Thera whirled in time to see the shadow of a motorbike fly over the rise behind her. The bike had two very large mufflers at its side to dampen its engine sound.
“Ferguson,” she said.
“You’re expecting someone else?” he asked, skidding down the hill.
“How did you get down so fast?”
“Hop on. The bikes landed back on the other side of the hill. I just about tripped over them when I came down. Good thing you took your time going out; we would have been all night finding them.”
Two hours later, Ferguson watched as a large Pave Low helicopter skimmed across the desert terrain toward the chemical glow light Rankin had placed to guide it. The chopper shook the desert as it rumbled a few feet over the terrain, flying low to avoid the Syrian radars to the west. The Pave Low’s immense blades kicked a sandstorm around it as it flew. Ferguson shielded his night glasses as the bird settled in. A company’s worth of Rangers augmented by two Delta veterans and an Iraqi intelligence officer began emerging from the rear. The men and their equipment had been detailed to support the First Team, providing on-ground security and extra eyes at their base of operations in the desert wilderness. Additional troops were on call to be used for the actual “snatch,” assuming conditions allowed.
Ferguson watched for the Iraqi intelligence officer accompanying them. He wasn’t particularly hard to spot; more than twice the age of most of the soldiers, he walked with a nervous hop away from the helicopter, ducking even though it was unnecessary.
“Fouad Mohammed?” yelled Ferguson when the man reached him.
“Yes,” said the Iraqi.
“Bob Ferguson. Call me Ferg. Step into my office.” He motioned back to a run of rocks twenty yards away where he’d parked his bike. The landing area was about a quarter mile from the small caves and overhangs where they’d located their base camp.
“You know Khazaal?” Ferguson asked the Iraqi.
“I met him some years ago,” said Fouad, whose ears and bones still reverberated from the helicopter ride. He greatly preferred quieter modes of transportation, though he knew better than to mention this to the American; in his experience Americans never found machines quite noisy enough.
Fifty-three years old, Fouad had dealt with a number of Americans over the years, beginning with his very early service as a glorified gofer and eavesdropper for the Iraqi foreign intelligence service. Stationed in Cairo at the age of twenty-two, he had kept tabs on various expatriate movements and Jews: easy work, though the detailed weekly reports often took two or three days simply to write. By the Iran-Iraq War he had progressed to a liaison officer working with the CIA. Out of favor for a while, he had been sent north into exile in the Kurdistan area until just before the start of the Gulf War, when he worked on a group assigned to prepare for the defense of Baghdad. After the war he found his way to the great sanctions shell game. For the first few months he helped hide evidence of banned weapons from weapons inspectors but soon turned to the more critical task of trumping up evidence of continuing programs to impress the fading dictator and keep external enemies at bay. Fouad lay low in the northern Kurdish region after the second Gulf War until friends in the government convinced him to come to work with them. A brief job with an American security contractor had renewed some of his CIA ties; eventually Fouad found himself back in service with the interior ministry’s security apparatus, serving as a liaison to “external services,” the latest euphemism for the CIA.
“You think Khazaal would go through one of the tunnels?” asked Ferguson, sitting on a rock near his motorcycle. “I thought he liked to travel in style.”
“We all adapt,” said Fouad. Something about the American was very familiar.
“All right.” Ferguson wasn’t sure if Fouad was parroting the intelligence report he’d seen or if he was its author. In his experience, the Iraqi intelligence people demonstrated a wide range of abilities, from extreme competence to extreme ineptitude. As a rule, the more confident they made themselves sound the less able they were. “So we watch for a car that meets him?”
“Possible. It may be a wild goose chase.”
“Not what I want to hear.”
“You want the truth or what you want to hear?” said Fouad, who knew that the latter was almost always preferred, especially by Americans. Putting the question bluntly sometimes saved problems and sometimes not.
“Truth. Always.” Ferguson smiled at him. “But all truth is relative.”
Fouad shrugged, though he did not agree; God’s truth was absolute, after all.
“What we think will happen is that he’ll come across the border on foot, get picked up and driven to one of the abandoned military camps northwest of here, where a plane will meet him,” said Ferguson. “We’re going to stake out the camps so we can hit them when he’s there. On the other hand, he may just take a car all the way across the desert. If that happens, we take the car.”
“What if you miss?”
“Then we punt. We find out where he’s going, and we try to get him there. Problem is, we’re not sure where he’s going. Unless you are.”
“There are so many rumors about Khazaal you can make something up, and it is just as likely to be true.”
“We think tomorrow night,” said Ferguson. “What do you think?”
Fouad could only shrug.
“Can you ride a motorcycle?”
“Not well.”
“You’re my passenger then. Come on.” Ferguson picked up the motorcycle.
Fouad hesitated. He did not like motorcycles and had had several bad experiences with them. “I knew a Ferguson once,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“In Cairo. And during the war with Iran.”
Ferguson realized that Fouad was talking about his father. But he only started the bike and waited for Fouad to get on.
“That was my dad in Cairo,” he said after they reached the base camp. “He had a bunch of jobs over here during the Cold War.”
“Yes, I can see him in your face.” A very solid officer, thought Fouad, not a liar, like many. Good with Arabic. How much like the father was the son?
“No. Your father was a brave man. And you speak Arabic well, though with an Egyptian accent.”
“Grammar school in Cairo. Before the nuns got a hold of me.” Ferguson laughed.
The son was like the father in many ways, thought Fouad. A thing both good and bad.
4
Rankin turned to the Iraqi and gestured at the car that had turned off from the highway. It rode across the open desert, approaching the foothill two miles away. “Is that for him?”
“Who can tell? But the car is like the one that left from Thar in the afternoon, an old Mercedes.”
Just like a
