He grunted “go” as they closed the doors. It was the right decision. I’ve been up that creek many times before.
While I was waiting for the computer to do its thing, I set up my wireless bug in the telephone. We’d taken the precaution of using units very similar to those used by the Egyptian intelligence service, based on the theory that when they were found—when, not if—Abu Bakr would put two and two together and start looking for enemies in the wrong direction. We didn’t figure it would last a week, but you never knew; it transmitted to a collection unit (a fancy name for small hard drive attached to a radio receiver) about 1,500 meters away.
Installing the bug took all of thirty seconds, which left me with another seven and a half minutes to kill. I put them to use inspecting the L-shaped office. The desk and computer were in the smaller leg, which measured about twenty by thirty feet. The other half was dominated by a large sofa and bookcase; I assume that had been the setting of the tryst I’d interrupted earlier. Thick curtains covered the windows behind the area where the desk was. I slid them back and found that one of the windows wasn’t locked. The window opened from the side. I pushed it out gently, deciding that I’d go out here rather than down the hall.
The desk drawers were locked, but the locks were the sort that could be opened with a letter opener or paperclip, and they presented no problem to my pick. But as I started to ease the first one open, I heard a set of confident footsteps approaching down the hall.
I glanced over at the computer. A timer in the program showed how much longer the operation would need. Of course, since Shunt had written it, this wasn’t a simple set of figures blinking at me in the middle of a dark screen. It was a chaotic barrage of numbers flying across space, something Dalí might have painted if he ever tried acid.
TWO MINUTES, 42 SECONDS, AND COUNTING…
TWO MINUTES, 41 SECONDS, STILL COUNTING…
WORKING ON IT, DUDE.
TWO MINUTES, 40 SECONDS, AND COUNTING…
You get the idea. Rather than killing the computer and risking losing some of the data (and making it obvious someone had stolen it), I thought I would turn the monitor off. I reached to the bottom corner, figuring I’d find the on-off switch there. But this wasn’t a standard Dell screen. Its designer was an independent type who believed in style over usability: He’d hidden the switch somewhere else on the unit. I spent about five seconds looking for it, then dropped to my knee and looked for the power cord instead. The doorknob turned as I pulled the plug. I rose and stepped back to the edge of the bookcase, hidden in the corner as the light came on and Abu Bakr entered.
Was I tempted to hit him over the head, hoist him over my shoulder, and carry him back to the States for an interview?
Is the pope Catholic?
But I have to confess that my doubts that he was Saladin had grown exponentially. Between the opulent house and the loose woman on the couch earlier, he didn’t impress me as the religious type. Maybe this was all a well-maintained cover, or maybe Saladin was some sort of bizarre psychological alter ego. But I don’t put much stock in psychology, bizarre or otherwise. And if I’m going to kidnap a member of a foreign government, I want to be reasonably sure I’m getting the right one. For the moment, whacking him over the head was only the backup plan.
Still, when he took a few steps toward the desk, I thought I might have to implement it. But he was only grabbing a cigarette—yet another Western temptation rare among fanatics. As he lit up, I heard another set of footsteps coming from down the hallway: another woman, a different one from the sound of her shoes, though I couldn’t see from where I was.
The light went off just as the door was opened. The woman stepped in, they kissed, and then drifted to the couch. Give Bakr credit—he learned from his earlier experience, putting on a stereo to dampen some of the ambient sounds emerging from the room. Or maybe this “date” just preferred music.
Whatever. It made it easier for me to crawl out and pop the DVD from the drive.
Damn, the gears that worked the drawer in that computer were loud! I swear I’ve heard quieter tanks. Twenty-five feet away, Ramona or whatever her name was on the couch started moaning in French that she wanted to be taken. I pulled the disk out of the drive, waited for the volume on the couch to increase, then hit the button to close the drawer. In a nod to discretion I didn’t bother with the key logger. I turned the machine off, reconnected the power switch at the back, then backed toward the window. The corner of the room blocked my view of the couch, but the audio portion of the program came in loud and clear and left little to the imagination. Sliding behind the curtains, I started out the window just as a set of headlights swept in my direction.
I jumped back against the inside wall. Mr. Murphy had persuaded the car valets to use the area nearby to queue up vehicles; there were far too many people nearby to risk going out this way.
I was stuck in my own private peep show. Just think: If I’d been thirteen years old, I’d’ve been in heaven.
Doc and the others had left the compound by now, escorted by the security people in two other cars. The safest and smartest thing at that point was to simply follow them to the hospital. There he would stage a miraculous recovery, throw a credit card at whoever was assigned to seek payment, and race back to pick me up. Doc didn’t always do the safest thing in life; you might even make an argument that that tended to be his last choice most days. But he nearly always did the smartest thing, and he knew that in this case, doing nothing to arouse suspicions further than they had been aroused was the wisest course of action. He’d trust me to find a way out of the compound by myself; it made more sense than going back and blasting me out.
Though he was prepared to do that if necessary.
Back in Bakr’s office, things were reaching their climax. This was definitely a different woman—much quieter, but with a deeper voice. They finished up and headed out. Bakr left but came right back, nearly catching me as I made sure I had gotten the monitor reattached. He only wanted another cigarette, however, and didn’t even bother turning on the light. I waited for him to leave, then retraced my steps down the hall to the other room and back outside.
I didn’t know about Doc’s swoon into the hors d’oeuvres or the other complications until I saw that the car wasn’t where I had left it. I crawled around a row of other Mercedes, thinking it had moved or that maybe I’d forgotten where we had parked. About a third of the guests had already left, and maybe another third or so had called for their cars. Most of the rest of the drivers were gathered in two clumps across from the parked cars, chattering away.
Obviously, if my Mercedes wasn’t available, any one would do. I slipped into a car at the far end of the row, got it started, and then when one of the security men appeared to call for a vehicle, put it in gear and started forward.
The driver must have been standing nearby, but must not have recognized his vehicle; there were so many that were similar it’s not surprising. As I approached the front of the house, one of the security people appeared and waved me down the semi-circular drive that ran toward the door of the house instead of the stacking area the other cars were using. I drove up, wondering how far I could take this before I’d have to stomp on the gas pedal and barrel through the front gate a good thirty yards away. To my surprise, a butler came out, opened the rear door, and in stepped a well-dressed man and woman. They spoke to each other in French, so loudly it was clear that they didn’t think I knew the language.
Très bien.
We cleared the gate and I maneuvered toward the highway, which is a mile or two from the river. I decided that it was now time to find out where the hell Doc was, so I pulled my phone from my pocket and hit his preset.
Tremblay’s voice exploded in my ear. I told him in Arabic that I was on my way.
“You can’t talk, is that it?” he said.
I gave him a clipped “no.” I really felt like saying something else, a lot else, most of it consisting of four-letter words.
“We’re on our way to the hospital in Cairo,” he said. “It’s a long story. You need backup?”
I glanced in the mirror. The couple were in their late fifties. The man’s head hung back against the seat cushion; if he wasn’t sleeping, he would be soon. The woman sat in the other corner, staring at the floor.
“No,” I said, and hit the end-transmit button.
A few miles later, the man had begun to snore. I told the woman in French that it was a beautiful evening.
“Oui,” she said in a tone that wasn’t particularly encouraging, but Doc’s gift of the gab had inspired me. Besides, one thing I’ve never had problems with was talking to a beautiful woman. Women sometimes think they lose their attractiveness to men as they grow older, but take it from a Rogue who knows—wine isn’t the only thing that grows finer with the passing of time.
I told her that I was a replacement driver because the other man’s wife was having a baby, and then apologized because I wasn’t sure of their hotel. Fortunately, it was the Hilton on Tahrir Square; I not only knew where it was but had stayed there enough to describe how nice the lobby was. She was more interested in the other driver’s pregnant wife, and we took the conversation from there. I asked her about Abu Bakr and eventually got what I think was a pretty accurate assessment of him—a charming, well-connected, and very rich man who couldn’t be trusted on any level. The woman’s husband was a salesman with a French electronics firm, and by the time we reached Cairo she had practically told me the terms of the bribe Abu Bakr had demanded for a contract.
A pair of policemen were waiting for the car when we arrived at the hotel. I greeted them like long-lost friends; they scowled and began reaching for their holsters. I produced Jamal’s card and told them that I was under his “direction”; they didn’t stop scowling but their firearms remained at their sides. In the meantime, the Frenchwoman woke her husband. Not understanding what was going on, they disappeared upstairs while the two policemen debated between themselves which one was going to wake up the intelligence service captain.
I settled the debate by calling him myself.
“I’ll explain the whole thing to you in the morning,” I told him. “But for now you have to get me off the hook.”
Jamal grunted, saying that he wanted to speak to me as well.
“Talk to your friends first,” I said.
“Yes, but remember the words you once told me, Dick, and I have never forgotten: Payback is a bitch.”
I’ll go further than that: Payback is a yellow cur of a dog scurrying through a slimy alley full of garbage and excrement. I reached this conclusion the next night, in exactly that kind of alley, as I was being hauled there by two thugs who’d ID’d me as a flakey American tourist ripe for the picking. I wasn’t, but then they weren’t thugs, at least not by profession—they were two of Jamal’s men, and we were providing a diversion for a raid on a bomb factory on the outskirts of the City of the Dead…
(Was that too much of a jump for you? I’m just following Elmore Leonard’s advice and leaving out the boring parts. Here’s the executive summary: I spent the day catching up with my team and Jamal. Jamal began by volunteering that he had tapped the rug warehouse, an admission that convinced me I could trust him, at least as far as I could throw him. We traded some information—he was now very interested in Bakr, and while I didn’t tell him I’d bugged the place, he knew from the circumstances that I had been there and could easily guess. The rest of the day involved a lot of tail chasing and a tiny bit of hand-holding; suffice to say we were no closer coming up with anything linking Bakr to Saladin, or getting more information on who Saladin might be if not him. We now join our regularly scheduled mayhem, already in progress…)
Jamal’s two agents played thieves while I went against type and pretended to be a helpless and befuddled tourist. We hammed it up for a bit, then, as rehearsed, one of the “thugs” began running with my wallet while the other kicked over some garbage cans. I yelled and went after him, catching him ever so coincidentally at the front door of a mud-hut hovel.
Just at that moment, the assault team poised near the rear of the hovel made its move. One second there was a lot of yelling and screaming at the front; the next second there were flashbangs and a crack special operations squad going in the back. A second wave of policemen clad in protective gear came across the street from a pair of nearby vans as I rolled out of the way.
Taking down a bomb factory is not for the fainthearted; those things can go boom even under the best circumstances. I’d touched on the highlights of the tricky dance during my training visit years before. Jamal proved that he had not only retained what he learned but had taught it to his men. They swarmed inside so efficiently that even Mr. Murphy didn’t have time to react. I dusted myself off, admiring the precision of the Egyptian team, feeling a little like a proud papa at his kid’s graduation.
The feeling was a bit premature.
A crowd started to gather. This had been foreseen and though outnumbered, the half-dozen policemen assigned to control onlookers had the initial advantage, wielding large plastic batons and very loud warnings to stay back. Two vans, lights and sirens blaring, were headed down the street with uniformed reinforcements, and a contingent of riot police was less than a half-mile away. A helicopter pulled overhead, the beams of its floodlights playing across the ramshackle buildings.
But Mr. Murphy was clearly p.o.’d that he had missed his chance inside. In revenge, he urged one of the members of the crowd near where I was standing to pick up a stick about the size of a baseball bat. The man waited until the policeman nearest him had turned his back, then grabbed the piece of wood and aimed it at the officer’s unprotected head.
I jumped to intervene, catching the bat with my left hand mid-swing. He’d put so much weight into it that he flew to the pavement without me even getting a chance to pop him with my right hand. I took a half-step to balance myself, my eyes hunting the crowd in front of me for a second threat.
I should have looked behind me. A hard plastic baton smashed into the left side of my head and neck. I whirled, fought back, and fell, all in the same motion. My fist connected with someone’s jaw, but the satisfaction was dulled by a second hard wallop of a baton, this one to the top of my head. Pepper spray exploded in my eyes. I snapped into bar-fight mode, determined to take as many jarheads down with me until my sailor buddies came to my aid.
Problem was, I wasn’t in a bar fight. Knocked to the ground, I was dragged down the street even as I flailed. I started yelling that I was with the police, my curses alternating between English and Egyptian Arabic. My eyes felt like the inferno chicken wings at the local barbecue shack. I grabbed one of the sticks that was hitting me and waved it against something that gave way. The next thing I knew, I was thrown into the back of a van. I rolled over and got to my knees. I had to grab my pants legs to keep myself from rubbing my eyes, which would only have irritated them more.
The van bolted forward, throwing me down to the floor. I rocked back onto my butt, clawing for the side of the truck to get back up. Tears were streaming from eyes, washing the cayenne away. I blinked a few times, then managed to get my right eye open. The interior of the van was nearly pitch-black, the only light a thin filter of gray from the top of the door. I got out the small LED flashlight attached to my keychain. There was no one else in the truck. Still struggling to get my left eye open, I crawled to the back door. A large metal plate had been welded in front of the lock mechanism; the only way to remove it was with a blowtorch. I didn’t have one handy, so I went to work with my never-fails door opener: my size extra-Rogue right boot.
The van careened around a corner as I aimed my first kick. Rather than hitting the door near the lock I put a good-sized welt in its bottom panel. Cursing, I propped myself against the corner and swirled to the left, combining martial arts with soccer as I pirouetted my foot toward the target. The door didn’t budge.
I had one of my small Glock pistols strapped
to my calf, but the metal guarding the door lock looked to be nearly an inch thick. The body of the truck was much more pliable, as my first kick had demonstrated, and that same thin metal separated me from the driver.
It took four shots before the van veered onto its side. I went with it, rolling and twisting as the truck tumbled out of control.
On my fifth rebound off the roof I thought to myself: time to reload. I pulled the magazine out, leaving a round chambered, and fed one of my spares in before the van stopped moving. Yea, verily, did my pistol overflow as the tumult ended. I pointed it at the back of the van a few seconds later when I heard pounding on the back.
Pounding followed by a most glorious sound—not of angels, but the next best thing: Doc’s voice.
“Hey shit for brains, are you in there?” he yelled.
“Where the fuck do you think I would be, asshole?”
“Stand back. We’re blowing the lock.”
Had my brain not been jumbled, I would have told him not to blow the lock. Doc has a tendency to use just a tad too much C4 when he constructs an IED. Fortunately, he left the job to Big Foot, who is a stingy bastard, and he managed to pop the hinges off without wasting yours truly. Big Foot tossed me over his shoulder and double-timed back to the car.
If you’ve ever been in the back of a van that’s had its doors blown off, you know one thing: that is a LOUD explosion. My ears were ringing. But around the time we reached our car, I started to pick out a few familiar sounds from the background: Big Foot’s grunts, Doc’s curses, and a rat-tat-rata-bam-
RW13 - Holy Terror Page 18
