The Emerald Scepter

POSTSCRIPT

Mohamed sat in the passenger seat of the unmarked ISI vehicle parked on the side of a hillside road, watching the walled-off villa through the lenses of his night-vision binoculars.

Four cars had disappeared through the wall gate, which was guarded by two men armed with automatic weapons. He couldn’t see what was going on in the villa hidden behind the walls, but he could picture the scene from past experience attending meetings of the Shadow leadership.

The Doctor and his lieutenants would be sitting cross-legged on the bare floor, their backs to the walls of the room. The Doctor would be haranguing them, lacing his tirade with frequent religious references. In this case, the Doctor would be discussing the failure of the Prophet’s Necklace and the disappearance of the man who was going to carry out the plot.

Mohamed knew this because his commander was the one who had told the Shadows that the ISI could no longer provide cover for them. The treasure mission had failed. The Chinese deal had fallen through. Amir was still alive and in control of the lithium fields. The old warlord was looking for the highest bidder, but the U.S. was sweetening its offer by bringing in troops to protect Amir’s village.

Mohamed had heard from a CIA contact that Marzak and not Hawkins had killed his cousin. He had been fond of Saleem, and felt a load of guilt about bringing the professor into the dirty business of intelligence. His contact had said Marzak was dead, but Saleem knew there were others who were complicit in his cousin’s murder. When the commander told him to tie up loose ends, he had no hesitation carrying out the orders.

Mohamed knew that the Doctor was ultra-cautious. He would arrive in one car and leave in another, one of four that would speed off in different directions. Any attacker would have to go after all four cars if he didn’t know the right one.

What the Doctor didn’t know was that one of the men at the gate was in the employ of the ISI. When the gate opened after a few minutes, Mohamed kept his eye on the guard, who dropped his hand and tapped the rear fender of the third vehicle as if sending it on its way.

Mohamed smiled and punched out a number on his cell phone.

“Black Mercedes. Heading east,” he said.

The call was patched through to a dimly-lit windowless room in Tampa, Florida. The pilot in charge of the Predator that had been circling high above the villa worked the joystick and sent the drone winging after its prey. Within minutes the drone’s nose camera picked up the smudge moving in an easterly direction. The operator’s supervisor gave the command to fire, and seconds later two Hellfire missiles streaked out from below the wings of the drone and transformed the Mercedes into a ball of white fire.

The explosion that destroyed the Doctor and his car was soundless in the operations room, but thousands of miles away Mohamed heard the thud and saw the flare in the distance.

He instructed his driver to get moving and said in a low voice, “A torch to light your way to paradise, dear cousin.”