Pursuit of Honor

chapter 61
NEW ORLEANS

HIS watch woke him up with a steady beep... beep. Hakim turned off the alarm and looked over at the dashboard clock. It was four-thirty in the morning. He reached down with his left hand and searched for the seat controls. After he found the big vertical knob he pulled up and the driver's seat began to raise itself out of the fully reclined position. He looked over the steering wheel, half expecting to see a cordon of police officers. There were none. He smiled at the cars opposite him. There wasn't a person in sight and beyond the edge of the concrete parking ramp he could see the sky in the east turning gray with the first hints of dawn. The relief felt good. So far his plan had worked.

On the drive into New Orleans he'd weighed his options and decided it was time to press his luck, before his window of opportunity closed. It was time for a bold move. He had a brief conversation with his Cajun associate, Timmy the Bayou Coke King. The Coke King told him he was running a boat in five days. The thought was Hakim could ride out for the transfer and then ask for passage on the other boat. The plan might work, but Hakim had other concerns. The first involved staying at the Cajun's swamp shack for five days. The place was filthy. In his current state he was likely to catch a debilitating infection. His second concern was the vision of himself attempting to climb from one boat to the other in the inevitable swells. And that would be after pounding through who knew what kind of seas, at close to fifty knots. If it had been his only option, he still would have wavered, but he supposed in the end he would have simply dealt with the pain.

Fortunately, there was an alternative. There was a great deal of risk in the sense that he would be trapped as soon as he entered an airport, but sometimes the best course of action really was the simplest. He had an American passport and a matching credit card with a ten-thousand-dollar limit. On the way down the night before he'd pulled into a Wal-Mart parking lot outside Vicksburg and turned on his laptop. There were no direct flights, but in a way that was better. He had his choice of ten or more flights that would work, but the best combination was the 6:00

A.M. out of New Orleans with a connecting flight through Miami. He was very familiar with both airports. The security people at New Orleans International Airport weren't exactly the cream of the crop, and the people at the Miami Airport weren't much better. Miami was also one of the busiest airports in the world, and they were far more worried about who was entering the country than who was leaving it.

So Hakim said a quick prayer and booked the tickets through an online travel site. He then very carefully eased himself out of the car and slowly walked into Wal-Mart so he could use the bathroom and purchase what he would need for the next leg of his journey. Back in the parking lot he took all of his purchases out of the packaging and neatly placed them in the new carry-on bag he'd purchased. He was back on the road in less than thirty minutes and headed over to Jackson, Mississippi, where he pulled in to a truck stop. He hobbled in with his new roller suitcase and found the pay showers that the truckers used. He fed dollar bills into the slot and then entered the cramped space. Slowly and carefully he peeled off his clothes and rolled them into a neat ball before stuffing them into one of the two plastic Wal-Mart bags he'd saved.

Hakim stood in front of the streaked and scratched mirror and inspected the full extent of his injuries. The left side of his body from under his armpit to nearly his waist was one marbleized slab of purple. Both eyes were bruised, his nose was broken, and his lip was split. Even when confronted with the severity of his injuries, he had a hard time believing his friend had done this to him. He plugged in the electric clipper, set it to one, placed his head over the sink, and began to buzz off his medium-length black hair. In a few minutes he was done. All of his hair was buzzed to a uniform quarter inch. He then took the electric razor and took off the two days of stubble on his cheeks and neck, leaving the thick black hair on his upper lip and chin. It was exactly the way he had worn it for the photo he used on his fake passport.

After a quick shower, Hakim placed the electric razor in his suitcase and put the clipper in the second bag with his shoes. He then put on his baggy khaki cargo shorts, a striped light blue and white polo shirt, flip-flops and a Budweiser hat. On the way back to the car he tossed the two Wal-Mart bags into a garbage can, then drove down to New Orleans and the Louis Armstrong International Airport.

He arrived a few minutes past eleven and pulled up to the short-term parking kiosk, where he grabbed his ticket and entered the large multilevel parking structure. He found the perfect open spot on the fourth floor. It was dark and the space was bracketed by a large SUV and a pickup truck. He carefully backed the vehicle into a tight space. There was barely a foot to spare on each side, which was good. If any security guards were on patrol this was the last row they would pick to cut through. Hakim set the alarm on his watch, reclined his seat, turned it all over to Allah, and went to sleep.

Now he had a flight to catch. He was about to open his door when he realized he needed more room. He started the car and pulled out of the spot. Near the end of the row he found two open spaces and pulled in. He popped the trunk and took the keys with him. He stuffed the keys in the pocket of the hoodie sweatshirt he had on over the polo shirt and then very carefully slid the carry-on over the edge and let it slide off the bumper to the ground. After extending the handle he grabbed the bag of cotton balls and tore it open. He took three and stuffed them in his mouth on the left side between his teeth and his cheek. He tapped his cheek with the palm of his hand and decided he could use a few more. After that he put just two on the right side and stuffed some extra ones in his jacket pocket. He then grabbed the dull metal cane he'd picked up at Wal-Mart and closed the trunk. With the left hand on the cane and his right hand on top of the wheeled carry-on he began hobbling toward the terminal.

Just before he got to the double glass doors he stopped and dumped his other forms of ID in the garbage can. It wouldn't look good if he was searched and they were discovered. He took the elevator down a couple of floors and then took the skyway over to the main terminal. So far he'd seen just one person, a flight attendant who walked briskly past him. Inside the terminal there were more people but it didn't look like much in the big space. Hakim looked carefully both ways and saw only one police officer. Overweight and barely awake, he didn't look like much of a threat. If they knew he was coming they were doing a wonderful job concealing themselves.

American Airlines had the busiest counter. Hakim wrote it off to the six-o'clock flight to Miami. He got in the coach line and waited a few minutes before it was his turn. The woman behind the counter looked at him with a combination of shock and concern.

"Oh, you poor dear," she proclaimed. "What happened to you?"

"Carrr assssident," Hakim mumbled through his cotton-stuffed mouth. He handed over his passport.

"I'm so sorry," the woman said as she took his passport and punched his name into the computer. "I have your reservation right here, Mr. Andros. You're on the six o'clock to Miami." She tapped a series of keys and looked at the screen for a moment. "You know what I'm going to do for you. First class is wide open. I think you'll be more comfortable up there. Now once you get to Miami you'll have to check with the gate agent. The computer isn't showing what aircraft you have for the next leg of your trip, so I can't assign those seats. Would you like to check your bag?"

Hakim smiled and said, "Pweeeze."

The woman took the bag and handed him his boarding pass. After he was done thanking her, Hakim hobbled over to the security line. Only one metal detector was open and again the security people looked about as alert as the cop by the front door. No sense in turning back now, he thought to himself. He showed the TSA agent his passport and boarding pass. The agent, a fifty-some-year-old man with bloodshot eyes, made sure the name on the passport and the boarding pass matched and that was about it. Hakim kicked off his flip-flops and very slowly bent down to pick them up. He placed them on the conveyor belt and tossed his money, watch, phone, and car keys in a dish. A female TSA agent standing on the other side of the metal detector asked him if he could walk without the cane and he nodded that he could. He placed the cane and his zip-up hoodie on the belt as well and slowly made his way through the detector. On the other end he picked all of his stuff up without a problem.

He felt so good after clearing security that he had to remind himself to slow down. Using the cane, he made his way over to the closest coffee shop and was about to get in line when he remembered the cotton balls. He picked up two newspapers instead and then headed down to the gate. On the way he extracted a few of the cotton balls and placed them in his left pocket with the others. A twenty-four-hour news channel was on an overhead TV near the gate. He stopped and watched for about five minutes. There was nothing new except that the director of the FBI had announced a press conference for 11:00

A.M. Eastern.

Hakim boarded early with the only other first-class passenger and settled into his seat. When the flight attendant came by with a glass of champagne and orange juice, he decided things were indeed looking good and he took her up on the offer. That was when he decided to call

Karim. He removed a few more cotton balls, turned on the phone, and then hit send twice. Surprisingly, the phone went straight into voicemail. At the beep, Hakim turned toward the window and in a quiet voice said, "It's too bad you didn't trust me. I'm already on my way out of the country. I suppose you're stuck somewhere in the middle of America getting ready to kill another innocent woman. The Lion of al Qaeda." He laughed. "It should be the Lamb of al Qaeda. It's too bad you don't have the genitalia to fight a real man face to face."

Hakim ended the call and removed the battery as a precaution. He couldn't help but smile at the thought of what the message would do to the thin-skinned Karim. He sincerely hoped the idiot would meet his death in a hail of bullets. Hakim hoped he could read about it on a beach somewhere. He would put the madness of al Qaeda behind him and start a new life.