Satan (21 page)

“Found you a pilot.” Lucifer hooked a thumb at Rutger. “Got Nikar, Volac, and Jinn on a commercial flight that leaves right about now. There’s a loaded carry-on on the plane that has all you’ll need in terms of bugs and communication.”

“You are now officially part of the U.S. embassy staff and you have diplomatic immunity. My counterpoint here in CONTUS, Dracul, will work with The Hades Squad. You all have full security clearance. I’ll debrief you on project Scourge inflight while Dracul does the same here.” Rutger paused, then added, “Dracul’s in the Teams.”

Satan nodded his thanks. What most civilians didn’t recognize was that SEALs, active or retired, formed a close-knit brotherhood and always had each other’s backs. By assigning an active SEAL to work with the rest of the Hades Squad, Rutger had de facto given them access to Dracul’s classified knowledge. “What about the GPS implant?”

“Implants. Rutger will do yours. Use the shirts, belt, and shoes in the carry-on. There’s a pen camera and a few other choice devices.”

“Were you able to trace the emails?” Satan held out no hope, but had to ask.

“Nope.” Lucifer opened his mouth and closed it almost right away.

Satan knew what had happened. “Another video?”

“She’s been punched around. Split lip, bruises.”

“I see.” Her beautiful skin would show every mark. He turned to Rutger. “This tango’s mine. And he’ll be repaid quadruple in kind.”

Rutger held up his hands. “I’ll be happy to arrange one-on-one time for you. Even guard your back.”

“Good. Anything else, Luce?”

“Stay in touch.” Lucifer back-slapped him.

Rutger and Satan reached cruising altitude thirty minutes later.

“Want to brew us a jug of coffee before I begin debriefing you?”

“Good idea.” Satan unsnapped his seatbelt, lurched to his feet, and exited the pilot’s cabin. The jet had a built-in coffeemaker in the galley. He rummaged around found the necessary supplies, brewed the java, and carried the two lidded steel mugs back to the cabin.

“Thanks.” Rutger accepted the proffered cup and swallowed a huge swig.

Satan plugged his mug into a holder, sat, and rebuckled in. “I’m assuming you’re on a project that somehow relates to the current situation.”

“In a roundabout way, yes. It’s best to tell this in chronological order. Our project’s code name is Scourge. Scourge’s target is The Ghost.”

“He actually exists then?” Satan grabbed his cup and sipped.

“You bet. The Ghost’s right hand man was Malik Mansoor.”

Satan kept his trap shut.

“We’ve been trying to determine Malik’s true identity for over twenty-four months.” Rutger banked the plane to the right.

“What’s this got to do with Angel?” Satan’s patience thinned to breaking point.

Rutger snorted. “So much for chronological order. After her parents’ murders, Angel along with her brother, Martin, inherited Caribbean Worker’s Bank, a Trinidadian based corporation. Six months later, Martin sells his shares in the bank to a Swiss-based investment company, converts to Islam, and then Martin vanishes.”

“Angel told me about the murders, and Martin’s conversion. She also told me he went to Iraq to fight for ISIS, and was killed there. She didn’t mention the hows or whys of it.”

“Martin was on
our
kill list because he was the executioner in five televised beheadings.
I
took her brother out. Someone got the operation on camera and sent Angel a recording of the entire event two weeks before Christmas.” Rutger had the third highest kill rate of not just American snipers, but all snipers past and present.

Crap.
Satan had not expected that. “Makes no sense at all. First, who would want to record you shooting Martin? And second, why wait this long to send the recording to Angel? Her brother died a while back.”

“That same someone who sent her the tape also hacked our security. The break was brief but very specific. They wanted information on me.” Rutger drank more coffee.

“Why you, specifically?” Satan finished his now cooling java.

“To arm Angel with enough information about me to get me to take her seriously.”

“After seeing the recording, you would’ve had to take her seriously.”

“I wasn’t going to stick around long enough to see any fucking recording. Wouldn’t have met with her if it hadn’t been a direct command from Admiral Halsley. Angel’s father and the admiral were college roommates. She called in a favor.”

Satan ran back the events Rutger had reiterated. “When did you meet with Angel?”

“Christmas Eve.”

The meeting that would affect the rest of her life. “What happened after you saw the recording?”

“She asked me to identify a photograph. I did. I confirmed that the picture she had was one of Malik Mansoor. I hauled her down to the base, and we questioned her for over two hours. She didn’t give us a fucking thing. All we know is that she had received a ‘misplaced’ letter from her brother that contained a photograph of Malik Mansoor. All we got was that two weeks before I met with Angel on Christmas Eve, someone emailed her the recording of me taking Martin out, and on that
same
day, she ‘found’ the misplaced letter.”

Satan focused on schooling his features into a neutrality he didn’t feel.

Rutger glanced at him. “We know you took out Malik. You left a calling card. What a cluster fuckup.”

“It was a warning,” Satan growled.

“Didn’t work. The whole village was slaughtered on Christmas Day.”

Satan stared at Rutger certain he hadn’t heard correctly. “Say again.”

“Aw, shit. You didn’t know. Sorry. It was on the evening news. I figured you’d make the connection.”

On Christmas Day at that time, he had been wallowing in self-pity. A prickle of self-disgust swept over him. He shoved the emotion aside and concentrated on dissecting all the data Rutger had shared.

Rutger stabbed a few buttons, shifted the joystick, and the jet banked to the left. “We began tracking The Ghost three years ago because of his rapid ascent up the ISIS command rankings. He was the man behind the idea of posting public executions. As you probably know, ISIS receives huge capital injections after each one.”

“The Ghost is part of the same cell as Malik and Angel’s brother?” Satan scrubbed his jaw, slouched, set his booted feet on a smooth part of the console, and scanned the now-darkening sky.

“We now believe so. At any rate, about six months ago, a transaction at Caribbean Worker’s Bank triggered an alarm. One of our overseas colleagues hacked into the bank and found a surprising pattern. It appears the bank’s become the primary wash for a majority of ISIS funding.”

Satan ran a few quick calculations. “This would be after Angel’s brother left Trinidad to join ISIS?”

“Yeah.”

His cell vibrated. He fished the phone out of his pocket. Lucifer. “Yo.”

“I’ve been watching tapes of the local news in Trinidad.”

How had Luce managed to obtain those tapes?

“The lunchtime news today mentioned that one Merylle Maharaj reported her friend, Angel Dare, as missing. Merylle said she and Angel had made plans to have dinner at seven at the Hilton Hotel on Thursday. She’s some sort of local artist and—get this—a well- known mystic. Doesn’t look as if the police are taking it seriously, but because Angel was Trinidad’s Channel Ten’s evening anchor, they’re plastering her picture all over the media.”

Satan ran through the timing. Today was Saturday. “She was last seen at eleven-forty-five when the bellman at the Trinidad Hilton hailed her a cab. That mean’s they’ve had her for a minimum of twenty-four hours.”

“I’m hunting down this mystic’s contact information. As soon as I speak with her, if it’s not all magic and mumbo-jumbo, I’ll call.”

“Thanks Luce.” For long seconds, Satan focused on his phone’s dimming display. He smacked his forehead, thumbed the email icon, and searched through his Inbox.

“What’s got you all fucked up?” Rutger demanded.

“Angel couriered a letter to Jess. Jess sent me a pic. I forgot about it.” Satan clenched his jaw when he found the email and prayed the letter held a clue as to Angel’s whereabouts. He opened the attachment.

The shot of the letter was grainy and difficult to read.

I expect to be dead by the time you read this, Jess. I want someone to know the whole story in case things get screwed up. The enclosed key opens safe deposit box #12187 in the Citibank branch on 5th Street. I put you on as a signer for the box. Sorry, but I had to snitch a copy of your driver’s license to do so.

Also enclosed is a letter from my brother, Martin, written when he was in Iraq “fighting” with ISIS. During his time there he overheard a conversation that led him to believe that Yaman Moses, a prominent Trinidadian businessman, is also the ISIS terrorist known as The Ghost.

Satan reread the paragraph.
Jesus
. The Ghost had kidnapped Angel.

Martin also discovered that Yaman was the one who ordered my parents’ killed and orchestrated the “home invasion.” Apparently, Yaman wanted to take over my parents’ bank, Caribbean Worker’s Bank, to indirectly fund ISIS. Yaman kidnapped my brother, he forced him to sell his shares in the bank to an investment firm—SwissMed Investments, and then Yaman had him sent to ISIS where he was coerced into executing prisoners. Yaman’s son, Bassel, who goes by the name of Malik Mansoor, was in command of Martin in Iraq.

I’m convinced Yaman owns SwissMed and I intend to find proof. Yaman’s been trying to get me to sell him my shares in the bank. I pretended to agree to do so after finding my brother’s letter two weeks before Christmas. I moved back to Trinidad to do two things:

1. Find out who owns SwissMed.

2. Destroy Bassel and Yaman Moses.

Bassel Moses, aka Malik Mansoor, has vanished. No one seems to know where he is. I have a hunch Bassel is dead because twice now, Yaman, his father, has referred to him in the past tense.

Enclosed are two pictures. The first is the one Martin took of Bassel wearing his disguise when he was in Iraq. The other is one of Bassel without his toupee. Amazing the way a full head of hair and a heavy beard and mustache can so easily change a face.

I’m planning on poisoning Yaman and as many of his men I can identify before Carnival. I expect that one of Yaman’s men will find out what I’ve done and they’ll kill me for revenge.

If by chance I disappear or die and Yaman Moses is still alive, I’d appreciate it if you get all the information and proof to the appropriate authorities.

You’ve been a wonderful friend to me and I’ll treasure that to the grave. I have one more favor to ask. When he’s ready to hear it, please tell Satan/Lorcan that I really did love him and I’m sorry for everything.

Love always,

Your friend,

Angel

Angel tried not to move a muscle, not to blink, not to show any signs of being awake. She hated regaining consciousness because the pain of all the punches and the burnings mushroomed with each ticking aware second. Her burnt flesh throbbed, but the spots on her breasts were the worst. And being naked didn’t help because she scraped the sides every time she moved.

She listened, but heard nothing but parrots quarrelling somewhere in the distance. The blindfold had been removed, but her hands and feet were still bound.

She slotted one eye a tich open. No boots or sandals in the vicinity. A fleeting peek revealed an empty room. Not wanting to alert her captors, she kept still, and scanned the tiny chamber. The three windows opposite where she lay were covered in dust, but she glimpsed the sun hovering above a steep hill. Blue skies, no hints of a cloud, and from the globe’s position, she guessed the time to be afternoon. So the room faced west.

It hurt like hell to roll onto her side. If she could get to the wall, maybe she could sit up. Her sense of time had become skewed.

When was the last time they gave her water or fed her?

Before the beating.

She grimaced when recalling Yaman’s first punch to her solar plexus. The water had come right back up. She hoped the vomit went all over him.

Her throat ached with dryness. It was humid and hot, and she would sell her soul for a drop of water. She spied an empty opened can in one corner and glimpsed red liquid in the bottom. Her stomach gnawed at her. She took a deep breath, decided to get the pain over and done with in one burst and rolled until she hit the wall.

At least this time they’d tied her hands in the front. She pushed to sitting, eyed the distance to the can, and butt-crawled to it. Her fingers were numb at the tips, but she managed to grab the can. A hysterical giggle escaped her mouth when she peered into it.

Baked beans, and almost half a can left. She had to lie down to get the beans to her mouth and didn’t even notice the pain she was so desperately hungry. Cold, stale and sour pintos with bits of bacon, she chewed each bite slowly, and savored each mouthful.

Why hadn’t they raped her?

Every time they came to get her, she braced herself for a gang rape. She hadn’t anticipated the beatings. Or the cigarette burns. Yaman Moses was a nasty sadistic animal. He had a torture room in the basement of Dolphin Paradise.

It had been impossible not to cry out when they stripped her. The horrible humiliation, shame, and embarrassment had been replaced by sheer, terrified dread when they chained her hands and feet to rungs built into the walls. When they put the noose around her neck, she had peed herself.

But that had been nothing compared to the excruciating helplessness she felt when they blindfolded her. That first cigarette burn she screamed her lungs off. She cried and begged incessantly after that. Yaman taunted her by taking a long break, and just when she figured the torture was over, he started again.

A vague memory surfaced. Yaman had spoken to his henchmen right before she passed out. What had he said? He’d sent two men to meet Satan’s plane. They were to bring him here. But there was something else. Something about Malik Mansoor. And killing Satan would be revenge.