“Shit. Hold on.”
He heard something that sounded like Dumond banging on his extremely expensive electronic equipment and was rewarded with an overhead map in his peripheral vision. It displayed speed and direction for both him and his target, as well as their relative positions.
“Five by five.”
“Told you it would work.”
Unfortunately it was one of a thousand things that had to. Tracking Aali Nassar to Mecca had been easy, but after that things had gotten complicated. Sayid Halabi might be a psychopath, but he was a thorough one. He’d run Nassar through tunnels and markets, transported him on foot, on trains, and in cars. There had been more than a few moments of panic—most notably when the Agency had been temporarily fooled by a double in Sakaka—but they’d always managed to reacquire him.
The cost, though, was unprecedented. Satellites had been retasked, allies’ arms had been twisted, and resources had been diverted from a very pissed-off military. Rapp had even been forced to bribe a Taliban group that would undoubtedly use the money for guns they’d eventually shoot at him with.
In light of that, coming up empty wasn’t an option. Nassar had been allowed to drain off an enormous amount of data and money from the Saudis, and letting him walk with it was a huge risk.
“Your speed looks good, Mitch. You’re paralleling them at about five hundred yards.”
“Copy. What’s that ahead, Marcus? Before the village. The infrared’s picking up something I can’t ID.”
“It’s a newly constructed bridge. Went up over the last few days.”
Rapp maneuvered the bike around a deep sand drift and then throttled across what looked like an ancient lake bed. The light amplification wasn’t ideal for picking up ruts in the dried mud, and he was forced to keep his speed below twenty miles an hour.
“It looks perpendicular to the road Nassar’s vehicle is on. Are they going to cross it or go under it?”
“The road leading to the village passes under it. Actually, there is no road that connects to the bridge. It’s just there. Our guys think the builders put it in first and that they haven’t started grading in the road yet.”
“Where would it go?” Rapp said, starting to get suspicious.
“They don’t know. Not much out there. Kind of weird, actually.”
He cut left and goosed the bike up to twenty-five, hearing only the dull chatter of the tires as they hammered against the cracked earth.
“You’re drifting off course, Mitch. Look at your overhead display.”
“Are they still headed for that bridge?” Rapp said, ignoring Dumond’s warning.
“Yeah. Probably a minute out. And you’re going to intersect the road in about thirty seconds if you don’t correct.”
“Will I come out far enough behind them to stay out of sight?”
“With no lights? Yeah. Easy.”
Rapp lifted the front wheel as he dropped three feet onto the poorly maintained dirt track.
“Where are they now?”
“Ten seconds from the bridge.”
“Have they slowed down?”
“I have their speed at twenty-two miles an hour.”
About the maximum the rutted road surface would handle, Rapp calculated.
“They’re through and out the other side,” Dumond said.
“Any chance someone got out?”
“No way in hell. The bridge is only about fifteen feet wide and they held their speed. Still heading for the village. Maybe five minutes out.”
“Copy.”
The road cut started to deepen, causing steep banks to grow up on either side of him. He didn’t want to get funneled into the low ground like this, but there was something about that bridge that didn’t feel right. Over the last three days Halabi had proved to be even more cunning than they’d given him credit for—nearly defeating the surveillance capabilities of the entire Western world with nothing more high-tech than a pickup truck. Was this another one of his tricks?
Rapp ditched the bike and continued on foot. The bridge was visible ahead, a hazy horizontal line against the glow of stars. He pulled his Glock from his jacket and screwed on the silencer as he continued. The darkness beneath the bridge was deep enough to significantly reduce the effectiveness of his goggles, forcing him to slow and drop to a crawl.
“Are you all right, Mitch? Why did you leave Scott’s bike?”
He didn’t respond, instead inching through the blackness beneath the structure. He could make out vague outlines but none took on a human form. What he could see, though, were a number of mattresses laid out on the ground with a vertical cargo net set up at one end. Rapp slid over them, finding a hole in the rock face on the other side. It measured probably three feet wide by five feet high and was filled with darkness that completely defeated his equipment.
“I think Nassar might have bailed out when they passed under the bridge,” he said into his throat mike. “There’s a cave entrance under here.”
“Shit,” Dumond said. “And I’ve got more bad news. Nassar’s car blew through the village and it’s headed for the mountains. Do you want me to pull the guys back to your position?”
Joe Maslick had a team in the foothills, but the risks of this operation were starting to push the limits of what was acceptable. The hope was that Nassar would lead them to Halabi and maybe a few of the former Iraqi generals he was using to brutalize the region. But even with a reward like that on offer, their primary concern was to make sure Nassar never saw another sunrise. If that meant passing up a chance at Halabi, so be it.
“That’s a negative,” Rapp said finally. “It’s time to pull the plug. Tell Mas to take out that vehicle and check if Nassar’s in it. In the meantime, I’m going to go into this hole and see what I turn up.”
CHAPTER 58
AALI Nassar crouched, feeling the already agonizing pain in his back flare to the edge of what he could bear. He guessed that he had at least three broken ribs and, based on the bone straining against the skin above his right shoulder, a separated collarbone.
The fact that the SUV he’d been transported in was missing its rear doors and seat belts hadn’t registered as unusual. ISIS scavenged what they could from the locals, the Americans, and their victims. Comfort was hardly the concern of men whose goal was to be martyred while visiting misery and death upon everyone around them.
It wasn’t until he was unceremoniously shoved through that gaping doorway that he realized the vehicle had been specifically chosen for its condition. Despite a pile of fetid mattresses, he’d landed hard, rolling at almost forty kilometers an hour before becoming hung up in a cargo net.