Hostile Fire (14 page)

An hour later she held his head in her naked lap and stroked his face, now streaked with paint from her body. He had kept drinking and now was so near passing out she had to stop the drinks.

“So how did you stay busy today, Kahled?”

“Busy, always busy. Had to send men to the desert. Defending what doesn’t need defending.”

She lifted her brows. “I thought all of Iraq needed defending. The enemy is always waiting for us to leave an opening.”

“Not defending against an enemy, protecting what we have.”

“What could we have in the desert that would be worth a hundred armed men?”

“Not a hundred, two hundred and heavy weapons.”

“You’re joking. Our men are needed on the borders in case Israel sends in planeloads of paratroopers, and tanks and infantry.”

“The borders are well protected.” He belched. His eyes flickered shut, then she kissed them and they opened. “We had to drive within a hundred and fifty kilometers of the Jordan border. Bastards made me go with them. Then the long drive back home. At least my sedan was air-conditioned.”

“Nothing in the desert is that important to take you away from Baghdad, and your good food and drink.”

“True—no, not true. This is important. The future of our country. So important that the president himself told me to take the troops out there and be sure they had the best positions around the complex.”

“Was two hundred enough?”

He blinked. His eyes closed and opened slowly. “Need one more drink.”

She poured vodka in his glass, just a sip. “There, that’s the last of the bottle.”

He drank it and threw the glass on the floor. “Important? Oh, yes, so fucking important you would be surprised out of your wits. You could do a painting about them. About the first one. A huge picture, massive explosion, enormous cloud rising…” His brows went up and he laughed. “Talking too much. You always bait me. Talking too damn much.” His eyes drooped closed and she knew this time they wouldn’t open. But they did, and he sat up quickly and stared at her, not looking drunk now at all.

“You are a spy. I told everyone. They wouldn’t believe me. Five years ago we had enough to shoot you, but they wouldn’t let me. I proved to them that you were working with the Americans, but they said impossible. You had painted a mural on one of Saddam’s castles, and he loved it. He ordered us to leave you alone. But now you are asking questions no one can ask. The desert is off the scale; it is so secret that not even all of the general staff know about it. I know. I supervised the work.

“And now I’m calling in my guards and they will shoot you as you try to escape. It’s been interesting. And I have the last body art painting the famous Gypsy ever did.” He stood to move to his desk. Gypsy darted there before he did. The drink had slowed him. She caught up a wooden pencil with a sharp point and whirled as he lunged toward her. She had put the eraser into the palm of her hand and let the six inches of pencil stick out between the middle fingers of her fist. As he lunged toward her, she held out the pencil, her wrist straight with her arm. Colonel Kahled Ibrahim saw the pencil and ignored it, until it drove into his chest, piercing his skin, slanting between ribs, and sinking six inches into his left lung.

He let out a sharp cry and staggered to the left. It tore the pencil out of her hand, but it remained in place. The colonel fell to one knee, then dropped on his face on the rug just short of the desk. The pencil hit the floor and drove the rest of the way into his lung. He tried to roll over. His arms flopped helplessly. Gypsy stared down at him, then turned him over. If he lived, she died.

As simple as that.

She caught up a metal letter opener from his desk. It was eight inches long, tapered steel and sharp on one side, coming to a point. She knelt beside the large man and watched his face distorted in fear and agony. Then she held the letter opener in both hands and stabbed it downward, directly at his heart. The point hit a rib and stopped. She moved the point over half an inch and drove the opener downward. It sank into flesh and into his heart.

She lifted away from him. His breathing was labored for a moment; then he died and his bladder emptied, staining his pants dark brown. Gypsy watched him a moment. He was dead. Could they tie her to him? She didn’t think so. She hurried to where she’d left her clothes and put them on. She cleaned off her face with a towel from the adjacent bathroom, washed off her arms, and then found her purse in the hallway. She went out the same familiar way she had come in. The guards were at the far side of the compound and wouldn’t see her go out the side gate, which had a lock on it that could only be opened from the inside, or left unlocked as it was tonight when she came. She walked six blocks to where she had left her car. Only then did her heart stop racing. She had killed him. There would be no way to tie her to his death. Even the body art painting could have been done by any amateur. She had killed him.

He said she had been suspected five years ago. Were they still watching her, only doing such a good job that she couldn’t tell? Had she led the three SEALs into a trap that would cost them their lives and that of John Jones? She found her car where she’d left it and drove quickly back to her quarters in the old warehouse. She parked down the street and walked up to where she could see the area in back of her place. She watched for ten minutes, but saw no one smoking, heard nothing, saw no shadows move. Nothing. She walked slowly, then darted into the entrance and waited, her heart thudding against her thin chest. Again, nothing happened. She went on inside and closed the doors and locked them. What if the SEALs were not back from the booze house? A moment later she saw the four men in her living room and she collapsed on the couch. None of them asked
about the paint splotches still on her face, in her hair, and on her arms.

Nobody said a word. She let some of the panic drain from her then looked at the Commander.

“So, Navy SEAL. What did you learn at the booze house?”

Murdock told her. “Sharif is dead. Must have been the Secret Police. They had submachine guns. These submachine guns.”

Gypsy stared at the pair of sub guns like many she had seen before. “So the Secret Police are dead, too. Lovely. Now the animals will all be out looking for revenge.”

“Did you learn anything from the colonel?” Rafii asked.

“Only that he took out two hundred armed men to defend the factory, and that it’s within a hundred miles of the Jordan border. We’ve got it bracketed. Now all we have to do is find it.”

Kamil Gardens, Iraq

Asrar Fouad settled into the lean-back upholstered chair in the guest house at Kamil Gardens and smiled grimly. Yes, everything was on schedule and going as planned. The big trailer was loaded; the tractor was full of diesel fuel and ready to drive. They would leave the first thing in the morning. He had spent most of the day hiding the nuclear bomb in the forty-foot trailer. It was shielded with lead blankets that would prevent even the minutest quantity of radiation from escaping. The bomb itself was in a wooden crate nearly six feet wide and ten feet long.

The West would call it a crude, overly large bomb. But it was a nuke that worked, which was all that Fouad cared about. The crate was tucked into the trailer, which had been loaded with dozens of bales of raw cotton. The cotton could be the key in the success of the mission. The fiber was grown in great quantities in northern Iraq, and was one of Iraq’s few export products. This truckload was heading straight for Jordan, continuing down the road toward the border. Once into Jordan, the road continued southwest through the heart of the Syrian Desert to As Safawi, where the highway turned northwest to Al Mafraq and then on into Irbid in northern Jordan and only a few kilometers from Israel.

Then the critical phase of the mission would come. They had to unload the crate at the airport and get it into the transport plane without arousing any suspicion or an in-depth inspection by the Jordanians. They had no export license for the crate so it could be touchy. He hoped the men he had bribed would be in place. Fouad sipped on the cold drink he had been provided, something carbonated with lemon. The guest house was one of the few air-conditioned in the whole
complex, and the temperature remained at a steady sixty-eight degrees year round despite the summer temperature of over a hundred and twenty degrees out in the desert. He looked at the selection of movie videotapes and decided not to indulge himself with a Hollywood epic. Instead he would get to bed early and be ready for their five
A.M
. start.

Fouad was impressed again by the huge highway tractor that he had talked President Kamil out of for the trip into Jordan. It was the latest model from Germany, huge, a diesel, and carried enough fuel in its saddle tanks below the cab to drive the rig for six hundred kilometers. He figured this run would be about five hundred and twenty kilometers, so they wouldn’t even have to stop for fuel. The big tractor had hitched up with the sleek trailer and pulled out on the highway from the concealed, underground manufacturing area slightly after five
A.M
. Fouad was pleased to be leaving Kamil Gardens, the name given to the production facility where the bombs had been created. He was used to hours of delay in getting most of his projects underway in Iraq. Time here was not as important as it was in the West. But this project was moving along on schedule. He smiled then, thinking about his surprise for the Americans. Things would slow down considerably all over a paralyzed America once he exploded his bomb over a big U.S. city. He had not decided yet which metropolis it would be. Once he was across the U.S.-Mexican border at the Otay Mesa inspection station near San Diego, California, in his disguised truck with the bomb, he could chose from San Diego, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. It would be a marvelous time for him, deciding which city to turn into a nightmare of death and vaporization.

Fouad watched out the truck’s windows. The cab was air-conditioned and even had a small freezer. He watched the barren, burned brown Syrian Desert roll past the window. They weren’t making the kind of time he’d hoped they would, but the plan was moving along. This was the start of the end. He sighed. Waiting had always been a trial for him. At least he had brought along enough food and drink from the dining room at the Kamil Gardens to last for three days. Even at eighty kilometers an hour on the poor roads, they
should be able to make the trip in half a day, one full day at the most. He didn’t worry about the border with Jordan. They were on good terms with that nation and the cotton import would be welcomed by the industries in Jordan. Actually the cotton would be sold there in Jordan to help cover their tracks. He had all the papers he needed, including an import license and the required documents to get the load of cotton across the border. Now all he had to do was have a pleasant nap in the big seat, or have another sandwich and a cold drink. Yes, for the moment, life was good. He was a bit on edge, and would be until the package was into the Jordan airport and loaded on the chartered air transport plane. There would be no trouble there. Already two Irbid airport officials in the international freight section had been properly compensated for the help they would give the shipment. All was ready and awaiting the package. Fouad laughed softly, bringing a look from the driver. The driver was not one of his men, and had no idea that there was anything in the trailer besides the cotton. He had no need to know, another part of the plan to keep the secret. Fouad talked with the driver for a few minutes, then waved and closed his eyes. It was time for a nap. There would be plenty of action soon.

Baghdad, Iraq

The same morning the big German highway tractor left Kamil Gardens with its load of cotton and one nuclear bomb, Murdock and his men, and ex–CIA agent John Jones, sat at the breakfast table in Gypsy’s quarters in the converted warehouse. They had just eaten fried goat meat and a hash of eggs and potatoes. The coffeepot kept perking.

“So, we fall back on plan B,” Ching said.

“What the hell is plan B?” Rafii asked.

“First it means we take a look at that scratch you got last night. Roll up your sleeve.” The wound was an in and out that had nipped an inch of flesh. It hadn’t bled much. Rafii had tied a kerchief over it to stop the blood flow last night. Murdock took it off gingerly.

“Gypsy, you have any alcohol and some bandages?”

She did and brought them. Murdock cleaned the wound on both sides, then wrapped it tightly with a white roller
bandage and fastened it with tape. It wouldn’t show under the shirtsleeve.

“So plan B?” Rafii asked.

“We make it up as we go along,” Murdock said. “Gypsy, do you have any other contacts that might have some idea where the bomb factory could be?”

“Absolutely none if I want to stay alive. Yes, women here in Iraq have it better than any females in the Muslim world, but we also have a dictator who executes his enemies and any who protest his policies. This bomb must be top secret. I’m surprised that he let as many of the construction men who built the project live as he did. A lot of them must be mixed in with the concrete in the foundations out there in the desert.”