She had guaranteed that Takana and his family would be protected but said that relocating them would pose some challenges. She’d asked Ross why he was so concerned about helping a drug and weapons smuggler, and he’d just shrugged and said, ‘Good people in bad situations … sometimes they just do bad things. You change the situation, and sometimes you fix the problem.’
‘Be nice if it were that simple,’ she said. ‘I think your faith in Mr Takana might be a little misplaced.’
‘I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met just like him, people caught up in the shit with no way to escape. They don’t even remember how they got there. I haven’t given up hope yet.’
‘Wow, and I thought being cynical and pissed off came with the territory.’
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ Ross warned her. ‘I still feel that way about you … and your people …’
She rolled her eyes.
He glanced out the window. They were headed north toward the port, following a strip of paved road running through rolling desert hills as mottled as tanned leather. 30K drove, with Kozak running shotgun. Ross, Pepper and Diaz were crammed into the backseat. Pepper had made sure to sit next to Diaz, his ‘fascination’ with her schoolboy-obvious and stronger than his resentment for her employers.
‘Looks like they’re still heading toward the port,’ Ross said, studying a map of Sudan with the tracking beacon’s location superimposed with a flashing red dot and data box displaying latitude and longitude. In another window flashed satellite photos of the tractor-trailer as it moved up the highway, passing beneath a broad stone archway.
‘I have another car at the port that’ll pick them up, so no worries, Captain, we have backup,’ said Diaz.
‘Must’ve been something big,’ Ross said.
‘What?’
‘The favor you owe Mitchell.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because you’ve got, what, two teams already helping?’
‘Three, actually. All local informants employed by me, all unknown to Langley.’
‘So what do you know?’
‘That’s the thing. Not much more than you. This one’s completely compartmentalized. And to be honest, that scares the shit out of me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it means they’re trying to plug a leak.’
‘A mole? Rogue? Double agent?’
She took a deep breath, clearly disgusted. ‘Delgado is a wild card. They put Tamer on him, even though I warned against it. I worked with Tamer once before, and I told them he couldn’t be trusted.’
Ross stiffened. ‘You know the whole story?’
‘If you’re talking about the boy in Tobruk that he recruited and killed, then yes. Wouldn’t be the first time he’s terminated his own informant.’
‘Son of a bitch.’
She shifted in her seat to face him. ‘Ross, let me tell you something. It’s a lot different on my side of the fence. They tell you to gather the intel. They tell you not to break the law. But they don’t ask questions.’
‘And you’re okay with that?’
‘No, I’m not. But sometimes I have to be … if I want to stay alive.’
Ross swore under his breath. They were both caught between duty and politics, between doing what was morally correct and what would best keep the country safe. If making those decisions had been easy, neither of them would have been there …
‘All right, you’ve been around this block a few times and so have I,’ he said. ‘So what do we got? SAMs smuggled out of Libya, flown down to Sudan, and off to where? Afghanistan?’
‘Maybe. Or the missiles could stay right here in Africa. You know, I could rattle off twenty other places they could go — Basilan, Chechnya, Syria …’
Ross felt her frustration. ‘Here’s something else bothering me. Why are the FARC being used overseas? Why doesn’t Hamid use his own people?’
‘Our intel on the Bedayat is still fragmentary and evolving. His al Qaeda allies are dead or in prison, so he’s developing a new network. He’s still recruiting the bulk of his force now. Maybe he’s just brought over the FARC to bolster his numbers.’
‘Either that or he’s not wasting his people on these security missions because he needs them someplace else.’
‘And where’s that?’
Ross glanced at his tablet computer. ‘I’m just a guy following a truckload of SAMs. You’re the intelligence agent.’
She snickered. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be more … intelligent.’
‘I was going to say enlightening.’
‘Look, once we get to the port, we’ll figure out what these bastards plan to do with the SAMs, then I can tap a few more resources if I need them.’
‘I’m willing to bet our boy Delgado has all the answers. You guys need to find him.’
‘Oh, trust me. We will.’
THIRTY-NINE
Soon Port Sudan and its environs rose out of the ancient sands of the coastline desert, and Ross had never seen so many cargo ships gathered in one place, with forty-foot-long intermodal containers stacked like colorful pieces of Lego across their decks. The deep, coral-free harbor allowed those vessels to arrive with imports of machinery, cars, fuel oil and construction materials, while cotton, gum arabic, oilseeds, hides and skins and senna were shipped out. Behind the port lay the oil refinery receiving petroleum from onshore wells and piping more oil down to Khartoum.
They followed the GSIC tractor-trailer to the south side of the harbor, where the truck vanished down a road leading through a vast shipyard of cargo containers stacked in a labyrinth of rows and avenues. Diaz suggested they hold back there.
Within minutes the truck passed under a network of blue scaffolding as large as any major bridge Ross had seen, but that framework was actually part of the elaborate container crane system that traversed the quay and was equipped with a moving platform or spreader. The spreader lowered down on the container, fitting into the container’s four corner castings, then twistlocked into place.
Ross watched as the spreader descended now toward a container positioned at the edge of the yard. He tugged out a pair of binoculars, rolled down his window, and turned his attention toward the cargo container ship being loaded. She belonged to the Maersk Line out of Liberia, the word ‘MAERSK’ prominently displayed on her hull. Diaz was pulling up data on the ship since the tractor-trailer was now parked, the pallets being offloaded into a container whose number — 11132001 — Ross forwarded back to Fort Bragg.
‘Okay, I’ve got it,’ Diaz said. ‘That ship’s the Ocean Cavalier, Liberian registry.’
‘Bound for —’ Ross began.
‘Bound for a number of ports, any one of which could be our transfer point. Her first stop is Massawa in Eritrea, followed by the Port of Aden in Yemen.’
The latter struck a nerve with Ross.
The very first attack ever carried out by al Qaeda occurred in Aden back in late December ’92. A bomb had been detonated at the Gold Mohur Hotel, where US troops were staying while en route to Somalia. Thankfully, the troops had already left before the explosion, but years later other American servicemen were not so lucky:
On 12 October 2000, the USS Cole, an Arleigh Burke — class destroyer, was moored and refueling at the port when she was attacked. The bastards came up alongside the destroyer in a small craft carrying four hundred to seven hundred pounds of explosives molded into a shaped charge. At 11:18 a.m. the bomb went off, blowing a gaping, forty-by-forty-foot hole in the Cole’s port side. Seventeen crew members were killed with another thirty-nine injured. The current rules of engagement at the time had prevented the Cole’s guards from firing upon the small boat as it approached, and even after the explosion, as a second boat neared, guards had been ordered to stand down.