“You are performing His will,” said Zurif. “Today you risked the plan He has set into motion.”
“Come on, man,” Cross rasped, the agony knifelike now, until Saflin let go. Cross tried to shake the life back into his hand. “I thought we were in this together.”
“You’re in it with us,” Saflin corrected. “But not together.”
“I’m not a Muslim,” Cross reminded. “I just hate this damn country, want to see it get what it deserves.”
“Muslim or not, you are following the will of Allah, as we were when we answered your call.”
“We’ve been granted operational authority,” Zurif added.
Cross was about to poke fun at the term, then thought better of it. “What’s that mean?”
“It means you need to prove yourself before us,” Saflin explained, “this theory of yours, so Allah may bless the plan.”
“It’s not just a theory,” Cross said, rotating his gaze between the two of them. “You want to kill a whole lot of people at once. I’ve come up with the weapon that can do it.”
“That’s what we need proof of before Allah,” Zurif picked up. “A demonstration to show you’re not full of shit. Before we get the okay to move to the next stage.”
“A demonstration,” Cross repeated.
“And there’s something else,” said Saflin. “Someone was watching your apartment building.”
Cross felt a tremor slip through him, starting in his stomach and spreading upward. “What’s that mean, exactly?”
“It means Allah saved you by guiding you away, proof of His blessing over our holy mission.”
Zurif leaned across the booth, too, close to Cross’s now forgotten plate of food. “And it means you made somebody’s list, triggered an alarm somewhere. Not to worry. That’s what Allah has placed us here for.”
“To keep you safe, so you can make good on your promises before the eyes of God,” Saflin added. “Now, about that demonstration…”
13
AUSTIN, TEXAS
Jones parked the van up the street from the rundown apartment building off East Saint Johns Avenue, shielded from view by leaking bags of trash piled high on the sidewalk. Guillermo Paz had counted a half dozen cars propped up on blocks since they’d hit this part of town, hopelessness riding the air as plainly as the stench of uncollected garbage.
“You know the drill, Colonel,” Jones told him. “The target’s a lone wolf as far as we can tell. Can’t be sure, of course. That’s why you’re here.”
“Lone wolf,” Paz repeated, glancing into the rear of the van, where the team members he’d chosen for this operation were gearing up.
Like him, they were veterans of the Venezuelan secret police, better known as the National Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services, or DISIP. Part of a never-ending and self-replenishing supply of soldiers, culled from the best and most ruthless that American dollars could buy. In return, they offered plausible deniability for Jones’s black flag operations, undertaken on behalf of a shadowy subdivision of Homeland Security. As far as Washington knew, the colonel and his men didn’t exist, and that suited Paz just fine.
“The target made overtures to ISIS via social media, but we lost the trail when he started pinging them via the Deep Web.”
“But that’s not why you required my services, is it?” Paz asked him.
“Nope. You got the job, Colonel, because something finally pinged back.”
14
AUSTIN, TEXAS
Paz and his men were dressed like civilians, locals, secure in the knowledge that this wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where residents were likely to call the police to report suspicious behavior. The apartment to which he and his three men were headed overlooked a rat-infested alley at the back of a building. This particular slum seemed to have a nondiscrimination policy, drawing its hapless from among various ethnicities and backgrounds. According to the intelligence gathered by Jones, Daniel Cross was the product of a rape, his mother having been a prostitute at the time of his conception.
Paz hadn’t read any more of the file because he didn’t need to. Half of Cross’s genes belonged to a rapist, which in Paz’s mind was as low as life could get. He’d come to realize that everyone is a prisoner of their own birth. Just as Paz had inherited psychic abilities, brujería as he called it, from his mother, Cross clearly carried the crazy, violent gene from his father’s side.