The Ragnarok Conspiracy (15 page)

“You have no place to hide. You never make deal again! We hunt you down, to America. You are
dead
man, Yusuf.”

Jordan looked out through the window of the speeding car over the bright sands and sighed. “So aren't we all, Mika.” He slapped a new cartridge into the Uzi. “What's important is what you do while it lasts.”

Some three thousand miles away, the August night was cool in Algiers. Despite its nearness to the desert, its location within the Tell Atlas Mountains and its proximity to the Mediterranean Sea dominated this coastal city, giving it a temperate climate that even in the hottest months was never too uncomfortable. The day's heat had abated by the predawn hours, and the wind that blew from the mountains dropped the temperature into the high sixties.

The cool night was a welcome relief to the American and his team, especially since they were dressed in bulky Arab clothing over their combat attire. They had ridden into the city late in the evening, disguised as migrant workers, in several trucks provided and driven by their helpful friends of the Ibadi People's Army. Of course, the man laughed to himself; no one had ever heard of the IPA, and they likely never would. But he humored its young and naive founders. They were a ticket through the Arab and Berber landscape in Algiers, a landscape that too easily could become problematic if they ran into any complications. But no one had paid any attention to yet another group of workers trucked into the city to do its heavy lifting.

They had left the Ibadi drivers with the vehicles beside the foul-smelling piers. His team headed under cover of what darkness remained toward the Great Mosque of Algiers, Jemaa Kebir, a structure over one thousand years old. Two members of his team were posted to keep watch on their collaborators. The IPA members wanted credit for the destruction of this landmark of Sunni Islam. They had fought to be a part of tonight's efforts on several occasions in his presence. He would not have them interfering in what he and his men had to do.

Five commandos from his team were dispatched to the mosque. Among them were two weapons specialists, a communications officer, and two demolition men. They carried enough S-47 to take down five buildings this size. The explosion would ensure a level of carnage that would make a statement the world would notice. The men checked off with their leader and sprinted toward the historical shrine.

The rest had another plan. The American turned and gathered together the remaining seven of his team. This was the team that would be responsible for an act of terrorism even greater than that at the mosque, an act targeting an Algerian symbol of independence from Western powers that even the Ibadi held in high respect. They would never have allowed such an action. Had they known of his plans, they would have likely tried to kill him.

His team searched along the roadway hugging the coastline. Several blocks from the Great Mosque, they found what had been left for them: a van with keys inside, left by “tourists” that evening. They loaded into the van, each man with large packs of S-47, gripping automatic weapons. A driver started the engine and pulled out, heading nearly due south along the road. After a few minutes, they took a southeasterly turn through the nearly empty streets of the city and, within five minutes, pulled up several streets before coming to the square.

At night the structure was an awesome sight. Bright lights bathed the curving concrete arches, inverted so they turned inward, giving the imposing structure a solid and yet otherworldly presence.
Maquam E'chahid
, the Martyrs Monument, was constructed in 1982 to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Algeria's independence from France. It took the abstract interpretation of three standing palm leaves, forming in their center a shelter beneath which the “eternal flame” burned. Statues of soldiers adorned the front of each leaf where it rested to find support on the ground.

He checked his watch. They were nearly late. In two minutes, team Beta would kill the power to this portion of the Algiers power grid, darkening the lights across a portion of town for a short period of time. Before technicians had located the problem and dispatched crews,
their job would be done and the power restored, leaving nothing to trigger suspicion at the site.

Right on cue, the powerful searchlights went dark, and the lights in buildings and streetlamps for many blocks around them went out. The site was nearly totally black but for the light leaking its way over from other portions of the city. The team strapped on their night-vision goggles and sprinted to the monument.

With five minutes to spare on their tight schedule, they piled into the van, backpacks empty, magazines full, the job a silent success. They drove north, back toward the site of the Great Mosque, where they parked the car and left the keys. They sprinted back up to the rendezvous point where they were met by the remaining members of team Alpha. The news was good from both groups, and they returned to find their Ibadi friends waiting impatiently for them.

“This took too long!” whispered Aziri, his eyes flashing. “You are lucky no police came!”

“Relax, Aziri. The job went well. It is best to be sure about these things and take your time.”

The Berber grunted and started the truck as the rest of the team settled into the back of the flatbed. He pulled out along the road, taking the American and his men to the airport for the first flight of the morning. The light of dawn began to break on the horizon. “Yes,” he noted, “you are right. It is written: ‘Haste is of the Devil.'”

“Indeed, my friend,” replied the American, beginning to remove his robes and glancing over to the towering form of the monument silhouetted against the pale sky.

The three gray BMWs pulled into a parking lot behind a row of small sheds, which resembled the sort of structures that an army would throw up—cheap, easy to raise, easy to break down, and yet highly functional with amenities like electricity, heat, cooling, running water, and, in this case, Internet lines. The small buildings were in a fairly undeveloped region of Sharjah, with construction surrounding the lot and the ground dirty and paved only with gravel. Little traffic came in or out. It was a perfect location to escape notice and yet to be as completely connected to the world as any high-rise in Dubai.

Jordan marveled at the arrogance, or ignorance, of these dealers. Did they really believe that Viktor Bout had been apprehended at random, through some stroke of luck by the international community? Did they never consider that their entire operation may have been compromised? Yet they maintained their same base of operations, known for years now to the CIA through Jordan's efforts, and now also known to several international agencies when the CIA worked with them to apprehend their former boss.

He stepped out onto the gravel, hearing it crunch beneath his shoes. On the other side of the car, Kharitonov rose slowly, a pistol pointed at his head, and maneuvered awkwardly with his hands wired together behind his back. Two black men in white robes shepherded him toward the back entrance of one of the small structures. He glared at Jordan.

“I cannot feel my hands, you
bastard
!” he spat.

A gun tapped against his temple reminded him to speak more quietly, and more politely.

“Mika, let's go over this to make sure you don't make us have to kill you,” said Jordan, looking around the area. Thankfully, the building had few windows, and the back entrance was not easily visible from within. He stared at the Russian coldly. “You will enter as if nothing whatsoever is out of the ordinary. You will speak to us as clients, making up whatever excuse you have to as to why we are here. You will then take us to where you keep your records.”

Kharitonov squinted and eyed him darkly as Jordan's men untied the Russian's wrists. “You are police?” he asked.

Jordan nodded his head to one side, and a large man next to the Russian punched him in his right kidney. Kharitonov groaned but kept quiet as Jordan put his finger to his lips. “
Shhhhh.
No, we're worse, my friend. And that is the last I expect to hear from you except for what I have explained. If you alert anyone, if you take any action, or if the air in there doesn't smell right to me, I'll paint the walls with your brain. Understood?”

Kharitonov grunted between painful gasps of air. Jordan gave him a minute to regain his composure, then issued instructions for his team to conceal their weapons. The additional time allowed for the return of his Harvard Men, who had ditched the rentals, bringing Jordan's team up to full strength.

They all made eye contact, and Jordan turned toward Kharitonov. “The guns are out of sight, but don't let them be out of your mind. You saw what we did to your men. We'll do it again. Remember, my Russian is better than your English, so don't get stupid.”

He nodded toward the door, and Kharitonov pulled out a security card and held it up to a reader that beeped at the same time a metallic sound could be heard from the door as the lock clicked. He stepped inside, followed closely by Jordan and the other men.

For his part, Mika Kharitonov acted well. No Oscar, but the show and threat, and very real action he had witnessed, had brought out his inner coward. He led them through what appeared to be very ordinary office rooms, filled with clerks, mostly female, typing into computers and taking calls. Guns were good business, and like any modern
business, there was a lot of administration. Several people looked surprised to see him, and even more so the entourage that followed him through the room and down the hall to another room where thousands of optical disks were filed and a lone archivist worked. As he had done in the other rooms, Kharitonov put on a pleasant, professional, if somewhat strained face, and told the archivist to leave them alone.

Jordan's team went to work immediately. Within minutes, they had located the records for all transactions within the last five years. These were no longer stored on the computer, so they pulled and pocketed the CDs from storage cabinets. A USB memory stick was used to store all the records that were present on the computer itself, although Jordan doubted that what they were looking for was there. Kharitonov was clearly as intrigued as he was frightened, but he was forced to chew on his questions as the operatives worked on in silence.

“OK, move it, move it. The clock's running on this one, and we don't know when time runs out,” Jordan said, pushing his team.

Within half an hour they were finished. Jordan rounded up his team, the precious data in his own backpack. They headed back the way they had entered, through what looked suspiciously like a call center, and out the back door. Kharitonov opened the door to the outside, stood upright, straight as a plank of wood, and dove to the right and outside the door.

Ambush!
thought Jordan, and lunged to the left, pulling the Uzi out as he slid to the floor. The thin walls of the building exploded with sound as bullets tore through the siding and whizzed in through the open door. Two of his team fell with multiple bullet wounds, as did several phone operators near the door. Screams filled the room, and women dropped to the floor or dashed out toward the front of the building, sending papers flying through the office. Still the bullets blasted against the walls, and one shattered the single window on the side of the building where Jordan lay, showering glass over him and the unmoving body of a nearby office worker.

He knew things had been too easy.

The day was going to be hot, and the tourists squirmed awkwardly under backpacks, cameras, and overloaded shopping bags along the streets of Algiers. Street vendors hocked their overpriced items as locals smirked at the naive Westerners spending more money than could possibly be justified for the goods. Business was particularly good around the Great Mosque. The combination of history and its nearness to the sea made the landmark a must-see stop on the tourist run.

“
Allahu Akbar!
” Suddenly, a loud, static-filled call rose over the loudspeaker near the mosque. Heads of tourists turned toward the sound, despite having heard it several times in the day already, and five times every day of their stay; it was still an unusual sound to their ears. In contrast, the Algiers citizens seem to give a calm and familiar response, the pious slowly stopping their activities, pulling out prayer mats and laying them on the ground. A tight group of American tourists listened as their guide explained and translated.

“The muezzin is making the
adhan
, the call to prayer,” he said.

“
Allaahu Akbar!
”

“God is great!” he echoed in English to the wondering faces.

“
Ashhadu Allah ilaaha illa-Lah; Ash Hadu anna Muhamadar rasuulullah.
”

“I bear witness that there is no other god but Allah. I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God!”

“
Hayya' alas Salaah; Hayya' ala Falaah.
”

“Come to prayer! Come to Success.”

“
Allaahu Akbar! Laa ilaaha illa-Lah.
”

“God is great! There is no god but Allah.”

The echoes of the haunting Arabic chant rebounded over the streets and cement buildings, reaching out over the harbor toward incoming ships. After a moment of silence, as if in answer, the mosque exploded.

The sound was deafening, the shock wave injurious and stunning, citizens and tourists alike thrown to the ground as rock and metal hurled through the air at lethal velocity. The loudspeaker from the minaret arched high above the road as debris flew underneath it, then reached an apex and took its parabolic dive toward the street below, crushing a street vendor and his cart. The muezzin making the call to prayer, and all the worshippers within the mosque, were never identified in what remained.

Chaos landed along with the loudspeaker, as the able-bodied fled from the scene in panic, abandoning hundreds of injured and dying to their screams for aid. Time slowed down for all who remained, as a false evening fell from the smoke and dust obscuring the sun. Wounded shadows limped through the choking fog of grit, like undead creatures risen from the grave, the horror real and more terrible than any film director's vision.

Finally, muffled sirens were heard as emergency vehicles and military personnel arrived on the scene and worked to impose order over the chaotic remains. Just as they had begun to attend to the wounded and put out the fires, staring with wide eyes toward what was minutes ago the Great Mosque, a strong breeze from the sea sliced the cloud of dust blocking the view, providing a tunnel of vision southward to reveal the majesty and brutal artistry of the Martyrs Monument.

Under the shadow of the monument, a group of French tourists were gathered for a final photograph before returning home from their vacation. What had been a tightly pressed form with twenty smiles facing the camera became a dissolving clump looking toward the northern part of town as a thunderous sound reached their ears and a pillar of smoke began to rise several miles away. The photographer turned to face the chaos, and the sounds of her shutter firing rapidly stuttered in the growing silence. All conversation ceased for several moments, then rose to a higher level as concerned voices sought the
meaning of the events. Many were running toward the northern edges of the park that rose up on a small hill above the port, seeking a closer and clearer view of the source of the smoke and noise. Cell phones were pulled out, more photos taken, and many left the monument site to head home or elsewhere.

The French tourists remained close to the monument. They were expecting their tour guide to return and meet them there, under the monument, and lead them to a bus for the airport. None of them would make the return trip.

Three massive explosions erupted around them, the blast ejecting building debris radially from the structure, flailing the tourists to death in milliseconds. Each explosion was centered on one of the three legs of the Martyrs Monument, placed strategically to sever the supports of the tower from its body like a giant's scalpel. Those watching at a distance stared transfixed as time crawled and the great tower appeared to shudder above the disk of debris beneath it, then plunge toward the ground like a spear. The concrete column crumbled as it smashed into the surface underneath, dissolving like dust and throwing a circular plume outward and upward. Within seconds, the great symbol of Algerian pride for independence from foreign rule was gone.

“Anything from Husaam?” Rebecca Cohen asked as she poked her head into John Savas's office.

“No,” he replied, sipping from his morning coffee. “The CIA is slow to update us, and they never released his precise schedule. He should have made contact with the Russian dealer by now. I guess we'll hear soon how that went.”

Cohen stepped into his office, partially closing the door. “John, I think morale is beginning to slip. It's two weeks into August, and we aren't any closer to finding out who is behind this. Frankly, we aren't sure where to look anymore. Manuel is down to ten percent confidence in his database associations—that's all that's left, and let me tell you, when you are at ten percent, it really is pretty random. J. P. and Matt have taken to bickering for the most part, and Angel has completely withdrawn.”

“Well, we need to keep focused on what this is about. They need to see beyond their own frustrations.”

Cohen frowned. “John, it's not that they don't. It's that they want this so badly. Larry picked us all in part because we had a commitment, an emotional one, to combating terrorism. That much has become clear over the years. In the past two months, we've seen two horrific attacks, one right under our noses. In our own city! That also brings back so many painful memories, as if it weren't bad enough by itself. The strain is coming because they want to bag these guys. But right now, it's starting to seem to them that their goal is somewhere way out of reach.”

Savas winced. He understood. He understood because that was exactly how he was feeling as well. Outside of a few small leads, they had nothing to go on. Nothing at all. What few leads they did have were being pursued thousands of miles away by the CIA, leaving the FBI to await information, search databases, conduct late-night brainstorming sessions over stale coffee. Essentially, twiddling their thumbs. It was time for a mind clearing for all of them, a pep talk of some kind. Savas realized he needed to reset the course for the team.

A loud knock came at the door, and it swung open suddenly. Startled, Savas looked up. It was Rideout. His face was ashen and yet touched with fury. He spoke, slightly out of breath, clearly having raced over to the office.

“John, Rebecca—you'd better come. There's been another one.”