The Aleppo Code (The Jerusalem Prophecies) (59 page)

“Fischoff? You know Fischoff?”

“Well, let’s just say the sergeant and I have fought together against the same enemies,” said Kabir, “and at times on the same soil. He contacted me after you disappeared from the Tel Aviv airport and asked if my men would watch for your arrival. I told him of the phone call from Ann. That’s when he asked if I still had the transponder. We’ve been closing in on your signal since yesterday.”

“I would like to take as many of my men as possible,” said Kabir. “They know the desert, and they know the way. If anything should happen—”

“It would be best to have as many men as possible,” Whalen interrupted. “I know … I understand. But I don’t think that’s the wisest course.

“This isn’t a military operation,” said Whalen, “it’s an escape. Our job is to help get Bohannon, his team, and his package safely out of the country. It’s not our mission to take on the Iraqi militias, or ISIS, or anyone else with a gun. If we have to fight our way through to Al Asad we’re in big trouble, no matter how many men we can squeeze into those Rovers.”

“But these people who are pursuing us, pursuing the staff, will not give up,” said Bohannon. “They are determined and ruthless.”

“And they will probably pick up our trail, sooner or later,” said Whalen. “But I think our best chance is to draw as little attention to ourselves as possible, to blend in, look anonymous, and move as fast as we possibly can—outrun them to Al Asad and hope that the plane is waiting for us when we get there.”

Whalen turned and checked the location of the sun, then looked back at Kabir. “I don’t think it’s healthy for us to hang around here.”

“I understand,” said Kabir, “but it would be prudent to cross Highway One, the road that connects Fallujah and Ramadi, after the sun goes down.”

Bohannon regarded the other two men, the serious but determined looks on their faces. “So, when do we leave?”

Whalen looked at his watch. “Five minutes. We worry about Fallujah when we get there.”

Gamal knew it wasn’t far now. They were close, perhaps over the next dune. He held up his right hand and turned to the men behind him, putting an index finger to his lips. Twelve heads nodded in response.

The desert here was more pounded grit, tawny brown sandstone ground to coarse pebbles, than the white sand of the Sahara. Gamal split his men into two groups. One group he sent around the dune to approach the Americans’ camp from behind. His group would go over the ridge. But they needed to be very careful with their footing.

He checked his watch again. Enough time. He started up the dune, the machine gun held aloft in his left hand, his right hand helping keep his balance on the loose gravel. As he got near the ridge, he knelt on the ground and ventured a peek over the edge. And he could see … nothing.

He hoped the woman wasn’t dead yet so he could crush her throat with his own hands and watch the light fade from her eyes.

11:10 a.m., Al-Kifl, Iraq

The speed—or lack of it—wasn’t the driver’s fault. Kabir had told him to keep the speed down as they traveled south on Route 70. But the relatively slow pace was eating away at Bohannon’s nerves like fingernails on a blackboard. The bridge they were heading for crossed the western fork of the twin-branched Euphrates between Al-Kifl and Qaryat Aqtab, about twenty kilometers south of Hillah. Route 70 was a well-traveled road compared to most in western Iraq, and Kabir made it clear that an extended Bedouin family traveling from one location to another would be in no hurry.

They looked the part of Bedouin nomads.

Each of the men in the Land Rovers wore the ubiquitous keffiyeh. Kabir’s bodyguard was driving the lead Land Rover, with Kabir riding beside him. Whalen, Vordenberg, and Atkins were squeezed into the back seat.

A concession to Kabir was to have one of his desert-wise men drive the second Rover. Rodriguez was riding shotgun, a well-worn red-checked keffiyeh making him look like the driver’s brother.

Even Rizzo, whose dark features and hooked nose made him ideal for the part, had the scarf affixed to his head with dual bands of thin, black rope, the agal. He sat on a couple of sleeping rugs on the back seat of the second Rover, next to Annie. She was covered head-to-toe in a black burnoose and a light, black veil covered the lower half of her face. It was hot, but it was necessary. Above everything, they wanted to blend in as much as possible, to be invisible to the people around them. Tom was next to Annie, a sweat-stained ghutra, the white version of the checked keffiyeh, on his head.

Bohannon was anything but relaxed. For the first time in months, they were completely dependent on someone else. Aaron’s staff was stashed carefully in the back, in a padded weapons carrier, but Bohannon kept glancing over his shoulder to make sure it was still there and to make sure there was no lightning bolt from heaven or angelic death ray shooting out from the bag. He felt like he was riding in the Nitro Express. Slowly.

This was going to be a long day.

11:22 a.m., Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Saudi King Abbudin had already been surprised once this day. He didn’t like surprises, particularly such monumental ones.

The first surprise came when the Swiss and Chinese agreed. It was rare for Switzerland and China to agree on anything. But today, Geneva and Peking agreed to rescue the world’s economy. The Swiss bailed out the European Union with an infusion of one billion euros into the European Central Bank, staving off the imminent bankruptcy of half a dozen nations. And the Chinese bought debt around the globe, stabilizing shaky markets from New York to Tokyo.

Abbudin was conferring with his minister of finance and the head of the Saudi Central Bank—both cousins of the family Saud—when his son Faisal brought news of a second surprise.

Crown Prince Faisal, Abbudin’s heir and pride, was barely through the door when he began to speak, a breach of etiquette but one his father tolerated on this day. “The Americans are moving swiftly,” Faisal declared. “President Whitestone has removed all limits on pumping from the Alaskan oil fields, and he has offered licenses for off-shore drilling and for more drilling in Alaska to American-owned companies only.”

Faisal came to the side of the table where his father sat with his ministers. “Even more surprising, the Russians have opened up a new oil field—the Mamontovskoye Field—for the express use of Europe. The field was unknown to us, but it is fully prepared for production. It sits right along the Trans-Siberian pipeline. They can be pumping oil into the pipeline in three days.”

A portrait of his father hung over a mantel across the room from where Abbudin sat. He gazed at it with questioning eyes.
What would you think?
His father had dreamed of a moment in time like this, a moment to throw the arrogant Americans under his feet.
What would you do now?

King Abbudin turned his gaze to his son. “We have lost the initiative and the element of surprise. We have one chance to regain it. Has there been word from Baghdad?”

“I wish there was.” Faisal sat at the table on his father’s right. “Somehow the Americans have disappeared again. Operatives of the Brotherhood were closing in on them yesterday evening in the ruins of Babylon. Then they vanished, along with some of our men.”

“Underground?”

“Perhaps … likely.”

“How long ago did they vanish?”

“Eighteen hours?”

“Then we must assume they found the garden,” said Abbudin. “If they surface—when they surface—we must be prepared to act as if they found the staff and have it in their possession. Get word to all the ISIS commanders to turn the attention of all their men to finding this team of Americans. Tell them to look for the dwarf. And tell the Brotherhood faithful to take to the streets, the roads, the bridges. Find these infidels. Find the staff, and we still have a chance.”

Abbudin looked at the portrait once more.
We are so close, Father. So close.

11:35 a.m., Baghdad, Iraq

The old man in the tobacco shop had never been so frightened. His hands were wrapped together in a knot around the telephone pressed to his ear. The urgency of the demands coming from Riyadh, and the threats that underlay that urgency, once again made him doubt the wisdom of this alliance he’d formed with the Brotherhood.

“We have agents at the airport in both the commercial and private terminals.” His explanations sounded like pleas for mercy. “We have teams of men at every bus station, every railway terminal. We’ve dispatched fighting squads to every major highway intersection and others patrol almost every secondary road.”

He listened to the voice on the other end of the phone connection. “No, Your Excellency. We captured one of their contacts yesterday and beat her until we got the information we sought. But she lied to us and then escaped. We surrounded their hiding place, only to find it empty. We will kill her when we find her again.”

He listened.

“No. We have no other leads.”

The old man wondered if he would see another moon. Unless he succeeded, it was unlikely. His grandson would have only a memory.

“Yes, Your Excellency. We will not give up.”

11:54 a.m., Al-Kifl, Iraq

They turned off the approach road and onto the bridge across the Euphrates. Immediately Rodriguez spotted the militia. There were loiterers around the bridge entrance, which concerned him, but a few yards onto the bridge itself, two Jeeps were parked on either side of the bridge, men in ragged, mismatched camouflage and holding automatic weapons standing on the hoods to get a better look at any passing vehicle.

“Don’t look.”

Rizzo swung his head toward the urgency of Rodriguez’s voice, and his gaze drifted past Rodriguez and out the window, toward the men standing on the Jeep along the side of the road. For one fleeting moment, his eyes locked with one of the men.

Kabir turned in the seat and looked over his left shoulder, out the back window of the Land Rover, as they gained speed on the down slope of the bridge. He couldn’t see much, or for long. But he noticed that the men who had been standing on the hoods of the Jeeps were gone.

“Faster,” he said to the driver.