“Sounds good.”
“Be back in five.”
Brian sat in the living room, studying their captives and doing a mental postmortem of their takedown. Pretty damned good job, he thought. Dominic had always been good with a gun, and a pro at Hogan’s Alley, but this had been the first time they’d really gotten into the shit together. Sure, there’d been that mall thing, but that wasn’t quite the same, was it? Here they’d taken on genuine URC bad boys on their home turf. Not really accustomed to taking prisoners, though; he’d have to change mental gears on that point. The butt of the Browning had laid both mutts out, sure enough, but not very efficiently. Maybe a lead-and-leather sap might do the trick. Have to look into that.
He heard the courtyard gate open. He got up, walked to the door, peeked around the corner. “Just me, bro,” Dominic said, walking inside.
“How’s it looking?”
“Quiet. The place really dies down after dark. Another couple hours and it’ll probably be a ghost town.”
“Which brings up a good point.”
“These two?” Dominic replied, nodding at Bari and the other one.
“Yeah. If they’ve got info, we can either try to wring them out here or try to get them out.”
“Well, one thing’s for sure, we’re not getting them out of Libya on our own. Maybe a run for Tunisia.”
“How far?”
“Hundred miles west, give or take. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s have a chat with Bari and see where it takes us.”
With a cold glass of water poured over his head and a few light slaps to the face, they were able to rouse Bari. He blinked several times, then looked around the room, then at Brian and Dominic.
He barked a few words in Arabic, then said in heavily accented English, “Who are you?”
“The cavalry,” Brian said.
Bari squeezed his eyes shut and groaned. “My hand.”
“Just two fingers,” Dominic said. “We stopped the bleeding. Here.” He handed Bari half a dozen aspirin from a bottle they’d found in the bathroom. Bari shoved the tablets into his mouth, then accepted a glass of water from Brian.
“Thank you. Who are you?”
“But by the looks of it, we’re the only friends you’ve got left in the Medina,” Dominic said. “Who were they?”
“They’re all dead?”
“Except for the fella with the paring knife,” Brian replied. “Who were they?”
“I can’t ...”
“Our guess is URC. Somebody pushed the button on you, Mr. Bari.”
“What does that mean?”
“Somebody ordered you murdered. What were they asking you about?”
Bari didn’t reply.
“Look, without help, they’re going to get you. You might be able to hide for a while, but they’ll find you. Probably your family in Benghazi, too.”
Bari’s head jerked up. “You know about them?”
Dominic nodded. “And if we do ...”
“You’re Americans, aren’t you?”
“Does it matter?”
“No, I suppose it doesn’t.”
Brian said, “Help us and we’ll help you—try to get you out of the country.”
“How?”
“Let us worry about that. Who were they?”
“URC.”
“The same ones who did Dirar al-Kariim?”
“Who?”
“Web video. Guy with no head and no feet ...”
“Oh. Yes. That’s them.”
Dominic asked, “What’s his name, the one with the knife?”
“I know him as Fakhoury.”
“What’s he do?”
“What you saw here. Murder. Punishment. Very low-level type of person. He bragged about al-Kariim. Talked about it.”
“Why was he after you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit,” Brian said. “You and your bodyguards were in a hurry. You knew Fakhoury was on his way. How?”
“Word on the street was that I was talking to the police. It wasn’t true. I don’t know who said it, but with these people . . . security is everything. Killing me was a precaution.”
“What’d they want from you? You’re their Web nerd, right?”
“Yes. Fakhoury wanted to know if I’d kept any data.”
“Such as?”
“Domain names. Passwords. Graphics ...”
“Like banner images?”
“Yes. Yes, he asked about those.”
Dominic looked at Brian and muttered, “Stego.”
“Yep.”
“What are you talking about?” Bari asked.
“So what’s the answer?” Dominic asked. “Did you keep any data? A little insurance, maybe?”
Bari opened his mouth to speak, but Brian cut him off: “You lie to us and we’re going to cut Fakhoury free and leave.”
“Yes, I kept data. It’s on an SD card—secure digital, like for a camera. It’s under a tile behind the toilet.”
Brian was already moving. “Got it.” He was back two minutes later with a thumbnail-sized card.
Dominic asked Bari, “Who gives Fakhoury his marching orders?”
“I’ve only heard rumors.”
“Fine.”
“A man named Almasi.”
“Local?”
“No, he’s got a house outside Zuwarah.”
Dominic looked at Brian. “About sixty miles west of here.”
“How high up is this guy? Could he have okayed al-Kariim’s execution?”
“It’s possible.”
They left Bari alone and walked out into the courtyard. “What’dya think?” Brian asked.
“Bari’s a good catch, but it’d be nice to grab a fish higher up the food chain. If this Almasi has enough juice to green-light one of their own, it might be worth a try.”
Brian checked his watch. “Almost ten now. Figure a half-hour to get back to the car, then two hours to Zuwarah. Hit him by two, then back on the road.”
“So we take Bari, grab Almasi if we can.”
“Which leaves Fakhoury.”
“Dead weight, bro.”
Dominic thought it over and sighed.
Brian said, “He’s a stone-cold murderer, Dom.”
“No shit. Having trouble throwing the switch in my head, you know?”
“You threw it once. The kiddie-raper thing.”
“That was a little different.”
“Not much different. Bad guy that wasn’t going to stop on his own. Same thing here.”
Dominic considered this, then nodded. “I’ll do it.”
“No, bro, this one’s mine. Go get Bari ready to move. I’m going to police up.”
Five minutes later Dominic and Bari were in the courtyard. Brian came out, dropped a canvas shopping tote at Dominic’s feet. “Half a dozen semiautos and ten magazines. Be right back.” Brian went back inside.
“What’s he doing?” Bari asked.
From inside came a dull clap, then a second.
“Fakhoury?” Bari said to Dominic. “You killed him.”
“Would you rather he be alive to come after you?”
“No, but who’s to say you won’t do the same to me when you’re done?”
“I am. Worst case, we’ll let you walk away.”
“And best case.”
“That depends on how helpful you are.”
Brian walked out ten minutes later. He and Dominic walked to the far wall, and Brian boosted Dominic onto the roof. He was back ten seconds later with their backpacks. The three of them moved to the courtyard door.
Brian turned to Bari. “Just so we’re clear: You run, or draw attention to us, we’ll put a bullet in your head.”
“Why would I do such a thing?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. You put us in a jackpot, you’ll be the first one to die.”
“I understand.”
Forty minutes later they emerged from the Medina on Sidi Omran and walked
two blocks east toward the Corinthia, where they’d parked the Opel. Five minutes after that, they were on Umar al Mukhtar and heading west toward the outskirts of the city. Overhead the sky was clear, showing a quarter-moon and a diamond field of stars.
They drove in silence, with Bari lying flat on the backseat until they were past Sabratah, forty miles up the coast from Tripoli. “You can sit up,” Dominic told him from the passenger seat. “How’s the hand?”
“Very painful. What did you do with my fingers?”
“Flushed them down the toilet,” Brian replied.
This was the easiest of his tasks inside Bari’s home. In turn, he had checked Fakhoury and his men for tattoos and identification. He found none of the former but plenty of the latter; these he put in the tote bag. Next he fired three rounds into the back of each man’s head. The hollow-points did their job, turning each face into so much unrecognizable hamburger. The police would probably be able to eventually identify them, but by the time the URC realized it had lost one of its own, he, Dominic, and Bari would be out of the country.
“You flushed my fingers down the toilet?” Bari repeated. “Why?”
Dominic answered this one. “So there’s no trace of you. The more unknowns they have, the better. Where’s Almasi’s house?”
“East of the city. I’ll recognize the turnoff. It’s across from an old refinery.” Twenty minutes later, Bari said, “Slow down. This next road on the left.”
Brian slowed down and turned onto the dirt tract. Almost immediately the grade increased; ahead, the road wound its way in a series of low, scrub-covered hills. After five minutes the road turned sharply right. Bari, looking out the driver’s-side window, tapped the glass. “There. That house with the lights on. That’s Almasi’s.”
A quarter-mile away down an eroded slope, Brian and Dominic could make out the two-story adobe structure surrounded by a shoulder-high mud-brick wall. Fifty yards away to the west was a cluster of four adobe huts. Directly behind the house sat a barn.
“Old farm?” Dominic asked.
“Yes. Goats. Almasi bought it as a retreat home three years ago.”
Dominic said, “See the antennas on the roof, Bri?”
“Yeah. The guy’s wired for some serious comms.”
They continued on for another half-mile, losing sight of the farmhouse behind a hill, then slowed at a crossroads. On impulse, Brian turned left. The dirt road narrowed for fifty yards before opening into what looked like a gravel quarry.
“This ought to do,” Dominic said.
Brian doused the headlights, coasted to a stop, then killed the engine. They turned in their seats and looked at Bari. “What else do you know about this place?” Brian asked.
“Just where it is, that’s all.”
“Never been here?”
“Once. Just to drive by it.”
“How’d that happen? Just curiosity?”
Bari hesitated. “In my business, it pays to know who you’re dealing with. I knew Fakhoury answered to Almasi. I thought it might be smart someday to deal directly with him, so I made some inquiries.”
“Industrious,” Dominic remarked. “So you’ve never been there, never been in the house?”
“No.”
Brian: “What about bodyguards?”
“I’m sure he has them, but I don’t know how many.” Brian and Dominic stared hard at him. “It’s the truth, I swear on my children.”
“Dogs?”
“I don’t know.”
“Give me your hands,” Brian said. “Put them on the headrests.”
Tentatively, Bari did so. Together Brian and Dominic duct-taped his hands to the headrests. “Is this really necessary?”
“We’re not quite to the trust stage yet,” Dominic explained. “Don’t take it personally. We’ll be back.”
“And if you’re not?”
“Then you’re shit out of luck,” Brian said.
They climbed out, retrieved the tote from the trunk, and sat down in the dirt to sort through their arsenal. In addition to their Brownings, they had four French-made MAB P15 9-millimeter semiautos, and two snub-nosed .32 revolvers.
“Got sixty rounds from the P15s,” Brian said. “Nine-mil Parabellum. Good fit for our Brownings. If we need more than sixty, it means we’ve fucked up anyway.”
They reloaded the Brownings’ magazines, then divided up the remaining loose P15 rounds and stuffed them into the thigh pockets of their cargo pants. Finally, they stuffed some odds and ends into their backpacks. Dominic walked to the Opel’s back window. Bari said, “I need some more aspirin.”
Brian fished the bottle from his backpack and tossed it over. Dominic dropped half a dozen into Bari’s mouth, then gave him a swig from their canteen.
“Don’t go anywhere, and don’t make any noise,” Dominic ordered. He turned to Brian. “Ready?”
“Damn straight. Let’s go bag us a big fish.”
68
HOW’RE YOU HOLDING UP?” Gerry Hendley asked, as Jack sat down across from the desk. Sam Granger stood to one side, leaning against the window, arms folded.
“Aside from getting asked that too many damned times, just fine,” Jack replied. “It was just a nick, Gerry. Nothing a little superglue couldn’t handle.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“I know what you’re talking about.”
“Jack, less than twelve hours ago you killed a man. If you tell me it’s not bugging you, I’m chaining you to your desk.”
“Boss—”
“He’s serious,” Granger said. “Like it or not, you’re President Jack Ryan’s son. If you don’t think that gives us pause, think again. And if for a second we don’t think you’ve got your head screwed on right, you’re benched.”
“What do you want from me? The truth is, my hands still shake a bit and my stomach’s churning. I pushed the plunger on MoHa because he deserved it. This Sinaga guy . . . I don’t know. Maybe he deserved it, maybe not. He came at me, tried to kill me. ...” Jack hesitated, cleared his throat. “Did I want to kill him? No. Am I glad it’s him and not me? You bet your ass.”
Gerry considered this for a few moments, then nodded. “Give it some thought and let me know tomorrow. Whatever you want to do, you’ve got a place here.”
“Thanks.”
“Sam, ask them in, will you?”
“Hang on a second,” Jack said. “I already ran this by John and Ding. ... Remember the birth e-mail we got?” Hendley nodded. “It never went anywhere. No replies, no follows. Just dead air, pretty much across the board. I’m thinking that e-mail was a ‘change the channel’ order.”
“Explain,” said Granger.
“We know the URC’s using steganography to communicate. Probably in the banner images on their websites, and they’ve probably been doing it awhile. What if the e-mail was a signal telling cells to switch to some stego-only protocol—call it their version of radio silence.”
“To what end?”
“Special ops guys go radio-silent when they’re getting ready to jump off. Maybe the Emir gave the go signal on an operation.”
“We saw a drop in chatter before Nine-Eleven,” Granger observed. “Bali and Madrid, too.”
Hendley nodded. “Jack, I want you to glue yourself to Biery. Tear down the dump from Nayoan.”
“Okay.”
“Call them in, Sam.”
Granger opened the door, and Clark and Chavez walked in and took their seats next to Jack. Hendley said to Clark, “You hear?”
“What?”
“The charges against Driscoll are gone.”
“Imagine that,” Clark said with a grin.
“Kealty’s press secretary announced it yesterday at close of business. Just in time to slide into the weekend. Sam talked to an old friend at Benning. Driscoll’s clear. Honorable discharge, full pension plus disability. His shoulder going to be a problem?”
“Not unless you’re hiring him to drywall your office, Gerry.�
�
“Good. Okay, let’s hear it.”
“Didn’t find anything in Sinaga’s trailer but a digital SLR camera,” Clark said. “Nikon, medium price range. It had an SD card inside it with a few hundred images. Mostly landscape stuff, but maybe a dozen were head shots.”
“Passport head shots,” Chavez added. “All men, mostly Middle Eastern or Indonesian, looks like. And one we’ve seen before. Remember the courier we tailed—Shasif Hadi.”
“No shit?” said Granger.
“But get this,” Jack replied. “In the head shot Sinaga had, Hadi’s clean shaven. When we were tailing him, he had a beard and mustache. Shave it off, use the new passport, and you’re good to go.”
Clark said, “That might answer the question of where he went after Las Vegas—at least partially. He left the country.”
Hendley nodded. “Where and why, though? Sam, what else do we know about Sinaga?”
“He’s high on the hit parade in Jakarta. I talked to a friend of a friend who’s the station chief in Surabaya. The guy was good. Had a real eye for passports.”
“Where are we with facial recognition?”
Jack answered this one. “Biery’s got his system in beta testing, but we don’t know much about the system ICE and Homeland Security is using. Their parameters might be different than ours.”
“FBI?” Granger offered.
“Probably the same system. If not, they’ll all be cross-pollinating anyway.”
“When Dom gets back, let’s have him run up a trial balloon. Since Hadi’s our only known quantity, let’s focus on him first. Find out where he was heading from Vegas. Mr. Clark, where did you leave things in San Francisco?”
“We’re clean with Nayoan. Left everything as is but downloaded a lot of data. Gavin’s massaging it right now. One thing’s for sure, Nayoan was a big logistics operator for the URC. Money, documentation . . . Who knows what else. As for Sinaga, we staged a break-in. He lost the fight with the burglar and got killed. Took his DVD player, some cash, to flesh it out.”
“We’ll keep an eye on the news out there, see if it’s playing. It should. We were careful.”
“Okay, so we wait until our über-nerd has something. Thank you, gentlemen. Mr. Clark, can you stay for a minute?” Once Jack and Chavez were gone and the door was closed, Hendley said, “So?”
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