Yanking the terrorist up onto his feet, Harvath dragged him toward the edge of Black Rock City and their ride.
Inebriation was an amazing thing. Just as they got moving, a new round of emboldened Burners tried to get in their way.
When Harvath gestured at his prisoner’s suicide vest, they reacted as if it was a costume. When he drew their attention to his gun, though, they seemed to get the message. He had been seriously considering squeezing off a few more rounds when they all took a step back. Shaking his head, he shoved Rahim forward.
As the Crystal Sky DJ moved from Rick James to George Clinton, Harvath filled his seared lugs with another deep breath of air.
It was at that moment that an additional suicide bomber detonated his vest in the center of Black Rock City.
CHAPTER 5
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NEXT MORNING
REGGIO DI CALABRIA, ITALY
Ravshan Tursunov’s rough hands rubbed a yellow lemon peel around the edge of his porcelain espresso cup.
He’d told the ignorant Italian waitress “No sugar,” but she’d brought it anyway. He tossed the cubes, like a pair of brown dice, into the cobbled street.
Sugar was one of the many things he’d given up. Bread, rice, and pasta too. The doctor had been adamant. For the transformation to work, he’d been required to shed forty pounds.
As an observant Muslim, there were few vices left available to him. Coffee was one. And even though ISIS forbade them, cigarettes were another.
He had become a connoisseur of both. With the money he was being paid, he could more than afford to.
In his native Tajikistan, the only thing worse than the coffee was the cigarettes. That went double for Syria. Both countries, though, were now behind him.
The tiny café, three blocks up from the water, was one of the best-kept secrets in the city. And while he didn’t care for the waitstaff, the barista was the Michelangelo of coffee.
Both the Russians and the Americans had taught him never to visit the same location twice. There were certain things in life, though, worth making an exception for. This was the exception. Besides, no one knew him here.
Looking at his reflection in the glass door of the café, he still didn’t even know himself. Blepharoplasty and canthoplasty had softened his eyelids and made him look less Eurasian. Rhinoplasty had narrowed the bridge of his nose, adjusted his dorsal hump, and tightened the tip.
Otoplasty improved the shape of his ears by reducing his earlobes, while cheek and chin implants gave his face more distinguished, angular features.
A neograft addressed his male pattern baldness and gave him a full hairline. Vaser liposuction helped him vaporize the remnants of the spare tire around his middle.
In short, the Pakistani surgeon had done an amazing job. There was very little scarring, and in less than two weeks, he’d been ready to sit for his new passport photo. The trip to Lahore had been worth it.
Now, such as it was, he was finally in Europe.
The suicide bombing in America was all over the news. From where he sat on the terrace, he could see the TV inside. Cell phone cameras had captured the aftermath. Festivalgoers were covered in blood. Many wandered around in a state of shock. Others writhed on the ground in agony. Multiple people had lost limbs. Even more were dead. But not nearly enough.
According to witnesses, there had been one enormous explosion. There should have been four. Something had gone wrong.
The target, and the method of attack, had been his idea. He felt he should have been more involved. His superiors had other plans. They didn’t want to risk smuggling him into the United States. They wanted him focused on Europe. That was where they needed him the most.
But what if the U.S. cell had been penetrated? What if the Americans were working their way up the chain?
Though the thought had been haunting him all morning, he didn’t want to think about it anymore. He had too many of his own problems. Chief among them was the loss of his chemist.
He was still infuriated by the incompetence. The ship never should have sailed—not with that kind of a storm barreling down on it—and certainly not without lifeboats or, at the very least, life jackets.
For the smugglers, though, it was a risk they had been willing to take. All that ever mattered to them was getting paid. That’s why they always demanded the money up front.
As far as Tursunov was concerned, they shouldn’t have been paid until arrival—especially for someone as valuable as Mustapha Marzouk. How they were going to replace him at such a late date was still beyond him.
Turning his attention back to the street, he removed a pack of Treasurer cigarettes from his blazer pocket and lifted its aluminum lid. The cigarettes had gold foil tips and looked like thin works of art. Placing one between his lips, he struck a match, and then inhaled deeply.
So much had been invested, he thought to himself. So many things had been set in motion. Too many to pull out now. The burden of the operation weighed heavily on his shoulders.
Shaking his watch from under his sleeve, he checked the time. It was almost nine o’clock.
Exhaling slowly, he placed a few coins on the table, sipped what was left of his espresso, and exited the terrace. He wanted to get a feel for the pickup location before his ride arrived.
Reggio was the toe of Italy’s boot. To its east was the Aspromonte mountain range and to the west was the Strait of Messina, which separated the Italian peninsula from the island of Sicily.
Under certain weather conditions, an optical phenomenon known as the Fata Morgana took place, and people could be seen walking in Sicily as if they were only meters, rather than miles, away.
Today, though, there was no such illusion. It was sunny and the temperature was already climbing.
As he walked, Tursunov admired the city’s exotic palm and lush magnolia trees. Reggio was known as the “City of Bergamot.” The name came from the fragrant, nubby green citrus, with its lemon yellow interior, grown exclusively in the region and used to flavor perfumes and Earl Grey tea.
It was a port city with a thriving fishing community, but it was just as driven by agriculture from the surrounding countryside. From spring through fall, tourists flocked to its beaches and azure water.
In a rundown neighborhood, several blocks from the Castello Aragonese, was a pastry and gelato shop with a narrow bar called Ranieri. It sat next to a vacant lot, beyond which was a burned-out building that had been left to rot.
Graffiti was spray-painted across several buildings. Bars covered the windows of others. Cigarette butts littered the sidewalk like dead moths under a neon beer sign. Tursunov added his to the pile and entered through the rear door.
A heavyset man in a wrinkled shirt stood behind the bar, doing a half-assed job of polishing glasses. He had dark circles under his eyes and several days’ growth of beard. He looked as if he hadn’t seen a bed or a bathtub in weeks.