O’Brien was silent for a few seconds. “Gates was killed in there, where there’s electricity … this guy was probably taking the body out for disposal … maybe to dump it in the river but never got that far. Somebody nailed him in the back of the head.”
“Maybe it’s Mohammed … or one of his guys.”
“Gates was a big man. Would have taken two of Borshnik’s men to carry him down to the river.”
“Which means-”
“Borshnik has a defector. Eric, tell your men we’re working our way around to the other side of the building. The main entrance.”
Hunter relayed the information, and requested four SWAT members for backup. He and O’Brien kept low, hugging the exterior wall. O’Brien peered around the edge of the building. “Another down. Looks dead.”
Hunter used a hand signal and four members of the SWAT team converged next to them in seconds. They approached the body.
“Even without a forehead,” Hunter said, “this guy looks like the second man in the Chapman’s video. Why is he here and Gates and the other Russian back there?”
O’Brien knelt down for less than five seconds. Then he rose and motioned for the men to come to the partially opened wooden door. He whispered, “Blood splatter was blocked by something with a corner side, like a box. Maybe a briefcase. Whatever it was, it’s gone. So are the guys who did it. I think he met someone here. Could have been a payoff. We might find a lot of blood in there.”
O’Brien and the men moved stealth-like though the rooms and halls. They followed blood splatter on the floor to a room with an open door and cautiously entered. The smell of gunpowder, blood, and burnt electrical wire was in the air.
“Holy shit …,” mumbled one SWAT member.
“It was a fuckin’ slaughter,” said another.
They counted nine bodies. Hunter knelt by Borshnik and looked at the bullet hole in the center of his chest. “Looks like the auction is off,” Hunter said sarcastically. “He’s the oldest here … the son of the only Russian spy ever killed by execution in America. He carries out his own revenge and gets a bullet through the heart. Ironic-it’s not by us, but by a new breed of spies-Islamic jihad extremists.”
“The hate is the same,” O’Brien said, looking at Borshnik’s body. “They took Jason. Mohammed Sharif has him.”
“Looks like Sharif had the same idea we had. But he was faster.”
“That’s because he knew the location before we did,” O’Brien said. “And I’m betting the reason why is that dead man in the front lot, he sold out. O’Brien walked to a window facing the front entrance. He studied the area while the men checked the bodies for signs of life. Then O’Brien stepped across the room, trying to avoid pools of blood, and looked out a window facing the wide river. He watched as a Navy Blackhawk helicopter hovered near Pier 13. Hunter joined him at the window.
“We’ll get Jason alive,” Hunter said. “I’ll have the choppers fly the main roads.”
“What are you going to look for?”
“They don’t have a long head-start. We’ll watch for fast driving with an emphasis on trucks and vans. Probably crated the uranium in a truck or a cargo van and are on their way to someplace like the Port of Miami … or they may be near here, right under our noses at Jax Port.”
“Maybe,” said O’Brien. “But, what if they have no intention of exporting the stuff? Why head south when you can go north.”
“Where would they go from here?”
“The closest place to make an atomic bomb.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE
The taxi driver with no face rose from the cab’s front seat, sat up, placed both hands on the wheel and slowly turned his head toward O’Brien. Greenish yellow blowflies fed on the blood from the eye cavities.
O’Brien was in the old warehouse looking out toward the river. He watched the black helicopters in the distance hover then sweep down above the surface. They looked like giant black prehistoric birds, predators ready to scoop prey out of the dark water.
He awoke from a deep, erratic sleep, sat straight up in a strange bed and stared at a clock on the nightstand: 3:57 a.m. He sat there for a minute, the sweat dripping through his chest hair, the images of the dead fading in the dark, the sound of a passing car outside the motel.
O’Brien sat on the edge of the bed for a few seconds trying to clear his head. Think. He got up, turned the light on and walked into the bathroom where he shook three aspirins from a bottle he’d bought earlier. He filled a glass with water and chased down the aspirins. O’Brien looked at himself in the mirror. Eyes red. Lips chapped. Hair matted. A four-day growth on his face.
He flashed back to his dream, to the Blackhawk helicopters flying over the river. “The river …,” he mumbled. “A perfect escape … if they had a boat.” O’Brien splashed water on his face, dressed, shoved his Glock under his belt and walked to his Jeep.
He stopped at pier 13, got out and turned on his flashlight. Pockets of mist drifted up from the river’s surface, like ghost couples entwined in a silent dance across a black marble floor. He heard the drone of a tanker moving upriver. He walked down to the edge of the dock, slowly panning the flashlight across the concrete for clues. O’Brien leaned over the edge, shined the light on the big rubber bumper guards protruding from the dock.
Blood.
Just above the water line, in the center of the cement joint. A spot the size of a dime. The tide was rising and O’Brien could tell by previous waterline marks, it wouldn’t be long before the blood was washed away. Was it Jason’s blood? Was one of Sharif’s men wounded? He looked at the last piece of physical evidence leading to the river. The escape was done in a boat. Why? He looked up at the river, the twirl of mist in the foreground, the silence of dark water moving toward the sea.
On the way back to the motel, O’Brien called Hunter and told him what he found and what he thought.
“Gimme a second,” Hunter said, his voice heavy with sleep. “Could have been fish blood for all we know. Maybe somebody had been fishing there earlier.”
“No. There are high-water marks on the bulkhead. Tide was probably going out when Mohammed hit Borshnik. Tide’s been rising all night. At high tide it’ll cover the bumper. I could see the blood was fresh. It dripped there today.”
“How far are you from the motel?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“I’ll start the calls now. Coast Guard and Navy are all over this place. Mohammed could have been in the Atlantic in a half hour from Pier 13. Depending on the speed of their boat, they may have headed south toward Miami or north. They have a big head start.”
“I don’t think Sharif plans to export something he’d kill to have imported into this country. Where is he going to get the stuff packed and made into a real bomb that will work? If we can figure that out, we might have a chance of stopping him.”
CHAPTER NINETY
It was early morning when the 45-foot Sea Ray turned portside from the Atlantic and slipped into Wassaw Sound east of Savannah. The pilot followed the channel markers. Small fishing boats and jet skiers buzzed across the wide bay.
Mohammed Sharif sipped a dark coffee. He had not slept in two days. He knew there would be no sleep until the work on the bomb was underway. That would be very soon. He watched as they passed Sister Island on the left and the opulent homes of the Wilmington Island Club on the right. An attractive blond woman in a tiny bikini stood at the end of a dock and applied sun screen. Mohammed stared at her, watched her rub sunscreen on her breasts, felt the movement in his loins and disgust in his heart.
The pilot looked at his gauges and said, “We will have to refuel in about an hour.”
“They will be waiting for us in a cemetery next to the river,” Mohammed said. “It is called Bonaventure Cemetery, and we will see the road next to the river. This road is Mulryne Way. We will load the truck. You will go on farther, perhaps three kilometers to dock in Savannah off East River Street. Leave the keys, walk away, check into a hotel and wait for instructions. You will fly the plane. You, Anwar, will be the man who releases the bomb on America.”