Ferguson took a step out from the shadow as the man staggered past him, touching him lightly on the shoulder and then backing away. It was definitely Ravid, and the Israeli looked very much the worse for wear: he was bleeding from the forehead; the side of his face looked battered; and a patch of black blood stood out on his shirt beneath his jacket.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Ferguson asked him.
Ravid tried to focus. “You’re an American.”
“Yeah, cut the bull. I know you’re Mossad. One of my people saw you in Tel Aviv.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m not in a mood to play games tonight,” Ferguson told him. “For one thing, you guys just blew my operation. And for another it’s past my bedtime.”
“Police—”
“You don’t want the police.”
Rankin had circled around the block from the other direction. He raised Ferguson’s shotgun and steadied it against Ravid’s head.
“I could take that gun from your man,” said Ravid.
“Then I’d have to kill you,” said Ferguson.
“It’s clear, Ferg,” said Guns over the radio. He and Monsoon had checked the area to see if Ravid was followed. “Nothing, not even a wino or a cat.”
“All right. We’re going to take him upstairs. After we check him for bugs and see if this is blood or catsup.”
Ravid’s wounds were minor but real, scrapes that could have been from shrapnel or simply falling down, said Rankin. He wouldn’t say how he got them.
“Why did you guys take down Meles Abaa without telling us what was going on?” Thera asked. “We could have helped.”
Ravid looked at her as if she’d suggested the earth was flat.
“The real question is, why’d you come here?” Ferguson asked.
“I didn’t.”
Ferguson would have sooner believed that pigs could fly than that Ravid had simply wandered by. But there was no sense arguing with him; he was good enough that he wouldn’t say anything he didn’t want to.
“Go inside and lay down,” Ferguson told him.
“I want to leave.”
“Yeah, I know. Inside.” Ferguson thumbed at the bedroom; Ravid got up reluctantly and went in.
“Hell of a coincidence him showing up here,” said Rankin.
“Ya think?” Ferguson snorted.
“Maybe those aircraft we intercepted were supposed to take him out.”
Ferguson shrugged. He doubted it. And if they were, the Israelis would have had a backup, and a backup for the backup.
“Hey, Ferg, you better take a look at the feed from the video bug you planted in the lobby,” said Monsoon, who’d taken the watch. “Two plainclothes guys and a squad of soldiers just walked in the front door.”
Some people choose hotels because of the room service; others look for marble bathrooms and king-sized beds. For Bob Ferguson, multiple escape routes were the deciding factor. He sent Thera, Guns, and Rankin to the stairway, telling them to go to the roof and cross over two buildings before descending to an alley that ran to the next street over, where the team’s safe car had been parked. He and the others, with Ravid, took the elevator to the next floor down, where Ferguson jammed it so it couldn’t close. They went to the backup room, where the windows overlooked the side alley.
Ferguson tied a rope to the leg of the coffee table, opened the window, and threw it down.
“Monsoon, you go first. There should be a Dumpster down there. If it looks soft enough, we’ll throw Ravid here down.”
“I can climb,” said the Israeli.
“Come on, let’s go. The Syrians are used to chasing people. They’re pretty good at it.”
The Dumpster was there, which meant it was only a two-story climb. Ferguson sent Grumpy down next.
“What’s your game?” Ferguson asked Ravid.
“I’m not playing a game.”
“Can you climb, or should I throw you?”
“Climb.”
Ferguson watched him go down. Then he went and unhooked the rope, deciding they would do better not to leave any telltale signs of their departure.
Ferguson glanced down into the alley, where the others were waiting, then pulled out his sat phone and called Corrigan.
“Ferg, why are you using the phone? Is there a problem with the radio?”
“I don’t know. Ravid showed up at the hotel. The Syrian police just came in, and they look like they’re looking for him.”
“Aaron Ravid?”
“Yeah. Maybe you better see if
“You think that’s what it is? He needs a bailout?”
“I really doubt it.”
It was possible, of course. Maybe Ravid had been close to the airport when the bombs went off, expecting the planes offshore to pick him up there. Now he was desperate to get away.
Maybe.
“What are you guys doing?” asked Corrigan.
“Right now I’m jumping into a pile of garbage,” Ferguson said, dropping his backpack down into the Dumpster. “I’ll get back to you.”
When Ferguson got down, he found Monsoon and Grumpy but not Ravid.
“Where’s the Israeli?” he demanded.
Monsoon turned just as Ravid came out from around the corner, where he’d relieved himself. “Nature,” said the Mossad agent.
“Don’t let him out of your sight again,” Ferguson told the others. “Not even for ‘nature.’ Let’s go.”
Rankin led Guns and Thera across the block to a car he and Fouad had rented.
“Everybody stand back,” he told them, kneeling down next to the driver’s side and feeling underneath for the magnetic box that held the key.
“You think it’s booby-trapped?” asked Guns as Rankin rose with the key.
Rankin didn’t answer, just glanced to make sure they were back far enough. He didn’t think it was booby- trapped and hadn’t seen any signs that it had been tampered with when he checked it before the night’s operation, but you never knew.
After he got it started, he rolled down the windows and opened the other doors; you never knew. He’d seen a car in Iraq that had been set up to go off only when the rear passenger door was opened. Two Americans had driven around in it for days before the bomb was discovered. SOBs were journalists, and they bugged out the next day.
It was four a.m. and the streets were deserted. They headed in the direction of the Cote d’Azure de Cham, a well-known tourist hotel on Blue Beach or Shaati al-Azraq. Two truckloads of soldiers had cordoned off Palestine Square, and all the traffic that ran near it. They ducked it by going up one of the side streets. Figuring that there would be more patrols on the main roads in the middle of town, they crisscrossed their way toward the western part of the city. But this strategy could only get them so far. To get to the beach they had to get on the highway, where they were sure to run into another roadblock. Even though their papers were in order, they couldn’t take the
