Jack nodded. “Yeah, I think so.” While the real world existed mostly in shades of gray, when the moment of truth came, there was only room for black-and-white. Jack smiled and toasted Clark with his coffee cup. “You’re a wise man, John.”
“Thanks. You get older, you get smarter. At least that’s how it’s supposed to work. There’s always exceptions, though. Your dad, for one. He’s wise beyond his years. I knew that the first time I met him.”
“Yeah, when was that?”
“Nice try, Jack. Have you talked to him yet?”
“About The Campus? Yeah, when we rode back together from Andrews. He was pissed at first, but it went a lot better than I thought it was going to go.”
“Let me guess: He wants to be the one to tell your mom?”
Jack nodded. “And just between you and me, I’m damned glad. My dad’s a tough SOB, but my mom ... She’s got that look—that look that only a mom can give, you know?”
“Yep.”
They sat in silence for a while, sipping coffee. “Been thinking about Dom,” Jack said.
“He’ll pull out of it. You gotta remember, except for maybe you, his transition has been the toughest. He went from being an FBI agent to a spook. From an agency that runs on rules and regs to a fake brokerage house that hunts down bad guys outside the law. And now this thing with Brian ...” Clark shrugged. “No matter how you look at it, it’s a shitty deal.”
“I’m just thinking it’s too early for him to be going back out.”
“Ding doesn’t think so, and that’s good enough for me. For Gerry, too. Plus, there’s just four of us now, and a lot of bases to cover.” Clark smiled. “Hell, remember who he’s running with. I trusted the guy with my daughter, Jack, and never regretted it. He’ll make sure Dom comes through.”
Though separated by less than four hundred miles, both Raharjo Pranata and Kersen Kaseke had been following virtually the same routine for weeks: Go to school, draw no attention to yourself, and wait for orders. Pranata’s had come only hours after Kaseke’s, during his final message check of the day. He was so surprised to see the text file sitting in his file storage’s inbox that he botched his first attempt to decode the message.
The location they had chosen for him was less than a mile from his apartment. He’d passed by it almost every day. As targets went, it was almost ideal: large enough to accommodate hundreds of people yet hemmed in on all sides by buildings. The timing of the attack made sense as well. Pranata had seen signs advertising the event in question all over town, though he’d paid little attention to the specifics. A dedication of some kind. A statue or fountain. Not that it mattered.
Of the three targets they’d told him to prepare for, this one offered the greatest potential for massive casualties. What was that American saying? A turkey shoot?
The maps he’d used in his preparations had been easy to obtain, and several of them he’d even gotten at the town’s visitor center. The topographical map he’d downloaded from a popular hiking website, and while he had no interest in the local trails, the elevations and distances were clearly marked, and a stroll around town with his portable GPS unit had confirmed their accuracy.
Once he was sure he had all the necessary data, he’d simply punched the numbers into the appropriate equations and come up with the settings.
Now would come the hard part: waiting. He would pass the time by practicing setting up and dismantling his equipment.
Musa’s second day of driving was relatively short, taking him from Toppenish, Washington, to Nampa, Idaho, whose only claim to fame, according to a sign on the outskirts, was that it was not only the largest city in Canyon County, Idaho, with a population of 79,249, but also the fastest-growing. Yet another sign along the road, less than a hundred yards from the first, proclaimed that Nampa was also “a great place to live!”
When planning his route from Blaine, Musa had decided his overnight stops must be in medium-sized towns—not too large that the police force was aggressive or particularly well trained, and not too small, lest the arrival of a dark-skinned stranger provoke any undue curiosity. Toppenish, with a population of only eight thousand, might have fallen in the latter category if not for its close proximity to Yakima. Of course, his encounter with Willie, Toppenish’s nosy chief