Threatcon Delta (7 page)

Kealey looked up. “Jon, this is gonna sound cold, but I’m done with all this.”

“So you’ve told me. Then why’d you come?”

“An old friend asked me to. And he sent a helicopter.”

“I’ll send you to Texas in a jet,” Harper said with a grin. The smile faded quickly. “You knew the old friend would ask you to do more. I repeat: Why did you come?”

Kealey thought for a moment. “I honestly don’t know. I’ve got my pension and I liked it where I was. Everything you’re telling me—it’s nothing new. Washington has known the cartels were making a push into Texas and has done next to nothing to seriously amp up border security. Washington has known that terrorists were looking to hook up with drug czars for years and has done next to nothing to infiltrate the cartels. No HUMINT where we need it.”

“Agreed.”

“Now I’m supposed to fix that?”

“DEA has run a few names up the flagpole but no one with Middle Eastern savvy, except you. If you don’t go, we may just be sending agents to an ambush.”

“Jesus, Jon. Guilt?”

“I have to try,” Harper said. “We’ve got one, possibly two nasty men within our borders. Finding the doctor could lead us to Hernandez.”

“Do you think he’s still here as well?”

“We don’t know,” Harper admitted. “What we don’t know is staggering, in fact. The surveillance of Hernandez was hazy. He’s not stupid. He traveled by night and kept to wooded areas. He apparently moved around by tunnels as well. For all we know, the meeting was about getting him to Iran for sanctuary. There may be a drug war percolating in the south. Mexico is not so well informed. But here’s something my gut and the circumstantial evidence tells me: We have a perfect storm to take out two monsters.”

“Texas has FBI, DHS people. Experienced ones.”

“They do. Top people. They want to be set loose.”

“But they aren’t getting the go-ahead,” Kealey said.

Harper gave him a look that said, Of course not. A mob of angry, vengeful agents standing shoulder to shoulder with bayonets bared, so to speak, would be spotted by the kind of expert bodyguard who killed Yerby. This mission required HUMINT by someone who knew how to track and keep his distance—or move in for the takedown.

Kealey sighed miserably. Allison had told him, as a psychiatrist—before they scuttled all kinds of professional ethics and busted a few of the Commandments to boot—that Kealey found it difficult to say no since doing so could result in death. That was the burden of being a peacekeeper in any capacity.

“How much time do I have to kill?”

“Estimated time of departure, an hour and a half. Thank you, Ryan.”

Kealey waved it off, not looking in Harper’s eyes.

Harper went to an office and left Kealey with one of the laptops. Kealey transferred the funds for the house to Ellie’s account and considered calling Allison. He decided against that, too. She was as much a part of his former life as Harper was. He cared for her but he did not want to immerse himself again emotionally. Agreeing to take on this mission—which he had, even though he hadn’t—was enough of a step in the wrong direction.

Kealey went to the small officers’ mess a short walk from the JIB. It was a pleasant walk in the late afternoon, reminding him of how many tarmacs he had crossed in so many cities over too many years.

He chose a Cobb salad, sat in a corner, and watched as men and women began filing in for early dinner. He remembered when officers seemed so much older than he was. Now Kealey was at least in the upper twentieth percentile of age.

And most of these guys don’t have to get physical the way I do,
he thought as he looked over the rainbow mix of in shape, slightly out of shape, and some who would never make it through boot camp today. They also weren’t mostly white men. Maybe half of them were. The rest were women and a rainbow of races. It seemed as if the world had come to Kealey. Yet here he was, ready to go out and fight it again. He wondered how many of these people identified themselves as hyphenates? Asian-American, Latino-American, Gay-American, Muslim-American. There was a time, even at the height of the “melting pot” in the early twentieth century, when someone was American first. You were Irish-American or Italian-American pretty much just one day a year, when there was a parade. He wondered how many of these people identified themselves as Americans first. He wondered if it would be politically incorrect—or even perceived as “hate”—if he dared to ask those questions aloud.

It was a pretty good salad, though. Better than the prefab-tasting meals in “his” day.

He didn’t mind waiting in the mess hall but a couple of cafeteria workers were hanging Christmas decorations before the real dinner rush started. The scraping of ladders edged closer to Kealey’s seat until he realized they were probably going to displace him and left.
At least they waited till December to decorate,
Kealey thought. He especially loathed the new trend of decorating for Christmas even before Halloween.

He didn’t have a badge to go walking around the base, so he returned to the JIB. He watched aircraft of all stripes coming and going.

This mission has got to be it,
he decided. The last one. He was too jaded to keep going. He did not tell himself he needed rest, because he knew too many people who grabbed some premature rest from a bomb or a bullet. But he did need peace. Like a mystic who had seen too much horror in the world, too many territorial squabbles on the world stage and on the political stage, he needed to find something new sitting on that mountaintop in Connecticut. Next Christmas, he promised himself, he was going to spend the day flying in his own little plane over his own secluded home.

He stopped still at the thought, just before he was going to enter the JIB. He whipped out his cell phone and called Harper.

“Don’t tell me you got lost on base,” Harper answered.

“It’s Christmas,” Kealey said.

“You’ve got a couple weeks yet—”

“Jon, it’s Christmas in Texas, too.”

There was silence on Harper’s end. Then Kealey heard him wrench a door open and start running.

S
an Antonio is one of the oldest settlements in the Southwest. The Payaya Indians, who lived along the San Antonio River, were among the first indigenous peoples encountered by Spanish settlers in the region. The colonists constructed forts, trading posts, and Catholic missions in the eighteenth century—including the famed Mission San Antonio de Valero. Today, this building is better known as the Alamo, the Spanish word for the cottonwood trees that grew there. American settlers wrested San Antonio from Mexico in 1835, and the following year the Republic of Texas was founded. The Mexicans retook San Antonio twice in 1842 but each conquest was short-lived. Texas was granted statehood in 1845.

Clean, sunny, and a mecca for tourists, San Antonio is the jewel of Texas, even though the inhabitants of Dallas, Houston, and other great Texas cities demur. The disagreement is polite, however, since it is still a treasure of the Lone Star State.

Dr. Hanif al-Shenawi did not know or care about any of this. He had never been to Texas and had no interest in it; he was here in the mosque on San Pedro Avenue for one reason, and it was not to pray.

The short, balding fifty-six-year-old sat in a room that had been constructed beneath the
mihrab,
the semicircular niche in the wall that faces the direction of the Sacred House in Mecca, the direction in which all worshipers should face. The room was used to store prayer books and had been constructed after the mosque was completed. The imam and his followers never anticipated committing or abetting acts of sedition against the United States. But to many of them it was, after all, only a host nation and not a home. Mecca was their home, and the mosque was its representative on any shore.

This was a new experience for al-Shenawi, who had never been compelled to go into hiding anywhere. Not in Yemen, where he was sought by undercover Israeli operatives for organizing local radicals into hit squads; not in Egypt, where he had recruited military marksmen for assignments overseas, right from under the noses of their secular commanders. In those and many, many other instances the physician had been able to make getaways in ambulances, by using disguises, or by slipping into an embassy. He not only held a passport for his native country but also forged documents for Chechnya, Turkey, and Spain.

The doctor lay on the cot that had been brought downstairs for his comfort. Food and drink had been provided and sat on a tray table beside him. The imam had been cordial if not friendly; so many clergymen did not like being drawn into political matters. But it was a political world and theirs was a politicized faith. There was no escaping the demands of the modern world.

The irony was that al-Shenawi was not here for his own safety. He was in the mosque simply to be here, in this city, at this time. His job was to remain hidden until the action was concluded.

Lying here with books and dissertations he had brought with him for entertainment, al-Shenawi felt like he did when he was a student at the School of Medicine of the University of Tehran before it became the Tehran University of Medical Sciences and Health Services. Once again he was in a small, mostly airless room, sitting on an uncomfortable bed, reading medical texts and drinking water, eating bread and fruit—which was all he could afford at the time. Now, it was actually a pleasant experience because he knew it was only temporary. Al-Shenawi did not sit here and think, I am an honored physician to the leaders of a nation, I should receive first-class accommodations. Instead, he was reminded of how far he had come, the son of a bus driver who had surpassed his modest ambition to become a doctor and practice in his home city of Zanjan.

He was content.

He perused a text about the latest developments in laproscopy.
Soon,
he thought,
medicine will merge with religion.
Except perhaps in the matters of accident and trauma. Instead of minimally intrusive surgery, doctors would heal without entering the body, by laying on hands and manipulating tissue. In the future there would be very little distinction between doctors and clerics. Perhaps if patients learned to self-heal, they would need neither.

The doctor shut his eyes. He was tired, jet-lagged, exhausted. He reclined and savored the passive part he was about to play in events that would shape the world.

The doctor smiled a little. The fact that his role was passive made this even sweeter. All he had to do was be seen arriving in this city and in this mosque, but not leaving. All he had been required to do was grab the attention—and the eyes—of law enforcement. The only other thing on his itinerary—and this was more a nod to decency than anything else—was not gloat when he finally walked through the front door of the mosque.

T
he woman arrived in San Antonio in a station wagon driven by a man she did not know.

Buddy Anthony, the thick, middle-aged man plumped behind the wheel, had never met nor heard of his passenger. There was no reason he should have. His one-person car service had been engaged online in Phoenix to make a pickup in Southern California and drive to San Antonio. He was given half of his fee in cash by an agent in Arizona, the motel rooms were paid in advance, and he would receive the other half of his fee when his passenger arrived in San Antonio.

The fee was exactly Buddy’s asking price, one thousand dollars with a hundred-dollar surcharge for higher gas prices. There was no haggling—which was unusual. And a very generous tip was promised.

Buddy’s passenger was uncommonly quiet. She did not eat with him when they stopped for the night in Gage, New Mexico. She went right to her room at the Motel Pyramid and did not emerge, at least while he was awake in the room next door, until the following morning. The woman was young and attractive, not rude or distant; just someone who kept to herself. He tried engaging her at the start of the journey, telling her the always reliable story of his brother Ricky who lived on a boat in Connecticut—even when it was stored in a friend’s garage during the winter. She didn’t bite. She didn’t even nibble.

Which was fine with Buddy. He listened to his music, chatted occasionally on the phone with his wife, who never asked whom he was driving or where—she was too busy doing needlepoint and selling kitten pillows online—and enjoyed the open, uncrowded highways. It made him feel like the rebel he thought he was back in the 1970s when he hot-rodded and then motorbiked his way through the desert and across the unpopulated Southwest. He never wondered what his life would have been like had he joined his friends in their car and bike clubs. Most of those guys were in prison or dead. No, his two daughters were grown and happily married and he was okay with his life, with being his own boss, with the occupation he loved as a young man still available to him.

They arrived in San Antonio in the early evening. He dropped his passenger at Main Plaza, where it looked like there was some kind of Christmas shindig going on. She paid him in cash, then walked over to a pushcart selling snacks. She bought a pretzel as Buddy fingered through the hundred-dollar bills. There were two extra. That was a handsome tip.

Whoever these nameless, faceless people were who hired him, Buddy pulled away hoping they’d need him a few more times this year.

Though he had opened the door for the woman and then checked the backseat to make sure she hadn’t left anything, Buddy did not look under the passenger seat. If he had, the vendor was watching and things would have happened a little sooner.

Because Buddy was not so diligent, Abejide did not have to hurry after making her purchase and walking away from the vendor.

 

 

Plaza de las Islas, or Main Plaza, is one of the oldest features of the city of San Antonio. Located a walkable half mile from the Alamo and a stone’s throw from the San Antonio River, it was planned by its Spanish founders to be the heart of the city, and placed immediately to the east of the white stone San Fernando Cathedral, some of whose walls are now the oldest standing structure in Texas. The founders hoped, of course, that this arrangement would keep the state of the citizenry’s souls foremost in their minds as they gathered and socialized in the plaza.

A hundred and sixty years later the dark red sandstone of the Bexar County Courthouse was added south of the square across Dolorosa, and gradually other lots nearby grew buildings and lost them and replaced them according to the style of each era. After some decades of disuse as San Antonio’s suburbs grew apace with the rest of America’s, the plaza was reclaimed in 2006 by urban planners who saw its potential for outdoor events and a cheerful marketplace. It was refurbished to be an extension of the life gathering in the new restaurants, bars, and hotels along the nearby River Walk. Now the city puts together a calendar of events for each month of the year with activities designed to bring together the diverse cultures and peoples of San Antonio, from music festivals to food fairs. But the city saves the best events, some would argue, for last.

Every year on the day after Thanksgiving, over a hundred thousand Christmas lights of all colors are turned on along the River Walk. Festooned on branches and storefronts, they turn San Antonio into a kind of candy land. Main Plaza erects a Christmas tree in front of the cathedral, nearly as tall as the church itself, bursting with red, yellow, blue, and purple lights. Holiday market vendors are invited to set up temporary shops, and on the first Saturday of December chairs are arranged in the plaza for the free “Silver Bells” concert. The performers vary from youth orchestras to mariachi bands but Santa Claus, in person, is there every year.

Today was the first Saturday of December. Kids were still running around the shops but the adults had mostly taken their seats, waiting for the concert to start. A wave of applause suddenly swept through the crowd: Mayor Isobel Garcia, the youngest Hispanic mayor in the nation, had just walked up from her SUV on East Commerce Street. She, her twin sons, and her husband, Manuel, a patent attorney, were taking their seats in the first row. Mayor Garcia waved and smiled and shook the hands of everyone seated near her.

No one noticed the young black woman with a bag slung over her shoulder. No one paid attention to the snacks vendor facing East Commerce Street, who suddenly moved his cart to the east, opposite the direction in which Buddy’s car was headed. When surveillance images from the plaza were studied later, he would just be a man who was moving his snacks closer to the high school brass band waiting to perform. Surveillance would also find nothing unusual when the vendor, leaning into his cart to get up some speed, pulled a cell phone from his hip. A number had been programmed into the memory of the phone. He pretended to make a call, laughing as he walked, watching and waiting until Buddy’s car was just passing another crowd of performers waiting for the concert to start. Then he moved the phone to the side of his head away from the cameras, slipping a thumb between his ear and the phone.

The ensuing blast ripped the station wagon in half, blowing both ends nearly fifty feet from one another. It sent nails, pieces of the car, glass from the windows, and then bodies and body parts flying in the direction of the plaza and the cathedral. The explosion and the ground-shaking roar punched a crater in the street, in the day, and in the lives of everyone who survived.