The monk fell to his knees.
The thin metal skin was already glowing red, transferring its heat to the contents within, as Badru ran from the cargo bay and ducked under the hatch to where the monk was struggling to hold the torch erect.
The wounded man looked at him. “Thank you . . . for helping me . . . pray,” he wheezed.
A moment later the fuel in the tank ignited with a roar, lifting the back end of the helicopter nearly a meter in the air before rending it into a confusion of rubber tubing and flakes of metal skin, plastic valves and structural fragments, and mixed with these among the blossoming red-and-black plume, a riot of flesh and fabric and bone.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
JEBEL MUSA, SINAI PENINSULA
Kealey and the pilgrims nearest him were pushing their way toward the mountain when the helicopter exploded. They turned and watched in blank-faced shock as the flaming cloud rose, only to be joined moments later in fiery oblivion by its neighbors on either side. The shower of flaming wreckage caused the remaining helicopters to ignite, adding more ragged blasts to the no-man’s land.
Crewmen who saw the first explosion coming had fled, most of them literally diving behind rocks as the first helicopter blew up. The bulk of the men managed to survive the forest of fireballs and shrapnel that followed from the subsequent explosions, most of which were limited to the tail sections.
Even before the punishing heat wave struck, the crowd had jumped to life and was running faster than Kealey’s urging could have made them move. The blast came in waves as each of the helicopters exploded. Flight created an adequate buffer. Most of the retreating pilgrims were far enough from the helicopters and somewhat protected by the cliff sides. Any danger that would have been presented by the microbes was neutralized by the flaming destruction of their containers. Chances were good that any that survived would be borne high into the atmosphere by the rising heat, where they would float helplessly until they perished.
The explosions quickly subsided into a long, clanking rain of debris. Crewmen had to scurry to get out of the way of the secondary assault from above. The remains of the ruined helicopters burned with ugly hisses and snapping, the orange flames streaked now and then with blue and green as chemicals in the components or wiring burned.
Huffing from the run, the crowd looked to Kealey like an enormous living thing. If anyone doubted that all people were the same, a brisk two- or three-hundred-meter dash would disavow them of that. Some men still ran, others walked, a number of them wisely doused themselves with water, a few crawled, and those who were all out stood with their hands on their knees and talked to people who stopped beside them. A few smoked hand-rolled cigarettes. They occasionally pointed toward the wreckage and puzzled about what had happened and, no doubt, at their own gullibility.
Panting himself, Kealey looked around for Bulani. There was no point calling his name; the buzz of voices and the cough of vehicles created a carpet of sound that made it difficult to hear his own voice. Kealey knew that because he was muttering to himself about the insanity of what had just transpired.
The agent made his way back toward the monastery, his eyes searching left and right, now and then urging pockets of people to get back, to move as far as possible from the explosion site. Here and there, small deposits of oil that had dripped from vehicles announced their presence with angry, flaming flourishes. It was possible that embers from the blasts would reach clothes, the vehicles themselves, other combustibles. After a few minutes, Kealey heard helicopters as the Egyptian military finally moved in. Obviously, whoever had been running the show for Task Force 777 was no longer doing so.
He had only gone about four hundred meters but it felt longer. As he slowed, Kealey received a call from Phair. He answered as he continued to walk.
“Ryan, are you all right?”
“Yes,” he said. He had to work up saliva in order to speak. “The prophet blew up the choppers.”
“Good God.”
“Apparently,” Kealey said. “How are you all?”
“Adjo is sick, but we’re okay.”
“That was a brilliant move, recording the conversation with your captive,” Kealey said. “It turned the crowd after your friend had planted doubt.”
“You can thank Carla later,” Phair said. “She showed me how to send the file.”
“And you can tell me later why I shouldn’t have you court-martialed for having the Staff stolen from the desert. You could have told me.”
“Would you have allowed me to call Bulani and give him the location of the Staff?”
“I don’t know,” Kealey admitted. “But you should have consulted me just the same.”
“It needed to be done this way,” Phair said. “It couldn’t have been an American and it certainly couldn’t have been a Nazi. It had to be one of their own people, with his own faith exposed and vulnerable.”
“We’ll discuss this later,” Kealey said.
“Just remember that thanks to all of us, countless lives were saved.”
“Like your Iraqi walkabout, the heroic ends apparently justify the questionable means,” Kealey said. “Where are you?”
“At the northwest corner of the monastery,” Phair said. “We’re pinned now by the crowd moving the other way. We need medical attention. Adjo’s hanging tough, though I’m starting to feel not so great myself.”
“I’ll let the embassy know we need antibiotics,” Kealey said. “They can arrange for an airlift.”
Kealey hung up and placed the call. He quickly briefed Harper and was not surprised to discover that the deputy director had placed medical assistance on standby at the embassy; when they saw the explosions via satellite, the team was dispatched by air. Kealey asked if the unit would wait until he got there.
“We were all exposed to the bacteria through Adjo,” he said. “I’ll make my way as quickly as possible.”
“You won’t be in much danger, nor anyone you may have encountered,” Harper told him. “Gail Platte says that the bacteria requires moisture and a significant body temperature to stay active. It goes dormant and dies very quickly in dry, airborne situations.”
“So the real damage would have been inflicted by people leaving here and sharing food, drink, a kiss, a handshake, things like that.”
“Exactly,” Harper said. “Communities that share well water or have extended families were apparently their targets. What happened to the Staff?”
“I have a feeling it’s gone,” he replied. “Phair’s friend took it.”
“We’ll have to find him,” Harper said. “We don’t want the real one causing these same problems.”
“No argument,” Kealey said. He looked out at the crowd of people that was thinning in all directions. “We’ll have to have a serious talk with Phair about that. I don’t think the fellow wants to be found.”
“He’s probably going to sell the damned thing on eBay,” Harper said disgustedly.
“I don’t think so,” Kealey said. “Though if he did, that’s one way we could get it back.”
Harper snickered. “Touché. That was a shitty thing of me to say. It’s just that I’m going to have to explain this to the director, who is going to have to tell the president.”
“You can tell him we won,” Kealey said. “That’s the bottom line.”
“You did do that,” Harper agreed. “Helluva job.”
Kealey’s eyes moved toward the mountain. “Other men have done greater things here. And with the same tools.”
“Ryan, you going native on me?”
“I guess this place brings it out, eventually.”
“The way D.C. brings out megalomania,” Harper said.
There was no disputing that. Kealey said he would call when he could and Harper congratulated him again. It occurred to Kealey that things weren’t quite the same: Moses didn’t need a cell phone to talk to his boss.
As he made his way across the uneven terrain, the first hint of dawn was giving him some
help negotiating the pitfalls. He made himself a little bet as he neared the monastery. He wondered which of him would win: the optimist or the cynic.
Cynically, he expected the cynic would come out on top.
He was right.
James Phair was gone.
The morning had fully broken across the Wadi el-Deir when Kealey reached the van. He was far beyond tired; the sunlight hurt the backs of his eyes and he all but dragged himself the last half kilometer on blistered feet and reedy legs, his arms dead weights at his side. He was still wearing his backpack because it helped keep him from slumping forward.
Carla was watching for him and waved when she saw him. Kealey was glad of that. There were many MFO and military vans and helicopters around, and he would have had no idea which was theirs.
“Thank you,” was all he could say as he reached the van and she gave him a shoulder to keep him from stopping and simply going to sleep by the driver’s side tire. He was beginning to feel a little feverish now, and was happy when a medic from the embassy laid him in the back and gave him an injection and didn’t ask him for the pillow back when he closed his eyes and went to sleep.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
CAIRO, EGYPT
Kealey awoke to find the floor shifting and bouncing in a gentle, lulling way. He was facing the back of the dark cabin. The only illumination was from behind, low sunlight casting an oval glow on the olive-drab wall in front of him. It was coming through a window. He was in the air—in a Chinook, he surmised; he heard the rotors thumping above and in front of him—and he was heading away from the sun, which meant they were going west. Flying to Cairo.
He looked around. His eyes stopped on his right. Carla was sitting on a fold-down chair, her grandfather resting on her shoulder in the seat beside her. The young woman’s eyes were half-open, not really seeing.
“Where’s Adjo?” Kealey asked.
He barely heard himself above the sound of the props. With effort, he raised his right hand so she could see. Her eyes snapped toward him. Gingerly, she moved her grandfather’s head so it was leaning on the canvas seatback of her chair. She waited a moment to make sure his head stayed there; helicopters, as she had discovered, were not airplanes. They tended to dip and torque. At least the chest harness would keep him in place.
She squatted beside Kealey and he repeated his question.
“The Egyptian army airlifted the lieutenant to a nearby medical facility,” Carla told him.
“Will he be okay?”
“They think so, but they wanted to get him into a proper care center. We stayed a little longer to help treat some of the people who had helped the lieutenant and Major Phair.”
“Was Phair treated?”
Carla nodded.
“Did he tell you where he was going?”
Carla shook her head.
“Are you two all right?”
“My grandfather is tired—we both are,” she said with a smile as she yawned.
“You both did really well,” Kealey said. “Thank you.”
Carla handed Kealey a bottle of water that was tucked in a mesh pouch at the side of her seat. He took it gratefully and propped himself on one elbow.
“We made a difference here, didn’t we?” she asked Kealey.
“Very much so,” he replied. “How does it feel?”
“Honestly? Futile,” she replied after a moment’s thought. “We saved lives, but these people will not be stopped. War here will never end.”
“Old enemies can become friends. You’ve seen that.”
“Not blood enemies,” she said. “Those battles do not end until there is no more blood.”
“I don’t want to believe that,” Kealey said.
“Believe what you wish. It is that way. You all had trouble with my grandfather’s views, but he was able to work with that man, Lieutenant Adjo, because his hate for these people and their squabbles is in his brain, not in his bones, not in his blood. When it is that deep, nothing can dislodge it.”
Kealey drank half the bottle, then capped it and lay down. “Adjo fought his own kind to protect outsiders, outsiders who it was his job to stop. That would seem to dispute your claim.”
“It is true he acted as a man, not an Egyptian,” Carla said. “We will see if that lasts.”
“We were all human beings today,” Kealey told her. “Ideally, it will last for all of us.”
Carla seemed sad, but it flashed away quickly, replaced by concern.
“Let me know if I can get you anything,” she said comfortingly.
He squeezed her hand as she walked like a tightrope walker back to her seat. He stared at the ceiling, randomly reviewing what had gone wrong and what had gone right over the last few days. Very little of the latter. Catastrophically little, in fact. Yet somehow—
He thought of the mountain, he thought of the Staff, and then he thought of the implications of what he was thinking. Phair would say it was the hand of God that shaped their success, or at least nudged it.
Maybe God nudged Phair, too, Kealey reflected. The army might accept that explanation once but not a second time. He hoped that if the major were gone, this time he stayed gone.
Perhaps that was how the prophets and saints really got their strength. Not from God per se, but from the conviction that this or that was what God wanted them to do. In a way, that made the task seem more heroic. With God came certainty. Without Him, there was only one’s inner resources. Without approving of what Phair did, Kealey could not fault the conviction and courage that drove him.
The agent drifted in and out of a dreamless sleep. When they arrived at the airport in Cairo, they were transferred to a van. Kealey was able to walk, hindered more by the lingering effects of the drugs than by exhaustion or injury. The van stopped first at the Venezuelan consulate. The American ambassador had called ahead. Here, Carla and her grandfather would be able to obtain the documents they needed to get home. That wouldn’t be difficult with the elder Montilla’s help.
“I can’t remember—did I ever apologize for that chaotic departure?” Kealey asked as they stood outside the iron gates of the sand-colored structure on Mansour Mohamed Street.
“To tell you the truth, I don’t remember,” Carla laughed as two members of the Venezuelan guard helped her grandfather inside.
Kealey scooted over to him before the gates closed. He offered the elderly man his hand.
“Thank you, Herr Durst.”
The German looked at him. “Where do you think my Staff has gone?”
“I wish I knew. It’s home, though.”
Durst regarded him with sad gray eyes. “The Staff and I—wir sind weg zu langes gewesen.”
“I’m sorry?”
“We have both been away too long,” Durst said. “Home.”
Durst stepped inside, followed by Carla, and a heavy electronic latch clanked shut behind them. Within moments, and without a backward look, they were lost in a turn of the path.
Kealey got back in the van, closed the door, and settled into the seat. It struck him, then, that he would probably never see any of these people again—Phair, Carla, her grandfather. It was a strange thought, but reassuring. They shared nothing, not even the same reasons for having undertaken the mission, yet they had worked together and pulled it off. Whether that was luck, determination, or fate, it did give him hope. Contrary to what Napoleon had said, God did not, apparently, favor the side with the most battalions.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
CAIRO, EGYPT
Lieutenant Adjo was not feeling his best. The medicine the doctors had given him, the injections and intravenous fluids, had drained him more than the illness itself. But his focus had never been sharper, not even when he was trapped in the tunnel in Mt. Sinai with armed men in pursuit.
He could not call Lieutenant General Samra a traitor. The more he considered it, the more he realized the man was a patriot. A zealous, misguided patriot, a would-be mass murderer, and a megalomaniac, surely. A la
wbreaker, absolutely.
But not a traitor.
The men who had served with Samra—Adjo did not yet know who all of them were, and he might never know—were simply misguided by Samra or his ideas or the notion of doing something secretive. Men were drawn to 777 in part for that reason. They liked the idea of knowing something that others did not, of some impending raid or surveillance or arrest.
But this....
Adjo sat in the back of the Russian-built Hip-C helicopter as it soared over the 777 airfield headed west beyond the Nile. They were headed toward Giza, passing only a few hundred meters above well-traveled roads, the edges hidden in what looked like chew marks caused by the beating desert sand—or the Sphinx, depending on what one believed—traffic thinning as cool night drives gave way to sizzling daytime traverse. They were looking for the road Samra was said to have taken. Not all of his allies had been loyal, especially when their own lives or freedom were at risk.
The key piece of information was provided by the scum who had poisoned Adjo in the mountain. He confessed what he knew under the effects of drugs administered and questions asked before he was taken into surgery. He hadn’t known much—only that after the success at Sinai, Samra had intended to hold a rally at the pyramids, a gathering to support a new military government in what was expected to be a time of confusion. Once that information was in hand, other members of the plot had come forward. Samra had planned to go there regardless. In the event of failure, they were to rendezvous and plan their next move. In the event of failure and discovery, that was to be their escape route.
Samra’s staff car was visible on the side of Pyramid Road. The officer had stopped within view of the Great Pyramids and left the vehicle to walk toward them. In the distance, tour buses were arriving by the manned barricade that prevented tourists from entering until the appointed time.
Adjo told the pilot to set the helicopter down in the sands beyond the wall, between the Great Pyramid of Khufu and the officer. Samra continued to approach, either unmindful or uncaring of the obstacle. Or maybe he felt that Adjo might be sympathetic to his cause, if not his means.
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