He needed a walk in the night air to consider these recent developments. This last dialogue with Babcock was worrisome. The Americans would not wait much longer.
One part of Al-Fasr almost welcomed such a development. The U.S. Navy would execute one of their classic tactical air strikes, using all the wrong weapons and employing tactics used against adversaries like Iraq and Yugoslavia. It would be a pigeon shoot.
With his concealed air defense assets — the three remaining MiGs, an arsenal of SA-16 air-to-air missiles, and a battery of fifty-seven-millimeter AA guns — he would take a heavy toll on their strike fighters.
What if they also sent in an assault force?
He would be forced to yield territory, of course. But northern Yemen was perfect guerilla country, and the Americans had no stomach for close-in fighting in these hills. Nor would the citizens of the United States tolerate planeloads of their young men returning home in body bags. A ground war in Yemen was not on their list of options.
But he couldn’t allow a strike. Not yet. Not until the long-standing business in the Gulf of Aden had been settled.
Where was Manilov?
His last communication from the submarine had been early yesterday. The Russian had signaled that he would be in a position to attack this morning.
And then nothing.
Who was this Manilov? Al-Fasr had never met him. Hakim, the agent who had secured the contract with the Russian, had been convinced that he was reliable. The submarine captain, according to Hakim, possessed a hatred of the Americans that nearly equaled Al-Fasr’s.
Now Al-Fasr was not sure. In his experience, Russians were unreliable. They were temperamental romantics whose passions came and went like the tides. Today they hated Americans, tomorrow someone else. Vodka and corruption were the only constants in Russia.
Nothing had happened in the Gulf, according to his source aboard the Reagan. The radar operator on the guided missile cruiser Arkansas had reported a disappearing contact — a possible submarine — but the subsequent search had turned up nothing. For good reason, Al-Fasr had not solicited more information from his source about the contact. The source aboard the Reagan was uninformed about the Russian submarine and its mission.
Al-Fasr was concerned. Had the Russian captain been intimidated by the firepower arrayed against him and decided to run? Or were the American antisubmarine forces so effective as to thwart any attempted attack?
As he walked, he kicked at loose stones, thinking about the absent Russian submarine. Everything depended now on Manilov. Everything that Al-Fasr had planned for so long was waiting to come together, like electrons of an imploding atom.
He walked past the row of camouflaged bunkers that contained racks of missiles. Beneath a retractable screen, a huge dish antenna pointed at the sky and the constellation of satellites that served Al-Fasr’s bank of communication devices. He could make an instant connection with any commercial telephone in the world, receive any televised newscast, conduct encrypted and scrambled conversations with anyone he chose.
Except Manilov. What the hell was happening?
She knew she was running away from the hotel, but she had no choice. She came again to the Al-Salah restaurant. For a second she considered dashing inside, asking for help. Then she saw the Yemenis come out — the same grim-faced men who had stared at her. They were watching, pointing, gesturing with their arms. One of them yelled.
Was he yelling at her, or giving directions to someone else?
The footsteps behind her were louder, closer.
A hundred yards away she saw a dimly-lighted T intersection. She sprinted toward the corner, then peered left and right. In either direction, the street narrowed and angled off into darkness.
Which way?
To the right. She rounded the corner and bolted down the narrowing lane.
She felt her heart pounding in her chest, her breath coming in short, heavy rasps. She wasn’t a runner, never had been; hated it, in fact.
In a darkened doorway she heard something — a hissing noise. Cat? Rat? The spike of fear sent another surge of adrenaline through her. Her foot banged into an object, something metallic, a trash can, she guessed, sending it clattering into the darkness.
Behind her, the footsteps were louder, drawing nearer. She heard men’s voices, heavy breathing. How many? Who were they? What did they want?
The narrow street meandered left, then right, twisting like a snake between the ancient buildings. She was lost, running without direction, plunging into the darkest heart of Yemen.
Another intersection of narrow lanes. To the left she saw a glimmer of light. She turned the corner, and saw a faint illumination somewhere ahead, around the bend in the lane.
She couldn’t keep running. Her need for oxygen was critical, and her legs had become numb and wooden. It occurred to her that she should have asked Maloney for some sort of weapon. A gun, a knife even, to hell with legalities. She could have concealed it in the leather pouch she wore under her blouse where she kept ID cards and money and her passport.
Too late. The most lethal instrument in her kit was a tube of lipstick.
The dim light ahead was moving, casting a ray of light against the front of an ancient plaster wall. As she rounded the corner she saw that the yellow glow came from the headlights of a clattering automobile. It was stopped at the junction a hundred meters ahead. For what?
She slowed, suddenly more afraid of the car than of the running footsteps behind her. The car wasn’t moving. It seemed to be waiting.
Drawing nearer she peered at the rickety vehicle. It was a rusty Peugeot, a diesel, judging by the clacking engine noise and the stench of exhaust. On its roof was an object, a dimly lit marker with Arabic lettering.
A taxi.
She saw the driver, a hawk-nosed man wearing a checkered kaffiyeh. As she ran to him, he regarded her with dark, interested eyes.
She reached inside her blouse, zipped open the leather pouch, and pulled out a folded piece of paper, the one Maloney had given her at the restaurant.
She thrust it at the driver. “American embassy,” she said between gasps. “Please, please, take me there.”
She heard the running footsteps in the lane behind her. The driver heard them too. He gazed at Claire, then he held the piece of paper up to the light.
The footsteps were loud, almost there. Wheezing voices, someone barking orders in Arabic.
“Please,” she said. “They want to kill me.”
The driver peered at the running figures coming toward them. He had dark, penetrating eyes, like the men in the restaurant.
Maloney’s words came back to her. They hate you. They hate us all.
The driver looked at her. Abruptly he reached behind him and opened the passenger door.
There were four of them, running toward the taxi at full tilt. The first was reaching for the door handle just as the driver shoved the Peugeot into gear and floored it. In a shower of dust and dirt and diesel fumes, they sped down the street.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
DELIVERANCE
The eastern ridgeline glowed orange in the approaching dawn. At exactly 0600, Gritti’s voice crackled over the PRC-112 transceiver.
“Runner One-one, do you read Boomer?”
“Go, Boomer.”