“Can your bird use its cameras to zoom in or something so we can see how he is? I don’t know… infrared maybe, like on those Tom Clancy movies.”
Guttman sighed, seemingly relieved Thibodaux had decided not to chop his head off. “Sorry, sir. No can do. If Damo was a conventional drone buzzing over a third world country with little in the way of defense we’d be able to get some images. Saudi Arabia would shoot one of those down in a heartbeat. But she doesn’t work that way. She floats around up there in stealth mode, out of the picture and out of radar contact — until we need her.”
Damo was a new and highly classified UAV. Far beyond the Predator and Reaper drones being used to run recon missions blasting away at insurgent compounds from Kirkuk to the wild and wooly Frontier Provinces of Pakistan, Damo was not supposed to be anything but a few sketches on a Northrop Grumman engineer’s drawing board. Three generations past the officially still experimental X47B Pegasus, the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carrier launch-capable Unmanned Combat Air System, Guttman’s UCAS, was more properly known as the AX7 Damocles. Particularly useful for its ability to loiter unnoticed above an enemy for long periods of time, Damocles could be suspended overhead, ready to strike like the mythic sword hanging by a horse hair. In reality, it had been in operation for well over a year, based out of Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.
Though most UAVs were piloted by officers, the AX7 was launched from the back of a Boeing 747—out of sight of snooping eyes and video cameras — and then controlled by a new generation of gamers from the enlisted ranks whose proficiency test scores had been off the charts. In the hands of a skilled computer dweeb with the right equipment, Damocles could be controlled from anywhere in the world.
Staff Sergeant Guttman was the king of computer dweebs. He checked the systems monitor, touching the screen with a plastic stylus, then made a note on his clipboard.
“I don’t know what your friend is out there looking for. That’s way above my pay grade, but I can only bring Damo down and into the open if I get the order from that phone.” He nodded toward a black handset on the stainless counter beside his joystick and stylus. “If I get the order, Damo is armed with four Tomahawks. But until that phone rings, I can’t…”
Thibodaux raised his big hand. “We get it, kid. Why don’t you just chill and kill some more Nazi zombies…”
Megan stood to go look at the map, to do something, anything but sit and wait.
Then the black phone on Guttman’s desk began to ring.
CHAPTER 29
If given the choice, Quinn preferred quick, decisive movement over a lengthy deliberation. It allowed him the freedom to respond to gut feelings. More times than not, such action gave him the clear advantage. There was no doubt Dr. Suleiman had heard the pistol shot from outside the killing room. It was, after all, the fitting conclusion of his execution order. Jericho knew Suleiman was the professional, the one he would have to kill first, but when he sprang into the hall the chief veterinarian was gone.
The desk guard was on his feet, looking toward the double doors. Quinn put a quick double tap between his running lights. The startled man hardly had time to look up. His body spun to the ground in the particular corkscrew fashion of one who is brain dead before they fall.
Without a pause, Jericho rushed for the doors.
Dr. Suleiman met him in a head-on attack, crashing into him with the full weight of his body. The veterinarian was well groomed, but he knew how to fight. He smashed down with both fists in a well-delivered haymaker that sent the pistol skittering across the dimly lit room and out of reach.
Jericho crouched, springing forward like a lineman, using the strength of his legs to drive the Arab backward with the point of his shoulder toward a white marble support column. Flailing out with both hands, Suleiman dragged a tapestry off the wall, bringing the heavy woolen rug down on top of both men. Quinn rolled away, struggling to push free from the tangle of thick cloth. When he got to his feet, he saw a smiling Suleiman holding the thick dowel that had been used to support the tapestry. Five feet long and an inch in diameter, the wooden staff made a formidable weapon in the hands of someone who knew how to use it.
“I do not know who you are,” Suleiman panted, a fleck of spittle forming at the corners of his twisted mouth. “But I think you are no Kuwaiti horse buyer…”
Quinn stood facing him, slightly bent at the waist, arms loose at his sides, body quartered away. “I am a messenger,” he said in Arabic.
Suleiman raised an eyebrow, dropping his shoulder slightly. “What sort of messenger?”
Feinting with his left hand, Quinn drew Suleiman into a rushed attack. Rolling past the first blow, he caught the doctor on the point of his chin with a brutal upward strike from his elbow. Stunned, Suleiman let go of the staff with one hand but kept a death grip with the other, letting the end hit the ground. Quinn grabbed the man’s fist, and stomped hard on the angled wood, snapping the staff in the middle. The jarring shock caused Suleiman to release his hold on what was left of the weapon.
Quinn grabbed the wooden shard before it could hit the ground. It was two feet long and incredibly sharp on the broken end. Spinning, he drove the splintered point through the startled man’s neck so it came out each side like the handlebars on a motorcycle.
“That sort of messenger,” Quinn said.
Suleiman no longer a threat, Quinn was met by an empty marble room. Somewhere to his left, he could just make out the soft, eerie whirring of exhaust fans.
Where the building entrance had been sparse and utilitarian, the inner portion was palatial, complete with marble floors and stone pillars. More heavy Arab tapestries of rich maroon and gold draped stucco walls. A long, low table of rich mahogany surrounded by ornate brocade throw pillows occupied the middle of the vacant chamber. Quinn’s footsteps echoed off the arched ceiling, twenty feet above his head. A chessboard sat at the end of the low table. Squat pieces, testaments to Islam’s prohibition against statues of living creatures, sat lined up on the board and ready for play.
Quinn retrieved the Beretta from the floor and held it in tight against his waist. He scanned the room, searching for any sign of Farooq or his operation. It was a lonely but familiar feeling to be in such a hostile environment thousands of miles from home… wherever that was.
The whirring of the fans suddenly grew louder, as if a compressor had kicked on. One of the heavy, floor-to-ceiling plum-colored drapes directly across from the low table rustled slightly, jostled by an unseen wind as if a door had opened on the other side. Quinn prepared himself for an attack, but the movement turned out to be caused by an air intake located in the marble tile behind it.
Closer inspection revealed a glass window on the other side of the curtain. When he drew the heavy cloth to one side, his breath froze in his chest. His free hand slid into the pocket of his dishdasha.
CHAPTER 30
Mahoney pursed her lips. She’d never met this Jericho Quinn but could tell from Thibodaux’s demeanor he was a good man in serious danger.
The baby-faced staff sergeant spoke into the phone for a quick moment, then pressed the hands-free button on the device.
“Damo’s got you on a shadow relay, sir — running your voice in encrypted laser bursts,” Guttman explained over the line. “The Saudis won’t even know we’re talking unless they happen to walk in on you.”
There was silence on the speaker. Guttman turned back to the phone. “You still there, sir?”