Mike Lawson - Dead on Arrival

This was what really bothered DeMarco: Rollie, a guy who couldn’t seem to decide what kind of doughnut to buy, assessed the situation with Mustafa in about five seconds and then pulled out his gun and killed him.

‘I mean, that’s what I don’t get,’ DeMarco said. ‘The other two guards, they’re scared shitless trying to figure out what to do. Here’s this crazy guy walking toward them with enough explosives on him to blow the dome off the building, they’ve never been in a situation like this before in their lives, and they’re probably thinking that if they shoot Mustafa they’ll hit the C-Four and blow themselves to kingdom come. But not Rollie. Friggin’ Rollie takes out his gun and blows the guy away.’

There was one other thing about Rollie, DeMarco explained to Emma. While everybody agreed that Rollie was a malingering slug, they also agreed he could shoot a pistol. When the guards had to pass their shooting quals, Rollie had no trouble at all. He was overweight, flatfooted, and not the least bit athletic, but he was a natural when it came to using a pistol.

‘Hmm,’ Emma said. ‘Anything else?’

‘Well, no, but when you look at the whole package, you’ve got a lot of stuff that doesn’t make sense: an apparently apolitical cabdriver who suddenly decides to become a suicide bomber, and the guy who takes him out is the last person you’d expect to do it. It’s just a puzzle.’

‘And maybe a conspiracy,’ Emma said, smiling slightly.

He sat watching the television set, amazed at what had almost happened.

A man had just tried to walk into the U.S. Capitol with an explosive device strapped to his body. They had pictures of the man — somehow, some way, in this country there was always someone with a camera or a cell phone nearby — and the pictures showed the man standing, his arms outstretched, and then the bullets striking his chest. Why didn’t the bomb explode? he wondered.

But it was still amazing. Counting the man who had tried to crash his plane into the White House, there had been three attacks by Muslim Americans in a period of less than a month, and the last two had been only a week apart. The country was in an absolute frenzy. This man Broderick and his bill, his law — whatever they called it — it appeared he was going to succeed.

And if he did, the hatred would grow.

Maybe that was why the attacks had happened so close together: because Sheikh Osama wanted this law passed. But that could also explain the failures. Whoever was helping the American martyrs had rushed their planning or had not trained their recruits well or had not checked their equipment as thoroughly as they should have. But still, two attacks in seven days? That was phenomenal. They had never acted this quickly in the past.

He was embarrassed. He knew he had to move slowly and cautiously; unlike his brethren here in America, his identity was definitely known to the authorities. Still, it had been over three months since Baltimore. He needed to move more rapidly, particularly if his success could influence this law they kept talking about.

He and the boy had been to the refinery five times now, three times during the day, twice at night, and they still had one or more trips to make before they would be ready. The first visit had been the most dangerous. He had stopped the El Camino on a road that was not heavily traveled, and from which he could see the refinery, and then he had jacked up the vehicle to make it appear that he was changing a flat tire. But if a policeman had driven by, and if he had seen two Arabs, and if he’d realized the significance of the refinery, they could have been arrested on the spot. That did not happen, though; God protected them.

During the first visit, he and the boy studied the refinery for three hours. He took photographs with a digital camera with a long-range lens and used binoculars to study the markings on the various tanks and pipes. The refinery was filled with tanks and pipes; it was a forest of tanks and pipes. But the boy was very bright and he had no trouble at all memo rizing the markings that were significant and tracing the routing of the pipes that were important.

The next two daylight visits, he’d dropped the boy off and told him to find the best spots to place the explosives, places not too close together, places where the charges would not be visible to someone passing by, places where he could hide when he attached the bombs. He told the boy it was particularly important that certain valves be destroyed so the valves couldn’t be shut to stop the chemical from escaping.

He purchased bright-colored clothes for the boy, the type of clothes that teenagers his age wore: a sweatshirt that had the logo of a local sports team, baggy jeans, silly-looking tennis shoes. He made the boy turn the bill of the baseball cap around so it was pointed backwards, and when the boy did he couldn’t help but laugh. Even the boy laughed, something that rarely happened.

And he told the boy, ‘Don’t sneak. Don’t act like you’re skulking about. Act like a boy. Throw rocks, kick cans, run a stick along the fence. You’re just a boy walking about, going wherever boys go.’ On the last visit they’d been lucky enough to find a dog wandering near the refinery, and he tied his belt around the dog’s neck to serve as a leash, and the boy had pretended to walk the dog as he looked for places to hide the bombs.

‘So you wanna know about Jubal Pugh,’ Patsy Hall said.

Hall was a mid-level supervisor at the DEA, and according to Barry King she was the DEA’s expert on Pugh. She was in her early forties and had smile lines bracketing intelligent brown eyes, a trim build, and short-cut, no-fuss dark hair. She was wearing a charcoal-gray pantsuit, a white blouse, and a big gun in a holster on her hip. She was short enough — and the gun was big enough — that the handgrip on the gun was halfway up her rib cage.

Two minutes with Hall, and you knew you were dealing with someone who was bright, tough, stubborn, and confident. DeMarco bet that none of the men who worked for her had any doubt that she was the boss, and most of them, the ones with any brains, knew she deserved to be the boss.

‘Jubal Pugh,’ Patsy said, ‘likes to-’

‘Jubal,’ DeMarco said. ‘That name just cracks me up.’

‘His full name in Jubal Early Pugh, Jubal Early having been a Confederate Army general who — Aw, never mind. At any rate, Jubal likes to wear an old slouch hat and he shaves about once a week. In the summer, he wears bib overalls, no shirt, no shoes, and he talks so slow you wonder if he’s ever gonna finish a sentence. Your first impression would be that he’s the brother of the guy who played the banjo in Deliverance . And you’d be totally wrong.

‘Pugh sells meth; he’s one of the top five dealers in Virginia. His territory also includes parts of West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. I know he’s killed people and burned their houses and intimidated witnesses to stay king of his little hill. I know all this, and I haven’t even been able to arrest the bastard, much less convict him. And I’ve been after him for more than five years.’

Hall gave a little tug on her holster to readjust the pistol grip digging into her ribs.

‘Jubal didn’t go to school beyond the tenth grade, and he started out with a 1956 Airstream trailer and ten acres he inherited from his daddy. Today he owns four hundred acres. He’s got apple orchards and gas stations and a muffler shop, and he makes cider for sale. He uses these businesses to launder his drug money. He’s not that smart, but he’s smart enough to know what he doesn’t know. He’s got a good accountant, who makes sure he stays out of trouble with the IRS, and another guy who manages his legitimate businesses. And even though he’s no Rhodes scholar, he hires people that are competent and then he micromanages the shit out of them so they don’t screw up.’