Pushing the Limit (17 page)

Ain took Mueen’s hand and nodded at the sheik. Harry wondered what kind of story would have them both looking so sick.

“It was a June evening ten years ago. A beautiful evening. My family and I had eaten at a Bedouin settlement, close to the site you are working at. We were wishing our hosts farewell, when we heard a boom, like a firework.

“I remember thinking that it was a perfect night for fireworks, warm and still, with a bright moon. But as we looked for the display, the sound of an aircraft got closer and closer. Unusually low. We couldn’t see anything in the sky, until it was over us.” She laughed softly. “I was so scared. I felt that if I reached up, I could have touched it.

“But although there had been no fighting here, we knew the country was at war. There was another bang, and it seemed as if half of the airplane fell away with sparks. Then there was silence until the sound of the plane as it hit the sand.” Ain rubbed her arms as if the memory of the night was giving her goose bumps. It was certainly giving Harry goose bumps, that was for sure.

“The Bedouin leaders rode camels to get to the wreckage. Some of the younger people there took old motorbikes, and my father and I took our truck. I prayed for there to be survivors. I prayed harder than I ever had before.”

Matt leaned forward. “What kind of plane was it?”

“It was a military plane. I don’t know the type.” She looked at Mueen questioningly.

“It was a C-130,” he said, looking at the floor.

“All I could tell was that it had a small American flag on its tail,” Ain continued. “By the time my father and I arrived, two men in uniform had been taken out—and were lying on the sand.”

Matt swallowed visibly. “Dead?”

“Alive. Just,” Ain said.

Matt sat back in his chair, a disbelieving look on his face.

Harry wondered what was going through his head. Maybe that Ain could tell him where they buried the bodies, and then, maybe his mission would be complete.

“His Highness arrived at the scene when we did. He gave orders to everyone. Our orders, my father and mine, were to take the men in our truck back to our house.”

“Oh my God, Ain. You saw the men? I came looking for them. So I can bring them home to their families,” Matt said.

Harry felt tears well in her eyes when she saw Matt’s glisten with the recognition that he would in fact be bringing his troops home at last.

Mueen sat back in his chair, eyes averted from everyone.

Ain continued. “We loaded them into the backseat of the truck, and brought them home to the village. The medical woman was called and we kept them both alive for one day. They both had broken legs and crushed ribs, and the older man had at least one puncture in his lung from his broken ribs.

“I tried really hard to save them both.” Tears were falling down Ain’s face unchecked. “I really did.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much for trying.” Matt took her hand and squeezed it. “It means the world to me that someone took care of them.”

“And to me,” Harry said, trying hard not to cry herself. She wondered if Ain telling her story was cathartic or if it amplified the emotion for her.

“He died the following morning. There was nothing we could do. The journey to the nearest functioning hospital that wasn’t under Hussein’s power was just too far. We knew if we tried to take them anywhere, they would be captured and probably left to die. We… I thought it better they die with us than with the president’s soldiers. I still don’t know if I made the right choice for him. I think about it every day.”

Him? Surely she meant “them”? Wait… Harry looked at Matt to see if he’d realized what she’d said.

“What about the other one?” Harry said gently, pieces of the puzzle falling together like they were magnetic.

“He woke up three weeks later. He didn’t know his name, or how he’d got to our house. He couldn’t walk, and I was the only one in the village who spoke English at the time. For months I looked after him, we talked, I taught him Arabic, and as his memory gradually came back, we…”

“Fell in love,” Mueen said, raising his eyes for the first time. He looked directly at Matt, who was shaking his head.

“What’s your name?” Matt asked softly.

“Captain Douglas Carpelli from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,” Mueen said.

Harry suddenly realized why he sounded so American to her sometimes. She blew air out from her cheeks incredulously. Wow.

“You didn’t make contact with anyone?” Matt asked. “Once you’d recovered?”

“I wanted to, but no one came for me. For us. Do you understand?” Mueen held his gaze unapologetically. “No one came.”

* * *

Matt did understand. The military hadn’t sent anyone to help them, to try to find them. The money-moving operation was off-the-books, a black op. The military credo, across all branches of service, was leave no one behind. It was unthinkable that the organization he’d dedicated his life to had elected to leave the airmen there, in the middle of a war.

“But it was your duty…” Matt began, relentlessly trying to pin the blame on anyone but the military. But as the words came out, he knew he couldn’t blame Mueen for his actions.

“My duty was to safeguard the package until it got into the right hands. If I fell into enemy hands, my only duty was to serve honorably and keep my mouth shut.”

“And he did. He hid the container as soon as we found it, and he to this day has never told me what was in it,” Ain said.

Matt paced the room. “You are still a member of the United States armed forces and you must—”

Mueen shouted, “In that case, call me sir. I outrank you and won’t be spoken to like that.”

Matt opened his mouth to shout back but realized he was right. He couldn’t have it both ways: either he was a civilian who would take orders from Matt, if necessary, or he was a captain, and dammit, Matt would have to take orders from him. He gave a short laugh and shook his head. “Fair point.”

In essence the captain was a deserter. But what was he supposed to have done in the middle of a desert, injured with no rescue on its way? What would he have done? From his file, he knew that the captain had no family to go back to… Who was he to judge? He looked at the couple in the center of the room. And then at Harry. Well, he couldn’t blame Carpelli for falling in love; after all, that’s exactly what he’d done himself. He swiped a hand through his hair.
Shit on a stick
. What had he just admitted to?

“Do you know what was in your container?” Matt asked him.

“Both the sheik and I know,” the captain said.

“If you know, why haven’t either of you done anything with the money?” Matt was amazed, and looked between the captain and the sheik incredulously.

“Wait a minute. Back up,” Molly said. “What money?”

Harry briefed her as succinctly as she could and then nodded at Carpelli to carry on.

“I didn’t know what it was for, or
who
it was for. Also, the container was rigged to blow if anyone tampered with it. The sheik and I thought it better buried and forgotten.”

“Rigged to blow?” Matt mentally rubbed his hands together at the thought of eyeing explosives again. A thread of adrenaline spiked from the top of his spine down his back.

“Charges were attached to both sides of the container. Tech Sergeant Ranger was trying to secure the pallet in some bad clear-air turbulence when one of them detonated. He died instantly.” Mueen looked down at his hands as he flipped beads around a thick string. “And that blew a hole in the fuselage, precipitating our landing.”

Matt thought his head was going to explode. He couldn’t believe that no one was tasked with trying to find them. But since no one had reported the aircraft as missing, how could they search for them? He also couldn’t believe that someone rigged cargo in a fucking aircraft to blow. After his initial outrage that the captain hadn’t tried to get back to base, he kind of empathized with him.

The sheik spoke into the silence. “So now all our cards are on the table, you should know that Americans in big black cars have been patrolling both the professor’s and your sites. The chief of police told me that he had fast-tracked some visas for twenty men arriving tomorrow. For”—he pulled out a piece of paper from his breast pocket—“MGL Security.”

The sheik had underlined the letters MGL, and Matt’s mind instantly went back to Rapson’s papers. His Megellin papers all had underlined letters. He thought they’d been doodles, but no. Rapson had underlined the M, the G, and the L in the name Megellin. Goddammit. Could Megellin just be a front for MGL Security?

“So we have only today to stop that money falling into the hands of MGL. Okay, who’s in?” Matt said, only half joking.

Harry and Molly stuck up their hands immediately, followed by Carpelli.

Matt looked at them all with their earnest faces… well, not Carpelli’s. His face was as impassive as ever.

Matt took a deep breath and released it.
Okay, then
. “Do you have a sat phone I can use?” Matt asked the sheik. There was silence for a second, and Matt wondered for a moment if they really were prisoners.

The sheik nodded to Mueen, and he in turn nodded at Matt to follow him. They walked down a parallel corridor to the women’s quarters. This one had just one guard. Matt winced when he realized it was baby-knife man. He smiled broadly at him as they went past.

“I always thought you hated me from the moment you saw me,” Matt said.

“I did. I was worried for my future if you saw me for what I was, and worried for anyone who found and tried to tamper with the payload. I’m still really fucking pissed at the air force for leaving me here. And worried you’d drag me back Stateside. Yeah, you could say I hated you.” He paused. “Are you going to?”

“Take you back? Hell if I know,” Matt replied, honestly.

Mueen opened the door to what was clearly the sheik’s office. “Does it need to be secure?”

“Not really. I think the odds of them tapping the sheik’s phone, or the person I’m going to contact, are remote at best.”

“Then, here”—he threw a phone the size of a book at Matt—“This is what we have.”

“Wow. You are rocking the eighties here, aren’t you?”

Mueen rolled his eyes and sat in an old, battered armchair.

“You’re not going to give me any privacy?” Matt’s finger hesitated over the button.

“Nope.” He tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. “We don’t have all day.”

Matt took a slip of paper from his wallet. First rule of travel: have everyone’s personal phone numbers on hand. He dialed his commander.

He picked up after two rings. “Jenks.”

Matt couldn’t help but feel a little relieved when he heard his voice. “It’s Stanning, sir.”

“Thank God. I’ve given the team travel orders to get to your location, but with the official visas they have to get, it may be a week before you see them.”

Dammit. A week would definitely be too late. Whatever was in the crate might already be in the wrong hands. “Then I may need to… act without them.”

“I realize that.” There was silence.

“Do you know for sure what is in the crate?” Matt asked.

“As we suspected,” he said, obviously trying to be discreet over the phone. “As soon as I sent your travel orders, I started receiving phone calls asking where you were and what you were doing. Initially I just told them what I knew. That some archaeologist had found parts of a military plane in Iraq. Then I decided to keep quiet about where you were. I figured you’d do better by yourself. Was I right?”

“That’s yet to be seen. But you did get MGL Security to provide me with a security detail, right?”

“Who, son?”

Matt wondered if the connection was bad. “MGL Security?” A sinking feeling pitted his stomach as he waited through the silence at the other end of the phone.

“No. I didn’t tell anyone you were there. I was too worried about the talk going around as it was. You know how many troops get out of the service and go straight into private security contractors? All those people have a direct line back into the military. If you’ve been approached by anyone from MGL…” His commander’s voice sounded strange.

“I have, but it was an ex-colleague of mine. I can deal with him. Sir, can you do some digging and see what kind of links MGL has to other companies or organizations operating here in Iraq?” He had a suspicion that the answer would be the Megellin Foundation. It had gotten to the stage where he almost hoped it was. It would make the most sense and take a big unknown from their equation.

“I will do that, Stanning. I’ll get word to you as soon as I can. Listen…” he said lowering his voice. “They’ve tasked satellites over your position there. Both internal and external. An old buddy in the NSA told me. The government and… other interests are using private satellites to gather intelligence. All of a sudden, everyone’s up to their necks in requests for pictures of your site to see what’s going on. All I can do is tell you when they’re going to be live. When they’re overhead.”

“Roger that, sir. Thank you. Get back to me as soon as you know.” He pressed a button to hang up.
Shit
. And yet a plan was formulating in his head. One that almost persuaded him to smile.

“So?” Mueen said, getting up.

“My ex-colleague, David, was less about having my six, and more about keeping tabs on me.” He could tell him his suspicions, but he couldn’t help still think of him as Mueen, instead of Captain Carpelli.

“Assuming we can get our hands on the money before anyone else, if you know anyone who can help get it into the right hands, and they have their own passports rather than official ones, the sheik can get them in-country without visas,” Mueen said as they loaded the equipment into the truck by the tents. “If they have personal passports, it won’t be a problem as long as we had a few hours’ notice to grease the right palms.”

“When you say ‘the right hands,’ I’m guessing you don’t mean the United States Treasury,” Matt said.

“I can use Google as well as the next person. Harry was right. The money belongs here. To build schools, and hospitals.”

Matt sighed. His black-and-white view on obeying orders was becoming more and more gray. “Why can’t you use the sheik’s men?” he asked.