NanoStrike (20 page)

Quinn shrugged. He was glad he’d found Lana, but from his perspective, it was the wrong sister. He couldn’t imagine child abuse being in Ghazi’s playbook: too risky, too messy.

Suddenly, Lana began screaming and thrashing. She dropped the phone, jerked upright, and knocked the drip stand into the nurse’s face. The woman jumped back in fright and upset the water carafe, which smashed on the floor. Even wrapped like a mummy, the girl bounced her body, trying to get off the bed. The cords connected to her monitor yanked free, triggering a high-pitched alarm.

The security guard pulled his gun. Quinn wanted to hold the girl down, but didn’t dare touch her burned skin. He looked to the nurse for guidance. She was shouting the girl’s name, attempting to calm her.

“Lana! Lana!” Her father’s frantic voice squawked from the telephone, which lay abandoned on the bed.

Quinn read Lana’s eyes. The girl was terrified and staring straight at him.

No.

She was staring past him.

He spun around. The TV showed a CNN press conference. A bank of microphones pointed to a sallow-skinned man with silver hair, sparkling green eyes, and a neatly groomed beard. His smiling face filled the screen. The graphic at the bottom read, “Gas from Garbage.”

Quinn recognized Nazar Eudon.

And so, apparently, did Lana.

Chapter 22

In Jeddah, Imam Ali listened to the mellow drone of afternoon prayers coming from the mosque beyond his office door. With two chair legs on the floor, feet on the desk, and arms behind his head, Ali leaned back and spoke into the phone, “The Saudis failed to send the third installment. The contract is canceled.”

Ghazi sat on a grubby hospital cot in the abandoned wing of the West Bank medical facility in Israel, and replied to his friend. “They have no stomach for real warfare. They pretend to be Muslim, to care about our Palestinian brothers, but when a tough choice must be made, they cower before their American paymasters. No matter, I have the situation in hand.” Across the room, David Baker listened to Ghazi’s side of the conversation. “I sent the prisoner release demand again to the Londoners.”

“And?” Ali asked.

“No response yet, but be confident. The events in Seoul will change their thinking.” Ghazi faced David and raised his voice. “Thanks to Allah’s Revenge’s newest captain, Dawud Ferran, for the first time in fifteen hundred years the soldiers of Islam have a weapon to defeat the Crusaders.” Ghazi smiled at David. The young man’s face glowed with pride.

“And if they don’t?” Ali asked.

“We will use the weapon.”

“Firman is expensive, we will need money.”

“Don’t worry, brother. I will execute in parallel. We need money even if they do comply. This is only the beginning.”

“
Allahu Akbar
,” Ali said.

“
Allahu Akbar
,” Ghazi replied.

David repeated the words, like an echo.

Above, in Adiba’s room, Adiba and Abdul played their tenth game of chess. Ghazi had brought the board, and Abdul had yet to win. In fact, he had yet to cause her a problem. She moved her queen across the board to a protected square directly in front of his king.

“Checkmate again, Mr. Junior Middle East Correspondent.” She grinned with delight. Abdul didn’t know which would be more enjoyable; winning, or losing again and seeing her victory smile. He leaned over and kissed her full on the lips.

“What was that?” she said.

“My reward for letting you win again.”

With a crinkled brow, she wagged her finger at him in mock annoyance. He laughed. She looked so cute when she pulled that face.

The door opened, cutting short his laughter.

The terrorist who had snatched him from the hotel burst into the room. “Abdul-Haqq, you must come.”

Abdul and Adiba disliked the man, whom they assumed was Ghazi’s number two. He always smelled of stale sweat, and his narrow eyes and crooked mouth gave the appearance of a permanent sneer. Ironically, they both trusted Ghazi, despite the atrocity they knew he had perpetrated in London. Yet they feared this man.

Abdul stood, squeezed Adiba’s hand, and followed the terrorist across the landing and through the open door into his room. Ghazi sat in one of the plastic chairs.

“Sit.” Abdul took the chair opposite. The grim look on Ghazi’s face reminded Abdul of their first meeting in Jerusalem.

“How well do you know Nazar Eudon?” Ghazi asked.

If Abdul had been asked to guess the hundred most likely reasons for this meeting, Nazar Eudon wouldn’t make a reserve list. The question surprised him.

“We met in Eilat at a press briefing to clarify his announcement in London about shifting focus to alternative energy. He felt something of a kinship with me because our family backgrounds are similar. He invited me to supper.”

“You went to his home?”

Abdul suspected Ghazi was testing the verity of his story. “Yes, Adiba and I stayed the night.”

“Can you contact him?”

“He gave me a business card.”

“Give it to me.” Ghazi held out his hand. Abdul fished out his wallet and handed the card to his captor.

“You must call this Keisha.”

“What’s this about?”

Ghazi’s face hardened and he stared Abdul down. Abdul’s head began to tremble under the man’s fierce glare. For the past two days, the smelly man had delivered their food, and Abdul had spent every waking hour with Adiba, talking and playing chess. The fact that they were captives had slipped from top-of-mind. Ghazi’s angry face brought their predicament back into focus.

“I can call. What do you want me to say?”

Ghazi slammed a sheet of paper on the table in front of Abdul, handwritten in Arabic. “Can you read it?”

“Yes, but I don’t understand what it means.”

“Come.” Ghazi snatched up the note, stood, and walked toward the door. Abdul followed him down the stairs and into the office.

Two men he hadn’t seen before sat at a small table, smoking and playing cards. They looked up when he came in the room. The terrorist they disliked was absent. Abdul worried that he might be upstairs bothering Adiba.

Ghazi pointed to a chair beside his desk. Abdul sat, and Ghazi handed the business card to the younger of the two men, who stopped his game, pulled a cell phone from his inside pocket, and made a call. Ghazi placed the note on the desk in front of Abdul. The man with the phone entered a long series of numbers, perhaps using a calling card to disguise the call origin. Finally, he spoke in Arabic. “Is this Mr. Nazar Eudon’s office?” he waited for a reply, and then, “Please hold for Abdul Ahmed.” He passed the phone to Abdul.

“Hello?” Abdul said.

“I am Keisha, Nazar Eudon’s personal assistant. Mr. Eudon mentioned you, Abdul, but we understood you had been abducted. How may I be of assistance?”

“Hello, Keisha, I’m—” Before Abdul could complete the thought, Ghazi’s calloused hand struck him hard across the face. The suddenness and ferocity of the blow knocked the phone from his hand and left his face throbbing. His heart slammed against his ribs, and he stared wide-eyed at Ghazi’s furious face. The terrorist jabbed a finger at the notepaper. Abdul picked up the phone. Hand trembling, he read with a quavering voice and through tearing eyes.

“Ms. Keisha, I have a message to deliver.”

“I am recording the call. Please continue.”

“Allah’s Revenge possesses the only viable virginbots in existence. They are for sale. We require one million dollars in cash. I will call in two hours with details of the exchange conditions.”

Ghazi snatched the phone from Abdul, ended the call, and barked across at the two thugs.

“Take him upstairs.”

Abdul’s face ached. Ghazi had hit him hard, and he hadn’t been ready. He felt sick to his stomach. The older of the two card players frog-marched him up the stairs and locked him in his room. He worried about Adiba. He wanted to shout across, to check if she was okay. But fear of angering Ghazi prevented him. He’d experienced the man’s temper: quick, ugly, and painful.

In the bathroom, he checked in the mirror. Ghazi’s handprint stood out, white and red, on his cheek. He filled the sink with cold water, soaked a hand towel, and pressed it to his face to prevent swelling. Obviously, Ghazi’s change of mood was the result of a funding issue. Everything always seemed to end up being about money.

Keisha had received the call from Abdul in Nazar’s plane, waiting on the tarmac at New York’s JFK airport. They had flown there from Phoenix after the grand opening. When Nazar returned from his meetings in Manhattan, they would fly to Washington, DC where Nazar would meet with the Senate’s Sub-Committee on Energy. Abdul’s call might change those plans, so she sent a text to Nazar.

On the thirty-fifth floor of the Oppenheim building in the heart of Manhattan’s financial district, Nazar strategized with his underwriters about Eudon Alternative Energy’s planned public offering of stock. When his phone vibrated, he glanced down and immediately reacted to Keisha’s emergency code.

“Gentlemen and lady. Please excuse me, I must make a call.”

The attractive executive assistant responsible for managing the meeting, the only woman in the room, showed him to an empty office next door. Keisha dictated the message she’d received from Allah’s Revenge. How could anyone outside Phoenix know about virginbots? But the information was too specific to ignore. He told Keisha to stay by the phone, and called Professor Farjohn at the lab in Arizona.

“Professor, do you have any issues with the virginbots?”

“Issues, n . . . n . . . no, I . . . I . . . I . . .”

When he heard the stammering, Nazar knew he had a problem. He cut the man off in mid-stutter. “Let me put it another way professor. What is the problem with the virginbots?”

“W . . . w . . . we’re working o . . . o . . .”

Nazar cupped a hand around the mouthpiece of his phone and lowered his voice. The underwriters might be listening in the next room. “In less than one hour I must decide whether to purchase new virginbots from another source. Find me someone who can speak without stammering!”

“I . . . I . . . I . . .”

“Professor, let me speak to David.”

“N . . . not . . . here.”