Since 9 P.M. the Pit had yielded nothing living — or even intact.
Sanchez took a sip of his coffee, then spit it out, sickened by the thought of anything on his stomach. His nerves were frayed and he jumped at a sudden female voice to his right. The speaker was backlit by the glaring headlights of a waiting ambulance. He couldn’t make out her face until she stepped closer, sloshing into his muddy pool to be heard above the pounding clatter of jackhammers and agonized whine of cable winches pulling up slabs of concrete.
“I think we might have an ID on one of the drivers,” the woman said, almost screaming to be heard. She was Carol Victors, the Denver Anti-Terrorism Task Force supervisor. In the past ten hours, she’d become Sanchez’s go-to agent in Colorado. No stereotypical Betty Bureau Blue Suit, Victors was tall, only an inch shorter than Sanchez at five eleven, and could hold her own in a battle of wit or muscle. Her dark hair was piled up under a navy-blue baseball cap with FBI emblazoned on the front in white letters.
“An ID?” Sanchez shook his head in disbelief. “No way. We don’t even have a solid lead on the type of explosives yet. Somebody claiming credit for this?”
“We got lucky,” Victors said, setting her otherwise full lips in a tight line. It was good news, but circumstances were too heavy for a smile. “There was a security camera at the Public Works garage. One of the drivers turned and looked directly at it after he killed the night watchman.”
“So we got a face or an ID?”
“I ran the video stills through the facial recognition programs at State, Homeland Security, as well as ours at Quantico.” She shrugged. “Again, we got lucky. State had a hit. Our driver was one Mahir Halibi, a Saudi student majoring in soil and crop sciences at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. He was using the name of Samir Mohammed and was here under a Jordanian passport.”
“Soil and crops?” Sanchez reasoned. “If this turns out to be ammonium nitrate — which it probably will — that would make sense.”
Agent Victors bounced from one foot to the other as if she had information that was to hot to hold inside.
“You’ve got more?”
“I do, boss,” she said. “Halibi was already on our watch list. He’s got ties to some serious people…”
“How serious?”
Now Victors allowed herself the hint of a smile. “Does the name Farooq ring a bell?”
“Sheikh Husseini al Farooq?” Sanchez chewed on the swizzle stick from his coffee. “We’re sure about this?”
“Our friends at the Agency say Halibi’s father and Farooq attended the same madrassa in Damascus in the late seventies.”
Sanchez pulled the BlackBerry from his pocket. “Like father like son, then,” he said as he punched the speed dial. When the other party answered, he took a deep breath. “This is Paul. Connect me with the Director.”
Sheikh Husseini al Farooq leaned over the marble chessboard like a lion considering his kill. A slender hand poised over his knight, fingers tapping lightly. Islam’s prohibitions against graven images of living things required the game piece to look like a squat painted mushroom instead of the more customary horse.
Farooq’s opponent, a boy in his late teens, watched in rapt fascination. “Is it not glorious?” the boy said. “The Americans are broken, shattered as glass before a stone!”
A murmur of agreement rippled through the dozen men in the room. Each sat on a soft pillow watching the contest. With the setting sun, plates of food had been set after a day of fasting in observance of the holy month of Ramadan. The entire palace had been abuzz with congratulatory fervor as scenes of the Colorado mall bombing streamed on a plasma big screen tuned to Al Jazeera television.
“Do not underestimate the Americans,” Farooq said, smiling as he maneuvered the knight in concert with his bishop, to put the boy in checkmate. “Underestimating one’s opponent is the surest way to fail—”
“Forgive me, my sheikh.” A man wearing a red Saudi ghutra on his head and a white, ankle-length robe burst into the room. Had it been anyone else but Dr. Suleiman, such an intrusion would have been met with quick and decisive violence.
Suleiman was in his mid thirties and clean shaven because of his need to wear protective masks during his experiments. His pink face beamed as if reflecting a great light.
“I suppose you have heard of the events in Colorado?” Farooq nodded toward the television in the corner.
“I… we have had a breakthrough in the lab.” The doctor smiled, ignoring the others in the room. “I believe this will make the mere bombing of a shopping mall pale in comparison.”
Farooq raised a brow. “Is that so?”
Suleiman stammered on. “Our Algerian friends have solved one piece of the puzzle. They are testing it as we speak. I believe I now know the answer to the problem that has always eluded us… Of course… it will require another, more particular test…”
Farooq clapped his hands. A brooding man with dark eyes and long, windswept hair rose from his seat in the corner, hand on a curved dagger at his belt. “Yes, my sheikh.”
Holding up an open hand, palm out, Farooq turned back to Suleiman. His slender wrist protruded from the long sleeve of his white robe, identical to the doctor’s. “You’ve actually done it then?” he said.
“I believe I have.” Suleiman’s eyes shifted uneasily back and forth from the sheikh to the brooding bodyguard.
A sneering grin spread across Farooq’s angular face as he turned back to the man with the dagger. “We shall need a few more subjects on which to test the doctor’s theories. Inform Ghazan at once.”
CHAPTER 1
Jericho Quinn gunned the throttle, willing more power from the screaming motorcycle.
“Which one is Ghazan?” He threw the words over his shoulder, into the wind as he rode.
Blowing sand scoured his chapped face. He peered through the dusk, squinting, wishing he had a pair of goggles. Something pinched his nose in the gathering darkness — the telltale odor of wet wool seasoned with the sulfur that oozed up from the desert floor.
The smell of a sheep roasting in the flames of hell.
The scent of Iraq.
“There!” Quinn felt his passenger shudder behind him, his words ripped away by the wind.
“Which one?” Quinn scanned a knot of a half dozen FAMs — fighting-age men — loitering at the corner beneath the crumbling walls of a bombed mosque. In the three days following the horrific bombing of a Colorado shopping mall, any semblance of trust between cultures had evaporated from the streets of Iraq. Natives flinched and dropped their eyes when American patrols rolled past. Few in number from cyclical troop drawdown, U.S. forces stood on the edge of a full-blown assault at every encounter. Soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen boiled with righteous anger that over three thousand Americans — most of them women and children — had lost their lives in the blasts.
The worst act of terrorism on American soil since 9/11, the media had dubbed it the Fifth Sunday Bombing — but it was impossible to put a title on something so horrible. Most just spoke in whispered reverence about Colorado. Hunting down those responsible was priority one for men like Jericho Quinn.
Ghazan al Ghazi was the HVT — the high-value target — of the moment. Quinn felt a familiar sensation in the back of his neck — the tingle that told him violence was close at hand — and wondered if he was enjoying this too much. He had no idea what he’d do if peace suddenly broke out in the world. Not much chance of that.