then swung the laptop so Matt could see the screen.
It was on the home page of a company called Centurion. A slick slideshow showed an oil refinery in a desert location at sundown, then what looked like a gated compound somewhere in the Middle East, then a convoy of cars, again in the same sunny, dusty environment. The last picture showed a steely guy in pristine quasi-military gear, black gloves, and surfer-cool wraparound shades, poised behind a large-caliber machine gun. A slogan flashed up with each image, the last of them announcing the company’s motto, “Securing a Better Future.”
Matt and Jabba read through the “About Us” paragraph, which described Centurion as a “security and risk management company with offices in the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East” and a “security provider to the U.S. government and a registered and active UN contractor.” Jabba clicked on the “Management” link, and a black-and- white portrait of Maddox leapt out at them. The hard case was the firm’s founder and CEO, and the accompanying blurb described his long, stellar career in the Marines and his achievements in the field of “security consulting.”
“Ouch,” Jabba said, flinching at the unsettling and unapologetic mug shot of Maddox. He glanced around nervously, clearly uneasy at the thought of taunting this man. He checked his watch again and held up his phone. “Eighty-five seconds. Can we please switch this off now and get the hell out of here?”
Matt was still absorbing every word of Maddox’s bio in silence. After a moment, he said, “Sure.”
Jabba turned it off as Matt fired up the car and pulled away.
He looked over at Matt. “So?”
Matt nodded to himself, his eyes a bit distant, his expression dour. “So now we know who we’re dealing with.”
“Dude, the man’s got a private army,” Jabba pleaded, his pitch doing its worry rise. “We’ve got a white Camry and a handgun with no bullets in it.”
“Then we’ve got some catching up to do,” Matt replied. “But let’s see what Reece’s wife has to say first.”
“YOU’RE SURE?”
Maddox wasn’t shouting. In fact, his voice was unnaturally calm, given the news he’d just been given. But his displeasure was coming through loud and clear to his contact at Fort Meade.
“Absolutely,” came the answer. “Komlosy’s phone signal popped up on the grid for just over a minute before powering down.”
Maddox walked over to his office’s window and looked down. Nothing unusual caught his eye. The parking lot and the street beyond were glacially quiet.
Two unexpected appearances from Sherwood in as many days, he fumed. The second one in the immediate vicinity of his office.
The man was good.
A bit too good for Maddox’s liking.
“How long ago?” he asked.
“It just went dead.”
Maddox seethed quietly. “Can’t you track him with his phone switched off?”
“Looking at his contract, it seems he’s got an iPhone, a 3G one,” the NSA monitoring agent told him. “If he keeps it on long enough, I can remotely download some burst software onto it that’ll let me track it even if it’s powered down.”
“I need you to do better than that,” Maddox insisted.
“We’re working on some stuff. But for now, it’ll get better every time he switches it on. The tracking software will have a head start on him; it’ll keep adding data every time he powers up. We won’t need as long to get a lock.”
“Okay. Let me know the second it powers up again,” the Bullet ordered. “And get that download done as soon as you get a chance.” With that, he hung up, stuffed the phone into his pocket, checked his watch, and glared out his window again.
Chapter 47
Deir Al-Suryan Monastery, Wadi Natrun, Egypt
“Don’t we have anyone who can get here sooner?” Dalton asked. “Where’s the damn sixth fleet when you need it?”
They were standing around uneasily by the base of the keep—Gracie, Finch, Dalton, Brother Ameen, and the abbot. An expectant hum of voices reverberated across the plain, beyond the monastery’s thick walls. Closer by, the imam’s hateful voice droned on from the people carrier’s radio, an angry, never-ending call to arms that was echoed on countless other radios outside the walls. “Yeah, that’ll look real good,” Finch commented wryly. “American troops flying in to safeguard a Christian holy man in a sea of angry Muslims. That’ll clinch the hearts-and-minds battle right there.”
“We need to get Father Jerome out of here,” Gracie said.
“I agree,” Finch said, “but how?”
“What about bringing a chopper in to whisk him out?” she asked.
“Where’s it gonna land?” Finch queried. “There’s nowhere wide enough for it to put down, not inside the monastery’s walls.”
Gracie pointed up at the keep. “What about up there?
Finch shook his head. “The roof ’s not strong enough. It’s hundreds of years old. There’s no way it can hold the weight. And I don’t think winching him out is gonna work either. He’s too old to take that, and even if he could, someone could take a potshot at him.”
Dalton slid a forlorn nod over at the keep behind them. “So what do we do? Bunker down?” He pointed up at the keep’s second-floor drawbridge, sitting above them. “This thing still work?” he asked the abbot, only half-joking. The fortified keep, with its food stores, water well, library, and top-floor chapel, had been used as a refuge in times of attack, but that hadn’t happened in over a thousand years.
“No, but . . . we should just stay here and wait for the security forces to arrive. They’re bound to send them in now. Besides, there aren’t just Muslims out there,” the abbot reassured them. “A lot of them out there, they’re our people. Christians. They’ll defend Father Jerome if they have to.”
“I’m sure they would, but that’s not the point,” Gracie pressed. “It’d be better to get him out of here before anything like that happens.
To make sure it doesn’t.”
“There might be another way out,” Brother Ameen offered.
All eyes turned swiftly to him. “How?” Gracie asked.
“The tunnel,” he said, turning to the abbot with a questioning look.
“There’s a tunnel? Where to?” Gracie asked.
“It goes from here to the monastery closest to us—the one we drove past on the way in.”
“The Monastery of Saint Bishoi,” the abbot confirmed.
“What, the one across the field?” Gracie was pointing northeast, trying to visualize the second monastery’s relative position from when she’d last seen it, from the roof of the
The abbot nodded. “Yes. The tunnel is older than this monastery. You see, our monastery was built over what was once the monk Bishoi’s hermitage, the cave he used to retreat to. Because of the constant threat from invaders, the monks decided to build an escape route from Saint Bishoi’s monastery, and they chose his old cave as the exit point. Years later, as the danger receded, a small chapel was built over his cave, and that small chapel eventually grew into this monastery.”
“You think it’ll still get us there?” Finch asked.
