And nowhere were they needed more than in Anbar. As Jack Allstrong had predicted in August, the rebuilding of the electrical tower infrastructure in that province was turning out to be a gold mine for the company, albeit a costly one in terms of human life. Allstrong had by now put more than five hundred men to work on this latest contract, which initially bid out at forty million dollars, although it had grown to more than one hundred million in the past seven months. Allstrong Security, Jack liked to point out, was in 2003 the fastest-growing company in the world, outstripping Google, compliments of U.S. largesse and Jack's ability to surf the chaos of the reconstruction.
But in Anbar, the company also had already lost thirty-six of Kuvan Krekar's men, and Kuvan's supply chain of bodies was growing thin and dispirited. Beyond that, Kuvan had been facing severe competition from another broker named Mahmoud al-Khalil, who was not only supplying cheaper workers but was perhaps terrorizing and even killing Kuvan's people to discourage others from signing on. Why? So that Mahmoud and not Kuvan could pocket the extremely lucrative cash commissions. Well, with the recent untimely demise of his paterfamilias in Menlo Park, Mahmoud would hopefully soon conclude that competing directly with Allstrong's chosen subcontractor was not a sound business decision.
Hefting his duffel bag, Nolan let himself into his townhome through the garage door to the kitchen. He walked through the living room, stopped in his office and turned on his computer, then went into his bedroom, where he dropped the duffel bag on his bed, then returned to his desk and checked his e-mail and-first things first-made sure he'd been paid. He had.
With that taken care of, Nolan went back into his bedroom and started to unpack. Grabbing a pair of pants, he turned and opened the closet, and stopped short.
Something was not right.
Nolan didn't spend much time thinking about his military-ingrained penchant for order, but when he woke up in the mornings, he automatically made his bed with hospital corners so that the covers were tight enough to bounce a coin off them. The spare shoes were always shined and perfectly aligned on the floor of the closet. He hung his shirts and pants in order from light to dark, the hangers spaced with an automatic and practiced precision.
Now he stared at the row of hangers. He didn't specifically remember taking down the shirts and pants that he'd packed for his trip, but could not imagine that he would have taken down his clothes and left the hangers spaced unevenly as they were now. His eyes went to the backpack on the top shelf. He had lined it up exactly with the break in the hangers between his shirts and his pants, and now it was clearly centered over the shirts. Reaching up, he pulled it toward him, relieved by the familiar weight. He opened it and saw that nothing-not the grenades, the gun, or the ammo-was gone.
Which was weird.
Maybe he'd imagined that the hangers had been moved. It didn't seem possible that someone would have broken in here and not taken the grenades and the gun.
But it wouldn't be smart to take chances. Reaching into the backpack, he removed the Beretta and slammed one of the clips into place, then racked a bullet into the chamber. He dropped the backpack next to the duffel bag on his bed and went to check the bathroom, where an intruder might still be lurking. Finding no one there, he went back out into the living room to the front door, where the piece of Scotch tape that he'd laid over the connection between the door and its jamb was now stuck under the jamb.
Somebody had definitely been here.
Methodically now, he went back out to the garage, where he patted down the empty backpacks hanging against the wall. He was about to start opening the drawers when he straightened up, stopping himself.
He didn't see how it could be remotely possible, but it occurred to him that if one of the members of Khalil's extended family could have somehow traced the patriarch's execution back to him, their method of retribution might include a bomb-open a drawer and it goes off. By the same token, his experience with IEDs in Iraq told him that if there was a bomb, someone would have been hiding somewhere outside, seen him drive up, and sent an electrical pulse to detonate the device after he was inside. Alternatively, Nolan could trigger the bomb himself by switching on any one of a dozen electrical connections in the house. But any of those scenarios contemplated the possibility that someone had identified him as the Khalils' killer.
