House of Spies Page 33

  “Shit,” said Yaakov.

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  “Think he’s gone over to the other side?”

  “We’ll know in a minute.”

  “Why wait?”

  “You have a better idea?”

  “Send a message to Mikhail and Keller. Tell them to come out of that tent, guns blazing.”

  “And what if Bakkar’s men return fire with those Kalashnikovs?”

  “They’ll never get them off their shoulders.”

  “And Martel?” asked Gabriel. “What if he’s standing in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

  “He’s a drug dealer.”

  “We wouldn’t be here without him, Yaakov.”

  “You think he wouldn’t betray us to save his own neck? What do you think he’s doing right now? Send the message,” said Yaakov. “Put them all down and let’s get our people out of there before the Americans light up the desert with those Hellfire missiles.”

  Gabriel quickly sent not one message but two—one to Dina Sarid and the other to the satellite phone in Keller’s possession. Dina replied instantly. Keller didn’t bother.

  “I respectfully disagree,” said Yaakov.

  “Duly noted.”

  Gabriel looked at the shot from the Predator. Four identical Toyota SUVs racing northward across the desert.

  “Which one do you suppose he’s in?”

  “The second,” said Yaakov. “Definitely the second.”

  “I respectfully disagree.”

  “Which one then?”

  Gabriel stared at the screen. “I haven’t a clue.”

  The Hotel Kasbah stood at the western edge of the great sand sea at Erg Chebbi. Dina and Eli Lavon were drinking tea in the terrace bar when the message came through from Gabriel; Yossi and Rimona were poolside. Five minutes later, having sanitized their rooms, they were all four in the hotel’s cramped lobby, asking the night manager for the name of a nearby club where they might find a bit of music and dancing. He gave them the name of an establishment in Erfoud, which was to the north. They headed south instead, Yossi and Rimona in a rented Jeep Cherokee, Dina and Eli Lavon in a Nissan Pathfinder. At Khamlia they turned off the main road, into the desert, and waited for the sky to burn.

  59

  Langley, Virginia

  But in which Toyota Land Cruiser was the prize riding? After months of plotting and scheming and recruiting and deal making, it all came down to that. Four vehicles, two missiles. The odds of success were one in two. The price of failure would be a broken relationship with an important Arab ally—and perhaps far worse. Saladin’s dead body would atone for all manner of secret sins. But Saladin on the loose in Morocco after a botched drone strike would be a diplomatic and security catastrophe. Many careers hung in the balance. Many lives, too.

  There was no shortage of opinions. Graham Seymour swore it was the third Toyota, Paul Rousseau the fourth. Adrian Carter leaned toward the first vehicle but was willing to entertain the notion it was the second. Inside the White House Situation Room, the president and his senior aides were equally divided. CIA Director Morris Payne was all but certain he had seen Saladin enter the third SUV. But the president, like Paul Rousseau, was adamant it was the fourth. At the Black Hole in Langley, that was reason enough to eliminate number four from further consideration.

  Expert opinion was divided, too. The drone teams analyzed the recordings of Saladin’s initial flight from the camp, along with the live video and sensory data. The data pointed to number three with high probability, though one junior analyst was convinced that Saladin was not in any of the SUVs, that he had fled the camp on foot and was now making his way across the desert alone.

  “He walks with a limp,” remarked Uzi Navot caustically. “He’ll be out there longer than Moses and the Jews of Egypt.”

  In the end it was left to Kyle Taylor—a veteran operations officer who had overseen more than two hundred successful drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia—to make the final call. He did so swiftly and decisively and without bothering to consult with Adrian Carter. At 5:47 p.m. Washington time, 10:47 p.m. in Morocco, the order passed to the drone teams to ready the ordnance. Seventy-four seconds later, two of the Toyota Land Cruisers, the first and the third, exploded in a blinding flash of white light. Uzi Navot was the only one in the Black Hole or the White House Situation Room who wasn’t watching.

  The sound of the explosions reached the camp a second or two after the burst of light on the horizon. Keller and Mikhail had already drawn their Berettas by the time Jean-Luc Martel entered the tent.

  “What are you going to do? Shoot me?”

  “I might,” answered Keller.

  “That would be a miscalculation on your part.” Martel glanced to the north and asked, “What just happened out there?”

  “Sounded like thunder to me.”

  “I don’t think Mohammad is liable to believe that. Not after what his Iraqi friend told him before he left.”

  “And what was that?”

  “That Dmitri and Sophie Antonov are Israeli agents who were sent here to kill him.”

  “I hope you disabused Mohammad of that notion.”

  “I tried,” said Martel.

  “Is that why he gave you that gun?”

  “What gun?”

  “The one in the right-hand pocket of your jacket.” Keller managed a smile. “The drones never blink.”

  Martel extracted the weapon slowly.

  “An FN Five-seven,” said Keller.

  “The standard-issue sidearm of the SAS.”

  “Actually, we call it the Regiment.” Keller was holding the Beretta with both hands. He released his left and stretched it toward Martel. “I’ll take that.”

  The Frenchman only smiled.

  “You’re not thinking about doing something foolish, are you, Jean-Luc?”

  “I did that once already. Now I’m going to look after myself.” He glanced at Olivia, who was sitting at the edge of the bed next to Natalie. “And her, of course.”

  Keller lowered the gun. “Tell Mohammad I’d like to have a word with him.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “So he can hear my offer.”

  “Your offer? And what would that be?”

  “Our safe passage in exchange for the lives of Mohammad and his men.”

  Martel emitted a low, bitter laugh. “You seem to have misread your situation. You’re the one who has several Kalashnikovs pointed at you, not me.”

  “But I have a drone,” said Keller. “And if anything happens to us, the drone is going to turn Mohammad into a pile of ash. You, too.”

  “Predator drones carry two Hellfire missiles. And I’m quite certain I heard two explosions just now.”

  “There’s another drone above us.”

  “Is there really?”

  “How did I know there was a gun in your pocket?”

  “Lucky guess.”

  “You’d better hope so.”

  Martel approached Keller slowly and stared directly into his eyes. “Let me explain what’s about to happen,” he said quietly. “I’m going to leave here with Olivia. And then Mohammad’s men are going to cut you and your friends to pieces with AK-47 fire.”

  Keller said nothing.

  “You’re not so tough without the don’s protection, are you?”

  “You’re a dead man.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Martel turned away from Keller and reached a hand toward Olivia. She sat motionless next to Natalie.

  Martel’s eyes narrowed in rage. “How much did they pay you to betray me, my love? I know you didn’t do it out of the goodness of your heart. You haven’t got one.”

  He seized Olivia’s arm, but she tore it from his grasp.

  “How noble of you,” Martel said acidly. Then he placed the barrel of the FN to the side of her head. “Get on your feet.”

  Keller raised his gun and leveled it
at Martel’s chest.

  “What are you going to do? Shoot me? If you do that, we all die.”

  Keller was silent.

  “You don’t believe me? Pull the trigger,” said Martel. “See what happens next.”

  In the Black Hole at Langley, only Uzi Navot was watching the Sentinel’s shot of the scene unfolding at the camp. Everyone else in the room was staring, transfixed, at the adjoining screen, where the wreckage of two Land Cruisers was burning brightly on the floor of the Sahara. But they were not the only vehicles to suffer damage in the strike. The driver of the second SUV had lost control after the explosions and had collided at high speed with an outcropping of desert rock. Badly damaged, the vehicle now lay on its passenger side, its headlamps still aglow. There appeared to be two men inside. In the ninety seconds since the crash, neither had moved.

  “Three for the price of two,” said Kyle Taylor, but no one in the room responded. They were all too busy watching the only surviving SUV, which had doubled back and was approaching the vehicle now lying beached and broken on its side. A moment later two men were frantically dragging a third from the wreckage.

  “What are the chances,” asked Kyle Taylor, “that he’s Saladin?”

  Adrian Carter watched as the two men hastily loaded the third into the back of the intact SUV.

  “I’d say it’s about one hundred percent. The question is, is he still alive?”

  The surviving SUV was soon racing north with its headlights off, followed by the now-defanged Predator. The drone’s sensors estimated the vehicle’s speed at ninety-two miles per hour.

  “Off road,” said Carter, “with no headlights.”

  “Looks like we missed,” said Taylor.

  “Yeah,” agreed Carter. “And he’s still alive.”

  In Casablanca, Gabriel had eyes only for the video feed from the Sentinel drone. Greenish, ghostly versions of Keller and Mikhail were aiming weapons at Jean-Luc Martel, and Martel was holding a gun to the head of one of the women—Natalie or Olivia, Gabriel could not tell. Mohammad Bakkar and four of his men were outside the tent, weapons leveled toward the entrance. Owing to the center court’s confined dimensions, they were tightly grouped. Gabriel calculated the odds. They were better, he reckoned, than doing nothing at all. He started to type out a message, but stopped and dialed instead. A few seconds later he watched a greenish, ghostly version of Christopher Keller reaching into his coat pocket.

  “Answer it,” said Gabriel through gritted teeth. “Answer the phone.”

  The Beretta was in Keller’s right hand, the vibrating satphone in his left. His thumb was hovering over the screen.

  “Don’t,” whispered Martel hoarsely.

  “What are you going to do, Jean-Luc?”

  Martel grabbed a handful of Olivia’s hair and ground the barrel of the FN into her temple. Keller tapped the touchscreen and raised the phone swiftly to his ear.

  Gabriel addressed him calmly.

  “They’re standing directly outside the entrance of your tent, Bakkar and four others. They’re tightly packed, their guns are locked and loaded.”

  “Any other good news?”

  “Saladin is still alive.”

  Keller lowered the phone without severing the connection and looked at Mikhail. “They’re outside the tent waiting to kill us. Five men, all armed. Directly outside the entrance,” Keller added pointedly.

  “All of them?” asked Mikhail.

  Keller nodded, then looked at Martel. “Khalil the Iraqi is a piece of charred meat. Several pieces, actually. Tell Mohammad to let us go, or he’ll be next.”

  Martel dragged Olivia toward the entrance of the tent, the gun still to her head. Keller allowed the satphone to fall from his left hand while swiftly raising his right. He fired two shots, the tap-tap of a trained professional. Both found Martel’s face. Then he pivoted to his right and along with Mikhail unleashed a stream of fire toward the five men standing outside.

  As return fire tore through the skin of the tent, Natalie pulled Olivia to the floor. Martel lay next to them, the FN still in his lifeless hand. Natalie ripped the gun from his grasp, aimed it through the entrance, and pulled the trigger. And all the while, at the House of Spies in Casablanca, Gabriel was watching and listening. Watching as the members of his team fought for their lives. Listening to the sound of gunfire and the screams of Olivia Watson.

  60

  The Sahara, Morocco

  From Gabriel’s perspective, it seemed to last an eternity; from Keller’s, a second or two. When the return fire from outside the tent fell silent, he expelled the spent magazine from his Beretta and rammed the spare into place while next to him Mikhail did the same. Then he looked down at Natalie and was surprised to see Martel’s weapon in her outstretched hands. Olivia was screaming hysterically.

  “Is she all right?”

  The side of Olivia’s face was covered with blood and brain matter. Natalie quickly searched her for a gunshot wound, but found nothing. The blood and brain matter were Martel’s.

  “She’s fine.”

  Maybe someday, thought Keller, but not anytime soon. He reached down and snatched up the phone. “What’s going on out there?”

  “Not much,” answered Gabriel.

  “Any sign of movement?”

  “The one in the middle. From up here, the rest look dead.”

  “Pity,” said Keller. “What now?”

  Ten miles to the north, the last surviving Toyota Land Cruiser was racing across an uninhabited patch of desert, pursued by the Predator.

  “What’s the loiter time on that drone?” asked Navot.

  “Eight hours and change,” said Adrian Carter. “Unless the Moroccans figure out that we carried out a clandestine drone strike on their territory. Then it’s a hell of a lot less.”

  “And that one?” asked Navot, nodding toward the shot of the camp from the Sentinel.

  “Fourteen hours.”

  “How stealth is it?”

  “Stealth enough so that the Moroccans will never be able to find it.”

  One of the phones in front of Carter flashed with an incoming call. He brought the receiver to this ear, listened, and then swore softly.

  “What is it?” asked Navot.

  “NSA is picking up a lot of traffic from Morocco.”

  “What kind of traffic?”

  “Sounds like the shit is hitting the fan.”

  Another phone flashed. This time it was Morris Payne calling from the Situation Room.

  “Understood,” said Carter after a moment, and hung up. Then he looked at Navot. “The Moroccan ambassador just called the White House to ask if the United States had attacked his country.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “The loiter time on those drones just got a whole lot shorter.”

  “The stealth drone, too?”

  “What stealth drone?”

  Carter gave the order to the drone teams. Instantly, the Predator banked sharply to the east toward the Algerian border. Its thermal imaging camera stayed with the surviving SUV for another two minutes, until finally the heat signature evaporated from the screens of the Black Hole. The Sentinel was next. The last image Navot saw was of two men slipping out of a tent in the desert, weapons in their outstretched hands.

  It was true that all five men in the camp’s center court had been shot, but two were still alive. One was Mohammad Bakkar. The other was one of the guards. Mikhail ended the guard’s life with a single gunshot to the head while Keller examined Bakkar by starlight. The Moroccan hashish producer had been hit twice in the chest. His pullover was drenched in blood, and there was blood in his mouth. It was obvious he did not have long to live.

  Keller crouched next to him. “Where is he going, Mohammad?”

  “Who?” asked Bakkar, choking on the blood.

  “Saladin.”

  “I don’t know anyone by that name.”

  “Perhaps this will refresh your memory.”

  Keller
placed the barrel of the Beretta against Mohammad Bakkar’s ankle and pulled the trigger. The Moroccan’s screams filled the night.

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Of course you do, Mohammad. You gave him sanctuary here in Morocco after the attack on Washington. You gave him the money he needed to attack my country.”

  “And what country is that? Are you French? Or are you a fucking Jew like him?”

  Bakkar was looking at Mikhail, who was standing over Keller’s shoulder. Keller placed the barrel of the Beretta against the Moroccan’s lower leg and pulled the trigger.

  “I’m British, actually.”

  “In that case,” said Bakkar, moaning in agony, “fuck your country.”

  Keller fired a shot into the side of Bakkar’s knee.

  “Allahu Akbar!”

  “Be that as it may,” said Keller calmly, “where is he?”

  “I told you—”

  Another shot into what was left of the knee. Bakkar was starting to lose consciousness. Keller slapped him hard across the face.

  “Did he order you to kill us?”

  Bakkar nodded.

  “And what were you supposed to do after that?”

  The Moroccan’s eyes were closing. Keller was losing him.

  “Where, Mohammad? Where is he going?”

  “One of my . . . houses.”

  “Where? The Rif? The Atlas?”

  Bakkar was choking on the blood.

  “Where, Mohammad?” asked Keller, shaking the Moroccan violently. “Tell me where he’s going so I can help you.”

  “Fez,” gasped Bakkar. “He’s going to Fez.”

  The light was going out of the Moroccan’s eyes. Despite the blood and the pain, he looked like a deeply contented man.