Angels of Wrath (68 page)

The front of the vehicle began to shake. Guns realized he was being fired at and jumped off the back as the fusillade intensified. A machine gun—an M60 set on a bipod—joined the four Iraqis firing M16s from near the building, chewing the bricks into dust.

Guns got to the next aisle, ducking behind a pile of bagged stone. As the gunfire continued, he climbed up and burned a box of bullets before the machine gunner managed to return fire. As he slid down to the ground he heard a rumble and thought it was the AC-130 approaching.

It wasn’t: the missile had been ignited and was building pressure to launch.

~ * ~

32

THE RED SEA

Thera took a swig from the water bottle, letting the cold liquid run down the sides of her mouth. The heat was already building; it was going to be a hot, muggy day.

“How much farther?” she asked Ferguson. He was up at the how, listening over the phone as an aide hack in the Cube told him what they saw on the new satellite photos.

“Ten more minutes,” he told her, taking his glasses and studying the horizon.

They’d passed two medium-sized oil tankers and a host of small dhows. The interpreter had spotted a boat that looked somewhat like the
Sharia;
he couldn’t tell because it had a tarp covering the rear deck.

Not a good sign.

Ferguson was just about to put his phone back in his pocket when it began to ring. He saw an odd string of numbers on the face and opened it carefully, as if it might explode.

“Ferguson.”

“Hey, Ferg.”

“Michael. How’d you get the number?”

“I persuaded an old friend that it was important.”

“OK.” The only old friend it could be, Ferguson knew, was the general. “What’s up?”

“Aaron Ravid’s wife and son were killed by Islamic extremists eighteen months ago by a suicide bomber. He was taken out of service, but for some reason they called him back.”

“Why?”

“I’m afraid that you would have to take that up with someone else.”

Ferg could guess: it must have had to do with Meles. The Israelis didn’t have too many agents with good access in Syria. New faces were one thing; a deeply planted, well-experienced agent was something else. They’d weighed the risks and called him back.

“Michael, thank you,” said Ferg, ending the transmission.

~ * ~

33

NEAR AL FATTAH

Rankin began shooting at the building, pouring the rest of the Uzi’s 9mm slugs at the steaming cylinder. He fired until the magazine was empty, fired even as the missile began to lift off the pad.

Then a sharp crack split the air, and he heard the sound of metal being torn apart. A ball of flames shot across the ground to his left. Before Rankin could do or think anything else, he felt himself being pushed backward as the building exploded. A fireball shot up from the truck that had been used as a launcher, the flames catching the tail of the modified Scud. Even as the missile pulled away from the ground through the hole in the roof, it had begun to veer off course.

Lying on his back, Rankin saw it twist to the right. A black finger curled around the side and then it keeled over, moving sideways through the air like a kid’s balloon that had just gotten a pin it. The warhead exploded with a tremendous thunderclap. The framework of the building was on fire, ignited by the same flame that had run up the fuel line from the train car. Thick black smoke furled out across the yard.

“Guns! Guns!” yelled Rankin. “That was a great idea. Guns!”

“Over here,” said Guns, opposite where Rankin expected him to be. The marine fired a fresh burst at the spot where the machine gun had been, but the Iraqis had retreated as soon as the missile launched and were now running to escape. The AC-130 droned in the distance, an angry bee late to the picnic.

“Guns?” Rankin, hobbled by his wounds, pushed in his direction.

“Down!” yelled Guns, spotting a figure with a pistol. He fired his M4 too late; the other man ducked as he fired.

Rankin went down. The bullet had missed, but the jerk to his knee was too much and he lost his balance. He dropped his gun as he fell. Before he could roll onto his stomach and retrieve it, the other man kicked it away.

It was Vassenka. The Russian extended his pistol slowly. “I hate Americans,” he said, taking aim, “but I love watching them die. Slowly. With great pain. I do this for free.”

A shot rang out from behind Rankin, then another. The bullets hit Vassenka in his chest. Staggering, he looked up, surprised.

James fired twice more. Vassenka sunk to his knees, then fired his own gun, striking James in the chest before collapsing.

Guns ran over and kicked the pistol from Vassenka’s hand. All four of James’s bullets had struck the Russian, but they were .32 caliber, small slugs in a big body. One had hit him close to the neck, and blood pumped steadily from the wound.

There was a chance he might live if someone stopped it from bleeding quickly. Guns took his weapons, stuffed them in his belt, then left him to die.

Rankin crawled over and cradled his friend’s head in his arms. “James?”

“Hey, Stephen. I got tired of waiting, man. I hope you don’t mind that I set the thing on fire. I figured you guys were in trouble.”

Unlike James’s gun, Vassenka’s pistol fired a large, thick slug. Blood was surging from the wound into James’s lungs and chest cavity.

“You saved my life,” Rankin told him.

“You should have thought of that, Stephen. Just set the damn thing on fire. You’re a bright guy. You should’ve thought of it. Not me.”

“I should have thought of it, James. You’re right.”

“I thought it was going to explode.”

“The rocket? It went off course.”

“The grenade,” said James, remembering. “I really thought it would go off.”

“So’d we all.”

“I wanted to die, man. That’s why I went with you guys. I just wanted to be gone. And since that time, so many times, I might have done something worthwhile, but what am I?”

James began coughing.

“You’re a hero. You saved my life,” Rankin told him. “You saved a lot of people’s lives.”

James closed his eyes, slipping away. “I really thought the grenade was going to explode.”

~ * ~

~ * ~

THE RED SEA

Ferguson could see the
Sharia
about a mile ahead. The yacht sat dead in the water, not moving. Nor was there anyone topside. A large tarpaulin flapped on the deck at the stern, covering several large crates. So maybe Birk hadn’t sold the missile after all, or at least hadn’t gotten around to delivering it.

“You sound disappointed,” said Thera as Ferguson described what he saw.

“Not necessarily,” he told her. “Come up slow. Remember, the guy who owns that tub is an arms dealer. He could have anything short of a nuke aboard. He might even have that.”

“You sure we should go aboard ourselves? Why don’t we just call in backup?”

“Who are we going to call?”

“The navy comes to mind.”

“It’ll be next week before they can spare someone.”

Ferguson picked up his shotgun, deciding to stick with nonlethal bullets as his first choice. But he strapped on the waterproof backpack with the MP5N just in case.

They circled around the
Sharia
without seeing anyone. The anchor line was extended into the water.

“Let me get off, then you pull away,” Ferguson said. “I’m worried about booby traps.”

“If you’re worried about booby traps, why don’t we just wait for the navy?”

“If we wait and then this turns out to be nothing, how would I show my face at the next bar fight?”

Ferguson went over to the side, watching the yacht. He stepped, up then swung over the side, jumping across to the platform at the fantail. Once on the deck, he looked at the tiedowns to the tarp, trying to find booby traps. He couldn’t see any, nor did the detector find any bugs or radio devices. Ferguson walked up to the bow, then went back along to the cabin area.

“Birk?” he yelled. “Yo, guess who.”

No one answered.

“Hey, you dumb Polack, what are you doing?” Ferguson shouted. “Did you ever hear the joke about the Polish guy and the Irish guy and pig?”

Ferguson stepped down into the galley area and through the enclosed space to the ladder that led down to Birk’s suite of living quarters.

“Birk!”

The door to Birk’s cabin was ajar. Ferguson could see part of Birk’s bed, its covers taut and neat.

He pushed the barrel of his shotgun into the crack and edged the door open. Mildly surprised not to find Birk’s body on the bed, he slipped into the cabin. It looked pretty much exactly as he remembered from the other day.

Back topside, Ferguson took out a knife and hacked off the lines holding down the tarp. The two crates below the plastic were empty.

“How are we doing?” yelled Thera from the other boat. She’d cut her engine and was drifting toward him.

“Not so well,” said Ferguson.

“Should I come aboard?”

“No, I’m just about done here. Come up alongside. I’ll be right back.”

Ferguson went up to the bridge area, looking for a logbook or some other records. None were visible, and the only chart he could find was a generic map that looked as if it came from a geographic atlas; it surely wasn’t t he sort of thing a sailor would use to plot a long trip. Birk, who thought he was a real sailor, would surely have used real charts.

Ferguson looked around for a gun locker, interested in a grenade launcher or something large enough to stop another boat. Birk had stowed a variety of weapons on his first yacht, partly for defense and mostly to wow visitors. Most likely, thought Ferguson, he would have done the same aboard the
Sharia.

There were lockers in a storeroom next to the main lounge. In one there was a kit for an SA-7. Designed as an antiair weapon, the lightweight shoulder-launched missile would home in on any heat source, and Ferguson thought he could use it against a ship if necessary. His credit was good enough that the arms dealer wouldn’t mind if he borrowed a few items.

He surely wouldn’t; his body had been stuffed into the longest of the lockers, right over a cache of grenade launchers.