‘You right,’ said Billy, ‘but our tramping through the undergrowth will sound like a herd of buffalo.’
‘That’s a risk we’re going to have to take.’
The conversation between the CIA agents was only five miles from where Shafik, Faiz, and Mustafa were sitting, dry and comfortable. The hut had leaked, but Shafik had found some leftovers from the linoleum someone must have applied to the floor at least thirty years previous and had nailed them to the outside of the roof. The good guys were cold and wet and miserable. The bad guys were warm and dry.
Hussein Shafik found the peace that he had not known since he had arrived in America and if it wasn’t for the complaining and at night, the passing of wind from Faiz Ahmed, he could have stayed indefinitely. There were fish in the creek, not overly large. He had already caught one, and there were bound to be some rabbits. He had seen some droppings close to the hut, and he thought he had seen sheep as well, probably some strays that had wandered off from a nearby farm. If he could catch one of those, then they could have a real feast. In time, he mused, maybe I could grow some vegetables.
The passion for the cause over a few weeks had defused in his mind. Mustafa felt hornier than he had in a long time and, without the Mullah to direct the prayers, he found that he had skipped his devotions a few times. Faiz just sat by himself, grumbling, but he had only a small mind and remained focussed on the task ahead.
‘We should just release the sprays,’ Faiz said at the end of the first week.
‘But we have instructions to wait until the airports open,’ replied Shafik. ‘And the radio says that may happen in a couple of weeks. We must hold on.’
‘Shafik, you’re too soft, too cosy here in this flea-bitten hut. You would stay here forever, given the chance. Me, I want to be out there, with the action.’
‘You are right. I do enjoy it here. And that fish you ate tonight – wasn’t it better than anything you can buy in New York?’
‘It was tasty, but we can’t sit here forever.’ Even Faiz had to admit it was special.
‘We leave once the airports open.’
‘And what do we do for wheels?’ Faiz complained yet again.
‘If the roads are clear, we steal one.’ Shafik looked directly at Faiz. ‘I take it you know how to hot-wire a car?’
‘It’s easy.’
‘That’s how you made your living, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, and sometimes reclaiming for a loan shark. I got to drive some pretty impressive wheels.’
‘You’re just a petty criminal, a hoodlum,’ Mustafa said contemptuously.
‘Petty? I was anything but petty. I was an ace at what I did. Nobody could steal a car as well as I could.’
‘You’re proud of that, I suppose?’ Mustafa asked.
‘Proud, why shouldn’t I be? At school, the teacher, a Jew, said I would amount to nothing. But here I am, about to attack New York, the best car remover there is, and now to become the instrument of Allah.’
‘You don’t get it, do you?’ Shafik said. ‘To you, this is a game. You don’t do this with the view of a better world. It’s just another feather in your cap, something to tell your admiring friends.’
‘What’s wrong with that? We’re getting the results.’
‘You disgust me,’ replied Shafik.
‘What should I care what either of you thinks?’ said Faiz. ‘Tell me when you want the car stealing and I’ll be there for you. You are both the sons of a donkey. What I do is for Allah, he understands.’
Chapter 18
Darius and his team wasted four days traipsing through the area. The rain was torrential, the creeks flooded, and the tents impossibly wet inside and out. One of the team, Charles Lauder, had fallen into a creek due to carelessness and inappropriate footwear. It was only due to the quick action of Darius and his long arms that he was plucked from the water. It was the rain that had turned every creek, every little stream, into a deathtrap for the unwary, but it was the rain that would give them their first substantial lead.
‘There’s a vehicle jammed under the bridge on Route 4005, close to where you headed off into the park,’ Ed said on one of the rare occasions when the rain had let up. With a break in the clouds, Darius had climbed to the top of a fire tower that rose prominently above the surrounding trees. It was luck mainly that his mobile phone picked up a signal of any strength.
‘I remember the bridge. What sort of vehicle? Do you have any details?’
‘The local police chief in North Bend reported it a day ago. Our guys found it in the police records of abandoned vehicles, although we had an all-points bulletin out for it. Their police chief should have picked it up, but I assume it all moves a bit slower out of the big smoke. Besides, communications have not been the best for the last few weeks.’
‘Did he say what type of vehicle?’
‘Yes, Chevy Station Wagon, relatively old and badly mangled. The police chief received a second-hand report initially from someone who had spotted it as they were driving over the bridge. They didn’t stop to investigate as the weather was atrocious and they were running low on fuel. The old wagon was not high on their list of priorities.'
‘It sounds like Shafik,’ Darius said.
‘It is, and judging by the closed doors, the open windows, and the vehicle being in neutral, they’ve deduced it was pushed off the side of the track that you walked up.’
‘We saw no sign of it. Mind you, the weather was abysmal.’
‘It may be best if you head back and see if you can find where it went off the side,’ Ed said.
‘You’re right. I’ll go myself.’ Darius relieved that he would be walking down a muddy track instead of sloshing through the damp undergrowth. The leeches were awful and the squelching underfoot as his boots sank into the sodden soil was tiring on the calf muscles and his leg hurt like hell.
Michael Lincoln was Darius’s only choice to accompany him, although not the person he would have chosen if there had been another option. Lincoln was an obnoxious bore who consistently elevated his own importance. He claimed to be a descendant of the assassinated President, but he wasn’t, even if he bore a resemblance.
By the age of ten, he was running with a gang in a rundown area of Detroit. There was no option, it was either join a gang or be targeted. He chose the former, initially out of self-preservation but in time because he enjoyed the violence and the thieving and the stand-over tactics and the drug dealing.
It was at the age of sixteen that his life took a turn for the better.
A show-off, full of tall stories, invariably about his illustrious heritage, his soon-to-be-inherited wealth, and his physical prowess, he decided the side of law and order was definitely a lot safer than running the streets. He moved in with an aunt in a safe area of the city, found himself a part-time job in a grocery store and reconnected with his education. Intellectually bright and quick of wit, he soon regained the academic achievements that his life as a street hooligan had negated.
He was not a popular person in the CIA. Big-headed and opinionated, he had passed the exams, he was handy with a gun, and he understood the mentality, the mindset of the criminals they invariably had to deal with.
‘It’s what I would have done,’ he said when Darius relayed Ed’s account of the vehicle in the creek.
‘Do you reckon we can find it?’
‘I don’t see why not. I know how to track.’ Bragging came naturally to Lincoln. ‘Let’s backtrack and look for the most likely places for a vehicle to go over the side. A bend in the road, the steepest decline, the least obstructions – there shouldn’t be too many.’
‘In summer, I suppose it’s beautiful,’ Darius said.
‘Summer or otherwise, I’ll stay with the concrete,’ Lincoln said.
It took Lincoln two hours to find the location and Darius had to admit he would have just walked past it.
‘What can you see?’ Darius asked.
‘The branches of the tree down below, some
are broken. There’s also a piece of metal further down. Can you see it?’
‘The branches I can see, but not the metal.’ Darius had felt for some time that his long-distance vision had been deteriorating. He could only think that the mishap with the car’s hood some years earlier may have had something to do with it. He had banged his head when he had hit the ground. It didn’t concern him at the time, but detail at a distance was not as precise as in the past. If the annual CIA medical picked it up, he’d be confined to a desk or retired from the service, and he didn’t want either.
‘It’s there, but I’ve no intention of clambering down to check it out further,’ said Lincoln. ‘It could be a license plate. We should just focus on where these idiots have gone to.’
‘And how do you intend to do that?’ Darius found it difficult to conceal his dislike for his colleague.’
‘The same way we found the car.’
‘But they could be anywhere.’
‘Sure, but don’t they have a crate with them,’ said Lincoln, ‘weighs maybe thirty kilos?’
‘That’s true. They wouldn’t want to drag it too far.’
‘A wooden crate would require dragging. It would break off branches as they moved. They’re not too far away, maybe watching us, but that seems unlikely. They would have picked a hiding place, as well-concealed from us as we are from then.’
‘So how far do you reckon?’
‘A few miles. Any likely-looking places, somewhere warm, somewhere secure. I assume they haven’t spent the last few weeks endlessly dragging a crate around getting soaking wet.’ Lincoln relished the opportunity to show his superior skills.
‘There are some old huts scattered around the park,’ said Darius. ‘Most of them go back to when they logged the place. At least, that is what the tourist brochure said.’
‘Pick one of two not far from here, but not close to the road.’
‘There’s a couple, and some tracks marked on the map.’
‘Where’s the nearest track from here?’ Lincoln asked.
‘Back up the road from where we’ve just come.
‘Sounds ideal. It’s what I would have chosen.’
‘You seem very adept at thinking as they do,’ replied Darius.
‘You’ve read my service record. You know about my earlier life, running with the gangs in Detroit.’
‘Normal practice. I like to know who I’m working with. Their strengths, as well as their weaknesses.’
‘That’s fine. I would have done the same had it been me. No doubt it mentioned that I tend to be a show-off, a big head, a pain in the rear end.’
‘Yes, but not in those words.’
‘Nice psychiatric terms that no one really understands.’ laughed Lincoln. ‘I just say it as it is, and it’s true. Goes back to my childhood – either you were tough, or you pretended to be. I didn’t have the physique, a bit skinny and timid, so I just spoke big. It got me by. It’s a habit I should break, but it’s not always so easy.’
‘I understand,’ replied Darius. ‘I see myself as the great sporting hero, but it’s in the past. Maybe it’s best to accept the reality.’
‘Reality is dull, but let’s not stand here reliving our lives. We’ve got to find these fools and their crate.’
‘The other guys are close by. We should wait for them,’ Darius said.
‘Trust me,’ replied Lincoln, taking control of the situation. ‘Two of us stand a better chance of closing in on the hut than eight stomping through the undergrowth. Lauder fell into that creek, and some of the others can’t stop moaning. No, it’s just you and me.’
‘Fine, I’ll let you lead.’ Darius said.
Two hundred metres up the track and Lincoln grabbed at Darius’s backpack as he moved forward. ‘Don’t you see it?’ he said excitedly.
‘See what?’
‘I can see where they put the crate down. They should have carried it into the undergrowth first, but maybe they’re not so experienced.’
‘How come you’re so good at this?’ asked Darius.
‘Our gang used to run drugs, nothing serious – uppers, downers, some marijuana. Stashing them always presented a problem. We came up with some ingenious methods. Then we were always trying to find out where the other gangs were, what they were hiding. It was on one of those raids that two of my friends were killed.’
‘Are we following in?’ asked Darius.
‘I reckon so. It’s best if we stash our backpacks here, behind a tree, cover them with undergrowth. No talking from now on and we better check our weapons are ready. These guys will not be averse to shooting us on sight.’
It took twenty-five minutes to reach the first rise when Lincoln pointed into the distance. It looked to be about two miles further to a small hut by the side of a very fast-moving stream. Heavily camouflaged by the canopy of trees, a momentary break in the cloud had allowed the rays of the sun to focus on the area of the hut.
‘Do you think they’re in the hut?’ asked Darius.
‘It’s an excellent location for a hideout.’
‘We should bring up the others, standard Bureau procedure.’ Darius had always been a stickler for following the rules.
‘Surprise is of the essence. They won’t be expecting anyone. It’ll take a couple of hours for the others to get here, and if they seeing them marching down through the undergrowth, they’ll run for it. As I said before, it’s you and me, and I hope you are as good a shot as you were a basketball player. I saw you play once at the Palace in Auburn Hills, Detroit.’
‘That was two weeks before I walked out between two cars. I played well that day.’
‘We can walk down the track for maybe another mile,’ continued Lincoln. ‘Then we should split. You come at them from upstream. I’ll go round the back.’
‘How will I know you’re in position?’
‘I’m not sure. We’ll just have to keep a look out for each other.’
***
It was Darius who first saw that they had found the right hut. He had tried to contact Lincoln, but the undergrowth, grown since the rain started, and the drooping and rain-sodden leaves on the trees, had reduced his vision close to zero. It was no use trying to use a radio, as his speech may have been overheard.
He had taken up a position close to the hut and the only person he had seen was, he presumed, Hussein Shafik. He looked comfortable, sitting under the awning in front of the hut tending a small fire with a frying pan on top. He was cooking what appeared to be a fish.
Unseen by Darius, Faiz Ahmed, the unpleasant and smelly individual was lying on a rough bed in the cabin. He was not so smelly, however. After two weeks, Shafik and Mustafa, unable to tolerate the body odour any longer, had grabbed him, ripped off his clothes, thrown him into the freezing water and refused to allow him out until he had washed with the bar of soap they had thrown in after him. After that, smelling better and with a distinctive hatred of the other two, he had kept himself to himself, apart from meal times when he would appear and take more than his fair share.
Mustafa, devoid of the diversion of the occasional woman, would daydream about the pleasures he had enjoyed, and the momentous occasion when Beverly Maddison had seduced him in the back of her father’s car. Her breasts firm, her body moving in rhythm with his. He was barely able to contain himself, and he woke up most nights with a hard-on. She had been the first of many, but he remembered her, above all the others.
Shafik loved the hut. He saw himself as an outdoorsman and, for the first time in many years, had found true contentment. He thought about Hala, the girl who had failed to marry him, the greedy Latino landlord, and the dreary storage depot where he had worked in New York after his attempts at academia. All paled into insignificance.
He would have stayed, maybe ask Rachel, the well-endowed whore to join him, but it was only to be another five minutes before Faiz’s loathing, Mustafa’s lecherous thoughts and Shafik’s outdoor life were to be shattered by the violence that Darius and Lin
coln were to bring. The three of them would be forced to make a decision, a reaffirmation to the cause that they had so fervently embraced a few weeks earlier.
Faiz saw the admiration of his friends back in New York as paramount, but how he was going to avoid the infection he didn’t know.
Mustafa regretted the anger that had forced him to be indoctrinated by the Mullah at the Mosque in Lahore.
Shafik would realise that his personal well-being was not at the cost of following Allah’s wishes.
Darius and Lincoln had agreed – in fact, Ed Small had instructed the team before they left – that this was not a capture and arrest mission, purely eliminate. They both knew the significance of the instruction. Darius had not killed before.
Lincoln had no issues with killing, he had done it before. Fourteen and newly inducted into a gang down by the corner of Wyoming and Orangelawn Street, he had cornered a pimply youth by the name of Spotty, a street kid, and stuck a knife through his chest. It was a right of initiation, but he was careful not to mention it when he joined the CIA.
Now with visual contact and hand signals between the two of them, they slowly edged towards the hut. Lincoln’s motioning of his index finger across his neck indicated that Faiz Ahmed, who was now standing up and only two feet from Darius through an open window, was to be garrotted. Mustafa had taken off into the bushes and Shafik was humming to himself as he turned the fish in the pan.
Darius had completed his training on how to kill a man, but that was only a rubberised dummy. He couldn’t show weakness in front of a junior operative, especially Lincoln who would happily tell everyone back at the office that the great basketball hero had gone weak at the knees when there was an easy kill.
Approaching to the back of Ahmed, still yawning and complaining under his breath, Darius took the wire that he had been issued with and quickly looped it down over Ahmed’s head. He tightened it with a force that he never knew he possessed.
Shafik, only ten metres away but separated by a closed door heard nothing, except for the scraping of a chair as Ahmed’s left foot pushed it in his desperation to resist. Had Faiz been a more pleasant person, he may have gone to investigate, but he wasn’t, and he just ignored the sound. He did not, however, ignore the noise of a car’s horn coming from the direction of the road that Darius and Lincoln had just come from. Billy Hammond, good in an office, mediocre in the field, had failed in the one important art of surveillance: to keep quiet.
Terrorist: Three Book Boxed Set Page 22