Angels of Wrath (64 page)

Oh, thought Ferguson.
Sheesh.
“Talk about in front of my face,” he muttered.

“Excuse me?” said Thera.

“A lot of food here,” he said, picking through the vegetables.

When dinner was over, Thera went and called Van Buren. The colonel confirmed that Ferguson had turned in the counterfeit money.

“Why are you asking?”

Embarrassed but relieved, she said, “I’m getting nosy in my old age.”

~ * ~

ven though it was well past sundown, the tiny lights lining the marina docks as well as the building made anyone at the front easily visible. The back of the building, however, was cast in shadow, and the window was open. Unfortunately, the building backed onto the water, which meant the only way in was to climb up out of the waves or a small boat. Ferguson picked one up from a row stacked on shore and plopped it into the water.

“You think there’s a burglar alarm inside?” asked Thera.

“I’m kind of hoping they don’t have anything worth stealing,” said Ferguson, leaning down and paddling with his hands. “I wouldn’t want to be tempted.”

“Am I going to hear about this for the rest of my life?”

“Just a good portion of it.”

Ferguson paddled the boat under the window and held it against the structure. The open window argued strongly that there wasn’t an alarm, but Thera checked anyway, bringing up the infrared glasses and using them from the corner of the window to look first for a pyroelectric sensor and then a laser or similar device. Pyroelectric sensors, commonly found in cheap motion detectors, worked by scanning the air for a change in heat energy. While not difficult to defeat—Ferguson had a soapy substance that would blur the sensor’s window, effectively dulling its vision—the sensor itself had to be spotted, and looking around the room carefully took some time.

“Ah, just stick your head in. If the alarm goes off, we’ll know something’s there,” said Ferg.

“Maybe it’ll be a silent alarm.”

“The stuff they have that’s worth stealing is out on the water,” said Ferguson. “If they didn’t chain the small boats, they’re not going to go crazy with burglar alarms. The front door is probably open.”

“Patience is a virtue,” said Thera, pulling out the bug detector to look for a device that used sonar or radio waves.

“I thought it was one of the deadly sins.”

“Oh, the nuns would be proud of you.”

Satisfied that there were no alarms, Thera pulled herself up and into the building. By the time Ferguson followed, she had found the computer and was hunched over the keyboard, waiting for it to boot up. The machine wasn’t password protected, but the point-of-sale program used to record rentals and credit card charges was.

“We can steal the drive,” Thera suggested. “Have someone analyze the data.”

“We don’t have to do that,” said Ferguson, staring at the wooden board where the boat keys were hung. Double sets sat on each peg, except for one: A3. The alphanumeric system referred to the mooring places. Worst case scenario: they could have figured out what the boat looked like by comparing the photo of the marina on the wall with the boats outside. But that wasn’t necessary; the boats each had a little paper file with important information in the cabinets next to the desk, and Ferguson found that A3 was a fiberglass cabin cruiser that could sleep six. It was called the
Jericho,
and its engines had been serviced two months before.

“This is the boat,” he told her, showing her the file.

“Who’s using the card? His sister?”

“I’m not sure yet,” said Ferguson. “Except that it’s not Hatch.”

“It has to be the sister,” said Thera. “Or Mossad. They had access to his wallet and card.”

“Could be us,” said Ferguson.

“You can rule us out.”

“Not yet. Come on. We need to get to the airport, and I have to check my e-mail.”

~ * ~

20

BALAD

AFTER MIDNIGHT . . .

The security was so tight that Rankin, Guns, and James had trouble getting into the city. Troops had staked out all of the areas that Rankin and Guns had ID’d from satellite photos as possible launch sites and several others besides. Heavily armed Iraqi units crisscrossed the major roads and many of the minor ones, and there were already several helicopters and an AC-130 gunship orbiting overhead. An insurgent couldn’t set off a firecracker in town, let alone set up a cruise missile.

More important, there were no Russian bars in the city, and even if there had been, they’d be closed; a nine p.m. curfew had been imposed.

They stopped at a temporary battalion headquarters near a checkpoint north of the city, catching some coffee and gossip. Word of the missile had been broadcast, and in fact a patrol had already investigated what turned out to be a false alarm.

The senior NCO on duty offered them a tent to sleep in. James wanted to take him up on the offer, but Rankin and Guns insisted they’d find their own place to stay. Which struck James as funny; the military guys were the ones who were supposed to be willing to rough it, not him.

James slid into the back of the Hummer, trying in vain to sleep as the truck bounced along the road. Rankin drove, the sound of the tires drilling into the side of his head, his body tense. His Beretta sat in his lap, and every so often he glanced toward his Uzi next to him.

“So you caught that guy up in Tikrit, huh?” said Guns, trying to talk to stay awake.

“Pretty far from there,” said Rankin.

“Musta been tough, huh?”

“Catchin’ him was easy.”

Guns waited for more, but Rankin didn’t volunteer anything else. After a minute or two, James slid forward. Guns thought—hoped—he’d supply more of the story but he didn’t. Instead he asked what Guns did “in real life.”

“This is real life,” said Guns. “I’m a marine.”

“For real?” asked James.

“Well, yeah. What do you think?”

“How’d you get hooked up with Stephen?” James asked.

“Lucky, I guess.”

“Classified, huh?”

“It was an accident,” said Guns.

“Everything in life’s an accident,” said James.

“You believe that?” asked Rankin.

“Pretty much.”

“Lonely thing to think,” said Rankin.

“You think God moves us around like pieces on a chessboard?” asked James.

“I didn’t say that,” answered Rankin. “You don’t believe in God at all.”

“That’s not true. I told you, I don’t believe in God in our image, as something we can understand. I think God’s mysterious, beyond us. That’s why I don’t get hung up on religion.”

“You can’t just turn religion on and off,” said Rankin.

“I didn’t say you could.” James leaned back in his seat. “What do you think, Sergeant?” he asked Guns. “You go to church?”

“When I can.”

“Which one?”

“Next you’re going to ask what kind of underwear he likes,” Rankin said.

“I’m a boxer guy myself,” said James.

“Methodist,” offered Guns, but the other man had pushed back in his seat, watching the shadows along the road.

~ * ~

21

TEL AVIV

The security staff at the American embassy gave Ferguson an incredibly difficult time when he asked to use the secure communications facilities, so much so that at one point he was tempted to deck their supervisor. He didn’t, but only because she looked like the type who might enjoy that sort of thing. She didn’t know him and wasn’t impressed when he offered to give her Parnelles’s home phone number. Finally he managed to convince her that she should call Slott to see if he was legit. The woman didn’t have the guts to come out and apologize herself, sending one of her red-faced peons out to show him to the room.

“You wouldn’t want them to let just anyone in,” said Lauren when he called the desk.

“Yeah, I hear Yasser Arafat was at the door just the other day,” said Ferguson. “Listen, I need to feed you a picture of a boat for the satellite interpreters.”

“Ferg, we’re
really
stretched.”

“No kidding. I thought you guys were goofing off. Tell you what, though, take the people you have looking for the Siren missile around Baghdad off the job. It’s not there.”

“Where is it?”

“The Red Sea, I think.”

“The Red Sea?”

“Near Mecca,” said Ferguson. “But I’ll worry about that. I want them to look for a Scud within range of Baghdad.”

“Huh?”

“That’s why Vassenka went to Iraq. I don’t know if the plane is a red herring or not. I have to talk to Rankin.”

“What am I doing?”

“You’re going to receive a photo of a boat that I send you and find someone who can tell me what it would look like in a satellite photo,” said Ferguson. “Better would he to find someone who could figure that out for me, but I’ll do it myself if I have to. Then you’re going to send an alert out about a Scud missile in Iraq. Don’t bother canceling the cruise missile; there’s always a possibility I’m wrong. It’s happened two or three times in my lifetime.”

“Ferg.”

“All right, once. But there’s always a chance.”

~ * ~

ankin sounded as if he were sleeping when he answered his phone.

“Rankin.”

“Hey, Skippy, top of the morning to you.”

“Ferguson.”

“Listen, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Vassenka and what Khazaal had going.”

“And?”

“Khazaal had to have had a Scud or at least parts for one. More, maybe. Vassenka’s there. He must have brought fuel with him.”

“I thought you said he brought a cruise missile.”

“Never mind that.”

“Ferguson—”

“The other thing that I’m thinking, I’m going to bet that Vassenka improved the range. Because at a hundred miles, we would have found it already, right?”

“They have a hundred-mile range,” said Rankin.

“I think it’s a little more. Check with Lauren. You know what? Tell her to get Thomas Ciello working on this. Get a rundown of all the mods Vassenka might try. The range has to be more. That was probably the key to the plan in the beginning.”

“Ciello? Is that the UFO nut?”

“One and the same,” said Ferguson. “I’ll tell you, though, the way things have been going lately, I think I’m starting to believe in UFOs.”

~ * ~

22

SOUTH OF THE SUEZ CANAL

The adrenaline shook Ravid so fiercely that he couldn’t sleep. Finally he got up and began pacing around the small boat. The man at the helm nodded but said nothing.