“No time,” said Karr. He pulled out his pistol and glanced at LaFoote, who had taken out his own weapon — an old revolver.
“We don’t fire unless we absolutely have to,” Karr told him. “And if we do, I want you to go through that window and run like hell,” Karr added.
“I’m not running away.”
“It’s all right. I’ll be right behind you.”
37
When they reached the airport, Lia got out of the cab and went into the terminal, leaving Dean to deal with the driver.
The young man in the restroom apparently had wanted to rob her, not rape her. If the old lady was to be believed, he was an Algerian, not a local.
“Probably bribe her into keeping her mouth shut,” Chafetz had said. “She’ll be well off for a few months. Assuming he recovers.”
Lia wasn’t in much of a mood to add her own cynical comment. Maybe the old woman thought the slime had only wanted money; Lia knew differently.
Someone grabbed her shoulder. Lia spun, ready to deck him. Only at the last instant did she realize it was Dean.
“Hey, our flight’s this way,” he said.
He had a look in his eyes that she had never seen there before.
Pity?
She began walking in the direction of the airplane gate. Dean hurried to keep up.
“Hold on a second,” he said, grabbing her again.
“What do you want?” she said harshly.
“I wanted to talk to you for a second.”
“What?”
“Get on the plane by yourself. I’m going to go back and get into the office and look around. I couldn’t earlier because someone was there.”
“What?”
There were people around. Dean stopped speaking, waiting until a pair of Moroccans passed.
“I’ll catch a flight in the morning,” said Dean.
“You think it’s a good time to go back?”
“As good as any. There’ll only be one guard, if he’s not busy taking his friend to the hospital.”
“Well, let’s go then.” Lia started back toward the terminal entrance.
“No, you take the plane.”
“Let go of me, Charlie Dean,” she told him as he grabbed her. “I’m not letting you go in there alone.”
They locked stares. The taste of her stomach rose into her mouth, but she pushed her teeth together hard, steeling herself against it.
“All right.” said Dean finally. “Let’s talk to the Art Room about it and get something to eat.”
“No, first we figure out how we’re going to do it, then we tell the Art Room,” she said. “Let’s get a taxi.”
38
Karr watched the two men approach the house. Both had military-style night-vision goggles strapped to their heads. They also wore dark clothes, and the bulk of one of the men in the shadows made Karr think he was wearing a bulletproof vest. One carried a submachine gun, probably an MP-5N; the other had a small backpack but no gun in his hand.
They came into the house through what had been the front door. Karr had a clean, easy shot on the first man in, the one with the gun; most likely he could get the second man as well. But that would leave whoever was in the other car, as well as seriously complicating the situation.
Then again, he might not get such a clean shot again.
Karr held off. The men passed through the house into the back.
“They’re looking over the kitchen,” said Rockman, watching the feed from the Crow. “Checking out the bomb crater. All right. Now they’re going into the office.”
Karr didn’t need the play-by-play; the house was so small that it was obvious where they were.
LaFoote stirred next to him. Karr tapped the old Frenchman on the shoulder and held his hand to his lips.
The Frenchman nodded — then sneezed.
39
Rubens took his eyes off the screen at the front of the Art Room long enough to glance at his watch. The meeting with the judge about the General was due to start in forty minutes; he had to leave in ten minutes or risk being late.
So be it. It was just an informal session, after all. And his lawyer would be there.
When Rubens glanced back at the screen, it was blank.
“What’s happening?” he demanded.
“I’m losing some of the communication bandwidth,” said the man flying the Crow from a piloting bunker on the other side of the underground complex. “One of the satellites has a power glitch and we may blow some of the circuits. I had to shut down the feed as a precaution.”
“No!” thundered Rubens. “Visual now, whatever the consequences! Show us what’s going on with Tommy! Now, damn it.”
Rubens never, ever raised his voice in the Art Room, and if he’d said half a dozen cusswords during his entire NSA career, it was news to the staff. Everyone stopped what they were doing.
“Yes, sir,” said the pilot, and the image snapped back on the screen.
40
Dean took the napkin and sketched the basic layout on it for Lia, diagramming the alley and the charity building.
“You could stand right at this comer here and watch the office,” Dean told her. “You’ll be able to see everything.”
“And be run over by anyone who comes up through the alley in a truck,” Lia told him. She reached into her travel bag for her PDA and pulled up the photos of the area they had been given as part of the earlier briefing. “I can get up on the roof from this fire escape,” she said, pointing. “I’ll have just as good a view.”
“OK,” said Dean. She seemed a little more herself, he thought. “I saw a place at the eastern end of the medina where we can rent bikes. We can stash them so we can use them to get away if we need to. We could use them to get to the airport if we have to.”
“It’ll be closed by now.”
“You can’t pick the locks?”
