Chapter 42
After dropping off the FedEx package, the contractor drove to Nashville for his next job.
The car was registered in his name, at his address in Paramus, New Jersey.
He had been a U.S. citizen for fifteen years, with a passport to prove it.
Actually, he had a collection of passports.
In his business he often needed other names, along with different license plates for his vehicles.
His target lived in the small town of Tilman, Tennessee, thirty minutes north of Nashville, where he rented a small house and lived alone, not far from his first wife and their two children.
According to the divorce papers, she alleged abuse, too much booze and pills, and abandonment.
A report from a court-appointed shrink called it a case of post-traumatic stress disorder.
She got full custody and he saw the kids two weekends a month.
Since they split, she had hauled him back to court twice for delinquent child support.
He operated a forklift in a warehouse for fifteen dollars an hour.
Garrett gained some level of notoriety when he beat a prisoner so bad he cracked his skull. The kid, a seventeen-year-old Algerian, died in his cell without medical attention. He was the third fatality at the hands of the Americans.
When a reporter for The New York Times broke the story, he also included a photograph of Garrett urinating on the prisoner.
The army had stonewalled all inquiries into torture and abuse, but the firestorm from the photo finally forced it to act.
Garrett was charged with murder, court-martialed, convicted, and sent to a military prison in Alabama where he served three years before being released.
Then he met his wife, married her, and soon started beating her.
A week before the contractor arrived in Tilman, his scout had slipped into town and scoped out the territory.
The scout was crucial because he was an invisible operative who could come and go in the dark and never leave a trail.
He did the homework that allowed the contractor to strike quickly before anyone could remember seeing him.
According to the scout, this would be one of their easier jobs.
The town had only five thousand people, very few police officers, and little crime.
The streets were dead by nine each night.
Garrett’s rental was on a half-acre lot with a few others visible but none too close.
Every Tuesday night he played on a softball team with some boys from the warehouse and they went to a sports bar afterward to celebrate.
The contractor watched the game from a distance—softball was foreign to him—and after half an hour he left.
He parked on a dirt road in the woods and crept through the trees until he was in Garrett’s backyard.
There was no dog, no alarm system. He entered through a patio window, took the narrow steps down into the basement, found the propane tank, and examined its rubber tubes and valves.
He turned the petcock half a rotation to the left, allowing the odorless gas to escape.
A strong odorant was added to the bottom of the tank to alert the danger of a leak.
Garrett would likely smell it immediately upon entering the house, but by then it would be too late.
There were no windows in the basement, just the usual assortment of abandoned junk, along with a water heater with a pilot light that the contractor turned off.
Upstairs he checked to make sure all windows and doors were shut tight, then left through the same window.
There was no moon and he was dressed in black, so he moved easily in the darkness and set up his post behind some trees, a hundred feet from the house.
He figured a hundred feet from the blast site was safe enough.
He took a drone from his backpack and assembled it quickly.
The brand was Hawkeye, model number 880BB, made by a Czech company for second-rate militaries and serious amateurs.
He fit neither label but didn’t need anything fancier.
It was on a suicide mission anyway. It lifted off in complete silence above the house.
Its video camera rotated and surveyed the neighborhood, though there was little to see.
When everything was situated and working perfectly, the contractor checked the time and brought in Hawkeye.
Last Tuesday night, the boys left the bar a few minutes after eleven.
Garrett was due at work at eight each morning.
At eleven, Hawkeye lifted off again and hovered over the street in front of the house.
Minutes passed. Maybe the boys were having another round.
Finally, headlights appeared and Hawkeye descended.
Its camera zoomed in and focused on the license plate.
It was Garrett’s ten-year-old Ram with triple-sized tires.
From fifty feet, Hawkeye trailed as he turned into his gravel drive, turned off his truck, got out and walked to the flimsy front door.
In the blackness of the night, Hawkeye moved in for the kill.
Garrett unlocked the door, took a step inside, sniffed something unusual, and was about to switch on the lights when Hawkeye crashed through the plateglass window.
The bomb was loud and shook the earth. A massive orange fireball exploded and blasted bits of wood, sheetrock, glass, and bricks high into the air.
The contractor was knocked to his feet and scrambled behind a tree for cover, barely missing a chunk of brick that whistled nearby.
The fire roared as debris fell and rattled and a thick smoke began to boil.
There was nothing left of the house. There was nothing left of Garrett—he was vaporized.
Even from a hundred feet, the heat was too intense.
The contractor packed his tripod and camera and retreated to another spot.
Soon he heard sirens and the panic was on.
Neighbors gathered down the street and gawked.
Red and blue lights appeared and every cop in the county would soon be on the scene.
The contractor left Tilman, drove six hours nonstop, and checked into an interstate motel near Winston-Salem.
He slept a few hours and walked next door to a pancake house where he ordered waffles and eggs.
Sitting alone in the empty dining room, he played with his phone and retrieved the videos.
The first was from Hawkeye as it trailed the truck, watched Garrett take his fateful last walk, then crashed into the window.
The second was taken with his iPhone on a tripod.
It captured the majestic moment when the explosion boomed through the perfect stillness and the fireball detonated like a powerful bomb.
He could not help but smile. It was his first kill with a drone and a propane tank, such a clever mix of high and low technology. He looked forward to using it again.
Three days later, he sent an edited video by email to an encrypted site in Berlin. It was received by his broker, who was impressed and promised to complete the transaction. The contractor had no idea who was paying him, nor did he care. He worked for his broker, who wired his contact in Cairo.
Five days after the mysterious propane explosion in Tilman, Tennessee, word finally reached the principal.
Nabeed was at his flower shop, doing the usual routine of tending to his flowers and waiting on his customers, while running a small terrorist organization from his desktop in the rear.
His contact in Cairo sent a text, then sent the video.
Newspaper reports in Tennessee confirmed that one Cade Garrett had died in a terrible explosion, most likely caused by a propane leak.
The contact sent copies of news reports.
Nabeed signed off and realized he was crying. He left the shop and walked along a trail. He sat on a bench and cried some more, overwhelmed by the memories of Yusuf, his beloved younger brother.
Ten years after his murder, justice had finally been served.