Countdown to Mecca (27 page)

Jack watched as Jimmy chatted with the women. Since he was wearing nice Arabian clothes, they showed him respect, but soon there was more than that. He reminded Jack of certain perceptive, persuasive stand-up comics, and sure enough, the women started laughing and nodding to each other.

Eventually Jimmy made his farewells and returned to Doc and Jack, motioning for them to follow him. “Those men would never betray their bosses, no matter how much you pay them,” Jimmy explained. “You gone in a moment. Hundred dollars not enough to retire on. You never know the truth from them. Ah, but their wives…! Wives know what men say about bosses behind bosses' back.”

Doc smiled in appreciation and admiration as they all got back into the car. “So you commiserated with them, right?”

“What is commiseration?” Jimmy asked, starting the car.

“Sympathized with them,” Jack translated. “Understood what they were going through, and joked about it with them.”

“Yes, yes,” Jimmy said as they drove away from the pier. “Co-mis-er-ate.” He nodded. “Good word.”

“What did they tell you?” Jack asked.

“Saudi Air Force,” Jimmy reported, heading away from town. “The place they sent the truck was Saudi AF base.”

“Around here?” Doc asked. “I don't know any Saudi Air Force Base around here.”

“No name,” Jimmy revealed. “Strange. But I have directions.”

Doc frowned. “This does not sound good,” he decided. “Take it nice and easy, Jimmy.”

Jack looked to his tall, experienced friend with a question on his face.

“If the truck driver told his wife that he was sent to an Air Force base,” Doc explained. “I figured it was because they wanted that driver, as well as the others, to stay away.”

“No, no,” Jimmy countered. “Wife say air force base okay. Got nice little town there, helping soldiers.”

Doc's face registered surprise, then concern. “Interesting. Still be careful, Jimmy.”

“Always careful, Doc,” Jimmy assured him.

The landscape changed dramatically several times before they'd gone five miles. The port buildings gave way to a thin green belt of lettuce and other sunflowers, which promptly melted into total desert, then a fog of sand, and finally a hardscrabble collection of low hills and canyons that clustered beneath the horseshoe peak of Jebel Jar, a nearby mountain.

Jack studied the area. The only sign of life was a small group of Bedouins camped in the middle of the desert to the east as they drove. But no matter how hard they looked, the terrain in front of them looked just as empty and uninviting. Then Jimmy spotted a pair of large rocks at the side of the road. They had been painted with white swirls.

“We turn here,” he said.

“There's no road,” Jack pointed out.

“Rocks mark something,” said Jimmy.

“What did they say?” Doc asked.

“‘Praise Allah.' Out in the desert? Must be sign.”

They fishtailed onto a pockmarked dirt road, skidding in the loose sand. Jimmy kept going, keeping his momentum up until they reached a harder packed section that headed them toward a set of low hills. The firmer surface of the road was a mixed blessing; the path was studded with holes deep enough to hide a dog in.

“I hope you know where we can get some good shock absorbers,” said Jack as they thumped along.

“You be sterile for week,” said Jimmy. “SEAL joke. Get it?”

Try as he might, Jack couldn't. He looked to Doc for help. “Damn squids never could come up with a good punch line,” his friend grumbled. “Does this match up with what the trucker's wife told you?” he asked.

“Close enough,” Jimmy assured him.

Jack realized that they were all at the mercy of a Middle Eastern game of “telephone.” The husband told the wife, the wife told Jimmy, and now they had to live with the result. Five minutes later, they came across what looked like an abandoned oil well head. A concrete platform, half covered by sand, sat on a small rise just off the road. Jimmy turned again, nearly losing control of the car in the dirt. They quickly found a hard-packed road—and this one was much smoother than anything they'd been on since leaving the highway.

“That's a good sign,” Doc determined.

Half a mile later, the road took a sharp turn to the left, then back to the right, entering a canyon. There Jimmy slowed the car down even more and he looked confused.

“What's up?” Jack asked him.

Jimmy looked in every direction, craning his neck. “Woman say village here.”

Jack stared into the blankness of the area. “You sure?” Jimmy nodded. “Maybe we took a wrong turn at those rocks?”

“No,” Jimmy said with certainty. He drove down the road slowly, his eyes checking both sides of the road.

Jack followed his gaze but could see nothing unusual. Even so, given the driver's concentration, he didn't want to distract him. “What is he looking for?” he whispered to Doc, who was leaning forward in the backseat.

“Booby traps,” Doc murmured back.

Jack was bewildered. “Here?”

“If Jimmy is checking for booby traps, he has good reason. Shush.”

They both watched the driver study the seemingly benign area, until Jimmy stopped the car as they reached a flat plateau. He turned off the engine and stepped out. Jack and Doc got out shortly after, watching as Jimmy moved around in a widening circle.

“Half-dozen shacks,” Jimmy told them. He pointed between his feet. “Here.”

Jack looked, and saw nothing.

Doc looked, and kicked at rocks on the side of the tire path. “Look,” he told Jack. “More treads. Heavy machinery. And they were trailers, Jack. Easily moved.”

Jack came over and saw the marks in the ground. “What'd they do with them?” asked Jack. “Haul them away?”

“I think so.” Doc walked across the open area where the trailers had been. “The question is why.”

Jack walked around the flattened area, his shoes sinking into the sand. He kicked down a few inches, scraping the dirt with his foot until he came to harder ground. Whoever had moved the trailers had simply dumped sand to make their work harder to spot. Why would anyone create a shanty town by a secret air force base, then sweep it away as if it never existed?

“They're done with the bomb,” Jack realized. “That's why the village is gone.” Doc didn't answer. He was too busy poking around the edges of what had once been a settlement. Suddenly he barked, “Here. Quick.”

Jimmy and Jack raced over to find that Doc had uncovered some boards beneath the sand. Without exchanging another word, they all started digging at it with their hands. Jimmy found something. At first Jack thought it was part of one of the trailers—had they buried them here? Then he saw it was smaller, narrower. He looked closer.

It was an arm, sticking out from a pit below.

 

37

San Francisco, California

Sammy was alone in front of the computer console upstairs at the safe house. Ric was taking a nap, spooning Miwa, who was napping beside him. Sammy didn't begrudge them. They had earned it. Ric had been monitoring the situation nonstop since Jack and Doc had left, and was keeping both sides informed of any progress.

Sol was God-knew-where, doing God-knew-what. Probably getting more new cars,
Sammy thought. Boaz was down in the secure room, monitoring Middle East chatter while Ritu served as night watchman for the residents. Sammy hoped that Boaz was doing a better job than the authorities. Dover could fret and suggest all she wanted, but any ex-Marine could tell you that the U.S. government was a sleepy giant, who only moved when it absolutely had to.

Sammy blinked. He realized he was a sleepy giant as well, entering his twenty-second straight hour trying to find golden needles in the sad haystack of Montgomery Morton's hard drive. Who else was Morton working with? Was the whole Strategic Command involved? Was Al Qaeda or some other terror group involved?

The questions were ghosts haunting Sammy as he picked through the digital puzzle pieces. It was an obsession, and more than that. There was a plan, a big plan, something worth killing over. That was why Schoenberg was dead. That's why Morton had tried to kill them. Maybe he'd stumbled onto it. Maybe he'd been part of it from the beginning. Sammy was convinced that it had something to do with the documentary his brother was working on, but far more serious.

That was the difference between them. Jack had the head of a journalist. Sammy had been a warrior. Jack and Sammy had the same mother, but their fathers had made all the difference. Sammy's father was old school with a vengeance, a strict disciplinarian who expressed his love for his only son with a constant stream of criticism and harsh words. Over the years, Sammy had come to understand that his father had been trying, in his own way, to help his son become successful. But growing up, Sammy had only felt the harshness. Jack had a different father, far more laid back and easygoing—probably too much, at least in Sammy's opinion. He doted on Jack, praising him to excess. Partly as a result, Jack felt free to pursue his dreams. Sammy was caught in a never-ending cycle of trying to please an unpleasable father.

As a result, Sammy was always one to push things, whether it was a teacher's patience or the red line on his motorcycle's tachometer. He surprised the family by joining the Marines in his senior year of high school, but in retrospect the move was typical Sammy—impulsive, honorable, and probably for the best. The Marines did little to tame his impulsive side, and certainly didn't hurt his confidence, but they added a discipline and a smattering of skills.

Sammy learned to use a rifle well enough to be recommended for sniper school. He turned the offer down, wisely knowing that while he might shoot well, he didn't have the patience to complete the scout portion of the training, which to the Marines was as important as marksmanship. He served instead as an intelligence specialist, where his daily interactions with computer systems sparked enough of an interest that he taught himself to program in C
++
.

He was home on leave, reacquainting himself with his motorcycle when a Prius driver yakking on a cell phone sideswiped him on a curve coming out of the Sausalito tunnel a few miles outside the city. The accident left Sammy physically disabled, and effectively ended his Marine Corps career. He bought the apartment with the insurance settlement, started going to school for computer science, but dropped out midway through his third semester. Various career plans had fizzled before he took up his latest: a clown.

Why a clown? Jack hadn't been able to fathom it. Becoming a Marine, studying computers—those were decisions that made sense. Putting a red ball on his nose and blowing up balloons for bratty five-year-olds didn't. But, he realized, with each balloon, Sammy knew there was something about being a clown that satisfied his soul. The kids' smiles and applause were part of it, but there was much more to it that he could never explain.

Sammy knew that his brother and the rest of the family were disappointed in him, but they didn't understand how being a clown made him feel. For forty-five minutes he was immersed in what could only be called paradise. And he was good at it.

The tap of a coffee cup hitting the desk beside him made Sammy jerk in place. Then the soft hand on his shoulder and light laugh behind him told him Ana was there, as always, anticipating his needs and backing him up.

She buried her face in his shoulder. Sammy craned his neck to kiss her ear and touch her hair.

“Are you all right?” she asked quietly, so as not to disturb Ric and Miwa.

“No,” he admitted.

Her head came up, honest concern on her face. “What's wrong?” Her caring for him made him feel even worse, but still, somehow, stronger.

“Do you know why I'm working so hard on this?”

“Of course. You want to show us all what you can do. What I know you can do.”

He shook his head, then nodded, seemingly confused. “No, I mean yes, of course, but beyond that.” He looked deeply into her extraordinary eyes, trying to feel worthy of them.

“Because, if I figure it all out before Jack, then I'm the smart one. Not him. Me.”

Her expression made his heart swell, because she didn't look at him with pity. She looked at him with understanding.

“It's so petty and venal, I'm ashamed of it,” he confessed. “I need to best my brother … in the worst way.”

“Oh, Sammy,” she said, almost as a sigh. “Come here,” she continued, gently turning his chair and wrapping her arms around him. “I know, I know.…”

He let her embrace him as his arms came up to hold her in return, but as he set his head against hers he mumbled bitterly into her silken hair, “How can you know? How can you?”

“Just hold me,” she said. And he did, for what seemed like hours. He folded his arms around her, gently pulling her breasts against his chest. He lowered his head down into her hair. Her perfume entangled him, an exotic scent of flowers and spice. She began to rock very gently, as if he were a baby. And, like a baby being lulled to sleep, she told him a story. “I know because I, too, had a father,” she went on. “My father was impossible.
Impossible
. The most impossible man ever.” He heard in her voice her love for her father, but also her hate, and, ultimately, her acceptance, empathy, and understanding. “He was married to my mother, yet he wasn't. Not fully. He could never be. It wasn't because he didn't love just her. He didn't love women.”

“You mean he couldn't love?” Sammy inquired.

She shook her head.

“Oh,” Sammy replied.

He wasn't a gay-basher but he wasn't comfortable with the idea of homosexuality, either. It was one thing to say he didn't have a problem with it, and quite another to actually understand. He knew he should understand; he'd known three gay Marines, who of course were closeted though it was an open secret to the unit. He also knew they were good Marines—one was the second-ranking NCO on his first fire team, and Sammy would surely have followed him through hell. And living in San Francisco, it was impossible not to know someone who was gay. But Sammy had never had a real discussion about homosexuality with anyone he could think of.