MANO

CHAPTER 9

Hakim had been warned only to use his contact in the United States in the direst of emergencies but the way things broke, he felt he had no choice. The contact was a deep insert infiltrated by Al Queda a number of years ago and living in the San Francisco Bay area. Hakim contacted the man by email using special codes that he had been issued yet. A meeting was set up as soon as the contact had booked a flight to Honolulu.
The meeting place was a discreet sushi restaurant and Hakim went alone. The San Francisco man was different than what he expected. He was a jolly, fat man who looked like he had enjoyed one too many hamburgers, but the brain was agile enough. He greeted Hakim like an old friend even though they had no prior contact with one another. They sat down and ordered from the menu before getting down to the business in hand. They also waited to make sure they couldn't be overheard and both spoke in Arabic. Hakim put a question to Fathi about the wanted flyer on Jamil.
The fat man coughed and then gave Hakim a hard look. "They're onto you?"
"But how?"
"You should have realised when Anwar didn't show. Do you know there was a shootout at Honolulu airport last week?"
"I remember reading something about it," Hakim admitted. His brow furrowed, and then cleared. "Newspapers said it was domestic terrorism."
"Don't believe everything you read in newspapers."
Understanding dawned in Hakim's cold eyes. "You mean we've been compromised. Anwar was involved in that shooting."
"It's my understanding that is the case."
Hakim felt sudden rage. His plans were being thwarted and he felt the presence of a dangerous nemesis. He felt suddenly on the defensive. He looked at the San Francisco man. "Who am I up against?"
The San Francisco man slid a dossier over to him. "His name is Mano. He's a cop, very dangerous, smart and resourceful. He will find you if given enough time."
"Unless we find him first?"
"Don't underestimate him," Fathi warned. "He's on wife number two and he's very dedicated. He spent eight years working as an undercover, and he's a marked man with half the Chinese community living in Hawaii. He has a security detail with him everywhere he goes and there have been a number of attempted hits. He's still around. What does that tell you?"
"That he's a dangerous adversary," Hakim purred, not liking the sound of this cop who was hunting him down even as they spoke. He smiled unexpectedly. The game was getting interesting.
He had known from the beginning that the operation was dangerous. Since 911, the Americans had upped their game. They had set up a new department dedicated solely to homeland security, and Mano was an extension of that new reality. His brief from Hawaii's governor was very simple: "Keep terrorism out of Hawaii."
He had been trained to expect pursuit. He had been taught methods to throw pursuers off the track, the lessons sometimes delivered whilst sitting around a campfire in the Yemini desert clutching a coffee in one hand and an armalite in the other, whilst out of the corner of the eye an orange suited westerners waited his turn to be beheaded and filmed as a warning to the western leaders. Hakim smiled as he remembered yielding the beheading sword a few times himself. He had proved himself before, and he felt Allah was with him and urging him on.
He remembered the planning for his operation and of how his idea to do what the Japanese had done in '41 had been seized upon by his superiors. He had read everything he could lay his hands on about that raid. He had absorbed the details and the subterfuge, and he had become convinced through his research that the higher echelons in Washington hadn't been as taken aback by the raid as they pretended, but that they had allowed the raid to proceed because they wanted America drawn into the war. In Hakim's eyes it was just another example of American capitalism gone askew. His superiors had liked his thinking, striking a blow every bit as devastating as the original Pearl Harbour and they had settled on Hawaii, perceiving that the defences there wouldn't be as strong as the mainland. Hakim knew that was no longer the case with a cop like Mano on his backtrail.