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  But if things went wrong, if he failed to deliver the intel, those hours could speed by like minutes.

  He had caught a break when the guy who owned this Volkswagen stopped to ask Parker if he needed a ride. Parker had been double-timing it along the road east of the village where the Hizb ut-Tahrir training compound had been located. The compound was gone now. Parker had heard the explosions, had felt the ground tremble under his feet, had seen the flames leap high into the air as the explosives went off.

  It was several hours later, around midday, when the car came along. The driver had seen what appeared to be a fellow Pakistani jogging along the road in the middle of nowhere and had stopped to generously offer him a lift.

  Parker had been shocked as hell when he heard the car and turned around to see a Volkswagen bug approaching. How it had wound up here in Pakistan at least thirty years after it had been manufactured, he had no idea. But it ran, even though the engine didn’t sound too good, and it would be faster than walking.

  Keeping his rifle hidden under his cloak, Parker circled around the front of the car as the driver cranked the window down. The guy had barely opened his mouth to offer a ride when Parker hit him. It was a short, sharp punch that knocked the Pakistani senseless without doing any permanent damage. Parker hauled him out of the car and left him lying on the side of the road.

  It would have made more sense to kill the driver. That way, if there was any pursuit, he wouldn’t be able to tell them that Parker had taken the car and describe the vehicle. Parker considered it very seriously for about ten seconds.

  Then he sighed, climbed into the bug, and put it back in gear. He was no Boy Scout, but the cold-blooded murder of an innocent civilian had to be a last resort, if the country he was defending was to mean anything.

  The liberals never got that right either. They thought everybody who worked in SpecOps, especially the covert branch, was a bloodthirsty rogue.

  Over the next twelve hours, Parker had wondered several times if he’d been wrong about his assessment of the vehicle’s speed. Maybe it wasn’t faster than walking. The engine had a definite knock to it that got worse every time he pressed down too hard on the gas. He had a feeling that everything under the hood in the rear would fly to pieces if he pushed the car too fast.

  So he had to settle for creeping along, wrestling with the poor steering around the worst of the potholes, and hoping that the Volkswagen would hold up until he reached Islamabad. Once he made it to the embassy and turned over the information he had found in the compound, the problem would be out of his hands. Somebody else would have to deal with it.

  And now, another half hour tops and he’d be there. He allowed himself to feel a slight sense of relief as the lights of Pakistan’s capital drew closer.

  That was a mistake, he realized as a pair of headlights popped up behind him and began to close in rapidly on him. He shouldn’t have jinxed himself like that.

  There had been other traffic on the highway, other cars and trucks he’d met and some that had come up behind him and passed the battered old bug. Parker’s instincts told him that this was different. He sensed menacing purpose behind those lights that were growing larger in the flyspecked rearview mirror.

  He kept his left hand on the wheel and reached down with his right to the automatic rifle that lay on the seat beside him. His foot pressed harder on the accelerator. Once again the pinging from the rear-mounted engine behind him grew louder, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  Nothing but pray that the Volkswagen held together long enough for him to reach the capital and lose himself in the maze of Islamabad’s streets.

  Parker’s eyes darted back and forth between the road ahead and the rearview mirror. The headlights were only a few hundred yards behind him now, and still closing steadily.

  Suddenly, the rear window shattered. Glass flew across the backseat and stung the back of Parker’s neck. He crouched lower behind the wheel and cursed. His pursuers were impatient. They had opened fire before they were right on top of him. And they were pretty good shots, too, judging by what had happened to that back window.

  But now the gloves were off. He didn’t have to wait to make sure he wasn’t just being paranoid. Now there was no doubt they were after him.

  One-handed, he swung the rifle up and around and fired a burst through the rear window while continuing to drive toward Islamabad as fast as he could. He paused and then squeezed off another dozen rounds or so, craning his neck to look behind him as he fired.

  This time he was rewarded by the sight of one of the headlights going out suddenly. Luck had been with him, because under the circumstances it sure as hell hadn’t been skill that had caused one of his bullets to hit its mark. The remaining headlight veered sharply to the left, toward the edge of the road, and Parker allowed himself to hope that he had also hit either a tire or the driver.

  The tire would have been better, but no such luck. The pursuing vehicle pulled back onto a straight course after him. That meant he had either winged or killed the driver, but the rest of the bunch had hauled the guy out from behind the wheel and somebody else had taken over.

  Parker emptied the rest of the clip at the vehicle, but didn’t think he did any good. He kept his left hand on the wheel while he used his right to dump the clip and ram home a fresh one.

  Bullets thudded into the bug’s chassis, and the racket from that competed with the knocking in the engine. The now-one-eyed vehicle behind him was only fifty yards back, close enough for him to see the flickering muzzle flashes. It was a toss-up what would happen first—the Volkswagen’s engine would give out on its own, the pursuers would knock it out of commission with their bullets, or they would shoot out one or more of Parker’s tires.

  He guessed he should have slit the throat of the guy who owned this ancient Beetle. No question he had to be the one who had put these bastards on Parker’s trail.

  He wondered fleetingly if any of the terrorists back there at Jihad U. had survived the battle and the explosions. That was always possible. He hadn’t had time to put a round through the head of each and every one of them.

  The answer to that question didn’t matter. Parker heard a loud bang and felt the bug lurch hard to the right. There went a tire. With a huge clatter, the engine gave up the ghost a heartbeat later, while Parker was trying to hold the Volkswagen on the highway’s almost nonexistent shoulder. The old car weaved back and forth crazily as it lost speed. More glass sprayed around Parker as a slug shattered the driver’s side window.

  The pursuing vehicle swerved to the left and zoomed closer, coming alongside the struggling Volkswagen. Parker knew that in a second the killers inside it would riddle the bug—and him—at close range. He glanced over as he switched hands on the wheel, saw that it was a pickup with several heavily armed men in the back. He even caught a glimpse of some of them grinning evilly at him.

  Then his left hand came out from under his jacket where he had found his last grenade. He yelled, “Catch this, fuckers,” as he tossed it through the broken window at the jihadist assassins. None of them caught the grenade. He saw it fall among them as he jammed his foot on the brake and dove for the floorboard. Bullets smashed the windshield and punched through the doors and stormed around him like a swarm of angry bees.

  He didn’t see the explosion, but he heard it, an earsplitting roar followed immediately by an even heavier blast that told him the pickup’s gas tank had gone up, too. Even as that registered on Parker’s stunned brain, he felt the Volkswagen tipping.

  The highway was built on a slight embankment, and there was enough of a slope so that the car started to roll as it veered off the shoulder’s edge. The bug went up and over, up and over, metal denting and crumpling under the impact, sand flying, axles snapping, hubcaps spinning off the tires and sailing through the air.

  The old German car finally came to a shuddering halt on its top, a good thirty or forty yards from the road where the wreckage of the pickup blazed bright
ly. None of the Volkswagen’s windows were still intact, and in the flickering light that came from the burning pickup, it seemed that not a single square inch of metal on the smaller vehicle was undented. But it wasn’t on fire, and after several moments a groan sounded from inside the Volkswagen as Brad began struggling to pull itself out through the jagged opening where the windshield had been.

  Parker wasn’t sure how bad he was hurt. He knew he’d been hit by some of those flying bullets, and he’d been thrown around all over the inside of the car as it was tumbling off the road. Bones had to be broken, and he tasted blood in his mouth along with the sand and grit that seemed to fill it.

  But he was still alive, and as he hauled himself free of the wrecked bug, he told himself he was going to stay alive until he turned over that intel. He felt under his coat and found the documents he had taken from the compound. Still there, and they weren’t soaked with blood…yet.

  With the lights of Islamabad to guide him, Parker struggled to his feet and stumbled off into the darkness. He had help. He felt them hurrying him along and giving him strength…

  All those Americans who would die if he failed. They didn’t know it, but they were right there with him in the Pakistani night, urging him on.

  CHAPTER 13

  Hamed didn’t try to reach for his weapon. He knew if he did the woman would kill him. Instead, he stood as still as humanly possible and listened as she spoke to him in Arabic, asking him his name. He told her, giving her his real name instead of the fake one that was on all of his fake identity papers. He didn’t relax until the gun went away from the back of his neck—and he wasn’t fully at ease even then. He was angry that he had allowed anyone to get the better of him like that, especially a woman.

  “All right, you can turn around,” she said in English. She had no trace of an accent.

  Hamed turned toward her. She held the gun down at her side. She wore a sweatshirt with the big letters UTA on it and a pair of blue jeans. The shirt was baggy and at least somewhat decent, but the jeans were immodestly tight. She lifted the hem of the sweatshirt, exposing a few inches of smooth, golden-brown belly, and tucked the little pistol into the waistband of the jeans.

  “I’m Shalla,” she said as she pulled the shirt down again. “Shalla Sahi.”

  “Iranian,” Hamed said, not bothering to keep the disdain out of his voice. She was Shiite.

  “My parents are Iranian. I was born here.” A note of bitterness came into her voice. “My father was a doctor in Tehran until he was forced to flee the Shah. Here he drove a taxicab for twenty years before a crackhead murdered him one night to steal less than thirty dollars.”

  Hamed sneered. “We all have our stories.”

  “Don’t take that tone with me…Frenchman.” Her dark eyes blazed with anger.

  “Children.” A new voice came from a doorway leading into one of the apartment’s other rooms. “We are all on the same side here, remember? The infidels are our enemies, not each other.”

  Hamed turned and saw a familiar face. The last time he had seen this man had been at the training compound in Pakistan. He was one of Sheikh Abu ibn Khahir’s lieutenants. Mushaff al-Mukhari was his name. Older than Hamed, he had a lean face, balding head, and neat goatee that gave him a look the Americans would have called satanic. To Hamed, though, the sight of Mukhari was a very welcome one indeed. It meant that the head of Hizb ut-Tahrir was taking a personal interest in this mission by sending one of his top men to oversee it.

  Mukhari came into the room and embraced Hamed, pounding him on the back. Other men emerged from the room where Mukhari had been waiting, and they were familiar, too. Hamed greeted his fellow graduates of the training compound with smiles and hugs and backslaps. He counted quickly. Ten men were crowded into the small apartment. That was only half of the force that should be gathering here. The others hadn’t arrived yet.

  “We would have food and drink,” Mukhari said to Shalla in Farsi. For a second she looked like she wanted to tell him to get it himself, Hamed thought. Clearly, the evil Western ways had embedded themselves in her, causing her to no longer know her proper place. That was apparent from her dress as well as her attitude. But then she shrugged and went into the tiny kitchen to do Mukhari’s bidding.

  “You have come to tell us of our mission, Sheikh?” Hamed asked Mukhari, since the man was entitled to that term of respect as well.

  Mukhari held up a finger and waved it back and forth as he smiled. “Later, my impetuous young friend,” he said. “When all the others have arrived.”

  Hamed nodded with downcast eyes. He was impetuous. It was one of his failings. He was just so eager to strike a blow against the infidels and die for Allah that he could barely contain himself, especially after living and working among the decadent Americans for months that had seemed like an eternity.

  So now he had to be patient. He told himself that he would be, with the help of the Prophet. He waited with the others for the rest of the cell to arrive.

  To help pass the time, he asked Shalla Sahi, “What is your part in this?”

  “I told you, my father was murdered by a drug addict. If this country had accepted him as it should have, he would have been working in a hospital somewhere, saving lives with his medical knowledge, instead of driving a cab in the worst parts of Dallas.”

  “I am sorry for your loss,” Hamed told her, trying not to sound grudging about it. “This tragedy led you to become a believer in our cause?”

  “I’ve always been a follower of Islam,” she said. “I know, I may look like one of them, but I still believe. I still think America is the Great Satan.”

  It figured that she would quote the Ayatollah. Hamed said, “You could return to Iran. Such things can be arranged, even now.”

  “Why would I want to do that? My family is all dead. I’ve never set foot in that land. It’s not my home. This is. But that doesn’t mean I hate the infidels any less.”

  “You just don’t want to give up the advantages they give to women. You don’t want to don the burka and live as a proper Muslim female should.”

  Her face darkened again with anger at the disapproving words, but before she could say anything, Mushaff al-Mukhari lifted a hand and smiled. He didn’t have to remind them that they all had a common enemy.

  The doorbell rang. Mukhari came to his feet and motioned for all the men to go into the other room while Shalla answered the door and made sure that the newcomer was one of their group. If not, she would send whoever it was away.

  The man at the door was Rahjif, one of Hamed’s best friends from the compound. Again there were hugs and backslaps of greeting. Then Najul arrived, and Ogan, and Khalid…

  By eight o’clock that evening, all twenty members of the group were there, packed into Shalla’s apartment like sardines, as the Americans would say. Like Shalla and the sheikh and Hamed, they all wore American clothes, and although their ancestry was apparent by looking at them, there were millions of fellow Muslims in this country. They would do nothing to stand out, and although some of the infidels would look at them with hatred and suspicion, no one would think that they represented a real threat until it was too late—much too late—to stop them.

  Because most Americans would look at them and see convenience-store clerks and software engineers and believe that these were some of the good Arabs, the ones who had adopted Western ways and beliefs, the ones who were glad to be here earning money and buying DVD players and iPods and sending their children to American schools. The only Arabs who really represented a threat were the ones who wore robes and spoke among themselves in foreign tongues and bowed to Mecca five times a day.

  At least, that was what the infidels believed in their arrogance. They thought so highly of themselves and their culture that they assumed just a taste of it would be enough to seduce anyone into accepting their ways. It never occurred to them that someone wearing Levi’s and Nikes could be a warrior of the Prophet.

  They would find out, Hamed t
hought as the group gathered around the sheikh to learn the details of the plan. To their everlasting regret, they would find out…

  CHAPTER 14

  Private Rigoberto Gomez loved being a Marine. He had even loved the physical, mental, and emotional challenges of boot camp at Parris Island, because every day he survived those challenges was one more day he wasn’t spending in the barrio. Instead of being back there with the ’bangers and the lowlifes, worrying about drive-bys, watching his friends die from drugs or violence—like Little Chuy, man, his best amigo since they were kids, bleedin’ out from that bullet wound in his neck while ’Berto sobbed and held his hand over the hole with all that red pumpin’ out, sayin’ don’t die, Chuy, don’t die, man—instead of that, Private Gomez was doing something with his life. Accomplishing something. Putting all that gang shit far behind him.

  Of course, now the Marines had him standing guard at the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, where you never knew when one of those crazy suicide bombers might try to crash through the gates with a truck full of explosives and blow himself to hell in the ultimate drive-by, along with as many Americans as he could take along for the ride. Those Al Qaeda dudes were as mean and nasty as any of the gangs back in East L.A., man. But ’Berto Gomez was a Marine now, which meant he had the whole damn Corps at his back.

  That didn’t keep him from getting sleepy, pulling the graveyard watch like this. Nothing was going on. The streets around the embassy were empty at this time of night. Islamabad might be the capital of this country, but it was still a small town in many ways.

  Well, the streets weren’t exactly empty, Private Gomez realized as he stifled a yawn. Somebody was walking toward the main gate in the wall around the embassy compound, where Gomez was posted. Just one guy, but that didn’t mean anything. He was wearing one of those long cloaks like the Pakistani men wore, which meant he could have a lot of explosives strapped to his body. He could be a walking bomb.