Angels of Wrath ft-2

by Larry Bond

  Ravid rose. The thirst had receded again. A light breeze blew; he felt it cool his face as he turned toward the dim lights of the shore in the distance. Hours now. Just hours.

  23

  BAGHDAD

  EARLY MORNING…

  Unable to sleep, Corrine got out of bed at 4:30. She took a shower and got dressed, then left her room in the embassy annex to go over to the main building, where a command center had been set up to keep track of the president’s progress. He was running late: no surprise there. Air Force One was now scheduled to touch down at 9:12 a.m.

  The precision of the estimate would have amused him.

  Corrine poured herself a cup of coffee, checking the overnight reports. While she’d been preoccupied with the First Team and the possible SSN-9 missile, the Secret Service, military security, and Iraqi interior ministry had been chasing down literally dozens of other rumors and possible plots. A suspected suicide-bomb factory had been raided overnight; rather than giving up, the five men inside had ignited their weapons store. Two of the soldiers involved in the raid had died. A truck filled with rocket-launched grenades had been stopped on the highway leading to the airport a few hours ago; its driver had been shot. A patrol of American soldiers had been sent into a town to the west of the airport after a report that a surface-to-air missile had been spotted; a firelight had followed.

  Corrine imagined McCarthy looking at the reports. He’d nod, then say something about how much trouble it was to shoe a horse that hadn’t been properly cared for. “Doesn’t mean you give up,” he’d say.

  She’d heard him use that expression several times about Iraq and many more times about other problems in general. That was one of the things she liked most about him: he was always realistic and somehow optimistic at the same lime. “Look far enough ahead,” he’d say, “and you can’t help but smile.”

  She was about to check in with Corrigan when one of the Secret Service people interrupted to tell her that the caravan for the airport was about to leave.

  “Can you arrange for me to take a later one?” she asked.

  “This is the last one, ma’am. They’re going to shut down traffic at six.”

  Corrine managed to squeeze into one of the three vans that were heading over to the airport. The procession was sandwiched between a pair of armored Humvees. Two Delta plainclothes bodyguards sat in the front of each of the vans. Corrine barely had time to buckle her seat belt before the van started moving; by the time they left the compound the trucks were doing over fifty.

  Speeding onto the highway, Corrine caught a glimpse of pink at the edge of the horizon, a brilliant band of predawn light greeting the day. Jonathon has a good day for it, she thought. He was the sort of man who liked to smile at the sunrise, saying good weather was in his genes.

  “Faster!” yelled one of the men in the front of the van.

  As Corrine started to look up to see what was going on, something exploded. Her body become weightless, even as her eyes remained fixed on the beautiful fringe between earth and heaven.

  24

  CIA BUILDING 24-442

  Thomas Ciello sat in his office staring at the computer. On the left part of the screen was a summary report by one of the CIAs weapons teams about the possibilities of a missile being used in Iraq. Prepared six months before, the paper declared that if Scud missiles remained in Iraq, they were most likely stored as component parts scattered in hiding areas. Assembling the devices would require expertise and time. The analysts, being of a mathematical bent, had even put this into an equation, attempting to show that expertise might compensate for a lack of time and vice versa.

  On the right part of the screen was a report from the Agency photo-interpretation team that had just finished examining the area around Baghdad at Ferguson’s request, looking for a Scud missile or a prepared launch site. The report filled two pages, but the summary amounted to a single word: nothing.

  Thomas had looked at the satellite and U-2 photos appended to the report and found nothing to suggest that the interpreters had missed something. A new series of infrared images would be available in a few minutes, and he was already near the top of the dissemination list.

  Needing a break, he got up and went to his desk, retrieving a candy bar from the bottom drawer. As he unwrapped it, he started skimming through Professor Ragguzi’s book again. He hadn’t gotten very far the other day, thrown off by the Turkey reference. Now that he knew it wasn’t a mistake, he could start reading again. It was as if he’d been blinded by that, as if all he could see were errors or potential errors. Now that he understood the professor’s point, he could read it again with a clearer, fairer mind.

  Oh, he realized. That’s the problem. Everyone’s looking for the missiles.

  He pushed the candy bar into his mouth, threw the blanket over his desk, and ran to talk to Corrigan in the Cube.

  25

  NORTH OF TIKRIT

  DAWN…

  Rankin pulled the sat phone from his pocket as it began to vibrate. He pried the antenna out from the body of the phone awkwardly as he drove, both hands on the wheel. The others were dozing, and the truth was he felt like pulling over and joining them.

  “You need to look for sewer pipes,” said Corrigan.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Hold on.”

  A new voice came on the line. It was Thomas Ciello. “They’re hiding the missile somewhere.”

  “You think?” said Rankin.

  “A sewer pipe or something like that. I have the interpreters on it. There are a couple of places in Tikrit. I think you should go there.”

  “Why would they hide it in a sewer pipe?” Rankin’s experience with intelligence types had not been very good, and Thomas was crazier than the rest.

  “Not in it; with it. From the air, it would look like it belonged. You’d really have to get up close to check it. I have them looking at old sites,” added Thomas. “I think maybe it was in a pile for a long time and then recently moved. There are about forty sites within the hundred-mile range, and nearly double that if we got to a hundred and fifty miles. It would be nearby, I think. I mean, we could look through the whole country, but—”

  “A hundred and fifty?” asked Rankin.

  “Oh yeah. I was going to tell you that, too. That’s the total range Vassenka can achieve. There are a few simple modifications. The rocket fuel has to be properly prepared, but once that’s taken care of, everything else falls into place.” The analyst spoke quickly, as if he were afraid that he would run out of breath before he got his entire idea out of his mouth. “It’s probably going to be set up at the last minute, so maybe there’s a place with an overhang or something they’re counting on, even say a tarp or something. I wanted to look at every mosque that had a roof repair recently or ongoing, and—”

  “Could you hide rocket fuel in a kerosene tank?” asked Rankin. “Not a tank; a tank car. Like a train.”

  “Kerosene?”

  “It said kerosene.”

  “The Russians developed it from the V-2. There were experiments,” said Thomas.

  “What are you mumbling about?” asked Rankin.

  “I have to get back to you.”

  “Do that.” Rankin tossed the phone to Guns, sitting in the seat next to him, then pulled a U-turn across the two lanes of traffic.

  26

  BAGHDAD

  Something about the way the van’s momentum shifted reminded Corrine of an accident she’d been in as a six-year-old. She hadn’t thought of that moment in years, but it came back to her now, and she pushed her neck down against gravity, hunkering in the van as she had in the sedan that had gone off a mountain road in a snowstorm two decades before. She felt the six-year-old’s mixture of horror and fascination, the fear when her mother didn’t answer right away. She heard the loud crack of the airbags and the long hush that followed, the incongruous silence as the car lay in the field, slowly being covered by snow.

  And then she wa
s back in the present, the van on its side, thrown off the pavement by the force of a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound bomb buried beyond the shoulder of the highway.

  “Out! We have to get out!” said one of the bodyguards.

  “Out, yes,” Corrine said. She grabbed at her seat belt latch and undid it, then pushed up against the door. The door flew from her hand. One of the soldiers who’d been riding in the rear Humvee reached in and grabbed for her, helping her pull herself out. She jumped down to the ground, pushing against the chassis to steady herself. Remembering where she was, she ducked down and took out her small Smith & Wesson pistol, holding it in both hands as she scanned the side of the road.

  “In the Hummer! Everybody in the Hummer! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” shouted the soldier who’d helped her out.

  A helicopter whipped toward them.

  The driver of the van had been lifted out and helped down to the pavement, moaning. The airbag had exploded in his face, and he was burned. Corrine grabbed his arm and led him toward the Humvee. She pushed him inside and then ran back to the van. The passenger on the far side of her had been cut by a piece of metal or glass in the door and was bleeding profusely. Corrine grabbed the sleeve of her shirt and ripped it off, trying to stop the blood.

  “Into the Humvee,” said one of the soldiers. “Come on now. Out of here.”

  “We need a medical kit,” she said.

  “In the Hummer, ma’am. Come on.”

  Corrine kept her hand pressed to the man’s neck as the soldier took him in his arms and carried him to the truck. She wedged herself into the back, where a medical kit lay open on the floor. She grabbed gauze and wrapped it over the sleeve and wound, pushing in tightly to try and staunch the flow of blood. She could feel the man’s pulse ebb and flow beneath her fingers.

  “Hospital,” she said.

  “We’re in! Go!” yelled one of the soldiers, and the Hummer jerked forward.

  “This is one screwed-up place,” muttered someone. Corrine didn’t know who said it, but she certainly agreed.

  27

  THE RED SEA

  Getting to Yanbu on the coast of the Red Sea at the lip of the Saudi Arabian desert was only half as hard as finding a serviceable boat there, finally Ferguson found a man who ran a diving business who agreed to rent them a vessel for the day, as long as they paid twice the normal rate in cash. Ferguson didn’t have that much cash; it was Thera who suggested the bracelet.

  The man said he would take a credit card.

  Once they cast off, Ferguson had Thera take the wheel. He unpacked their weapons from the duffle bags and called Corrigan for an update.

  “I have a lot of stuff going on here, Ferg.”

  “Gee, Jack. No kidding. I thought you were hanging out knocking down beers.”

  “Rankin thinks he knows where the Scud missile is.”

  “Good. can you get me a Global Hawk down here? The satellite image is pretty old.”

  “Every available asset in the Middle East is over Iraq. There’s a satellite coming over your area in twenty minutes. A team is standing by to analyze it. That’s the best I can do.”

  “Where’s Van?”

  “They’re en route to back up Rankin.”

  “All right,” said Ferguson. “The photo guys know what the Sharia looks like?”

  “They’ll do their best.”

  “Call me back.” He snapped off the phone.

  Thera looked over from the wheel. “What did he say?”

  “Not much. I figure we have about twenty miles before we have to really worry. Open the throttle up and let her rip.”

  “It could be a wild goose chase. The boats in the satellite photo aren’t necessarily the ones we’re looking for, and they might not have come this way.”

  “I hope so,” said Ferguson. He was putting two and two together and coming up with forty-four: the most recent satellite photo showed a yacht like the Sharia in the Red Sea. He hadn’t been able to find the speedboat, or, rather, he’d seen plenty similar. His theory was that the Sharia had gone south alone for some reason, with Coldwell or whoever had used Thatch’s credit card joining up from Tel Aviv. He might be wrong, but being wrong would be easier to deal with than just missing them.

  “Did you really think I stole the jewels?” asked Thera.

  “I still do.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Nah. You would have plugged me in the back by now if you had.” Ferguson reached into his bag and took out a battered Boston Red Sox cap to shield his eyes from the sun. Then he took out his binoculars and began scanning the horizon in the direction of Mecca.

  28

  NEAR AL FATTAH, IRAQ

  There were guards at the entrance to the lumberyard. Behind them, the fence was locked and chained. James told the men that they had business with the manager. The men told him the manager wouldn’t be in until ten or eleven, and the yard wouldn’t open until then.

  “Tell them we’ll wait inside,” said Rankin.

  James tried it, but the guards claimed not to have the keys.

  “Have them call the manager.”

  “No phone,” translated James. “I think they meant the manager. That’s very possible. Half the country doesn’t have working phones.”

  Rankin looked at the men. There were four of them. They were separated well, positioned in such a way that they could pummel the vehicle if anyone inside opened fire. The fence to the yard opened on a set of barriers and a stationary forklift; it was impossible to simply crash the gate and get in.

  “Tell them we’ll come back,” said Rankin.

  “Ask for a place to have breakfast,” suggested Guns. “A good, long breakfast.”

  “You hungry?” asked Rankin.

  “If they think we’re having breakfast, they won’t be watching for us.”

  “You got that from Ferg,” said Rankin. He turned to James. “Ask for an American-style breakfast.”

  They drove a mile down the highway to a spot where the road curved and they could stop without being seen from the lumberyard. When they stopped, Rankin called Corrigan in the Cube. “What did the space cadet find out about kerosene?”

  “Kerosene was used for the very first set of rockets developed,” said Corrigan, who was reading notes Thomas had prepared. “It would require heavy modifications but is potentially usable, if an expert prepared the rocket. Other possible fuels include—”

  * * *

  “That’s good enough for me. We’re going to do a reecee on the lumberyard. Have Van meet us there.”

  “He’s twenty minutes away.”

  “We’ll be inside. Tell him about the building.”

  “Do you really think—”

  Rankin killed the phone and stuffed it into his pocket. Ferguson didn’t get second-guessed like this. When he said something, people saluted.

  “You think we should update the CentCom security people?” Guns asked.

  “They’re only going to tell us again to check it out and get back to them,” said Rankin, opening his door. “We can get up there before CentCom gets back to us anyway. Gear up.”

  “I’ll stay with the car,” said James. “Somebody’s got to, right?”

  “No. We may need you,” said Rankin. “If we come across someone who speaks only Arabic.”

  “Your Arabic’s fine, Stephen.”

  “Yours is a lot better. I’m all right with a few phrases, but once they get going, I get lost.”

  “It’s a long walk,” said James.

  “Don’t be such a wimp.”

  “I am a wimp.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Guns didn’t think it would be that bad an idea if someone stayed back with the vehicle, but he didn’t feel like arguing with Rankin. They put their weapons into civilian-style knapsacks — having guns out might panic the wrong people- and trotted across the road. They continued across a patch of scrubby land to the railroad tracks, then walked down them in the direction of the lum
beryard. After about fifty yards, Guns spotted a ditch on the far side of the tracks. They had to pick their way over rubble at several spots, but it covered their approach. They walked to within fifty yards of the tanker car, where Rankin saw a guard slouched in the shade.

  “Case closed,” said James.

  “Doesn’t prove anything. We have to get inside.”

  “Just send the police out here.”

  “Man, James, you really are wimping today,” said Rankin.

  “I tell you, I’m a coward.”

  Guns looked over at the journalist. He thought he’d see him smile or wink, but the look on his face was very serious.

  “You have your sat phone?” Rankin asked him.

  “Yeah.”

  “I have a number for you to call if we get greased.”

  James took a small pad and pen from his pocket and wrote it down. “I don’t know where we are.”

  “The guy you talk to will. You call that number and you duck. You got me?”

  “Stephen—”

  “You duck. Run the other way. No heroics. Because they will take out everything in their path. Everything.”

  James shook his head.

  Rankin looked at Guns. “We flank this guy?”

  “I think I can crawl up behind him if you attract his attention.”

  “Shoot him if you have to.”

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  Guns crawled two car lengths beyond the tank car, then got out of the ditch and moved to the tracks. He thought of climbing up the car and attacking the guard from above but decided he’d have trouble if the Iraqi moved before he could attack.

  When Rankin saw that Guns was in position, he moaned, softly first, then louder. The guard walked a few yards in his direction, gun pointed at the ground.