Suicide Mission Read online

  “And the man helping her,” Tariq said with a frown, “he must be an American agent of some sort, considering the ease with which he dealt with the men you sent after them.”

  “He was lucky,” Sanchez snapped. “They both were.”

  Tariq didn’t say anything. He didn’t believe luck had had much to do with Catalina Ramos’s escape. The American intelligence community was involved, more than likely, and that did cause worry to nag at the back of his mind.

  But before the Americans could figure out what was going on, it would be too late. Downtown San Antonio would be a glowing, smoking pit, obliterated by a new sun that rose at midday.

  And Tariq would be in paradise, basking in his reward.

  Four miles away

  “A lot of this is reading between the lines and educated guesses made by our analysts,” Clark said as he sat at the dining room table with Bill and Catalina. “We’ve known for quite some time that there are ties between terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and Hezbollah and the Mexican drug cartels. Drug money gets siphoned to the Middle East, and in return the cartels get weapons and other assistance they’d have a hard time getting their hands on otherwise.”

  “Like suitcase nukes,” Bill said.

  “Exactly. As far as we’ve been able to determine, the device came from Russia on the black market, brokered through a Mafiya with ties to the old KGB and Soviet army. The guy seems to have dropped off the face of the earth a while back, and my hunch is that once the terrorists had what they wanted, they disposed of him to cover their trail.”

  “Not very efficiently, if you’ve already figured that out,” Bill commented.

  Clark shrugged and said, “Our people are good at what they do. It doesn’t take much for them to spot a pattern. A word here, another there . . . Anyway, one of the terrorists brought the device to Mexico on a ship that docked at Veracruz, then he drove it up to Ciudad Acuña and came across the border there. We have a possible vehicle identified and a partial plate number, and a car we think is the right one came across earlier today. Satellite footage shows it heading for San Antonio.” He clasped his hands together on the table in front of him and sighed. “It’s probably already in the city.”

  Catalina said, “Wait a minute. Are you saying there’s a nuclear bomb here in San Antonio ready to go off?”

  “You shouldn’t even know about this, Señorita Ramos, but since you’re already in the middle of it, I suppose we’ll have to trust in your discretion—”

  “And in the armed guards all over the place,” she interrupted.

  “That, too,” Clark said. “And in answer to your question . . . yes, that appears to be the situation.”

  “Then why in God’s name aren’t you warning everybody and evacuating the city?”

  Bill said, “That’d be the worst thing we could do. Chances are, the fella who brought the bomb here plans to trigger it while he’s close enough that it’ll get him, too. He figures he’ll go out in a blaze of glory that’ll send him straight to his version of heaven.”

  “So if he’s already here,” Clark said, “and he realizes that we’re aware of the plan, he’ll just go ahead and detonate the bomb wherever he is, whether it’s downtown or not, rather than take a chance on us finding him and stopping him before he can make his grand gesture.”

  Catalina looked back and forth between Bill and Clark and then shook her head.

  “That just sounds crazy to me. Loco.”

  “That’s because we’re dealin’ with a crazy man,” Bill said. “He’d have to be loco to want to murder more than a million innocent people.”

  Clark said, “Except to his way of thinking, they’re not innocent. They’re guilty of being Americans. That’s enough of a reason for somebody like that.”

  “So if you can’t evacuate the city, what can you do?” Catalina asked.

  “Find him. Stop him before he gets a chance to set off the bomb.”

  “How will you do that?”

  Bill said, “You mentioned something about the Alamo . . .”

  “We think that’s ground zero, according to the plan,” Clark confirmed. “There was a mention of it in the emails, and nothing else makes sense. It’s an important symbol, it’s right in the middle of downtown, and there’ll be a lot of people around it. That makes it a good target.”

  “Could be the Mexicans had something to do with that, too,” Bill said. “They tried to take the Alamo back a few years ago, and that didn’t work out too well for ’em.”

  Clark grimaced and said, “Don’t remind me. That whole mess gave the country a black eye. And what did the administration do? Groveled and apologized for a bunch of things that weren’t even our fault!”

  “Better watch what you say,” Bill warned. “With just one political party runnin’ practically the whole shebang now in Washington, you got to toe the line.”

  “You know I’ve always tried to stay apart from politics, Bill. My job is to protect the country, period, no matter who’s running it. I’ll grant you, it’s getting harder and harder to do that with the presidents we keep getting, but I suppose it’s what the voters want . . .”

  “Yeah, and they’ll get what they asked for, one of these days, when everything comes crashin’ down. But you’re right, we’ve got a bigger problem right here and now, stoppin’ that bomb.”

  Catalina said, “I still don’t understand what the cartel has to gain from this.”

  “If the bomb goes off, it weakens and destabilizes the American government that much more. The economy’s on life support already, and it might collapse completely from a terrorist attack of this magnitude. When the economy goes down, the government goes down. Then in the chaos that follows, Mexico can grab Texas and the rest of the southwest and a big chunk of California. Even if the country recovered, it would never be the same.”

  A solemn silence hung over the table following Clark’s words. Finally, Bill cleared his throat and asked, “What about that terrorist training camp you mentioned?”

  “Barranca de la Serpiente. Canyon of the Serpent, or Snake Canyon, to be informal about it. The name is really all we know at this point. We don’t have a location on it yet. It’s almost like a military base, a joint venture between the terrorists, the cartel, and corrupt elements of the Mexican army. They’re putting together a paramilitary force the likes of which we haven’t run into before. You were mixed up in something like that a while back, weren’t you, Bill?”

  “That was mostly the cartel’s doin’,” Bill said, remembering the bus full of teenagers that had been hijacked and taken across the border, where the prisoners were held for ransom. “There may have been some Middle Eastern advisors, but they weren’t runnin’ the show.”

  “Well, we’ll have to do something about that camp pretty soon . . . assuming that we all live through the next twenty-four hours.”

  “How can you find the man with the bomb?” Catalina asked.

  “Remember, we have a tentative identification of the car that’s involved,” Clark said. “Right now we have agents checking the footage from every traffic camera in the city, looking for it.”

  “How long will that take?” Bill wanted to know.

  “A while,” Clark admitted. “We’re also running checks on every hotel and motel. The guy’s got to have a place to stay.”

  “He could have a safe house like this one,” Bill said.

  “He could. But I think it’s more likely he’s staying at a motel owned by one of his countrymen. There are an awful lot of them in the hospitality business.”

  Bill chuckled and said, “Better be careful. You’re gettin’ into ethnic profilin’ there.”

  Clark snorted in disgust.

  “Well, pardon me for not thinking that some ninety-year-old grandma from Des Moines is really the one who wants to blow us to kingdom come, instead of the thirty-year-old Pakistani guy. I guess I’m gonna just have to be politically incorrect until we find that damn bomb.”

  “You’re p
reachin’ to the choir, old son. I’ve got just one more question.”

  “What’s that?”

  Bill nodded at Catalina and said, “What are we gonna do about Señorita Ramos?”

  “I was wondering about that myself,” Catalina said. “I mean . . . there’s a bomb.”

  Clark nodded and said, “We’ll get you out of town, of course. First thing in the morning, Bill and some other agents will take you to Dallas. You’ll be well away from here before anything happens.”

  “Scratch that,” Bill said. “I don’t plan on leavin’. Might be something here I can do to help.”

  “Not your job,” Clark said curtly. “I needed you to deliver Señorita Ramos and the intel she had to us, and you did that. You can go back to being retired again.”

  “I don’t think so. Everything’s changed now. We’re all soldiers in this war, Clark . . . and I plan on bein’ right here in the front lines.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Tariq slept surprisingly well, considering that this would be his last night on earth. The next time he awoke it would not be from slumber, but rather from death, and he would be in paradise.

  When he answered the knock on his door, he found Sanchez standing there wearing a worried frown.

  “One of our contacts in the San Antonio Police Department reports that there are rumors about government agents accessing their traffic cameras,” Sanchez said. “They must be searching for a particular car.”

  He half-turned and looked at the car parked in front of Tariq’s room. It was a plain sedan with nothing to distinguish it and certainly no indication of the mass destruction that it carried in its trunk.

  “The woman must have put them on our trail,” Sanchez went on.

  “You worry too much,” Tariq said bluntly. “The woman could not have known anything about the vehicle we’re using. The Americans fear that something is going to happen, but they have no idea what, when, or where. They’re simply flailing around in futility, as they always do.”

  “You can’t be sure of that. Perhaps we should postpone the operation long enough for them to slip back into complacency. There’s no reason we can’t wait a week, or even two . . .”

  “No!” Tariq couldn’t contain the anger that simmered inside him. “There is no need to wait. That just gives them more time to search for us. Destiny will not be delayed!”

  “What you’re doing is tempting fate,” Sanchez insisted.

  “It doesn’t matter to you,” Tariq said coldly. “You’re not going to be here anyway, are you, Señor Sanchez?”

  “It was never part of the arrangement that I had to die, too,” Sanchez replied, his voice just as chilly as Tariq’s had been. “That is your choice, amigo.”

  “It is what I am called to do.”

  “But you choose to answer.”

  “What would have me do? Forfeit my immortal soul?”

  Sanchez didn’t reply. Instead he said, “I’m leaving now.”

  “Fine. Go back and tell your masters that Tariq Maleef carried out his holy mission . . . after you finish licking their boots.”

  For a heartbeat Tariq thought Sanchez was going to attack him. He had wounded the man’s Latin pride, after all. But Sanchez, like all infidels, really cared for nothing except himself. He wanted to be gone from here before that inferno of death erupted . . . and every passing second brought that glorious moment closer.

  “Good luck to you,” Sanchez said grudgingly.

  “I need no luck. Allah watches over me.”

  Sanchez just grunted and turned away.

  Tariq reached around his back to the handle of the knife tucked behind his belt. It would be easy enough to draw the weapon and plunge the blade into Sanchez’s back. The man’s decadent existence was an affront to Allah.

  But as satisfying as killing Sanchez might be, it could upset the arrangement between the Mexican cartel and the organization to which Tariq belonged. He couldn’t give in to his own petty personal urges when there was so much else at stake.

  “Vaya con Dios,” Sanchez muttered as he walked away. Tariq didn’t know how the man intended to get out of town and didn’t care; he supposed the cartel had people Sanchez could call on for transportation.

  “Go with your own god,” Tariq said quietly enough that Sanchez couldn’t hear him. “Mine will soon be smiling with joy at the death and destruction I will bring down upon the Americans in his name.”

  Catalina’s new clothes, a simple blouse and skirt and flat-heeled shoes, made her look a little like a suburban housewife, Bill thought. A spectacularly attractive suburban housewife. It was hard to imagine her fighting and shooting and stealing cars.

  “I don’t want to go,” she told him as they stood in the kitchen of the safe house. “Well, that’s not true, of course. I want to get as far away from that bomb as I can. But I want you to come with me. I’m not sure I trust any of these other people.”

  “You’ve known me less than twenty-four hours,” Bill pointed out.

  “But we have faced death together. That makes a difference.”

  She was right about that, Bill thought. The sort of intense danger they’d been in created a bond between people. Anybody who had been through a war knew that.

  She went on, “I don’t feel right about leaving you here.”

  “I wouldn’t feel right about leaving Clark, either, not to mention all the other folks living here in San Antonio who’re wakin’ up this morning with no idea what’s hangin’ over their heads. I’ve got to do everything I can to save them.”

  “Even if it means losing your own life if you fail.”

  “Even if,” Bill said. “But look at it this way . . . if we don’t find the fella in time, I won’t have to sit around worryin’ about it.”

  She shook her head.

  “That doesn’t make me feel a bit better.”

  He gave in to an impulse and put his arms around her, drawing her against him. He felt the tense strength of her body, but after a moment she relaxed and rested her head against his chest.

  “It’s a little more than four hours until noon,” Bill said quietly. “You’ll be at least two hundred miles from here by then, and I won’t have to worry about you while we’re lookin’ for . . . well, you know what we’ll be lookin’ for.”

  “Why would you worry about me?” she asked in a voice thick with emotion. “You’ve known me less than twenty-four hours, remember?”

  He chuckled and planted a kiss on the top of her head. She was tall, but he was taller.

  “Go on and get out of here,” he said as he let her go and stepped back.

  “Bill . . .”

  He gave her a stern look.

  She nodded, summoned up a weak smile, and turned to go with the three agents waiting to take her away from San Antonio. Bill didn’t know how the agents had decided who would go and who would stay to help with the search for the suicide bomber, but he supposed it didn’t matter. Those who missed this battle would probably have another one to fight later on, because it seemed unlikely that the enemies who wanted to destroy this country would ever give up.

  At least, not as long as certain elements of the country seemed hell-bent on trying to destroy it from within . . .

  Catalina cast a last glance over her shoulder at Bill and then left the room. Clark must have been waiting for her to go, because he came into the kitchen less than a minute later.

  “I didn’t want to interfere with you saying goodbye to Señorita Ramos,” he said as he poured himself a cup of coffee.

  “You wouldn’t have been interferin’. Hell, the girl’s young enough to be my daughter. Damn near young enough to be my granddaughter.”

  “Yeah, but she’s a mighty pretty one. I suppose if somebody could overlook her background—”

  Bill said, “There are things in my background that’d make a normal person turn pale and faint dead away. You ought to know. Some of ’em I did while I was workin’ for you.”

  “That’s a fair po
int,” Clark said with a laugh. He took a sip of the coffee. “Have you had breakfast?”

  “Not much of an appetite this morning.”

  “Yeah, me neither.”

  “Any leads on the car we’re looking for?”

  Clark shook his head and said, “No, but my people are still checking the traffic cam footage. The San Antonio PD and all the other departments in the surrounding cities have the description and the license plate partial. They think they’re looking for a car used in a child abduction. We arranged for an Amber Alert to be put out a little while ago. That’ll get the public involved without them knowing what they’re really looking for.” He took a deep breath. “The car’s out there somewhere, Bill. We’ll spot it and close in, grab up the guy before he knows what’s going on.”

  “You’d better hope so. We don’t know what sort of detonator he’s using. If he has even a few seconds’ warning, it might be enough for him to trigger the bomb.”

  “Of course, he might have it on a timer.”

  Bill shook his head and said, “I don’t think so. You know how those fanatics are. He’ll want to take a minute and stand there with his finger on the button so he can bask in the thought of how powerful he is.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right.” Clark took another sip of coffee, then made a face and set the cup on the counter. “Coffee doesn’t even taste good anymore.”

  “Tell you what I’ll do,” Bill said. “When this is all over, we’ll go to one of those places down on the River walk and have us a big ol’ enchilada dinner and a few mugs of cerveza. How’s that sound?”

  Clark smiled and said, “You’ve got a deal, cowboy.”

  The morning seemed to go by in the blink of an eye. Almost before Bill knew it, the time was eleven o’clock.

  An hour left, assuming the intel gathered from Martin Chavez’s flash drive was accurate.

  An hour before a new sun would burst into life in the heart of San Antonio and consume the historic downtown, along with hundreds of thousands of souls. And by the time all the damage was done, more than a million people might lose their lives.