With a quick movement of his wrist, Satam consulted his watch. Just as the digits registered 6:31, another explosion shocked the crowd. This time, the bomb hit closer, much closer, a few blocks away. From inside his parked truck, Satam looked at the bright yellow glow of the blast. High flames leapt at a ten-story office building. A thick cloud of black smoke began to swallow up the tower. The crowd broke into smaller groups. People scurried in all directions. Some ran back to their shops and apartments. Others simply circled the area, perhaps unsure of the safe way out.
Satam knew his time had come. He revved the engine and stomped on the gas pedal. The truck arrowed toward the vendors’ tables. The market was mostly empty, and the truck crashed into crates of fish, baskets of grapes, and barrels of olive oil. Produce scattered everywhere as the truck rampaged through plastic tables and chairs.
A police truck zipped toward him. Satam steered around, not to escape, but to meet the approaching vehicle. The two policemen in the truck ignored Satam. They were going to drive past him, but Satam swerved hard. The right fender of his truck smashed into the police truck. The police truck jerked to the other side. The driver pulled over and stopped less than thirty feet away. The other policeman rolled down the window. Satam stared at the muzzle of an AK-47 assault rifle.
“Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot,” Satam shouted and opened his door.
A quick burst of bullets sent him ducking for cover in the front seat. A shower of glass shreds fell over his head.
They’re going to kill me before I even have a chance to open my mouth. Or one of the bullets will blow up the truck. I can’t let that happen.
He looked at the back of the truck. Thirty pounds of Semtex explosives wired into a homemade bomb were stored inside the seat compartments. He noticed the cellphone on the floor mat by his left hand. He reached for the phone. All it would take for him to set off the explosives — and pulverize himself and the policemen — was to tap three preset numbers. His fingers hovered over the phone, but he remembered his family’s honor and the reward waiting for him in paradise. He dropped the phone to the floor, buried his head in the seat, and locked his fingers behind his head.
A minute or so passed before the shooting stopped, but the screaming continued. He heard the distinct thuds of combat boots marching up the street. The police were approaching his truck. He looked up slowly as a policeman pulled open the driver’s door of his truck and aimed an AK-47 at his head
“Don’t move!” the policeman ordered him.
Satam nodded.
Without a word, the policeman juggled the rifle in his hands and slammed its buttstock hard against Satam’s head.
Chapter One
Justin Hall did not want to fire his gun. Too many witnesses crowded the street.
I will kill those two men following me if I have to. Then, I’ll clean up the mess.
His hand rested over the Browning 9mm riding inside the waistband holster at his thigh. He peered again at the reflections in the store window glass. He pretended to admire a black suit. In fact, he was checking every move of two young men behind him. Before he continued to his meeting, he wanted to make sure the pair, which had followed him for the last three blocks, were random strangers, rather than plainclothes police officers doing a poor surveillance job. Or worse. Assassins.
The two men did not stop by the store. They kept walking and, as they rounded the street corner, Justin followed them. He tailed the men for a couple of minutes. They wandered along the north side of Nile City Towers Mall, stopping at times for quick window-shopping but never looking over their shoulders. Still, he found their actions suspicious. He used the same counter-surveillance tactic. Justin wondered if a second backup team had replaced the first, after he had made the two men. If this is mukhabarat, there has to be more than one.
The sun had begun to set, its last golden rays bouncing off the reflective glass of nearby tall skyscrapers. A thin crowd was building up around the shopping district in downtown Cairo. Justin glanced around him on all sides. He tried to spot anyone who looked as if they belonged to a surveillance team. He scouted the area for operatives in dull or baggy clothing, wearing boring sunglasses, sporting earpieces, or simply standing out in the crowd. He listened for the slowing of footsteps, the shuffling of clothes, and any metallic click. No one fit the profile.
The men turned another corner and Justin continued to follow them. Twilight shadows and the flow of pedestrians out for the evening should have made it easier for him to track his prey, but the dry, sizzling air, scorched by a punishing sun for twelve hours, countered all his advantages. Drops of sweat formed on his broad forehead. The bulletproof vest underneath his loose-fitting polo shirt felt twice as heavy as when he had put it on earlier in the morning.
His BlackBerry chirped from his pocket, the sound breaking his concentration. Without slowing down, he pulled it out and glanced at the screen.
“Where are you?” the short e-mail asked.
It was from Carrie O’Connor, his partner. They worked for the Canadian Intelligence Service, and they should have checked in at the Fairmont Nile City Hotel an hour ago. They were scheduled to meet with Sheikh Yusuf Ayman, one of the masterminds of the terrorist organization Islamic Fighting Alliance, but the sheikh had scrapped the meeting at a moment’s notice. Carrie was still surveilling the Fairmont, while Justin was returning from following two of the sheikh’s associates to a previously unknown safe house.
I’ll be there soon. He pocketed the BlackBerry. A few more minutes.
He followed the two men until they entered the Desert Rose, a hip bar favored by the young and rich. Justin kept a close eye on the main door, throwing casual glances at their table by the window. At the same time, he searched the streets for the elusive second surveillance team.
Ten minutes later, after the two men had finished their first drinks, Justin concluded they were not secret police, and he was not being watched by them or anyone else. But this was Cairo, and one could never be too careful. In a country still ruled by the General Intelligence Service, known simply as mukhabarat, one wrong turn could be the last, even for professionals like him. Controlled paranoia had saved his life more than once in the most dangerous back alleys of North Africa.
Justin headed toward the Castle, a small coffee shop where Carrie was waiting for him. The Castle was to the left of the Fairmont, with an unobstructed view of the hotel’s VIP entrance. Rahim, the owner of the joint, was on the CIS Cairo Station payroll. The coffee shop provided a casual yet safe place for CIS agents to run covert operations.
Before pushing open the carved wood door of the Castle, Justin stopped and glanced at the alley in front of the coffee shop. He noticed a white sedan, an old model Ford, parked halfway between the entrance to a three-story apartment building across the alley and a grocery store. Justin squinted and noticed the silhouette of a small woman wearing a hijab crouched in the front passenger’s seat. A tall man was talking to the shopkeeper by the fruit and vegetable stand in front of the grocery store. Is that her husband? Her brother? Justin scanned the windows of the apartments but noticed nothing suspicious. He threw another sweeping look at the other side of the street and stepped inside the coffee shop.