Under Siege (24 page)

“Right, and we have the two Arabs and their two canvas bags of cash. They’re wearing gray civilian clothing. We’ll let them get off first and follow them. Where are you?”

“At the airport reception area. They’ll have to come right past me. I’ll follow them to the outside, the taxi stand, I’d guess.”

“Good guess. We’ll be right behind you.”

Murdock picked out the two Arabs the moment they came out of the landing ramp. They each carried one of the canvas bags, which were gray with a heavy plastic covering. Handles had been strapped to the bags. They walked to the main-lobby, checked the signs, and went directly to the taxi stands. Murdock looked behind and saw Gardner and his team following closely.

Outside there was no line waiting for cabs. It looked like a free-for-all, with drivers shouting fees and waving. Murdock signaled for Lam, Howard, and Jaybird to join him and he grabbed the first taxi he saw and he and his men piled in. They watched the two Arabs getting into a cab three cars ahead.

“Follow that Blue and White cab, but not too closely,”
Murdock told the driver. The cab had “Blue and White” stenciled across its flanks. “There’s a hundred rand tip for you if you don’t let him spot you.”

“Yes, sir,” the driver said with a British accent. The accent still surprised Murdock after all the years that the Brits had been out of South Africa. He looked back and saw J.G. get into a cab with his men. The driver jerked his cab into the traffic and Murdock saw the Blue and White cab still three cars ahead.

“Yes, stay three cars back.”

The trip into town was smooth, uneventful, and quick. Then the Blue and White cab driver seemed to have trouble making up his mind where to go. The taxi made quick turns, backtracked, and ran into a dead-end street. Murdock’s driver avoided the no-outlet street and waited for the Blue and White to emerge.

After another five minutes of playing tag, the Blue and White cab pulled into a large parking lot with at least twenty-five cabs with identical paint jobs.

“I can’t go in there,” Murdock’s cabby said. “That’s the Blue and White Cab Company parking lot.”

Murdock threw some bills at him, told him to wait, and climbed out of the cab as the other cab full of SEALs stopped behind them. J.G. Gardner came up behind him. “Jaybird, Lam, take a run around the right side and back of the lot. They might go over the fence. J.G., send two men around the other way. We’ll play cop here and see if they drive out.”

Five minutes later Murdock and the rest of the driveway SEALs were still waiting.

“Nothing,” Murdock said. “Where the hell did they go?”

“Got them,” Lam said on his Motorola. “They came out from between the cabs on this side, dragging the cash. Then they went over a six-foot fence and are shagging ass up the street. I’m on them like a coon dog on a possum.”

“Coon dogs chase raccoons,” Prescott said. “I used to have one.”

“Jaybird, see if you can find Lam and stick with him. We’ll use the cabs we kept here and follow.”

J.G.’s two men came back from the other side of the lot and they got back in their cabs and eased around the lot. Murdock saw Lam a block ahead, moving slowly.

“Damn, they split up,” the Motorola said. “I didn’t hook up with Jaybird and I can only follow one. I’m on him.”

Murdock found Jaybird sitting on the curb in the next block and picked him up. Murdock had no idea where Lam was.

Ten minutes later the SEALs in the two parked cabs caught Lam’s disgust.

“Yeah, big tracker. The damn Arab went into this alley with some business backed up to it. About a dozen doors down there. I thought he went in the second one. Wrong. It was some kind of a women’s wear store and they threw me out. I’m fucked. Corner of Tenth and Trent if you want to pick me up.”

Before they got there the Motorola came on again. “Hot shit, I’ve got them again. Both of them, so they hooked back up. Must have holed up in one of those stores for a time. I’m not gonna let them see me this time. All smoke and shadows. Here we go. Keep back. Don’t spook them. Looks like they’re getting tired each carrying five million dollars.”

“Stay with them, Lampedusa,” Murdock said. “We’ll pick you up when they go to tree.”

“What in hell?”

“Fox-hunting term, I think,” Murdock said. “When the varmint gets tired of running and climbs up a tree so the dogs can’t tear him into bit and pieces.”

“Gotcha.” Lam eased from behind a ten-year-old sedan and kept his gaze on the two men moving slowly up the street. A cab went by and they waved at it frantically, but it sped on past. “So tired they couldn’t piss straight if they tried,” Lam said softly. He grinned, glad he wasn’t packing
about sixty or seventy pounds of one hundred dollar bills.

Lam saw the men look behind several times. Each time he was out of sight behind some cover. They tried for another cab and then a third, but this was a through-traffic street, not a pickup street.

After just over a half-hour of walking, the men were now dragging the canvas bags. They eased across a main street and into a small hotel. Lam got close enough to see them registering and then they vanished up some steps, still dragging the ten million dollars between them.

“Right, Cap. Looks like they registered and are here for a while. Place probably has a back or side door. I could use some help watching the rest of the place.”

“Can do. Tell me where you are and you’ll have company.” It was Third Street and St. James. A holdover name from the Brits for sure.

Five minutes later Jaybird and Howard eased up beside Lam and he jumped.

“What the hell, you guys aren’t supposed to slip up on the scout. No respect.” He grinned. “Jaybird, you get the back. There is a back door over there into the alley. Just this one in front. We’ll trade off. The boss say how long we were to stay here?”

“Not a peep. Long as it takes. If they move, we tell Murdock and move with them.”

“Unless they take a cab or get a car.”

“Murdock is stashed about two blocks over for just such a trick.”

“Right, so we watch and wait,” Howard said.

In a small hotel less than two miles away, Badri picked up the ringing phone. Only two men knew he was in this hotel.

“Yes?”

“Colonel, it’s Imran. We still have the two packages. Haven’t looked inside to see if it’s really money. Should we?”

“Absolutely, Sergeant. Cut a small hole so you can see inside, but not big enough to interfere with moving it. Do it now.” He waited while the soldier did as ordered. When the man came back on the phone, Badri could hear the excitement in his voice.

“Sir, you wouldn’t believe it. It’s real. Stacks and stacks of plastic-wrapped bundles of bills. All hundreds, right out of the mint. So beautiful.”

“Good. You checked both bags?”

“Yes. One other thing, Colonel. We were trailed and tracked and chased by at least six or eight men. All were young and had close cropped haircuts like they were military. But they wore civilian clothes. I didn’t see any weapons.”

“Damn those Americans. They didn’t pull the military trackers off our trail. They are still there. That means we’re going to have a little party with the First Lady.”

“Her little finger?”

“Exactly. Did the Americans follow you to the hotel?”

“I don’t think so. We watched behind, and we never saw anyone.”

“Good. Just to be sure, wait until dark. Then buy a hat and pay a woman from the bar to walk out the front door with you and get a cab. Call one to pick you up. Buy or steal a different shirt, so if anyone is watching they won’t know it’s you. Should be dark in an hour or so. I need you here. Oh; stop by at a store and buy a small cleaver.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lam and Howard had moved up to be just across the street from the hotel. They sat behind some shrubs that shielded them from the front door. Just after dark they saw a man in a baseball cap and tan shirt and a woman with a short skirt come out the hotel door and get into a cab.

“Couldn’t be,” Howard said.

They kept watching.

Twenty minutes later, across town, Imran knocked on
the hotel room door, and Badri let him inside. He handed a small paper package to the terrorist, who grinned when he felt the weight.

Mrs. Hardesty looked up at them from where she had been watching an old movie on television. She frowned. She had been surprised earlier when she found that she was alone with Badri. The two other men had vanished yesterday. Now one of them was back.

Badri sat down across from the First Lady. “Now, Mrs. President, this would be a good time for you to lecture me that the Arab world is fifty years behind the Western world in science, in business, in medicine, in morality, and in our treatment of women. Now would be an excellent time to make me just furious.”

She frowned. “What on earth are you talking about? I never said you were fifty years behind the times. Maybe twenty, not fifty. Of course Iraq is closer to women’s rights than any other Moslem nation. Do you know there are women doctors and lawyers in Baghdad? There are women who run their own business firms, and they are required to go to school, and they can drive a car, and go on the streets without a male escort from their immediate family.” She smiled. “Of course you know that. You’ve done a lot of traveling. Seen the world. But have you ever been to the United States? Have you viewed the Great Evil up close and personal? Have you seen how so many Arabs have prospered and developed and become highly thought of in the United States? No, of course you haven’t. That would shatter all of your prejudices, would sink the arguments that you have convinced yourself are right even though you have no logical or practical reasons to justify them.”

“Whatever you say, Mrs. President. That’s a beautiful heavy wooden armrest on that easy chair. Solid.”

She frowned. “Yes, and it’s also varnished and polished.”

“Good. Kindly put your left hand on the armrest.”

“Why?”

“Because if you don’t, I’ll shoot you through the head. Reason enough?”

In spite of herself, Mrs. Hardesty shivered. “Yes, all right.”

“Now make a fist but leave your little finger stretched out straight.”

“Like this. I really don’t see …” The other Arab grabbed her hand and held it rigidly in place. She couldn’t budge it. She never saw the blade descending. The cleaver jolted through flesh and bone and her little finger lay there on the arm of the chair completely detached from her hand.

Eleanor Hardesty gave a small groan and then fainted into the overstuffed chair with the solid wood arms.

She came back to consciousness less than five minutes later. She groaned and looked up, wide-eyed, then stared down at the arm rest on the chair and saw the cut in the smooth surface and the trace of something dark. For just moment she wanted to scream. It rose in her throat and almost made it to freedom but she clamped her mouth tightly closed and squeezed her eyes shut and felt a tremor slant through her body. Then she took a deep breath and looked down at her left hand. The small finger was gone, only a bloody tissue covered what must be a stump. She shivered again.

Then the pain came, a throbbing, burning, searing that tore through her body like a whirlwind. It passed and she gasped, then looked up at Badri.

“Yes, Mrs. President, you have just sacrificed the small finger on your left hand for your country. I don’t know if it will convince your husband that I am serious, but I hope it does. If he doesn’t do as I tell him, you will suffer the consequences. Be sure to remind him of that fact when you talk with him again.

“Now, to business. Your amputation has been cleaned
and disinfected and bandaged by my man who also is a medic in the army. So don’t worry about infection. Your finger is even now being sent to the police so they can take your fingerprint and send it by email to your husband for verification.”

Mrs. Hardesty sat there listening, feeling her finger throb now. She wanted to scream at him, to yell, to cry, to wail, and whimper. Mostly she wanted to talk, but she wasn’t sure that she could without breaking down. She would not cry. No. She would have to talk sooner or later. She held her bandaged hand in the palm of her right hand and looked away from Badri. This nightmare had to end soon. It had to be over. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could fight this madman.

Murdock gave up on his stakeout with the car. He radioed Lam and his helpers.

“Looks like a wrap for tonight. You men hold the fort there until midnight and we’ll have replacements for you. Just make certain that the money doesn’t leave the hotel. There’s no underground driveway or even a side drive. If anyone loads anything large into a car or pickup, you may have to check it out in person to make sure it isn’t the money bags.”

“That’s a roger, sir,” Lam said. “No action here. I think they have settled in for the night.”

“I’m going back to our hotel. The car that brings your replacements will take you to our hotel. You’ll have to drive. Keep alert. I’m checking in with Stroh. He’s in town somewhere.”

Back in his hotel, Murdock opened up the SATCOM and set it up to
SEND
. He used the frequency Stroh often used and tried two calls. On the third one, the CIA agent answered.

“Yeah, Murdock, wanted to get to you. The president is kicking holes in the walls of the oval office. About a half-hour
ago they got an email picture from Durban showing a fingerprint. It’s of the First Lady’s small finger on her left hand. The Durban police have the digit in formaldehyde.”

“Did Badri say why he cut it off?”

“Because we told him we would call off you SEALs. Of course we never figured to do that.”

Murdock filled in Stroh on the day’s jaunt. “So we know where the money is, but we don’t know where the First Lady is. We hope they will join up tomorrow. If they do, we still won’t be able to rescue her until we are absolutely sure we can do so without any chance of wounding or injuring her. We need a stable situation, preferably a hotel room where we can do the job quickly, neatly, and without firing a shot.”

“Agreed. Until then we follow the money. You have a watch on all that cash?”

“We do. Changing the guard at midnight. Now, all I need to do is find Gardner and get two of his men to take the second watch. What hotel is he at?”