[Rogue Warrior 18] Curse of the Infidel (18 page)

He responded with an even louder tirade in what can only be called ferocious Arabic.

“You want me to drop my weapon?” I asked, gesturing.

He said something else. It might have been “yes,” with a few gutter words thrown in.

“Why?” I asked. “Do you think I’ll miss?”

I didn’t. My bullet went right between his eyes and he fell back, his pistol clattering harmlessly to the ground. In his anger, the hostage taker had neglected the first rule of threatening hostages—don’t put your head out where someone else can shoot it.

“Crap, you took your time,” griped Trace as we cleared the room to make sure there were no confederates hiding nearby. She was holding a second pistol, which she had pulled from some nether region of her body. “I thought I was going to have to wing him myself on the way out.”

Place clear, we exited to accolades of the local police force, who immediately whisked us to city hall where we were awarded the key to the city and feted with a day named in our honor …

*   *   *

Actually, we didn’t stick around for the honors, or the police.

Taking positions outside the building as our backups, Shotgun and Mongoose noticed a car lurking nearby. When the car sped to the front of the building, obviously waiting for the bank robbers, they closed in. The driver stepped on the gas and jerked the wheel. As he pulled away, Mongoose somehow found himself on the hood of the car. Face-to-windshield with the driver, Mongoose swung his pistol up and put two bullets into his chest.

The bullets killed the man, but had no effect on the foot that was pressing on the gas. The vehicle sped through the intersection toward the market, scattering people and carts stationed in the market’s overflow area. Held in place by the momentum of the car,
18
Mongoose bounced with the car as it bounded over the curb and into the low rail in front of a building housing a restaurant. It crashed into the steel gates at the front of the building, landing in the middle of the dining room amid tables and chairs. Mongoose emerged with a handful of cuts and some deep bruises.

Shotgun, being Shotgun, was right there as he walked from the building. “Kitchen open yet?”

“Food’s good, but the service sucks,” answered Mongoose. “You’ll never get a table.”

Shotgun checked the driver’s body to see if there was any ID. It was clean, as was the glove compartment.

Miraculously, no one except the driver had been hurt. The boys slipped away and we caught up with them two blocks away.

“What a disaster,” said Garrett.

“Hell no,” said Shotgun, who’d managed to snag a large orange on the way out. “Just your typical SNAFU—situation normal, all fucked up.”

(IV)

Magoo already knew about the bank robbery, and not because Garrett was with me—he’d sent his people to watch the banks in town. The two assigned to ours arrived just after the mayhem.

He naturally bawled me out when I called to tell him what had happened. I didn’t expect a pat on the back, but something north of a FU would have been in order.

“You’re dismissed, Marcinko. The U.S. government appreciates your support. Don’t let the door of the airplane hit you on the rear as you leave.”

“I won’t. But we’re not through,” I told him. “There’s still the matter of getting the drugs.”

“I don’t need the drugs. We’ll be watching the accounts. Thanks for your help.”

He abruptly hung up.

In fact, he did still need my help. It wasn’t just the fact that there’d be a lot more potential for intelligence when the ship landed, starting with the fact that we’d know which ship it was. I’d realized on the way back to our hotel that there probably weren’t going to be any bank transfers, at least not of the wired variety. I hadn’t interrupted a bank robbery; the men with the burkas had come to collect the down payment.

Duh.

It was just a theory, but a promising one. With Shunt now monitoring the accounts at the bank and looking for transfers, I set Trace and the boys hunting from the other direction: “Get IDs on the bank robbers, the car, anything else you can find. Report to me when I get to Mumbai.”

“What do I do with Abdi?”

“He may be useful getting information. If not, pay him off and cut him loose. Help him get a bank account and get him a ticket to Mogadishu,” I told her. “Or wherever he wants to go.”

“What if he wants to go to Brooklyn?”

“Talk him out of that if you can.”

*   *   *

Nothing interesting happened on my long-ass flight to India—in coach—so we’ll stay with Trace and the boys in Djibouti.

Garrett volunteered that the local CIA station might be able to get information about Allah’s Rule operations in Djibouti, and together they went to the embassy to see what they might discover. The chief of station was an affable sort, who led them to the SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, a room supposedly impervious to eavesdropping) and then proceeded to tell them that he had never heard of the organization. Garrett tried to salvage the situation by pumping the chief for general information, but this was mostly a waste of time as well.

On the way back to their hotel, Garrett obviously noticed Trace’s foul mood and tried lifting it by filling her ears with sweet nothings. Or more accurately, he did what a lot of guys do when they see what they think is a promising romantic situation rapidly deteriorating—he started talking about himself. (Gentlemen: wrong thing to do.) This didn’t exactly win Trace over, but it did push the conversation in a direction that Trace found useful, making it easy for her to pump him for data. He’d spent much of his time over the past few months in Pakistan, posing as a drug buyer for a French syndicate. In among mostly useless details, Trace managed to get a few questions in.

“What’s with the prescription pills?” she asked. “Why are they smuggling them?”

“Good markup, steady customer base,” said Garrett. “Plus, since they’re medicine, they’re not forbidden by the Koran. Unlike other drugs.”

Garrett segued into a longer dissertation, during the course of which he mentioned that he had tracked the source of the drugs to a factory in Bangladesh.

“Dick should check it out,” he said. “The agency can’t do anything about it because of politics, but he could.”

“I don’t think he’s interested in opening a pharmacy.”

“He could track the drugs as they go to the Middle East, then turn the information over to Magoo. He’d be grateful. It would get Dick on his good side.”

“Dick doesn’t care about being on people’s good side,” said Trace. “And from what I’ve seen of Magoo, he doesn’t have one.”

*   *   *

Concerned that Mongoose’s injuries were more severe than they looked, Trace ordered him to the clinic at the base. A navy corpsman looked over Mongoose, saw the small frog tattooed on his arm, and gave him the green light. The frogman tattoo is known inside the navy as a tribute to UDT (Underwater Demolition Teams), the dedicated predecessors to the SEALs. It’s often worn by SEALs, and the corpsman jumped to the right conclusion that Mongoose had been a member of the Teams.

“You better be careful,” the corpsman told him. “They’re looking for people who were in town. Europeans. They say they robbed a bank.”

“I’m not European,” said Mongoose.

“You are to them. Filipino, yes?”

“Why?”

“Brother.” The corpsman rolled up his sleeve and displayed an elaborate tattoo featuring the islands and the Filipino flag. “Goes with this one,” he added, rolling up the other sleeve to show the U.S. flag and country.

“The American flag is a little higher on the shoulder, get it?” added the corpsman. He tilted his body, exaggerating the difference.

“Nice tats,” admitted Mongoose.

The corpsman took out some antiseptic and began cleaning the cuts on Mongoose’s face. I’m sure it stung like hell. I’m also sure Mongoose did everything he could to keep from wincing.

“There was a big accident in town,” continued the corpsman. “A bank robbery. The police put out a bulletin looking for people.”

“Oh yeah?”

“You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” asked the corpsman.

“Not at all.”

The corpsman retrieved some gauze from a cabinet and returned.

“There was an accident at the market,” said the corpsman. “They’re looking for a couple of white guys.”

“I’d say my color’s a little closer to brown than white,” said Mongoose.

“White’s a relative concept out here,” said the corpsman.

He raised the gauze to Mongoose’s head to start a wrap. Mongoose stopped him.

“In case somebody got a good look,” said the corpsman. “And you’ve been here since six
A.M.
, waiting to get in. Hell of a long line Thursdays.”

“Damn long,” said Mongoose.

They were now friends for life. The corpsman explained that the base security office had received the bulletins, and passed the information on to the medical people, just in case military personnel showed up with unexplained wounds.

“But yours are pretty much explained by that fall you took at the Giz very early this morning,” noted the corpsman.

“Giz?”

“Topless bar. Off-limits to current military personnel. But since you’re a civilian, you’re in the clear.”

Someone came to the door of the clinic room, calling the corpsman away. Mongoose pulled on his shirt. After a few minutes, he decided to go see what was up. He ambled down the hall, only to be intercepted by the returning corpsman.

“No big deal,” said the sailor. “They brought the bank robbers. We’re going to do the PM—postmortem. Autopsy. Find out what killed them.”

Mongoose knew what killed them, as would anyone else lifting the cloth to take a look. But he kept the information to himself.

“Ever see an autopsy?” asked the corpsman.

“Uh…”

“Come on. It’s fun. You cut up people and look inside. Very nice.”

Mongoose’s stomach suddenly turned queasy. He likes blowing things up, but doesn’t care to study the results.

“Another time, man,” he said. “I gotta go see a friend.”

“Maybe later?”

“Uh, sure.”

Mongoose slipped out a side door. Trace had left him off and told him to call for a ride when he needed to be picked up. He dialed her now, and found she was in an unusually buoyant mood.

“Where the hell have you been?” she asked. “They give you a brain transplant?”

“Nice talking to you, too,” answered Mongoose.

(There may have been a few other words sprinkled in there, mostly of the Anglo-Saxon variety. Neither one seems to recall.)

“I have to take care of getting another backup car rented and some other logistics,” said Trace. “I need you to go over to the police station and see if you can get their IDs.”

“Why the police station?”

“Isn’t that where they usually take bank robbers?”

“Not when they’re dead. They’re inside, down the hall, waiting for an autopsy.”

*   *   *

Security at the clinic was pretty much typical of any medical facility anywhere in the world—once past a trivial check at the door, people generally assumed you belonged there as long as you acted like it. Put a surgical gown on, tuck a stethoscope into your pocket, and people will sooner ask what to do about a trick knee than demand ID.

Looking like you belonged in a room where autopsies are performed could be tricky, however, especially if your stomach turned even thinking of the procedure. Scrubs were easily found, as were a face mask and a hairnet, but Mongoose lingered in an adjoining clinic room, gathering his courage, settling his stomach, and trying to think of some other way he might get the IDs without having to see the bodies being cut up.

He must have a psychotic fear of straight lines. Jagged ones never seem to bother him.

He was steadying himself against a cabinet when a gravel-throated voice boomed behind him. “What the hell are you doing in here?”

Mongoose grabbed the nearest instrument. It happened to have a handle and, to Mongoose at least, looked a little like a grease gun without the hose feed or canister.

“I was just getting, uh, this,” he said, mumbling as he turned around.

Gravel Throat turned out to be an incredibly good-looking American nurse, not quite thirty years old, who filled her scrubs in a way that should be outlawed. Petite in all the right places, she had a pair of blue eyes and blond hair that was pulled into a braided ponytail curling around her neck.

“Dr. Torrence sent you here?” Her voice was the exact opposite of her face and figure. The cabinets rattled as she spoke.

“I, uh—” Brave in the face of danger, Mongoose turned speechless in the face of great beauty. “New,” he managed finally.

“Oh, I know you’re new. You better get back to Torrence before she takes off your head.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What the hell does Torrence want with a uterus manipulator?” asked the gravel-throated beauty.

Mongoose shrugged.

“What’s with the mask?”

Mongoose feigned a cough. “Gotta bad cold. Torrence, uh, she—”

“Well you better get back before she bites your head off, Jason. She’s a bitch in heels.”

Mongoose hurried past her, trying to decide whether her voice was too much of a turnoff. A few strides into the hall, he met another man in identical scrubs, moving purposely in his direction. For a moment he thought he was going to be stopped. Then he caught sight of the ID clipped to the man’s pocket.

“Yo, you’re Jason—the new guy, right?” he asked, pointing the uterus manipulator at him.

“Yeah, that’s me. Just started a half hour ago. I know I was a little late but—”

“Take this to Dr. Torrence.” He held the instrument out.

“To who?”

“Nobody warned you about Torrence?”

“Uh—”

“Bitch in heels? The woman doctor?”

“Oh, yeah, right. She’s at the end of the hall, right?”

“Yup.” Mongoose made a show of glancing at Jason’s ID. “You don’t have the dot on your ID.”

“Huh?”

“It’s a security marker. They change them every day. I had to leave mine because they’re putting a new picture on it. I’m on my way over to get it now. Here,” said Mongoose, holding out his palm. “I’ll get your dot for you. Give me the ID.”