phones in an attempt to block the fleeing Algerian. He got a flat hand to the face for his trouble. His glasses shattered and he dropped to his knees.
Hamzah’s heart sank as boots closed in behind him. Was it Allah’s will that he should fail when he was now so close? Something had gone terribly wrong for RAID to be on him so fast. Someone must have informed.
Panting for breath, the Algerian rounded a bend at the great hall, near the main ticketing plaza. He felt a rush of wind as a RAID man swept at his neck.
Then, he saw his target, right where Rashid said he would be. Five more seconds, Allah willing, and nothing else would matter.
Ian Grant readjusted his tattered yellow backpack and took a look at his ticket. At nineteen he was already a seasoned world traveler, visiting places his friends back in Iowa had only seen in National Geographic. Charles de Gaulle Airport had fast become his least favorite spot on earth. Notoriously difficult to negotiate, even in September it was as muggy as a West African jungle and stunk like an overflowing toilet. Now it was packed with stranded travelers trying to get back to the States after a three-day flight embargo because of some stupid terrorists bombing a mall. He missed Africa already.
The flight from Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, the night before had been grueling. Before the cramped plane had lumbered down the tarmac, two haughty flight attendants had hustled down the center aisle, liberally applying the contents of two aerosol insecticide bombs into the already dank air over the passengers’ heads. The smug women wore masks, but assured everyone else that the stuff was perfectly safe. Ian could plainly see a skull and crossbones on the orange cans. Twenty-four hours later, his T-shirt still reeked. It was a reminder of the many idiosyncrasies of the Dark Continent.
A year of sleeping on a reed mat and eating meals small enough to hold in the palm of his hand made civilization overwhelming. Small luxuries at the cheap hostel in Roissy the night before had been startling-light with the flick of a switch, a hot shower, and more food in one sitting than he’d been used to eating in a week. It gave him a melancholy pang at how he’d taken his entire life for granted.
Clarissa had warned him about that the night before he left. She was twenty-five and freckled. A Protestant missionary, she was severely British and said whatever popped into her head.
Ian would never understand why a girl like Clarissa had taken up with someone like him. Six years her junior, he was all knees and elbows, with a perpetual bedhead of muddy brown hair. He was blind as an African fruit bat without his glasses, and his front teeth were on the big side.
With thoughts of Clarissa’s herbal shampoo swirling in his head like a hot African wind, he didn’t see the huge Arab until it was too late.
The tiny device in Hamzah’s fist was called a cat’s whisker. Roughly two inches long, it was nothing more than a hollow cellulose needle, sealed at both ends and housed inside a slightly larger cardboard tube with a plunger at the base. Once inserted into the body via the plunger, the inner needle would dissolve rapidly, releasing its contents into the bloodstream. It held little more liquid than a single drop of dew.
In this case, a drop was more than enough.
Ian’s iced coffee spewed like a geyser as the massive Algerian ploughed into him from out of nowhere. Both men went down hard, the Algerian on top, driving the air from Ian’s lungs.
The giant regained his feet in an instant, running again. Ian watched the soles of two black boots as a uniformed policeman leaped over him, only to slip in a puddle of spilled coffee. Another officer yanked his partner to his feet and the two tore down the hall cursing in French.
Ian shook his head as the trio disappeared around a corner beyond ticketing. He felt as if he’d been run over by a train. When he lifted the front of his coffee-soaked T-shirt he found the beginnings of an ugly bruise on his right side. He touched the spot with the tip of his finger. It was raw, like a bad carpet burn. The big guy must have led with his fist.
Ian grabbed a fistful of paper napkins from a nearby cafe stand and dabbed his shirt while he ordered another iced coffee. A veteran of West Africa, he’d endured far worse than a little bruise.
CHAPTER 3
0126 hours Iraq
The sounds of an American M4 assault rifle were distinctive-a friendly series of flat, supersonic whacks splitting the air-and hopefully the hearts and minds of more than a few Iraqi insurgents.
Sizzling arcs from falling Star Cluster flares illuminated the night sky to Jericho’s left, past the motorcycle he’d stashed under a scraggly tamarisk tree. Male voices barked commands in English and guttural Iraqi Arabic. Moments before, a U.S. Army Cavalry “Peacekeeping Unit” had blazed through the streets in hot pursuit of two rusty Toyota Land Cruisers and an Opal sedan that supposedly carried several high-ranking insurgent leaders. The sounds of shouts and shooting moved four blocks away, then five, then six as American soldiers, many no older than twenty-one, ducked and dodged through dark, narrow streets and bombed-out buildings in this the City of Mosques.
So far, their quarry had eluded them.
Thirty feet above Quinn’s head, a brisk desert wind caused the fronds of a lone date palm to hiss and rattle in the darkness as if shaken by an angry dog. There was no moon and as the Star Clusters burned away, the night closed back around him.
Dressed in the ankle-length dishdasha and a checked Arab head scarf known as a shemagh, Quinn lay prone. The rubble and broken pavement of the street gave up the heat gained from a long day, warming his belly. Though he wore his own M4 carbine and assorted other weapons, Quinn’s robe made him look too much like an insurgent to take part in the present action without getting shot to pieces.
As a fluent Arabic speaker, Quinn was a rarity in the Air Force. With the copper skin of his Apache grandmother, he’d been able to blend in with the local populace, living “outside the wire” or beyond the protection of the base, for the past six days. A rash of kidnappings over recent weeks saw seven contractors, an Air Force TACP, and three soldiers from the U.S. Army Task Force out of Camp Fallujah go missing. Four of the civilian contractors and one soldier had shown up in various butchered body parts around the city. As other areas in Iraq appeared to be becoming more peaceful with the steady withdrawal of U.S. troops, minority Sunni insurgents in Fallujah had become even more violent. With the Colorado bombings, some now believed the Americans might just decide to stay for a while and were pulling all stops to make sure that didn’t happen.
Though he ate everything he could get his hands on when he was able to eat in the chow hall, Quinn had the gaunt look of a half-starved jackal that helped him fit in with the war-torn Iraqis. His Apache skin coloring, perpetual five o’clock shadow from his Irish father, and uncanny ability with the Arabic language allowed him to blend with the population outside the wire. His aggressive brand of fighting skill and elite fitness made him an obvious choice to spearhead the joint-service investigation tasked with finding the kidnapped personnel.
Since the Army had the most missing men, a lieutenant colonel named Fargo from Task Force 605 was put in charge of the operation. He was a blustering man with a red face and enough frustrated energy to start a grass fire if he stood in one spot too long. A logistics and supply officer by training, Fargo was rumored to have a relative in Congress who had helped move him into a more active role in the fighting before he rotated back to the States.
Quinn had been in Iraq for almost a year-double the term of deployment for an OSI agent. In that time, he’d developed a trusted stable of informants who had led him to Ghazan al Ghazi, an insurgent thug who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Iraqi civilians. Now, he’d finally developed a solid lead and the boneheaded Lt. Colonel Fargo had just blown right past with his men.
A nineteen-year-old Marine had been kidnapped the previous night during a protracted firefight in the far north end of the city. Since they had no personnel missing prior to that point, the Marine Corps had seen to its other duties and chosen not to take part in the task force.
For reasons known only to himself, Lt. Colonel Fargo had taken Quinn’s intel and launched this rescue
