Angels of Wrath - [First Team 02]

by Larry Bond

“Supposed to.”

  He picked up the sat phone and called Guns’s phone. There was no answer.

  Rankin and Monsoon, sleepy-eyed, came over.

  Ferguson fiddled with the computer, looking for the screen that would show where Guns was. A signal came up offshore, north of the mosque.

  “I’m going to take a run out there,” Ferguson told Thera, grabbing his gear. “See if you can get ahold of Van and make sure he’s ready for a pickup. Keep Khazaal and Meles in view if you can. Khazaal’s more important. Rankin. Monsoon. You’re with me.”

  ~ * ~

  I

  t didn’t seem possible that the tide could be this strong. Guns thought it must be some defect in the way he was swimming, not curling his hand right or something. But no matter what he tried, nothing worked.

  After nearly fifteen minutes struggling against the tide, Guns felt his arms starting to cramp. He tried to relax, coasting for a bit, but the weight of his pants and long shirt dragged him down. He decided he didn’t need the pants, and stripped to his military-green shorts, then off came his shirt. He had a pistol strapped to his waist and another at his leg; he pulled off the one at his stomach but kept the other. He turned and started stroking with the current, but this didn’t take him any closer to the shore.

  “I hate the water,” he said out loud. “If I wanted to die in the water, I would have been a sailor.”

  You’re not going to die, he told himself quickly, but once the idea had been planted in his head it began to grow. He tried to fend it off by concentrating on the job at hand, which was to find some way—any way—out of the current. But with each stroke his arms got heavier and his legs more tired.

  “Goddamn it,” he said. “Let’s go, marine. Stop being a sissy.”

  The pep talk worked for about two minutes. He tried to float to rest, kicking his legs and leaning his body out nearly flat against the surface. When he started to swim again he saw a large boat on the horizon about a half mile offshore. He decided that was his destination and that once he reached it he would be saved. So all he had to do was stroke for a few more minutes, he told himself, ten or fifteen at the most. Then he would get there and give them some cock-and-bull story about falling off a tourist boat, completely in Russian, and be saved.

  He’d be ribbed about this forever. Served him right for jumping into the water. He should have had Grumpy covering his butt.

  His arms were lead and stiff and dead.

  A motor ripped in the distance. Guns turned to see where it was. As he did, his arms collapsed and he sunk below the waves. Something hard grabbed him around the neck and shoulder and dragged him upward.

  The air felt like a shock when he broke the water.

  “Don’t they teach marines how to swim?” yelled Ferguson. He was swimming alongside him.

  “Ferg, man, am I glad to see you.”

  “Yeah, no shit. Kick. Come on. We have to grab that rope. See it? Rankin can’t steer to save his life.”

  Guns managed a feeble kick, but it was Ferguson who did all the work, towing the marine to the rope and then pulling them both to the boat, where Rankin and Monsoon fished them from the sea. Guns collapsed against the side of the vessel.

  “I owe you one, man. I owe all you guys,” said Guns.

  “Bet your ass,” said Rankin.

  Ferguson stood and tried knocking the water out of his ears. The harbor would not rank among the world’s cleanest, and he was covered with a film of oil. The only reason he couldn’t smell it was that the stench of raw sewage and dead fish was too strong.

  “Where’s Grumpy?” asked Guns.

  “Not where he was supposed to be,” said Ferguson.

  “It wasn’t his fault,” said Guns. “I left him on the other side of the mosque and told him I’d be back.”

  “We left him where we stole the boat,” said Ferguson, only slightly mollified. “I told him if the owner came back he should offer himself in trade.”

  “You shouldn’t have told him that,” said Guns.

  “Why not?”

  “He’s a marine. Trained to follow orders. I don’t think he’s got much of a sense of humor.”

  ~ * ~

  22

  LATAKIA

  The scent of the vodka nearly overwhelmed Ravid. When he had started out this evening to get a sense of what the arms dealers were doing, he had felt strong, even dismissive of the need for liquor. But now desire clawed up from his chest, more powerful than sex, more powerful than the will to breathe when underwater. He wanted, he needed a drink.

  Was that why he had given himself this assignment after all? Because he knew he would succumb? Because he had to succumb in the end?

  Ravid tried to ward it off. He returned to the plot to take Khazaal’s gems, but its elaborate twists no longer interested him. He thought of his wife and his son, forced his mind’s eye to reconstruct their pictures. He thought of revenge, the need to annihilate his enemy. He wanted justice—

  No, all he wanted was a drink. He didn’t even care if it damaged his cover. Why would it? Many Muslims, especially those who had tasted the luxuries of the West, sinned by drinking. It might even be argued that it helped his cover, for what spy would dare to sin openly?

  He didn’t care. He wanted a drink.

  Ravid turned around as if he were here to meet someone.

  Who? One of the arms dealers. Birk, the notorious Pole. Andari, the half Italian, half Armenian whom everyone thought was a Jew.

  Perhaps he would go up to one of them, just as a diversion, just to keep himself from giving in.

  But if he didn’t want a drink, why didn’t he just leave? He was free to walk out. He could easily walk out.

  He should walk out, he told himself. And yet he felt he couldn’t.

  The bartender tapped Ravid’s arm from behind. Ravid jerked around, as if jolted by lightning.

  “Drink, sir?” asked the man in English.

  Ravid stared at him for twenty seconds, thirty. “Vodka,” he said.

  As soon as he pronounced the word, blood rushed to his head. He felt warm, almost hot. Relieved and ashamed at the same time.

  A woman brushed by him. Ravid turned quickly, his eyes following her as she made her way toward one of the arms dealers, Birk.

  The bartender put the vodka down behind him. Ravid forced himself to stare after the woman, ignoring the greater temptation.

  He would never stop at one drink. His mission would be lost. Very likely he would lose his life. Tischler would have nothing to do with him. Any chance of revenge would be lost.

  What chance, though, did he have of revenge? He knew several people, many people, men in similar situations, who would help. He could form an army of the wrathful, he thought. Together they could take their revenge.

  If he had the strength. Not to gather them—that was nothing, that was a child’s task. The strength he needed was to not drink. Not to remember his wife and child. Not to remember but to stay focused on the present.

  The smell of alcohol rose around him, overwhelming everything else. He put his hand to his face, closing off his nose, trying to force the scent away. He wanted to leave yet his legs seemed glued to the spot. Finally he got himself moving, eyes riveted on the woman who had just bumped into him. He began following her, telling himself she was attractive and reminded him of his wife. A lie, but useful.

  The woman—-Judy Coldwell—stopped at Birk’s table. It had taken her much longer than she had thought to find him, and now she had to screw up her courage just to speak. But with the first word, the rest flowed; it was if she were an actress, playing a part, and that made it easy.

  “Do you remember me?” she said first in Arabic, then in English. Her Arabic was still rusty—far too rusty, really, to be properly understood—but Caldwell knew that using it before English was generally helpful.

  Birk didn’t know quite what to make of her. She was attractive, and while he thought it possible she was some sort of journalist, he decided h
e might amuse himself for a few moments while it was still relatively early. He swept his hand across the table, inviting her to sit.

  “Do you remember me?” she repeated as she sat.

  “I should, with a face as lovely as yours,” said Birk. “But I’m afraid I do not.”

  “Three years ago, I worked for a firm that needed to equip its security workers,” said Coldwell. “We needed to get around some inconvenient regulations and some nosy officials. You were able to sell us some items.”

  “Of course,” said Birk. He didn’t remember the transaction, but that was unimportant. “And now you find yourself in need of more. I have to say that inflation has taken quite a toll—”

  “I’m here for something else entirely,” said Coldwell. “I’m taking the place of Benjamin Thatch. He’s been delayed.”

  “His name is unfamiliar.”

  “Perhaps not with others. I was hoping perhaps you could mention it.”

  “Mention it?”

  “Some people may be looking for Thatch instead of me. Of course if this is inconvenient, we could arrange to pay for your time.”

  Birk could tell from her accent that the woman was an American. Could this be a hopelessly lame attempt by his friend Ferguson to trick him?

  “You’re a reporter?” he asked.

  The woman’s face blanched. “Absolutely not.”

  “CIA?”

  “No. I am with a group called Seven Angels. We assist different people.”

  Birk laughed. “A charity?”

  “Not exactly, no.”

  A few yards away, Ravid slid back in toward the bar. The bartender saw him and approached once more, holding the drink out this time. “No, thank you,” said Ravid. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a few bills. “For your troubles. And if I might have a seltzer, no alcohol.”

  The bartender shrugged. Ravid straightened, straining to hear the conversation at the table. He could hear no more than a few words, Seven Angels among them.

  They struck him because they were the name of a group mentioned in the background briefing as he brought himself up to date. An American group had made some contact with a number of Islamic groups, including members of the cells meeting in Latakia. Seven Angels wanted to provoke some sort of apocalyptic dawn by funding attacks in the Holy Land. It had been rolled up completely by the Americans following a freak event in Jerusalem around the time he had been recalled.

  Ravid leaned closer, trying to hear, but the interview was over; she was already getting up.

  Ravid began to follow, slowly first, then quicker, pushing toward the exit, and his future.

  ~ * ~

  23

  BAGHDAD

  When Peter Bellows saw Corrine at the airport, he shouted to her. He felt almost as if he were her uncle, though he hadn’t seen her more than once a year over the past decade.

  For her part, Corrine didn’t feel like a niece; Bellows was her father’s friend, not hers, and since receiving the president’s instructions had tried to distance herself even further mentally, thinking of him as the “American ambassador to Iraq,” not her father’s old chum. She smiled bashfully and put out her hand, but Bellows wrapped his arms around her and kissed her cheek.

  “It’s been so long, Corrine,” said Bellows. “How are you, hon?”

  “Very well, Mr. Ambassador. Yourself?”

  “Oh, stop that Mr. Ambassador stuff. Peter’s fine.” He winked at her, indulging in an almost fatherly pride at how far his friend’s little girl had come. “Your father says hello,” Bellows added. “I spoke to him just last night. He claims you never call.”

  “He always says that.”

  “God, you look good. Now I don’t mean that in a sexist way.”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” she told him.

  “Would you like to freshen up back at the embassy or look around town?” he asked.

  “I’m fresh enough.”

  “You said it. I didn’t,” said Bellows, leading her to the cars as a swarm of bodyguards followed.

  Two years after the formal turnover of government to the Iraqis, the city remained pockmarked and battered from the occupation and the continuing struggle with a hodgepodge of insurgents. The Iraqis were clearly making progress, and in fact two-thirds of the country was arguably as calm as any place in the Middle East. The area around Baghdad remained the exception; while it wasn’t anywhere near as dangerous as it had been even a year before, Americans were still targets here. A sizable portion of the remaining U.S. military presence was concentrated in and around the capital. American troops and dignitaries traveled in convoys whenever possible, their routes never announced in advance.

  But Bellows seemed jubilant and even carefree as they rode from the airport and toured the sprawling city. He spoke in glowing terms of a new housing development that, in Corrine’s eyes at least, already looked rundown. From there they drove to a new shopping mall outside of town. Corrine realized that the ambassador wanted her to be impressed, hoping that she would interpret what she saw as a sign that normalcy was returning to the country.

  The empty shelves and idle clerks in the mall had the opposite effect. There were at least three dozen Iraqi government soldiers in the building and another dozen Americans, outnumbering the shoppers nearly twenty to one.

  Iraq might be on the road to democracy, but it was a long road, with many twists and turns, and it would be years before the country rose from poverty, let alone began to live up to its economic potential. In two months, the bulk of the remaining American troops were scheduled to withdraw. Corrine couldn’t help but wonder what would happen when they were gone. Besides reducing security, their removal would hurt the local economy, which was benefiting from cash payments for bases as well as from the GIs’ personal spending.

  Bellows shrugged off the question.

  “A few hiccups, nothing more,” he said as they rode back to the embassy. “I have a few meetings I can’t duck. Should we get together after dinner? Late? I’d love to catch up.”

  “Sure,” said Corrine. “That’d be good. I have a few things to do myself.”

  The embassy complex—it had been built at the end of the occupation, one more spur to the economy—was so new that it smelled of plaster as well as fresh paint. There were three small dormitory-style residence buildings for VIPs. Though Bellows suggested she take a room in the ambassador’s residence near him, Corrine demurred; she planned on using the secure communications facilities, which were located in the basement of the largest of the VIP buildings (the Yellow House, so called because of the exterior color). Staying there would make it easier to come and go. She also wanted to keep a little professional distance between herself and Bellows, though she didn’t tell him this.

  Like its predecessor, the embassy had extensive secure facilities manned twenty-four hours a day and located in an elaborate bunker. Corrine found her room, then went down and checked in with Teri, her secretary at the White House. Teri ran through a long list of calls and then demanded to know if the rumors were true that she had been shot at.

  “No. There was some sort of fracas in a nightclub, but my bodyguards hustled me out before things got too crazy,” said Corrine, crossing her lingers in front of her.

  “Is that really what happened?”

  “Would a lawyer lie?”

  “Ha.”

  After she managed to allay Teri’s fears, she phoned Corrigan to see what was up with Ferguson. The First Team leader wanted to talk to her, Corrigan said. Corrine kicked off her shoes and curled her legs up in the chair as she waited for the connection. The long day had her tired out already, and she was a little disappointed by the ambassador; he hadn’t taken her questions seriously.

  Or maybe he had, and that’s why he was putting a smiley face on everything.

  “How do you like sunny Baghdad?” said Ferguson cheerfully when the line connected.

  “It’s all right. What’s going on?”

  “I know where Kh
azaal is staying, a mosque in town.”

  The word mosque swept away her fatigue. “You can’t blow up a mosque.”

  “I didn’t say I was going to. Can I make the arrest without a replacement for Fouad?”

  “Go ahead, but don’t do it in a mosque. Not in a mosque.”

  Ferguson said nothing.

  “Unless you really have to,” she added finally.

  “I don’t think I will. I’ll talk to you.” He snapped off the line.

  Corrine rose and went upstairs in search of a shower.