THE GUARDIAN (Taskforce Series) (24 page)

Even now, she fought the urge to turn around and search for him on the blacktop, where she could hear a basketball being dribbled. Pride alone kept her from stealing a peek as she whirled around and marched for the door.

But then a lone figure jogging on the shoulder of the highway snared her attention and, with lurch of her heart, she recognized the runner as
Jackson
. Slick with sweat, his limbs gleamed like oiled teak as they pumped in graceful rhythm beneath him, carrying him closer
.
Envisioning him driving his powerful body into hers, she gave a moan of lament before she squared her shoulders and forced herself to look away.

I didn’t come here to fall in love,
she reminded herself. The four-letter word leaped so lightly into her head that it made her heart stop
.
I came to catch my sister’s killer.

“Maggie!”

Hearing her other name called, she glanced back to see Nadim, hustling across the highway on his way over to be interviewed. Pasting a smile onto her face, she held the door for him and waited. “Glad you could make it,” she said when he reached her side
.
   

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he exclaimed with Hispanic flair.

His words prompted a powerful pinch of remorse. What am I going to miss, she wondered, by refusing
Jackson
’s offer?

**

At last, the packed Friday night service ended. Ibrahim stepped to the edge of the
minbar
to issue a final blessing which Zakariya repeated from a lower platform opposite him.

“
Maa’assalama
,” Zakariya called. “Go in peace, my sons and brothers.”

Rolling up his prayer rug,
Jackson
tucked it under one arm, careful not to whack any of the men that pressed in on either side of him.

The service had been as heavily attended tonight as the prior week, with Five Percenters and parolees crammed together like sardines into the prayer hall. Again, Ibrahim’s sermon had been filmed to be uploaded to his website. But, unless he’d spoken in a code
Jackson
couldn’t decipher, the imam had said nothing to suggest that Judgment Day was at hand. Catching the eye of the powerful-looking stranger who’d kneeled beside him, he proffered a hand
.
 

“
Assalamu alaikum
. My name is Abdul Ibn Wasi. I am a soldier of the Fruit of Islam.” 

The unsmiling giant looked him over dubiously as he came to his feet. At last, he clasped
Jackson
’s hand in a daunting grip. “I am Mr. Rakeem,” he responded in a stentorian voice. “Welcome to your future, Abdul.”

Mr. Rakeem seemed to be establishing his dominance with their handshake. “Thank you.” Tugging free,
Jackson
sought something else to say. “Did you come through Gateway?” he asked, knowing the answer already
.

The powerful stranger nodded. “Seven years ago when the doors first opened. I was once a thief,” he added on a note of self-contempt. “Now I run a school for boys.”

Terrific
,
Jackson
thought, picturing a school full of dark-skinned boys being taught that the white man was the Devil. “What’s the name of your school?” 

“Rabia,” came the terse reply. “Ask less questions and you will learn more.”

Unimpressed with the man’s arrogance,
Jackson
gestured at their feet. “May I put away your prayer rug for you?” he asked to placate the man. Without a word Mr. Rakeem stepped back while
Jackson
stooped to roll it up.

“You are a quick study, Abdul,” Mr. Rakeem relented as he straightened with the rug. “Tell me what you have learned about the First Supreme Lesson.”

Jackson
summarized the gist of the lesson quickly. It was Mr. Rakeem who needed to offer information, not him. “When is the Day of Judgment?” he tacked on to his last statement.

The man’s dark eyes glinted. “Is that a question, Abdul?”

Jackson
’s hopes nosedived. “I’m jus’ curious,” he persisted.

“What you are is a soldier,” the man corrected. “It is not a soldier’s place to know these things.” He clapped
Jackson
hard on the arm. “We will meet again,” he predicted, moving abruptly away.

I’ll be there when the judge hands down your jail sentence,
Jackson
thought as he watched Mr. Rakeem walk away, his chin at a regal angle. Then
Jackson
cast his gaze about to find Muhammed, Corey, Shahid, and Davis in deep in conversation with their future mentors. Jamal and Hasan had finished talking to theirs
.

If he and Toby didn’t find the evidence needed to indict Ibrahim while searching the imam’s offices tonight, then all seven of Ibrahim’s chosen, himself included, would be initiated into the Five Percent Nation on the last Friday in the program. While Ibrahim hadn’t mentioned it yet, there were severe consequences for trying to leave a gang. Once pledged, new recruits were members for life. Deserters were beaten to death, or drugged and set on fire to burn alive.

Jackson
swallowed the sour taste in his mouth. He could never wish that on the men he’d come to know, least of all on his soft-spoken roommate. All he could was do was try to get Ibrahim incarcerated before that happened. But even jailed leaders were known to wield their positions of power from behind bars
.

Nothing I can do about that,
Jackson
told himself. His job was to secure the evidence the Taskforce needed to put Ibrahim in jail. Once he’d accomplished that much, he could take some well-deserved time off and spend the remaining weeks of summer with his daughter. What he absolutely would not do was cave into his obsession with Magdalena Xenakis who, despite his best efforts to convince her otherwise, was stubbornly proceeding with her plans.

Oh, she had given him her trust when she wanted something from him, but the very next day she’d shown up at Artie’s like their interlude had never happened, like his word wasn’t worth shit
.
 

His blood boiled with frustration. He’d been so certain he’d finally persuaded her to leave town. The fact that she remained, that she refused to trust him, left them nothing to discuss. How stubborn could one woman be?

Among some of the first men to leave the mosque,
Jackson
stalked to his dormitory, averting his gaze from the bright lights across the street. Just the sight of Schlesser’s black Jeep parked out front made his jaw ache. And that discomfort was nothing compared to the hollow sensation in his chest or the throb of disappointment in his groin. He had hoped...well, it didn’t matter what he’d hoped. Tonight, her presence was a distraction he couldn’t afford
.

Stripping off his dress clothes, he donned his dark pajama bottoms and paired them with the black T-shirt he would wear in his reconnaissance of the mosque. Corey came into the room shortly after him. Directing an astute look at him that made him feel a flash of transparency, Corey switched on the desk lamp. “Mind if I read?” he asked.

“Go ahead.”

Corey parked himself at the desk and buried his nose in a book.
Jackson
brushed his teeth and rolled into his rack
.

He heaved a sigh. With the light on, he doubted he’d fall asleep any faster than he had the last few nights. Christ, he was tired—tired of this investigation, tired of being away from his daughter, tired of trying to bend
Magdalena
to his will.

Rolling toward the wall, he punched up his pillow and closed his heavy eyes. In a matter of minutes, his sleep deficit sucked him straight into an unconsciousness state
.

He slept soundly, for hours, his dreams unmemorable. Then, suddenly, he was back in Fallujah, leading his platoon down a debris-strewn alleyway hemmed by bullet-pocked walls. Their mission: to clear the city of civilians. Every one of his senses was set on high-alert when a bullet whizzed out of nowhere.

“Sniper!”
Jackson
shouted, diving for cover. A tingling pain lanced his hip.
Oh, shit, I’ve been shot
! He looked down at himself in horror. Blood spurted out of him, forming an ever-widening ring around him, despite his best efforts to stem the slippery flow. He could feel himself going into shock.

Oh, God, Naomi.
He’d been terrified that this would happen, that he’d be killed before he could return to her. And now she would have no one but her grandparents to look after her. He’d failed her.

Tears of remorse scalded his cheeks as the dark screens of unconsciousness began to surround him, shrinking his field of vision like a retracting camera lens. He thought of
Lena
, whom he’d never get to court, slowly and methodically, the way he wanted to, while relishing every new discovery about her.

He was going to die in this God-forsaken, war-torn city, and for what? Because he’d put duty to country above his family. Hadn’t he learned his lesson the first time? Hadn’t Colleen’s senseless death taught him anything?

A tingling in his palm tugged him back toward consciousness. Why was his palm burning when it was his hip that was shot? Forcing his eyes to open, he found himself in bed, one hand pressed over the cell phone in his pocket, which emitted an electrical charge, not too painful, but not pleasant, either
.

Hitting a button on the side,
Jackson
acknowledged Toby’s silent summons and sat up slowly.

Above him, Corey mumbled in his sleep. A glance at the room clock showed it to be 2:08 in the morning already. Damn, Toby had probably been calling him for eight minutes now.

He eased out of bed, wriggled his feet into his tennis shoes, and slipped outside
.

Heavy cloud cover smothered the stars and enveloped the campus in darkness. The night air felt so humid that it dampened his pajamas and muffled the cricket-song as he picked his way through tall grass to the back wall of the mosque.

As planned, Toby awaited him by the mosque’s rear exit. Dressed in midnight camouflage with his face painted black,
Jackson
wouldn’t have seen him at all if he hadn’t leveled a glare at him, the whites of his eyes flashing.

“Little out of practice, aren’t you, Stonewall?” Toby mocked, but then he let
Jackson
’s tardiness go. “Bossman says the alarm’s disabled, so we’re good.” He handed
Jackson
a helmet rigged with night vision goggles.

“Sorry,”
Jackson
mumbled, setting the helmet on his head. What could he say? He’d been sleeping like the dead, for a change.

Toby took out a silent, battery-powered picklock, the same tool he’d broken into Artie’s with, and headed down the five steps to the basement door. Meanwhile,
Jackson
surveyed the deserted perimeter through his NVGs. He heard the picklock purr as it lifted all the pins in the deadbolt. The lock clicked open. Toby cracked the door, took a peek inside then held it open for
Jackson
.

Backing down the steps,
Jackson
leapfrogged his position
.
Once they were both within the long, basement corridor, Toby secured the door from the inside while
Jackson
waited at the entrance to the stairs.