MIKE LAWSON

Dead on Arrival

To Keith – the best birthday present ever. We’re so very proud.

Contents

Title Page Dedication Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty One Chapter Twenty Two Chapter Twenty Three Chapter Twenty Four Chapter Twenty Five Chapter Twenty Six Chapter Twenty Seven Chapter Twenty Eight Chapter Twenty Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty One Chapter Thirty Two Chapter Thirty Three Chapter Thirty Four Chapter Thirty Five Chapter Thirty Six Chapter Thirty Seven Chapter Thirty Eight Chapter Thirty Nine Chapter Forty Chapter Forty One Chapter Forty Two Chapter Forty Three Chapter Forty Four Chapter Forty Five Chapter Forty Six Chapter Forty Seven Chapter Forty Eight Chapter Forty Nine Chapter Fifty Chapter Fifty One Chapter Fifty Two Chapter Fifty Three Chapter Fifty Four Chapter Fifty Five Chapter Fifty Six Chapter Fifty Seven Chapter Fifty Eight Chapter Fifty Nine Chapter Sixty Chapter Sixty One Chapter Sixty Two Chapter Sixty Three Chapter Sixty Four Chapter Sixty Five Chapter Sixty Six Chapter Sixty Seven Chapter Sixty Eight Chapter Sixty Nine Chapter Seventy Chapter Seventy One Chapter Seventy Two Chapter Seventy Three Chapter Seventy Four Chapter Seventy Five Chapter Seventy Six Chapter Seventy Seven Author’s Note Acknowledgements About the Author Also By Mike Lawson Copyright About the Publisher

Prologue

They had no idea how big the blast might be.

The techs, those useless dorks, said the bomb could take out just the garage or just the surrounding homes – or it could flatten struc tures as far as a quarter mile away. It all depends, they said. It depended on how the bomb was constructed, if it was shaped to blow in a par ticular direction. It obviously depended on how much ammonium nitrate the bombers had. It all depends.

No shit, had been Merchant’s response, and thanks for all your help.

But Merchant knew, no matter how big the bomb might be, that he couldn’t evacuate the nearby homes. If he started an evacuation, the two guys inside the garage might notice all the lights going on at three in the morning and then would see people running like hell, dressed in their pajamas. Or, with his luck, one of the good citizens they were trying to protect would call a radio station, and the bombers would hear that they were surrounded by fifty FBI agents. And once they knew that, they’d probably blow the thing right where it was, and Merchant and his guys, hiding less than twenty yards from the garage … well, they’d be toast. Literally.

If the bomb did explode and a bunch of civilians were killed, the media weenies and the politicians would naturally second-guess the hell out of his decision not to evacuate. They’d call him reckless and irresponsible, and his bosses would blame it all on him to save their bureaucratic butts. But then what did he care? He’d be dead. No, the smart thing to do was to forget evacuating anybody and go in now. And as for trying to negotiate with the guys in the garage. … Hell, even the suits at the Hoover Building agreed that would be useless. You can’t negotiate with people who are willing to kill themselves in order to kill you.

What a way to spend Labor Day.

He spoke softly into his mike: ‘Alpha to Bravo Team Leader. Any sign of a third man yet?’

‘No, sir.’

The two men assembling the bomb were in a garage that was fifty feet from a two-story house. Merchant had overall tactical command of the operation and command of the five-man squad that made up Alpha Team. Another senior agent commanded Bravo Team, also a five-man squad. Bravo was on the opposite side of the garage from Alpha. Charlie Team, which consisted of almost forty agents, was protecting the perimeter, making sure no one entered or left the site. Charlie also had the snipers. The snipers would shoot anyone they thought needed shooting – and they wouldn’t miss.

Merchant and his men were dressed in SWAT gear: combat helmets with face shields, black fatigues and body armor, headsets so they could hear and talk to Merchant, night-vision goggles, and an assortment of assault rifles, shotguns, and .40-caliber pistols. They were dressed for war, a war they were going to start.

‘Alpha to Charlie Team Leader. What about you? Any sign of the third man?’

‘No, sir.’

The reports they’d received said three guys were involved, but there might not even be a third guy. The intelligence on him was weak. Maybe the third guy was in the house sleeping, or maybe he’d left to get something. Whatever the case, it was time to move. They had to move before daylight and the longer he waited the higher the likelihood that the guys in the garage would see his men or, even worse, drive the truck out of the garage. If that happened he’d be dealing with a mobile bomb, and that would be no fun at all.

‘Alpha Team Leader to all personnel. We’re going in. Bravo, are you ready?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Charlie, are you ready?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Merchant nodded, although no one could see the gesture. He couldn’t rely on the intelligence and he couldn’t rely on the techs – but he could rely on his guys. He spoke into his mike again. ‘Re member, we want these assholes alive but I don’t want any of you people dyin’ to keep them that way.’

Merchant took a breath, flipped the safety on his weapon, and felt the adrenaline start to squirt into his bloodstream. ‘On my go,’ he said. ‘Three. Two. One. Go!’

The garage had two doors: a normal door, like the door to a house, and a slide-up garage door operated by an electric garage door opener. There were also two small windows. On Merchant’s go! the men from both teams belly-crawled forward until all ten agents were pressed up against the walls of the garage. Merchant tapped one of his men on the shoulder, and the agent placed four small C-4 charges on the large garage door, each charge at the corner of an imaginary six-foot square. A fifth charge was placed in the center of the square. Merchant took a breath and whispered into his mike a second time. ‘On my go. Three. Two. One. Go!’

Three things happened simultaneously: flash-bang grenades that produced a horrific amount of noise and light were shot in through the two windows; a door knocker – a heavy piece of pipe with a plate welded on one end and equipped with handles – was slammed into the small door, ripping it open; and a button was pushed on a re mote control and the five small charges on the garage door exploded, blowing a hole in the door. Merchant’s men were inside the garage in less than three seconds, screaming like banshees out of some urban nightmare.

It went down perfectly, like a training exercise at Quantico. The two men inside the garage were both on the floor, knocked down by the concussion of the door being blown open. They’d been blinded by the flash-bangs, had their fists pressed against their eyes, and were wondering why their ears didn’t work. Merchant’s guys had handcuffs on the mutts less than a minute after they breached the building.

Jesus, Merchant thought, they’re just kids. Then he looked inside the truck. Holy shit! That was a lot of fertilizer. There had to be at least a ton, maybe two.

‘Merchant to Charlie Team Leader. Garage secure. Perps in cus tody. Get the bomb techs in here now, right now, to tell me if this goddamned thing is armed.’ Turning to the agent in charge of Bravo Team, he said, ‘Harris, take your people and do a quick sweep of the house and make sure the third guy’s not in there. Clemens, you take these bastards to the command vehicle and stand by. I’ll wait here until the bomb techs show.’

Merchant looked into the truck again. Man, that was one big bomb! He wondered what – or who – these guys had been planning to blow up.

He was two blocks away when he saw all the flashing red and blue lights. He stopped the car and took the binoculars from the glove box. There were so many lights that he could see the scene as clearly as if it were noon instead of 4 a.m. He could see a fire truck, two ambu lances, and more than a dozen marked and unmarked police vehicles. There were also two armored trucks, one truck looking like some thing a bomb disposal squad might use. The other truck, with the satellite dishes on the roof, was probably a command and communi cations center. There were uniformed men milling about and men wearing windbreakers over white shirts and ties. FBI, he assumed. Standing off to one side was a group of men dressed in helmets and black clothes, shaking hands, patting each other on the back, acting like athletes who’d just won a game. There were also a lot of people standing outside their homes wearing robes or clothes they’d just thrown on, wondering what was happening in their peaceful Ameri can neighborhood.

What had those fools done wrong?

He had to leave immediately; he was particularly vulnerable now. He hoped he hadn’t left anything inside the house or the garage that would identify him, but if he had there was nothing he could do about it. They could have cars patrolling the area and if they stopped him he had no doubt they’d detain him because of the way he looked. He made a slow turn into a driveway, backed up, and began driving in the direction from which he’d come, forcing himself to drive slowly.

His right leg was on fire; it always hurt when he’d been sitting for a long time. He needed to get out of the car and walk around a bit, but he couldn’t do that. He would bear the pain – as he’d always borne the pain – until it was safe to stop.

He headed in the direction of the freeway. With God’s blessing, he’d be in Philadelphia in two hours. There he had a place to go, a place set up in advance. There he might be safe.

What had those fools done?

Myron Clark was good at his job because he was smart and because he was patient, but most of all because he was tireless. He was abso lutely indefatigable.

He always looked fresh whenever he conducted an interrogation: his shirt wrinkle-free, his tie in place, face clean-shaven, hair carefully combed. He looked as if he’d just stepped from a shower after a full eight hours of peaceful sleep. The truth was that he was surviving on catnaps, but he would never allow the prisoners to see this. They had to think that Clark could go forever, that he’d never stop. And he wouldn’t.

Clark was interrogating the two men captured in the garage in Baltimore. He’d been interrogating them for twenty-six straight hours, and he could tell that the one named Omar al-Assad was going to break first. In fact, he was going to break the next time Clark talked to him.

Clark was an ordinary-looking man in his forties, five-nine, reced ing hairline, carrying twenty pounds he ought to lose. He wasn’t physically intimidating and he knew it – that’s why he had Warren Knox for an assistant. Knox was six-four, heavily muscled, and kept his hair cut close to his big knobby skull. He had a particularly brutal face, the kind you’d expect to see on a tattooed felon, and he always looked like he was just barely suppressing an incredible amount of rage. The truth was that Warren Knox was hardly violent at all; Clark had killed more men than Knox.

Omar had asked for a lawyer when the interrogation first began, and Clark had nodded to Knox and Knox had grabbed Omar by the throat and slammed him up against the wall of the interrogation room. As Omar was pinned against the wall, choking, his feet no longer touching the floor, Knox said, ‘If you say lawyer one more time I’m gonna kick your teeth out.’

That’s when Omar began to fully appreciate his situation. This wasn’t like TV. It wasn’t like all those Law and Order shows where the cops yelled at the prisoners but never touched them – and stopped yelling as soon as they asked for a mouthpiece. No, Clark and Knox had made it clear to Omar that he had no rights. He wasn’t going to be allowed to see anyone. Not a lawyer, not his partner, not his mother. He was completely alone.

If they took these clowns to trial, the fact that they’d trampled all over their rights as citizens could be a problem. The government’s lawyers would spout legal gibberish to minimize the damage, but convicting these guys wasn’t a priority, not at this point. In London, in Spain, in India, the subway attacks hadn’t involved just a single bomb; the terrorists had set off four or five bombs simultaneously. Clark needed to know if Omar and his pal had accomplices, and if he had to cause Omar a little discomfort to find this out … well, too bad for Omar.

So for twenty-six hours Omar wasn’t allowed to sleep. He’d be allowed to almost fall asleep, but just as his head would hit his chest, Knox would slam open the door to the interrogation room, cuff him on the back of the head, and tell him to go stand in the corner as if he were a truculent five-year-old.

And Omar was given no food and a lot of coffee. The coffee not only kept him awake but the caffeine in his empty stomach com pounded the condition of his already jangling nerves. Yes, Omar was ready. Omar’s partner – who was just a bit dumber than Omar and didn’t have Omar’s imagination – would last a bit longer, but not much.

Clark checked his appearance in the mirror near the interrogation room door and entered the room. He took a seat across the table from the prisoner and looked for a moment into his bloodshot eyes, his terrified young face. ‘Well, you’ve beaten me, Omar,’ he said, shak ing his head in mock disappointment. ‘My boss says we gotta send you someplace else, to see if some other guys can do better than me. We used to send people like you to Gitmo, Guantánamo Bay, down there in Cuba. But Gitmo became a fishbowl, Omar. Too many pussy liberals always watchin’ over our shoulders, always tryin’ to make us play by the rules. Well, my friend, we’ve gotten a lot smarter since Gitmo. Now we use an island off the coast of Maine.’

Clark smiled sadly at Omar, as if he truly pitied him.

‘The army used to use the island for testing biological weapons. They have a facility there, and they have cages in the facility. The cages don’t have a lot of headroom because they used to keep monkeys in them – you know, the monkeys they used for the experiments. The monkeys are all dead now, but the cages are still there. But the best part isn’t the cages, Omar. The best part is that nobody knows about the island. And nobody knows what happens there.’

Omar al-Assad stared at Clark for a moment, maybe looking for mercy, but knowing by now that there was nothing merciful about Myron Clark.

‘We were going to explode the bomb in the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel,’ Omar said.

In the next hour, Clark had the whole story. Omar al-Assad and his friend Bashar Hariri were American-born Muslims. They were eigh teen years of age, from low-income families, high school dropouts, and unemployed. Neither young man was particularly religious, and their tastes and style of dress were typical of Americans their age.

One Saturday evening, they attended a lecture at a local mosque. The main reason they attended was because it was cold outside, and free food and coffee came with the speech. The title of the lecture, which neither young man could remember exactly, was ‘The Impact of American Imperialism on the Muslim World.’ Something like that, they said.

The lecturer told the two Americans that his name was Muhammad – he might as well have said John Smith – and he was from Yemen, was an imam, and was traveling around America preaching to the faithful. He instantly became the two young Americans’ new best friend, spending hours with them, buying them din ners and hammering into their weak brains a message of hate. After a month he convinced them that blowing a hole in the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, killing several hundred people, and disrupting com merce up and down the eastern seaboard would be a good and noble thing to do. And they’d each be given ten thousand dollars after the job was done.

Muhammad gave the young men the money to purchase a truck and the other ingredients they needed to make the bomb. He had been helping them assemble the bomb until just before Omar and Bashar were captured. All Omar knew – and ultimately, three hours later, Myron Clark believed him – was that Muhammad had to leave the garage to call someone, but Omar didn’t know who.

But the most important thing Omar told Clark was that Muham mad had an artificial leg. That’s what allowed the Bureau to find Muhammad in their files and determine who he really was – an honest-to-God al-Qaeda operative.

‘How did you catch us?’ an exhausted Omar asked.

Clark didn’t tell him, but they’d caught Omar and his buddy be cause a fertilizer seller hadn’t liked their looks.

They had needed two major ingredients for their bomb: ammonium nitrate fertilizer and a racing fuel composed primarily of nitromethane. At one of the places they’d purchased the ammonium nitrate, the fer tilizer supplier had asked the young men why they needed it and Omar had said that they operated a landscaping business. The supplier was used to dealing with beefy white farmers, and the two men purchasing the fertilizer were obviously of Middle Eastern ancestry, too young to be likely principals in any business and visibly nervous during the pur chase. He was on the phone to the FBI before the young men and their truck had exited his parking lot.

But instead of answering Omar’s question, Clark asked one of his own. ‘Why did you and Bashar decide to become martyrs? I mean, do you guys really believe all that virgins-in-paradise bullshit?’

‘Martyrs?’ Omar said. ‘We weren’t going to be martyrs.’

Then Omar explained. Their plan had been to drive the truck and another car – the car Muhammad had escaped in – into the tunnel, punch out the tires on the truck so it couldn’t be easily moved, and flee the scene in the second vehicle. They would have been miles away when the bomb exploded.

That’s when Clark unveiled the part of Muhammad’s plan that Omar obviously didn’t know.

‘Omar,’ he said, ‘your pal Muhammad had set the timer to deto nate the bomb two seconds after you armed it.’

Senator William Davis Broderick, Republican, the junior senator from Virginia, waited impatiently for his turn to speak.

In the two weeks since those Muslim boys had tried to explode a bomb in the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, Broderick had listened to his colleagues say all the usual and expected things. Some senators grumbled that controls for bomb-making materials like ammonium nitrate were still lacking. Yada yada yada, Broderick said to himself.

Others complained that our borders were still too porous, that ter rorists could obviously enter and leave the country at will. Shake-ups at Homeland Security were coming, they promised. Hearings would soon be held, they warned.

Yeah, like that was gonna help.

But what Broderick really liked was that the senator currently speak ing had just given him the perfect lead-in to his speech. Patty Moran, the senior senator from Oregon, had just said that the federal gov ernment was continuing to underfund those poor cops and medics who would be first on the scene the next time al-Qaeda attacked. And then she said the magic words. She said them as if she’d been given an advance copy of Broderick’s speech. She said, ‘We must adequately fund our first responders, senators, because, as we all know, it’s not a matter of if there will be another attack, it’s only a matter of when.’

Oh, Patty, if you weren’t a Democrat I’d kiss you.

Finally, Broderick was at the podium. He went through the obliga tory will-the-senator-yield litany and then took his speech from the inside pocket of his suit, knowing he would never look at it. He had this one nailed.

‘My friends,’ he said, ‘we just heard the good gentlewoman from the great state of Oregon say what we’ve all heard so many times before. In fact, I’ve heard it said so many times I’m sick of it. She said that another terrorist attack is not a matter of if but when. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I’m here to tell you it’s only a matter of if – if nothing changes.’

Broderick’s aide, Nick Fine, had written the speech, and Broderick had to admit the man had done a good job. He knew Nick didn’t like him – hell, the man hated him – but when writing this particu lar speech ol’ Nick had really put his heart into it.

‘Senators,’ Broderick said, ‘I’m here today to propose changes, real changes, changes that will make this great country safer. It’s time to stop being po litically correct. It’s time to stop being afraid to speak the truth because someone will be offended. It is instead time for somebody in this body, this body chosen to represent and protect the people, to stand up and say what needs to be said. And I’m gonna say it.

‘The first thing I propose to change is that we quit calling this a war on terrorism. We’re not at war with terrorists. We’re at war with Muslim terrorists. It’s time to quit making redheaded schoolchildren and their grandmothers take off their shoes at airports when we all know the most likely terrorist is a young Muslim man.’

Broderick could almost hear the redheads cheering.

‘And as the near miss in Baltimore clearly showed, the threat isn’t solely from outsiders, from foreigners from across the sea. My friends, even though we don’t like to say it out loud, the fact is that we are at risk from some of our own citizens because some of them – hopefully a very small number – have more allegiance to Islam than they do to their own country.’

Broderick looked around the Senate chamber. It was half empty, and most of the senators in attendance were busy talking to their aides or reading e-mail on their BlackBerries. That’s the way it usually went. Politicians didn’t give speeches to change the minds of other politi cians; they gave speeches to get their faces on C-SPAN and their names in the papers. And Broderick’s name was going to be in the papers. As he was speaking, Nick Fine was e-mailing the text of his speech to everyone, friend and enemy alike, and Broderick figured that on this occasion his enemies were going to be at least as much help as his friends.

‘My fellow Americans, I’m going to introduce a bill that contains three provisions that will make this country safer. Some of you will be shocked, some of you will be angered, but as I said before it’s time for us to start doing something other than praying that we don’t have another nine-eleven. Yes, it’s time for somebody in the United States Senate to do something other than hold a bunch of daggone hear ings after we finish mopping up the blood from the latest Muslim attack.’

And lay out his bill he did. He noticed that as he spoke a few sena tors actually began to pay attention – or, to be accurate, he could see them chuckling and shaking their heads. But they’d see who had the last laugh.

His first proposal was to eliminate a large part of the threat by shipping every Muslim who was not an American out of the coun try. And he wasn’t kidding, he said. Students, visitors, immigrants with green cards … Well, adios, or whatever the Arabic word was for goodbye. He noted that Prime Minister Tony Blair had had a similar reaction toward foreign Muslims when the London subways were bombed. Blair, however, had wanted to deport only the rabble-rousers and agitators; Broderick wanted to take Tony’s good idea one large step further.

His second proposal was that future visits by people from Mus lim countries would be significantly limited, carefully controlled, and primarily allowed only for business purposes. Being a good Re publican he knew that business mattered, but Muslims could send their children to Europe for school and if they wanted to take a vacation they could visit the Fijis. He knew some would argue that education and tourism were businesses, but hey, you had to draw the line somewhere.

Muslims desiring to enter the country would have to apply for entry months in advance to permit time for background checks. Upon ar rival they would be photographed, fingerprinted, and DNA-sampled, and they would have to have an American sponsor who would be responsible for their conduct. Naturally, these people would be care fully monitored while they were in the States.

But Broderick knew it was his last proposal that would draw the most attention: he proposed that background checks be performed on all Muslim Americans. These background checks would identify if a Muslim belonged to a radical group or supported radical causes and, most importantly, would identify who these people knew and were related to overseas.

‘The near demolition of the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel – God only knows how many would have died – showed that radical Muslims in this country, American citizens, can be proselytized and turned into weapons of mass destruction. We must take steps to guard against this very real threat.’

Later, he wished that he hadn’t used the word registry, but he did. He said that all Muslims who successfully passed the background checks he was proposing would then be entered into a registry, one of the benefits of this being that airport travel for these folks would become less bothersome. He wasn’t saying they wouldn’t have to go through the metal detectors, just that they were less likely to be pulled off to the side and patted down. He noted that the idea of travelers having some sort of special identification to speed up airport screen ing was nothing new.

‘I’m just saying let’s start with the Muslims,’ Broderick said.

Joe DeMarco saw Mahoney sitting on the warped wooden bleachers with five black women and a couple of toddlers. The football players they were watching appeared to be ten or eleven years of age, their helmets too big for their heads. The team in the hand-me-down, wash faded orange jerseys was called the Tigers; the other team, their color blue, their uniforms just as worn, were the Cougars. Just as DeMarco reached the bleachers, the Cougars’ quarterback threw a perfect ten yard spiral to a kid who was about three feet tall and who was imme diately buried under a sea of orange shirts.

‘Good hands, son!’ Mahoney yelled out. ‘Way to stick. Way to hang on to that ball.’

DeMarco had no idea why Mahoney did this – the stress of the job, a need for some time alone – but whatever the reason, every once in a while he’d leave his office and sneak over to southeast D.C. and watch the kids play. He’d sit there on the sidelines with the mothers, completely out of place, a big white-haired white man dressed in a topcoat and a suit in a part of Washington that was predominantly black. The other odd thing was that he wasn’t usually recognized; this was odd because John Fitzpatrick Mahoney was the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. It seemed as if folks who lived in this section of the city had lost their faith in politicians a long time ago and no longer paid all that much attention to the players, including those at the top of the roster.

DeMarco took a seat on the bleachers next to Mahoney. Mahoney glanced over at him – clearly irritated that he was there – and turned his attention back to the game. DeMarco took an envelope out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Mahoney. ‘I ran into Martin Born up in Boston,’ he said. ‘He asked me to pass this on to you.’

Born was a Boston developer, one of Mahoney’s wealthier constitu ents, and he had his small avaricious heart set on a wetland area known to be home to some variety of slow-breeding duck. Mahoney, at least for the moment, was siding with the ducks.

Mahoney started to open the envelope, but the Cougars’ quarter back was sacked just then by a ten-year-old who looked big enough to play for Notre Dame. ‘You gotta double-team that guy, boys. Protect your quarterback!’ he yelled.

One of the mothers, a woman as big as Mahoney, turned to him and said, ‘They gotta triple-team that one. That chile, he must weigh a hundred fifty pounds.’

‘Yeah,’ Mahoney said, ‘but that kid playin’ right guard, he’s stoppin’ him by himself about half the time. That kid’s got game.’

‘You got that right,’ the woman said. ‘That’s my sister’s boy, Jamal.’

When the Cougars took a time-out, Mahoney ripped open the envelope and fanned out a number of hundred-dollar bills, maybe ten of them. ‘What the hell’s this?’ he said. ‘A tip?’

DeMarco just shook his head. He was a lawyer, although he’d never practiced law, and he occupied an unusual position on Mahoney’s staff. If asked his job, he would have said he was the speaker’s personal troubleshooter, but one of his duties was bringing Mahoney envelopes like the one he’d just delivered. There were times DeMarco didn’t like his job.

‘Mavis sent me over here to get you,’ DeMarco said. Mavis was Mahoney’s secretary. He didn’t bother to add: Which I wouldn’t have had to do if you’d ever turn on your goddamn cell phone! ‘You got a roomful of people waiting to talk to you about Broderick’s bill.’

Mahoney shook his head. ‘What a waste of time. That bill’s not goin’ anywhere. Broderick’s a fruitcake.’

DeMarco shrugged. ‘I dunno. People are scared.’

‘So what?’ Mahoney said. ‘Just because – ’ Mahoney leaped to his feet. ‘Offside! Number eight, he was offside!’

‘Yeah, Lionel,’ the big woman said. ‘You shoulda seen that, for cryin’ out loud. Them glasses you got, they thick enough to see stuff on the moon.’

Mahoney whooped.

Lionel, a man in his sixties, a good guy who had volunteered his time to ref the game, glared over at the woman – and the speaker.

‘What are you lookin’ over here for?’ the woman yelled. ‘If you wasn’t always lookin’ at the women in the stands, you’da seen that boy was offside too.’

Mahoney sat back down, happy. Nothing he liked better than start ing a ruckus.

‘Mavis said the meeting was supposed to start half an hour ago,’ DeMarco said.

‘Aw, goddammit,’ Mahoney said, but he rose from the bench. He started to walk away, then turned back to the woman. ‘Hey, you got some kind of fund for uniforms and stuff?’

‘Yeah,’ she said, suspicious now, not sure what Mahoney was up to.

‘Well, here,’ Mahoney said, and handed her the envelope that Mr. Born had stuffed with cash. ‘Get those boys some new jerseys – and football shoes too. You know the kind with little rubber cleats on the bottom, so they won’t be slippin’ all the time.’

1

The two F-16 Falcons screamed down the runway at Andrews Air Force Base.

Pete Dalton – Lieutenant Colonel Dalton – lived for this. There was absolutely no other experience on the planet like flying an armed-to-the-teeth air force fighter.

It was the week before Thanksgiving, and when the klaxon went off, Dalton and his wingman had been sitting in the ready trailer at Andrews, bitching that they’d been assigned to work the holiday, although Dalton didn’t really care that much. Then the klaxon blared and they were out of the trailer, into their planes, and tearing down the runway five minutes later.

As they were ascending into the skies over Washington, they were briefed on the situation. Some idiot in a small slow-moving plane had just taken off from an airfield in Stafford, Virginia. The guy was at three thousand feet and doing eighty-six knots, almost a hundred miles an hour. He had flown briefly to the south, then turned northeast and crossed into the outer zone and was not responding to air traffic controllers at Dulles.

There are two air defense zones around the nation’s capital, an inner and an outer zone. The outer zone has a ragged, roughly circular boundary that extends thirty to fifty miles outward from the Washington Monument. This zone is called the ADIZ – the Air Defense Identification Zone. To enter the ADIZ a pilot has to identify himself, must have an operating transponder that broadcasts a signal identifying his aircraft, and must remain in continuous two-way communication with FAA controllers. The second zone, the inner zone, is the no-fly zone. The no-fly zone is a perfect circle extending out sixteen miles from the Washington Monument. The only aircraft allowed to enter this area aside from commercial traffic going in and out of Reagan National Airport have to be specially cleared.

The fool in question hadn’t identified himself, his transponder was either malfunctioning or disabled, and he wasn’t responding to queries from FAA controllers. He was doing everything wrong. When the unidentified aircraft was two miles inside the ADIZ, thirty-three miles and approximately twenty minutes from all the government buildings in D.C., a whole bunch of things began to happen.

An air force colonel in Rome, New York – the officer commanding NORAD’S Northeast Air Defense Sector – scrambled the F-16s out of Andrews; Blackhawk helicopters under the control of Homeland Security lifted off from Reagan National; the Secret Service and the U.S. Capitol Police were alerted and told to be prepared to evacuate the White House, the Capitol, and the Supreme Court; and men in secret locations throughout Washington who are qualified to fire surface-to-air missiles were notified and told to stand by.

At the same time, four people were paged: the secretary of defense, his deputy, a navy admiral located at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado who had overall command of NORAD, and an air force major general located at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida who was responsible for NORAD’S operations in the continental United States. These four people were paged because they had been delegated the authority by the president of the United States to shoot down a plane entering the no-fly zone.

Dalton was fairly certain, however, that it wouldn’t come to that; it never had in the past. He expected that within the next two minutes the dummy from Stafford would be on his radio saying, ‘Oh, shit, sorry,’ about sixteen times and then get headed in the right direction, and Dalton would be ordered back to Andrews before he could have any fun.

But these incidents, pilots breaching the ADIZ, occurred two or three times a week, and once Dalton had been on duty when it happened three times in one day. These muttonheads who couldn’t read a map or a compass, who had their radios turned off or set to the wrong frequency, would blunder into the ADIZ and then have the livin’ shit scared out of ’em when two F-16s went roaring past them at six hundred miles an hour.

‘Huntress. Hawk Flight. Bogey still not responding. Snap vector three-twenty for thirty. Intercept and ID. Noses cold.’

Huntress was the call sign for the colonel com manding the Northeastern Air Defense Sector. He had tactical command of the F-16s. Hawk Flight was the two F-16s: Hawk One was Pete Dalton; Hawk Two was his wingman, Major Jeff Fields. Snap vector 320 for 30 meant the bogey was on a bearing of 320 degrees and 30 miles from the Hawk Flight’s po sition. Noses cold meant they were to approach with their weapons systems unarmed – which was a damn good thing for the bogey.

Dalton responded. ‘Hawk One. Huntress. Copy that. Proceeding to intercept.’

The unidentified aircraft was now twenty-four miles and fourteen minutes from Washington, D.C.

Dalton could see the bogey on his radar, and a minute later he could make out a dot in the sky that had to be it. He and Fields headed directly at the dot, and when they were half a mile away, and the bogey was clearly visible – and they were visible to it – Dalton split to the right and Fields to the left, and they blasted past the plane, coming within a hundred yards of its wingtips. Dalton looked over his shoulder and saw the bogey wobble in the jet wash caused by the F-16s, and he figured that whoever was flying that baby was sitting there right now in a puddle of his own piss.

Dalton and Fields made tight loops in the sky and came in behind the plane, slowing down to match its speed.

The bogey was now twenty miles and twelve minutes from Washington.

‘Hawk One. Huntress. Bogey is a Cessna One-fifty, tail number N3459J. Repeat N3459J.’

‘Huntress. Hawk One. Copy that. Attempt contact.’

‘Hawk One. Huntress. Roger that.’ Dalton switched frequencies on his radio. ‘Cessna 3459, Cessna 3459. This is the Air National Guard. Respond. Respond. You are approaching the no-fly zone. Respond.’

Nothing came back from the Cessna. Shit.

‘Cessna 3459. Cessna 3459. Respond or you will be fired upon. You are entering the no-fly zone.’

Nothing. It was possible, of course, that the Cessna’s radio wasn’t working or that the pilot was unconscious and the plane was flying itself. That had happened before, though not this close to the capital.

‘Hawk One. Huntress. Cessna 3459 is not responding. Going alongside for visual.’

‘Huntress. Hawk One. Copy that and proceed.’

While his wingman stayed behind the Cessna, Dalton pulled up next to it, the tip of his starboard wing less than fifty feet from the other plane. He waved his right hand at the pilot, signaling for him to get the hell out of the air and down on the ground, but the Cessna pilot, the damn guy, was staring straight ahead, not even looking over at Dalton’s jet. He looked like he was in a trance.

Jesus, Dalton thought. The pilot looks like an Arab.

The Cessna was seventeen miles and ten minutes from D.C.

‘Hawk One. Huntress. Cessna not responding. Pilot ignoring visual contact.’

‘Huntress. Hawk Flight. Fire flares.’

‘Hawk One. Huntress. Roger that. Firing flares.’

Dalton and his wingman shot ahead of the Cessna and made tight turns in the sky to come back at it. This was the sort of maneuver they practiced a dozen times a month. Each pilot fired two flares. The flares missed the Cessna, but not by much, the closest one coming within thirty feet of the Cessna’s cockpit. There was no way the Cessna pilot didn’t see those flares – or the F-16s coming directly at him once again.

But the guy just kept going, never deviating from his original course.

The Cessna was now ten miles – six minutes – from Washington.

Dalton shot past the Cessna again, turned, and pulled up alongside it a second time. He waggled his wings and waved an arm at the pilot. No response. The bastard just sat there like he was made of stone. Dalton reached out to – aw, shit! The Cessna had assumed a downward angle. It was going to cut right across one of the approaches to Reagan National. Beyond the airport, across the Potomac, Dalton could see the White House.

This son of a bitch was headed directly at the White House – and the Cessna was now less than three minutes away from it.

Dalton wasn’t concerned about his F-16 or the Cessna colliding with commercial airplanes going in and out of Reagan National. He knew that by now every plane within a hundred miles either was on the ground or had been diverted away from D.C. Dalton also knew that at this point the White House was being evacuated: guards screaming, people running and tripping and falling, images of 9/11 burned into their brains. Dalton didn’t know if the president was in town, but if he was, two big Secret Service guys had him by the arms and were running him to the bunker, the president’s feet not even hitting the ground.

The Cessna was now four miles – less than two and a half minutes – from the White House.

Dalton spoke into his radio. ‘Hawk One. Huntress. Cessna not responding. I repeat. Cessna ignoring all attempts at contact.’ Dalton knew that he sounded calm – he’d been trained to sound calm – but his heart was hammering in his chest like it was going to blow through his breastbone. He also knew he didn’t have to tell anybody where the guy in the Cessna was headed.

There was no immediate response from Huntress. Oh, shit! Dalton thought. Please, God, don’t let somebody’s goddamn radio go out now. Then his radio squawked.

‘Huntress. Hawk One. Bogey declared hostile. Arm hot. You are cleared to fire. Repeat. Arm hot. Cleared to fire.’

Now Dalton understood the pause. The word had gone up and back down the chain of command. One of those four men who had the authority to give that order had just given it.

Dalton knew this was his mission. This was the reason they’d spent all those years and all that money training him. This was the reason he was flying an F-16 Falcon. But he had never really expected to have to execute the command he’d just been given.

Dalton hesitated, he hesitated too long – he hesitated long enough to end his career.

‘Huntress. Hawk One. Did you copy that order?’

‘Hawk One. Huntress. Roger that. Arm hot. Cleared to fire.’

And then Lieutenant Colonel Peter Dalton did what he’d been trained to do. He reached down and toggled the master arm switch in the cockpit to ON, slowed down to increase the distance between him and the smaller plane, and just as the Cessna was crossing over the Potomac River – less than two miles from the White House – he fired.

NORAD and the Air National Guard refused to tell the media what sort of weapon had been used to destroy the Cessna. Ordnance and armament used to protect the capital from aerial assault are classified. But whatever Dalton fired, it struck the Cessna and a ball of flame fifty yards in diameter bloomed in the sky over the Potomac. Pieces seemed to rain down onto the river for a solid minute after the Cessna had been obliterated.

2

Danny let Vince take the lead going up the stairs.

Charlie Logan lived on the fifth floor of an ancient apartment building in Flushing, not too far from Shea Stadium. It was a crummy, stinky place, the elevator broken, the stairway barely lit, the rug on the steps so dirty and worn that it was impossible to tell what color it had originally been. They found Charlie’s apartment, and Vince took a snub-nosed .38 out of his jacket pocket. Oh, shit, Danny thought.

Vince used the butt of the .38 to rap on Logan’s door. He waited a minute and then slammed the gun butt three times against the wooden door, the sound echoing down the hallway. Danny figured whoever was in the apartment across the hall from Charlie had to have heard the noise. But fuckin’ Vince, he didn’t think about things like that. He didn’t care about things like that.

Vince Merlino didn’t look like a tough guy. He was five-eight, wiry, not heavily muscled. At forty-five his hair was getting thin right on the top, like he was going to have a little skin circle up there in a couple of years. Yeah, if you saw Vince from the back you wouldn’t be scared at all, a half-pint guy in a cheap leather coat and jeans and high-top Nike knockoffs. But from the front, he’d give you pause. His face looked like it didn’t know what a smile was, lips so thin they practically weren’t there at all, but it was his eyes that got you. He had these flat don’t-give-a-fuck eyes, eyes that said he’d go off on you no matter how big you were.

Vince hit the door again, practically splintering the wood. ‘Jesus,’ Danny said. ‘You’re gonna wake up everybody in the fuckin’ building. Maybe he’s not home.’

‘He’s home,’ Vince said. He raised the .38 to hit the door again, but before he did they heard a bellow from inside the apartment and the door flung open. ‘What the hell do … oh, hey, it’s you,’ Charlie said when he saw Vince, and he stepped back so Vince and Danny could enter the apartment.

Charlie Logan was a fat guy, six-foot-four, two hundred and eighty pounds. Maybe it was because of Charlie’s size that Mr B had told Danny to go with Vince. Danny didn’t normally do this sort of stuff, but he’d been hanging around Mr B’s office when Vince said he was going to see Charlie, and that’s when Mr B had told him to go too. Danny had said he didn’t think Vince needed any help – it wasn’t like Charlie was gonna wrestle with him or something – but Mr B had said to shut up and do what he was told.

Charlie was wearing a white sleeveless T-shirt and white boxer shorts with blue stripes. The T-shirt was the ribbed kind, clinging to Charlie’s love handles ballooning out around his waist. His shoulders were hairy and his arms were heavy and flabby looking. His legs were surprisingly thin compared to his frame and his feet … Christ, he had ugly feet, the toenails yellow and cracked, big corns on some of the toes, nasty blue veins running all over the place. Danny wished he’d never looked down at the guy’s feet.

‘Hey,’ Charlie said again. ‘Can I get you some coffee? It’s not made, but I can make some. Or a beer maybe.’

Then Charlie saw the gun in Vince’s hand.

‘Hey,’ Charlie said a third time, and pointed at the gun. ‘Come on, guys, what’s with that?’

Vince looked at Charlie for a moment, his eyes as warm as a snake’s. ‘You owe twelve grand. I told you two weeks ago to pay it. I told you last week to pay it. Now you’re gonna either pay it today, right now, or you’re gonna give me the keys to your Lincoln.’

‘I can’t give you the Lincoln,’ Charlie said. ‘How would I get to work?’

‘I don’t give a shit how you get to work,’ Vince said. ‘Gimme the money or gimme the keys.’

‘Let me have until Saturday night,’ Charlie said. ‘Oklahoma’s playin’ Nebraska. I got it nailed.’

Danny would have laughed if he hadn’t been trying to look tough. Fuckin’ gamblers. Charlie had borrowed money from some other shark, hoping he’d win enough to pay back the first shark. These guys should just kill themselves.

‘Go get the keys,’ Vince said.

‘Come on, just till Saturday,’ Charlie said. When Vince just stared at him, Charlie looked over at Danny, his eyes begging.

Then Vince hit Charlie with the gun, whacked him right across the side of the face, high up near his left eye. Danny thought Charlie would collapse to the floor or hold his hands up to his head and start moaning – but he didn’t. Instead he let out a yell and grabbed Vince’s throat.

The crazy bastard. He ignored the gun like it wasn’t even there, put two big hands around Vince’s throat, and began to strangle him. Danny thought later that that was why Mr B had made him go with Vince. Mr B had known Charlie was the kind of nutcase who would do something dumb like this.

As Charlie was choking Vince, Vince banged his gun ineffectually on the top of Charlie’s head, but Charlie, the maniac, was oblivious to the blows. Danny tried to pull Charlie away from Vince, and when he couldn’t, he jumped on Charlie’s back, put his right forearm under the fat man’s chin, and began to press his arm against Charlie’s windpipe. The faces of both Vince and Charlie were now turning purple as a result of being simultaneously strangled.

And then Danny heard the gun go off.

The first thing that went through Danny’s brain was that it was lucky Vince’s bullet hadn’t passed through Charlie and hit him. The second thing he thought was that Vince hadn’t really wanted to shoot the guy. You never kill someone who owes you money. No, Vince hadn’t meant to shoot him. He’d just panicked, thinking Charlie was going to kill him. Or maybe he didn’t panic; maybe he was so goddamn mad at what Charlie had done, so humiliated that Charlie had made him squawk, that he stuck his gun into the guy’s gut and pulled the trigger.

‘What the hell did you do?’ Danny said, looking down at Charlie lying on the floor, the front of his white T-shirt turning red.

Vince didn’t say anything. He just stood there rubbing his throat, staring at the gun in his hand as if he was surprised at what it had done.

And then Danny saw Charlie give a little shudder and die.

Vince hadn’t shot him in the gut, he’d shot him in the heart.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ Vince said.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ Danny said, still looking down at Charlie.

‘Come on. Let’s go!’ Vince said. He turned toward the door and started running.

By the time Danny got to the door, Vince had almost reached the fourth floor landing, one flight down. Danny started to follow him, then for some reason, for some fuckin’ reason, he pulled out a handkerchief so he wouldn’t leave prints and started to close the door to Charlie’s apartment. That was his big mistake.

Just as he was shutting Charlie’s door, the door across the hall opened. He and the woman stared at each other for about two seconds. She was a short, heavy old broad with a fat nose and gray hair tied up in a bun. Polish or German, Danny thought, and she looked tougher than elephant hide.

‘Danny!’ Vince cried out from the stairwell. ‘Come on!’

Great, just call out my fuckin’ name, Danny thought, as he tore his eyes away from the old Polish woman and started to run. But Vince wasn’t through. Just as Danny reached the stairs – the woman now standing in the hall looking at his back as he ran – Vince yelled again.

‘DeMarco!’ Vince screamed. ‘Move your ass!’

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