The Secret Soldier (42 page)

And the commander pushed the saw forward and cut.

WELLS DROVE ALONG THE BLAST-PROOF WALL OF ABDULLAH’S PALACE
, slabs of concrete fitted together as closely as a starlet’s capped teeth. When the wall ended, he and Gaffan found themselves on the coastal cornice, the Red Sea to their right, flat and black. They were headed for a seedy neighborhood in south Jeddah, near the port.

The police had put Jeddah under an eleven p.m. to five a.m. curfew. But the deadline was more than three hours away. For now, traffic was heavy. They passed a half-dozen hotels before the road swung inland to accommodate another palace. Near its entrance, four police cars blocked traffic. A cop waved Wells over. Another put a flashlight in his eyes. “Identification?”

Wells handed over their identity cards. The cop looked them over, shined a light through the Jeep. “Make sure you’re home by the curfew.”

“Yes, sir.”

They turned left, onto a wide avenue that ran through an upscale commercial district, big-box electronic stores and BMW and Mercedes dealerships. Wells made a block-long loop, four straight right turns, the quickest way to pick up surveillance. But they seemed to be alone. “We have any friends?”

“Not that I can see.”

“Me either.” Wells drove on, to the elevated highway along Jeddah’s east side. At first glance the road could have passed for the 405 in Los Angeles or the 10 in Houston, four smoothly paved lanes in each direction, sometimes five, surrounded by brightly lit office buildings and industrial parks and oversized malls. Yet the traffic had a strangely caffeinated quality that Wells had never seen in the United States. He didn’t think it was related to the kidnapping. Nearly everyone tailgated.
Everyone
sped. All the drivers were men, of course, mostly in their teens and twenties. They had nothing to do and nowhere to go except drive in circles burning cheap gas, hamsters on an asphalt wheel. The House of Saud stifled their creative and political and sexual energy. Islam was their only outlet. No wonder they blew themselves up so often.

After fifteen minutes, Wells turned right at a massive cloverleaf, passing a soccer stadium as he headed west, toward downtown. Soccer qualified as an acceptable public activity in the Kingdom, even if it did expose the players’ legs. The highway ran through miles of empty lots waiting to be developed and a sign for a “Psychic Disease Hospital,” which somehow sounded gentler to Wells than a psychiatric hospital. A mile southeast of downtown, Wells pulled off. After another roadblock, he drove under the highway into a grim warren of concrete and brick.

 

 

IN SAUDI ARABIA, AS
in the United States, the poorest urban neighborhoods lay on the fringes of downtowns. They’d left the opulence of Abdullah’s palace behind. The streets were potholed, narrow, and dark, the overhead lights burned out. The stench of sewage filled the Jeep, and some of the houses sat on concrete blocks. The Saudi government had budgeted billions of dollars to build a proper drainage system for Jeddah, but the money had mysteriously disappeared into the pockets of the men who ran the city. Not for the first time, Wells wondered about Abdullah. The king’s concern for his subjects wasn’t obvious in this part of town.

For now, though, the Kingdom’s problems ran deeper than succession. If Kurland’s kidnappers began to torture him in public, the United States and Saudi Arabia would be hard-pressed to avoid war. Time was short. Wells pulled over, called Shafer. “We’re in.”

“And free of unwanted baggage?”

“Think so. What have we missed?”

“The
muk
found the fake cop cars that took Kurland. The betting now is they’re hiding him in the desert. Most of the passports you gave us are from guys in the Najd. Those families are getting their doors kicked in tonight.”

“Any word on the helicopter?”

“I passed your theory to NSA and NGA, but they didn’t get anything. The Saudis haven’t let us put up drones. We’re stuck with satellites and AWACS”—air force radar jets. “Tough to find one helicopter in a million square miles.”

“So it’s still in play. They could have brought him this way.”

“Yes, but unless you get some evidence, it’s not a priority. We have eighty FBI agents in Riyadh now. They’re mainly trying to keep an eye on the
muk
. Theoretically, they can chase their own leads, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

“What about Lebanon?”

“We hit the camp this afternoon. Burned to the ground. Actual words of the Delta major in charge were: ‘Like a nuke hit it.’ We’re asking the Syrians to lean on Hezbollah, get them to open up, but our leverage there is limited. To put it mildly.”

Wells understood. No doubt the attack on Kurland had thrilled Hezbollah, along with its backers in Syria and Iran. Those two countries would love nothing more than for the United States to invade Saudi Arabia.

“Meantime, the Airborne and the Rangers are sitting tight,” Shafer said. “Treasury and the NSA are trying to follow the money, looking to connect the camp with, how do I put this nicely, government sources in Saudi Arabia. So far they haven’t found anything. Until they do that, the president has ordered that official policy is to assume that this attack is the work of independent non-state actors. His words.”

“‘Independent non-state actors.’”

“Think Brad Pitt.”

“You know what I like about you, Ellis? You always make time for a joke, brighten my day. And if we do connect the princes to the kidnappers?”

“No decision yet.”

“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

“Exactly right.”

“So. Summing up. The FBI’s in Riyadh. The Airborne’s in Turkey. The
muk
are knocking heads five hundred miles from here. No useful intel since yesterday.”

“Correct, correct, correct, and correct.”

“And we’re still on our own in beautiful Jeddah, the jewel of the Red Sea.”

“Just the way you like it.” Shafer clicked off.

Wells was about to drive on when a police helicopter swung low overhead, its spotlight slicing left to right, catching a mosque’s minaret before finding the Jeep. The light held them for fifteen seconds, filling the windshield with its dead white glare before moving on. When it was gone, Wells eased the Jeep back onto the road.

 

 

AS HE DID, THE
cell phone that Wells had gotten at the palace trilled.

“This is Miteb.” The prince’s voice was low, hard to hear. “My brother asked me to call. He says you must be careful. He says the
muk
aren’t to be trusted.”

Tell me something I don’t know,
Wells didn’t say. “He have anything specific? Do they know the names we’re using?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

“The names on our ID cards. Do the
muk
know them?”

A long pause, as if the prince was struggling to comprehend the concept of the national identity cards his family made its subjects carry. “I don’t think so. I think it’s more a general warning to do with Saeed. That he sees you as a problem. But I don’t think he knows you’re here, not yet. The place where you came in, that’s a good place.”

“All right. If anything changes, let me know.”

“Please find our friend.”

“We’re trying.” Wells hung up.

“What was that?” Gaffan said.

“Nothing good,” Wells said, and explained.

“This keeps getting messier, doesn’t it?”

“Quickest way to solve it is to find Kurland.”

“True dat.” Words that earned Gaffan a sidelong look from Wells.

 

 

BUT EVEN FINDING 42
Aziz proved more difficult than Wells expected. The street grid was as sloppy as an undercooked waffle, and Gaffan had trouble with the map. They doubled back twice before Wells spotted “Aziz Street” painted crudely on a black sign screwed into a brick wall. To the left, toward downtown, a mosque sat beside three barred storefronts.

Wells turned right, deeper into the slum. The houses were small and mean, their lights peeking through barred windows. Concrete blocks, a rough parody of the walls protecting Abdullah’s palace, hid their front yards. A stray dog trotted into the Jeep’s headlights before turning tail and disappearing between two oil drums that overflowed with trash.

Wells didn’t see anyone on the street or in the yards, but he did spot a couple of small groups of men on rooftops, talking and smoking. Many of these houses didn’t have air-conditioning. After a day baking under the Saudi sun, they could be unbearable. The rooftops were like front porches in the nineteenth-century South, a way to escape the worst of the heat. But the curfew and the helicopters were keeping most people inside tonight.

“If I were Aziz, I’d be mad they named such a lousy street after me,” Gaffan said.

“He’s got plenty of others to choose from. Anyway, he’s dead.”

“You think they could be keeping Kurland here? Seems almost too quiet.”

Wells understood what Gaffan meant. The neighborhood was poor but not chaotic. Wells guessed most of these houses were filled with the migrant laborers who did the menial jobs the Saudis wouldn’t. In times of crisis, they would buckle down and hope to be ignored. Armed men would stand out. Apparently, the police were making a similar calculation and focusing their attention on neighborhoods where jihadis had a stronger presence.

Six blocks on, Aziz Street dead-ended at an electrical substation. Wells made a U-turn, pulled over beside a house better lit than its neighbors, knocked heavily on the front gate. A man stepped out. He was too dark to be Saudi. Indian, probably.
“Salaam aleikum.”

“I’m looking for number thirty-eight Aziz.”

“This is number eighty-one. Thirty-eight is that way”—the man pointed toward downtown. “And on the other side. Near the mosque.”

The location made sense. The mosque would draw traffic, helping to hide the jihadis’ coming and going. “Is the mosque number forty-two?”

“No, maybe thirty-two, thirty-four.”

“Do you go there?”

The man was no longer interested in the conversation. He backed away with slow, careful steps. “Good luck, mister.”

 

 

WELLS ROLLED TOWARD THE
mosque’s narrow minaret. Four buildings down from the mosque, a twentysomething man sat on the flat roof of a two-story house, his legs dangling over the front. He could have been trying to cool off. But he didn’t seem relaxed. He shifted his attention up and down, from the helicopters to the Jeep and back. To the northwest, the center of the city, a shot clipped the night, a big high-caliber round. Then another. The kid popped up, looked toward the downtown office buildings.

Wells drove without slowing, past the house, the mosque, and the storefronts. Three blocks on, the street hooked right, then merged into a grimy avenue. “You think it’s the one with the guy on the roof?” Gaffan said.

“I think we need to find out.” Wells swung onto the avenue, past a long, low warehouse, and then turned right and right again, circling the warehouse. Aziz Street was three blocks down.

A police helicopter picked them up again. Wells slowed. It slowed, too. It was barely two hundred feet up, its rotor wash rattling the Jeep’s windshield. Wells didn’t see how they could get close to the house with the helicopter on them.

Then he had an idea. He drove past the mosque, didn’t turn onto Aziz. Halfway down the next block, he pulled over. The chopper stayed on them.

“I’m getting out. I’ll walk to the next corner, go left. You loop past the warehouse again, come back, park a block past the house on Aziz. Don’t rush it. Let the chopper stay with you. If he follows me instead, I’ll keep walking this way. In that case, make the loop, come back, pick me up a couple blocks down.”

“You want to use the copter to distract the kid?”

“I’ll go in the back of the house. He’ll be focusing it. Give me a couple minutes, let the chopper get bored and peel off, then come in the front.”

“What if it doesn’t get bored?”

“Come in the front anyway. Worst case, we’ll go out the back, ditch the Jeep.”

“Worst case, they close off the neighborhood and trap us.”

“They’re spread thin. They’re running roadblocks all over the city and they have no reason to focus on us in particular.”

Gaffan shrugged, conceding the point. “You gonna take your rifle?” They’d stowed their vests and M-16s in the spare tire compartment but kept their Glocks under their seats.

“No.” Wells reached under his seat for his pistol and silencer, slipped them in a white plastic bag imprinted with a cartoon chicken and the logo of Al Baik, a chain of popular fast-food restaurants in Jeddah. “Nobody ever thinks the guy holding a bag of chicken is a threat.”

Wells stepped onto the street. The spotlight fell on him with almost physical force. Gaffan shifted into the driver’s seat, and the Jeep rolled off. Wells shuffled along the curb, as if he had nowhere to be—
I’m just a guy heading home to eat some fried chicken in my concrete living room.
The helicopter hesitated, its light shifting between Wells and the Jeep. It decided on the Jeep and moved away.

As the helicopter’s noise faded, Wells heard another half-dozen shots echoing from downtown. The police were busy tonight. No doubt the roadblocks had snared more than one unlucky criminal. Wells turned left on the nameless street just past Aziz. The chopper circled away, following Gaffan. Wells had a partial view of 42 Aziz, enough to see that the sentry on the roof was watching the helicopter. He walked past an alley that dead-ended at the back-right corner of the house. Two blocks up, he turned, paced back, timing his steps against the slow rotation of the spotlight tracing Gaffan. His window was narrow at best. In a few minutes, the police in the helicopter would either call in cars to stop the Jeep or find another target.