The Cyclops Conspiracy (38 page)

When he’d finished placing the charges, he unzipped the body bags on the aft deck. One contained a woman in her midsixties, whose height and skin tone were identical to Zanns’s. The other was a male, Oliver’s height, also with tawny skin. For good measure, Oliver had snipped off the pinky fingers of both hands. Both victims had been chosen months ago, murdered in their sleep, and kept in cold storage in a locked freezer in a subbasement under the mansion’s garage.

A corrupt dentist in Kansas had taken X-rays and made plaster impressions of Zanns’s and Oliver’s mouth after they had flown out in the float plane. A month later, the dentist had been blindfolded, flown in, and promised a handsome payday. From the X-rays and impressions, it took him three long days to prepare both corpses’ teeth to be dead-on matches to both Oliver and Zanns’s dental profiles.

When his work was complete, Oliver had snapped his neck as if it were a matchstick with his powerful hands. The body was stuffed in a large drum, filled with cement, and dumped from the plane ten miles off the Virginia coast in the early morning hours.

Every contingency had been covered. Even in the unlikely event the authorities figured it all out, Zanns and Oliver would be half a world away by then.

Since the male was bigger and heavier, he was dragged a few feet back to the transom and placed directly beside the six containers there. Oliver doused the body with diesel from a separate fuel canister. The female’s final repose was belowdecks, in the bow, beside another cluster of combustibles.

The female was dressed in one of Zanns’s leisure outfits, while the male wore one of Oliver’s white shirts and a pair of his black trousers. He didn’t bother wiping any fingerprints. The fire would destroy them anyway. If they didn’t, this was Zanns’s yacht. Their prints were supposed to be all over it.

With everything set, Oliver motored back to the plane with the small fuel can and the empty body bags. He set the dingy adrift after opening the sea cocks, allowing it to fill with brackish water.
He taxied the plane to the middle of the river and gunned the twin engines. In the air, he banked the craft and circled twice. On the second lap, Oliver depressed a button on a remote activator. Charges fired, igniting the fuel. The fuel tanks exploded five seconds later. A mushroom cloud rose forty feet into the night air, sounding as if the gods had slammed a large steel door shut, and lighting up the sky for miles. The plane teetered from the concussion.

* * *

Three years of planning had come down to these final moments. Her beloved Iraq and her beloved Amo would have their vengeance in twelve hours.

But Hammon and his small, ultrasecret organization had their own lethal agenda. As much as the Simoon wanted the elder Hope dead, Hammon wanted the son, the current president, eliminated. Theirs was a fragile alliance born out of common hatred. Though she did not know why Hammon wished the younger Hope killed, she would lose no sleep over it.

The last four American presidents, two pairs of fathers and sons, had overseen the rape and destruction of her homeland. The first president Bush had begun the downward spiral by ousting them from Kuwait. Hope Sr. followed, energizing the cataclysm with devastating economic sanctions and US-led UN resolutions. The second Bush invaded again, conquering and occupying. Finally, Hope Jr. was left to water the vile seed of democracy, coaxing it to sprout like a weed.

Hell, all four men deserved to die. In fact, the Simoon had made attempts on the lives of the Bushes. The attempt on the Bush, the father, had failed in Kuwait. Attempts on Bush the son were planned but unable to be carried out. The Bushes were out of office now and therefore nonfactors. So they had turned their focus on the second pair of father and son presidents, the Hopes. The christening of the aircraft carrier represented an opportunity of great magnitude. Their
deaths would be simultaneous and captured live. News agencies all over the world would replay the killings for weeks. The American government would point fingers in every direction, as they always did in the aftermath of a crisis. And in the following months, Sam Fairing would come forward and take credit for avenging his Iraq. And that would begin his rise to power.

Jason Rodgers had nearly ruined their mission. Zanns gave him reluctant credit. He’d been implicated in the assassinations and escaped the attempt on his life. Though their plan to eliminate him had failed, he was hunted by local police, more concerned with avoiding capture and preserving his own life than spoiling her mission. He was a nonfactor now.

The glowing flames from the burning, sinking yacht reflected off the inside of the plane’s cabin. Zanns smiled at Oliver. “Our mission is almost complete,” she said wistfully.

She said a
du’a
for her two children. Jasmine’s chances for survival were slim. But her mission was a holy one. Sam’s escape, on the other hand, had been planned carefully. He must live to claim his birthright. Allah would reward them both with places in heaven, Jasmine sooner than later.

“You’re right. It won’t be long now,” he said. Oliver turned southeast, toward the Atlantic Ocean and a rendezvous with a Liberian tanker somewhere off the North Carolina coast. From there, Delilah Hussein, a.k.a. Lily Zanns, would begin her new life, the second in twenty years. Oliver would be beside her, as a faithful servant and protector.

* * *

Jasmine Kader hunkered down in the rubber raft, out of the breeze. She floated a hundred yards off shore. The Raggy Island Wild-life Refuge, where the bridge met the southern shore of the James, was three and a half miles upriver.

The Secret Service would begin their final canvas well before dawn, securing the perimeter. By then, she would be in place, out
of view long before the last sweep. The tower of the James River Bridge would not be manned by an agent. Helicopters would fly over the structure, looking for any potential long-range threats, and find nothing out of the ordinary.

Her nest was perfectly camouflaged. Like a true sniper, she would lie in wait for hours until the targets took their positions. The .50-caliber projectile would rip through fabric and flesh with amazingly destructive force.

An explosion rocked the stillness. The northwest horizon turned yellow for a moment, then darkened again. She could not see the flames, but knew it was her signal. Lily and Oliver were airborne. Time to move.

She shrugged off the chill and turned the fifteen-horsepower Mercury engine over. A small plane droned overhead. She caught glimpses of its silhouette against the sky, passing between clouds. Clad in black, a large dark drag bag at her feet, she negotiated the raft along the southern shoreline. Food, water, her sniper rifle, and her Mauser 7.65 mm loaded with a full eight-round magazine were the bag’s only contents.

Kader had no illusions about her journey. It was a suicide mission.

* * *

Sam Fairing knelt on the prayer rug, forehead pressed against it, mumbling another short prayer. The Quran lay open on the floor in front of him as he flipped through appropriate passages. He chanted in Arabic, rocking himself with an intensity and elation he’d never felt before.

He would not show up for work again. Not that he cared. Billy Parks thought he was covering until Monday. Fairing’s absence was permanent; his weekend trip to Canada was a lie.

He had enough food and drink for twice that amount of time. A stack of eight DVDs sat on the television, rented this morning to help pass the time. Fairing couldn’t relax enough to watch them. A packed suitcase with a change of clothes sat by the front door of his
seventeenth-floor condo of the south tower of the Windsor Towers complex. The fatal shot would not be taken from here. The angle was too high. It had, nonetheless, provided an excellent vista of the dry dock for the last three years. Using binoculars set on a tripod, Fairing had memorized every inch of the aircraft carrier and the dock.

The shot would be executed thirteen floors below, in the north-tower condo. Of course, Cooper did not own it. Whatever organization he worked for did. It had remained unoccupied for three years. Fairing had maintained it, checking it monthly. The last thirty days had been spent preparing it for Saturday’s christening. The rifle had been dismantled after the last training session. Perfectly sighted and aligned, it now sat in the closet of Fairing’s condo.

Fairing glanced at the red numerals of the digital clock on the nightstand. He rose, then reconsidered, turning on the television and turning up the volume. Let everyone think he was still here. He retrieved the Quran and placed it on top of the food and DVDs. Fairing moved through the living room, carrying his supplies in a large, brown paper bag from Keller’s Food and Drug. Jason Rodgers once worked there.
Should have stayed put, Jason
, he thought. He picked up his suitcase and the grocery bag and exited, locking the door for the last time.

In the north tower, he passed through the ornate lobby and eschewed the elevator, opting for the stairs. It was harder lugging the suitcase, but there was less chance of being seen. He ascended the stairs slowly, lugging his bag of supplies and clunking the large, wheeled suitcase behind him.

The fourth-floor corridor, like all the others, was set at an obtuse angle. Each tower was shaped in a lazy V, like a boomerang. Tonight, the plush carpeting and the thickly textured wall coverings seemed brighter, more vibrant. The wall sconces glowed hotter. His senses always worked overtime the night before a kill.

The door, like all the units in the complex, was on the left, allowing the owners a view of the water. This particular unit was a double,
spreading over 2,500 square feet. Directly opposite the front door, a large picture window framed the aircraft carrier in the flooded dry dock, awash in floodlights and final preparations.

A christening celebrated a ship’s first float. The beginning of the vessel’s journey of years on seas, both calm and turbulent. Tomorrow, Fairing’s bullet would find its target during the high-water mark of the ceremony. The ceremony would be ruined, catapulted into panic and hysteria. The ship would be cursed by the last breaths of its namesake and his son. Sailors would consider it unlucky, a ship of death. The world would remember it as tragic history. Fairing gazed at the
Hope
as if seeing it for the first time. Tonight, the lights of the city and shipyard shone only for him.

The condo was empty. He set the large rifle case on the floor under the picture window and opened it. He smiled every time he set eyes on it. A .50 caliber with a bipod and thermal infrared scope. Beside the rifle, nestled in the foam, sat two boxes of specially prepared mercury-filled M33 rounds. The mercury would cause the projectiles to disintegrate on contact. It was the same technology that had killed Kennedy. Of course, only one or two rounds would be required. Farther down the hall, in the master bedroom, Fairing had set up a bed, a prayer rug angled east to west, and a television with cable. In the kitchen, he set the bag of food and DVDs on the small table. The front bedroom contained a large wooden platform constructed of smooth pine by his own hand to exacting specifications of height and angle. Beside it lay the tools and supplies used to construct it. Discarded pieces of wood, boxes of nails, a circular saw, a T-square, level, a miter box, sawhorses, and some duct tape. The platform was identical to the one at the Camp in North Carolina.

Returning to the master bedroom, he laid his suitcase on the bed and proceeded into the bathroom. A collection of toiletries sat on the vanity along with a pile of freshly folded towels. Fairing brushed his teeth, splashed water on his face, and lay down, pulling his lips into a wide smile.

He flipped on the television. News shows and movies raced by. Nothing interested him. His mind raced, cycling over the details he’d studied over a thousand times.

The schedule had been pushed up by twenty-four hours, at least for his mother. Zanns and Oliver hadn’t been supposed to disappear until tomorrow. Rodgers had changed things slightly. Better to get out now, rather than risk capture, torture, and humiliation. Anxious and restless, Fairing moved to the hall and picked up the rifle case.

Slowly, with the careful, deliberate precision of a master craftsman, he began assembling the lethal instrument.

Jason planned on sneaking into the mansion grounds and taking out Zanns himself. He didn’t know what he would do or how he would do it. If he could cut off the head, perhaps, the entire operation would disintegrate. They were fanatics. He knew his chances were slim.

He parked the stolen Taurus in the deserted driveway. It was a simple task people took for granted every day. Nothing was simple anymore. He’d thought about parking down the road and sneaking back. But if he was spotted, someone might call the cops. Better to park in the driveway and pretend he belonged.

Before the engine stopped turning, it became apparent he would not be facing Lily Zanns tonight. The mansion was dark. The air was heavy with the promise of rain. The walls whispered Lily was gone. The place was a carcass of brick and wood rather than the glorious mansion Jason had experienced at the gala for Thomas.

He circled the mansion, hugging the exterior brick walls. If the alarm system was activated, he doubted it would capture his movement this close to the main house. At the rear, he peered
into Zanns’s study and saw the dark security panel. The system appeared to be inactive. A light near the french doors lit up the patio and most of the backyard. Jason moved back to the front, where the portico was in relative darkness.

He didn’t bother with the enormous front door, assuming it was locked. Fully clothed now in tight-fitting jeans and a T-shirt, compliments of the young couple’s suitcases in the stolen car, Jason stepped to a window along the portico. Using an elbow, he broke the glass pane, knocked an opening wide enough to reach in and unlock it. He paused, prepared to run if there was any sign he’d alerted a neighbor or someone lurking in the house. Eerie silence filled his ears. He pushed up the window and crawled in.