“I respectfully disagree.”
“Which one then?”
Gabriel stared at the screen. “I haven’t a clue.”
The Hotel Kasbah stood at the western edge of the great sand sea at Erg Chebbi. Dina and Eli Lavon were drinking tea in the terrace bar when the message came through from Gabriel; Yossi and Rimona were poolside. Five minutes later, having sanitized their rooms, they were all four in the hotel’s cramped lobby, asking the night manager for the name of a nearby club where they might find a bit of music and dancing. He gave them the name of an establishment in Erfoud, which was to the north. They headed south instead, Yossi and Rimona in a rented Jeep Cherokee, Dina and Eli Lavon in a Nissan Pathfinder. At Khamlia they turned off the main road, into the desert, and waited for the sky to burn.
59
Langley, Virginia
But in which Toyota Land Cruiser was the prize riding? After months of plotting and scheming and recruiting and deal making, it all came down to that. Four vehicles, two missiles. The odds of success were one in two. The price of failure would be a broken relationship with an important Arab ally—and perhaps far worse. Saladin’s dead body would atone for all manner of secret sins. But Saladin on the loose in Morocco after a botched drone strike would be a diplomatic and security catastrophe. Many careers hung in the balance. Many lives, too.
There was no shortage of opinions. Graham Seymour swore it was the third Toyota, Paul Rousseau the fourth. Adrian Carter leaned toward the first vehicle but was willing to entertain the notion it was the second. Inside the White House Situation Room, the president and his senior aides were equally divided. CIA Director Morris Payne was all but certain he had seen Saladin enter the third SUV. But the president, like Paul Rousseau, was adamant it was the fourth. At the Black Hole in Langley, that was reason enough to eliminate number four from further consideration.
Expert opinion was divided, too. The drone teams analyzed the recordings of Saladin’s initial flight from the camp, along with the live video and sensory data. The data pointed to number three with high probability, though one junior analyst was convinced that Saladin was not in any of the SUVs, that he had fled the camp on foot and was now making his way across the desert alone.
“He walks with a limp,” remarked Uzi Navot caustically. “He’ll be out there longer than Moses and the Jews of Egypt.”
In the end it was left to Kyle Taylor—a veteran operations officer who had overseen more than two hundred successful drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia—to make the final call. He did so swiftly and decisively and without bothering to consult with Adrian Carter. At 5:47 p.m. Washington time, 10:47 p.m. in Morocco, the order passed to the drone teams to ready the ordnance. Seventy-four seconds later, two of the Toyota Land Cruisers, the first and the third, exploded in a blinding flash of white light. Uzi Navot was the only one in the Black Hole or the White House Situation Room who wasn’t watching.
The sound of the explosions reached the camp a second or two after the burst of light on the horizon. Keller and Mikhail had already drawn their Berettas by the time Jean-Luc Martel entered the tent.
“What are you going to do? Shoot me?”
“I might,” answered Keller.
“That would be a miscalculation on your part.” Martel glanced to the north and asked, “What just happened out there?”
“Sounded like thunder to me.”
“I don’t think Mohammad is liable to believe that. Not after what his Iraqi friend told him before he left.”
“And what was that?”
“That Dmitri and Sophie Antonov are Israeli agents who were sent here to kill him.”
“I hope you disabused Mohammad of that notion.”
“I tried,” said Martel.
“Is that why he gave you that gun?”
“What gun?”
“The one in the right-hand pocket of your jacket.” Keller managed a smile. “The drones never blink.”
Martel extracted the weapon slowly.
“An FN Five-seven,” said Keller.
“The standard-issue sidearm of the SAS.”
“Actually, we call it the Regiment.” Keller was holding the Beretta with both hands. He released his left and stretched it toward Martel. “I’ll take that.”
The Frenchman only smiled.
“You’re not thinking about doing something foolish, are you, Jean-Luc?”
“I did that once already. Now I’m going to look after myself.” He glanced at Olivia, who was sitting at the edge of the bed next to Natalie. “And her, of course.”
Keller lowered the gun. “Tell Mohammad I’d like to have a word with him.”
“Why would I do that?”
“So he can hear my offer.”
“Your offer? And what would that be?”
“Our safe passage in exchange for the lives of Mohammad and his men.”
Martel emitted a low, bitter laugh. “You seem to have misread your situation. You’re the one who has several Kalashnikovs pointed at you, not me.”
“But I have a drone,” said Keller. “And if anything happens to us, the drone is going to turn Mohammad into a pile of ash. You, too.”
“Predator drones carry two Hellfire missiles. And I’m quite certain I heard two explosions just now.”
“There’s another drone above us.”
“Is there really?”
“How did I know there was a gun in your pocket?”
“Lucky guess.”
“You’d better hope so.”
Martel approached Keller slowly and stared directly into his eyes. “Let me explain what’s about to happen,” he said quietly. “I’m going to leave here with Olivia. And then Mohammad’s men are going to cut you and your friends to pieces with AK-47 fire.”
Keller said nothing.
“You’re not so tough without the don’s protection, are you?”
“You’re a dead man.”
“Whatever you say.”
Martel turned away from Keller and reached a hand toward Olivia. She sat motionless next to Natalie.
Martel’s eyes narrowed in rage. “How much did they pay you to betray me, my love? I know you didn’t do it out of the goodness of your heart. You haven’t got one.”
He seized Olivia’s arm, but she tore it from his grasp.
“How noble of you,” Martel said acidly. Then he placed the barrel of the FN to the side of her head. “Get on your feet.”
Keller raised his gun and leveled it at Martel’s chest.
“What are you going to do? Shoot me? If you do that, we all die.”
Keller was silent.
“You don’t believe me? Pull the trigger,” said Martel. “See what happens next.”