helicopter lifted once more into the air. Then it vanished into the black clouds and they were
alone.
March pulled the hood of his anorak up to shield against the freezing rain that had already
seeped its way down his neck and under his thin pullover. A vehicle was waiting for them, a
Russian-made UAZ-3151. Al-Adel had his rucksack on the muddy ground, his hands buried
deep in the bowels of the pack until he found what he was looking for. His eyes were bright
when he lifted the Garmin handheld GPS receiver for March to see.
“The Americans would dearly love to get their hands on this. I imagine they would pay a great
deal of money for the information it contains. Tell me, what would that money mean to you, my
friend?”
Jason March fixed his steady gaze on the other man before speaking. “If you think I came this far
to betray you for money, then you are the fool, Saif.”
“We shall see.” A smile spread over the Egyptian’s face as he held out his hand. “Give me your
pistol.”
March hesitated, and the smile turned into an impatient sneer. “Give me your pistol or I’ll shoot
you where you stand. Even if you survive the bullet, you won’t last long — the temperature is
already below freezing, and the wolves are always hungry in the winter.”
Reluctantly, March handed over his Beretta. “And your pack.” March gave him that as well, and
watched as the other man perused the contents. Satisfied, Saif al-Adel stood and gave him a
questioning look. “Food and water? Where are these plans you speak of?”
March smiled and tapped his own head gently with two fingers. An incredulous look spread
over the commander’s face, but it was quickly replaced by a cold gaze. “Then I hope you have a
good memory, my friend. A very good memory indeed, because your life depends on what you
have to say today.” He threw the rucksack back toward the American, but held on to the
Beretta. “Get in the jeep.”
“And where are we going?”
Al-Adel turned east toward the jagged spires of the Tian Shan mountains. “Up there,” he said.
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Ryan had called the embassy in Pretoria from the catamaran with a request for transport. There
would be hell to pay when Harper found out, but it was the only option open to him. He had
briefly considered making the trip without Agency assistance, but knew that the consequences
would be far worse if they were intercepted by the police without official cover. In that situation,
he wouldn’t have put it past Langley to completely disavow any knowledge of their presence in
South Africa.
In fact, he wouldn’t have expected anything less.
Despite the fact that they had nowhere else to go, Ryan realized they couldn’t stay out on the
water. The first police officers on the scene would take in the vehicles left on the street and the
shattered doors leading out to the beach, and then rightly conclude that an escape had been
made by boat. Police cutters would be dispatched with orders to board every small craft in the
vicinity, and the larger docks around the bay would be sealed off. Even now, approaching the
private dock of the Victoria and Albert Hotel, he could hear the sirens screaming on the other
side of the bay.
Looking down at his watch, he estimated that they had at least seven hours to kill, even if the
embassy car carried diplomatic plates and traveled south unimpeded as fast as possible. After
docking and securing the catamaran, he found blankets in a storage compartment beneath a seat
at the stern. These he stuffed haphazardly into his backpack along with more bottled water,
sacrificing space for speed. Finally, he turned his attention to Naomi.
She was sitting on a hard wooden bench just aft of the cabin, hugging her knees against her chest
and watching him intently. As he walked toward her, though, she pulled away from his
outstretched hand.
“Naomi,” he said, impatience in his voice. “There’s no time for this. If you don’t follow me right
now, we’re both going to spend a lot of time in a South African jail. You know I wouldn’t hurt
you. Gray had a gun — he would have killed us both without thinking twice.”
After a moment she held out her hand without speaking. Ryan pulled her up off the bench and
they stepped onto the dock, walking hand in hand past the bright lights of the V&A hotel and
into the empty streets beyond.
The steep roads leading out of the valley gave them the most trouble as the jeep, lacking 4WD
capabilities, continued to slide toward the precarious edge of the path. Several times March felt
his heart in his throat as the jeep drifted in the deep mud toward the brink and a plummeting
drop of several hundred meters to the valley floor. He was terrified of mountains and
precipitous slopes, a fear that dated back to his childhood. He felt the cold sheen of sweat on his
body and hoped that they didn’t have far to go. Fortunately, they soon moved away from the lip
of the valley. The route smoothed out when they reached the cut-granite roads leading into the
mountains.
Although the heater was going full blast, the air was bitterly cold in the higher regions, pushed
along by a howling wind that whipped over the stone outcroppings and drove the frigid gusts
through unseen apertures in the vehicle’s frame. As the elevation continued to climb, the rain
turned to sleet, and then to a driving snow that made progress even more difficult.
“Do you see that?” March followed al-Adel’s finger to a small stone structure perched on a rock
outcropping at least 100 meters above the road. The building blended into the surrounding
mountains so well that he would never have seen it on his own. “It is one of our observation
points — only one of several. This is the only passable mountain road for 10 kilometers in any
direction. That is why this place was chosen. If the Americans come, we will have ample time to
evacuate the camp.”
“It’s a good location,” March conceded. He could see that there were other advantages as well;
even those cruise missiles with the greatest range, the Tomahawks and the Harpoons, would not
be able to reach the landlocked base from the North Sea. Additionally, incoming aircraft would
be forced to cross the airspace of numerous countries in order to mount an attack. It would be
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difficult to get the consent of each government to do so. “It must be hard to direct the
organization from here, though.”
Al-Adel nodded in agreement. “The unit commanders have been delegated a great deal of
responsibility. Approval for missions is now granted by myself, or by Abu Fatima. You would
know him as al-Zawahiri. He is a great man — I have known him for almost twenty years.”
The Egyptian fell silent as he consulted the Garmin navigation system once more. “We’re almost
there,” he said. The space between the jagged rocks bordering the path began to narrow, and
March could faintly hear the low rumble of a diesel engine over the screaming wind. Soon the
outline of a track vehicle appeared through breaks in the snow, and then the formidable sight of
a 100mm turret-mounted main gun pointed down the road in the direction of the approaching
jeep. Al-Adel slowed to a stop and waited as a young man climbed out of the rear hatch and
trudged heavily through the snow toward their vehicle, holding an AK-74 rifle and a portable
radio. Several words were exchanged between the guard and al-Adel in rapid-fire Arabic, and
then the young soldier spoke into his radio.
After the guard had completed a cursory inspection of the jeep, the BMP-3 infantry carrier was
rolled back to allow them to pass. The road led into a small clearing contained on three sides by
towering granite walls that kept out much of the inclement weather. The clearing was dominated
by a large canvas tent powered by a command vehicle and its generator, both of which were
miniscule by comparison. Two more soldiers of the Taliban stood guard outside the imposing
shelter, but otherwise the clearing was devoid of human life.
After leaving the jeep, al-Adel and March approached the tent slowly, careful to keep their hands
in plain view. One soldier checked them for weapons, taking both of al-Adel’s while the other
stood back and covered the two arrivals with his rifle. Once again a quick conference was held
by radio, and then the tent flap was pulled back to allow both men to enter.
Ryan and Naomi walked for twenty minutes before he found a suitable location just opposite the
predetermined collection point. The alley entrance was just below a recently installed streetlight,
and the glare of the bulb made all but the first few feet of the black corridor impenetrable to the
eye. The space between the brick walls of the buildings was perhaps 4 feet wide, and dominated
by the smell of rotting garbage in close proximity. The stench was slightly quelled by a cool
breeze that felt like an arctic wind in the narrow confines of the alleyway.
He moved deep into the dark space before pulling one of the two blankets from his pack and
folding it into thirds. He placed the neat square of material on the litter-strewn ground and
pulled Naomi down onto the makeshift seat. Then he reached for the second blanket and draped
it over her, watching with satisfaction as she pulled the coarse wool around her body. After
taking his own seat on the rough cement several feet away, Ryan focused his attention on the
road adjacent to the alleyway and tried to ignore the biting cold.
After a few minutes he turned to check on Naomi and found her watching him, the luminous
green eyes clearly visible even in the shadowed confines of the alley. He could also see that she
was shivering hard, the thick material having fallen down from around her shoulders. Sliding
over, he wrapped the blanket even tighter around her, and then pulled her shaking body close to
his. After another moment she relaxed and rested her head gently on his shoulder.
“Ryan?”
“Hmmm?”
“When you shot him, did you feel anything?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is it hard for you? I mean, killing someone?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a lie,” she mumbled after a moment. He did not respond. “I watched your face when
you pulled the trigger… There was nothing there.”
Her eyelids were growing heavy, and she pushed herself tighter into his body as the sleep began
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to wash over her like a warm sea. “What was the little girl’s name, Ryan?”
He felt his muscles stiffen with apprehension. He did not want to remember that, to remember
what they had done to her. It had taken so long to forget…
“It’s not right, you know. It’s not right that you feel nothing when you take a life…” A long
pause. “The girl in Bosnia. What was her name?”
“Safiya,” he finally said. Her head was dipped, her face hidden from view. She could not have
known the pain it caused him. “Her name was Safiya.”
“Thank you.” The words were so soft that he almost missed them.
Once again he stayed silent, and after a few minutes heard her breathing settle into the soft
rhythm of sleep. Looking down, Kealey found her features hidden by layers of lustrous hair
falling about her face. Only her nose was visible, the very tip peeking through the black waves.
Instinctively, he pulled her even closer, turning his head away from the alley’s entrance just as a
police car screamed past.
He willed the hours to pass and waited for the image of a young girl’s torn body to fade from
his mind.
The air was warm and thick inside the tent, the combined effects of an overworked space heater
and the trapped odor of men who had not bathed in weeks. There was a section separated from
the sleeping quarters by a threadbare blanket hung from a wooden pole. The makeshift curtain
was not pulled all the way across, and March could see the communications gear set up on a
wooden fold-out table. A soldier wearing a headset was seated before the array of equipment.
Monitoring the radio net, he thought. He’d done the same thing many years before.
There was a flurry of activity in another cordoned section and two men emerged, one with a rifle
in his hands. The other carried no weapon, and wore a thick woolen sweater over a linen shirt
and wrinkled dress pants. The eyes behind the simple steel-frame spectacles were bleary with
lack of sleep, but March could still easily identify the distrustful gaze that was aimed in his
direction. The younger man with the rifle watched March carefully as his superior pulled al-Adel
aside and began speaking rapid French in forceful tones.
March was fluent in the language, a fact that he had never revealed in al-Adel’s presence. He
clearly understood that the older man was angry with Saif for bringing him into the mountains.
Abruptly, the man turned to speak to March in cultured English. “Do you know who I am?”
“Of course.”
“Why have you come here?”
“To speak with the Emir.” March tilted his head a fraction to the left and appraised the man
who stood before him: Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Director’s private physician and closest
confidante. March knew it was widely suspected in Western intelligence circles that this man had
died several years earlier in an air raid over southwestern Afghanistan. “I thought Saif would
have explained this to you. I do not think it is too much to ask, considering what I have
contributed to your organization.”
“What you have contributed,” the physician repeated, an edge to his voice. A short, barking
laugh as he turned to al-Adel in amusement, and then back to the American. “What have you
done that is so special? I was fighting the jihad from an Egyptian jail when your mother was
dressing you for school. The death of a politician, the destruction of an empty building… These
are your grand accomplishments? That is all you have to offer?”
“It is more than your entire organization has achieved in four years,” March pointed out. He
watched the arrogant smirk fade, slowly replaced by a strangely indifferent expression.
The older man turned to the junior soldier with the rifle and issued a command in French.
Before the last word left his mouth, March had taken three lightning-fast steps forward to deliver
a vicious blow to the young man’s throat. The soldier’s iron grip on the rifle slipped as his hands
shot to his neck, groping at his crushed windpipe, his eyes bulging wide. March pulled the
weapon out of the air, ejected the magazine, and snapped the round out of the chamber before
