Teeth of the Tiger

CHAPTER 13 MEETING PLACE

After two thousand-plus miles of driving, the arrival was entirely anticlimactic. Not a kilometer off Interstate 64 was a Holiday Inn Express, which looked satisfactory, especially since there was a Roy Rogers immediately next door and a Dunkin' Donuts not a hundred meters uphill. Mustafa walked in and took two connecting rooms, paying with his Visa card out of the Liechtenstein bank. Tomorrow they'd go exploring, but for now all that beckoned was sleep. Even food was not important at this moment. He moved the car to the first-floor rooms he'd just leased, and switched off the engine. Rafi and Zuhayr unlocked the doors, then came back to open the trunk. They took their few bags in, and under them the four submachine guns still wrapped in thick, cheap blankets.

"We are here, comrades," Mustafa announced, entering the room. It was an entirely ordinary motel, not the more luxurious hotels they'd become accustomed to. They had one bathroom and a small TV each. The connecting door was opened. Mustafa allowed himself to fall backward on his bed, a double, but all for him. Some things were left to be done, however.

"Comrades, the guns must always be hidden, and the shades drawn at all times. We've come too far for foolish risks," he warned them. "This city has a police force, and do not think they are fools. We journey to Paradise at a time of our choosing, not at a time determined by an error. Remember that." And then he sat up, and removed his shoes. He thought about a shower, but he was too tired for that, and tomorrow would come soon enough.

"Which way to Mecca?" Rafi asked.

Mustafa had to think about that for a second, divining the direct line to Mecca and to the city's centerpiece, the Kaaba stone, the very center of the Islamic universe, to which they directed the Salat, verses from the Holy Koran said five times per day, recited from the knees.

"That way," he said, pointing southeast, on a line that transected northern Africa on its way to that holiest of Holy Places.

Rafi unrolled his prayer rug, and went to his knees. He was late in his prayers, but he had not forgotten his religious duty.

For his own part, Mustafa whispered to himself, "lest it be forgotten," in the hope that Allah would forgive him in his current state of fatigue. But was not Allah infinitely merciful? And besides, this was hardly a great sin. Mustafa removed his socks, and lay back in the bed, where sleep found him in less than a minute.

In the next room over, Abdullah finished his own Salat, and then plugged his computer into the side of the telephone. He dialed up an 800 number and heard the warbling screech as his computer linked up with the network. In another few seconds, he learned that he had mail. Three letters, plus the usual trash. The e-mails he downloaded and saved, and then he logged off, having been online a mere fifteen seconds, another security measure they'd all been briefed on.

What abdullah didn't know was that one of the four accounts had been intercepted and partially decrypted by the National Security Agency. When his account — identified only by a partial word and some numbers — tapped into Saeed's, it was also identified, but only as a recipient, not an originator.

Saeed's team had been the first to arrive at its destination of Colorado Springs, Colorado — the city was identified only by a code name — and was comfortably camped out in a motel ten kilometers from its objective. Sabawi, the Iraqi, was in Des Moines, Iowa, and Mehdi in Provo, Utah. Both of those teams were also in place and ready for the operation to commence. Less than thirty-six hours to execute their mission.

He'd let Mustafa do the replies. The reply was, in fact, already programmed: "190, 2" designating the 190th verse of the Second Sura. Not exactly a battle cry, but rather an affirmation of the Faith that had brought them here. The meaning was: Proceed with your mission.

Brian and Dominic were watching the History Channel on their cable system, something about Hitler and the Holocaust. It had been studied so much you'd think it'd defy efforts to find something new, yet somehow historians managed every so often. Some of it was probably because of the voluminous records the Germans had left behind in the Hartz Mountain caves, which would probably be the subject of scholarly study for the next few centuries, as people continued to try to discern the thought processes of the human monsters who'd first envisioned and then committed such crimes.

"Brian," Dominic asked, "what do you make of this stuff?"

"One pistol shot could have prevented it, I suppose. Problem is, nobody can see that far into the future — not even gypsy fortune-tellers. Hell, Adolf whacked a bunch of them, too. Why didn't they get the hell out of town?"

"You know, Hitler lived most of his life with only one bodyguard. In Berlin, he lived in a second-floor apartment, with a downstairs entrance, right? He had one SS troop, probably not even a sergeant, guarding the door. Pop him, open the door, go upstairs, and waste the motherfucker. Would have saved a lot of lives, bro," Dominic concluded, reaching for his white wine.

"Damn. You sure about that?"

"The Secret Service teaches that. They send one of their instructors down to Quantico to lecture every class on security issues. The fact surprised us, too. A lot of questions on it. The guy said you could walk right past the SS guard on your way to the liquor store, like. Easy hit, man. Easier'n hell. The thinking is that Adolf thought he was immortal, that there wasn't a bullet anywhere with his name on it. Hey, we had a President whacked on a train platform waiting for his train to arrive. Which one was it? Chester Arthur, I think. McKinley got shot by a guy who walked right up to him with a bandage around his hand. I guess people were a little careless back then."

"Damn. It'd make our job a lot easier, but I'd still prefer a rifle from five hundred meters or so."

"No sense of adventure, Aldo?"

"Ain't nobody paying me enough money to play kamikaze, Enzo. No future in that, y'know?"

"What about those suicide bombers over in the Mideast?"

"Different culture, man. Don't you remember from second grade? You can't commit suicide because it's a mortal sin and you can't go to confession after. Sister Frances Mary made that pretty clear, I thought."

Dominic laughed. "Damn, haven't thought of her in a while, but she always thought you were the cat's ass."

"That's 'cause I didn't screw around in class like you did."

"What about in the Marines?"

"Screwing around? The sergeants took care of that before it came to my attention. Nobody messed with Gunny Sullivan, not even Colonel Winston." He looked at the TV for another minute or so. "You know, Enzo, maybe there are times when one bullet can prevent a lot of grief. That Hitler needed his ticket punched. But even trained military officers couldn't bring it off."

"The guy who placed the bomb just assumed that everybody in the building had to be dead, without going back inside to make sure. They say it every day in the FBI Academy, bro — assumptions are the mother of all fuckups."

"You want to make sure, yeah. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice."

"Amen," Dominic agreed.

It had gotten to the point that Jack Ryan, Jr., woke up to the morning news on NPR expecting to hear about something dreadful. He guessed that came from seeing so much raw intelligence information, but without the judgment to know what was hot and what was not.

But though he did not know all that much, what he did know was more than a little worrying. He'd become fixated by Uda bin Sali — probably because Sali was the only "player" he knew much about. And that had to be because Sali was his personal case study. He had to figure this bird out, because if he didn't he'd be… encouraged to seek other employment…? He hadn't seen that possibility until now, which by itself did not speak well for his future in the spook business. Of course, his father had taken a long time to find something he was good at — nine years, in fact, after graduating Boston College — and he himself had not yet lived one whole year past his Georgetown sheepskin. So, would he make the grade at The Campus? He was about the youngest person there. Even the secretary pool was composed of women older than he was. Damn, that was an entirely new thought.

Sali was a test for him, and probably a very important one. Did that mean that Tony Wills already had Sali figured out, and he was off chasing data already fully analyzed? Or did it mean that he had to make his case and sell it after he'd reached his own conclusions? It was a big thought for standing in front of the bathroom mirror with his Norelco. This wasn't school anymore. A failing grade here meant failing — life? No, not that bad, but not good, either. Something to think about with coffee and CNN in the kitchen.

For breakfast, Zuhayr walked up the hill, where he purchased two dozen doughnuts and four large coffees. America was such a crazy country. So many natural riches — trees, rivers, magnificent roads, incredible prosperity — but all in the service of idolaters. And here he was, drinking their coffee and eating their doughnuts. Truly, the world was mad, and if it ran on any plan at all, it was Allah's Own Plan, and not something even for the Faithful to understand. They just had to obey that which was written. On returning to the motel, he found both TVs tuned in to the news — CNN, the global news network — the Jewish-oriented one, that is. Such a pity that no Americans watched Al-Jazeera, which at least tried to speak to Arabs, though to his eyes it had already caught the American disease.

"Food," Zuhayr announced. "And drink." One box of doughnuts went into his room, and the other to Mustafa, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes after eleven hours of snoring slumber.

"How did you sleep, my brother?" Abdullah asked the team leader.

"It was a blessed experience, but my legs are still stiff." His hand shot out for the large cup of coffee, and he snatched a maple-frosted doughnut from the box, downing half of it in one monstrous bite. He rubbed his eyes and looked at the TV to see what was happening in the world this day. The Israeli police had shot and killed another holy martyr before he'd been able to trigger his bodysuit of Semtex.

"Dumb fuck," Brian observed. "How hard can it be to pull a string?"

"I wonder how the Israelis twigged to him. You gotta figure they have paid informants inside that Hamas bunch. This has got to be a code-worded Major Case for their police, lots of resources assigned, plus help from their spook shops."

"They torture people, too, don't they?"

Dominic nodded after a second's consideration. "Yeah, supposedly it's controlled by their court system and all that, but they interrogate a little more vigorously than we do."

"Does it work?"

"We talked that one around at the Academy. You put a bowie knife to somebody's dick, chances are he'll see the wisdom of singing, but it's not something anybody wanted to think much about. I mean, yeah, in the abstract it can even seem funny, but doing it yourself — probably not very palatable, y'know? The other question is, how much good information does it really generate? The guy's just as likely to say anything to get the knife away from his little friend, make the pain stop, whatever. Crooks can be really good liars unless you know more than they do. Anyway, we can't do it. You know, the Constitution and all that. You can threaten them with bad jail time, and scream at them, but even then there're lines you can't cross."

"They sing anyway?"

"Mostly. Interrogation's an art form. Some guys are really good at it. I never really had much of a chance to learn it, but I did see some guys play the game. The real trick is to develop a rapport with the mutt, saying stuff like, yeah, that nasty little girl really asked for it, didn't she? Makes you want to puke afterward, but the name of the game is getting the bastard to fess up. After he gets into the joint, his neighbors will hassle him a lot worse than I ever would. One thing you don't want to be in a prison is a child abuser."

"I believe it, Enzo. That friend of yours in Alabama, maybe you did him a favor."

"Depends on if you believe in hell or not," Dominic responded. He had his own thoughts about that.

Wills was early this morning. Jack saw him on his workstation when he came in. "You beat me in, for once."

"My wife's car came back from the shop. Now she can take the kids to school for a change," he explained. "Check the feed from Meade," he directed.

Jack lit up his computer, sat through the start-up procedures, and typed in his personal encryption code to access the interagency traffic download file from the downstairs computer room.

The top of the electronic pile was a FLASH-priority dispatch from NSA Fort Meade to CIA, and FBI, and Homeland Security, one of whom would have surely briefed the President on it this morning. Strangely, there was almost nothing to it, just a numeric message, a set of numbers.

"So?" Junior asked.

"So, it might be a passage from the Koran. The Koran has a hundred fourteen suras — chapters — with a variable number of verses. If this is such a reference, it's a verse with nothing particularly dramatic in it. Scroll down and see for yourself."

Jack clicked his mouse. "That's all?"

Woods nodded. "That's all, but the thinking at Meade is that such a dull message is likely to denote something else — something important. Spooks tend to use a lot of reverse English when they hit the cue ball."

"Well, duh! You're telling me that because it appears to have no importance to it, it may be important? Hell, Tony, you can make that observation about anything! What else do they know? The network, where the guy logged on from, that sort of thing?"

"It's a European network, privately owned, with 800 numbers all over the world, and we know some bad guys have used it. You can't tell where the members log in from."

"Okay, so, first, we do not know if the message has any significance. Second, we do not know where the message originated. Third, we do not have any way of knowing who's read it or where the hell they are. The short version is that we don't know shit, but everybody's getting in a flutter about it. What else? The originator, what do we know about him?"

"He — or she, for all we know — is thought to be a possible player."

"What team?"

"Guess. The NSA profilers say that this guy's syntax seems to indicate Arabic as a first language — based on previous traffic. The shrinks at CIA agree. They've copied messages from this bird before. He says nasty things to nasty people on occasion, and they're time-linked with some other very bad things."

"Is it possible that he's making some signal related to the bomber the Israeli police bagged earlier today?"

"Possible, yes, but not terribly likely. The originator isn't linked to Hamas, as far as we know."

"But we don't really know, do we?"

"With these guys you can't be totally sure about anything."

"So, we're back to where we started. Some people are running around over something they don't really know shit about."

"That's the problem. In these bureaucracies it's better to cry wolf and be wrong than to have your mouth shut when the big gray critter runs off with a sheep in his mouth."

Ryan sat back in his chair. "Tony, how many years were you at Langley?"

"A few," Wills answered.

"How the hell did you stand it?"

The senior analyst shrugged. "Sometimes I wonder."

Jack turned back to his computer to scan the rest of the morning's message traffic. He decided to see if Sali had been doing anything unusual over the last few days, just to cover his own ass, and in thinking that, John Patrick Ryan, Jr., started thinking like a bureaucrat, without even knowing it.

"Tomorrow it's going to be a little different," Pete told the twins. "Michelle is your target, but this time she'll be disguised. Your mission is to ID her and track her to her destination. Oh, did I tell you, she's really good at disguises."

"She's going to take an invisible pill, right?" Brian asked.

"That's her mission," Alexander elucidated.

"You going to issue us magic glasses to see through the makeup?"

"Not even if we had any — which we don't."

"Some pal you are," Dominic observed coldly.

By eleven that morning, it was time to scout the objective.

Conveniently located just a quarter mile north on U.S. Route 29, the Charlottesville Fashion Square Mall was a medium-sized shopping mall that catered to a largely upscale clientele of local gentry and students at the nearby University of Virginia. It was anchored by a JCPenney at one end and a Sears at the other, with Belk's men's and women's stores in the middle. Unexpectedly, there was no food court per se — whoever had done the reconnaissance had been sloppy. A disappointment, but not all that uncommon. The advance teams the organization employed were often mere stringers, for whom missions of this sort were something of a lark. But, Mustafa saw on going in, it would do little harm.

A central courtyard opened into all four of the mall's main corridors. An information stand even supplied diagrams of the mall, showing store locations. Mustafa looked one over. A six-pointed Star of David leaped off the page at his eyes. A synagogue, here? Was that possible? He walked down to see, halfway hoping that it was indeed possible.

But it wasn't. It was, rather, the mall's security office, where sat a male employee in a uniform of light blue shirt and dark blue pants. On inspection, the man did not have a gun belt. And that was good. He did have a phone, which would undoubtedly call the local police. So, this black man would have to be the first. With that decided, Mustafa reversed directions, walked past the restrooms and the Coke machine, and turned right, away from the men's store.

This was a fine target place, he saw. Only three main entrances, and a clear field of fire from the Central Court. The individual stores were mainly rectangular, with open access from the corridors. On the following day, at about this time, it would be even more crowded. He estimated two hundred people in his immediate sight, and though he'd hoped all the way into this city that they'd have the chance to kill perhaps a thousand, anything over two hundred would be a victory of no small dimension. There were all manner of stores here, and unlike Saudi malls, men and women shopped on the same floor. Many children, too. There were four stores listed as specialty children's goods — and even a Disney Store! That he had not expected, and to attack one of America's most treasured icons would be sweet indeed.

Rafi appeared at his side. "Well?"

"It could be a larger target, but the arrangement is nearly perfect for us. All on one level," Mustafa replied quietly.

"Allah is beneficent as always, my friend," Rafi said, unable to conceal his enthusiasm.

People circulated about. Many young women were pushing their little ones about in strollers — he saw that you could rent them from a stand just by the hair salon.

There was one purchase he had to make. He accomplished it in the Radio Shack next to a Zales Jewelers. Four portable radios and batteries, for which he paid in cash, and for which he got a brief lecture on how the radios worked.

All in all, it could have been better, in a theoretical sense, but it wasn't supposed to be a busy city street. Besides, there would be policemen on the street with guns who would interfere with their mission. So, as always in life, you measured the bitter against the sweet, and here there was much of the sweet for all of them to taste. The four of them all got pretzels from Auntie Anne's and headed out past the JCPenney back to their car. Formal planning would take place at their motel rooms, with more doughnuts and coffee.

Jerry Rounds's official job was as head of strategic planning for The Campus's white side. This job he performed fairly well — he might have been the very Wolf of Wall Street had he not chosen to become an Air Force intelligence officer on leaving the University of Pennsylvania. The service had even paid for his master's degree from the Wharton School of Business before he'd made full-bull colonel. This had given him an unexpected master's degree to hang on the wall, which also gave him a superb excuse to be in the trading business. It was even a fun diversion for the former chief USAF analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency's headquarters building at Bolling AFB in Washington. But along the way he'd found that being an "un-rated weenie" — he'd never worn the silver wings of a USAF aviator — didn't compensate for being a second-class citizen in a service completely run by those who did poke holes in the sky, even if he were smarter than twenty of them in the same room. Coming to The Campus had seriously broadened his horizons in a lot of ways.

"What is it, Jerry?" Hendley asked.

"The folks at Meade and over across the river just got excited about something," Rounds replied, handing some papers across.

The former senator read the traffic for a minute or so and handed it all back. In a moment, he knew he'd seen most of it before. "So?"

"So, this time they may be right, boss. I've been keeping an eye on the background stuff. The thing is, we have a combination of reduced message traffic from known players, and then this flies over the transom. I spent my life in DIA looking at coincidences. This here's one of them."

"Okay, what are they doing about it?"

"Airport security is going to be a little tighter starting today. The FBI is going to set people at some departure gates."

"Nothing on TV about it?"

"Well, the boys and girls at Homeland Security may have gotten a little smarter about advertising. It's counterproductive. You don't catch a rat by shouting at him. You do it by showing him what he wants to see, and then breaking his goddamned neck."

Or maybe by having a cat spring on him unexpectedly, Hendley didn't say. But that was a harder mission.

"Any ideas for us?" he asked instead.

"Not at the moment. It's like seeing a front move in. There may be heavy rain and hail in it, but there's no convenient way to stop it."

"Jerry, how good is our data on the planning guys, the ones who give the orders?"

"Some of it's pretty good. But it's the people who convey the orders, not the ones who originate them."

"And if they drop off the table?"

Rounds nodded immediate agreement. "Now you're talking, boss. Then the real big shots might poke their heads up out of their holes. Especially if they don't know that storm's coming in."

"For now, what's the biggest threat?"

"The FBI is thinking car bombs, or maybe somebody with a C-4 overcoat, like in Israel. It's possible, but from an operational point of view, I'm not so sure." Round sat down in the offered chair. "It's one thing to give the guy his explosives package and put him on a city bus for the ride to his objective, but, as applied to us, it's more complicated. Bring the bomber here, get him outfitted — which means having the explosives in place, which is a further complication—then getting him familiar with the objective, then getting him there. The bomber is then expected to maintain his motivation a long way from his support network. A lot of things can go wrong, and that's why black operations are kept as simple as possible. Why go out of your way to purchase trouble?"

"Jerry, how many hard targets do we have?" Hendley asked.

"Total? Six or so. Of those, four are real, no-shit targets."

"Can you get me locations and profiles?"

"Any time you say."

"Monday." No sense thinking about it over the weekend. He had two days of riding all planned out. He was entitled to a couple of days off once in a while.

"Roger that, boss." Rounds stood and headed out. Then he stopped at the door. "Oh, there's a guy at Morgan and Steel, bond department. He's a crook. He's playing fast and very loose with some client money, about one-fifty worth." By which he meant a hundred and fifty million dollars of other people's money.

"Anybody on to him?"

"Nope, I ID'd this guy on my own. Met him two months ago up in New York, and he didn't sound quite right, and so I put a watch on his personal computer. Want to see his notes?"

"Not our job, Jerry."

"I know, I shorted our business with him to make sure he didn't dick with our funds, but I think he knows it's time to leave town, like maybe a trip overseas, one-way ticket. Somebody ought to have a look. Maybe Gus Werner?"

"I'll have to think about that. Thanks for the heads-up."

"Roger that." And Rounds disappeared out the door.

"So, we just try to sneak up on her without being noticed, right?" Brian asked.

"That's the mission," Pete agreed.

"How close?"

"Close as you can get."

"You mean close enough to put one in the back of her head?" the Marine asked.

"Close enough to see her earrings," Alexander decided was the most polite way of putting it. It was even accurate, since Mrs. Peters wore her hair fairly long.

"So, not to shoot her in the head, but to cut her throat?" Brian pressed the question.

"Look, Brian, you can put it any way you want. Close enough to touch her, okay?"

"Okay, just so's I understand," Brian said. "We have to wear our fanny packs?"

"Yes," Alexander replied, though it wasn't true. Brian was being a pain in the ass again. Who'd ever heard of a Marine with conscience attacks?

"It'll make us easier to spot," Dominic objected.

"So, disguise it somehow. Be creative," the training officer suggested a little testily.

"When do we find out what all of this is for, exactly?" Brian asked.

"Soon."

"You keep saying that, man."

"Look, you can drive back to North Carolina whenever you want."

"I've thought about it," Brian told him.

"Tomorrow's Friday. Think about it over this weekend, okay?"

"Fair enough." Brian backed off. The tone of the interplay had gotten a little uglier than he'd actually wanted. It was time to back down. He didn't dislike Pete at all. It was the not knowing, and his distaste for what it looked like. Especially with a woman as the target. Hurting women was not part of his creed. Or children, which was what had set his brother off — not that Brian disapproved. He wondered briefly if he might have done the same thing, and told himself, sure, for a kid, but without being quite sure. When dinner was finished, the twins handled the cleanup, then settled in front of the downstairs TV for some drinks and the History Channel.

It was much the same the next state up, with Jack Ryan, Jr., drinking a rum and Coke and flipping back and forth between History and History International, with an occasional sojourn to Biography, which was showing a two-hour look at Joseph Stalin. That guy, Junior thought, was one seriously cold motherfucker. Forcing one of his own confidants to sign the imprisonment order for his own wife. Damn. But how did that physically unprepossessing man exercise such control over people who were his own peers? What was the power he'd wielded over others? Where had it come from? How had he maintained it? Jack's own father had been a man of considerable power, but he had never dominated people in anything like that way. Probably never even thought about it, much less killing people for what amounted to the fun of it. Who were these people? Did they still exist?

Well, they had to. The one thing that never changed in the world was human nature. The cruel and the brutal still existed. Perhaps society no longer encouraged them as they had in, say, the Roman Empire. The gladiatorial games had trained people to accept and even to be entertained by violent death. And the dark truth of the matter was that if Jack had been given access to a time machine, he might — he would—have journeyed back to the Flavian Amphitheater to see it, just once. But that was human curiosity, not blood lust. Just a chance to gain historical knowledge, to see and read a culture connected to, yet different from, his own. He might even toss his cookies watching… or maybe not. Maybe his curiosity was that strong. But for damned sure, if he ever went back, he'd take a friend along for the ride. Like the Beretta.45 he'd learned to shoot with Mike Brennan. He wondered how many others might have taken the trip. Probably quite a few. Men. Not women. Women would have needed a lot of societal conditioning to want to look at that. But men? Men grew up on movies like Silverado and Saving Private Ryan. Men wanted to know how well they might have handled such things. So, no, human nature didn't really change. Society tended to stomp on the cruel ones, and since man was a creature of reason, most people shied away from behavior that could put them in prison or the death chamber. So, man could learn over time, but the basic drives probably did not, and so you fed the nasty little beast with fantasies, books and movies, and dreams, thoughts that walked through your consciousness while waiting for sleep to come. Maybe cops had a better time. They could exercise the little critter by handling those who stepped over the line. There was probably satisfaction in that, because you got both to feed the critter and to protect the society.

But if the beast still lived in the hearts of men, somewhere there would be men who would use whatever talents they had to — not so much control it as harness it to their own will, to use it as a tool in their personal quest for power. Such men were called Bad Guys. The unsuccessful ones were called sociopaths. The successful ones were called… Presidents.

Where did all this leave him? Jack Jr. wondered. He was still a kid, after all, even though he denied it and as a matter of law he was a grown man. Did a grown man stop growing? Stop wondering and asking questions? Stop seeking after information — or, as he thought of it, truth?

But once you had truth, what in hell did you do with it? He didn't know that one yet. Maybe it was just one more thing to learn. Surely he had the same drive to learn as his father, else why was he watching this program instead of some mindless sitcom? Maybe he'd buy a book on Stalin and Hitler. Historians were always digging into old records. Problem was, then they applied their own personal ideas to what they found. He probably really needed a shrink to look things over. They had their ideological prejudices, too, but at least there was a patina of professionalism to their thought processes. It annoyed Junior that he went to sleep every night with thoughts unresolved and truths unfound. But that, he figured, was the whole point to this thing called life.

They were all praying. All quietly. Abdullah was murmuring through the words of his Koran. Mustafa was running through the same book in the sanctity of his own mind — not all of it, of course, just the parts that supported his mission for the coming day. To be brave, to remember their Holy Mission, to accomplish it without mercy. Mercy was Allah's business.

What if we survive? he asked himself, and was surprised at the thought.

They had a plan for this, of course. They'd drive back west and try to find their way back to Mexico, and then fly back home — to be welcomed with great rejoicing by their other comrades. In truth, he didn't expect this to happen, but hope was something no man sets completely aside, and however Paradise might beckon, life on earth was all that he actually knew.

That thought startled him, too. Did he just express doubt in his Faith? No, not that. Not that, exactly. Just a random thought. There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is His messenger, he chanted in his own mind, expressing the Shahada, which was the very foundation of Islam. No, he couldn't deny his Faith now. His Faith had brought him across the world, to the very location of his martyrdom. His Faith had raised and nurtured his life, through childhood, through the anger of his father, into the very home of the infidels who spat upon Islam and nurtured the Israelis, there to affirm his Faith with his life. And his death, probably. Almost certainly, unless Allah Himself desired otherwise. Because all things in life were written by Allah's Own Hand…

The alarm went off just before six. Brian knocked on his brother's door.

"Wake up, G-man. We're wasting sunlight."

"Is that a fact?" Dominic observed from the far end of the corridor. "Beat ya, Aldo!" Which was a first.

"Then let's get it done, Enzo," Brian responded, and together they headed outside. An hour and a quarter later, they were back and at the breakfast table.

"It's a good day to be alive," Brian observed with his first sip of coffee.

"The Marine Corps must brainwash your ass, bro," Dominic observed, with a sip of his own.

"No, the endorphins just kick in. That's how the human body lies to itself."

"You grow out of it," Alexander told them. "All ready for your little field exercise?"

"Yes, Sergeant Major," Brian replied with a smile. "We get to whack Michelle for lunch."

"Only if you can track her without being spotted."

"It would be easier in the woods, you know. I'm trained in that particular skill."

"Brian, what do you think we've been doing here?" Pete inquired gently.

"Oh, is that what it is?"

"First get new shoes," Dominic advised.

"Yeah, I know. These are just about dead." The canvas uppers were separating from the rubber bottoms, and the bottoms were pretty shot, too. He hated doing it. He'd put a lot of miles in his running shoes, and a man can be sentimental about such things, which was frequently a matter of annoyance to his spouse.

"We'll hit the mall early. Foot Locker right next to the place they rent strollers," Dom reminded his brother.

"Yeah, I know. Okay, Pete, any advice on Michelle?" Brian asked. "You know, if we're out on a mission, we usually get a mission brief."

"That's a fair question, Captain. I'd suggest you look for her at Victoria's Secret, just across from The Gap. If you get close enough without being spotted, you win. If she says your name when you're more than ten feet away, you lose."

"This isn't strictly fair," Dominic pointed out. "She knows what we look like — especially height and weight. A real bad guy wouldn't have that information in his pocket. You can fake being taller, but not being shorter."

"And my ankles can't take high heels, y'know?" Brian added.

"You don't have the legs for it anyway, Aldo," Alexander needled. "Who ever said this job was easy?"

Except we still don't know what the fucking job is, Brian didn't respond. "Fair enough, we improvise, adapt, and overcome."

"Who are you now, Dirty Harry?" Dominic asked, finishing off his McMuffin.

"In the Corps, he's our favorite civilian, bro. Probably would have made a pretty good gunny."

"Especially with his.44 Smith."

"Kinda noisy for a handgun. Kinda tough on the hand, too. Except maybe the Auto-Mag. Ever shot one of those?"

"No, but I handled the one in the gun locker at Quantico. Damned thing ought to come with a trailer to haul it around with, but I bet it makes nice holes."

"Yeah, but if you want to conceal it, you better be Hulk Hogan."

"I hear that, Aldo." As a practical matter, the fanny packs they used didn't so much conceal a pistol as make it more convenient to carry. Any cop knew what it was on first sight, though few civilians recognized it. Both brothers carried a loaded pistol and a spare magazine in their packs, when they wore them. Pete wanted them to do so today just to make it harder to track Michelle Peters without being spotted. Well, you expected such things of training officers, didn't you?

The same day began five miles away at Holiday Inn Express, and on this day, unlike the others, they all unrolled their prayer rugs and, as one man, said their morning Salat for what they all expected to be the last time. It took but a few minutes and then they all washed, to purify themselves for their task. Zuhayr even took the time to shave around his new beard, neatly trimming the part he wanted to wear into eternity, until, when satisfied, he dressed.

It wasn't until they were completely ready that they realized it was hours short of the proper time. Abdullah walked up the hill to Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast and coffee, this time even returning with a newspaper, which circulated its way around both rooms while the men drank their coffee and smoked their cigarettes.

Fanatics they might seem to their enemies, but they remained human, and the tension of the moment was unpleasant, and getting only worse by the minute. The coffee only pumped more caffeine into their systems, making hands shake and eyes narrow on the TV news. They checked their watches every few seconds, willing unsuccessfully for the hands to turn faster around the dials, then drank more of the coffee.

"Now we're getting excited, too?" Jack asked Tony at The Campus. He gestured at his workstation. "What's here that I don't see, buddy?"

Wills rocked back in his chair. "It's a combination of things. Maybe it's real. Maybe it's just a coincidence. Maybe it's just a construct in the minds of professional analysts. You know how you tell what it really is?"

"Wait a week, look back, and see if anything actually happened?"

That was enough to make Tony Wills laugh. "Junior, you are learning the spook business. Jesus, I've seen more predictions go wrong in the intelligence business than they have on Preakness day at Pimlico. You see, unless you do know, you just don't know, but people in the business don't like to think that way."

"I remember when I was a kid, Dad used to get in shitty moods sometimes—"

"He was in CIA during the Cold War. The big shots were always asking for predictions that nobody could really give — at least not that meant anything. Your father was usually the guy who said, 'Wait awhile and you'll see for yourselves,' and that really pissed them off, but, you know, he was usually right, and there weren't any disasters on his watch."

"Will I ever be that good?"

"It's a lot to hope for, kid, but you never know. You're lucky to be here. At least the Senator knows what 'don't know' means. It means his people are honest, and they know they're not God."

"Yeah, I remember that from the White House. It always amazed me how many people in D.C. thought they really were."

Dominic did the driving. It was a pleasant three or four miles down the hillside into town.

"Victoria's Secret? Suppose we'll bag her buying a nightie?" Brian wondered.

"We can only dream," Dominic said, turning left onto Rio Road. "We're early. Get your shoes first?"

"Makes sense. Park by the Belk's men's store."

"Roger that, Skipper."

"Is it time?" Rafi asked. He'd done so three times in the past thirty minutes.

Mustafa checked his watch: 11:48. Close enough. He nodded.

"My friends, pack your things."

Their weapons were not loaded, but placed inside shopping bags. Assembled, they were too bulky and too obvious. Each man had twelve loaded magazines, with thirty rounds each, taped together in six pairs. Every weapon had a large sound suppressor tapped to screw onto the barrel. The purpose of these wasn't so much silence as control. He remembered what Juan had told him back in New Mexico. These weapons tended to jerk off target, climbing high and right. But he'd already gone over the weapons issues with his friends, and they all knew how to shoot, had all shot these things when they'd gotten them, and so they should know what to expect. Besides, they were going to what American soldiers called a target-rich environment.

Zuhayr and Abdullah carried out their travel things, locking them into the trunk of their rented Ford. On reflection, Mustafa decided to put the guns there, too, and so all four of them, each carrying his shopping bag, walked out to the car and set the bags standing up on the floor of the trunk. With that done, Mustafa got into the car, unthinkingly bringing the room key in his pocket. The drive was not a long one. The objective was already in sight.

The parking lot had the usual entrance points. He chose the northwest entrance, next to the Belk's men's store, where they could park close in. There, he switched off the engine and said his last prayer of the morning. The other three did much the same, getting out and walking to the back of the car. Mustafa popped the trunk. They were less than fifty meters from the door. Strictly speaking, there was little point in concealment, but Mustafa remembered the security desk. To delay police response, it had to begin there. So, he told them to keep their weapons in the shopping bags, and, bags dangling from their left hands, they walked to the door.

It was a Friday, not so busy a shopping day as Saturday, but close enough for their purposes. They came inside, passing the LensCrafters, which was busy — most of these people would probably escape unhurt, which was regrettable, but the main shopping area was still before them.

Brian and Dominic were in the Foot Locker store, but Brian didn't see anything he liked. The Stride Rite next door was only for kids, so the twins proceeded forward, turning right. American Eagle Outfitters would doubtless have something, maybe in leather, with high tops that would be easier on the ankles.

Turning left, Mustafa passed a toy store and various clothing businesses on his way to the Center Court. His eyes were sweeping the area rapidly. Perhaps a hundred people in his immediate sight, and judging by K*B Toys, the retail stores would all be well peopled. He passed the Sunglass Hut and turned right for the security office. It was conveniently located, just a few steps from the restrooms. All four went into the men's room together.

A few people had noted their presence — four men of identically exotic appearance was unusual — but an American shopping mall is the nearest thing to a zoo for humans, and it took a lot for people to take much note of anything unusual, much less dangerous.

In the men's room, they all took their weapons from the shopping bags and assembled them. Bolts were pulled back. Magazines were inserted in the pistol grips. Each man slipped the five magazine pairs into pants pockets. Two screwed the lengthy suppressors onto their weapons. Mustafa and Rafi did not, deciding after rapid reflection that they preferred to hear the noise.

"Are we ready?" the leader asked. The replies were only nods.

"Then we shall eat lamb together in Paradise. To your places. When I shoot first, you will all begin."

Brian was trying on some low-top leather boots. Not quite the same as the boots he wore in the Marine Corps, but they looked and felt comfortable, and they fitted his feet as though custom designed. "Not bad."

"Want me to box them up?" the clerk — a girl — asked.

Aldo thought for a moment and decided: "No, I'll break them in right away." He handed her his disreputable Nikes, which she put in the box for the boots, and led him to the cash register.

Mustafa was looking at his watch. He figured two minutes for his friends to get in place.

Rafi, Zuhayr, and Abdullah were walking into the main concourse of the mall now, holding their weapons low, and, amazingly, largely escaping notice from the shoppers who bustled along and minded their own business. When the sweep hand reached twelve, Mustafa took a deep breath and walked out of the men's room, and to the left.

The security guard was at his chest-high desk, reading a magazine, when he saw a shadow on the desktop. He looked up to see a man of olive complexion.

"Can I help you, sir?" he asked politely. He had no time to react after that.

"Allahu Ackbar!" was the shouted reply. Then the Ingram came up.

Mustafa held the trigger for but a second, but in that second, a total of nine bullets entered the black man's chest. The impact of nine bullets pushed him backward half a step, and he fell, dead, to the tiled floor.

"What the hell was that?" Brian instantly asked his brother — the only person nearby — as all heads turned to the left.

Rafi was only twenty-five feet to their right-front when he heard the gunfire, and it was time for him to start. He dropped into a half crouch and brought his Ingram up. He turned right toward the Victoria's Secret store. The customers there all had to be women of no morals even to look at such whorish clothing, and perhaps, he thought, some would serve him in Paradise. He just pointed and held the trigger down.

The sound was deafening, like a colossal zipper of explosions. Three women were immediately hit and went down at once. Others just stood still for a second, their eyes wide with shock and disbelief, not taking any action at all.

For his part, Rafi was disagreeably surprised by the fact that more than half of his rounds had not hit anything. The poorly balanced weapon had jerked in his hand, spraying the ceiling. The bolt closed on an empty chamber. He looked down at it in surprise, then ejected the first magazine and reversed it, slapping it back into the port and looking for more targets. They'd started to run now, and so he brought the Ingram to his shoulder.

"Fuck!" Brian said. What the hell is going on? his mind shouted.

"Fuckin' right, Aldo." Dominic swiveled his fanny pack to the front of his belly and jerked at the string that opened the two-zipper closure. A second later, his Smith & Wesson was in his hands. "Cover my ass!" he commanded his brother. The shooter with the SMG was a bare twenty feet away, on the other side of a jewelry kiosk, facing away, but this wasn't Dodge City, there were no rules about facing down a criminal.

Dominic fell to one knee, and bringing the automatic up in both hands, he loosed two ten-millimeter hollow points into the center of the man's back, and then one more into the center of the back of his head. His target dropped straight down, and judging by the red explosion from the third shot, wouldn't be doing much else. The FBI agent jumped to the prostrate body and kicked the gun away. He noted immediately what it was, and then he saw that the body had extra magazines in its pockets. The immediate thought was Oh, shit! Then he heard the crackling roar of more gunfire to his left.

"More of 'em, Enzo!" Brian said, right at his brother's side, his Beretta in his right hand. "This one's all gone. Any ideas?"

"Follow me, cover my ass!"

Mustafa found himself in a low-end jewelry store. There were six women in view, in front of and behind the counter. He lowered his weapon to his hip and fired, emptying his first magazine into them and feeling the momentary satisfaction of seeing them fall. When the gun stopped shooting, he ejected the empty magazine and reversed it to reload, cocking the bolt as he did so.

Both twins came to their feet and started moving west, not fast, but not slow either, with Dominic in the lead and Brian two steps back, their eyes mainly going to where the noise was. All Brian's training came flooding back into his consciousness. Use cover and concealment wherever possible. Locate and engage the enemy.

Just then a figure came left to right from Kay Jewelers, holding an SMG and spraying to his left into another jewelry store. The mall was a cacophony of screams and gunfire now, with people running blindly toward exits instead of first looking for where the danger was. A lot of those went down, mostly women. Some children.

Somehow this all passed the brothers by. They scarcely even saw the victims. There just wasn't time for that, and what training they'd had took over completely. The first target in view was the one standing there hosing the jewelry store.

"Going right," Brian said, darting that way with his head down but looking in the direction of his target.

Brian almost died that way. Zuhayr was standing at Claire's Boutique, having just turned away from dumping a full magazine into it. Suddenly unsure of which way to go next, he turned left and saw a man with a pistol in his hand. He carefully shouldered his weapon and squeezed the trigger—

— two rounds fired off uselessly, then nothing. His first magazine had been expended, and it took two or three seconds for him to realize it. Then he ejected and reversed it, ramming it back into the bottom of his machine gun and looking back up—

— but the man was gone. Where? Without targets, he reversed direction and walked with a measured pace into the Belk's women's store.

Brian crouched by the Sunglass Hut, peeking around the right side.

There, moving to the left. He brought his Beretta into his right hand and squeezed off one round—

— but it missed the head by a whisker when the man ducked.

"Fuck!" Brian then stood and put both hands on the pistol, leading just a hair and firing off four rounds. All four went into the thorax, below the shoulders.

Mustafa heard the noise but didn't feel the impacts. His body was full of adrenaline, and, under such circumstances, the body simply does not feel pain. Just a second later, he coughed up blood, which came as quite a surprise. More so, when he tried to turn to his left, his body didn't do what his mind commanded. The puzzlement lasted just another second or two when—

— Dominic was facing the second one, gun up and aimed. Again, he fired, as trained, for center-of-mass, and the Smith was on single-action, barking twice.

So good was his aim that the first round hit the target's weapon—

— The Ingram jumped in Mustafa's hands. He barely held on to it, but then he saw who'd attacked him and took careful aim and squeezed — but nothing happened. On looking down, he saw a bullet hole in the steel side of the Ingram, just where the bolt was. He took another second or two to realize that he was now disarmed. But his enemy was still before him and he raced toward him, hoping to use his gun as a club if nothing else.

Dominic was amazed. He'd seen at least one of his rounds take him in the chest — and the other one had broken his weapon. For some reason, he did not fire again. Instead he clubbed the bastard in the face with his Smith and headed forward, where there was more gunfire.

Mustafa felt his legs weaken. The blow in the face did hurt, even though the five bullets had not. He tried to turn again, but his left leg would bear no weight, and he fell, turning to land on his back, where, suddenly, breathing came very hard indeed. He tried to sit up, even to roll, but as his legs had failed him, so the left side of his body was useless.

"That's two down," Brian said. "Now what?"

The screaming had abated, but not by much. But the gunfire was still there, and it had changed character…

Abdullah blessed fate for putting the suppressor on his weapon. His shooting was more accurate than he'd ever hoped.

He was in the Sam Goody music store, which was filled with students. It was also a store with no rear exit, because it was so close to the westernmost entrance. Abdullah's face was grinning broadly as he walked into the store, firing as he went. The faces he saw were full of disbelief — and for an amused moment he told himself that disbelief was the reason he was killing them. He emptied his first magazine quickly, and indeed the suppressor allowed him to hit with half his shots. Men and women — boys and girls — screamed, stood still and staring for a few precious, deadly seconds, and then started running away. But at less than ten meters, it was just as easy to hit them in the back, and they really had nowhere to run. He just stood there, hosing the room, letting the targets select themselves. Some ran up the other side of the CD racks, trying to escape out the main door. These he shot as they passed, hardly two meters away. In seconds, he'd emptied his first magazine pair, and dumped it, pulling another from his pants pocket and slamming it home and cocking the bolt. But there was a mirror on the store's back wall, and in it he saw—

"Jesus, another one!" Dominic said.

"Okay." Brian darted to the other side of the entrance and took position against the wall, bringing his Beretta up. This put him on the same pseudo-corridor as the terrorist, but the setup didn't benefit a right-handed shooter worth a damn. He had to choose between shooting weak-hand — something he didn't practice as much as he should have done — or exposing his body to return fire. But something in his Marine mind just said Fuck it and he stepped to his left, pistol up in both hands.

Abdullah saw him and smiled, bringing his weapon to his shoulder — or trying to.

Aldo fired off two aimed shots into the target's chest, saw no effect, and then emptied his magazine. More than twelve rounds entered the man's body—

— Abdullah felt them all, and he felt his body jerk with each impact. He tried firing his own weapon, but he missed with all of his shots, and then his body was no longer under his control. He fell forward, trying to recover his balance.

Brian ejected his empty magazine and pulled the other one from his fanny pack, slapping it in and dropping the slide-release lever. He was going on autopilot now. The bastard was still moving! Time to fix that. He walked over to the prone body, kicked the gun aside, and fired one round right into the back of his head. The skull split open — blood and brains exploded out onto the floor.

"Jesus, Aldo!" Dominic said, coming to his brother's side.

"Fuck that! We got at least one more out there. I'm down to one clip, Enzo."

"Me, too, bro."

Amazingly, most of the people on the floor, including the shot ones, were still alive. The blood on the floor could have been rain in a thunderstorm. But both brothers were too wired to be sickened by what they saw. They moved back out into the mall and headed east.

The carnage was just as bad here. The floor was defiled by numerous pools of blood. There were screams and whimpers. Brian passed a little girl, perhaps three years old, standing over the body of her mother, her arms fluttering like a baby bird's. No time, no damned time to do anything about it. He wished Pete Randall were close. He was a good corpsman. But even Petty Officer Randall would be overwhelmed by this mess.

There was still more chatter from a suppressed submachine gun. It was in the Belk's women's store, off to their left. Not all that far off by the sound of it. The sound of automatic-weapons fire is distinctive. Nothing else sounds quite the same. They split up, each taking one side of the short corridor leading past the Coffee Beanery and Bostonian Shoes into the next combat area.

The first floor of Belk's started off with perfumes and makeup. As before, they ran to the sound of the guns. There were six women down at perfume, and three more in makeup. Some were obviously dead. Others were just as obviously alive. Some called out for help, but there was no time for that. The twins split up again. The noise had just stopped. It had been off to their left front, but it wasn't there now. Had the terrorist run away? Was he just out of ammo?

There were expended cartridge cases all over the floor — nine-millimeter brass, they both saw. He'd had himself a good old time here, Dominic saw. The mirrors affixed to the building's internal pillars were nearly all shattered by gunfire. To his trained eye, it seemed as though the terrorist had walked in the front, sprayed the first people he'd seen — all women — and then worked his way back and to the left, probably going to wherever he saw the most potential targets. Probably just one guy, Brian's mind told him.

Okay, what are we up against? Dominic wondered. How's he going to react? How does he think?

For Brian it was simpler: Where are you, you motherfucker? For the Marine, he was an armed enemy, and nothing else. Not a person, not a human being, not even a thinking brain, just a target holding a weapon.

Zuhayr experienced a sudden diminution of excitement. He'd been more excited than at any moment in his life. He'd had only a few women in his life, and surely he'd killed more women here today than he'd ever fucked… but to him, here and now, somehow it felt just the same.

And all that struck him as very satisfying. He hadn't heard the shooting from before, none of it. He'd scarcely heard his own gunfire, so focused was he on his business. And good business it had been. The look on their faces when they saw him and his machine gun…and the look when the bullets struck… that was a pleasing sight. But he was down to his last two magazine pairs now. One was in his gun, and the other in his pocket.

Strange, he thought, that he could hear the relative silence now. There were no live women in his immediate area. Well… no unwounded women. Some of those he'd shot were making noise. Some were even trying to crawl away…

He couldn't have that, Zuhayr knew. He started walking toward one of them, a dark-haired woman wearing whorish red pants.

Brian whistled to his brother and pointed. There he was, about five-eight, wearing khaki pants and a similarly colored bush jacket, fifty yards away. A playground shot for a rifle, something for a boot at Parris Island to do, but not quite so easy for his Beretta, however good a marksman he was.

Dominic nodded and started heading that way, but swiveling his head in all directions.

"Too bad, woman," Zuhayr said in English. "But do not be afraid, I send you to see Allah. You will serve me in Paradise." And he tried to fire a single round into her back. But the Ingram doesn't allow that easily. Instead he rippled off three rounds from a range of one meter.

Brian saw the whole thing, and something just came loose. The Marine stood up and aimed with both hands. "You motherfucker!" he screamed, and fired as rapidly as accuracy allowed, from a range of perhaps a hundred feet. He fired a total of fourteen shots, almost emptying his weapon. And some of them, remarkably, hit the target.

Three, in fact, one of which got the target right in the belly, and another in center chest.

The first one hurt. Zuhayr felt the impact as he might have felt a kick in the testicles. It caused his arms to drop as though to cover up and protect from another injury. His weapon was still in his hands, and he fought through the pain to bring it back up as he watched the man approach.

Brian didn't forget everything. In fact, a lot came flooding back into his consciousness. He had to remember the lessons of Quantico — and Afghanistan — if he wanted to sleep in his own bed that night. And so he took an indirect path forward, dodging around the rectangular goods tables, keeping his eyes on his target and trusting Enzo to look around. But he did that, too. His target didn't have command of his weapon. He was looking straight at the Marine, his face strangely fearful… but smiling? What the hell?

He walked right in now, straight at the bastard.

For his part, Zuhayr stopped fighting the suddenly massive weight on his weapon, and stood as straight as he could, looking in the eyes of his killer. "Allahu Ackbar," he said.

"That's nice," Brian replied, and fired right into his forehead. "I hope you like it in hell." Then he bent down and picked up the Ingram, slinging it over his back.

"Clear it and leave it, Aldo," Dominic commanded. Brian did just that.

"Jesus, I hope somebody called 911," he observed.

"Okay, follow me upstairs," Dominic said next.

"What — why?"

"What if there's more'n four of 'em?" The reply-question was like a punch in Brian's mouth.

"Okay, I got your six, bro."

It struck both of them as incredible that the escalator was still working, but they rode it up, both crouching and scanning all around. There were women all over the place — all over meaning as far from the escalator as possible—

"FBI!" Dominic called. "Is everybody okay here?"

"Yes," came multiple, separate, and equivocal replies from around the second floor.

Enzo's professional identity came back into full command: "Okay, we have it under control. The police will be here shortly. Until they get here, just sit tight."

The twins walked from the top of the "up" escalator to the top of the "down" one. It was immediately clear that the shooters hadn't come up here.

The ride down was dreadful beyond words. Again, there were pools of blood on a straight line from perfume to handbags, and now the lucky ones who were merely wounded were crying out for help. And, again, the twins had more important things to do. Dominic led his brother out into the main concourse. He turned left to check the first one he'd shot. This one was dead beyond question. His last ten-millimeter bullet had exploded out through his right eye.

On reflection, that left only one, if he was still alive.

He was, despite all of his hits. Mustafa was trying to move, but his muscles were drained of blood and oxygen, and were not listening to the commands that came through the central nervous system. He found himself looking up, somewhat dreamily it seemed, even to him.

"You have a name?" one of them asked.

Dominic had only halfway expected an answer. The man was clearly dying, and not slowly, either. He turned to look for his brother — not there. "Hey, Aldo!" he called, to no immediate response.

Brian was in Legends, a sporting-goods shop, taking a quick look. His initiative was rewarded, and he took it back to the mall corridor.

Dominic was there, talking to his "suspect," but without getting much of a response.

"Hey, raghead," Brian said, returning. Then he knelt down in the blood beside the dying terrorist. "I got something for you."

Mustafa looked up in some puzzlement. He knew that death was close, and while he didn't exactly welcome it, he was content in his own mind that he'd done his duty to his Faith, and to Allah's Law.

Brian grabbed the terrorist's hands and crossed them on his bleeding chest. "I want you to carry this to hell with you. It's a pigskin, asshole, made from the skin of a real Iowa pig." And Brian held his hands on the football as he looked into the bastard's eyes.

The eyes went wide with recognition — and horror at the moment's transgression. He willed his arms to move away, but the infidel's hands overpowered his efforts.

"Yeah, that's right. I am Iblis himself, and you're going to my place." Brian smiled until the eyes went lifeless.

"What's that about?"

"Save it," Brian responded. "Come on."

They headed for where it had all started. A lot of women were on the floor, most of them moving some. All of them bleeding, and some quite a lot—"Find a drugstore. I need bandages, and make sure somebody called 911."

"Right." Dominic ran off, looking, while Brian knelt next to a woman of about thirty, shot in the chest. Like most Marines, and all marine officers, he knew rudimentary first aid. First he checked her airway. Okay, she was breathing. She was bleeding from two bullet holes in her upper left chest. There was a little pink froth on her lips. Lung shot, but not a bad one. "Can you hear me?"

A nod, and a rasp: "Yes."

"Okay, you're going to be okay. I know it hurts, but you are going to be okay."

"Who are you?"

"Brian Caruso, ma'am, United States Marines. You're going to be fine. Now I have to try'n help some others."

"No, no — I—" She grasped his arm.

"Ma'am, there's other people here hurt worse than you. You will be fine." And with that he pulled away.

The next one was pretty bad. A child, maybe, five years old, a boy, with three hits in his back, and bleeding like an overturned bucket. Brian turned him over. The eyes were open.

"What's your name, kid?"

"David," came the reply, surprisingly coherent.

"Okay, David, we're going to get you fixed up. Where's your mom?"

"I don't know." He was worried about his mother, more fearful for her than for himself, as any child would be.

"Okay, I'll take care of her, but let me look after you first, okay?" He looked up to see Dominic running toward him.

"There ain't no drugstore!" Dominic half shouted.

"Get something, T-shirts, anything!" he ordered his cop brother. And Dominic raced into the outfitters store where Brian had gotten his boots. He came out a few seconds later with an arm full of sweatshirts with various logos on the front.

And just then the first cop arrived, his service automatic out in both hands.

"Police!" the cop shouted.

"Over here, God damn it!" Brian roared in return. It took perhaps ten seconds for the officer to make it over. "Leather that pistol, trooper. The bad guys are all down," Brian told him in a more measured voice. "We need every damned ambulance you have in this town, and tell the hospital that they got a shitload of casualties coming. You got a first-aid kit in your car?"

"Who are you?" the cop demanded, without holstering his pistol.

"FBI," Dominic answered from behind the cop, holding his credentials up in his left hand. "The shooting part is over, but we got a lot of people down here. Call everybody. Call the local FBI office and everybody else. Now get on that radio, Officer, and right the hell now!"

Like most American cops, Officer Steve Barlow had a portable Motorola radio, with a microphone/speaker clipped to the epaulet of his uniform shirt, and he made a frantic call for backup and medical assistance.

Brian turned his attention to the little boy in his arms. At this moment, David Prentiss was the entire world for Captain Brian Caruso. But all the damage was internal. The kid had more than one sucking chest wound, and this was not good.

"Okay, David, let's take it real easy. How bad does it hurt?"

"Bad," the little boy replied after half a breath. His face was going pale.

Brian set him on the countertop of the Piercing Pagoda, then realized there might be something there to help — but he found nothing more than cotton balls. He crammed two of them into each of the three holes in the child's back, then rolled him back over. But the little boy was bleeding on the inside. He was bleeding so much internally that his lungs would collapse, and he'd go to sleep and die from asphyxiation in minutes unless somebody sucked his chest out, and there was not a single thing that Brian could do about it.

"Christ!" Of all people, it was Michelle Peters, holding the hand of a ten-year-old girl whose face was as aghast as a child could manage.

"Michelle, if you know anything about first aid, pick somebody and get your ass to work," Brian ordered.

But she didn't, really. She took a handful of cotton balls from the ear-piercing place and wandered off.

"Hey, David, you know what I am?" Brian asked.

"No," the child answered, with some curiosity peering past the pain he was feeling in his chest.

"I'm a Marine. You know what that is?"

"Like a soldier?"

The boy was dying right in his arms, Brian realized. Please, God, not this one, not this little boy.

"No, we're a lot better than soldiers. A Marine's about the best thing a man can be. Maybe someday when you grow up, maybe you can be a Marine like me. What do you think?"

"Shoot bad guys?" David Prentiss asked.

"You bet, Dave," Brian assured him.

"Cool," David thought, and then his eyes closed.

"David? Stay with me, David. Come on, Dave, open those eyes back up. We need to talk some more." He gently set the body back on the counter and felt for a carotid pulse.

But there wasn't any.

"Oh, shit. Oh, shit, man," Brian whispered. With that, all the adrenaline evaporated from his bloodstream. His body became a vacuum, and his muscles slack.

The first firefighters raced in, wearing khaki turnout coats and carrying boxes of what had to be medical gear. One of them took command, directing his people into various directions. Two headed to where Brian was. The first of them took the body from his arms and looked at it briefly, then set it on the floor, and then he moved away without a word to anyone, leaving Brian standing there, with a dead child's blood on his shirt.

Enzo was nearby, just standing and looking, now that professionals — mainly volunteer firefighters, actually, but proficient for all that — were assuming control of the area. Together they walked out the nearest exit into the clear noontime air. The entire engagement had lasted less than ten minutes.

Just like real combat, Brian realized. A lifetime — no, many lifetimes had come to their premature ends in what was relatively a blink of time. His pistol was back in his fanny pack. The expended magazine was probably back in Sam Goody. What he'd just experienced was the nearest thing to being Dorothy, sucked into a Kansas tornado. But he hadn't emerged into the Land of Oz. It was still central Virginia, and a bunch of people were dead and wounded behind them.

"Who are you guys?" It was a police captain.

Dominic held up his FBI ID, and that was enough for the moment.

"What happened?"

"Looks like terrorists, four of them, came in and shot up the place. They're all dead. We got 'em, all four of them," Dominic told him.

"You hurt?" the captain asked Brian, gesturing to the blood on his shirt.

Aldo shook his head. "Not a scratch. Cap'n, you got a lot of hurt civilians in there."

"What were you guys doing here?" the captain asked next.

"Buying shoes," Brian answered, a bitter edge on his voice.

"No shit…" the police captain observed, looking at the mall entrance, and standing still only because he was afraid of what he was going to see inside. "Any ideas?"

"Get your perimeter set up," Dominic said. "Check every license plate. Check the dead bad guys for ID. You know the drill, right? Who's the local SAC?"

"Just a Resident Agent here. Nearest real office is Richmond. Called there already. The SAC's a guy named Mills."

"Jimmy Mills? I know him. Well, the Bureau ought to send a lot of troops here. Your best move is to secure the crime scene and stand by, get the wounded people clear. It's a fucking mess in there, Cap'n."

"I believe it. Well, I'll be back."

Dominic waited for the police captain to walk inside, then he elbowed his brother and together they walked to his Mercedes. The police car at the parking lot entrance — two uniforms, one of which held a shotgun — saw the FBI ID and waved them past. Ten minutes later, they were back at the plantation house.

"What's going on?" Alexander asked in the kitchen. "The radio said—"

"Pete, you know about the second thoughts I've been having?" Brian asked.

"Yeah, but what—"

"You can forget about them, Pete. Forever and always," Brian announced.