Hostile Fire (17 page)

An hour later Fouad jumped and looked out the window. He rolled it down and let the hot air pour in as he stretched out the window looking at the trailer.

“We’ve got a bad tire—can’t you feel it? A heat blister. We’ve got to stop. Pull over just off the road.”

“Tires are all fine. The readouts on the control panel show all are up to pressure on air.”

“That readout doesn’t show blisters on the melting rubber. Pull over, damn it, right now.”

The driver shrugged. “Yeah, okay. You’re the boss. I still say…” He looked up at the anger on the smaller man’s face and shrugged again. He pulled the rig to a stop at the side of the road and they both got out.

“It’s on my side,” Fouad said. The driver came around the front of the rig and bellowed in rage.

Fouad had out his pistol and fired six shots into the big man’s chest so fast he didn’t crumple until the last 9mm round penetrated his left lung and he went down, sprawling into the dirt and sand of the Syrian Desert, dead before he hit.

Fouad waited two minutes to be sure the man was dead. No cars or trucks came by. He grabbed the driver’s hand and pulled him ten meters into the rocky landscape, well away from the side of the road, and left him behind a scrub growth that looked starved for a drink of moisture.

Fouad climbed back into the cab, shifted the rig into drive, and moved it back on the road. He’d had two days of instruction in driving the big new highway tractor in Baghdad before they hooked up the trailer. It was much simpler than
flying a jet plane. He eased the unit up to speed and hummed a little tune as the kilometers melted away.

When he reached the larger town of Al Mafraq, he was hungry. He found a place he could park the big truck, went into a cafe, and sat where he could see the truck out the window. He had a mutton stew meal with desert and hurried back to the truck. If he kept moving at this pace, he could get to the airport at Irbid before dark. The plane and the bribed customs inspectors would be waiting. He had memorized the route and knew that from here there were only a little over forty kilometers to the big town and the airport. He speeded up. The road was better now, and he made good time. Before dark he hoped to have the package safely on board the jet cargo plane. As soon as it was securely tied down, they would take off, with him on board, as well. He touched the money belt inside his shirt. The flight had been prepaid, but he had enough money to pay for it again if he needed to. He had twenty thousand Jordanian dinars as well as twenty thousand U.S. dollars. He could buy his way out of any problems or trouble. He yawned. An old habit when he began to get nervous. Now it was only a matter of a few hours before he would take the next big step in his grand plan to humiliate the Great Evil, to blast one big American city into vaporized ruins.

Baghdad, Iraq

In the restaurant where she had hidden, Gypsy peered out the inch-wide slit where she had opened the door a crack. She stared at the wall across from the women’s rest room. No one stood there. She checked her watch. It had been twenty minutes since she called Jones. Where were they? She went back into the rest room and into a closed stall and locked the door behind her. She stood, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She heard women come in, chatter, run water, use the stalls. Then a rough man’s voice sounded as if it came from the open door.

“Gypsy, I know you’re in there. In five minutes if you don’t come out, I’m coming in and breaking your arm and dragging you out.”

She heard the door close and excited talk by three or four
women who must have been in the room. She opened the stall door and stepped out. She went to the door and pulled it back an inch and looked out.

Yes. The two Americans stood against the wall, looking out of place and nervous. She pushed the door farther, waved at them, and they both walked toward her. She hurried out and they flanked her as they moved toward the outside door.

“Stop!” a commanding voice bellowed in Arabic. The three kept walking. A shot thundered into the room, echoing like a thunderclap in the closed area. The round went into the ceiling. Murdock turned, a pistol already in his hand. He fired three times at the Secret Policeman who still pointed his gun at them. The man jolted a step backwards, then turned and fell on his side to the floor.

Murdock, Rafii, and Gypsy hurried out the door, ran down the street to the alley, and surged into it. Murdock stopped them. He watched behind them but saw no pursuit. They ran through the alley to where they had left the car and got in.

“Gypsy, in the back, lie down on the seat, and cover up with the blanket.”

Ching sat in the rear seat and helped hide her.

“There will be an alert out as soon as they find their man. Rafii, guide us out of this downtown area and to the west. We need to find that highway that darts across the desert toward Jordan.”

They had gone only a dozen blocks before they saw a police car with flashing lights rocketing toward them. It flashed past them.

“Heading for the restaurant and their dead buddy,” Rafii said. “Won’t be long now before we have cops all over the place. Gypsy, what’s the best way out of town east?”

“Find the Hussein Parkway and head east,” Gypsy said. “Then watch for the turnoff to Al Kazimiyah. That will be the highway to Jordan. I don’t remember its number. It will be close to a small river.”

Ten minutes later they found the parkway, and soon the turnoff to the highway leading west.

“This is the main highway?” Murdock asked. “It’s only two lanes.”

“We’re lucky it’s blacktopped,” Gypsy said. “Our glorious
president would rather spend money on missiles and bombs than on roads and bread. We’re holding on by our teeth here.” She sat up and frowned. “I guess I should say the Iraqis are holding on, since I won’t be with them much longer.” She looked out the window. “I really didn’t expect to be alive by this time,” she said. “Once the Secret Police get a kill order on you, there’s no way to last more than a day or two.”

“That’s when there aren’t three U.S. Navy SEALs watching your back,” Ching said. “I hear you can fire an AK-47?”

Gypsy turned to him and smiled. “Yes, that I can do. I was second in marksmanship in my women’s army battalion of four hundred. Oh, I forgot to tell you. The colonel said that he took two hundred troops to the desert to protect the bomb plant. He said they had heavy weapons. Would that be fifty-caliber machine guns and maybe some shoulder-fired rockets?”

“Probably, which is not good news for our side,” Murdock said.

A half hour later they were through the little towns near Baghdad and racing down the road almost due east. The Chevy’s odometer was calibrated in miles not meters, so it must have been an import.

“How long until it gets dark?” Murdock asked.

“Probably about seven o’clock,” Gypsy said.

“How big a gas tank on this bucket?” Ching asked. “Maybe fourteen gallons? If this crate can get twenty miles to the gallon, we’ll be lucky. That’s two hundred and eighty miles. How far is the target?”

“We figured about two hundred and forty to that little town, then whatever south we need,” Rafii said. “We might have enough petrol.”

“If we don’t?” Gypsy asked.

“Easy,” Rafii said. “We dump this one, steal a car in that town, Ar Rutbah, and drive south until we hit those two hundred troops.”

“Just how the hell do we link up with the rest of the platoon?” Ching asked.

“All we can do is use the SATCOM and tell them where
we are,” Murdock said. “They’ll have to come find us. Or if we hear a firefight somewhere, we circle around and try to get behind the good guys.”

“Lights ahead,” Ching said.

Murdock saw them about the same time. Looked like a pair of army trucks parked across the road. They were at a hundred yards now and no way they could fade into the desert. Murdock slowed and Rafii slid under him as Murdock went high and they changed places, with the Iraq native now driving. He rolled up to the barrier. Near the two trucks stood four soldiers, each holding a submachine gun at the ready.

“What’s our story?” Rafii whispered. Before anyone could answer, one guard tapped on the window that was halfway down.

“We don’t get much traffic this late at night,” the guard said. “Where are you from and where are you going?”

Rafii held out his papers. “We’re from Baghdad and we’re heading for a little town called Ubaylah. Hope we haven’t missed it. They didn’t tell us it was this far out here. My uncle’s funeral. Tomorrow morning. We should have started earlier. What time is it, anyway?”

The guard shrugged. “You didn’t miss it. Not far now. You’ll come to Ar Rutbah. A few kilometers past that place you turn right. A funeral? It’s a bad time to die.”

“Anytime is bad for dying. Did you see a fairly new Citroën coming this way? I thought our relatives would be ahead of us.”

“Haven’t seen them tonight. Maybe you beat them.” The soldier guard looked at Rafii’s papers in the beam of his flashlight, then handed them back. “Time? I don’t have a watch. Get out of here so I can take a nap.”

Rafii waved at the guard, the trucks pulled apart, and the old Chevy eased through, then sped up and drove away from the soldiers.

“Good thinking, Rafii,” Gypsy said. “Funerals are highly important in this country. Almost everyone comes to a good funeral.”

“We should be fairly close,” Murdock said. “We need to decide when to ditch the car and hike.”

“We drive until we get stopped or see lights around the place,” Rafii said. “If there are any lights.”

“We’ve got the two sub guns and our pistols if we get stopped at a checkpoint,” Ching said. “They’ll have at least one, maybe two or three, on that dirt road. My guess is we get stopped not far down the dirt road from that little town.”

“If we don’t want to advertise that we’re here, we better
ditch the truck before we get stopped,” Murdock said. “Gypsy, you have good shoes on?”

“I can hike in what I have. No heels. I could use a shirt if one of you has an extra one. It gets cold out here in the desert at night.”

“Rafii,” Murdock said.

Rafii grinned and took off the shirt he wore as he drove. Murdock held the wheel as he got it off his shoulders. They all had put on two shirts before they left Gypsy’s place. Rafii was the smallest of the three; even so, his shirt hung on Gypsy like a blanket. She pinched it in and then tucked it into the top of the long skirt she wore that came almost to her ankles.

“Ready for duty,” she said.

“You get one of the AKs,” Murdock said. “Let’s load up and get ready to travel.”

Ten minutes later they saw lights ahead.

“Has to be the town,” Rafii said. “Now all we need to do is find that dirt road leading south. I’ll turn left off the main highway and work the back streets until we find something that looks like it could take a lot of heavy trucks, which must have had to run down this way just to build a complex out here. Everyone keep your eyes open. Even in the dark we might be able to spot something.”

“Just after midnight,” Murdock said. “Most of these houses are dark. Let’s hope there isn’t much military in town, and that the cops are all taking a break.”

Three blocks down on a back street, Rafii pulled the Chevy to a stop. Fifty yards ahead a string of headlights cut into the night.

“Army trucks,” Rafii said. “Like our six-by-sixes. Covered, haul men or equipment or supplies. Could be a nightly supply train to prevent it from being spotted by the satellites.”

“Let them get a couple of miles ahead of us,” Murdock said. “Then we’ll follow them as far as we can. Move when you’re ready, Rafii.”

They waited five minutes after the last truck had gone past.

“I counted eighteen,” Ching said. “Haul a heap of stuff in all those trucks.”

“Let’s hope they aren’t two hundred more defensive troops,” Murdock said.

Rafii pulled the Chevy onto the dirt road. The dust had settled, and they saw the camouflage fake trees and shrubs that evidently would be pulled back into the dirt trail before daylight.

“Not a straight road,” Rafii said. “Taking some gentle curves one way and then the other. Make it harder to pick up by the satellite.”

“We’re two miles down the dirt,” Ching said as he watched the odometer. “I’d say we’re overdue for a checkpoint.”

Rafii stopped and cut the lights, then he crept forward, trying to get his night vision established. “I want to see them before they see us,” he said.

“Lock and load,” Murdock said. The other three pushed magazines into weapons and checked chambers.

Two miles later, Rafii slowed and stopped. “I’ve got some lights about half a mile down the road. Could be a checkpoint or another truck coming this way. Up to you, Cap.”

“Drive off the road to get the Chevy out of the wash of any truck lights,” Murdock said. “We’re on our shank’s mares from here on in. Let’s get the SATCOM up and running.”

When the Chevy ground to a stop in the deep sand thirty yards off the dirt road, the four got out and Ching set up the SATCOM on the hood and positioned the antenna. Murdock took the handset.

“This is Underground One. We are in the area near the bomb factory. We are north of it. Figure you’re coming up from the south. We’ll try to circle the complex, when we find it. We’re about five miles south of the town of Ar Rutbah on a dirt road. Our information is that there are two hundred troops defending the factory and they have heavy weapons. Be careful. Hope to find you soon.”