Red Right Hand (18 page)

“What do I do now?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Once the exploit's done uploading, remove the thumb drive, close the door, and get the eff outta Dodge.”

“How will I know the exploit's done uploading?”

“Just watch the screen.”

“For what?”

“You'll know it when you see it.”

“Uh, buddy?” The tech had reached the other side of the cell on wheels. “You want to tell me what the hell you think you're doing?”

Hendricks eyed the screen. Then the tech. Then the screen again. Nothing on it had changed that he could see. “I don't know what you mean.”

“I
mean,
why are you fucking around with my machine?” He began to circle around to Hendricks.

“Oh, that,” Hendricks said nonchalantly. “My signal keeps cutting out. I thought it'd get better the closer I got to the tower, but no such luck. So then I figured there's gotta be some kind of knob on this thing somewhere that'll turn it up. But the goddamn thing is locked.”

The corner braces forced the tech to swing a little wide. Otherwise, he would've seen the open panel door and called to the guards—who were already a little too interested in this exchange for Hendricks's liking.

Hendricks glanced down. Saw the screen flicker. The code vanished, replaced by a message in block letters made of zeros:

Then the message disappeared, and code began to scroll by once more.

Hendricks removed the thumb drive. Pocketed it, along with the electric toothbrush. Eased the panel door closed as the man rounded the corner. It locked automatically with a click.

The man had an ID badge on a lanyard around his neck declaring him to be Aaron Stanton of the NCSC—Homeland Security's National Cybersecurity Center. “This thing's locked for a reason.”

“Which is?”

“So morons who can't stop the clock on their microwave from blinking twelve don't fuck with it and knock out our whole damn communications network,” he said.

“Listen, asshole,” Hendricks said, affecting umbrage, “I'm not some dipshit off the street—I'm a special agent with the FBI.” He was always amazed at how well a little bit of swagger sold a flimsy grift.

“Oh. Sorry,” Stanton said, his words dripping sarcasm. “I didn't realize you were a Feeb. I'll try to talk slower.”

Hendricks leaned in close and grabbed Stanton's ID badge. He made a show of scrutinizing it closely. “Hey!” Stanton exclaimed, snatching at it. “What the hell?”

“I want to make sure I spell your name right when I report you,” Hendricks replied.

“For what? Doing my job? You're lucky
I
don't report
you
. If you'd so much as pressed a button on this baby, I would've. So how about you get the fuck away from her before I change my mind?”

“Fine. Have it your way. I don't have time for this bullshit.” Hendricks turned and walked off. Once it became clear the argument was over, the attention of the crowd began to wander. Stanton, though, was still suspicious. He looked the cell on wheels over carefully, even opening the panel door and checking inside.

When Hendricks was twenty paces away, Stanton shouted, “Hey, dipshit—not so fast.”

Hendricks tensed. Reddened. Turned. Those near enough to hear Stanton turned too, their gazes focused on Hendricks once more. A few placed their hands on their guns. Hendricks broke out in a nervous sweat.

“What now?” he asked, as casually as possible.

Stanton smiled like a grand master declaring checkmate and waved something at Hendricks. “You forgot your phone.”

Hendricks didn't have to feign embarrassment; his rattled nerves made his performance as convincing as it was effortless. He jogged over to Stanton and took his phone. Once he had it, he set off walking west—toward the nearest off-ramp, toward anywhere but here.

Y
ANCEY SET HIS
items on the counter beside the register and flashed the teenage girl behind it a smile. She was young, pretty, and Somali. Her skin was light brown. Her hair was hidden beneath a vibrant head scarf of orange and pink. Her clothes were otherwise indiscernible from any reasonably modest Western teen's. She was chewing gum and texting someone as he approached, thumbs flying across her cell phone's screen. But when she turned her attention to him, her face went immediately expressionless. “That it?” she said, eyeing the items he'd set down, her tone bored, her accent Californian.

“Actually, little lady, I'd also love a book of matches, if you please.” He cranked up the wattage on his smile and threw in a wink for good measure.

The girl snapped her gum, rolled her eyes, and rang him up. Then she grabbed some matchbooks from beneath the counter and tossed them in the general direction of his bag, her eyes glued once more to her cell phone's screen. A couple of the matchbooks landed inside. The others missed. One bounced off Yancey and landed at his feet.

The smile died on Yancey's face. He snatched the cell phone from her hand and launched it across the room. It ricocheted off a magazine rack and shattered when it hit the floor.

“Hey!” the girl exclaimed. “What the—”

Yancey flipped aside his sport coat to reveal the wooden grip of his revolver. The girl's eyes widened and she shrank a little behind the counter. Her chin quivered as tears threatened.

“T-t-take whatever you want, just please don't hurt me.”

“I ain't gonna hurt you, honey—I'm one of the good guys. I keep this country safe so people like your folks can pour across our borders and take advantage of our social services. But I draw the line at letting 'em raise their kids to be spoiled brats. If you're gonna live here, you better learn to show some goddamn respect.”

He fished his wallet from his pocket and tossed a twenty on the counter. “Ditch the scarf and use the change to buy a baseball cap,” he said. “This is America, for Christ's sake.” Then he snatched up his bag and headed for the door.

The air outside the convenience store smelled of exhaust. Yancey lit a cigarette on his way across the parking lot and then waited at the curb for the traffic to clear. Once it did, he jogged across the street to the mosque.

The place didn't look like any mosque he'd ever seen. There were no domes. No minarets. No ornamentation of any kind besides the banner hanging off the roof with lettering in Arabic. It was just a squat, ugly commercial building that used to be a second-run movie theater—though the letters had been removed, the words
DAYMARK CINEMA
were still faintly visible in negative on the building's dingy facade—in a commercial stretch of Daly City, ten miles south of San Francisco.

Today, the mosque was closed. Its expansive lot—sun-bleached and in need of repaving, tufts of crabgrass sprouting through the cracks—was nearly empty. The only vehicles were his rental, a plum-colored Cadillac ATS; two unmarked Bellum Industries Humvees, identifiable as Bellum's only by their license plates, BI23 and BI27; and a green late-1980s Chrysler LeBaron with a Bondo'd front-right fender that likely belonged to the imam. Two Bellum men, both thickset and clad in sleek black body armor, flanked the front entrance.

Yancey headed toward the door. One of the men opened it for him before he arrived. He stepped inside, exhaling smoke, and looked around.

They hadn't done much with the place since its movie-theater days. Same carpets, same walls, same lights. The concession stand was dark, its glass case empty. There was a set of shelves beside the door for shoes, a couple pairs left on it, even though the imam was the only one here. Yancey wondered how the fuck somebody managed to walk out without his shoes. These people were a mystery to him.

He kept his on.

The lone theater had been converted into a prayer hall, its seats removed, its floor recarpeted but not leveled so it still sloped gently toward the curtained screen. Its entrance was to the left of the concession stand. Yancey headed right, to the imam's office—originally the theater manager's—and went in without knocking.

The imam was inside, zip-tied to a folding chair.

His desk—metal, institutional, painted antacid green decades before and left to flake—was shoved against the wall, as was the thrift-store office chair that normally sat behind it. Office chairs were lousy for interrogations. Always rolling away or slowly spinning around. They blunted the force of a good punch, and made it hard to intimidate the subject by walking in and out of his field of view.

The imam was in his early forties, tall and thin, with long limbs and delicate hands. He had a well-trimmed beard, black flecked with white, and wore a loose-fitting white button-down with no collar, a white skullcap, and gray trousers. His wire-rimmed glasses rested on his desk blotter. An oozing cut split his right eyebrow. His face showed anger. His feet were bare.

Yancey schlepped his grocery bag across the room and set it on the floor where the imam could see it. “He give you any more trouble since we last spoke?” he asked the black-clad man who leaned against the desk cleaning his fingernails with a carbon-steel tactical knife. Another Bellum man stood, silent, in the corner of the office behind the imam.

“No, sir. He hasn't said a word.”

“Good.” Then, to the imam: “I hear you gave my boys quite a fight.”

The imam said something in reply but too quietly for Yancey to hear.

“What was that?”

“I said you cannot smoke in here. It is a place of worship.” His voice was calm. Quiet. Full of rage and hurt, well mastered.

Yancey took a good, long drag. Let the smoke flow freely from his mouth. Inhaled it through his nose. Held it, savoring. Then blew it out again, smiling. “Seems to me, I can smoke in here just fine. And anyway, from where I'm standing, this place looks more like a porno theater than a place of worship. Now, you wanna tell me why you went all Taliban on my boys when they came knocking?”

“I did no such thing. I merely attempted to flee. When one is Muslim in America, one learns to be distrustful of masked men with guns. Given the proximity of their arrival to yesterday's tragedy, I surmised—correctly, it appears—that they were here in a misguided attempt to lay blame for this horrible attack at my feet.”

“Seems to me that distrust cuts both ways,” Yancey said. “We wouldn't come knocking if you people would stop attacking us on our own soil.”

“The soil is as much mine as yours,” the imam replied. “And I resent the implication that I am anything like the men who did this. Those men are zealots, savages, lost souls corrupted by leaders whose teachings are an affront to the true message of the Koran. I am not like them. I am a man of faith. A pacifist. Neither I nor Allah condone what happened yesterday.”

“A damn shame those savages look so much like you, then.”

“On that,” the imam replied, “I do not disagree. Although I hasten to point out that I am not the one to resort to violence today. These restraints are unnecessary. Perhaps you'd consider removing them and having your men wait outside so that we two may continue this discussion in a civilized manner.”

“Civilized,” Yancey said. “Right. Listen, Muhammad—”

“Rafiq,” the imam corrected.

“—as much as I'm enjoying our little chat, I don't have time to dance with you all day. Here's how this is going to work. The restraints stay on. My men stay where they are. I'm gonna ask you some questions. You're going to answer them. My satisfaction with regard to those answers will dictate how the rest of your day goes.”

“I would like a lawyer,” Rafiq said.

“Would you, now.”

“Yes. If you wish to question me, it is my right.”

“Well, would you look at that,” Yancey said to his men, “Rafiq here knows his rights! Only here's the thing, Rafiq. I'm private sector. Your so-called rights don't mean shit to me. So, as I was saying, I'm going to ask you some questions, and you're going to answer them.”

Rafiq set his jaw. “And if I do not?”

“Then you're going to find out what's in that bag.”

“I see. Then by all means, please begin,” Rafiq said, his quiet confidence in the face of Yancey's attempts to intimidate a subtle act of rebellion.

Yancey pulled up an image on his phone. It was a black-and-white ID photo of a thin young man with dark hair and deep-set eyes, his face clean-shaven, his expression neutral. He showed it to the imam. “Do you recognize this man?”

Rafiq said nothing.

“I asked you a fucking question. Do you recognize this man?”

Still nothing.

Yancey thumbed to the next image. A different photo. A different young man. “What about this one? Or this one?” he said, swiping again.

 Rafiq looked Yancey in the eye. And remained silent.

“These men are terrorists,” Yancey said. “Known members of the organization that claimed credit for the bombing. And these photos were taken from the visas they used to enter the country. Why, I wonder, would you elect to help them by refusing to answer my questions?”

“Perhaps it has something to do with the manner in which those questions are being asked. I am curious: What, besides my religion and the color of my skin, makes you think I know anything of these men?”

“Cry profiling all you want—it ain't gonna fly. We have a witness that puts them in this mosque.” It wasn't technically a lie. But it also wasn't the whole truth.

“This is a place of worship,” Rafiq said. “Many people come and go.”

“Even terrorists?”

“If in fact these men were here, as you claim, they were not yet terrorists.”

“So you
do
remember them.”

“I did not say that. I simply inferred it, based on the fact that they were issued visas. It is my understanding that the U.S. government is not in the business of abetting the travel plans of known extremists.”

“That's a funny argument to make, Rafiq. Kinda makes it sound like they were radicalized here.”

“Impossible. As I have said, I neither preach nor condone violence. And if you must know, I truly have no memory of these men, which means if they passed through here, it was but briefly.”

Yancey got down on his haunches so that he and Rafiq were eye to eye, and smiled. “Okay,” he said. “Now we're getting somewhere. And you know what? I believe you. So let me make things easy on you. You want out of those restraints? You want me and my boys to leave you be? All you need to do is give me a list of congregants or whatever the fuck you people call 'em who might be sympathetic to these men's cause. The sorts of people who might, say, give them a boat or someplace to hole up when the cops come looking.”

Rafiq shook his head. “As I said, I do not know these men. If I did—if I knew
anything
that could prevent further bloodshed—I would be happy to tell the proper authorities.” The stress he put on
the proper authorities
made it clear he didn't think Yancey qualified. “I have no loyalty to this so-called True Islamic Caliphate. Their beliefs insult those who, like me, truly wish to follow the teachings of the prophet Muhammad. But while I would gladly aid in their apprehension, what I will
not
do is assist you in conducting a…
witch-hunt
is, I believe, the term, against the law-abiding men and women who worship here.”

Yancey stood. Shook his head. Walked over to the convenience-store bag. “You know much about waterboarding, Rafiq?”

Rafiq's face tightened with worry. He shook his head.

“Well, I do,” Yancey said. “See, the way it works is, you strap a guy down at a slight incline—ten, fifteen degrees will do—so that his lungs are higher than his head. Most folks picture a special table with straps and shit, but the fact is, you can use whatever you have on hand. That chair back you're fastened to would work just fine. Then you put a rag over his face, so his mouth and nose are covered.”

Yancey reached down and removed from the bag a five-pack of small white terry towels, the type used to buff cars. “These'd do the trick,” he said. “Once the rag's in place, you pour water over it real slow so that it fills his nasal passages, his sinuses, his throat. The idea is, the guy—or gal, there's no need to discriminate—won't drown, because his lungs are uphill from where the water pools, but honestly, most folks aspirate it anyway, or puke and fill their lungs with vomit. I've seen both, and it ain't pleasant. And of course, even though the manuals
say
water, really, any liquid will do. I like using something carbonated because the bubbles burn like a motherfucker and have a way of loosening the tongue.”

Yancey reached into the bag again, and removed two forties of Colt 45. Rafiq began to struggle atop his chair, though the zip-ties held him in place.

“Oh, right,” Yancey said. “You people are forbidden to consume alcohol, aren't you? Well, then, you'd better start working on that list I asked for, or hope your God ain't watching.” He nodded to his men, who moved silently to either side of Rafiq, grabbed the chair, and tilted it backward, Rafiq screaming, until he lay with his head on the ground and his bare feet up in the air.

Yancey's phone chimed—a text. He read it. Smiled. Typed a brief reply.

“Sorry, Rafiq,” he said. “It looks like I'm not going to get to stay for the festivities. I've got other business to attend to. But don't you worry—I'm sure my boys will take good care of you.”