The Third Caliph

by Alex Archer

  “Shoot them.”

  Obeying instantly, one of the things Garin had always respected about the first Qurtubi, the second Qurtubi leaned out the window and opened fire. Bullets stitched the sedan’s side and the men retreated back into the vehicle.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Garin spotted the SUV that Annja was traveling in only half a block away. The sedan was blocking the intersection and two other vehicles were trailing the SUV. If Annja were stopped, there was no doubt that she would be killed by the CIA or MI-6. He saw the gunners inside the sedan preparing to disembark.

  Garin braced himself and drove straight for the sedan. “Hold on.” He lay on the horn.

  Chapter 33

  As soon as the Land Rover’s front end smashed into the sedan, the air bag ballooned out of the steering column and slammed into Garin. At the same time, his seat belt bit into his chest like a vise. Air emptied out of his lungs in a rush, stifled for a moment when he face-planted into the air bag.

  The impact nearly knocked him out and the steering column collapsed under him. The windshield fractured and dribbled in chunks into his lap and around his feet. Blurred images of the sedan, the street and the surrounding shops pinwheeled through his head, but he felt certain the Land Rover was driving the other vehicle ahead of it. The smell of gunpowder from the air bag stung one of his nostrils. The other was filled with blood.

  Dazed, Garin reached for the gun still trapped under his thigh. The Land Rover ground to a stop. Shifting the Desert Eagle to his left hand, Garin put the transmission into Reverse and tried to back away. The engine was no longer responding. A quick glance at the tachometer confirmed it was dead. He hadn’t been able to hear the silence because he was still partially deafened from the crash.

  His first thought was for himself, but he knew from five hundred years of battle that he was whole enough to walk away. His second thought was for Annja. He looked over his shoulder, but all he saw were the two vehicles that had been following her across the debris-strewn intersection.

  * * *

  INCREDULOUS, ANNJA TURNED in the seat and glanced back at the intersection where the Land Rover had seemed to appear out of nowhere and knock the sedan into the next alley. Hamez had never let off the accelerator, had been closing on the sedan like some kamikaze pilot. She’d taken a firm grip on the seat belt and braced herself against the seat in front of her.

  Some of the vehicle parts from the collision bounced across the windshield and she’d thought it would cave in. Miraculously, the glass had collapsed in on the passenger’s side, but it had held. Wind whipped through the bullet holes and the spaces left from the windshield pulling away. She didn’t know what the driver of the Land Rover had been thinking.

  The two vehicles roaring in pursuit made her forget the Land Rover, though. They were hard to see through the dust, but they were there.

  “We’ve got two vehicles following us.”

  “I see that.” Hamez flicked his gaze to her in the rearview mirror, adjusting the angle to pull her into view.

  “Who are they?”

  “I do not know.” Hamez pulled hard on the steering wheel again, careened sideways into a shop front and left a collapsed awning and several boxes of broken pottery scattered across the street. Luckily, no one was harmed because they’d all retreated into the nearest buildings or alleys.

  The lead pursuit vehicle came screeching around the corner and fishtailed as the driver overcorrected. He slammed into the building, as well, skidded across the pottery shards before gaining traction, then once more picked up the chase.

  One more turn and they were on the main road headed back to the airport. Hamez accelerated and whipped the SUV back and forth across the road to prevent the other vehicles from overtaking them. The SUV swayed precariously, nearly slipping out of control again and again.

  Bullets ripped into the back of the SUV and Annja threw herself down in the seat. In the next moment, Hamez hit the brakes, fishtailing wildly, but holding the road. The closest pursuit vehicle tried to shut down, tires shrieking as they fought for traction, but slammed into the SUV.

  The impact tore the rear door away and lifted the SUV’s back wheels off the ground. When the wheels touched the road again, the SUV sped up and left the trailing vehicle slewed sideways in the road. On the other side of the broken window, men fought the deployed air bags. Fluids leaked from the front of the vehicle and steam billowed from under the hood.

  The second vehicle following them, an SUV similar to the one Hamez drove, evidently avoided collision for the most part. The dents and scrapes down the right side of the other vehicle showed that it hadn’t entirely escaped damage. Inside the SUV, men jockeyed to bring their weapons to bear as they shot past.

  The SUV shivered with the effort of allowing Hamez to catch up to the other vehicle. Before the driver or the armed passengers could react, Hamez pulled up so that the SUV’s front end was even with the other car’s rear bumper. Then he banged into the other SUV and gunned the accelerator.

  Caught on the SUV’s front end, the other vehicle lost traction and swung sideways, coming around in front of them, and flipped over sideways.

  As soon as the other vehicle started to overturn, Hamez pulled to the left, tapped the brake just enough to sever contact, then accelerated around the out-of-control vehicle. Annja watched the other SUV come to a rest at the side of the road.

  No one climbed out.

  * * *

  TWO AIRPORT SECURITY CARS sat on the other side of the red-and-white-striped crossbars. Annja thought Hamez might surrender then, but he hunkered down behind the steering wheel, fought the uncertain steering and barreled through.

  The airport security guards fired a few token shots, some of which hit the SUV, but none that stopped the vehicle. The SUV shattered the crossbar and shivered through the two security cars like a halfback blasting through a defensive line.

  Smoking and sputtering, the SUV continued across the tarmac. Hamez talked hurriedly on a sat phone and then spotted the plane he was looking for, hung up the phone and drove straight for it.

  The small jet sat near the runway. Four men in suits stood at the bottom of the open fuselage door. As Hamez stopped in front of them, they pulled out machine pistols and took up defensive positions around the SUV.

  “Out!” Hamez pointed toward the jet. “Get on! Quickly!”

  Annja grabbed her backpack and struggled to force the dented door. She finally got it open with a loud screech. She turned back to the box of books from Iskandar ibn Silahdar, but Hamez already had gotten them and was handing them to one of the guards.

  The guard sprinted toward the jet. Fleetingly, Annja thought of trying to escape during the confusion, feeling that she had a better than even chance of making it. But she had to know what all the destruction had been for. She wanted to know what secrets Abdelilah Karam’s manuscript held.

  Your curiosity is going to get you killed one of these days.

  Hitching her backpack over her shoulder, Annja ran after the guard up the steps and ducked into the jet.

  * * *

  “QURTUBI.” GARIN LOOKED at the younger man in the passenger seat. He sat supported by the air bag. “Qurtubi.”

  “Yes. I am still with you, my friend.” Qurtubi forced himself to sit up straighter. Instinctively, he pulled his assault rifle up to the ready position. Blood leaked from a cut over his left eye and dripped onto his cheek, running into his beard. He looked around and got his bearing, finally settling on Garin. “That was a desperate thing to do. The woman is worth it?”

  “I don’t know.” Garin took a fresh grip on his pistol and turned his attention to the door. “This is not my fight. Sometimes she makes me crazy.”

  Qurtubi chuckled and wiped blood from his eye. “That is the way it is with women. My father taught me this.”


  Despite the tension of the situation and the police sirens closing in on them, Garin laughed. “This one is different. I just don’t know how different yet.” He put his shoulder into the door and hit it hard. With a shriek, the door popped off its hinges and fell to the ground.

  He already knew the Land Rover was a loss. The vehicle wasn’t registered in his name, so it didn’t matter. And the man who had met him at the airport wouldn’t give him up, either. Even if his name was somehow connected to the incident, Garin had a host of international lawyers just waiting to take care of situations like this.

  With the Desert Eagle in his hand, Garin strode to the other vehicle. Through the cracked windshield, Garin saw that the man in the passenger seat was dead, crumpled by the door when it had given way. The man sitting behind him was in the same shape.

  The three other men were at the very least unconscious. He didn’t recognize any of them. He looked over at Qurtubi, who had followed him around the car.

  “Do you know these men?”

  Qurtubi shook his head. “Not by name, but they are with the British intelligence team that landed in Fes a short time ago.”

  “What were they doing here?”

  “They showed interest in Annja Creed.”

  But what was Annja doing snooping around Fes? What could she possibly be looking for that would draw so much attention? Frustrated, he worked his jaw, tender to the touch.

  The sirens closed in on their position.

  Qurtubi looked at Garin. “If we stay, there will be entirely too many questions.”

  Garin agreed and followed Qurtubi toward the nearest alley. As he walked, he tried to figure out his next move. Annja was still in enemy hands. That wasn’t acceptable. But chasing after her was going to be dangerous.

  * * *

  “SIT DOWN. STRAP IN.” Hamez roughly guided Annja into one of the large seats inside the jet’s passenger area and took another on the other side of the cabin.

  She dropped her backpack into the seat next to her, strapped it in, then fastened her own seat belt. Across from her, Hamez flicked an intercom control on the panel in front of him as he pulled his belt into place.

  “Get us airborne. Now.”

  The two security men sat with three others behind Annja and Hamez.

  Turning to the window beside her, Annja gazed out at the tarmac. The view was limited, but the airport security were en route. The jet’s engines thundered and shook, and the aircraft lumbered forward awkwardly. Then the jet vaulted into the air.

  Bullets slapped against the fuselage, but none seemed to penetrate the jet. The only way they would know if there was any real damage was if the jet reached an altitude that required it to be pressurized. Then she spotted the larger passenger jet ahead of them, directly in their path. She forced herself to take a slow, deep breath and couldn’t keep from arching her back in an effort to get over the other jet.

  For a moment it looked as if the smaller jet was going to end up scrapped against the larger one, but then the smaller one gained enough altitude. Anxiously, Annja watched as they flew over the jet. The tires had to be within inches of touching the other aircraft. Imminent destruction seemed to waver around them and the cabin filled with the thunderous roar of the larger jet’s engines. It seemed as if the jet’s proximity, or the thrust of the other jet’s engines, was going to suck them in and expel them like they’d been through a Cuisinart. Or at least throw off their trajectory.

  In the end, neither of those things happened.

  Hearing Hamez speaking rapidly in his native tongue, Annja turned to face him. He gradually stopped talking over the sat phone and started listening. Even over the roar of the jet engines, Annja heard the male voice at the other end yelling, and she recognized some of the curse words.

  Evidently the boss wasn’t happy with how things were turning out.

  Finally, Hamez shut the phone off and returned it to his pocket. He held his pistol in his right fist.

  “Care to share?” Annja said.

  Hamez gave her a dead-eyed stare. “Your fate is being decided.”

  “Decided how?” Annja couldn’t help asking even though she was fairly certain she knew.

  “Getting to you has proven too much trouble. We do not know why so many intelligence agencies are involved in this matter.”

  Annja pushed aside her fear. She wasn’t dead yet, and she’d been in worse circumstances. Just not lately. She forced herself to be calm. “Since we’re having to wait, maybe I could look in the box. See what we’ve gone to all this trouble for.”

  Hamez regarded her and nodded.

  Now that the jet had leveled off, Annja unbuckled her seat belt and retrieved the box. Hamez’s guards kept close watch over her. She didn’t think that any of them would want to risk shooting her, but men like that wouldn’t hesitate to kill with their bare hands, and they probably carried knives.

  If the situation devolved to a physical confrontation, the jet’s size limited how many of them could come at her at one time. And they wouldn’t expect the sword.

  The trick was to figure a way out of this by her wits. The only way to do that would be to discover what information Thabit was after and how to get it.

  Then her life would be in jeopardy again. It was a catch-22, but she would think of something. If Iskandar’s ancestor’s books actually had any real information that related to what Thabit was searching for.

  Annja dug into the materials, separating what she could read from what she couldn’t. Thankfully, some of the journals were in Spanish, photocopies of work prepared by Philip Gardiner, the English historian who had been aboard one of the ships in the Spanish Armada when it had gone down in 1588.

  Chapter 34

  Curtain Bar

  K Street

  Washington, D.C.

  Anxious but hopeful, Brawley Hendricks walked down the stairs that led to the underground control center beneath the bar. Two guards, one of them a man he had seen before, followed him down. The one in the lead waved a card in front of the lock.

  “Ma’am, your appointment is here.” The lead guard stood in the way and didn’t permit Hendricks to pass.

  In the shadowy back section of the room, Sophie sat at her appointed place. The light from the large screens lifted her features from the darkness. She waved for Hendricks to join her.

  Stepping past the man, Hendricks shot a glance at the wallscreens. One showed a small jet flying over a body of water. The other rolled footage captured by video cameras and cell phones of a battle that had taken place in the streets of Fes.

  At Langley, news was already circulating about an ex-CIA agent who had turned up dead in a battle with men who were believed to be British intelligence. No one there knew what was going on yet. Hendricks’s gut roiled. He was afraid the events he’d put into motion were about to spill back onto him. He reminded himself of Paul Gentry’s murder at Thabit’s hands. Whatever price he had to pay was worth it as long as Thabit went down.

  “That’s the plane that took off from Fes?” Hendricks stood in front of Sophie.

  “Take a seat, Brawley.”

  He sat.

  “Yes, that is the plane.”

  “And Annja Creed is aboard?”

  “We believe so.” Sophie steepled her fingers and stared at her personal computer screen. “She got on at the airport. That’s been verified. However, Hamez or his men could have jettisoned her from the aircraft. Our initial surveillance of the jet was limited. Things...could have happened.”

  Hendricks felt bad about that. His primary concern, though, remained Thabit. “Do you know where they’re heading?”

  “No.”

  Hendricks just stared at the craft. “Where are they?”

  “Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.”

  “Ho
w long have they been in flight?”

  Sophie checked. “An hour and forty minutes.”

  “How much fuel does that type of aircraft hold?”

  “Five to six hours’ flight time.”

  Hendricks thought furiously, cycling through the various factors. “How much does one of those go for? Ten? Twelve million?”

  “Seventeen million, conservatively.”

  Concentrating on the wallscreens at the other end of the room, Hendricks sat up straighter and felt a little more hopeful. “Thabit wouldn’t throw away that much money to lay down a false trail.”

  “No. Which means that whatever he’s after is worth a lot.” Sophie studied Hendricks. “And you maintain that you know nothing about what that is?”

  Hendricks looked at her. “Sophie, I swear to you, if I knew I’d tell you. It would put us one step closer to nailing that man.”

  Sophie held his gaze for a moment, then nodded.

  “Have you been able to track ownership of the jet?” Hendricks hoped that Thabit had left himself exposed. If Thabit was willing to risk the jet, maybe he’d left a trail.

  “To a shell company in the Caymans, yes. Getting through those layers is going to be next to impossible if it’s done right. We’ll know soon enough. I’ve got some of my best asset recovery people on it. But if the CIA hasn’t been able to track any of Thabit’s finances, I wouldn’t hold out any hope.”

  “What about MacKenzie?”

  “He’s still operational. He’s lost half his team. I’m trying to rectify that.” Sophie continued shifting through images on the computer screens. “Right now I’m working on getting him out of Morocco.”

  “You’re sure what Thabit is looking for isn’t there?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  Hendricks sighed. “I don’t know.”

  She nodded. “I don’t think it is. Thabit’s people have made a proper mess of things there. If whatever they wanted was still in-country, they would have stayed. Especially with someone as high profile as Annja Creed.”