In the Black Hole at Langley, only Uzi Navot was watching the Sentinel’s shot of the scene unfolding at the camp. Everyone else in the room was staring, transfixed, at the adjoining screen, where the wreckage of two Land Cruisers was burning brightly on the floor of the Sahara. But they were not the only vehicles to suffer damage in the strike. The driver of the second SUV had lost control after the explosions and had collided at high speed with an outcropping of desert rock. Badly damaged, the vehicle now lay on its passenger side, its headlamps still aglow. There appeared to be two men inside. In the ninety seconds since the crash, neither had moved.
“Three for the price of two,” said Kyle Taylor, but no one in the room responded. They were all too busy watching the only surviving SUV, which had doubled back and was approaching the vehicle now lying beached and broken on its side. A moment later two men were frantically dragging a third from the wreckage.
“What are the chances,” asked Kyle Taylor, “that he’s Saladin?”
Adrian Carter watched as the two men hastily loaded the third into the back of the intact SUV.
“I’d say it’s about one hundred percent. The question is, is he still alive?”
The surviving SUV was soon racing north with its headlights off, followed by the now-defanged Predator. The drone’s sensors estimated the vehicle’s speed at ninety-two miles per hour.
“Off road,” said Carter, “with no headlights.”
“Looks like we missed,” said Taylor.
“Yeah,” agreed Carter. “And he’s still alive.”
In Casablanca, Gabriel had eyes only for the video feed from the Sentinel drone. Greenish, ghostly versions of Keller and Mikhail were aiming weapons at Jean-Luc Martel, and Martel was holding a gun to the head of one of the women—Natalie or Olivia, Gabriel could not tell. Mohammad Bakkar and four of his men were outside the tent, weapons leveled toward the entrance. Owing to the center court’s confined dimensions, they were tightly grouped. Gabriel calculated the odds. They were better, he reckoned, than doing nothing at all. He started to type out a message, but stopped and dialed instead. A few seconds later he watched a greenish, ghostly version of Christopher Keller reaching into his coat pocket.
“Answer it,” said Gabriel through gritted teeth. “Answer the phone.”
The Beretta was in Keller’s right hand, the vibrating satphone in his left. His thumb was hovering over the screen.
“Don’t,” whispered Martel hoarsely.
“What are you going to do, Jean-Luc?”
Martel grabbed a handful of Olivia’s hair and ground the barrel of the FN into her temple. Keller tapped the touchscreen and raised the phone swiftly to his ear.
Gabriel addressed him calmly.
“They’re standing directly outside the entrance of your tent, Bakkar and four others. They’re tightly packed, their guns are locked and loaded.”
“Any other good news?”
“Saladin is still alive.”
Keller lowered the phone without severing the connection and looked at Mikhail. “They’re outside the tent waiting to kill us. Five men, all armed. Directly outside the entrance,” Keller added pointedly.
“All of them?” asked Mikhail.
Keller nodded, then looked at Martel. “Khalil the Iraqi is a piece of charred meat. Several pieces, actually. Tell Mohammad to let us go, or he’ll be next.”
Martel dragged Olivia toward the entrance of the tent, the gun still to her head. Keller allowed the satphone to fall from his left hand while swiftly raising his right. He fired two shots, the tap-tap of a trained professional. Both found Martel’s face. Then he pivoted to his right and along with Mikhail unleashed a stream of fire toward the five men standing outside.
As return fire tore through the skin of the tent, Natalie pulled Olivia to the floor. Martel lay next to them, the FN still in his lifeless hand. Natalie ripped the gun from his grasp, aimed it through the entrance, and pulled the trigger. And all the while, at the House of Spies in Casablanca, Gabriel was watching and listening. Watching as the members of his team fought for their lives. Listening to the sound of gunfire and the screams of Olivia Watson.
60
The Sahara, Morocco
From Gabriel’s perspective, it seemed to last an eternity; from Keller’s, a second or two. When the return fire from outside the tent fell silent, he expelled the spent magazine from his Beretta and rammed the spare into place while next to him Mikhail did the same. Then he looked down at Natalie and was surprised to see Martel’s weapon in her outstretched hands. Olivia was screaming hysterically.
“Is she all right?”
The side of Olivia’s face was covered with blood and brain matter. Natalie quickly searched her for a gunshot wound, but found nothing. The blood and brain matter were Martel’s.
“She’s fine.”
Maybe someday, thought Keller, but not anytime soon. He reached down and snatched up the phone. “What’s going on out there?”
“Not much,” answered Gabriel.
“Any sign of movement?”
“The one in the middle. From up here, the rest look dead.”
“Pity,” said Keller. “What now?”
Ten miles to the north, the last surviving Toyota Land Cruiser was racing across an uninhabited patch of desert, pursued by the Predator.
“What’s the loiter time on that drone?” asked Navot.
“Eight hours and change,” said Adrian Carter. “Unless the Moroccans figure out that we carried out a clandestine drone strike on their territory. Then it’s a hell of a lot less.”
“And that one?” asked Navot, nodding toward the shot of the camp from the Sentinel.
“Fourteen hours.”
“How stealth is it?”
“Stealth enough so that the Moroccans will never be able to find it.”
One of the phones in front of Carter flashed with an incoming call. He brought the receiver to this ear, listened, and then swore softly.
“What is it?” asked Navot.
“NSA is picking up a lot of traffic from Morocco.”
“What kind of traffic?”
“Sounds like the shit is hitting the fan.”
Another phone flashed. This time it was Morris Payne calling from the Situation Room.
“Understood,” said Carter after a moment, and hung up. Then he looked at Navot. “The Moroccan ambassador just called the White House to ask if the United States had attacked his country.”
“What are you going to do?”
“The loiter time on those drones just got a whole lot shorter.”
“The stealth drone, too?”
“What stealth drone?”
Carter gave the order to the drone teams. Instantly, the Predator banked sharply to the east toward the Algerian border. Its thermal imaging camera stayed with the surviving SUV for another two minutes, until finally the heat signature evaporated from the screens of the Black Hole. The Sentinel was next. The last image Navot saw was of two men slipping out of a tent in the desert, weapons in their outstretched hands.