Angels of Wrath

1

Corrine Alston stood as patiently as possible in the small booth in the basement of CIA Building 24-442, waiting as the equipment behind the stainless-steel walls scanned her for high-tech bugs. Security here was so meticulous that no one — not Corrine, not CIA Director Thomas Parnelles, not even the president himself — could bypass the bug scan, let alone the weapons and identity checks. But the ritual only heightened her anger.

The small green light in the center of the ceiling lit. Corrine stared at the door, willing it to open. When it did, she walked down the hall to an elevator that opened as she approached. She didn’t have to press any buttons once inside, which was fortunate; she would have broken either the panel or her fingers with the jabs.

The elevator opened a few seconds later fifty feet below the level where she had started. Corrine walked to a stairwell at the far end, ignoring the two plainclothes CIA officers flanking the entrance. Downstairs, her heels echoed loudly on the cement floor as she strode to the small conference room next to the secure communications suite used to support First Team operations. The door to the conference room was ajar. Corrine pushed it open and found Jack Corrigan sitting alone at the far end of the conference table.

“Why wasn’t I told?” she demanded.

“I did tell you.”

“You waited three hours. I heard about it from the State Department first, for cryin’ out loud.”

“I know, uh, that was a mistake. My mistake. I called your office and Teri said you were with the president. So I waited.”

“You should have used the personal phone. That’s why I have it.”

Corrigan tried not to act intimidated, but Corrine Alston’s fury was not easily withstood. Though only twenty-six, she was one of the most powerful women in the administration, serving as the president’s counsel and his personal representative to the First Team, in effect, Corrigan’s boss.

Complicating matters was the fact that she was pretty good looking, too: touch up her nose, add a little makeup, maybe hire a hairstylist, and she could pass as a model or at least a B actress.

“The Egyptian reaction was better than expected,” offered Corrigan, trying to salvage what he could of the situation. “The tailor turned out to be Ahmed Abu Saahlid. They wanted him for terrorist activities, so—”

“Why was Ferguson in Cairo in the first place? He didn’t clear that with me. He exceeded his authority. He was told to proceed with caution on the entire operation.”

“I think getting Bob Ferguson to proceed with caution, Ms. Alston, would be well beyond even your considerable abilities,” said CIA Director Thomas Parnelles, striding into the room behind her. “And I think you would be doing the country a great disservice besides.”

Corrigan’s military training kicked in, and he jumped to his feet. “Mr. Parnelles.”

Corrine felt her face burn. “Special Demands will not be a rogue organization,” she told Parnelles.

“I quite agree,” said the CIA director softly. He pulled a chair out and sat down.

Corrine took a moment to gather herself, putting on what she thought of as her lawyer face: neutral, reserved, calm. She wasn’t exactly sure where she stood with Parnelles. The president had appointed him CIA director partly based on her recommendation; she had known Parnelles from her work as counsel to the Intelligence Committee, when as a retired CIA official he had acted as an informal and valuable consultant to some of the committee members. But they had had a few disagreements after his appointment, when as counsel to the president she recommended against some of his suggestions as a matter of legal principle. And now that the president had appointed her as his representative overseeing Special Demands, she wouldn’t blame Parnelles if he saw her as an interloper. The appointment effectively usurped the deputy director for operation’s authority over the First Team, and since the DDO worked for Parnelles, it tended to cut him out as well.

She had heard from others that Parnelles implied he had himself suggested that she take the position, acting as the president’s eyes, ears, and conscience on sensitive covert missions. It hadn’t happened that way; the president had had the idea himself. Or so she believed.

“I called over to your office to find out what was going on,” Parnelles told Corrine, answering her unasked question about why he was there. “When I heard you were on your way, I thought it would be wise to join you in person for an update. Unless, of course, you have an objection.”

“I have no objection at all,” Corrine told him. “You’re CIA director.”

Parnelles smiled. He pressed his finger to his lip in a thoughtful pose, inadvertently emphasizing the scar on his cheek that was a souvenir of a nasty incident during his salad days as a CIA officer.

“Mr. Corrigan was just giving me a briefing,” said Corrine. “And I would be pleased for you to hear and offer your insights.”

Corrigan recounted the events in Jerusalem and Cairo, adding very little to what Corrine and Parnelles already knew. With the First Team operation over, the FBI had made a dozen arrests in the Seven Angels case earlier m the day; Corrine had been with the president when the attorney general personally briefed him. Among the charges were conspiracy to fund terrorism and several counts of tax evasion. From what she had seen, Corrine thought the terrorist case would be hard to prove, but the tax evasion and related currency violations were slam dunks. She kept that opinion to herself.

She also didn’t share her opinion that the group was a collection of schizoid crazies who would have been ignored if they hadn’t had access to a few million dollars and if the FBI didn’t need a political score to shore up its standing with the administration.

“The FBI felt it had to go ahead with the arrests,” said Corrine. “With Thatch dead, there was little prospect of gathering more information about the groups that Seven Angels may have been trying to contact.”

“Good timing with the president’s visit to the Middle East coming up,” said Parnelles.

That was the sort of comment from the CIA director that threw Corrine. She knew — and she suspected that Parnelles did as well — that the president thought just the opposite. Anything involving the Middle East had the potential to throw off the delicate negotiations he was trying to foster between the Palestinians and the Israelis. The arrests were preferable to terrorist activity, certainly, but only just.

“So Seven Angels is wrapped up?” Parnelles asked.

“From the FBI’s point of view, yes. But there are a few things Ferg wanted to look at,” said Corrigan. “He thinks he may be able to get more information about the group’s contacts, maybe leverage that into information about terror groups that we have poor intelligence on. There were some phone calls preceding Thatch’s visit to a dentist’s office in Tel Aviv. It may be a wild goose chase, but you know Ferguson.”

“He does love wild goose chases,” said Parnelles.

Parnelles didn’t say anything else. Corrine sensed he had come not about this — the briefing could have been done over the phone — but because he wanted to talk about something else.

“I think we’re in a wrap-up stage on Seven Angels. The action in Cairo was unfortunate,” she said.

“Unavoidable, I would say,” said Parnelles.

“The Egyptians used that word,” said Corrigan, sensing he might escape without further roasting.

“Is there anything else at the moment, Jack?” asked Corrine.

“No, ma’am.”

“I think the director and I might spend a few minutes reviewing some budgetary matters,” she said.

Corrigan was only too happy to be relieved.

“You dealt with Senator Sondborn masterfully,” said Parnelles when they were alone.

“I simply told the senator that executive privilege is an important principle that must be maintained,” said Corrine, aware that she was being buttered up for something else. The head of the Intelligence Committee had asked for a public session on the recent attempt by terrorists to explode a dirty bomb above Honolulu; his inquiry would have undoubtedly revealed enough about the First Team that its efficiency would have been threatened. Turning him back was a no-brainer and one of the easier tasks Corrine had accomplished the week before.

“Ferguson exceeded his authority by going into Egypt without clearing the operation first,” said Corrine. She knew Parnelles and Ferguson had a long-standing personal relationship, and guessed that was his concern. “I don’t think there’s a question about that. This was an FBI operation, and he went overboard. It was just Ferg being Ferg.”

“That may be.” Parnelles smiled wryly. He had known Ferguson for a long time, and would have been surprised if Ferguson hadn’t gone off in his own direction. Getting the First Team involved in the Seven Angels operation had been overkill, but it precluded the possibility of a mess if the FBI, as usual, bungled. More important for Parnelles, it positioned the First Team for a more serious task.

“I wouldn’t want to micromanage Ferguson,” Parnelles said. “Sometimes a horse has to be given his head.”

“Or a man enough rope?” suggested Corrine.

“If we have the proper people in place, we learn to trust their judgments,” said Parnelles. “I’m not here to second-guess you or to stick up for Bobby.”

“Okay.” Corrine folded her arms. Talking to Parnelles was like playing three-dimensional chess blindfolded: sometimes it was a struggle simply to know where the pieces were, let alone dissect his strategy.

“Mossad has developed information that a member of the Iraqi resistance will be en route to Syria for a meeting within the next few days,” said Parnelles. “Nisieen Khazaal.”

“Khazaal would leave Iraq?”

“Mossad’s information is almost always correct, especially if they’re passing it along. Nonetheless, we haven’t been able to confirm it. Not through the ordinary channels. Our dedicated resources in Syria are skimpy. The NSA is sifting through intercepts, and the staff in Damascus and down at the farm are sifting the wheat, but we have no verification.”

Nisieen Khazaal had been a member of the Iraqi army before the war. He had been identified by the new government’s intelligence service as well as the CIA as the leader of “New Iraq,” a resistance movement responsible for more than two dozen strikes against various American and Iraqi targets in the last twelve months. Capturing him and putting him on trial would be major coup. Especially now, with the Iraqi government just starting to gain legitimacy.

“We have to get him if we can,” said Corrine. “Even if it’s a long shot.”

“I quite agree.”

Several hours later, back in D.C., the president poked his head into Alston’s office.

“Well, now, Miss Alston, I am glad to see you here so late,” he told her in his gentlemanly Georgian voice. “The taxpayers are getting their money’s worth.”

“We have to talk, Mr. President,” Corrine said.

“So your note said, my deah. And here I am.” He slid into the chair across from her desk. “So what do you want to tell me?”

President Jonathan McCarthy came by his twang honestly: he traced his ancestry to an indentured servant who’d come over before the Revolution. The accent could range from a very light note to a thick brogue, depending on political requirements — and how tired he was. Since it was going on eleven p.m., she supposed fatigue was responsible for its thickness… though she was never one hundred percent sure.

After Corrine relayed what Parnelles had told her about Khazaal, the president’s smile turned to a frozen frown.

“Why would he be going to Syria?” he asked.

“We’re not sure. Our theory is that there is some sort of summit planned, with outside groups meeting to coordinate strategy and possibly pass money. Khazaal’s organization needs funds. The new government has had some success clamping down on the money that was coming from outside religious groups.”

“I find the timing curious.”

“It may have nothing to do with your trip to Iraq,” she told him. “Or it may have everything to do with it.”

The president had decided to visit Baghdad to help dedicate the new Parliament building there a week and a half from now. It was a critical symbol of democracy in the struggling country, and McCarthy was convinced that his presence would demonstrate how far Iraq had come. At the same time, it would allow him to make what would seem like a spontaneous visit to Jerusalem as well, with the idea of helping the peace process along. The side trip was a closely guarded secret since it was supposed to seem like a spur-of-the-moment idea, but the visit to Baghdad was not. As McCarthy put it, the president of the United States was not some skunk who snuck into town at midnight to sniff around the garbage cans. Iraq was a struggling democracy; his visit would help convince others that the outcome of the struggle was not in doubt. Or at least that was what he hoped.

“I’d like to use Special Demands to investigate this,” said Corrine. “The First Team and the supporting Special Operations elements are already in the Middle East for the Seven Angels case. That’s just about wrapped up. It would be quite a coup to capture Khazaal. And who knows what it would avoid? The possibilities are immense.”

“Do you know what the old farmer thought of possibilities, Miss Alston?”

“I couldn’t begin to guess.”

McCarthy didn’t bother telling her the punch line. “Use the Team. Find this man and arrest him. He should be brought to justice. Just remember, Miss Alston, that my trip to Baghdad is very important. I would not like anything to disrupt it.”

“We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen,” she said.

“I know you will, deah. I know you will.” He rose. “There is one other item I’d like you to possibly attend to, if you have the time and inclination.”

A request from the president was more than a mere request, and they both knew it. But McCarthy hewed to his well-taught manners, asking rather than demanding. It was one of the reasons his staff worked so hard for him.

“Of course I’ll do it. What do you need?”

“Our ambassador to Iraq, Mr. Bellows. I believe you know him fairly well.”

“My father does.”

McCarthy smiled. Peter Bellows had been a business partner of Corrine’s father two decades before. McCarthy, who had known Corrine’s family since before she was born, knew that. Ten years before, Bellows had left business to become an ambassador. While his first appointments were made mostly as political paybacks, the previous administration had found him very useful, and he was now seen as a very capable man, though McCarthy himself had not had an opportunity to test his mettle.

“I am thinking that with the initiative to the Middle East, I will need a special envoy, someone the Palestinians especially would be comfortable with. And Bellows would be a prime candidate,” said the president.

“I’m sure he’d be fine.”

“How do you know?”

The truth was, she didn’t. Corrine had had no dealings with him, not even when she was working in the senate for the Intelligence Committee. Special envoy was not only an important position, it was also the sort of post that might lead to a Nobel Prize, certainly if the president’s initiative brought the two sides closer together.

“I have only one outstanding requirement for the job,” continued the president, “but it’s critical. I need a man, or a woman, who will tell me the truth, even if it is something I do not want to hear.”

“That sounds like my job description,” said Corrine.

“I’m sorry, deah, but you would not be qualified for this job.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Well, good. Then I won’t have to worry that you might be prejudiced.” McCarthy’s lips turned up in a half smile. “I’d like you to go on to Baghdad ahead of me and make an assessment. I know Mr. Bellows’s resume is impressive. And I know he’s personable. He and I even get along, for which there is something to be said. But that’s not what I truly need to know.”

“Jonathan…Mr. President—”

“Jonathan is fine when we are alone. Go ahead, tell me what I don’t want to hear but must hear.”

“You’re putting me in a difficult position.”

“Now I thought that was your job description.” McCarthy smiled again, and this time traces of it lingered on his face as he continued to speak. “You might find an excuse to visit Tel Aviv and Palestine and the other countries in the region as well, ahead of my visit. Take their pulse, as it were. I suspect that you should be in the area as this Special Demands project runs its course.”

“Yes, sir, of course,” said Corrine, who hadn’t been thinking that at all; she had plenty of work to do in Washington, and her role was to supervise the First Team’s operations, not take part in them. Then again, she was looking for an opportunity to talk to Ferguson in person. He could blow her off too easily on the phone and made a regular habit of it.

“I’ll leave as soon as I can,” said Corrine.

“Now, now. No need to rush,” said McCarthy. “Give yourself twenty-four hours to wrap things up. And make sure that your secretary knows how to get in touch with you.”

“I will.”

McCarthy started to leave but then turned back. “Now you remember one thing. If you get hurt, I’m going to have to be the one to tell your daddy. And neither one of us wants that. So you be careful, heah?”

2

“Before you blow your top,” Corrigan told Ferguson, “listen to the whole deal. This is a good one, Ferg. A real good one.”

“Corrigan, I don’t blow my top. Your top, maybe.” The old wooden chair creaked as Ferguson leaned back. It felt so rickety, he thought it was going to send him in a tumble to the floor at any minute. Ferguson, Rankin, and Guns were sitting in a secure communications facility in the Cairo embassy, a room within a room with an encrypted communications link back to Washington. They had the option of using video and seeing Corrigan as they spoke, but the vote not to do so had been unanimous.

“So tell me what the story is,” said Ferguson. “Why are we being jerked off one wild goose chase and put on another?”

“How’d you know there was a new assignment?”

Ferguson rolled his eyes for the others. “Spill it, Jack,” he told Corrigan.

“Khazaal. Nisieen Khazaal.”

“That’s it?”

“The name doesn’t mean anything to you? Jesus, Ferg, where have you been? This is only the most infamous Iraqi scumbag going. I bet Rankin knows who he is.”

“Yeah, he’s at the top of the Who’s Who of World Scumbags,” said Rankin.

“Where did we get this?” asked Ferguson.

“Mossad. Came from the top. I think Parnelles huddled with Ms. Alston, and here we are.”

Corrigan gave them everything he knew about Khazaal, which wasn’t all that much. The Israelis either didn’t know or wouldn’t say where exactly he was going. The Agency had several indications that he had moved west from the Tikrit area — a favorite of Rankin’s — and theorized that he was near the border, though not yet across. Several groups tied to his organization had transferred funds into bank accounts used by smugglers, and Iraqi intelligence had several leads about where he was in the western desert.

“Yeah, Iraqi intelligence,” said Rankin. “Hajjis with IQs equal to their shoe sizes.”

“The assignment is to locate and apprehend,” said Corrigan, ignoring him. “Apprehend as in arrest, as in bring him back alive.”

“And what do I do when he tells me to get bent?” said Ferguson. “Rhetorical question, Jack,” he added quickly. “Mossad involved?”

“No. They’re tied up.”

“Where’s Thera?”

“I put her on a plane to Athens. We’ve asked for a liaison from the Iraqi security service. Where do you want him?”

“Paradise,” said Rankin.

“I don’t know yet,” said Ferguson. Mossad’s posture struck him as odd; if they bothered to pass something along, they almost always provided a complete dossier and at least a liaison to feed back notes. “Listen, I want to talk to Parnelles.”

“Why?”

“I’m having some trouble with my 401K.”

“We don’t have a 40IK plan.”

Guns and Rankin both started to laugh. Ferguson grinned, relaxing a little. “Get him for me, will you?”

“I can’t just snap my fingers and get him on the line.”

“Use the bat phone, Robin.”

“Come on Ferg. Parnelles is traveling. I don’t know where he is. I can leave a message.”

“Tell him I want to talk to him, not you. Say it’s important.”

“OK. Listen, Corrine wants you to meet her in Tel Aviv. She wants to talk to you. She’s pretty upset about Cairo.”

“What about it?”

“You didn’t run the operation by her. She wants you in Tel Aviv—”

“I’m not going to Tel Aviv.”

“Hey, Ferg, you can’t blow her off. She’s the boss.”

“All right. Let me talk to her.”

“She’s not here, Ferg. It’s the middle of the night over here. Like four a.m.”

“The way you’re calling her Corrine and everything, I thought you were at her apartment.”

“Ferg.”

“Go wake her up.”

“Come on.”

“Look, I’m not going to Tel Aviv. Why should we go to Tel Aviv from Cairo?” He looked at his watch. “Thera’s going to Athens?”

“Yeah.”

“Hold her there. Tell her I’ll be in tonight or maybe tomorrow.”

“What should I tell Cor — Ms. Alston?”

“Tell her I’ll be in Athens. Actually, probably Incirlik, with Van and the Ranger boys.”

“She really wants to talk to you.”

“My phone is on twenty-four/seven.”

“What about Rankin and Guns?”

“They can get their own girl.”

“Ferg, listen. Alston is going to be pissed.”

Ferguson tossed the phone on the table. The others looked at him. Ferguson folded his arms across his chest but then reached across and picked it up.

“You OK, Ferg?” asked Corrigan. “Maybe you need a rest.”

“Yeah, a nice long rest,” Ferguson said. “So Alston wants to chew my butt in person, huh?”

“Well, I don’t know that she wants to chew you out.”

“Oh, come on, Jack. But hey, who knows? Maybe some hot-looking blonde who graduated magna cum laude at daddy’s law school can run covert ops better than I can.”

“Listen, you don’t have to like it,” said Corrigan. “You just have to do your job.”

“You know what, Jack? I’m going to take your advice,” said Ferguson. “Tell Corrine she can look me up in Syria if she wants, because I don’t have to like it, but I have a job to do.”

I his time when he tossed the phone, he got up and left the room.

3

A cold hand grabbed Thera Majed as she fell from the aircraft, wrapping itself around her throat and squeezing tightly. Her heart jumped in her chest, and she felt her eyeballs freeze over. She was breathing oxygen from a small bottle strapped to her side — a necessity when parachuting from 35,000 feet — but even her lungs felt as if they had turned to ice.

“Looking good,” yelled Ferguson over the short-range radio they were using to communicate.

Guns and Rankin had gone out first. Thera’s unfamiliarity with the procedure had cost the second pair a few extra seconds, which at four hundred knots translated into nearly two miles.

And counting.

Between the wind howling around her and the tight helmet, Ferguson’s words sounded more like “luck of gold,” and it took a few seconds for Thera to decipher what he was talking about. By the time she figured it out, the Douglas DC-9 she’d jumped out of had disappeared.

Thera struggled to get her body into the “frog” position she’d learned nearly two years before at the Army Airborne school. Since that time, she’d made no more than two dozen jumps, only three of which had been high-altitude, high-opening forays like this one, and none had been at night. Everybody said it would be easy — her body would remember how to do it once she stepped out of the plane — but the only thing her body remembered was how cold it had been… not half as cold as this time.

Ferguson, arms spread and legs raised as if he were a miniature aircraft, zoomed toward her. On his left wrist he wore a large altimeter, which had a sound alert wired into his helmet’s earset. On his right he had a CIPS device that looked like a large compass. An arrow dominated the dial, showing the direction to their destination and a countdown of the mileage. A pair of lightweight night-vision glasses were strapped beneath his helmet like goggles. The aircraft had been going nearly four hundred knots when they jumped out, which meant they were, too. Their trajectory to the landing zone had been calculated before takeoff, then tweaked ever so slightly a few minutes before the jump to account for the wind.

“Let her rip,” he told her, the altimeter buzzing in his ear as they fell through 30,000 feet.

Thera’s first tug on the handle was too tentative, and the parachute failed to release. But her interpretation of the problem was that she wasn’t in the proper position — true enough, as it happened, though this had nothing to do with the chute deploying — and she struggled to push her head downward and get her arms out before trying again. As she did, something whipped by and tapped her on the head.

It was Ferguson. Worried that she was having problems, he shaped his body into a delta to gain speed in her direction, then flared out to slow down. He misjudged his speed slightly in the dark as he pulled close and rather than paralleling, flew past. He recovered, sailing to the left and then back around, inching forward.

It felt like inching. In fact he was moving at over a hundred miles an hour.

“We have to pull now,” he yelled into the radio. “We’re getting off course. Hey! Hey! You ready? Ready?”

Thera thought Ferguson was the one having trouble, and she started to maneuver toward him.

“Pull!” said Ferguson, motioning at her.

She reached to the handle and yanked, feeling the gentle tug of her harness as the chute unfolded above her. And now it really was like they said it would be: her arms moved up as she took stock of the chute and herself, making sure the cells had inflated properly and orienting herself with the aid of a GPS device wrapped around her right wrist. She was back in control or at least as much in control as anyone being held up in space by engineered nylon could be.

Rankin reached the bluff overlooking the Iraqi border ahead of Guns. He put down the bike and increased the amplification on his night-optical glasses, which looked like a pair of very thick sunglasses. The wrap-around glasses combined generation-four infrared and starlight enhancement technology with electronic magnification to a factor of ten. While not as powerful as the new gen-four devices being tested by Army Special Forces units, the glasses’ light weight was more than fair compensation; they were more than powerful enough to illuminate the rocky desert terrain below.

Rankin could see a warren of “rabbit” holes and days-old tracks through the gritty soil. The holes were the entrances to tunnels used by smugglers, who used them to avoid the new Iraqi government’s surveillance aircraft and patrols.

“What’d you do, tune the bike?” Guns asked, walking up next to Rankin.

“Less wind resistance.” Rankin rested his right hand on his Uzi as he surveyed the desert. While the fewer than ten thousand American troops still stationed in Iraq were concentrated near Baghdad and the northern oil fields, Rankin figured the Iraqis and certainly the Syrians could stop the smugglers if they really cared to. But smuggling goods was a lucrative business, especially for the local commanders who averted their eyes.

“We can put the main post down in the those caves. Watch the border from here,” Rankin told Guns. “Let’s go mark a landing spot for the Rangers.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for Ferg?”

“He knows where we are.”

Thera stepped forward as the ground finally came up to her legs. She twisted slightly and crumpled to the ground as she landed, falling on her side. It wasn’t pretty, but at least she was down. She got up, expecting Ferguson to fall on top of her any second. Gathering in her parachute, she looked around for a convenient place to hide it. Ten yards away a small collection of boulders huddled together on the ground. That would do.

With the chute stuffed between the rocks, she took stock of her situation, checking her position with a GPS device. Their rendezvous point was about five miles away, on a ridge overlooking the nearby valley.

She was supposed to hit no farther than a mile away. It was an inauspicious start to her first real mission with the team. She knew Ferguson only by reputation. Depending on whom you talked to, he was either easy to get along with or the biggest SOB in the world, but everybody agreed he was driven; he’d probably be mad that she had fallen so far away.

Thera checked her radio, then decided it would he better not to call in until she was a little closer. Trudging in the direction of the rendezvous area, she’d gone about a quarter of a mile when a rich baritone echoed in her headset.

“Oh come tell me, Sean O’Connell, tell me why you hurry so.”

“Ferg?” she said.

“I’ve got orders from the captain,” sang Ferguson, “for the pipes must be together, by the rising of the moon.”

Thera dropped to one knee, scanning three hundred and sixty degrees around her. The only thing nearby were rocks.

“Where are you?” she said. “Ferg?”

The sound of a motor in the distance made her freeze. She brought her submachine gun up.

“Ferg?”

“Yee-hah!” he shouted over the radio.

Thera whirled in time to see the shadow of a motorbike fly over the rise behind her. The bike had two very large mufflers at its side to dampen its engine sound.

“Ferguson,” she said.

“You’re expecting someone else?” he asked, skidding down the hill.

“How did you get down so fast?”

“Hop on. The bikes landed back on the other side of the hill. I just about tripped over them when I came down. Good thing you took your time going out; we would have been all night finding them.”

Two hours later, Ferguson watched as a large Pave Low helicopter skimmed across the desert terrain toward the chemical glow light Rankin had placed to guide it. The chopper shook the desert as it rumbled a few feet over the terrain, flying low to avoid the Syrian radars to the west. The Pave Low’s immense blades kicked a sandstorm around it as it flew. Ferguson shielded his night glasses as the bird settled in. A company’s worth of Rangers augmented by two Delta veterans and an Iraqi intelligence officer began emerging from the rear. The men and their equipment had been detailed to support the First Team, providing on-ground security and extra eyes at their base of operations in the desert wilderness. Additional troops were on call to be used for the actual “snatch,” assuming conditions allowed.

Ferguson watched for the Iraqi intelligence officer accompanying them. He wasn’t particularly hard to spot; more than twice the age of most of the soldiers, he walked with a nervous hop away from the helicopter, ducking even though it was unnecessary.

“Fouad Mohammed?” yelled Ferguson when the man reached him.

“Yes,” said the Iraqi.

“Bob Ferguson. Call me Ferg. Step into my office.” He motioned back to a run of rocks twenty yards away where he’d parked his bike. The landing area was about a quarter mile from the small caves and overhangs where they’d located their base camp.

“You know Khazaal?” Ferguson asked the Iraqi.

“I met him some years ago,” said Fouad, whose ears and bones still reverberated from the helicopter ride. He greatly preferred quieter modes of transportation, though he knew better than to mention this to the American; in his experience Americans never found machines quite noisy enough.

Fifty-three years old, Fouad had dealt with a number of Americans over the years, beginning with his very early service as a glorified gofer and eavesdropper for the Iraqi foreign intelligence service. Stationed in Cairo at the age of twenty-two, he had kept tabs on various expatriate movements and Jews: easy work, though the detailed weekly reports often took two or three days simply to write. By the Iran-Iraq War he had progressed to a liaison officer working with the CIA. Out of favor for a while, he had been sent north into exile in the Kurdistan area until just before the start of the Gulf War, when he worked on a group assigned to prepare for the defense of Baghdad. After the war he found his way to the great sanctions shell game. For the first few months he helped hide evidence of banned weapons from weapons inspectors but soon turned to the more critical task of trumping up evidence of continuing programs to impress the fading dictator and keep external enemies at bay. Fouad lay low in the northern Kurdish region after the second Gulf War until friends in the government convinced him to come to work with them. A brief job with an American security contractor had renewed some of his CIA ties; eventually Fouad found himself back in service with the interior ministry’s security apparatus, serving as a liaison to “external services,” the latest euphemism for the CIA.

“You think Khazaal would go through one of the tunnels?” asked Ferguson, sitting on a rock near his motorcycle. “I thought he liked to travel in style.”

“We all adapt,” said Fouad. Something about the American was very familiar.

“All right.” Ferguson wasn’t sure if Fouad was parroting the intelligence report he’d seen or if he was its author. In his experience, the Iraqi intelligence people demonstrated a wide range of abilities, from extreme competence to extreme ineptitude. As a rule, the more confident they made themselves sound the less able they were. “So we watch for a car that meets him?”

“Possible. It may be a wild goose chase.”

“Not what I want to hear.”

“You want the truth or what you want to hear?” said Fouad, who knew that the latter was almost always preferred, especially by Americans. Putting the question bluntly sometimes saved problems and sometimes not.

“Truth. Always.” Ferguson smiled at him. “But all truth is relative.”

Fouad shrugged, though he did not agree; God’s truth was absolute, after all.

“What we think will happen is that he’ll come across the border on foot, get picked up and driven to one of the abandoned military camps northwest of here, where a plane will meet him,” said Ferguson. “We’re going to stake out the camps so we can hit them when he’s there. On the other hand, he may just take a car all the way across the desert. If that happens, we take the car.”

“What if you miss?”

“Then we punt. We find out where he’s going, and we try to get him there. Problem is, we’re not sure where he’s going. Unless you are.”

“There are so many rumors about Khazaal you can make something up, and it is just as likely to be true.”

“We think tomorrow night,” said Ferguson. “What do you think?”

Fouad could only shrug.

“Can you ride a motorcycle?”

“Not well.”

“You’re my passenger then. Come on.” Ferguson picked up the motorcycle.

Fouad hesitated. He did not like motorcycles and had had several bad experiences with them. “I knew a Ferguson once,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“In Cairo. And during the war with Iran.”

Ferguson realized that Fouad was talking about his father. But he only started the bike and waited for Fouad to get on.

“That was my dad in Cairo,” he said after they reached the base camp. “He had a bunch of jobs over here during the Cold War.”

“Yes, I can see him in your face.” A very solid officer, thought Fouad, not a liar, like many. Good with Arabic. How much like the father was the son?

“Anna saiiiid jiddan himuqaabalatak,” lie said in Arabic. “I am very glad in meet you. Your father was a very dependable fellow.”

“Anaa af ham tamaaman,” replied Ferguson, using the rudimentary phrase a visitor to an Arabian country would use to show he understood what was being said. But then he continued in Arabic: “I understand perfectly: you’re trying to butter me up because you think I’m just another CIA jerk who’s easily turned by a compliment.”

“No. Your father was a brave man. And you speak Arabic well, though with an Egyptian accent.”

“Grammar school in Cairo. Before the nuns got a hold of me.” Ferguson laughed.

The son was like the father in many ways, thought Fouad. A thing both good and bad.

4

Rankin turned to the Iraqi and gestured at the car that had turned off from the highway. It rode across the open desert, approaching the foothill two miles away. “Is that for him?”

“Who can tell? But the car is like the one that left from Thar in the afternoon, an old Mercedes.”

Just like a hajji, thought Rankin: never a straight yes or no.

Thar was a small town on the other side of the border. Iraqi intelligence officers there had prepared a list of half a dozen suspicious vehicles, all with single drivers. The theory was that the vehicle would go over alone and wait for Khazaal to slip through, a practice often employed by criminals and others trying to escape the country without documentation. The Mercedes would have been thoroughly searched before being allowed over the border.

Two shadows came from the rocks. “You see a face?” asked Rankin.

Fouad shook his head.

Rankin looked over at Guns, who was using his satellite radio system to talk to Corrigan back in the Cube. The radio had a “local” discrete-burst mode for short-range communications with other team members on the ground and a longer-range mode that used satellites to communicate. The latter was easier to detect; though the transmissions were encrypted and virtually unbreakable, the presence of the radio waves could lead someone to the user.

“Where are we, Guns?” asked Rankin.

“I just uploaded the video. They’re looking at it.”

“What’s the UAV see?” Rankin asked. A Predator robot aircraft, or “unmanned aerial vehicle,” was orbiting overhead, helping with the surveillance. It would follow the vehicle to a spot where it could be ambushed.

“Nothing so far.”

“Tell Ferg what’s going on.”

“Already have,” said Guns.

“Hold on,” said Rankin. “There’s another car coming.”

The trick was to let the Mercedes get far enough from the border area so that any of the local smugglers and Syrian spies nearby wouldn’t be tipped off but to not let it get so far away that they couldn’t stop it. With two cars, the task became more complicated, especially once the two vehicles got on the nearby road and headed in different directions. Ferguson and Thera staked out the first car, which was moving northwestward; Rankin and Guns followed the second, traveling two miles to the south.

Just to make things even more interesting, a third one appeared soon after the second made its pickup. Two Rangers were detailed to follow that one, staying close enough to trail them but not take them unless ordered to do so by Ferguson.

The first car took a turn off the highway onto a packed dirt road in the direction of an abandoned military outpost a few miles west of the border. The road wound around a series of dry streams, or wadis, and loose sand traps. Since they were on motorcycles, Ferguson, Thera, and the two Rangers traveling with them were able to sprint ahead and check out the site. Ferguson sent the Rangers down the road to watch, in case his hunch about where the Mercedes was going proved wrong. As he and Thera approached the camp, Fouad warned that a Land Rover was parked in front of one of the buildings. The Iraqi had taken over for Guns and was watching the Predator’s video feed. The vehicle had not been there in the afternoon’s satellite snapshot. Ferguson and Thera got off their bikes and went to scout the base. A low ridge sat to the south about a quarter mile from the fence. Standing at the top, Ferguson could see most of the base area.

“There,” Ferguson told Thera, pointing to the second building in the row. “You can just barely make out the shadow inside.”

“How many people?”

“At least two.” He pointed to the road beyond the complex. “Maybe they’re forming a caravan here. Or maybe waiting for a plane. You could land our MC-130 on that road at the back there.”

Ferguson dropped down, sliding to the bottom of the hill. They were no more than fifteen minutes ahead of the Mercedes; if they were going to take it here, they had to get a move on.

“What we have to do is take out the guard by the gate, then the person or persons in the building,” Ferguson told Thera. He took the M203 grenade launcher from his pack and stuffed a dozen plastic shells in his pants pockets, which were already bulging with magazines for the MP5N submachine gun. His vest had concussion and smoke grenades, along with ammo for his pistol and slugs for his shotgun, which he had over his right shoulder.

“Are we taking these guys prisoner or what?” asked Thera.

“Khazaal’s the only one we have to apprehend alive,” said Ferguson. “But, yeah, we dunk these guys if we can. Have your gas mask ready. Crossbow?”

Thera held up the weapon, which was very similar to the type used by deer and other game hunters in the States. A marriage between a miniature rifle and high-tech bow, the weapon fired a titanium arrow over fifty yards, was as accurate as a rifle at that range, and would send its missilelike arrow through the side of a skull. It could also fire two different types of nonlethal ammunition: a syringelike dart with a fast-working anesthetic and a lollypop-shaped hard plastic arrow that was supposed to stun someone struck with it. The anesthetic was related chemically to sodium thiopental, the barbiturate commonly known as truth serum. It worked even quicker though it left the subject feeling as if he or she had a full-body hangover. Thera didn’t trust the lollypops and had left them back at the base camp.

“Wait until I’m outside of the buildings if at all possible,” Ferg told her. “But if you have to shoot, shoot. He doesn’t have a vest. Shoot at the chest.”

Ferguson jogged to the west side of the base, taking advantage of the wadi near the fence, which obscured the view. He found a hole under the fence and crawled into the compound between the two warehouse buildings at the southern end of the compound.

Thera used a drainage ditch to cover her as she closed in on the guard. She found a brace of weeds thirty yards from the entrance and got into firing position. The guard, clearly bored, stood with his gun down against his leg. She took a grenade out just in case — no sense fooling around if she missed — and put her MP5N within easy reach.

“Thera, where are you?” hissed Ferguson in her ear.

“Here,” she whispered. “Just tell me when.”

Ferguson hunkered on his haunches. There was no sign that there were more people than the guard and the one whose shadow he’d seen in the large building to his right. The building had a window at the back; he was tempted to try and get in that way but decided it was too risky. Nor did he have anything to use to booby-trap the exit.

“Thera?”

“Yeah?”

“After you take out the guard, I want you to get to the west side of the southern-most building, all right? There’s a window there. You think you can cover it?”

“Yeah, but—”

“No but. Wait until I’m ready if you can.”

Thera steadied the crossbow, zeroed in on the guard. She’d first used a bow when she was twelve years old, hunting with her father at his cabin in the Catskills. He was a New York City detective back then, two years divorced from her mother, a much heavier drinker than now. She could feel his hand on her shoulder, gripping gently, his thumb pressing as the buck walked toward them in the field.

The guard turned toward her. Suddenly he started to bring up his rifle. Thera pulled the trigger on her crossbow. The weapon made a whispery thwang as it shot. She watched through the scope as the arrow struck the guard flat in the chest. He shook, stunned, not quite comprehending what had happened. Then he started to grab at the arrow, stopped, raised his gun again, then fell off to the side, knocked unconscious by the massive dose of synthetic narcotic in the warhead.

Ferguson heard Thera’s heavy breathing over the radio and realized she’d shot the guard. He moved up the side of the building, reached the corner, and glanced toward the front. He saw no one. He checked the grenade launcher — he figured he would hit anyone coming out in the chest with the tear-gas round, which would knock them down at very close range — then knelt on one knee to wait for Thera.

Thera ran to the stricken guard, made sure he was down, then grabbed the dart and his rifle and went to the back of the building. Ferguson caught a glimpse of her as she ran.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Let me catch my breath.”

“Not enough time. Use the gun if you have to. Get your mask on.”

Without knowing exactly how the building was configured, Ferguson decided on a simple, two-step plan: tear-gas grenade in window, then duck. Standard grenades needed about fourteen meters to arm; this was a precaution against the grenade going off too close to friendly troops. The arming mechanism in these rounds allowed them to explode as soon as they struck something.

Ferguson rammed the metal butt end of the grenade launcher through the window, breaking the glass. Then he pumped the round inside and grabbed his shotgun. A man emerged from the building; Ferguson fired point-blank at the man, striking him in the chest, neck, and face with the plastic pellets in the shell.

“Ferg?” asked Thera.

“Watch the back, watch the back,” he yelled, reloading the M203 and pumping another round inside the building before running over to the man he’d shot, who was writhing on the ground. Though the shotgun pellets were plastic, he’d been so close to Ferguson that the round cut as well as bruised his face, and he wailed in pain, temporarily blinded. Ferguson put him temporarily out of his misery with a shot of Demerol.

As he rose, he heard Thera scream.

5

Judy Coldwell waited for the bank clerk to leave the safety-deposit area before opening the box. Her fingers trembled as she picked up the passport and the envelope filled with hundred-dollar bills.

As she had hoped but also feared, she had been called on to fulfill her brother’s mission. It would not be easy. The church was under attack. The Reverend Tallis had been arrested. So had other elders, perhaps all of them. The bank accounts in the United States and Cayman Islands had been frozen, according to the FBI press release she read on the Internet.

Tallis had managed to send her a one-word message: Latakia.

Coldwell knew that meant Latakia, Syria, and that she should go there. Beyond that, however, she was unsure exactly how to proceed. She knew that her brother’s mission would have been to contact groups interested in attacking holy sites. She knew where to get the necessary authorizations (and find willing bank officers) to enable her to access the group’s hidden overseas funds. But she did not know what groups Benjamin had been dealing with.

Latakia had been a favorite spot of arms dealers and other smugglers when she last visited roughly three years before, and she guessed that whomever Benjamin had been dealing with had arranged to meet him there. Whether they would accept her as a replacement or not remained to be seen. Traveling to Syria was not easy for an American, but that at least would not be a problem; the passport in her hand indicated she was a Moroccan of French and Italian descent.

Whatever must be done would be done. Generations were counting on her to bring forward the next age.

Coldwell glanced at the passport. She would have to get her hair cut so that it matched the photo, but by tomorrow afternoon, Judy Coldwell would no longer exist. Agnes Perpetua would have taken her place. The tickets for the first leg of her journey were already waiting at the airport to be claimed.

Coldwell put the passport and money into her purse, then closed the box.

“I’m done here,” she told the clerk outside. “Done.”

6

Thera’s scream was followed by a steady rattle of gunfire from an AK-47, followed by an MP5’s sturdier whistle. Ferg ran around the north side of the building, aiming to flank who’d ever come out.

“Thera,” he said as he ran. “Where are you? Yo.”

She didn’t answer. When he reached the back corner of the building he threw himself down, moving forward slowly on the ground.

Something moved near the doorway. Thera.

She bent down, reaching for the doorknob.

“What are you doing?” said Ferguson.

“Duck!” she told him, flipping a grenade in through the crack and then running back toward the berm ten yards away. She made it just as the grenade went off.

Ferguson rose and walked toward the doorway. Two men lay sprawled in the dirt nearby; a third had been killed inside the building by Thera’s grenade. None of the men was Khazaal.

“Run up and cover the front of the building,” Ferguson told her.

“You’re not going in, are you?” she asked.

“Just get up there and make sure no one came out while we were playing back here.”

The interior of the building had been divided in half by a wall that ran only partway to the high ceiling. Except for the dead man and a few scattered cartons, the room at the back was empty. Ferguson moved inside as quietly as he could, then raised his grenade launcher and pumped a shell of tear gas over the wall. He pulled up his shotgun, aiming it at the open doorway, then ran forward to the wall. Though he had a pretty strong suspicion that the front half of the building was empty, he rolled on the floor and crawled his way inside.

A hundred boxes or more lined the wall on his left. The rest of the place was empty. The boxes were filled with infant formula, according to the writing on the side.

“Is this where Khazaal is going?” asked Thera when he came out.

“I don’t know yet,” he told her. “Let’s go put down markers for the airborne guys and then hide.”

“I’m sorry I had to shoot,” said Thera.

“Forget about it now. Come on. Their Mercedes should be about ninety seconds away.”

Nearly ten miles to the south, Rankin stopped his bike in the desert and pulled out his paper map, correlating his position against the handheld GPS device. He flipped the radio into satellite mode. “Fouad, is he still coming this way?”

“Yes,” said the Iraqi.

“Where’s he going?” asked Guns. The two Rangers they’d taken with them pulled up behind them.

“Maybe for that airfield at the corner there,” said Rankin. “Let’s move up the road to the intersection with the airport.”

Ferguson hid behind the Land Rover, and Thera crouched at the edge of the building as the battered Mercedes rounded the turnoff and headed for the complex.

“You have the first guy out. I have the second,” said Ferguson. “Make sure the mask covers your glasses. This gas is worse than CS by a factor of ten.”

“No way.”

“Try it and see,” said Ferguson, readying the grenades.

The Mercedes stopped alongside the Land Rover. The two men inside made things easy by getting out at the same time.

Thwack!

Thera’s crossbow landed in the driver’s left shoulder, where the plunger tip injected enough anesthetic to knock him senseless within three seconds. By then, Ferguson had knocked the second man to the ground with a plastic round to the head. He soft-tossed a tear gas grenade into the car as he ran to the man, kicking away a fallen pistol. Though the man had been knocked unconscious by the blow, Ferg injected a heavy dose of the sodium pentothal to keep him out. A fog of tear gas enveloped the area; Ferguson and Thera had to pull the two men all the way to the fence before they were clear.

Ferguson cursed when he took off his mask. Neither of the men in the Mercedes was Khazaal. He took out a small digital camera to transmit the pictures back to Fouad.

“I don’t know who they are,” Fouad said. “They may be with the resistance, but most likely they are smugglers.”

“Smugglers sell baby food?” asked Ferguson.

“Maybe. It might have been stolen inside Iraq and stored there, to be sold elsewhere. The relief agencies bring in supplies, and the scum steal it away.”

“All right. We’ll get them picked up anyway. Where’s the third vehicle and what was it?”

“A Ford. I do not think it belongs to the resistance.”

“Which would be why they would use it, no?”

“I don’t think they are that clever.”

“But I do,” said Ferguson. He pulled out his map and spread it on the hood of the Land Rover to orient himself. As he did, Rankin told him over the radio that the second Mercedes had just passed the airstrip.

“We’re going to be too far behind now to catch him if he stays on the highway,” said Rankin.

Ferguson looked at the map. The highway headed southwestward for over a hundred miles before approaching civilization; there were few places on that stretch where it could turn off. The MC-130 with the special operations forces aboard could make it across the border within a few minutes and get ahead of the car, but if they missed the ambush they wouldn’t get another shot. And Ferguson and Thera would have to take the other car out by themselves.

“I’ll have Van Buren’s Rangers set up an ambush down the road,” Ferg told Rankin. “Just keep following.”

7

Colonel Van Buren moved from the command area at the front of the First Team’s specially equipped MC-130 into the assault bay, where Captain Ricardo Melfi and a team of hand-picked Rangers and Special Forces soldiers were waiting to jump.

“Godspeed,” said Van Buren, holding up his thumb. Melfi, about twenty feet away, signaled back. Van Buren found a handhold and watched his people crowding toward the cargo ramp, eager to get into action. They were shadows in the unlit bay, and he tried to keep them that way, anonymous warriors; it made it more difficult to deal with problems if he thought of them as individuals with families and loved ones.

Designed to fly through hostile territory at very low altitude to avoid radar, the MC-130 used a satellite system to show its flight crew precisely where they were. The airplane banked and began to rise over the target area, a desolate curve in the highway the second Mercedes was taking. The men went out quickly, executing an extremely dangerous low-level drop as if they were stepping off an amusement park ride back in the States. By the time the airplane banked north, the troops were on the ground, squaring away their chutes.

Van Buren went back to his post. Modified from a stretched version of the Hercules (officially, the C-130J/J-30), the forward area of the First Team’s MC-130 was equipped with radio surveillance and communication gear similar to those used in the Commando Solo and ABCCC airborne battlefield controller versions of the Hercules, with a few of the links used by JSTARS thrown in for good measure. Van Buren got on the radio to the two Chinooks that had been tasked for the pickup. The aircraft were now airborne over Iraq and were about twenty minutes from the border.

“We can hear a vehicle coming north,” said Melfi when he checked in.

Van Buren checked the image from the Predator.

“That’ll be them. Get ready.”

Melfi crouched a few yards from the road as the Mercedes approached the curve. The trick wasn’t stopping the car; it was stopping the car without killing the people inside. The fact that his men had been on the ground for less than ten minutes made things even more interesting.

Two Special Forces sergeants took positions on the right flank of the road, aiming SRAW weapons at the car. SRAW stood for Short Range Assault Weapon. The missile- known as a “Predator” before the Air Force hogged the nickname for its UAV — was designed to disable tanks as well as light-armor vehicles and built-up positions, replacing the LAW and AT-4. Essentially a modern version of the World War II-era bazooka, the stock weapon typically struck an armored target from the top rather than the side, guided by a laser range finder and a magnetic detector. The warhead normally consisted of two parts, an explosive penetrator and a fragmentation grenade: the warhead would penetrate the outer shell of whatever was being attacked, and the grenade would kill whoever was inside.

Melfi’s men were using a special version of the missile. Its titanium and steel warhead did not contain explosives. The idea was that the slug would destroy the front of the car and its engine, stopping it without killing the people inside.

“Now,” said Melfi, ducking down.

The missile made an unearthly hiss as it leapt from the shoulder of the weapons man. The car veered to the right under the blow, plowing to a halt across the road. As it skidded, a Ranger jumped up with what looked like a mortar in his hands. He sighted a red laser dot on the top of the car and squeezed the wide trigger at the base of the weapon. A large, blimp-shaped missile flew from the throat of the gun. The shell disintegrated in midair; by the time it hit the vehicle it had spread into a wide net. Two dozen miniature flash-bang grenades exploded as it hit, the effect not unlike the finale of a massive Fourth of July fireworks display. As the air ripped with the explosions, two pairs of soldiers ran to the car. One man in each pair wielded a pointed sledgehammer, the other carried CIS grenades. The back window and one of the side windows were walloped and the grenades inserted.

“Team up! Team up!” yelled Melfi as smoke began pouring from the car. Six men in heavy body armor and gas masks came forward, armed with crowbars and chain saws; they were covered at close range by four others with more conventional weapons of war. One of the occupants of the vehicle had managed to open his door before being overcome by the gas. He was pulled down, secured under the netting. The team tore off the roof of the vehicle, cutting through the nylon mesh as well as the metal.

“Go, let’s go!” said Melfi. He pulled up and snugged his gas mask as the fumes surged from the car. “Do it! Get every one of them out.”

By the time Rankin got there, all of the men had been taken out and trussed. Two were unconscious, leaning against each other. One lay on the ground moaning. The last sat a few feet away from the others, staring sullenly into the night.

None of the men looked remotely like Khazaal.

“Any papers?” Rankin asked Melfi.

“Nothing. Nothing in the car.”

“Take their pictures. Let the Iraqi look at them.”

Melfi squinted at him. It was the cross-eyed squint captains reserve for NCOs, even those on special assignments, who give them orders. Nonetheless, he told one of his men to do it.

“How far off are the choppers?” Melfi asked.

“Eighteen minutes,” said Rankin. “We’ll hear them a good way out.”

8

Ferguson decided the motorcycles were too far away to walk to, so he hotwired the Land Rover instead. Telling the two Rangers he’d posted on the road to come in and watch the prisoners, he took off with Thera to a spot where he thought he could intercept the third vehicle.

Driving across the open terrain would have been difficult enough in the daytime, since it was pockmarked with boulders and sandpits, but at night without headlamps it was treacherous, which only made it more interesting. Ferguson had Thera pull the satellite photos from his pack as he drove, trying to dodge the worst of the obstructions. They had more than two miles of hardscrabble to get through before reaching a road to the northwest.

“Let me see that sat photo with this grid in it.”

“It’s two satellite photos,” Thera told him, reaching down to get them from the pack on the Land Rover’s floor.

“Point to where we are and where that other road is,” said Ferguson.

“Here and here,” said Thera.

He took the photos and held them on the wheel for a second, then tossed them back.

“All right. Let’s try this,” he said, pulling sharply off the road.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”

“Friend of mine says that,” Ferg told her. “You Catholic?”

“What are you doing?”

“Shortcut. You Catholic?”

“Greek Orthodox, but I went to parochial school.”

“Good thing that didn’t come up in the job interview,” said Ferguson. “Would’ve disqualified you as a fanatic.”

“I heard you went to Catholic school yourself.”

“That’s what I mean.”

When he finally spotted the highway, Ferguson misjudged the depth of the ditch along the side of the road and nearly rolled the Land Rover trying to veer onto the pavement. Thera flew forward, barely keeping herself from slamming into the dashboard. Belatedly, she began fishing for the seat belts.

The Ford was behind them now, but with the road and terrain fairly open, Ferguson needed a strategic place to lay a trap. He’d spotted an intersection about three miles ahead on the map. He told Thera they would put the truck in the middle of it as if it had broken down, then shoot out the Ford’s tires when it stopped to see what was going on. After that they’d use the crossbow and tear gas routine again.

They were still about two miles from the intersection when a shadow loomed over the empty field to his right. Ferguson jammed on the brakes.

An airplane flying at very low altitude, no more than a few feet off the ground, passed over the roadway ahead.

Ferguson jumped out of the car. “Son of a bitch.”

“What?”

“Look.” He pointed in the distance.

“What?”

“You see that?”

“The airplane? Is it ours?”

“Nah. It’s a little Cessna thing. Or some Russian plane like a Cessna.” The plane continued on a straight line to the west, twelve or so feet above the ground.

“Back in the car,” said Ferguson, deciding they’d take the Ford anyway.

“You really think that was Khazaal?” asked Thera.

“Who else would be flying a plane at low altitude across the Syrian frontier?”

“Dozens of people,” she told him. “Smugglers, drug dealers, some other terrorist scumbags we don’t know about.”

“Nice try, but you’re not going to cheer me up,” said Ferguson. He stepped on the gas, going up over a hill and then down so fast that they went airborne for a moment. That gave him an idea. He hit the brakes and backed up, putting the car off one side of the road.

“All right. Out,” he told her. “Take off your shirt.”

“What?”

“Just to rip the sleeve,” he said, pulling open his pocketknife. “The left sleeve. Driver’s side. You can leave it on if you trust me.”

“I’ll do it myself, thanks,” said Thera, holding out her hand for the knife.

“Come on. We probably have less than two minutes,” Ferguson told her. “Open the door and lean out. When they stop and come over, drop the tear gas canister. I’ll be over there with the shotgun.”

“What if they don’t stop?”

“I’ll take out a tire with your crossbow. If they don’t hear a gun they’ll stop,” he told her. “And if they don’t we can always catch up to them in the Land Rover. But if you rip enough of that shirt off, they’ll stop.”

“Ha, ha.”

“Who’s joking?”

Ferguson trotted down the road. He had one shell with netting and flash-bangs, a large projectile with a very short range. It was tempting, very tempting, to load the grenade launcher with a high-explosive grenade and use it on the car; the Ford wouldn’t be armored. If anyone asked any questions, it would be easy to claim that the vehicle tried to run him down. No one would know any different. But he would know, and that was enough.

Ferguson barely had time to get his weapons laid out and set himself before the Ford came over the hill. It moved much slower than the Land Rover had. Ferguson steadied the crossbow then put it down as the vehicle skidded to a stop. Four men, all with small weapons, got out of the car.

Ferguson aimed the grenade launcher point-blank at the tallest of the men and fired. The launcher kicked up as the grenade shot off. He missed the man and hit the side of the truck, igniting the stun grenade and the micromesh net. Ferguson dropped the launcher and thumped two slugs from his shotgun into the men who were still standing, the thick plastic bullets pounding the back of their heads. He had to hit one of the lugs a second time before he fell. By then, tear gas had begun curling out of the Land Rover.

Thera scrambled back through the front of the truck, kicking out of the open passenger-side door. As she reached the ground, one of the men began firing an AK-47 in her direction. She huddled low, grabbing for her own gun. Whirling around, she saw one of the men crawling through the truck. He had a pistol; she fired her own gun point-blank into his forehead.

Ferguson ran to the far side of the Land Rover, grabbing Thera as she staggered backward, coughing from the gas. He pulled her away and gave her a water bottle to irrigate her eyes, then trotted back to the truck. Two of the men were writhing on the ground, one still holding his gun. Ferguson blasted each one in the skull and got the other man for good measure. Then he hit them with the syringes.

“You weren’t kidding about the gas,” said Thera when he got back to her. Tears were streaming from her beet-red face.

“I meant for you to put the mask on before you pulled the grenade,” said Ferguson.

“How?”

He pulled his off, then held it to his face. “You could have run back to the side. It’s all right. Men find it hard to resist a woman’s tears.”

“You’re on a roll tonight,” she told him sarcastically.

“Tell me about it.” Ferguson walked over to the car. Besides a half-dozen guns on the floor of the rear seat, he found a duffle bag filled with hundred-dollar bills.

None of the men were Khazaal. The night had been a total wipeout.