“Your taxi is here, sir,” Viktor’s disembodied voice said.
Jason took one last look through the scope. He had hoped, prayed if you could so define his pleas to an uncaring universe, that he would see Moustaph make a break through that door. Likely, the flamethrower had incinerated the bastard. Still, killing him, putting a bullet into the very face of evil, seeing one of the brains that had plotted 9/11 splattered over desert sands, would be a catharsis, an expurgation of the irrational guilt Jason suffered. Laurin had been on her way to fetch him a cup of coffee that late summer morning. Had it been the other way around…
No time for rumination. As much as he wanted to see Moustaph’s dark face quartered by the crosshairs of the Leupold, he could not risk the lives of his men on the chance the man had survived the flamethrower’s blast or what was to come next.
66
Knapsack on his back, Jason dashed through the lobby, the Barrett in his hands, wiping the smile from the desk clerk’s face to be replaced by astonishment. The camera equipment had become as superfluous as the National Geographic charade, both left in the room.
Viktor was in the driver’s seat of the Toyota truck parked at the front door. “Taxi? Is set rate for airport!”
Carefully placing the sniper’s rifle in the truck’s bed, Jason climbed into the cab. “First the mosque. And stand on it!”
Emphani and Andrews had shed their backpacks the instant they could spare a hand to wriggle out of the straps. Emphani took a step before his knees buckled.
Without hesitation, Andrews scooped him up, slinging him across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. He immediately felt the warm fluid soaking through his own shirt. “Goddammit, man, why didn’t you say you were hit?”
A faint chuckle. “And you would have done what, call 9-1-1?”
Before Andrews could reply, there was an earth-trembling blast and a hot wind strong enough to nearly knock him down. Turning, Emphani still draped across his shoulders, he gaped at what he saw.
The top half of the minaret had simply vanished, leaving a cloud of gray-brown dust slowly settling around the shattered base like a woman putting on a shawl. Tiny metallic parts, the remains of the machine, were distant stars in the early morning light. Viktor was as skillful with explosives as he proclaimed himself to be.
“Jesus Christ on a…”
Apparently, his astonishment at the amount of damage done by a pound and a half of C-4 had rendered him unable to describe the appropriate mode of transportation.
The battered Toyota’s worn brakes screeched just outside the mosque’s courtyard. Jason was yelling and motioning from the passenger’s seat.
Burdened with Emphani, Andrews waddled across the sand. “Gimme a hand here, Artiste.”
Jason helped Andrews gently lay Emphani flat in the truck’s bed before climbing over the side. “You ride with Viktor. I’ll see if there’s anything I can do.”
Andrews took one last look. “Poor bastard took one meant for me.”
Jason was unpleasantly surprised how much blood had accumulated in the truck’s bed in the few seconds Emphani had lain there. Kneeling, Jason pulled his knife from its leg scabbard and cut away the blood-drenched shirt. A small tide of crimson was flowing down the right arm. It didn’t require a second look to see why: A neat hole just below the armpit was gushing blood like an uncapped oil well. Jason used the knife to cut a strip from Emphani’s shirt and then to tighten the rude tourniquet. From what he could see, the brachial artery had taken a direct hit. Without medical help in the immediate future, the man would bleed out. Jason had seen worse deaths. A fatal loss of blood meant the victim drifted quietly off to sleep, never to wake. Relatively painless or not, helplessly watching a comrade die was not an experience to which Jason would ever become accustomed.
“How bad is it?” Emphani was whispering.
“Ah, a scratch. You’ll be fine.”
It could have been a cough, but more likely it was a weak laugh. “Jason, you cannot lie for merde.”
Before Jason could reply, Emphani had grabbed his shirt in a remarkably strong grip. There was nothing strong about the voice, though. Jason had to put his ear next to Emphani’s lips to hear.
At first, he thought he couldn’t hear. Then it dawned on him what the dying man was saying.
“Harvard?”
Emphani smiled, managed a nod, and lay back flat.
Whatever thoughts and emotions Jason had were interrupted by a frantic tapping on the cab’s rear windshield. Chief’s mouth was open, yelling something that could not be heard over the rumble of an exhaust long without a muffler, the rattle of a chassis loosened by washboard-like roads and the general clatter of loose objects banging around the bed with each gully, ditch, or pothole. What was clear was that he was over Jason’s shoulder. One glance answered the unasked question.
Behind them, almost obscured in the Toyota’s dust, was another truck, this one mounted a flashing blue light and filled with armed men in uniform. Apparently, Mali’s finest had not only managed to survive the damage Viktor had done, but round up reinforcements as well. Worse, they seemed to be gaining.
67
Colonel Hasty had never flown in Algerian airspace but he had heard the stories: Strict adherence to ATS routes to avoid endless military airspace, no matter how circuitous, constant fuel consuming changes of altitude and controllers whose English was unintelligible despite the fact the language was the lingua franca of aviation.
That was why he was pleasantly surprised to hear a very American voice in his head phones. “Air Force One, descend to and maintain flight level three-one-oh. You are cleared Cairo International direct. Stay with me. Oh yeah, give my best to your chief passenger.”
Though non-aviation-related chatter was discouraged on the airways, the controller had started it, and rank does, in fact, have its privileges, and Air Force One ranks right on up there.
“Uh, I’ll do that, Algiers Center. You sound like an American. Midwest, if I’m guessing right.”
“Indianapolis originally. Worked Atlanta Center till ’82. Listened to the damn union and went on strike in ’81. Got fired and been here ever since. Not half bad if you don’t mind sand, heat, and couscous with every meal. Good news is there’s no retirement age here, not if you have any aviation experience. Sure would like to go home, though. Maybe you could put a word in with your boss.”
Hasty had come across the world’s most garrulous air-traffic controller. Surprising he hadn’t been fired before defying a presidential order to return to work.
As is so often the case for people who work closely together over a long period of time, Patterson knew what his superior was thinking. “Maybe the guy just gets long-winded when he has a chance to chat with a fellow American. ’82? That’s before my time.”
“Maybe so but just our luck to run into an air traffic controller who likes to talk.”
Had Hasty any idea of what had happened just more than thirty minutes ago in arguably the most obscure place on Earth, he might have had a different concept of luck.
68
With one hand Jason held on to the side of the truck bed while he picked up the Barrett with the other. He had no intent to kill or injure the men behind. They were simply doing a thankless job of trying to keep order in a lawless place in a fourth-world country. On the other hand, he had no intent of spending time in some hellhole of a jail while explaining the destruction of part of the mosque as well as the deaths of several of its occupants, either.