Abdul-Hakim drove the gray van up to the garage. He got out, unlocked the padlock, raised the door. He drove the van in, hopped out, switched on the lights, and pulled the door down behind him.
He had a moment of panic when he heard nothing in the empty garage. Then the hum of the freezer reassured him. He walked over to it, raised the lid.
The body of the dead sniper lay crumpled up inside. A thin layer of frost gave him a surreal look.
Abdul-Hakim nodded in satisfaction. He opened the back of the van and rolled out a gurney. He released the lever, pulled it up to full height, and rolled it over to the freezer. He took the body out and laid it on top of the gurney. The corpse was stiff and bent at the waist and wouldn’t lie flat. When he pushed the legs down, it actually sat up.
Abdul-Hakim exhaled noisily. This wasn’t going to work. He pushed the body back down, which flipped its legs up again. He ignored them and secured the torso to the gurney with straps. He rolled it into the shadows at the back wall and left it there, with the legs still sticking straight up.
He drove the van out of the garage, switched off the lights, and locked the door. He drove around, parked the van on the street, went into a diner and had lunch. He picked his way through a club sandwich, topped it off with a piece of blueberry pie. He lingered over coffee, checked his watch. It had probably been long enough.
Abdul-Hakim paid his check, and drove the van back to the garage.
Abdul-Hakim rolled the gurney out from the wall and positioned it under the overhead light. While not entirely thawed, the corpse was at least pliable. He was able to pull the legs flat on the gurney, which was a vast improvement. He rolled the body over and laid it on its stomach.
He got the medical bag from the van and went to work. With scalpel, clamps, and forceps he began digging for the bullet.
It wasn’t easy. The shot had gone through the back of the skull, and the bone was hard. He should have brought a hammer. He wondered if there was anything similar in the doctor’s bag. There was. A wooden mallet, not as heavy as he would have liked, but better than nothing. He banged on the scalpel, wiggled it around, enlarged the hole. Finally there came the satisfying rasp of metal on metal. He’d found it. Now to get it out.
He butchered the job removing the bullet. He’d been told it didn’t matter, still he hated to do such poor work. It just went against the grain. But he had neither the equipment nor the expertise to do better. He dug it out, popped it into a plastic Ziploc bag. Later he’d make sure to throw it away.
Now the hand.
Abdul-Hakim positioned the body on the gurney so the left arm lay flat from elbow to fingertips, palm down. He took a surgical saw from the doctor’s bag and cut the hand off at the wrist. It was amazingly easy. The fact that the body was still somewhat frozen actually helped. He put the severed hand in another Ziploc bag.
When he was done he rolled the gurney back to the van and loaded the body in. He closed up the van, locked the garage, and left.
He was back at one in the morning. He picked up the van and drove to a bar in the suburbs. As the van pulled up, three men dressed in black came out of the bar and climbed into the back. Once they were aboard, the van took off for Falls Church, Virginia.
There was no traffic at that time of night, and he arrived at his destination in thirty minutes. He drove by the house, double-checked the address, circled the block and came up on the house again. Before he reached it he pulled off into the shadows and cut the engine.
In the back of the van the three men in black propped up the dead sniper and strapped him into a suicide bomber’s vest. It wasn’t armed, still they handled it gingerly. When they were done, they laid him down on the floor of the van.
Abdul-Hakim got out of the cab, came back to inspect their work. It met with his approval. He nodded to the man designated for the next task.
The man slipped out of the van, crept through the shadows to a private home down the street. There was a car parked in the driveway. The man stole up to the car, slipped a Slim Jim into the driver’s side window. Moments later the door lock clicked.
The man in black eased the door open, reached onto the floor for the release, and popped the trunk.
The van pulled up alongside. Two men in black got out, unloaded the dead sniper, and lifted him into the trunk.
Abdul-Hakim hopped out of the van, armed the suicide bomber’s vest, and closed the trunk.
He took the severed hand out of the Ziploc bag and wedged it under the driver’s seat. After the explosion, he wanted this small piece of Salih’s anatomy intact.
He locked the car, got back in the van, and circled the block. He parked in the same spot in the shadows where he’d been before, and settled down to wait.