The Sign (35 page)

They reached Yusuf’s brother-in-law’s taxi, a tired white VW Sharan people carrier. It was waiting for them in the shade by a small, multi-domed structure, Pope Shenouda’s occasional retreat.

“Are you sure it’s safe out there?” Gracie asked the abbot.

“It’s relatively quiet here,” Antonius informed her. “They’re not interested in us. So far.” He smiled uncomfortably. “Come, I’ll show you.”

They left the driver and the monks to pile the gear into the car and followed the abbot across the courtyard and up a maze of narrow outdoor stairs that snaked up to the top of the wall.

“Have a look,” the abbot told them, “but stay low—just in case.”

Gracie and Dalton rose slowly from their crouched positions. The familiar carpet of cars and trucks covered the plain between the two monasteries, but with one crucial difference. All attention seemed focused away from them, toward the monastery they’d just left. Which meant they had a reasonable chance of sneaking out unnoticed.

They climbed back down, thanked the abbot, and got into the car. This time, Dalton and Gracie sat on either side of Father Jerome, while Brother Ameen rode shotgun. Gracie felt a bubble of apprehension as she watched the gate creak open. She steeled herself and straightened up in her seat as the driver gave the throttle a gentle nudge and the Sharan rumbled out into the desert.

There were a few scattered cars and trucks parked on either side of the dusty trail that led away from the monastery. A few men loitered by each cluster of vehicles, talking, smoking, waiting. As their car got closer to the first group, Gracie turned to Father Jerome and raised his cassock’s hood over his head, shielding him from view. Yusuf’s brother-in-law kept calm, trying not to draw any attention to them as the Sharan cruised past slowly without eliciting more than a casual glance.

Gracie let out a small breath of relief. There weren’t many cars or trucks up ahead. A few more minutes, she guessed, and they’d be free and clear. They were less than a hundred yards out from the monastery’s gate when the road doglegged to the left by an old crumbling wall and a clutch of palm trees. A few more cars were parked there, with another bunch of men clustered against the wall, seemingly oblivious to the sun. Gracie felt a flutter in her gut as the driver slowed down to thread through the haphazardly strewn cars, which he managed without fuss—only to find a narrow ditch cutting across them. A lone man was walking toward them, alongside the trail, heading for the trees. Gracie spotted him and tensed up. She tried not to look over at him as the driver slowed right down to a crawl. They were halfway across the ditch when—just as Gracie feared—the passing man drew alongside them, and just as he glanced in, Father Jerome turned and looked sideways, casually, in his direction. It was enough.

The man reacted as if he’d been slapped. His relaxed features took on a sudden alarmed scowl as he put both hands against the car’s side window and leaned right in against the glass, trying to see in, side-stepping alongside them.

“He’s made us,” Gracie exclaimed. “Get us out of here—now.”

The driver glanced back, saw the man moving with them, and nudged the gas pedal. The Sharan’s engine whined as the rear tires bounced across the ditch and kept going. The man tried to keep up, but couldn’t, and quickly fell back into the car’s dusty trail. Gracie watched him drift away, but she knew they weren’t out of danger yet. Sure enough, she saw the man turn away and start running toward the cluster of men by the trees, waving his hands feverishly, trying to attract their attention. And then, he disappeared. She wasn’t sure what had happened, as her view was partially obstructed by the gear in the back of the car and the dust the car was kicking up behind it, but one moment he was there, running and waving and shouting, and then he was gone. She thought she saw him clasp his hands to his head and fall to the ground, almost as if a sudden spasm had crippled him, but she wasn’t sure. They weren’t about to stop and find out. The driver kept his foot pressed against the pedal, and fifteen minutes later, they were on the highway with a seemingly clear run to the airport.

And then Gracie’s satphone rang.

She’d been steeling herself to make that call to Ogilvy, to tell him about Finch, and thought he’d beat her to it. But as she reached for the phone, she didn’t recognize the number it was showing. She only recognized the prefix as that of an American cell phone.

“Hello?” she queried curiously.

“Miss Logan?” the voice boomed back. “We haven’t met yet, but my name is Darby. Reverend Nelson Darby. And I think I can help you.”

FOX
TWO
WATCHED
the white people carrier streak away down the desert trail, then turned his binoculars back to the stricken man. He was still on the ground, writhing with pain, his hands pressed against his ears. Fox Two relaxed somewhat.

It had been a close call—but they’d been prepared.

He knew the agitator would be down for a while. They’d hit him with a potent blast, just to make sure. Fox Two was surprised the man hadn’t lost consciousness, though he knew he still might. Main thing was, he wasn’t going anywhere or saying anything. Not for a while, anyway. Which was all the time they needed.

He raised a finger and spun it around, giving his men the signal to move out. Swiftly and silently, they powered down the
LRAD
and covered it up before pulling away and heading out as innocuously as they’d arrived, shadowing the van from a safe distance and looking forward to finally going home.

Bedford, Massachusetts

The man kept the gun pressed against Matt’s temple. “Easy.” His voice was flat, his arm stable. With his left hand, he reached down to Matt’s lap and pulled out his gun, which he stuffed under his belt. Matt cursed inwardly. He’d been so focused on watching the plane and Maddox that he hadn’t noticed the man sneaking up on them from the back. Another guy—same general appearance, dark suit, white shirt, no tie, granite-dark shades—appeared a few yards ahead, rounding the other side of the outbuilding, moving toward Jabba’s side of the car. He also had a gun out, and it was also leveled at Matt’s head. A big gun. A Para-Ordnance P14. It looked heavy. It looked like it could stop a charging rhino in its tracks. Which it could.

Matt’s mind rocketed into a manic good news/bad news sift-through. Maddox’s drones couldn’t really kill them there and then; the airport authorities had to have a record of their being there, there had to be some
CCTV
cameras scattered around that would have recorded their presence. It was altogether too messy for them, too risky, had to be. Which definitely went under the good news column. But they had plenty of other options. The key was getting him and Jabba off the airport grounds, quietly. They’d either lead them to their cars, or—the cleaner, more obvious option—one of the drones, or both of them more likely, would get into the Camry and lead him and Jabba, at gunpoint, to somewhere nice and quiet where they could pump a few bullets into them and leave their decomposing bodies for some hapless camper to discover. Which definitely went under the bad news column. Matt knew that if he let one or both of the drones into the car, he probably wouldn’t be running these good news/bad news exercises ever again. Which in itself wasn’t a bad thing, but he did feel like sticking around for other, less life-threatening, pursuits.

It was simple. He couldn’t let them into the car.

Which meant he probably had no more than a couple of seconds left to do something about it.

Matt’s hands and feet moved like lightning. His left hand shot up and grabbed the man’s right wrist—his gun hand—and slammed it forward, crushing it against the inside of the A-pillar. A shot erupted out of it—a deafeningly loud explosion inside the car, a mere eighteen inches from Matt’s face. He felt like he’d slammed face-first into a swimming pool. The shot’s sound wave hit him like a lead fist that pounded both ears and numbed them into a soundless, disconcerting stillness in the same split second that the .45
ACP
round obliterated the rearview mirror and punched through the windshield, a clean, supersonic jab that didn’t shatter it but only spiderwebbed it around the bullet’s clean, oval-shaped hole of an exit point.

Matt thought he heard Jabba yell out, but he couldn’t be sure. He felt like he was still underwater, and besides, he wasn’t focusing on him. The other guy was more his concern. So in the same instant that he shoved the first shooter’s hand forward and jammed it against the windshield pillar, his right foot stamped on the gas pedal and his right hand twisted the wheel to the right. The car lunged forward and slewed right—straight at the second shooter. The guy to his left jerked backward, but Matt had his elbow locked and managed to keep the guy’s gun hand pinned against the pillar long enough for the car to cover the three yards to the second shooter and slam into him before he had the chance to loose a shot, crushing him against the low metal fence that jutted out from the side of the outbuilding. The shooter’s midsection was pulverized—his eyes popped wide and he let out a piercing yelp of agony before a gush of blood overwhelmed his vocal cords and came spewing out of his mouth and onto the Camry’s virgin-white hood.

Matt still had the first guy to deal with. For a second, the guy’s face went rigid with shock at seeing his coworker truncated, then he was all crunched up with renewed determination as he fought Matt’s grip and struggled to angle his gun inward. Another round exploded—again mere inches from Matt’s face, again deafening, dizzying, like a baseball bat to the ears—and whizzed past Jabba’s face before spinning out through his open window. Matt saw the guy reaching down with his free hand—his left hand—moving to pull the gun he’d taken off Matt from under his belt, and Matt spun the wheel to the right—once, twice, full lock, using one arm—then dropped his hand down to the gearshift, slammed it into reverse, and mashed the gas pedal again. The car leapt back, courtesy of the standard tight gearing in reverse, and with the steering locked all the way to the right, the Camry’s front swung sideways and outward violently and slammed into the first shooter. He was thrown back and, with his hand still pinned to the pillar, tripped over himself and stumbled to the ground—with the car still arcing backward. The Camry’s rear end crunched against the outbuilding’s concrete wall just as its left front wheel rode over the fallen shooter’s ankles, tearing up bone and cartilage in its wake. The man howled with pain and his fingers let go of the gun, which tumbled into Matt’s foot well. Matt threw the car back into drive and howled away in a squeal of rubber.

He threw a glance at the plane—the two bodyguards who were with Rydell’s daughter were rushing toward him, guns drawn. He floored the accelerator again and tore back up the apron, found the gate through which he’d sneaked in—it was closed—plowed right through it and tore down Hanscom Drive and into the shelter of its tree line.

“They knew we were coming,” he yelled at Jabba.

“What? How do you know that?”

“They knew. Maddox knew we were coming. They were waiting for us.”

“But . . .” Jabba’s mouth was stumbling for words, still in shock from the bullets slicing through the air right in front of him.

“Your phone—they’re reading it,” Matt stated flatly.

“No way,” Jabba objected. “I haven’t been keeping it on long enough—”

“I’m telling you they’re reading it,” Matt shot back angrily.

“There’s no way, man.” He held his iPhone up, examining it curiously. “No way they can lock onto it that fast, and I haven’t had it on long enough for them to download any spyware onto it and—”

Matt just snatched it out of his fingers, and was about to flick it out the window when Jabba grabbed it with both hands.

“No,” he yelled, “don’t.”

Matt looked at him angrily.

Jabba wrenched it out of his fingers and took it back. “My whole fucking life’s in there, man. You can’t just throw it away like that. Just give me a second.”

He looked around, checked the car’s side pockets, the ashtray, then opened the glove box and rifled through it. He found some paperwork in a plastic sleeve—service documents and a receipt—held together by the very thing he was looking for, a paper clip. He plucked it off, straightened it, and stuck one of its ends into the tiny hole on the top face of the phone. The
SIM
card tray popped out. He pulled the card out of its slot and showed it to Matt.

“No
SIM
card. No signal. For all intents and purposes, the phone’s dead. Okay?”

Matt frowned at him for a moment, then shrugged and nodded. “Okay.” He felt his pulse ratchet its way back. He’d just killed two men. Which should have felt bad, but—strangely—didn’t. It was, he told himself, a simple matter of kill or be killed. But he knew he’d have to be more careful if he didn’t want to fall on the wrong side of that equation the next time it presented itself.

Jabba sat quietly for a moment, just staring ahead, then asked, “What are we going to do now?”

“What do you think?” Matt grumbled.

Jabba studied him, then nodded stoically. “Rydell?”

“Rydell,” Matt simply confirmed.

Wadi Natrun, Egypt

“ Iunderstand you’re looking to get out of there in a hurry,” Darby said in a casual tone.

Gracie stared ahead quizzically. “I’m sorry?”

Dalton leaned out and mouthed her a question. She gave him an uncertain glance back.

“You need a ride, Miss Logan,” Darby observed somewhat smugly. “And I’m calling to offer you one.”

Her mind scrambled to make sense of the call. She recognized the name, of course. She couldn’t exactly count herself among the pastor’s fans. Far from it, truth be told. But that didn’t really matter now, nor did it tell her what she needed to know. “How did . . . ?” she stammered. “Who gave you this number?”

“Oh, I have a lot of friends, Miss Logan. Well-connected friends. I’m sure you know that. But that’s beside the point, which is that you need to get yourself and my most esteemed brother in Christ out of danger. And I can help you do that. Are you interested?”