Under Siege (23 page)

Murdock had a gut feeling about Durban. It was large enough to have an al Qaeda cell here, if any of them were still functioning. Such a group could be a big help to Badri. He could go to ground here in the Arab community and be
nearly impossible to find. Murdock sighed. He hated waiting. He was good at it, but still didn’t enjoy it. Several times he had to stretch out in a swamp for four hours and never move a muscle. It had paid off. He just hoped that this waiting would pay off tomorrow.

Less than two miles from where Murdock tried to sleep, Badri shifted on the bed, knowing he needed the sleep so he would be sharp tomorrow. He could take a pill. No, he decided not to. He would command himself to sleep. The woman in the other bed with all her clothes on had been sleeping now for two hours. He didn’t understand how she remained so calm, so self-assured. In her place he would be screaming and throwing fits.

Tomorrow would be a great day. He would have the money, and he would still have the valuable package. Then he would decide what to do with her. He could milk the cow for more money, or he could let her go at some other hotel. Or he could simply put a bullet in her head and dump her body along the road somewhere. He would decide tomorrow, after he had the ten million U.S. dollars in his hot little hands.

He had listened to the news tonight. As Mrs. Hardesty had told him, the war in Iran was going badly. He heard that General Tariz Majid had been executed by a firing squad. A council of colonels had taken over the country, so his power base with the old regime was shattered, nonexistent. There was no reason for him to even return to Iran. He might be caught up in a dragnet by the council and blamed for the ruinous war and be jailed or even shot. No, he would not be going back to Iran. So, he needed all the cash he could gather. He still had his money belt and a good supply there. But he needed to think in terms of twenty years or more. Ten million dollars would help a lot. So tomorrow had quickly become vital to his own best interests. Damn the nation he had been working for. It was now him and his two men on their own.

Pretoria, South Africa

Captain Lonnie “Loony” Chambers caught sight of the two blips on his screen as he and his wingman came across South Africa heading for Pretoria, less than thirty miles away.

“Closing fast,” Captain Browning “Brownie” Phillips said on the radio.

“They passed us off from that pair we met at the coast about a half-hour ago,” Loony said. “They will be friendly.”

The international channel chirped at them and the voice came across. “Yanks, we have you on our screens. Two F-15s if we hear right. We’re on your radar by now as well. Your welcoming party of two Mirage Fl-AZs at your service.”

“Roger that, Mirage. Let them know at Pretoria that we’re friendly. I have a set down in about six minutes.”

“Right, Yanks, glad to escort you in. You might pick up on frequency four to get our base tower. Our military air force base is about ten miles north of town so we don’t scare the locals.”

The two American planes landed side by side on the wide north/south runway and turned onto the taxi strip where a Jeep with a large green flag led them to a transient military hangar.

Captain Chambers stepped down from his aircraft and met Phillips and they supervised the transfer of the two canvas packages from their planes to an armored car that had been waiting for them.

“Gentlemen, you are requested to accompany the car to our destination where you will sign off on the items,” the armed guard said. “Do you know what you brought here?”

“No, sir,” Brownie said.

“Just as well. Get on board, we’re about ten minutes late.”

They drove quickly from the military airport and toward Durban. There was no small talk. The pilots heard the
driver and his guard radio that they were on their way.

Thirty-four minutes later they wheeled in at the Three Star Hotel on Easterside Street.

The driver turned to the pilots. “Gentlemen, standard procedure here. I go in and check to be sure this is the right address and that they are ready to receive the goods. Then I come back and transport it inside, you go in and the receiver signs off on it and all is well. I’ll be less than two or three minutes.” He left the armored car by the front driver’s door and the second guard watched the two pilots, his right hand never far from the big .45 automatic on his right hip.

Lieutenant (J.G.) Gardner felt the sweat popping out on his forehead. He wasn’t used to this type of pressure. He’d rather have somebody shooting at him. The very fact that ten million dollars would soon roll into the hotel parking lot and the life of the First Lady hung in the balance as well, were almost too much to bear. He and Canzoneri, Fernandez, and Rafii had talked to the hotel manager just at noon. The manager said he was not authorized to tell anyone anything about the shipment coming in or what further instructions he might have for whoever delivered it. Gardner told him who he was and the manager was impressed, but said he still couldn’t reveal the instructions. He had been handsomely paid to do this small task and he would do it. Gardner told him he would be nearby in case of any trouble.

After that, Gardner had spotted his men in the best defensive/offensive locations around the front of the hotel. He had the MP-5 and sat at a small table just outside of the office where he played solitaire. The MP-5 was well out of sight.

He almost lurched out of his chair when the armored car arrived. It stopped in a no-parking area ten feet from the front door. He watched one uniformed guard get out of the
truck and go inside. Gardner used the Motorola with the concealed mike. “Okay, it’s probably here. Stay cool. If the armored truck leaves the goods here, we watch and wait. If it leaves with the canvas packages, Rafii, you bring up the car and we get in casually and follow it. Everyone cool?”

They checked in and waited.

The driver left the hotel after a few minutes in the office and went back to the armored car. The truck’s headlights blinked three times. A junker car parked halfway down the lot with three doors of different colors and serious body damage on the passengers side drove up to the armored car. The side door opened and the guards pulled out the canvas packages. The trunk lid popped open electrically and the guards dropped the ten million dollars in the trunk and one of them slammed it shut.

“Go, Rafii,” Gardner said. He saw Rafii quickly walk twenty feet to a two-year-old Chevrolet, get in, and back out. He rolled forward just as the junker that was mostly blue, eased away from the armored car and headed for the street. The SEALs stepped into the Chevy and Rafii was five car lengths behind when he pulled into Easterside Street.

“Stay three cars behind him,” Gardner said.

“He’s in no rush, just cruising along,” Rafii said.

“Stay with him,” J.G. said. “I bet he’s going to lead us to the First Lady, wherever she is by now. He’s heading toward the outskirts of town” he said, pointing.

Five miles later the junker car pulled into a line of two cars waiting at a car wash.

“He’s getting that bucket of bolts washed?” Rafii blurted. “What in hell for?”

“That’s what worries me,” Gardner said. “Canzoneri, you get out here and watch him to be sure he goes into the wash. Use your radio if he suddenly backs out and heads the other way. We’ll go up near the outlet to be ready if he comes there. As soon as he hits the water, come up and get back in the car.”

Canzoneri dropped out of the car and found some shade to sit in as he watched the junker move up in the line.

Gardner noted it was a new-type car wash where the car went into a plastic booth and was enveloped in steam for a few seconds. They drove near the outlet and stopped. Gardner got out and took a walk back to the carwash and watched it. He could see the booth. There was a driveway on the far side of it not connected with the car wash.

“Canzoneri,” Gardner said on his Motorola.

“Right.”

“Make sure that the trunk of that car doesn’t move for any reason.”

“Roger that.”

The cars edged forward.

“I’ve got the junker in the booth, steam, water, suds, but the trunk lid hasn’t budged.”

“Good. Keep on it all the way through. We’ll pick you up.”

Gardner noticed a black car drive up near the side of the wash booth and stop. Curious. A moment later the side of the plastic tent opened next to the black Porsche. Steam gushed out and with it came a man in a yellow slicker with a hood. He carried both bags of money. He threw them in the back seat of the Porsche, climbed in, and the car sped toward the exit and the street.

“Canzoneri, on me to the car, they switched cars. They’re in a black Porsche.”

Gardner and Canzoneri got to their car at the same time and dove inside. Already Rafii had it starting forward. They slammed the doors.

“He’s ahead of me half a block,” Rafii said. “No cars between us. Will he know we’re following him?”

“He will unless he’s an idiot,” Fernandez said. “No sense being clandestine now. He’s made us. He’ll try to outgun us. And with that big engine of his, he can.”

As Fernandez said it, the black car ahead charged away. It slid through a yellow and Rafii gunned after him. hitting
about half of the red light as it changed. Rafii rammed down the gas pedal and caught up a little when the Porsche hit a red light. Then they were in more open country heading south and the Porsche vanished over a hill on the four-lane road.

Rafii gunned the Chevy to its top speed and came over the hill quickly. Far ahead they could see the black car slamming down the roadway.

“Keep going, we might get lucky,” Gardner said. They drove for five miles, then Rafii pointed ahead.

“Some trouble. Looks like a wreck.”

Gardner saw at once that it was. Two cars were smashed up, blocking both lanes going south. “A wreck. This might have held up our runner,” Rafii said.

Rafii stopped the car twenty feet from the mangled cars. One of them was a black Porsche.

“It has to be our boy. Try and find him. No, two of them.”

That’s when they heard tires squealing and a woman screaming. The four men ran around the wreck to where cars had stopped on the other side.

The woman kept screaming. Gardner tried to calm her down.

“They stole my car. Two of them looked like damn Arabs. Stole my car and drove away. They just took my car and drove away!”

“What kind of a car?” Gardner asked. Rafii sprinted back to the Chevy and began working it through the shallow ditch and around the wreck.

“Car, what kind of a car is it?”

“A brand new red Ford.”

“We’ll get it back for you,” Gardner said. He rushed to the side of the road where Rafii had stopped the Chevy. Gardner jumped in the front seat and Rafii spit gravel from the rear wheels until he got back on the blacktopped road.

“Red Ford,” Gardner said. Rafii turned the lights on to
bright and tore down the road. The lights were a warning that he was coming. A minute later the speedometer showed 160 kilometers per hour.

“That’s a hundred miles an hour,” Gardner said. “What is this a freeway?”

“Close enough,” Rafii said. “My guess it’s the route to Johannesburg. Some curves coming up, I better slow down.”

“There it is,” Gardner said. “Red car ahead, we’re gaining on him.”

“We better be. He must be doing only eighty-five.”

“No, he’s slowing down, turning off,” Rafii said. “Divided road up there.”

The car slowed and took the turnoff. A second later the red Ford burst out from a side road and charged back down the highway the way they had just come. Rafii swore, did a quick braking, and spun the car around and slammed through a natural divider between the lanes of traffic and headed north back toward Pretoria.

“Will someone tell me what’s going on?” Canzoneri asked. “If the dumb ass didn’t want to come this way, why did he wait until he got all the way out here to turn around?”

Nobody answered him. Rafii caught the red Ford ten miles from Pretoria, and it didn’t seem in any rush to lose them.

“What’s he doing now?” Gardner asked.

“Maybe leading us away from the money,” Fernandez said. “He could have stashed it back up there where he turned around.”

“Leave ten million in the bushes?” Rafii said. “No chance. He’s got something else in mind.”

“Whatever happens, remember, we follow the money and we find the First Lady.”

They drove behind the red car until they came to the airport. The car took the first off-ramp and to the departing passenger’s ramp. The red Ford stopped in a no-parking zone. The two men got out and walked into the airport each
with one of the canvas bags. Rafii parked right behind them, waved away a parking-enforcement man, and the four SEALs ran into the airport. The two Arabs dressed in grey shirts and pants stood in a ticket line. Rafii moved up near them to find out where they bought tickets for.

He came back a few minutes later. “They’re going to Durban. Flight 204 leaves in half an hour. We’ll have time to make it.”

Gardner had the money, over five thousand rand. He went through the line, bought four tickets, and they ran for the boarding area. Their flight was loading. They saw the two Arabs and their canvas bags they would use as canyons. At the plane door the flight attendant looked at the bags and shook her head. One of the Arabs folded some bills in his hand and shook hands with her. The bags went in the special compartment in front of first class.

A few minutes later the four SEALs got on the plane singly and sat apart. Gardner looked out the window and shook his head. Follow the money. They were on the trail of the cash. He didn’t know what would happen once they hit the next airport. There was no way and no time to contact Murdock in Durban. He’d have to wait and hope his Motorola would reach out to wherever Murdock was waiting in Durban. It was a chance. It was his only chance.

Durban, South Africa

J.G. Gardner tried to call Murdock on the Motorola from the commercial jet aircraft just after it set down. To his surprise he got a response.

“Yeah, J.G., that you coming in?”