Jihad

CHAPTER 103

By the time the plane landed in New Orleans, the Art Room had IDed the passenger in Seat 2B as Joseph Roberts. According to his ticket and the Department of Motor Vehicles, he lived in a large Detroit apartment building; a crosscheck showed that there were at least four other adults with addresses there. He had no credit card, didn’t own anything that had to be registered, and did not appear to have had any brushes with the law.

Lia, who had plenty of experience with Karr’s “hunches,” scowled as the plane rolled up to the gate. Picking at straws was not one of her favorite pastimes.

“Comin’ at ya,” said Karr as the plane started to unload.

“Peachy.”

Lia drifted back toward the middle of the small knot of people waiting for relatives and friends, sipping her coffee to ward off her nagging jet lag. Like most of the Gulf Coast area, the airport still bore the mark of Katrina’s ravages. Though it had been well over a year since the hurricane struck, debris still littered the highway and edge of the parking areas. On the other hand, the rebuilding effort was everywhere in evidence, with cranes rising above new steel skeletons as the nation worked strenuously to erase the horror of the storm and shame of its aftermath.

Karr’s blond head loomed over the crowd; Lia sidled to the right to get a better view of the young man directly in front of him. The kid looked like a well-dressed toothpick, nervous and jumpy, eyes darting back and forth. She started paralleling him as he walked, her focus not on Roberts but on anyone who might be trying to spot someone tailing him. She turned sharply on her heel, gesturing as if she’d forgotten something; no one seemed to notice. Now at the back of the crowd, she swung around a few yards behind Karr, who was still a few feet in back of Roberts.

“Any time,” muttered Lia, indicating to Karr that he could peel off whenever he wanted.

A man in a black suit stood about thirty yards from the flow of passengers from the plane, arms at his side. Robert approached him tentatively; the man tilted his head slightly, then whirled around and walked in the direction of the doors.

One of the FBI agents assigned to help them was sitting in a car ready to pick Lia up and follow Roberts. But Lia had also left two cars outside, and so she followed Roberts to the open-air parking lot, where he and the other man got into a Chevy Impala. Though it dated from the 1960s, the car had been restored and its paint gleamed in the sun. Lia got into her rental and pulled out behind it; a small video bug on her bumper gave the Art Room the license plate number.

“Nice car,” said Rockman. “Sixty-eight Impala. Bet it’s got a short block, four on the floor, headers. Doesn’t handle, but it can haul.”

“If I want Car Talk, I’ll turn on the radio,” Lia told him.

They drove west and then north, weaving through the highway work and escaping the built city area and suburbs. Within an hour they had left the interstates, following a succession of state and then parish highways; a half hour after that they were on local roads, only some of which were paved. Swamp and more solid land alternated in an intricate patchwork arranged by man and nature according to a logic so tangled it was indecipherable. Reminders of the hurricane were everywhere: trees that had been pushed off the road and then forgotten, flattened and roofless houses. But nature as well as man had started a recovery — the vegetation was lush, with new growth springing up to replace what had been lost.

“I’m going to lose him soon,” said Lia, who had to keep slowing down to avoid being spotted. “These roads are empty. Where’s that plane?”

“We’re still working on it,” Rockman told her. “The plane we’ve borrowed from customs had engine problems and we’ve gone to a backup.”

A plane might not have helped; the canopy was so thick it looked like early evening rather than noon, and in some places the trees hung so low over the road that they swatted Lia’s windshield. Fortunately, the old Chevy kicked up rocks and dust as it went, making it easier to track. Then suddenly the road turned back to macadam. Lia sped up, realizing she was probably going to lose them.

“I see where you are,” Rockman told her. “There’s a farm just to the west, some sort of fields that are cut out of the jungle there.”

A dirt road swung off to Lia’s right. By the time she saw the dust hovering in the air near the intersection, she was by it. She hit the brakes and threw the car into reverse.

“I have a turnoff here,” she told Rockman.

“You sure he took it?”

“Somebody did.”

“I don’t see it on the map,” said Rockman. “You sure it’s there?”

“No, Rockman. I like to share my hallucinations.” Was it all men she had a problem with, or just the dumb ones? Lia braced herself as the car bumped off the pavement. “I’m going up it. Where’s Tommy?”

“About five minutes behind you.”

“Have him stay on the macadam.”

After about fifty yards the trail narrowed and then swung hard to the left, then widened and zigzagged through a grove of thick trees. The road dipped downwards and straightened, a swampy ditch on either side. A tangle of fallen trees sat on the right; Lia noticed a clearing beyond them. There was a trail there.

Two men in dark green clothes appeared from behind the tangle. Both men had shotguns.

Lia continued past, her eyes riveted on the road.

“I think I found out where they went,” she told Rockman, slowing to take the next curve.