The Courier: A Ryan Kealey Thriller (26 page)

“No,” he told her. “If Yazdi is telling the truth—and I believe he is about this—the terrorist got the bomb by accident. He may have had a name to go to or else it was just luck that he stumbled on that beach shack. You can pretty much throw a dart here and hit someone who knows someone with connections to radicals. So we have a group that embraced our man and may have a mission for him. My guess is that after what happened to the professor, they didn’t want any other members being ID’d and compromised.”

The Volvo sped down the empty two-lane road. There were infrequent side streets here, just surprisingly modern shops; if not for the Arabic writing, some of them would have been at home in a D.C.-area strip mall.

When they reached the industrial area, all eyes turned left. There was no gate, no security. Just a long road leading to white buildings. Kealey slowed. Ahead, on both the left and right, was a suburban-style development with evenly placed street lamps and tract homes. That, too, could have been Anywhere, U.S.A. The little white cones of light went on for at least three-quarters of a mile in both directions.

Kealey didn’t realize how hard he was gripping the wheel until sweat trickled from his palms. He relaxed. They passed the complex and neared the development.

Does he try to lose himself or outrace us?
he wondered.

He leaned forward, looked up through the windshield at the helicopters. One was circling the lot, one the complex. A nose-mounted spotlight played around the grounds. The Moroccan police had this covered. It didn’t matter who got the bastard, only that he was apprehended. Kealey gunned the engine, throwing Rayhan and Yazdi back in their seats.

Kealey sped forward until he reached a fork in the road. One went southeast. That would take their quarry back toward Algeria. The other—

A glow caught his eye in that direction.

“No!” he snarled and charged down the road. The helicopter over the industrial complex saw it at the same time and joined them.

The right fork ended at a Christian cemetery. The Renault was burning. Whether the site was symbolic or not, the group was taking no chances: they had torched any trace of the terrorist and his cargo.

Kealey did not stop. He sped around the cemetery looking for a car that was heading away from the fire. He hadn’t seen any cars coming past him on the fork—they had to have gone this way.

Into the housing development, through the southern side. With dozens of side streets and endless garages. Where nothing but a complete cordon and lockdown, followed by a door-to-door search—or blind luck—would turn up their quarry. And only that if none of the officers were sympathetic to the cause. Kealey couldn’t count on them. Not to a man. Then there was the possibility that the target had simply swung through the community, exited on the north side, and headed west—back to the highway.

He drove through the neighborhood, saw a few cars, but none of them reacted to the Volvo. It was another case of having the target within reach and not being able to close the damn deal.

Rayhan and Yazdi were silent. He didn’t know whether they were thinking or keeping a respectful distance from the mission leader or both. Not that it mattered.

Kealey pulled to the curb. He called Clarke and asked him to have the authorities go into big-net/little-net mode: set up roadblocks on the highway headed north while they organized a grid search within that.

“I’ll see what I can do,” the DNI chief replied. “I’ve still got to work through INTERPOL.”

“This isn’t a hypothetical, General. There’s a briefcase bomb headed somewhere. Remind them what it’ll do to their tourist billions if they’re implicated. Buck it up to POTUS. Have him point out it’s the same guy who just blew up the A1.”

Clarke hung up and Kealey looked around. The name of the game had always been cat and mouse. He took some comfort in the fact that the mouse was still near. Because the trail was still warm, the group had two options: keep running or sit until it cooled. Sitting with a nuclear device was chancy: if these guys were as educated as the professor, they wouldn’t want to babysit a lead container that was seventy years old and had been packed in crushing ice for most of that time.

They wouldn’t count on getting out by the highway
, he thought. That left air and possibly rail. If they had a second car—and they would—they could double back to Moulay Bouselham and get out by sea.

Kealey’s internal motor was revving, but in neutral. Again.

“Ask him how the hostage was,” Kealey said. “Please.”

Rayhan posed the question and Yazdi answered. “He said she was alive and semiconscious. He doesn’t know how severe her internal injuries may have been.”

“But she was talking?”

Rayhan asked; Yazdi nodded.

The authorities would ask for a description of the man who abducted her—and who tossed an IED on the Moroccan highway. His likeness would be everywhere within an hour or so. Unless he was planning to hunker down with plutonium, he would have to get out of the country as soon as possible.

Kealey started back for Avenue Mfadel Cherkaoui

Yazdi asked a question. Rayhan said, “He asks where we are going.”

Ordinarily, Kealey wouldn’t answer. But the man had a pair of handguns and hadn’t used them to seize the car—yet. He felt he could trust him with information he probably already knew.

“There’s even more reason now for our terrorist to want to get out of the country,” Kealey said. “We don’t know what the resources of his new associates are. We need to be ready to leave the country. Does he have his fake passport?” Kealey asked, cocking his head back toward Yazdi.

Rayhan posed the questions exactly. Yazdi laughed and said he did.

“Great,” Kealey said. “We’re going to Tangier.”

“What about the North Atlantic Coast?” Rayhan asked. “If they double back the way they came and get a boat, they can sail to the coast of Spain or Portugal, find a way ashore.”

“I know,” Kealey told her as he took out his cell phone. “That’s why we’re going to need help.”

 

 

There was a terrible moment—a longer moment than he was expecting—when Mohammed was not sure he was going to survive.

Within a minute of pulling up to the cemetery a vehicle pulled up behind him, its headlights off, interior dark. Mohammed didn’t know whether to remain seated or to get out. He tasted his meal in the back of his throat. He tasted it still as a man emerged from the driver’s side of the car and walked over. He glanced in the backseat before stopping by the window. It was dark and the Yemeni could not see his face.

“Where is the device?” the man asked Mohammed.

“In the trunk,” Mohammed replied.

“Please get out,” the man said.

It was more of a command than a request. He stepped back as Mohammed opened the door.

“Bring the device to my car,” he said as he went back to the trunk.

Mohammed did as he was told, popping the trunk and lifting the lead box. It seemed heavier than before. He was arm weary and tired. He lugged it to the open trunk of the other car, a Nissan Tiida. While he did so, the other man ran back to the Renault, emptied liquid on the seat and dashboard and inside the open trunk, and lit a match. He hurried back to the Nissan, and Mohammed got in—there was no one else in the car, as he had suspected—and they drove off. Mohammed heard the
whoosh
of the Renault being consumed by flame.

The man concentrated on negotiating the roads through the dark eastern reaches of the city. He stopped when they reached a squat white building. A sign said
Hagasaa
. Soft drinks. They were too small to be a distributor. Perhaps they made flavorings for beverages and other foods. The driver pulled around the back, under a white canvas canopy that protected the car from direct sunlight during the day.

They got out. The man closed the flap of the little tent and shut it with a padlock. The ends were bolted to the ground. It was a secure little place and just a few steps from the back door of the structure.

The man looked around before he ushered Mohammed inside. Mohammed walked quickly across the noisy gravel driveway. The man propped open the back door with a wedge of wood. He did not turn on the light but gestured toward a straight-back wooden chair. The man sat on the edge of a wooden desk, close to Mohammed. There was a wall behind him and, to his right, machinery sat silent in the darkness. The man picked up a cell phone, called a number. Mohammed still could not see his face. The only light came from a street lamp somewhere in the distance, behind the high wooden fence that stood behind the canvas.

“We are back,” the man said into the phone. He listened for a moment. “No. No word from Ali.” He listened again. “Very good, sir.” Then he shut the phone and set it beside him. “Would you like a drink? Food?” he asked Mohammed.

“I’ve eaten, thank you.”

The man said, “I am Yousef. I am a colleague of the professor. I am sorry to inform you that he died in the service of our cause, murdered by the people who were chasing you.”

Mohammed’s tired mind processed the news slowly. It seemed to him like that was impossible: he had just been with him. But then, he had only left Aden a few moments and then he was dead. If the deaths hadn’t quite gotten hold of his mind and soul, resolve did: he would complete this mission, proudly, at any cost, and they would all be together again.

The man stretched out his arm and lay a hand on Mohammed’s shoulder. “The professor saw you as a gift from God and was willing to make the sacrifice he did. I fear, now, for Abdeliah—the man who spoke to you on the phone and who protected your back when you arrived in Souk el Arba du Gharb.”

“That is why—the fire?”

“Among other reasons,” Yousef replied. “I have been listening to the radio. The car was seen, described. But that is no matter now. We all feel the same about your achievement. You have come far and have brought so much. There is more to do, and for that reason we would like you to rest now. There is a cot in the office behind me. You have about three hours until we will be taking you from here.”

“May I ask where I am going?” Mohammed asked.

The man smiled in the shadows. “To Paradise,” he said. “But before that—to America.”

K
ealey had just crossed into Moulay Bouselham when Clarke reached him. He had been in a meeting when Kealey phoned and said he would call back.

“You’re going to have to pull some strings with the Spanish Civil Guard,” Kealey told him.

“How many and for how long?” Clarke asked.

Kealey told him what had happened and explained that they were concerned about the waters between Morocco and Spain.

Clarke did not jump to that immediately. “I just got out of a meeting with the President and the rest of the Homeland Security team. They’re not happy with how we keep losing him.”

At least Clarke said “we.” He understood the difficulty of the cat-and-mouse operation and wasn’t dropping this all on Kealey. Yet.

“They can have the whole thing back.”

“You know that’s not what they’re saying,” Clarke said. “It’s the package. They’re scared.”

“Me, too,” Kealey said.
And starting to feel the weight of that damn bomb. And doubting myself just a little.
But though he had always had a pretty candid relationship with Clarke, this wasn’t the time to get into any of that. “Which is why we need the Guardia Civil. We can watch the Strait, but if the guy heads out to sea we need a blockade. Don’t know what kind of boat, don’t think there will be any detectable radiation—but these guys are trained to spot smugglers, they know the currents, they know the likely ports. We need them out there ASAP.”

Clarke agreed and said he would fast-track it personally through his intelligence contacts with the Armada Española in Rota.

“Optimally we need eyes-and-ears-on within a half hour,” Kealey said.

Clarke hung up as Kealey headed toward the A1, beyond the explosion site. The smell of burned rubber and the distinctively different, pungent odor of melted plastic both hung in the air like a crashed Osprey in Afghanistan and the pit at the World Trade Center for months after the attacks.

As soon as he got on the highway—where all cars had to pass through a cordon of squad cars if they wanted to go north—Yazdi’s phone hummed. Rayhan looked at Kealey.

“If it’s a text, have him read it. If it’s a call, on speaker,” Kealey told her.

Rayhan translated the instructions. It was a text.

“I sent photographs of fingerprints from the crash site and the shed,” he explained. “The first were from the woman’s cell phone that the terrorist had used. Those proved not to be helpful. The ones I sent from the shed were identified. They belong to a man named Abdeliah Ali Makdissi. He is a Syrian officer who sought asylum in Morocco during the rebellion against Assad. He is known to be affiliated with the highly secretive KOO—the Khalid al-Otaibi Organization.”

Highly secretive was right: Kealey had never heard of them. “Do you know that name?” he asked Rayhan.

She shook her head, asked Yazdi who they were. He hesitated.

“Is that another name of the Foxes, which you told us wasn’t a real group?” she pressed.

“No.”

“Then what?”

“You asked only that I read the text,” he replied. “I do not wish to share classified information with Americans.”

Rayhan told Kealey what he had said. There was a time when practically every terrorist or terror-affiliated or terror-sponsoring group was known to him. In this age of hydra-headed jihad and Internet jihad and lone-wolf jihad and anti-Israel jihad, it was impossible to remain informed. Maybe that was the advantage Uncle Largo had: back then, it was just the Axis powers and his bailiwick consisted entirely of occupying Nazis. The mind didn’t have as many routes and players to consider. Right now, he still didn’t know whether Yazdi was an ally or an enemy or an enemy posing as an ally. He risked everything on “ally” because nothing was more important than getting the bomb from the terrorist.

“Will you tell us what we need to find the device?” Kealey asked.

“Yes,” Yazdi informed Rayhan. “The KOO has the will to utilize weapons such as this—and vast financial resources. If they are here, we cannot discount any method by which our quarry will escape.”

“That suggests air or sea,” Rayhan speculated after she had translated. “Private, fastest, most mobile.”

Kealey wasn’t convinced. There were still countless moving parts, including Yazdi.

“Would you show Rayhan your phone,” Kealey said. It wasn’t a question.

Yazdi handed it to the woman. She studied it for a moment. “The text has been deleted.”

Kealey looked in the rearview mirror. “Why?”

Yazdi’s expression was neutral. “I did not want you to see the name of the sender.”

Kealey definitely didn’t believe him now. But that wasn’t his immediate concern. He heard Yazdi’s guns clatter—intentionally, he was convinced—as Yazdi shifted in his seat. The American didn’t trust the man, but he also did not want to fight on two fronts. If he did not return the phone there was no telling what Yazdi might do—now or perhaps five minutes from now. Part of Kealey—a big enough part to get his attention and create an internal struggle—wanted to turn his own handgun around, fire through the seat, and be done with Yazdi. But he still might need what the Iranian had in his head and, even if that weren’t the case, the drumhead-tight modern world had not yet turned him cold-blooded.

Kealey passed her his phone along the seat. He touched the letters KOO and said, “Clarke.” She understood. Then he considered the options pertaining to the bomb. If this group arranged for a private jet, they’d need a runway from four to six thousand feet long. After Rayhan had finished, he had her check to see the nearest airports that met the requirement.

She showed him the phone. He nodded. He wanted to have the flexibility of a port city in any case.

They were going to Tangier.

Later, as Yazdi relaxed, the car went through the roadblock, helped by the security officer who had been on duty when the American had arrived just an hour or so earlier. The faces of the police officers had an uncommon intensity about them. After an attack, men and women used to being in authority stayed that way, shirking the impact of the incident until their job was finished. But two bombings in one day, so nearby, had them appearing focused on the outside while they had to be wondering what was next on the inside.

The Iranian did not know what was next, though he knew what he would be contributing to that. He had not told them the entirety of the text. He did not tell him that the request he had sent from the highway was being expedited.

He had not told them about Z
l-5.