“The next time you lie to me I’m going to burn out your other eye, and that will only be the beginning. I want every detail. Beginning to end. The time has come for a full confession. Don’t leave out anything.” She thumped the propane torch on the floor to make her point. “Start talking.”
With the blowtorch sitting close, he finally abandoned all resistance and began spilling out everything he had done. He almost seemed relieved to confess his sins.
Every detail matched exactly the vision she’d had that first instant she saw him in the bar and knew that he was a killer.
It felt somehow amazing, but at the same time it sickened her to be in the mind of a killer, to see what he saw, what he had done, to be there and witness the terrifying, lonely helplessness of his victim. Angela was now that young red-haired girl’s only advocate.
It had been his first kill. It had been an orgy of rage that unlocked all his pent-up hatred and urges. It was his initiation to becoming a killer. Angela had put an end to it.
She still wasn’t sure how she was able to do such a thing, but that melted away into insignificance once she had confirmed that she had gotten every detail right. All that mattered now was that she could do it.
That night, something snapped in her, the same way it had snapped when that bigger girl had punched her.
She had passed through that mental doorway to become something she had never been before. She felt a new purpose in life. She had a new reason to live.
There were killers, and then there was her.
She was chaos among them. She was a disrupter. She was the unexpected, the unanticipated, the fly in their ointment. She was imbalance in their perfect equation of evil.
Angela had found purpose.
She spent the next three days down in the basement with the killer. He spent the next three days in hell on earth.
She had wanted it to never end.
SEVENTEEN
Rafael stood watching through the window in the small office as the team out on the dock loaded the metal cylinders into containment chests. It was exciting that after all the decades of planning and hard work the mission was finally getting under way.
He glanced to the clock and saw that they were behind schedule. There were long overland drives ahead of them, and then a journey aboard a freighter that would make several stops before reaching South America. Many other members of their team were already on their way. They would infiltrate in separate groups.
He and his team had been training for this mission nearly their entire lives. It seemed surreal that the real thing was finally happening.
He looked up and saw a cylinder slip from José’s arms when he turned to tell a joke to some of the other men. The cylinder bounced twice and then rolled across the floor of the loading dock.
José ran after it, tripping over his own feet along the way. When he stumbled, his foot hit the cylinder and sent it racing away even faster. Fortunately, Ronaldo planted his boot on the cylinder to stop it as it rolled past.
Those cylinders were quite strong, but if they were mishandled who knew what might happen? José, laughing, thanked Ronaldo, and then hoisted the cylinder up onto his shoulder, as if it weren’t the least bit dangerous, to carry it back to the crate.
“Idiota,” Rafael muttered under his breath.
Rafael couldn’t hear through the window what José said to the other men when he brought the canister back, but some of them returned a weak laugh. Others shook their heads. José was the joker of the group. But this was hardly the time or place.
Alejandro, Rafael’s second-in-command, glanced up and gave Rafael a look as if to say he’d about had it with José.
Rafael’s jaw clenched tight. Like Alejandro and many of the others, he was sick and tired of José’s antics. This was the mission of their lives, the mission they had trained for since early childhood. Now that the most critical parts of the plan were finally in motion, he didn’t know how they could any longer afford to have such a fool involved in the operation.
He wished they had cut José from the team years ago. But even then it would have been far too late to bring anyone else in. Even if there was no one to replace José, José was far more of a liability than an asset. José put everything at risk.
Rafael turned when he heard the door. Hasan stormed into the room. His face was red. His thobe swirled around his legs when he came to a halt. He raised his shoulders and then lowered them to make slack to pull his bisht together in front. The rich brown cloak edged in gold was distinguished looking, as it should be for someone of Hasan’s importance.
“Que te trae aquí hoy?” Rafael asked.
Hasan waved a hand. “Farsi, please. You know I don’t speak Spanish.”
“Sorry. I forget. I asked what brings you here today?”
“I wanted to let you know that everything should be ready for final assembly by the time you get there.”
Rafael folded his arms. “How are you getting the exploding bridgewire there so the team on site can continue the build without any delays?”
The exploding bridgewire was of concern to Rafael because it was a vital component that had to be sent on ahead of them, and if it was intercepted or lost it would jeopardize the entire mission. Like many of the critical parts, exploding bridgewire was usually illegal to possess in America and closely tracked.
“Couriers,” Hasan said. “We have MOIS intelligence officers in foreign missions and embassies in most of the countries we need to send it through. They’re waiting to hand off the package with the EBW from one of our trusted agents to another.”
“That makes sense,” Rafael said. “But what about in America? That is the most dangerous link in that chain. Do you have trusted agents who can make the final delivery?”
“We can’t risk using any of our agents to deliver the package because it’s possible they are known to American intelligence and under surveillance. The Americans have electronic communication techniques we don’t always know about. Using our people for this delivery would risk everything. This is the operation that will make history. We can’t afford to let it be compromised.
“To eliminate suspicion, we won’t use our people or even sympathizers. We will instead use small, commercial couriers. They will hand the package in a chain from one to another. None of them know the contents or the destination. Each courier has only sequential instructions to deliver the package to another courier. In this way, only the final courier will open the instructions with the final destination—your team there run by Miguel.”
“But that final courier knows where the package is going,” Rafael said. “He has to deliver it there. That knowledge is a threat to us.”
Hasan smiled. “You and I think alike, Rafael. That is why I had instructions placed in the box along with the EBW. The instructions order them to kill the courier and make the body vanish. No one will know what happened to that last courier so there will be no connection to our team. In that way, the link is broken. I used your name on the orders. Those are your men, so they will not hesitate to carry out the instructions.”
Rafael nodded as he sighed with relief. “Good.”
“What about you? You are behind schedule.”
“We have the most dangerous part done and we will soon have the rest of the components loaded. All that is left is to load the power unit. We are close to having the shipment on its way. I have calculated that if we push we can be back on schedule by the time we reach Brazil. Our people are keeping a watchful eye over the route until we arrive at each transfer point.”
Hasan nodded. Rafael thought he looked distracted.
“Is there some problem?”
Hasan swiped a hand across his mouth and then smoothed down his black beard. “You remember me telling you that we sent Wahib into Jerusalem?”
Rafael cast about in his memory for a moment. “Wahib, the assassin? Is that who you mean?”
Hasan nodded. “He was recognized.”