As Cole watched workers nervously moving out of Quraishi’s way, determined to avoid eye contact of any sort, he could only begin to wonder what that understanding was.
The whole situation seemed suspicious to Cole; he had been taken to a closed tourist attraction – he had noticed that the gates had been resealed behind them by the man from the ticket booth – and was being followed by two armed security guards, with another car full waiting outside. As far as he knew, Quraishi had no reason to suspect him; but on the other hand, maybe Jeb Richards had said something? He might only have mentioned a rogue US agent, and Quraishi might have thought the timing of ‘Dan Chadwick’s’ visit was simply too coincidental.
But even if Quraishi was setting Cole up, what choice did he have? He needed answers, and he wasn’t going to get them by playing it safe. And so he decided to play Quraishi’s little game and see what happened.
As they walked through the dusty alleys of the city zoo, Quraishi gave Cole a running commentary – here are the kangaroos, there are the parrots, over on the right you can see the elephants; on and on it went, but Cole had seen better animals pretty much everywhere. The ones held here seemed uniformly dull, depressed and unhappy.
‘Ah,’ Quraishi said with a smile, ‘and here we have my favorite.’ He gestured with his hand to a sunken pool to their left. The surface was still, but when Cole raised his hand to cut out the glare of the sun, he could see small, rough shapes moving silently through the water.
Eyes and snouts.
‘American alligators,’ Quraishi informed him. ‘Alligator mississippiensis. Members of the same family are said to date back as far as the Cretaceous. Incredible creatures. They will eat anything, from fruit to large mammals, from snails to automobile license plates. Even men,’ he added, his expression blank.
When Cole didn’t respond, Quraishi smiled and turned back to the pool, moving closer. Cole noticed that the two security guards were also getting closer, and he could feel the adrenalin start to work its magic on him, readying him for anything that might happen.
‘But on the other hand,’ Quraishi explained, ‘they can sometimes live for weeks – even months – with no food whatsoever.’ He turned back to Cole. ‘You can see why they have survived for so many millions of years,’ he said. ‘They are perfectly evolved killing machines.’
‘You believe in evolution?’ Cole asked, now right at the water’s edge next to Quraishi. ‘I thought Allah created everything that we see.’
‘He did,’ Quraishi said, seemingly undisturbed by Cole’s ruse to upset him. ‘I appreciate that some of my fellow believers claim that this means that evolution could not happen, but I myself fail to see why the two things should be mutually exclusive. Blame it on my western education, perhaps. As far back as the nineteenth century, Islamic scholars have supported Darwin’s theories. Jamal-al-Din al-Afghani, for instance, agreed that life will always compete with life, and the strongest will survive. There are numerous references to the emergence of life in the universe in the Qur’an, and many respected men have explained how there is no contradiction between these and the scientific theory of evolution.’
Cole sensed the two security guards directly behind him now, and turned to see their Uzi submachine guns aimed at his back. So Quraishi’s little speech had been little more than a distraction; whether it reflected what the man believed was irrelevant, and unknowable. Sociopaths like Quraishi were able to fashion any reality they desired if it served their purposes.
Cole moved his head, taking in the three men stationed on the parapets of the high walls which surrounded the zoo, aiming Soviet-era – but no less deadly for that – Dragunov sniper rifles at him. The men from the second car, Cole mused as he turned back to Quraishi.
‘Okay,’ Cole said indifferently. ‘What do you want?’
‘I would like very much to know who you really are,’ Quraishi replied in a voice that was still friendly. ‘And if I don’t find out, I would like very much to feed you piece by piece to my little friends here.’
Quraishi gestured with a sweep of his hand to the alligators swimming languidly in the pool before them, and Cole for an instant saw what lay behind the man’s eyes.
And it was only then that he realized how much trouble he was in.
Quraishi and his guards had a different approach to feeding Cole to the alligators than Cole himself had used with al-Zayani and the sharks.
Whereas Cole had strung the terrorist financier upside down, so that his head was just inches from the water, Cole was being held down the right way up on the concrete poolside, the water lapping gently against his feet. His shoes and socks had been removed, and he could feel the hot sun warming his skin.
The difference was that Cole had just been trying to scare al-Zayani; there were no sharks, and even if there had been, Cole wouldn’t have fed him to them. He wanted the man to talk, and he knew that just the threat of it would be enough.
Here, though, it was clear that Quraishi wanted Cole to talk, and the fact that his feet were in the water meant that his captor was prepared to have the alligators really start to eat him. If his head was near the water, their first bite would render Cole useless; if they started on his legs, Quraishi would still have plenty of time to extract a confession before they reached anything truly vital. If he didn’t pass out from pain, shock and blood loss first, of course.
The water was already bloody, Quraishi’s men having thrown in some raw meat from a large pail they’d brought down to the pool.
Cole watched in detached terror as the alligators’ huge jaws snapped out of the water and swallowed the small carcasses whole.
‘I hope it’s all Halal,’ Cole said, trying to keep himself calm.
Quraishi spat at him, then laughed. ‘Very funny, Mr. Chadwick,’ he said. ‘Or whoever you are. I’m sure you understand that we are using the meat to bring them in closer, get them interested in those little feet of yours. They are cautious for the most part,’ he carried on conversationally, as if giving a lecture. ‘Sometimes they can be a little lethargic, even sluggish. They need some . . . encouragement, before they start on the real feast.’
Quraishi snapped his fingers, and an assistant appeared with a cup of tea for him. The terrorist leader lounged back languidly, enjoying the sun. He seemed perfectly relaxed, and Cole was sure that he’d done this before, probably more than once.
Cole watched as the gators snatched the meat out of the water, rolling over and over as they ripped and swallowed, teeth tearing, blood spilling.
As they finished, they continued to swim, eyeing the shore warily, as if wondering whether to come back.
‘They will not take long to make the decision, my friend,’ Quraishi said pleasantly. ‘Then they will come back. Or one will, at least, just to test you out. Probably that one there,’ he said, pointing at a large gator which appeared slightly darker than the others, circling closer. ‘He’ll take a foot at least, perhaps two. My men here will pull you back, make sure he doesn’t get everything, but it will mean that your entire leg will probably be torn off below the knee.’ He smiled. ‘I cannot promise that the experience will be completely painless.’
‘Okay,’ Cole said, steadying his hammering heart rate with pure strength of will, ‘what is it you want to know?’
‘Ah,’ Quraishi said in disappointment. ‘Ready to talk so soon?’ He watched the gators for several more moments, then looked back at Cole. ‘Let us start with your real name. Then we can move on to who you work for, what you know, and who you have told.’ He gestured at the hungry alligators, some of which were starting to nose their way onto the poolside. His men chased them back into the water. ‘If they let you get that far, of course.’
‘How about an exchange?’ Cole asked, trying to ignore the gators.
‘An exchange?’ Quraishi asked as he sipped at his tea. ‘How do you mean?’
‘I’ll tell you what you want to know, and you tell me what I want to know.’
Quraishi
laughed. ‘But what possible use can it do you now?’ he asked. ‘You must realize that you are going to die here, I will not insult your intelligence by pretending otherwise. The only question that should bother you is how painful the experience is going to be.’ He gestured to the murky green waters of the gator pool. ‘You are hardly in a position to barter.’
‘If I’m going to die anyway, why not tell me something?’ Cole asked, his feet pulling back reflexively from the water as the big dark gator nudged his snout towards them. ‘Like what the weapon is that you stole from the Fu Yu Shan, and what you’re planning on doing with it.’
Quraishi laughed again. ‘Oh, I see; you want me to tell you my entire plan? So that – what? So that you can go to your grave knowing that you failed to prevent the biggest massacre in US history? Would that make you happy?’
‘Try me,’ Cole said seriously.
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Quraishi said. ‘Even my men don’t know.’ He pointed to the guards who were restraining Cole on the concrete slope, others who were monitoring the gators, keeping them away with long poles until their boss gave them the word. ‘If I told you, I would have to have them all killed to keep them quiet. And you know that the Qur’an forbids unnecessary killing.’
It was Cole’s turn to laugh. ‘It’s funny how you people twist the Qur’an to support whatever suits you at the time.’
‘You people?’ Quraishi asked with a raise of an eyebrow. ‘It is racist comments like that have damned your country.’
‘Racist? I’m not talking about Muslims. I’m talking about terrorists. Cowardly little piss-ants like you, nothing better than common criminals. You people.’ Cole spat at Quraishi’s feet. ‘The scum of the earth.’
Cole received a backhanded blow from one of the men who held him, but Quraishi held out a hand to stop him. ‘No,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘No.’ He smiled. ‘If this man wants to play games, we can accommodate him.’
Quraishi turned to the men keeping the gators at bay with their poles, and snapped his fingers. They moved back at his signal, and the alligators crept immediately closer.
‘We’ll continue our conversation after breakfast,’ he said with a smile.
Quraishi watched as his favorite, the nearly black alligator he’d called Adil – the just one – inched closer to his captive’s bare feet.
The man who had come to him as Daniel Chadwick tried to pull them back from the water, but his men continued to hold him in place, immobile. The unknown man’s hands were restrained, but his legs were free, and Quraishi looked on with enjoyment as they tried to kick out, their jerking actions an indication of the panic the man must now be feeling.
He was brave, of course; most intelligence agents were, due to the nature of their work. But he would tell Quraishi everything after just the first little nibble from Adil’s powerful jaws.
He wondered what it meant, the presence of this man here. Was he same man Richards had warned him about? And if he was, was he really working alone? And if he wasn’t, who else knew about his trip to Riyadh? Who else knew that the man had gone to the Ministry to meet Quraishi? Who else could link Quraishi to recent events?
Quraishi sipped his tea as he waited for the first screams. Did it even matter anymore? He had already accepted the fact that his life would soon change. His plan acknowledged that his role would be revealed sooner or later. But Quraishi welcomed this; it would be a relief to finally leave the public life he had created for himself. The lie.
For none of it was the real man. The al-Saud family connections, the job at the Ministry – even his wife and children – all were just affectations, a smokescreen to throw the authorities off the scent of the real Abd al-Aziz Quraishi.
For the real Quraishi was embodied in the Lion, the feared, hooded leader of Arabian Islamic Jihad. The silk hood didn’t mask his real face; the hood was his real face, and everything else was the mask.
He wondered sometimes where it came from, this drive to change the world, his passionate, zealous fury against the House of Saud and the Great Satan. The truth was, he didn’t know. His life had been blessed – he had had a happy childhood, he had never wanted for anything – and yet it had not been enough. There was something inside of him, something – unknowable? – that demanded that he take action, do what he was doing, rise up against the status quo and demolish it in its entirety.
He was destined for great things, that much he knew. And what could he ever hope to attain as a minor relative of the royal family? An assistant minister, who the corrupt regime would allow to rise no higher?
He knew that American psychoanalysis might suggest that he was driven by greed, the insatiable desire for power and control. Perhaps there were incidents in his childhood which had made this important for him – a feeling that he couldn’t control things, which had ultimately led to an overriding need to control everything, to change everything.
And yet Quraishi had no use for psychoanalysis; it was yet one more trick used by the West to conceal and hide the truth, the only thing that really mattered.
The will of Allah.
And so Quraishi never questioned his motives, his intentions. He was what he was because Allah had made him so. And if Allah had made him so, then it must be for a reason; and who was Quraishi to stand in the way of His will?
His plan was about to come to fruition, and the United States would never be the same again, and neither would Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East.
Indeed, the very fabric of the world was about to change, just as Allah required.
And if this man before him was a threat to that, then Quraishi would find out what he wanted, and make him pay for his effrontery.
Quraishi finished his tea and handed the cup back to the assistant, smiling as Adil made the final approach, his black jaws gaping wide.
8
It was now or never, and Cole didn’t have to think twice; he just reacted.
As the dark alligator opened its jaws to take its first bite, Cole pivoted up on his hips and pulled his legs free of the guards’ grasp. He had been purposefully jerking them forwards and backwards to simulate panic for the past few minutes, as well as to get the guards used to his movements, and now they arced up in the air and caught around the nearest security guard’s neck, pulling him down in one fast blur.
The man’s head was inside the alligator’s hungry mouth before anyone could react, and the writhing of his body as the jaws clamped closed, blood flying from the severed neck as the alligator twisted the head clean off, caused immediate panic in the others.
The two men holding Cole down instinctively let go to help their comrade, hands pulling the headless corpse back to the blood-drenched concrete poolside.
Cole was moving again in the same instant, on his feet and barreling into one of the men covering him with the Uzi. The startled man – his focus on his friends who were now trying to fend off the rest of the alligators – was knocked to the ground, dropping the submachine gun.
Shots rang out, and Cole realized that the snipers were firing at the alligators, who were storming out of the water, activated by the smell of the blood and the sight of the headless corpse.
Cole stooped to the ground and grabbed the Uzi, his hands still bound at the wrists, and shot the other armed guard in the chest before he even knew what happening.
One of the other men broke away from the group by the water, running towards Cole, but Cole opened up with the Uzi and the man flew back into the water, blood geysering out from the wounds in his chest.
Within seconds, the alligators moved in to tear the body to pieces.
Cole saw Quraishi backing away from the area, gesturing for the men on the roof to leave their friends to it and fire at Cole.
Cole immediately started firing at the rooftop snipers, hitting one and pinning down the others.
Cole waited – Quraishi was still backing away, and the men by the pool were too occupied with the gators to bother him – and then on
e of the snipers showed himself, and Cole fired two shots, hitting him in the mouth and shoulder.
He knew the other sniper would take his chance while Cole was occupied, and – anticipating the man’s movement – Cole pivoted and fired the last of his rounds. He saw blood fly from the sniper’s arm and chest and knew that – although he might live – at least he could no longer fire his rifle.
Cole turned to Quraishi, but felt the heavy impact of a body as he was tackled by one of the guards who had earlier been controlling the alligators with the pole.
The air was knocked from Cole’s lungs, and both men fell into the writhing, bloody waters of the alligator pool.
It took a lot to surprise Quraishi, but the agent’s actions had managed to do so.
One moment the man who had been posing as Daniel Chadwick was lying there, terrified he was about to have his legs chewed off; and the next, he was moving more quickly than anyone Quraishi had ever seen, except perhaps for Amir al-Hazmi.
And then one of his men was nothing more than a headless corpse, the gators were attacking the others; some fell into the water, others escaped, screaming as they went; then the agent got hold of one of the Uzis, another man was down, then his snipers too . . .
And still Quraishi wasn’t moving.
What the hell was wrong with him? What was he waiting for?
He didn’t want to admit it, but it must have been shock, rooting him to the spot. But he was unarmed, and against a man like this, he would stand no chance. He had to get away.
Yet still his legs refused to move.
But then – yes! – one of his men sacrificed himself, tackling the agent right into the middle of the alligator-infested pool.
This was his chance.
Run! he ordered himself. Run!
Cole saw the movement of green reptilian armor in the dark water and pulled free of the guard, kicking with his legs to the bottom of the pool. He sensed the huge beast sail past above him, felt the movement of the water as the big head collided with the other man’s body.
WHATEVER THE COST: A Mark Cole Thriller Page 24