One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [172]
“At least they have some sort of security going on. Turn around and park it on the river. That’ll only be about three blocks south.”
After we had parked the vehicles, while Bull worked to get a new grid for Carlos, I said, “What about Lucas?”
“What about him?”
“We can’t leave him alone. He’s no pushover and a slippery bastard to boot. Someone needs to cover him, or he’ll screw this whole thing up.”
“I agree,” he said, “but we can’t afford to leave a teammate to babysit his ass. We need every man on this.”
“Call the pilots. Get one of them to come here and swap cars.”
Knuckles grimaced. “Pike, I can’t do that. I can’t risk the cover of the bird. Those guys are pilots, period. You know that.”
“Shit, man, that guy’s running around with a damn bomb on his back! Fuck the damn rules.” I stopped, holding up my hands. “Okay, okay. I’ll tell Jennifer to come get him. She can switch cars and take him back to the 427. The pilots can guard him until we get there. Can they at least do that?”
“Yeah, they can do that.”
I called Jennifer and gave her instructions, a little piqued at Knuckles’s rigid adherence to procedures. This is one time he should be flexing like Gumby. I let it go, knowing he had a point. Compromise the pilots and we wouldn’t be able to fly out of here. Jennifer’s switched on enough to get the job done. For the first time I realized that I trusted her as much as the Taskforce members themselves.
By the time I hung up the phone, Bull had pinpointed the new location. “He’s just south of the market. Maybe one hundred and fifty meters away from it.”
I looked at the map and said, “That’s straight north from here. He’s about two blocks up.”
Knuckles gave final instructions, splitting the team into two-man elements. “Bull, you and Retro come in from east to west. Pike and I will come up from south to north. The rest of you box in from west to east. Hopefully we’ll pin him in. Everyone, remember he’s got a WMD. Whatever you do, don’t hit the pack or his chest. If you have to shoot, go for the head.”
The problem with the cell phone track was that it only gave us a snapshot in time. We couldn’t do any real-time tracking, so whatever we had was only as good as the time we had it. Knuckles and I began walking up the sidewalk to the north, scanning the crowds. The other men were quickly lost from sight as they began their part of the mission.
Without any traffic, the streets were teeming with people going toward the ceremony. Great. Rush hour. The crowds were a definite problem. For one, it forced me to hide the UMP under my jacket, the folding stock jammed into my armpit. I’m not going to be the fastest gun in the West running around like this. For another, I could be walking right by the terrorist and not see him. Moving closer to the market, Knuckles and I both heard the loudspeakers signaling the start of the ceremony.
BAKR HEARD THE ANNOUNCERdroning on and on about the significance of the day, first in Serbo-Croatian, then in English. Bakr waited, straining to hear any announcement that the dignitaries had arrived. He couldn’t afford to leave and return. The man from Guatemala was somewhere close. He could feel it. When he left this bathroom, it would be straight to the eastern corner of the security perimeter. Once there, he’d continue on, past any demands that he halt. Only when someone drew his weapon would he trigger the device.
He heard a different voice, then the words he was waiting for: the introduction of the guests of honor. He squeezed his eyes shut and said a silent prayer. Pulling the detonator from his pack, he conducted a self-test of the system. When it registered green, he opened the door and stepped into the light.
He was shocked by the number of people who had shown up in the time he had spent in the bathroom. He would have to fight his way through the crowd to get close enough to ensure a successful strike. Setting off the device this far away would kill a lot of people but would most likely miss the targets, as they would vacate before they were hit with the downwind hazard.