Threatcon Delta (36 page)

L
osing the instincts he had honed in Iraq, Phair did not hit the ground when the shot sounded behind him. He did wonder why he’d heard it, however. He should have been dead before the sound reached his ears.

His next thought—which was pumped into his brain by breath so rapid he didn’t recognize it as belonging to him, as something he was capable of producing—was that the bullet had missed his head. He waited for pain to flare in his shoulder or back. It didn’t come.

Then he saw the shadow on the floor in front of him kick back and drop as though it had been winched about the waist.

The entire event had taken less than a second, but it was long enough for every detail to sear itself into his mind. The message that he was alive finally reached his knees, and he moved.

Phair thrust himself forward and down as though he were diving to cover an active hand grenade. In the same movement he pulled Adjo forward and snuggled his own body protectively near, his arm and part of his chest on top, a hand covering Adjo’s head. Phair ducked his own head as low as it could go, his cheek to the floor. Sometimes life or death was just a matter of inches.

A second shot cracked through the cottony deafness caused by the first. It also issued from behind. Someone else fell, this time across Phair’s ankles. The victim was dead weight. The cleric didn’t know if it was Kealey, the MFO, or some other savior, but he was glad they were there.

He felt Adjo wriggle beside him. The young officer was so sweaty that Phair couldn’t keep him pinned. Adjo scratched his way around, like a pinwheel, and Phair had to grab the back of his robe to keep him in place. Facing sideways now, Phair saw the rest of the men react. They were running for the street. He saw a black shape take form beside him, realized it was Adjo, saw that he was holding a torn robe. Adjo half crawled, half staggered to the door. He was holding a semiautomatic one of the men had dropped. The flashes from its muzzle brightened the doorway, the coughing bursts merged into one, and then Adjo leaned against the left side of the jamb. His legs went molten and let his torso drop to the corner of the doorway.

The moment he went down and the gun fell from his limp fingers, people moved into the doorway. Phair assumed they were friends, not foes; otherwise, they would have shot Adjo.

One of the newcomers stooped beside him. He couldn’t see who it was but, oddly, he recognized the smell of the man.

It was Durst.

The German set the gun aside, lit a match, and moved it over him, looking for injuries.

“You are not dead,” Durst said.

“Thank you,” Phair replied. The cleric’s eyes rolled forward. The shadow in the doorway had to be Carla crouched beside Adjo, laying him out. “How is he?” Phair asked, and realized that the dry words didn’t make it past the floor in front of his lips. He swallowed and repeated the question.

“Unhurt,” she replied.

“You came back,” Phair said.

“We were watching the gate,” Carla said, stepping over with two handfuls of guns and squatting. She put them on the floor. “One van drove away with the wounded and another came in. We didn’t think that was good. There was no one watching the gate so we followed them in.”

“We did not find the Staff, but I do not like to feel useless,” Durst remarked.

“Thank you,” Phair said again, adding, “I’m very sorry you had to do what you did.”

“They would have killed you and then they would have killed us,” Carla said. She was silent for a moment. “Three days ago I was training overweight clients. Now I’m a killer.”

“A savior,” Phair corrected.

Her grandfather reached over and put his hand on her forearm. Was he comforting her or welcoming her to the family?

“Have you been in touch with Kealey?” Phair asked, ashamed at that last ungracious thought but unable to get out of its way or—worse—to shake it.

Carla nodded. “He believes there is a plot to poison everyone in the desert. That appears to be what is wrong with the lieutenant.”

“Adjo suspected as much,” Phair said. “Does Kealey have a plan?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “He told me he was headed toward the helicopters, but I know nothing more.”

Her grandfather asked for the flashlight the Americans had given her. She handed it to him and he rose, surprisingly spry. Durst went over to the doorway and slapped one of the Egyptians who was lying there. The man started and moaned and tried to grab Durst’s hand, but the German stepped on the man’s wrist, pinning it.

“He’s alive!” Phair said.

“As I intended,” Durst replied. “We may need him.”

“The others?”

Durst shook his head. “Are you able to make it to the van? I think we should be leaving here.”

In response, Phair rose and, after taking a moment to collect himself, walked forward with Carla at his side. Together, the three of them half dragged, half carried Adjo and the other Egyptian to the back of the van. When they were inside, Carla called Kealey to bring him up to date.

There was a lot to digest, and a great deal more still to be done. Phair decided to concentrate on the latter, for there was more at stake than anyone realized.

K
ealey might just as well have been at his desk.

Information was coming in from multiple sources—first Harper, and now Carla with the welcome news that she and her grandfather had rescued Phair and Adjo. Kealey was proud of them, and angry at the risk they took, although he showed neither emotion as he calmly told Carla to go to the checkpoint and get medical attention for Adjo—for all of them, since they had now been exposed to the pathogen. Meanwhile, he continued to make his way toward the helicopters like everyone else, hoping he would find something there to turn the crowd back. His eyes moved frantically, his right shoulder a wedge against the crowd as he tried to figure out some way to keep the choppers grounded. He thought back to Eagle Claw, the ill-fated attempt to rescue the Teheran hostages in 1980. At the makeshift base, Desert One, a sideways-sliding RH-53 helicopter had caused chaos and destruction among the tightly packed vehicles.

As Kealey was considering how such a scenario might be enacted here, a man stepped directly in front of him, facing him. The agent extended an arm to maneuver around him. The man stepped with Kealey, causing the agent to stop and exhale impatiently. Kealey prepared to muscle around him.

“Mustair Keeleh?”

That was a surprise. Kealey stopped. “Who are you?”

“Phair frient,” he said with rolling
r
s.

Kealey squinted at him. Silhouetted against the lights of the helicopters, the man was of medium height and build, robed with his head covered by a hood, and bearded, with steel wool puffs on either side of his lower jaw. The hint of a backpack jutted above his shoulders.

“I’m listening,” Kealey replied. “Quick.”

“Come,” the man said, turning toward the thinner outer edge of the crowd.

Kealey followed for a few hesitant steps. “I really don’t have time—”

“Come.”

The man didn’t say anything else. Perhaps he had just spent all the English he knew. Kealey exhaled again. He had no immediate options, besides the unrefined notion of using one of the choppers as a weapon. He jogged after the man, dodging a few slow-moving pilgrims.

“What’s your name?” Kealey asked.

The man didn’t appear to hear, or perhaps he didn’t understand. He continued walking. Kealey ran in front of him. He saw his face for the first time. It was round and swarthy, his black beard streaked with white. His eyes were deep set but not unhappy. He was probably forty but looked older. If he was a friend of Phair, he was probably an Iraqi.

“You know
my
name,” Kealey said, pointing to himself and saying his own name. He pointed to the other man and shrugged. “What is yours?”

“Bulani,” the man replied, then purposefully moved around Kealey and continued toward the front of the crowd, toward the helicopters, to the area where people were approaching the prophet.

Kealey knew the name but couldn’t place it. He thought of texting Harper to look it up, but suspected he would find out the man’s purpose soon enough. Kealey’s eyes drifted to the backpack, which was in shadow. There was something poking out over the top—along the man’s neck—and from below, along his leg. Kealey moved in for a better look. It was a leather bundle tied with short lengths of rope at the top and bottom.

“You bastard,” he muttered.

He didn’t know whether to thank Phair or damn him, and ended up doing both. His only active thought was “what next?” What could he do, what should he do? He didn’t even speak the language.

As the man moved along the outside of the crowd, he reached above his right shoulder as though he were drawing a saber from a back-worn sheath. His left hand snaked under his backpack and pulled a rope free, letting it drop from metal hooks on both sides of the kit. His right hand pulled the package over his shoulder and he hooked his fingers under the top and bottom bindings in turn, undoing them. The leather fluttered open and fell away.

The monks who had come down the hill had formed a circle at the foot of the mound where the prophet stood. They formed a barrier between the crowd and the object of their adoration.

“
Musa saheeh!
” Bulani cried, proudly thrusting the aged, broken staff above his head. “
Musa saheeh!
”

All heads, including those of the prophet, turned to him.

Kealey felt the breath leave his body as he waited to see what would happen next.

A
djo seemed to recover some of his strength as he lay in the back of the van. There were no seats, so he slid against the side, gun in hand, and pointed at the head of the wounded officer who was slid in perpendicular to him, his head facing the cab.

Carla had climbed in after him. She used a pocketknife from her backpack to cut away his shirt. She shredded the fabric and made a makeshift bandage.

Durst sat in the passenger’s seat studying a map of the compound and the surrounding area while Phair sat behind the wheel and, with uncertain fingers on the small keys, texted Kealey:

Kealey replied:

Phair asked:

Kealey replied:

CBS was military shorthand for cargo bays. Phair texted:

Kealey typed back:

Phair wrote:

He turned off the device so there could be no further discussion, tucked it away, and drove the van out the way he’d come. Using the map and a flashlight, Durst guided him from the road to a small side path that would take them around the garden and out to the plain.

Almost at once Phair encountered the edge of the mob, which was now clustered as far as the west side of the monastery. Some may have been late arrivals, and some may have come from neighboring villages from which the fire would have been visible. Perhaps that was part of the plan all along. Local Egyptians would not have needed the main road to get here, circumventing the MFO via shortcuts and footpaths.

Which is why the borders are so porous,
he thought, empathizing with Adjo.

Cruising through the crowd proved slow, and then impossible. Going around them was not an option because it led to the foothills, away from where he could be of any use to Bulani and possibly where the van could not go.

“Let us turn around,” Durst said. “We don’t have a choice.”

“Your Staff is out there,” Phair said.

The German shot him a look. “How do you know this?”

“I had someone bring it.”

“You? You stole it?”

“I recovered it,” Phair said.

The van was completely stopped now. Phair suddenly felt deflated.

“How?” Durst asked.

“A man I know from the region.”

“Why?”

“Would these people have believed an American? Would Washington have allowed me to give it to an Iraqi?”

Phair thought he saw a half smile cross the German’s lips. Perhaps he admired the deception or the hubris. In any case, judging from the abrupt change in his expression, Durst was no longer complacent about the van being impeded.

“
Die Idioten!
” the German screamed at the windshield.

Two of the captured Egyptian weapons were on his lap. He cranked down the window and stuck a P228 out the window.

“Don’t!” Phair pleaded rather than warned. “Some of these people—”

Gunfire drowned out the rest of his words. “
Verschieben Sie es!
” Durst screamed as he fired over the heads of the crowd.

The throng of pilgrims parted to the right and left and as far ahead as the van’s headlights could see.

Almost at once, return gunfire raked the front of the van. Pieces of metal from the fender and hood ricocheted off the windshield, shattering it. Steam rose in angry puffs from a hole in the side. The tires hissed and died.

“Damn,” Phair muttered. “I was about to say that they have weapons, too. That is how they celebrate here.”

Opening the door and raising his hands, Phair stepped out and addressed the mob in Arabic. “We mean no harm!” he said. “We seek the Great and Holy Prophet to help a dying Egyptian in the back!”

“We all have needs!” shouted one. “It is said he will help us all with a wave of his Staff.”

Phair shook his head. It was like the game of telephone he played as a boy. In just a few days, this phenomenon had gone from a single man telling a BBC cameraman, without corroboration, that he had met the True Prophet. Now he faced a mob thousands deep, expecting that man to perform miracles. This had been a brilliant grassroots movement with virtually no input from the source other than to look the part. It became what everyone wanted it to be, without it actually being anything. That was both awe-inspiring and frightening.

“All right,” Phair said. “We will wait. Let us have no more gunplay.”

With a grumbling that seemed to signify agreement, accented by angry gestures from those without guns, Phair looked across the crowd. There was no way they were getting through, even on foot.

With a tremulous sigh, he stood by the door and considered his options. For a man who was big on preparedness, Kealey had brought them into a situation where everyone was busy improvising. One thought occurred to him, though. It could work. He reached into his pocket and went to the back of the van. Carla had opened the door to let in the night air.

The lieutenant was shaking and feverish. He was having trouble holding his weapon on the captive. Carla was beside him, not interfering—the task was helping Adjo to stay focused—but ready to move in case he faltered.

The captive looked at Phair. “Your efforts . . . have failed!” he laughed.

“Your efforts will fail, too,” Phair said in Arabic.

The man continued to laugh.

“Your helicopters will not be allowed to take off and infect the pilgrims,” Phair said.

“It is too late for the pilgrims,” the man said. “It is too late for all of you.”

“Why?”

The man continued to laugh weakly.

“You don’t have to tell me, I know,” Phair said. “The helicopters don’t have to take off to release their poison. Everyone who came here is going to die. And they will carry the plague to their homes and families.”

“You are all going to die like this one,” he said, indicating Adjo with a weak wave of his hand.

Phair snickered. “I don’t think so.”