Tracks (49 page)

And it was unlocked.

Devlin led the way.  The
door
creaked
a little as he pulled the handle and
revealed a dark abyss beyond the door.  There was also faint odor of aging
sea water.  A quick flash of light revealed a rusty metal ladder attached
to the wall which Devlin grabbed and began climbing down.

He carefully climbed down the
ladder, flashing his flashlight at intervals to see where he was going. 
The ladder descended several meters before Devlin felt he had reached solid
ground and the tunnel was revealed to him through a round opening which he had
to slither through.  Once in the tunnel he could see his surroundings by
means of bare light bulbs that hung along the ceiling at lengthy intervals,
providing enough light to see the way.

The tunnel was quite spacious,
allowing him to walk almost fully upright with plenty of room on the
sides.  It was built of aging rectangular stone blocks forming an arch
over his head.  It was cool and damp and smelled of weathered seaweed.

His two companions were right
behind him as they carefully inched their way forward.  The tunnel wended
its way on a subtle decline for the first few hundred meters then began to
subtly rise again.

Devlin worried about
surveillance cameras and unexpected obstacles such as guards posted along the
way.  He carefully surveyed each section from behind a bend before giving
the signal to proceed.  The tunnel stretched for almost a kilometer before
he could detect a change in ambiance.  He reached one final bend before
the tunnel joined into a large hall that was dimly lit. He peeped in and
immediately saw a man slumped on a small couch in front of a television that
was broadcasting white noise.

The man was snoring heavily,
his AK-47 leaning on the couch next to him.  Devlin sneaked behind the
unconscious man and silently took hold of the gun.  Using hand signals he
ordered Amar to remain with the man while he and Aziz went off to investigate.

The place seemed
deserted.  They walked silently through a maze of corridors not really
sure where they were heading.  The ancient structure had darkened nooks
and crannies which they used to
proceed
until the
formation turned more modern with steel doors and glass windows.  They
tried to decipher the composition of the rooms they were passing through the
windows but they were all darkened. 

The doors were unlocked. 

They walked into one of the
rooms, quickly flashing their lights around and found they were in a classroom
of sorts with a blackboard, and two rows of tables and chairs.  There were
several cupboards with some paintings hung above them along the walls. 
They quickly looked in the cupboards but found nothing of interest.

Looking more closely at the
paintings they realized were pencil sketches of guns and grenades, fighter
aircraft, armored vehicles, submarines, and boats.

There was no indication of
whom or what age the students were but from the sketches it was obvious they
were children’s sketches.

They skipped into an adjacent
room along the corridor and found another classroom with more sketches, world maps,
Middle East maps, United States maps, Biblical maps, chemistry tables,
multiplication tables, and various other teaching aids but no indication of who
the students were. 

There were no names and no
duty rosters.

There were two more rooms on
the opposite side of the corridor.  They split up.  Devlin walked
into a Muslim prayer room, empty with mats thrown about.  Aziz walked into
a storeroom filled with shelves loaded with office supplies.   

Continuing on, Devlin almost
walked into a door that suddenly burst open.  A burst of light illuminated
the corridor as two men hurried out arguing passionately in Arabic.  The
two infiltrators hugged the wall behind the door as the arguing men walked in
the opposite direction not noticing the threat so close behind.

The door swung back closing
with a metallic click as Aziz and Devlin scooted low waiting for the two men to
disappear behind the corner.  As soon as they did, Devlin ran quickly for
the corner stooping, hoping to see where the two men were heading.  As he
reached the corner he saw them entering a different room with light pouring out
of its windows.  He checked both his flanks as the corridor split in two
directions, looked this way and that and practically crawled to the window to
take a look, Aziz right behind
him.             

It was a communication center
loaded with electronic and communication equipment.  They could see
several men and women in gray fatigues moving about the room, the two men who
had just entered hovering over a computer screen.

Beyond the communication hub,
the corridor had opened into a square courtyard which revealed the night
sky.  Devlin could see stars and realized he was standing by the square
they had seen from Rolston’s surveillance apartment. 

There were rooms along the
entire perimeter of the square and they began trying the doors, hugging the
wall, keeping in the dark.  The doors were, again, unlocked.  Devlin
surmised security had slackened off.  The terrorist organization was
feeling quite invincible where they sat.

The first room along the
square was an office. Two desks were pushed against the walls, both with
computer terminals on them and several cabinets situated between them. 
Devlin watched the door while Aziz quickly searched the cabinets.  The top
drawers contained accounting data.  The bottom drawers had various
alphabetized files.  It was awkward for Aziz to thoroughly check the files
having to try and conceal the light from his flashlight but as he looked he
could see photos attached to each file.  His heart began to race as he
scrutinized the files more carefully realizing he was looking at files of
employees or operatives of the organization.  They had no means of
photocopying the files so Aziz did the next best thing he could think of. 
He found a pen on one of the desks and quickly jotted down on his arm three
names with their addresses, leaving everything in order.

They continued along the
square, entering two more offices but finding nothing they could use.  At
one point they could hear voices from the direction of the communication room
and heard a door being closed as the voices faded.  They did a complete
round of the square, finding one room empty and three rooms locked. They had no
means to force the locks open and were not about to risk making a racket so
they returned behind the communication room and scooted low below the window to
the darkened corridor that had split from the main corridor they came through.

It was a narrow corridor with
no lights and no doors on either side.  They quickly ran through it and
nearly fell off a flight of stairs at its end.

Carefully descending the
stairs into an abyss, not daring to flash their lights, they reached the bottom
of the stairs feeling a hard concrete floor under their feet.  The
dampness had returned as they inched their way forward not really seeing where
they were going.  Feeling their way along the wall, they reached a steel
door that was locked.  Dead end!

They returned to the stairs
and climbed back to the empty corridor that led to the communication room then
slipped back to the main corridor that led to the entrance hall where they left
Amar with the sleeping guard.

They emerged from the trap
door in the garage one hour after they had entered and signaled Saeed on the
short wave radio that they were ready to come out.  Five minutes later
they received the signal. 

Jaras was waiting for them
outside the back doors, fitting the new lock and silently locking the doors
behind them.

“They won’t know the
combination,” Devlin whispered to Aziz as the four men sprinted for the safety
of the closest street before the guard would make his next round.

“Mix up,” Aziz replied in
English, flashing a smile of crooked white teeth in the dark.  “Someone
changed the combination.  I doubt they’ll notice it’s a different lock.”

“Let’s hope you’re right,”
Devlin muttered to himself then recalled something.  “Say, what
did those guys we nearly ran into argue
about?” he asked
Aziz as they were taking a wide berth around the garage area heading for their
waiting vehicles.

“A delivery of weapons that
was missing certain items,” Aziz replied instantly.  “One of them was
pissed at the other for paying the full amount before checking the
merchandise.”

“So they get screwed by
suppliers too,” Devlin remarked sarcastically.

“I guess they do,” Aziz
agreed, marching ahead.

"So you do speak
English," Devlin remarked eyeing the Lebanese agent walking next to him.

"Only when there is no
other choice," whispered Aziz, smiling mischievously as if sharing a
secret and increasing his pace.

CHAPTER
FORTY SEVEN

Rolston was preparing black
Arabian coffee he had learned to brew in the years he had spent in the Middle
East, to the group assembled in the apartment.

“The kids do not come into the
compound every day,” Mai-Li was saying.  “In fact, in the two weeks we
have been here and the time we have been surveying the tunnels we have not seen
any children walking in.”

“The two rooms we entered down
there were definitely children’s classrooms,” Devlin stated.

“Maybe they no longer run the
program,” Rolston commented cynically, pouring the coffee from the bubbling
kettle into small glass cups.  “Maybe they've completed a phase and are
now in a different location?  Can you honestly say those classrooms were
in use?”

“Not really.  It was very
dark.” 

“And the lack of security…”
Rolston continued, “…I wouldn’t expect a secret organization such as that to be
so sloppy.”

“Or they could be very arrogant,”
Aziz said through the translator.  “They could be feeling quite invincible
here in Beirut where the government must be supporting them.”

“Or as a minimum looks the
other way,” Elena pitched in.

“We can’t keep watch forever,”
Devlin said.  “We need to move ahead.  We’re on borrowed time here.”

“Well, right now all we have
are those three names you guys brought back from the compound,” Rolston said.

“So we need to go after them,”
Aziz said, “the sooner the better.  We have names and addresses. 
What more do we need?”

“It’s going to have to be
closely coordinated with springing little Sammy, if he’s here at all, otherwise
once these three go missing or get the word out somehow, we’ve had it. 
We’ll never get close to him again,” Devlin surmised.

“What about the other kids?”
Natasha said.

Devlin turned in
surprise.  “What other kids?”

“There are other kids there as
well.  What about them?”

“Look, we have no idea who
they are.  We’ll be lucky if we can find little Sammy.”

“Yeah, but we can’t abandon
the other kids,” Natasha insisted.

“My job, our job, is to get
Sammy.  Once that’s done,” Devlin said looking around at the group, “it
will be up to our governments to somehow stop this organization.  But for
now all that’s wishful thinking.”

“We can’t pretend Sammy’s the
only kid in trouble here,” Mai-Li added.

“Look here,” Rolston said,
“Sammy will be the proof which they can use to save the others.”

Aziz was shaking his head
pitifully. “I don’t think they’ll survive if we get your boy.”

“Why
not?”
Rolston asked.

“They will be eliminated
instantly.”

“I doubt that.  More
likely they’ll be moved and hidden but I don’t think they’d give up such assets
so quickly.”

There was confused
silence.  Everyone went for their steaming cups of coffee.  Aziz lit
a cigarette and offered the pack to his companions who each took one.

“What’d you have in mind?”
Devlin finally asked Aziz.

“We tail each of the three
employees then we decide how to grab them.”

“Then
what?”

“Then it’s your call, boss.
 You want to call in the troops?  It’s up to you.”

“If we grab these three
operatives all at once, we would need time to interrogate them.  Can we
hold these people long enough without exposing the plot?”

“It’s a risk we’ll have to
take, obviously,” Aziz said.  “And that does not guarantee these people
will cooperate or fully disclose to you what you need to know. We don’t even
know who these people are and what function they hold.  They may not even
know where the kid is.”

“Should we talk to Sam? 
Explain the risks?” Mai-Li asked.

“You’ve got to be kidding!”
Devlin mocked.  “This is exactly why we keep him in Cyprus.  You
can’t expect him to be reasonable about this.”

“So it’s our call, Mike,”
Rolston said quietly.  “It’s a risky decision.”

Devlin wished Harley was
present just this once.  He was aware of the risks.  It was all or
nothing!  If none of the three people they were planning to grab could
lead them to Sammy, not only would they lose him but most likely the entire
operation would fail.  The moles would disappear and the network would
never be found. 

He was not even sure it was
his call to make without talking to Kessler or some of the higher ups.

“OK,” he said, postponing the
decision just a while longer. “We track these people see what we can find out about
them, then we decide.”

Nyla Ammad lived in an
upper-end suburb of Beirut overlooking the north shore.  She had a
two-storey house surrounded by a well-kept lawn and a silver Mercedes was
parked under a partially enclosed parking spot in front.

She also had three children,
two boys and a girl, as far as Aziz could determine, who were taken to school
on foot by a maid.

The husband was nowhere to be
seen on the week Aziz tracked Nyla around Beirut, to the compound, and back
home in the evening.  She was driven by a large armed man who showed up in
the morning and entered the compound in her car via the main gate and not like
a thief in the night through the tunnels.

The house was not guarded
during the day but as Aziz noticed through his binoculars, Nyla activated what
looked like an alarm system before she left. 
Once Nyla
was back home, the bodyguard and a second guard that joined in hung around well
after dark, smoking outside the front door, before leaving on foot somewhere
unknown.

A more thorough inspection of
the area around the house revealed nothing special.  It was a quiet,
relatively well-kept, neighborhood, which suffered little from the ongoing
conflict down below in the city. 

It struck Aziz as more than a
little odd that such a safe haven existed in this battle-ravaged city and that
he, a Beirut native, never really saw it.

It was well known that the
north shore area suffered far less than the city and anywhere further south,
but until now Aziz had never bothered to properly explore the area.

The road leading to the north
shore neighborhoods was as hampered with road-blocks and check-points as the
rest of the Beirut area, but once past those on the way up to Junia and
Tripoli, the character of the country became more peaceful and calm.

It was no real surprise, now
that he was aware of it, that it was also well-known that most of the ministers
and government personnel took refuge in those parts and were secluded from any
real danger.

So Nyla Ammad, he surmised,
enjoyed the perks of the elite, which meant she was a figure to be reckoned
with.

They needed to break into her
house.

He assembled the group once
again in Rolston’s and Mai-Li’s apartment and laid down his findings and
conclusions.

Jaras was assigned to tail the
second person whose details Aziz and Devlin brought back from the compound.

He quickly briefed them on
Ibrahim Abu Ahmed who lived in close proximity to the compound, in the port
area, in a small apartment building, closely guarded around the clock. 
Abu Ahmed walked always with a group in gray fatigues to and from the compound
through the main gate, same as Nyla, only without a car.  The group lived
in the same building and stuck close together.

One evening Jaras followed
them to a local coffee shop where they spent an hour but returned immediately
to the building.

During the entire week, they
would be at the compound very early in the morning to replace the night shift
who lived in an adjacent building.

“They are the soldiers, the grunts,”
Jaras summarized.  “They most likely live several in a room and though it
would not be difficult to break in, I doubt we would find anything of
interest.”

Aziz looked to Amar who had
the responsibility for the third name they had found.

Fuad Abdulla was a janitor - a
repair man.  He entered and exited the compound with a toolbox, wearing
matching blue clothes stained from grease and waste.

His schedule was sporadic and
Amar assumed he only came in on call.

Amar had followed him on foot
from the shack he lived in near the water by the port to the compound three
times during the week he had been tailing him.  It was odd, Amar thought,
to allow such a security hazard to do repair work in the compound.  A
person who lived on his own in such susceptible surroundings would very likely
be targeted if anyone wished to harm the organization.

“…But most likely he does not
know a thing about the real operation down there and using him to smuggle or do
anything is very likely to be a waste of time with only his tool box to show
for.”

“They probably check him
thoroughly on the way in and out, so they figure he can do whatever he likes on
the outside,” Rolston remarked.

“That’s the way I figure it,”
Amar said, lighting a cigarette to signal he was done briefing.  Then he
remembered something. 
“Though you could get from him a
rough layout of the place if you bothered to interrogate him.”

“So we forget about the
soldier, Abu Ahmed, and we leave the janitor for a last resort,” Devlin said
looking at Aziz.  “I guess our best bet is the rich lady.”

Everyone nodded.

“If we can break into her
house we may be able to find something useful before we make a final decision.”

“We can’t leave any tracks if
we do that,” Devlin stated.

“I know,” Aziz acknowledged.

Elena had flashbacks from the
raid on the Shiite command post on the eve of her arrival in Beirut.  She
was paired with Jaras, Amar and the alarm specialist, sitting in a beat up
Subaru, waiting for a signal to climb up the hill to the house.

They chose the only time they
thought no one would be in the house - 8:30 in the morning right after Nyla and
her bodyguard left.  The maid left with the children a few minutes earlier
and Aziz had timed her absence to be about an hour.

The plan was simple yet quite
risky since they were not sure about guards patrolling the area or anyone
inside the house. Aziz did his best to answer these nagging doubts but was not
completely sure.

They were to drive up and park
the car on the road leading to the cul-de-sac where the house stood.  The
spot Aziz chose for them was behind the last bend at the base of a small slope
before the road straightened toward the house.  There were several bushes
there that partially hid the car from anyone watching from the house though if
it was anyone remotely suspicious, like a guard, he would easily spot the
threat.

The tricky part was getting to
the house on foot. 

They received the go-ahead
signal from Aziz, two clicks on the short wave radio, and drove gingerly up the
incline passing well-kept properties along the narrow two-lane road.  A
silver Mercedes flew by them, and Elena got a glimpse of its two passengers, a
male driver and woman passenger with a modern hairstyle.  Both seemed to
be looking at her.

Amar parked the car at the
assigned spot.  He and Elena remained in their seats while Jaras and the
alarm specialist slid out the back doors and followed a low terrace around the
crest of the hill before they would be fully exposed to the house.

They reached the side of the
house and waited a few moments to make sure they were not spotted.  Jaras
gave the signal and the alarm man cleared the balcony and went to work on the
front door.

Jaras had his pistol out
circling the outer perimeter of the house to make sure they were not ambushed.

He rejoined the alarm man at
the front door waiting impatiently for him to break in.  The man had two
wires out from a digital counter of some sort connected with two small aluminum
alligator clips to wires he had exposed on both sides of the alarm box, and was
looking at the numbers and signals flashing by until he seemed satisfied and
took out a small cutter from his pants pocket.

“It’s the blue wire,” he
whispered to Jaras. “Get ready to run if I am wrong.”  Without further ado
he stuck the cutter between the red and yellow wires and cut the blue wire on
one side.  When nothing happened, he cut the blue wire on the other side
of the Alarm box and the door suddenly clicked open.

“Nice,” the alarm man said to
himself. “Saved us more work.”

“How’s
that?”
Jaras asked him, surprised.

“The lock’s activated by the
alarm in these systems.  That is why the box is outside and not in the
house.”

“Did you know that?”

The alarm man smiled. 
“No, we just got lucky.”