water… and perhaps I will let you live…”
Another pinch brought a scream and a renewed sense of focus. Quinn kept his voice low, a menacing whisper, slipping seamlessly into English. “I need you to tell me about the Americans. They are my friends.”
“Your friends…” Sick realization crept over the big Iraqi’s face. “ You are American?”
Quinn nodded slowly. “I am.”
“Impossible,” Ghazan sneered, momentarily coherent. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Quinn drew a long, slender blade from the back of his belt and held it before the Arab’s face.
Ghazan blinked sagging eyes. He gave a tight chuckle, trying to convince himself. “Put that thing away. It does not frighten me. You Americans… you have told the world. You are disgusted by the mere idea of torture.”
“We are disgusted by it,” Quinn said, nodding slightly. “I am sickened by the act.” He pressed the point of his blade up Ghazan’s flared nostril until a trickle of blood flowed down his twitching lip. “And yet, I find myself needing the information inside your head.” Quinn shrugged, drawing a fresh trickle of blood. “I am disgusted not for what it does to scum like you, but for what it does to the one inflicting the pain. Such violence does irreparable emotional harm to the torturer…” The tip of his knife remained motionless, now more than an inch inside the big Iraqi’s nose. “Some say it damages them beyond repair.”
Quinn leaned in, almost touching the sweating man’s face with his forehead, close enough to smell the odor of spiced chickpeas he’d eaten for supper. “The bad news for you,” he whispered, “is that I’m already damaged…”
Ghazan wept like a baby, but in the end, the drugs and the threat of a man even more cruel than himself loosened his mind and his tongue. He gave up an address in a bombed-over suburb outside Fallujah where American hostages were supposedly being kept. In his panic he offered information that some of the hostages were to be killed that very night as a show of insurgent solidarity.
The contents of a second syringe sent the Iraqi’s head lolling against the wet concrete, snoring. Quinn stared at him for a long moment, thinking of the innocent people the terrorist was responsible for killing. He held the knife in his clenched fist and considered all the events that had brought him up to this point. He was not yet thirty-five, a government agent, Fulbright scholar, father, PTA volunteer… and an extremely talented killer. The world was a very strange place.
It seemed such a simple thing to slide the razor-sharp blade between Ghazan’s hairy ribs and scramble his black heart like an egg…
Instead, Quinn wiped the knife clean and reached inside the folds of his dishdasha for his secure radio, wondering just how damaged he was.
“This is Copper Three-Zero,” he said. “I have high value target Juliet for immediate pickup…”
Quinn dialed his encrypted cell phone on the way back to his stashed motorcycle.
Sadiq answered, “ Assalaamu alaikum, Jericho. I am so pleased that you have remained alive to pay me.”
Quinn returned the greeting and repeated the address Ghazan had provided.
“Mean anything to you?” he said.
“Nothing,” Sadiq said. “But that neighborhood is a Sunni stronghold, very dangerous.”
Quinn laughed to himself. All of Fallujah was a Sunni stronghold. “Ghazan mentioned a man named Farooq. Have you heard of him?”
The line was silent.
“Sadiq?”
“I know of this man. Most simply call him the sheikh.” “It is said that this man was behind the bombing of your Colorado shopping mall. He has vowed to bring the Great Satan to her knees. Your Fifth Sunday Bombing, it is said, is just the beginning. He plans something far worse…”
“In the United States?” Quinn held the phone against his ear with his shoulder as he pushed the motorcycle from the shadows behind the stinking pile of cans, rotting fruit, and pungent diapers.
“Most definitely in the United States,” Sadiq said, preoccupied. “He wants to punish the Great Satan on American soil… Jericho, these hostages, they are to be killed?”
“So says Ghazan al Ghazi.”
“In that case,” Sadiq said. “Be very careful you do not get killed yourself. Remember, I have yet to receive payment.”
“Thanks for your concern.” Quinn couldn’t help but shake his head at his informant’s abrupt manner. The kid was right though, lives ended in the blink of an eye in this part of the world. “I’ll see that you are rewarded, no matter what happens to me.” He ended the call and sped into the darkness as fast at the rattling little Kaweseki would carry him.
Intelligence was a perishable substance and if he intended to save the American prisoners, he had to move fast. Worse, he’d have to enlist the help of a man he despised.
CHAPTER 2
3 September, 2035 hours Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport
Hamzah Abdul Haq ran-not for his life, but, Allah willing, to choose a less agonizing manner in which to die.
The hulking Algerian bolted down the long, arched hallway, heart pounding, lungs rasping for breath. Cheap, rubber-soled shoes squeaked on the cracked tile as he dodged startled pockets of tourists. A stinking vagrant-the airport was full of filthy people-sprawled across the floor directly in his path, but fear made Hamzah agile as well as fast and he darted around the derelict without losing any of his precious lead.
If the men chasing the Algerian had known what he had tucked in his huge fist they would have ignored the crowd and shot him on the spot.
Since 9/11 when people saw Hamzah with his sullen eyes and wild, black goatee they naturally assumed he was a terrorist-a man on a sacred quest to destroy everything Western democracy represented. The American mall bombings had set nerves on edge. Commercial planes were only now beginning to be allowed back into U.S. airspace. Terrorists, they reasoned, lurked behind every shrub.
In Hamzah’s particular case, these suspicions were correct.
Standing six feet four inches with the broad shoulders of a professional wrestler, the Algerian cut an imposing figure. The French girls with whom he spent his time called him armoire a glace — the mirrored wardrobe. His great bulk proved useful for bending others to his will or hurting them if the opportunity arose. At the moment, he would have traded size for more speed. This was his last run, but, Allah willing, it was the most important of his life.
Two officers of the French Police Nationale dogged his heals. Dark jumpsuits and shoulder patches identified them as Black Panthers-members of Recherche Assistance Intervention Dissuasion or RAID. As members of an elite antiterrorism unit they had their choice of weapons. These carried Glock semiautomatic pistols and the stubby, but deadly H amp;K MP5 submachine gun. RAID operators were said to shoot more than three hundred rounds each day and were all expert marksmen. The crowded terminal and their misguided desire to keep him alive for questioning were indeed the only things saving him from a bullet in the back of the head.
In desperation, Hamzah cut in front of a yellow kiosk selling computerized foreign language courses. Unawares, a petite woman with blond braids pushed a baby stroller directly across his path. Her ribs crunched as he drove the point of his shoulder into her chest. The impact sent her crashing against a billboard with a sickening whoof. Hamzah yanked at the stroller as he bolted past, spilling a tangle of infant and blankets across the floor.
He held a feeble hope the officers would stop and check on the baby’s safety, but a glance tossed over his shoulder confirmed what he already knew. RAID men were too professional for such a trick. They sailed over the dazed woman and her screaming child like Olympic hurdlers with automatic weapons.
A stately, graying gentleman dressed in the tweed sport coat of a university professor stepped from a bank of
