Act of Terror Read online

  He nodded in satisfaction as Sanborn tried to honk the horn. Good for her. But he’d disabled that along with the battery. Her back arched. Feet pedaled against the floorboard, kicking blindly. Pinned back in her seat there was little she could do. Beg himself knew of no way to defend against such an attack—but he was smart enough to check the backseat before he got into a car.

  The beauty of a garrote was the silence of its simplicity. There were no screams to raise the alarm. If applied correctly, by the time a startled victim opened her mouth, the unforgiving cord had already crushed the windpipe and pinched both carotid arteries. Her brain denied oxygen and blood, Sanborn fell unconscious in seconds. Beg held his grip for two full minutes, humming “Treat Me Nice” under his breath. Sweat from the exertion of the killing beaded along the dark lines of his forehead and dripped from the end of his nose.

  Sanborn died with her eyes open, her once bright face purple and taut with terror.

  Beg rolled the thin cord around the two grip sticks on either end and stuffed it back in the pocket of his loose jacket. He shoved the dead woman so she toppled over into the passenger seat, her arm trailing into the floorboard on top of a Wendy’s hamburger sack. Grabbing her purse so the incident would look like a robbery, he walked quickly down the shadowed street.

  A block away he ducked down the alley behind a CVS drugstore. Earlier that day, while Sanborn had been away, he’d taken an envelope containing the illicit photos of her and Drake from under her mattress. In her purse, he found the thumb drive that was surely her backup. For a blackmailer, she was highly unsophisticated.

  Beg snapped the thumb drive into an adapter on his smartphone and scrolled through the contents. He shook his head at the woman’s stupidity. The files weren’t even password protected. The metadata showed the photos had been printed twice—that accounted for the set mailed to Drake and the set he’d found hidden under her mattress.

  He scrolled through the photos again, looking at each one carefully. He was glad he’d killed Sanborn without spending any time with her. She was a whore and he had no use for that sort of woman.

  He took the thumb drive out of his phone and dropped it to the pavement, crushing it beneath his heel. His mind wandered to the jasmine scent of Veronica Garcia as he dialed Badeeb’s number. She was a woman he would soon spend some time with. His crooked mouth perked at the thought.

  Badeeb picked up. “Peace be unto you,” he said. The sound of him exhaling a lungful of cigarette smoke fluttered on the other end of the phone.

  “And to you,” Beg said, pressing on with business lest the doctor spend the next ten minutes on their greeting. “I took care of the problem with the photographer.” He was careful not to use Hartman Drake’s name on an open phone line.

  There was a long pause. “Cleanly, I trust.”

  Beg shook his head, sighing. “Of course,” he said. There was no truly clean way to kill another human being. “In any case, your man is free to pursue his goals without her interference.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  7th Fighter Squadron

  Langley Air Force Base, Virginia

  Tara Doyle leaned against a flat, diesel-powered aircraft tug and watched the weapons being loaded onto her aircraft. She toyed with a crescent wrench while she sipped a can of Pepsi. It was against hangar protocol to drink soda this close to the aircraft, but the two airmen loading ordinance were more interested in stealing glances at her chest than anything she might be doing to bend the rules.

  It was still hours before her flight, but she’d already donned her olive drab Nomex flight suit. Normally loose, it was known as a bag by those in the business. Tara had found one a size too small that showed off the round swell of her buttocks. A full-length zipper ran from the crotch to the neck. She unzipped it down to her belly button and tied the long sleeves around her slender waist to keep it up like a pair of pants. Her metal dog tags dangled on a chain over the chest of her skintight T-shirt, drawing attention to the fact that she’d worn no bra. She wanted the airmen’s focus anywhere but their job.

  Tracy, a chubby kid with a mop of dark hair that pushed Air Force regulations, drove the weapons lift. He sat idling next to the aircraft, a load of bombs partially under the plane. The F-22 had to be loaded from the opposite side in order to clear the open bay door. Arlow stood beside his partner, scratching his buzz cut and pursing baby-face cheeks as he looked over the paperwork.

  Doyle dropped the wrench on the deck of the tug and walked over to sidle up next to him. Men reacted in one of two ways to such direct attention. Arlow didn’t disappoint her. He gulped, looking her direction, trying—and failing—to keep his eyes off her breasts.

  She threw her head back to drain the last of her Pepsi. It exposed the delicate lines of her neck and tightened the shirt against her body. She let her left arm drape over the top of her head, exposing the small tuft of dark hair under her armpit. Her real mother had never thought to shave there and Tara vowed not to bow to the vain American custom. It had made her the object of derision during gym class growing up. Air Force flight surgeons raised surprised eyebrows every year during her physical, but never actually asked anything. She was happy to be an outcast. It made her remember what the Americans had done to her father and brother ... and the way they’d defiled her mother before they’d cut her throat.

  Whether or not the young airmen found an unshaven woman attractive, they were certain to find it exotic—and in her experience, that was all a man needed to become hooked like a fish. Tara gritted her teeth behind a tight smile. Her chest shuddered with a mix of excitement and revulsion.

  “Something wrong, Airman?”

  “Nope.” Arlow shook his head, blinking as if to clear something out of his eyes. “I ... I mean ... you’re goin’ out hot tonight... . By that I mean your airplane, ma’am... . I don’t mean you personally... .”

  “Calm down, Airman. I know I’m the queen of West Texas bitches—but I don’t bite... .” Her smile turned coy, perking up on one side. It made her physically ill, but she knew how to play a man. It had even worked on Dr. Badeeb, many times.

  Arlow swallowed hard and looked over his sparse mustache to consult the clipboard in his hand. “I got you down here for a full complement of four-eighty cannon rounds. I get that.” The M61A2 machine gun fired at a rate of a hundred rounds per second, giving her roughly five one-second shots.

  Airman Arlow continued. “You got two Slammers and two Sidewinders. I get that too.” He called the AIM 120 and the AIM 9M/X missiles by their nicknames. “What I don’t get is the GBUs. I’ve never loaded out live bombs for an over-watch run on home soil.”

  Tara pitched the empty soda can toward a fifty-five-gallon oil drum used as a trash barrel. She purposely missed and it clattered to the gleaming white hangar floor.

  “I know,” she said, bending over slowly to pick up the can. She felt like her suit was about to split. She could feel his eyes on her.

  “Weird, huh?” she said. “They got Speedo running air-to-air tonight during the big soiree. I’m working air-to-air and air-to-ground. I suppose the big heads that think all this up are worried about waterborne attacks on the island—especially with all the talk of moles and traitors on the news.”

  Arlow shrugged, his eyes locked on Tara’s white T-shirt. “Makes sense, I guess.” He was from a little town outside Houston and though he blanched every time she got near him, she knew he considered his fellow Texan an ally. “Anyway, we’re loadin’ the stuff written on the orders. It’s just odd, that’s all. He tossed the clipboard on the seat of the aircraft tug. “Eight GBU 39s coming your way, ma’am... .”

  He pulled on a pair of gloves and went to help his chubby partner finish the load-out.

  The GBU 39 SDB or Guided Bomb Unit/Small Diameter Bomb weighed just two hundred and fifty pounds. Its lethality radius was roughly the size of a tractor trailer—not particularly large considering the awesome firepower of the F-22. Doyle had already programed the guidance sys
tems to home on four specially designed transmitters—strategically placed. They were accurate enough to fall within fifteen meters of their intended destinations—and for human targets that would be close enough.

  Tara arched her back against the tug, closing her eyes to prepare herself for the next move.

  Flying “slick,” in stealth mode, the Raptor was literally wrapped around its weapons system. All four missiles and eight bombs were tucked in the aircraft’s belly, out of sight behind the bomb doors. Speedo would check his own bird, but leave Tara to check her ordnance. The captain who had forged her orders was one of them. That left Airmen Arlow and Tracy as the only loose ends that might show up in the short term.

  “So,” she called out, looking at her watch as they finished affixing the last load of four bombs to the mounting carriage on the starboard side of her aircraft. The late shift would be arriving in less than an hour. “I need to go over some inventory with you boys back in the storeroom... .”

  The storeroom, with row after row of head-high shelving units stocked with aircraft parts and fluids, was a favorite place for squadron members to hold clandestine meetings. People went in looking intense and emerged flushed and pensive. Tara had never met anyone back there herself, but knew well enough what was going on.

  She threw her head in a saucy tease and began to walk toward the gray double doors beyond the tool racks. She’d let her flight suit slip, showing a thin line of pale belly skin below the hem of her T-shirt. When she glanced over her shoulder, both Arlow and Tracy followed as though they had ropes through their noses. She patted the slender fillet knife inside the thigh of her suit and gave a long quiet sigh, smiling. It was all too easy.

  First she would kill these witless men. Then, very soon, she would rain down death on the very heads of those who believed they were the most powerful people on earth.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  Governors Island, New York

  There was a good deal of grubby work yet to be done and Nancy Hughes hadn’t yet changed into the navy-blue dress she’d wear to watch her only daughter tie the knot. She’d had her hair done that morning, but wore a pair of faded jeans that were comfortably big in the hips and a red Texas Tech Red Raiders sweatshirt. She looked up from where she stood behind the small mahogany table at the threshold of the three-story brick home known as the Admiral’s Mansion.

  The weather had turned out on the chilly side but clear—perfect for a wedding—and she’d left the front door open in an attempt to air the mustiness out of the old manor house.

  She situated the white taffeta guest book between two Montblanc fountain pens held upright in marble stones shaped like eggs. With all the politicians in attendance, the expensive pens were sure to “run off,” as her mother would say, before the night was over. Still, Jolene wasn’t going to get married again anytime in the near future. No detail was too minor.

  Nancy had eloped to keep her daddy from killing young Bobby Hughes. That was long before anyone thought the skinny boy from across the tracks would amount to anything at all, let alone the vice president of the United States. She would never admit it out loud, but this wedding was as much about her as it was her daughter. It had to be perfect. And now security that rivaled a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly threatened to turn the whole thing into a circus.

  For the last day and half Governors Island and its surrounding waters had become a spewing fountain of activity.

  The two-hundred-and-ten-foot U.S. Coast Guard cutter Vigorous, bristling with a twenty-five-millimeter chain gun and fifty-caliber deck guns fore and aft, prowled the Buttermilk Channel between the island and Brooklyn, New York. The hundred-and-sixty-five-foot Algonquin class cutter Escanaba, down from Boston, lay just off Liberty Island. A half dozen orange and gray USCG fast-boats, each also armed with a fifty-caliber machine gun mounted on the foredeck, patrolled upper New York Harbor and the entrances to the East and Hudson Rivers. These vessels, along with as many NYPD patrol boats, enforced a two-thousand-foot mar-sec standoff, keeping any other boats away from Governors Island.

  A virtual army of Secret Service, Department of State Diplomatic Security agents, and NYPD secured the concrete docks and dilapidated redbrick industrial buildings on the Brooklyn side. Three hundred more from the same agencies locked down Battery Park and the entire southern tip of Manhattan. The Brooklyn Battery Tunnel that ran underwater adjacent to the island, connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn, had been closed for the day. The Secret Service Uniform Division manned a series of checkpoints at the Governors Island Ferry dock, ready to double-check the guest list for those arriving by water. Each guest, no matter his or her rank or standing, would be required to pass through full-body scanners like those that caused all the brouhaha at airports. Heads of state would arrive by helicopter and would be exempt from such scrutiny, though their staff members would be scanned at the security checkpoint in the center of the island, under a large, circus-like tent set up in the wooded park beyond the helipad.

  Spotters with binoculars watched from virtually every rooftop. A heavy thump of helicopters shook the bluebird-clear sky. Navy and Air Force fighters streaked overhead, rattling the floor-to-ceiling windows in the historic mansion. Nancy felt as if she was on the deck of an aircraft carrier rather than setting up the final details of her only daughter’s wedding. She’d have to call Bob and see if he couldn’t pull some vice presidential strings and quiet the sky down a few hundred decibels.

  Nancy stepped out and leaned against one of the Doric pillars on the full-length front porch to rest. Jolene would arrive in four hours; guests would start showing up an hour after that. Oh, for a few minutes with her feet up before they all descended upon her. It was unladylike, but she scratched her back against the column, sure some of the flaking white paint had rubbed off on her red sweatshirt.

  She caught Special Agent Doyle’s eye and gave him a grin. He stood post, ramrod straight in his dark suit, at the corner of the porch.

  “Sorry, Jimmy,” she said, sliding up and down like a bear against a tree. “I really hate that you get to see me absent my good Southern manners.

  “The United States Secret Service sees nothing—and everything,” he said, returning her grin. “But if it’s any consolation, Mrs. H., everyone scratches their itches.”

  “For what it’s worth, Jimmy,” Nancy said, “I’m glad you’re the one assigned to this. Feels safer having you here.”

  She looked up to see Amanda Deatherage standing on the brick walkway. Her mouth agape, she stared up at the sky.

  “Are you all right, dear?” Nancy said. Her wedding assistant seemed to grow more agitated at each pass of the military jets.

  The girl’s head snapped around as if she’d been slapped. “Yes ... ma’am,” she stammered, a hint of something sullen in her eyes. Her hands trembled slightly as she wrapped blue and yellow ribbon around the black barrels of two heavy antique cannons on either side of the brick walkway.

  Mrs. Hughes nodded warily, unconvinced. “Have the flowers arrived?”

  Deatherage smoothed a large ribbon into a bow at the muzzle of a cannon. “They have,” she said. “I took care of them myself. I picked the best ones for the vice president and the president since he’ll be the guest of honor.”

  “My daughter is the guest of honor.” Nancy Hughes glared. She was too exhausted to suffer the girl’s foolishness. Still, it wouldn’t do to make an enemy of her today. Nancy softened her tone. “You were correct to pick a good one for the president, dear.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” Deatherage brightened. “I’ll take care of putting them on myself so they don’t get mixed up with the ones for the groomsmen.”

  Agent Jimmy Doyle raised a brow, dark eyes flitting back and forth from Nancy to the girl.

  “I want you to take care of the photographer tonight,” Nancy said, hoping to give the witless girl something to keep her mind occupied. “When President Clark comes through the receiving line, I’d like to capture that moment.
Could you see to that?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am,” she said. “It would be my honor.” Deatherage gave her a long smile, then turned back to her duties.

  What a strange girl, Nancy Hughes thought. She wouldn’t be staying on after the wedding. That was a certainty.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  Manhattan

  Chinatown

  “You should have let me kill the Cuban woman,” Beg said, walking briskly beside his boss. His mouth was set in a tight line as if he’d just eaten something unpleasant.

  “She is hospitalized and helpless.” Dr. Badeeb held a glowing cigarette in front of him as if to ward off the press of people on teaming sidewalks of Canal Street. “Hardly a matter that requires someone of your skill. I have sent a competent man to take care of that problem.”

  Beg ground his teeth like a predator deprived of a favorite piece of meat. He’d been looking forward to learning more about the lovely creature that was Veronica Garcia ... before he killed her.

  He suddenly found the crush of the city extremely annoying. Tourists jostled by, mouths agape at the sheer press of foreign humanity on American soil. Beg walked dutifully beside his employer, waving off the persistent Chinese women offering their knockoff goods with a whispered buzz of: “Handbag-handbag-DVD-DVD-handbag. . .” Finding them bothersome as blowflies, Beg had to press back the urge to kill all of them with one of the colorful pashmina scarves that hung by the dozens in every other tourist and T-shirt shop.

  “I need you to strangle Li Huang,” the doctor went on, as if reading Beg’s thoughts and throwing him a bone. “The Pari School has been compromised. Who can say where the Americans will come with their questions? She knows far too much.”

  Beg had expected the order to murder the doctor’s wife for some time. He found it interesting that Badeeb had prescribed the method for her death. Those details were customarily left up to Beg and the Mervi found himself a little put out by such micromanagement.