“I didn’t say you could.” James leaned back in his seat. “What do you think, Sergeant?” he asked Guns. “You go to church?”
“When I can.”
“Which one?”
“Next you’re going to ask what kind of underwear he likes,” Rankin said.
“I’m a boxer guy myself,” said James.
“Methodist,” offered Guns, but the other man had pushed back in his seat, watching the shadows along the road.
21
The security staff at the American embassy gave Ferguson an incredibly difficult time when he asked to use the secure communications facilities, so much so that at one point he was tempted to deck their supervisor. He didn’t, but only because she looked like the type who might enjoy that sort of thing. She didn’t know him and wasn’t impressed when he offered to give her Parnelles’s home phone number. Finally he managed to convince her that she should call Slott to see if he was legit. The woman didn’t have the guts to come out and apologize herself, sending one of her red-faced peons out to show him to the room.
“You wouldn’t want them to let just anyone in,” said Lauren when he called the desk.
“Yeah, I hear Yasser Arafat was at the door just the other day,” said Ferguson. “Listen, I need to feed you a picture of a boat for the satellite interpreters.”
“Ferg, we’re
“No kidding. I thought you guys were goofing off. Tell you what, though, take the people you have looking for the Siren missile around Baghdad off the job. It’s not there.”
“Where is it?”
“The Red Sea, I think.”
“The Red Sea?”
“Near Mecca,” said Ferguson. “But I’ll worry about that. I want them to look for a Scud within range of Baghdad.”
“Huh?”
“That’s why Vassenka went to Iraq. I don’t know if the plane is a red herring or not. I have to talk to Rankin.”
“What am I doing?”
“You’re going to receive a photo of a boat that I send you and find someone who can tell me what it would look like in a satellite photo,” said Ferguson. “Better would he to find someone who could figure that out for me, but I’ll do it myself if I have to. Then you’re going to send an alert out about a Scud missile in Iraq. Don’t bother canceling the cruise missile; there’s always a possibility I’m wrong. It’s happened two or three times in my lifetime.”
“Ferg.”
“All right, once. But there’s always a chance.”
Rankin sounded as if he were sleeping when he answered his phone.
“Rankin.”
“Hey, Skippy, top of the morning to you.”
“Ferguson.”
“Listen, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Vassenka and what Khazaal had going.”
“And?”
“Khazaal had to have had a Scud or at least parts for one. More, maybe. Vassenka’s there. He must have brought fuel with him.”
“I thought you said he brought a cruise missile.”
“Never mind that.”
“Ferguson—”
“The other thing that I’m thinking, I’m going to bet that Vassenka improved the range. Because at a hundred miles, we would have found it already, right?”
“They have a hundred-mile range,” said Rankin.
“I think it’s a little more. Check with Lauren. You know what? Tell her to get Thomas Ciello working on this. Get a rundown of all the mods Vassenka might try. The range has to be more. That was probably the key to the plan in the beginning.”
“Ciello? Is that the UFO nut?”
“One and the same,” said Ferguson. “I’ll tell you, though, the way things have been going lately, I think I’m starting to believe in UFOs.”
22
The adrenaline shook Ravid so fiercely that he couldn’t sleep. Finally he got up and began pacing around the small boat. The man at the helm nodded but said nothing.
They were beyond the Suez, the Egyptians paid off, and their paperwork taken care of. With every mile it became easier, but with every mile his heart seemed to beat faster. There were only hours left.
Once the missile was launched, Ravid would kill himself. He would not wait until it struck the target. What was the sense? He knew it would strike, and frankly if it didn’t he would not want to taste the bitterness.
He had debated how exactly to do this — there was no question that he would do it — and finally decided to simply place a pistol in his mouth. It was a sure and simple solution, though it presented a problem: he didn’t have a pistol.
He would have to borrow one but before the time for the launch. Well before. Otherwise they might try and stop him when the time came.
That was the strange thing, wasn’t it? To stop someone from killing himself — what was the point?
Ravid curled his feet beneath him as he sat on the deck. Something itched at the very back of his throat.
He took a long, slow breath, thinking about the day he got married, remembering the moment when he looked at his new wife and felt incredible lust. And the day their son was born. He had nearly been stopped at a checkpoint the day before, disguised so he could come see her.
The ache remained. The men had brought beer with them; there were bottles in the cooler.
Ravid thought of Mecca and its destruction. He envisioned his revenge.
Not his only, nor that of the men who had come gladly to help him, an army of the wrathful, but revenge for everyone murdered by Muslims in the name of their God. For Jews, Christians, Israelites, Americans, Buddhists, Chinese — everyone. Let the Muslims taste what jihad truly was.
Ravid rose. The thirst had receded again. A light breeze blew; he felt it cool his face as he turned toward the dim lights of the shore in the distance. Hours now. Just hours.
23
