Threatcon Delta (37 page)

T
he change happened quickly but decisively, so much so that even Kealey was unprepared for the shift. It was similar to the way animals in a field grow instantly still and attentive at the first crack of thunder.

The silence at the front of the gathering rippled back until it was nearly absolute. The quiet was broken only by the rotors and the distant rending of bundles containing bread. Crates of bottled water were also being unloaded. Even the wind seemed to have died.

Kealey could not understand what his newfound ally was saying, but he got the gist of it by his actions and the reactions of the crowd. He was telling them that he held the actual Staff of the prophet and that the man before them held a fake.

God help us all—and You can consider that a prayer—if he is asked to make it a serpent,
Kealey thought.

The monks who stood near the prophet did not look to him for guidance. Two hoods turned together in conversation, obviously trying to decide what to do. One nodded and the other moved out, motioning for two others to join him. They were probably going to remove Bulani, usher him toward the helicopter.

But maybe not, if someone were to believe
—

Kealey went to his knees beside Bulani and began to pray in silence. The monks continued to approach as Kealey motioned for those around him to pay respect to the Staff by kneeling. No one moved. The expressions he saw showed confusion, doubt, indecision, and all the many shadings thereof. But no one bent a knee.

The agent rose and approached Bulani just as one of the monks grabbed the Staff and tried to wrestle it away. Bulani refused to yield. A few pilgrims moved forward and seemed to urge the monks away—their faces showed surprise at the clerical violence—but the remaining monks formed a line between them and Bulani, one which no one crossed.

Kealey was about to do just that when someone shouted from behind him. Kealey turned. The man was holding a cell phone and shouting. Soon, other cell phones began to glow among the bowed heads of the pilgrims. The lights swept backward, spotting the crowd here and there like emerging stars.

Kealey leaned toward the nearest phone. Someone was speaking in Arabic from a video image.

The monk fighting with Bulani stopped. Bulani was able to wrest himself free without difficulty. He stood where they had left him, facing the prophet and repeating “
Musa saheeh
” almost inaudibly, the Staff cradled to his chest. Kealey didn’t know whether he was speaking softly on purpose or not, but it was forcing those who hadn’t heard to come closer. And coming closer, they saw the Staff. Whether the relic would affect them or not, it had caused a hard stop to the proceedings.

Almost at once voices were raised, along with cell phones, demanding something—probably an explanation.

Wildfire burns both ways,
Kealey thought hopefully as he felt the mood of the crowd shift. No wonder there had never been peace in the region. Each new idea was fanatically granted its moment in the sun. Kealey peered to his left to see what the prophet was doing.

He was standing there, mute and small, his staff diminished and the torch held uncertainly at his shoulder. He seemed confused.

What concerned Kealey, though, was that all the monks were departing. He wasn’t worried for the prophet’s safety—the mob could rip him apart, for all he cared. He was worried about the monks’ destination. The monks were weaving through the outskirts of the crowd, moving toward the helicopters, shouting instructions ahead of them. He had no doubt what they were going to do.

We’re back where we started,
Kealey thought. All the team had accomplished was to accelerate the process.

The dishonored prophet did not seem to hear the multitude or the shouts of his own monks. He did not make any sign that he intended to go with them yet he wasn’t telling the people to run.

He doesn’t know about the bacteria,
Kealey realized.

This man was serious about what he was doing. No doubt he believed he had been given the Staff of Moses by God. Perhaps it had been planted in the monastery by the false monks so he could discover it. It may not even have been the prophet who had cast the rigged staff to the ground, turning it to a serpent. He had been kept in isolation, praying and planning for his ministry. That meant he probably didn’t know his fellow monks were dead. No doubt he thought these monks were real and were running to save themselves from the wrath of the mob—a fate to which he himself was apparently resigned.

Kealey swung around Bulani and ran toward the prophet. He hoped the prophet knew some English or maybe French. Kealey could get by in French.

The agent slowed as he neared the prophet. The man looked like a church statue, frozen in his robes where he was standing. The only movement was provided by the dancing shadows created by the torch. Kealey approached slowly.

“Your eminence,” he said, trying to be respectful. “Father Kusturica—I need to talk with you. Do you speak English?”

The man didn’t move. He continued to stare ahead.

“You
must
believe me,” Kealey went on. “Your aides are going to poison these people.”

The monk looked over warily. His face was a shallow, ruddy mask from which life and faith seemed to have fled.

“What are you talking about?” the man asked, his English inflected with a Mediterranean accent.

“The whole of this mission was not to promote peace through faith, but security through mass murder,” Kealey said, reaching for his phone. “Those helicopters contain bacteriological agents. The bread, the water, was to draw the people together—the gas was to be dropped when they left.”

Kealey had kept Phair’s photograph on his cell phone. He approached cautiously, holding the phone before him, face out. He was unsure how the monk—no longer a prophet—would react.

“These are your colleagues at the monastery,” Kealey said. “They were all infected to test the germ. They are all dead.”

The monk stepped from the mound as if in a trance. He came forward, transfixed by the photograph. He held the torch toward it, as though that would help illuminate the image. Around him the crowd of pilgrims watched expectantly, their gaze shifting from the monk to Bulani, waiting to see whom to rally behind. They had to get behind someone, Kealey knew. Otherwise, their journey would have been for nothing.

“This is so?” the monk asked, his voice catching.

“It is, your eminence,” Kealey said.

“They told me my brothers had been sent elsewhere.”

“They have,” Kealey said.

The monk looked for another moment before lowering his eyes and turning away. Kealey couldn’t leave it at that. There wasn’t time.

“Sir, I fear that the men who posed as monks are simply going to open the tanks that are filled with plague germs. You must tell the people to disperse in the hopes that some will survive.”

The monk stopped and half turned. “The others who were with me. Will they not die as well?”

“They took medicine.”

“And you?”

“No, sir. I didn’t know what was happening. I came from Washington to help the Egyptians.”

The monk looked from Kealey to Bulani. “That—that is the genuine Staff of the Prophet?”

“It is, found many years ago and hidden in the desert.”

Tears fell along the man’s red cheeks. “Lord,” he said, “what have I brought them to?”

“Please, if you tell them to go now, there may be hope—”

He looked across the bobbing sea of confusion and outrage. “I see their expressions. They will not listen to me. Will anything stop this contagion?”

“We are studying it now,” Kealey told him. “They burned the evidence in Sharm el-Sheikh—”

“Fire?”

Kealey looked from the monk to the torch. “Intense heat, yes.”

“Thank you,” the monk said. “Thank you for giving me the chance to redeem my soul.”

Kusturica looked toward the helicopters, his body following his head around as he held the torch with renewed purpose, tightly gripping the staff in his right. If it had no power until now, he would give it some. The monk walked away briskly, the sudden wind lifting his robe like angels’ wings, his dark form shrinking rapidly in the glare of lights from the helicopters.

There was a great deal of activity in front of him as the men rushed to finish what they had begun. Even though they had been discovered, they still had an advantage. They knew it would be difficult to evacuate so many people and, even if that were done, to administer sufficient antibiotics in time. All it would take for the plan to succeed was a few people on the fringe of the gathering to depart over the mountain, along their secret paths in the dark.

As he stood there, Kealey suddenly realized that the contagion was not the only thing they had to worry about. The monk’s cure posed dangers as well.

“Bulani!” he cried, and ran back to where he had left the Iraqi. With the departure of the monk, dozens of people had gathered around Bulani, obviously moved by his own devout expressions and manner.

The Iraqi looked over.

“Get them away!” Kealey was shouting, motioning with big, sweeping, pushing waves of his arms. “Get them away
now
!”

“W
hat are you doing?”

The crewman shouted down from the top of the ramp of the open cargo bay as the monk approached. He repeated the question, this time more insistently.

The monk did not reply. He stopped beside the helicopter to the left of the ramp, his eyes taking in the surroundings. Several of the monks were there, opening crates. He recognized Ngozi, Badru, and Qeb, all of whom had shed their robes. When they saw him they stopped what they were doing. The nearest of the men came toward him tentatively.

“What are you doing, my brother?” Ngozi asked him. “Go back to the others. They need you.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m finishing the job you began,” he replied. “I’m protecting the homeland, the monastery.”

“From what?”

“Poison,” he replied. “Foreign influence, Islamic extremists, destruction of a culture as old as civilization itself.”

The monk shook his head slowly, unhappily, his eyes glazed with sadness. “This is not the way.”

“It is our way,” the man replied. “It is God’s way.”

Another man strode over from deep within the belly of the helicopter.

“Go about your work, I’ll deal with this!” Badru ordered Ngozi. His eyes were fixed on Kusturica.

“What you do is against God’s law!” Kusturica said, gesturing behind him. “A law that was given to us
here
!”

Badru withdrew a gun from his waistband. He leveled it at the chest of his former partner. “Leave or die!”

The monk, the would-be prophet, the holy man who had been deceived by men of dark vision, stood as though he were a mountain himself. He glanced to his right. On the side of the airframe, written in slightly peeled black letters on white metal skin, was the word
banzeen.
Gripping the staff and torch tightly, the monk walked to the fuel tank and dipped the torch to the metal covering.

“Get back!” Ngozi yelled, even as he turned to run.

“For the peace of God and the salvation of our souls I pray, oh Lord,” said the monk. “For the peace of the whole world, for the stability of all the holy churches of God . . .”

Badru fired at him from the middle of the cargo bay. It was an awkward shot, but he was able to catch his target in the belly.

The monk fell to his knees.

The thin metal skin was already glowing red, transferring its heat to the contents within, as Badru ran from the cargo bay and ducked under the hatch to where the monk was struggling to hold the torch erect.

The wounded man looked at him. “Thank you . . . for helping me . . . pray,” he wheezed.

A moment later the fuel in the tank ignited with a roar, lifting the back end of the helicopter nearly a meter in the air before rending it into a confusion of rubber tubing and flakes of metal skin, plastic valves and structural fragments, and mixed with these among the blossoming red-and-black plume, a riot of flesh and fabric and bone.

K
ealey and the pilgrims nearest him were pushing their way toward the mountain when the helicopter exploded. They turned and watched in blank-faced shock as the flaming cloud rose, only to be joined moments later in fiery oblivion by its neighbors on either side. The shower of flaming wreckage caused the remaining helicopters to ignite, adding more ragged blasts to the no-man’s land.

Crewmen who saw the first explosion coming had fled, most of them literally diving behind rocks as the first helicopter blew up. The bulk of the men managed to survive the forest of fireballs and shrapnel that followed from the subsequent explosions, most of which were limited to the tail sections.

Even before the punishing heat wave struck, the crowd had jumped to life and was running faster than Kealey’s urging could have made them move. The blast came in waves as each of the helicopters exploded. Flight created an adequate buffer. Most of the retreating pilgrims were far enough from the helicopters and somewhat protected by the cliff sides. Any danger that would have been presented by the microbes was neutralized by the flaming destruction of their containers. Chances were good that any that survived would be borne high into the atmosphere by the rising heat, where they would float helplessly until they perished.

The explosions quickly subsided into a long, clanking rain of debris. Crewmen had to scurry to get out of the way of the secondary assault from above. The remains of the ruined helicopters burned with ugly hisses and snapping, the orange flames streaked now and then with blue and green as chemicals in the components or wiring burned.

Huffing from the run, the crowd looked to Kealey like an enormous living thing. If anyone doubted that all people were the same, a brisk two- or three-hundred-meter dash would disavow them of that. Some men still ran, others walked, a number of them wisely doused themselves with water, a few crawled, and those who were all out stood with their hands on their knees and talked to people who stopped beside them. A few smoked hand-rolled cigarettes. They occasionally pointed toward the wreckage and puzzled about what had happened and, no doubt, at their own gullibility.

Panting himself, Kealey looked around for Bulani. There was no point calling his name; the buzz of voices and the cough of vehicles created a carpet of sound that made it difficult to hear his own voice. Kealey knew that because he was muttering to himself about the insanity of what had just transpired.

The agent made his way back toward the monastery, his eyes searching left and right, now and then urging pockets of people to get back, to move as far as possible from the explosion site. Here and there, small deposits of oil that had dripped from vehicles announced their presence with angry, flaming flourishes. It was possible that embers from the blasts would reach clothes, the vehicles themselves, other combustibles. After a few minutes, Kealey heard helicopters as the Egyptian military finally moved in. Obviously, whoever had been running the show for Task Force 777 was no longer doing so.

He had only gone about four hundred meters but it felt longer. As he slowed, Kealey received a call from Phair. He answered as he continued to walk.

“Ryan, are you all right?”

“Yes,” he said. He had to work up saliva in order to speak. “The prophet blew up the choppers.”

“Good God.”

“Apparently,” Kealey said. “How are you all?”

“Adjo is sick, but we’re okay.”

“That was a brilliant move, recording the conversation with your captive,” Kealey said. “It turned the crowd after your friend had planted doubt.”

“You can thank Carla later,” Phair said. “She showed me how to send the file.”

“And you can tell me later why I shouldn’t have you court-martialed for having the Staff stolen from the desert. You could have told me.”

“Would you have allowed me to call Bulani and give him the location of the Staff?”

“I don’t know,” Kealey admitted. “But you should have consulted me just the same.”

“It needed to be done this way,” Phair said. “It couldn’t have been an American and it certainly couldn’t have been a Nazi. It had to be one of their own people, with his own faith exposed and vulnerable.”

“We’ll discuss this later,” Kealey said.

“Just remember that thanks to all of us, countless lives were saved.”

“Like your Iraqi walkabout, the heroic ends apparently justify the questionable means,” Kealey said. “Where are you?”

“At the northwest corner of the monastery,” Phair said. “We’re pinned now by the crowd moving the other way. We need medical attention. Adjo’s hanging tough, though I’m starting to feel not so great myself.”

“I’ll let the embassy know we need antibiotics,” Kealey said. “They can arrange for an airlift.”

Kealey hung up and placed the call. He quickly briefed Harper and was not surprised to discover that the deputy director had placed medical assistance on standby at the embassy; when they saw the explosions via satellite, the team was dispatched by air. Kealey asked if the unit would wait until he got there.

“We were all exposed to the bacteria through Adjo,” he said. “I’ll make my way as quickly as possible.”

“You won’t be in much danger, nor anyone you may have encountered,” Harper told him. “Gail Platte says that the bacteria requires moisture and a significant body temperature to stay active. It goes dormant and dies very quickly in dry, airborne situations.”

“So the real damage would have been inflicted by people leaving here and sharing food, drink, a kiss, a handshake, things like that.”

“Exactly,” Harper said. “Communities that share well water or have extended families were apparently their targets. What happened to the Staff?”

“I have a feeling it’s gone,” he replied. “Phair’s friend took it.”

“We’ll have to find him,” Harper said. “We don’t want the real one causing these same problems.”

“No argument,” Kealey said. He looked out at the crowd of people that was thinning in all directions. “We’ll have to have a serious talk with Phair about that. I don’t think the fellow wants to be found.”

“He’s probably going to sell the damned thing on eBay,” Harper said disgustedly.

“I don’t think so,” Kealey said. “Though if he did, that’s one way we could get it back.”

Harper snickered. “Touché. That was a shitty thing of me to say. It’s just that I’m going to have to explain this to the director, who is going to have to tell the president.”

“You can tell him we won,” Kealey said. “That’s the bottom line.”

“You did do that,” Harper agreed. “Helluva job.”

Kealey’s eyes moved toward the mountain. “Other men have done greater things here. And with the same tools.”

“Ryan, you going native on me?”

“I guess this place brings it out, eventually.”

“The way D.C. brings out megalomania,” Harper said.

There was no disputing that. Kealey said he would call when he could and Harper congratulated him again. It occurred to Kealey that things weren’t quite the same: Moses didn’t need a cell phone to talk to his boss.

As he made his way across the uneven terrain, the first hint of dawn was giving him some help negotiating the pitfalls. He made himself a little bet as he neared the monastery. He wondered which of him would win: the optimist or the cynic.

Cynically, he expected the cynic would come out on top.

He was right.

James Phair was gone.

The morning had fully broken across the Wadi el-Deir when Kealey reached the van. He was far beyond tired; the sunlight hurt the backs of his eyes and he all but dragged himself the last half kilometer on blistered feet and reedy legs, his arms dead weights at his side. He was still wearing his backpack because it helped keep him from slumping forward.

Carla was watching for him and waved when she saw him. Kealey was glad of that. There were many MFO and military vans and helicopters around, and he would have had no idea which was theirs.

“Thank you,” was all he could say as he reached the van and she gave him a shoulder to keep him from stopping and simply going to sleep by the driver’s side tire. He was beginning to feel a little feverish now, and was happy when a medic from the embassy laid him in the back and gave him an injection and didn’t ask him for the pillow back when he closed his eyes and went to sleep.