Joshua`s Hammer (32 page)

He pulled on the cap, wrapped the scarf around his neck and slipped out the door and hurried past the tennis court to the wall.

The bricks were in much better condition on this side, so it took him three running attempts to reach the top and pull himself over. He dropped down into the sewage clogged alley, crossed the ditch and let himself back into the empty rug merchant's shop.

He had to stop for a couple of minutes to catch his breath. The slightest exertion was difficult, and scaling the wall had used almost all of his reserves.

The narrow street in front was still deserted. Nothing seemed to have changed in the half-hour he'd been inside the ambassador's compound, which he found was odd. But he couldn't dwell on it now. Stealing another car was a possibility he was going to have to consider. But if no one had discovered the Rover yet using it one last time might pose less of a risk.

His luck ran out when he left the shop and started down the narrow street.

Dozens of men suddenly materialized out of the shops and homes up and down the street. Some of them were armed with clubs, but none of them were in uniform, nor did he see any guns.

McGarvey stopped, and held his empty hands out. An older man with a long white beard, wearing a leather apron, shouted something at him in Persian. Some of the others murmured angrily. McGarvey put his hands over his ears, showing them that he was deaf.

The old man pointed to the shop that McGarvey had just come out of and shouted something else. They thought he was a thief. He shook his head and again held out his empty hands to show them that he had taken nothing. He took a step forward and the old man backed up warily. They were just ordinary people trying to protect their neighborhood in troubled times. Had they been interested in politics they would be demonstrating at the old American embassy.

More people were coming out of their homes and shops into the street behind him, ringing him in. Soon it would be impossible to move two feet let alone break free. It had to be now.

He shook his head and walked directly toward the old man. He didn't think he had much to fear from these people once he got away from here. They might report a religious crime to the Taliban, but they probably wouldn't go to the government to report a suspected thief. They would deal with it in their own way by running him off.

The old man and those around him backed up, and when it looked as if McGarvey wasn't going to stop, they parted for him.

He shook his 'head as if he was disgusted as he passed through them, and without breaking stride or looking back he headed down the street the way he had come in. Once he reached the corner and got out of the neighborhood he figured he would be okay. But the crowd was becoming agitated, the men shouting something, arguing with each other.

Ten feet from the corner rocks and bricks began to rain down around him, one of them hitting him in the shoulder. Covering his head, he bolted, and a huge cry rose up behind him.

He almost made it to safety, but as he turned down the side street a brick smashed into the side of his head, driving him to his knees and temporarily blacking out his vision. A wave of nausea rose up from his gut causing him to retch as he got unsteadily to his feet and stumbled away as fast as he could move. He was dizzy, moving mostly on instinct, and the day was suddenly very dark, his vision reduced to a narrow tunnel directly in front of him. But there were no more rocks, and at the next corner he looked back. In the distance, what seemed to him to be a mile away, the crowd had stopped just at the edge of their district as he hoped they would. The last he saw of them they were shaking their fists and clubs.

There was a huge knot on the side of his head just above his right ear. When he explored it with his fingers it was extremely tender to the touch, but there was no blood. As he walked, he wrapped the scarf around his mouth and nose, and gradually his vision began to clear.

Down several intersecting streets he could see road blocks and more people heading in the direction of the embassy, but no one noticed him heading in the opposite direction, or if they did, nobody seemed to care.

The Rover was where he had left it, parked between the battered Mercedes and the Flat van. But he approached carefully to make sure that it had not been staked out. As far as he could tell, however, there wasn't a single soul around.

He got behind the wheel, touched the starter wires together and the car's engine came immediately to life. He backed out of the parking slot, drove out the alley and headed down the street to the main boulevard that led to the airport.

To the south on Bebe-Maihro Street, toward the city center, there seemed to be roadblocks, military vehicles and soldiers everywhere, directing the thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of people heading toward the embassy. Traffic was being diverted away from the barricades, and was already backing up.

To the north, in the direction of the airport, the road was clear, but that was the direction they'd be expecting him to come. There was only one main road to the airport, and it would be heavily guarded until the American transport aircraft came in, picked up its passengers and departed. Airports were very large places, however. They sprawled across hundreds of acres of flat countryside. There might be only one road to take passengers to the terminal, but there would have to be several access roads for cargo deliveries, fuel and aircraft repair supplies, and for maintenance vehicles to have access to the ILS lights and electronic aids.

McGarvey headed straight across the broad boulevard, and found himself in another section of narrow, winding streets that sometimes opened to broad avenues lined with apartment buildings, or parks, or other districts of craftsmen-wool merchants, tin- and copper smiths and even goldsmiths. Like the other areas of the city he'd seen this morning, most of these shops were closed, some of them boarded up, others with steel mesh security shutters lowered over their windows and doors. The anti-American demonstrations had turned into a national holiday of sorts.

He worked his way generally north and east, sometimes finding himself stopped by dead-end streets and having to backtrack several blocks before he could find another way. It was like being a rat in a maze. At one point he came around a corner into the middle of another large crowd of people and official vehicles, their blue lights flashing. He jammed on his brakes. But it wasn't a roadblock as he had feared. A large building that might have been a warehouse was on fire. Flames and smoke shot several hundred feet into the sky. Firemen using antiquated equipment poured water into the building, while on the other side of the street dozens of men had formed a bucket brigade and were dousing down their own shops and houses in a frantic effort to stop the flames from spreading. No one noticed him as he backed up and hurried off in the opposite direction. The houses and shops and other buildings began to thin out about the same time the pavement ended. The streets continued in some places only as narrow dirt tracks. He came around another corner, and the track abruptly stopped at a tall chain-link fence topped with razor wire. For several long seconds he gripped the steering wheel and simply stared at the fence as he tried to catch his breath. His vision had gone blurry again, but when it began to clear he realized that he had reached the airport. Directly across from him, perhaps fifty or sixty yards away, was what looked like the main east-west runway. He could make out the white lights along the paved surface. In the distance to the right he could see the markers at the end of the runway. Straight across was a line of maintenance and storage hangers, and in the far distance to the left were the control tower and terminal.

His heart skipped a beat. Pulling away from the terminal was the distinctive, squat shape of a C-130 Hercules transport. McGarvey checked his watch. It was already past nine o'clock. It had taken him two hours to come this far, but the airplane was almost an hour early.

In minutes his last chance to get out of Afghanistan would be at the end of the runway and lined up for takeoff. He needed to find a way to get out there, or at the very least signal to them.

As the C-130 majestically started up the long taxiway, McGarvey threw the Rover in reverse, backed around and spit gravel as he raced through the labyrinth of narrow, bumpy tracks. This far from the city center the dwellings were little more than crude adobe brick hovels. But there were people around, most of them farmers tending small fields or herds of goats. Some of them looked up in astonishment at the speeding car, others didn't bother.

He got lost several times and had to backtrack so that he could keep the airport perimeter fence in sight. The C-130 was nearly to the end of the runway by the time he reached a gate. There were no guards, but the gate was secured with a heavy chain and thick businesslike padlock.

He jumped out of the Rover, drew his pistol and fired three shots into the lock. The bullets fragmented on the hardened steel and ricochetted dangerously around him, but the lock held.

The Hercules had reached the end of the taxiway and was turning onto the runway as McGarvey popped the Rover's rear lid, pulled the spare tire out of its compartment and found the tire iron. At the gate he jammed the tool into one of the links of the chain and tried to pry it open. The tire iron bent, but the chain held.

A pair of Russian jeeps, their lights flashing, were racing directly up the runway from the terminal, directly for the nose of the C-130 as the pilot gunned the four Allison turboprop engines.

McGarvey tossed the tire iron aside, jumped back into the Rover and backed up twenty yards. He slammed the transmission in drive and floored the accelerator. The heavy car shot forward, slamming into the gate, shoving it backwards nearly off its hinges.

The C-130 was lined up now and starting to roll, as McGarvey backed up again, dropped the transmission into four-wheel-drive and jammed the pedal to the floor. He hit the fence with a bone-jarring crash. The big Rover climbed up an dover the mangled gate, finally breaking free with a horrible screeching of metal. Immediately the oil pressure indicator began to drop and hot oil started to spray out from under the hood.

He shifted to drive, never taking his foot off the accelerator, bumped over the last few yards of grass up onto the runway and headed after the accelerating C-130 while flashing his headlights.

He tore the scarf and hat off and tossed them aside. The Rover's engine started to bog down as the temperature needle climbed into the red and pegged. The C-130 began to pull away from him.

"Goddamnit," he shouted.

He started to look for a way out of the airport, when incredibly the rear loading deck of the Hercules started to open and the big airplane slowed down.

A loud clattering noise started under the hood and the car lost even more power. The transport's ramp was fully down now just inches off the runway, and several crewmen were frantically waving him on.

The front tires bumped up on the ramp and he nearly lost control of the car as it swerved sharply to the right. But then he inched the rest of the way up onto the ramp. The crewmen leaped to the side as the Rover's rear wheels hit the ramp and suddenly the car accelerated like it had been shot from a cannon into the belly of the airplane.

McGarvey slammed on the brakes and the car slewed to the left, finally coming to a halt against cargo restraining straps that had just been raised.

McGarvey slammed the transmission into park, and as the rear cargo deck closed, and the big airplane gathered speed, he laid his head back, his hands still gripping the steering wheel as his heart began to decelerate.

He closed his eyes, and thinking about the Russian jeeps heading toward them, willed the airplane off its front landing gear, and then into the sky.

One of the crewmen came to the driver's side. The window had been smashed out. "Mr. McGarvey?" he shouted over the roar of the engines.

McGarvey opened his eyes and grinned with such intense relief that his mood bordered on the manic. "Actually I'm Evel Kneivel. McGarvey's a better driver than that."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Washington, D.C.

What is the purpose of your visit to the United States, Mr. Guthrie?" the Dulles International Airport passport official asked.

"Business," Ali Bahmad replied. "And maybe a day of sailing on the Chesapeake." He smiled pleasantly. "I'm told that it's quite nice this time of year."

"Fishing isn't what it used to be," the officer said, stamping the British passport. He looked up. "But you're right, it's real nice down there. Have a pleasant stay."

Bahmad pocketed his passport and, carrying the slim attache case that had been handed to him in London, sauntered down the dingy corridor and out into the customs arrivals hall, a small man without a care in the world. He wore a loose-fitting natural linen suit by Gucci, a collarless white cotton shirt, and a soft yellow ascot tied loosely around his neck. His two bags were Louis Vuitton. He was a dapper, seasoned international traveler.

"Do you have anything to declare, sir?" the uniformed customs officer asked. The man looked like a bulldog, and Bahmad had to wonder if he came from Queens or Brooklyn in a questionable neighborhood. It would be difficult, he decided, to be pleasant day after day under such circumstances.

"Nothing," Bahmad said, handing the man the declaration form he'd filled out on the 747 coming in from London.

Another customs agent came over with a drug-sniffing German shepard that circled Bahmad's two bags on the low counter, and then sniffed the attache case. The dog looked up at his handler as if to say, no.

"Would you like me to open my suitcases?" Bahmad asked. "Just dirty laundry, I'm afraid."

"That won't be necessary, sir," the officer said. He made chalk marks on all three pieces, then turned away indifferently as the other agent with his dog went off to another passenger's luggage.

Bahmad summoned a porter for his things, and heading out into the terminal, and across to the taxi stands outside, it amused him to think what he could do to the customs officer with little or no effort. When he finished it would be enough to give the man's family nightmares for the rest of their lives.