The Third Caliph

by Alex Archer

  “You should be. Everybody else is.”

  “Not everybody.”

  “Enough of them are. Didn’t I just tell you that the brass wants us to have more zombies?”

  “Yes. Not interested.”

  “Somebody’s been sipping bitter-ade.” Doug growled in frustration. “Annja, I need a team player here. I need zombies. Dig up one of those mummies that are in Casablanca. Or gimme some of those flesh-eating beetles.”

  Annja counted to ten. “There. Are. No. Zombies. In. Casablanca.” She leaned back in her chair and watched as the satellite pinged the GPS signals of the devices she’d left with the Bedouins. She took a breath. “I’m here on an archaeological dig, not something for the show.”

  “What kind of attitude is that? You should always be on the lookout for ways to improve the show.”

  “I am. But I’m not looking for zombies.”

  “Fine.” Doug huffed. He could do that like no one else Annja had ever known. “I’ve got the zombie angle covered, anyway. One of us needs to be looking. How do you spell Morocco? I keep coming up with those Mexican shaker things.”

  Annja spelled the name.

  “You sure there’s not a k in there?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Despite the stuff he didn’t know, Doug was one of the best authorities on pop culture Annja had ever met. But he also secretly belonged to a vampire coven. He brought a whole new level to the show that the fans appreciated, but one that Annja struggled with.

  “I don’t know why they didn’t use a k. I’m surprised your parents used an o in your name. Why not just name you Dug?”

  “Because my actual name is Douglas, and I was named for my maternal grandfather. I’m searching for zombies in Morocco.”

  Annja gazed across the room to where the lone secretary manned his desk. She checked the time on the wall and grew more anxious.

  A short, somber man in his fifties came out of the back of the building. He wore a lightweight suit that had been carefully ironed and his shoes shone. A pencil mustache framed his upper lip and his hair was slicked back from a receding hairline. He had dark, bluish-purple bags under his eyes.

  “Miss Creed.” He looked at her expectantly. “This way, please.”

  Annja packed her computer and satellite dish. “Doug, I have to go.”

  “Where? I thought you were staying in Morocco.”

  “I am. I’ve got a meeting.”

  “Okay. I’ll keep looking for the zombies.”

  “You do that.” Annja broke the connection and pocketed her sat phone. She slung her backpack over her shoulder and walked over to the man.

  “I am Inspector Khouri. This way, please.” He waved her to one of the back rooms.

  Chapter 7

  Algiers, Algeria

  Riding in the back of the armored luxury sedan, Habib ibn Thabit gazed out over the white buildings clustered along the seacoast and ignored the frantic thumping in the trunk. Evidently his guest’s sedative had worn off early. It was no matter, though. Bab el Oued—what was once the fishing district—teemed with noise.

  These days, the fishing boats in the harbor shared anchorage with tourist boats and private yachts. Much of the world recognized Algiers as a dangerous place to be, though, so there were very few upstanding citizens on the water. And that made it an even better place to do illegal business.

  Thabit’s own yacht, Shabanna, lay out there waiting for him. So did two cargo ships he was currently doing business with. If he hadn’t had a mole in his organization, he would have only needed one vessel.

  But that was working out to his advantage. Thabit had learned to be a man who took what God provided and made a feast of it. In fact, he was making a feast today.

  In his late thirties, he was a powerful man, and handsome. He didn’t have to think that for himself. There were plenty of women who had told him. He’d hired a personal trainer and a groomer who traveled with him. The Americans, the Central Intelligence Agency, had tried to cultivate those people over the years, but Thabit made it a point to never discuss business. He kept an inner circle, and no one ever got into it.

  The thumping resumed in the back, and this time there were muffled cries, as well. The man was scared, as he should be. He knew the end that he was about to meet.

  Thabit had known exactly when the CIA had turned the man, and he had used that knowledge against the Americans. They wanted him badly, but he always stayed one step ahead of them. No matter how hard they pursued him, and no matter the traps they set, he could not be enticed.

  His father had lived the same way, and in the end he had died of old age, not from an assassin’s bullet. That was how Thabit would die, too.

  The driver controlled the sedan easily, moving swiftly through the traffic. He was older than Thabit, going gray at his temples, but he drove flawlessly.

  Thabit pressed the intercom button that linked him to the driver’s compartment. “Sanjay, are we still followed?”

  “Yes. I have identified five cars. The other men have confirmed this. They are using a rolling tail, swapping out cars every few blocks.” Sanjay paused and nodded. “They are very good.”

  Thabit crossed his knees, straightened the line of his pants and interlaced his fingers. He knew he was secure in the car. Heavily reworked, it was a juggernaut, and he had men waiting to close in.

  But he wanted to make a point to his new business contact, not just to the CIA.

  “Do not lose them.”

  “I won’t.”

  Thabit looked at the two other men in the car, also in suits. They were older, marked by war and danger. Both sat with German machine pistols in their laps. Attentive, but relaxed.

  “How far are we from the meeting point?” Thabit gazed at the expensive Rolex on his wrist.

  “A mile. Perhaps three minutes.”

  Thabit took his thin sat phone from his jacket. He pressed speed dial and waited.

  The call was answered on the other end by a man with a deep voice. Abdul Saidi. “Hello.”

  “My friend, I look forward to meeting with you in a few minutes. I trust everything is in order?” Thabit was talking about the money.

  “Yes. You have my product?”

  “I do.”

  There was a pause. “I was told there were people, possibly Americans or Britons, watching your vessel.”

  “Do not worry.”

  “I will worry.” His newest business contact sounded angry now. “I will not have you bring trouble to my doorstep.”

  “There is no trouble I cannot handle.” Thabit didn’t want to say even that much, but his pride was affronted and he could not restrain himself. “Everything will be well.”

  “If it is not, you are to blame.”

  Thabit did restrain himself then; otherwise, there would have been no deal. He could live without the profit, but he had maneuvered his enemies into an untenable position and wanted to rain retribution down upon them.

  “I will see you in a few minutes. If everything is not as I say, I will give you your product free of cost.”

  Thabit closed his phone and put it away. He watched through the windshield as Sanjay drove the car through the next intersection and turned left. The sedan glided down a couple alleys, as out of place there as a greyhound in a wolf pack. The flotsam that lived in the alley shuffled away from the car out of self-preservation.

  A moment later, Sanjay pulled the sedan to a stop in front of a three-story warehouse. He honked the horn twice.

  The place was decrepit, the stone stained by countless years of hard use and bad weather. Most observers would think it was simply out of business. They wouldn’t notice the windows covered in black paint or the closed-circuit cameras hugging the roofline above.

  The ware
house doors parted down the middle and slid sideways on well-oiled rollers. A row of lights shone down the center of the building, displaying the emptiness of the warehouse. The place wasn’t completely empty, though. Enough crates remained to make a well-placed bulwark where gunners could be stationed.

  Both bodyguards in the car shifted their weapons into readiness.

  “Sanjay, let us proceed.”

  The driver lifted his foot from the brake and rolled forward, not stopping till a man carrying an assault rifle stepped out in front of him. Other men lurked in the shadows behind the crates.

  Thabit opened the door and stepped out of the car. “Abdul Saidi.”

  “I am here.” A thin man with a wide face and curly hair stepped from the crates on the left. In his forties, he moved with a slight limp. His clothing was plain—a gray shirt and dark green pants that would allow him to vanish into the dock crowd if he had to. He carried an assault rifle in one hand, the barrel pointed up. “I am told you were followed.”

  Thabit smiled. “CIA.”

  Several of the men in the warehouse readied their weapons.

  “The CIA? You brought them here? What kind of betrayal is this?” Saidi pointed his weapon at Thabit.

  Thabit held his hands away from his body. “No betrayal. This has been carefully orchestrated.” He gestured to the warehouse entrance. “Close the door. It is about to become quite...noisy.”

  Saidi gave the order and men sprang to close the warehouse doors. One of them turned around quickly and shouted a warning. “There are cars out there! They have found us!”

  Thabit stared at Saidi across the rifle muzzle. He spoke softly over the buzz of conversation that suddenly filled the warehouse. “You have heard about me, Saidi. You know how I do business. I am always one step ahead of those who would offer me harm. Now put the rifle down and wait.”

  “I should kill you right now.” Saidi’s voice was harsh and he glared at Thabit over the open sights of the rifle.

  Calmly, Thabit nodded at his two bodyguards, both of whom had their weapons trained on Saidi. “If you do, you will be the next to die. I promise you that.” Thabit had to force himself to appear relaxed. This was as close to death as he had been in a long time. “This trap was set by me, not my enemies, and they’re about to find that out. If you doubt me, I can bury you here today, as well.”

  CIA Headquarters

  Langley, Virginia

  CIA SECTION CHIEF Brawley Hendricks stared at the large screen covering the wall in front of him in the ops room. In his early sixties, he’d been in this situation several times over the past few decades of his service. For the past fifteen years, he’d been chasing terrorist vermin like Habib ibn Thabit around the world. He’d gotten good at the job, but Thabit had been the most dangerous man he’d ever tried to corner.

  The man was rising within the ranks of the known terrorists, filling the vacuum left by those they’d taken down in recent months. Terrorists were like the mythic hydra—cut off one head and two more grew in its place.

  On the screen, several agents in vehicles converged on the warehouse where Thabit had gone for his meeting. The final destination of the Algerian trip hadn’t been known. Thabit played things close to the vest. Now, though, it appeared they finally had him, and with Thabit they would get a key to the Muslim terrorist group the CIA had been tracking for three years.

  “Keep breathing, Chief.” Craig Morely, the CIA liaison reporting to Congress and the Joint Chiefs on this particular operation, stood nearby. He was in his late thirties, enough of a political animal to roll with the punches by now, and to be wary of results till the dust had settled.

  Like Hendricks, Morely wore the tuxedo he’d had on the previous night when they’d found out Thabit was on the move. They’d been attending a meet and greet, jockeying to suck up to the right holders of the purse strings all agencies coveted now that budgets were being cut.

  Nailing Thabit would be a big feather in Hendricks’s cap. The section chief watched with increasing anticipation as the vehicles jolted to a stop and black-clad CIA special ops agents poured out. Hendricks had gotten to meet most of them, had handpicked and recruited them for the task force.

  Hendricks pulled the headset microphone down to his mouth. “Okay, Swan Leader, let’s get that flock into the air.”

  At the front of the room, near the wall screen but not looking at it because their attention was riveted on their individual computers, a handful of young agents monitored the operation. Three of those agents controlled drones. The spy vehicles were on-site to monitor the situation and intercept radio signals. And, if need be, they could track down anyone who escaped the invasion.

  “Swan Team is online and is go.”

  On the screen, the three drones were in the air, marked in targeting triangles and identified with ID tags. They dodged and whipped across the rooftops toward the warehouse like oversize dragonflies.

  Morely rocked from side to side nervously. He still had a headful of dark hair and years to go before his career was over. Hendricks had gray hair, wore bifocals and had noticed on some mornings an occasional tremor in his left hand that hadn’t ever been there before. His game was about over.

  He wanted to go out with a win.

  “Agent Hendricks.” One of the drone operators worked his controls quickly. “I thought I saw something in one of the surrounding buildings.”

  “What?” Hendricks’s stomach dropped. He’d felt good about this op, but no one had ever before gotten this close to Thabit. Getting in this tight had taken time. There was no reason to doubt the intel.

  “I think there are people in the surrounding buildings.”

  “Put it up on screen.”

  “I am. Moving from real-time to rewind...now.”

  A large section of the upper right-hand screen suddenly filled in with a view from one of the drones. The image slowed, tracking through the frames now, and finally stopped on a window of a nearby building just as a man dodged back inside. A curtain fell back into place, blurring the shadow behind the thin fabric.

  Hendricks stared at the screen in sudden understanding and horror. “Give me access to the team. Do it now!”

  “Yes, sir.” The communications officer was a middle-aged woman who had worked ops like this before. “Patching you through now.”

  “Swan Leader!” Hendricks stepped toward the screen, then caught himself and realized that getting closer to the screen wasn’t going to let those men hear him any better. “Swan Leader!”

  Swan Leader was Special Agent Paul Gentry. He’d been a bright kid with a bright future when Hendricks had recruited him from Virginia Tech. He could have been anything, but Hendricks had pulled him into the spy business. He wasn’t even thirty yet.

  “Paul! Get out of there! It’s an ambush!” Hendricks looked at the comm officer. “Am I getting through?”

  She shook her head and continued inputting keystrokes. “No. We’re blocked. Someone has cut off the comm. Switching to direct sat-relays on handsets.”

  That was going to be too late. Those men were going to die today, and it was his fault.

  Before the special agents in all their military gear could set up, they were hit from both sides by rocket launchers. The narrow alleys around the warehouse turned into a blistering battleground of explosive fury and flames.

  Hendricks lifted a hand to his mouth and watched in helpless horror. “My God.”

  * * *

  “PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPON.” Thabit stared into Saidi’s dark eyes. “You and your men are safe in this place. The CIA agents out there are going to die.” He smiled grimly. “I decided to kill two birds with one stone.”

  Saidi lowered his weapon, then waved to his fellows to do the same. “How did you know they would be here?”

  Thabit walked to the rear of his vehicle a
nd gestured to the driver. “They put a mole into my organization seven months ago. It took me two months to figure it out, and five more months to figure out how I could best use him.”

  The driver reached into the car and triggered the trunk release. The lid rose slowly and revealed the man lying on his back inside the compartment. He was disheveled and bloody from the beating Thabit’s security people had given him earlier. His lips were split around the gag in his mouth, and one eye was swollen shut.

  “Since we were doing business together for the first time, I wanted to make sure you understood what I could do for you. And to you.” Thabit reached into the trunk and hauled the man out.

  The prisoner fell heavily on the floor. Plastic ties held his hands behind his back and bound his ankles. He writhed, looking up at Thabit and making pleading noises.

  Thabit looked at Saidi. “You want the Moroccan government out of Western Sahara.”

  Saidi nodded. He was in the Polisario Front, the liberation group trying to increase the holdings of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

  “Today, you and I share a common goal. King Mohammed is a lapdog for the Westerners, and he will never allow Western Sahara to belong to the Sahrawi people. You are having trouble securing weapons with which to continue your struggles there. I can get them to you, and I can do it more cheaply than others who might want to take advantage of you.” Thabit paused. “I work to strike back at the Western world the same as you, and I’m in a position to help you. All you have to do is accept that help.”

  “If I choose not to?”

  Thabit shrugged. “Then I will find another rebel who is willing to do business with me. But I tell you now that no one else will be able to get you the weapons I have waiting for you in the harbor for less than what I am offering. I have chosen you because you are a committed man. I know you will use those weapons.”

  Saidi hesitated only a moment longer. “All right. It will be as you say. We have a deal.”

  “Good.” Thabit smiled, then he reached under his jacket and took out his pistol. “Keep in mind, I am not a man who is afraid to get his hands bloody.” He seized the prisoner’s hair, tilted his head up, pressed the barrel into his forehead and pulled the trigger. The prisoner shivered and died, and Thabit felt warm blood from the dead man’s wound on his cheek. He put the pistol away and took out a handkerchief to blot it from his face.