“I’ll come charging in at exactly two o’clock.”
Ibriham said to her, “If you see one of their boats attempting to escape, stop them.” With a whispered order from him, one of his men gave her an automatic pistol while others handed over some of their weapons and ammunition to Mercer and Booker Sykes.
Cali gave Mercer one last look but didn’t kiss him. “Good luck.”
“You too.”
“Man, you’ve got yourself a handful,” Booker remarked quietly after she faded into the darkness with Book’s GPS. “She is one fiery redhead.”
Mercer said nothing, trying to put the awkward exchange out of his mind and focus on what lay ahead. He didn’t care that they were standing feet away from perhaps the greatest treasure in human history, the value of which was incalculable in the monetary sense. Even more important was the insight the tomb would give on perhaps the greatest military mind who ever lived. Alexander the Great had single-handedly drawn the map of the ancient world, establishing boundaries that were still in effect today. All Mercer thought about at that moment was preventing Poli Feines and his sponsor from getting their hands on the Alembic of Skenderbeg. Let the archaeologists have their day when it was over. Tonight was about preventing genocide.
“What’s your plan?” he asked Ibriham again.
“Ten minutes before Miss Stowe is to return, we attack the compound.”
“What, just a frontal assault?”
Ibriham nodded. Mercer and Book exchanged a look and shook their heads.
Booker said, “We can do better than that.”
By one thirty the revelry infecting the camp had yet to die down. Men still talked animatedly as they peered into the hole, no doubt excited by the promise of so much death. Only a few had drifted back to the tents, where they were kept awake by celebratory gunfire. Mercer and Devrin were in position fifty yards from the kitchen while Booker had made his way around the encampment toward the lake’s edge. His job was to take out the houseboat. If he failed, the guard on board could turn the camp into a slaughtering ground with the machine gun they’d mounted on the boat’s rail.
For the first time in his life Mercer found he was eager for a fight. He wanted revenge on Poli, on Al-Salibi and on the men who thought wholesale destruction was their god’s greatest desire. The adrenaline pumping through his body was as familiar and rousing as an addict’s drug of choice. Even with the darkness he felt he could see perfectly. He could feel the barest whisper of the breeze against his skin and hear the muted lapping of wavelets on the shore. He could smell the spices from the kitchen as though he were standing at the stove.
The gun Ibriham had given him was a Heckler and Koch HK416, a compact 5.56-millimeter assault carbine with a detachable 40-millimeter grenade launcher. In the pockets of his cargo pants he carried four extra twenty- round magazines and two additional grenades. Although unfamiliar with this particular weapon, he was more than confident of his abilities with it.
He checked his watch for the fifth time in five minutes, more anxious than nervous. Booker would be slipping into the water about now. He looked toward the lake but couldn’t see his friend, whose skin blended with the night.
Keeping low so only his eyes appeared above the surface, Booker Sykes moved easily through the water. The houseboat was only fifty yards from shore, and while the gunner was still awake, he wasn’t looking around the craft, only at the celebration he was certainly disappointed to miss.
Book cut a wide circle around the boat to come at it from the seaward side. Light spilled from a window on this side of the boxy vessel and he could hear Arab music being played on a cassette deck. He edged closer to the stern, away from the guard. The boat was wooden-hulled and slimy. He reached for the railing that circled the low deck, moving slowly so water didn’t drip from his clothes. Rather than heave himself up, he slipped a leg through the railing’s stanchions and slowly rolled onto the deck. He made no sound and his motions had been so smooth that his added weight didn’t rock the flat-bottomed houseboat.
The square superstructure took up most the deck space, leaving a narrow catwalk ringing three sides of the boat. Only the back deck, where the machine gunner stood vigil, was open space. Booker padded aft, ducking when he reached the lighted window. Moving a millimeter at a time he positioned himself so he could see through the grimy glass. Two Arabs were at the dining table reading their Korans while a third was asleep on a threadbare sofa.
Booker eased himself down again. He’d expected there would be more than one man on the houseboat, but he hadn’t expected four and he didn’t know if anyone was asleep in the cabins. During a combat mission Booker was able to keep a precise clock ticking in his head so he knew the time almost to the second. He had two minutes before Ahmad’s men broke cover and started their assault.
He didn’t know how many men he’d killed in his military career. In just one night in Mogadishu he estimated a hundred rebels had fallen under his guns, but the ones he remembered, eleven of them, were the ones he’d taken with a blade. His nightmares were filled with every detail of their deaths, from the smell of their last meals to the heat of their blood. He could still feel the stubble on his palm from the sentry he’d taken at a drug lord’s hacienda. He could still hear the wheeze of air when he severed the throat of a North Korean sailor guarding a mini-sub packed with explosives. And their eyes. The eyes were always with him, asleep or awake.
Slowly, so it made no more sound than an infant’s sigh, he withdrew the knife given to him by one of the Janissaries.
Mercer slithered under the side of the kitchen tent. He’d heard only one man snoring inside. With the moon nearly set, the tent was pitch black. He waited a moment for his eyes to adjust. There was a gentle glow from the stove’s pilot light that allowed him to discern the layout of the tent. There were actually two stoves, several large plastic drums of water, and serving tables. A cot was against one wall, a single figure sprawled under the sheet. The cook’s clothes lay in a pile next to a small prayer rug. An AK-47 hung from the tent pole.
Moving silently Mercer approached the bed. He found the man’s kaffiyeh. He had no idea how to properly wear the traditional headscarf so he just draped it over his head and wrapped the tails to hide his face. He checked his watch. One minute.
Though the man was part of a terrorist cell, he was just a cook. Mercer imagined he’d been given these duties because he wasn’t a capable fighter. And no matter how Mercer tried to rationalize it in his head, he simply couldn’t kill him in cold blood. So when he smashed the butt of his HK into the man’s skull, he checked his swing just enough to render him unconscious. He bound the cook’s wrists behind his back with the Kalashnikov’s sling and was just about to stuff a greasy rag into his mouth when he sensed motion. He whirled, bringing up his assault rifle, but it was only Devrin.
“You are taking too long.” He saw what Mercer had done and quickly strode over to the side of the bed. He looked down at the unconscious cook, then glanced at Mercer. “This is why you will never defeat them,” he said and unceremoniously plunged a knife into the cook’s chest. “They ask for no quarter so you shouldn’t give it.”
He wiped the blade on the sheet, resheathed the knife, and together they exited the back of the tent.
Booker came to the edge of the superstructure. There was about eight feet of open deck between him and the machine gunner. He had twenty seconds. He crept forward, lifting his feet no more than a fraction of an inch from the Astroturfed deck. Book came to within a foot of the guard and he still hadn’t felt his presence. He kept leaning against the rail and watching the celebration on shore. Sykes was grateful he’d never see the Arab’s eyes.
He moved no slower or faster in those final seconds, simply took another practiced step and prepared to reach around the guard’s head with one hand while the knife in the other was poised to open his throat.
A casual voice called from the open door to the cabin. The guard turned to answer. He saw Booker no more than a foot away. With reflexes honed through decades of training, Booker lashed out even before the guard realized what he was seeing. Sykes drove the blade into the Arab’s neck and ripped outward, tearing through muscle and blood vessels so nearly half his throat was slashed open. Blood fountained from the ragged wound, splashing across the deck and into the water.
The man inside called again. Booker let the body fall and tried to swivel the Russian-made fifty-caliber so it pointed at the cabin door, but the gimbal only moved through thirty degrees.
Another guard appeared at the doorway. Booker threw his knife in a desperation toss because the weapon
