Angels of Wrath ft-2

by Larry Bond

  “Team up! Team up!” yelled Melfi as smoke began pouring from the car. Six men in heavy body armor and gas masks came forward, armed with crowbars and chain saws; they were covered at close range by four others with more conventional weapons of war. One of the occupants of the vehicle had managed to open his door before being overcome by the gas. He was pulled down, secured under the netting. The team tore off the roof of the vehicle, cutting through the nylon mesh as well as the metal.

  “Go, let’s go!” said Melfi. He pulled up and snugged his gas mask as the fumes surged from the car. “Do it! Get every one of them out.”

  By the time Rankin got there, all of the men had been taken out and trussed. Two were unconscious, leaning against each other. One lay on the ground moaning. The last sat a few feet away from the others, staring sullenly into the night.

  None of the men looked remotely like Khazaal.

  “Any papers?” Rankin asked Melfi.

  “Nothing. Nothing in the car.”

  “Take their pictures. Let the Iraqi look at them.”

  Melfi squinted at him. It was the cross-eyed squint captains reserve for NCOs, even those on special assignments, who give them orders. Nonetheless, he told one of his men to do it.

  “How far off are the choppers?” Melfi asked.

  “Eighteen minutes,” said Rankin. “We’ll hear them a good way out.”

  8

  EASTERN SYRIA

  Ferguson decided the motorcycles were too far away to walk to, so he hotwired the Land Rover instead. Telling the two Rangers he’d posted on the road to come in and watch the prisoners, he took off with Thera to a spot where he thought he could intercept the third vehicle.

  Driving across the open terrain would have been difficult enough in the daytime, since it was pockmarked with boulders and sandpits, but at night without headlamps it was treacherous, which only made it more interesting. Ferguson had Thera pull the satellite photos from his pack as he drove, trying to dodge the worst of the obstructions. They had more than two miles of hardscrabble to get through before reaching a road to the northwest.

  “Let me see that sat photo with this grid in it.”

  “It’s two satellite photos,” Thera told him, reaching down to get them from the pack on the Land Rover’s floor.

  “Point to where we are and where that other road is,” said Ferguson.

  “Here and here,” said Thera.

  He took the photos and held them on the wheel for a second, then tossed them back.

  “All right. Let’s try this,” he said, pulling sharply off the road.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”

  “Friend of mine says that,” Ferg told her. “You Catholic?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Shortcut. You Catholic?”

  “Greek Orthodox, but I went to parochial school.”

  “Good thing that didn’t come up in the job interview,” said Ferguson. “Would’ve disqualified you as a fanatic.”

  “I heard you went to Catholic school yourself.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  When he finally spotted the highway, Ferguson misjudged the depth of the ditch along the side of the road and nearly rolled the Land Rover trying to veer onto the pavement. Thera flew forward, barely keeping herself from slamming into the dashboard. Belatedly, she began fishing for the seat belts.

  The Ford was behind them now, but with the road and terrain fairly open, Ferguson needed a strategic place to lay a trap. He’d spotted an intersection about three miles ahead on the map. He told Thera they would put the truck in the middle of it as if it had broken down, then shoot out the Ford’s tires when it stopped to see what was going on. After that they’d use the crossbow and tear gas routine again.

  They were still about two miles from the intersection when a shadow loomed over the empty field to his right. Ferguson jammed on the brakes.

  An airplane flying at very low altitude, no more than a few feet off the ground, passed over the roadway ahead.

  Ferguson jumped out of the car. “Son of a bitch.”

  “What?”

  “Look.” He pointed in the distance.

  “What?”

  “You see that?”

  “The airplane? Is it ours?”

  “Nah. It’s a little Cessna thing. Or some Russian plane like a Cessna.” The plane continued on a straight line to the west, twelve or so feet above the ground.

  “Back in the car,” said Ferguson, deciding they’d take the Ford anyway.

  “You really think that was Khazaal?” asked Thera.

  “Who else would be flying a plane at low altitude across the Syrian frontier?”

  “Dozens of people,” she told him. “Smugglers, drug dealers, some other terrorist scumbags we don’t know about.”

  “Nice try, but you’re not going to cheer me up,” said Ferguson. He stepped on the gas, going up over a hill and then down so fast that they went airborne for a moment. That gave him an idea. He hit the brakes and backed up, putting the car off one side of the road.

  “All right. Out,” he told her. “Take off your shirt.”

  “What?”

  “Just to rip the sleeve,” he said, pulling open his pocketknife. “The left sleeve. Driver’s side. You can leave it on if you trust me.”

  “I’ll do it myself, thanks,” said Thera, holding out her hand for the knife.

  “Come on. We probably have less than two minutes,” Ferguson told her. “Open the door and lean out. When they stop and come over, drop the tear gas canister. I’ll be over there with the shotgun.”

  “What if they don’t stop?”

  “I’ll take out a tire with your crossbow. If they don’t hear a gun they’ll stop,” he told her. “And if they don’t we can always catch up to them in the Land Rover. But if you rip enough of that shirt off, they’ll stop.”

  “Ha, ha.”

  “Who’s joking?”

  Ferguson trotted down the road. He had one shell with netting and flash-bangs, a large projectile with a very short range. It was tempting, very tempting, to load the grenade launcher with a high-explosive grenade and use it on the car; the Ford wouldn’t be armored. If anyone asked any questions, it would be easy to claim that the vehicle tried to run him down. No one would know any different. But he would know, and that was enough.

  Ferguson barely had time to get his weapons laid out and set himself before the Ford came over the hill. It moved much slower than the Land Rover had. Ferguson steadied the crossbow then put it down as the vehicle skidded to a stop. Four men, all with small weapons, got out of the car.

  Ferguson aimed the grenade launcher point-blank at the tallest of the men and fired. The launcher kicked up as the grenade shot off. He missed the man and hit the side of the truck, igniting the stun grenade and the micromesh net. Ferguson dropped the launcher and thumped two slugs from his shotgun into the men who were still standing, the thick plastic bullets pounding the back of their heads. He had to hit one of the lugs a second time before he fell. By then, tear gas had begun curling out of the Land Rover.

  Thera scrambled back through the front of the truck, kicking out of the open passenger-side door. As she reached the ground, one of the men began firing an AK-47 in her direction. She huddled low, grabbing for her own gun. Whirling around, she saw one of the men crawling through the truck. He had a pistol; she fired her own gun point-blank into his forehead.

  Ferguson ran to the far side of the Land Rover, grabbing Thera as she staggered backward, coughing from the gas. He pulled her away and gave her a water bottle to irrigate her eyes, then trotted back to the truck. Two of the men were writhing on the ground, one still holding his gun. Ferguson blasted each one in the skull and got the other man for good measure. Then he hit them with the syringes.

  “You weren’t kidding about the gas,” said Thera when he got back to her. Tears were streaming from her beet-red face.

  “I meant for you to put the mask on before you pulled the gr
enade,” said Ferguson.

  “How?”

  He pulled his off, then held it to his face. “You could have run back to the side. It’s all right. Men find it hard to resist a woman’s tears.”

  “You’re on a roll tonight,” she told him sarcastically.

  “Tell me about it.” Ferguson walked over to the car. Besides a half-dozen guns on the floor of the rear seat, he found a duffle bag filled with hundred-dollar bills.

  None of the men were Khazaal. The night had been a total wipeout.

  ACT III

  They have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them

  blood to drink…

  — Revelation 16:6 (King James Version)

  1

  TEL AVIV

  THE NEXT MORNING…

  Menacham Stein, the Mossad officer who had worked with the First Team on Seven Angels, met Corrine at the airport in Tel Aviv. He looked more like a businessman on vacation than a spy: six feet tall, with slicked-back hair and a light scent of aftershave, he walked up to her as she came out of the tunnel off the plane and led her away from the others. He slid a magnetic card into a reader on a door, showing her into a stairwell that led to an empty corridor. After several more twists and turns they emerged in an area of offices before exiting in the main terminal section. Here he slowed his pace to an easy nonchalance, guiding her with a gentle tap on the shoulder to the doors. As they walked to the car she realized that there were at least two other men watching them.

  “Your people, I assume,” she said.

  He smiled but said nothing, leading the way to a blue Ford in the middle of the lot. Corrine noticed another pair of men sitting in a car nearby.

  “More?” she said.

  “We don’t like to take chances with important visitors,” said the officer, popping the trunk for her bag.

  While it looked ordinary from the outside, the vehicle had been heavily modified: the sides, roof, and floor had been armored and the glass reinforced. A phone sat on the console between driver and passenger. The Mossad officer reached under the dash and put his finger on a small device that read his fingerprint. This gave him five seconds to insert his key in the ignition and start the car.

  “First time in Tel Aviv?” asked Stein.

  “It’s my third or fourth, but it’s been ten years. You sound like you’ve spent a great deal of time in the U.S.,” she added. “Do you come from New York?”

  “I lived in Brooklyn for a few years,” said Stein, but he didn’t elaborate.

  Inside the Mossad building, Corrine was searched politely but not perfunctorily. Stein took her to an elevator that led to an isolated part of the building, where a special room was set up for top-secret conversations. To secure the room against possible eavesdropping, it had been sheathed in a layer of copper and its supports isolated from vibrations, so that it literally floated within the space. More conventionally, radio and microwave detection devices hunted for transmissions emanating not only from the room but from any of the nearby areas, and white noise generators provided a sonic barrier around the facility.

  To get into the secure area, they had to walk down a tunnellike hall made of polished cement. As they started down it, another man came up from the other side. Corrine thought it was David Tischler, the Mossad supervisor she was meeting with, coming out to greet her. But after holding her glance for a brief moment, the man abruptly turned his head toward the wall and then put his hand up, shielding the other side of his face.

  Stein touched her elbow, leading her through a small anteroom to the chamber where Tischler sat waiting.

  “I hope your flight was a good one,” said the Israeli, rising. Unlike Stein, he was short and a little overweight; it might not have been fair to say he had a potbelly, but he certainly didn’t look like an athlete.

  “We appreciate your help with the Seven Angels case,” she told him as she sat down.

  “Of course.”

  “I want to be assured that his death was random,” said Corrine.

  “God does not call us randomly. But in the sense you mean it, yes. It was an accident. Whether it was fortunate or unfortunate, I suppose we can’t tell.”

  “It was unfortunate for our investigation,” said Corrine. “He would have been apprehended, and you would have had more information about the people he wanted to contact.”

  Tischler’s narrow brown eyes held no expression; his mouth was the mouth of a man staring into space, revealing nothing.

  “Ferg was there,” said Stein, who unlike his boss seemed agitated at the question. “What did he think?”

  “Mr. Ferguson was a little too close to be objective,” said Corrine.

  “He thought it was random, too,” suggested Stein. “As did I.”

  “Mr. Ferguson wasn’t prepared to say it wasn’t random. But he lacked proof, one way or the other.”

  “Spoken like an American lawyer,” said Stein.

  The faintest of grins appeared on Tischler’s face.

  “We’ve made arrests in the case,” said Corrine, loosening her tone slightly. “The FBI will share what’s appropriate as it becomes available. If you require specific items to assist you, I can certainly facilitate sharing that. As I said, we appreciate your assistance. I’m wondering if you’ve developed any additional information that might be useful to us.”

  “We’ve shared everything we know,” said Stein.

  “There was a jeweler?”

  “A blind, as far as we can tell.”

  Corrine looked at Tischler, whose face was once more a blank wall. “Do you see a connection between Seven Angels and Nisieen Khazaal?”

  Tischler’s eyes widened ever so slightly. “Is there one?”

  “Thatch was on his way to Egypt. We believe the people he was to see in Cairo may have been on their way to the meeting that Khazaal is going to.”

  Tischler’s eyes went dull again. “I guess.”

  “It would be difficult to believe,” said Stein. “The Seven Angels would be more aptly named Seven Wanna-bes. They’re really amateurs. Thatch would have been killed by them, just as Ferguson almost was.”

  The connection between Seven Angels and Khazaal was every bit as far-fetched as Stein said. Egyptian intelligence indicated that the tailor, Ahmed Abu Saahlid, commanded a network of terrorists and had plans to travel to Lebanon or Syria — typically for the Egyptians, they couldn’t be specific. The tailor opposed the Egyptian government and was “of interest,” something that might be said of at least a third of the Egyptian population. Nothing in his dossier, however, showed that he had any connection with Khazaal or any Iraqi for that matter. The Egyptian report made it seem unlikely that he would have been willing to act as a go-between with Seven Angels even if he did have access to Khazaal. Several of his recorded statements showed he despised Americans in general, and Ferguson’s experience with him demonstrated a willingness to act on those beliefs.

  But something in Stein’s answer interested Corrine a great deal: the line about wanna-bes. It had been in an FBI report she’d read on the way over, one that was not among the documents shared with the Israelis.

  Coincidence? It was a common phrase.

  “I suppose it’s unlikely there’s a connection,” said Corrine, moving on to the real reason she’d come to see Tischler in person. “What else can you tell us about Khazaal?”

  “Very little,” said Tischler.

  “You know his travel plans?”

  “Only that he is due to see others in Syria. Two men we have interest in over in Damascus transferred some money into an account used by one of the exile groups friendly to the so-called resistance. And a room there was rented for the weekend.”

  One of the men was being followed by Iraqi intelligence, and the bank account was being monitored by the CIA. But it was possible that the exiles had already been tipped off; the second man had disappeared.

  “Do you expect the meeting in Damascus?” asked Corrine.

  �
�Not necessarily,” said Tischler. “Damascus would not be ideal, because of the Syrian government’s presence. Somewhere in the east, perhaps.”

  While that would sound logical to someone uninitiated in the intrigues of Iraq, the sparsely populated desert areas of Syria were much worse than the capital of Syria. Strangers there tended to stick out, and there were many competing interests — Kurds, informants, smugglers, drug dealers — who would have much to gain by supplying information to the Syrians or to the Iraqi spies and operatives in the area. A meeting outside of a city would be visible to spy planes or satellites. Though in reality the coverage over the area was spotty at best, the resistance people tended to think American coverage was twenty-four/seven.

  So why had Tischler even suggested it, Corrine wondered. “Could you make an educated guess?”

  “Syria is a place where educated guesses can often get one in trouble,” said Tischler. “I wouldn’t try.”

  Corrine let the matter drop temporarily, asking if the Mossad required assistance on any other projects and receiving the bland answers she expected. Finally she glanced at her watch.

  “I’m afraid I’m running a little late,” she said, rising. “I’m due at the embassy.”

  “Of course.” Tischler rose. “If we can be of further assistance while you’re in Tel Aviv, please tell us.”

  “Thank you. The Khazaal meeting—”

  The Mossad officer looked at her expectantly as she paused. He was well practiced at keeping his face expressionless, and Corrine simply couldn’t tell now whether he knew more about it than he had shared.

  “You would suppose that would be more likely in the west than in the east,” she suggested.

  “I’ve learned not to suppose.”

  An answer there could be no arguing with, Corrine thought. “If we get any additional information,” she said, extending her hand. “We’ll share it.”