The Old One watched a seagull buffeted by the rising wind, the bird hanging in space directly in front of the window, all its efforts failing to move it forward…and the gull slowly, ever so slowly fell behind until it disappeared from view. The Old One felt an ache in his belly, a terrible void, worse than hunger.
There were moments now…moments when the plan was too vast, when he lost the tread of the skein for an instant, the faces blurring, connections blurring, before he regained his focus. The duration of his confusion was irrelevant; it was the confusion itself that kept him awake at night. Those lost moments seemed to be occurring more often lately. More than once, the Old One had fallen to his knees, prostrated himself, begging Allah for a little more time to fulfill his divine mission, just a few more years to bend the world to a true and perfect Islam. Many times over the long years the Old One had heard the voice of God, heard it more clearly than the beating of his own heart, but lately…Allah had remained silent. Silent as a stone. Time was running short, that much the Old One was certain of. Even for him.
The Old One placed his hands on his hips, faced the gathering storm. Let it come. Let it huff and puff and blow his house down. He didn’t blame Allah for his silence. God had been patient enough. So had the Old One.
Chapter 9
“Are you listening?” said Sarah. “This is important.”
Rakkim played with Michael, holding an index finger in front of the wobbling toddler, pulling it back as the boy grabbed for it. Michael, one of the four archangels, captain of the heavenly host, the angel most beloved of Allah, but this Michael was a chubby infant, not quite two, with his mother’s eyes, dark and bright, his gaze steady. He almost fell over, then one hand darted out and pinched Rakkim’s finger. Michael squeezed, delighted, and Rakkim kissed his shaggy curls. Michael might have his mother’s eyes but he had his father’s quick reflexes. Maybe even his guile. Rakkim still wasn’t sure if the boy had really almost lost his balance or was just distracting him. It worked, whatever the cause. Michael clapped his hands, wanting to play again.
“Rakkim?”
“The Colonel has become more aggressive in the last two or three years,” repeated Rakkim, watching Michael as the boy watched them, head cocked. “He’s expanding his territory, buying weapons, consolidating his support.” He lightly tapped Michael’s nose, retreated. Michael giggled. “Tactically brilliant, generous and popular with the locals, threatening to attack the republic…” Another tap on Michael’s nose. The boy swatted at Rakkim’s hand, missed. “…although the anti-Muslim invective may be just a recruiting slogan.” He looked at Sarah. “I read the data file General Kidd gave me.”
Michael lunged at him, flopped in Rakkim’s lap. Rakkim lifted him up, tossed him into the air. Caught him. Michael laughed.
“There’s currently a power vacuum in the Belt, one that the Colonel could easily exploit—was that in the file?” said Sarah, as Rakkim continued to throw Michael higher and higher. “Their new president was elected with a minority of votes. He’s a smart politician, very likeable, but weak and indecisive. There’s been talk that his party received massive financial support from the Nigerian Confederation, but no proof. The rumor may have been spread by the Colonel’s men for all we know, but…” She glared as Rakkim caught Michael by one ankle, the two of them flopping back onto the bed, Rakkim covering his eyes, pretending to cower as Michael launched an attack. “Do you mind?”
“What are you so mad about?” said Rakkim.
“I want you to be prepared.”
“I am prepared.” Rakkim carefully set Michael down on the floor, reached for her. “As prepared as I can be. Sarah…all the reports and rumors and projections aren’t going to help. They’re after-the-fact assessments, outdated five minutes later or dependent on the skill of whoever gathered the information. The only way I can find out what it’s really like in the Belt is to go there and sit around talking with strangers, making conversation, listening to what they argue about, what they laugh at. You want me to have a plan in place, some guidebook…that’s not going to happen.”
“You need a plan or—”
“The other shadow warriors sent in, they had a plan, and it got them killed.” Rakkim took her hands, pressed them against his heart as tears gathered in her eyes. “I’m going to slip into the Belt, Sarah. I’m going to make my way to where the Colonel is digging up the mountain and I’m going to stop him. Whatever it takes, I’m going to stop him. Then I’m going to come home.”
Sarah put on a brave front, but one eye overflowed.
“I know what I’m doing.”
She let it lay, watching Michael as he walked hesitantly around the room. “Is General Kidd offering transport?”
“I don’t want his help. There may be a mole in the Fedayeen high command.”
She stared at him and he could see the effort it took her to stay calm. “I see.”
He shrugged. “I also think it was a mistake sending the shadow warrior teams in from the north and the west.”
“It’s the shortest route,” said Sarah. “The most direct and we were in a hurry. We’re still in a hurry.”
“People in a hurry get noticed.”
Sarah started to speak. Stopped. Keyed the remote on her earlobe. “Spider’s here.”
Rakkim didn’t ask why. He’d find out soon enough.
The main wallscreen crackled. A car pulled into the armored garage, waited until the blast door closed. Infrared screens showed the outside streets buckled down for the night. No movement. No extraneous electronic activity. Safe. Spider got out of the car, waved to the camera. Someone got out of the passenger side. Big guy…no, it was a kid, a soft, doughy teenager wearing khaki trousers that nipped at his ankles and a baggy brown sweater. He didn’t wave. Just stood there with a sullen expression while pulling at the seat of his pants.
“Who’s Humpty-Dumpty?”
“His name is Leo.” Sarah unlocked the door to the house. “He’s one of Spider’s sons.”
“Are they here to brief me too?” He saw her glance away. “What is it?”
“I…I wanted to tell you before they showed up,” said Sarah. “I’m sorry.” Onscreen, Spider and Leo stood in the elevator as it rose rapidly toward the living level. Leo looked like he was going to throw up. “Leo…Leo’s going with you to the Belt.”
Rakkim laughed. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“Direct order from the president.”
“When?” said Rakkim. “When did the president issue the order?”
Sarah straightened. “Earlier today. Just…just a few hours ago.”
“Just a few hours?” he said. “Why not just a few minutes?”
Michael started crying, looking from one of them to the other.
Sarah hurried over to the baby, picked him up. “There had been some talk earlier, but Spider…he wasn’t sure about sending the boy into the Belt.”
“This sudden change of plans sounds like something Redbeard would have pulled,” said Rakkim. “Measuring out the mission in teaspoons, not giving me a chance to reject it outright until I’m in too deep.”
“I wouldn’t do that to you.”
He saw the hurt in her eyes, but he didn’t back off.
She rocked Michael in her arms, quieting him. “I wouldn’t, Rikki.”
“Anything else you haven’t told me? Any other last-minute additions to the mission? Should I pick up a case of Moon Pies and a carton of Marlboros while I’m there? How about a few souvenirs from Graceland? Maybe one of those pillows that sings ‘Love Me Tender’ when you lay your head down?”
Sarah’s eyes flashed. “That won’t be necessary.”
“You sure? Long as I’m lugging around a civilian, I might as well make myself useful.”
“Leo’s not just a civilian,” said Sarah. “He’s smart—”
“All Spider’s kids are smart.”
“Not like Leo. He’s a genius, a true Brainiac. Spider says he’s smarter than any
of them…except for the seven-year-old, Amanda, but she’s—”
“Amanda is not smarter than—” Leo stood in the doorway to the bedroom, suddenly aware of the blade of Rakkim’s knife a millimeter from his jugular. He blinked, a tall, pale, soft-bodied youth with a large head and wispy, dirty-blond hair plastered across his skull.
“Rakkim?” said Spider, hovering nearby. “I…I thought we were expected. Please?”
Leo licked his fleshy lips. “My father grossly overrates the intellectual capacity of my baby sister,” he said idly, a single drop of blood running down the blade of the knife. He ignored it. “Amanda came up with a more elegant solution than I did for the Riemann hypothesis and he acts as if she’s Stephen Hawking. She merely tweaked the zeta function, which I would have done eventually—”
Rakkim pushed him aside. Looked at Spider. “You want to get him killed? Because that’s what sending him to the Belt is going to do.”
“Rikki, if there was any other option, I’d keep him here,” said Spider, “but the truth of the matter is, you need each other.”
Rakkim laughed. “What do I need him for?”
“To tell you what’s buried in the mountain,” said Sarah. “To tell you if it’s a decoy, or a failed experiment, or if it’s dangerous and needs to be destroyed.”
“What are you trying to convince him for?” Leo sniffed, wiped his nose. “I’m the key man here. He’s just the…the travel agent.” He sniffed again. “You need to adjust the humidity in here. I’ve got allergies.”
“Leo,” soothed Spider, “please, shut up.”
“He’s got allergies, but no training,” said Rakkim. “He’s got a face that begs to be slapped, but no useful skills. No survival instincts. First time he opens his mouth in the Belt or doesn’t hold his utensils right, we’re going to draw attention. Then what? How am I supposed to explain him?”
“You’ll think of something,” said Sarah, rocking Michael in her arms. “You always do.”
“Leo’s physical attributes may not be impressive, but he stood up well during the hard times when the Black Robes searched for us,” said Spider. “He saved the family more than once. He complains, but he doesn’t break. And Rikki”—his voice softened—“he really is very smart.”
“Look, Mr. Fedayeen, traipsing around Holy Joe-ville wasn’t my idea,” said Leo. “Personally, I’d rather be studying plasma physics and let you idiots fight each other until there’s nobody left.” He blew his nose, shoved his handkerchief into his back pocket.
Rakkim turned to Sarah. “You’re right. I have thought of a way to keep Humpty-Dumpty from taking a great fall.” He smiled at Leo. “This is going to be fun.”
Chapter 10
How long are you going to stay mad at me, Rikki?
I don’t like being blindsided.
I didn’t have a choice, said Sarah. And neither do you.
Rakkim turned at the sound of Leo vomiting over the side of the small fishing boat, hanging on to the railing with his chubby fingers as he upended his gullet for the tenth time in the last two hours. There hadn’t been anything left for the last forty-five minutes but he kept trying. Rakkim half expected the kid to hurl his intestines into the Gulf.
Leo looked over at Rakkim, the kid still bent over, clothes soaked from the salt spray. Snot ran from his nose, glistened along his chin like an iri-descent beard. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? I can feel your brain stem twitching with glee.”
“I told you to take Dramamine.”
“I’m allergic to it.”
“Anything you’re not allergic to?”
Leo started to respond, grimaced, and lurched over the rail.
“That pendejo never been on a boat before?” said Vasquez, captain of the Esmeralda, bare-chested, his stringy hair billowing around his grease-stained cap.
“Kid must have had a bad tamale back in Rio Concho,” said Rakkim.
“You should choose your companions more carefully, amigo. A strong man tied to a weak man…when there is trouble, the strong man’s strength counts for nothing.”
Rakkim turned his face into the wind. “I don’t see any trouble.”
Vasquez spit, perfectly timing the wind to carry his burst of tobacco juice away.
Rakkim walked past the wheelhouse. Took a position forward. Bumpier near the bow but he liked watching their progress and catching the full force of the wind. Still no sight of land. He felt the Esmeralda’s engine underfoot. Heard the two mates, Hector and Luis, banging around belowdecks. The Esmeralda was in even worse shape than ten years ago, when Vasquez had delivered him to Santabel Island in a squall, lightning crackling all around them. Best way to avoid the Belt patrol boats. Vasquez thought he was a smuggler then, thought he was a smuggler now. He told Vasquez that Leo was a diamond cutter, a freelancer on his way to an unnamed client in Atlanta. A lot of the fishermen supplemented their meager income ferrying human contraband in and out of the Belt.
You would have thought the warming of the Gulf of Mexico would have made life easier for independent fishermen like Vasquez, that the waters would be teeming with even more fish than ever. Not so. Global warming had turned the Gulf into a cauldron of sudden storms and a hurricane season lasting six months and rising. Small boats like the Esmeralda were forced to remain idle half the year, and the central government of Aztlán, which now claimed most of the Gulf, awarded contracts to massive commercial trawlers who could better handle the storms, and whose miles-long nets swept the waters bare.
Rakkim glanced at the salt-pitted glass of the wheelhouse, then back to the sea. The boat groaned, engine sputtering briefly before kicking in. The best piece of equipment on the Esmeralda was a sophisticated new radio/sonar unit. Vasquez said he had spent three months’ wages on it, hoping the sonar would allow him to compete with the factory ships in the search for fish. Rakkim checked the stern, saw the kid slumped on the deck, holding his head in his hands. Pathetic. Thanks, Sarah. He tried to remember the last argument with her that he had won.
Did the other teams have a Brainiac along for the ride? Rakkim asked. Did Spider already lose one of his kids?
No, Sarah said. This is the first time he’s risked one of his children.
We’re at that point, are we?
We’re that desperate, yes, said Sarah.
Desperate enough that you think I need help? Rakkim shook his head. I don’t need Leo to evaluate this weapons system. I could just blow the fucker up. Problem solved. But you don’t really want me to hotshot it, do you? You want me to bring the weapon back. That’s why the kid’s tagging along. So he can tell me if it’s worth the effort.
No…bringing it back wouldn’t be practical, Sarah said softly. She reached for him but he didn’t respond. You’re not supposed to know about this, Rikki. No one is.
Rakkim waited.
It’s not the system per se that’s important, Sarah said finally. It’s the science behind it. The schematics. The theoretical leaps the former regime did so well. Leo can evaluate the data, but there’s more. Much more. She moistened her lips. Leo…he’s been modified.
Leo inched his way toward Rakkim from the stern, bent forward slightly, hanging on to the railing for support. The rain gear that Vasquez had loaned him was ridiculously small. He flopped beside Rakkim, tucked in his chin as the storm broke, sheets of warm rain slanting across them. The full force wasn’t supposed to hit until tomorrow morning. So much for satellite imaging.
“Is there some rational reason why you’re standing here and not inside the cabin?” shouted Leo, voice cracking. “Are you even capable of forming a rational judgment?”
“Just working on my tan.” Rakkim spread his arms, knees bent, swaying with the rolling of the boat, eyes half closed in the warm rain. “Why don’t you go inside? Vasquez makes good coffee.”
Leo shook his head. Looked even younger somehow. “They don’t like me.”
Rakkim noticed a slight change in the engine vibration, started toward the wheelhouse
as Leo called after him.
Vasquez turned away from the wheel as Rakkim reached the top of the ladder. Hector, the first mate, slouched in the corner, rain dripping off him as he sucked on a bottle of beer.
“You’re turning northeast,” said Rakkim. “We at the cutoff point already?”
Vasquez grinned silvery teeth as he cut the running lights. “You have radar too, amigo?”
Rakkim’s itinerary called for Vasquez to take them due east from his village of Laguna Madre, then cut toward the Texas coast and drop them off outside Nuevo Galveston in a small inflatable raft.
“Change of plans,” said Rakkim. “Drop us off just south of Corpus Christi.”
Vasquez peered through the windscreen as the boat shuddered and groaned. “Corpus?” He narrowed his eyes. “Bad idea. Very dangerous currents. Rocks and sandbars—”
“Bery, bery dangerous,” echoed Hector.
“I’ll take the chance,” said Rakkim.
“Hey!” Leo called up from the deck. “I don’t like being left alone out here.”
“We clear, Alejandro?” said Rakkim.
“Gone cost you another five hundred,” said Vasquez.
“Fine.” Rakkim slid down the railing of the ladder, landed with a splash on the deck. He silenced Leo with a raised finger, scrambled silently back up the ladder. Stopped just below the wheelhouse, listening as the wind howled around him.
Sins of the Assassin Page 9
