"Tell the dispatcher to put you through to Matar Air Medical Service at the airport. Tell him only that." He pressed the muzzle into the man's neck. "I speak Arabic."
The driver did as asked. A voice came on. Bobby took the handset from the driver.
"This is Dr. Mansour bin-Halibib, personal physician to Fetish al-Zir, assistant to the imam Maliq, blessings be upon his name. To whom do I speak?"
The voice came back crisp and subordinate. "Saif al-Utabi, Excellency, at your service."
"Very well. We require an immediate medical evacuation. One of the imam's wives has sustained a brain injury. We are en route to you. Weil need your fastest aircraft, with fuel for Cairo."
"But I've received no authorization. Excellency—"
"I am authorizing it"
"But Excellency—"
"If the imam's wife dies in this ambulance, I will tell him that it was because I was distracted by unnecessary questions!"
One advantage of totalitarianism: The lower down the food chain, the higher they jump.
"We will make reach' for you." Saif al-Utabi said.
"We will be there in fifteen minutes. Inform the security personnel at the gate to admit us without delay." "Yes, Excellency."
The ambulance driver looked at Bobbv, goggle-eyed with fear.
The road to the airport went through mostly empty desert. Bobby put on the unconscious attendant's uniform vest. He instructed the driver to pull off on the far side of a billboard advertising the pleasures of Infidel Land: Mukfellecn censors had painted over the offending text. Florence held the gun on the driver while Bobby dragged the other man out of the ambulance and laid him behind the base of the billboard.
Back inside, he gave the driver instructions, com eying, as gently as possible under the circumstances, that if he did not follow them precisely, he would be meeting Allah sooner than expected, prepared or not.
Florence listened and said to Bobby in French, a language she guessed the driver did not comprehend, "They do have an air force. They'll shoot us down."
"I'm wide open to suggestions."
"What about the embassy? They have to take us in there."
Bobby snorted. "Oh yeah, they'd be just tickled to have us. Even if the marines didn't shoot us down, even if we did make it through the gates, then what? Spend the rest of our lives living in the basement being frowned at by embassy pukes? No. thanks. Right now a jet with medical markings sounds pretty good to me." Florence had to agree.
They were approaching the airport. Florence rigged herself up with every medical device in the ambulance—respirator tube, blood-pressure cuff, IV tubes. CoolPak pressure bandages—and lay back on the gurney in a passing imitation of an imam's wife with a serious head injury. Bobby took his seat in the front, reminding the whimpering driver that he had a pistol in his vest pocket. Bobby reached forward and flicked on the siren and lights, lighting up the desert around them in red, white and blue strobes.
There was a roadblock at the airport entrance. "Stay calm, say nothing. I will do the speaking," Bobby said. They slowed to a stop. Soldiers with machine guns blocked the way. One motioned to the driver to roll down the window. "Where are you going?" "Air Medical Service," Bobby said. "What's the problem, sir?" "That's for me to ask, not you. There's an alert." "But sir, it's urgent, as you can see."
The two rear doors of the ambulance opened, and two soldiers looked in. Florence lay still on the gurney, clenching the grip of the pistol under her abaaya."Who is she?" the soldier said through the driver's window.
"The imam's wile," Bobby said. "His favorite wife. She's being evacuated to Cairo." He added gravely "It's critical."The soldier straightened. "We've had no notice of this."
Bobby said angrily, "Why do you tell me this? This injury was not planned in advance! Allah is merciful—don't expect the imam to be."
The soldier hesitated. Then, with a slight, contemptuous sideways gesture of his head, he indicated his permission to proceed. The ambulance's rear doors shut with a bang. The soldier in front stood aside. The ambulance moved forward."I think my blood pressure spiked," Florence murmured.
The driver appeared to be hyperventilating. Bobby patted him on the back and spoke to him in a friendly tone. "You did well, my friend, well. A few more minutes, and it will all be over, and you'll have a great story to tell your wife and chil—"
The driver's eyes rolled up under his eyelids. He pitched forward onto the steering wheel. The ambulance veered into the path of a service vehicle.
Bobby lunged for the wheel and swung it back, avoiding the oncoming truck by inches. Florence was thrown off the gurney in a tangle of medical appurtenances. "What the hell?" she said.
Bobby was trying simultaneously to steer the careening ambulance, reach the brake with his left foot and drag the unconscious driver out of his seat, a complicated endeavor under the best of circumstances. Florence struggled to free herself of tubes and crawl to the front. A crunching sound announced the fact that they had driven through a wooden barrier and were now going the wrong way on a one-way service road, which declared to even the casual observer that all was not well at the wheel.
With a grunt, Bobby succeeded in hefting the unconscious driver out of the seat and onto the floor, and then jimmied himself into the seat, reasserting control of the ambulance, which was now driving straight at a fuel truck. The ambulance had the advantage of a siren and flashing lights, forcing the oncoming vehicles off the road with angry blaring. But now other sirens asserted themselves. And as Florence groped her way over the unconscious driver to the passenger seat, she heard the squawk of voices over the radio—urgent, angry voices, addressing themselves to the driver of the ambulance and demanding that he halt.
"Hang on." Bobby spun the wheel and slammed on the brakes. The ambulance turned but, top-heavy, went onto two wheels. It tottered for what seemed a very long time, then fell back miraculously onto all four wheels.
Now, at least, they were facing the right way, although they had by this point created a spectacle of themselves, and with that came increased interest on the part of a dozen vehicles in the distance. Some had mounted heavy-caliber guns.
Bobby assessed the deteriorating situation in the clinical language of the professional: "We're fucked."
He turned up a ramp that announced DEPARTING FLIGHTS. The security vehicles were still hundreds of yards off but closing fast. It was evening, and the airport was crowded. Then' were dozens of vehicles in front and hundreds of travelers getting out and entering the terminal.
"When I pull up to the curb," Bobby said, "jump out. Blend like hell. You can make it. Remember, ZamZam Best Chickens. Azool. Cyrus—"
"—from Cyprus. Yes. Bobby, I know."
"Okay, then." He drove to the far end of the terminal, then pulled over to the curb. He'd turned off the siren and the lights. "Go, Frenzy." "I'm stuck." "What?"
"My foot, it's wedged." Bobby leaned toward her.
"No, you ean't reach it from that side." she said. "Go around. Quickly."
Bobby opened his door and bolted around the front. As he did. Florence jumped into the driver's seat, put the ambulance in drive and took off with a screech of tires. She caught a glimpse of him in the side mirror, standing on the curb. Then the police and military cars screamed past him in hot pursuit of her.
Ambulances are built for speed. She drove fast, drawing the pursuers away from Bobby. But police and military vehicles are also built for speed, and they soon closed behind her. They had apparently satisfied themselves that there was no imam's wife inside, for they were now shooting. The low overhang of the ambulance protected the tires, and her body was shielded by the metal bulkhead behind the driver's seat. But a volley of bullets ripped through the doorway and smashed through the windshield, turning it into a spider web.
Florence analyzed her situation as she drove. In minutes, she knew, she would be captured or dead. They'd drag her out and—what then? Interrogation. Torture. Execution. The Wasabis would want their
licks. They would want her most of all.
She heard a noise and saw the helicopter. It was flying low. keeping pace with her. She saw the man with the rifle aiming at her. She looked at the speedometer. A hundred and ten. She was approaching a highway overpass. It could all be over in seconds, neat and clean. So much easier all around. Not a particularly glorious way to go out, smashing into the concrete strut of a highway overpass, but SO much cleaner. No one screaming at her, no one hooking her up to a car battery, no beheading or being stoned.
She nudged the vehicle into the left lane and kept her foot down on the accelerator. She felt, suddenly, quite calm, almost thrilled to be in such complete control of her fate. She thought of Nazrah, who had set all these events in motion with her own car crash. Florence put her head down and aimed at the support And then she heard the groan.
It was the driver. She had forgotten all about him. He was looking up at her in pure terror, babbling. He presented a pathetic spectacle, lying on the floor there, but then she remembered his seven children. If only he hadn't mentioned that. It only he'd been a little braver. If only he'd kept that to himself and ... the overpass was seconds away.
She veered away from the concrete strut and sped under the overpass.
The helicopter was flying alongside her, low off the ground. She saw a man leaning out the side door. He was aiming a rifle al her.
He fired three efficient shots into her engine block. The windshield splattered with oil. The vehicle began to slow.
She caught a brief glimpse of the man as he lowered his rifle. She noted the blond hair and the tell-tale rolled sleeves of a French para. Yes, she thought as her vehicle slowed and was surrounded, they always were very good at le sniping, the French.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Rick Renard was in his Washington office Irving to persuade a portly former U.S. senator, twice thwarted in his attempt to be elected president, to become spokesman for a chain of weight-reduction centers.
The senator was pretending that this was beneath his dignity, which it was, but he had another reason: He wanted more money. Renard, meanwhile, was pretending that helping obese Americans lose weight was a magnificently selfless humanitarian act, and if a distinguished man who had devoted his entire life to public service made a few dollars in the process, what reasonable person could object?
In the midst of this perfunctory Kabuki dance. Renards assistant entered apologetically and handed Rick a note saying that George was on the line demanding to speak to him. No, it could not wait, and yes. it was urgent, very, very urgent.
"The White House." Rick said to the senator as he reached for the phone. "Do you mind?"
The senator understood perfectly well that it wasn't the White House, but he was flattered that Rick should elevate the lie to such a high degree. In Washington, you know how tall you stand by how low the other person is willing to stoop.
"No, of course not."
"Yes, Karl?" Rick said into the phone.
"It's Firenze," George said. "I think they've got her."
"Shit." Renard said. "Fuck."
The senator stared.
"I'll find out what I can." George said. "I'll meet you at your office as soon as I can get out of here. Duckett has me auditing eight-year-old visa applications, the swine."
Rick hung up.
"Is everything all right—at the White House?" the senator asked heavily.
"Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know how they are." Rick smiled. "Every time their numbers drop a point, it's panic city."
Rick got rid of the senator and told his assistant lo cancel everything, then switched on all the TV sets and surfed those and the Internet until George arrived with what news he'd been able to gather. It wasn't easy, since Duckett had petulantly downgraded his security clearance. But George had friends.
The U.S. embassy in Amo-Amas had cabled a report about some kind of disturbance in the Dismalia Quarter: shootings, car crashes, an incident at the airport, Embassy communication monitors had picked up Matari police-radio chatter about el imra'a amrikiya (the American woman). They had also picked up French radio transmissions to and from a military helicopter, asking for and receiving permission to fire upon a fleeing vehicle. Half an hour later, a convoy of vehicles had driven at high speed through the gates of the Prince Wazba Air Base. Following Maliq's takeover, the base had been turned into a detention facility for Mataris who were bold enough to express the opinion that Maliq's coup was less than the greatest event in Matar since the coming of Islam. The vast majority of these complainants were—no surprise—female Mataris.
"Duckett disappeared into his office looking like a Komodo dragon had just crawled up his ass." George said, pacing back and forth. "He wouldn't give me the time of day. They've got her. I know it."
"I tried calling some of the old gang at TV Matar," Renard said glumly. "No one's left. All I got were hang-ups. One person actually called me an infidel. I want my old Matar back."
Renard's assistant came in. "Someone named Bobby for you?" Rick and George practically knocked each other over, reaching for the phone.
"Bobby? Is she all right?" Rick said.
"No. They got her. Okay, just listen. I'm not gonna stay on long, on account of that double-dealin' lowlife Uncle Sam probably listenin' in. You there, Sam? You listenin'? You tell us you're arrangin' for a water-taxi exfil, and ten minutes later, Anbar Tal—my recruit—shows up to kill us. Well, listen to this: I'm gonna come back there. If I have to swim, I am comin' back there, and by the lime I'm through with you. you'll be breathin' through your asshole and crappin' through your ears. You got that?"
Renard cupped the phone and whispered to George, "I think he's upset."
"All right," Bobby said, "is it on the news over there?"
"No. not yet."
"George there? Put him on. George, what's State doin'?"
"What they do best. Nothing. Just a few cables out of Amo. Duckett won't tell me anything. Bobby, what are they going to do to her?"
"1 don't know, man. Put Renard back on. Rick, you remember that cell phone I gave you? The one I told you to keep in D.C.? Do you still have it?"
"Yeah, I think—yeah."
"All right. Use that to call me. I'll be in touch. You get started at your end." "Started—on what?" "You're a PR man, aren't you?" "Well, yeah—"
"Start spinnin", man. Spin till you drop. Yo, George?" "I'm here."
"Don't let those embassy pukes walk away from this." "I'm on it."
"All right," Bobby said, "let's get her out of there. Shock and awe, boys. Shock and awe."
The line went dead.
"What did he mean by that last part?" Renard said. "Oh. it's just knuckle-dragger talk. But for once I agree."
IT WAS A SMALL CELL, fairly clean; by ceil standards, the very lap of luxury. There was a cotlike bed with a bit of foam for a pillow, a plastic pail for necessities—with a lid, very deluxe—a bottle of water, and a copy of the Holy Koran.
They'd hooded Florence after dragging her out of the ambulance. Before the hood went over her head, she'd had a last look at the French sniper who had put the bullets in her engine. He looked almost apologetic, giving her a little shrug as if to say, Bui what can one do? Orders are orders, Helas, cherie.
After the handcuffing and hooding were done, without apologies or shrugs, Florence was put in the back of a vehicle and driven off. Even with her instinctive inertial guidance navigation, she had no way of knowing where they were taking her. After an hour, perhaps more, the hood was removed, and she found herself blinking in a brightly lit room, somewhere—pray Allah—still in Matar, and not across the border in Wasabia. Not that there was much sunlight left between the two countries.
She was reading the Koran when she heard the key turning in the heavy door. In Washington she had met a man who had spent live and a half years being tortured and confined in North Vietnam, most of it in solitary, unspeakable conditions. He told her that even thirty years later, whenever he heard the sound of keys
or a door being opened, his pulse quickened and his chest seized up.
The man who entered the cell wasn't wearing the black and blue uniform of the mukfelleen. One takes such comforts as one can.
Florence was hooded, manacled leg-and-hand and marched out. She guessed that the chains were for psychological effect, the likelihood of a woman overcoming her captors and breaking free being low. Florence clanked along the stone floor barefoot, trying to fall into a semblance of dignified rhythm. She was also trying not to trip and fall. Her situation was undignified enough as it was.
She was prodded forward with the end of what fell like a club into a cooler space. The thought came to her, not entirely unwelcome, that in a second the hood might be pulled off to reveal the executioner with his seyef. If you were going to have your throat cut, better that it be cleanly done and with some semblance of a ceremonial beheading, instead of with a rusty folding knife of the kind used on a sekeen sheep.
She found herself in an air-conditioned room reassuringly devoid of bloodstains or instruments of death or torture, facing a plain table at which sat three men. the center of whom she recognized right away as Maliq, emir, sheikh and imam of the Islamic Republic of Matar, blessings be upon him.
It took her several seconds to place the man sitting on Maliq's right, from the distinctive teal and maroon gutra. she knew him for a Wasabi, and by the scarlet trim of his otherwise plain thobe, for a member of the Hami Babb, the tribe that, since the time of Sheik Abdulabdullah "The Wise" Walla al-Hamooj, founder of the Wasabi dynasty, had been entrusted with the duties of royal bodyguard. This was Salim bin-Judar, first deputy for the Ministry of Public Health. the euphemism that the Wasabi central government had decided upon for its secret police. This man she knew by reputation very well, and despite the honor of being in his presence, it caused her a distinct dryness of mouth.
The identity of the man to Maliq's left was all too easily discerned. The black and blue thobe proclaimed him mukfellah. Mis stare of pure hatred was the most intense Florence had ever seen from a human being—anthracite coals of smoldering fury—trained on a shackled American woman, an infidel who deserved to be consigned to hell to be gnawed for all eternity In Satan's foul jaws and stinking breath. Have a nice day.
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