East of the Jordan (A Logan Connor Thriller Book 2)

by Micheal Maxwell

  Abiy leaned into the driver’s side window. In English, he said, “I am glad to have known you, Niles and Binyamin.”

  Logan smiled. “Your English is improving.”

  Abiy laughed. “Your Amharic is not.”

  Eric, pretending to be Binyamin, spoke in perfect Amharic. “Thank you for everything you did for us. We’ll never forget it.”

  Logan said, “I’m serious, though. Wait for a text message from a Benin number. That will be me. It will have a bank account number in it.”

  Abiy frowned and waved his hands. “I do not need money. You were my guests.”

  “The bank account will have enough money for your grandchildren to live wherever they want.”

  “I do not want it,” Abiy said.

  Miriam leaned around him. “I will take it.”

  They all laughed.

  Abiy shook Logan’s hand and said, “Go. You will need all of the sun.”

  Logan shook his hand and put the truck in reverse. They crept out of the driveway and onto the neighborhood street.

  The countryside of Ethiopia looked much more hospitable compared to Somalia. Somalia looked like an endless hard-scrabble desert. Ethiopia was populated with rolling hills painted green with tall grass. There were houses and huts built wherever the grass was exceptionally green or wherever a stream meandered by. They drove down the broad highway through the wilderness with the greens and yellows racing by. They could just as easily have been in Nebraska or Kansas.

  Logan said as much. He pointed out the window at a man lying on the hood of his car with a rifle up to his shoulder, probably waiting for a gazelle, ibex, or a wild pig. Logan wasn’t sure what roamed in central Ethiopia. “Look at that,” he said. “We could be in Nebraska for all I know.”

  Eric shook his head and pointed to an animal emerging from the trees, then at the hunter, who had perked up at the sight of it. “No way. When’s the last time you saw a gazelle in Nebraska?”

  They both laughed. It felt good. For a moment, Logan was able to put out of his mind that he’d lost Eric. Eric had gone from being a young spy on his way to the top to an ardent cult acolyte. It had happened gradually, but getting shot had sent him over the edge. Whatever vision he’d had while he was feverish seemed real enough to him. He thought Chemosh had saved his life. In fact, it was Logan who had stitched him up with fishing line and carried his heavy butt all the way to Abiy’s car and Miriam who had fed him with a spoon. Chemosh didn’t lift a damn finger.

  They met the Cairo-Cape Town Highway at an intersection and turned north onto the road.

  Eric asked, “Does this really run all the way from Egypt to South Africa?”

  Logan nodded. “A few parts of it aren’t paved, but yeah. It would have been nice to have one of these in west Africa. Driving around Benin was a nightmare.”

  They followed the highway to the town of Awasa. The city sat on the edge of a massive lake. The border ran right into the muddy banks that sank into the brown and blue water. A group of hippos plodded just below the surface of the water.

  Eric sighed. “Hippos are one of those animals that don’t seem real, ya know? They’re just on Discovery Channel.”

  He was right. Zebras and hippos didn’t seem like animals you actually encountered out in the real world. Yet here we were in a city built on the banks of a lake that hippos had claimed long before humans.

  “Eric asked, “A hotel?”

  Logan shook his head. “Don’t want to ping the bank accounts yet, if we don’t have to.”

  “Then, where?” Eric asked.

  Logan pointed at a massive sculpture rising from the street. The artwork looked to be made of concrete or limestone. It was made of two pillars that were twisted like a strand of DNA.

  Logan said, “Hawassa University. They’ve got a library. I used to fall asleep in libraries on all-nighters all the time.”

  “We’re going to break into a school?” Eric asked incredulously.

  Logan replied, “I’ve broken into stranger places.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Logan and Eric woke up early enough to slip out of the library at Hawassa University before the janitors came through. They climbed back into the crotchety Toyota truck they’d borrowed from Abiy. Before the sun even fully arose, Logan made the 170 or so mile drive to Addis Ababa.

  They drove into the largest city in Ethiopia as the sun was rising. The buildings on the outskirts of the city were houses and small businesses. They were mostly tan and gray. Several of them had boarded up doors and windows. They saw a lot of badly cracked driveways. However, as they drove further and further into town, they saw more and more skyscrapers. Eventually, they were stopped in a line of car taillights as they sat at a red light sandwiched between glass and steel skyscrapers. The buildings stretched into the hazy morning sky. People milled around them; several appeared to be going to work, and a few jogged by for their morning workouts. Others seemed to just be sitting around at coffee shops and outdoor restaurants.

  Addis Ababa was a city that came alive early in the morning.

  “How are we going to find this guy?” Eric asked.

  Logan replied, “We’re not. He’s going to find us.”

  They were looking for a man named Haile Gibran. The note Abu Kishaa gave them only said he worked for Interpol in Addis Ababa, but that wasn’t quite right. In movies, Interpol agents ran around wearing uniforms that said “Interpol” on them, but that’s not how it worked in the real world. In real life, Interpol agents were local law enforcement who were contracted for some kind of international crime. This Haile Gibran would likely be an Ethiopian Federal Police officer working in the city.

  If Abu Kishaa was after him, he would likely be working some kind of investigation into Abu Kishaa. The question was, how much did he know about who worked for Kishaa?

  Time to find out.

  Logan steered the truck to a curb outside of a bank. He pulled a series of debit cards out of his boot. There was a range of different names on them. If Interpol was really after Abu Kishaa, they would know that he’d been in Abu Kishaa’s camp. They must have spies among his followers.

  His best option would be to send up a flare and see who came running. He pulled out a debit card for Titus Crow. Crow only used it when he wasn’t undercover. When he needed a paper trail with his real name on it, he would send Logan off in some different direction to take money out from time to time to throw law enforcement off his trail.

  Logan swiped Titus Crow’s card in the ATM and withdrew 400 Ethiopian birrs. He got back in the truck and drove off.

  “Interpol probably has alerts for every known contact of Titus,” Logan said.

  Eric replied, “Won’t that be too obvious?”

  Logan shrugged. “I’m hoping it’s obvious. If we can arrange a meeting with this Gibran guy, we can figure out why Abu Kishaa wants him dead.”

  Eric frowned. “Won’t it be difficult to kill him if he knows we’re looking for him?’

  Logan nodded. “Good thing I don’t plan on killing him.”

  Eric practically jumped out of his seat. “What? Abu Kishaa clearly said everybody on the list needs to be killed. That’s the mission.”

  “I don’t take missions from international terrorists.”

  Eric growled. “Abu Kishaa isn’t a terrorist. He’s a modern-day prophet. You could learn a lot from him.”

  Logan shook his head. “He’s not a prophet. He’s a drug dealer. I don’t need any more teachers.”

  “What about everything you’ve seen?” Eric said. “What about all of the miracles?”

  Logan steered the truck around a corner towards a different bank. “You mean the so-called miracles that we saw when we were high? Those are just the effects of silphium, Eric. Surely, you can see that.”

  Eric shot back, “I wasn’t on qedex when he came to me in my dream.”

  Logan groaned. “You were shot and bleeding out. That was just your subconscious firing randomly.”
/>   Eric turned towards the window and pouted. “I don’t believe that.”

  Logan replied, “When I arrest Abu Kishaa and try him in the Hague, you’ll see that he’s just a man.”

  Eric whispered, “I won’t let you do that.”

  Logan let that eerie warning lie. He would need to shake Eric out of his stupor somehow, and soon, there was thirty days to handle this Abu Kishaa situation. He didn’t know what inspired Sydney to put such a firm timeframe on it or what she would do at the end of thirty days, but he knew she wouldn’t have risked a text message on their secure phones if it wasn’t necessary. Thirty days.

  He pulled up to another ATM. This one was outside of a bar called the Lion’s Den. There was a large colorful painting of Bob Marley on the door.

  He pulled a different card out of his stash of debit cards. This one was a card Titus Crow used when he wanted to send a message. The name on the card was Brandon Lee, the son of Bruce Lee, who starred in a movie called “The Crow.” It was heavy-handed and an overt reference. That made it perfect for sending a message to anyone who was looking for Titus Crow.

  It would also serve the purpose of telling Interpol that he wasn’t someone who happened upon Titus Crow’s debit card in a dumpster. This was someone who knew Crow personally.

  Logan grabbed his cash and got back in the truck.

  They headed for a public park. After a few more miles of driving, they pulled into Hamle 19 public park. Logan and Eric got out and walked down a sidewalk through the cultivated green space. The grass was cut recently, and the smell of wet grass tasted like perfume. Plump green fruits hung from trees. They were covered in spiky spines like pineapples but as large as Logan’s head.

  “What are those?” Logan asked, just looking for some way to break the awkward silence.

  Eric studied them for a second and said, “Soursop, I think. They’re like a cross between a banana and an apple.”

  That sounded pretty good. Logan made a note to try some soursop before they left Ethiopia. However, if the past was a prologue, they’d be leaving Ethiopia like their asses were on fire.

  The pair walked over to a metal bench sitting beside a paved path and sat down. Logan pulled out his burner phone and started scrolling.

  “Now what?” Eric asked.

  Logan replied, “We wait. I sent up the bat signal.”

  They didn’t have to wait for very long. Logan checked the scores of a few NFL games back home. He was just getting to college football when a thin, black man sat down on the bench. The man wore jeans and a Hawassa University t-shirt. He was sending them a message that he knew where they’d been.

  The man pulled out a book and opened it. The book was A Game of Thrones. He reached into his pants and pulled out a Glock 9mm. He hid it behind the hardback book.

  The man whispered in a deep voice. “Don’t look at me. Don’t react. Don’t move too quickly. If I get spooked, the snipers start shooting. I spook easily.”

  He spoke with a thick Ethiopian accent, but his English was pretty good.

  Logan mumbled under his breath as he scrolled his phone. “Haile Gibran?”

  “What name are you using today, Logan Connor?”

  Logan responded, “Niles.”

  The man flipped a page. “And who are you, young man? We have eyes on you but no name.”

  “Binyamin,” Eric replied.

  The man flipped a page. “Sure, you are. Okay, you wanted to be caught and now you are caught.”

  Logan pretended to absentmindedly scroll his phone. “I’ll give you the straight sell. I killed Titus Crow. Dumped him in a swamp back in America. Abu Kishaa is reassembling his distribution network to run a new drug called qedex.”

  Haile asked, “Addictive?”

  Logan replied, “I’m not sure. It’s powerful, though. Powerful hallucinogen. He sent me here to kill you.”

  Gibran straightened up a little. “What are you waiting on?”

  Logan replied, “I want to know why he wants you dead.”

  Haile responded, “Crow had a connection in Ethiopia. Worked with the guys in Benin, Menelaus, and his ‘Spartans.’ I took down the Ethiopia branch of that organization.”

  Logan sighed. “Ah, I see. He needs you out of the way to put the band back together.”

  Eric butted in. “Abu Kishaa just wants everyone to see what I’ve seen.”

  Haile narrowed his eyes. In that instant, he knew Eric couldn’t be trusted.

  Logan ignored Eric. He said, “What’s the play, Gibran?”

  Gibran replied, “How do I know I can trust you?”

  Logan said, “Crow’s been dead two years. If I wanted his network, I would have already moved on it. I’m a good guy. You can believe that.”

  Gibran set a business card on the park bench beside him. “That’s my direct line. I can have a full tactical team in the air within ninety minutes. We can be on the ground in Jordan in eight hours.”

  Logan nonchalantly placed his hand on the business card. “I’ve got a few more names to round up. We’re moving within thirty days.”

  “Why so fast?” Gibran asked.

  Logan replied, “I don’t know.”

  Logan stood up. Eric stood up with him.

  Gibran asked, “Where to now?”

  Logan dug in his pocket and pulled out the folded piece of paper. He read the next name. “Jethro ibn Ahmad.”

  He stuffed the paper back in his pocket. “Syria.”

  * * *

  Logan didn’t respond to Sydney’s text message, but she didn’t expect him to. It was risky communicating via satellite phone, even if they were encrypted and registered in different places around the world. He surely got her message and was, hopefully, making moves to put an end to Abu Kishaa. There were twenty-seven days remaining. Abu Kishaa’s movement was growing faster and faster. Having studied dozens of cult movements and even broken up a couple of them, Sydney knew that they reached a critical mass. They started small and grew very slowly. But then spread like a virus. One person infected two people. Two people infected two people each. Those four new people infected two more people each. Eventually, they reached a size that they grew out of control. Once that happened, there would be no stopping Abu Kishaa. She could kill him or throw him in jail, but the effect of his ideology would be massive. It would be a power base in search of a leader, then. That was even more dangerous.

  Sydney sat on the top of a shipping container in the narrow Gulf of Aqaba. The sun was rising over Saudi Arabia to the east. She could see the waxy orange sun climbing over the horizon, but she couldn’t see the Kingdom of the Two Mosques over there. Instead, she was sitting on a ship owned by a terrorist group that called itself the Rightful Custodians of the Two Mosques.

  The leader of the Custodians, Ibn Kitab, was nowhere to be found. She and Abu Kishaa’s lawyer, Al-Misri, came to oversee the first delivery of silphium. They delivered about 75 pounds of dried qedex sap. The Ibn Kitab’s acolytes unpacked the qedex bricks and loaded each one into a steel drum full of unroasted green coffee beans. They buried the drugs about halfway down in the barrel and shoveled beans over it. Drug-sniffing dogs probably didn’t have a nose for qedex, but they perfected a process for shipping drugs. They were nothing if not careful.

  They were devout as well. As the sun rose, a man stepped onto the top of the shipping container with Sydney. He wore a long dish-dash with a hooded sweatshirt over it to cut the morning chill coming off the ocean. The sweatshirt was deep blue with a yellow “M” on the chest. It took Sydney a moment to place it.

  In accented English, he said, “Good morning. Will you be praying with us?”

  Sydney responded, “No. I don’t pray towards Mecca.”

  Then she realized the hoodie was a Michigan Wolverines hoodie. Did he go to the University of Michigan? Probably. In the popular imagination, terrorists were brutes living in caves who beat women over the head and dragged them back to their holes to eat mastodon steaks. In reality, they were generally e
ducated men with sharp minds and hollow souls. That made them dangerous. Dumb brutes were only dangerous as far as their fists could reach. Educated monsters could capture millions.

  The Wolverine, as Sydney thought of him, cleared his throat. He tilted his head back and began a song/chant that boomed across the calm sea.

  He sang in Arabic, but Sydney heard it dozens of times.

  He sang, “God is Great! God is Great! God is Great! God is Great! I bear witness that there is no god except the One God.” His voice was bright and clear, and Sydney must admit, it was beautiful and so was the message. “I bear witness that there is no god except the One God. I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God. I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God. Hurry to the prayer. Hurry to the prayer. Hurry to salvation. Hurry to salvation.”

  The Custodians didn’t hurry. They were already awake and moving around. They dropped what they were doing and went into one of the containers. They emerged with their faces looking freshly scrubbed. They laid out prayer rugs. Some of them were as simple as bath towels that they stretched on the ground. Others were elaborate pieces of art with lovely designs.

  The singer, a muezzin in Arabic, finished the last verse by singing, “Prayer is better than sleep. Prayer is better than sleep.”

  Is it, though? Is it? Sydney mused.

  The Custodians went through their ritual prayers facing in the direction of the sunset. They were practiced and smooth. They possessed the rote quality of mechanic movement without much thought, like folding laundry.

  When they were done, they rolled up their prayer rugs and went back to work.

  The muezzin sat on the edge of the container.

  “That was beautiful, “Sydney said.

  The Wolverine smiled. “Why do you follow him, the son of Chemosh?”

  Sydney replied, “I could ask the same thing to you about Ibn Kitab.”

  He replied, “I do not follow Ibn Kitab. I walk towards God. Ibn Kitab is just walking in front of me.”