Iron Dove

by Leon, Judith

  “No, Mom. Don’t worry.”

  “Please take care of yourself. You are always doing such dangerous things on those tours.”

  “Yes, I’ll take care. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Nova hung up, her hands trembling slightly. Now she had to concentrate. She checked her watch. Five-ten. Think.

  Joe said, “Well, major shit has hit the fan. Cesare says they have to try to figure out what to do without causing a monumental panic. We should meet him at the van.” Ya Lin had disappeared into her closet. “He says the authorities are approaching the front door as we speak to arrest Ya Lin.”

  Nova walked to the door of a closet roughly the size of her dining room and called to Ya Lin. “I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for being honest with us.”

  She joined Joe and they headed for the bedroom door, but Ya Lin burst from the closet. “No, no,” she yelled. “You can’t leave. I want to help you. If I don’t help you, you’ll die, too.”

  Chapter 27

  “Maybe he didn’t lie to me,” Ya Lin said, her face flushed with excitement and fear.

  Nova turned back to see the actress throw the skimpy dresses she’d brought from the closet onto the bed. Her face still stiffened by urgency if not panic, Ya Lin hurried on. “Why would he lie such an elaborate lie? I’m still leaving Italy. I’m taking no chances. But I want to help if there is any chance you can stop him.”

  What the heck is she talking about? Absolutely baffled, Nova waited.

  Ya Lin rushed to her bathroom and returned carrying a leather cosmetic bag embossed with her initials. She laid it on the bed next to the half-full suitcase and opened it. Lying in the center, something had been wrapped in white tissue paper. Ya Lin stripped back the paper to reveal three vials, each of which was topped with a stubby, capped needle.

  “He gave me six. He said that if I injected one under my skin it would make me immune within two hours.”

  “IMMUNE!” Nova gasped in unison with Joe.

  “If the man is right. If I took the drug right. I don’t want to stay here in Italy and find out. But I give these to you.” She picked up the three vials and pressed them into Nova’s hand. “You can use them, and then maybe you will be immune. And that might help you, or at least save you, if you try to stop him. Then perhaps I can feel less guilty.”

  Ya Lin was right. If the drug conferred immunity within a matter of hours, even partial immunity, the chances of stopping these madmen would be tremendously increased. Otherwise, approaching them without wearing bulky and confining HAZMAT gear would be a death sentence.

  Joe said, “He told you it takes two hours to work?”

  “He said it would help right away, and for certain I would be safe in two hours. I didn’t feel he was sure himself.”

  Nova grabbed the actress. “Thank you.”

  She heard steps outside the bedroom and then three men appeared at the door, two in uniforms and one plainclothes. They nodded to her and Joe. The last thing Nova heard as she and Joe bolted down the curving stairway was one of the officers informing Ya Lin that she was under arrest.

  The moment they reached the van, Cesare said, “Surveillance says the guy who visited Ya Lin this morning around seven is a fish dealer from Positano. Ahmad al Hassan. We have an address. Get in. We’ll drive and by the time we get there, maybe SISMI will have decided what in the name of all the saints they want to do or can do. There is talk of immediately putting a quarantine on all of southern Italy, if you can believe that. Imagine the chaos. Oh my.”

  “Wait, Cesare,” Nova said. “See these.” She showed him the three vials and began to explain that they would presumably provide immunity. As she was talking, she popped the cap off one vial. She had already decided. Without immunity or without wearing HAZMAT gear, approaching these men, one or more of whom might be a carrier, was a death sentence. Immunity would give her mobility. Freedom to act. Better odds for success in stopping them.

  “What are you doing?” Cesare said.

  She looked at Joe for a moment, and then slid the needle under the skin on her inner left arm. The thing self-injected the contents. Only a drop of surplus clung to the bottom, something the CDC could use for analysis. The site of injection burned like hell. She caught her breath.

  Cesare exploded. “What have you done?”

  Joe took a second vial from her and injected it similarly.

  “You two are crazy. You are out of control. You have no business, no right, to do that,” Cesare yelled.

  “There is one last vial.” She offered it to him. “It will be quite a few hours before we’re likely to get any vaccine over here to Italy from the CDC. Until we do, any contact with these bastards will be deadly.”

  “I don’t…I don’t know.”

  Joe, man of action, shook his head at Cesare’s dithering. “If we get over to Positano and this Hassan bastard is contagious and is still there, you know what’s going to happen to you if you don’t at least try it.”

  Gingerly, Cesare took the vial, looked into her eyes. She said, “Burns like the devil.”

  He gave her a weak smile, then injected.

  She took back all three vials, wrapped them up and, after the three of them climbed into the van, put them into its glove compartment for safekeeping and for analysis as soon as Provenza could arrange for it.

  Joe said, “It’s half past five. By half past seven, we should have full immunity.”

  “That’s the theory. I can understand why Ya Lin kept saying she wasn’t sure the man hadn’t lied. Maybe we’ll have immunity. Maybe not. The ‘maybe not’ possibility is very, very scary.”

  “Do you think this Ebola affects dogs?” Cesare asked as Joe burned rubber.

  She ignored Cesare, thinking now at double speed about what they might find in Positano. And what, if anything, they were going to be able to do to stop a nightmare from being unleashed.

  She pulled out the cell phone and punched in Star’s number. Again, only the answering machine.

  “Who?” Joe said.

  “Remember my niece?”

  “Oh, shit. Sorry I didn’t think of her sooner. Where the hell is she?”

  “I don’t know. And I can’t reach Star.”

  Chapter 28

  Traffic on a Sunday afternoon on the coast drive sometimes could be not just bumper to bumper but stalled. The traffic gods favored them, though, and they made it back to Positano in quick time.

  SISMI had taken control of the situation from local police, and when Joe drove up to the apartment house at the address Provenza had given Cesare, the place where the fish dealer had gone after leaving Ya Lin, they found it surrounded, after a fashion. Four large white vans the size of small moving trucks, presumably from city gas services, sat outside, two in front and two in back, but there wasn’t a man in sight.

  In fact, there wasn’t a person in sight. Cesare was now in almost constant contact with Provenza, and Provenza informed him that SISMI had already arranged that no foot or car traffic be allowed into the area within a four-block radius. Guards only allowed the Laforza to join up with the SISMI teams in front of the suspect location after all three of them had shown ID at the blockade. Cesare was immediately recognized as being top on-site command.

  A trim mustached man of about forty wearing a special ops all-black jumpsuit stepped out of the back of one of the two vans at the front of the house. He gestured for Cesare to come to the customized special ops transport. Nova, Joe and Cesare climbed inside.

  “Serge Alonza,” the special ops guy said, introducing himself to Cesare.

  Four other men sat on jump seats. HAZMAT gear hung on pegs along one sidewall but all of the men still wore only black special ops suits.

  If it were me and I were in their shoes, I’d be wearing one of those damn bubble bags no matter how awkward or uncomfortable they are.

  She checked her watch to find out how much time had passed since she had injected the vaccine. Rou
ghly forty-five minutes. Long enough to give her some protection from whoever might be inside the house, but not long enough to be safe—assuming, of course, that Hassan had not lied to Ya Lin.

  “Here’s the deal,” Alonza said in English, presumably for her benefit and Joe’s, working on the assumption that like the majority of Americans he met, they didn’t speak the language. “Headquarters still hasn’t given us the go-ahead to enter the premises. The sight of HAZMAT suits on the street would set off a flash-fire of questions and attract immediate media attention. We expect to get instructions pretty quick to wear normal gear to clear all civilians off this block, and then, when there are no witnesses, we can go into the house in the HAZMATS. For that matter, we still don’t know if there is anyone inside.”

  Alone and depressed, Ahmad sat slumped on the sofa of the apartment house, elbows on knees, chin propped in his hands, staring at the news channel on the television. Everything so far with Operation Awesome Vengeance had moved perfectly on schedule and with no hitches. But he could not find Saddoun, and something ominous roiled in the pit of his stomach.

  He had picked up the Ebola and the vaccines from the extraordinarily beautiful Ya Lin as planned. He had injected himself with the vaccine, as had all the bodyguards. He was now safely immune. Ali had been given the slightly weakened version of the virus that triggered a partial immunity. An hour later, he had been given the full dose that turned him into a walking carrier of death and by now he was exactly that—and carrying vengeance into the heart of Italy. In ten or twelve days, however, he too would die. This was his sacrifice.

  The thing was, Mohsin had called right after they injected Ali to say that he had taken Nissia and the girls to the airport and they were safely out of Italy, but that Saddoun had not been with them.

  Ahmad had spent the rest of the morning and all of the afternoon searching for Saddoun. None of his son’s three friends had seen him or knew where he might have gone. Ahmad had checked the closest soccer field and two others more distant. He’d checked for over an hour at the mall.

  He could not imagine why the boy had disobeyed so outrageously. The punishment, when Saddoun was found, must be severe. But the horror twisting Ahmad’s gut was that if Saddoun extended his rebellion beyond today, perhaps fearing how severely he would be punished, he might hide out for, say, three or maybe four days.

  Three or four days, and he could contact someone infected and then die himself.

  The cell phone rang and Ahmad jerked upright so hard he felt a sharp pain in his lower back. Mighty and merciful Allah, I beg You to let it be Saddoun. “Yes,” he said. “Ahmad al Hassan.”

  “This is Alberto,” said the familiar deep voice of his contact with La Cosa Nostra.

  The usual anxiety this voice always evoked got mixed with crushing disappointment that it wasn’t Saddoun. Ahmad could barely get out, “Yes.”

  “This is a warning. We have information from Rome that something big is happening in Amalfi, and that the authorities will be on your doorstep in minutes, if they aren’t already there.”

  The phone went dead.

  Ahmad leapt to his feet. His thoughts reeled. He must get home at once. And do what? No, he thought. I must not go home at all. I must go someplace. But where? What authorities? What do they know? Should I call Khangi? And tell him what?

  He was very confused, that he realized, but he wasn’t so confused that he would forget to take the tape Ali had made. He ejected it from the VCR, put it into a Ziploc bag and into his jacket pocket. He shrugged into the shoulder holster carrying the Beretta semiautomatic. He did not intend to be taken alive.

  He put on the jacket, looking around the clutter of the room with its pizza boxes and miscellaneous debris from having men living without the care of women for nearly three weeks. No time now to sort through it all. He could think of nothing incriminating, even if the authorities were to find the place. He had the tape. That’s what counted.

  Chapter 29

  “Boss,” the special ops man in the van’s driver’s seat called out in Italian. “Someone’s coming out of the house.”

  Nova and everyone else in the back of the van looked out the one-way glass windows. “That’s him,” Serge Alonza announced.

  Cesare asked the question everyone had to be thinking, the question that had them all momentarily paralyzed. None of them had put on HAZMAT gear, and no one was eager to die. “Do you think he’s contagious?”

  Ahmad al Hassan dashed through the gate in the wooden fence toward a car parked directly in front of the house, directly across the street from the van. He jumped inside, and Nova gingerly got to her feet, still being careful of the ankle. She bent over Cesare, stuffed her hand into his pants pocket and fished out the Laforza’s keys. Hassan pulled into the street as Nova’s feet hit the pavement.

  Limping slightly, she ran for the SUV. If this guy got away, they might lose their only chance to stop this monstrous machine of death before it could reach out to all of Italy. To all of the continent. To Maggie.

  She slid into the driver’s seat and burned rubber as she spun the van in a U-turn up onto the tiny front lawn of the apartment house, taking down the wooden fence. Principessa barked twice. Nova passed Joe. No time to stop and pick him up. No time to stop and let Principessa out.

  Hassan crashed right through the wooden saw horses and tape that made up the police barrier intended to keep the public out, and clearly inadequate to keep Hassan in. Nova kept tight on his tail.

  She glanced into the rearview mirror and saw several policemen scrambling toward their car doors.

  To pass a tiny Smart car, she swung the SUV into the oncoming lane and nearly ran headlong into a lime-green Volkswagen. The squealing of her tires and the tires of the VW apparently reached even Hassan because she saw him checking her out in his rearview mirror.

  At the next intersection, he made a hard, fast right, and when she followed, he stepped on the gas still more, swerving into the oncoming traffic to pass a red car in front of him. She glanced to the passenger seat. Principessa had curled up into a tiny white fluffy ball, her nose hidden under her haunches. Smart dog.

  They wove downhill, in and out of traffic, until he took a sharp left. They were leaving the relatively unpopulated suburbs, getting closer to the heavily populated center of town. Time to stop him.

  She swung into the passing lane.

  He swerved left and blocked her.

  They both swung back into their lane, she behind him, as three cars passed. An intersection loomed ahead. She made her decision, gave the Laforza gas right into the oncoming traffic. Cars ran off the road into parking lots and onto sidewalks as she zoomed up beside Hassan’s sedan.

  He gave his car more gas and they raced through the intersection. Cars were still dodging her. She was either going stop Hassan or kill herself, and maybe a lot of other people.

  Just short of the next intersection, she turned the car across the bow of the sedan. “Hang on, Principessa. This guy is going down.”

  Metal screeched, the wheel jerked in her hands, but she kept control.

  Hassan slammed into a sidewalk vendor. Pottery shot into the air and crashed onto the sidewalk and her windshield. She braked just short of ramming into a dress shop, jumped out, grimacing with pain as she slammed the door to keep Principessa inside.

  Hassan was already running.

  She pulled out the Glock. “Basta!” she shouted, as she raced after him, her ankle screaming in agony. She shot into the wooden storefront to Hassan’s left.

  A woman and a girl about Maggie’s age had stepped out of the shop just before Nova fired. Hassan grabbed the girl and whirled around, holding the girl with what looked like a Beretta semiautomatic in his right hand aimed at the girl’s head. Her mother started screaming.

  Alive. Need him alive.

  Nova stopped, took aim at his right shoulder and fired.

  His arm jerked. The Beretta went off twice, but neither shot hit the girl or her mother. Nova had
only a moment to feel a rush of gratitude that her risk of the girl’s life for Hassan’s capture had paid off. This game was for high stakes.

  He clutched his shoulder and moaned. Nova rushed him, kicked the Beretta out of his hand. Kicked him again, this time on the side of his right knee, a hard blow that if delivered right was guaranteed to bring him down and probably cripple him.

  Screaming, he fell onto the cement on both knees.

  “You shitty bastard,” she muttered in English.

  Hearing her, he spat out, “Go ahead!”

  With a squealing of tires and the accompanying smell of burnt rubber, one of the SISMI vans halted beside them. All traffic had stopped. The mother grabbed her daughter, and both ran back inside the store.

  Joe jumped out of the SISMI van and grinned that oh-so-cocky grin. “You know, babe, it’s you and me against the world. For better or worse.”

  Babe. Joe had never called her babe before. Did she like it?

  Yes, she did.

  Joe pulled Hassan to his feet, and grabbed something out of Hassan’s jacket pocket. A closer look revealed a videotape. He said, “Let’s get back to Cesare and to the apartment house. Maybe there will be a VCR there and we can see what’s on this tape he thought so important to bring with him.”

  “You know what?” Joe said to Hassan as he marched him toward the SISMI van, which presumably came equipped with handcuffs, “It’s too bad we need you alive. I’m a connoisseur of scents. Perfumes and such. Bad odors are something I hate, something to be disposed of as soon as possible. And you are one of the worst stinks I’ve ever smelled.”

  Chapter 30

  Joe marched Hassan into the apartment’s living room and they immediately became the center of attention. Cesare and the SISMI team were already inside, all dressed in HAZMAT gear.

  Cesare said, “Is he talking?”