Kalisa Harris saw Hamza, the Lion King, or whatever the hell he called himself, running toward the back of the bus. She’d been waiting for some kind of ruckus, and his pounding feet would do. She clamped a magnetic bomb with a locator to the chassis. Once she’d heard that Geiger counter click, she knew she would have to set the plastique as soon as possible, because the bus couldn’t go anywhere with a nuclear bomb aboard. Computers had firewalls, but so did an operation like this, except the backup security that she’d just put in place was as basic as mud pudding — by the standards of contemporary computer wizardry. Old-style war versus cyberterror.
She grabbed the fuel hose to try to make up for lost seconds, but the commotion inside froze her in place. She placed her hand on the bus. The pounding had stopped, but there were still vibrations. Some kind of tussle in the back, where the bomber was. She saw her life, those kids, and most of central New Jersey vaporized.
Get a grip, she warned herself. If it goes, it goes.
Travis did not like the latest turn of events. Lana could tell, even before he spoke up.
“We did not plan on taking you in there. That place has more random elements than the Hadron Collider.”
He sounded disgusted and looked away as their driver veered sharply right, angling across the desert toward Sana, blanketed by haze.
The Humvees were leaving the safety and relative anonymity of the sands behind. She stared ahead, their destination somewhere in that vast urban maze. With so few towers and smokestacks, it looked wide and flat, like a magic carpet of myth, but deeply soiled by all the ill effects of modernity.
“So what are you saying?” she asked Travis. That we’re about to get caught in a crossfire from hell?
“He’s saying it’s going to get interesting,” Gabe said in the voice of some silly Russian antagonist.
She wasn’t up for humor in any guise. Neither was Travis, apparently:
“Not now,” he said brusquely. After the briefest pause, he went on: “It’s not so much a physical security issue. We’ll get you there. It’s just that we’re going to be noticed. There’s no slipping in and out on such short notice.”
“Just get me close, and I can walk in on my own.”
“And not be noticed? You? No,” Travis said. “You may have been sheep-dipped, but you’re no spy. Not for the streets, anyway.” He poked her shoulder. She winced. “We’re going to stay as close to you as blood to bone.”
A dune suddenly reared up before them. She hadn’t noticed it. At the last moment, their driver swerved left.
“What’s he doing? Playing chicken with the desert?” she asked.
“Diversionary driving,” Gabe advised. “Staying unpredictable, wherever he can. Like this assignment of ours. It’s improv all the way.”
“I’ll bet they’ve got drones watching every step,” she replied. Yemen was now the epicenter for Predator activity, although Africa was catching up fast.
“No doubt,” Travis said. “But they can’t use them on Sana. The collateral would have the rest of the world swearing bloody murder.”
For good reason. But she kept that comment to herself, considering the company and the exigencies of the moment.
Lana saw the poor making their trek to the city from shantytowns and tents or, for the most miserable, berths on bare sand.
Most looked too weary to even note the Humvees. Lana understood that kind of profound tiredness. She’d felt plenty of it herself of late. But now she was as alert as she’d ever been, endowed with what felt like preternatural awareness seeded into every pore of her skin.
Even with the absence of traffic, it took the full fifty minutes to make their destination. In the sharply angled morning light, the building they pulled up to looked beautiful, with its ornate arcade and inlaid Arabic designs. But the pleasure of that glimpse passed quickly.
Travis readied his gun. So did the others.
“Gabe’s going to be by your side at all times,” the commander said. “You stick with him. This is all catch-as-catch-can. We have to take them by surprise.”
“The Mabahith?”
“We hope it’s only them,” Travis answered. “Our people have tracked them, but it’s not like we could tell them we were stopping by. They’re not exactly trustworthy, and every agency has its own proprietary interests. Theirs is to run Ruhi, even if they think we don’t know that. But they’re about to find out.”
They rushed through the arcade, past wooden doors, and started up the stairs, SEALs in front of her, SEALs in back of her, SEALs, including Gabe, to her sides.
They stayed in formation till they reached the top floor, the fifth by her count.
Travis led two of his men to the end of the hallway. A single bulb burned in the ceiling. The building was far more attractive from outside. Crouched as she was in the hallway, it felt claustrophobic with secrets and threats.
Bam.
Travis kicked open a door. The sound of shocked breaths was so sharp it raised the hair on Lana’s neck fifty feet away.
Gabe escorted her to the doorway. Holding her back with one hand, he peered into the room. Gently, he tugged her forward.
It was crowded with men; she guessed some hailed from the Mabahith. Only the SEALs, though, had their guns drawn. They’d gotten the jump on everyone.
They kept their aim as a tall thin man, hands raised to show he was unarmed, slowly stood.
“I’m Ruhi,” he said, looking into Lana’s eyes. “Ruhi Mancur.”
Hamza jerked the trigger from the bomber’s hand. Close, so close. Thank you, Allah.
“Ibrahim, this is not New York,” he told the bomber in the next breath. The fool didn’t hear him. He was still sleeping. “Not New York, Ibrahim. You idiot. Not New York,” Hamza kept repeating.
“What? What?” Ibrahim mumbled in Arabic.
“You had the trigger on your lap. It could have gone off accidentally.”
To think an infidel spy’s daughter had saved the whole mission, made it possible to go on to New York City and blow up that den of iniquity. That was the final proof — if any were even needed — that this was a plan born in the Prophet Mohammed’s own sweet bosom. Peace and blessings be upon Him. Thank you, oh blessed one, for making this miracle possible for such a worthy martyr as I.
“But I must be ready at all times,” Ibrahim said, holding the trigger back up in front of him.
“Stay awake,” Hamza ordered.
Ibrahim nodded.
“Sleep again and I will kill you.”
“Coffee,” Ibrahim said. “I have been awake for two nights now.”
“No, you have not been awake. That is the problem. That is why I am here. That is why Allah has granted us the miracle of the infidel spy’s daughter.”
That last befuddled Ibrahim the bomber, but his next words hinted that he wanted more than just threats and reminders from Hamza. “How are you staying awake?”
“By the power of my great belief.”
Ibrahim shook his head. “By Red Bull. I know you. Give me Red Bull. I am the supreme martyr here. Red Bull.”
Hamza still had the knife in his hand. All along, he’d been planning to use it on the white girl, but now he had to fight an urge to stab Ibrahim in the heart. Saying he’s the supreme martyr of them all. What heresy. Who made the plans? Who handed him the bomb? Is the grantor of such an honor the honoree supreme, or the one who sits there dumb as a stump and takes it? Any fool knows the answer.
“I’ll be back,” Hamza said so angrily he could have spit.
He brushed by the miracle of the infidel spy’s daughter, who had been watching the whole time, probably planning to beg him for mercy now, but mercy for infidels was definitely not in Mohammed’s sweet bosom.