David Lindsey - The Rules of Silence

“Anyway, Berkat just needed to disappear, and it was best if that happened in Mexico. Without the Mexican government's knowledge, of course.

“There would be no loss of intelligence if Berkat just evaporated without anyone even talking to him. We already knew Hamas was financing his run. The delivery system that he was carrying was known by its designer/creator, the good Dr. alAbed back in Gaza. The Mossad would deal with debriefing him. Berkat was just a snake that had to be killed. His poison would die with him.

“Garcia's choice of weapon was a particularly incendiary bomb design, just to make sure the exotoxin didn't survive or was somehow inadvertently distributed by the explosion. The bomb was loaded on a helicopter and flown ahead in the general direction of Berkat's anticipated route, the choices being narrowed down as he advanced north. Finally it was clear that he was headed for one of the border's smallest crossings, the toll bridge at Los Ebanos, Texas.”

Norlin paused again. He glanced out the kitchen window and cast his thoughts to far-off places. He slowly shook his head and brought his eyes back to Rita.

“You've got to understand, ”he said, “that every operation is a moving target. You start out with an objective and a plan, but you know damn well that most of the plan is bound to change because you'll inevitably be blindsided by some damned surprise. It's one of the hardest things about the job. And it's one of the things that Garcia excels at. He's cool with blindsides.

“Incidentally, his other most desirable talent is his ingenuity in making things happen without raising any eyebrows. He achieves his objective in silence. Or if that can't happen, the event is disguised to make it appear to be something other than what it actually is.

“Anyway, at a dusty village called Cerralvo, Berkat left the main highway and headed north through the backcountry desert. That was even better for Garcia's plans. The helicopter moved ahead, landed at an isolated spot of the highway, dealt with installing the explosives, and took off again. Five miles from the bomb, Berkat pulled off the side of the road at a little food stand. And, whoa, big surprise. The surveillance team was stunned to see a woman, two little boys, and a little girl bail out of the SUV with him to get snacks. Berkat had himself another family.

“Surveillance team frantically radioed Garcia. The helicopter had dropped him off on the other side of the bomb, and he was headed toward it from the opposite direction, watching Berkat's dot on his tracking monitor as they both converged on the site.”

Norlin looked out the window over the kitchen sink again. Titus followed his eyes and saw one of the bodyguards prowling around the poolhouse. Norlin, his forearm on the cabinet, rubbed his forehead with his other hand. He seemed reluctant to continue.

“One night a little more than a year after this happened, I sat with Garcia in his study in San Miguel. We'd been drinking. Too much. But I remember how the crickets were raising hell in the darkness outside the opened windows as he told me in a flat, dead voice what happened next.

“Garcia and his driver raced toward the bomb's location. About a quarter of a mile from the bomb they turned off on a dirt track and drove out into the brush and turned around to watch.

“Garcia got out of the car and vomited in the grease brush. And then, suddenly, he lost control of his bowels. After cleaning himself up, he scrambled onto the top of the car and watched the highway through his binoculars. He could see Berkat's SUV with the woman and children heading for the border and the bomb. There would be no mistake about the bomb, a computer would make sure the timing was accurate. Everybody involved in the operation who had a radio or phone or computer was using it to message Garcia about the woman and kids. His driver was inside the car, confirming, confirming, confirming.

“Garcia stood alone on top of the car in the grease brush and watched through binoculars as the SUV sped along the highway.

“Then, instantly, it went up in a geyserlike explosion. It threw up a mushroom plume high into the desert's purple evening sky. Garcia remembered the color of the sky and the color of the plume with its internal fireball. He saw it, then heard it, then felt it.

“The bomb had been designed to destroy as much evidence as possible, and the Mexican federal police couldn't even tell how many people had been in the vehicle. They and the newspapers assumed the blast had been the work of drug traffickers’assassins, and those who suspected otherwise kept their suspicions to themselves. Whatever it was, it had been a serious thing. Mexicans learned long ago to make peace with inexplicable events.”

Norlin shook his head and stared at nothing for a moment.

“Later, as Berkat's operation was dissected, and the leads gathered in those last frantic days were played out, it was learned that he had been headed for the Texas Medical Center in Houston. The effectiveness of the dispersal method designed by al-Abed for the exotoxin was a controversial question. It was an aerosol device intended for the air-conditioning system in one of the center's largest hospitals. Some argued that only twenty or thirty people would have died, but others strongly disagreed. They used words like ‘catastrophic’ and ‘unimaginable.’

“But the speculation about body count didn't have any effect on Garcia. There were always only four in his nightmares. He said it bothered him a lot that he never saw body parts in his dreams, only bits of charred clothing drifting down through the darkly glittering mushroom, a bright red little tennis shoe, a toddler's green-and-blue-striped T-shirt, a woman's white bra, a small dress with sashes fluttering. The colors and the kinds of clothing changed from dream to dream, but the dream never changed, and the count never changed, either. Four completely innocent people went up in a plume of fire and desert sand, over and over and over.

“Because Garcia Burden had decided that they should.”

Luquin and Jorge Macias sat beneath the oak that shaded one end of the pool. They were nursing cafecitas, as Luquin liked to call the demitasse cups of strong coffee that he was addicted to. It wasn't espresso, just damned strong coffee. Luquin had slept late, and he'd slept like a tired old cat, deeply and serenely. That was his way. The abominations of the waking man never disturbed the peaceful hours of the sleeping man. And why should they? Waking was not sleeping. They were two entirely different things, he said.

But his confrontation with Cain had put him in a foul temper. Nobody talked to him the way Cain had talked to him, and what made it worse was that others had heard what had been said because the room had been wired for security reasons. Macias had heard it, and the sharpshooter who had waited outside in the dark, his rifle aimed through the window at Cain in case anything should happen, had heard it through his ear mike.

“No, absolutely nothing, ”Macias was saying. “We never saw the same car twice, all the license plates checked out. We saw nothing suspicious, and the surveillance people didn't, either. We photographed every car and put them into the computers. If any of them show up again, we'll know it.”

Luquin was wearing dark trousers and a white guayabera that hung unbuttoned and open, exposing his thick chest. He wore sunglasses. He smoked. And sipped his cafecita.

This was a dangerous enterprise under any circumstances, but doing this sort of thing inside the United States was next to insanity. Yet it was precisely there, next to insanity, that a great deal of money was to be made. High stakes inevitably required great risks.

“And the house?”