The Phoenix Affair by Dave Moyer (e book reader pc TXT) 📖

all the numbers in memory, and bought a new one. Cash. Prepaid. No account. Khalid was a little worried.

Then, there was the message on the website at around four o’clock today, with a photo of the General and his family in Amman, Jordan, saying they’d arrived the evening before. There was no more information, and since then the original source of this tidbit had disappeared somewhere in Amman, along with a fair number of other operatives who were normally reliable, although low level. So the disease spread with this General, and this General was getting around too fast. Khalid once again saw that awful picture of the square, the grate, and the sword as it swam through his conscious thought and had to be suppressed.

Dismal as it was, the picture galvanized him into motion. He rose and slipped into his sandals, pocketed his wallet and left, heading for the lobby. The hotel was not one of the big Western chains, so it didn’t have a big internet cafe, but it had a small closet of a room with a sign out front labeled “business center” in Arabic and English, and inside was one desktop computer tied to the internet. There was nobody there, so he held up a hand to the clerk at the desk and stepped inside. It took just a few moments to link to the site he wanted, to link from there to another, and to find the third. Then a couple of clicks and he found the message board that would tell him the latest news in a code he knew by heart.

The Amman story was not improving, it was getting worse, but the new bit was that someone thought the French had done that, not the Americans, and that made things worse still. It was one thing to fight the Americans, who despite their corruption were devilishly clever and completely relentless. It was a similarly difficult thing to fight the British, who were even more clever and quicker to act. But the French? Khalid had only once been to France, but he knew a few things about the French. They had no notion of “rules” like the Brits or the Americans for one thing. Everyone in the Brotherhood knew the stories from Lebanon in the 80’s, when someone got a little carried away and kidnapped a prominent French citizen when they were kidnapping just about everyone else. It was a costly mistake. Seven well known and pretty high-ranking members of the Hezbollah group were found hanging from street lights along a major public highway. All of them were missing their hearts and their penises—and nobody ever found the missing body parts. The Americans would be patient, refuse to negotiate, apply political pressure everywhere, but they were relatively slow to act and not really ruthless. The Brits were a notch up. But the French? You did not screw with the French unless you were willing to play very, very hard. Having them in the game and playing hard gave Khalid a headache.

Nothing else from Europe, though, so he hoped that might mean the worst was over. He found his messages and read them. One was interesting—there was a phone message waiting for him somewhere. He looked at the number, very wary. He didn’t want to call any cellular phones at this point, at least none he’d ever called before. But this number was a landline in Dhahran, he could tell by the area code, “03”. He rocked back in his chair and thought a moment. Deciding, he dialed from his new cellular and waited.

Five rings, and an answering machine picked up. He recognized the voice, thought quickly, remembered the code, entered it on his keypad. A series of beeps and then a voice in Arabic: “An Air Force Brigadier just crossed into the Kingdom at al-Kaf. He travels with his family: two women, a teenager, and a small boy, four Saudi men, and three Americans. They’re moving in three GMC Suburban vehicles. The time is ten-thirty.” Khalid stabbed the “end” button on the phone and rocked back in the chair again, stunned. “The General, the damned General, may he burn in Hell. He’s back in Saudi Arabia! What day would that have been, I wonder?”

It took a little thinking, but he decided it had to have been yesterday. The General was in Amman on Thursday night, and then the network there began to go down. So this must have been—today? Not yesterday, that was Thursday. Today at ten-thirty in the morning. But where is al-Kaf? He’d never heard of it. He turned back to the computer and looked for a map, found the place easily. A border crossing in the far northwest, Jordan. So, they are traveling on the Tapline Road, but going where? Ahhh. A smile lit his broad, brown face. Finally, Allah smiled with him. “The General is going home to Al-Ha’il, to meet his family, possibly to return to Dhahran, or possibly to make trouble for me here in the Kingdom. Well, my friend, I will have a surprise for you. My people will be waiting, and I will be rid of you. Who is ahead in this game now?

His people would indeed be there. Mohammed and he spoke much earlier this morning, and he knew that they would meet his larger party tomorrow at Buraydah, they would move to al-Ha’il and be waiting. In two days the General would be gone and Khalid's plan would be secure.

That would have made a much finer ending to what had been a relatively miserable day of news for Khalid, except replaying the taped message in his head he came upon an inconvenience he’d overlooked. The tape had said “three Americans,” had it not? Who were these Americans, and what were they doing with a Saudi General out in the middle of the God-forsaken desert? Why go to al-Ha’il with him, why go that way? There were easier ways—why not fly from Amman to Jeddah or Dhahran? This was a dangerous thing. The thought of slave virgins in Khartoum sounded suddenly much better to him that it had even a day or two ago. He looked at his watch, felt his stomach grumble. Time for food. But first he found his travel website and exchanged his Monday flight to Cairo for one on Sunday at noon. The connection onward to Khartoum could not be fixed for the same day, but the connection for Monday would be all right. As long as he was out of Saudi Arabia before Mohammed took the compound on Sunday night . . .

*****

At Fort Meade, “Ingrid” received the new record from the nameless machine to it’s left, against the wall, nameless for the sole reason that it could not be seen from the control consoles where the geeks usually sat. The record went into the cue. It would have moved immediately, or one would assume so, if there was anything in the programming that was designed to detect duplicate messages, or if anyone had put a listening watch on the landline in Dhahran, or even if the analyst team had had a chance to see the original message, or if the NSA would send its raw intercepts with some level of interest on to other agencies for them to analyze. But none of these things were so, they made another invisible “seam” in the great intelligence and counter-terrorism “system” in the United States. Instead, “Ingrid” sent other calls onward to “Fluffy” and her fellows for consideration and classification, and this message waited. If anyone had known to ask, “Ingrid” would have told them that she thought it would be about nine hours before this record would get a turn with “Fluffy” or one of the others. At best, Fluffy would send it to an analyst, but not necessarily the same one as the original. If luck played a part, the same analyst would see both, and see them in a small enough span of time to remember they were identical and to think that strange. If luck did not smile this time, nobody would ever make the connection at all.

*****

“Smith,” Jones growled into his desktop phone. He hated that damned thing when it rang while he was thinking.

“Nice talking to you, too, old buddy. Whatta they feed you geeks at Langley these days?” It was Allen.

“Stuff it you snake-eater. Where the hell are you, and how’s my Phoenix holding up?” Jones returned. Allen’s voice across the sat-phone, way out there in the middle of the action, really did nothing to improve his mood.

“Blooming, blooming,” Allen replied, catching the problem immediately and determined to make the most of if. “We’ve had the scenic drive of the world today, across half the effing desert into Arabia. Crossed into Saudi at a place called “Kaf”, like in a cow with a “K” instead of a “C”, about 1030 local this morning. Right now we’re camped about ten clicks south of the Tapline road and about a hundred fifty clicks north of Al-Ha’il. Looks like we’re gonna have quite a feast, too. Huge tents, light trucks, luxury mobile latrine, great scenery . . .Hey Jones, you ever been to a real live Saudi camp with someone filthy rich? You really gotta do this sometime!”

Jones chuckled knowing Allen was just needling him, but he had to admit it was working. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. Any worries about security there?”

“Nope, I don’t think so. The General’s got some guys that met us in the village a little way north of here, they have the equipment we need and they picked a good spot. A couple of them look like they’re pretty squared away, I can see a lookout on top of a dune about three hundred yards out that I’d have picked if I was setting up the perimeter. We’re pretty well tooled up, too, if we happen to need to be. Do you have anything new for us?”

“Nothing of immediate interest really. Oh, the French were the ones that nabbed your guy on the street last night in Amman. He seems to have sung directly, the French are telling us they’ve rounded up quite a few people around town, with the help of the Jordanians of course. They’re probably not telling us everything, but as these things go they’re being pretty free. On the AQ side, just about everyone’s phone we had on our list has gone dead quiet, so they know someone’s up to something. I’m not certain anyone’s tied our General and Colonel to the problems they’ve had in three major world capitals this week yet, but it won’t be long before they do. The guy the French took in Amman had a picture of the General on his phone, and he’d sent it onward, so sooner or later someone in AQ is gonna put it together. No photos of the Colonel, though, so that’s good for him.”

“Right. I like that guy. Kinda an amateur, but pretty squared away, you know? Hey, he just woke up, you wanna talk to him?”

“No, no need, just give him my regards. I also got an overhead of the General’s compound, or at least the area. I won’t know for sure if I’ve pegged the right place until I see your blue force tracker and can match it to these coordinates. Unless you or the general knows the coordinates off the top of your heads?”

“I asked him, but he didn’t know, so that’ll have to wait until we get there. You watching for anything special, Jones? I didn’t think we thought there was gonna be any trouble?”

“Nothing special, I just like to know what and where things are happening. No hunches either, not really, just situational awareness. It’s a big place if I’ve picked the right one, there’s several big ones there but this one’s the biggest. Gotta be half a mile deep inside the perimeter fence, eight or ten big houses along a central lane with