The Shroud of Heaven (13 page)

The killer moved like lightning, spinning on one foot and bringing the other around in a kick aimed at Kismet’s head. A raised arm deflected most of the powerful assault, but Kismet felt a stab of pain just below his elbow. He tried to grab the outstretched leg as it rebounded away, but was too slow. His opponent twisted out of his reach, leaping and rolling like an acrobat.

The evasive maneuver took the lithe killer sideways, away from the center of the room and off course for a hasty exit. Kismet moved to flank the man, forcing him back to the edge of the gallery. The man paused as he realized his mistake, drawing to a stop in front of the balcony wall that overlooked the garden courtyard below. He spun around and his eyes, the only part of his face not covered by the turban and veil, locked for a moment with Kismet’s. There was nothing human in the gaze. Just the cold, tactical stare of a killing machine, surveying a battlefield. In that instant, Kismet realized that if he failed to quickly subdue his opponent, the violence would escalate to a fatal conclusion.

He raised his hands, palms down in a steadying gesture, and took a slow step forward as if attempting to negotiate. The move was a feint. As soon as he sensed that his opponent had taken the bait, Kismet sprang forward again. The assassin was fast, but he had nowhere to go. Kismet’s shoulder plowed into the man’s mid-section, driving him back even as the former’s arms encircled him.

Kismet’s cheek struck a hard object beneath the assassin’s robes, the silenced pistol, but it was something soft and yielding pressing into his forehead that caused him to falter in the ferocity of his assault.

The veiled killer struggled free of his grasp and Kismet careened headlong. He managed to recover his footing and backpedaled to block the exit once more, but the assassin no longer seemed interested in escaping by that route. Instead, with robes fluttering like the scarves of a dancer, his foe whirled around and dove toward the balcony wall. Kismet gasped involuntarily as the other figure took flight.

He reached the railing just in time to see the assassin land gracefully, cat-like, on two feet. The downward momentum translated effortlessly into forward motion and the assassin moved unimpeded toward the exit, oblivious to the amazed exclamations of clueless laborers working in the garden.

“Shit.” Kismet muttered the rare curse because he knew what he had to do.

With considerably less elegance than his opponent, and a good deal more trepidation, he closed his fists around the railing and vaulted over the barrier. He kept his handhold firm, describing a pendulum motion with his body, until the soles of his feet were parallel with the floor. Only then did he let go, narrowly avoiding a collision with the outward facing balcony wall, and dropped two vertical meters to crash noisily into an unidentifiable thorn bush. The assassin reached the entrance lobby while he struggled to disentangle himself, and Kismet knew he had lost the race.

***

The assassin hit the double doors, blasting through them with hardly a pause, and continued through the elaborate archway. After the controlled interior lighting of the museum, the rays of the midday sun stabbed down like knives, causing the robed figure to raise a shading arm. No one took notice. What was one more traditionally dressed Arab in a nation almost exclusively populated by them? The killer slowed to a walk, staying close to the outer edge of the building, and crept along the perimeter. The soldiers, unaware of the commotion inside the museum, carried out aimless patrols around their vehicles or huddled together in small knots of conversation. Aziz’s slayer saw an opening and launched into motion.

A lone infantryman stood at the rear of D-42, the refueling vehicle, idly smoking a cigarette and paying attention to little else. The assassin moved like lightning, flashing in front of the hapless soldier and striking before the young man could even register surprise. A slashing blow to his exposed throat left the soldier gasping for air, while the robed killer effortlessly ripped his carbine away.

The violent attack did not go unnoticed by the other soldiers, but the lethargy of too much heat and too little action slowed their collective response. Before a single man could lift his weapon, the assassin checked the captured M4, advanced a round, and switched the fire selector to “burst”. Fire and lead erupted from the muzzle, splitting the silence with a series of rapid cracking sounds. To a man, the infantry squad hit the ground, dashing for cover as they wrestled to bring their weapons to bear, but their target had already moved on.

The assassin popped open the door to the Humvee and slipped inside with practiced familiarity. The military vehicle had a simple starter switch and was secured only by a padlocked cable looped around the steering wheel. Using the stubby barrel of the carbine as a pry-bar, the assassin broke the shackle and toggled the starter switch. The diesel fuel, already warmed by the desert sun, ignited instantly.

***

Kismet could barely hear the shots through the dense brick walls, but what he could make out was enough to slow his pace as he ran toward the exit. His shirt and the skin underneath had been torn to shreds during his violent extrication from the museum’s interior gardens, but he gave it little thought. He was far more concerned about catching a stray bullet as he stepped outside the sheltering brick structure.

The distinctive popping sound of gunfire ceased as he reached the doors, but he continued with hasty caution, moving in a duck walk through the archway. He eased around the corner, just in time to see a lone Humvee tearing out of the parking area and onto the street. The pandemonium that lingered in its wake was explanation enough as to what had just occurred. The lone assassin had somehow stolen the vehicle under the noses of the infantrymen and was escaping.

Colonel Buttrick was already marshaling his troops for the pursuit, but every passing second put the fleeing Humvee further away. Before Kismet could cross half the distance to the parking area however, the first of the three transports took off in a spray of sand and gravel, while three soldiers, now standing in a firing line, continued to pump short bursts from their carbines at the rapidly diminishing target vehicle. If the bullets found their mark, they were insufficient to slow the assassin.

A second Humvee pulled away close on the heels of the first and Kismet saw the third give a slight tremor as its gears were engaged. Desperate to reach that last remaining vehicle, he sprinted ahead, no longer concerned about the exchange of weapons fire.

He was not sure what exactly he hoped to accomplish. Catching up to Aziz’s killer seemed a remote possibility at best, but that individual was the only person remaining who could answer the question burning in Kismet’s mind: why had Aziz been silenced?

The death of the curator had been eerily familiar. The killer had controlled the situation, yet upon discovery, Aziz had become the target, not Kismet. The phone call had evidently been a ruse to separate the Iraqi from his inquisitors, yet for what purpose? Had he been marked for death all along? What secret had died on his lips? Kismet knew from experience that secrets worth killing for were the kind of secrets that most needed to be revealed, and presently the assassin was his only link to that secret. If the soldiers succeeded in overrunning the fleeing Humvee, they would probably follow the time-honored progression of shooting before questioning. Perhaps that fact, more than anything else, spurred him onward as he drew closer to his last opportunity to join the chase.

As he closed to within ten meters, the Humvee’s rear tires began to turn. A scattershot of gravel blasted into his face as the driver punched the accelerator a little too eagerly, and Kismet involuntarily looked away for a moment. Three more steps, in less than a second, brought him to the place where, only a moment before, the Humvee had sat idle. Now there was only a toxic cloud of diesel exhaust. Still running, he thrust out both hands, blindly groping for the vehicle as he blinked away the sand and fumes.

The fingers of his right hand bounced off the hardened aluminum exterior of the rear hatch, momentarily catching on the fabric of the white United Nations banner rigged across the back end of the vehicle. His left hand however closed on something more substantial: the driver’s side antenna mount. He reflexively closed his fingers, gripping the coiled spring of metal as he might a lifeline.

The Humvee lurched forward and Kismet was abruptly yanked along with it. A stabbing pain shot from his elbow to his shoulder as his full weight suddenly depended from that lone extremity, but he did not let go. He made a futile effort to run behind the vehicle. There was no hope of keeping pace with the racing transport, but Kismet reckoned he only needed to get his feet under him long enough to propel himself up and onto the rear hatch. If he failed to do that, nothing else would matter.

For a moment or two, he succeeded. Pouring on a burst of speed, he actually managed to run along behind the Humvee, easing the strain on his left arm incrementally. He could feel the ground vanishing beneath his toes, moving faster than his legs could propel him, and knew that he would only get one chance. With two more bounding steps, he threw his right hand forward, groping for anything that might give him a second secure point of contact.

Once more, his reaching fingers found no purchase. The smooth exterior of the vehicle was free of latches and other protuberances. With half a meter of ground clearance, the designers had not even bothered with collision bumpers. The rear of the vehicle was a featureless metal wall, rising vertically above nothingness before sloping forward at a forty-five degree angle. He once more found himself clutching the flimsy UN banner as he was yanked forward off his feet.

Miraculously, the flag did not tear as his weight pulled the fabric taut. The sudden shock was absorbed by the rubber bungee cords that stretched from grommets at each corner of the strip. As he lost his footing, Kismet swung forward and his face slammed into the vehicle. The impact was not hard enough to knock him loose from his precarious handhold, but it proved a thankful distraction from the jarring blows that now traveled up from his feet as they dangled and scraped along the rough macadam roadway. The heavy leather of his boots afforded a measure of protection, but that would not last. His footwear was being methodically sanded away by friction from the relentless forward movement.

The Humvee’s speed was impossible to judge, but Kismet knew intuitively that he was now moving too fast to safely let go. He could not give up in his quest to gain a perch on the vehicle even if he chose to do so. If the impact did not kill him, the drop onto the pavement would scour the flesh from his bones. Though his left arm now burned with exertion and the pain of torn ligaments, he summoned every ounce of will power that remained and channeled it into a single pull.

His muscles bunched under the tattered remains of his shirt. To avoid losing what little progress he had made, he jammed his right arm deep under the UN flag until he could feel the fabric cutting into his armpit. Though his progress seemed marginal, he found that by flexing his knees, he could lift his feet away from the constant scraping punishment, if only for brief moments.

Nothing else existed in his world but the task of hauling himself onto the back of the Humvee. The streets of Baghdad flashed by unnoticed, and even the pursuit of the assassin now seemed a secondary concern. Kismet counted twenty ragged breaths before trying once more to lift himself higher, but his effort collapsed after only a moment, yielding almost no reward. Gritting his teeth, he tried again.

***

Lt. Col. Jonathan Buttrick pushed the accelerator pedal to the floorboard, intent on closing the gap between his own vehicle and the rest of his command. He had no idea what had happened inside the museum, much less the identity of the robed malcontent who had opened fire on his men and stolen the resupply vehicle, nor did he care. The enemy had struck a blow on his watch, and that was intolerable.

One of his men, the driver of the stolen Humvee, was down, possibly dead from a crushing blow to cricoid cartilage. Buttrick had only glimpsed the man’s fall, hands ineffectually clutching his throat as he collapsed beside the vehicle, but his blue pallor was explanation enough; the man was suffocating. He knew the medics might be able to save the man with an emergency field tracheotomy, but it would be messy. Buttrick clung to the image of the gasping soldier in order to fuel his resolve.

“Where the fuck are we?” he growled.

The sergeant in the seat beside him was frantically checking his city map against the GPS locator. “We’re coming up on the Shuhada Bridge over the Tigris.”

Buttrick’s mind ran through possible strategies. The bridge would be an excellent place to catch their prey, but only with outside help. “Get on the horn and see if anyone’s patrolling on the other side. Maybe we can scare up a roadblock.”

“Yes, sir.” The sergeant’s fingers closed on the radio handset before his superior finished speaking.

Neither man was aware of Kismet’s life and death struggle, less than three meters away, nor could they have possibly known that his fingers were at that very instant clenched around the base of the radio antenna.

The military radio had the capacity to send and receive coded information on a shifting cycle of frequency modulation wavelengths. Yet, beneath all the computerized circuitry, it operated on principles that had not changed in over a century. At its core, the device converted the sounds of the human voice into bursts of electricity, which then traveled along copper wire to the antenna, and it was only there that the electrical pulse became a radio wave. The antenna was essentially an electromagnet, disrupting the local magnetic field with measured bursts of energy that could be gathered out of the air and deciphered only by a correctly tuned receiver unit. Depending on the power of the transmitter and the length of the antenna, it was possible for those signals to reach out over hundreds of kilometers, or even into space. Despite quantum leaps in technology, long-distance communications still relied on that simple conversion of electricity into magnetism.