The portly man muted the sportscast. “Come on in, Haroun, sit down. We just made a fresh pot of coffee.”
Haroun set the plastic container on the table, shook his head. “No, no, I must get the truck into the loading dock. Please be my guest. I shall return in a few minutes and join you.”
“Better hurry,” said the carpenter with the ponytail. “The last time you brought honey cakes they were gone before the foreman got any! And boy did Morganthau bitch.”
Haroun hurried out the door. Ponytail Man helped himself to one of the tiny nutty cakes dripping with sweet honey. He passed the container to the others. “Man, these hit the spot,” he gushed after a hearty first bite.
Before he took another, a groan came from the couch, out of the mouth of the youngest man in the room. He was slumped on the couch beside the portly worker. The lanky, twenty-two-year-old had shaggy blond hair and a deep surfer’s tan. He groaned again and clutched his stomach.
“What the fuck is wrong with him,” the portly man asked before sampling the sticky pastry.
“Dickhead here went to that new strip club out by the airport,” Ponytail Man replied. “He drank till three a.m., then came to work.”
“He ain’t gonna be worth shit,” opined a middle-aged, muscle-bound worker with a shaved head. He leaned back in his armchair and licked his gooey fingers.
The sick young man couldn’t take it anymore — all the eating, the smacking lips, the smells. He jumped up and raced to the john, slammed the door and locked it behind him. He hung his head over the toilet, waiting.
“Another worshipper of the porcelain god,” quipped Ponytail Man. The others laughed.
Inside the cramped head, the young man gagged a few times, but nothing came up despite his nausea, the wracking cramps. He wasn’t surprised. He’d lost the contents of his stomach a long time ago, and wondered now when the agony would subside. Vowing never to drink to excess again, he ran water, washed out his mouth, rinsed his face. After he toweled off, he felt a little better, so he took a deep breath and opened the door.
At first he thought the whole thing was a twisted joke.
Ponytail Man was slumped over the table, head lolling to one side, eyes wide and unblinking, lips blue. The portly sports fan’s eyes were wide and staring at the television broadcast, but he could no longer see. Another man was sprawled next to him on the couch, mouth gaping, tongue black and distended.
The big, bald dude lay dead on the floor, fingers curled and clutching the carpet. The youth whimpered, felt more than saw movement behind him. Then something hard and cold touched the back of his head. The young man froze, knees suddenly weak.
“You really should have eaten the cakes,” said Haroun. The sound suppressed Colt bucked in his hand. The young man’s head burst like a melon; his body jerked and tumbled limply to the floor.
Haroun grunted as blood sprayed across his face. “As Hasan commands, so it shall be,” he murmured.
The muffled sound of the shot had hardly faded before eight men in jeans and T-shirts entered the RV. Unlike Haroun, not one of these men was of Middle Eastern origin. All were Caucasians with brown or black hair, three were blond with fair skin and gray or green eyes. Their appearance easily fit the names and identities of the dead men around them.
Silently, the newcomers stripped the tool belts, ID tags, wallets, vests, clothes, keys and watches from the dead men. Meanwhile Haroun gingerly lifted the box of cakes and gathered up the fallen pastries, careful not to touch the tainted confections with his bare flesh. He dumped the poisoned food into a garbage bag, tossed the sound suppressed handgun in with it, then joined the others.
For the past two weeks, Haroun — obeying the instructions of the mysterious Hasan — had worked side-by-side, and socialized with the murdered men who lay at his feet. On three previous occasions Haroun had brought honey cakes baked, he said, by his dutiful and obedient Muslim wife. In truth Haroun had no wife, nor would he ever have one— except perhaps in Paradise where he would have many. Each time, the cakes had been delivered to him by an operative of Hasan, and Haroun was advised to share them with these men.
But not today. This time Haroun was told not to touch the pastries on pain of death. As always, he obeyed his master’s instructions to the letter.
It was the least he could do for the man who showed him the Gate of Paradise, granted him a tantalizingly brief vision of the world beyond this one.
Haroun did not know what deadly poison his master had used to kill these men. Nor did he care. All that mattered was that at last the plan had been set into motion. Nothing could stop the tide of blood to come. The dead men scattered around him were but the first of many who would fall. But unlike the quiet, anonymous deaths of these foolish pawns, the massacre to come would be seen by hundreds of millions all over the world.
The pop tune ringtone shook Fay Hubley out of her monitor trance. She saved her work, reached for the cell in her leather bag, dangling off the back of the chair
“Hello.”
“Fay? It’s Jamey. I tried to reach Tony but—”
“He turned his phone off. He hooked up with some smelly snitch down here and he’s following a lead or something.”
“He should have passed that information on to Nina.”
“Tony told me to make the call,” said Fay. “I was just about to—”
“What’s the name of this snitch?”
“The guy’s last name’s Dobyns. His first name is Ray.”
“Can you spell his last name?”
“No, but Tony said he knew the guy from before so it’s probably in one of his after-action reports.”
“And where did Tony go?” asked Jamey.
Fay exhaled with distaste. “Some ho’ house. A place called El Pequeños Pescados on Albino Street.”
Jamey noted the information in the mission log, pumped Fay for more and came up dry. She was concerned about Fay. The girl sounded distracted. “Listen, Fay, I want to give you a heads up. We found a Trojan horse. It’s an attractive download for people with the right equipment — a movie that hasn’t been released yet. Milo Pressman matched the hidden virus with the protocols you isolated and he says it has Lesser’s fingerprints all over it.”
Fay chewed her lip. “That’s bad. If Lesser’s launched something in the last five days, he did it from a server we know nothing about. That means he’s at least one step ahead of us.”
“Ryan Chappelle is sending Milo Pressman down there to back you up. He should arrive in a few hours. I’ll update you when I know more.”
“Cool,” said Fay. “That will be fun. Milo’s cute.”
“Listen up, girl. You’re not on vacation. Stay alert. Stay wary. Tony’s an ex-Marine, and he has good field experience. If he left you with instructions, follow them. This mission is heating up and a lot can go bad down there.”
Fay laughed. “Take it easy, Jamey. I’m not in Afghanistan. I’m just across the Mexican border. Really, what can happen to me in the middle of the day?”
Ray and Tony took a cab to the choked streets of Centro, but Tony made them get out in front of Planet Hollywood.
“Why are we switching cabs?” Dobyns asked nervously. “Are we being shadowed or something?”
“We’re walking from here, that’s all,” said Tony.
It was apparent from his girth that Ray Dobyns didn’t like walking. All the way to Albino Street the man complained about his sore feet, the uneven pavement, the crowds, the heat, the exhaust fumes.
The neighborhood surrounding the tavern and brothel called El Pequeños Pescados had decayed since the last time Tony had been to Tijuana. Perhaps in its heyday Albino Street had aspired to genuine middle class status, but things had obviously gone to seed. Now there were too many bars nestled between ramshackle storefront churches, fortune tellers in street stalls, pawnshops, liquor stores and check cashing businesses. There were also unmistakable signs of criminal activity — gang graffiti, street whores, pickpockets visible to those who knew how to spot them. A battered shell of a car, windows shattered, interior looted, sat next to a crumbling curb.