Countdown to Mecca

by Michael Savage

  “We turn here,” he said.

  “There’s no road,” Jack pointed out.

  “Rocks mark something,” said Jimmy.

  “What did they say?” Doc asked.

  “‘Praise Allah.’ Out in the desert? Must be sign.”

  They fishtailed onto a pockmarked dirt road, skidding in the loose sand. Jimmy kept going, keeping his momentum up until they reached a harder packed section that headed them toward a set of low hills. The firmer surface of the road was a mixed blessing; the path was studded with holes deep enough to hide a dog in.

  “I hope you know where we can get some good shock absorbers,” said Jack as they thumped along.

  “You be sterile for week,” said Jimmy. “SEAL joke. Get it?”

  Try as he might, Jack couldn’t. He looked to Doc for help. “Damn squids never could come up with a good punch line,” his friend grumbled. “Does this match up with what the trucker’s wife told you?” he asked.

  “Close enough,” Jimmy assured him.

  Jack realized that they were all at the mercy of a Middle Eastern game of “telephone.” The husband told the wife, the wife told Jimmy, and now they had to live with the result. Five minutes later, they came across what looked like an abandoned oil well head. A concrete platform, half covered by sand, sat on a small rise just off the road. Jimmy turned again, nearly losing control of the car in the dirt. They quickly found a hard-packed road—and this one was much smoother than anything they’d been on since leaving the highway.

  “That’s a good sign,” Doc determined.

  Half a mile later, the road took a sharp turn to the left, then back to the right, entering a canyon. There Jimmy slowed the car down even more and he looked confused.

  “What’s up?” Jack asked him.

  Jimmy looked in every direction, craning his neck. “Woman say village here.”

  Jack stared into the blankness of the area. “You sure?” Jimmy nodded. “Maybe we took a wrong turn at those rocks?”

  “No,” Jimmy said with certainty. He drove down the road slowly, his eyes checking both sides of the road.

  Jack followed his gaze but could see nothing unusual. Even so, given the driver’s concentration, he didn’t want to distract him. “What is he looking for?” he whispered to Doc, who was leaning forward in the backseat.

  “Booby traps,” Doc murmured back.

  Jack was bewildered. “Here?”

  “If Jimmy is checking for booby traps, he has good reason. Shush.”

  They both watched the driver study the seemingly benign area, until Jimmy stopped the car as they reached a flat plateau. He turned off the engine and stepped out. Jack and Doc got out shortly after, watching as Jimmy moved around in a widening circle.

  “Half-dozen shacks,” Jimmy told them. He pointed between his feet. “Here.”

  Jack looked, and saw nothing.

  Doc looked, and kicked at rocks on the side of the tire path. “Look,” he told Jack. “More treads. Heavy machinery. And they were trailers, Jack. Easily moved.”

  Jack came over and saw the marks in the ground. “What’d they do with them?” asked Jack. “Haul them away?”

  “I think so.” Doc walked across the open area where the trailers had been. “The question is why.”

  Jack walked around the flattened area, his shoes sinking into the sand. He kicked down a few inches, scraping the dirt with his foot until he came to harder ground. Whoever had moved the trailers had simply dumped sand to make their work harder to spot. Why would anyone create a shanty town by a secret air force base, then sweep it away as if it never existed?

  “They’re done with the bomb,” Jack realized. “That’s why the village is gone.” Doc didn’t answer. He was too busy poking around the edges of what had once been a settlement. Suddenly he barked, “Here. Quick.”

  Jimmy and Jack raced over to find that Doc had uncovered some boards beneath the sand. Without exchanging another word, they all started digging at it with their hands. Jimmy found something. At first Jack thought it was part of one of the trailers—had they buried them here? Then he saw it was smaller, narrower. He looked closer.

  It was an arm, sticking out from a pit below.

  37

  San Francisco, California

  Sammy was alone in front of the computer console upstairs at the safe house. Ric was taking a nap, spooning Miwa, who was napping beside him. Sammy didn’t begrudge them. They had earned it. Ric had been monitoring the situation nonstop since Jack and Doc had left, and was keeping both sides informed of any progress.

  Sol was God-knew-where, doing God-knew-what. Probably getting more new cars, Sammy thought. Boaz was down in the secure room, monitoring Middle East chatter while Ritu served as night watchman for the residents. Sammy hoped that Boaz was doing a better job than the authorities. Dover could fret and suggest all she wanted, but any ex-Marine could tell you that the U.S. government was a sleepy giant, who only moved when it absolutely had to.

  Sammy blinked. He realized he was a sleepy giant as well, entering his twenty-second straight hour trying to find golden needles in the sad haystack of Montgomery Morton’s hard drive. Who else was Morton working with? Was the whole Strategic Command involved? Was Al Qaeda or some other terror group involved?

  The questions were ghosts haunting Sammy as he picked through the digital puzzle pieces. It was an obsession, and more than that. There was a plan, a big plan, something worth killing over. That was why Schoenberg was dead. That’s why Morton had tried to kill them. Maybe he’d stumbled onto it. Maybe he’d been part of it from the beginning. Sammy was convinced that it had something to do with the documentary his brother was working on, but far more serious.

  That was the difference between them. Jack had the head of a journalist. Sammy had been a warrior. Jack and Sammy had the same mother, but their fathers had made all the difference. Sammy’s father was old school with a vengeance, a strict disciplinarian who expressed his love for his only son with a constant stream of criticism and harsh words. Over the years, Sammy had come to understand that his father had been trying, in his own way, to help his son become successful. But growing up, Sammy had only felt the harshness. Jack had a different father, far more laid back and easygoing—probably too much, at least in Sammy’s opinion. He doted on Jack, praising him to excess. Partly as a result, Jack felt free to pursue his dreams. Sammy was caught in a never-ending cycle of trying to please an unpleasable father.

  As a result, Sammy was always one to push things, whether it was a teacher’s patience or the red line on his motorcycle’s tachometer. He surprised the family by joining the Marines in his senior year of high school, but in retrospect the move was typical Sammy—impulsive, honorable, and probably for the best. The Marines did little to tame his impulsive side, and certainly didn’t hurt his confidence, but they added a discipline and a smattering of skills.

  Sammy learned to use a rifle well enough to be recommended for sniper school. He turned the offer down, wisely knowing that while he might shoot well, he didn’t have the patience to complete the scout portion of the training, which to the Marines was as important as marksmanship. He served instead as an intelligence specialist, where his daily interactions with computer systems sparked enough of an interest that he taught himself to program in C++.

  He was home on leave, reacquainting himself with his motorcycle when a Prius driver yakking on a cell phone sideswiped him on a curve coming out of the Sausalito tunnel a few miles outside the city. The accident left Sammy physically disabled, and effectively ended his Marine Corps career. He bought the apartment with the insurance settlement, started going to school for computer science, but dropped out midway through his third semester. Various career plans had fizzled before he took up his latest: a clown.

  Why a clown? Jack hadn’t been able to fathom it. Becoming a Marine, studying computers—those were decisions that made sense. Putting a red ball on his nose and blowing up balloons for bratty five-year-olds didn’t. Bu
t, he realized, with each balloon, Sammy knew there was something about being a clown that satisfied his soul. The kids’ smiles and applause were part of it, but there was much more to it that he could never explain.

  Sammy knew that his brother and the rest of the family were disappointed in him, but they didn’t understand how being a clown made him feel. For forty-five minutes he was immersed in what could only be called paradise. And he was good at it.

  The tap of a coffee cup hitting the desk beside him made Sammy jerk in place. Then the soft hand on his shoulder and light laugh behind him told him Ana was there, as always, anticipating his needs and backing him up.

  She buried her face in his shoulder. Sammy craned his neck to kiss her ear and touch her hair.

  “Are you all right?” she asked quietly, so as not to disturb Ric and Miwa.

  “No,” he admitted.

  Her head came up, honest concern on her face. “What’s wrong?” Her caring for him made him feel even worse, but still, somehow, stronger.

  “Do you know why I’m working so hard on this?”

  “Of course. You want to show us all what you can do. What I know you can do.”

  He shook his head, then nodded, seemingly confused. “No, I mean yes, of course, but beyond that.” He looked deeply into her extraordinary eyes, trying to feel worthy of them.

  “Because, if I figure it all out before Jack, then I’m the smart one. Not him. Me.”

  Her expression made his heart swell, because she didn’t look at him with pity. She looked at him with understanding.

  “It’s so petty and venal, I’m ashamed of it,” he confessed. “I need to best my brother … in the worst way.”

  “Oh, Sammy,” she said, almost as a sigh. “Come here,” she continued, gently turning his chair and wrapping her arms around him. “I know, I know.…”

  He let her embrace him as his arms came up to hold her in return, but as he set his head against hers he mumbled bitterly into her silken hair, “How can you know? How can you?”

  “Just hold me,” she said. And he did, for what seemed like hours. He folded his arms around her, gently pulling her breasts against his chest. He lowered his head down into her hair. Her perfume entangled him, an exotic scent of flowers and spice. She began to rock very gently, as if he were a baby. And, like a baby being lulled to sleep, she told him a story. “I know because I, too, had a father,” she went on. “My father was impossible. Impossible. The most impossible man ever.” He heard in her voice her love for her father, but also her hate, and, ultimately, her acceptance, empathy, and understanding. “He was married to my mother, yet he wasn’t. Not fully. He could never be. It wasn’t because he didn’t love just her. He didn’t love women.”

  “You mean he couldn’t love?” Sammy inquired.

  She shook her head.

  “Oh,” Sammy replied.

  He wasn’t a gay-basher but he wasn’t comfortable with the idea of homosexuality, either. It was one thing to say he didn’t have a problem with it, and quite another to actually understand. He knew he should understand; he’d known three gay Marines, who of course were closeted though it was an open secret to the unit. He also knew they were good Marines—one was the second-ranking NCO on his first fire team, and Sammy would surely have followed him through hell. And living in San Francisco, it was impossible not to know someone who was gay. But Sammy had never had a real discussion about homosexuality with anyone he could think of.

  But Anastasia wanted to talk about it, and so, maybe for the first time in his life, certainly for the first time since the accident, he wanted to listen.

  “My father was in the closet when they got married,” she whispered. “They were young. Well, I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t know. He claims he didn’t know. My mother certainly didn’t. I think maybe he wanted just to conform, but it’s impossible to read someone else’s mind, you know? Especially on something like that. But one day my mom came home and there he was … with someone else. It was a bad way to find out—a big shock. I was in the other room, a year and a half old. It was chaos. I didn’t remember a thing, except … except my father was not there. I grew up without a papa, yet I still had one. In all the dirty whispers and all the pointed fingers, I still had one.”

  Sammy held her tighter. What was worse? he wondered. Growing up with an abusive father, or with an absent father and abusive neighbors?

  “It wasn’t like today,” Anastasia continued as if it were a fairy tale. “There was still a stigma, and—and gays weren’t considered good parents. That’s nonsense, but that’s what people said. But I didn’t blame the whisperers and pointers. I blamed him. I blamed my dad.” She stopped and took a long breath. “We didn’t talk about him. I tried a few times. But my mother … her heart was closed. Years go by and I moved out to L.A. I was going to be a model and an actress. But too short here, too round there, blah-blah-blah. And your eyes … my God, what is it with your eyes?”

  Anastasia gave a small, throaty laugh, which made Sammy feel better than he had since Jack and Doc had left.

  “Then one day I get a phone call. It’s him. In San Francisco. Of course, San Francisco. We met for coffee. We tried to patch things up, but I was too hurt. In his absence I let him hurt me. It was all my fault, you see? In my mind, he left because of me. And I cursed him for that fantasy.”

  Sammy felt a single tear reach his forehead. He was going to wipe it off for her, but then she continued.

  “I couldn’t get over the hurt I had built up. I couldn’t move on. I was embracing my imagined hurt so I couldn’t hold him. I had nursed the hurt so long I thought it was a better friend than he could ever be. He was a bartender in a gay club here. Cliché, right? But that wasn’t the only one. I never visited … too busy, right? But then, two years later, a hospital calls. They say, ‘Your dad’s dying.’ AIDS. AIDS! Of course.”

  He felt more tears, but her soft voice continued, telling him it was more important that he listen than console. “That is why I came to San Francisco. It wasn’t that the modeling dried up. It was because I wanted to look after him. I could have stayed in L.A., but no. I couldn’t leave him the way he left me. Not anymore.” She was silent for a few moments, and he felt the tears stop. “I nursed him the way I had foolishly nursed my pain. It wasn’t enough. He died within a month. It was only afterward that I found out he didn’t get the drugs. He didn’t want them. After all he had done to me, he didn’t want to linger.…” She let go of Sammy. He sat up and looked into her wet eyes that were now shining like beacons. “You see?” she asked, her voice cracking. “You see what blaming your father does?” Sammy drew her to him, holding her more firmly, yet more tenderly than he ever had before. He wanted to protect this woman for eternity. He wanted to make her happy and safe more than he would ever want to best his brother. She had heard the word “Firebird.” It had tried to destroy her. He would stand up to it and bring it down if he had to tear off every one of its fiery feathers with his teeth!

  Samuel Michaels’s eyes snapped open. He found himself staring at the computer screen, but dancing in his mind’s eye was a pattern from an exercise he’d done for a class way back in the Marines … a byte dump … a website sign-in … a you-build-it template at an Internet provider creating a simple webpage. He stared at it now. All it consisted of was a template for a plumbing business.…

  “Oh, my Lord,” Sammy breathed. He took Ana’s shoulders and kissed her more passionately than he ever had anyone in his life. Then he stabbed at the computer keyboard to access the plumbing site’s activity log. Ana looked up at his face, saw his energized expression, and turned her own head to see what he was doing.

  The webpage had first been set up over a year before. There were multiple log-ins, but mostly from five separate providers. Sammy checked the sign-in data to see where they were located. Two were definitely local, and Sammy guessed they were providers whom Morton used to connect to the web. The others were from overseas. From the timing of some of the sign-
ons, he guessed that they were being done by at least three different people, not simply one person traveling across the globe.

  Now that he had found one website provider, he went back to the various hexadecimal dumps and looked for others. There, he found another website builder, this one from a place in Spain called Ariba!Go.com. Once more he found a bare-bones website, but this one’s home page had something on it: a link to Google Maps. At first glance, there appeared to be nothing there—the middle of the desert in Saudi Arabia.

  Sammy switched to the satellite view and zoomed in. A long strip of concrete sat in the desert, next to a building and a road. The place looked abandoned. There was a date under the link. It was from a month before. It didn’t relate to the satellite image, which was marked as having been taken nearly a full year prior to that.

  Once again, Sammy found a log of activity. The log-ins were from the same ISPs he’d found earlier. This site also kept backups of pages that had been worked on. Sammy went through the list. The oldest was the docking time for an Indonesia-registered ship in Saudi Arabia three months before. Sammy made a note of it to research later and scrolled on. There was another shipment, and a passenger plane schedule. Then a page with only three words buried in the description of available services: “Firebird alt feint.”

  “Jesus!” Sammy exclaimed, rousing Ric and Miwa. “It’s a double blind!”

  38

  Outside Yanbu’ al Bahr, Saudi Arabia

  Jack’s phone buzzed as Doc found the eleventh body in the pit. He looked at Doc, who glanced up from a dirt-covered corpse with slit eyes and a clenched jaw. The smell was not pleasant. Jimmy had already tied part of his headscarf over his nose.

  Jack glanced at the smartphone screen. It was from Brooks’s event coordinator. “Yes?” he said quietly.

  “Mr. Hatfield.”

  “Yes.”

  “The general wishes to meet you for dinner at his hotel this evening,” said Peter Andrews. “I will text you the exact time and address. Will that be satisfactory?”