Chapter 15
T
obey hadn't planned to get distracted, but it was difficult not to once he was in the sprawling sporting goods store that was one of the mall's anchors. There was just so much to look at.
The store carried every sort of camping equipment anybody could ever need, a vast array of fishing gear, bows and arrows, exercise apparatus, balls, bats, nets, shoes, boots, waders, camo clothing, trail mix, granola, water purifiers, and around the outside walls were dozens of glass-fronted cases filled with edged weapons and guns.
Bowie knives, skinning knives, axes, hatchets, and personal defense blades. Revolvers, semi-autos, shotguns, hunting rifles, AR-15s, replicas of famous guns from the Colt .45 Peacemaker to the Winchester '73 and the Sharps Big Fifty. Calibers from .22 on up. Shelves and shelves of boxed ammunition.
For a guy like Tobey, it was a little slice of heaven.
In the meantime, he knew he needed to get over to the jewelry store and buy Ashley's engagement ring, but he found himself looking at a display of beautifully made 1911s and had trouble tearing himself away.
The guy working behind this section of counter came over to him and said, “The classic, iconic handgun of the twentieth century, just like the Peacemaker was the classic of the nineteenth.”
“You'll get no argument about either of those things from me, amigo,” Tobey said.
“You want a closer look at any of them?”
Tobey looked at the prices on the guns, sighed, and shook his head. He had enough money for that ring, but not if he spent it on some fancy 1911.
“No, I guess not,” he said regretfully.
“Come on,” the salesman urged. “What are you gonna spend it on that's nicer than one of these babies?”
Tobey thought about Ashley. Guns were nice, but he was in love with her and always would be.
“I've got something in mind,” he said. “Sorry.”
“Well, come on back any time. We'll be here.”
Tobey nodded and turned to head for the jewelry store, where he planned to spend the money he'd saved on the true love of his life.
* * *
Habib had stopped Dave Dixon's heart so quickly that when he withdrew the blade from the wound, only a small amount of blood welled out to stain the American's uniform shirt.
Carefully, Habib lowered the body to the floor, sliding it down the wall until Dixon was in a sitting position. Habib wiped the blood from the knife with the inside of the man's jacket, then put the weapon away.
He had to move quickly now. One of the mall's maintenance workers could come in and ruin everything, as the guard almost had.
Habib started moving the stacks of crates around. He needed to create an open space big enough that Dixon's corpse would fit into it. Once he had done that, he could move the crates back in front of the dead man to hide the grim sight.
Urgency nibbled at the edges of Habib's brain as he worked. Everything had gone perfectly until now, and this glitch in his plan annoyed him.
Of course, he had known from the beginning that he couldn't control everything, couldn't account for every possibility. At some point, like it or not, he would have to trust to luck.
Luck was sometimes good, sometimes bad, but always capricious and unpredictable. Habib had to count on his swift wits and determination to overcome any setbacks.
Just like he was doing now. In a matter of minutes he had fashioned a hiding place for the corpse. He pulled the dead man away from the wall and got behind him, so there was no chance he would get blood on his own uniform as he grasped Dixon under the arms and lifted him. Grunting with the effort, he picked up the limp weight and hauled it backward into the little space behind the crates.
He stretched Dixon out along the wall and rolled the body on its left side to face the cinder blocks. Then, holding Dixon in place, he used his foot to shove one of the heavy crates against the body to keep it from rolling back. Another crate and then another formed a barrier. Habib began to stack them again.
A few minutes later, he was finished, and no one had disturbed him. If anyone glanced into the storage room now, all they would see were the crates of janitorial supplies.
No one would suspect that a dead man was hidden behind them.
Or a small arsenal of automatic weapons.
Beads of sweat covered Habib's face. It was cool back here in the areas of the mall off limits to the public, but you couldn't prove that by him. He heaved a sigh of relief as he sleeved some of the drops off his face. The speedy recovery he had made from this potential disaster told him that Allah was still on his side, still guiding his actions with the divine hand of vengeance.
Leaving the body hidden there worried him, but he couldn't stay and watch the place. He had other things that had to be done if the plan was to go forward. He eased the door open, checked the service corridor, and finding it empty, stepped out and pulled the door closed behind him.
A moment later, he was out in the mall again. He walked toward the bank of escalators in the center of the mall, and when he reached them, he looked up and saw Mahmoud Assouri standing on the second level, resting his hands on the black plastic top of the clear glass railing.
Habib's eyes met Mahmoud's. Slowly, Habib nodded his head just a little. The gesture was so small, so commonplace, so innocent, that no one would notice it.
Mahmoud smiled slightly, but that was his only reaction. He turned away from the railing and disappeared from Habib's angle of sight.
Habib didn't have to see his second-in-command to know that Mahmoud was carrying out the next step in the plan.
And none of the Americans had any idea what was about to happen.
* * *
An instinct for trouble was maybe the most important quality a good cop could have.
Jake Connelly had learned that over the years, and his own instinct was honed to a keen edge. He could pick out a troublemaker a mile away.
Because of that, he was suspicious as the gray-haired woman approached him in the home furnishings store and asked, “Could I help you, sir?”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “I came to get a set of these.”
He held up his phone to show her the picture of the curtains Adele had sent him to buy. He didn't want a lot of other stuff. No shams or flounces or whatever the hell they were called. Just plain, old-fashioned curtains.
“Oh, those are very nice,” the woman said as she looked at the webpage Jake's phone displayed. “And they're on sale today, so you can get a good deal on them.”
“Yeah, that's what my wife said.”
“She sent you to get them?” the woman asked knowingly.
“That's right.”
“Well, I'll be sure and take good care of you, then.”
Jake figured that meant she planned on selling him a bunch of things he didn't need. She was going to be disappointed, though. He was no pushover for a sales pitch.
“They're right over here,” she said, turning and pointing. “You'd better not waste any time getting them. Those curtains are a popular item, especially today.”
“Thanks,” Jake said, trying to sound sincere instead of surly. He hated to ask for any favors, but he went on, “Maybe you could show me . . .”
The woman smiled and said, “Of course.”
The aisles were crowded, just like every other place in the mall. Jake wasn't sure why she had singled him out to approach, unless it was because he looked a little lost and she took him for an easy mark.
Or maybe she actually was trying to be helpful, he told himself. It wasn't easy to break through the shell of cynicism that years on the job had given him, but he knew, logically, that there were still some nice people in the world.
Just because he hadn't dealt with them very often didn't mean they weren't out there.
It could have been worse, he mused. The parking lot was crowded, but he'd been lucky and had come up on a fairly close spot just as a shopper was backing his car out. Jake had waited and then swooped in, beating a car coming from the other direction to the punch.
Inside the mall, pedestrian traffic was heavy, but people were moving along with a minimum of standing around. They were bent on their errands as much as he was, he supposed.
“Here are those curtains,” the saleslady said. “What color do you need?”
Jake's brows drew down in a frown. Adele hadn't said anything about the color.
He held up the phone again and said, “This one, I guess. The one in the picture.”
“Well, this style comes in five different colors. If you look at the webpage, you can see the drop-down menu where it asks you to pick a color if you're ordering online.”
“You mean you can order these online?”
“Of course. You can get any merchandise in our stores from our website, and other options, besides.”
Then why in the hell hadn't Adele just ordered what she wanted and had it delivered to the house, he asked himself. Why send him out into this . . . this hellhole of good cheer?
Maybe she just wanted a break from him, he realized. He supposed he
did
tend to hover a little. Or maybe she honestly thought it would do him some good to get out of the house for a while. She probably wished
she
could get out of the house and go somewhere besides doctors' offices and treatment centers and hospitals.
Feeling foolish and a little embarrassed all of a sudden, he said to the saleslady, “The room where these are going is a pale blue, I guess you'd call it. I don't know the fancy name for that particular shade.”
“Then I believe these will do just fine,” she said as she picked up a set of curtains in a clear plastic package. She handed them to Jake and asked, “What do you think?”
He held them up, squinted at them, and tried to imagine what they would look like hanging over the windows in the bedroom. That wasn't easy, because he had about as much visual sense as a rock when it came to things like that.
But after a moment he nodded and said, “Yeah, I think they'll look okay,” even though he still wasn't a hundred percent certain.
“Excellent. What else can we get for you?”
Here came the sales pitch. He shut that down right away by saying, “That's it. This is all I need.”
“The checkouts are at the front of the store, then,” she told him with a smile. “Thank you, and have a wonderful holiday season.” She glanced around and added in a slightly conspiratorial tone, “Is it all right if I wish you a Merry Christmas?”
“It's all right by me, lady,” Jake said. “Merry Christmas to you, too.”
For a second he was tempted to buy something else, just because she hadn't been cowed completely by the forces of political correctness. But he didn't know what it would beâhe didn't exactly need new throw pillows or anythingâso he just smiled and nodded and headed for the checkout.
Long lines stretched from all of them. Jake passed the time while he waited by playing solitaire on his phone. He might be a crusty old curmudgeon most of the time, but some aspects of modern technology were okay, he supposed.
When he finally made it out of the store, he paused in the mall and drew a deep breath as he tried to think of anything else Adele might like. A little surprise of some sort might brighten her day.
He hadn't come up with anything yet when he noticed the security guard.
The guy was standing over by the main escalators in the center of the mall, looking up at the second level. The intensity on the guard's face made Jake think something might be wrong, so he lifted his gaze as well. If there was some sort of trouble, he might be able to help out, although those rent-a-cops often resented the real thing, even retired ones.
Jake didn't see any trouble, though, just another guy leaning on the railing up there and looking down at the guard. Or maybe they weren't looking
at
each other, but only in each other's general direction.
Jake didn't think so, though, and then when the guard nodded a littleâsuch a faint movement of his head that most of the busy shoppers hurrying around him never would have noticed itâJake was sure there was a connection between the men.
Those two were up to something, he told himself.
And to a guy like him, such a thought was like waving the proverbial red flag in front of the proverbial bull. Jake wanted to know what was going on here.
There was one way to find out. When the guy on the second level walked off and then the guard turned and sauntered away, Jake followed him, staying back in the crowd so he wouldn't be spotted, but close enough that he wouldn't lose his quarry.
The thought that he needed to get home to Adele prodded the back of his brain, but Jake put it aside for the moment.
This wouldn't take long, and hell, it probably wouldn't amount to anything, anyway.
Chapter 16
T
obey wasn't the sort of man who second-guessed himself. He knew there was a possibility Ashley wouldn't like the ring he picked out. If that happened, they would just bring it back and return it, and she could select her own ring.
She ought to give him credit for trying, though, he thought as he stood in the jewelry store, looking down through glass at glittering diamonds and bands of shining silver and gold.
A sleekly attractive, well-dressed young woman stood on the other side of the counter, smiling at him. Her expertly manicured hands rested on the glass on her side. She wasn't wearing an engagement ring or a wedding band, and Tobey had seen the way she eyed him appreciatively.
Didn't matter, he told himself. He was taken. And once he had told her he was looking for an engagement ring, she hadn't bothered trying to flirt with him. Instead she had settled for being friendly and professional.
“If you told me how much you want to spend, I can show you the rings in that price range,” she suggested. “Just a ballpark figure is fine.”
Tobey hesitated, then said, “I've got three thousand dollars.”
Actually, he could go as high as four thousand, but he didn't see any reason to tell her that.
“You can get a very nice ring for three thousand,” she said. “Let's look at these right along here . . .”
Tobey glanced toward the throngs passing by in the mall. The store was open all the way across the front, like most of the businesses here, with heavy gates that would be drawn across to close it off after hours. He figured that they probably had a safe somewhere in back, too, where they locked up the most valuable items.
The important thing was that Ashley could walk by, glance in here, and see him. He mentally muttered curses at himself for lingering so long in the sporting goods store, looking at guns. He should have gotten this done as quickly as possible, before she finished what she was doing and came searching for him. She might do that even though they had agreed to meet at the food court.
Then he told himself to relax. She'd said she was going to look at purses and accessories, and he knew from experience how long
that
could take. He just didn't need to waste any more time than he already had.
He couldn't afford to rush this decision, though. Ash might be wearing this ring for the rest of her lifeâhe certainly hoped she would beâso he had to find just the right one . . .
“Do you see any you like?” the woman asked.
“I dunno, they're all really pretty,” Tobey replied without looking up. His eyes went from one ring to the next in this section as he tried to imagine how each of them would look on Ashley's finger.
His scrutinizing gaze paused on a ring with a simple but classically beautiful stone in a setting that was fancy but not gaudy, with three smaller stones in a line on each side of it. The main stone wasn't huge, but it was a nice size, he thought. The band was a deep gold color.
“I can afford this?” he asked.
“You can,” the woman said. “Although the tax might make it go a
little
over your budget.”
“That's all right,” Tobey said.
“You think your girlfriendâI mean, your soon-to-be fiancéeâwill like it?”
“I believe she will,” Tobey said. “She's beautiful, and so is this ring.”
“I've never even met her, and I know you're right about her. Do you want a closer look?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
She unlocked the case and took the ring out, then lifted it from its velvet nest in the box and extended it toward him. Tobey took it gingerly. The thing felt tiny and delicate in his big, blunt fingers, even though he knew that diamonds were among the hardest substances on earth.
“Think about slipping that onto your girl's finger.”
“That's just what I'm doin',” Tobey said. Everything about it felt right. “I'll take it.”
“That's wonderful. I'm sure you're both going to be very happy.” She gave him a dazzling smile, but not as dazzling as the ring. “Now, what about the size?”
“Oh, crap,” Tobey said before he could stop himself.
The young woman laughed, a genuine sound that made him like her.
“You don't know her ring size, do you?” she asked.
“Well . . . no.”
“What about my finger? How does it compare to hers?” She took the ring from him and slipped it on the third finger of her left hand.
For a second he wanted to say,
Hey, don't do that! That's Ashley's ring!
But it wasn't yet, and anyway, he figured other women had tried it on in the past, so this was nothing to get upset about. The woman was just trying to help him.
Her fingers were a little skinnier than Ashley's, he thought, and the ring was a little loose on her. He said, “I think it might fit her okay.”
“You want this to be a surprise, don't you? So you can't very well bring her in and have her try it on.”
“That's right. I plan to ask her to marry me on Christmas Eve.”
“Aww. That's sweet. Well, if it doesn't quite fit, you can have it resized later. From what you're saying, though, it should be pretty close.”
“I hope so.” He hated to bring up the next subject, but he had to. “Uh . . . what if she hates it?” Quickly, he added, “I don't think she will, but just in case . . .”
“I know, this is a substantial investment. As long as the ring is in the same condition it is now, you can return it for full credit within thirty days and she can pick out something else.”
“That's fair enough, I guess. Cutting it a little close on the thirty-day business, but Christmas Eve falls inside that window.”
The woman smiled again, shook her head, and said, “I don't think you have a thing to worry about. She's going to love it.”
“You really think so?”
“She loves you, doesn't she?”
“Yeah,” Tobey said. “I believe she does.”
A few minutes later, he left the jewelry store three grand poorer but with the little black box in his pocket, a light step, and a grin on his face.
Mission, as they say, accomplished.
* * *
Despite the sunshine, the temperature was cool enough today that most of the shoppers were wearing jackets. Habib had studied the weather forecast and was counting on that, but he had a backup plan as well.
Now, on the spur of the moment, he decided to combine the two.
The mall had displays of shopping bags set up in various places. They were simple, cheap bags with the mall's name and logo printed on both sides. Their handles were looped into a coin-operated machine. Shoppers fed in a certain amount of quarters and could then pull one of the bags loose.
Habib wandered through the mall until he found one of the shopping bag displays in an isolated area. He had a pad of paper, a marker, and some tape in his pocket, items he had brought along in case the weather was too warm and people were in shirtsleeves. He brought them out and quickly printed a makeshift sign that read
OUT OF ORDER
.
After taping the sign to the display, he picked up the whole thing. Tending to a problem like this was probably something the janitorial staff would more likely do, but that didn't matter. The shoppers who saw a guard carrying a bag machine like that wouldn't think anything of it.
Habib started back toward the storage room where the guns and Dave Dixon's body were hidden.
He got there just in time. One of the men who had joined in this holy effort with him was approaching the entrance to the service corridor. Habib caught his eye, and the man slowed down, loitering in front of a toy store for a moment while Habib carried the bag display into the corridor and along it to the storage room.
The area was deserted, he saw. Relief went through him. Dixon's body and the arsenal hadn't been discovered.
He opened the door and confirmed that everything was in place. The Americans hadn't found out what was going on and set a trap for him.
They would have been surprised if they had. Enough explosives were strapped to his body under his shirt to make a nice big blast. He had known right from the start that this was a necessary precaution. If anything went wrong, he was not going to be taken alive, and he would take as many of the infidels with him as he could.
He set the shopping bags down, moved a crate, and opened one of the special ones. He took out a small but deadly, fully automatic Steyr TMP, one of a shipment that had been bought on the black market in Europe, shipped on a freighter to South America, smuggled northward and finally across the border from Mexico into Texas, and then transported up here to Illinois.
The door eased open. Habib turned and handed the gun to the man he had seen out in the mall a few moments earlier. The man took it, smiled as he hefted it, and said, “Allahu akbar.”
“Allahu akbar,” Habib replied.
The man reached behind him and stuck the Steyr into the waistband of his trousers, under the jacket he wore. The weapon was small enough that it wasn't very noticeable. The man already had a dozen fully loaded thirty-round magazines hidden around his body. When the time came to strike, he and his fellow warriors would have plenty of firepower.
No sooner had he gone, after wishing Habib good luck and saying that they would meet again in paradise, than another man was there to pick up his weapon. Habib broke open the shopping bag display and slipped the machine pistol into the bag.
“If you carry it by both handles, the bag will be closed enough that no one will look in and see the weapon,” Habib told the man, who nodded in understanding.
That was how it began, and for the next hour Habib continued distributing the weapons that Saudi oil money had paid for. Another example of how the stupid Americans had sown the seeds of their own destruction, he thought, by doing business with men who wanted them all dead.
Habib felt excitement growing inside him. Everything was going so well. He began to get the sense that a great victory was inevitable here today, that Allah had touched him and bestowed a special destiny on him with which nothing could interfere.
His name would be known from now on.
When the clerics spoke of the martyrs who had done the most to further the holy cause of Islam, the name of Habib Jabara would be first among them.
Nothing could stop him now.
* * *
Jake was more torn than he had been in a long time. He should have headed for home an hour ago, he told himself as he sat on one of the benches the mall had put out so shoppers could rest for a few minutes before going off to spend more money.
Jake had been on the bench for more than a few minutes, though. It was located diagonally across from the entrance to a service corridor with an
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
sign on it. He was pretending to look at stuff on his phone, but in reality he was watching the steady stream of Middle Easternâlooking guys going in and out of that corridor.
That security guard he had noticed earlier had made his radar go off, and nothing that had happened since then had done anything to silence those alarm bells. Jake had followed the guy and seen him put an
OUT OF ORDER
sign on that thing that dispensed shopping bags. That didn't really seem like something a guard would have done, but Jake supposed it was possible.
He had been twenty yards back in the crowd as the guy carried the bags back to the service corridor near where Jake had first seen him. Jake had spotted the bench and gone over to sit down on it.
And then the parade had started.
Jake's last fifteen years on the job, he'd heard more than he ever wanted to about racial profiling and how bad it was and how the police and other authorities could never be allowed to carry out such evil, disgusting, racist behavior.
Which was all bullcrap, of course. There was nothing racist about being able to look at the plain and simple facts right in front of your eyes and recognize them for what they were.
One of those facts was that nearly all Islamic terrorism was carried out by young, Middle Eastern males. It was crazy to think that anything else might be true. Worse than that, it was a waste of time and resources.
There were plenty of Muslims in the country now, more than ever before, in fact. Jake supposed that most of them were law-abiding folks who just wanted to be left alone to go about their lives, like anybody else. Maybe it wasn't fair to look at somebody like that and wonder if he was a terrorist.
But when a bunch of them suddenly started acting in odd ways . . . Hell, forget about fair. It wasn't
prudent
not to wonder about them. Jake was willing to bet that none of the guys he had seen going in and out of that service corridor in the past hour were
Authorized Personnel
.
So what were they doing? What was their connection to the security guard Jake had first noticed? To be honest, that guy could be Middle Eastern, too, although Jake had taken him for Hispanic or Indian at first.
Jake didn't have any answers, but the hunch was growing strong in him that somebody needed to start looking for some.
That wasn't his job. He was just an old, retired cop with a sick wife at home. He put his phone away, rested his hands on his knees, and heaved his body to his feet. He knew where the mall offices were. The head of security would be there, too.
A few minutes later, Jake found who he was looking for. The burly, white-haired man was standing behind a counter in one of the offices, wearing the same sort of uniform Jake had seen on all the guards. He had some papers in front of him, but he glanced up from them and asked, “Help you, sir?”