Dead Six

Chapter 23:

The Heist

LORENZO

June 15

Countdown to D-Day.

The radio was on in the background. Just as I had expected, General Al Sabah’s true colors were showing. All of Zubara’s major industries had been nationalized, and if you didn’t like it, too bad, please line up against that wall and wait your turn. The brain drain of the upper-class fleeing was already starting to affect the running of the country. People who had cheered the general’s rise to power a few short months ago were cursing now as their property was confiscated. The university had been closed down, the remains turned over to the craziest mullah he could find. The Zoob was toast.

People never learn. It made me kind of melancholy. I had liked this city. But it didn’t matter, we’d be leaving for our meeting in Saudi Arabia shortly, and I didn’t plan on ever coming back. I’d had some good times here. Shaking my head, I went back to work comparing three different shades of brown contact lenses so that I could match Falah perfectly. Good times? I was just being stupid. Carl shouted for me from the garage.

“What do you think?” he asked proudly when I came down the stairs. He was gesturing at the massive black car that filled the entire space. “No more of that pussy van. This is class.” It was a Mercedes-Benz 600 luxury car, built in 1968. When I had explained the plan to Carl, he had been very specific about what kind of vehicle we would need. “six point three liter V8, single overhead cam, Bosch mechanical fuel injection, hydraulic suspension, sweet mother of God, it has hydraulic windows and trunk lid.”

“You’re starting to sound like Reaper,” I said.

Carl shook his head at my apparent lack of appreciation for automotive excellence. “No soft electronics, genius. I’ve worked this baby over. She’s cherry. I don’t know where Hosani found her, but damn.” He whistled.

“Maybe he bought it off Fidel Castro?”

Reaper was in the backseat, bolting Starfish down. Our testing yesterday out in the boondocks had shown it was ready to go. He chimed in. “Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, and Ceaucescu drove one of these, too. Idi Amin, Ferdinand Marcos, all the real bad asses. This is the ultimate dictator dope-ride.”

“Don’t forget Elvis Presley,” I added. “And the Popemobile.”

“See,” Carl insisted. “Those guys know class.” He turned back to the car sadly. “Too bad we’ve got to trash her.”

“Every mission has casualties. We’re sacrificing her for the greater good.” I put my arm over his shoulder. “Dude, we live through this and I’ll buy you two.”

Carl patted the hood fondly. “I’m gonna hold you to that, Lorenzo.”

LORENZO

East of Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

June 18

Phase Three begins.

The palace compound rose out of the bleak desert like some ancient monument. It was the only human habitation for miles, with nothing but sand stretching in every direction as far as the eye could see. It had once been an oasis and was now a self-contained miniature city. Isolation was the complex’s first layer of defense. There was no way to sneak in. If you wanted to get through those walls, you needed an invitation.

Behind the walls lived a staff numbering in the hundreds, and only a select few of them were ever allowed to leave. Every inch of the interior was constantly monitored. The security here was so unbelievably tight that only once a year were outsiders allowed into the inner sanctum.

The temperature outside was so bad that the window glass of the limousine was scorching hot to the touch, but the overburdened air conditioner kept me semi-comfortable in my traditional robes and additional fake fat padding. Starfish was sitting on the floor next to my legs, black and ominous. “Reaper, is this thing going to give me cancer?”

“Probably not. Now back to quizzing. Third wife’s name and birthday?” Reaper spoke from the front seat. He looked much different with his hair in a neat ponytail and wearing a suit. Both he and Carl were sporting the black-sunglasses bodyguard look.

“Sufi. August twentieth, 1985,” I answered, switching back to Arabic. I tugged on the fake beard that had been weaved into the real one I’d grown out over the last two months and dyed gray. “She is a shrill little harpy, who will give a man no rest.”

“What do you think about football?” Carl asked.

I checked the glued on latex attachment on my nose. It itched horribly but looked perfect. “It is a pathetic distraction that takes our young men away from more important pursuits, such as jihad or reading the scriptures,” I replied, knowing that my tone and inflection was a perfect match to the hours of recorded tapes of Falah’s conversations. Then in my own voice in English, “But I think Al-Nasiffia will take the regional championships.”

“Quit screwing around, you need to be in character.” The palace was growing larger through the window. We were close now. The walls were forty feet tall and thick enough to withstand anything short of 105mm direct fire. FLIR cameras swiveled downward to examine us. The massive front gate hydraulically opened as we neared.

I cleared my mind. For the next few minutes, I needed to think and act as if I were Ali bin Ahmed Al Falah, terrorist scumbag. We passed through the tunnel in the wall and entered the Garden of freaking Eden. A paradise waited inside the walls. It had trees, orchards, a lake with spiraling fountains, and behind that was the palace itself. The small model in our hideout had not done the thing justice. It was huge.

But I wasn’t here for the palace. I was after what was under it.

My trained eye picked up the multitude of cameras and guard posts watching us. We stopped at the base of the palace, and I prepared myself as my “bodyguards” exited and opened my door. Carl extended a hand and helped me out. The heat was like a blast furnace.

I was in character now.

A hulking brute of a man approached, with four rifle-armed guards trailing behind him. He looked awkward in a suit. “Ali bin Ahmed Al Falah, my name is Hassan, and I am the director of security for Prince Abdul.”

“What happened to Adar?” I asked suspiciously. “He was in charge of security the last time I was here.”

“He left for other opportunities,” Hassan replied without hesitation. In reality he had left for Iraq, where there were more opportunities to hurt people, until Falah had called him to Zubara.

“Of course. I had not heard from my old friend recently. I’ve been worried about him.”

“Please come with me, sir. The other guests have already arrived.”

I followed Hassan up the stairs, Carl and Reaper behind me, and the four guards behind them. I spotted at least one sniper on the roof. There were two helicopters parked on a nearby pad. Several other limos and expensive super-cars were parked just forward of mine. Through the steel-reinforced twelve-foot front doors, cold air washed over us as we came into the entryway that was bigger than the largest house I’d ever lived in. A solid gold chandelier was overhead, and the best word to describe the interior of the palace was opulent. Paintings and statues that would have been centerpiece attractions at the finest museums in the world lined the walls, mere trinkets here. The prince had some cash.

Hassan gestured toward a metal detector manned by two more guards. Adar’s box was safely concealed inside my padding. Whatever metal the key was made out of didn’t trigger metal detectors, we’d already checked. I stepped through, clean, followed by my crew.

Nobody brought weapons anywhere near the prince.

It beeped as Carl stepped through. The four guards lifted their guns slightly. Carl raised his hands. “I got a piece of metal stuck in my back,” he stated. Two other men appeared and immediately led Carl aside for a more invasive search. As a VIP, I knew that I would be spared such indignities.

Hassan held up one gigantic hand to stop me. “I apologize for the inconvenience, but surely you must understand, with all the questionable activity concerning your disappearance and the resulting confusion, I need to be sure of your identity before I allow you into the presence of Prince Abdul.” He held a small box with a scanner window in his other hand. It had two lights on it. One red. One green.

“But of course,” I replied. Without hesitation, I put my right thumb on the window.

Reaper had spent hours testing the prosthetic attachment. It was a relatively new technology, and the single, tiny piece of etched, synthetic flesh glued to my hand had cost a ton, and just to be on the safe side, I was wearing one on each finger. Micro engraved with preprogrammed whirls and ridges, it was the most practical way to fool a fingerprint machine. The machine would only read Falah’s fingerprints.

The red light lit up.

Not cool. A single bead of sweat rolled down my back. The guards shifted, spreading out around me.

Hassan shook his head. “Technology, it never works right. Please try again, sir.”

I put my thumb on the glass. Hassan nodded at the guard behind me. If this didn’t work, we were going to die. Horribly. Turn green, you little bastard.

Green light.

“Ah, excellent. I apologize for the inconvenience.” Hassan smiled. His teeth looked slightly pointed. “There is just one more thing. I have someone who wishes to speak with you, an old friend who was most shocked by your sudden disappearance.” He clapped his hands.

“Please hurry,” I said with some exasperation. This was not good. We had not planned on anyone close to Falah being at the palace. He was known to these people, but only because of an annual meeting. Conning a close associate was a thousand times more difficult than mere business acquaintances. “I do not wish to be late.”

A young man in a gray guard’s uniform came around the corner. “Al Falah!” he exclaimed, his face lighting up. “Oh, I was so sure you had been murdered.”

Flash back to the apartment, hours spent going over the cards, each card a picture of one of Falah’s people, with a name and a description on the back. Carl had quizzed me mercilessly, hammering these strangers into my brain. “Rashid!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing here?” Really, what was he doing here? Rashid was one of the bodyguards that had supposedly been killed during the hit. He had been in the chase car that had taken off after the sniper. This was way too close.

I’d been practicing for weeks, talking like Falah, moving like him, watching videos, listening to phone calls, and then finally watching him in person in the club, conversing with the man, playing games of chess against him, all coming down to this.

“I saw you get shot, and then we chased the assassins. They crashed into our car. I was the only one who lived. I woke up, and there was this tall American standing over me. He pointed this huge revolver at my face. I prayed for my life. He fired, but the bullet only grazed my head.” He eagerly indicated a long scar going down the side of his head. “I thought I was dead, but Merciful Allah spared me!”

Valentine, you cock-fag sack of shit monkey-humping pus ball!

I smiled broadly. “How fortuitous.”

“But how did you live?” He studied me carefully, obviously suspicious. Apparently he’d shared his concerns with Hassan also, because the tall man had that look in his eye that suggested he was ready to break me in half at a moment’s notice.

“I hired Khalid, from the club, to stand in my place. I had heard rumors of Americans operating in the city, and it worried me. Allah smiled upon me, as I had been wise to do so. Rashid, I’m so very glad to see that you are alive.” I spoke as he spoke. I moved as he moved. I was Ali bin Ahmed Al Falah.

“As am I to see you.” He grinned, buying the act, then nodded at Hassan. “I am working for the prince now, but I would be honored to serve you again, should you ever need me.”

“Of course. Thank you, my son.”

Hassan gestured toward the epic marble staircase. “Right this way, sir. The meeting is about to start. Your men will stay here, and we will provide them refreshment.” I nodded at Carl and Reaper. They knew what to do.

There was an elevator shaft in the center of the staircase. Hassan and I traveled up several floors. The motors were utterly silent, and it was the smoothest elevator I’d ever ridden. The control panel was encrypted, and the basement levels couldn’t be accessed without authorization from central control. Even the carpet inside the elevator was so thick that I left footprints.

“The prince respects you a great deal,” Hassan said, attempting small talk. “He was worried that you might have been hurt in the recent unpleasantness.”

“I am only sorry that so many of our brave brothers gave their lives to the cowardly Americans,” I answered. “And I’m greatly troubled that I would have caused a man as noble as Prince Abdul any distress. I do hope that he will accept my humble apologies.”

The door whisked open at the top floor. We exited into a long hallway, and Hassan led the way into a meeting room the size of an aircraft hangar.

It was only because of Big Eddie that I knew anything about this meeting which was conducted annually in extreme secrecy. By special invitation only, it was a gathering of the region’s movers and shakers, and a handful of special guests from the rest of the world. Businessmen, politicians, scions of powerful families, royalty, and propaganda masters, some of the most important string-pullers on Earth were gathered here. Unspeakable things were planned in this room, agendas set, and massive checks written. This was where the real behind-the-scenes action took place.

Reaper’s conspiracy-theory radio would have a heart attack.

The guests were milling around, eating endangered species off a buffet table that could feed Ecuador for a year, mingling and waiting for their host to arrive. I recognized many of them from the flashcards, others from the news. I stayed in character, passing through the room, looking for familiar faces, watching for anyone who might know the terrorist financier that I was pretending to be. In this crowd, Falah was a low-level player. He barely ranked an invite only due to his many contacts. If a bombing was going down within 1,500 miles, Falah probably knew about it beforehand.

The prince had not arrived yet. In a country with 4,000 members of the royal family, he was not even close to being the heir, but through malicious use of his fortune, Prince Abdul had carved a place for himself as the ultimate arbiter of power in the Middle East, and since the world’s economy had stupidly become dependent upon this region’s resources, the decisions he made affected every person on the planet. He had his fingers in everything, oil, war, politics, even entertainment. Nothing happened here unless the prince had knowledge of it. OPEC was his bitch.

The annual meeting was held for two reasons. First, so the prince could set his agenda for the next year, and coerce or bribe the various VIPs to work together to accomplish his goals. Second, it was to stroke his massive ego. He liked being so important that presidents and dictators jumped at his command. Factions that absolutely hated each other came together for this meeting, all evil but each hoping to be the side that curried the prince’s favor this year. This must be what Satan’s throne room was like.

Of the hundred or so guests, there were maybe a dozen Europeans, a few Asians, and a handful of Africans. I recognized one American, a former senator who was surely here lobbying on behalf of something nefarious.

There was one man standing to the side that I knew immediately, not from the flashcards but from the protestor’s signs. General Al Sabah had come himself to pay respects to the ultimate Godfather. He looked a little uncomfortable. Maybe his ascension hadn’t had the prince’s blessing, but he’d earned his way in through ruthlessness. I’m sure he’d fit right in.

Flash back to the model. Remember the layout. Focus on the mission.

A hand fell on my shoulder. I slowly turned. It was one of the Europeans. “Ah, Mr. Al Falah. What a pleasure to meet you,” the man said. He didn’t look like much.

Falah’s English was rough, halting, and so was mine. “The pleasure is mine . . .” I did not recognize him from the flashcards. “Mister?”

“Montalban. Eduard Montalban.” He smiled, but his eyes were pools of nothing. I had looked into serpent’s eyes that held more soul. He leaned in close and hissed in my ear, “But for you, Lorenzo, my friends call me Big Eddie.”

I couldn’t speak. Big Eddie was real.

His accent was British, and his manner was effeminate. His nails were manicured, and each finger had some form of expensive jewelry on it. Probably only in his thirties, with Flock of Seagulls hair and dark circles under his eyes, he looked skinny and weak. He even spoke with a bit of a lisp.

All this time, I had been picturing Lex Luthor, and instead I got Carson from Queer Eye. It was a bit of a shock. As Carl would say, Big Eddie was a poofter. This really wasn’t what I had expected.

But I would be a fool to underestimate him. I knew for a fact that he was directly responsible for hundreds, if not thousands, of murders. He was a pure killer. This man had more blood on his hands than anyone could ever imagine.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Montalban. I do not believe that I’ve seen you at this meeting before.” It was difficult to stay in Al Falah mode and not just snap his neck. The room was lined with guards, and I wouldn’t make it ten feet. I could live, well, die with that, but it would seal my crew’s fate as well.

“No. You would be correct. This is my first year. Normally my half-brother represents the family interests.” Eddie did not blink as he appraised me. My initial take had been correct. There was no soul in there. He was empty.

“It is unfortunate that he could not make it.”

“Yes. His boat exploded. Bloody sad bit of business, that.” He glanced over his shoulder at the American delegation. “That Senator Kenton is a batty shit, isn’t she? Hag just won’t shut up. Her people are a constant pain in my arse.”

“Indeed. Filthy Americans,” I responded. What was he doing here? I struggled to be polite while the wheels in my brain were turning. “So, what is it that you do, Mr. Montalban?”

“The family business.” he waved his hand dismissively. “Shipping, mostly. All the oil in the world won’t do any good if they can’t move it, you know. I don’t trouble myself with the details.” Then Eddie leaned back in and whispered into my good ear. “Just a slight change of plan, chap. You just keep up the good work. Pretend I’m not here.” His closeness made me cringe.

“This wasn’t part of the deal,” I whispered.

“I make the deal. You do what I say.” He must have caught the murderous glimmer in my eye. “That would be a mistake, my friend. Even if you succeeded in taking me out, your family would still die.”

“What do you want?”

His breath stank of menthol lozenges. “Why, you’re a legend. The family wouldn’t be where it was today if it hadn’t been for you. I just wanted to meet you in person.” He reached up and tugged on the end of my beard. “I’d say face-to-face, but this is close enough. You’re probably the best employee I’ve ever had. When you quit, I was simply heartbroken.”

I had been warned back then. Nobody left Big Eddie’s service. Nobody. “Yeah, me, too.”

“Do your job. Now get back to work.” Eddie adjusted his silk tie as he walked away, waving foppishly at someone else, returning to the party.

Focus on the plan. Deal with Eddie later. It took me a moment to compose myself. Why had he bothered? It didn’t make any sense. Shit. He’d told me his name. He was going to kill me.

Servants in tuxedos began to usher the guests away from the buffet and toward a rectangular table the size of a basketball court. Bummer, since the harp seal looked delicious. The meeting was about to begin. I could only hope that Reaper and Carl were ready. I checked Falah’s Rolex, the meeting was exactly on schedule. It was time.

Hanging back, I waited for the group to begin to sit in their assigned places around the giant table. The room gradually darkened; projectors came out of the ceiling and displayed images and maps on the walls. The prince entered the room, and the power brokers politely clapped. Prince Abdul was one of the richest people in the world. If he woke up with a tummy ache, gas prices would go up fifty cents a gallon by lunchtime, so you damn well better believe they clapped.

While the main attention was elsewhere, I grimaced, stumbled, and caught myself on the edge of the buffet table. There was a servant by my side almost instantly.

“Are you all right, sir?”

“My arm hurts. Oh, my chest.” I gasped and wheezed, doing my best to contort my face. The servant was on a radio, and I had a guard on each arm helping me toward the exit within seconds. In the background, the prince was giving his opening comments. Most of the power brokers did not notice my exit. Big Eddie winked.

We had memorized the layout of the palace. Every room and corridor was known to me. I knew exactly where I was as the guards pushed my wheelchair down the marble hall. The infirmary was the tenth room on this wing. The guards chattered into their radios, asking for one the prince’s physicians to meet them.

“Oh, the pain.” I was really milking it. “It is my heart again. Summon my men; they have my special medication.”

“Do as he says!” one of the guards ordered as he rolled me into the white-walled room filled with state-of-the-art medical equipment. They gently lifted my padded bulk onto a padded table. There were two guards in the room now.

This was right where I needed to be. The building plans indicated that the infirmary backed up to the secondary security-control station. They shared the same wiring conduit behind the walls. The plans said that the access panel was ten feet from the northwest corner. Reaper figured that it would look like a half-size metal door with electrical warning stickers on it. There.

“Dr. Karzi, it is Al Falah, one of the guests. He has fallen ill. He says it is his heart,” one of the guards exclaimed as an older man entered the room, pulling a white smock over his starched shirt and tie. He rudely pushed the guard aside and pressed his fingers against my neck. He scowled.

“That is odd,” he muttered. “Describe your pain.”

“It hurts.” I held up my arm and risked a glance at my watch. I had been playing sick now for three minutes, which meant Carl had probably tripped Starfish’s timer by now. “I need my men . . . my medicine . . .” On cue, Reaper appeared, being led by a third guard. He gave me an imperceptible nod.

The doctor began to open the front of my traditional dress. “Your heart rate is only forty beats per minute. Something is abnormal.” There were some downsides to having ice water running through your veins.

“I have his medication,” Reaper said, holding up the briefcase he had been allowed to obtain from our car. Sadly, there were no guns in it, because we had been certain that even in this scenario, they would probably still give it a cursory check. He opened the case.

The doctor was going to figure out something was wrong any second now. The guards looked more concerned for my health than for any trickery. Well, they should be concerned; Al Falah was buddies with every badass terrorist in the business. I was the equivalent of a rock star to these guys.

Several stories below, Starfish was counting down to firing. I was technically illiterate, but Reaper had done his best to educate me. Starfish was a NNEMPD, a Non-Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse Device. When Starfish’s timer hit zero, it was going to use a small amount of explosives to cause a compressed magnetic flux. It would nail every electronic device within a couple hundred yards with the equivalent of getting struck by lightning ten times in a quarter of a second.

Reaper came out with a syringe full of amber liquid. He tapped it and squirted a bit out to remove the air bubbles. The doctor glanced at him. “This isn’t a coronary. What is his condition?”

The lights went out, plunging the room into pure black.

“Just plain mean,” Reaper answered.

I nailed the doctor with an elbow to the face and then sprung off the table, moving in the direction of the three guards. I couldn’t see, but I had been expecting this. They were caught by surprise. A shape moved in front of me. I kicked straight out, low and fast, and caught someone in the knee. There was a scream. A hand grabbed my thobe and pulled. I grabbed the wrist, twisted it, and levered it down, snapping bones. I palm-struck that guard in the throat and put him down.

The emergency power kicked on a second later. The place was certainly efficient. The third guard was down, Reaper’s syringe in his neck. The man with the broken knee fumbled with the strap over his pistol. I snap-kicked him in the face, and he was done.

Reaper retrieved the briefcase and sprinted to the access panel. He opened it, revealing a twisted pillar of wires and fiber-optic cables. He immediately went to work. Starfish wasn’t powerful enough to destroy everything, just the unshielded electronics that were close to it. It was at ground level and wouldn’t travel very far. Inside the palace, it would have fried a lot of stuff, but the main security system would be shielded. But that was okay. We didn’t want to take it out; we only needed to give them a surge hard enough to force them to restart.

I pulled the syringe out of the guard, moved to the next one, and poked him in the side, careful to only give him a few CCs of the powerful horse tranquilizer. The doctor moaned and crawled toward one of the guard’s squawking radios. “Nighty night, Doc.” I stuck him in the arm and gave him the last of the drug. He sluggishly rolled over, smiled stupidly at me, giggled, and was out.

“System report. What caused the power surge?” It was Hassan’s voice on the radio. I picked it off of the guard’s belt. Apparently it hadn’t been hot enough to fry these.

“Unknown, sir,” someone else responded. “The system has gone down. We’ll have it back up shortly.”

“Find out, or I’ll have you fed to the tigers,” Hassan snapped. “Taha, report.”

The line was quiet.

“Taha. What’s the status of our guest?” Hassan sounded angry. He did not seem like the kind of person I wanted to deal with when he was angry. I had to assume that one of these men was Taha.

I made my voice as neutral as possible. “Dr. Karzi says that it was just gas. Al Falah is resting.” I began to remove weapons from the guard’s duty belts. FN FNP 9mms, good guns.

“Fine. Get him back here as soon as you can. Hassan out.”

I checked my watch. “Forty seconds,” I said to Reaper.

“Working on it.” He was flipping through wires like a man on a mission. “Get my computer.” I pulled the laptop out of the briefcase, opened it, and waited for his next command. It was already running and on the correct screens. We had practiced this a few times. This was his gig now.

From Big Eddie’s intel we knew that the palace compound was a closed system. There was no way to hack into the security from the outside world. If you wanted to take over, you needed to be in the belly of the beast. The design parameters told us that we had one minute from a power outage for the system to reset, and then we’d be locked out. It was a narrow window, but it was all we had.

Reaper picked a fat yellow cable and did his magic to it, clamping some sort of ring around it. He plugged a USB cable into his machine and then pushed me rather rudely out of the way.

“Thirty seconds.”

“I know. I know,” he muttered. Screens flashed by as he paged through them. “Come on, baby, come on.”

I stuffed two of the FNs inside the thobe and left the third on the countertop by Reaper. I stuck four extra magazines into my pockets. Might as well be ready, because if he couldn’t get us into their system, we were going to have a whole lot of explaining to do. And when I said explaining, I meant shooting. I also took one of the radios.

“Twenty seconds.”

Numbers were scrolling through a box on the screen. Another box was gradually filling up with asterisks below it. This was hard to watch, and my stomach felt sick at the tension. The computer beeped.

“Ten. Why did it beep?”

“Shut up, Lorenzo!”

“Five.”

The screen changed color, and Reaper clapped his hands together above his head. “I so rock! We’re in. I think I should be the new sysadmin.” Reaper began to tab through windows. Alarm systems, cameras, laser arrays, surface-to-air missiles; you name it, we had it. He immediately found the camera for the infirmary. It was a black-and-white image of the two of us standing over the computer, with a bunch of people lying on the floor. He fiddled with the track ball, and the camera rotated until it was looking at the far wall. Now it was an empty room.

“I’m going,” I said. I reset the timer on my watch. “Mark, ten minutes. Then we blow this sucker.” From our best estimates, that was how long we figured we had before system command figured out that they were compromised and the whole place locked down on red alert.

“I know the drill,” he replied, not taking his eyes from the screen. Of course he did. We had practiced this a hundred times. He was already screwing around with the palace’s communications. In a few seconds, the only people who were going to be using the radio net in this place were the ones Reaper was going to allow to do so. He didn’t need to do anything to the outside equipment; Starfish had destroyed most of that. So now he was randomly closing down interior systems. Hopefully they’d think that it was some sort of equipment malfunction and not that they were being violated by people like us.

At ten minutes, I exited, took a quick glance down the hallways, and then walked purposefully toward the main elevator. Some servants noticed me, but I smiled at them like I belonged there, and they let me pass. I entered the elevator and waited for the doors to close.

Nine minutes left. The elevator was secure and plated in gold and polished mirrors. You needed a card key to access anything other than the main floors. Only a handful of the staff here had the card necessary to do so. I didn’t even press any buttons, and the car began to move smoothly down. A digital display counted rapidly into the negative numbers as we headed deep into the bowels of the palace.

My radio beeped. I pulled it out. “Go.”

“I’m in control now. I’ve locked out everyone else. They’re confused, blaming it on the surge. You’ve got two guards standing at the base of the elevator shaft, and you’re going to walk right into them.”

“Put me through to them,” I said, then cleared my throat. I had only spoken with him for a moment, but I needed to do a real convincing Hassan, real quick.

“You’re on,” Reaper said, and the radio clicked.

“All guards on basement six report to the level command post.” I could only hope that those were the correct terms, as that was what they had been labeled on Big Eddie’s stolen plans. “I want you there immediately.”

“But, sir, you said not to leave our—”

“Tigers! I will feed you to the tigers! Hassan out.” I shouted.

“They’re moving, Lorenzo,” Reaper said.

At seven minutes the elevator slid to a halt at negative six and the doors whooshed open. This was the lowest floor, chiseled out of the solid rock and containing one very secure vault. The hallway was empty. The concrete floors echoed as I walked down them. The level command post was just around the corner. I needed to get past it to get to the vault room.

I slid along the cold wall. Even the desert heat couldn’t reach this deep into the Earth. I carefully took stock of the command room. I could see at least a half a dozen men through the glass doors, most of them standing, looking around nervously, waiting for Hassan to arrive.

I checked my watch. Six minutes. There was no way I was going to get past there without getting spotted. I pulled out the radio. “Need a distraction at the guard room.”

“I’m looking through the menus. Hang on.”

The clock was ticking. I was going to give him thirty more seconds, and then I would try to sneak past on my own. Knowing that I was probably going to get spotted, I pulled one of the pistols and checked the chamber. No time for thought, once you pick a course of action, you were committed, and you’d damn well better see it through.

“Got it.”

The guards shouted in confusion as the fire sprinklers came on. I was immediately drenched in the downpour. I moved quickly while they were either looking up or covering their heads. I ran, splashing down the hallway, and pushed my way through the heavy double doors at the end. Once again, I didn’t even have to swipe a card.

“Oh shit. I screwed up, chief.”

“What?” I stared at the mighty vault door. It was enormous, a circular stainless-steel ultra-modern monolith to security engineering. To a thief like me, it was the most intimidating thing I had ever seen. Multiple combination locks ringed the device, over a dozen giant bolts were compressed into the tempered steel at different angles. The fact that the sprinklers in here were dumping water everywhere made the scene slightly surreal. On the other side of that vault were the greatest treasures in the world, wealth beyond all comprehension.

But that wasn’t what I’d come for.

“That command turned on all the fire sprinklers in the palace. I’m watching the cameras. Everybody is freaking out!”

I continued down the hall. The carved stone became rougher and rougher and the passage started to trend sharply downward. I was now in the ancient tunnels that predated the construction of the palace. There were no sprinklers here, but their water flooded in a fast trail past my feet to disappear ahead of me.

“The IT guys know something is up,” Reaper exclaimed. “Hurry.”

They were ahead of schedule. Why was it that nothing ever went according to plan?

The tunnel opened into a larger room. A string of lights had been bolted into the ceiling. The room was perfectly square, every surface covered in carved writing. I didn’t recognize any of the words; everything was too archaic. There was a circular indentation on the floor. The room felt ancient.

And it should. This space had been carved over a thousand years ago by unknown hands. Discovered by Saladin’s armies, it had been used to house his most valuable possessions. Or so the Fat Man’s report had said. All I knew was that the thing I sought was under my feet.

There were only a handful of these keys still in existence, passed down from fathers to whoever was the best warrior among their sons for hundreds of years. Over time they had gained something of almost religious significance. It was prestigious to be the bearer of the key, even though the reasons had long since been lost to the sands of time. Eddie’s file had said the prince didn’t understand what he was sitting on, except that it was prestigious and therefore had to be hoarded.

I found the keyhole in the center of the floor, a bizarrely geometric shape, going straight down. Standing in the indentation, I took the key out. I had to turn the base slowly until the protruding spines lined up with the hole. I inserted it until it clicked into the lock. As I twisted the base back, there was a cold hiss of air around me and the stone under my feet began to shudder. Steps appeared one by one as the floor sank. I leapt back in surprise. I had expected a simple door or something, not an elaborate construction that seemed to work like oiled silk even though it was a millennium old.

Holy shit, that’s cool.

Within thirty seconds a narrow staircase had materialized, shooting straight down into the darkness. The steps were tiny, brutally steep, and made for feet far smaller than mine. I went down, and after a few steps I made out a faint glow. The stairs terminated in a stone wall carved with a three-foot skull. The skull had curving ram’s horns. The light was coming from inside the skull’s open mouth.

There it is. Whatever it is. It was sitting in the alcove formed by the mouth. It was vaguely Egyptian looking, almost like one of those beetle things they carved on the pyramids. A scarab, I believe they were called. It was only two inches of intricately carved black metal wrapped around a gold blob. At first I thought the center was glass, but it was different somehow, almost like crystal. With a shock I realized that the center was actually where the light was coming from.

I was scared to touch it. Maybe it was radioactive. “Shit,” I muttered. I didn’t have time for this. I reached inside the alcove and scooped up the thing. It was surprisingly heavy. I froze as I felt it shift in my palm, for an uneasy second thinking that it was alive, but it was the golden interior. It was some sort of dense liquid shifting about sluggishly. I felt incredibly nervous, like I was a child screwing around with something that I really shouldn’t be. There was an unbelievable temptation to just put it the hell back.

This thing wasn’t natural. It was somehow wrong.

Reaper pulled me back. “Time’s up, Chief.” I looked at my watch, I had only been down here for ten seconds, but it had felt like forever in the dark. “I gotta go. I’ve set the system for our getaway and crashed everything else. I locked the sprinkler controls. I’ve opened every gate except for the one that leads to the water main. I’m going to pump half the Gulf in here before they get that door breached, punk-ass newbs tried to mess with me. Elevator is running freely now. The guests are trying to get out. All hell’s breaking loose. Shit. Some guards are coming this way, gotta run.”

“Go, I’ll meet you at the car,” I said, stuffing the scarab inside my clothing. I didn’t have time for metaphysical bullshit. I had a job to finish. I ran back up the stairs, reached the top, twisted the key free, and sure enough the stairs began to rise, one by one. I knew that within seconds it would be like I had never been here.

There was no way that stealth was going to work now. I drew one of the FN pistols and kept it low at my side as I hurried up the tunnel. The sprinklers were still pumping. One of the guards stepped into the raining hallway from the control room, shouting into his blocked-off radio. He heard my footfalls and turned just in time to catch a face full of steel slide. The shock reverberated down my arm, and the guard rebounded off the wall. I was past him, in a full-on sprint now. Voices shouted behind me. I extended the 9mm as I ran, not even looking as I fired wildly down the corridor, just trying to keep their heads down.

Bullets whizzed past. I spun to the side as I slid into the elevator. Projectiles impacted the wall, shattering the polished glass. Mashing the up arrow repeatedly, I leaned the gun around the corner and cranked off wild shots until the slide locked back empty. The door slid closed, bullets clanging off the exterior.

I dropped the spent mag on the soggy carpet and reloaded. The elevator car vibrated slightly as pulleys lifted me toward safety. I pushed the button to stop at the lobby floor. The doors opened onto pure pandemonium. Water was pouring down the walls, collecting in chandeliers, and ruining antique furniture. Billionaires were pushing to get out the entryway, and the prince’s men were trying to stop them. A fight had erupted between one of the bigwig’s security detail and some of the gray-uniformed guards.

I collided with a fat, bloated slug of a man. He glared stupidly at me with little pig eyes and tried to push his way into the relatively dry elevator. “Hey, you’re bleeding,” he said nasally in American English as he pointed at my robes. “What happened in here?” Not seeing any guards looking in my direction, I grabbed him by the throat, yanked him into the car, broke his nose with a head butt, kneed him hard in the crotch, and then slammed his face repeatedly into the wall. He collapsed in a whimpering heap in the shell casings and broken glass.

Nonchalantly as possible, I stepped into the indoor rain and pushed through the chaos. Carl magically appeared at my side. “Wow, you really kicked Michael Moore’s ass,” he whispered. I turned back briefly. It had kind of looked like him . . . Naw.

There was Reaper, also heading toward the door. Hassan was blocking the door with his bulk, shouting for order and begging the VIPs to calm down. I saw Eduard Montalban at the foot of the stairs, a grinning caricature of a human being. In sharp contrast, the Fat Man stood behind him, holding an umbrella open over his employer. Big Eddie golf-clapped for me.

Hassan finally relented, surely not willing to risk the prince’s wrath, and let the sodden guests through the door. We shoved along with the rest of the sheiks, royalty, CEOs, and scumbags into the scorching desert air. Hassan was too busy screaming into his nonresponsive radio to notice me exit. Steam immediately rose from my man-dress as we headed for the car.

The crowd was spreading when the first explosion went off. It was at the opposite end of the compound, but it sent the group into an even bigger frenzy. Reaper had set the mines along the opposite perimeter to detonate randomly. He was grinning from ear to ear, enjoying the up-close view of his handiwork.

The radio under my thobe began to speak. It was my voice in panicked Arabic, the audio file recorded back at our hideout and set to play on the radio net as a final distraction. It was going to repeat every thirty seconds, and it was the only thing that was going to broadcast over their intercoms and radios. “We’re under attack. Forces are breaching the north wall. All guards to the north wall. Evacuate the guests. The prince does not want them found here. Let everyone out the gates!” I opened the door and slid into the backseat of our Mercedes. Carl and Reaper jumped in the front.

Around us, other drivers were attempting to start their expensive cars to no avail, their modern electronics all hopelessly fried by Starfish. “Go!” I shouted. We were spinning tires and leaving rubber on the pavement in an instant, zipping through the gardens, through the tunnel under the wall, and then we were out into the blinding desert. The acceleration sucked, but within a few minutes our land-yacht was doing a hundred.

We had done it. We had pulled it off. The palace was shrinking in the distance. All three of us began to whoop and cheer wildly. Carl screamed out happy profanities. Reaper punched the ceiling. We had done the impossible. Phase Three was done. This suicide mission was done. Screw you, Eddie. We got your stupid treasure.

Then the adrenaline began to subside, and my hands began to shake. That is when I noticed the blood and felt a burning sensation in my back. I stuck one quivering hand under my thobe and probed around. It came back slick and red.

Nothing ever goes according to plan.

“Ow! Carl, careful!” I snapped. “That hurts.”

“Quit your crying. Here you go.” He waved a bloody Leatherman multitool in front of my head with something held in the pliers. I opened my hand and he dropped a bullet fragment onto my palm. Carl poured something stinging on my back then started to tape down a bandage. “That’s it. Must have bounced off the elevator wall and got you. I thought the way you were whining you might actually have gotten hurt or something.”

The limo was still cruising across the bleak desert. Reaper was driving now, so Carl could play medic, and had taken us off the main road and deeper into the dunes. The car kicked up a massive sand plume behind us. “We’re almost there,” he shouted into the back compartment.

“Good,” I answered as I threw the waterlogged and bloodstained man-dress on the floor. Carl handed me a T-shirt. “As soon as we stop, you guys grab Al Falah out of the trunk, shove him back here, and we’ll light this sucker. I’ll get the van ready.”

“What, you get one little hole in you and you think you don’t have to lift the fat guy?” Carl asked with a grin. Even a bitter and angry fellow like Carl had to be in a jovial mood after pulling off a heist like this. He started to undo his tie. “At least he’ll be thawed. When he wouldn’t bend, it was a hell of a time getting him in the trunk.”

They’d identify the burned corpse as Al Falah, probably assumed murdered by his co-conspirators, which would totally point the investigation in the wrong direction at first. Eventually an autopsy would show that he’d been dead for a long time, but by then we’d be well out of the country.

I tried to turn serious for a minute. “Guys, I’ve just got to say. You were amazing back there. The EMP was awesome. You took down security in record time, everything. That was damn near perfect . . . except for the sprinklers.”

“Yeah, what the fuck was that?” Carl shouted before he called Reaper something unpronounceable in Portuguese and threw his tie at the driver.

“Hey, I had to improvise,” our techie answered defensively. “Next time, you do the computer stuff and I’ll do the kung-fu ninja stuff. How hard could it be?”

“Well, either way, we’re done.” I pulled the scarab from my pocket. It still made me uncomfortable. “We got his damn . . . whatever.”

“Rub it and see if it grants three wishes,” Reaper suggested.

“Whatever, Aladdin, Big Eddie will be in contact and we can arrange a handoff. And I didn’t get the chance to tell you—I met Eddie. He was there at the meeting.”

“No way,” Carl said. “Was he there because of us?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. But he felt the need to talk to me in person, which can’t be good.”

“Do you think our families are off the hook?” Reaper asked quietly.

“I think I’ve got an idea to guarantee Eddie sticks to his word. I’ll fill you guys in on the way to the border.”

An ancient oil rig appeared ahead of us. It had long since fallen into disuse and was slowly decaying back into the desert. There was a wooden shack behind it where we had stashed our van. A few minutes to destroy the evidence, and we’d be on our way toward the border. We parked near the dilapidated shed. Old canvas tarps whipped in the wind.

I stepped into the searing heat, savoring the freedom of it, and went to unlock the padlock we had left on the shed. Carl pulled out a pair of binoculars and scanned the desert we’d just traveled. “Lorenzo, we’ve got dust behind us. We’re being followed.”

I shouted back as I unlocked the door. “How far?”

“We’ve got maybe five minutes,” he responded. “How’d they find us?”

I’d hoped that Starfish would have bought us more time. “Eddie probably had a bug stuck on our car during the meeting,” I shouted. Well, it was either Eddie’s goons or the prince’s men. Eddie must have decided he couldn’t trust us to hand off the goods, that double-crossing bastard, and heaven help us if it was Hassan. I shoved the door open. The white van was a welcome sight. “Hurry up and move that body! We’ve got to roll.”

I was getting into the van, looking for the ignition key, as Carl was unlocking the limousine’s trunk. Reaper was getting out of the driver’s seat.

“They won’t be able to catch us, Lorenzo. Nobody can catch me,” Carl said as the trunk lid opened.

CRACK!

I jerked my head in surprise, jolted by the unexpected noise, dropping the keys to the van’s floorboards.

Carl’s beady eyes narrowed in momentary confusion, bushy brows scrunching together as he looked into the trunk. The first bullet had struck him square in the chest, leaving a red hole on his white dress shirt. The second concussion came a split second later. Blood spurted from Carl’s neck, his hands flying reflexively to his throat as he fell sprawling into the sand.

Time jerked to a screeching halt.

“Carl!” Reaper screamed. Someone was crawling out of the trunk.

I was moving, the FNP coming out of my waistband.

The man twisted to the side, one foot hitting the ground, the other still bent in the trunk. He extended a small B&T machine pistol in one hand, seeking Reaper.

“Down! “Down!” I pushed around the van door, punching the FN out, the front sight moving into my field of vision, finger already pulling the trigger back.

Too late.

The submachine gun bucked, brass flashing in the sunlight. Reaper jerked violently to the side, spinning, crashing into the limousine’s hood as the window beside him shattered. I fired, the 9mm in my hand recoiling, the front sight coming back on target, firing again.

The man dove from the trunk, rolling in the sand on the other side of the limo. I moved laterally, gun up, tracking, searching, looking for another shot. He opened up from under the car. Bullets stitched across the shack behind me, flinging splinters into the air. Metal screeched as something struck the van. I was running now, not even thinking about it, trying to flank around the side of the car.

He rose, looking for me, glaring over the top of the limo, stubby black muzzle swinging wide. He was a tiny, dark-skinned man, drenched in sweat. Still moving, I saw him first, centered the front sight and fired. His head snapped back violently, visible matter flying as I shot him in the face. I hammered him twice more before he disappeared.

I lowered the gun. Multiple dust plumes were closing in the distance. Reaper was dragging himself up the car hood. He screamed as the pain hit him. I grabbed him as he started to fall again. “Can you move?” I shouted.

He grimaced, biting his lip, tears running down his cheeks. “Yes.”

“Get in the van. Hurry!” Reaper lurched away. I ran for Carl.

My friend was gasping, shaking, blood streaming between his fingers as he kept pressure on his neck. He focused on me as I knelt beside him. “Get him?” he wheezed. There was a massive quantity of blood already spilled on the sand.

“Yeah, I got him. Hang on, man, I’m gonna get you out of here.”

Carl closed his eyes. He grabbed my hand and squeezed.

Then he was gone.

“Carl?”

The cars were closer now. I knelt by the body of my friend, pistol dangling from my numb fingertips. I wanted nothing more than to stay here and wait for them to arrive.

Then all of this would have been for nothing.

I stood, dragged Carl’s body to the limo, gently set him in the driver’s seat, then went to the trunk. Falah’s body was still cold. It was probably the only thing that had kept the assassin alive in the heat, lying on that ice block, waiting for his chance. He must have gotten in while we were at the palace. I retrieved the white phosphorus grenade from under Falah, pulled the pin, and tossed it into the Mercedes. It ignited behind me in a billowing wall of chemical flame.

Carl would have liked the Viking funeral.

Reaper was sobbing when I got into the van. “Dude, the fuckers killed him.” He was cringing from the pain, holding his hands tightly to his wounded side. “Eddie did this. Bastard’s gonna pay.”

I found the keys on the floorboard. The goons were inbound. It was going to be a race to the border now.