One Rough Man (24 page)

They were about to purchase tickets on one of the local small planes when Bakr pulled Sayyidd out of line.

“What’s wrong?”

“Take a look at what they’re doing to the bags. They’re putting each one through an X-ray.”

“So? That’s a result of our glorious victory against the Great Satan. We have no weapons. The X-ray will show a container of dirt. What are you afraid of?”

“I saw a man’s bag searched after the X-ray. They weren’t looking for weapons. They’re looking for artifacts. This isn’t for security; it’s to prevent looters from taking treasure from the country.”

“I say again, who cares? We have a bag of dirt.”

“We can’t chance it. Our package will look like a blob on X-ray. They’ll be forced to check it out. We can’t risk having them open the container, releasing the weapon. We can’t fly out of here.”

“What do you want to do? What else can we do?”

“We need to get to another country, where there’s less security. Either Mexico or Belize. Let’s get out of here and find a bus station.”

Catching a cab, they made the short trip to the Santa Elena bus station. After a brief investigation, they found a bus heading to the Yucatán in Mexico at four in the afternoon, and another one heading to Melchor de Mencos on the Belizean border within the hour. Finding out that they could take a further bus into Belize City, and from there an airplane out, they bought the ticket.

Bakr, not sure if Sayyidd would remember, asked, “You have your American passport, right? Without that, you’ll need a visa to enter Belize. I don’t want to be embarrassed.”

Sayyidd scowled, saying, “Yes, chosen one, I have the passport. I traveled the long way to get here as well. I haven’t forgotten what to do.”

“I meant no disrespect. I’ll continue to ask questions, the same way I did in battle. It’s why I’m still alive. I would expect the same from you. Please, let’s talk about the mission.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been thinking,” Bakr said, “and I believe we need to test the weapon. Now. Before we fly out. We don’t even know if it’s deadly. I put a sample in a test tube, hoping maybe we’d get a chance to analyze it with our specialists before we employ it, but really there’s no reason for that. We test it here, and we’ll know.”

“You told me you saw the dead boy in the temple. Isn’t that proof enough? Why risk letting the weapon out now?”

“Yes, I did see the boy, but we don’t know what killed him. He might have had a heart attack or something else. I know it’s a small chance, but we should be sure that the effort we’re going through will be rewarded. We need to know the weapon is real. On top of that, I need to see how the weapon works. That’s the only way I’ll be able to determine the optimum method of deployment. Otherwise, I’ll just be guessing.”

They heard their bus being called. Getting up, Bakr said, “When we get off at the Belizean border, we’ll find a place to test it.”

Two hours later, Bakr was bouncing along inside the ancient converted school bus, roasting in the heat. The fan in the roof did little to provide any relief, although the local nationals riding with him didn’t seem to mind. Looking around, he began to get an idea. He asked the man sitting in front of him how far they were from the border, speaking Spanish for the first time. When he heard they were only about ten minutes away, he told Sayyidd in Arabic, “We’re getting off right now. When we stop, let me go up top to get the luggage.”

“Why? We’ll have to walk the rest of the way.”

Bakr pulled out the test tube he had filled in the temple. “We’re going to test the weapon right here, while the bus is still out in the middle of nowhere.”

He moved to the front, gave out a lame excuse to the driver, and convinced him to pull over. Climbing on the roof, he pretended to mess with their luggage, passing one bag down, then pretended to struggle with the other. The driver killed the bus, not wanting to waste the gas, something Bakr was waiting for. Working swiftly, he securely taped a piece of twine to the test tube, then measured out the length of one of the fan blades in the roof of the bus. He cut the twine, tied the loose end at the hub of the fan, then laid the test tube on the edge of the mount. Now, once the bus started back up, the fan would jerk the tube off the mount and smash it against the frame, shattering the vial. Once that happened, Bakr hoped the poison would be blown into the bus by the rotation of the fan.

He retrieved his bag, climbed down, and called the driver to him—wanting to make him walk back to the bus to give them more time to increase their distance before it was started. He gave the driver a tip and thanked him, then began walking back the way they had come. The driver shook his head and moved back to the bus, muttering about crazy foreigners as he went.

Bakr and Sayyidd were walking as fast as they could when they heard the bus start up. Turning around, they watched it begin driving away. It moved about forty yards down the road before it began weaving back and forth. Then it lazily crashed into the wood line on the edge of the road, never getting up over twenty miles an hour. Nothing happened for a long five seconds, then the back door exploded open and two people fell out, clawing at their necks and writhing on the ground as if they were trying to scrape off ants covering their bodies. From the inside of the bus Bakr could hear what sounded like a group of pigs grunting, and could vaguely see arms and legs thrashing about, like a nest of snakes.

“Allah the Merciful,” Bakr said in a subdued whisper. “It works better than I would have ever dreamed. And faster too.”

J
ennifer and Pike checked into their rustic villa in the small village of Punta Gorda, Belize. With Pike gone to sniff around the town, Jennifer was finally able to take off the filthy clothes she’d stolen. She filled the sink with cool water, soaked a rag, and blotted her face. She felt a sharp sting on her right cheek. She jerked her hand away like she’d touched a hot stove.
Damn, that hurt
. She leaned forward and looked at her cheek in the cracked mirror above the sink, seeing two small gouges ripped out, each about the size of a popcorn kernel. She had no recollection of how she’d sustained them, and hadn’t even noticed the cuts when she’d cleaned off at the hotel in Guatemala last night. She leaned in closer.
Shit . . . that’s going to leave a scar. Matches my nose.

She was the only one who could still see the small white line across the bridge of her nose, a trophy from her childhood of competing with her older brothers. She thought of the tree she had fallen out of. Like lightning jumping from pole to pole, her thoughts went from that summer day, to her brothers, to her mother, ending with her uncle. And what had happened to him.

Uncle John’s dead
. Up until now, she hadn’t had the luxury of dwelling on his loss. The thought hammered home for the first time. She felt the grief roil her like a wave, fighting to take control. She closed her eyes and leaned forward, resting her head on her arms.
Not now. Later. Think about this later, when you’re home
. She took off her sweat-soaked undergarments and washed them in the sink, a mindless chore to keep her busy. She then stepped into the shower, trying to keep moving to prevent her mind from returning to the sorrow. Ten minutes later she toweled off and put on the simple floral print dress and leather sandals she had purchased. Picking up the stolen pants and shirt, she turned to throw them in the trash when a small bit of paper fluttered to the ground. Curious, she picked it up.

 

 

I CAME BACK FROM EXPLORING THE TOWN and entered our room, calling out to Jennifer. She came out of the bathroom freshly scrubbed and wearing her new clothes. I was a little surprised by the transformation. She had a couple of cuts on her cheek and a little swelling around her left eye, but she certainly wasn’t ragged anymore.
Huh. She’s a damn hammer. How’d I miss that before?

“What’re you looking at?”

“Uh . . . nothing. I was just surprised to see you without those Arab rags on.”

“Well, speaking of Arabs, have you thought about what we talked about earlier?”

“Man, you’re like a dog with a bone. I told you I’d think about it, but we can’t do anything until we get to the U.S. anyway. Let’s focus on that right now.”

“I found something in the shirt. A bunch of e-mail addresses and passwords. I think we need to tell someone sooner rather than later. They may have already robbed the temple and smuggled out the artifacts.”

I paused, torn because I wanted to stomp this latest request, but intrigued by the find.

“How many addresses?”

I knew that terrorists used hundreds of e-mail addresses to communicate, a move and countermove continually fought between intelligence agencies and Al Qaeda. AQ switched addresses so frequently it made me wonder how they knew which ones to use, but somehow they did.

“Six different addresses, with six different passwords.”

“Well, that will be something we want to turn over to whoever we talk to in the States.
When
we get there.”

“Pike, please, I think this is important. We need to tell someone now. Can’t we go to the U.S. embassy? Won’t they do something with it?”

I shook my head. “Unfortunately, no. They would listen to us, but they wouldn’t do anything with the information. It’d be put into some report and buried in a ton of other information. You wouldn’t believe the amount of reports that embassies get on crime and terrorism. We’ll get quicker action by flying to the States first.”

I could tell she didn’t believe what I’d said. “Nobody in the embassy deals with crime? Who gets called when an American citizen is a victim of something?”

“The legal attaché. He’s the representative of the FBI at the embassy, and if we go to him, he’s going to be more concerned with the death and destruction we’ve done than any story of a temple vandalism. They’d listen to us for about five seconds. Then they’d put us in handcuffs. Remember, we don’t have any proof of what you think. The only thing we have in concrete is that I’ve killed folks both in the U.S. and in Guatemala. Going to them isn’t going to get the action you want. It’s just going to get us in trouble.”

“Well, couldn’t we talk to the CIA? Wouldn’t they listen to us?”

“Jennifer, trust me on this. I have a lot of experience working with country teams. We wouldn’t even get in to see the CIA. They won’t have a sign out front saying, ‘Spying Done Two Doors Down.’ They aren’t acknowledged publicly. If we went to the embassy and said, ‘We’d like to talk to the head spy,’ we’d be shown the door.”

“Look, how about this? We go to an Internet café and check out these e-mail addresses. If we see something in them that leans toward some type of illegal activity, we take that to the embassy. How does that sound?”

I gave up. “Okay, fine. We’re safe here. We can either take some time out walking the beaches and seeing the sights, or we can waste our time trying to figure out this giant conspiracy theory. First can we get some lunch?”

“Sure. I’m hungry.”

We practically ran to the first taco stand Jennifer could find, where I watched her suck down fish tacos like she was in some kind of competition. We finished in fifteen minutes, with Jennifer tapping her foot while I paid the bill. A little later, we found a tourist store with two ancient computers in the back. For the small price of twelve U.S. dollars per five minutes, we were allowed access. Sitting down, Jennifer went to the first e-mail account listed, at
Yahoo.com
. Putting in the password, we saw that the account was empty. Looking in the sent file, Jennifer saw one entry. She clicked on it, pulling it up.

“Look! It’s in Arabic! This account is used by the guys staying at Miguel’s.”

“Great. We already know they’re Arabs. All this proves is that they’re e-mailing their family to tell them what they bought as tourists.”

“Hang on, let me check the other accounts.”

She did so but found nothing else. Every other account was empty.
Okay. Maybe she’ll let this go now
.

She began typing on the computer, pulling up the Google search engine.

“What’re you doing now?”

“I’m going to try and translate the Arabic. I have to do this kind of research all the time at school. I’ve never translated anything before, but trust me, there’s a Web site that’ll tell us what this says.”

Jesus Christ. Stick a fork in it and call it done.
“Come on. This is getting ridiculous.”

“Just a second. We paid for five minutes. Let’s use it.”

She found a dozen translation sites and clicked on the first one that came up. Copying the Arabic from the Yahoo! mail, she pasted it into the translation box, then clicked on the “GO” button. We sat and waited for the slow Internet connection to work. Eventually, it timed out. She went back to the Google search page and clicked on the next one, trying again. Before this one timed out, it presented the translation of the Arabic text.

Jennifer, clearly disappointed, said, “Looks like you’re right. A drunk must’ve sent this message. Let’s go.”

The pasted Arabic had turned into a translation in English, reading:

I stared at the screen.
I’ll be damned. She found something.

J
ennifer said, “What? What’re you looking at?”

“We need to print this and the original Arabic. Don’t say anything else in here. We’ll talk back at the room.”