“I’d say we’re both almost there. It was your choice long ago. It’s a lonely life playing the game. But when you step out of the boundaries, you step into a house of mirrors. What you see reflecting back is whatever illusion you’ve created. Forever begins now, Gates. Hold that point up to the light from hell and leave me alone-”
“They’ll come for you, too. You just got away with it longer. You’ll go down as this country’s worst traitor! They’ll write the name Benedict Arnold over your damn grave. Do you hear me Miller? You fucking hear me!”
The phone went dead in Gate’s hand.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE
Mohammed Sharif sat in the back seat of the rented SUV and spoke Arabic into a satellite phone. “Salaam alaikum,” he said. The SUV stayed below the speed limit as the driver’s eyes darted from the road to the mirrors. Another man sat in the front, one in the back next to Sharif, and two minivans loaded with heavily armed jihad soldiers followed.
“We’re within two miles of the U-235,” Sharif said. “Borshnik does not suspect we are en route because he is not aware we know his location. Abdul-Waahid is a martyr. He is in paradise. His death bonds the umma, the brotherhood. He walked into the face of the infidels and removed at least nine of them. The FBI, CIA and the rest are in a state of chaos. I have given orders for the girl to be taken alive today. Her father will do as we order. Within a few days, we will have an atomic bomb here on American soil. Now they will learn a lesson as we do much more than bloody their noses, the same noses that they stick in the world’s affairs, hamdulihhah.”
Sharif nodded, listened in silence for a half minute and said, “Inshallad, it will be done. Allah akbar.”
O’Brien and Eric Hunter watched EMTs load Dave Collins in an ambulance. Dave, conscious, one eye swollen, with its surrounding area the size and color of a plum, looked at O’Brien and asked, “How many dead?”
“I don’t know.”
“Lauren ….”
“She didn’t make it.”
Dave closed his eyes for a long moment, his barrel chest rising and falling. “I’m sorry … find them Sean. You and Eric make a good team. Be damn careful. America’s never experienced anything like this before. It could make 911 look like boy scouts. Bring in Gates if you can catch him.”
“Get well,” Hunter said.
As the paramedics closed the ambulance doors, one of a dozen ambulances carting the injured, O’Brien said, “Let’s move. My Jeep’s in the lot.”
“I’m parked near you. I’ve got a pretty fair arsenal in the trunk. Plenty of rounds. Let’s stop there first. Got a feeling we might need the firepower.”
More than two dozen television satellite trucks lined the parking lot. A herd of reporters and onlookers were kept behind the yellow tape. O’Brien and Hunter had to walk through the pack to get to their vehicles.
Reporter Susan Schulman stepped in front of O’Brien. A cameraman rolled, the tiny red light on the camera an unblinking Cyclops’ eye. She gripped the microphone with one hand, red fingernails like talons of a hawk holding something dead. “Mr. O’Brien, we understand the casualty number could reach as high as perhaps a dozen people. Can you give us a short soundbite? What did you see?”
“Fuck you. Is that short enough?” O’Brien and Hunter continued walking.
“Asshole!” Schulman shouted, turning to her cameraman, “Cut.”
Mike Gates drove across the Fuller Warren Bridge into the heart of Jacksonville. He punched the car’s radio station selector trying to find a newscast. There was an odd sound, like static created by approaching lightning. The sky was clear.
“Bastards!” he grunted. He turned off the exit into West Bay Street and parked his car in the lot adjacent to the Omni Hotel. Gates got out and walked up to a taxi, the driver reading the paper. “Can you take me to JaxPort?” Gates asked.
“Sure, get in.”
Gates got in the backseat and the driver asked, “Where to at JaxPort?”
“The old Pier 13 … should be a warehouse near there.”
“I have an idea where it is,” the cabbie said, pulling out of the hotel lot. “Place is in a rough part of the docks.”
“I’m representing a developer. We’re looking at it purely as a speculative buy. Condos could be in there in a couple of years.”
The cab driver pulled into a service road that led down to Pier 13. He drove slowly past a discolored Chiquita Banana sign, long ago faded from salt air and time.
“Park by the dumpster,” Gates said. “I’ll be down by the water. Wait for me.”
“I can’t stay too long, understand? Got other customers-”
“Here’s a hundred.” Gates tossed the bill on the front seat. “Wait for me. I won’t be long. Then you can take me to the airport.”
The driver stuck the money in his shirt pocket. Gates climbed out of the car and walked toward the rusted and broken Pier 13. The place looked creepy, he thought, including the old pier, which slept derelict-like by the dark water. He glanced at his watch, lit a cigarette, and watched a tanker leave the port across the wide river, heading for the Atlantic Ocean.
The cab driver watched him. He pulled the hundred dollar bill out of his pocket and held it up in the fading sunlight.
There was a noise. Maybe a rat in the dumpster. The cabbie looked toward Gates standing by the dock as the rubber lid on the dumpster flew open. A shotgun blast fired directly into the open window of the cab. The cabbie’s face was blown off. His jawbone propelled out the passenger window.
Zahkar Sororkin pointed the barrel at Gates. “Hands up! Drop your gun!”
Gates did as ordered. Sorokin climbed from the abandoned dumpster, 12-gauge shotgun aimed at Gates’ chest. “Kick the gun away from you.”
“No! What’s going on? Borshnik and I have a deal.”
“Kick the gun!” Sorokin yelled, stepping closer. “Do it or this shotgun will take your head off. They will find pieces of it in the river. The catfish will eat the soft parts.”
Gates dropped his pistol. “I want to see Borshnik.”
“And he wants to see you.”
Mohammed Sharif and his caravan were less than five miles from the docks. He made a call. “The boat must be there in half an hour. The Americans will block all roads. They will not think to monitor their ports and Intracoastal Waterway … they never do.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR
O’Brien drove his Jeep up I-95 at almost ninety-miles-per hour. Hunter sat in the passenger seat, holding the GPS in his lap. He said, “There is no movement from Gates’ car. He’s in downtown Jacksonville, near the river.”
“Maybe that’s the location. Could be something there, a building, store, auto body shop, whatever.”
“Or he could have found out we’re tailing him and left his car in a parking lot.” Through his dark sunglasses, Hunter looked at the GPS screen. He punched in a satellite image of a map, scaled closer. “Looks like Gates is at Riverside Avenue. I’ll start making the calls. We’ll bring in F-16’s if we have to … they won’t crawl out of there.”
“First, we bring Jason out alive.”
Robert Miller had just ordered his third Irish whiskey when his cell played the first few bars from Mozart’s Requiem. He lifted the phone from the bar, looked through his bifocals and saw that it was security calling from his condo. “Mr. Miller, this is John in security at-”
“Yes, what is it?”
“You’d asked me to call, sir, if anyone was inquiring about you.”
“Yes, what do you have?”
“Well, sir, two men were here. Said they worked for the government, but they didn’t show ID. Looked like FBI types. Told them you weren’t in, and they left”
“When?”
“About ten minutes ago.”
“Thank you.” Miller pressed the disconnect button and looked up at the bartender, a woman in her mid-thirties. He asked, “Do you have children?”