Dead or Alive (90 page)

“John!”

“Here!”

“He’s got something, a bomb, a grenade ... something.”

Another object arced up into the air. This time Jack got a better look at it. Pipe bomb. Jack boosted himself up onto the lip of the container, then sidestepped to the front and began edging across the containers, heel to toe. On the starboard side, he saw Clark’s head appear above the container’s rim.

Balanced on the front rim, Jack peered into each container, gun tracking for movement. Another pipe bomb arced through the air and clattered into a tank. Then another.

He leaped to the next tank, teetered, then regained his balance and leaped again. His foot slipped, and he slammed chest-first into the fourth container’s rim. On the starboard side, Clark was up on the rim and coming to meet him.

“Fuses are going, John,” Jack called.

He pushed himself up, hooked his leg on the rim, got to his knees.

“You see him?” Clark called, taking a step.

A torso popped up in one of the containers, fired a shot at Clark, then ducked out of sight again.

“Fuck it,” Jack muttered, and started running, arms extended like a tightrope walker’s. He was crossing the sixth container when Purnoma Salim appeared over the rim of the eighth tank and tumbled into the next. Then he was up again, turning toward Clark, who was in mid-leap between two rims. Purnoma raised his gun. Still running, Jack brought his own gun around, left arm still extended for balance, and started firing, trying to keep the sites on center mass. Purnoma went down. Jack stopped firing. Two containers behind him, there came a crump. The container stack trembled.
Crump.

“John, get off!” Jack yelled, and kept running.

The rim shifted beneath Jack’s feet, and he stumbled sideways into the container. He saw the white curve of a propane tank rushing up to meet him. He turned his body sideways and took the impact on his arm and shoulder, then slid down the curve and found himself pinned against the container wall.

Somewhere in the terminal, an alarm Klaxon sounded.

“Jack?” Clark yelled.

“I’m okay!”

He heard a hissing sound. Looked around. Directly below him, from beneath the bottom edge of the tank, he saw a yellow glow.
Aw, shit.

“John, move, go!”

One tank over, another crump.

Jack rolled onto his back and sat up, then rolled again so he was straddling the tank. He stood up, looked around. Nowhere to go. Fifty-foot fall on all sides, the nearest ladder another twenty feet away.
Pilothouse.
Jack sprinted down the tank, then leaped. He grabbed the overhang, swung his leg up, hooked his ankle, then chinned himself and rolled onto the pilothouse roof.

Jack rolled over, looked down. From inside the tank came the sounds of sloshing. The odor struck him. His eyes started watering.

“John!” he shouted.

“Yeah, port side!”

“You smell that?”

“Yeah. Move your ass.”

Jack got up, sprinted across the roof, found the superstructure ladder, then started down. Clark was waiting at the bottom. Jack asked, “What the hell is that?”

“Chlorine gas, Jack.”

 

 

 

F
orty minutes later, wet and exhausted, they reached their car and headed back down Terminal Avenue. In the rearview mirror they could see clusters of flashing red and blue lights from one end of the terminal to the other. Knowing their presence would create more problems than it would solve, they’d gone over
Losan
’s side, stroked to shore a few hundred yards away, then picked their way back through the terminal, dodging fire trucks and cop cars until they reached the tank farm.

Clark got back on the 664 and headed northeast into Newport News, where they found an all-night diner. Jack dialed The Campus. Hendley answered. “This shit in Newport News ... That you?”

“It’s already on the news?”

“Every channel. What happened?”

Jack recounted the events, then asked, “How bad is it?”

“Could be worse. So far, only thirty or so terminal workers at the hospital. No deaths. What were they, what kind of tanks?”

“Propane, I think, about fifty of them. They only got off half a dozen pipe bombs, but we’re betting they had a lot more in their backpacks.”

“They’re both dead?”

“Yes.”

“I need you to head to the airport. We’ve got you booked on a three-thirty back here.”

“What’s going on?”

“We got word from Chavez and Caruso: They got Hadi, and he’s talking.”

H
ENDLEY AND GRANGER were waiting with a Suburban when they touched down at Dulles. “Where’re we heading?” Clark asked.

“Andrews. Gulfstream waiting,” Hendley replied. “We’ve got gear and clothes already aboard. First things first: the ship—
Losan
. You were right, Jack. The Salims had two dozen pipe bombs. On the manifest there were forty-six propane tanks listed, all defective and empty, and heading back from Senegal to the manufacturer, Tarquay Industries out of Smithfield.”

“Well, we know they weren’t empty,” Clark said.

“Right. They won’t be sure for a couple days, but the Hazmat teams out there are guessing there was a couple hundred gallons of ammonia or sodium hypochlorite in each tank.”

“Bleach,” Jack said.

“Yeah, looks like. Common everyday bleach. Mix them together and you get chlorine gas. You do the math and we’re talking about at least thirty-five tons of chlorine gas precursors. As it stands, only a couple hundred gallons got mixed. They’ve got it contained.”

“Holy shit,” Jack said. “Thirty-five tons. What kind of damage could that have done?”

Granger answered. “Depends a lot on wind, humidity, and temperature, but we could have been looking at thousands of dead. Thousands more with skin and mucosa burns, pulmonary edema, blindness ... It’s ugly shit.”

Hendley said, “Next piece of business. Chavez and Caruso grabbed Hadi.”

“What about the others in his group?” Clark asked.

“Dead in the Rocinha. That might have had something to do with it, but once Hadi started talking, he didn’t stop for a while.”

“We’ve got him?”

“No, they bundled him up like a Thanksgiving turkey and dropped him at a police station with a note attached. He’ll never see the outside of a Brazilian prison.”

“We were mostly right about Hadi. He was a longtime URC courier, and got tapped for the Paulinia operation at the last minute. His last courier job—Chicago to Vegas to San Francisco—he stopped on the way to visit an old friend.”

Hendley’s expression answered their next question before either Clark or Jack could ask it. “You’re shitting us?”

“No. The Emir came in on a Dassault Falcon from Sweden about a month ago. He’s been living outside Vegas ever since.”

“And Hadi knew where—”

“Yeah.”

“It’s bullshit,” Jack said. “He came here for a reason. The Paulinia thing, the
Losan ...
Ding is right. Shoes are starting to drop.”

“Agreed,” Granger said. “That’s why you’re going to go snatch him up. Chavez and Caruso are already in the air. They’ll touch down about an hour after you.”

“So we grab him and drop him on the FBI’s doorstep?” Clark said.

“Not right away, and not until we’ve had a chance to wring him out.”

“That could take some time.”

“We’ll see.”

This Hendley said with a smile that Jack could describe only as slightly evil.

 

 

 

A
t Andrews, the Gulfstream was prepped and ready, the door open and stairs extended for them. Jack and Clark collected their gear from the back of the Suburban, shook hands with Hendley and Granger, then boarded the plane. The copilot met them at the door. “Sit wherever you want.” He pulled up the stairs, swung the door shut, and locked it down. “We’re taxiing in five, wheels up in ten. Help yourself to the fridge and minibar.”

Jack and Clark made their way to the rear of the cabin. Sitting in the last row was a familiar face: Dr. Rich Pasternak.

“Gerry didn’t tell me much,” Pasternak said. “Please tell me I’m flying across the country in the dead of night for a good goddamned reason.”

Clark smiled. “Nothing’s written in stone, Doc, but I think it’ll be worth your time.”

 

 

W
ith the four-time-zone difference and a four-hour-and-twenty-minute flight, they technically landed at North Las Vegas airport only twenty minutes after leaving Andrews. It was a phenomenon Jack understood, of course, but thinking too much about the surreal flexibility of the temporal world could give a man headaches.

Between catnaps he and Clark had dissected the
Losan
mission, talked baseball, and rummaged through the fridge and minibar. For his part, Pasternak sat in his seat, occasionally dozing but mostly staring into space. A lot on the doctor’s mind, Jack knew. The man had lost a brother on that ugly September morning, and now here he was eight years later, flying across the country to perhaps meet the man who’d planned it all. But then, “meet” wasn’t quite the right word, was it? What Pasternak had in store for the Emir was something Jack wouldn’t wish on anyone. Almost anyone.

The plane came to a stop, and the engines spooled down. Jack, Clark, and Pasternak collected their personal belongings and headed for the door. The copilot came out of the cockpit, opened the door, and unfurled the stairs. “Doctor, you want us to send your gear along to ground transportation?”

“No, we’ll wait for it.”

On the tarmac, Clark asked Pasternak, “What gear?”

“Tools of the trade, Mr. Clark.”

Pasternak said it without a hint of a smile.

 

 

 

A
shuttle bus dropped them at ground transportation, and ten minutes later they were in a Ford minivan heading south on Rancho Drive. They pulled into McCarran’s short-term parking and found a spot. Jack dialed Dominic’s cell; he answered on the second ring. Jack said, “You’re down?”

“Five minutes ago. Where you at?”

“We’ll pull up to arrivals.”

 

 

C
havez and Dominic threw their bags into the cargo area and climbed in. There were greetings all around. Chavez said, “Damn, John, never thought I’d see you behind the wheel of a soccer-mom mobile.”

“Smart-ass.”

Clark pulled out and headed for the highway.

 

 

I
t took only fifteen minutes, but soon enough they were entering the upmarket development. Following Chavez’s directions, Clark drove by the house without pausing, then turned the corner and headed back to the subdivision’s entrance. At the stop sign, he put the van in park and shut off his headlights.

“We got about two hours before sunrise and no intel on what’s inside, right, Ding?”

“Hadi saw the garage, the kitchen, and the living room. That was it.”

“Alarm systems?”

“He didn’t remember seeing any keypads. He knows for sure the Emir has one bodyguard, a guy named Tariq. Regular-looking guy, medium height, brown hair, but his hands are all burned. Hadi didn’t know anything about that.”

“So two inside for sure,” Clark said. “It’s probably been a while since the Emir did any soldiering, but assume they’re both badasses. Questions?”

There were none.

“We’ll go quiet in the side garage door, then into the kitchen. Two teams. Anybody see any need to mix things up?”

Chavez said, “Nope.”

Jack noticed Dominic drop his head slightly and look out the side window. Clark asked, “Dom?”

“We did okay together. I kinda fucked up a bit, but we got it straightened out, right?”

Ding nodded. “Good to go.”

“Okay,” Clark said. “Two teams, standard house clearing. We need all the live bodies we can get our hands on, but the Emir’s our primary target. It’d be best if we don’t fire a shot. A neighborhood like this and we’d have cops in five minutes. Doc, I’m going to ask you to stay here and man the fort. We’ll call you when we’re done. If there’s room in the garage, pull right in. If not, in the driveway.”

 

 

 

T
hey parked the van at the end of the block and walked the remaining distance. The sky was clear, with a full moon; the air was cold, the kind of cold only a nighttime desert can produce.

Clark took the lead, walking up the driveway, through the side gate to the side door. The lock was a turn-knob, so he had it picked and open in forty seconds. They filed into the garage. Dominic, bringing up the rear, eased the door shut. The garage was empty. No car. They stood still for a full minute, listening and letting their eyes adjust to the relative darkness.