The Crisis (65 page)

The SR-25 had backup sights that flipped down out of the way when the scope was installed. (He'd buried the busted scope back at the hide.) It
would be a difficult shot, but iron sights were more accurate than most shooters thought, if you knew how to use them. No magnification, but with them he could use the new rifle, with its faster twist and heavier, long-range bullet.

He still had to get forward at least another two hundred yards. He pointed to the ground and made a patting motion to Cooper:
Stay put—five minutes—then follow me
. Then pushed off with his toes, hugging the rifle, his busted collarbone jabbing, moving with excruciating slowness up over the lip of the shallow depression that until now had shielded him.

In the open, he moved with a deliberation that made his previous progress seem like a sprint. He didn't jostle a single pebble. Nor a blade of the dead grass-clumps he gradually wormed between. He kept his cheek to the sand, head turned sideways to further lower his silhouette as he oozed along a half inch at a time, matching each movement to the wind. Making its rhythm his own. It wouldn't be the same at the top of that hill. It'd be different still where he'd fire from. It was switching, blowing first one way, then another, gusting till streamers blew off the sand humps that dotted the undulating slope up which he inched.

A lizard froze, eyeing him. Its leathery lids flickered. He didn't move. Neither did it. A standoff. He flicked his little finger and it blinked again and vanished. The hilltop above, the battered trucks, seemed close, but weren't. Not in terms of a bullet's flight. It would be a half-mile shot.

A tug on his boot sole. “There's the hostages,” his observer muttered, lips pressed to the ground.

He squinted. Distant forms were exiting the far truck, but when they dropped below the lip of the crest he lost sight of them. The lead vehicle was parked on the side of the hill closest, but so far there was no movement from it.

He tilted his watch. The ransom party would arrive at noon. He had to be in position then.

He swerved in his snailing to put a head-sized rock fifty yards upslope between him and the silently waiting white truck. Wondering, meanwhile, how long it would take to swap a suitcase of cash for fourteen heads. Not long, probably, but he couldn't take the shot until it was done. Otherwise, even if he connected, the insurgents could mow down the hostages.

He'd have to hold fire until they were out of the way, yet act before Al-Maahdi climbed back into his vehicle. The window of opportunity could be very narrow. But “mission failure” wasn't a welcome phrase in the spec ops world.

The heat grew intense, focused by the saddle below. The sun cauterized his pupils. His gut cramped and voided. He felt as if he were leaving a trail
of slime behind him, like a slug. The sharp ends of broken bone ground and sliced each time he extended his arm. Every muscle in his upper body screamed. If anyone up there had glasses on them, if they shook a branch at the wrong time or sent a rock rolling, they were prime targets. It'd be a long shot for the skinnies too, but at the rate four or five AKs sprayed bullets, they wouldn't make it back to the ditch without getting hit.

He oozed from gully to gully like a torpid snake. No one could see him. No one could stop him. He was the Invisible Man. He was Death, inching closer to the one whose time left on earth was ticking away.

Teddy Oberg couldn't stop grinning.

 

HOURS later, lying full length on a slope littered with shattered quartzite, he understood. This was as close as he was going to get. Pushing it even a yard farther would be like crawling across a tennis court and expecting to surprise the server. He estimated they were at least eight hundred yards from the crest. From time to time, when the wind was right, he heard voices.

He glanced around, moving only his eyes, and waited for a gust. When it kicked up the dust he scraped a little rampart of rocks and sand and dead sticks together in front of him.

That done, he began working the rifle around. When the barrel got within reach he slipped off the muzzle cap. He grasped the tab of the tan gaffer tape over the ejection port and peeled it off. He slipped a lemon candy out of his pocket, shucked off its silent waxy paper, and slid it into his parched mouth. Then reached down again, and came up with a disposable lighter and a flimsy white plastic MRE spoon.

Holding the lighter down by his thigh, he lit the spoon. The tiny orange flame flickered in the wind. He passed it under the inverted front sight, playing the smoke over it. Then pushed the spoon into the sand.

He pulled the rifle the rest of the way up. Peered. Carbon from the smoky flame had blacked the front sight, eliminating reflections. It was tapered aft to forward, so there wouldn't be any shadows. He just hoped the jump and all the marching and crawling since hadn't knocked the backup sights off kilter too.

Very slowly, he slid the rifle up and along his body until the suppressor poked out through the sticks and straw and pebbles.

 

“NOT very far now,” said the driver, listening through headphones to an intraconvoy intercom. He tapped instant coffee out of a packet and crunched it between his teeth. “That's it, between those two hills up there.”

Aisha peered through the windshield, dazzled by light and heat. Their
convoy had left the embassy just after midnight: two Marine armored cars and four Humvees, one the ambulance version, spearheaded by two Cobras that scouted ahead. The money was in a valise in the backseat. It wasn't State money, and it wasn't Navy. When she'd asked, Peyster had just said he had funds. And when she probed, said he could hide them “within the bureaucracy” as used to purchase information leading to the capture of a senior terrorist.

When she'd asked what bureaucracy, he'd smiled and changed the subject.

They'd crossed the dry bed of the Tanagra, shortcutting the coast road, miles back. Now they were climbing. The foothills rose around them, at first just gentle slope, but growing ahead into the southern mountains. Not tall enough to be snowcapped in these latitudes, but tall enough to impress. The Humvees were cramped, packed with the coveralled medical personnel Ridbout had insisted had to come. Only they didn't act like medical personnel. They talked like marines, and the cases by their boots were shaped more like weapons than medical equipment. She sniffled and blew her nose.

The LAV ahead slowed. Its lights flashed as it turned right. The other herringboned to the left, leaving the Humvees to pass through and onward as the camel track they'd been following grew steeper. She checked the map. It was new, put out by the Defense Mapping Agency, in beautiful full color. The well was clearly marked. She peered closer at faint blue dotted lines identified as abandoned irrigation canals. Abandoned villages too. Apparently this area had once been heavily populated. Was it the desert's steady advance, the repeated droughts, or the Morgue's ruthless “national communism” that had erased what must once have been a fertile, well-watered region?

“There they are,” said the driver. Young, with stubbled skin the color of creamy coffee. His name tag read Spayer. “Hold on. Could get rough.”

It did. The Humvee jolted and banged over rocky outcrops. After a painful body slam off the door into one of the medical personnel—who carried something hard in his side pocket—she clung to him to avoid getting bruised like an eggplant in a grocery bag. Her own service sidearm was in her purse. Peyster had looked at her funny in the floodlights inside the embassy gate. “A
purse
? And you're wearing—that? Into the desert?”

“They're designed for the desert, Terry. Not coming?”

“Not me, this is your show. You look like . . . I don't know.”

“How about this? Better?” She pulled the chador up over her face. Not really an abaya, a georgette caftan in teal her sister had gotten her at
Barneys, but kind to someone who, to be blunt, was packing more weight than she liked. She wasn't looking forward to the annual fitness test. “I can wear Level Three protection and nobody'll suspect.”

“Right, but—”

“And the best thing is, there's this cute little Arab with them. Believe me, he'll come in his pants when he sees me. They know how to appreciate a good-looking woman.”

The marines snapped their shaven heads around. Peyster seemed lost for words. Finally he'd just waved. “Good luck, everybody. Bring 'em back alive.”

Once she wouldn't have said such words. She thought about asking for forgiveness. But she didn't.

Something was happening, all right. The longer she stayed in the Mideast, the less pious she felt.

Wasn't that what her mother had been afraid would happen? When she'd told her she wanted to be a cop? “You'll get hardened. Fall away from the faith.”

It wasn't that she didn't believe. But the more evil she saw done in God's name, the more horrors justified with twisted religion, the less she felt like invoking Him herself.

Like the sticker she'd seen on a bumper:
I love God. It's His fans I can't stand.

The Humvee lurched and tilted, climbing. Diesel noise filled the compartment, and of course there was no air-conditioning, unlike the embassy vans, or the massive SUVs the GrayWolf personnel drove. Jolene had asked if she wanted them along, and she'd put her foot down. She had more confidence in the marines. There were disturbing rumors out of the Washington office. A whistle-blower had implicated the security conglomerate in arms dealing and influence peddling. So far just rumor, but she felt more comfortable with real military protecting her.

She shifted, trying to get some air in under the protective vest. She was sweating like a pig. They had to keep the windows closed or dust infiltrated everything, so they were all cooking, sweat glazing their faces. The bad thing was Kevlar degraded to a lower level of protection when wet.

“There they are,” said Spayer. She peered through the dirty glass. Four vehicles, parked in a rough circle. Flags flying. Two larger trucks, a white pickup, a strange-looking contraption that might once have been a Land Rover. “Thought the deal was no weapons, Special Agent.”

She peered. Both pickup and Rover mounted machine guns. Beside her Erculiano was examining them through binoculars. “Abort?”

“No way. We're committed. Which truck's he in?”

“I'd guess the white one,” Spayer said. “He won't be with the hostages, which is probably the one that looks like a stake truck.”

She wasn't sure what a “steak truck” was but figured it was the one that looked as if it were built to haul livestock. “Stop a hundred yards out. I'll walk the rest of the way. You're coming with me? Spayer?”

“Absolutely, ma'am.”

“Special Agent.”

“Hooyah, Special Agent.”

The Humvee crested the rise and came out on a hilltop twice as large as a football field. It was littered with rocks and dwarf bushes that looked corkscrewed into the ground. As they approached, men in light-colored clothes dropped flat. Spayer muttered under his breath but kept rolling. “They aiming at us, Ready?”

“Looks like it, Team.”

“Fuck. Fuck.”

“Just keep driving,” Aisha told him, clutching her purse. They must know that if anything happened to them there'd be aircraft, helicopters on call. They'd be hunted down and exterminated.

But maybe fanatics, desperate for martyrdom, wouldn't really care.

She put her hand in her purse, then took it out. The trucks loomed in the windows. The men stood as the Humvee braked. They weren't armed. What she'd thought were rifles were sticks, like Ashaaran goatherds carried.

She got out, knees shaking, and tried to hold her skirts down as the wind whipped them. That would make a great impression, to Marilyn Monroe them. She hobbled toward the trucks, wishing she hadn't told the marine to park so far away. The landscape shimmered, as if they were all submerged in some hot thin fluid heated by gas jets beneath their feet. Far above, specks soared between her and a swollen, white-hot sun that occupied half the sky. So bright and hot it seemed to spear down into her brain. Hawks, buzzards? She blinked up, but the birds kept the sun behind them, circling so slowly and so high they hardly seemed to move at all.

As she neared, a figure detached itself. Green-turbaned, and even thinner than she remembered.

When she saw his face she gasped.

His eye sockets were those of a skull. Most horrible, though, was the enormous swelling that disfigured his whole lower face. He was probing his mouth with two fingers as he came forward. He worried something out, examined it, then tossed it away.

Had that been a
molar
? Three lieutenants ambled forward with him. She knew them now by name. The tallest, the most dangerous, in her
book: Juulheed. Hasheer, the Judas, in Western-style jeans and short-sleeved ocher-and-sunflower-striped polo shirt. The Arab, Yousef, fussy in spotless white turban, white robe, and
thobe.
The latter spread his arms as he approached, as if to embrace her, though of course he didn't. She called greetings as they came within speaking distance, keeping her tone demure. She was acutely conscious of Erculiano behind to her left, the marine to her right. Another woman, black-burkaed head to toe, trailed the approaching party. She kept her gaze on the ground save for one glance up. When their eyes locked Aisha caught her breath at the hatred in them, a flaw at the heart of a black diamond.

Al-Maahdi swayed as he walked. They stopped a few feet apart on the hot ground, and she saw he was terribly ill. He trembled, leaning on one of the camel prods.

Then he spoke. She concentrated but couldn't make out a word of the slurred mumble. He opened his hands and held them forward, as if thrusting something out. Then half turned, and waved behind him.

“The money,” she told Erculiano, without looking away from the insurgent chief. The plan was to get the hostages clear, then helicopter-land the anvil force behind the Waleeli and their retreat. She looked steadily into Hasheer's eyes. He dropped his gaze.