“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 Hellfire 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

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.