The Courier: A Ryan Kealey Thriller (24 page)

“Get word up there,” Kealey said suddenly, looking behind him. “Tell the toll agents to look for a hostage.”

“You have more than that?” Clarke asked.

“Yeah,” Kealey said. “Look for someone who looks afraid—and might be wearing a cross.”

The two-fisted American, the classic clean-cut, beardless, steely-eyed American returned to the car, barked something at his companion, and sped onto the highway without his police escort. Yazdi was not surprised when the woman turned and asked him again about the message he’d received.

“Persistence will gain you nothing,” he answered. “I do not know who sent it.”

“I’ve seen that kind of wording before,” Rayhan said. “ ‘
He thinks Tangier
.’ Someone in the field briefed someone in your department and they passed the information to you. Who and where is ‘he’?”

“I cannot help you.”

“Will not.”

“No,” he said firmly. “Cannot.”

She regarded him dubiously, then translated for Kealey. He gave her new instructions. She said, “Can you help us in Tangier?”

“If you give me the phone.”

She translated. Kealey said one word, which she repeated. “How?”

“Let me contact my staff. These people we’re chasing—they’re not going to attack my country. I am trying to help.”

The woman’s partner said something without being asked.

“He says this is all that’s keeping you here,” Rayhan told him. “You can’t have it back. We’ll do what we can to accommodate classified information.”

Yazdi knew there was not likely to be anything else from their sleeper. Unaware that he was the Americans’ guest, the sleeper had done what he could to direct their efforts elsewhere. But this American man was too intuitive to be misled. The real danger lay in what names and contact numbers and stored emails remained on the phone. Yazdi needed to get it and put in a kill code to burn that data. He considered snatching the phone from her and smashing it, but they could still make something from the chips and pieces.

There was no rush. The American was on the phone again, racing north on the highway. He was talking animatedly to the “general” on the other end; the woman was listening attentively. The traffic was growing thicker, slowing, and Yazdi realized they were coming to a toll plaza. As they neared, the American swung the car from the left lane to the right and from there onto a very narrow shoulder. Yazdi saw men with donkeys moving along the other side of the wire fence. They were leaving satchels that farmers would fill and leave for pickup in the morning, vegetables bound for market. Beyond them, sheep were grazing in a field and several landscapers were trimming the grass with hand shears. None of the animals started but a few horns complained as the American cut over. He drove around traffic along the maintenance road, toward the side of the toll booth. A security officer was there to wave him around the last of the glass and metal booths.

Yazdi didn’t see radiation detectors anywhere. Someone must have spotted the terrorist based on information the American had provided.

The way this man could envision a mosaic from a few tesserae impressed and worried him. More than ever, Yazdi was determined to share nothing.

And to make sure the American
took
nothing.

 

 

Except for occasional tears and the way her cross sometimes glinted tauntingly in the reddening sun—as though ‘
Ibl
s,
the Devil himself, was present in the car—Mohammed found nothing distracting or uncooperative about the woman. She asked no questions and she did not answer her phone when it chimed. There was a bit of tension as they waited in line to go through the toll booth: surrounded by motor homes that blocked them in and impeded his view, Mohammed felt that the crawling pace would never end. When they finally reached the booth, Mohammed made a point of putting the gun back on his lap and covering it with a map from the glove compartment. The woman paid the toll without looking at the guard. They eased through, headed along the coast. The signs said that the next major town was Moulay Bouselham, a fishing village.

“I don’t know if I can do much more of this,” the woman choked. She was still staring ahead but there were tears on her cheek.

Mohammed remembered the gun, moved it to his side. “Think of your family.”

“I am. Please. Take the car—leave me on the road.”

“You will talk.”

“No! No, take the car. I will say nothing. I’ll walk home.... I will say I remember nothing. I will tell them I had a seizure. I am a nurse.... I can make them believe me.”

“Be quiet,” he said. “You will take me where I wish to go.”

They drove on, the woman occasionally weaving, starting back to alertness. Mohammed put the gun back in his lap.

“If . . . if you shoot me, you will crash,” she said boldly.

“And you will never know my fate!” he snapped. “Do not imagine I have never driven before, on the run, on more difficult roads. You do not understand the power a man has when God is with him!”

“God is with me,” she said quietly, as though reminding herself. “He is here.”

Mohammed heard horns blare behind him. He glanced in the side mirror, saw a car speeding ahead. He recognized it from the city; it was a police car that had been parked across the street from Boulif’s laboratory. Was it coming toward
them
? The car slowed. It was following him at a distance.
This cannot be
.

Had they found out about the device? Had Boulif told them something? Had they gone into his laboratory, somehow discovered what had been there?

Mohammed assumed the worst: that they knew what he was carrying. The nuclear device was not armed, though the police could not know
that
. They would not charge him. But he did not want to be followed.

He picked up the gun with his left hand, aimed it at the woman’s head. He grabbed the steering wheel with his right.

“Open the door,” he ordered.

“I—what are you going to do?” She lifted her foot from the gas.

“Do not stop!” he yelled. “You are getting out! Alive or dead, you are leaving!” He stretched his leg over, jammed his foot on hers, pushed the gun to her temple. “
Open the door
!”

She froze as he released the wheel, leaned across her, and pulled up the handle. She had her old-style seat belt on, across her waist, and cried out as he tried to pop it. She fought him now, releasing the wheel, turning her head, shrieking with fear she had tamped down since she was abducted. The car swerved as the door opened. The swing startled Mohammed; his finger tightened on the trigger and the gun went off, tracing a trail of red across the back of her head. The woman screamed and was thrown toward the door by the glancing impact, just as Mohammed managed to release the belt. She tumbled out, a strangely silent pile of clothes and limbs with an expression of frozen disbelief. Mohammed grabbed the wheel as a car swung wide toward the shoulder to avoid him. He righted it, slid into the seat, and pulled the door shut with the hand that was still holding the gun. He was energized but calm as he placed the weapon on the driver’s seat and reached toward the floor mat in front of him.

 

 

Kealey saw the door open and immediately sped up.

He was in the right lane, the Renault in the left. The American accelerated, got in front of the car nearest the terrorists, and cut in front of it. The driver had to brake and honked loudly but Kealey ignored him. He slowed, allowing the Renault to pull away.

The driver behind Kealey swung right, tried to cut him off. Rayhan rolled down the window, motioned him away with both hands. He gave her the finger. Kealey handed her his gun and she stuck it out the window.

The driver backed off.

Almost at that same moment, the woman exploded from the car and bounced on the road. Kealey braked, swung diagonally to keep anyone else from trying to cut in, and stopped.

“Tell him to get out and help her,” Kealey told Rayhan.

She relayed the information. Yazdi started to argue.

“If she’s conscious, I need her debriefed!” he snapped. “We’re losing time!”

Rayhan translated and Yazdi jumped out. He pushed the door shut and Kealey tore away, after the Renault. Kealey looked in the rearview mirror. The woman seemed to be moving. Other cars were stopping, people getting out to help.

“What about the device?” Rayhan asked.

“If it’s armed, he’ll use it as a threat to get away,” Kealey replied. “What I want to do is see if we can stop the car. If I can fire a shot, perfect. If not, I want to get close so you can take a picture, video—record his voice if you can. We’ll see if it matches any phone conversations on file. We need to know who his associates are, who might help him.”

“Do you think we
can
stop him?”

“If he gets out of the car, maybe,” Kealey said. “But I can’t see why he would. He’s still got plutonium at his fingertips. Just kicking it out the door kills God knows how many people, including us. At the very least I want to try and make the guy—buck this over to the brain trust so they can figure out how to haul him in.”

The man was driving wildly, bumping cars that came too close or got in his way. Kealey wasn’t closing the gap but at least the man wasn’t getting away. It was strange to smell the sea, a vacation smell, a relaxing smell, while engaged in a high-speed chase after a terrorist.

“Do you think we’ll see Yazdi again?” Rayhan asked.

“Not sure,” Kealey said. “That phone is obviously a gold mine of information. He won’t want to leave it if he doesn’t have to.”

The chase looked as though it was going to take them into the fishing village as the terrorist sped up and appeared to make for the exit. Kealey was still on his tail, sped up himself, Rayhan bracing herself against the dashboard with her left hand while she gripped the gun with her right. If they got a shot at the man, she didn’t want Kealey to have to fish for the gun. It was right there, the safety off—

Kealey saw the package arc from the driver’s side window. It looked like a black bird, even though it was airborne for only a moment. It struck the roadway with a skidding twist as Kealey realized what it was.

“Get in the backseat, on the floor!” he screamed at Rayhan.

She processed the command before she understood what was going on. She threw herself over the seat and hunkered down. She was still holding the gun.

It was too late to stop the car and to try and block the vehicles rushing in behind him—the big motor homes and trucks were perilously close. There was nothing he could do. Kealey swerved around the backpack and floored the gas pedal and barely avoided a van in front of him just as the IED exploded.

The rear window shattered and was blown from the frame, raining glass on Rayhan. But the trunk and backseat absorbed any other debris. In the rearview mirror Kealey could see two motor homes on either side of the explosion literally knocked to their sides, like the pillars pushed over by Samson. They threw sparks into the air as they slid forward, bumped hard by cars behind them that drove or were blown into them. A dark, ugly cloud rose from the middle of the road and a motorcycle came pinwheeling through it without a driver. It crashed hard in front of one of the fallen motor homes. Cars had driven onto the shoulder, and were banged ahead in fits as other cars collided with them.

Kealey could only see the collisions, not hear them; his ears were still ringing slightly from the explosion in Fès and this new blast was even louder. It had been enough to momentarily deafen him.

“Are you all right?” he shouted toward the backseat.

A hand came up over the seat, indicating Rayhan was all right.

As Kealey looked ahead to see where the driver had gone, he became aware of his car wobbling. He couldn’t hear it but he knew that something had punctured his rear tires.

Kealey pulled over to the shoulder. He jumped out, climbed on the hood, and looked down the highway. He saw nothing. He looked toward the fishing village. It was getting dark, but he thought he saw the Renault speeding away.

“Put your cell number in his phone and leave it,” he told Rayhan.

“Leave it?” she shouted to clarify.

“Yes!” Kealey nodded in emphasis, then jumped from the hood and started running through the field, toward the sea.

Rayhan did as he asked, then rose and opened the back door, stretched a leg out crab-like and followed. She was still holding the gun. She put the safety on.

She watched her step in the fast-fading sunlight, though she still managed to step in sheep manure—which, under the circumstances, had the oddly reassuring result of tweaking her senses and making her feel oddly, gratefully alive.

 

 

Yazdi knelt beside the fragile heap that was piled awkwardly on the asphalt. Limbs were broken, judging from their marionette poses; not her back, he guessed, since one leg was moving and her head was shifting from side to side. He took off his shirt and tucked it under her bloody head wound.

“Can you hear me?” he asked.