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot that campaign donor during a quail hunt in 2006.”

  “Yeah,” Sammy said. “You gotta love these guys who use the First Amendment to trash the Second.”

  “But that’s not really the story here,” Ric said.
>
  “What do you mean?” Ana asked.

  Sammy, who knew about military justice, piped up. “What your friend here is doing is shutting down any investigation into the accident. Why would he do that?”

  “Why, indeed?” Ric replied, his eyes still on the screen. “Let’s see if we can find out about what else Morton, Pallor, and the Kid liked to do together.”

  Ric pulled up a chair and relieved Sammy at the keyboard. Miwa and Ritu wandered back to the sofa. Ana headed to the kitchen to make more coffee.

  From the suddenly eager looks on the faces of Ric and Sammy, it was going to be a long night. Sammy needed a break and joined Ana.

  14

  Livermore, California

  By all rights, The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory should have shone like a beacon of knowledge and learning in the morning sun. In reality, it stretched like a scab on the dewy, misty ground.

  Doc looked at it doubtfully as he drove another vehicle Sol had supplied: a 2014, tuxedo black, Ford Escape SUV, with tinted windows, fog lamps, a two-liter EcoBoost engine, four-wheel drive, a voice-activated direction, phone, and entertainment system, and everything else short of machine guns and ejector seats.

  “I liked the name,” Sol had told them before turning over the keys. “‘Escape.’ Fitting, eh?”

  The whistles and bells aside, the powerful engine and roomy interior had served them well during the forty-five-mile drive from San Francisco.

  “This is where you’re going to find out what’s what?” Doc asked Jack dubiously as his eyes peered through the smoky windows, scouring the seemingly worn, squat buildings.

  “Don’t let the unassuming exterior fool you,” Jack informed him. “In those many walls is the most extensive in-depth knowledge of nuclear and atomic weaponry in the world. It was created in 1952 as an offshoot of the UC Radiation Lab and as competition for Los Alamos.”

  Doc sniffed. “Looks like they haven’t changed the wallpaper since ’52, either. But we may not be looking for nuclear material. How’s this help us in that case?”

  “Gossip,” Jack replied. “Apart from lawyers, no one likes telling tales more than scientists, especially when one of their hated rivals screws up.”