African Ice (23 page)

He continued to look at her. The usually shiny hair, flowing gracefully over her shoulders, was not so pretty. It looked bedraggled, dirty and dull. Her face was covered with streaks of mud and moss, and her clothes sweaty and ripped. But the beauty was still there. Her chiseled features, high cheekbones, and intelligent eyes all shone through the dirt and grime. To him, she was even more beautiful. She turned to face him, and for the first time he sensed something that had not been there before—the adoration and love that he felt for her being returned.

And it felt good.

Patrick Kerrigan ripped the cord from its socket and hurled the phone across the room. It hit the far wall and shattered, spraying sharp pieces of plastic across the hotel furniture. He clenched his hands into tight fists and moved his lower jaw back and forth, grinding his teeth. He took a few deep breaths and then walked over to the window, looking out through the London fog. His breathing returned to normal; he slackened the pressure on his jaw and straightened his fingers. He willed himself to relax.

He glanced at the ruined phone, then walked into the bedroom and placed a call from the one on the night table. He knew the number and dialed it, including the area code for Northern Ireland. Liam O'Donnell picked up on the third ring.

“The wheels have totally come off our African operation,” Kerrigan said. “Our colonel is no longer with us, and the targets have left the area.”

O'Donnell was equally vague with his response. “That's not good news, but the family is ready to leave anytime. Give me your number and I'll call you back.”

Kerrigan gave his Irish hit man the hotel number and hung up. He knew that O'Donnell would head for a public phone, eliminating any chance of the authorities overhearing their conversation. Five minutes later, the phone rang. He answered it immediately.

“What happened?” O'Donnell asked.

“Mugumba was sure he had the location of the mine pinpointed to within a hundred square yards, so he went in and tried to take out the entire expedition. He fucked up and got himself killed. They eliminated one of Carlson's team, but she's still alive. And she knows where the vein is.”

“Did Mugumba give you the location?”

“No. The team he sent ahead by chopper radioed back the location, but Mugumba cleared everybody away from the radio before they gave him the coordinates. He's the only one who knew, and now he's dead.”

“So we need Carlson alive.”

“Yes. The bitch knows where the diamonds are, and this time I want the location. I want that fucking location.” There was unbridled fury in Kerrigan's voice.

“You'll get it. Where are Carlson and the rest of her team now?”

“I don't know, but I've got feelers out. I'll have their destination for you in seventy-two hours, give or take. They can't go so deep that I can't find them. Just have your guys ready to move.”

“Not a problem. I'll be waiting for your call.” The line went dead.

Kerrigan replaced the handset in the cradle and sat in a chair next to the bedroom window. From this angle he could see one corner of the British parliament buildings. The cornerstone of Britain itself, and the birthplace of the laws that governed the country. The laws that determined how justice was applied. Justice. He silently mouthed the word, enjoying the syllables as they spilled out mutely over his lips. Justice. Exactly what he would dole out to Samantha Carlson and her motley crew of mercenaries. He had hired them, paid them to perform a service for him and they had stabbed him in the back. Success was theirs, but they chose to hide the information from him, and in doing so, they signed their death warrants. He was through playing games. They had betrayed him, and they would pay.

His carefully cultivated network in Washington, D.C., and Langley, Virginia, was electronically combing the globe as he sat in the Victorian wingback and looked out over London. There could be no escape from the moles he had bought within the CIA and the NSA. They had never failed him, and he knew that given enough time, they would locate Samantha Carlson or one of the remaining three ex-SEALs. And they would feed that information to him. Then on to Liam O'Donnell, and they would die. All except Carlson.

He had special plans for Ms. Carlson. She would endure a horrific fate at his hands. The pent-up anger and frustration he harbored needed an escape, and the traitor geologist would suffice nicely. He wanted to personally torture her, to watch her suffer and hear her scream. Once he knew precisely where the richest source of diamonds discovered in the past hundred years was, then he would really turn up the heat. Torturing the bitch would no longer be business; it would be pleasure.

Liam O'Donnell hung up with Kerrigan and immediately placed another call. His men would be ready to move on a moment's notice. He vacated the public phone booth and entered a nearby pub. He knew the owner well, and the man delivered a frothing Guinness without being asked. O'Donnell paid the man, including a substantial tip, and sat back in the corner booth, mentally conjuring the upcoming mission.

His men were anxious to go head-to-head with the ex-SEALs, but O'Donnell knew full well that these men would be worthy adversaries. They were not to be taken lightly. They were on the run from the African skirmish, but unaware of what was coming at them. They would be wary, suspicious perhaps, and most certainly on edge. They would try to disappear into a sea of humanity, so the battleground would be a major city—which one, he could only speculate. Paris was a possibility; the French authorities were slack about foreigners entering the country as tourists. London was equally attractive, perhaps even more so. They spoke English and could blend in even better.

There were many other ports of entry into Europe. Athens, Rome, Madrid, Berlin, Vienna, the list was long. Perhaps rather than think of where they would arrive in Europe, he should concentrate on where they would leave Africa. Two cities, and only two, came to mind:Tangiers and Cairo. Most of northern Africa was in a state of political upheaval. Algeria was a mess; fair-skinned people were targeted and murdered indiscriminately. Tunisia was almost as bad. Libya was off limits for Americans without valid work visas. That left Morocco and Egypt—Tangiers and Cairo.

O'Donnell wanted the advantage of knowing their African exit point. Rather than wait for them to hit the vast number of available European cities and disappear, he could pin them down before they left Africa. He mentally weighed the two remaining cities. Egypt was far more lax than Morocco in allowing weapons to cross its borders. If his targets came through Cairo, they could theoretically bring automatic weapons with them. Morocco was a different story. The border patrols were always watching for illicit hashish shipments, and they tended to catch anything larger than a breadbox. Hell, a lot of the illegal drugs people tried to bring through were the size of a cellular phone, and when the authorities were looking for something that size, they were bound to find a machine gun. And an ex-SEAL would know that. Cairo. That would be their exit point.

O'Donnell drained his Guinness and waved for another one. What to do? He briefly thought of heading for Cairo without advising Kerrigan, but then thought better of that. Kerrigan held the purse strings, and he didn't want to piss the man off. Besides, talk around the grapevine pegged Kerrigan as a man you did not want to cross. Revenge killings ate up a good portion of Kerrigan's budget. Or so O'Donnell had been told. Another course of action was to call Kerrigan and see if he had arrived at the same conclusion: that their prey would be in Cairo. Or he could do nothing. Just let Kerrigan's intelligence-gathering personnel do their job and follow up once they had a European location. He took a long draught of beer and mulled his options. Suddenly, he stood up, dumped some money on the table and left the pub. He found a different pay phone than he had used earlier and put a call through to Kerrigan's London hotel. The man was in his room.

“I have an idea,” he said, and filled Kerrigan in with his thoughts on Cairo.

“Okay,” the distant reply came back. “Take three men with you, leave the other three in Belfast. I'll alert my intel sources in the States to keep a close eye on Cairo. I'll be here for a week or so, in case you need me.”

“What do you want me to do if I find them?”

“Call me first thing. Then keep them under close surveillance. If they look like they're ready to move, kill the SEALs. Take Carlson alive. I don't care if she's shot up a bit; just don't kill her.”

O'Donnell hung up the phone and stepped into a light afternoon shower. The clouds covered part of the sky, but directly above was brilliant blue. He looked upward, squinting to keep the water from his eyes. Several mini-rainbows danced about as the sunlight bent through the airborne moisture. The effect was intriguing, almost surreal.

But one thing was not surreal, he thought. He had been given the green light to track down and kill McNeil and his men. And to capture Samantha Carlson. His heartbeat picked up a bit as he envisioned the upcoming mission. Ferreting out the enemy amidst the dirty, teeming Cairo streets, then methodically eliminating them. He smiled. He really enjoyed working for a living.

Kerrigan placed a call to his mole in the CIA and advised him to keep Cairo under a magnifying glass. Watch for Internet connections, credit card authorizations, and hotel or car reservations for Travis McNeil, Alain Porter, Dan Nelson, Troy Ramage and Samantha Carlson. He placed a similar call to his inside connection at the NSA, and then poured some room-service tea. He put a dab of milk in the tepid drink, took a small sip and replaced the cup in the saucer. Fucking Brits. He hated tea and there wasn't a single person on the entire island who could brew a proper pot of coffee. He despised London, but knew that New York was too far removed from the current action. He needed to be here. His thoughts returned to Africa, and to what had happened.

Mugumba had screwed up. He had managed to locate the diamondiferous formation, then lose it when he lost his life. Not that Kerrigan gave a flying fuck about that greedy little turd. He cared solely about the diamonds. And once again the location had eluded him. He knew the extent of the wealth that existed inside that vein, and he wanted it. And he would get the precise location from Samantha Carlson's lips just before he killed her. And then once he had it, he would fill her in on a little secret. He would watch the disbelief, the hatred build in her eyes. Then he would finish her off.

“Bitch,” he said softly to the empty room. “Will you ever be surprised.”

Samantha clutched the lamb close to the robes that covered her upper body, and moved away from the street vendor in search of Travis. She spotted him two stalls down, haggling on some black lentils for their daily kushari. She joined him, pulling the veil down over her blond hair. She couldn't hide all of her face though, and numerous Arabs stared at her fair skin and blue eyes. Travis paid for the food and they walked briskly through the Khan El Khalili Bazaar back toward their Cairo apartment.

The Friday prayer hour was over, and the ancient bazaar teemed with midday activity, just as it had since the fourteenth century. The stones that passed beneath their feet were worn, grooved from countless millions of hooves and sandals. Crumbling concrete replaced the original hand-cut stones that formed the walls lining the narrow, winding paths. The constant barrage of sights and sounds inundated the mind, but the pungent odors arising from food left in the afternoon heat assailed the senses. At times the aromas were sweet, almost pleasant, but mostly they carved a harsh path through the sinuses, leading an all-out assault on the brain. One shop ran into another, then ten, then a hundred and a thousand. They seemed unending, and Sam slowed her pace and rubbed the tip of her nose, trying to suppress the smells. Her eyes burned from the thick industrial pollution that hung in the air, the crud she ingested with every breath. She felt a tug at her elbow and turned to look at Travis, pointing at a break in the upcoming wall. A way out. She nodded and they moved toward it. She recognized the architecture, and thought back to what she knew of Egyptian history, if for no other reason than to diminish the horrific odors.

The land of the Pharaohs. Or so was the common misconception, Sam thought. Cairo, in fact, was never a Pharaonic city; that honor belonged to the much smaller city of Memphis, which lay just south of the Giza Plateau. But it was Cairo that had grown, mosque by mosque, house by house. The Romans founded the city and were the first in a string of non-Egyptian rulers. Muslim Arabs replaced the Romans in 640 AD, rejected Babylon and built Fustat, a tent city on the northern extremes. Then came a series of governors, appointed by the caliph in Baghdad. Followed by the Fatimids, Mamluks, Ottomans, French, and eventually the British. When an Egyptian finally seized power in the person of Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1956, control of their country reverted back to the Egyptians for the first time since the Pharaohs. And it was then that Cairo's population exploded, making it the most densely populated spot on the planet. Egypt had a colorful history, even before one took into account the pyramids—a history that Sam had studied in depth while in university. She blinked a few times to acclimatize her pupils as they left the bright sunlight of the bazaar and entered the shadows that clung to the passageway.

The high but narrow archway led through a decrepit building dating back to the era of the brutal Mamluks. An era of wonderment and excess. Trade and prosperity followed the rule of the Turkish slave-soldiers as they opened the canal linking the Nile to the Red Sea. But typical of Egypt's violent history, a price was paid. The rulers reaped the riches that flowed from the trade route, with little but their brutality filtering down to the Egyptian masses. Even Qaitbey, a slave boy who rose to sultan, tortured and maimed the commoners as he built monuments to himself that stood today. Legend recalled the instance when a chemist was unsuccessful at transforming lead into gold: Qaitbey ripped out his tongue and eyes as punishment. As Samantha remembered the details from her college classes, the odors haunting the bazaar seemed muted, almost tolerable. She shuddered at the ability of man to inflict pain and suffering on his fellow man.