He had chosen his culvert with the pickiness of a master chef. The road to the village fed directly into the main street, a skinny thoroughfare without turns, bordered on both sides by buildings that channeled the convoy straight to Abdallah. After long and careful consideration, he had positioned himself twenty yards short of the first intersection, a four-way and the first opportunity for the Americans to change direction.
They had no choice but to pass directly by Abdallah, no option but to drive by the lethal trash barrel ten feet back from the road.
Abdallah couldn’t resist a smile. What a nasty surprise they were in for.
The four men in robes peeked over the edge of the building. The street was clear and quiet, no traffic, no pedestrians wandering aimlessly. A perfect target zone, a perfect day to kill.
They had, three hours before, patiently observed the big barrel being rolled into place, then later watched one tiny urchin enter the neglected building and reappear a few minutes later in an upstairs window. They laughed as the bigger, fatter one fought and squeezed his way into the narrow culvert.
They watched and they waited.
They had slipped up onto this rooftop in pitch-darkness the night before. For the past seven hours, between cigarettes and quiet sips of hot tea, between sweating and boredom and baking under the broiling Iraqi sun, they had watched and waited.
They whispered among themselves, arguing quietly and sometimes heatedly about the quality of the bomb below. Would it work? How well would it work? This was a test, a vitally important one, though this news had been slyly withheld from Mustafa and the two street punks he had hired to do this job. That fired-up, true-believer patriot act he put on fooled nobody. Mustafa was a selfish, self-indulgent crook, plain and simple.
A mercenary who killed for the cash, nothing more.
He would’ve pressured for more money had he known. Probably a lot more.
The bomb was the newest thing, smuggled in a week before from Iran with lots of loud promises about what it could destroy. Supposedly, the device was manufactured to be triggered through the open air, though the four men on the rooftop had no idea how that actually worked. Nor did they care. An Iranian bomb mechanic had babbled on about the particulars-something to do with penetrating rods, and secondary explosives, and sound waves, and signal receptors. All four men were yawning and nodding off long before he finished.
Who cared? The long-winded blowhard was squandering his breath and their patience. They merely needed to know if it worked. Did it trigger a blast or no? Would it allow them to kill more Americans or not?
One of the four men edged forward a little. He positioned his video camera against the ledge. He pushed zoom, narrowed the picture frame to the road space directly abutting the barrel, punched start, lit up a smoke, and waited for the fun to begin.
Bill Forrest had his nose stuffed inside a map. Fifty yards out from the village, he pointed straight ahead at the narrow street. “Follow that until the first intersection, then turn left,” he told Davis, who pumped the brakes and slowed up a bit as was their usual custom anytime they drove through built-up areas.
Roadside bombs could be hidden anywhere, in animal carcasses, in broken-down cars, or even dug into shallow holes in a road out in the middle of nowhere. Towns and villages, though, offered plenty of camouflage and were particularly dangerous.
“What a dump,” Davis remarked. The streets weren’t even paved, just flattened-down dust.
“Slow down a little more,” Forrest warned him, looking worried and tense.
“Why?”
“Do you see anybody on the streets? Locals always know when it’s too dangerous to come out and play.”
Davis scanned the village and saw a few faces poking out of windows. “Well, it is the hottest part of the day. I’d hide inside, too.”
Just then the radio barked, the same young lieutenant again, the same whiny, needy tone. The captain shook his head, rolled his eyes, and lifted the handset. “Listen,” he told the young officer, “take a deep breath and settle down. I’m trying to watch the road, and you keep interrupting me.”
Davis stifled a laugh.
Abdallah held his breath, kept his hand loose, and watched as the convoy approached the barrel. Mustafa had told him not to squeeze the trigger too soon. It had happened twice before, Mustafa warned, young idiots overcome with excitement or nerves who clumsily wasted a bomb and killed nobody. No corpses, no money, Mustafa had threatened with a mean grin that showed where his front teeth had been kicked out in one of his many failed attempts at crime.
Abdallah glanced up at Hadi, who was leaning out the window, craning his neck and straining to watch the big boom.
A moment later, the lead vehicle was directly beside the barrel. Abdallah could actually observe the men inside, one talking into a handset, the other, a bit younger-looking, chuckling to himself and steering the vehicle. He vowed that he would wait for a vehicle with more passengers, a much riper target, but in that instant his hand developed a mind of its own and squeezed hard on the device.
The response was immediate and overwhelming. Abdallah felt the blast literally drive him back another two feet into the culvert, until he felt like a cork stuffed into a bottle. He squealed with pain and clenched his eyes shut to block the barrage of dust from the road. His ears hurt, and though he did not know it, the drums had burst.
When he opened his eyes, he saw that the Humvee had been blown over, sideways, and now was teetering on its side, like some giant Tonka toy tossed by the wind. It was on fire and he could feel the surge of intense heat even from fifty feet away. He watched a man crawl out, a big man, pulling himself up through the side opening, trying desperately to escape the flames. After a moment the big man in an invader’s uniform ended up on the ground, flopping and pulling himself forward with his arms, which really was the only way he could since his legs were gone.
The big American seemed to be staring straight into Abdallah’s eyes with a mixture of shock and recognition. Then he lay still for a moment, bleeding and suffering. Abdallah couldn’t hear, but could clearly picture his groans and his pitiful attempts to draw breath. He saw his hand move, go inside his shirt, and he pulled something out and stared at it hard.
Abdallah used all his might to get out of the culvert and edge forward. The big American just stared at the thing in his hand, and Abdallah strained to see what it was. Clearly the man was dying, and Abdallah wondered, what was the last thing a man on the cusp of death wanted so desperately to see?
He was out of the culvert now; to his surprise he discovered he could barely walk. Blood was trickling out his ears. He stumbled forward until he stood swaying above the American.
In the man’s hand was a picture of an attractive blonde woman, hugging two little blonde girls who were laughing and giggling.
2
The folder had been passed around the conference table four times, read, dissected, debated, scrutinized, and rescrutinized by the three men for nearly an hour.
The biography of Jack Wiley held their attention for the first thirty minutes. An impressive man, no question about that. A 1988 graduate of Princeton, peculiarly he had entered the Army, fought in the first Gulf War, then traded his boots for loafers a few months after the last shot was fired. A Silver Star and a Bronze Star: a combat vet and genuine hero to boot. A few intense years drinking the Kool-Aid at Harvard Business School, then he shot straight into the labyrinth of a big Wall Street firm, bouncing through three big firms in ten years.
A few calls by one of their executives posing as a corporate headhunter to those firms revealed that Wiley was restless, but a steady rainmaker wherever he went. His former employers described him as pleasant, smart, energetic, but also cautious and diligent, all values the men around the table intensely admired. He produced profit by the bushel wherever he went; this quality they admired even more. That success brought a flood of offers from competing firms, and he jumped without compunction for better pay and more exalted titles.