“It was me,” groaned Mahmoud.
Dewey leaned back against the Mercedes.
“He was tough,” whispered Mahmoud after a few moments. “Fought hard.”
“But why Marks?” asked Dewey. “I can understand Capitana and Savage Island.”
“He’s a symbol.” Mahmoud struggled to remain upright against the side of the car. Blood covered him everywhere.
“For who?”
“I can’t tell you,” said Mahmoud. “Even if I wanted to. Can’t. Cells.”
Dewey moved forward and knelt so that he was in the terrorist’s face. An image of the burning oil derrick at Capitana came into his mind. He stared down at Mahmoud, thought of the World Trade Center, the images of the men and women jumping from the top of the building as the flames engulfed the upper floors, jumping rather than waiting for the heat to consume them alive.
He hadn’t asked to join this war. It had found him. The enemy had accidentally pulled him in. Their shitty luck, and his, that he knew how to survive. To fight.
“You know Marks lived. You failed.”
“I know.”
“When I put the last bullet into your thick head it will be for him.”
He grabbed Mahmoud’s left hand. He took the index finger and slowly bent it back, at the knuckle in the middle of the finger until it snapped. The man screamed.
“Give me a name, a place.”
Dewey snapped another finger, then another. Mahmoud screamed with each pop.
“Who is it?” yelled Dewey. He snapped Mahmoud’s thumb back. Mahmoud’s eyes rolled around in their sockets. He was in agony. He stared at Dewey at last.
“Notre Dame,” Mahmoud blurted out. “My cell. That’s all I know.”
“Why?”
Mahmoud remained silent.
Dewey stared at Mahmoud. “Why Notre Dame?”
“The football stadium.”
“Your buddy, was he there too?”
“Yes.”
“How? Octanitrocubane?”
“Yes, yes. Detonator. My job is to set it. That’s what we all do. Someone else has the detonators. We don’t know where.”
“Who?”
“Karim,” he whispered. “The only one I know.”
“Where is he?”
“New York City.”
“Last name. What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who’s your contact?” Dewey screamed. “What’s his last name?”
“Karim. That’s all I know.” Mahmoud remained silent. Dewey reached for his right hand. He began by snapping the middle finger. Mahmoud let out a loud yelp, then began a long, low keening, punctuated by labored gasps for air.
“What does Karim do?”
“I don’t know.”
Dewey grabbed the man’s index finger.
“They never tell me,” Mahmoud said, sobbing now.
“How do they pay you?” Dewey repeated. “How do you know he’s in New York?”
Mahmoud’s eyes began to fade. He was in shock.
“How do you know he’s in New York?”
“He said something once, by accident. About Central Park.”
Mahmoud stared at Dewey. He remained silent.
“What’s the next target?” he screamed. He snapped Mahmoud’s index finger.
“Soon,” Mahmoud whispered. “It will happen soon. That’s all I can tell you.”
“What is soon?”
Tears rolled down his cheeks. “Kill me,” he whispered. “Please.”
“How did you get here?”
Suddenly, Mahmoud looked up, alert. His eyes looked to Dewey’s right, at the ground. The cell phone.
“How did you get here?” Dewey repeated.
“Plane.”
“Where is it? Is it still here?”
Despite his extensive injuries, despite the blood that now covered him, Mahmoud suddenly lunged for the phone. It was a weak move, though, which Dewey easily stopped with a hard kick to the chin, sending him backward against the car bumper.
“The plane’s waiting, isn’t it?” Dewey asked. “You don’t need to answer. You fucking idiot.”
Dewey walked back to the Mercedes. He grabbed the Colt and returned. He aimed the gun down at his head as Mahmoud’s eyes followed. It was over. There would be no more revelations, not from this one. He aimed the Colt at the terrorist’s chest. He pulled the trigger and sent a bullet through his heart.
He searched his pockets for anything that could help, evidence of any sort, found nothing.
He walked quickly to the Mercedes and turned the key in the ignition. He inched out and took a last look at the bloody scene. Tomorrow, some poor tobacco farmer would get the shock of his life.
He drove down the field road and beyond, back toward Havana. He drove as fast as the car would take him. He was tired, but his mind raced as he plotted his next steps.
He opened his cell phone, but had no coverage. The Mercedes had one headlight now, no windshield, was badly dented and riddled with bullets. Still, it moved. It was difficult to see as he negotiated the dark countryside. After a few minutes, he began to see ramshackle cement homes. He was getting close. He tried the cell phone again.
“Tanzer,” said Jessica.
“It’s Dewey.”
“I thought you were out.”
“They found me. Two of them. I trapped them. They’re dead. I got a little info.”
“What? Where are you?”
“Cuba. Get a team to Notre Dame. The football stadium.”
“The stadium?”
“Yeah.”
“My God—” He heard her clacking away at a keyboard. “Okay. I’ll get a team out there to rip the place up. Octanitrocubane?”
“Yes, remote detonator.”
“Remote detonator? All right, let me get that to my team. Hold on.”
The phone clicked and Dewey drove for several seconds, waiting. Finally, Jessica returned.
“We’re scrambling bomb logistics out of Indiana State Police, Quantico. Did he give any other targets?”
“No. He would have if he knew. He called himself Mahmoud. He only knew about his own cell. He mentioned a person—name of Karim—from New York City. He mentioned Three Mile Island.”
“Three Mile Island?” Jessica asked incredulously.
“Yeah. Said it was their first target.”
“I’m running the name Karim. Looks like there are more than three hundred in New York City alone.”
Dewey kept driving. Small cement shacks turned into larger ones, clusters of homes, then shops, followed by strip malls. He was close to Havana now, on the outskirts.
“I need your help,” said Dewey. “Can you tell me where the private terminal is at Jose Marti?”
“Hold on.”
Dewey saw a green sign with an outline of a plane.
“Got it. That would be Terminal Two. Where are you?”
“Calzada de Bejucal, heading north.”
“Okay, hold on. Got it. You want to take a left onto Vantroi. The terminal will be on your right.”
“Thanks.”
“What’s your plan, Dewey? Why the private terminal?”
“I’m not sure. I might have something. I’ll call you.”
“The Cuban authorities are going to find the bodies. Am I right? Let us bring you back in. You do not want to be stuck in a Cuban prison. There won’t be anything we can do.”
Dewey saw the sign for Avenue Vantroi. He swung left, under the streetlight.
“I have to go.” He flipped the cell phone shut.
He hung up and drove along Vantroi for half a mile, slowly now. He passed the main entrance for Terminal Two. He parked the Mercedes on a side street, next to a dark warehouse, climbed out, looked around. Vantroi was empty. To the right, down the street a few hundred yards, he could see the terminal, a long, plain cement building. Lit, but no activity. He checked the clip on his Colt, then tucked the gun into his shoulder holster. He reached down, felt for his Gerber blade tucked into his ankle sheath. He moved down the empty street toward the chain-link fence that ran around the airport.
He quickly scaled the fence. At the barbed wire strands that ran in a taut line atop the fence, he placed his hands between two wires, then leaped up, cartwheeling over the fence and falling to the ground inside the airport, rolling. He felt pain jab at his shoulder. Looking at his arm, he noticed a small trickle of blood. He reached down to his ankle and removed the knife, held it in his left hand, tucked the blade up flush against his wrist and forearm. He walked through a parking lot half filled with maintenance vehicles, security vans, fuel trucks, and food service trucks. Past a small, empty maintenance building, two stories high. He stalked in the darkness, through the lot, came around the corner of the building.
In front of him, the private terminal. The building itself was a two-story cement structure. Most of the lights were off. The planes were spread out in orderly rows in front of the building, at least thirty in all. Most were small, single-engine turboprops. In the far corner, off to the side, one plane stood out; a long, sleek black jet that Dewey recognized immediately; a Gulfstream 450.
Dewey checked his watch: 4:17
A.M.
In the distance, a large cargo plane was taking off from in front of the main terminal at the other side of the airport.
The black Gulfstream glinted under distant lamplight. Dewey moved from the corner of the darkened maintenance building to the last row of small planes in front of the Gulfstream. He moved to the far left of the line of planes, away from the terminal. He moved in a crouch down the line of small aircraft, hidden by the shadows. At the last wing set, he stopped. The Gulfstream faced the private terminal, and was set apart
from the smaller, single-engine aircraft, which were parked in rows in front of the nose of the plane. The jet’s door was shut. If somebody was inside the plane, they had a bird’s-eye view of everything in front of them. It would be impossible to approach the plane without being seen. It would also be impossible to get inside the shut plane.
Staring for several seconds from a crouching position beneath the wing of a Cessna, Dewey could see a dim light on in the main cabin.
Turning, Dewey moved quickly back down the line of planes, then doubled back to the maintenance building. He resheathed the knife at his ankle, moved along the wall of the building. He saw a door and moved to it. He stepped back, then took three running steps, kicking the door just to the right of the knob. It crashed open, the lock block tearing out of the wooden wall and splintering the jamb to the ground. He flipped on the light, looked around. Lockers, a lunchroom. He moved to the line of lockers, opened them until he found a green uniform hanging inside one of the lockers. On the chest, in yellow letters:
SEGURIDAD
. He put the green button-down shirt on, then the hat that hung on another hook inside the locker. He moved to the door, turned the lights off.
He smashed a window on the driver’s side of a white security van, pushed the glass out of the way, reached in and opened the door, then climbed in, ripped the plastic casing off the steering column, spliced two wires together, and started the van. He drove out of the parking lot with the van’s lights off, away from the private terminal along the dark tarmac. After several hundred feet, he turned the van around, flipped a switch on the console that turned on the van’s headlights. He noticed a yellow siren light on the dashboard. He flipped the switch beneath it and the light went on, flashing a bright orange light. Dewey drove quickly down the tarmac toward the Gulfstream. He swung the van in front of the Gulfstream and parked to the left, directly in front of the jet’s door. He pulled the hat as far down over his forehead as he could, climbed out of the van. He started waving his arms as he walked to the door, trying to get the attention of whoever was inside. In his right hand, Dewey held up his cell phone.
Another light went on, and the face of a man appeared at the window.
“
Emergencia!
” Dewey yelled. “
Telefonazo!
”
Dewey repeated himself several times.
“
Emergencia,
” Dewey repeated, waving the open phone in front of the window. He acted slightly frantic.
Finally, he heard a loud bolt click, then watched as the door popped open and slowly started to move down. It swung slowly down, coming to rest just above the black tar. In the door frame stood a middle-aged man, Arabic in appearance, semiformally dressed. His nose was badly cut.
“What is it?” asked the man.
“
Es una emergencia,
” said Dewey. He stepped forward to hand him the phone.
“Un hombre está en la línea. Quiere hablar con el Señor Karim.”
At the name Karim, the Arab dropped his arms and gestured for the phone, taking one, then two steps down the stairwell.
“Give me the phone,” he demanded.
Karim took the third step, his hand extended to meet Dewey’s. As he hit the third stair, Dewey lurched, grabbed his arm tight at the wrist, then yanked a vicious pull, tearing him down the stairs, but holding on. He whipped the terrorist down to the tarmac, face first, slamming him into the ground. Then he moved forcefully toward his back, no hesitation. He popped the Arab’s right arm behind his back, yanked up. The bone snapped. The man screamed out in agony.