The Kill Room

very efficiently, killing DEA regional director Barbara Summers and anyone at the church picnic within a thirty-foot circle, possibly wider, depending on how many people were waiting in line at the ice cream station, where the device would be planted.
    Rashid nodded toward the room where the Mexican hostages were being kept. He asked the Fat Man, “His company has come up with the ransom?”
    “Yes, yes, it’s confirmed. The family’s been told. They can leave tonight, as soon as the last of the money is transferred.” He regarded Rashid closely. “It’s only business, you know.”
    “Only business,” Rashid said, thinking, No, it’s really not.
    The Fat Man walked to the kitchen, where he opened the refrigerator and, surprising Rashid, took out not a beer but two cartons of Greek yogurt. Eyeing the Arab, he peeled back both tops and ate one then the other with a plastic spoon, standing in the middle of the room. Then he wiped his mouth with a paper towel, tossed the empties into the trash and sipped from a bottle of water.
    “Señor, I will see you soon.” They shook hands and he stepped outside, waddling on shoes with heels worn angular.
    After the door closed Rashid stepped to the window and looked out. The man climbed into a Mercedes, which sagged port side. The diesel purred to life and the black vehicle bounded down the drive, leaving a dust cloud.
    Rashid remained at the window for ten minutes. No sign of surveillance, no neighbors glancing uneasily as they passed by. No curtains dropping back over windows. Dogs stood about unsuspicious and no disembodied barks suggested intruders in unseen places nearby.
    From the bedroom suite he heard voices. And then a soft noise he couldn’t place at first, uneven, rising, falling in volume and tone. It grew regular and he knew the sound was a child’s crying. The little girl. She’d been told she was going home but she wouldn’t appreciate that. She wanted to be there now , with her stuffed toy, her bed, her blanket.
    Rashid thought of his sister, who, with two schoolmates, was killed in Gaza. His sister…not much older than this girl. She hadn’t had a chance to cry.
    Rashid sipped more tea and examined the diagrams, listening to the mournful sound of the girl, which seemed all the more heart wrenching for being muted by the walls, as if she were a ghost trapped forever in this dusty tomb.

CHAPTER 69
    T HE PHRASE “KILL ROOM” suggested something out of a science-fiction movie or the operations center in the TV show 24.
    But the National Intelligence and Operations Service’s Ground Control Station was a dingy space that looked like a storage area in a medium-sized insurance business or ad agency. It was housed in a fifteen-by-forty-foot trailer and was divided into two rooms. The office area was where you entered from the NIOS parking lot. Lining the wall were cardboard cartons of varying ages, cryptic writing on them, some empty, some containing documents or paper cups or cleaning supplies. A communications center, unoccupied at the moment. Computers. A battered gray desk and brown chair were in one corner and old, unclassified files littered it, as if a secretary had grown tired of finding the right drawer for them and had just given up. A broom, a box of empty Vitaminwater bottles, a broken lamp sat on the floor. Newspapers. Light bulbs. Computer circuit boards. Wires. A Runner’s World magazine.
    For decorations, maps of the Caribbean, Mexico, Canada and Central America, as well as of Iraq, and several OSHA posters warning about the dangers of lifting heavy loads with a bent back and not drinking enough water on hot days.
    The place was dim; the overheads were rarely on. As if secrets kept better in hinted light.
    You tended not to notice the shabbiness of the office, however, because of the other half of the trailer: The UAV operations station, visible through a thick glass wall.
    Men and women like Barry Shales, the pilots and sensor operators, tended to refer to the operations station as a cockpit, which nobody seemed to mind, though the word “drone” was discouraged. Maybe “unmanned aerial vehicle” sounded more sophisticated or sanitized. This term was certainly better—from a public relations view—than what UAVs were called among those who flew them: FFAs, or Fuckers From Above.
    Wearing dress slacks and a tie-less short-sleeved blue plaid shirt, slim Barry Shales was sitting in a comfortable overstuffed tan leather chair,