Without knowing exactly how the building was configured, Ferguson decided on a simple, two-step plan: tear-gas grenade in window, then duck. Standard grenades needed about fourteen meters to arm; this was a precaution against the grenade going off too close to friendly troops. The arming mechanism in these rounds allowed them to explode as soon as they struck something.
Ferguson rammed the metal butt end of the grenade launcher through the window, breaking the glass. Then he pumped the round inside and grabbed his shotgun. A man emerged from the building; Ferguson fired point-blank at the man, striking him in the chest, neck, and face with the plastic pellets in the shell.
“Ferg?” asked Thera.
“Watch the back, watch the back,” he yelled, reloading the M203 and pumping another round inside the building before running over to the man he’d shot, who was writhing on the ground. Though the shotgun pellets were plastic, he’d been so close to Ferguson that the round cut as well as bruised his face, and he wailed in pain, temporarily blinded. Ferguson put him temporarily out of his misery with a shot of Demerol.
As he rose, he heard Thera scream.
5
Judy Coldwell waited for the bank clerk to leave the safety-deposit area before opening the box. Her fingers trembled as she picked up the passport and the envelope filled with hundred-dollar bills.
As she had hoped but also feared, she had been called on to fulfill her brother’s mission. It would not be easy. The church was under attack. The Reverend Tallis had been arrested. So had other elders, perhaps all of them. The bank accounts in the United States and Cayman Islands had been frozen, according to the FBI press release she read on the Internet.
Tallis had managed to send her a one-word message:
Coldwell knew that meant Latakia, Syria, and that she should go there. Beyond that, however, she was unsure exactly how to proceed. She knew that her brother’s mission would have been to contact groups interested in attacking holy sites. She knew where to get the necessary authorizations (and find willing bank officers) to enable her to access the group’s hidden overseas funds. But she did not know what groups Benjamin had been dealing with.
Latakia had been a favorite spot of arms dealers and other smugglers when she last visited roughly three years before, and she guessed that whomever Benjamin had been dealing with had arranged to meet him there. Whether they would accept her as a replacement or not remained to be seen. Traveling to Syria was not easy for an American, but that at least would not be a problem; the passport in her hand indicated she was a Moroccan of French and Italian descent.
Whatever must be done would be done. Generations were counting on her to bring forward the next age.
Coldwell glanced at the passport. She would have to get her hair cut so that it matched the photo, but by tomorrow afternoon, Judy Coldwell would no longer exist. Agnes Perpetua would have taken her place. The tickets for the first leg of her journey were already waiting at the airport to be claimed.
Coldwell put the passport and money into her purse, then closed the box.
“I’m done here,” she told the clerk outside. “Done.”
6
Thera’s scream was followed by a steady rattle of gunfire from an AK-47, followed by an MP5’s sturdier whistle. Ferg ran around the north side of the building, aiming to flank who’d ever come out.
“Thera,” he said as he ran. “Where are you? Yo.”
She didn’t answer. When he reached the back corner of the building he threw himself down, moving forward slowly on the ground.
Something moved near the doorway. Thera.
She bent down, reaching for the doorknob.
“What are you doing?” said Ferguson.
“Duck!” she told him, flipping a grenade in through the crack and then running back toward the berm ten yards away. She made it just as the grenade went off.
Ferguson rose and walked toward the doorway. Two men lay sprawled in the dirt nearby; a third had been killed inside the building by Thera’s grenade. None of the men was Khazaal.
“Run up and cover the front of the building,” Ferguson told her.
“You’re not going in, are you?” she asked.
“Just get up there and make sure no one came out while we were playing back here.”
The interior of the building had been divided in half by a wall that ran only partway to the high ceiling. Except for the dead man and a few scattered cartons, the room at the back was empty. Ferguson moved inside as quietly as he could, then raised his grenade launcher and pumped a shell of tear gas over the wall. He pulled up his shotgun, aiming it at the open doorway, then ran forward to the wall. Though he had a pretty strong suspicion that the front half of the building was empty, he rolled on the floor and crawled his way inside.
A hundred boxes or more lined the wall on his left. The rest of the place was empty. The boxes were filled with infant formula, according to the writing on the side.
“Is this where Khazaal is going?” asked Thera when he came out.
“I don’t know yet,” he told her. “Let’s go put down markers for the airborne guys and then hide.”
“I’m sorry I had to shoot,” said Thera.
“Forget about it now. Come on. Their Mercedes should be about ninety seconds away.”
Nearly ten miles to the south, Rankin stopped his bike in the desert and pulled out his paper map, correlating his position against the handheld GPS device. He flipped the radio into satellite mode. “Fouad, is he still coming this way?”
“Yes,” said the Iraqi.
“Where’s he going?” asked Guns. The two Rangers they’d taken with them pulled up behind them.
“Maybe for that airfield at the corner there,” said Rankin. “Let’s move up the road to the intersection with the airport.”
Ferguson hid behind the Land Rover, and Thera crouched at the edge of the building as the battered Mercedes rounded the turnoff and headed for the complex.
“You have the first guy out. I have the second,” said Ferguson. “Make sure the mask covers your glasses. This gas is worse than CS by a factor of ten.”
“No way.”
“Try it and see,” said Ferguson, readying the grenades.
The Mercedes stopped alongside the Land Rover. The two men inside made things easy by getting out at the same time.
Thera’s crossbow landed in the driver’s left shoulder, where the plunger tip injected enough anesthetic to knock him senseless within three seconds. By then, Ferguson had knocked the second man to the ground with a plastic round to the head. He soft-tossed a tear gas grenade into the car as he ran to the man, kicking away a fallen pistol. Though the man had been knocked unconscious by the blow, Ferg injected a heavy dose of the sodium pentothal to keep him out. A fog of tear gas enveloped the area; Ferguson and Thera had to pull the two men all the way to the fence before they were clear.
