Dead on Arrival. Mike Lawson

Чтение книги онлайн.

       5

      He had been in Philadelphia for more than two months, and then two days ago, when he was finally on his way to Cleveland, on to the next target, that man tried to crash his plane into the White House. He’d been walking toward the bus depot when it happened, and he’d just passed a crowd gathered around the window of an electronics store when he heard a woman say, ‘Oh, my God! Not again.’

      He should not have stopped, it was foolish to have done so, but he did. He looked at the enormous television in the window of the store and saw a small plane flying; then, an instant later, he saw the plane explode and a military jet fly through the ball of flame and smoke where the plane had been. The caption at the bottom of the television screen read, ‘Katie, we don’t know who was flying the plane at this time. One high-ranking official at the Pentagon, who we can’t name, said the pilot was a well-known Muslim attorney, but we have not been able to confirm that. What we do know is that the man appeared to be trying to crash his plane, a Cessna, into the White House. The Cessna was shot down by Air National Guard pilots flying F-Sixteen Falcons, and the president was evacuated from the White House only minutes before the plane was destroyed.’

      As he had stood there looking at the huge television set, he became aware that people were turning and beginning to stare at him, so he had lowered his head and continued on his way, trying to remain calm. Someone in the crowd had called out to him, but he’d kept walking.

      He had decided immediately that it would be too risky to go to the bus depot that day. People would be too vigilant. So he had returned to the safe house where he’d been staying since the debacle of the Baltimore tunnel. Once inside, he had turned on the television and listened to the news reports, realizing as he listened that he was going to have to postpone going to Cleveland for a few days, maybe longer, because of what had just happened.

      He had only God to thank that he was not at that moment in a jail cell being tortured. He had left the garage in Baltimore that night to make a phone call, a call from a public phone booth, and had difficulty finding a working phone in a country inhabited by animals. And then he had gotten lost because he didn’t know the city very well. Had it not been for making a wrong turn, he too would have been in the garage when the FBI blasted their way in. But God saved him. Praise be to God.

      He knew from subsequent news reports how the two fools had been caught. He’d told them to buy the ammonium nitrate in small batches, very small batches, but for whatever reason – laziness, recklessness, stupidity – they had purchased enough fertilizer in one place to draw suspicion upon themselves. Worse yet, he had been identified.

      When he had fled Baltimore he had gone to the home of a devout couple in Philadelphia. His intent had been to stay there only a week, two at the most, by which time he thought it would be safe to travel. But then the fools told the FBI about his artificial leg, and the next thing he knew there was a grainy, barely recognizable photograph of him in the newspapers. So he had cut his hair and shaved his beard and stayed in the basement for two months. But it hadn’t been a total waste of time; while he was in hiding he learned more about the boy in Cleveland and about another boy, this one in Sante Fe. And he learned much more about the next objective.

      The Internet truly would set the world free.

      The amazing thing about the incident in Baltimore had been the reaction of this senator, this William Broderick. It was exactly the sort of reaction they had wanted, but he had never expected it when the attack on the tunnel had failed. But now, because of what this lawyer had done, there was talk of some law being passed that would cause even more discontent among the faithful in this country.

      They were truly blessed.

      What he didn’t know was if any of his brethren had helped the lawyer. He knew he was not the only one of his kind in this country, so it was possible that the leader of another cell had recruited the man. But the lawyer was not the type he himself would have selected; he was too old, too well educated, and, most important, he seemed too entrenched in American society, not a devout Muslim at all. So maybe it was as their FBI had said – the man had just gone insane because of all that had happened to him – but that didn’t strike him as sounding right either.

      Whatever the case, the lawyer had helped them, and this senator – he was helping them even more.