“Johnny, ease up,” said Christian. “Ghadab’s girl is telling her they’re sisters and that she’s going to help her. But you’re spooking her. She thinks you’re going to molest them because they’re slaves. That’s why she clamped on to Chelsea. She just told her to run when she gives the signal.”
“Let’s just take her down,” said Johnny.
“Chill. Chelsea’s fine.”
“I’m two blocks away,” said Turk.
Johnny stopped and turned toward the street. There were no cars; he crossed.
“It might be a ruse,” Johnny told Turk. “I don’t trust this.”
“No, she’s talking about being a slave. Dump your jacket for a different look.”
“All right,” he said, still reluctant.
A Daesh pickup truck with a teenager hanging on to the machine gun mounted in the back roared past Chelsea and Shadaa as they turned onto the street with the hotel. The kid bounced up and down, swinging the gun and grinning like a three-year-old on a merry-go-round. Dust billowed behind the truck as it flew down the street and turned.
“What’s going on?” Chelsea asked.
It was an Arabic phrase she had practiced quite a bit, but Shadaa seemed confused.
“Where are you from?” Shadaa asked.
“Somalia.” Chelsea lowered her eyes, as if admitting this was an act of shame.
“You’re Christian?”
The translation was slow, and the device offered no possible responses.
Chelsea shook her head.
“Does he beat you?” asked Shadaa.
Chelsea froze.
Shadaa interpreted that as a yes. “Come with me and I will get you some food.”
Johnny came up the block just in time to see Chelsea going into the hotel.
“She’s going in,” said Christian over the radio. “Hot damn.”
Johnny continued up the street. He was about ten yards from the entrance when one of the two guards stepped out and, with his submachine gun, motioned him away.
Johnny crossed the street. The guards were well equipped: rather than the ubiquitous AKs, they wielded MP5 submachine guns. The weapons suggested a higher degree of competence, or at least investment.
Johnny walked about twenty yards past the restaurant entrance before crossing back. They were still watching.
Turk was waiting around the corner.
“Get a look at those goons?” he asked Johnny.
“I saw them.” Johnny frowned. “You have a fix on where Chelsea is in the building?” he asked Christian.
“She said something about tables — must be a dining room. Stand by; I gotta talk to Yuri.”
Johnny folded his arms. Before the war, this had been a fashionable block. It was still something of an oasis — if you ignored the shrapnel marks on the low walls and the crater at the side of the street.
“Johansen says the Syrians are gearing up for an attack,” said Christian. “Russian planes are on the way.”
“Tell Chelsea to plant the damn bug and get out of there,” said Johnny.
“Relax,” said Christian. “She’s doing fine. I moved our pickups into the city,” he added, referring to the trucks with backup team members in case anything went wrong. “Destiny is above; we can get out anytime we want. Let her do her thing. I’m listening and she’s doing fine.” He paused, then added, “Russian planes are about zero-five away.”
Chelsea tried to think of how to get to Ghadab’s room. She needed strategy, words.
Go to the restroom, use the translator.
“You don’t speak very good Arabic,” said Shadaa. They were alone at the edge of the dining area’s patio — distant from help.
“I don’t,” admitted Chelsea.
“What do you speak?”
“Somali,” said Chelsea.
Shadaa reached to Chelsea’s face. She brushed her cheek gently, then lifted her scarf back. Chelsea reached to stop her, but it was too late; the cloth fell back, taking its earpiece with it. The piece would automatically shut off when the veil was back, so there was no chance of it being detected, but now Chelsea didn’t even have the rudimentary translator to help.
“I don’t know Somali,” said Shadaa. “Français?”
Chelsea shook her head.
“English?” asked Shadaa.
“A some,” said Chelsea haltingly. “A some I can talk.”
“You mean, ‘I can speak a little.’”
“This.”
A shriek from the street interrupted them. It was an odd, unexpected sound that morphed and changed, beginning like the whistle from an old tin toy. It lengthened, becoming a woman’s scream.
In the next moment, there was a loud crack and the ground rumbled from an explosion.
“Bombs!” said Shadaa, speaking once more in Arabic. “Come with me. Quickly.”
The ground rumbled again, this time violently enough to fell several chairs. Chelsea had a hard time staying on her feet as she followed Shadaa into the hotel’s dining room.
The room went dark before they were midway across. Another explosion, this one so close that it shook the ground sideways, sent Chelsea to the ground face-first. She struggled to her knees, then her feet, wincing and then coughing with the plaster dust shaken from the ceiling.
Shadaa lay a few feet away.
“‘Ayn?” asked Chelsea, helping her up. “Where?”
Shadaa blinked, dazed.
“Room?” said Chelsea in Arabic, then English. “Your room? To go? Safe?”
The ground shook again. Shadaa took Chelsea’s hand and led her from the dining room to the basement stairwell. There were sirens in the distance, and the heavy ra-thump of antiaircraft fire.
With the electricity off, the stairs were dark, the basement impossibly so. Shadaa walked with her hands out, feeling her way until she came to a wall. She collapsed against it, sinking to the dirt floor. Chelsea did the same.
The bombing continued for another minute and a half, the explosions moving away. As they waited, Chelsea reached into her pocket and took out the bug, slipping it onto the hem of Shadaa’s dress.
It was time to leave; she’d pressed her luck too far already.
“Yjb ‘an ‘adhhab,” she said, rising. She slurred her words to hide the flaws in her pronunciation. “Must go.”
Shadaa surprised her by jumping to her feet. “With me,” she told Chelsea, grabbing Chelsea’s hand and starting for the stairs.
They stopped at the top of the stairs. Chelsea glanced toward the door.
Run?
Run!
“This way,” said Shadaa, pointing down the hall.
Is that where Ghadab is?
She should leave; she knew she should leave. But this was too good an opportunity.
“Yes,” she told Shadaa. “With you I am.”
60
GigaMan was not, Massina learned to his surprise, a single person. Instead, the identity belonged to three different users, the most prominent of whom had a home base — if you could call it that — in southern Turkey. The other users were based in Germany and Albania. They all shared the same botnet and servers based in Morocco and Ankara, and occasionally were online at the same time.
Their credentials proved remarkably easy to steal, thanks to a photo Massina had surreptitiously included in the root directory of one of his computers: inspected by their botnet’s virus, it back-infected its attacker; within an hour Massina made the botnet his own.
“Prime GigaMan” had contacts throughout the Middle East. The one that interested Massina was in Fallujah, an Iraqi city under Daesh control. The contact used a web provider in Croatia to post comments on a website devoted to a youth football league — soccer to an American — in England. The posts appeared to be innocuous, mostly scores and credits to players for goals and assists.