Callsign: Bishop - Book 1 (An Erik Somers - Chess Team Novella) (5 page)

“I will,” the man said. “I will. I assure you, we will find him. Do not worry.”

The first man closed his phone and looked at Ahmad. “He is not happy.”

“I did not think he would be,” Ahmad said. “What did he say, Massai?”

Massai shoved the phone into his pocket. “He said we better find Somers soon, or it will be very bad for us.” He narrowed his eyes and stared at Ahmad, wanting to make sure his partner understood his full meaning. “
Very
bad.”

Ahmad paled, then nodded his head. “Understood. We should get to work, then.”

The two men turned toward the entrance of the Evin Hotel and started walking.

“Do you think he is here?” Ahmad asked.

“I hope so,” Massai replied. “For our sake.”

“And if he is not?”

Massai shook his head. “We will keep looking. We dare not return without him.”

5.

Bishop felt like CJ had just punched him in the gut. “You sure?”

“Oh, yeah,” CJ said, weaving around a slow moving truck. “No question. We’ve been watching him for a long time. He’s not just a terrorist, he’s also a top terrorist recruiter. He spent several years recruiting for Al Quaeda, among others. He’s pretty high up the food chain.”

“Why haven’t you taken him in?”

“No proof.”

Bishop snorted. “This isn’t
Law and Order
. What’s the real reason?”

CJ looked back at him via the rearview mirror and laughed. “All right, you got me. The reason we don’t take him down is that we like Dawoud Abbasi right where he is. As long as he doesn’t suspect that we’re wise to him, we can completely monitor his operations and keep tabs on every new terrorist he recruits. We’ve been able to neutralize quite a few potential threats with this information. Just last year a finger of Al Quaeda was planning another series of hijackings, but because we were able to stay on top of the people involved and put a stop to it. Probably saved thousands of lives. We—”

“All right,” Bishop said. “I get the picture. Abbasi is more valuable out here than behind bars.”

“You better believe it.”

“What about…” Bishop found the word difficult, but he spat it out anyway, “…my mother. What about her?”

“She’s clean, as near as we can tell. Dawoud has nine other wives, several of which are actively involved in his recruiting processes—record keeping, contacting families, that sort of thing—but Faiza stays clear of it. She seems to dislike that side of her husband a great deal, and contrary to the accepted norms of Iranian society, she has voiced her displeasure with her husband’s work many times. To be honest, we aren’t sure why Dawoud keeps her around at all.”

“Why he doesn’t kill her, you mean,” Bishop stated.

CJ nodded. “Exactly.” He sped through a red light, earning a chorus of honks from irritated drivers as he passed. He stuck his hand out the driver’s side window and gave them a gesture that made them honk even more, though Bishop couldn’t see it from his seat. “His personal life would be a lot simpler without her in the picture.”

“Other children?”

“Dawoud has plenty, but Faiza only had one.”

“Me.”

“Yup. You.” CJ nodded, then laid on the horn and stuck his head out the window to swear at another driver in perfect Persian. The other driver said something back, and CJ called him an asshole—in English—and withdrew his head. “You’re his first, too. The eldest son. The heir to his empire, so to speak.”

“His empire?”

“Didn’t I tell you? The Abbasis are rich. Worth over half a billion dollars.”

Bishop’s eyebrows rose. “That’s a lot of money.”

“Damn straight.”

“How’d you find all this out?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

They rode on in silence for a while. Bishop watched CJ dart and honk his way through Tehran traffic until they left the city limits, then he steered the car onto Freeway 7.

“Are we going to Qom?” Bishop asked, referring to the large city about a hundred miles south of Tehran.

“No, just heading south. Our plane is waiting for us in a hangar about 20 minutes outside of Tehran.”

“You’ve arranged it already?”

“I knew you’d be coming.”

“Because of my parents?” The word felt strange on his tongue, like trying to pick up a quarter while wearing gloves. “They’re in Shiraz, not Tehran.”

“Because of Manifold,” CJ replied. “The best place to fly in to get close to the Kavir is Tehran, unless you want to pretend you’re making a holy pilgrimage to Qom. You’re not a Shi’a Muslim, though.”

“I’m not Muslim at all.”

“Exactly, which is why I knew you’d pick Tehran. And Imam Khomeini is the biggest airport in the city for international flights, so I figured you’d come there if you were flying commercial.”

“What if I’d flown military?”

“Then I’d still be waiting, wouldn’t I?”

Bishop shrugged. CJ had guessed commercial and knew to check Imam Khomeini over the other airports in Tehran. That was probably how the other men had found him, too. They were probably part of the same terrorist group that had taken over the Manifold site. Most likely, they had placed agents at all four of Tehran’s major airports to watch for him. That would explain why the men were there waiting. But one question bothered him more than how well they predicted his arrival: how did they know he’d be coming?

The question hung in his mind as CJ exited Freeway 7 and turned onto a small access road headed east. In the distance, Bishop saw the mountains that bordered the Kavir Desert, or Dasht-e Kavir, as it was known in Iran. In the US, people usually pictured large, ever changing sand dunes when they imagined a desert, but that wasn’t always the case. People often forgot that the entire continent of Antarctica is actually classified as a desert.

Named after the many salt marshes, or
kavir
, that could be found within it, the Kavir Desert stretched from the Alborz mountain range in the northwest to the Dasht-e Lut, or Lut Desert, in the southeast and took up a land area of about 30,000 square miles. At its heart lay the Great Kavir, a salt marsh over 150 miles long.

“The Manifold site isn’t in the middle of the Rig-e Jenn, is it?” Bishop asked, referring to the large area of the Kavir Desert that did consist of the sand dunes and desolation most people associated with a desert climate. Very few people ventured into the area. The old caravan travelers believed it to be a place where evil spirits waited, and even today, many of the people who lived in the nearby areas of the Kavir avoided it for the same reason.

CJ scoffed. “If it was, we’d never get there. No one has ever successfully explored the place. The closest anyone has come was when that Austrian geographer crossed the southern tail of it in the 1930’s. Gabriel, I think his name was. No, the Manifold site is just over a day’s walk from Hassi, a village just south of the Alborz Mountains. The land is hot and dry, but no sand dunes.”

Bishop smiled. He, of course, knew all along that the Manifold site wasn’t in the Rig-e Jenn. His briefing from Deep Blue had told him exactly where the site was located. He even had the exact latitude and longitude. He was just wondering how much CJ knew. Apparently, the man knew plenty. Was his team investigating the Manifold site, as well?

Since Bishop’s team had gone from Delta to Black Ops, it was certainly possible. For all intents and purposes, Chess Team didn’t exist anymore, so if anyone in power were to investigate Manifold, they would have to use another Special Forces team—one sanctioned by the US government. Domenick Boucher at CIA and General Keasling were supposed to redirect any intel on Manifold to Deep Blue, but there was always the possibility that another Delta team or even a division of the CIA could stumble across something, and act on it, before the higher-ups were informed. Is that what was happening here?

Maybe. But he knew he would never get that information out of CJ. He made a mental note to ask Deep Blue the next time he spoke with him.

“Here we are,” CJ said, turning onto a small dirt road.

At the end of the road, Bishop saw a large metal building with wide doors. From the road, the building was hidden by a large copse of trees, but as they drew closer, it came fully into view. Bishop recognized it as a small hangar. The doors stood open to reveal a tan Cessna 172. The closer they got to the hangar, the more of the plane he could see, and the sight wasn’t as encouraging as he’d first hoped.

The Cessna had clearly seen better days. The paint was faded in more places than not, and the once black stripe along the side was now gray. Several of the panels on the fuselage and wings were a different color than the rest of the plane, indicating they’d been replaced but never repainted, and here and there, he spotted the rough welds of hasty patch jobs. The windows looked dirty, and the whole plane needed a wash. The airframe seemed sound from the car, but he wouldn’t know for sure until he got a closer look. Even then, Bishop was no airplane mechanic. He knew how to fly them and how to jump out of them, and that’s where his knowledge ended.

“Looks old,” he said.

“It is,” CJ replied. “Older than you. It’s one of the first models from back in 1956. Over twenty five thousand hours logged on the airframe. It’s got a new engine, though, and updated electronics. It’ll get us there.”

“You know the pilot?” Bishop asked, still looking at the plane.

“Oh, yeah. I know him real well,” CJ replied. “He’s me.”

Bishop grinned. He might have known.

They came to a stop beside the barn and both men stepped out of the car. Bishop stood looking at the plane, marveling at how something that looked so old and patched could still fly. It sure wasn’t the Crescent.

“How long will it take to get to Hassi?” Bishop asked.

“Not long,” CJ replied. “An hour. Maybe an hour and a half if the wind is against us. The plane looks like a warm turd, but it can move.”

Bishop nodded. “When do we leave?”

“How about right now?”

Nothing like getting right down to business. “All right,” Bishop said. “Let’s move.” He reached up and grabbed the door handle on the Cessna’s fuselage, then pulled it open. It seemed much smaller inside than he’d anticipated. But then again, it had been a very long time since he’d flown in a single-engine prop plane. The Crescent had room for row upon row of computers and equipment, and commercial airliners were huge, if cramped. CJ’s Cessna had enough room for four passengers, as long as they were built like Miley Cyrus. He worked his way around the tiny rear passenger seats until he reached the front of the plane, then he sat in the co-pilot’s spot. CJ came up behind him and closed the cabin door. Then he took his place in the pilot’s seat.

CJ started the plane. The engine came to life right away, and to Bishop’s surprise, it was smooth and quiet. He’d been expecting backfires and heavy vibration, but the plane eased out of the hangar without a single hiccup.

CJ must have noticed the expression on his face, because he turned to Bishop and nodded toward the engine. “Told you. I installed a brand new engine last year. Less than a hundred hours on this one. And it’s an upgrade over the stock setup. 210 hp instead of the normal 180, although the original engine only had 145. This thing is updated where it counts, B. It’ll get us where we need to go.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Bishop replied. “A plane’s a plane.”

“You were thinking it,” CJ said.

CJ steered the plane onto a grass runway and gave it some gas. The plane bumped along the runway but soon lifted into the air. “What’d I tell you? Smooth as silk.”

Bishop nodded. “Good.” He looked through the window at the ground below, watching as it fell away. Whenever he flew in the Crescent, he was always in the back where there were no windows, so this was something new. As the ground got farther and farther away, he thought about his former regenerative abilities. A gift from Richard Ridley, he’d been able to march into just about anything without fear of being hurt. Those days were gone, now. Ridley had taken the ability away as easily as he’d given it. He would have to learn to be careful again.

“You all right, B?” CJ asked. “You’re awful quiet.”

“I’m always quiet,” Bishop replied. His thoughts turned to the Manifold facility. He knew from experience that anything could be waiting for them—living, dead, reanimated or mechanical. He looked at CJ and wondered if the man had any idea what kind of shit might be waiting for them.

***

The desk clerk at the Evin was reluctant to talk until Massai offered him a few thousand rial. After that he told them everything they wanted to know. Not that the man had much information to offer. Yes, a man named Erik Somers had a reservation at the Evin. No, he hadn’t checked in or called to cancel. No, he hadn’t sent any luggage ahead. Yes, the room was still reserved for him.

That was all they could get. Even after a quick search of the room, they had nothing.

“What do we do now?” Ahmad asked.

Massai was just about to answer when his phone beeped. He pulled it out of his pocket, cast a worried look at Ahmad, and unfolded it.

“Massai, here… You have? Where is… Are you sure? Of course, I… Yes. Yes, we will do so right away.” Massai closed the phone and stuck it back in his pocket.

“What was that about?” Ahmad asked.

“That was Shahid,” he replied. “They found Somers. A traffic camera caught an image of him leaving Tehran on Freeway 7.”

“Qom?”

“Unlikely. The camera also caught an image of the driver.”

“What does that have to do with—”

“He is with
them
,” Massai interrupted, emphasizing the last word. “The one called Joker was driving.”

Ahmad winced. “Already? How did they know he was coming?”

“The same way we knew, I presume.” Massai shook his head. His job had just gotten a lot more difficult. Still, there was one bright side to the latest news. “At least we know where they are going,” he said.

Ahmad nodded. “We should hurry.”

“Soon enough,” Massai said. “But first we should go to the warehouse.”