by Mack Maloney
She leaned back against the limo seat and let out a long breath. Maybe then it would hit her, she thought. Maybe once she was out of this horrible place and back in the arms of civilization she would break down and shed tears over what she’d just done. There was a distinct horror in taking another person’s life, she was sure. But the feeling hadn’t arrived yet. At the moment, she was still rock hard and steel willed.
The limo arrived at the airstrip—but this was not the same place Li had first seen this afternoon. Back then, it looked like nothing more than a patch of asphalt in the middle of a field of sand. Now it looked like a military base. She counted more than a dozen F-15 fighters parked along the runway. Each plane was brightly lit and had mechanics nursing it. Not only were these people here, but there were also soldiers—or at least heavily armed men in uniforms—guarding the jet airplanes.
The driver pulled in about halfway up to the airstrip. There was a small gate here where most people boarded their private planes. Li lowered her window and miraculously heard above the whine of the idling military jets the sound of a Gulfstream’s smaller, higher-pitched engines. She looked up to see the familiar green and white aircraft pass overhead, turning for a landing. This was the CIA transit plane. Thank God, she thought.
The limo driver turned to ask her if this was where she wanted to go—but stopped before he could say anything. His eyes suddenly went wide. Li stared at him for a moment, then looked out the back window of the limo. There was a line of vehicles with flashing lights coming up behind them. Police cars. . ..
Her heart sank. These cars belonged to the Bahraini cops. Several were always parked in the casino’s back lot. At least a half-dozen of them were surrounding the limo now, the flashing lights creating weird shadows everywhere.
A small army of armed men jumped from the police vehicles and ran up to the limo. Some were in uniform; others were obviously plainclothes bodyguards. They all had their guns drawn and were pointing them right at her.
At the same moment, Li realized the CIA Gulfstream had landed. It taxied up to the small gate, not 20 feet away. She could see through the limo’s windshield to the plane’s cockpit, making out the face of the pilot plus one of her handlers. She almost cried out to them—but it wouldn’t have done her any good. They sized up the situation with Li and her limo—and kept right on going. Back out to the airstrip, where, engines screaming, they immediately took off again.
Leaving her behind.
Suddenly the door beside her opened and two men stuck their heads in. They immediately started yipping and pointing at her. She recognized them. They were the twin idiots she’d passed on the elevator. The Gebeebs, the DP’s dim-witted cousins. They were the ones who’d found the DP dead.
Suddenly someone pushed them out of the way and took their place in the door.
It was Jabal Ben-Wabi, the Patch. Smelly, drunk, ugly. He was holding Li’s bloody spike in his hand.
“You bitch!” he screamed at her. “You American bitch!”
He launched himself into the back of the limousine, grabbing her arm and twisting it. Instinctively she started to fight him off. But he began slapping her and then punching her—hard. Then he put his face right up to hers.
“I’m going to kill you,” he hissed at her. “And when I do, the whole world will be watching. . . .”
Chapter 6
Ryder was freezing in the desert. He saw sand dunes and scorpions and even a few palm trees off in the distance. Yet, his hands were covered with ice and his feet were encased in snow. It was like he was standing at the North Pole and in the middle of the Sahara. As for his late wife, she was nowhere in sight. That’s why he wasn’t sure if this was a dream or not.
Then, from behind, a voice beckoned to him: “Get up. We’ve got a problem.”
Ryder opened his eyes to find Red Curry, the team’s other senior pilot, shaking him awake.
“And it’s a big problem,” Curry was saying to him. “Get up to Murphy’s cabin right away. . . .”
With that, Curry left, allowing Ryder to crawl out of bed with some dignity. It was hard to do, though. His legs were stiff; his arms were aching; his head was ready to burst. He’d just slept for nearly 24 hours, yet he was still bone-tired.
He’d been the last one to land back on the ship following the raid on Loki Soto. It was only a 35-mile trip, as the Ocean Voyager had been waiting for them just over the horizon, 10 minutes away. But a few miles out from the African coast, the Harrier’s engine started coughing. At the same moment, all of his oil pressure gauges began blinking red. Then most of his primary power went out. One look at his fuel gauge told him he was pissing gas by the gallon. The jump jet was falling apart around him.
It came down to having one of the three remaining Superhawk helicopters turn back and ride nursemaid for him for the last few miles of the return trip. His plane’s engine was backfiring and smoking heavily by this time. The guys in the copter had signaled that they’d counted more than two dozen holes in his fuselage and on the tail of the plane. Some of those militia rounds had hit him after all, or maybe people had been shooting at him all along as he was buzzing the town and he just hadn’t realized it. Either way, according to the copter guys, his airframe looked like Swiss cheese.
Aware that his return might be messy, those on the ship got all the copters and occupants safely down below before they told Ryder to come in. As it turned out, his landing wasn’t so much of a crash as it was a spinecrushing bounce. The sound was sickening, especially after he came down the second time, cracking his landing gear and ripping his tail section in two. A fire broke out under his wings. The engine began tearing itself apart. Even the controls on his flight panel began sizzling.
The ship’s crash crew immediately covered the airplane in fire-suppression foam, quickly snuffing out the flames. Ryder didn’t even bother to climb out. He just slumped farther into the pilot’s seat. The last time he’d pranged the Harrier on the ship, after the Hormuz battle, it had been resurrected to fly again. But at that moment, he knew the jump jet had made its last flight.
Following the moving of the Delta Thunder guys to the sick bay, the Ghosts went up to Murphy’s quarters to celebrate their successful operation. All except Ryder. As he usually did after a heavy mission, he took a six-pack back to his quarters alone, drank one beer after another, then lay down to get his first real sleep in what seemed like centuries.
But now he was awake again.
And something was wrong.
He ran up to Murphy’s quarters, taking the steps two at a time. Reaching the grand wooden door of the Captain’s Room, Ryder didn’t stop to knock. He burst in, expecting to see the whole team assembled. But he was surprised. The room was empty, except for Murphy. The diminutive Texan was sitting at the far end of the long table. He looked devastated.
He waved Ryder in. The pilot took a seat right next to him. Ryder knew the world was about to fall on his head.
“I’ll just give it to you straight,” Murphy began. “Because there’s no other way to do it. . . .”
Ryder just stared back at him for a moment. Then it hit him.
Li. . .
“What’s happened to her?”
“She’s dead,” Murphy told him starkly. “The mooks got her. Executed her.”
Ryder went numb. He couldn’t feel his fingers. He couldn’t feel his boots on the deck. The room began spinning 360 degrees, yet he remained still. He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing would come out at first.
Finally he was able to croak: “How . . .?”
Murphy shook his head. “The Agency sent her into that freak show casino over in Bahrain. Her mission was to ice the Diamond Prince—and she actually did it. But then something went wrong. She was supposed to fly out as soon as the DP was toast, but the DP’s guys caught her at the airstrip seconds before she could get on the escape plane.”
Again, Ryder just stared at him in disbelief. If the mooks caught her just seconds before she was
to get on the escape plane, that meant the CIA guys must have been there to witness her capture—and didn’t step in to help.
“You mean they left her behind?” he asked Murphy, anger growing.
Murphy nodded slowly. He was almost in tears. “We left her in the hands of those assholes,” he said. “And they chickened out on her. They might as well as have put the gun to her head themselves.”
Now Ryder was shaking; his brain was just not accepting what he was hearing. He’d begged her not to go. They all did. But she’d become convinced that it was the best way to serve her country—and become a real member of the Ghost Team. The result was now a nightmare.
Murphy poured Ryder a drink. He downed it without even knowing what it was.
“The guy they saw pulling her out of the limo was the DP’s brother—Jabal Ben-Wabi,” Murphy explained. “They call him the Patch. He’s one of Al Qaeda’s chief executioners. He already beheaded at least six American hostages on TV, people Al Qaeda snatched in Iraq. When someone falls into his hands, it’s just a matter of getting the execution videotape to Al-Qazzaza TV. Daniel Pearl. Nick Berg. Jack Hensley. Eugene Armstrong. You know their names. You know how they met their end. In every case, Jabal Ben-Wabi was there, front and center, hiding behind a mask.”
“Yes, but, maybe—” Ryder whispered.
Murphy stopped him from saying any more. “We intercepted a call before you got up here,” he went on. “A line we got into Al-Qazzaza’s news desk. The caller told them to expect a new execution tape very soon—that it was being made with a girl and two guys from the Philippines and that he was watching them getting. . . well, beheaded . . . at that very moment. This Patch guy works fast. That’s his trademark, the bastard.”
Ryder put his head in his hands. Murphy patted his shoulder, trying to comfort him. “As soon as Li left the ship, I told our friends down in the White Rooms to start eavesdropping on the CIA’s black ops communications net, as a way of following her on her mission. I heard their phone calls when things started to go wrong. That’s how I know what happened. I knew it even before the guys at CIA headquarters back in Virginia did.
“The only upside of all that,” Murphy continued slowly, “is we’ll know where she is as soon as the CIA does. The body usually turns up, you know, just before the beheading video airs.”
Ryder just couldn’t believe it.She was dead. It was beginning to overwhelm him. The time they’d just spent together. Drinking the awful coffee. Dodging the spray. His filling her head with the Stars and Stripes. The question she was going to ask him before the whole world changed.
He closed his eyes tight, as if in darkness there would be some light. But no such luck. Instead, he was startled to see an image of his old hunting rifle staring him in the face again. He tried to shake the vision away, but it refused to go. He sank deeper into the abyss. First he lost his wife; now he’d lost Li. What kind of life was he living here? Why was God piling on him? What long-forgotten sin had got him in all this trouble?
He’d worked very hard to keep his act together after his wife died. At the time, he didn’t believe it was possible. He just couldn’t imagine life without her—that’s what put him on the wrong end of his hunting rifle the first time, so close to blowing his brains out just on the chance that there was an afterlife and he’d be with her again.
Then came the Ghost Team and he was able to get his second life, one dedicated to hunting down his wife’s killers and the people who so cowardly attacked the United States on 9/11. And he’d whacked a lot of them since then. Dear, sweet revenge.
But now this. The unthinkable. Pushed back to square one. The mooks had killed another person dear to him. How could this happen to someone twice in a lifetime? Certainly the love affairs were different. With his wife, it had lasted a dozen years. With Li, counting all the time they’d actually spent together, maybe a dozen hours. But it was love all the same, wasn’t it? The hole left in his heart was just as deep. Just as dark.
Eyes still closed, he knew he had two ways to go here. One was to go find a real rifle someplace and blow his head off once and for all.
Or. . .
“I’ve got to quit the team,” he told Murphy suddenly. “I hate to leave you hanging, but I’ve got to go. . . .”
He let his voice drift off.
Murphy asked him: “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know,” Ryder replied. “But I’ve got to find this Patch guy. Hunt him down. I don’t care if he’s in a cave, in a mansion, or floating on a boat down the Nile. I don’t care if he has twenty grandkids around him. I don’t care if he’s stumbled on the Road to Damascus and has suddenly turned into Mother Teresa. I’m going to find him and I’m going to beat him to death with my own hands. What he did on 9/11 was bad enough. But now, for what he’s done to Li? He’s a dead man—or I’ll die trying to make him that way.”
He knew this all sounded too dramatic, but he meant it.
“And after I grease him,” he went on, “I’m going looking for those two CIA assholes who left her behind. And I’m going to do the same to them.”
“You’re going to do all this by yourself?” Murphy asked him.
“I have to, Murph,” Ryder replied, finally taking his head out of his hands. “If I ever want to sleep again, that is. Damn, I hardly sleep now. But there’s no way I can let them get away with this. I just can’t. . . .”
Murphy smiled sadly. Then he just nodded toward the big picture window at the other end of the huge cabin.
“Go take a look,” he said.
Ryder got up and made his way to the window. Down below, the big aircraft elevators were bringing up the three remaining Superhawk helicopters. Members of the strike team were moving all over the top deck as well. Gear packed, weapons in hand. They were getting ready to launch. . . .
But where were they going?
“They’re going with you,” Murphy told him from across the room. “Because they believe as you do. Li was one of us, even though she never thought of it that way. They took her from us and now they have to pay. That’s how we work. That’s what we do.”
Ryder was speechless. No words could express what he was thinking.
Murphy joined him at the window. “It will mean the end of the team, of course,” he said. “They’re expecting us back in the U.S. in three days and they’ll pull the plug on us for sure if we don’t show up. I mean, we’ll really be unauthorized this time. But I don’t care. I’m with you one thousand percent. Even if it’s the last thing we do, we can’t leave it any other way. Not for us. Not for Li’s family.”
But Ryder was suddenly not so sure. “But I don’t want everyone to walk into the jaws of death with me. This is something I have to do my way. On my terms. As bad as that sounds.”
Murphy shrugged. “You’re the senior officer of the team,” he said. “You’ve always been the senior officer. Just like with Martinez before you, these guys will follow you anywhere. They want to go. And frankly, if you had a change of heart, I believe they’d go without you.”
Ryder looked over at him. “Really?”
“Don’t you see?” Murphy asked him. “They all loved her. Everyone on the goddamn boat—even the guys who’d only known her for a short while. That’s just how she was.”
Ryder looked down at the team again. Again he tried to say something, but the words got caught in his throat. He was proud and devastated at the same time. For some reason, the way the afternoon ocean sun was hitting the deck, the patch each man wore on his right shoulder seemed to be gleaming, almost sparkling with electricity. It was a very strange moment for Ryder.
Finally, he was able to speak again.
“But where the hell do we start? Where do we go looking for this Patch guy?”
“At least I can help on that,” Murphy replied. He cranked up his handheld electronic notebook. It was tapped into everything the Spooks were doing below. “We tracked the Patch’s last phone call to a city called Khrash. Turns out it’s a s
nake pit of Al Qaeda types, a haven for them. In fact, it’s where their fighters go for what amounts to R and R. The NSC actually believes that at least some of the most notorious beheading videos of the past couple years were filmed there—and not in Iraq at all.”
“But if it’s not in Iraq,” Ryder asked, “where the hell is it?”
“In a place some people think is worse,” Murphy told him.
“Afghanistan?” Ryder guessed right away.
“Right on the western edge.” Murphy nodded. “So close that if you sneeze hard enough you’re in Iran. A very nasty part of the world.”
Ryder just shook his head. His brain had finally shifted into gear.
“Nasty?” he said darkly. “They don’t know what ‘nasty’ is.”
The ship turned 180 degrees and was now heading toward the Mediterranean Sea. It was moving at incredible speed, its four jet engines firing in afterburner mode. Ryder soon joined the activity on the deck. The trio of helicopters was in position, rotors turning. Some of those team members who were going—Delta guys, SEALs, SDS, 36 in all—were wearing uniforms still dirty from the mission to Loki Soto. It made no difference to them, though. Their shoulder patches were clean.
The copters were loaded up with little ceremony. As always, most of the troopers were carrying short-stock M16s with extended magazines. But some were also carrying backup weapons such as Mossberg shotguns or grenade launchers. Each man also had his razor-sharp bayonet attached to his first weapon of choice. This was a trademark of the team.
The mood was grim but determined. Murphy had been right. Romantic subplots aside, they’d all thought of Li as one of them—just as much as the SEALs who’d defected or the SDS guys or the original Delta operators. They had to go avenge her death. Had to find her killers and had to make them pay. Or at least die trying.