Chasing the Night - Iris Johansen [77]
“How close are you?” he asked curtly.
“You shouldn’t have sent Kelly here,” Catherine said. “You don’t have a great deal of conscience, but I’d think a fourteen-year-old girl would be off-limits.”
“No one is off-limits now. How close are you to finding Rakovac?” he asked curtly. “For God’s sake, that’s why I sent her. Is she helping?”
She had never heard Venable sound so tense. She could almost feel the vibrations crackle over the cell. “She’s doing the best she can. It takes time.”
“We don’t have time.” He drew a deep breath. “I think time’s running out.”
She could see Eve straighten in her chair across the table from her. Catherine knew how she felt. Venable’s tension was contagious.
“What are you talking about?”
“Have you been watching the news?”
“No, we’ve been busy.”
“Pull it up on your computer. And then get back to me.”
“What am I supposed to be looking for?”
“Nine-eleven.” He hung up.
She sat there for an instant, stunned. “Nine-eleven?”
“I’ll do it.” Kelly had jumped to her feet and grabbed her computer. She was quickly surfing the Internet for news. She didn’t have to look long. It was the lead story. “Vantaro Airlines. Lima, Peru. Terrorist attack. A suicide bomber took over the cockpit and killed the pilot and forced the copilot to fly low into the heart of the city. He radioed the tower at the airport that he was doing this for the glory of Islam and the Red Darkness, a terrorist group based in Libya.” She paused, reading the next page. “He set off his explosion when he was near the capitol building. The death count may have reached over twenty-two hundred people.”
“Two thousand…” Eve said. “Peru’s 9/11.” She shook her head as if to clear it. She couldn’t clear it. The horror was too overwhelming. “I remember our 9/11. Watching those planes dive into the two towers. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t imagine the evil that could spawn something like that.”
“Neither could I,” Joe said. “I went up to New York as a volunteer and helped dig out survivors…and bodies.”
“Maybe it’s not Peru’s 9/11,” Kelly said slowly. Her gaze was fixed on the wreckage of the plane in the news story. “Maybe not.”
Catherine’s gaze flew to her face. “What?”
“Prologue,” Kelly said. “Rakovac said prologue.”
Eve inhaled sharply. “My God. Call Venable, Catherine. Call him now.”
Catherine was already dialing the number.
“What does that suicide bomber have to do with Rakovac?” she asked as soon as he picked up. “What actually happened in Lima?”
“It has everything to do with Rakovac. But we don’t know all the details about that suicide bombing yet. We’re still piecing the story together. We weren’t expecting Lima.”
“What do you know?”
“We know what the media tells you about the actual suicide bombing. The bomber was Manuel Camarez. He was an office-supply salesman and lived in southern Peru. No known affiliations to any Islamic group though he did spend a summer in Istanbul a few years ago. He could have been recruited at that time.”
“Recruited? He had to be a fanatic if he blew himself up.”
“Yes, and clever enough so that no one in his immediate circle even realized he was a prime candidate to do it.”
“How did this happen? What happened to all the airport security?”
“It’s only as strong as the weakest link.”
“So he was able to just walk onto that plane with enough explosives to kill that many people?”
“The weakest link,” Venable repeated. “In this case we’re almost sure the link was Pedro Gonzalez, the gate agent who worked the flight.”
“What did he do? Was he an Islamic recruit, too?”
“No, we think he was a victim and forced to cooperate with the terrorists.”
“How?”
“He was seen giving the bomber a black briefcase before he got on the plane. There was a mention that security had sent it up to the gate.”
“And that never happened?”
“Security didn’t know anything about it. Gonzalez probably smuggled it into the gate area the day before.”
“Wasn’t he checked by security before he was hired?”
“He was checked and came out smelling