Warlord

TWENTY-ONE

CHANDRA FELT AN ALMOST OVERWHELMING URGE to trigger her automatic stiletto and jam the razor-sharp blade straight up through her boss's jaw. Through his tongue and into the soft tissue of the palate at the roof of his mouth. She knew the sharpened tip would come to rest at the base of his brain, just behind the nasal cavity. This was one of the exact thrusts the weapon was made for. The kidneys, heart, and behind the ear were the other targets she went for with a great deal of regularity and success.

She'd been late. That's why she was being quote-unquote "punished" by this asshole. She'd been sent to Miami International with the van to pick up four new "students" arriving from Islamabad, Pakistan, via Jihad, Dubai, Caracas. Planes out of Venezuela were always late, but he blamed her anyway.

She took the "students" to the safe house they kept for new arrivals, a run-down two-story bungalow off Calle Ocho in Little Havana. Student housing for terrorists, the IED frat house she called it. They were moving a hundred kids a month through that dump. And Bashi got a big cut out of each and every one he delivered safely into the system.

Tomorrow, the students would disperse and begin their own personal crime waves. Crimes sufficiently serious to warrant the attention of the police, the courts, and finally the prison system. Then their real mission began. Preaching the hijacked gospel of the Prophet inside whatever joint they landed in.

Along with the daily religious instruction came bomb building, terror tactics; all this in preparation for the Caliphate, the "Big Day." It couldn't come soon enough for her. She hated her job, Miami, and the loathsome pig who often treated her like a bad dog. But he was a rich bastard, and he was exceedingly generous. The gorgeous new Bentley Arnage in her town-house garage was all the reminder she needed of that.

Tonight, he had kept her waiting for at least a half hour, standing before his desk, not being allowed to speak, while he made endless phone calls to various mullahs and warlords on Afghan mountain-tops using his encrypted sat phone.

The only thing that kept her homicidal desires in check was the fact that he still owed her money, a lot of money. Enough to live like a princess for the rest of her life. If she killed the fat bastard, she'd never see a penny of it. She just had to roll with it for a little longer, that's all.

The burly, unshaven man in his fifties finally put his phone down, shook his head, and said in his guttural Afghan-accented Urdu, "I understand that you accomplished your goal, my darling child. My concern is the considerable amount of media attention you have brought upon yourself. Look at me."

Her eyes drifted from him to the big plasma screen on the wall above the fake fireplace…LIVE AT FIVE BREAKING NEWS… Bashi's latest problem was scrawling across the bottom, MURDER ON THE BEACH!

"Bitch! You see what I am saying?"

"Following orders. Sir."

"Yes. But, still."

"Excuse me. Sir. You wanted these two dead. The last two alive who could tie us to Jackson Memorial. You didn't think a double homicide in broad daylight was going to attract a media story?"

"Two men gunned down in a car is one thing, but a running gun battle with government agents is quite another. How many casualties did you suffer?"

She was silent, looking across the large room full of gilded furniture. A newly redecorated penthouse suite at the recently rejuvenated Fontainebleau Hotel, overlooking the Atlantic. Rented by the month. Twenty grand a month.

The awful blond wig she'd worn on the job was on a sideboard with the liquor, sitting atop one of the artfully arranged Styrofoam heads. Four colors. Another of his many fetishes, she thought. Wigs. Why else keep them so neatly arranged in his living room? And in the top drawer of the sideboard, the rest of his-

She looked him in the eye.

"Two casualties. Abdullah was wounded severely by the black agent who chased us, and I had to put him out of his misery. And the other man, Caucasian, arriving at the end, whoever he was, killed Machmud with a couple of extraordinarily well-placed head shots. On the run."

"And this other shooter, the late arrival, he was also you believe with the CIA? Not local gendarmerie?"

She shook her head, her dark eyes glued on the fat man in front of her. Disgusted with herself that this pig was her lover. The things she had done. Willingly and unwillingly. She knew his background and the extraordinarily perverse evil he was capable of.

Until 1999, when he was quietly removed from the Khan nuclear lab in Islamabad, Bashi was one of the scientists who worked on the gas centrifuge program that Dr. Khan stole from the Netherlands and brought home to Pakistan. Then he'd designed the reactor at Khushab that produced fuel to move to the next level-a plutonium bomb. He was hailed as a genius, the hero of all Pakistan.

Over time, people started wondering if he was playing with a full deck. He was always talking about sunspots. He even wrote an extensive treatise in Urdu about the role sunspots played in triggering the French Revolution, World War II, and uprisings against colonial masters around the world. Sunspots. He still couldn't shut up about them. They finally sent him north to forge alliances with the Taliban.

His name was Bashir al Mahmoud Bashi, because he was tight as a tick with the new prez, and still had access to the entire Pakistani nuclear program. The Sword of Allah sleeper agents who had penetrated the nuclear weapon storage facilities were under Bashi's control. And the fat bastard was completely out of his fucking mind. No one knew that better than she.

She looked him in the eye.

"I told you I don't know who the white guy was. He moved so blindingly fast and shot so well that none of us got a good look at him. He didn't even show up until we were over in the city of Miami. I thought we had the big black man dead and done with. Then-well, you know the rest."

Now the fat man made a show of tidying up his fingernails with his small solid gold nail clipper. Tiny little clips here and there. Delicate, like brain surgery. He purposefully didn't look at her. This was the time of the biggest threat. Was he trying to lull her into a false sense of security? That was the way of the old-style Taliban commanders. Before they flayed you alive, they lulled you to sleep.

She knew Bashi had made his reputation long ago in Islamabad and later providing sophisticated nuclear weapons for Iran and North Korea. He would still be in a powerful position today had his mind not stripped a few gears over the ensuing years. And he would surely be dead, long ago, had the Soviets invading Afghanistan not turned his backbone to steel. And had he not come under the powerful protection of the Sword of Allah.

Now he looked up at her. His cold grey eyes were still powerful enough to send a slight shiver down her back.

"Are you ready to handle this other matter?"

She nodded.

"When?" he asked.

"Soon."

"Are you planning to make it a message or do it quietly?"

She looked up and leveled her eyes at him. "It is a fluid situation. Missing two of my best men, I may decide to do it quietly. Do you have a preference?"

"People have been asking far too many other people far too many questions. I don't know exactly how much they know about Pakistani ISI operations, but in the interest of caution he must be eliminated. I don't care how."

"What about the two CIA men who chased us? Should we handle them as well?"

"Did either get a good look at you?"

"The black one saw me in my wig with plenty of cleavage. Usually that's all American men notice. But we did face off over our gun sights. He looked into my eyes."

"Then you might want to spend a little time finding out more about these inquisitive federal agents. You have names?"

"The giant black man only. It shouldn't be too difficult to learn the other."

"Good girl. I will talk to you after this fucking traitor general has been eliminated. Do you know the American agent's full name? This black man who saw you?"

"Yes."

"How did you learn it?"

"He runs a company called Tactics International. Over in the Grove. He questioned me a few months ago about my visa. He had a list and thought my visa was illegal. When he found out it wasn't, he scratched me off the list, apologized, and went away. It was before my facial surgery. He won't remember."

"Who is he?"

"Stokely Jones is his name. Pity you're not handling this one yourself, Bashi. You could hit him. He's a very, very big target."