The Templar Concordat (48 page)

Eguardo let the lid on the display case close, but shoved the sealed plastic case with the forged treaty into his pack. That was the plan. If it all went to hell, they would take both treaties with them and run for it. If not, he would just put the plastic case with the forgery back under glass and leave.

The door handle rattled and a key twisted a few times in the lock. Callahan and Eguardo were in opposite corners against the door wall, aiming their guns toward the door between them, each aware that his position put him in the other’s line of fire. But with a bare room, and no cover, there was no choice.

Callahan heard one of the guards say in Arabic, “Is it still there? Has it taken a walk? Take a look and let’s get back to the bar.”

“How do I know? Let me take a look. You know how Hammid is. ‘Did you see it with your own eyes?’ I think he comes down here and makes love to his treasure.” Both guards laughed.

The door opened and the guard entered the room, flipped on the lights and focused on the table in the middle. He didn’t notice either Callahan or Eguardo, but that would change as soon as he turned around again. He walked to the table, looked down, looked again, and then spun around and raised his M16. Trapped. Eguardo’s silenced Beretta gave a dull thump when he shot the guard in the head, while Callahan spun and shot the other guard who was just outside the door. He grabbed him by the collar before he could fall, dragged him into the room, and closed the door.

“Busted,” said Eguardo. “Now what?”

“Damn.” Callahan glanced around and cursed the alternatives. There were none. He slipped the optical cable back under the door and scanned the hallway. “You have both treaties?”

“Got them both,” whispered Eguardo.

“Ok. Now the best we can do is escape alive.”

“Berrera, we’re busted. Two enemy down,” reported Callahan. “Coming out with both treaties.”

“All clear,” said Berrera calmly. “Ready to provide cover fire.”

Callahan took an explosive charge about the size of a paperback book from his pack and clipped a flipper switch to it. Eguardo looked out the door. “All clear.”

“Go.” When Eguardo left the room, Callahan backed out, hung the charge from the inside doorknob, and trapped the flipper between the door and the doorjamb. Eguardo was down the hall by the bedroom door, and when Callahan came toward him he whipped his gun up, pointed it at Callahan, and fired two more silenced shots. Callahan heard the grunts behind him and pivoted around to see two new guards on the floor.

When Callahan reached the bedroom, one of the wounded guards raised himself on an elbow and managed to fire a burst into the ceiling before Callahan shot him twice. “Goddamn, the whole world heard that. Now all those guys will be after us.”

Now the party revelry stopped and the shouting and running began. Shadows would be their only friend. Eguardo went over the edge of the balcony like a cat and lay prone up against the house wall. Callahan hung from the edge and dropped lightly beside him.

“Berrera, we’re going for the wall.”

“Got it,” Berrera replied from his position on the ridge. “Nothing on the outside yet.”

Callahan took a second charge from his pack, set the timer for sixty seconds, and lobbed it up on the balcony they had just left.

Eguardo looked both ways. “Time to…” the explosion from the second floor treaty room cut Eguardo off. That was the first place Hammid’s guards had gone. “That your little doorknob friend, Callahan?”

“That’s him. Got another here. He pushed the arming button that started the sixty second count down and dropped it off to the side. “At least we know they got to the treaty room. Let’s hit the wall.”

They sprinted to the wall and Callahan bent over while the lighter man ran up his back and laid on top of the wall reaching back for Callahan. They both rolled off the top of the wall and fell to the ground outside.

*     *     *

They crouched in the shadows on the outside of the wall, scanning the brightly lit area between them and the ridge. They could hear shouts from every direction, and a car started up and sped down the drive. “Let’s move, Eguardo, there’s way too many of them. You got both treaties? Right?” Eguardo nodded and slammed a new magazine into his Beretta, just as Callahan’s sixty second bomb on the balcony shook the whole villa.

“We can’t go back through the wadi. It takes too long. We’d never make it. Let’s break for that pump house.” Callahan pointed at a small shed that controlled the irrigation for the villa. “Let me get there, then you follow while I cover. You get that, Berrera?”

“Got it. All clear to the pump house. Got you covered. Give me a minute here.” Two rifle shots doused the lights covering the area between them and the pump house.  “Ok,” said Berrera, “Go, Go, Go.”

Equardo nodded his head and adjusted the small pack with the treaties.  “Ok. So shut up and go, Callahan.”

Callahan broke into a sprint, heard his third charge explode, headed at an angle to the pump house, then darted toward it when he heard fire behind him and saw bullets hitting to his left. He dove on his belly behind the shed and scrabbled around to aim his gun back toward the villa. He saw two men carefully coming up the west wall, then heard Berrera whisper, “Two moving up the west side. Eguardo, Go, Go, Go, I have them.”

Eguardo crouched and ran a zigzag course to toward the shed. A powerful shot rang out from Berrera’s rifle on the ridge, and one of the men fell. Callahan carefully aimed at the second man, missed, but Berrera’s rifle didn’t, just as Equardo skidded to a stop next to him at the pump house.

A group of five clustered at the southeast corner of the villa’s walls by the wadi. “Big target. Let’s hit ‘em.” Eguardo shot around the right side of the pump house, while Callahan shot around the left. Two of the five men immediately fell, Berrera hit a third, and the other two ran back around the east wall.

“Let’s go before they get it together again. Now!”

Both men raced across the hard-packed sand toward the ridge. They saw the multiple flashes of Berrera’s rifle ahead of them, from a new position he had taken, and heard more confused shouting and shooting from behind them.

Callahan looked around and saw Eguardo just ten paces behind him. Berrera waited behind the ridge about fifty feet ahead. Then Eguardo was next to him pumping his arms like an Olympic sprinter.

“God be with you, Callahan. Pray for luck! Remember my mass!”

Callahan looked at Eguardo, and watched him turn on a dime and charge back toward the villa, crouching and expertly weaving with the shadows. Callahan hurled himself over the ridge next to Berrera and turned back to the villa. “What the hell is he doing? What’s he doing?”

Eguardo ran parallel to the ridge until he reached soft sand, lay flat for a few seconds, then came out of the shadow into the lights from the villa and began to slog through the sand back toward the ridge. He was hit once, spun when another shot hit him, and he went down. But he switched magazines turned and started limping toward the guards, firing all the way. The third time he was hit he didn’t get up. Eguardo lay in a twisted clump on the sand and the guards ran past him up toward the ridge where Callahan and Berrera were hidden.

“Damn. Let’s move,” said Callahan. He jumped on the ATV, felt Berrera behind him, pushed the start button, and bounced away over the sand. Shots rang out behind them when the guards topped the ridge, but the guards could see nothing and the bullets went wild.

Callahan kept the ATV to the low ground and the hard-packed sand, weaving between the much softer dunes. With no lights, it was difficult to see even with the night vision goggles. After what he judged was about a mile, he took a hard left turn toward the beach and ran almost to the water where the wide, flat sand allowed him to push the ATV to nearly fifty miles per hour.

“Quarter mile more,” Berrera shouted in his ear. He had fished his GPS unit from his pocket and was watching their progress while Callahan drove. Just a quarter mile more, Callahan thought, a quarter mile without logs, birds, fishnets, or beached boats. He knew if there was anything out there, he would first know it when he hit it.

Berrera whacked him on the shoulder. “Right here. Just head up there.”

Callahan wheeled the ATV in a right turn and carefully picked his way between the picnic tables and concrete slabs on the beach until they bounced over the curb and were next to the Impala.

“Let’s go,” Callahan said as he jumped into the driver’s seat. Berrera threw his rifle into the scrub, took a quick look around with the night vision goggles and joined Callahan.

They dimmed the headlights until they reached the main road, then waited until there was no traffic and turned south, away from the direction of the villa.

Total failure, thought Callahan. Now Hammid had both the original treaty and the forged treaty. Eguardo was dead. Everything Jean Randolph did was wasted. The Knights Templar had entrusted him with the mission, and it was a total failure. The Templars lost, the Hashashin won, and they now had a good chance to keep on winning. Templars never left the battle while they could still fight, but there was nothing left to fight for. So Callahan left. Total failure. And there was nothing he could do about it.

Callahan flipped open his cell phone. Out of range.

“Go about eight miles,” Berrera said, “then we turn off onto a construction site. There’s a construction camp there and we can stay there for the night.”

“Who’s in the camp?” asked Callahan.

“Don’t worry,” answered Berrera. “The labor is all Filipino.”

Neither said a word about Eguardo.

Dhahran - Friday, May 15

Hammid woke with a start and immediately felt for the treaty case under his left arm. With his right hand, he grasped the M16 automatic rifle that lay across his lap and thumbed off the safety. The room had no windows, and his Rolex showed 5:15 AM. He had last awakened at 4:47 AM. He was soaked with sweat again, and his heart was racing. It had been like this ever since they had killed that Filipino thief and recaptured the treaty.

He laid his head back in the armchair, closed his eyes again, and tried to sleep, but all he saw was that man in the black T-shirt cresting the dune with his treaty, Hammid’s treaty, stuffed in his grubby backpack. Thank God none of the bullets had hit the treaty.

Who could he trust? His own compound had been penetrated easily, his home violated, his own guards killed. Had they been asleep? Drunk? How had one man… the guards said there were more… managed to come through his twenty guards? And if one had done it last night, how many more were waiting? He had to deliver the treaty to Cairo, where it could be encased in steel and bullet proof glass like the Magna Carta or the American Declaration of Independence. Just let him get it there and into the hands of the experts for the remaining tests. That’s all. Just a few more hours. Zahid had already conducted all the tests the panel would run, and it passed every one. Victory was so close, and would be his forever.

Filipinos, he thought. Saudi Arabia was overrun by six million Indians and Filipinos. His people couldn’t build their own houses, fix their own cars, or maintain an airplane. No, they were too good for that kind of work. So what did they do? Instead of changing attitudes and training their own people, they imported millions of foreigners who polluted their culture. His people couldn’t even take pride in an honest day’s work.

He rose and slipped across the room to listen at the door. Nothing. He silently turned the knob and peered out at two of his men looking back at him, and two more facing outward guarding their backs. When he opened the door wide, one stepped into the room and called to the others that it was clear. Only then did they lower their weapons.

“Good morning, Sheik. I hope you slept well,” said the first guard.

Hammid composed himself. He had to look confident, rested, and in command. “Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you, I slept very well. All quiet?”

“Yes, Sheik. Nothing since we killed that pig last night.” Hammid noticed he failed to mention the guards the pig had killed.

Sure, they killed the Filipino, but it was only blind luck. “Good. I will be going to my room, and I want you with me. We don’t know if there will be another attempt by the infidels to steal the treaty.” Hammid patted the plastic case under his arm. “But that can never happen, can it?”

“No, Sheik. We will all die first.” The others nodded, but with little enthusiasm.

Yes, thought Hammid, and if anymore Filipinos like the guy last night are around, we all probably will.

Hammid vowed to keep the treaty with him every second until it reached Cairo later that day. Who else could he trust? But when he reached his private quarters and laid the treaty on the counter by the sink so he could shower, he wondered about the effects of steam on something that old. “Call Professor Zahid,” he told the guard. Zahid could sit in the next room, under the eyes of the guards while he showered.

When Zahid arrived, Hammid told him to sit, gave him the treaty and instructed him not to move until Hammid came out of the shower. Zahid assured him the plastic case was impervious to external humidity, but Hammid didn’t want to take a chance.

“Humor me, Professor. It’s been a long night. Just sit for a few minutes.”