All Necessary Force (13 page)

“Did you get a facial ID?” I said, meaning did they have a photograph.

“No,” Jennifer said. “But I did see him. He was wearing a name tag for the convention.”

“Did he see you?”

“No. I was in a crowd walking by. No way he saw me.”

“Okay, you two stand down. I don’t want to risk burning you. Knuckles, head over to the convention and get a shot of everyone in his booth. We’ll have Jennifer ID the right guy, then we’ll all know what he looks like.”

20

T

he bus ride up to Alexandria went the same as our entire day at the pyramids—uneventful. Noordin had stumbled around gawking like every other tourist, taking pictures and paying outrageous prices for bottled water from the swarms of Egyptians just outside the gates. I was beginning to wonder if he wasn’t in Cairo on legitimate business.

Our first stop was the Library of Alexandria. Jennifer had given all of us a history lesson on how the Greeks had ruled Egypt and built this incredible library, only to see it destroyed. She was itching to get a look at the remains. Instead, we pulled up to a huge, modern-day library. We thought maybe they’d built a new library around the old one, but no, it was just a library—albeit one that commemorated the spirit of the original.

The entire bus spent about five minutes inside, apparently wondering, like us, why the tour guide thought we might want to check out some modern-day books. Noordin bought some more trinkets at the souvenir shop and we left scratching our heads.

Jennifer said, “The catacombs had better be real.”

Our next stop was a burial site called Kom el-Shoqafa. Apparently a great historical find, and something that Jennifer was looking forward to. We’d already gotten the classes on it from her.

I said, “We’re probably going to a modern cemetery. Don’t get upset.”

The bus wove its way into a densely packed neighborhood, with the buildings an arm’s length apart. We eventually stopped outside a simple metal gate. We let Noordin exit first, then followed. Getting inside, there
was nothing to see. Just a ticket booth. There were some artifacts around the grounds with a couple of Asian tourists taking happy snaps of each other around them.

The tour guide led us to a circular stairwell, and before I knew it, we were about sixty feet below ground level inside what was definitely an ancient catacomb. Small hallways branched out in all directions, with the walls hollowed out at regular intervals as final resting spots.
Going to be hard to keep up with Noordin in this beehive.

We listened to the tour guide give his class, which wasn’t as good as Jennifer’s, and waited for him to let us wander around on our own.

As the crowd split up, I took the first shift, bringing Bull with me and staying about thirty feet back from Noordin. He broke from the pack and began to explore by himself, forcing us to lose sight of him as he wound through the small hallways. We turned one corner and almost ran into him and another man, an Arab. The section we were in was covered in water, with planks allowing tourists to crouch over and walk without getting wet. We did a dance around them, hopping from plank to plank, and kept going. Noordin paid us no mind, but his friend did.

Once we turned another corner, I said, “You recognize that guy? Is he on our trip?”

Bull was thinking the same thing I was. “No. I’m sure he’s not with us.”

I immediately tried to contact Knuckles and Jennifer to get them in position, but the small covert radios we had wouldn’t function in the catacombs.
Should’ve seen that coming
. “Shit. We need to get eyes on them.”

I didn’t want to risk burning ourselves, and a sure way to do that was to have the same people walk by the target over and over again. If something nefarious was going on, they’d be looking for it. I knew damn well Noordin’s friend would. He just gave off that vibe.

I started walking again, saying “Maybe this thing dead-ends. That would give us a reason to go back.”

It didn’t dead-end, but it did get messy enough for anyone to plausibly turn back, with the decrepit boards dipping into the water.

“Okay, when we go by, I’m going to completely ignore them because I got eyeballed. See what you can see.”

We retraced our steps and found them both in the same location, apparently fascinated by one of the tombs that looked exactly like every other one of the hundreds down here. Something was going on.

We slipped by them, with Bull saying, “Sorry. Don’t go that way. It’s blocked.”

Reaching the main hall, I asked what he saw.

“When we turned the corner, the Arab handed something to Noordin. He did it quickly, like he was trying to hide it. And Noordin jammed it in his pocket immediately. They also weren’t saying anything. Nothing about the tombs or other tourist stuff. It’s like they shut up when they saw us.”

We found Knuckles and Jennifer and laid out what we’d seen.

Knuckles said, “So you want us to take the new guy? See where he goes?”

“Yeah… Shit, that’s not going to work. If they’re up to no good, he’s going to stay down here until the bus leaves. I won’t be able to point him out to you because I’ll be on the damn bus following Noordin.”

Knuckles said, “How bad is your heat state?”

“Radioactive. Bull and I both got close enough to bump asses with them.”

“Well, we could blow off Noordin. You could finger the Arab and we’d just meet back at the hotel.”

I thought about it but didn’t want to lose our original target. If something had been passed, it might play out today—in the next couple of hours.

“No. We’ll take a risk but split the difference. Bull, you get on the bus. Jennifer, you come with me. That way I can finger him and you’re a fresh face.”

Jennifer and I left the catacombs, finding a café on the corner across the street with a view of the metal entrance gate to the park, currently blocked by our tour bus. We watched the group exit the park, with the tour guide rounding everyone up. We saw Bull talking to him, giving some excuse for us. When the bus drove off, we had an unobstructed
view of the gate. I saw the Arab man just inside, sitting on a bench and watching the bus depart. I pointed him out to Jennifer.

She said, “You want me to close the gap on him?”

I watched the Asian tourists we’d seen taking photos drive off in the opposite direction. “Naw. Let’s just wait here and see what he does.”

Looking around at the grimy neighborhood, Jennifer said, “I’m not sure we got the best of this deal. I’d rather be on the bus.”

I laughed, watching the tour bus reach the first intersection, having to maneuver around a parked car in the cramped confines of the street. It stopped for a second, then began to back up, the car blocking its ability to turn the corner. Something about the scene spiked in my head. Egyptian drivers were horrible. Nobody would park there and risk a hit-and-run—unless they wanted to target the intersection. I started to rise, when the bus exploded in a fierce ball of fire.

21

R

eacting by instinct, I dove on top of Jennifer, the pressure wave of the blast knocking over the umbrella on our table. A split second later, I was running flat out to the bus, Jennifer right behind me.

Reaching the carnage, I screamed at Jennifer to get back, afraid there was a second bomb waiting on people who responded. She ignored me.

The badly parked car on the right side of the bus was peeled open like an empty beer can, black and burning. The bus was knocked over on its side, the middle compressed as if a giant hand had squeezed it. The smell of charred flesh and burning rubber mixed together.

I grabbed a piece of metal and began tearing into the wreckage. Once I had a hole, I started pulling out the pieces. Arms, legs, torsos, anything to clear the way for me to find my friends.
Please, dear God, be on the left side of the bus
.

A crowd had gathered and begun to help. The keening wail of someone injured sliced through the air. I kept going, now pulling out whole bodies. Eventually, I reached someone alive. I got him out, and saw Bull’s jacket underneath a seat. I screamed for help and found Jennifer by my side.

“I’m going to lever that seat up. Pull him out.”

I jammed a broken piece of metal underneath the frame and leaned into it with everything I had, raising the seat a foot. Jennifer dragged him out. I was relieved to see he was whole, with all of his limbs. I ran to him and began immediate first aid, checking for breathing and a pulse. He had neither.

The side of his skull was cracked open, with his brain matter falling onto the ground. I shunted the image to the back of my brain and returned to the bus, looking for someone who still needed help. Looking for Knuckles.

I was pulling another body from the wreckage, when I heard Jennifer scream my name. She was yanking on a piece of smoking metal, blood on her arms, her hair singed. Racing over, I saw my friend faceup, a vicious slice running down his torso, exposing his intestines underneath. And the rise and fall of his chest.

Rafik felt the blast from inside the courtyard, the shock wave shaking a cloud of dust from the walls. He scrambled out into the street, seeing a huge plume of smoke rising to the west. He ran toward it.

Fighting his way through the crowd around the wreckage, he circled, looking for Noordin. He reached a makeshift morgue, with the bodies unceremoniously thrown one on top of the other and a small stack of arms and legs looking like cast-offs from a wax museum. He saw what might be Noordin’s clothes, and moved the corpses for a clear view.

The head was missing, the neck a mass of torn tissue with the spinal cord sticking out stark white against the red, but it was him. Rafik was sure. He couldn’t believe the irony. Noordin was the contact with the pilots for the aircraft, and now he’d been killed by some other group. The whole plan destroyed by an infantile attack that garnered nothing.

He let out a scream of frustration, beating his hands into the ground. The people around him looking on in sympathy, misunderstanding his rage for grief. After a moment he regained his composure, thinking through his options.

All is not lost
. Noordin was dead, but he wasn’t the pilot. Just the contact. The pilots were in Cairo, at the trade fair. Drinking booze and whoring around. They weren’t believers and had no knowledge of Rafik, but they knew they were doing something unsavory. Rafik couldn’t be sure they didn’t think they were just smuggling drugs, or how they’d
react if he confronted them, but he was the ultimate money man, so that would count. Especially since their employer was now dead. In the end, he needed only one pilot. If they weren’t swayed by money, there were other ways.

He’d had that lesson branded on him as a child prisoner in Algeria.

22

E

ating dinner on a two-story boat anchored in the Nile River, Congressman Ellis wasn’t enjoying the belly-dancing floor show like the rest of the entourage. Since his last conversation with Han, he hadn’t enjoyed much of anything. His appetite had dropped off to nothing, and he felt permanently sick to his stomach. He’d told his aides that he’d caught something, and they’d seemed to buy it.

He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. Excusing himself, he went to the bathroom and read a simple text message:
Check the news. Call the plane.

He pulled out his worldwide BlackBerry and accessed the Web. Within short order, he located the terrorist attack in Alexandria. The initial death toll read eighteen, with no mention of nationalities.
Jesus. They blew up a bus?
The magnitude did nothing to dim his relief.

Thinking a minute, he dialed his pay-as-you-go phone, waiting on the long-distance connection. His contact answered, sounding like he was speaking in a tunnel.

“Hello. Can I help you?”

“Yes, I’d like to speak with Carlton Webber.”

“He’s not here at the moment. Can I take a message?”

Now that they were no longer in the States, they had established a code to ensure that each was who he said he was. Congressman Ellis had no doubt that Egypt maintained a pretty healthy capability for listening in on domestic cell phone calls, so their entire conversation would be benign.

Congressman Ellis said, “Yes, tell him that he can come as planned. But I had a question.”

“What’s that?”

“How long can he stay?”

“He’s only paid for three hours.”

“I know. I made the plan. Can he stay longer?”

“Uhh… possibly, but it will cost more money. And he won’t stay past the night. He has to be back here the following morning.”

Congressman Ellis realized the pilot was afraid of being at the closed Alexandria airport when the sun came up. He wanted in and out in one night. It was the best Ellis was going to get.

“Fine. Make that happen. Call me before you cross the Mediterranean.”

He hung up the phone, feeling a little release.
Barring any hiccups, I’ll give Han his twenty-four-hour call tomorrow night. And be done with this.
He returned to the table and flagged an aide. Telling him about the terrorist attack, he sent the man to the U.S. Embassy for a list of any Americans involved, under the pretense of finding out if one was a constituent. After the aide left, he relayed the news to the rest of the delegation, who all immediately began banging away on BlackBerrys and talking to aides, just as he had.

Congressman Ellis heard nothing from the aide until he returned to the hotel. The man entered his room with a smile, saying, “Not your constituents. No worries.”

“Were there any Americans?”

“Yes. Four on the tour, one dead, one in a hospital and expected to die.”

“Then wipe that fucking smile off of your face.”

The aide’s glee disappeared.

“How sure are you of the information?”

Now all business, the aide said, “One hundred percent. The embassy had the manifest of everyone who paid for the tour, and has already confirmed the information about the Americans.”