screwed up by picking him for the job. Gates thought the man would be a terrific Shark Team leader, but would never flip for money.
He had to be stopped. Both Swanson and Middleton had to be killed. First they had to be found, and who better to look for Spec Ops types than Shark Teams who knew all of the tricks of that dark art? Victor Logan, a violent cretin in many ways, was one of the best, but Gates decided to lend the Syrians some more specialized assistance.
He tapped into his private database to see what was available. There was an unmanned aerial vehicle, a pilotless UAV with a video link, on the ground in Jordan, and he sent instructions to get it into the air. It would be one more thing from which Swanson would have to hide. Gates added the Shark Team that was helping to train Hezbollah fighters in a remote part of Lebanon. That team had a serviceable UH- IE Huey helicopter with miniguns slung on the sides. He also sent in another team from Israel, where the two Sharks were acting as counterinsurgency advisors with the Israelis on how to trap Hezbollah guerrillas. They would drive over in their armored Humvee. He sent a coded message through a Syrian contact to the search team in the desert. Five well- trained Sharks brought a lot of expertise to the operation. Plus the new Iraqi jihadists. A lot of eyes.
Gates studied the Marine’s personnel jacket some more, looking for anything that might help. This sniper had already proven to be very aggressive, so Middleton and Swanson would be watching for the watchers. Middleton probably would have the strong binos, while Swanson would use the powerful Unertl telescope on his SASR, the big. 50-caliber M82 Special Applications Scope Rifle. That was a hog of a weapon, a real bone-breaker that Gates knew well from lugging one himself. That would slow Swanson down even more when it came time to run.
Every pound Swanson carried would weigh him down a fraction, and the SASR was 37 pounds even before adding the ammo. The sniper had to be carrying a big pack, more weapons, and maybe some other gear, too. He would start to shed the unneeded items, but in the current time frame, he was losing the speed contest. This was the moment to catch them, while they were at rest and before they could start moving again.
Gordon Gates slammed his drink down onto the thick glass top of his desk.
Gates opened his private electronic Rolodex and found an overseas telephone number. London. A quiet British voice answered.
CHAPTER 50
YOUSIF AL-SHOUM WAS BIDING his time. Logan had been correct, that the sniper would go to ground during the daylight hours, so moving fast was neither necessary nor wise. Al-Shoum rested in a large tent that had been set up beside the road near the village and watched his soldiers probe up the road for more mines and booby traps. Not far from the tent was the burned and blackened hulk of the BTR-80 troop carrier that had triggered the mine. The two men whose heads were above the armor were decapitated by the blast, and the fuel tank ruptured and exploded, which took out three more men. Al-Shoum was alive only because he had stayed behind with the second BTR to communicate with Damascus. Otherwise his own head would have been sticking out of the forward hatch of the lead vehicle.
The Syrian intelligence officer had had his fill of surprises for one day. Five of his men had died in the BTR ambush. Another was killed at the front door of the house in the village, along with one of the American mercenaries. The house with eleven jihadist fighters from Iraq was blown to pieces and they were all dead. Parts of the Frenchman who was everybody’s intelligence contact were found in the smoking ruins of his demolished home. The guard who was taped to the Zeus and the gunner who tried to fire it were dead. Two pairs of sentries at the checkpoint down the road had been slain. Two pair! The Marine general was gone. Enough was enough.
Al-Shoum would coordinate the search from this tent and be the spider at the center of the search web. While he waited for more troops and helicopters, he sent a squad back into the village to conduct a house-to-house search to be sure the American troublemaker had not taken shelter back there where he was least expected.
A big map was spread on a table before him, along with two radio sets, a Thermos of tea, water, and some food on clean white plates. Al-Shoum munched bread and cheese. “Well, Mr. Logan. Where did he go?”
Victor Logan had been impressed by the wreckage of the BTR, which still wore big stripes of dried blood and guts. The undamaged armored personnel carrier remained parked nearby, almost as if cowering until the minesweepers pronounced the area clear. This sniper knew what he was doing. Logan wiped his palm across the lower half of the map. “South. Toward Jordan.”
“Our scouts report some damage to a road sign at an intersection to the west, several kilometers from here, big truck tires digging around a sharp corner that would lead them north, toward Lebanon.”
Logan shook his head, a statue with his beefy arms crossed across his chest, thinking hard. “It’s a bullshit play to draw you that way. He’s not going there.”
“I agree,” said Al-Shoum. Still, he had to devote some search assets to the area, because from what this American Marine had done so far, he was not beyond leaving a false trail, doubling back on it and then doubling back still again. The Syrian remembered reading about that trick in a detective story about how a serial killer trapped a never-give-up New York cop and his beautiful FBI partner… he snapped his mind back to the present. “One would think he would take the general due west, as fast as possible, toward Israel.” He glanced at Logan. “Why not?”
“He’s made the same deductions that we are doing now. Getting to Israel would be the most logical and quickest route to safety, so he knows your troops will flood the area. Therefore he won’t use it, and he cannot head the opposite direction, to the east, into territory that is just as dangerous. To the south is Jordan, which is friendly with the United States. That’s where I would go. It’s where he will go.”
Again al-Shoum agreed, and scratched his head. Logan could afford to guess, but he had to cover all possibilities, and there were many. He could not rule out the dash to Israel, and he had sent search teams toward the Zionist border, further depleting his force.
Then there was the problem of the vehicle itself. The Marine had stolen an old white Toyota pickup truck, which was the most common vehicle in Syria, if not in the entire region. There were hundreds of white Toyota pickups on the roads, going in every direction, in and out of every population center, all day long. The escapees could be in any of them.
In a professional sense, al-Shoum held a grudging respect for his opponent for sticking with his job after the helicopter crash, coming into the village and rekidnapping the general. It did not matter. His job was now to catch them both, and that was what he would do. Afterward, he looked forward to dealing with Victor Logan for the murder of that girl.
He stood and turned when a soldier called out to him and pointed. A dark blue Land Rover came sailing toward them from the village, the tinted windows sealing in the air conditioning as the tires threw plumes of dust into the air behind it. A man with a gray beard and thick eyelashes, wearing clean white robes and head covering, got out of the back seat when the vehicle stopped beside the tent.
“General al-Shoum,” the visitor said. “My dear friend.”
Al-Shoum bowed with respect, then embraced the senior imam from a mosque in Damascus. He helped the cleric to a chair at the table, and poured tea. A guard moved Logan out of earshot.
“I am always delighted to see you, my friend, for you have the peace of Allah with you. But what brings you to this desolate place?” al-Shoum asked. “A man of the Book need not trouble himself in this routine business.”
The old man sipped his tea and spent about five minutes exchanging pleasantries. The children, of course, and the crops and the animals, and also the wife. Al-Shoum grew more impatient by the minute. This imam did not leave his mosque to drop by as a curious tourist. He might have been sent from the government to report on al-
