Charon's Landing (70 page)

“The second reason was the need to use some of Johnston’s equipment, namely his tankers, to carry the huge quantities of liquid nitrogen to Alaska and to act as Rufti’s troop base here in the Emirates. Johnston would also be their scapegoat when the operation was over.

“What Max didn’t know is that Kerikov and Rufti planned to cancel the deal all along and leave him with the mess following the destruction of the
Petromax Arctica
. Max had already fulfilled his part of the bargain, letting them use his ships and washing their money, so they were going to doublecross him. To ensure he never revealed what he’d done, Kerikov and Rufti’s assistant, a man named Abu Alam—”

“Oh, we know Alam,” Bigelow said. “The man’s a bloody psychotic.”

“Right now he’s just blood. Maybe a little tissue, but I doubt it. Anyway, Alam and Kerikov kidnapped Johnston’s daughter, Aggie. By holding her, Kerikov could threaten Max with her death if their deal were ever made public. Johnston’s hands were tied.”

“So Max Johnston didn’t know that the money he laundered from Rufti would eventually be used to destroy him?” Khalid asked.

“He had no idea. Kerikov and Rufti played off his greed for their own benefit while planning to betray him. It’s almost like a Shakespearean tragedy in its scope. It hasn’t been reported yet, but the FBI raided Max’s home yesterday. I was told by Dick Henna that Johnston had shot himself. I doubt he knew that Kerikov was no longer holding his daughter, so he must have traded the silence of his death for her life.”

“And avoided a long stint in gaol,” Bigelow said.

“I’ve known Max for a number of years. He would have gone to prison to make things right. I believe he saw his suicide as a way of rescuing his daughter, not to avoid his responsibilities.”

“Did Johnston know that Kerikov was using that oil rig you escaped from?”

“Yes, he did know that. Actually, Kerikov took it over and then told Max about it. But it was too late for him to do anything. He was in too deep.”

“And you managed to stop it all before it really even began?”

“Well, it did begin in the United States, but yes, it’s over. The twin spills in Alaska and Puget Sound were not nearly as bad as they could have been. Cleanup will still run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, but since this was a terrorist act, the federal government will be picking up a good share of the cost. But here in the Gulf, Kerikov and Rufti’s operation never really got off the ground. Colonel Bigelow told me a little about the action this morning. That was where everything finally stopped, Kerikov’s plan, Rufti’s coup, and the Iran-Iraq pact to dominate the Middle East.”

Khalid smiled for the first time since their conversation began. “At dawn this morning, a squadron of American F-18 Hornets from the carrier
Carl Vinson
made a series of subsonic passes over the tanker sitting off the coast,
Petromax Arabia
or
Southern Accent
, whatever you prefer to call it. Your Admiral Morrison phoned me himself to lend U.S. air support to our seaborne counterstrike.”

Bigelow continued for Khalid, adding the color that he felt the story needed. “While the fighters were strafing the port side of the tanker with Gatling gunfire and barrages of unguided rockets, UAE special forces boarded the tanker from the starboard, capturing the ship without ever needing to fire a shot. All of Hasaan Rufti’s troops were more than happy to surrender after the aerial bombardment.”

“Preliminary reports from our intelligence people indicate that they had lists of those to be executed and those who would be loyal to the new regime, as well as timetables for linking up with forces sweeping through Kuwait and Saudi Arabia,” Khalid concluded.

“Why didn’t your CIA catch on to the troop movements already under way in Iran and Iraq?” Bigelow directed the question to Mercer as if he were responsible for America’s lack of hard data.

“You can move troops in school buses and artillery pieces in tractor trailers, and tanks can be deployed like mobile homes. If the effort is coordinated, it’s impossible to detect,” Mercer lied. He believed it was more plausible that American Intelligence had been caught unaware again, as it had when Saddam Hussein first took Kuwait. Changing the touchy subject, Mercer asked, “So where does this leave us? Is everything settled?”

“Mostly,” Khalid said. “The troops we captured this morning, and the division Rufti had poised in Ajman, will be tried for treason and executed some time next month. Those who are not Emirate residents — mercenaries and the Iranian and Iraqi instructors — will be deported within the week, probably to face heroes’ welcomes, but that’s the price we pay for diplomacy.”

“What about Rufti?” Mercer asked.

“We have something very special planned for him. Perhaps you would like to watch. It won’t be pleasant, but I can assure you it will be satisfying.” Khalid checked his watch. “It’s time for lunch. Afterward, we’ll go see the esteemed Hasaan bin-Rufti.”

They dined in a private room at the top floor of Khalid’s office building, a sumptuous meal of curried lamb, whose flavor and spice balance kept Mercer eating well past the point when he was full. Though Khalid Khuddari abstained, Wayne Bigelow seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of wines in some private cellar. He found a soul mate in Mercer, bringing out three bottles before the meal was finished and stuffing a bottle of eighty-year-old brandy into his tunic for the ride that followed.

Seated in the back of a limousine racing out into the desert on the Al Ain Road, Bigelow and Mercer, after having shown the aromatic spirit its proper deferential respect, passed it back and forth, drawing from its open neck like soldiers slugging water from a single canteen. The ride, like the meal, was one of celebration. After an hour in the air-conditioned car, the three men transferred to a converted truck, the heavy vehicle reconfigured to make it more usable in the harsh desert environs. Khalid had to be carried from one vehicle to the other. He tried walking, but his canes sank into the soft sand. He withstood the ignominy stoically.

The ride out into the desert was over a tortuous route that was barely a rut in the baked earth, the truck jostling passengers and driver alike as it bucked farther into the empty expanse. The air in the high cab was approaching a hundred degrees, and even the breeze funneling through the open windows was too hot to be a comfort. Abrasive particles of sand swirled through the truck, covering the seats, the dash, the men themselves. If it weren’t for the brandy, Mercer would have considered the trip miserable.

Two hours after leaving the main road, the truck ground over the top of an old dry wadi and rumbled to its bottom. The sun was high overhead, blazing at its hottest in the midafternoon. Another truck was parked in the ancient riverbed, a boxy ten-wheeler, its canvas cargo cover faded and torn by years in the desert. Several Bedouins were hunched around a small, smokeless fire a short distance from the truck, their long robes protecting their skin from the brutal solar rays. They stood when they saw Khalid Khuddari shuffling toward them, his canes finding better purchase on the riverbed’s hardpan.

As was the custom of the nomads, Khalid and the Bedouins spoke for a few minutes, gesturing and laughing like old friends reunited after a long absence. Khalid took a cup of strong tea from them, Mercer and Bigelow following suit. After another long exchange that Bigelow seemed to follow with interest, one of the nomads detached himself from the group and went to the back of the truck. Returning a moment later, he placed a large plastic crate on the ground near Khalid.

From within it, a falcon called clearly — as if to welcome her master.

HASAAN bin-Rufti was secured to four metal stakes that had been driven into the ground. He lay naked and spread-eagle under the sun’s glare; his body burned raw and blistered by the sun. His hairless body was so rounded and creased by the rolls of fat that he resembled a pillowy Scandinavian sofa covered in bright red vinyl. He’d been drifting in and out of consciousness for hours. The ravaging thirst that burned his throat was matched by the deep rumbling in his empty stomach. He hadn’t had a thing for hours now, and the lack of food was drifting his mind and blurring his thinking.

For an instant, he thought he was in a Parisian hotel, trussed to the bedposts by a prostitute he’d hired, his body pinioned while she pleased him in unimaginable ways. He could hear her soft call as her long hair caressed the area between his legs. He moaned at her touch, then suddenly the whore sank her fingernails into his chest and he cried out. The pain was like steel spikes mincing his flesh.

As he came more awake, Rufti found just enough strength to raise his head off the ground and saw a tiny creature standing on him, its noble head looking off into the vacant desert, its wickedly curved beak arrowing down toward his prone form. He knew what was going to happen to him, and the thought sent a new, keener jolt of fear through him.

“She’ll go for your eyes first, Hasaan,” Khalid Khuddari said as he came into Rufti’s view. “As I understand, they are the easiest to get at and one of the more succulent parts of the human body. Once she’s plucked them from your skull, she may rest for a while, digesting until she’s hungry enough to go after your genitals, another easy target. I suspect Sahara will be able to sever your testicles easily, but she may have to eat your penis while it’s still attached.”

Khalid whistled, and his saker falcon lifted off Rufti’s bloated body and alighted on the glove covering Khuddari’s left fist. He stroked the bird’s chest, whispering to her softly, reassuring the raptor and praising her beauty. The falcon responded to the gestures happily, preening on his arm and giving him a
kweet kweet
of contentment. Although she wanted to hunt, she would be just as satisfied eating the banquet laid before her.

“I can think of a great many horrible ways to die, Rufti,” Khalid continued. “But I believe being eaten alive must be one of the worst. If Sahara has a mind to, she can make this last for a few days. I suspect you’ll be dead long before she finishes her repast, but you’ll still have plenty of time to think about what you’ve done and beg for forgiveness from me and the Crown Prince and Allah Himself. I guarantee that we are so far out into the desert that your pleas will never be heard. By all means, you bastard, scream your lungs out. Sahara will enjoy her meal that much more if she knows it’s alive.

“Killing you won’t bring back the planeload of people you killed in London, or the priest or the little girl in the airport. It won’t ever avenge the death of Trevor James-Price. Nor will it forgive you for trying to assassinate me or causing the environmental damage to the United States or attempting to overthrow my country. Your death won’t even be a warning to others, because no one will know how you died. Killing you is only to satisfy my desire to feel a little safer at night, to know that there is one less madman in the world. I’ll think about your ravaged corpse when I drift off tonight, Rufti, and I’m going to smile.”

Khalid waited for a response, but Rufti’s spirit had already died. He lay there docilely, not having the strength to even whimper. Khuddari eventually turned away and let Sahara fly from his arm to streak up into the clear sky before swooping to strike at her meal.

Back at the trucks, a hundred yards from where Rufti lay staked to the ground, Khalid addressed Bigelow and Mercer. “This is going to take the rest of the afternoon. He may even live into the night. I want to be here to make sure he’s really dead, but you two don’t need to wait with me. Why don’t you go back to Abu Dhabi and enjoy yourselves? I’ll join you for breakfast tomorrow morning.”

Mercer was tempted. After all the death he had seen in the past week, Khuddari’s version of desert justice was almost too much to bear. However, he demurred, wanting to witness the end of Charon’s Landing. The Bedouins built a second fire, erected a sunshade, and brought out a cooking pot for the evening meal. They boiled water for continuous cups of tea. The three men talked desultorily through the afternoon, ignoring the screams from beyond the banks of the wadi.

“So what happens next?” Mercer asked Khalid as the sun dipped below the horizon, turning the sky a rich bloodred before the beginning of twilight.

“I’m taking a few weeks off to recuperate. I’m going to London for a funeral, and then I’ll probably go to the south of France or maybe Malaga in Spain with my secretary. I think we both deserve it,” Khalid replied with a candor that surprised Colonel Bigelow. “What about you?”

“I was hoping to take your secretary to the south of France or maybe Malaga, but that’s out of the question now,” Mercer joked to mask his emotions about losing Aggie Johnston. “During my layover in New York, I checked my voice mail and discovered I had a rather intriguing message from the State Department, so I suppose it’s back to the mines for me.”

Hasaan bin-Rufti stopped screaming just after the desert settled under a blanket of darkness lit only by a sliver of moon and the coldly distant stars. Khalid’s falcon rejoined the men a few minutes later, her tight little body speckled with gore, her entire head covered with Rufti’s blood.

Mercer, Khalid, and Bigelow spent the night in the Bedouin camp, laughing until well past midnight thanks to the Colonel’s wildly exaggerated war stories. Sahara flew off once during the night to continue feeding. None of the men felt she had done enough mutilation of Rufti’s corpse. At sunup they returned to the city, leaving Rufti for the jackals and buzzards that had gathered in the night. Khalid left later that day for an extended vacation with a blushing but joyous Siri Patal while Mercer stayed in the country for another few days, resting himself and testing Bigelow’s boast that he could drink any man under the table.

Bigelow won all their competitions, but Mercer would have loved to see the Colonel go up against Harry White. The English-man wouldn’t have stood a chance.

M
ercer swung open his front door, reveling in the feeling of being home. He stood motionless for a few minutes, watching the sunlight that played through the three-story atrium. The air was crisp; a sudden and unexpected chill had Washington in its grip, and his furnace was still off. Thinking of such a minute domestic chore as relighting the furnace pleased him more than he thought it would. Everything was finally getting back to normal.