Suicide Mission (8 page)

Tariq slept surprisingly well, considering that this would be his last night on earth. The next time he awoke it would not be from slumber, but rather from death, and he would be in paradise.

When he answered the knock on his door, he found Sanchez standing there wearing a worried frown.

“One of our contacts in the San Antonio Police Department reports that there are rumors about government agents accessing their traffic cameras,” Sanchez said. “They must be searching for a particular car.”

He half-turned and looked at the car parked in front of Tariq's room. It was a plain sedan with nothing to distinguish it and certainly no indication of the mass destruction that it carried in its trunk.

“The woman must have put them on our trail,” Sanchez went on.

“You worry too much,” Tariq said bluntly. “The woman could not have known anything about the vehicle we're using. The Americans fear that something is going to happen, but they have no idea what, when, or where. They're simply flailing around in futility, as they always do.”

“You can't be sure of that. Perhaps we should postpone the operation long enough for them to slip back into complacency. There's no reason we can't wait a week, or even two . . .”

“No!” Tariq couldn't contain the anger that simmered inside him. “There is no need to wait. That just gives them more time to search for us. Destiny will not be delayed!”

“What you're doing is tempting fate,” Sanchez insisted.

“It doesn't matter to you,” Tariq said coldly. “You're not going to be here anyway, are you, Señor Sanchez?”

“It was never part of the arrangement that I had to die, too,” Sanchez replied, his voice just as chilly as Tariq's had been. “That is
your
choice, amigo.”

“It is what I am called to do.”

“But you choose to answer.”

“What would have me do? Forfeit my immortal soul?”

Sanchez didn't reply. Instead he said, “I'm leaving now.”

“Fine. Go back and tell your masters that Tariq Maleef carried out his holy mission . . . after you finish licking their boots.”

For a heartbeat Tariq thought Sanchez was going to attack him. He had wounded the man's Latin pride, after all. But Sanchez, like all infidels, really cared for nothing except himself. He wanted to be gone from here before that inferno of death erupted . . . and every passing second brought that glorious moment closer.

“Good luck to you,” Sanchez said grudgingly.

“I need no luck. Allah watches over me.”

Sanchez just grunted and turned away.

Tariq reached around his back to the handle of the knife tucked behind his belt. It would be easy enough to draw the weapon and plunge the blade into Sanchez's back. The man's decadent existence was an affront to Allah.

But as satisfying as killing Sanchez might be, it could upset the arrangement between the Mexican cartel and the organization to which Tariq belonged. He couldn't give in to his own petty personal urges when there was so much else at stake.

“
Vaya con Dios
,” Sanchez muttered as he walked away. Tariq didn't know how the man intended to get out of town and didn't care; he supposed the cartel had people Sanchez could call on for transportation.

“Go with your own god,” Tariq said quietly enough that Sanchez couldn't hear him. “Mine will soon be smiling with joy at the death and destruction I will bring down upon the Americans in his name.”

 

 

Catalina's new clothes, a simple blouse and skirt and flat-heeled shoes, made her look a little like a suburban housewife, Bill thought. A spectacularly attractive suburban housewife. It was hard to imagine her fighting and shooting and stealing cars.

“I don't want to go,” she told him as they stood in the kitchen of the safe house. “Well, that's not true, of course. I want to get as far away from that bomb as I can. But I want you to come with me. I'm not sure I trust any of these other people.”

“You've known me less than twenty-four hours,” Bill pointed out.

“But we have faced death together. That makes a difference.”

She was right about that, Bill thought. The sort of intense danger they'd been in created a bond between people. Anybody who had been through a war knew that.

She went on, “I don't feel right about leaving you here.”

“I wouldn't feel right about leaving Clark, either, not to mention all the other folks living here in San Antonio who're wakin' up this morning with no idea what's hangin' over their heads. I've got to do everything I can to save them.”

“Even if it means losing your own life if you fail.”

“Even if,” Bill said. “But look at it this way . . . if we don't find the fella in time, I won't have to sit around worryin' about it.”

She shook her head.

“That doesn't make me feel a bit better.”

He gave in to an impulse and put his arms around her, drawing her against him. He felt the tense strength of her body, but after a moment she relaxed and rested her head against his chest.

“It's a little more than four hours until noon,” Bill said quietly. “You'll be at least two hundred miles from here by then, and I won't have to worry about you while we're lookin' for . . . well, you know what we'll be lookin' for.”

“Why would you worry about me?” she asked in a voice thick with emotion. “You've known me less than twenty-four hours, remember?”

He chuckled and planted a kiss on the top of her head. She was tall, but he was taller.

“Go on and get out of here,” he said as he let her go and stepped back.

“Bill . . .”

He gave her a stern look.

She nodded, summoned up a weak smile, and turned to go with the three agents waiting to take her away from San Antonio. Bill didn't know how the agents had decided who would go and who would stay to help with the search for the suicide bomber, but he supposed it didn't matter. Those who missed this battle would probably have another one to fight later on, because it seemed unlikely that the enemies who wanted to destroy this country would ever give up.

At least, not as long as certain elements of the country seemed hell-bent on trying to destroy it from within . . .

Catalina cast a last glance over her shoulder at Bill and then left the room. Clark must have been waiting for her to go, because he came into the kitchen less than a minute later.

“I didn't want to interfere with you saying goodbye to Señorita Ramos,” he said as he poured himself a cup of coffee.

“You wouldn't have been interferin'. Hell, the girl's young enough to be my daughter. Damn near young enough to be my granddaughter.”

“Yeah, but she's a mighty pretty one. I suppose if somebody could overlook her background—”

Bill said, “There are things in
my
background that'd make a normal person turn pale and faint dead away. You ought to know. Some of 'em I did while I was workin' for you.”

“That's a fair point,” Clark said with a laugh. He took a sip of the coffee. “Have you had breakfast?”

“Not much of an appetite this morning.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

“Any leads on the car we're looking for?”

Clark shook his head and said, “No, but my people are still checking the traffic cam footage. The San Antonio PD and all the other departments in the surrounding cities have the description and the license plate partial. They think they're looking for a car used in a child abduction. We arranged for an Amber Alert to be put out a little while ago. That'll get the public involved without them knowing what they're really looking for.” He took a deep breath. “The car's out there somewhere, Bill. We'll spot it and close in, grab up the guy before he knows what's going on.”

“You'd better hope so. We don't know what sort of detonator he's using. If he has even a few seconds' warning, it might be enough for him to trigger the bomb.”

“Of course, he might have it on a timer.”

Bill shook his head and said, “I don't think so. You know how those fanatics are. He'll want to take a minute and stand there with his finger on the button so he can bask in the thought of how powerful he is.”

“Yeah, you're probably right.” Clark took another sip of coffee, then made a face and set the cup on the counter. “Coffee doesn't even taste good anymore.”

“Tell you what I'll do,” Bill said. “When this is all over, we'll go to one of those places down on the River walk and have us a big ol' enchilada dinner and a few mugs of
cerveza
. How's that sound?”

Clark smiled and said, “You've got a deal, cowboy.”

 

 

The morning seemed to go by in the blink of an eye. Almost before Bill knew it, the time was eleven o'clock.

An hour left, assuming the intel gathered from Martin Chavez's flash drive was accurate.

An hour before a new sun would burst into life in the heart of San Antonio and consume the historic downtown, along with hundreds of thousands of souls. And by the time all the damage was done, more than a million people might lose their lives.

An hour of his own life, maybe, because Bill knew where he would be when the time hit high noon.

Remember the Alamo.

If he died today, he would do so with a nearly clear conscience. There were things in his life he regretted: things he had done, things he
hadn't
done. He knew he had brought unnecessary pain into the lives of some people he had known, people he had been close to, people he had even loved. He had been stubborn, proud, and downright spiteful on occasion, just like everybody else in the world.

But he had done some good, too, and now he had to hope that balanced out the bad. Maybe, if he was lucky, more than balanced it out.

“I'm headed downtown,” Clark announced a few minutes after eleven o'clock.

“I'll go with you,” Bill said. He knew that they would be the last line of defense. If nobody else spotted the bomber in time, it would be up to them. “We can take my pickup.”

“Sure, why not?”

Bill knew San Antonio fairly well. It didn't take him long to cut back over to the Interstate and turn southeast toward downtown. The skyscrapers were visible in the late morning sunlight, along with the Hemisfair Tower from the World's Fair that had been held there more than fifty years earlier.

They were still several miles from their destination, however, when they hit heavy traffic.

“Damn construction,” Clark said. “Why now?”

“There's been road construction in San Antonio since General Santa Anna's brother-in-law was runnin' the place,” Bill said. “We'll go around it.”

“I've got agents all over downtown, but I wanted to be there myself.”

“I'll get you there,” Bill promised.

He was as good as his word, exiting the freeway and taking several shortcuts involving side roads. It was 11:45 when he steered the pickup into a parking lot on Crockett Street, around the corner from the Alamo.

His pulse was pounding pretty hard. There was nothing he could do about it. He knew Clark had to be feeling the same way. It was possible their lives could be measured in mere minutes now.

They got one of the few empty spots in the parking lot. Downtown was busy today. And why wouldn't it be? It was a beautiful early summer day, sunny but not overpoweringly hot. The Alamo and the River walk and San Antonio's other attractions brought tourists not just from Texas but from all over the country. All over the world, actually, Bill thought as he and Clark went along the sidewalk and turned the corner into Alamo Plaza. He heard people speaking German and Japanese, as well as an assortment of accents from the various parts of the country. The plaza was full of comfortably dressed tourists taking pictures of each other, wandering along the Long Barracks where many of the Alamo's defenders had snatched a few minutes of sleep during the siege, and going into the old chapel itself.

The sight of the old stone building with its instantly recognizable pediment made Bill catch his breath. The Cradle of Texas Liberty, it was called, and even though Bill wasn't a Texan, there was something uniquely American about the place. It was here that men had stood up to tyranny and said “Enough!” Not once, but twice. And both times they had shed their blood and given their lives in defense of freedom. It was enough to make anybody proud.

And the idea that some fanatical son of a bitch whose beliefs were trapped in the Middle Ages was going to destroy it, along with the lives of so many innocent people . . . that just couldn't be allowed. They had to find him and stop him before he could carry out his evil.

“I wish I knew who we were looking for,” Clark said as he scanned the crowd in the plaza. “Hell, it could be anybody—”

His phone rang.

Clark snatched it from his pocket.

“Go . . . What? My God. Send it to me. Now!”

He turned to Bill and went on, “We finally got a hit from one of the traffic cameras. But it was nearly real-time, just a few minutes ago and a few blocks from here. They're sending the image to my phone—”

The phone chimed, and Clark pushed a couple of buttons. He turned it so that Bill could see the screen.

“That's him,” Clark said, and even an old hand like him couldn't keep his voice from trembling a little.

The image on the screen had caught a car pulling through an intersection. The driver was visible in the picture: a young man, either bald or more likely with a shaved head, a neatly trimmed beard on his chin. He could be Hispanic, but he could be Middle Eastern, too.