Angels of Wrath (37 page)

Ferguson repeated his earlier story about being a pilgrim and tourist, exploring the holy shrines of Islam with his devoted though deaf and dumb grandson. ... A man who, alas, was not sharp in the mental department, perhaps as a result of being kicked by a Jew when he was young.

Even this last bit failed to win the sympathy of the man who had stopped them.

“This place is off limits to the likes of you,” said the man.

“Is it a shrine?” asked Ferguson.

“It is an empty building, fool,” said the man.

He pulled Ferguson’s cane from his hand. Rankin grabbed him. Fear sprang into the man’s face.

“No, no,” said Ferguson, tapping his ersatz grandson’s arm. “No, no. Peace be unto you, brother. Peace be unto you.”

Two other men came over. Both were dressed in business clothes. The taller of the pair began to speak, using calm tones and introducing himself as the imam’s son.

Then he started asking Ferguson about which mosques he had been to.

This was not a difficult question in and of itself, for as it happened Ferguson had been to many. He began with the expected, saying how the greatest experience in his life had been Mecca: an obligation for every able Muslim but, more than that, an experience of joy and faith impossible to duplicate elsewhere on earth. He then moved through Saudi Arabia, then to Yemen and then to Egypt. The Imam’s son still had not tired—in fact he seemed genuinely interested—and so Ferguson found himself in Beirut, where the Omari Mosque was incomparable.

“God must have been very pleased to take it from the nonbelievers,” said Ferguson.

“That happened here,” said the Imam’s son.

“So I’ve heard. But there was no trace.”

“Oh, yes. Come.”

By now, Rankin had a truly bad vibe about the Imam’s son. He tried to signal this to Ferguson by tugging at his arm, gently at first, and then more insistently. Finally his pull became obvious to everyone.

Rather than using it as an excuse to leave, Ferguson began berating his grandson, threatening to lash him with the cane and saying that it was not time to eat yet. Rankin did his best not to react, cringing like the long-suffering grandkid he was supposed to be.

The Imam’s son gently pulled Ferguson away, starting him toward the mosque. Ferguson wrapped his arm around his and planted a small audio “fly” and a tracking device on the man’s jacket.

~ * ~

hat the hell is he doing?” Monsoon asked Thera out in the van. They were parked two blocks to the north, barely in range of the bugging devices they were using. “He should be getting the hell out of there.”

“It’s a calculated risk,” Thera told him. “He hasn’t found what he’s looking for. Khazaal has to be inside. He’s the only one Meles would have come to meet. At least that’s what Ferg thinks.”

“Sounds to me like the guy’s trying to trap him. He’s asking too many questions.”

“Probably he doesn’t believe him.”

“We don’t have enough people to get him out if something goes wrong,” Monsoon said.

“He knows what he’s doing. Ferg’s been in this kind of situation before.”

Monsoon took a sip from the bottled water. As a Delta op, he’d been involved in some difficult operations, including a hostage rescue in Peru that had gone sour. But these people pushed things too far; if they saw a hairy situation, they tried to make it ten times worse.

“He have a death wish?” Monsoon asked.

Thera turned and looked at the Delta soldier. She was going to scold him but held back.

“He might,” she said. “He might.”

~ * ~

ankin could feel his heart pounding as they walked slowly along the pillars in the mosque, the Imam’s son pointing to the stones left from the older church. These guys didn’t believe they were who they said they were, but they were stuck now; cutting and running for it wasn’t going to get them out alive. Besides the two plainclothes guards at the back of the prayer hall, Rankin had spotted four men with Kalashnikovs outside.

He glanced at Ferguson, still hamming up the old man act. There was no sign that he was nervous. He could’ve been on the stage in a high school play, yapping out rehearsed lines.

Rankin had had a bit in a high school play once. He’d flubbed the five words he had to say.

Ferguson seemed to fall against him. Rankin grabbed at his arm, then realized that Ferg hadn’t fallen, but was bending forward to spit on the rocks of the Christian church.

“No, you shouldn’t show such disrespect,” said the Imam’s son. “They are children of the book, even if they are wrong in their conclusions. Jesus Christ was a great prophet. Peace be unto him.”

Chastised, Ferguson bowed his head, then spontaneously dropped to his knees and rubbed up the spittle. As he did, he slipped the knife secreted up his loose sleeve to his hand, ready to be used. The Imam’s son gently tugged him to his feet.

A moment of decision: there might not be a better opportunity to grab him by the throat.

The tug was gentle. Ferguson remained in character, mumbling his apology and begging forgiveness, practically doubling over even as he rose, admitting he was unworthy and a fool besides.

“No, old man, you are not a fool. I am sorry I yelled at you,” said the Imam’s son. “You are a devout believer, a faithful child. God will smile on your soul.”

He led them back outside, and offered a place to stay. Ferguson thanked him profusely, saying that first they must complete their visits to the other mosques in town and then with God’s grace return.

Outside the mosque, Ferguson started for his shoes. Four men with AK-47s were milling nearby.

“Just a minute,” said the Imam’s son, grabbing Ferguson’s forearm tightly.

~ * ~

uns pushed his glasses up, trying to peer across the street through the doorway of the outer wall without making it too obvious that he was staring inside. Ferguson had told him to remain outside if at all possible; even in disguise there was always the chance that someone would remember him from yesterday.

Two men with AK-47s, stocks folded up so the weapons looked more like machine-pistols than rifles, walked from the left and came through the opening. Guns took off his glasses as if to clean them but stayed where he was for a moment as the men checked the block. One of them put his hand to his ear—he had an earphone there though Guns couldn’t see it—and then both men came out of the doorway, heading eastward on the street.

Guns kept his glasses off and walked the other way, catching a glimpse of the knot of men in black shirts and pants as they came out. A pair of cars came around the corner, accelerating and then stopping in front of the mosque.

“You seeing this?” Guns whispered to Thera.

“Oh, yeah. There’s our boy. Just keep walking. We’ll have the Global Hawk tag the car in its ID system. Once we recover Ferguson we can find out where it went.”

~ * ~

erguson pushed his teeth together as the Imam’s son let go of his arm. Khazaal had passed not more than five yards from him, but he was gone now, the bastard.

“Strong arms,” said the Imam’s son, staring into Ferguson’s face.

Ferguson smiled and bowed his head.

“You have much hair,” added the man.

“Were every strand a prayer to holy God, it would not be a tenth of what I owe,” answered Ferguson.

“A van will take you to the next mosque,” said the Imam’s son. He snapped
his
fingers and shouted directions to one of the men nearby. Fergu
son
protested lightly, saying he was unworthy to accept such kindness but then accepted with gratitude.

One of the men with the AK-47s came over from the courtyard, walking with them to the street. Two other guards were nearby; the Imam’s son bade them good luck and farewell, then turned abruptly and went inside the administrative building. Ferguson took hold of Rankin’s arm, stalling for a moment to size up the layout, but it was clear that if they ran for it they’d be cut down before they made the street.

~ * ~

omin’ out,” said Guns. “Finally.”

“We see,” Thera told him from the van. “Four guards.”

“Shit.”

“It’s all right. Take a breath and hold it. Ferg is talking.”

Guns started walking behind a group of smartly dressed women, paralleling Ferguson and Rankin. The two ops were sandwiched by men with guns. Thera was right; Ferguson was chatting up a storm.

Guns hopped into the street, deciding to cross and get closer. He moved without thinking of the traffic, which though light wasn’t nonexistent. He just missed getting run over by a battered Renault, whose driver swerved and laid on the horn. Guns put out his hands in apology as another man leaned out the window and cursed him and his children’s children for being so careless.

One of the men with Ferguson pulled open the sliding door to a white Toyota van and prodded him inside. Ferguson pulled himself upward and got in, groaning all the way. Rankin followed. The van had three rows of seats: two guards got behind them; the other two crammed into the front with the driver.

“We better follow,” said Guns.

“We’re taking it,” Thera told him. “You hang back. Go up to that café at the corner and relax.”

Relax? Yeah, sure, thought Guns. He’d put that on the agenda, but it didn’t look like he’d be getting to it anytime soon.

~ * ~

hey’d gone about two blocks when Rankin felt the barrel of a gun pressed against his neck.

“You heard that horn,” said the man behind him. “I saw you.”

Rankin turned in the direction of the gun but said nothing, clinging to the last vestiges of his cover. The men in the front turned and started yelling at the gunman.

Ferguson started to laugh.

“He hears with his eyes and fingers,” Ferguson told the others, still laughing. “Shoot the gun and you will see. He hears it. Watch.”

Ferguson clapped his hands together. Rankin jerked his shoulder up in reaction.

“He’s a fake,” said the man in the back.

The man behind Ferguson reached forward with his gun. Ferguson, still feigning amusement, turned and insisted that the men must fire the weapons and see what he was saying. “You will see, you will see. Shoot.”

“We’re
not
firing in the Imam’s van,” said one of the men in the front.

Ferguson leaned across to the front seat. The man near him grabbed his hand as he reached for the horn.

“Beep it,” urged Ferguson. “Watch. He hears the air. It is quite phenomenal. Watch. Watch!”

The driver hit the horn. Rankin now practically jumped upward in the seat.

The man in the front who was in charge told the driver to stop up ahead near an open lot. He pulled in. The men got out. Rankin let himself be jerked from the van, a bewildered look on his face. He landed in a heap in the dirt, then slowly got to his knees.