“Poor Hassim. Look what you’ve done to him.” Khalifa’s gaze returned to Sara. “Step out of the dress,” he ordered. He grabbed her elbow again, half dragging her down onto the aft platform. The last of Hassim vanished into the churning water; there was still plenty of him to go around. He walked her to the edge.
“In you go.”
Sara cast a fearful glance behind her. “No. You can’t do this.” Now she did prepare to strike out at him, but she had left it too late. “I’ll dance—”
The flat of Khalifa’s hand struck her between the breasts so hard it took her off her feet. She screamed as she crashed into the water. She came up spluttering, only to see the colonel crouched above her like a grinning god.
Grasping her hair, he forced her head back down beneath the water, where the great shadows writhed in the blood-clouded water and bits of flesh floated past her.
Then the side of a shark—a monstrous twelve-foot bull shark—struck her a powerful blow, sandpaper skin abrading her flesh, adding her own blood to the widening feeding frenzy. The shadows converged on the blood and sinew, the bones, muscle, and fat. They were coming for her.
Part Two
19
The shark came directly at Sara, its mouth already half open, bloody ribbons of what had once been Hassim’s calf trailing from between its teeth. Sara grabbed one of Hassim’s femurs, almost entirely stripped of flesh, and thrust it through the water, timing and point of impact more important than speed. The knob of the bone struck the shark square on its snout, hurting it as well as startling it. Whipping around, it turned tail, in search of a meal that wouldn’t fight back.
Against her instinct, she let herself sink down into the bloody maelstrom, and, just as she had hoped, felt Khalifa let go of her hair. At once, she reached up, grabbed his forearm before he could withdraw it from the water, and hauled herself up.
Her head broke the surface. Khalifa, who had been in the process of leaning back, bent down again to shove her once more under the waves. As he did so, Sara launched herself upward. She still had hold of her Star of David. Its six gold points shed water, glittered in starlight, and she buried it, point first, into his right eye.
Throwing his head back, he roared in pain. Sara, clinging to his arm, rose up with him, her feet scrabbling on the slippery hull, then gaining purchase until she was on board. He came at her, maddened as a wounded bull. She knew at once his momentum would drive all the wind out of her. Still, she waited until the very last instant before sweeping her leg across his leading ankle. Thrown off balance, his momentum too great to break, he struck the gunwale, his upper body starting to go over.
He grabbed her, determined to use her as ballast to bring him back onto the deck, or, as a last resort, to pull her in with him. She jammed her thumb into his ruined eye, then jerked hard on the gold chain, extracting the star, along with the vitreous humor of his eye. He screamed again, groping more desperately for her.
Dancing away, she lowered her shoulder and, using the full weight of her body, rammed him at just above the height of the gunwale.
Over he went. She heard the splash, saw a fountain of seawater, then the dorsal fin, cutting through the water toward him. He tried to rise up, but his sodden clothes weighed him down, and he could get only his head and one shoulder out of the water.
“Help me!” he cried.
She stared down at him without pity. Her cheek and side burned like fire.
“Fuck you,” she said. “Fuck you.”
“Ahhhgh, no!”
His body convulsed as the leading shark took its first bite out of him. He shrieked, his body shaking violently as the shark whipped its head back and forth.
Then the others nosed in, claiming their own portions of the feast. For a short time, Colonel Khalifa was visible, one arm upraised, fist clenched against the agony as more chunks of flesh were torn off him. The water began to boil, he vomited blood, and was borne under, never to reappear.
* * *
Furuque was on top of Bourne, his weight pressing down on Bourne’s rib cage. Bourne’s mind rushed back to the hotel conference room in Doha, wires strapped around his chest, while the low-voltage current from the car battery constricted his breathing, on the way to asphyxiating him. He gasped, a blackness boiling at the periphery of his vision, where Soraya and Sonya sat, incarcerated, helpless, surely terrified.
Furuque was pounding him with a fury beyond the rational. It was the fanatic’s release, his justification for all he said and did. He was motivated by rage—the particular rage of the oppressed, the person who believed everything had been taken from him, the person who had nothing, and therefore had nothing to lose but a life in the service of Allah.
This ideology made Furuque a particularly dangerous opponent, especially for an emotionally and physically depleted Bourne. El Ghadan had bested him. Worse, he had managed to burrow into Bourne’s head, having successfully exploited his weakness.
All this went through Bourne’s mind while Furuque, in his single-minded rage, was inflicting great damage with his balled fists. Bourne found his head and shoulders hanging over the concrete edge of the canyon, the rubble-strewn floor yawning below him. Clearly, Furuque was determined to shove him over, to watch him break his back on the canyon’s twists of metal and jagged lumps of concrete.
Furuque’s furious countenance was just above him. Bits of food clung to his thick, curly beard like spiders to their web. The exhalations from his mouth were vile, as if the accumulated bile of dogma was eating through the lining of his stomach.
Bourne’s hands, pinioned at his sides by Furuque’s knees, were for the moment useless. He let his head drop over the open space, and Furuque, gloating, let his own head follow Bourne’s down until they were almost nose to nose. Without warning, Bourne slammed his forehead into Furuque’s nose, splitting the cartilage beneath the skin, driving it into his sinus passages.
As Furuque reared back in shock and pain, Bourne twisted his shoulders. Furuque’s position was upended, and Bourne, taking immediate advantage, shoved him over. For an instant, the sniper, blood pouring from his ruined nose, teetered on the brink, as Bourne had moments before. Bourne shoved him again. But as Furuque was about to fall, he grabbed Bourne’s shirt front and held on.
The two plummeted down. Furuque’s shoulder blade caught the corner of a concrete block, shattering it. Bourne came down on top of him and rolled off, the small of his back slamming into the rubble. The breath shot out of him, and for a long moment he lay on his back, unable to move or even to breathe deeply.
After a short time he found the strength to roll over, gain hands and knees. In this position, he looked down at Furuque. The sniper lay with his eyes open, the pupils fixed, staring into another world. He was dead, and a brief exploration of his body turned up the reason. Bouncing off the concrete cube, Furuque had landed on a nest of twisted iron rebar, one length of which had pierced his side and kidney.
Bourne, gradually regaining himself, cursed under his breath. With Furuque dead, he had no way of discovering who the sniper worked for or why he had been assigned to assassinate Minister Hafiz.
He rose, still shaky, and slowly made his way toward the ladder leading out of the canyon. But with one hand on an iron rung, he heard a sound above his head, and, looking up, saw crouched above him the young man he had helped out of the lavatory. He was grinning at Bourne.
He held the Stechkin automatic pistol Bourne had taken off one of the terrorists in the warehouse, and was now pointing it directly at Bourne’s head.
* * *
Sara sat on the bloody deck of Hassim’s pleasure craft with the crazy thought that all the pleasure had been drained out of this one. She laughed out loud—a strained laugh that had about it the sharp edge of hysteria. It was one thing to stare death in the face, she thought, quite another to escape being eaten alive by a shiver of sharks. Drawing her knees up against her bare breasts, she wrapped her arms around her shins, rocking back and forth.
In her left hand she still held her beloved Star of David, sticky with Khalifa’s eye matter, the consistency of custard. She dearly wanted to wash it clean, to see the six points glimmering again in the starshine, but she could not get herself to move. It was at this precise moment that she realized she was trembling uncontrollably.
Far away, she heard a deep boom rolling across the bosom of the Persian Gulf. She managed to turn her head, saw in the south that the stars had been obscured by clouds, blacker than the night. Embedded within, lances of lightning split the clouds with blue-white electricity. The atmosphere had thickened, the scent of rain was like a spice sprinkled over the waves, and a heavy sea was rising from the depths of the oncoming storm, freakish at this time of the year.
Sara knew she had to weigh anchor, make for shore at all due speed, otherwise the storm would catch her in deep water. This boat was a pleasure craft, not made to withstand six-foot waves. She risked shipping too much water, or even capsizing.
These thoughts galvanized her out of her temporary paralysis. Not bothering to waste time dressing, she went to the bow, hauled up the anchor, stowed it, then went to the wheel and fired the ignition.
The powerboat coughed to life. The huge engine rumbled, as if impatient to get going. Switching on the GPS, she identified the coastline, pressed the home button, and watched as the GPS plotted her course. Then she bore down on the throttle and the powerboat leapt forward in its own brand of mechanical joy.
Oddly, this display of pure energy lifted her, and she stroked the lacquered Macassar ebony trim of the wheelhouse with genuine affection.
Running before a storm had its own pleasures, as well as its dangers, which only accelerated her exhilaration. She had cheated death, she had overcome terrible odds, and here she was, driving a million-dollar boat, splay-legged, powerful, naked as a jaybird.
A strange thought occurred to her now. She had returned to the field, where she was always closest to death. And yet it was precisely here where she felt safest. She knew the territory, and the expertise she brought to bear on navigating every square inch of it was what, for her, made life worthwhile. Away from the field, she had been asleep; here she had come fully alive again.
Behind her, the wind had picked up. Though not yet at gale force, that too was coming, along with opaque sheets of black rain that already blocked her windward quarter. But up ahead, she could make out the beckoning string of lights, like a necklace of glowing pearls, which marked the safe harbor of Doha’s coastline.
She would make it with moments to spare. Time to climb back into her dress, pull her jacket close around her. Time to clean her Star of David. Time to return to civilization.
20
William Magnus, the president of the United States, was in a low mood. It was the kind of mood no one, even Howard Anselm, dared disturb for fear of being cut down at the knees.
POTUS stood in the Oval Office, staring out one of the windows. Night had fallen on the capital, the bright lights illuminating the reinforced concrete antiterrorist barriers. Looking at them depressed him further; they made him feel like a prisoner.
He stood immobile as a sentinel, as if he were one of the many that patrolled the White House grounds inside the high black-painted fences. Half draped in the same Stars and Stripes flag with which, days ago, he wished to wrap Camilla, he tried to sort out his thoughts after a long day of meetings, phone calls, arguments, and a parade of fifteen-minute appointments.
That he hadn’t taken the opportunity to fuck her wrapped in the flag, even against her wishes, ate at him like a tapeworm. She had said no, but so what? Women always said no, it was part of their nature. It was also true in his considerable experience that with women no most often meant yes, at least when it came to sex. They liked to appear demure, chaste even, but break through that porcelain exterior and they were as wanton as any man—sometimes even more.
Magnus stood with his hands clasped at the small of his back, head up, chin jutting forward. A pussy, he thought, is like the weather. When it’s wet, it’s time to go inside.
He chuckled, and for a moment his mood lightened. But then he thought of Camilla, her unwillingness to continue what they had started. And why? He’d never had such astonishing sex with any woman before. He knew she felt the same way, so why did she want to end it? The Monica explanation? He didn’t buy it. He had plenty of safeguards in place to ensure that kind of debacle never happened to either of them. He was the most powerful man in the free world—possibly in the world, period. Women were drawn to power as men were drawn to beauty. What the fuck was Camilla’s problem?
He sighed deeply. What, then, should he do? He knew, of course, but part of him did not want to stoop to such adolescent behavior. And yet he knew he would. No thought, no counteraction would stop him.
Sighing again, he broke away from his sightless vigil, went to his desk, and sat. From a locked lower drawer, he extracted a lightweight laptop. The instant it finished booting up, he clicked on the eye icon. A CCTV picture appeared, showing him Camilla’s room at the Dairy.
And there she was, in all her naked glory. She was padding out of the bathroom in a cloud of, he imagined, fragrant steam, drying her hair with a fluffy white towel. Ah, to be that towel, he thought. His heart hurt. And it was at this moment that he sat back with an audible gasp.
It wasn’t just that he wanted to fuck Camilla—he wanted to be with her. He loved her! He, the president of the United States, married with two children and a dog, all beloved by the American people.
He put his head in his hands, closed his eyes in agony. His heart beat like a trip-hammer, paining him. All at once, he lashed out with his right hand, sweeping the laptop with its incriminating, reprehensible, wicked video across the room. It struck the wall, as he had meant it to, shattering to pieces.
Immediately, the Oval Office was filled with Secret Service agents.
“Get out of here!” Magnus shouted. “Get out and stay out!”
When Howard Anselm was read in on the incident ten minutes later, he began to worry in earnest.
* * *
“As-salam alaykum,” Bourne said. “My name is Yusuf Al Khatib.”
The young man stared down at him. Then he grinned hugely. “Eisa. Thank you for saving my life.”
Bourne climbed up the ladder. When he reached ground level, Eisa handed over the Stechkin grip first.
“You need a better weapon, Yusuf. That gun is ancient.”
Bourne put the Stechkin away. “Let’s get out of here before the Syrian army decides to take another look.”
They crossed the junkyard field surrounding the factory. Apart from the hulks of bombed-out cars, the streets were empty. Another of Damascus’s eerie silences had descended like storm clouds across the city. Sections were brightly lighted, like any other city across the globe, but here and there, entire neighborhoods were blacked out, either from a loss of electricity or from the citizens laying low, not wanting to draw attention to themselves. Then shelling began again in the outskirts of the city, lighting up the night.
Eisa kept his head down. “Why did Furuque attack you like that?”
“Blood feud,” Bourne lied. “Uncles.”
Eisa nodded. “My family, too, is split in half.” His Arabic was odd—not stilted or poor so much as spoken with a curiously flat accent.
“Where are you from?”
“Pittsburgh,” Eisa said. “That’s in the United States.”
A chill went through Bourne. “Was the other young man with you at the club also American?”
“Everyone at tonight’s recruitment is American,” Eisa said. “We’re true believers. We’ve come to join the jihad.”
Bourne took a moment to allow this news to sink in. “How many of you are there?”
“I don’t know. I’ll see tonight.”
Bourne was shocked. He had of course heard of Americans being recruited to the jihadist cause, but not in wholesale numbers. This was a new and horre
ndous development. “Furuque was recruiting you.”
“Indoctrinating, actually. I recruited myself. Well, not exactly. I made a friend through the Internet.”
“Facebook?”
“No, that’s too public. A fantasy chat room. We’re both fanatics of this game. Anyway, we got to talking about other things. He’s lonely, doesn’t have any friends.”
“Why not?”
“He says he’s a runaway. His father’s trying to find him, but he’s been ducking him for years. He’s been using a false name and everything.”
“What’s his name?”
“I shouldn’t tell you. You might be one of his father’s people. His father’s very powerful, he says.”
Bourne laughed. “You can be sure I’m not. I work for no one.”
They had come to a cross street. A traffic light blinked intermittently, only half alive, like much of the city surrounding it.
Eisa studied Bourne. “I’m going to meet him.”
“He’s in al-Nusra Front?”
“No,” Eisa said. “The Tomorrow Brigade.”
El Ghadan’s army. “Is that where Furuque was taking you? To join them?”
Eisa nodded again. “There’s a staging area in the western quarter of the city. Nairabein Park, opposite the Zee Qar Battle Square. I was supposed to go with him tonight.”
“Do you know how to get there?” Bourne asked.
Eisa shook his head. “I only arrived yesterday.”
El Ghadan’s mobile buzzed in Bourne’s pocket, reminding him that it was now midnight and with it would come another proof-of-life message. At least, he thought, continuing to move away from the factory, El Ghadan no longer knows where I am.
“I’ll take you,” Bourne said, returning to Eisa. His heart rate was accelerated. Of course he would take Eisa. “These recruiting sessions are chaotic, more often than not. Tell me your friend’s name. I’ll help you find him.”
The Bourne Ascendancy Page 13