Secret Soldier (7 page)

If indeed, they were in Tihrin as a result of a series of misfortunes, he would donate money to their cause and send them on their way. Fast. He had no time to waste.

But first, he had to determine which way to deal with them. He glanced at the handful of computer printouts Ahmad brought over. His cousin was good at anything that had to do with computers, especially when it came to the bottomless resources of the Internet.

Dr. Abigail DiMatteo. El Jafar looked at the grainy picture from her home page on the university’s Web site. Her background with the Peace Corps and everything else she’d said about herself checked out.

He shuffled the papers and spread out the sheets that confirmed Gerald Thornton’s claims—reviews of documentaries that mentioned his name. No picture of him. El Jafar tossed the printouts aside and stood. The information Ahmad had found should have set him at ease. It didn’t.

Neither of the guests had acted suspiciously. He could swear every word the woman had spoken was the truth. The man, Thornton, was harder to read, but seemingly open and relaxed. And yet, their presence in the house prickled his instincts.

He sat and reached for the pipe again. If the foreigners were up to something, he would know it soon. He had made sure they were most closely watched.

SPIKE LAY ON top of the covers, his eyes fixed on the bathroom door. It shouldn’t take her too long to clean up. They’d both taken showers earlier, as soon as they’d been shown to their room. He wore nothing but his black boxer shorts, wanting to make her as uncomfortable as possible so she would turn in to sleep right away. He needed the night to search the house and place his bugs.

And yet, when the door opened and she came out, he wasn’t prepared for it. Nightgowns like that should come with a warning label from the American Heart Association. The bathroom light behind her outlined her figure through the sheer material, hiding little. Then she reached back and flipped the switch off.

Damn. “You’re too thin,” he said gruffly and tried to focus on that, rather than on the number of other highly inappropriate ideas that swarmed in his head.

“We’re in the middle of a famine.” She walked to the light switch by the door and turned that off, too. It didn’t make much of a difference; enough moonlight came through the windows to illuminate the room.

“Are you eating enough?” It seemed safer to focus on that topic than on the fact that she would be in bed with him, in the matter of seconds. Technically, it was their honeymoon.

“Stop acting like my mother.” She climbed under the covers and settled in as far away from him as the spacious bed allowed.

“Sorry. Good night, Abigail.”

“Good night, Gerald.”

“My friends call me Spike.”

She turned toward him. “I’ve been wondering. Where did that come from?”

He was reluctant to tell her anything personal-the less she knew, the better. But since he’d been stupid enough to tell her to call him Spike, he had to give some kind of explanation. “I was in an accident a long time ago. Got my skull busted so they had to put these screws in. They stuck out on top like a Mohawk.” He’d gotten frisky with a bomb during his SDDU training on a dare. It had nearly gotten him kicked out of the group.

“Good night, Spike,” she said and closed her eyes.

She was not dazzling in the traditional sense of the word, but had this inner peace, a certain strength, that reflected in her face and made her hard to ignore. Her arm, slimmer than it should have been, lay gracefully on the top of the covers. He would bet anything that she’d been giving up half her meals to the kids since she’d been in Beharrain.

She faked sleep for the longest time, but then her breathing finally evened. He waited another twenty minutes to make sure she was fully, deeply asleep before he slipped from the bed, pulled on his clothes and then sneaked out the door without making a sound.

He hesitated for a moment. He didn’t like leaving her unprotected. Didn’t like leaving her, period. But the sooner he accomplished his mission, the sooner he could get her out of there and away from any possible danger. He crept forward.

he hallway was empty. No security cameras. He had picked up on that earlier. The perimeter and the entrance had cameras and a massive security system, but once in the house, he hadn’t seen any. He heard voices in the distance-men talking, too far to make out the words. They didn’t seem to be coming closer. He took a minute to search for hidden cameras and found a dozen likely spots among the ornately carved wall decorations, but nothing on closer observation. He moved on.

He would search the main house tonight, then the outbuildings tomorrow night Jamal had invited them to stay as long as they liked. Outside would be trickier. He would have to avoid the guards, the security cameras and the dogs.

He walked down the hallway to the end where it came to a tee. They had gone to the left for dinner earlier. He looked right and was pretty sure that way led to the bedrooms, so he went left, hoping to find Jamal’s office.

He heard footsteps ahead. Somebody was coming his way. He backed into the dining room and waited until whoever was out in the hallway had passed. Then he opened the door a crack and watched the servant’s back until he disappeared from sight. Maybe he should follow the man. He considered that for a moment but decided against it. He wanted to get a better sense of the house’s layout first. Right now, he could easily become trapped.

He crept to the next door down the hall and listened for a while before testing the doorknob. It opened silently into a small storage room of some sort. He moved on.

Another half hour passed before he found what he was looking for-a locked door. Bingo. He took off his watch and extracted the slim metal pick from the back. The lock gave in seconds. He stepped in and closed the door behind him, listening in the dark, windowless room. Not a sound in there other than his own breathing.

All was quiet in the hall, too. He flipped on the light just long enough to get the lay of the room, then turned it off again. With care, he made his way over to one of the two desks in the large state-of-the-art-equipped room and turned on the computer. Password-protected.

He’d expected as much. It would delay him, but could not stop him. He would call the Colonel as soon as they were out in the city tomorrow. He had every confidence the man could get the proper software to him within twenty-four hours. Tonight’s job was more of a reconnaissance mission.

He left the screen on and used its light to riffle through the papers on the desk. Bills, invoices, business correspondence. Nothing suspicious. He picked the lock on the drawers, but didn’t come up with anything usable there, either. Maybe the other desk. He walked over and turned the laptop on, more for the light its screen would provide than because he thought he would be able to access it. He merely nodded when the password protection window came on.

He went through the drawers and the small filing cabinet. More business documents, maps, a handgun—9 mm Smith & Wesson—shoved far in the back. Loaded. He hesitated for a moment, wanting to take it, hating that he’d been without his SIG since he had entered the country—part of his cover. But if he took the gun, chances were it would be missed. He couldn’t risk discovery. For now it would have to be enough that he knew where it was.

He searched through the bookcases, looking for hidden compartments, and came up empty. He made sure he locked every drawer and cabinet the way he had found it, then turned off the screens. When he heard no sound out in the hallway, he opened the door inch by inch. All clear. He stepped outside and locked the door behind him.

He glanced at his watch. Just after midnight. Plenty of time to look around some more. He had seen the outside entry to the cellar when they got out of the car Jamal had sent for them. He hoped there was a way to get down there from the inside, as well. He moved forward as silently as a shadow, determined to find it.

He stumbled onto it an hour later in the kitchen. The jars of honey on the top of the trapdoor indicated that it wasn’t used regularly. He moved everything aside, neatly tucked next to the wall, so it wouldn’t be immediately obvious that they were out of place if somebody happened to walk into the kitchen for a midnight snack.

He swiped a box of matches from one of the tables, lifted the wood panel and then descended into the darkness one careful step after the other. Once he closed the door behind him, he lit a match.

Crates of guns, ammunition and hand grenades towered to the ceiling. The CIA had been right. El Jafar did keep in touch with his family. More than in touch. From the looks of it, they were helping him. It would be only a matter of time before the bugs would pick up something. Hopefully sooner than later. He would stick a few bugs in the cellar, then call it quits for the night-do the rest tomorrow. He wanted to be back in the room before Abigail woke up and came looking for him.

The match burned to the tip of his fingers; he pinched the flame out and lit another. He put a bug inside one of the crates and another under a low table by the wall. A muffled noise came from above. He put out the match. Somebody was in the kitchen.

Voices sounded from outside, too. He stepped behind a stack of crates just in time before the cellar door opened and light flooded the room.

“You’ve been a busy man, Mr. Thornton.” Jamal’s voice rang out.

Spike kept his cover and moved toward the open crate of rifles in the back, hoping he would have the time to load one.

“Maybe if you told me what you were looking for, I could help you find it?” Jamal continued. “Come on out now. No sense of hiding. You’ve tripped every silent alarm in your wake. I was just waiting until you got somewhere I could trap you without waking the whole house.”

Jamal was definitely in with his brother. Deeper than they had thought. He was a successful, American-educated businessman, the most progressive person in his family, pro-reform. As the oldest son and the family’s patriarch since their father’s death, he had been questioned about his brother’s whereabouts, had claimed Suhaib had been kicked out of the family by their father years ago and had been out of contact since then.

The CIA had been skeptical about that. In this part of the world, family ties were everything. But although they had suspected tacit support, they didn’t think Jamal was in on the action. Their investigation had failed to turn that up. His involvement sure as hell raised the stakes. And put Abigail in danger.

Spike grabbed a rifle without making a sound, and looked through a small gap in between crates. Jamal had about a dozen men with him, all armed to the teeth. He hoped none of them was stupid enough to start shooting in there.

But, of course,
despite
Jamal’s hand in the air holding them back, one of them did. And once the first shot rang out, there was no stopping the rest. He loaded the rifle and lunged for the trapdoor to the kitchen. Blocked. Whoever was up there wasn’t letting him out.

Then the crates exploded, and the house shook—the ceiling, the walls, even the dirt floor beneath him. The splitting pain in his head was the last thing he felt.

Chapter Five

She was in her hut, trapped by flames, screaming for Spike. And then the walls exploded.
Abigail sat up in the bed, disoriented. A bad dream—no. She looked at the phone that had been knocked onto the floor, her ears ringing. The explosion had been real.

She was alone in bed.

“Spike?”

The bathroom door stood open. He wasn’t in there.

She threw the
abayah
over her nightgown, the veil on her head, and rushed to the door, pulled it open. The two armed guards outside outyelled each other, their guns immediately trained on her.

“What happened?” she asked in her best Arabic.

They ignored her question. One of them used the long barrel of his gun to shove her back. Another man rushed down the hall, his clothes covered in plaster, his face bleeding. Jamal. He was yelling instructions she didn’t understand.

“Are you all right? What’s going on?”

He didn’t even look at her as he hurried by.

The two men pushed her into the room and came in after her. One of them swung his rifle onto his back, while the other kept his pointed straight at her head. She got the idea. If she resisted, she was toast.

Her arms and legs were tied before she knew what was going on, her questions halted when the man knocked her down, knelt on her chest and gagged her. They rolled her up unceremoniously in the Persian carpet she’d admired earlier; then she was being lifted. A punch into her stomach knocked the air out of her. No, it wasn’t a punch. One of them had thrown her over his shoulder, she realized as they began moving. She was rolled up tight, the dirty cloth stuffed into her mouth, gagging her. With each breath she sucked in the dusty smelling air from the carpet.

She refused to let panic engulf her. She had to figure out what was going on, she had to come up with a plan. She was being kidnapped for some reason. By an old friend from college. Not that good a friend, obviously.

She could almost hear her mother’s voice in her head.
Be sensible, Abigail. You can’t possibly mean to go over there. You’ll be kidnapped and sold into white slavery or into some harem as a sex slave. These things happen, you know.

She doubted very much that Jamal Hareb was dealing in sex slaves. But then what an earth did he plan to do with her? Her instincts said she wasn’t headed for a plush little harem.

She heard voices as more men joined the ones who were taking her God knew where. Dogs barked. They were outside. She heard a motor start and another; she could smell the exhaust. Then she was dropped, smashing her shoulder against something hard. The ground vibrated under her. No, not the ground. She was in the back of a truck. And not alone. A couple of men were talking above her, bracing her with their feet so she wouldn’t roll as the vehicle began to move.

She tried to ignore the pain and concentrate on what they were saying. Not much, probably aware that she could hear and understand them. Two of them had been injured in the explosion, the talk focused on that.

The explosion, Spike missing and her being kidnapped-they were all connected somehow. The truck stopped, but only for a minute before taking off again. Probably a traffic light. Where were they going? And what would they do to her when they got there?

Maybe her mother had been right. She should have stayed home and married Anthony. She would have been unhappy, but at least alive. Life was full of tradeoffs.

She lost track of time, rattling in the back of the truck as it picked up speed. They must have left the city behind finally. Her limbs had gone numb from lack of movement, her shoulder pulsed with pain. The longer she lay there, the grimmer her thoughts turned. Maybe they were taking her out into the desert to shoot and bury her.

She had to find a way to get away from them. Knowing what was going on would have helped.

Spike had sneaked out of their room in the middle of the night. If he’d been taken by force, she would have woken up. He was a big man; she couldn’t imagine him being taken without a heck of a struggle. No, he had left on his own. But why?

Had he caused the explosion?

It made no sense. Jamal had offered them his hospitality. Spike had seemed eager to accept it, pleased to be allowed inside such a prominent family’s home. The more he learned about the country; the better his documentary would be. If he was a cameraman… The doubts she’d had about him after the attack of the bandits now returned with a rush.

Only two possibilities existed—either he’d caused the explosion or he hadn’t. If he hadn’t, then who had? Presumably no one in Jamal’s family would want to blow up his own house. A business rival? But then why was she rolled up in a carpet?

And if Spike had caused the explosion? This theory made more sense than the first. If he had blown up something, Jamal might have thought she was in on it. But the question remained: Why would Spike do this? If he wasn’t Gerald Thornton, the Barnsley Foundation’s cameraman, then who was he?

She had forgotten her doubts about him in the scare of the firebomb and all that had followed. What if the firebomb hadn’t been from one of the villagers who resented her being there? What if it hadn’t been from Abdul’s son? What if it had been meant for Spike? But from whom?

She supposed a secret agent would have some enemies. And she was becoming more and more convinced that was what he was. Some kind of a government operative. Her first instinct had been right. And it really, really ticked her off that he would use her as a pawn in some insane plot, risking her life and undermining her work. If he hadn’t died in the explosion, he was going to wish he had once she was through with him.

After an eternity, the truck stopped, and she was lifted up by two men, one on each end. They carried her somewhere. She could hear doors open and close. Then she was put down, with care this time instead of being dropped, and she was grateful for the small mercy for a second before someone gave her a good kick to unroll her from the carpet.

The light bulb hanging from a wire above blinded her. A door banged shut. She squeezed her eyelids together then opened them again after a little while. She was alone in a small prison cell-like room, still bound and gagged. And she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to leave there alive.

She lifted her hands and removed the cloth jammed into her mouth. Marginally better. But she didn’t have time to enjoy the relatively small comfort before a man dressed in a camouflage uniform came for her and loosened the ropes around her ankles enough so she could walk, then dragged her from the room.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked in Arabic.

He spit in her face. The tobacco-smelling slime ran down her skin, into the neck of the
abayah.
The man held her by one arm so she couldn’t even lift her hand to her cheek. She tried to wipe her face on her shoulder instead, grateful when she partially succeeded.

They went down a narrow hallway and turned left. Then he shoved her into a larger sparsely furnished room. A young man resembling Jamal, dressed in a camouflage uniform, sat on a couple of sandbags. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. A chair stood in the corner, a table next to it with a funky radio. The smell of garlic hung in the air. The guard who had brought her in took her to the chair and shoved her down hard.

“I don’t understand-”

“How long have you known Gerald Thomton?” the young man, obviously in charge, questioned her. “A couple of days.”

She bit back a moan as ropes cut into her flesh. She was being tied to the chair.

“But he’s your husband now. Why the sudden marriage? It is hardly your custom.”

This was no time to lie. She told him about the mullah, and how they had gotten married so they could stay and work in Tukatar.

“So you make fun of our customs and religion by this mock marriage.” The muscles in his cheeks tightened.

“Not at all.” She fought the desperation that came from knowing whatever she would say he would turn against her. “We were trying to obey your laws.”

“What do you know about him?”

Not a lot. She focused on the table and the radio in front of her. And realized it wasn’t a radio. She swallowed.

“He works for the Barnsley Foundation. He’s a cameraman. He doesn’t have a family. He’s a good driver. Speaks excellent Arabic.” Until now, she hadn’t realized how every time they had talked, Spike had always managed to turn the conversation to her. It hadn’t seemed strange or suspicious at the time. He was there, after all, to make a documentary about her work.

“Anything else?”

She shook her head.

The man nodded to the guard. He picked up the electrodes from the table, lifted them to her forehead. She thrashed wildly, jerking her head from side to side, until the young man got up and came over to hold her down. His hands on either side of her face, he forced her to stay still until the electrodes were stuck to her forehead. He stepped away.

She hadn’t known before such panic existed. She was awash in it, petrified. Had she had any information, she would have given it to them. “Please, no. I don’t know anything. I’m here to help the children—”

The first jolt of electricity shot through her and she convulsed hard, biting her tongue, tasting blood.

Then the pain stopped as suddenly as it began. Her panic did not. But she was still alive. She tried to focus on that as she gasped for air, frantic to come up with something that would stop the torture.

“What do you know about Gerald Thornton?” The young man now stood in front of her, his face hard-set. There’d be no mercy coming from him.

Tears sprung to her eyes. “Nothing—”

He nodded to the guard and the pain began again.

SPIKE CAME AROUND, his ears ringing, every bone in his body feeling broken. His arms and legs were tied together. Damn. He opened his eyes slowly. He was in a small cell. Not alone. But the guard with him left as soon as he saw his, eyes open. The key turned in the lock.

He prepared himself for the coming pain, knowing he didn’t have long. He was right. No more than five minutes passed before the door opened and Jamal’s youngest brother came in with three of his men. Suhaib Hareb. El Jafar. He looked thinner and grimmer than the picture in his CIA file.

“Where is Abigail?”

“It’s amazing how little your wife knows about you, Mr. Thornton,” he said in Arabic.

“What have you done to her?”

“She insisted she didn’t know why you were here.” He paused. “My brother seems to think she might be telling the truth. I’m inclined to agree.”

Then they no longer needed her-in which case, she was probably already dead. The thought hit him harder than he would have expected, a tightness in his gut that squeezed till he hurt. Damn.

This was exactly what was wrong with bringing civilians into an operation. They had all known something like this could happen—the CIA, the Colonel, him. And they had gone ahead with the plan anyhow. Bitter regret rose in his chest. He was more than comfortable fighting any enemy, but civilian casualties got to him. And Abigail—he closed his eyes for a moment. He should have never dragged her into this.

Suhaib came closer. “You tell me what I want to know, and I’ll let her go.”

He had expected a bargain like that. It didn’t mean she was still alive. “I want to see her first.” He stalled for time.

“You’re hardly in position to make demands. I don’t think you fully appreciate your predicament.”

“The police are probably investigating the explosion already. They’ll look for us. They know at the Hilton where we went.”

Suhaib shrugged. “They’ll be told the servants’ kids found a land mine in the fields and brought it home. Boys are always curious about things like that. Very unfortunate, but it’s happened before. The police will be told that the Americans got spooked and decided to leave.”

“You’re not going to get away with this as easily.”

Suhaib looked at him for a long moment. “Maybe not forever, but long enough,” he said, then turned and left, his hands folded behind his back.

His men remained.

Spike strained against his binds. They had tied him tight. It would take time to loosen the ropes, if he could do it at all. And he had no time, or rather, just enough to curl up to protect his head before the first boot connected with an already broken rib.

Son of a bitch. That hurt. He jackknifed his body, kicking the feet out from under one of the men. The guy hit his head against the stone wall in a tremendous stroke of luck and went limp on the floor. The other two pummeled Spike with double savagery.

He ignored the pain, twisted and grabbed for the boot that was coming toward him, twisted again and pulled the man down. Within seconds, his attacker’s head was between Gerald’s knees as he tried to crush the man’s windpipe.

But then the butt of the third man’s rifle came down on his temple and that was the end of that.

THEY WERE DRAGGING her somewhere again. Didn’t matter. It would be over soon. She couldn’t take much more, and they knew it. Abigail squinted against the bright sun as an outside door opened in front of her.

She couldn’t walk so they dragged her along by her arms, her feet dangling in the hot sand. She couldn’t remember when she had lost the beautiful hand-embroidered slippers one of Jamal’s sisters had given her. The opulent mansion and the kindness of the women seemed as if they had been in another lifetime.