Sabotage (8 page)

N
aseem set his cruise control for 76 mph as he hit the interstate. He could call Miller back in a couple of minutes, after he knew the explosion was over. He hoped Miller listened to him. If he hadn’t, he would be dead now.

Adrenaline had gotten him to this point. He didn’t want to think about anything else. He had clearly been duped. If he needed clarity, the last text gave him that. Now, here he was, having failed in his effort to kill himself and to save the people he originally intended to kill.

What a mess. Was this what hell felt like? He felt sure of it. It certainly could not be worse.

He knew one thing for certain: if infamy loomed in his future, Yankee would have to live or die in it. He would have time to sort his own feelings, but he would bring it to that man who spit on everything he held holy and used him for his own gain. He spat on the prophet. He spat on Naseem.

The focus came back. The searing hatred lived as his brother for all those years, and the feeling that had been strangely diluted since he returned to this country ran back to him. Now, it focused on one man. Bring him down. Kill him or chain him, but make him pay for turning a martyr into a fool.

He wanted to drive 100 miles an hour, but, because of his skin color, he knew he shouldn’t speed, not in the middle of Missouri where the people were predominantly white. Police could spot him across the way. Frankly, if Miller hadn’t paid attention, he didn’t know what he really headed toward anyway. He would find out soon enough.

He dialed the number Miller gave him. No answer. He took a deep breath and dialed again. After the third ring, he finally heard an answer.

“Miller.”

“You listened.”

“I did. I can tell real intel when I hear it.”

They both paused for a second.

“The question is,” Miller said, “why did I get it?”

“First things first. I have two requirements before I tell you anymore.”

Miller said nothing.

“First,” Naseem said, knowing the whole thing sounded silly, demanding concessions when he stood guilty of a thousand capital crimes. “First, you must convince the press that many agents died. You must not let them know that you were tipped off.”

Miller was considering this. “I can agree. I will have to run it by my bosses, but I think we’re okay there.”

“The second concession is non-modifiable. It is not to be repeated to
anyone
. And it is nonnegotiable.”

“All right. Let’s hear it.”

“I will not give you a whit of information without your express agreement.”

“Time is wasting.”

“When this matter is concluded, at the time of my choosing, you will kill me.”

P
aolo pulled his car around back, got perilously close to the back door, and then rolled down his window and whistled for Caitlin. She peered carefully out the door and then skittered into the backseat, staying low and pulling the door close behind her. Paolo hit the gas and turned onto the boulevard.

“What do you think all this means?” Caitlin really did not want to involve Paolo in all this, but it seemed clear that what masqueraded for logical thinking had certainly done her no good. She didn’t trust him very much, but she guessed she trusted him a little, and that was more than she could say about anyone else at the place.

Paolo divided the world’s problems into three categories: money, pussy, drugs. He calculated. “You into him for some money?”

“No, I think I chose a bad guy to hang with.” She started to say more but thought better of it. “And I didn’t stay sober long enough.”

“You’ve been running with a rough crowd.”

“Tell me about it.” She thought about all she lost over the past year. It made her sick. She certainly didn’t need a lecture from him.

He turned on the radio. A new round of attacks began. No one had a solid estimate on total casualties yet, but it pushed 1,000. Attacks in eleven states. The radio announcers sounded like robots. No one knew what to make of this, least of all, Caitlin. She hunkered down in the back floorboards of Paolo’s Mercedes.

“Where are we headed?”

“It’s a little place over off of Rancho Santa Fe. My boy keeps it for moments like these.”

Caitlin didn’t recognize anything about it but didn’t doubt it. There were hundreds of such houses in Vegas, where everyone is one deal away from needing a hideout.

“How long?”

“Fifteen.”

She grabbed the Wal-Mart bag she had left in the back room, containing a change of clothes and some comfortable flats. It wasn’t exactly high fashion, but she left it there just in case something weird happened, which happens a lot when you live your life blackout drunk. She checked to make sure Paolo couldn’t get a free peak, but he had probably seen her bare ass a dozen times when she was hammered. She got everything off and back on and then slid down far enough to be out of sight, sitting in a weird yoga-like pose that hurt her back tremendously. She tried to turn on her side and worked on slowing her breathing.

Her smug assertion that Britt misjudged her now was replaced by the stone-cold observation she desperately miscalculated him. He was more than a low-level miscreant. It appeared she had been sleeping with the new Osama Bin Laden. Her back wasn’t the only thing that hurt. It all hurt.

She questioned what she would need just to face tomorrow. She couldn’t use her bank account, at least not at an ATM. She put some money away, but she felt sure he could trace that. If she made it until tomorrow, she could withdraw some, but it wouldn’t take long to put that together. She would have to get her affairs in order, do whatever she needed to Paolo to make him let her borrow the car, and then hightail it for somewhere.

The hightailing it part she didn’t mind. She wasn’t cut out for this. She was a Midwestern girl. She still had a soul, no matter how many self-help efforts she made to remove it. Down deep, no matter how many nights she wound up with cowboys snorting coke off her torso, she really only wanted simplicity and the life taken from her. She wanted that back. At this moment, at least, she was not too proud to admit it.

Time crawled on all fours. Her back barked at her. She knew she couldn’t look up, and that made the time seem all that much longer.

Finally, she could tell he was negotiating smaller streets. She figured they were getting close. “Here we are,” said Paolo. She ventured a peek. He finally pulled them into a fairly new taupe-colored duplex in a block that featured nothing but. He pulled into the garage and then shut the door behind them. She started to head inside.

“Wait,” he hissed. “Let me make sure it’s OK.”

He turned and nearly sprinted up the five stairs to the door. He peered in.

“All good.”

She followed him in. Around the corner, she saw Tony, Britt’s man. He dressed the part, black suit with a black tie. He could pass for a limo driver or maybe a thug. In this case, he was both. Tony pointed a revolver straight at her chest.

“Sorry,” said Paolo, shrugging as she looked at him, aghast. “Just taking orders.”

T
he gun recoiled in Britt’s hand. Muhammad fell backwards, and the back of his head exploded. He barely bothered to look at the guards. He knew his men had the draw on them. They knew the plan. Britt heard four shots from each of the guards and saw the other men slump to the floor. Then, the guard on his left, on cue, turned and fired at the guard on his right, one less witness. Mission accomplished. Loose ends tied, almost all of them.

Britt had never shot someone at point blank range before this morning, not in his previous profession and not in this world of filth where he reigned as the king. He had plenty of people who did that for him. This morning’s shootings had been in a more controlled environment and with a smaller gun. He marveled at the work this larger pistol did on a physical space. It sent blood everywhere. It caused him to breathe rapidly, much more rapidly than he had this morning, and, for a moment, he wondered if he would pass out. Good thing they weren’t going to be staying there anymore. His ears rang from the blast. He was not cut out to be a Wild West gunman; he knew that for sure. He hoped his last man didn’t notice how rattled he was by all of this.

“Start the fire in here. We’re done.” Almost done, he thought. The text he received told him that Caitlin was on her way back into the fold. He calmly tossed the gun to Gianny, stepped around the blood puddles like avoiding a grenade, and headed for the backseat of the limo, where he could watch the results of his day. That had been the toughest part of scheduling the meeting with Muhammad in the first place. It must be done, but it sure put a damper on the victory party.

Britt fell for Caitlin, and that led him to believe she didn’t know about his plans. He was glad she showed herself by reacting; otherwise, he planned on taking her with him as part of the spoils of battle, and he would have assumed that after the explosion that tore through his building, coupled with the mass chaos that was enveloping the nation, she would have never linked the events with her lover. Love, lust, or infatuation, whatever it was could turn even the hardest and smartest dumb and slow. He would file that away.

His limo impressed anyone who saw it, six screens tuned to the major news networks. He rarely watched them. Today, he wanted to see. They were filled with scenes of tragedy, tears and tumult, and with solemn-faced white people using their best worry-speak. No one knew what was next. No one dared to guess. Fire. Blood. Rubble. Tragedy. The disruptions were not massive in the sense of September 11, but the cumulative effect of so many, spread out over different geographical locations, felt much greater than other recent “tragedies.” September 11 affected first-hand only those in the largest of cities. Britt, in the five years of meticulous planning for this attack, specifically chose all types of targets: cities, towns, and countryside. He chose ethnic groups and the whitest of the white bread. Some of the attacks had symbolic meaning to him; some were supposed to convey red herrings to those who would pursue; some were completely random just to add to that sense this was an overarching attack, but the plan itself was fully obscured.

Gianny came. He could smell the smoke from the fire his man set, which, along with the acid he poured on the bodies, would make positive identification a negative. Using the belt-and-suspenders approach, he would now add the final touch.

“Is this one 10 or 12?” he asked Gianny.

“12.”

He dialed the number as they drove away and let it sit in the phone. As they pulled out, he waited until they were halfway down the block and then pushed send. Five seconds later, while he fully turned around to watch, the building took flight. It looked like it lifted from the ground. Gianny picked up the pace, knowing what came next: those whistling nails. He couldn’t hear them in this instance, but he knew exactly what they did. He could see it all over the news.

“Let’s go find my dear Caitlin and then head somewhere tropical.” Britt said it as if he were planning a family vacation.