by Alex Archer
The team moved as though they’d all worked together before. They had an easy camaraderie, a confidence.
Mac and Yahya were obviously the most familiar with each other. Annja had picked up on the mentor/apprentice relationship. The others were purely professional.
She had expected the mercenaries to be heavily armed, but they mostly carried personal weapons: pistols and knives, though the Middle Eastern woman carried a cut-down pump shotgun under her white wool burnoose.
They weren’t exactly outfitted to take on Mustafa and his raiding party.
Annja held her sat phone to her ear. It rang four times before the other end picked up.
“Annja?” Bart McGilley sounded exhausted, and she thought perhaps he’d gotten a case late in the day that had lasted through most of the night.
“Yes. Look, I know I’m calling at a bad time.”
Bedsprings squeaked at the other end of the connection, and sheets rustled as Bart rolled over. “What time is it?”
“Here or there?”
“What?”
“It’s early there—4:00 a.m. or so.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“No.”
“You don’t make a habit of calling me at 4:00 a.m. when you’re not in trouble. That would end a friendship quicker than just about anything I know that didn’t involve fire or killing a pet.” Bart paused. “You still in Morocco?”
“Yeah. I ran into a guy here. I’d like to have him checked out.”
“A guy in Morocco? And you want me to check him out here in New York?”
“Trust me. If this is who I was told he is, he’ll show up when you start looking for him.”
“Let me get a pencil.” Bart was gone for a moment, then he was back. “Now give me a name.”
Annja did and Bart put her on hold a second time. She listened quietly and watched Mac put his group through their paces. One of the team was already working at a notebook computer.
Bart came back to the phone. “This guy you’re wondering about? He’s trouble, Annja. The killing kind. Thabit’s got his photograph on every major wall through the intelligence arena. I’m talking CIA, NSA, FBI, NCIS, the works. Everybody. He’s real popular with the alphabet groups. How did you run into this guy?”
“Some of his men came after me this morning.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Pretty sure.” Annja believed Mac about that.
“What did they want with you?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t stick around to ask. Can you do me a favor? Can you check into this Thabit guy and let me know what you find?”
“Sure, but if you want my best advice, I’d say get out of there. Drop whatever you’re doing and head home.” Throughout their friendship, Bart had always spoken what was on his mind, but he’d never tried to guilt Annja.
“I can’t.”
“Annja, whatever you’re working with, it’s probably centuries old. Trust me, it can cool off for a while. At least until you regroup.”
He didn’t know about the rest of the dig team.
Bart sighed. “Let me do some digging. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
“Thanks.” Annja hung up as Mac started over to her. He’d seen her talking on the phone, but he didn’t question her.
His eyes met hers. “I’ve booked passage for us on the grand taxi line. It’s a three-hundred-mile trip across the desert to Marrakech.” Mac glanced at the expensive watch on his wrist. “It’ll take seven or eight hours to get there, at least—but there’s no guarantee of safety along the way. Thabit will know about the dig team. He’ll know about Mustafa.”
“The police will give him that information?”
“They won’t know it’s Thabit asking. He’ll work through a go-between.”
Annja nodded. “I understand, but what I don’t get is why Thabit is interested in this.”
Mac shook his head. “I don’t know. That part of this little tea party is your specialty. I’m just going to work on keeping us alive.” He glanced at his watch. “We’re pulling out in thirty minutes. Is there anything you need?”
“No. Thank you.”
He excused himself and returned to his team, and Annja pulled out the piece of the scroll she’d managed to escape with. She didn’t know if the answer to Thabit’s interest was there, but the scroll was all she had. What secret had Abdelilah Karam carried to his grave?
Chapter 15
Algiers, Algeria
Habib ibn Thabit stood inside the pilothouse of his two-hundred-and-ten-foot yacht and watched over the harbor. The number of boats had increased out on the water as shipments had come in, and some of those were doubtlessly manned by CIA agents or their assets. They didn’t know about his boat, and the true ownership was hidden beneath a snowstorm of paperwork, so he felt safe enough. The main flurry of searches for the attackers on the warehouse the previous day had died down.
Dressed and fresh from the shower, Thabit drank sparkling water from a champagne flute. On a low hill overlooking the harbor, the Casbah looked like something out of a fantasy story. The coupolettes were covered with beaten metal that gleamed in the afternoon sunlight.
Thabit had visited the Casbah a number of times when he’d been a younger man, little more than a boy. Getting lost there was easy, but the sights were always worth seeing. The Citadel, as it was also known, was divided into the high city and the low city, and that division had continued until present time.
The structure was scarred by time and violence. As long as it had been on the hill, the structure had been a place of refuge and struggle. Damage from spears and arrows, from cannonballs and from rifles and small arms fire during the Algerian struggle for independence scarred the walls.
Thabit pulled his gaze from the old buildings of the Casbah and glanced at the satellite-fed television that hung in the corner of the helm. Reporters were still on the scene at the warehouse where the CIA agents had been ambushed. Fire had spread through the building, but it had been quickly brought under control. Still, the warehouse had suffered major damage.
According to the reports, several people were dead, including a handful of rescue personnel. Once it had been discovered that many of the dead were suspected of being American intelligence operatives, the Algerian police and military had closed in rapidly. Journalists still got tipped to the story and the probable identity of the dead men, and the story was blazing across the news services.
The CIA would have its hands full trying to contain the event, explain the men there and spin damage control.
“Mr. Thabit, if I may.”
Turning, Thabit found Rachid standing behind him. Rachid was one of Thabit’s chief sources of information. Slim and dapper, with a blue velvet eye patch covering his right eye, Rachid had spent half of his forty years in the United States, learning technology as well as how the Western minds worked. Not once had he forgotten he was a Muslim living in a land of enemies. During that time he had gone to college, worked in Washington, D.C., as a political aide to garner the American Muslim votes and had gotten to know several people within the intelligence communities.
A few years ago, his cover had been blown when the CIA had been on a fishing expedition. He’d barely gotten away with his life, and he’d lost his eye. When he was on a mission, he wore a prosthesis instead of the patch, but when he was around Thabit, Rachid wore the patch. It was his badge of arms.
“Yes?”
“I have some bad news, sir.” Rachid stood stiffly at attention.
“What?” Thabit was splitting his time watching the live newsfeed and Rachid.
“Our agents in Erfoud were unable to take Annja Creed into custody.”
Dark anger stole through Thabit. “What happened?”
“So
meone else was there and aided her. If you wish, I can show you.”
Thabit nodded and followed the smaller man to the inner offices of the yacht. The operations room had been set up like a military command vessel’s CIC. Everything in the wheelhouse could be operated from inside this room, and there were no windows. Computer hardware covered the walls.
Rachid stood in the center of the room and held the small tablet PC that allowed him to control the computer. At his touch, a sixty-inch monitor rose out of a recessed area in the floor.
“The hotel where Annja Creed was staying had no security cameras.” Rachid’s voice was flat and factual. “Nor did any of the buildings on the other side of the streets that surrounded the building. However, there were a few people who saw what happened and took video on their phones and cameras, which they later uploaded to YouTube, Facebook and other social networks. My data miners sought them out and I patched them together.”
The resulting video was patchy and jerky, and it jumped from place to place. Thabit watched in silence as the interception team strode into the hotel. Within minutes, gunshots played over the recording.
“They escaped through the rear of the building.” Rachid touched the tablet again. This time the image on the monitor magnified, showing Annja Creed in the alley behind the hotel. She stood near a tall black man.
“They escaped?”
“Yes. Annja Creed and this man.” Rachid stroked the tablet PC again, and the image on the large screen magnified, losing some of the sharpness. “After enhancing this image, I have managed to identify him through facial recognition.”
A yellow rectangle suddenly framed the man’s face and lifted it out of the screen. Over the next few seconds, the features became clearer. Once the image looked clean, a window on the other side of the screen opened and began flicking through images faster than Thabit could follow.
The image froze on the new picture, which showed the man standing in an office building with an assault rifle canted in the crook of his arm. He looked fierce and hard edged, a dangerous man, with few scruples.
“His name is Rafe MacKenzie. From all accounts, he is a mercenary, but he also moonlights for the CIA. I believe they brought him into this situation.”
“As an agent?” That interested Thabit.
“I believe so.”
“Then the Americans have not yet given up their hopes of running me to ground.” Thabit smiled at that. He’d bloodied their noses yesterday. He wouldn’t mind doing it again. “What do we know about MacKenzie?”
“He’s worked as an asset for the CIA in years past.”
“In what regard?”
“An assassin. An extraction specialist. Anything the Agency wanted that requires guts. MacKenzie works on the contracted hits and operations.”
“Why would the CIA involve MacKenzie with this woman?”
“I can only assume the Americans realized you were interested in the discovery Annja Creed has made in Morocco.”
Thabit took a deep breath. If MacKenzie had been sent to Morocco to meet up with Annja Creed... Of course, they couldn’t know the secret that had been buried for fourteen hundred years.
“How would the CIA have discovered my interest in Creed’s find?”
Rachid shook his head. “I have no immediate answer to that, but I will look into it.”
“Do so.”
“At once.”
Thabit turned and walked out the door, heading for his private rooms on the yacht. He tapped the headset that linked him to the yacht’s control center. “Captain Abu.”
The captain responded at once. “Yes, sir.”
“Get us away from here.”
“Yes, sir. What heading would you like?”
“Make for Morocco. Put us up in international waters.”
“Yes, sir.”
In his suite, Thabit poured himself a fresh glass of sparkling water and got out his prayer rug. He took off his shoes and knelt facing the east. For a moment he merely sat there and breathed while his mind wrestled with everything going through it. He had solved one problem rather easily, but now he had another before him.
His phone rang and he pushed the call through to his television. The screen shimmered, then revealed Mirza Almodarresi. A few years older than Thabit, Mirza was going gray at the temples, and a little heavier because he no longer took care of himself as much as he had when he’d been younger. Like Thabit, he preferred Western clothes, but he also wore a keffiyeh because he did business with the Europeans and Americans and did not want them to forget what he was.
Almodarresi sat at a massive desk, leaning back in his chair, his fingers steepled before him. Behind him, a small shark swam restlessly through a huge aquarium amid brightly colored coral. “Hello, Habib. I trust you are well.”
“I am, Mirza. Thank you. I trust you are also well.”
“Yes.” Almodarresi nodded. “I see that you have been busy.”
Thabit sipped his water. He knew what was coming and looked forward to getting it over.
Almodarresi frowned. “Are you going to tell me that you are not responsible for the deaths of the CIA agents in Algiers?”
“Have they been confirmed as CIA agents?”
Almodarresi waved that away irritably. “We are friends. Please do not insult me.”
“As you say. In answer to your question to the deaths of those CIA operatives, yes, I am responsible.”
“You are valuable to us. We would not see you lost.”
Thabit smiled slightly. They could talk freely because the satellite phone connection was heavily encrypted. “I would desire not to be lost even more than you wish it.”
“Then why do you antagonize the Americans?”
“They planted a mole within my organization.”
Almodarresi was quiet for a moment. “You did not know this?”
“Of course I knew this. The work we have been doing has not been compromised. God looks out for us, as He always has.”
“Why did you not simply get rid of the mole?”
“I did. I shot him myself yesterday.”
Almodarresi frowned. “You could have done that quietly.”
“The CIA has been closing in on some of my operations. I wanted to create some breathing space. It would do you and the others no good if I allowed myself to be hemmed in.”
That was true. Thabit did what the other Shiite leaders would not: confronted their Western enemies and killed them where he could. Those like Almodarresi took comfort in their fortunes and spent money to have other people fight the war against the West. Thabit respected them for what they could do, but he detested them for what they didn’t do. They were at war with the West, and with the current economy in that part of the world, great strides could be made.
If they weren’t so afraid.
Mirza Almodarresi resided in Bahrain in wealth and privilege. Thabit had lived there, too, only without so much wealth and privilege—until he had decided to take it for himself. Almodarresi and his ilk depended on the oil industry that fueled the Bahrain economy. During his early years, Thabit had lived off that, too, only not so well.
Twelve years ago, Thabit had made his decision and he had charted his own course. His personal fortune was not so grand as that of Almodarresi and others, but Thabit had more power. They all knew it and hated that fact as much as they envied it.
Most of all, they loathed the simple truth that they needed him. He was the hard fist they reached for when they wanted to leave a mark on the Western world.
Almodarresi placed his hands on the desktop. He tapped a forefinger and struggled to look calm. But his bright eyes told Thabit the man was angry.
“Do you truly think you were becoming hemmed in, my friend?”
Thabit sipped his water. “I am closer
to the situation than you are, so yes, I believe I am the authority in this matter.” He paused. “And I will never make a habit of checking in with you before I choose to do something, Mirza. Do not do yourself the disservice of ever thinking that. You are no fool.”
Almodarresi tapped his finger again, caught himself and drew his hands back into his lap. “People worry that you are becoming too aggressive, Habib.”
“I am convinced we are not being aggressive enough. We need to strike back now while the West is afraid and while they’re fragmented.”
“To follow that course of action is to further reveal ourselves. This mole you killed is proof that they know who you are.” Almodarresi met Thabit’s eyes directly. “Once the West knew who Osama bin Laden was, his days were numbered.”
“Are you saying my days are numbered?”
“All of our days are numbered, my friend, but bold moves will shorten the number of those you have left. Be more patient.”
“You do not fight a war patiently.”
“No, but you change the world patiently. We are working God’s will. We need to keep that uppermost in our minds.”
Anger stirred Thabit. He put his hands behind his back and clenched them into fists. He did not need to entertain that discussion at this moment. Although he had emerged the victor, the skirmish with the CIA had created repercussions. The discovery Annja Creed had potentially made in Morocco might prove damaging.
And now Almodarresi was daring to call him on the carpet.
“I am a holy warrior, Mirza. I am a tool for God. I am a weapon He uses to strike against the unbelievers.”
“I know this, my friend. I—we—are also worried that you will draw the wrath of the Sunnis upon yourself. Iran and some of the other nations fear Western and Israeli aggression as a result of the attacks.”