The TACSAT on his hip hummed silently and he answered after a quick glance at the screen. “Wondering when I would hear from you.”
“Mr. Richards, it was a pleasure to receive your call last night,” the voice replied. “As always. You are in country?”
“Yes.”
“It has been awhile.”
“I don’t travel any more than I can help,” was the Texan’s curt reply. “We need to meet.”
“To be sure, Mr. Richards. When and where?”
“As soon as possible at your place. You open?”
“For my friends, I am always open. Shall we say, thirty minutes? Come to the rear entrance as usual.”
“Of course.”
“…sure the area’s clear. But there’s bodies everywhere.”
“Any signs of life?”
“No.”
Lasker pressed STOP on the audio recording and looked up at his superiors. “Substantively, that’s it.”
Lay and Kranemeyer exchanged glances. “It’s started,” was the DCIA’s solemn pronouncement.
“Someone has a sense of irony,” Kranemeyer observed, glancing down the transcript of the call once more. “Saddam Hussein also enjoyed using the Kurds as test subjects. Ah, the joys of being a minority in the Middle East.”
“Hancock will need to see this,” David Lay stated, turning to address the man at his side. “Make sure you get it in the briefing, Ron.”
Ron Carter looked up from polishing his glasses. “Sure thing, boss.”
“I think this is our chance,” Kranemeyer announced without preamble, looking up from the transcript before him.
Lay glanced over, puzzled by the look of excitement that had lit up the unshaven face of the DCS. “What do you mean, Barney?”
“If we can get blood samples from the bodies of the infected Kurds, the bio-war department over at Bethesda might be able to better diagnose what we’re dealing with here.”
“You’re not suggesting…”
“Send Parker in, of course. Why not, for heaven’s sake?” Kranemeyer demanded, looking up in surprise. “He’s within a mile of the target as it is — you don’t get more on-scene than this.”
“He’ll be exposed to the bacteria,” Lay interjected. “You know we can’t extract him fast enough to administer antibiotics in time.”
“Then that’s the price we pay.” The expression in Kranemeyer’s eyes was cold and distant. “Unless you can come up with a better idea, Parker goes in at dusk.”
The DCIA swallowed hard. “He was a good man. Place the call…”
Avraham Najeri’s fingers slid over the receiver of the Galil assault rifle with the intimate touch of a lover. He sighed. Guns were such beautiful things. Instruments of death to be sure, but beautiful nonetheless. There was a certain poetry to them.
The closing of a car door broke upon his reverie and his eyes flickered upwards, above the workbench, across the statue of the Virgin Mary that sat in a niche of the wall, to the small security monitor. There, in the fourth frame of the split-screen, was the figure of his visitor.
He frowned in annoyance. The American stood in unwelcome contrast to the very trait Najeri loved about most of the man’s fellow countrymen. They talked too much and it was very easy to figure out what they were thinking, if they didn’t tell you first. Not this one.
With a heavy sigh, Najeri turned, picking up a Beretta 92 from his workbench. He slammed a full magazine into the butt of the pistol and racked the slide to chamber a round. Time to answer the door.
Tex glanced up and down the alley, unsure whether to knock again, or leave. The Agency had maintained a professional relationship with Avraham Najeri for the better part of two decades, but it was a relationship of mutual suspicion.
While the Maronite Christian Arab maintained a clothing store at the front of his establishment, his real money was made in the basement. Dealing with his passion: black market firearms.
The Texan considered dealing with him an unpleasant necessity. He and the Arab merchant of death had never hit it off. The little man talked too much, and it offended his sensibilities deeply.
“Mr. Richards!” the door opened just as Tex had lifted his hand to knock once more. A wide smile was plastered across the face of the weapons dealer. “Come in, come in, it’s been too long.”
The CIA agent ducked his head to slip inside, observing the pistol in Najeri’s left hand. It wasn’t a mistake — the Arab was ambidextrous.
“So, what brings you to my humble establishment?”
“The usual.”
Najeri laughed. “My outposts have assured me you are alone. This is good — I would have considered it a personal affront had you deceived me. You need a weapon?”
“Two of them.”
“Good, good. Right this way.” The gun dealer hesitated, then waved him forward. “After you.”
“Yes, sir. I understand, sir.” Thomas looked out over the mountains, struggling to digest the words of the DCS.
“We’re still looking for another work-around,” Kranemeyer continued. “But until then, it’s on you.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“I know you will, Parker. You’ve been one of our best men.”
Past tense. The words hit Thomas with the impact of a rifle bullet. His vision seemed to cloud suddenly, as though he moved in a trance. He heard Kranemeyer’s final words of good-bye, heard himself respond with a numbed, “Yes, sir.”
The phone clicked off, severing the connection. He turned, handing the phone back to Azad Badir.
His feet seemed to move of their own will, carrying him across the mountain path to a ledge overlooking the valley. The valley of death.
His death.
Thomas had faced death before, but it had never filled him with this unspeakable, crawling horror. It was one thing to face a man with a gun in your hand, even odds of survival. But the plague…
Leaving Beer-sheba, Tex turned south along the highway. The deal with Najeri had gone well, despite the money it had taken. A Belgian-made FN-FAL rifle was disassembled in the trunk of the car, along with a hundred rounds of 7.62mm NATO.
The other half of the purchase was strapped to the Texan’s ankle: a short-barreled .357 Magnum. Some might have considered a semiautomatic a better choice, but he had always been partial to wheelguns. In any case, it was a back-up gun.
If things went well, the guns and car would wind up in the Red Sea following successful termination of the op.
On the other hand, if things went poorly, the eight thousand dollars he had paid Najeri would be money well spent. Preparation. The name of the game.
Tex sighed and checked his GPS. A hundred kilometers to Eilat…
“What do you hope to gain from this meeting with the Israelis?” President Hancock asked, lifting his eyes from the dossier in front of him. Directors David Lay and Lawrence Bell sat before him, in chairs facing the Resolute desk.
“A more exact understanding of the situation,” the DCIA replied without hesitation. “I have had a long professional relationship with General Shoham — trust me when I say he would not call for this meeting if he did not believe it would be mutually advantageous.”
“Or advantageous to his government,” Hancock countered. “It has been my experience that the Israelis act exclusively in their own interests, as often as not.”