Countdown to Mecca (18 page)

“No,” said General Morton. “It must be done.” He looked up beseechingly at Jack. “You, of all people, know this must be done.”

“Not like this,” Jack responded. “Not with us taking first blood.”

“That's not what you've said in the past!' Morton accused him. “Why must thousands of us die first before we take action? Why can't we take action—action that must be taken—after thousands of them die? Why is it always our blood?”

“Fitting you should use that word,” Jack said. “Blood. That's where you're hitting them, isn't it?”

The other man was silent.

“What is it? Smallpox? Ebola? Anthrax?”

“Does it matter?” Morton replied. “All that matters is an end to the madness of jihad. You can't disagree with that. You said so on television!”

“My question was about justice. It was about self-defense,” Jack defended himself. “It was about heroism.”

“And what is this?” the general asked.

“What you're doing is what
they
would do, what those sick Jihadists belonging to ISIS want to do.”

“For the right reasons, though. That's a big difference, wouldn't you say?”

“No, General. Anything that would align our tactics with their tactics merits a big, fat second look.” He put his hand on Morton's shoulder. “General, you know this is wrong. You know bringing down that passenger plane was wrong. You know trying to kill us was wrong. For God's sake, stop this now before it's too late.”

Morton looked at Jack, then looked away. He didn't answer, which was his answer. Finally he all but whispered, “Get off my property.”

The four other people on the sidewalk looked at each other, and then, as if in a funeral march, moved toward the minivan. Jack was the last one to enter. He looked back at General Morton, took out one of his business cards, and tossed it on the front lawn. It looked very small, and Morton looked very alone, in front of his house.

“Tell your commanding officer I'd like an interview,” Jack said. “Anywhere, anytime.”

That, of all things, brought a small, irony-filled, smile to Morton's lips. “You know what's funny? He'd like that,” the man said softly. “He wanted that.”

Jack nodded. “Good. And, sir?” He waited until Morton met his eyes. “Another rhetorical question. What if you do this and we lose? What would the world look like then? Think about that, okay?”

“I will,” said Morton stiffly. Then under his breath, he added, “I have.”

“Good,” Jack repeated. “Call me anytime, from anywhere, but make it soon. I'd rather settle this than go public with the data and this video.” He nodded toward the man's house. “There are other lives to consider.”

Morton said nothing, waiting until the minivan, and then the silent hybrid sedan, pulled away, and disappeared around the corner. He stood there for a few moments more, then wearily retrieved the business card and trudged back to his house.

As he entered the foyer, he could hear, and partially see out the windows, that the birthday party was still in full swing. It made an incongruous dichotomy with what had just happened. Morton sighed and went to his office to return the gun to its place in the “forbidden” desk drawer.

He placed the silencer back in its red velvet place, but paused with the gun in his hand. He looked at the powerful automatic, the favorite of SEAL teams everywhere, and thought about the good it had done all over the world. He thought about all the heroes who held it and used it to accomplish honorable goals. He heard the pleading of all the evil people it had vanquished.

And then, mixing in with the begging, he heard the voices of the people on that Russian passenger plane they had brought down, growing louder and more pitiful, until it drowned out all the rest. Morton looked at the gun as if hypnotized.

Hadn't there been a rumor that the commander-in-chief had known of the December 7, 1941 attack of Pearl Harbor, but had let it happen so the entire country would support our entering World War II? In that case, weren't those heroes who died in the attack the same as the plane passengers?

No. Even if the rumors were true, the commander-in-chief simply didn't relay the information to Pearl Harbor authorities. They didn't plan, or hire someone to carry out, the attack.

The cries grew louder in Morton's head as he brought the gun up, rather than place it down in its case. He found his mouth opening and his eyes closing. He felt the bite of the muzzle against the top of his mouth's palette. The screams of the dying filled his head until he thought he'd hear nothing ever again.

“Daddy!”

Morton's eyes snapped opened.

“Where's daddy?” he heard from outside. “He said he was going to give me a big surprise, like, hours ago!”

Morton blinked, the gun jerking from his mouth. His lips twisted into a shocked grin, and a voice deep inside his head, over the now silent screams, said, “Yeah, this would have been quite a big surprise for your son, wouldn't it?”

Morton snapped the gun back into its box and slapped the lid shut with the finality of a coffin. He had done this, all of it, for them, his children. To give them a better world upon which to build. Suddenly he saw it all clearly. It would all be over in just a few days. A matter of a few dozen hours, really. It was too far along to stop.

Let the clowns and their friends try,
he thought. One way or another, Morton had done his job. He had done what he thought right. He had done it for his family, and that, at the end of the day, or at the end of the world, was always what he would do.

General Montgomery Morton closed and locked his desk drawer, then went out to hug his children. The setting up of an interview, desired by both sides, between Brooks and Hatfield, could wait until after the party.

 

25

“Kinky,” Doc said when he noticed the tag on Sammy's sleeve.

“How did you find us?” Sammy asked breathlessly.

Jack tried not to come down hard on his brother's foolhardiness. Not now. “Sammy, you knew that the safe house had cameras all over the place. Also, you didn't erase your cache. We looked where you looked.”

“And strike three,” Sol explained from the driver's seat. “All my vehicles have tracking devices that only we can follow.”

“Wow,” Sammy said. “You're harder to trip up than the FBI.”

Neither Jack, Doc, or Sol told him why.

“I'm gonna kill Ric for this,” was all Sol said.

No one was sure whether he meant it literally or figuratively.

“Did you tell Miwa to come onto the poor guy?” Jack asked Ana, in case it was the former.

“No!” Ana insisted. “She already liked him. She likes nerdy types. She did it on her own.” She looked at Sammy. “We didn't even think about crashing the party until after they both went to shower.”

“Did you even have a plan?” Jack pointedly asked.

“Of course I had a plan!” Sammy answered resentfully. “When we saw on Mrs. Morton's social media page that she was having a big birthday party for her son, I realized that nobody would question a party clown. It was too good to pass up. By the time I realized that, the party was just about to start. I knew that if we waited and went through the chain of command, we'd miss it.”

“So you just took off on impulse,” Jack countered.

“Yeah,” Sammy said proudly. “I suppose you've never gone by your gut?”

“Sure, when there was just me at risk,” he said with a telling glance at Ana.

“That was my choice,” she insisted.

“Boys, boys … girl,” Doc said from the backseat. “You can have your pissing contest later. We got bigger fish to fry right now. And data to analyze? Data Sammy and Ana got for us?”

Jack mentally kicked himself. “Right. Sorry, Sammy,” he quickly apologized. “These guys could tell you, I was so worried when I found out you were missing.”

“That's true,” Doc said.

Sammy's face shifted from defensiveness to surprise. “Yeah, all right. I'm sorry, too, Jack. It's just that I thought, carpe diem and all that.”

“And
vestis facit virum,
” Doc winked.

Ana laughed. The others gazed blankly.

“Clothes make the man,” she chuckled, rocking her thumb between her getup and Sammy's.

Everyone smiled at the tension breaker, after which Jack asked to see what they recovered. Ana may have actually blushed, but it was impossible to tell with the clown makeup. Still, she shoved one arm down her pants, rooted around, and her fingers emerged with both a wallet-size, armored, orange, black, and silver hard drive as well as two small flash drives.

She held out all three to Jack, but he waved them toward Doc. “I wouldn't know what to do with them.”

Ana gave them to Doc, who winked at her disguised face.

“So, from the beginning,” Jack said to them. “Tell me.”

“I—
we
thought we might be able to find out what Firebird was, exactly,” Sammy said. “So I came up with the party clown gambit. No way I was going back to my place—”

“Smart move,” Sol said.

Sammy beamed.

“So we went to a place I know on Haight,” Ana said, “one that caters to the fetish market.”

“I know the place,” Sol commented. “Fairly close by. One of my mob buddies owns it.”

“There are clown fetishists?” Doc asked.

“There are all kinds of men with all kinds of interests,” Ana said. “We cobbled these together from several costumes, actually.”

“Anyway, we put on the makeup, suited up, and still got to the party in plenty of time,” Sammy said.

“I snuck in while Sammy performed,” Ana told them.

The tale she told—Anastasia breaking into the house while Sammy did his clown act—was inspired, completely irresponsible, and criminal, all in one big bite.

It was also vintage Sammy. Jack could cite a dozen different episodes from childhood where Sammy had gone off with some older kid to pull some prank. He hadn't been a bad kid, but at times he seemed to have exactly zero judgment. When he had a nutty or ambitious goal in mind, he was a car without brakes.

“Hopefully, it will have been worth it,” Sammy said. “Maybe one of these things'll tell us what Firebird really is.”

“Morton said it wouldn't,” Jack reminded them.

“But he has no good reason to tell the truth at the moment, either,” Sol added.

Sammy had frowned at his half brother, but brightened when Sol spoke. He lunged forward like an eager-to-please sheepdog so he could better engage the mobster.

“So why don't you send a bunch of your guys in there and beat a confession out of old Monty?” When no one replied for a moment, Sammy sat back defensively. “I mean, you do that all the time, don't you?”

Jack gave Sol a look, which said, “If you want to tell him everything, that's up to you.”

“Yes,” Sol said evenly, “when one of our own betrays us, we'll have a friendly little ‘talk.' But it would be a different story to confront a highly ranked, decorated member of the U.S. military that way, especially on American soil.”

“Oh,” said Sammy. “Yeah, right. Of course.”

Jack exhaled through his nostrils, trying to think of something to say that wouldn't kick-start his half brother's defense mechanisms, when Sol put them all in their place.

“And, on that note, I think we should table this discussion until we arrive back at a location where it is totally safe to speak of such matters.”

“Wouldn't you know if your car was bugged?” Sammy asked. “Aren't there safeguards?”

“You brought several items with you that haven't been vetted,” he pointed out.

Sammy shrunk back like that same sheepdog who had just had his nose whacked with a rolled up newspaper.

“Speaking of my security arrangements,” Sol concluded for the moment, “I would like to inform both of you that if you even so much as think about doing anything as bold or cavalier or reckless as this again—take your pick—your safe house will instantly become a dungeon. And I can assure you, we are very good at dungeons.”

The two clowns looked at him, one big red mouth smiling incongruously, the other frowning as it should have been.

“What you don't know,” Sol said, “is whether there are eyes on the general's house. Maybe he has private security. Maybe the FBI or the CIA or the SFPD has drawn the same conclusions we have and are watching him. Maybe they decided to tail us. And you're not exactly inconspicuous, even with smoked windows.”

“I thought that's why you took the circuitous route you're taking,” Doc said. “Stopping at lights, racing through others, going up and down hills so you can check the rearview mirror.”

“Exactly,” Sol said. “They were as underprepared as our team on this one.” He looked at Sammy and Ana in that mirror. “Do we understand one another?”

“Yes, sir,” Sammy said, his Marine training taking over.

“Understood,” Ana agreed.

And then they all fell somberly quiet until they were back at the safe house again. The clowns' darkened moods were broken by the delighted reaction of Miwa and Ritu, who excitedly laughed and talked and made fun of the makeup and outfits.

“Oh, you should get out of those things!” Ritu chided. “You will attract attention.”

“So we've been told,” Ana replied.

“Yes,” said Miwa. “You should take a shower. The shower is very nice!”

She looked over at Ric knowingly, but Ric only looked at Sol with a combination of apology and a willingness to take any reprimand required. When the Asian girl saw the look Ric and Sol shared, she quickly added, “I will help, Ana, if you need me somewhere else.”

As the girls and a slumping Sammy retired, Sol glared at his assistant. “I don't have to say anything, do I?”