Threatcon Delta (38 page)

K
ealey awoke to find the floor shifting and bouncing in a gentle, lulling way. He was facing the back of the dark cabin. The only illumination was from behind, low sunlight casting an oval glow on the olive-drab wall in front of him. It was coming through a window. He was in the air—in a Chinook, he surmised; he heard the rotors thumping above and in front of him—and he was heading away from the sun, which meant they were going west. Flying to Cairo.

He looked around. His eyes stopped on his right. Carla was sitting on a fold-down chair, her grandfather resting on her shoulder in the seat beside her. The young woman’s eyes were half-open, not really seeing.

“Where’s Adjo?” Kealey asked.

He barely heard himself above the sound of the props. With effort, he raised his right hand so she could see. Her eyes snapped toward him. Gingerly, she moved her grandfather’s head so it was leaning on the canvas seatback of her chair. She waited a moment to make sure his head stayed there; helicopters, as she had discovered, were not airplanes. They tended to dip and torque. At least the chest harness would keep him in place.

She squatted beside Kealey and he repeated his question.

“The Egyptian army airlifted the lieutenant to a nearby medical facility,” Carla told him.

“Will he be okay?”

“They think so, but they wanted to get him into a proper care center. We stayed a little longer to help treat some of the people who had helped the lieutenant and Major Phair.”

“Was Phair treated?”

Carla nodded.

“Did he tell you where he was going?”

Carla shook her head.

“Are you two all right?”

“My grandfather is tired—we both are,” she said with a smile as she yawned.

“You both did really well,” Kealey said. “Thank you.”

Carla handed Kealey a bottle of water that was tucked in a mesh pouch at the side of her seat. He took it gratefully and propped himself on one elbow.

“We made a difference here, didn’t we?” she asked Kealey.

“Very much so,” he replied. “How does it feel?”

“Honestly? Futile,” she replied after a moment’s thought. “We saved lives, but these people will not be stopped. War here will never end.”

“Old enemies can become friends. You’ve seen that.”

“Not blood enemies,” she said. “Those battles do not end until there is no more blood.”

“I don’t want to believe that,” Kealey said.

“Believe what you wish. It is that way. You all had trouble with my grandfather’s views, but he was able to work with that man, Lieutenant Adjo, because his hate for these people and their squabbles is in his brain, not in his bones, not in his blood. When it is that deep, nothing can dislodge it.”

Kealey drank half the bottle, then capped it and lay down. “Adjo fought his own kind to protect outsiders, outsiders who it was his job to stop. That would seem to dispute your claim.”

“It is true he acted as a man, not an Egyptian,” Carla said. “We will see if that lasts.”

“We were all human beings today,” Kealey told her. “Ideally, it will last for all of us.”

Carla seemed sad, but it flashed away quickly, replaced by concern.

“Let me know if I can get you anything,” she said comfortingly.

He squeezed her hand as she walked like a tightrope walker back to her seat. He stared at the ceiling, randomly reviewing what had gone wrong and what had gone right over the last few days. Very little of the latter. Catastrophically little, in fact. Yet somehow—

He thought of the mountain, he thought of the Staff, and then he thought of the implications of what he was
thinking.
Phair would say it was the hand of God that shaped their success, or at least nudged it.

Maybe God nudged Phair, too,
Kealey reflected. The army might accept that explanation once but not a second time. He hoped that if the major were gone, this time he stayed gone.

Perhaps that was how the prophets and saints really got their strength. Not from God per se, but from the conviction that this or that was what God wanted them to do. In a way, that made the task seem more heroic. With God came certainty. Without Him, there was only one’s inner resources. Without approving of what Phair did, Kealey could not fault the conviction and courage that drove him.

The agent drifted in and out of a dreamless sleep. When they arrived at the airport in Cairo, they were transferred to a van. Kealey was able to walk, hindered more by the lingering effects of the drugs than by exhaustion or injury. The van stopped first at the Venezuelan consulate. The American ambassador had called ahead. Here, Carla and her grandfather would be able to obtain the documents they needed to get home. That wouldn’t be difficult with the elder Montilla’s help.

“I can’t remember—did I ever apologize for that chaotic departure?” Kealey asked as they stood outside the iron gates of the sand-colored structure on Mansour Mohamed Street.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t remember,” Carla laughed as two members of the Venezuelan guard helped her grandfather inside.

Kealey scooted over to him before the gates closed. He offered the elderly man his hand.

“Thank you, Herr Durst.”

The German looked at him. “Where do you think my Staff has gone?”

“I wish I knew. It’s home, though.”

Durst regarded him with sad gray eyes. “The Staff and I—
wir sind weg zu langes gewesen.
”

“I’m sorry?”

“We have both been away too long,” Durst said. “Home.”

Durst stepped inside, followed by Carla, and a heavy electronic latch clanked shut behind them. Within moments, and without a backward look, they were lost in a turn of the path.

Kealey got back in the van, closed the door, and settled into the seat. It struck him, then, that he would probably never see any of these people again—Phair, Carla, her grandfather. It was a strange thought, but reassuring. They shared nothing, not even the same reasons for having undertaken the mission, yet they had worked together and pulled it off. Whether that was luck, determination, or fate, it did give him hope. Contrary to what Napoleon had said, God did not, apparently, favor the side with the most battalions.

L
ieutenant Adjo was not feeling his best. The medicine the doctors had given him, the injections and intravenous fluids, had drained him more than the illness itself. But his focus had never been sharper, not even when he was trapped in the tunnel in Mt. Sinai with armed men in pursuit.

He could not call Lieutenant General Samra a traitor. The more he considered it, the more he realized the man was a patriot. A zealous, misguided patriot, a would-be mass murderer, and a megalomaniac, surely. A lawbreaker, absolutely.

But not a traitor.

The men who had served with Samra—Adjo did not yet know who all of them were, and he might never know—were simply misguided by Samra or his ideas or the notion of doing something secretive. Men were drawn to 777 in part for that reason. They liked the idea of knowing something that others did not, of some impending raid or surveillance or arrest.

Adjo sat in the back of the Russian-built Hip-C helicopter as it soared over the 777 airfield headed west beyond the Nile. They were headed toward Giza, passing only a few hundred meters above well-traveled roads, the edges hidden in what looked like chew marks caused by the beating desert sand—or the Sphinx, depending on what one believed—traffic thinning as cool night drives gave way to sizzling daytime traverse. They were looking for the road Samra was said to have taken. Not all of his allies had been loyal, especially when their own lives or freedom were at risk.

The key piece of information was provided by the scum who had poisoned Adjo in the mountain. He confessed what he knew under the effects of drugs administered and questions asked before he was taken into surgery. He hadn’t known much—only that after the success at Sinai, Samra had intended to hold a rally at the pyramids, a gathering to support a new military government in what was expected to be a time of confusion. Once that information was in hand, other members of the plot had come forward. Samra had planned to go there regardless. In the event of failure, they were to rendezvous and plan their next move. In the event of failure and discovery, that was to be their escape route.

Samra’s staff car was visible on the side of Pyramid Road. The officer had stopped within view of the Great Pyramids and left the vehicle to walk toward them. In the distance, tour buses were arriving by the manned barricade that prevented tourists from entering until the appointed time.

Adjo told the pilot to set the helicopter down in the sands beyond the wall, between the Great Pyramid of Khufu and the officer. Samra continued to approach, either unmindful or uncaring of the obstacle. Or maybe he felt that Adjo might be sympathetic to his cause, if not his means.

Adjo got out. He carried his MISR assault rifle angled down across his chest. Samra wore a P228 in his holster. Adjo walked toward his former superior officer, the defense minister having removed him from his post by emergency order at six a.m., two hours before. He wondered if Samra knew.

“You have been relieved of command,” Adjo said as he approached. “And you used me.”

“Would you have helped willingly?”

“You know the answer to that.”

“Then your wound is self-inflicted,” Samra said.

“My only wound is having trusted a man who was not worthy of that trust,” Adjo told him. “Will you come back with me?”

Samra did not reply. Adjo looked past him. Samra’s driver had opened the door but he was still in the car, both hands on the wheel. He was looking at Adjo, his posture indicating that he was not going to be a part of any gunplay. Either he knew the back of the plan had been broken, or he had remained at his post because news of the discharge had apparently not been delivered to Samra and the driver lacked orders to the contrary.

Adjo continued forward. “I am here to arrest you.”

“That will not happen,” Samra said.

“I assure you, it will.”

Samra unbuttoned his holster. Adjo’s heart pumped harder and he felt the rifle become more real in his hands. He did not stop.

“Think about what you’re doing,” Samra urged.

“I am not the issue.”

“But you
are,
” Samra said. He was just a few meters away. “All I needed you to do was record our mechanical trick, our own staff. My intention then was to keep you out of danger. When we learned there was a real one, I needed you to bring it to us.”

“Why not one of the people who was already working on your scheme?”

“Everyone had a role,” Samra said. “I had to keep the MFO away, which meant involving my men in the local operations.”

“ ‘Your’ men,” Adjo said. “They were Egypt’s men.”

“And we were serving that master, all of us,” Samra said. “We have a long history together, a history of impressive accomplishments.”

“I hope the court will consider those when they sentence you. Now—”

“No!” Samra barked. “I will not go with you.”

“One way or another, you will.”

“Please, give me this. Allow me to go forward, into the shadows of a time when we were great. Permit me my dignity, at least.”

Samra withdrew his gun. Adjo raised his.

“I will not fire on you nor will I run,” the disgraced officer assured him.

“You had those monks murdered—”

“And I accept punishment,” Samra replied. “I only want to die with honor.”

A shot cracked from Adjo’s gun. Samra dropped backward like a storm-blown tree.

Blood from a hole through his forehead soaked the sand to a slushy consistency.

Adjo looked at him. “No,” he said, and turned back to the waiting helicopter.

“T
he Mukhabarat el-Khabeya found the remains of the fake staff in the ashes,” Harper said.

Kealey had him on speakerphone as he sorted through his drawers and closet, tossing clothes onto the bed.

“It worked like one of those magicians’ wands,” Harper went on. “You know, the kind where the magician holds one end and when he hands it to you the wand droops?”

“We had very different childhoods,” Kealey said. “I never went to a circus.”

“A birthday party?”

“Not where there was entertainment,” Kealey said.

“You never had trick toys, like gag chewing gum or fake dog poop?”

“No, I had these rubber-band guns made from the slats of shipping crates. You attached a rubber-band to the muzzle, then looped it back over the trigger.”

“If it was attached—”

“You didn’t fire the rubber band,” Kealey explained. “You slipped things about halfway along the barrel, like thumbtacks or little squares of cardboard. When you released the back end of the rubber band, the object went flying”

“I’m impressed, but not,” Harper replied.

“If you weren’t good with your fists, and weren’t ready for a switchblade, that was pretty much all you had.”

Kealey reached for an upper shelf of the closet and winced as his shirt pulled across his back. He had gotten burned in the Sahara and his skin was still sore, along with the rest of him.

“I heard Adjo is getting a promotion,” Harper said. “Not for what he did at Sinai, but for killing Samra in a gun duel. Samra’s own driver testified that his superior drew first.”

“He’s a fine soldier,” Kealey said. “He has a lot of initiative and heart.”

“We had to talk the Israelis out of going after Durst,” Harper added soberly. “All former SS are on their hit list.”

“I don’t like his worldview, but it didn’t sound as if he hurt anyone back then, and I don’t think he will in the future,” Kealey said.

“I had to lie and say he was helping us, and them, in order to atone for his sins,” Harper said.

“The son of a bitch,” Kealey said. “It never occurred to him that anything he thought or did was wrong. His granddaughter was different. I’m assuming they got back okay?”

“No snags,” Harper told him. “It actually worked out for us, too.”

“How do you mean?”

“The Venezuelans regarded this as a kidnapping, of course,” Harper said. “They didn’t make a fuss because they didn’t want to publicize the fact that we were able to pull it off despite the presence of their police. Ramirez might have had a word with them as well.”

There was a pause that lasted until the phone sounded dead. Harper knew the name was unwelcome to Kealey. Kealey hadn’t realized just how much.

To break the silence Kealey asked, “What do we do about Phair?”

“ ‘How do you solve a problem like Maria?’ ” Harper said. “You can’t say we didn’t ask for this, sending him back. Do you think he was playing us all along?”

“I don’t,” Kealey said.

“He wasn’t homesick?”

“For what, poverty and the desert? I don’t think so. I believe, based on nothing concrete, that he was reminded of why he became a priest and a soldier. To bring comfort where it was needed in a battlefield.”

“Whose?”

“Apparently, anyone’s. He’s certainly not running away, he’s not a coward,” Kealey said.

“I didn’t mean to imply that,” Harper said. “I guess—I just don’t understand how a man can come home—
home,
to the United States—and leave again. He could have found a way to work with his friends through us.”

“After taking the Staff the way he did?” Kealey asked.

“Point taken,” Harper said. “I’m still not sure why he did that.”

“Because he thought it would work and was afraid we’d say no,” Kealey said. “I’ll admit, I felt a little like a sucker when I found out, but I can’t fault his thinking. He may even be the vanguard of a new way of doing business over there.”

“How so?”

“Morocco, Egypt, Iraq, the United States—the major doesn’t seem to care about borders. He cares about people. That’s how he survived all those years.”

“You said he didn’t get along with Durst.”

“No, I got along better with Durst. Phair couldn’t get past the confessional aspect. He wanted the guy to admit his sins.”

“Doctrinaires make poor conversationalists,” Harper said. “Everyone shouts, no one listens.”

“I don’t know,” Kealey said. “Phair was different with Adjo. In the major’s defense, none of the people he appears to have associated with in the Middle East espoused genocide.”

“This is all Gail Platte territory. Me? I had enough trouble explaining to the president how we lost the Staff of Moses. I tried, ‘Well, sir, technically we never had it . . .’ but he wasn’t buying that.”

“Where did you leave it?”

“I told him the truth,” Harper said. “He wasn’t happy, but he understands how it happened. His concern is not that a holy relic was lost but that it could surface again in a similar scenario.”

“That probably won’t happen,” Kealey said.

“I agree,” Harper replied. “Terrorists don’t like to repeat themselves. They figure, correctly, we’ll be watching that route.”

“That wasn’t what I was thinking,” Kealey said. “The people who have it won’t
let
that happen.”

“Oh? All they need is one greedy SOB to turn, go for the cash. That’s how most of the terrorist leaders get found, you know that.”

“This is a matter of God,” Kealey said.

“Matter of fact,” Harper murmured.

“Is the army going to go after Phair?” Kealey asked.

“I don’t know,” Harper told him. “I don’t see how they can. They’re too busy finding guys who are shooting at us. If they do find him, though, the Internal Investigator’s Office won’t go easy on him. Not this time. Nor should it. He could have asked to go back, through channels. He could have resigned and gone back as a civilian.”

“Phair obviously doesn’t put much faith in channels,” Kealey said. “He measures time in souls rescued and lives saved. His own security just doesn’t matter in the face of that.”

“I’m not impressed,” Harper said. “Impulsive people worry me.”

“Oh, he’s not as impulsive as all that,” Kealey said. “He just follows a different book of regulations.”

“Sorry, I need to get off the phone now, Ryan,” Harper said. “I’ve got a scheduled call, West Coast.”

Kealey could tell Harper was dangling bait. Did West Coast mean Hernandez?

“No problem, I think we’ve covered everything,” Kealey said.

“See you Monday,” Harper said.

“See you Monday,” Kealey lied, and tapped off.

He sat for a moment, thinking about Chaplain Major Phair. Kealey didn’t believe in praying, and he didn’t think he had the rank to ask God to shuttle a good luck message to Phair. But he did wish the cleric well. He wanted to believe that humanism and patriotism were compatible, and there wasn’t a better ambassador than James Phair.

As for himself, he had another mountain to ascend. This one was in Connecticut.

Kealey was doing one last check of his bedroom when his phone buzzed. It was an e-mail, and Kealey glanced at it out of habit. He stopped reading as soon as he saw the sender’s name: Dina Westbrook. The Icebreaker. Was she calling about Phair? Or had she been pulled onto the Hernandez carousel?

Kealey shut off his phone and dropped it in the bottom of his duffel bag, then started piling clothes on top of it. Maybe he wasn’t coming down off this mountain, except for supplies now and then. Or maybe someday, he’d come down with some new ideas and a few clear messages.