“Beep it,” urged Ferguson. “Watch. He hears the air. It is quite phenomenal. Watch. Watch!”
The driver hit the horn. Rankin now practically jumped upward in the seat.
The man in the front who was in charge told the driver to stop up ahead near an open lot. He pulled in. The men got out. Rankin let himself be jerked from the van, a bewildered look on his face. He landed in a heap in the dirt, then slowly got to his knees.
“Fire the guns and watch,” said Ferguson as he got out of the van. “Watch him. He will jump.”
“Maybe we should fire at you,” said the man who’d first put the rifle at Rankin’s neck.
Ferguson took his prayer hat off his head and pushed out his chest. Then as a final gesture tossed down his cane. “Accept my soul, my Lord God. Thank you for this favor,” he said. “Thank you for sending the angel to deliver me to Paradise.”
The man leveled his gun at Ferguson’s face, then pushed the barrel down before shooting. Bullets splattered into the grounds a few feet from him, ricocheting wildly.
Ferguson didn’t flinch — much. “Old fool,” said the man. “Let them walk.” They got back in the van and drove away.
Ferguson bent to pick up his cane. Rankin got up and reached it before he did.
“We’re still being watched,” Ferguson whispered. “I don’t think the Imam’s son totally bought the act. But those idiots did.”
He straightened, then pointed up the street. “Thera can pick us up after we go into that cafe at the corner. We’ll dump our disguises in the back and come out there.”
He began to walk. Within a few steps he had fallen into a rhythm and begun to hum.
It took Rankin half a block to realize it was “Finnegan’s Wake.” He hoped to hell the people watching them didn’t know any old Irish folk songs.
21
“So, were you nervous?” said Ferguson as they headed back to the hotel in the van. He’d waited until they reached the other mosque, where he changed out of his costume and made sure the people trailing him had left before getting Rankin.
“I wasn’t nervous,” lied Rankin, “but next time don’t tell them to shoot me.”
“I didn’t tell them to shoot you, just to shoot the gun. There’s a difference.”
“I doubt they saw one.”
“The Global Hawk tracked the van with Khazaal up to the castle,” said Thera. “Meles is on his way in that direction, too.”
“What about the Russian?”
“Hasn’t left the hotel.”
“He may have a way around the sensors,” said Ferguson.
“Or maybe he’s not in on this meet,” suggested Rankin. “Maybe this is about Khazaal and Meles. Your source said the meeting wasn’t until tomorrow. Maybe they’re getting together before the rest of the players.”
“Do we still want to scare them out of there, Ferg?” asked Thera. “If they go to the mosque, we’re in worse shape.”
Ferguson took the laptop and paged through some of the video showing Khazaal. One of his men had a small briefcase with him.
“Hey, Rankin, this look like a case for an Uzi to you?”
Rankin looked at it. “Maybe a mini Uzi; it’s so thin. But why? It’s not like they need to fool anyone.”
“Probably has the jewels in it,” said Thera.
“Yeah. That’s what I’m thinking. So riddle me this, Batgirl,” he added. “Iraqis don’t buy, they sell.”
“What’s the riddle?”
“Iraqis don’t buy, they sell,” repeated Ferguson. “But our Iraqi is going around with a case that has so many jewels in it, he doesn’t leave it with the people in the mosque, he doesn’t even trust Meles, you see?” Ferguson pointed to the pictures. “He’s keeping it out of his reach, away from Meles’s people. These guys travel in a separate car.”
“Might he his lunch, Ferg,” said Rankin.
“Assume it’s not. What’s he going to buy here?”
“The Russian,” said Rankin. “He needs him to run some missile system.”
“Corrigan’s guess.”
Rankin frowned. He wished Ferguson hadn’t mentioned that.
“That’s not a reason to reject it,” added Ferg. “But ordinarily, you don’t pay in advance for services rendered. Maybe he’s trying to buy something, too. Eiher way, if we snatch the case, we stop the deal.”
“Just as easy to snatch him,” said Rankin.
“No,” said Ferguson. “Because I can’t touch him. I don’t have to be so careful with the guards; they’re not going to stand trial.”
He was making a fine distinction — a very fine distinction — but hadn’t that been Corrine Alston’s point? The administration wanted Khazaal to stand trial in Iraq.
She wouldn’t like the fact that the guards were killed, if that happened. Bui in the context of everything else, she’d accept it.
Maybe.
Definitely if he got Khazaal alive.
Snatch the jewels, and even if he missed Khazaal he’d change his plans. The Iraqi would be more vulnerable if he had to improvise, infinitely more vulnerable.
“So what’s he buying?” Thera asked.
“Something he doesn’t have,” said Ferguson, thinking of Birk’s offer.
While Ferguson was washing the gray out of his hair back in the hotel room, Guns and Grumpy added booster units to pick up signals from the bugs Ferg had left in the mosque. The boosters, each about the size of a cigarette carton, took the signals and broadcast them to the satellite system. Ringing the target area with the boosters not only provided insurance if one of the units malfunctioned or was discovered but also allowed them to plant even smaller audio flies inside later on.
Guns had one more unit to place, this one on the water side of the compound. An ancient wooden waterwheel stood about ten feet from the road on the north side; it looked to Guns the perfect place to put the booster, assuming he could get out there. A narrow stone ledge that had once been part of a dock or walkway ran almost all the way toward it, but what exactly would he say he was doing if someone came down the road and saw him?
He sat for a few minutes, puzzling this out. Then he hit on an idea: he’d claim he had dropped something into the water and hoped to fish it out. To make it more authentic, he dug into his pockets looking for something. He didn’t come up with anything, at least not that he felt he could afford to lose, so he took off his watch. It was a cheap plastic model, but it had been a present from his brother. Rather than throw it in he pocketed it. If he got to the point where he was being searched, the watch was going to be the least of his worries.
Guns reached over to the wall and pulled himself up. His foot slipped off one or two of the stones, but he managed to make it to the wheel. There he took the booster from his belt, activated it, and slipped it into the rung at the top.
As he started back he saw that the wall angled toward the land just beyond the wheel, forming a wedge that ran to a small rocky beach. A chain-link fence blocked off the beach, but from where he was he could just see the edge of a boat in the angled inlet made by the wall. As best he could remember, the boat had not been in the photos he’d seen earlier from the Global Hawk. Guns decided to reconnoiter, though the only way to do this was to go back the way he came, walk around several blocks, and then slip into the back of the large building above the
