by Larry Bond
Chastised, Ferguson bowed his head, then spontaneously dropped to his knees and rubbed up the spittle. As he did, he slipped the knife secreted up his loose sleeve to his hand, ready to be used. The Imam’s son gently tugged him to his feet.
A moment of decision: there might not be a better opportunity to grab him by the throat.
The tug was gentle. Ferguson remained in character, mumbling his apology and begging forgiveness, practically doubling over even as he rose, admitting he was unworthy and a fool besides.
“No, old man, you are not a fool. I am sorry I yelled at you,” said the Imam’s son. “You are a devout believer, a faithful child. God will smile on your soul.”
He led them back outside, and offered a place to stay. Ferguson thanked him profusely, saying that first they must complete their visits to the other mosques in town and then with God’s grace return.
Outside the mosque, Ferguson started for his shoes. Four men with AK-47s were milling nearby.
“Just a minute,” said the Imam’s son, grabbing Ferguson’s forearm tightly.
~ * ~
G
uns pushed his glasses up, trying to peer across the street through the doorway of the outer wall without making it too obvious that he was staring inside. Ferguson had told him to remain outside if at all possible; even in disguise there was always the chance that someone would remember him from yesterday.
Two men with AK-47s, stocks folded up so the weapons looked more like machine-pistols than rifles, walked from the left and came through the opening. Guns took off his glasses as if to clean them but stayed where he was for a moment as the men checked the block. One of them put his hand to his ear—he had an earphone there though Guns couldn’t see it—and then both men came out of the doorway, heading eastward on the street.
Guns kept his glasses off and walked the other way, catching a glimpse of the knot of men in black shirts and pants as they came out. A pair of cars came around the corner, accelerating and then stopping in front of the mosque.
“You seeing this?” Guns whispered to Thera.
“Oh, yeah. There’s our boy. Just keep walking. We’ll have the Global Hawk tag the car in its ID system. Once we recover Ferguson we can find out where it went.”
~ * ~
F
erguson pushed his teeth together as the Imam’s son let go of his arm. Khazaal had passed not more than five yards from him, but he was gone now, the bastard.
“Strong arms,” said the Imam’s son, staring into Ferguson’s face.
Ferguson smiled and bowed his head.
“You have much hair,” added the man.
“Were every strand a prayer to holy God, it would not be a tenth of what I owe,” answered Ferguson.
“A van will take you to the next mosque,” said the Imam’s son. He snapped his fingers and shouted directions to one of the men nearby. Ferguson protested lightly, saying he was unworthy to accept such kindness but then accepted with gratitude.
One of the men with the AK-47s came over from the courtyard, walking with them to the street. Two other guards were nearby; the Imam’s son bade them good luck and farewell, then turned abruptly and went inside the administrative building. Ferguson took hold of Rankin’s arm, stalling for a moment to size up the layout, but it was clear that if they ran for it they’d be cut down before they made the street.
~ * ~
C
omin’ out,” said Guns. “Finally.”
“We see,” Thera told him from the van. “Four guards.”
“Shit.”
“It’s all right. Take a breath and hold it. Ferg is talking.”
Guns started walking behind a group of smartly dressed women, paralleling Ferguson and Rankin. The two ops were sandwiched by men with guns. Thera was right; Ferguson was chatting up a storm.
Guns hopped into the street, deciding to cross and get closer. He moved without thinking of the traffic, which though light wasn’t nonexistent. He just missed getting run over by a battered Renault, whose driver swerved and laid on the horn. Guns put out his hands in apology as another man leaned out the window and cursed him and his children’s children for being so careless.
One of the men with Ferguson pulled open the sliding door to a white Toyota van and prodded him inside. Ferguson pulled himself upward and got in, groaning all the way. Rankin followed. The van had three rows of seats: two guards got behind them; the other two crammed into the front with the driver.
“We better follow,” said Guns.
“We’re taking it,” Thera told him. “You hang back. Go up to that café at the corner and relax.”
Relax? Yeah, sure, thought Guns. He’d put that on the agenda, but it didn’t look like he’d be getting to it anytime soon.
~ * ~
T
hey’d gone about two blocks when Rankin felt the barrel of a gun pressed against his neck.
“You heard that horn,” said the man behind him. “I saw you.”
Rankin turned in the direction of the gun but said nothing, clinging to the last vestiges of his cover. The men in the front turned and started yelling at the gunman.
Ferguson started to laugh.
“He hears with his eyes and fingers,” Ferguson told the others, still laughing. “Shoot the gun and you will see. He hears it. Watch.”
Ferguson clapped his hands together. Rankin jerked his shoulder up in reaction.
“He’s a fake,” said the man in the back.
The man behind Ferguson reached forward with his gun. Ferguson, still feigning amusement, turned and insisted that the men must fire the weapons and see what he was saying. “You will see, you will see. Shoot.”
“We’re not firing in the Imam’s van,” said one of the men in the front.
Ferguson leaned across to the front seat. The man near him grabbed his hand as he reached for the horn.
“Beep it,” urged Ferguson. “Watch. He hears the air. It is quite phenomenal. Watch. Watch!”
The driver hit the horn. Rankin now practically jumped upward in the seat.
The man in the front who was in charge told the driver to stop up ahead near an open lot. He pulled in. The men got out. Rankin let himself be jerked from the van, a bewildered look on his face. He landed in a heap in the dirt, then slowly got to his knees.
“Fire the guns and watch,” said Ferguson as he got out of the van. “Watch him. He will jump.”
“Maybe we should fire at you,” said the man who’d first put the rifle at Rankin’s neck.
Ferguson took his prayer hat off his head and pushed out his chest. Then as a final gesture tossed down his cane. “Accept my soul, my Lord God. Thank you for this favor,” he said. “Thank you for sending the angel to deliver me to Paradise.”
The man leveled his gun at Ferguson’s face, then pushed the barrel down before shooting. Bullets splattered into the grounds a few feet from him, ricocheting wildly.
Ferguson didn’t flinch—much. “Old fool,” said the man. “Let them walk.” They got back in the van and drove away.
Ferguson bent to pick up his cane. Rankin got up and reached it before he did.
“We’re still being watched,” Ferguson whispered. “I don’t think the Imam’s son totally bought the act. But those idiots did.”
He straightened, then pointed up the street. “Thera can pick us up after we go into that café at the corner. We’ll dump our disguises in the back and come out there.”
He began to walk. Within a few steps he had fallen into a rhythm and begun to hum.
It took Rankin half a block to realize it was “Finnegan’s Wake.” He hoped to hell the people watching them didn’t know any old Irish folk songs.
~ * ~
21
LATAKIA
LATER THAT DAY . . .
“So, were you nervous?” said Ferguson as they headed back to the hotel in the van. He’d waited until they reached the other mosque, where he changed out of his costume and made sure the people trai
ling him had left before getting Rankin.
“I wasn’t nervous,” lied Rankin, “but next time don’t tell them to shoot me.”
“I didn’t tell them to shoot you, just to shoot the gun. There’s a difference.”
“I doubt they saw one.”
“The Global Hawk tracked the van with Khazaal up to the castle,” said Thera. “Meles is on his way in that direction, too.”
“What about the Russian?”
“Hasn’t left the hotel.”
“He may have a way around the sensors,” said Ferguson.
“Or maybe he’s not in on this meet,” suggested Rankin. “Maybe this is about Khazaal and Meles. Your source said the meeting wasn’t until tomorrow. Maybe they’re getting together before the rest of the players.”
“Do we still want to scare them out of there, Ferg?” asked Thera. “If they go to the mosque, we’re in worse shape.”
Ferguson took the laptop and paged through some of the video showing Khazaal. One of his men had a small briefcase with him.
“Hey, Rankin, this look like a case for an Uzi to you?”
Rankin looked at it. “Maybe a mini Uzi; it’s so thin. But why? It’s not like they need to fool anyone.”
“Probably has the jewels in it,” said Thera.
“Yeah. That’s what I’m thinking. So riddle me this, Batgirl,” he added. “Iraqis don’t buy, they sell.”
“What’s the riddle?”
“Iraqis don’t buy, they sell,” repeated Ferguson. “But our Iraqi is going around with a case that has so many jewels in it, he doesn’t leave it with the people in the mosque, he doesn’t even trust Meles, you see?” Ferguson pointed to the pictures. “He’s keeping it out of his reach, away from Meles’s people. These guys travel in a separate car.”
“Might he his lunch, Ferg,” said Rankin.
“Assume it’s not. What’s he going to buy here?”
“The Russian,” said Rankin. “He needs him to run some missile system.”
“Corrigan’s guess.”
Rankin frowned. He wished Ferguson hadn’t mentioned that.
“That’s not a reason to reject it,” added Ferg. “But ordinarily, you don’t pay in advance for services rendered. Maybe he’s trying to buy something, too. Eiher way, if we snatch the case, we stop the deal.”
“Just as easy to snatch him,” said Rankin.
“No,” said Ferguson. “Because I can’t touch him. I don’t have to be so careful with the guards; they’re not going to stand trial.”
He was making a fine distinction—a very fine distinction—but hadn’t that been Corrine Alston’s point? The administration wanted Khazaal to stand trial in Iraq.
She wouldn’t like the fact that the guards were killed, if that happened. Bui in the context of everything else, she’d accept it.
Maybe.
Definitely if he got Khazaal alive.
Snatch the jewels, and even if he missed Khazaal he’d change his plans. The Iraqi would be more vulnerable if he had to improvise, infinitely more vulnerable.
“So what’s he buying?” Thera asked.
“Something he doesn’t have,” said Ferguson, thinking of Birk’s offer.
~ * ~
W
hile Ferguson was washing the gray out of his hair back in the hotel room, Guns and Grumpy added booster units to pick up signals from the bugs Ferg had left in the mosque. The boosters, each about the size of a cigarette carton, took the signals and broadcast them to the satellite system. Ringing the target area with the boosters not only provided insurance if one of the units malfunctioned or was discovered but also allowed them to plant even smaller audio flies inside later on.
Guns had one more unit to place, this one on the water side of the compound. An ancient wooden waterwheel stood about ten feet from the road on the north side; it looked to Guns the perfect place to put the booster, assuming he could get out there. A narrow stone ledge that had once been part of a dock or walkway ran almost all the way toward it, but what exactly would he say he was doing if someone came down the road and saw him?
He sat for a few minutes, puzzling this out. Then he hit on an idea: he’d claim he had dropped something into the water and hoped to fish it out. To make it more authentic, he dug into his pockets looking for something. He didn’t come up with anything, at least not that he felt he could afford to lose, so he took off his watch. It was a cheap plastic model, but it had been a present from his brother. Rather than throw it in he pocketed it. If he got to the point where he was being searched, the watch was going to be the least of his worries.
Guns reached over to the wall and pulled himself up. His foot slipped off one or two of the stones, but he managed to make it to the wheel. There he took the booster from his belt, activated it, and slipped it into the rung at the top.
As he started back he saw that the wall angled toward the land just beyond the wheel, forming a wedge that ran to a small rocky beach. A chain-link fence blocked off the beach, but from where he was he could just see the edge of a boat in the angled inlet made by the wall. As best he could remember, the boat had not been in the photos he’d seen earlier from the Global Hawk. Guns decided to reconnoiter, though the only way to do this was to go back the way he came, walk around several blocks, and then slip into the back of the large building above the fenced-off beach. The building was a laundry. Guns got past it without any problem, then hopped the fence and walked onto the rocks.
From the other side, it had looked as if he could just reach across to the boat from the rocks. But now that he was here, he saw it was actually six or seven feet from the shore. He also saw that there was a doorway in the mosque wall that opened right above the boat.
Guns took off his shoes, rolled up his pants, and plunged into the water. He took about two steps before he realized it was deeper than he’d thought, far deeper—it came above his knees—and with the next step dropped off to his chest. He was committed, though; he pushed down and swam to the wall. He pulled himself up on the slimy stones, twisted a bug so it would work, and stuck it in the wall. The boat bobbed nearby. He was tempted to take it, and then had another idea: why not plant a fly in it?
As he reached into his pocket, he heard voices coming from the other side of the wooden door. He quickly tossed a pair of flies into the boat. Then, not knowing what else to do, he slipped down into the water, took two long strokes, and dove under the surface.
Guns swam as far as he could underwater, then stayed down for two more good strokes before coming up. He took a gulp of air, then slid back down, pushing as strongly as he could, he repeated this two more times, until he felt the water starting to push him forward. He broke the surface and found that he was now about thirty yards beyond the boat. He pushed backward, kicking his legs beneath him. The speedboat had backed away from its mooring and circled toward the sea. By the time it passed him it was riding the waves at a good clip, heading northwestward along the coast.
Guns took a deep breath and began swimming back to the beach where he’d left his shoes. Four strokes later, he realized he hadn’t made any progress against the tide.
~ * ~
M
eles is moving,” said Thera, knocking on the door to the bathroom. Ferguson grabbed a towel and pulled on pants, then went out to the common room, where Thera had been watching the feed. The Global Hawk surveillance system showed two SUVs parked in front of the Riviera. The computer processing the unit’s images could be programmed to track and zoom in on up to one hundred different objects within its viewing range; it could distinguish objects roughly a meter square, which made tracking trucks relatively easy, though the city streets could complicate things.
“Khazaal’s still at the castle,” said Thera. “You think that’s where he’s going?
Ferguson studied the feed. If they were meeting—a good guess, given that Khazaal’s vehicles were at the castle—-then if he went to take Khazaal, Meles would be fair game.
So that was t
he solution. Except he wasn’t ready.
“Wake up Rankin and Monsoon,” he told Thera. “Where’s Guns?”
“Still down by the mosque with Grumpy.”
Ferguson bent down to the laptop and selected the area. But the resolution was not quite fine enough to see people.
“He have a bug showing where he is?” Ferg asked Thera.