Soul of the Assassin

by Larry Bond

  “Just as well,” he muttered to himself. “Just as well.”

  11

  NORTHEASTERN SUDAN

  “I’m just not sure,” said Dr. Hamid, looking up from the computer. “These Web pages Rostislawitch referred you to give the general procedure for using a type of virus to modify bacteria. The procedure is common, but that’s not a guarantee. It may be a bluff. It may not. He doesn’t give real information about the virus or the bacteria. I have no way of telling.”

  “Examine the bacteria then,” said Atha. “See if they are dangerous.”

  “They are a type of E. coli. It is in the family that he was working on, according to the papers that we have. But to know whether it is specifically the type that he developed as a weapon—I would need much more information. It’s very active, and its genetic structure is unique. But the only way for me to really tell would be to infect someone and see what happens. And that could take several days.”

  “If he does have a virus, will we be able to change these germs?” Atha suddenly saw his fortune evaporating.

  And then his life.

  The minister still had not answered his query. Another problem. But this had precedence.

  “I think we can follow the procedure, if it is straightforward,” said Dr. Hamid. “But we were set up here to replicate the bacteria, which is relatively easy. Beyond that—”

  “Yes, I know. No guarantees.”

  Atha needed to think. He stepped outside of the hut, wanting to walk, to move. Some of the refugees, anxious to be moving on, had gathered nearby. They saw him, and began cheering.

  Atha put up his hand in acknowledgement. If he didn’t let them leave soon, they’d probably riot.

  It might very well be just a bluff. Rostislawitch was probably angry that he had been cheated and was fighting back.

  He couldn’t afford to take a chance, though, could he? Traveling to Tripoli, as annoying as it might be, was possible—Ahmed had the plane fueled and ready to go.

  Dr. Hamid had turned off the computer and stepped outside the cottage. He was looking forward to the end of this. He’d been in the Sudan for nearly three months getting ready.

  “I will go to Tripoli,” said Atha. “Prepare some of the drinks with the bacteria, and get people ready to leave. Because it may just be a trick.”

  “Yes, that makes sense.”

  “Good. I’ll call as soon as I know something.”

  12

  OVER THE LIBYAN DESERT,

  APPROACHING SUDAN

  As far as Rankin could tell, George Burns had only one thing in common with his namesake—he liked to smoke big, thick cigars. And he liked to smoke them in his plane, which stank up the entire aircraft.

  Which was saying something, because the airplane was comparatively large—a 1960s-vintage two-engine Hawker Siddely 748 that in its prime regularly carried forty-eight passengers. The plane had seen use as both a passenger and a cargo aircraft, ferrying people first around India and then around Africa. George Burns had bought it from a somewhat shady government official in Senegal, overhauled the engines, replaced the avionics, and given it a fresh coat of paint.

  Rankin sat in the copilot’s seat. Guns made do with a jump seat immediately behind the pilot.

  “Not much of a view,” said Rankin as they flew over the desert.

  George Burns didn’t answer. He occasionally reached for the throttle lever between the seats, and every so often would glance at his global positioning map. But otherwise he stared straight ahead at the mountains that marked the edge of the desert.

  “You don’t really know where it is, do you?” asked Rankin. “You just have a general idea.”

  George Burns took his cigar out of his mouth, examined the ash—two inches long—then put it back.

  Rankin saw a shadow on the desert floor to the west. It was from an airplane, and for a moment he thought it was their shadow, cast in an odd direction. Then he realized that it was too small, and shaped wrong. He spotted the plane a few feet above the shadow, moving across the earth as if it were part of a toy display.

  “Hey, another airplane,” he said, pointing.

  George Burns turned and looked, staring as the aircraft moved past. It was no more than a mile and a half away.

  “We’re getting closer,” he said, and then he didn’t say anything else.

  13

  KALAMATA, GREECE

  Col. Charles Van Buren jogged up the ladder into the command center of the 777th’s MC-17, a Globemaster III combat cargo aircraft specially equipped to support the Special Forces Group. Van Buren and his men had just arrived from Aviano, Italy, relocating here so they could strike into Africa if needed. Additional support units, including tankers, C-130s, and Osprey aircraft, were being scrambled to assist.

  “Mr. Ferguson for you, sir,” said the communications specialist, holding up the phone.

  Van Buren took the phone and sat down at the console. “Ferg, what’s going?”

  “Hey, Van. Corrigan give you the background yet?”

  “We’re looking for an Iranian with Russian biological warfare material. Maybe he’s in Libya, maybe the Sudan. They’re looking. That’s what I know.”

  “Rankin and Guns have a lead on a possible camp. They hired a pilot to take them out there. He’s real paranoid, so he may be right. If they find something, I say you hit it. But if Atha were smart, he’d be already back in Iran.”

  “Are you going to follow him?”

  “Actually, I’m trying to get him to come to me,” Ferguson said. He explained that he had convinced the Russian scientist to set a trap in Tripoli. “I could use some muscle there, three or four guys who can blend in.”

  They worked out the details.

  “You doing all right, Ferg? You sound a little tired,” said Van Buren when they were done.

  “Yeah, I’m cool. Listen, be ready for anything on this. The professor says this stuff will tear your insides out and make you happy to die. You guys go in, you wear space suits, all right? MOPP NBCs, no fooling around.”

  “My guys are checking them out right now, Ferg. Talk to you later.”

  14

  NORTHEASTERN SUDAN

  When Dr. Hamid first heard the airplane in the distance, he thought Atha had turned back for some reason. But after listening for a few more moments, Hamid realized the drone was of something larger. His first thought was that it was a relief plane, though they rarely passed this way. Then he thought it might be a flight from Chad, which had propeller-driven SF 260 trainers converted to attack craft, which its air force used against “insurgents”—which in actual practice meant defenseless civilians in camps like theirs.

  “Be ready with the missiles,” he told the Palestinian. Then Hamid went and put the bacteria into a safe where it would survive a bombing attack.

  The Palestinian had already assembled his missile teams by the time the aircraft appeared. It was a two-engine plane that he did not recognize—not a fighter, he thought, but not a relief craft, either. It flew at about a thousand feet over the jagged ridge to the west; in his experience, no plane would fly that low unless it meant to land or strafe.

  “Observe,” he told the men over the radio. There were two teams, each with an American-made Stinger heatseeking missile. Shoulder-launched, the weapons had been given nearly two decades before to freedom fighters in Afghanistan, then sold after the war on the black market. Though old, they were nonetheless potent; a low-flying, slow plane like this was an easy target.

  The airplane passed overhead without turning to land. Just as the Palestinian was going to order the group on the east to fire, it turned back.

  “Observe,” he told his men again. “Be ready.”

  15

  OVER NORTHEASTERN SUDAN

  Rankin used binoculars to get a look at the camp. There was a landing strip, but no plane. The puzzling thing was the buses—it looked as if it were a school parking lot.

  “Looks more like a camping ground than a
refugee camp,” said Rankin as George Burns circled back. “You sure that’s it?”

  George Burns didn’t say anything. His cigar had burned down to a nub, the ash nearly at his lips, but it didn’t seem to bother him.

  Guns leaned close to the window over Rankin’s shoulder, taking pictures with his small digital camera.

  “What’s with the buses?” Guns asked George Burns.

  “Don’t know.” The pilot spoke in short bursts, keeping the cigar riveted to his lips. “Never saw them before. Only been over twice.”

  Burns pulled back on the wheel. He’d come down low so they could take pictures, but now he wasn’t feeling too good about it. Even for fifty thousand dollars, there was only so much risk he was willing to take.

  “There’s no lab or anything down there,” said Rankin. “If the Iranian came here, he didn’t stay. Where can you go from here?”

  “Shit!” yelled George Burns, spitting the cigar from his mouth.

  Rankin thought he’d burned himself, then saw there was a red light flashing at the left side of the pilot’s panel. He heard something like a waterfall behind him.

  Protective flares. Someone had fired a missile.

  “Fuck,” said George Burns again, and a sharp shudder gripped the plane.

  The missile hit the right engine, blowing it apart and starting a fire in the wing. If it weren’t for the fire, George Burns would have been able to save the plane; the Siddely was a durable aircraft, and he’d flown it on one engine more than a half-dozen times. But the fire spread through the wing, and within seconds he began losing control.

  “Buckle yourselves in,” he said, searching for someplace to land. The camp was located on the far side of a narrow range of low mountains; beyond them to the northeast was open desert. George Burns held the plane up as long as he could, trying to get past the ridge to a point where he could glide into the sand.

  His right wing began tipping upward; he struggled to hold it, then felt the controls start to give way—the lines that worked the controls had broken and he was losing the hydraulic fluid. Cursing, he jabbed at the pedals and tried pulling back on the control column, desperately trying to position the body of the plane to take most of the shock when it hit the ground. They were low—two hundred feet—but going too fast to land comfortably, even if they’d had a strip beneath them. He struggled to stay airborne as long as possible, let more speed bleed off, get his wings back level—he needed them level so they wouldn’t tip, would just slide in, skim across the desert as he’d done twice before; third time was the charm, they said. . . .

  The tip of the left wing hit the ground, jerking the right side of the plane forward as the belly slammed into the sand. The plane skidded sideways, sliding down a rough hill and then tobogganing up and across into a flatter plain of sand. Dirt and smoke flew everywhere; parts of the plane fell off and others disintegrated; the spine of the aircraft snapped in two.

  But as crash landings went, it wasn’t that bad. The plane remained relatively intact, and most of the heavy impact—and damage—was behind the flight deck. All things considered, George Burns had done an admirable job landing.

  Unfortunately, Burns was not in a position to appreciate it. Thrown forward, his head had hit the dash; he died of a cerebral hemorrhage before Rankin and Guns managed to undo their seat belts.

  “You all right?” Guns asked.

  “I think I busted my arm.”

  Rankin blinked his eyes. He saw two of everything in front of him.

  “I think we’re on fire,” said Guns. He stood, unsteadily, and turned to go out the door immediately behind the flight deck. But there was black smoke everywhere.

  “This way,” said Rankin, crawling through the windshield, which had blown out during the landing. Guns, coughing, stopped to unhook George Burns, then pulled him out behind him.

  Rankin groaned as he fell onto the dirt. He was still seeing double. Stunned, he tried to pull his sat phone out of his pocket to tell the Cube where they were, but his arm wouldn’t move. He stood up, dazed, blinking his eyes to get his vision back to normal.

  Pushed out by Guns, George Burns rolled onto the dirt near him. Rankin could tell by the way he landed that George Burns was dead. He got to his feet as Guns jumped down.

  “You all right?” Rankin asked.

  “More or less. How’s your arm?”

  “Hurts.” Rankin’s eyes focused as he looked at his forearm. It was black and slightly swollen. He’d broken bones before and this had that kind of feel, though a little more intense. Inside, the bone had been displaced slightly—not enough for a compound fracture that would pierce the skin, but more than enough to cause a great deal of pain.

  “Whoever shot at us will probably come looking for us,” said Guns.

  “Yeah. Pull the phone out of my pocket. Tell Corrigan we’re OK. He probably started having a cow as soon as the GPS locator stopped moving,” said Rankin, looking around to see if there was any cover.

  16

  CIA HEADQUARTERS,

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  Thomas Parnelles looked at the blinking red light on his phone console, hesitating before picking it up.

  “Parnelles,” he said, pushing down the button.

  “MI6 is going ballistic,” Slott said, without any other introduction or greeting. “Everyone but the janitor has called me. Their field guy is raising a major stink.”

  “That’s not surprising.”

  “I need their help in Indonesia. I can’t afford to just blow them off.”

  “Give them the usual company line,” said Parnelles.

  “That’s not working. I need to throw them a bone.”

  “What bone do we have?”

  “Bring them in on the operation. It was theirs to begin with. We should have cooperated with them from the start. Anyone other than Ferg would have done so as a matter of course.”

  Parnelles leaned back in his seat, gazing at one of the photographs on the wall, which showed him and Ferguson’s father in their salad days. Slott was probably right when he said that anyone else would have opted to work with the MI6 agent, regardless of personal differences, but on the other hand, second-guessing the judgment of the man on the scene was not good policy. Especially when it was someone like Ferguson.

  Parnelles had been guilty of it himself, urging Ferguson to concentrate on T-Rex rather than the Iranian, and he’d been wrong. Very wrong.

  He should not have gotten involved. He should have stayed aloof, as he normally did. Even if it was an important mission, even if he did know Robert, even if Robert was so close to him he felt like a son—he should not have gotten involved.

  And he shouldn’t now.

  “I see no reason to get MI6 involved in this. There’s no room for them,” Parnelles told Slott.

  “It was their operation.”

  “Was being the operative word. Didn’t Hamilton screw them up in the first place? Wouldn’t they have been able to grab Atha?”

  “That may be a matter of opinion,” said Slott. “MI6’s perspective is that they didn’t know there was a possibility that material was missing. We didn’t know, either—Ferg only found out after Atha got away.”

  While Parnelles thought Slott was playing devil’s advocate a little too strenuously, it was also true that grabbing Atha could have caused problems as well. Had they done so, this phone call could easily have been about the diplomatic repercussions. Given the circumstances as they now seemed, he’d have preferred that—but would he have said that earlier?

  “Can’t you just tell Ferguson to take Hamilton along for the ride?” said Slott.

  “Why should I tell him that? He works for you.”

  “Let’s face it, Tom, he only listens to you.”

  “I’m not sure he listens to anyone,” said Parnelles.

  “If MI6 doesn’t cooperate, then the Indonesia operation falls apart. We’re back to square one. The rebels will overthrow the government within six months, and Al Qaeda mo
ves in the next day,” said Slott. “All Ferguson has to do is let Hamilton sit in a hotel room in Tripoli so the British can take some credit, for cryin’ out loud. That’s not much.”

  “We’re assuming his plan is going to work.”

  “And if it doesn’t, what’s the harm with having this Brit there? Hell, MI6 can even share the blame.”

  Indonesia was important; the Agency was trying to thwart a coup there.

  Parnelles looked at the photo again.

  This was exactly the sort of thing he hated when he was in the field—being told what to do because of politics.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Parnelles told Slott, hanging up.

  17

  NEAR THE LIBYA-SUDAN BORDER

  Guns spotted the truck coming down off the ridge when it was only a mile away. The rocks he and Rankin were hiding in were a half mile southwest of the aircraft; there were just enough to keep them from being seen.

  Their first plan was to wait and watch. They’d left George Burns near the plane, facedown, then dragged the dirt so that it looked as if he’d crawled out on his own before dying. It was possible whoever was checking them out would think he was the only one in the plane and leave. If not, Guns and Rankin could wait in the rocks and ambush them up close. Both men had their pistols and several replacement magazines of ammo.

  The plan itself was a good one—but too passive for either Guns or Rankin to stick with for very long

  “There’s only four of them,” said Guns, peering from the side of the rocks as the truck circled around the plane. “I only see two rifles.”

  “Gotta figure the others have weapons of some kind,” said Rankin.

  “Yeah. They go in the plane, we got ’em. Come up from behind.”

  “Maybe,” said Rankin. “Depends where they park the truck. If they leave it on the side, it’ll be shorter.”

  “You OK with your arm?”