Nelson Demille - The Lion's Game

Not true. Simply not true. What was true was that I was addicted to the adrenaline rush.

Also, I actually felt good about protecting society. That's not something you'd say in the squad room, but it was a fact and a factor.

Maybe after this case was over, I'd think about all this. Maybe it was time to put down the gun and the shield and get out of harm's way, time to make my exit.

Asad Khalil continued on through a residential neighborhood. The Mercury Marquis was big, bigger than anything he'd ever driven, but it handled well enough.

Khalil did not go to the toll highway called the New Jersey Turnpike. He had no intention of going through any toll booths. As he had requested in Tripoli, the rented automobile had a global positioning system, which he'd used in Europe. This one was called a Satellite Navigator, and it was slightly different from the ones he was used to, but it had the entire U.S. roadway system in its database, and as he drove slowly through the streets, he accessed the directions to Highway 1.

Within a few minutes he was on the highway heading south. This was a busy road, he noticed, with many commercial establishments on either side.

He noticed that some automobiles coming toward him had their headlights on, so he put on his headlights.

After a mile or so, he dropped Jabbar's keys out the window, then removed Jabbar's cash from his wallet, counting eighty-seven dollars. He went through Jabbar's wallet as he drove, ripping up what could be ripped and dropping small pieces out the window. The credit cards and plasticized driving license presented a problem, but Khalil managed to bend and break them all, and let them fall out the window. The wallet now contained nothing except a color photograph of the Jabbar family-Gamal Jabbar, a wife, two sons, a daughter, and an elderly woman. Khalil regarded the photograph as he drove. He had been able to retrieve a few photographs from the ruins of his home in Al Azziziyah, including a few photographs of his father in uniform. These images were precious to him, and there would be no further photographs of the family of Khalil.

Asad Khalil tore the Jabbar family photograph in four pieces and let it fly out the window, followed by the wallet, then the plastic bottle, and finally the shell casing. All the evidence was now strewn over many miles of the highway and would attract no attention.

Khalil reached over, opened the glove box, and pulled out a stack of papers-rental forms, maps, some advertisements and other papers that had little purpose. The Americans, he saw, like the Europeans, loved useless papers.

He glanced through the rental agreement and confirmed that the name on the agreement matched his passport.

He turned his attention back to the road. There were many bad drivers on the road here. He saw very young people driving, and very old people driving, and many women were driving. No one seemed to drive well. They drove better in Europe, except for Italy. The drivers in Tripoli were like Italian drivers. Khalil realized he could drive badly here and not be noticed.

He looked at his gas gauge and saw that it read FULL.

A police car came into view in his side mirror and stayed behind him for a while. Khalil maintained his speed and did not change lanes. He resisted glancing too often in the side-view or rearview mirrors. That would make the policeman suspicious. Khalil put on his bifocal glasses.

After a full five minutes, the police car pulled into the outside lane and came alongside of him. Khalil noticed that the policeman didn't even give him a glance. Soon, the police car was ahead of him.

Khalil settled back and paid attention to the traffic. They had told him in Tripoli that there would be much traffic on a Saturday night, many people visited or went to restaurants or movie theaters or shopping malls. This was not too different from Europe, except for the shopping malls.

In Tripoli they also told him that in the more rural areas, the police were looking at cars that might be driven by dealers of drugs. This could be a problem, they warned him, as the police sometimes looked for drivers who were of the black or Spanish race, and they might stop an Arab man by mistake or even on purpose. But at night, it was difficult to see who was driving, and now the sun was setting.

Asad Khalil thought for a minute about Gamal Jabbar. He took no pleasure in killing a fellow Muslim, but each believer in Islam was expected to fight, or to sacrifice, or to be martyred in the Jihad against the West. Too many Muslims, such as Gamal Jabbar, did nothing except send money back to their homelands. Jabbar did not actually deserve death, Khalil thought, but death became the only possibility. Asad Khalil was on a holy mission, and others had to sacrifice so that he could do what they couldn't do-kill the infidel. His only other thought about Gamal Jabbar was a passing concern that the man could have survived the single bullet. But Khalil had seen that twitching before, and heard that gurgling. The man was dead. "May Allah take him into Paradise this very night."

The sun was setting, but it was not practical to stop to perform the Salat. He had been given dispensation from the mullah for the time he was engaged in the Jihad. But he would not fail to say his prayers. In his mind, he prostrated himself on his prayer rug and faced Mecca. He recited, "God is most great! I bear witness that there is no God but Allah. I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of God. Hasten to Salat! Hasten to success! God is most great. There is no God but Allah!"

He recited random passages from the Koran, "Kill the aggressors wherever you find them. Drive them out of the places from which they drove you… Fight them until Allah's religion is supreme… Fight for the cause of Allah with the devotion due to him… Permission to take up arms is hereby given to those who are attacked… Allah has the power to grant them victory… Believers, fear Allah as you rightly should, and when death comes, die true Muslims… If you have suffered a defeat, so did the enemy. We alternate these victories among mankind so that Allah may know true believers and choose martyrs from among you, and that he may test the faithful and annihilate the infidels. Allah is the supreme Plotter."

Satisfied that he had fulfilled his obligations, he felt at peace as he drove through the strange land, surrounded by enemies and infidels.

Then, he recalled the ancient Arab war song, and he sang the song called "The Death Feud." "Terrible he rode alone with his Yemen sword for aid; ornament, it carried none but the notches on the blade."

Jack Koenig returned with some papers in his hand that looked like faxes. We all sat and he said to us, "I spoke to the crime lab supervisor at JFK. They have a preliminary report-" he tapped the papers on the coffee table "-of the scenes of the aircraft and the Conquistador Club." He added, "I also spoke to George, who has offered to transfer out of the ATTF and out of New York."

He let that hang there for a few seconds, then asked Kate, "Yes? No?"

"No."

Koenig addressed Kate and me and said, "Can you two speculate or guess as to what happened on the aircraft before it landed?"

Kate said, "John is the detective." Koenig said to me, "You're on, Detective." I should point out here that the FBI uses the term "investigator" to describe what amounts to a detective-so I didn't know if I was being honored or patronized. In any case, this is partly what I was hired for, of course, and I'm good at this stuff. But Koenig made no secret of the fact that he just got some answers to the questions he was asking. So, rather than make an idiot of myself, I asked Koenig, "I assume they found those two oxygen bottles in the dome coat closet."