The Kill Room (Lincoln Rhyme 10)

Metzger assessed the situation. "We'll have to go with a missile. No visuals to use LRR."

The Long-Range Rifle program, in which a specially built sniper gun was mounted into a drone, had been Metzger's brainchild. LRR was the centerpiece of NIOS. The arrangement served two purposes. It drastically minimized the risk of innocent deaths, which nearly always happened with missiles. And it gave Metzger the chance to kill a lot more enemies; you had to be judicious about launching missiles and there was never much doubt after the fact where the Hellfire had come from: the U.S. military, CIA or other intelligence service. But a single rifle shot? The shooter could be anybody. Plant a few references to a gunman working for an opposing political party, a terrorist group, or--say--a South American cartel, and the local authorities and the press would tend not to look elsewhere. The victim could even have been shot by a jealous spouse.

But he'd known from the beginning that LRR drones wouldn't always work. For Rashid, with no visible target the only option was a missile, with its twenty-pound high-explosive warhead.

Boston's long face was aimed out the window. He brushed his white hair absently with his fingers and played with a stray thread escaping from a cuff button. Metzger wondered why he always wore a jacket in the office.

"What, Spencer?"

"Is this a good time for another STO? With the Moreno fallout?"

"This intel's solid. Rashid is guilty as sin. We have assessments from Langley and the Mossad and the SIS."

"I just meant we don't know how much of the queue got leaked. Maybe it was just Moreno's order; maybe it was more, Rashid's included. His was next on the list, remember? His death'll make the news. Maybe that damn prosecutor'll come after us for this one too. We're on thin ice here."

These were all obvious considerations but Metzger had the need inside his gut and, accordingly, was free of the Smoke.

He absolutely didn't want this relief, this sense of comfort, of freedom, to go away.

"And if we don't take him out, you know what Rashid's got planned for Texas or Oklahoma."

"We could call Langley and arrange a rendition."

"Kidnap him? And do what? We don't need information from him, Spencer. All we need from Rashid is no more Rashid."

Boston yielded. "All right. But what about the collateral damage risk? Firing a Hel

lfire into a residence with no visual reference?"

Metzger scrolled down the intel assessment until he found the surveillance report. Current as of ten minutes ago. "Safe house is empty, except for Rashid. The place's been under DEA and Mexican Federales surveillance for a week for suspected mules. Nobody's gone inside until Rashid this morning. According to the intel, he'll be meeting the cartel man anytime now. Once that guy leaves, we'll blow the place to hell."

CHAPTER 63

AL-BARANI RASHID LOOKED OVER his shoulder a great deal.

Figuratively and literally.

The tall, balding forty-year-old, with a precise goatee, knew he was in danger--from the Mossad, the CIA and that New York-based security outfit, NIOS. Probably some people in China too.

Not to mention more than a few fellow Muslims. He was on record as condemning the fundamentalists of his religion for their intellectual failings by blindly adhering to a medieval philosophy unsustainable in the twenty-first century. (He had also publicly excoriated moderates of the faith for their cowardice in protesting that they were misunderstood, that Islam was basically Presbyterianism with a different holy book. But they simply blogged insults; they weren't going to fatwa him.)

Rashid wanted a new order, a complete reimagining of faith and society. If he had any model, it wasn't Zawahiri or Bin Laden. It would be a hybrid of Karl Marx and Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who happened to have attended his own school--the University of Michigan.

But as unpopular as he was, Rashid believed in his heart he was right. Remove the cancer and the world will right itself.

The metastasizing cells were, of course, the United States of America. From the subprime crisis, to Iraq, to the insulting carrot of foreign aid, to the racist diatribes of Christian preachers and politicians, to the deification of consumer goods, the country was a sea anchor on the progress of civilization. He'd left the country after a graduate degree in political science, never to return.

Yes, enemies were eager as wolves to get to him because of his views. Even those countries that didn't like America needed America.

But he felt more or less safe at the moment, presently in a sprawling ranch-style house in Reynosa, Mexico, as he awaited the arrival of an ally.

He couldn't say "friend," of course. His relationship with the slick individuals of the Matamoros Cartel was symbiotic but their motives diverged considerably. Rashid's was ideological, the war against American capitalism and society (and support for Israel, but that went without saying). The cartel's purpose was, in a way, the opposite, making vast sums of money from that very society. But its goals were basically the same. Get as many drugs as you can into the country. And kill those who want to stop you from doing that.

Sipping strong tea, he looked at his watch. One of the cartel bosses was sending his chief bomb maker to see Rashid within the hour. He would provide what Rashid needed to build a particularly smart device, which would, in two days, kill a DEA regional director in Brownsville, Texas, together with her family and however many others happened to be nearby at the picnic.

Rashid was presently sitting at a coffee table, bent over a pad of yellow paper, and clutching a mechanical pencil as he drew engineering diagrams for the IED.

Although Reynosa was a thoroughly unpleasant town, dusty, dun-colored and filled with small, sagging factories, this house was large and quite pleasant. The cartel had put some good money into maintaining it. It had decent air-conditioning, plenty of food and tea and bottled water, comfortable furniture and thick shades on all the windows. Yes, not a bad house at all.