He watched Kealey from the near edge of the crowd.
He had moved with the flow toward the front of the gathering, for that was where he was told Kealey would probably be. Possibly alone, if things went that way. The man had been shown a picture, told what Kealey would probably be wearing. He had been instructed to watch for someone who moved like a police officer determined to break up a brawl. He would not be chanting or praying or acting like anyone else. The man was advised to look for the glow of a sophisticated-looking cell phone, for that would most likely be his lifeline.
Even in the dark, the man had no trouble locating the American—who was, as expected, by himself. The man had followed him when he left the group to go alone to the advance section of the gathering. He had watched, waited, followed, moving as the American did. Together—though Kealey didn’t know it—they now threaded their separate ways toward the feet of the prophet.
He had been asked to stay near Ryan Kealey and, when the time came, to do what needed to be done.
The man was concerned about how he would know when that time was.
“I don’t know,” he’d been told.
That wasn’t the best answer but it was truly the only answer. Because it did not seem that Kealey himself knew what he was doing, where he was going.
Fortunately, the man was accustomed to improvisation.
And so he moved closer and then closer still, unobserved by the crowd or his subject until he was within just a few paces....
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
MCLEAN, VIRGINIA
“I’ve just spoken with the head of the El-Khabeya, Egyptian Military Intelligence,” Harper said to the others as he returned to the Underground. “I had to threaten all kinds of reprisals but I got what I needed. They were testing pneumonic plague at the 777 laboratories.”
“Lovely,” Gail Platte muttered.
“Tell me about the strain,” Harper said as he sat. His tone made it sound as if he were reluctant to hear.
“It shuts down the respiratory system,” she said. “It’s one of the most contagious bacteriological infections, the worse because it’s communicable by air or water.”
“Not bread?” Harper asked.
“The heat would destroy it,” Platte said.
“Is it always fatal?” Nesmith asked.
“Not if antibiotics are administered before exposure or shortly after the onset of symptoms, which usually surface in about twenty-four hours,” she told the others. “The problem is, the damn thing will outstrip the world’s ability to combat it. We don’t have enough drugs stockpiled anywhere.”
Harper said, “We’re not only looking at hundreds of thousands of dead in the first day—”
“Millions in two or three days,” Platte said without inflection.
“And infrastructures without workers, international travel halted, and the ripple effect from that,” George Nesmith added.
“At a minimum,” Platte said. “Because there won’t be enough health care professionals to go around, families will stay with each other, infect each other, and rot where they die. Just like in the old days.”
“What possible gain is there in that?” asked Harper.
“That’s the wrong question,” Nesmith said. “The people who did this are asking, ‘What is there to be lost?’ If you’re a secular nation surrounded by nonsecular enemies, if you have no real wealth, if you can’t control the constant blasts of insurrection within your own borders, what do you do? You export hell. They used the very porousness of the borders from which they felt threatened to set a plague loose on their enemies.”
“Real or potential,” Schuyler remarked.
“Do they know we know?” Platte asked.
“I haven’t received any updates from the Task Force commander,” Harper said.
“On the run?” Platte asked.
“I doubt it,” Harper said. “I’m guessing he left to join his men. The MK director agreed to keep this under his hat until he could reach unaffiliated MFO units and get them to the scene.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the 777 boys are going to be where the action is,” Nesmith said. “People dropping dead in the desert or on their homeward journey—which is where I’m sure the prophet will send them at once—is going to get a lot of press and they’ll want to show who is in control.”
“And when the diseases erupt?” Platte asked.
“The plotters will be manning the front lines, organizing people, since they’ve been inoculated,” Nesmith said. “They’ll come out of this heroes, while one of the pilgrims gets blamed for bringing the disease into the group.”
“What happens to the prophet?” Harper asked.
“He’s done his job,” Nesmith said. “He dies and becomes a martyr, where he’s much more useful. If he is one of the monks, I’m betting they didn’t tell him that part. They probably kept him up in that cave where Adjo first videoed him, possibly convinced of his own sanctimony.”
“I wonder why they didn’t ask this Lieutenant Adjo to get involved,” Platte said.
“He doesn’t sound like he’d have gone along with it,” Harper said. His hand was on the phone. He was trying to think of what to tell Kealey.
“Sedition isn’t a team sport,” Nesmith replied. “The fewer people who are involved, the less the chance of a leak. I’m guessing even the chopper crews don’t know what they’re involved with.”
“Everyone exposed,” Platte said, “everyone a carrier.”
Nesmith frowned. “There’s something I don’t get. The enemy is expecting to transmit this by air, correct?”
Platte nodded.
“So what does the bread have to do with it?” he asked. “I mean, we’ve allowed that the bakery fire was related to this operation somehow.”
“The fire was to destroy evidence,” Harper said.
“Of what?” Nesmith asked. “The microbe’s gestation?”
Platte nodded.
“But you said the ovens would have destroyed the effectiveness of this particular bacterium,” Harper said.
“Maybe they sprinkled it on afterward,” Schuyler submitted.
“No,” Nesmith told him. “That’d leave a trail of the stuff through Sharm el-Sheikh. Bread wrappers aren’t hazmat containers. They’d poison their own people.”
“You’re missing the point,” Platte said. “The bread is beside the point.”
“You lost me,” Harper said.
“Many large bakeries use DAFS—Dissolved Air Flotation Systems—to keep bacteria-breeding yeast out of public sewer systems. The DAFS float the host medium, the insoluble matter, to the surface of a tub where it can be skimmed off and disposed of,” Platte explained.
“That’s where this particular bacterium was grown, then?” Harper asked. “Using regular baker’s yeast?”
“It’s brilliant,” Platte said. “What ferments carbohydrates in baking is the perfect medium for binary fission to create lots of little bacteria in secret.”
“Then why give out bread?” Schuyler asked.
“Multipurposing,” Nesmith said gravely.
“To get people to cluster,” Harper said, picking up the thought that Nesmith was unwilling to finish.
“The militants are probably going to release the airborne toxin from the helicopters, most likely when they take off,” Nesmith went on. “That will keep the crewmen safe.”
Harper said, “The good news, then, is we’ve still got time. I’ll get on the horn to the MFO and see what they can whip up to keep the choppers grounded.”
“You can’t use other choppers,” Nesmith pointed out, checking his computer screen. “I just checked the MESAT-6.”
“What does that mean?” Platte asked.
“According to our Middle Eastern weather satellite, the wind is blowing toward the mountain,” Nesmith told her. “If the MFO tries to pin them down from above, or even surrounds the area with vehicles, 777 can still release the toxins.”
“If they’re to be stopped, it has to b
e by infiltration,” Harper said. “And it has to be quick.”
“Not the kind of drill the MFO does conscientiously,” Nesmith pointed out as he scrolled through the phone book.
Harper was outwardly unemotional. “I’ll tell Ryan. Gail, you’d better notify our people at the embassy in Cairo to be prepared for what’s coming—and to make sure they have antibiotics for themselves and for our guys when they come in.”
Platte nodded and e-mailed their liaison at the consulate. No one said what was on everyone’s minds:
If they come in.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
JEBEL MUSA, SINAI PENINSULA
Losing the instincts he had honed in Iraq, Phair did not hit the ground when the shot sounded behind him. He did wonder why he’d heard it, however. He should have been dead before the sound reached his ears.
His next thought—which was pumped into his brain by breath so rapid he didn’t recognize it as belonging to him, as something he was capable of producing—was that the bullet had missed his head. He waited for pain to flare in his shoulder or back. It didn’t come.
Then he saw the shadow on the floor in front of him kick back and drop as though it had been winched about the waist.
The entire event had taken less than a second, but it was long enough for every detail to sear itself into his mind. The message that he was alive finally reached his knees, and he moved.
Phair thrust himself forward and down as though he were diving to cover an active hand grenade. In the same movement he pulled Adjo forward and snuggled his own body protectively near, his arm and part of his chest on top, a hand covering Adjo’s head. Phair ducked his own head as low as it could go, his cheek to the floor. Sometimes life or death was just a matter of inches.
A second shot cracked through the cottony deafness caused by the first. It also issued from behind. Someone else fell, this time across Phair’s ankles. The victim was dead weight. The cleric didn’t know if it was Kealey, the MFO, or some other savior, but he was glad they were there.
He felt Adjo wriggle beside him. The young officer was so sweaty that Phair couldn’t keep him pinned. Adjo scratched his way around, like a pinwheel, and Phair had to grab the back of his robe to keep him in place. Facing sideways now, Phair saw the rest of the men react. They were running for the street. He saw a black shape take form beside him, realized it was Adjo, saw that he was holding a torn robe. Adjo half crawled, half staggered to the door. He was holding a semiautomatic one of the men had dropped. The flashes from its muzzle brightened the doorway, the coughing bursts merged into one, and then Adjo leaned against the left side of the jamb. His legs went molten and let his torso drop to the corner of the doorway.
The moment he went down and the gun fell from his limp fingers, people moved into the doorway. Phair assumed they were friends, not foes; otherwise, they would have shot Adjo.
One of the newcomers stooped beside him. He couldn’t see who it was but, oddly, he recognized the smell of the man.
It was Durst.
The German set the gun aside, lit a match, and moved it over him, looking for injuries.
“You are not dead,” Durst said.
“Thank you,” Phair replied. The cleric’s eyes rolled forward. The shadow in the doorway had to be Carla crouched beside Adjo, laying him out. “How is he?” Phair asked, and realized that the dry words didn’t make it past the floor in front of his lips. He swallowed and repeated the question.
“Unhurt,” she replied.
“You came back,” Phair said.
“We were watching the gate,” Carla said, stepping over with two handfuls of guns and squatting. She put them on the floor. “One van drove away with the wounded and another came in. We didn’t think that was good. There was no one watching the gate so we followed them in.”
“We did not find the Staff, but I do not like to feel useless,” Durst remarked.
“Thank you,” Phair said again, adding, “I’m very sorry you had to do what you did.”
“They would have killed you and then they would have killed us,” Carla said. She was silent for a moment. “Three days ago I was training overweight clients. Now I’m a killer.”
“A savior,” Phair corrected.
Her grandfather reached over and put his hand on her forearm. Was he comforting her or welcoming her to the family?
“Have you been in touch with Kealey?” Phair asked, ashamed at that last ungracious thought but unable to get out of its way or—worse—to shake it.
Carla nodded. “He believes there is a plot to poison everyone in the desert. That appears to be what is wrong with the lieutenant.”
“Adjo suspected as much,” Phair said. “Does Kealey have a plan?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “He told me he was headed toward the helicopters, but I know nothing more.”
Her grandfather asked for the flashlight the Americans had given her. She handed it to him and he rose, surprisingly spry. Durst went over to the doorway and slapped one of the Egyptians who was lying there. The man started and moaned and tried to grab Durst’s hand, but the German stepped on the man’s wrist, pinning it.
“He’s alive!” Phair said.
“As I intended,” Durst replied. “We may need him.”
“The others?”
Durst shook his head. “Are you able to make it to the van? I think we should be leaving here.”
In response, Phair rose and, after taking a moment to collect himself, walked forward with Carla at his side. Together, the three of them half dragged, half carried Adjo and the other Egyptian to the back of the van. When they were inside, Carla called Kealey to bring him up to date.
There was a lot to digest, and a great deal more still to be done. Phair decided to concentrate on the latter, for there was more at stake than anyone realized.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
JEBEL MUSA, SINAI PENINSULA
Kealey might just as well have been at his desk.
Information was coming in from multiple sources—first Harper, and now Carla with the welcome news that she and her grandfather had rescued Phair and Adjo. Kealey was proud of them, and angry at the risk they took, although he showed neither emotion as he calmly told Carla to go to the checkpoint and get medical attention for Adjo—for all of them, since they had now been exposed to the pathogen. Meanwhile, he continued to make his way toward the helicopters like everyone else, hoping he would find something there to turn the crowd back. His eyes moved frantically, his right shoulder a wedge against the crowd as he tried to figure out some way to keep the choppers grounded. He thought back to Eagle Claw, the ill-fated attempt to rescue the Teheran hostages in 1980. At the makeshift base, Desert One, a sideways-sliding RH-53 helicopter had caused chaos and destruction among the tightly packed vehicles.
As Kealey was considering how such a scenario might be enacted here, a man stepped directly in front of him, facing him. The agent extended an arm to maneuver around him. The man stepped with Kealey, causing the agent to stop and exhale impatiently. Kealey prepared to muscle around him.
“Mustair Keeleh?”
That was a surprise. Kealey stopped. “Who are you?”
“Phair frient,” he said with rolling rs.
Kealey squinted at him. Silhouetted against the lights of the helicopters, the man was of medium height and build, robed with his head covered by a hood, and bearded, with steel wool puffs on either side of his lower jaw. The hint of a backpack jutted above his shoulders.
“I’m listening,” Kealey replied. “Quick.”
“Come,” the man said, turning toward the thinner outer edge of the crowd.
Kealey followed for a few hesitant steps. “I really don’t have time—”
“Come.”
The man didn’t say anything else. Perhaps he had just spent all the English he knew. Kealey exhaled again. He had no immediate options, besides the unrefined notion of using one of the choppers as a weapon. He jogged after the man, dodging a few slow-movin
g pilgrims.
“What’s your name?” Kealey asked.
The man didn’t appear to hear, or perhaps he didn’t understand. He continued walking. Kealey ran in front of him. He saw his face for the first time. It was round and swarthy, his black beard streaked with white. His eyes were deep set but not unhappy. He was probably forty but looked older. If he was a friend of Phair, he was probably an Iraqi.
“You know my name,” Kealey said, pointing to himself and saying his own name. He pointed to the other man and shrugged. “What is yours?”
“Bulani,” the man replied, then purposefully moved around Kealey and continued toward the front of the crowd, toward the helicopters, to the area where people were approaching the prophet.
Kealey knew the name but couldn’t place it. He thought of texting Harper to look it up, but suspected he would find out the man’s purpose soon enough. Kealey’s eyes drifted to the backpack, which was in shadow. There was something poking out over the top—along the man’s neck—and from below, along his leg. Kealey moved in for a better look. It was a leather bundle tied with short lengths of rope at the top and bottom.
“You bastard,” he muttered.
He didn’t know whether to thank Phair or damn him, and ended up doing both. His only active thought was “what next?” What could he do, what should he do? He didn’t even speak the language.
But Bulani did.
As the man moved along the outside of the crowd, he reached above his right shoulder as though he were drawing a saber from a back-worn sheath. His left hand snaked under his backpack and pulled a rope free, letting it drop from metal hooks on both sides of the kit. His right hand pulled the package over his shoulder and he hooked his fingers under the top and bottom bindings in turn, undoing them. The leather fluttered open and fell away.
The monks who had come down the hill had formed a circle at the foot of the mound where the prophet stood. They formed a barrier between the crowd and the object of their adoration.
“Musa saheeh!” Bulani cried, proudly thrusting the aged, broken staff above his head. “Musa saheeh!”
All heads, including those of the prophet, turned to him.
Threatcon Delta Page 36
