turned down a street across from the airport fence, riding up a short distance to a cluster of buildings where they had left the other bike. He parked next to it, debating whether to go into the store and get something to drink. He could see from the street that it had a Western-style beverage case, the sort of help-yourself arrangement that would minimize the amount of Arabic he would have to speak.
His Arabic wasn’t
He went in and bought an Arab cola, a precise knockoff of Coke except for the Arabic script. He paid with a ten-pound note that brought some change. He pointed to his mouth and groaned “toothache” when the proprietor tried to start a conversation. The man nodded sympathetically and advised him on a number of cures, all available at the store. Rankin simply shook his head patted his pocket, as if he had aspirin there. It was an old trick but an easy one, and when he left, the store owner had the impression they had had a long conversation.
Outside, he sipped the soda, the best thing he’d tasted in days.
After two gulps, a soldier appeared on the road. The man stared at the bikes as he approached; Rankin watched the man from the corner of his eyes.
“What business do you have here?” asked the soldier, walking up to him.
“Me?” asked Rankin in Arabic.
The soldier thought he was being disrespectful and asked again, this time in an even more demanding tone.
“No business,” said Rankin. The words were right and even the accent was fine, but he didn’t say it quickly enough, and the soldier’s suspicions had already been aroused. The Syrian began to swing his gun up to challenge him; Rankin flew forward, throwing his forearm into the soldier’s chin so hard that the man’s teeth nearly severed his tongue as his head snapped back. Rankin rode him to the ground and knocked him unconscious with two hard snaps to the head.
As quick as he was, Rankin hadn’t been quite fast enough; two of the man’s companions turned the corner of the fence nearby. They were talking to each other, arguing over soccer; it took them a second or more to see the two men sprawled on the road nearby.
It was too late for them by then. Rankin grabbed the soldier’s gun, leveling it against his stomach and thumbing down the selector to automatic fire without conscious thought. As he pulled the trigger he realized he might have chosen to run instead. If they’d been a little farther away or if he’d had another moment or two to think, he might have made that choice, but you didn’t survive in wartime by second-guessing your instincts. By the time he dismissed the idea the men were already dead.
Rankin jumped on his motorcycle, pulling it backward away from the curb before starting it. He started down the road toward the airport. Thera turned the corner, running toward him.
“On! Get on!” he said, pulling up.
“What’s going on?”
“Come on.”
“We can’t leave Fouad.”
“I’m not. Get on.”
Thera had to hike her long dress to her waist before she could do so; they lost a few more seconds before Rankin could spin back toward the other motorcycle. Rankin let her off, retrieved his Uzi from the top of his pack, then sped back toward Fouad, just turning the corner, face flush and chest heaving. Rankin pushed him down as if swatting a fly, then emptied the Uzi at the two soldiers who’d come out from the gate to see what the gunfire was about. Both men hit the dirt, but from this distance, a little better than a hundred yards, it was impossible to tell if he’d put them down or they’d simply taken cover.
“Up! Up!” he yelled to Fouad, reaching down for him. “Up! Let’s go! Come on!”
Fouad got his hands beneath his chest and pushed forward, more a beached whale looking for the water than an intelligence agent trying to escape. Rankin grabbed him and pulled him onboard, nearly losing his gun as he started moving again. Shots whizzed by before he turned the corner.
“Come on!” yelled Thera, who was waiting. “Let’s go!”
“That way,” said Rankin, pointing ahead. “Head for the highway!”
19
“Hey, beautiful. This towel taken?”
Kel looked up from her blanket on the beach below the Hotel Cairo, which was next to the Medici. Ferguson had left her there before swimming out to meet with Corrine.
“Bob, back already?”
“I told you, everybody calls me Ferg.” He grabbed his towel, giving the beach a quick glance while drying his hair.
“Still no one watching us,” said Kel.
“Syrians must be busy.” Ferguson plopped down next to her. “Thanks for hiring the girls. They did a good job. All locals?”
“All locals.” She leaned her arms back, stretched in the sand. “Now it’s time for you to pay up.”
“A hundred Euros apiece wasn’t enough?”
“I was talking about me,” she said, craning her head back for a kiss.
20
Rankin and Thera stopped their bikes in a grove of trees overlooking the river about fifty miles from the airport. As far as Rankin could tell, they hadn’t been followed, but he was sure they would be.
Corrigan cursed when he heard what had happened. For once, Rankin didn’t snap back and tell him to screw himself.
“We’re going to get back on Route 4 and ride up near Aj’aber,” Rankin told him. “At that point we’ll cut south into the desert. Fouad knows a couple of good places for pickups. We should be OK until nightfall.”
“The Syrians are going to go ape.”
Rankin said nothing. He was about to kill the connection when Corrigan told him that Ferguson wanted to talk to him.
“When?”
“I think he can talk now. Hold on. I’ll find out.”
Rankin’s shoulders sagged as he waited, partly from fatigue and partly because he knew he hadn’t had a particularly good run the last few days.
“Hey, Skippy,” said Ferguson. “How do you like the bikes?”
“They’re all right.”
“Tell me about the jewels Khazaal had.”
Rankin told him the little that he knew, then gave him the information that Thera and Fouad had found out at the airport.
“It’s a logical place,” said Ferguson. “How are you doing?”
Rankin told Ferguson what had happened.
“Yeah, Corrigan mentioned something along those lines. Sucks,” said Ferguson. “I’m going to have Corrigan figure out how to get you guys over here after you bug out. Take Guns, too. In the meantime, let me talk to Fouad.”
Rankin passed the phone over to the Iraqi. Fouad blinked into the sun, which had fallen halfway down the sky.
“Khazaal went west,” Fouad told him.
