the ankles on both legs before flaying and rolling up the skin to the neck and down to the ankles. It must have taken a week for McElroy, screaming in agony and covered in blood and flies, to die. Scorpion was glad McElroy was already dead, because otherwise he would have had to kill him.
Going through the farmhouse looking for clues was creepy. The rooms smelled of death, and in one of them, there were chains embedded in a stone wall and evidence indicating that McElroy hadn’t been the first person AQAP had brought there. Scorpion knew that if AQAP ever got their hands on him, they would take great pleasure in doing to him what they had done to McElroy.
“Sorry,” Peterman said again. Tell that to McElroy, you son of a bitch, Scorpion thought savagely. “We should debrief. Meet me-”
“Shut up!” Scorpion shouted into the phone, to keep Peterman from saying the address on an open line. “I know where you live. Be there,” he said, ending the call. This guy was a disaster, he thought as he drove into Sana’a traffic from the roundabout on the Khawlan. At least Rabinowich had done his prep.
Scorpion knew that Peterman had an apartment on Wadi Zahr Road, about half a mile from the American embassy. Except Peterman wasn’t in his apartment. Scorpion didn’t get that far. Even before he pulled up, he saw the small crowd in the street. He got out of the SUV and pushed his way through the onlookers. Peterman was lying in the gutter, blood seeping from the back of his head. Scorpion looked up at the building. Either Peterman had jumped or been pushed from his fifth-story apartment balcony. Scorpion knelt beside him, and Peterman looked up at him, his eyes wide as if with wonder.
“Hollis…” Scorpion began. He wasn’t sure Peterman even saw him, or if he did, whether in his fake beard and the Abidah turban from Ma’rib, he recognized him. Then a flicker of something.
“Run,” Peterman said, and Scorpion saw the light go out of his eyes.
“W hen you’re blown,” goes CIA doctrine, “it’s time to perform the classic military maneuver known as getting the hell out of there.” By rights, Scorpion knew he should have been on the next plane out of Sana’a. With Peterman’s death, he had to assume Alex Station was blown. That could mean AQAP knew about him too.
He eased back out of the crowd gathered around Peterman. NCS protocol was to clean the dead agent’s site to make sure nothing fell into the opposition’s hands. Except with the body of a Westerner in the middle of the street, the Yemeni CSO security forces were sure to be on their way already. Bad as things were, if Peterman had left anything incriminating behind, it was going to get a lot worse. He looked around. Attention in the street was still on the body. He decided to chance it, but knew he would have to move fast.
He slipped into the building and went up the stairs to Peterman’s floor. The hallway smelled of something burnt. The door to Peterman’s apartment was closed. Scorpion tried the handle; it wasn’t locked. He took out the Glock and studied the walls and door. There was every chance the door was rigged with explosives. He needed to take the time to check it thoroughly and defuse, only there was no time. The police or the CSO would be there any second. The only thing he had going for him was that whoever killed Peterman might have been in a hurry too. His fingers touched the door handle as though expecting an electric shock. He took a deep breath. They had just shoved him off the balcony, he told himself. They needed to get out of there. He grabbed the handle and opened the door.
He went in fast, ready to fire around every corner. The apartment was empty, the door to the balcony still half open. Scorpion peeked out, then closed the balcony door. The smell of smoke was strong, and he spotted the cause: an empty can of SpaghettiOs and a blackened pot on the stove. Someone had turned the gas off, but the pot was still warm. The apartment hadn’t been ransacked. Whoever had pushed Peterman off the balcony must’ve taken off immediately.
Scorpion moved quickly, going through drawers and shelves looking for anything incriminating. Peterman’s laptop was still on the bed. Why hadn’t they removed it? He thought for a second and it hit him. He removed the hard drive from the laptop and dropped it into his pocket. Odds were, it had Trojan horse software on it, in which case AQAP knew everything Peterman knew.
From outside, he could hear the klaxons of approaching police vans. They would be coming up the stairs any minute. He grabbed a towel from the bathroom and did a fast wipe-down of everything he’d touched, then made his way down the stairs and out the back of the building.
The clock had started ticking the instant Peterman hit the pavement, Scorpion thought, making his way around the crowd in the street. In theory, he should’ve been able to make a call to Rabinowich on the way to the airport and let the Company handle it. Unfortunately, with all the ELINT in Sana’a, that could be a death warrant for everyone in Alex Station. What happened to McElroy could happen to them. He couldn’t wait for Langley; he would have to warn them himself.
The CIA CP for Alex Station was a brick building on Al Quds Street in the Nuqum district. Because of Peterman, he had to assume that AQAP knew about the location too. It was now a red zone.
He caught a taxi at the corner. The driver made a face when he said “Nuqum.” Scorpion understood why. Nuqum was a mahwa, or slum, on the eastern side of the city, a dense maze of crumbling houses sprawling in the shadow of the mountain from which the neighborhood took its name. It was an odd location for a Company CP. The narrow streets and trash-strewn alleyways were crowded with carts and aimless young men chewing qat and looking for day work.
The people of the district were mostly dark-skinned Akhdam, the despised Yemeni lower class. The Yemeni proverb went: “Clean your plate if it is licked by a dog, but if it is touched by an Akhdam, break it.” As the taxi drove into the mahwa, prostitutes in abayas on street corners beckoned at passing cars, their hands fluttering like dark birds. Every car was a contest, the Akhdam women competing with the more recently arrived Somali women in their brightly colored hijabs who could be had for the price of a pack of cigarettes.
He told the driver to stop at a souk a few blocks from the CP building. He had to assume AQAP was watching the CP. The problem was how to get in or out without being seen or killed. He asked around the souk until he found a qat merchant with a truck. It took nearly an hour of haggling and making sure the merchant knew what he wanted, an hour Scorpion knew he really couldn’t afford, but there wasn’t much choice, not unless he wanted to end up like Peterman or McElroy.
“Ma’a salaama,” he said to the merchant, touching his hand to his chest as he left.
“Alla ysalmak,” the merchant said, smiling politely, but he looked at Scorpion as if he were crazy because of what they had agreed to.
Scorpion positioned himself outside a small rug store across from the CP building. He waited, putting a bulge in his cheek as though he were chewing qat. It’s taking too long, he thought, anticipating a bullet coming his way any second. He was wondering if the merchant was going to cheat him when he saw it.
The truck loaded with thick bundles of qat turned the corner and rumbled down the street toward the building. When he saw the driver’s face he nodded, and the driver nodded back. As the truck rumbled past, someone pushed a heavy bale of qat leaves out of the back, then the truck sped up, turned a corner and was gone.
Along the street, a group of young men stopped what they were doing and for a second everything was still, then the street erupted. The young men rushed the bale of qat, everyone grabbing handfuls of leaves and stuffing them into their clothes and the bags they made out of their shaals. People began to pour into the street. It was like an instant holiday, everyone grabbing qat and shouting for his friends to come, women screaming and ululating, children running between adults’ legs to grab loose leaves and twigs. In all the commotion, Scorpion was able to slip unnoticed into the building.
A burly American with a military haircut sat at a desk near the front door, a pistol pointed at him. The man wasn’t in uniform, but he had U.S. Marines or Special Forces painted all over him. Standing next to the desk, a Latino man leveled the business end of an M-16 at him as well.
“What do you want, Mohammed?” the American demanded.
“Have you ever been to Biloxi?” Scorpion said.
“No, but I’ve been to Gulfport twice,” the man replied, completing the sequence. “Who are you?” he asked then, not putting the gun down.
“Where’s Ramis?” According to Rabinowich, someone new, Donald Ramis, was the CIA’s Alex Station Chief for Sana’a.
“He’s out. Talking with Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.” The American made a face.
“Who the hell are they?”
“Sorry. It’s our little nickname for Ali Abdullah and his council,” meaning the President of Yemen.
