Jackknife Read online

So he was left to live in the ten-year-old brick house that looked like all the other ten-year-old brick houses in the vast subdivision, with all its memories of good times—and bad.

  The housing market was in a slump, even with all the fantastic growth in the area. No way he could get what the house was actually worth. So he couldn’t afford to move, not with the child support he was paying.

  He woke up on Thanksgiving morning in the bed he had once shared with his wife. He walked down a hallway that had once been littered with toys, and ate breakfast at an island countertop in the kitchen where his daughter had once eaten cereal every morning. Then, faced with a long day of having nothing to do except go over paperwork from various cases he was working on, he went into the den and made himself a drink.

  If he had been home in New York, he could have gotten together with friends. Watched the parade from somebody’s penthouse. Gone out on the town. Taken in a show. But in this cultural wasteland there was nothing to hold his interest. He brought in the newspaper and flipped through it. Ninety percent ads, which was why he subscribed to it in the first place. He certainly didn’t rely on it for actual news coverage.

  The thick ad for the new UltraMegaMart caught his attention. He went through it carefully, and sure enough, there on page five was the puppet-thingy that Vicky wanted, and for a really good price, too. Burke suppressed a groan as he saw the small print reading Limited to Quantities on Hand—No Rain Checks. He turned back to the first page of the section. DOORS OPEN AT 6 A.M.

  Shit, he thought. Anybody who got up at a reasonable hour and arrived at the store at, say, ten o’clock in the morning would be out of luck. All the good stuff would be gone by then, and he would be faced with forcing his way through a mob of sweaty rednecks looking for something, anything—confident only in the fact that whatever he got, his daughter wouldn’t like it nearly as well as the freaky-looking puppet.

  Burke tossed back the rest of his drink and thought that he would just forget the whole thing. He made a good living. He could afford to go out somewhere and pay more for the thing later, without ever venturing into Redneck Central.

  But if he did that, he told himself, he ran the risk of not being able to find it anywhere else either. He had seen stories on the news in past Christmas seasons about near-riots at toy stores when people tried to get their hands on that year’s hot toys that were in short supply.

  Like it or not—and he didn’t—he decided that his best course of action would be to drag himself out of bed early and head up the interstate a few miles to that grand opening. It would be an ordeal, but he told himself he could stand it…for Vicky’s sake.

  With that decision reached, he made up his mind about something else. He got up and went to pour another drink.

  CHAPTER 19

  There was nothing special about this Thanksgiving, and that’s what made it seem so nice, McCabe thought as he and Terry and Ronnie sat on the sofa and waited to see if the Cowboys placekicker was going to make the field goal that would win the game.

  Just Thanksgiving dinner with his family, followed by a nice nap, and then a football game that turned out to be close and exciting. He wasn’t on the road somewhere, hauling a truckload of goods along the interstate. Nor was he freezing his ass off in some mountains or sweltering in a jungle or scorching in a desert while people who hated the United States and everything it stood for did their damnedest to kill him. He had spent more than one Thanksgiving like that, too, and it was no fun.

  “He’s gotta make this kick,” Ronnie said as the opposing team called a time-out to let the Dallas kicker stew some more. “He’s just gotta.” McCabe’s daughter was a die-hard Cowboys fan. As for himself, he liked to see them win, but he wasn’t going to lose any sleep either way over something like a football game.

  The teams lined up. Neither side had any more timeouts. Three seconds remained on the clock. The ball was on the forty-yard line. That would make this a forty-seven-yard field goal. Difficult, but certainly possible. The Cowboys were two points behind. The new stadium, which had opened just a year earlier, was packed with screaming fans. They were all on their feet as the ball was snapped.

  McCabe felt some of their urgency, and leaned forward on his sofa as the kicker stepped into the ball and swung his kicking leg. The camera followed the ball up and up as the announcer on TV yelled, “It looks like it’s long enough…It’s good, it’s good! No time left on the clock! No penalty flags down! The Cowboys have won!”

  Ronnie jumped up and did a little dance, pumping her fists in the air. Her parents grinned at her, but she was too excited to notice.

  “Well, that was certainly a thrilling finish,” Terry said. “I think I’ll make myself a turkey sandwich. Anyone else want one?”

  McCabe rubbed his stomach and groaned. “I’m still too stuffed from dinner to even think about eating again. How can you be hungry already?”

  “I have a healthy appetite,” Terry told him.

  “I’ll say.”

  She punched him on the elbow, then stood up and headed for the kitchen. The phone rang while she was on her way there, so she detoured a few steps to answer it. McCabe wondered who would be calling on Thanksgiving Day. Probably one of Terry’s relatives, he thought. He didn’t have any close relatives left. That was one reason he had made the military his career for a long time.

  It took him by surprise when she held the phone out toward him and said, “Jack, it’s Keith Gossage.”

  McCabe frowned. Gossage was one of his supervisors. As he stood up and went to take the phone from his wife, he wanted to ask what the hell they wanted with him on Thanksgiving, but she hadn’t covered the receiver with her hand, so he didn’t.

  “Hey, Keith, what’s up?” he said into the phone.

  “Sorry to bother you on Thanksgiving, Jack,” came the voice in his ear, “but at least I waited until the Cowboys game was over.”

  “Yeah, I appreciate that.” McCabe didn’t say anything else, just waited to see what Gossage wanted.

  “I know you thought you were off until Monday—”

  McCabe couldn’t hold back a groan. “Aw, no. Don’t tell me.”

  “Sorry, buddy. Hiram Stackhouse needs you.”

  Stackhouse was the founder of MegaMart, a multibillionaire, an elderly man who was either a colorful eccentric or a crazy old coot, depending on who you asked about him.

  “Uncle Sam needed me, too, and that like to got my head shot off.”

  Gossage laughed. “Well, at least you won’t have to worry about that tomorrow. And you won’t have very far to go either. You just have to pick up a load of freight at the Alliance distribution center and take it to the new UltraMegaMart that’s opening tomorrow. Won’t take you more than an hour or so, I’d guess.”

  “That store’s not even open yet,” McCabe pointed out. “It should be fully stocked. They can’t be running short of anything yet.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. The guys in Marketing have been running the numbers. They’ve decided that the turnout for the grand opening is going to be even bigger than they thought at first. So they’ve ordered up some extra stock in certain areas.”

  McCabe didn’t care what the stock was. It could be anything from diapers to automatic transmission fluid to hairspray; it didn’t make any difference to him. All that mattered was that he had to get it from Point A—the distribution center at Alliance Airport—to Point B—the brand-spanking-new UltraMegaMart. And on a day that was supposed to have been time off for him.

  “I reckon it’s too much to ask if you’ve got anybody else who can handle this job.”

  “You’re the best, Jack. You know that.”

  His superiors in SpecOps had said that very thing to him on more than one occasion, especially when they were sending him into some dangerous Third World shithole from which they didn’t expect him to come back. But he had fooled them. He had come back every time, and usually relatively intact at that. Not always, and he had the scars to prove it, b
ut usually.

  Gossage made the job of driving a truck some five miles sound just as vital. And McCabe supposed it was, to Gossage and his bosses, all the way up to Hiram Stackhouse. McCabe had heard rumors that the old man himself was going to be on hand tomorrow for the grand opening, although that hadn’t been officially announced yet. Stackhouse liked to just show up with little or no warning. That was part of that eccentric charm of his.

  McCabe sighed. “All right, Keith. I’ll take care of this for you. But you’ll owe me.”

  “Extra time off later? You’ve got it, buddy.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of a bonus.”

  “Well…I’ll see what I can do.” Gossage didn’t sound too hopeful about that, however. Like George Halas, the old-time NFL big shot who had once owned and coached the Chicago Bears, Stackhouse had a reputation for throwing nickels around like manhole covers.

  “What time do I need to pick up the load?”

  “Eight o’clock. It’ll be loaded and ready to roll. See, I told you this won’t take very long, and then you’ll have the rest of the day off just like you planned.”

  “Okay. I’ll be there.”

  “I knew I could count on you, Jack. Thanks.”

  McCabe said his good-byes and hung up. Terry was watching him. She said, “Don’t tell me…you have to work tomorrow.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I was counting on you going with us to the grand opening.”

  McCabe chuckled. “Well, that’s where I’m going. I have to pick up a truck full of extra stock at Alliance and drive it over to the store.”

  Terry smiled. “That means you can meet us there and go shopping with us after all.”

  McCabe was starting to feel trapped, in more ways than one. “I, uh, already told Ronnie that I thought I’d pass.”

  “But now you have to be there anyway, so you don’t have any excuse for disappointing your loving wife and daughter, now do you?” she said, her smile growing even sweeter.

  That didn’t fool McCabe for a second. “You’re right,” he said, giving in. “Things are really working out for the best, aren’t they?”

  CHAPTER 20

  The plan was, in a way, simplicity itself, Hamed thought. Of course there would be security at the target, that temple of American decadence known as the UltraMegaMart, but it would be directed more at stopping shoplifters inside the store and car burglaries in the parking lot. Americans were such idiots. Just because they had not been attacked on their own soil since 9/11, they thought it would never happen again. Even though Homeland Security and the FBI had been lucky enough to uncover several small-scale plots by near-amateurs in time to stop them, people paid no attention.

  The group crowded into Shalla Sahi’s apartment spent the entire day, Thanksgiving Day, going over the plan. It had several different components, and everything had to occur perfectly for maximum effect.

  “Car bombs will be placed here, and here, and here, and here,” Sheikh Mushaff al-Mukhari said as he pointed to the map that was spread out on Shalla’s kitchen table. He placed pushpins at the site of each bombing. “A police station, to strike at American authority. A post office, to strike at American bureaucracy. A bank, to strike at the American economy. And this last one—”

  “A day-care center?” Shalla asked with a frown.

  The sheikh looked up at her. “You are not wavering in your zeal to serve Allah, are you?”

  “No, of course not,” she answered quickly. “Not at all.”

  Hamed wasn’t sure he believed her. This was a perfect example of why women could not be trusted to play an important part in this holy war. They were too weak, too emotional. Instead of being clear-eyed servants of the Prophet, they allowed their feelings to influence their actions.

  “And a day-care center,” Mukhari went on, “to strike at the hearts of the Americans. To make them feel the same pain that untold thousands of our people have felt at the loss of our children, not only to American guns and bombs, but to the satanic culture that seduces them away from the true tenets of Islam.”

  “But these explosions,” Hamed dared to say, “they are only a prelude, yes?”

  The sheikh nodded. “Yes. A prelude. So the Americans will take us seriously when we take over the UltraMegaMart and issue our demands.”

  The timeline was straightforward. The bombs would go off at nine forty-five on Friday morning, when targets such as the bank, the post office, and the day-care center would be busy. Then, fifteen minutes later, at ten o’clock, the group of heavily armed sleeper-cell Hizb ut-Tahrir agents would take over the UltraMegaMart, killing anyone who stood in their way. There would be hundreds, perhaps thousands of shoppers inside the sprawling store, and only twenty warriors, but that would be enough.

  The plan called for them to enter the store individually, along with the crush of Americans, starting when the doors opened at six a.m. The four hours before they struck would give them plenty of time to move throughout the store and plant the small but powerful bombs they carried at every entrance point. Once those bombs were armed, delicate sensors would trigger them if a large number of people approached from outside, like a force of American police or military. Of course, the Americans might think about trying to trigger them in some fashion, so they could launch an attack once the bombs had gone off, but they would reconsider when they saw the hostages secured right next to each of the explosive devices. The Americans would not deliberately blow up any of their own people—especially on camera.

  And there would be plenty of cameras, Hamed thought, once the sheikh contacted the American news media and issued the group’s demands.

  Demand, actually, because there was only a single major one.

  All United States presence—military, corporate, what have you—was to be withdrawn from Islamic soil. American business interests in Muslim countries would be turned over immediately, not to the governments of those countries, but rather to the Caliphate, the new Islamic order that would unite all Muslims everywhere and lead them to their rightful place of dominance in the world. If what it took to accomplish that goal was the death of every infidel on the entire planet, then so be it. Allah willed it. Allahu akbar!

  But kicking the Americans out had to be the first step. Their godless power would be broken. They would have to give in.

  Or else Hamed and his comrades would detonate the “dirty” briefcase nuke that Mukhari had brought with him, and where the UltraMegaMart now stood would be nothing but a radioactive crater, a blight on the already ugly Texas prairie that would last for hundreds of years.

  So, yes, Hamed thought, the plan was simple, but there were plenty of things involved in it that could go wrong. They would need the blessings of the Prophet to strike this blow for jihad, this opening gambit in the rise of the Caliphate. But he was confident that they would have those blessings. Allah would not desert them now, not when they were so close to their goal.

  Most of the men had not slept much in the past few days. The sheikh instructed them to rest that evening. They dozed in chairs and on Shalla’s sofa and on the floor.

  Hamed tried to sleep as well, but he was too restless. He got up, made his way to the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator, looking for something to eat.

  “You’re having trouble sleeping, too?” a voice asked quietly.

  He straightened and looked around the refrigerator door to see Shalla standing there. She had gone into her bedroom earlier. Her thick dark hair was tousled, as if she had been tossing and turning. She wore a long T-shirt that ended just below the tops of her thighs, leaving her legs mostly bare. The sight of all that smooth brown flesh was extremely disturbing to Hamed. It was immodest and sinful, of course, but he was also bothered by his reaction to it, which was that of a normal man. He felt himself becoming aroused, and by sheer force of will dragged his gaze away from her.

  “You should return to your room,” he snapped.

  “Why?”

  “Men are trying
to sleep here.”

  “This is my apartment,” she said. “Who are you to tell me what to do?” She stepped in front of the refrigerator, her hip bumping his as she did so. “Anyway, I’m hungry.”

  She bent over to search for something to eat, and as she did so the T-shirt pulled up in the back, revealing the bottom half of a nicely rounded rump clad only in thin panties. Hamed looked at it without meaning to, then closed his eyes and prayed for strength. Being surrounded by beautiful virgins in paradise was one thing; even a holy man could wish for that. But he had to remain strong and pure in this world and not succumb to the temptation of earthly pleasures.

  Shalla straightened and glanced over her shoulder. “Do I bother you?”

  She was tormenting him on purpose, Hamed thought. There was no other explanation for her behavior.

  “You are nothing to me,” he said, making his voice as cold as possible. “I am devoted to the holy cause of jihad.”

  “As am I. I told you what happened to my father.”

  “And you blame the Americans for that.”

  “Of course! His death was their fault. I want only to see them suffer as I and my mother have suffered. I want them to feel the same pain of loss, as Sheikh al-Mukhari said.”

  Keeping his eyes fastened on hers so that he wouldn’t be tempted to look at her body, Hamed asked, “Your mother, she still lives?”

  Shalla shook her head. “Without my father, she was nothing. She mourned him for six months before she went on to join him in paradise. But I promised her, on her deathbed, that I would avenge them both. That is why I will be with you tomorrow.”

  A shock went through Hamed at her words. “With us?” he repeated.

  “Of course.” She smiled at him. “Did you think that I was merely providing a place for you to meet?” She shook her head. “I received the same sort of training as you, Hamed al-Bashar, and I have been in this country even longer. And I am just as willing to die in the service of Allah.”

  Hamed’s mind was whirling now. He knew that females had served as freedom fighters in the past, and they could be as devout in their beliefs as any male.