One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [163]
While the car was being rigged, Knuckles and I studied a map of the target area with Bull, the man he had selected to conduct the reconnaissance. Knuckles had picked him because he most closely resembled the indigenous population, and I’d given him the leather jacket I’d bought as additional camouflage.
Knuckles asked me, “You ever been here? What’re the neighborhoods like? Is it like Fallujah where everyone knows you don’t belong?”
“I haven’t been in that neighborhood, but you know the city’s a significant tourist attraction, at least as far as Bosnia goes. I’d say that most of the tourist stuff is centered on the sights downtown but they probably see strangers quite a bit all over the place. It’s probably not suspicious to drive by, especially just once.”
An idea hit me. “Hey, why don’t you take Jennifer as some eye candy? She’s pretty good under stress, and she’s already dressed like a Bosnian woman. She’ll lower the profile if she’s in the car. If they have some sort of early warning going on, they won’t suspect a couple.”
Knuckles chewed the idea over for a few seconds. “Yeah, that’ll work. Bull, you got an issue with that?”
“No. It’s not like we’re going into a gunfight. She’ll be much more of an asset than a liability.”
I saw Jennifer getting a little aggravated with the talk going back and forth, as if she weren’t there or didn’t have a vote.
“You game for that?” Knuckles asked her. “All you’d have to do is ride and keep your eyes open.”
She said, “Yes. I can do that. Thanks for asking. I figured you were just going to tie me to the front seat no matter what I said.”
Knuckles looked at me like he was going to scrub her participation.
“She’s good to go,” I said, smiling at her. “She just likes to be the one telling people what to do. She doesn’t listen to me either.”
Jennifer purposely ignored me. “You’re Bull, right?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you want me to do?”
BAKR PLACED THE FINISHING TOUCHES on his explosive package, attempting to make it as unobtrusive as possible. Ordinarily he would have embedded the entire device in ball bearings and nails in an effort to create as much death and destruction as possible. In this case, all he wanted to do was disperse his Tupperware container of death without destroying it. He opted not to build a suicide vest but to utilize the backpack he already had.
His biggest challenge was creating enough of an explosive effect to distribute the toxin over as large an area as possible without actually destroying it in the fire and pressure of the explosion itself. It was a delicate Catch-22. Go too large, and all he would get was an explosion that consumed the toxin. Go too small and he would kill very few people. Luckily, he’d had in-depth instruction on how to tamp the material and protect it from the fire of the explosion as well as how to maximize the downwind hazard once the poison was airborne.
Taping down the blasting caps, he heard a vehicle approach down the road. He had been in the house for over an hour and hadn’t heard a single car yet. He paused his work and went upstairs to the window. He relaxed, seeing a beat-up sedan pass by with a Bosnian man and woman inside. They paid his house no attention whatsoever. He returned to the device, connecting his special detonator to the blasting caps.
97
Lucas wondered how far he could push his second-tier team. He decided to opt with their strengths: full-on frontal assault. Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that, as he had to assume that Mason’s team was on Pike right this moment, tracking him for the kill. He asked his tech man what was taking so long for a beacon fix, only to be told for the third time that the pager track download was locked up. He took a deep breath and let it out, asking again, “How much longer is this going to take?”
“It’s rebooting now. Shouldn’t be but a few more minutes.”
Lucas walked in a small circle, physically forcing himself to remain patient. The men returned