The Assassins (40 page)

He studied the rounds: The Iraqis had stacked them in two groups of eighteen—enough for a two-gun, two-minute attack, which would do enough damage that it could kill hundreds and take months to repair. Each stack was about a yard wide and twenty inches high. Decent cover.

He fired twice more at the wheelhouse, jumped up over the body, dashed across the deck, and hurled himself behind the munitions pile closest to the bow.
Christ, that hurt
. Pain throbbed in his arthritic knees and ankles, and landing lengthwise on the hardwood was like slamming into a bulldozer. With the back of his hand, he wiped sweat from his face. He massaged his left elbow.

With the crack of gunfire, bullets zinged overhead. He had been right—they were deliberately firing above him, avoiding hitting the ammo.

He knew what they would do next. Some would continue to fire over his head or to his left, away from the nearest mortar, to keep him down. Others would advance along the side of the boat on his left and right, trying to flank him. In fact, if they were smart, one or more would take to the dory, paddle around, and attack him from behind.

He peered around the right end of the Strix stack. Sure enough, someone was low-crawling along the port gunwale. A quick shot, and the man collapsed. By Morgan’s count, that meant three were left. His odds were improving. Another burst overhead, after which he heard what sounded like a splash, coming from his left. It could not be Eva, not from his left. Morgan longed for a hand grenade. Another burst overhead. He peered around the left end of the stack and then again around the right end. Nobody visible. Another burst, probably to muffle the sounds of the man or men in the water. Morgan flipped over so his back rested against the Strix ordnance. The attack would come up over the gunwale, probably from the starboard because a shot from the bow risked hitting the projectiles.

A moment later a hand reached up and grasped a stanchion, at the starboard rail. It was dead even with the post Morgan had been tied to. He brought his right foot up under his buttock and rested his right pistol hand on his knee, training it on the Iraqi’s fingers. A couple of seconds later a forehead appeared. Morgan fired, and the forehead splattered and dropped back out of sight.

An instant later, Morgan felt a hammer blow to his right midsection. He turned to see the man who had been hidden in the furniture aim his weapon again.

Morgan tried to swing his pistol to his right but could not get his arm to move. The man fired again, and a powerful impact to his right shoulder smacked Morgan flat on the deck on his left side. His right arm refused to work. He could not defend himself. The man was yelling something.

Morgan still had a pistol in his left hand. He managed to move his left arm so he could aim at the laptop hooked to the nearest mortar. He fired into the screen. He heard someone run past him toward the bow. He heard automatic gunfire at the bow. Now a man was standing over him, aiming a pistol at his face. The last thing Morgan saw was the man’s finger contracting the trigger.

82

Washington, D.C.

When the phone went dead, Gloria got up from her desk and headed to Scott Bridgeman’s office. The door was closed. She knocked once and opened it without waiting for an invitation. Bridgeman was on the phone. His youthful face looked at her with sharp disapproval.

“Hang up, quick,” she told him.

His forehead knitted in surprise. He ended the connection. “This had better be good, Gloria,” he warned.

“Go to our recorded calls.” She pointed to his phone. “You’ve got to listen to the message that just came in.”

He punched a couple of buttons, then put the conversation on speakerphone. Eva’s message replayed perfectly, the gunfire loud and lethal.

“Dammit all to hell.” He shook his head. “What do you make of it?”

“Don’t take a chance, boss. Let me order up the satellite feed, and we can try to locate the yacht and confirm the mortars.”

The National Reconnaissance Office oversaw the designing, building, launching, and maintaining of U.S. intelligence satellites, while the National Security Agency collected and analyzed foreign communications and signals intelligence. Catapult had been supplied with a direct feed of live satellite imagery. The satellites over Baghdad were so good they could read the playing cards at a poker game at midnight.

Without a word, Bridgeman rose from his desk and hurried out. Gloria followed as he headed down the hall to IT. He opened the door on a rumble of voices and clicking keyboards. Worktables arranged in neat rows housed a dozen secure computers and phones. The usual cans of soda, crumpled take-out sacks, and empty pizza boxes littered the area, impregnating everything with the salt-and-grease odor of fast food. The place radiated a sense of urgency.

Debi Watson, the manager, was studying one of the sixteen monitors hung on the opposite wall. A pretty young brunette in a short black skirt and pink sweater, she turned as soon as they walked in.

“Yes, sir?” she said.

“Show me the Tigris River south of the center of Baghdad, east of a bridge and northwest of a refinery,” Bridgeman commanded.

“Bones Howe, this one’s for you,” she ordered.

A freckle-faced young man at a keyboard quickly tapped keys, moved a mouse, and indicated a screen above him to the right. “There she is. The Tigris.”

On the monitor, the Tigris curled like a snake through Baghdad. He zoomed in, following Eva’s directions.

“I’m looking for a yacht,” Bridgeman told him.

There was a series of flashing screens and a boat or yacht appeared.

“That could be it. Zoom in more.” Bridgeman leaned toward the monitor.

The boat’s deck seemed to jump out of the screen at them. Visible were a couple of men working around two cylinders pointed up like cannons. There were corpses, too, that appeared to be lying where they had fallen.

“Thanks, Debi.” Bristling with purpose, Bridgeman turned to Gloria.

“Call Kari Timonen in Baghdad,” he commanded. “I’ll phone Langley.”

“We’d better warn them that Eva and Judd aren’t the terrible villains we thought,” she said.

Bridgeman hesitated. His face darkened. Then he gave a reluctant nod. “You’re right.”

They hurried out the door.

83

Baghdad, Iraq

Treading the dark water, Eva let the river carry the cell phone away. Thank God she had been able to reach Gloria. She looked up and around, studying the yacht. She was not sure how deep the keel was, but if she touched the river bottom she should be able to swim under the craft.

She exhaled hard, inhaled deeply, and dived. Two strong breaststrokes and her fingers sank into muck. She tucked her body to bring her feet down. Breaststroking and frog-kicking, she swam about ten yards, passing under the large black shape of the yacht. At last she saw moonlight glimmering down through the water. Switching to a flutter kick, she rose slowly, keeping a hand above her head for protection in case she collided with debris.

Her lungs ached. She was running out of air. At last her hand broke the water’s surface. Immediately she stopped kicking and spread her arms to slow her ascent. She broke the surface with hardly a sound. She forced herself not to gasp for air, made herself breathe slowly through her nose until she was comfortable.

Still treading water, she turned in a circle. In one direction was the south riverbank; in the other was the yacht, a black silhouette against the city’s night glow. She wished she could see Morgan. She waited, hoping he would dive off and join her.

Finally she rolled over onto her back and flutter-kicked beneath the surface, moving quietly toward shore. As she got farther from the yacht, she was able to see two men working on the mortar near the stern. One was bending over, probably adjusting its supports. Soon she saw a second man, holding a laptop, the screen’s gray glow illuminating his face.

Her butt scraped something, then her right elbow banged a rock. She had reached land. Grass and palm trees were about ten yards away. She clambered up over the rocks and ran for cover.

84

CIA station chief Kari Timonen was sitting in Baghdaddy’s bar in the U.S. Embassy compound. It was the CIA’s fave watering hole. He was just setting down his gin and tonic when two red lights on opposite walls of the bar began flashing, accompanied by an obnoxious buzzer that cycled on and off in synch with the lights. Instantly he was on his feet and heading for the door. Everyone else was, too.

There were occasional rocket attacks, but the compound was built like a bunker, so nothing more than annoyance and inconvenience came from most of them.

Still, a warning of attack had to be taken seriously. As the alarm shrieked, and people held their hands over their ears, they did what they were supposed to do and exited the bar, heading for bombproof tunnels fifty feet belowground.

Hurrying with the crowd, he grabbed his cell to call HQ to find out what the fuck was going on. Before he could call out, it rang in his hand. He answered it.

It was Gloria Feit from Catapult. “Emergency, Timonen. Are the alarms ringing yet?”

“Just went off. What’s up?”

“There’s going to be a terrorist mortar strike on the embassy. It sounds as if it’s some of those new mortars that blow through steel.”

He cursed. “How soon?”

“Any minute.”

“Do you know where the attack originates?”

“Yes, from a yacht in the Tigris about a mile south of you.” She gave him precise coordinates, which he memorized. “Keep your head down.” She hung up.

Continuing to move with the throng, he scrolled through his cell contacts until he found Karim Nagi. Nagi was the liaison to the Iraqi Air Force, which always kept three Apache helicopters and their crews on alert in the military section of Baghdad International. Nagi’s unit should already have received an official alert detailing the attack; Timonen’s call was a precautionary backup.

As soon as he heard Nagi’s voice, he started talking: “Colonel, this is Kari Timonen. I’ve got a confirmed alert. There’s a boat in the Tigris that’s about to shell Fort Knock.”
Fort Knock
was this month’s code for the U.S. Embassy. He related the coordinates. “Questions?”

But the colonel had already ended the call.

In a central foyer area, Timonen slowed to study the controlled madness of hundreds of people moving at once and sometimes at cross purposes. Despite the embassy’s best efforts, not everyone knew or remembered the entrances to the staircases that led down to the various security tunnels in each building. He found himself grabbing arms, turning people around, and acting as a traffic cop.

85

The celebration in the museum had quieted. Holding their buffet plates, people were listening to Prime Minister al-Lami speak about the accomplishments of his administration. He stood authoritatively behind the podium, a man of moderate height and girth. His muscular cheeks had their usual afternoon shadow. It was widely known he shaved three times a day, but it was not enough to keep the bristles under control. It was also said he refused to grow a beard because it was not modern, and he was a modern statesman, not some Arab just off a camel, a tent folded on his back, his beard filled with sand. This last sentiment about camels and sand offended voters both in the provinces and in the cities. His supporters claimed it was one of the ruinous lies that had been spread about him.

Still, he was a commanding figure on the two screens, and his oratory came through with the clarity of a Bose sound system. In fact, the video seemed unusually high quality, too, Judd noted. There was no evidence of anyone tending to the sound or video, which meant there was a control room somewhere. As he surveyed around, he began to have an idea.

But first Judd needed to find out who had called him. He went outdoors. The night was cool, inviting. When he caught up with Hilu, he lowered his voice and said, “My phone vibrated. I’m going to check my messages.” He raised his voice: “Tell Mr. San Martino I’ll join him shortly.”

“Certainly, sir.” With a nod, Hilu resumed rolling Bosa across a spacious patio to a stone bench and table set under date palm trees.

Stepping back, Judd checked the display on his cell:
Missed Call
. He checked for messages and found there was one. Glancing up, he saw the Carnivore and Seymour had stopped at the bench.

Judd returned to the exhibit hall. As he skirted the party, he saw a waiter knock on a door at the back of the room. There was a window in the wall showing a man inside, wearing earphones. The door opened. Judd moved closer and watched the waiter deliver a plate of food to the man, who was sitting at a console, adjusting the controls—the audiovisual room.

When the waiter left, Judd grabbed the door, stuck his head inside the room, and jabbed his thumb up in the air. “Good work!” he said in Arabic. He noted the room was the size of a large closet, and the AV system was computer-driven.
Perfect.

The fellow pulled off one of his earphones and peered up questioningly at him.

“Good work!” Judd repeated.

Nodding, the technician smiled around a mouthful of food, adjusted his earphones, and returned his focus to the controls.

Spotting a nearby door, Judd walked out into the night again. Traffic was noisy here, but then the museum complex was on the bustling thoroughfare between the central train station and the financial districts. Smartphone in hand, he stepped back into the shadow of an alcove and tapped in his password.

Phone to ear, he heard Eva’s voice: “Judd, I’m on a yacht in the Tigris. Al-Sabah’s men are setting up big-time mortars on the deck to attack the U.S. Embassy. Looks like they’ll start shooting soon. Don’t return my call.”

Don’t return her call? Horseshit.
Judd tapped in the number, but there was no ringing on the other end, just dead silence. He tried again. Again, nothing. He hoped like hell nothing had happened to her.

He forced his thoughts away from Eva. Earlier, he had called Kari Timonen to warn him, but Timonen had blown him off.
What the hell.
He dialed Timonen’s number again. This time he got a busy signal. He tried a second time with the same result. Frustrated, he decided to go back to Bash Badawi. Finding his number in his contacts list, Judd dialed overseas to Washington. Bash answered quickly.