Locked On

another for most of the past decade. He’d spent several years as a special agent in the FBI be sin the Ffore being recruited into The Campus along with his twin brother, Brian. Brian had been killed the year before on a Campus black op in Libya. Dom had been there, he’d held his brother in his arms as he died, and then Dominic returned to The Campus, hell-bent on doing the hard, dangerous work that he believed in.

Dom stepped around a young man selling tea from a large jug hanging by a leather strap from his neck, and he picked up the pace, anxious to get to the next decision point for his target: a four-way intersection some hundred yards to the south.

Back in the alleyway, Caruso’s partner, Sam Driscoll, followed the three men through the winding passageways, careful to keep his distance. Sam had decided that if he lost contact with his target, so be it; Dom Caruso was making his way forward to a choke point ahead. If el Daboussi disappeared between Sam’s and Dom’s positions they would look for him, but if they lost him today they would pick him up later, back at his rented house. It was better, it had been determined by the two Americans, to chance losing the target rather than to press their luck and run the risk of compromising themselves to their target or his protection detail.

El Daboussi stopped at a jewelry store; something had caught his eye in a dusty glass display case just inside the wide entrance. Sam continued forward a few yards and then stepped into the shadow of a canvas tent, under which young salesgirls sold chintzy plastic toys and other tourist kitsch. As he waited for his target to move on, he stepped deeper into the shade. He felt he blended well into the scenery, but a teenage girl in a chador saw him and approached with a smile. “Sir, you wanna sunglasses?”

Shit.

He just shook his head, and the girl got the message and moved on.

Sam Driscoll had the ability to intimidate with a glance. An ex-Ranger with multiple tours of duty in the sandbox and beyond, he’d been scooped up by The Campus after an introduction from Jack Ryan Sr. Driscoll had been chased from the military by Justice Department lawyers doing the bidding of a Kealty administration hungry for Sam’s blood after a cross-border incursion into Pakistan left a few too many dead bad guys for Kealty’s taste.

Driscoll would have been the first to agree that he’d violated those terrorist shitheads’ civil rights by firing a.40-caliber hollow-point into each of their brainpans. But as far as he was concerned, he’d done his job, and no more than what was necessary for his mission.

Life’s a bitch, and then you die.

Jack Sr.’s publicity of the Driscoll affair was enough to get the DOJ to drop the matter, but Ryan’s recommendation along with John Clark’s personal appeal to Gerry Hendley had gotten Sam hired into The Campus.

At thirty-eight, Sam Driscoll was several years older than Dom Caruso, his partner on this op, and even though Sam was in excellent physical condition, he wore his extra mileage on him, manifested in a graying beard, deep-set creases around his eyes, and a nagging old wound to his shoulder that he woke up to each and every morning. The injury had come in a firefight on the exfil during his Pakistan mission; a jihadi’s AK round had shattered a rock in front of Driscoll’s firing position, sending natural shrapnel into and through the Ranger’s upper body.

The shoulder didn’t bother him so much at the moment, the stiffness and soreness melted away with movement and exercise, and a couple hours of “foot follow” surveillance through Cairo’s Old Town had given him plenty of both today.

oinfont>

And Driscoll was about to get some more exercise. He looked up and noticed el Daboussi was on the move again. Sam waited for a moment, and then stepped out into the alleyway to resume his tail of the silver-haired terrorist.

A minute later, Sam stopped again as his target entered a busy kahwah, a boisterous neighborhood coffeehouse ubiquitous in Cairo. Men sat in chairs around small tables that spilled out into the center of the alley; they played backgammon and chess and smoked hookah pipes and cigarettes while drinking thick Turkish coffee or fragrant green tea. El Daboussi and his men walked past these open-air tables and continued deep into the dark room.

Sam spoke softly into his cuff mike. “Dom, come back?”

“Yep,” came the reply into Driscoll’s earpiece.

“Subjects have stopped. They’re in a coffeehouse on…” Sam scanned the walls and corners of the impenetrable market alleyway for a sign. Up and down the souk he saw stalls and canvas-covered kiosks but no signs referencing his exact location. Sam had had a better sense of direction humping through the mountains of Pakistan than he did right here in Cairo’s Old Town. He chanced a surreptitious glance down to his map to get his bearings. “Okay, we just made a left off of Midan Hussein. I think we are still just north of al-Badistand. Say fifty meters from your location. Looks like our boy and his goons are going to sit and chat. How ’bout you come over here and we can split the coverage?”

“On the way.”

While Sam waited for his backup, he wandered over to a chandelier shop and gazed appreciatively at a glass light fixture. In the reflection of a large crystal bauble he could see the front of the kahwah well enough to watch it in case his target left. But instead of anyone leaving, he saw three other men step into the kahwah from the opposite direction. Something about the look of the leader of this little pack gave him pause. Driscoll chanced a pass by the entrance, and he looked inside as if he was searching for a friend.

There, in the back against a stone wall, Mustafa el Daboussi and his men sat at a table right next to the new arrival and his men.

“Interesting,” Sam said to himself as he wandered off a few yards away from the coffeehouse’s entrance.

Dom arrived in the alleyway a minute later, shouldered up to Sam as both men picked through the wares of another tiny kiosk. Driscoll leaned over a table and pulled a pair of jeans out of a pile as if to look them over. He whispered to his partner. “Our boy is having a clandestine meet and greet with an unknown subject.”

Dom did not react; he only turned to a cheap mannequin at the front of the stall and pretended to look at the tag on the vest the mannequin wore. While doing so, he looked past the plastic life-size figure and into the cafe across the street. Driscoll passed behind him closely. Dom whispered, “It’s about damn time. We’ve been waiting for days.”

“I hear you. Let’s grab a table at the cafe across the way, maybe get some pictures of these jokers. We’ll send them back to Rick and see if his geeks can ID them. The one in back looks like he’s in charge.”

A minute later, the two Americans sat in the shade under an umbrella in the open-air cafe that faced the kahwah. A waitress in a chador stepped up to the table. Dom took the lead with the ordering, much to the surprise of Sam Driscoll. “Kahwaziyada,” he said with a polite smile, and then motioned diven motito himself and Sam.

The woman nodded and stepped away.

“Do I want to know what you just ordered us?”

“Two Turkish coffees with extra sugar.”

Sam shrugged, stretched the tight scar tissue of his shoulder wound with a long, slow neck roll. “Sounds pretty good. I could use the caffeine.”

The coffee came, and they sipped it. They did not look over at their target. If his security detail was any good, they would be evaluating the Westerners sitting across the alley, but probably only for the first couple of minutes. If Sam and Dom were careful to completely ignore them, then el Daboussi, his men, and the three other new arrivals would satisfy themselves that the Westerners were just a couple of tourists, sitting and waiting while their wives shopped the souk for rugs, and there was nothing to be concerned about.

Even though Sam and Dom were operational and in no small danger here spying on a terrorist, they enjoyed being outside, sipping coffee in the sunlight. For the past few days they’d gone out only at night, and then only in shifts. The rest of the time they’d operated from a studio apartment across from a posh walled residence rented by el Daboussi in the upscale Zamalek neighborhood. They had spent long days and nights peering through scopes, photographing visitors, and eating rice and lamb in quantities that caused both men to no longer be great fans of either rice or lamb.

But Sam and Dom, as well as their support team back at The Campus, both knew this work was