Abuse of Power - Michael Savage [8]
“He better be right. We can’t afford any more mistakes.”
“I’m with you. If anything goes wrong, we’ll cut our losses and call it a day. Otherwise, we continue full steam and let the imam worry about this idiot al-Fida.”
“Can Zuabi be trusted?”
“A little late to be asking that question, isn’t it?”
“I wasn’t worried till now. You realize however we distract them, the feds will heighten security across the board.”
“They can trot out all the security they want,” the voice said. “They still won’t see us coming. No one will.”
* * *
The woman in the security uniform smiled at him, but Abdal al-Fida had to wonder—was her smile genuine or was there something unspoken behind it? Something dangerous? Had someone at the terminal identified him, found something at the car, dug up a picture of him and sent it to every police department, every transportation center, every 7-Eleven?
He hadn’t expected this, the paranoia. And perhaps he wouldn’t feel it so strongly if the car hadn’t sat there so long, if he hadn’t screwed up. If he’d just done as he’d been instructed—
No, he admonished himself. It was a good plan.
He had intended to park the Land Rover in the underground lot of that absurd monstrosity of a federal building downtown, then wait for morning, when the place would be filled with enough infidels to send this fat, lazy nation a resounding message from Allah.
The afternoon before, Abdal had followed one of the blind fools who worked there to an apartment near Fisherman’s Wharf—an elderly woman who wore the beleaguered look of a capitalist slave. Breaking into her car had taken him no time at all, and he’d found her electronic key card tucked into a pocket of the visor above the driver’s seat. Stupid, trusting, and careless. It’s a miracle the nation functioned at all.
In a way, this theft was an act of mercy. If she could not gain access to the parking lot the following day, her life might be spared.
Of course, in the end they were all spared, weren’t they?
The black with the gun had seen to that.
Abdal cursed himself for allowing such an insignificant piece of trash to so easily take control of him. Finding the muzzle of a gun in his face as he waited for the light to change had been so unexpected that reason had fled. Ironically, his training had taken hold then: blend in. Don’t create a scene. It took time for him to get to the rooftop of an unguarded building within a thousand feet of the target, to obtain an unobstructed transmit line from his phone to the one strapped to the primer bomb.
Allah had spared him, and for that he was grateful, but he had to wonder why. He’d never had any interest in martyrdom, but the shame he felt for this failure was worse than any form of death. He knew that those he worked for, those who at this very moment were probably shocked by his impulsiveness, his impatience—his foolishness—would kill him. The methods were still too horrible to contemplate. Yet he resisted the impulse to disappear. He also resisted the urge to rally his wits, to take his own life in an improvised act of terror. Allah did not smile upon cowards, and willful suicide with a tacked-on purpose was still first and foremost a means to escape punishment.
Besides, if he were meant to die Abdal preferred to do it in London, where he had lived for nearly twenty of his twenty-two years, in the comfort of his own home.
Within an hour of the disaster, he sent his primary contact an encrypted text message confessing his sin and begging understanding, if not forgiveness. Several minutes later he received a reply, instructing him to fly home via Los Angeles, where a reservation had already been made in his name. He knew full well that they would consult with Hassan before deciding what to do with him. That was something, at least. Hassan might choose to spare his life so he could surrender it with dignity.
Whatever the decision, Abdal would use the time he had left to make peace with his God.
He didn’t want to risk stealing another vehicle, since the