It was true that all five men in the camp’s center court had been shot, but two were still alive. One was Mohammad Bakkar. The other was one of the guards. Mikhail ended the guard’s life with a single gunshot to the head while Keller examined Bakkar by starlight. The Moroccan hashish producer had been hit twice in the chest. His pullover was drenched in blood, and there was blood in his mouth. It was obvious he did not have long to live.
Keller crouched next to him. “Where is he going, Mohammad?”
“Who?” asked Bakkar, choking on the blood.
“Saladin.”
“I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“Perhaps this will refresh your memory.”
Keller placed the barrel of the Beretta against Mohammad Bakkar’s ankle and pulled the trigger. The Moroccan’s screams filled the night.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know!”
“Of course you do, Mohammad. You gave him sanctuary here in Morocco after the attack on Washington. You gave him the money he needed to attack my country.”
“And what country is that? Are you French? Or are you a fucking Jew like him?”
Bakkar was looking at Mikhail, who was standing over Keller’s shoulder. Keller placed the barrel of the Beretta against the Moroccan’s lower leg and pulled the trigger.
“I’m British, actually.”
“In that case,” said Bakkar, moaning in agony, “fuck your country.”
Keller fired a shot into the side of Bakkar’s knee.
“Allahu Akbar!”
“Be that as it may,” said Keller calmly, “where is he?”
“I told you—”
Another shot into what was left of the knee. Bakkar was starting to lose consciousness. Keller slapped him hard across the face.
“Did he order you to kill us?”
Bakkar nodded.
“And what were you supposed to do after that?”
The Moroccan’s eyes were closing. Keller was losing him.
“Where, Mohammad? Where is he going?”
“One of my . . . houses.”
“Where? The Rif? The Atlas?”
Bakkar was choking on the blood.
“Where, Mohammad?” asked Keller, shaking the Moroccan violently. “Tell me where he’s going so I can help you.”
“Fez,” gasped Bakkar. “He’s going to Fez.”
The light was going out of the Moroccan’s eyes. Despite the blood and the pain, he looked like a deeply contented man.
“You’re lying to me, aren’t you, Mohammad?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s he going?”
“Who?”
“Saladin.”
“Paradise,” said Bakkar. “I’m going to paradise.”
“I rather doubt that, actually,” said Keller.
Then he placed the gun to Bakkar’s forehead and pulled the trigger one last time.
Of the five dead men in the center court of the camp, only Mohammad Bakkar was in possession of a mobile phone. A Samsung Galaxy, it was in the front pocket of his trousers, with the SIM card and battery removed. Keller reassembled the device and powered it on while Mikhail and Natalie tended to Olivia. There were no vehicles left in the camp—Saladin, in his desperate attempt to escape, had taken all four—which meant they had no choice but to walk out of the desert. They took only what they could carry easily. Warm clothing, phones, passports, wallets, and two Kalashnikovs with fully loaded magazines. They didn’t bother trying to find a torch among the camp’s supplies. There was moon enough to light their path.
They left the camp at five minutes past eleven o’clock local time and headed due west into a sea of sand. Keller walked at the front of the line, followed by the two women and lastly by Mikhail. In Keller’s right hand was Mohammad Bakkar’s mobile phone. He checked the status of the battery. Twelve percent.
“Shit,” he said. “Anyone have a charger?”
Even Olivia managed to laugh.
In Casablanca, Gabriel and Yaakov Rossman took quiet stock of what remained of the operation. Its wreckage lay scattered across the desert of southern Morocco, from the Algerian border to the dunes of Erg Chebbi. Two Toyota Land Cruisers were smoldering ruins, a third lay damaged on its side. And a fourth—the one presumably carrying a wounded Saladin, a Saladin who looked as though he might require emergency medical treatment—had last been seen speeding northwest toward the Middle Atlas Mountains. Jean-Luc Martel, a prominent if deeply corrupt French businessman, lay dead at a remote camp, along with Mohammad Bakkar, Morocco’s largest hashish producer, and four of his men. Bakkar’s mobile phone was now in the possession of a British intelligence officer. The battery meter read ten percent and falling fast.
“Other than that,” said Gabriel, “it all went exactly according to plan.”
“Saladin would be dead if the Americans had picked the right car.”
Gabriel said nothing.
“You’re not thinking about—”
“Of course I am.”
Gabriel looked down at the computer screen. On it was a map of southern Morocco. Two blue lights were moving eastward across the desert from Khamlia; a single red light was moving slowly westward. They were approximately two miles apart.
“In a few minutes,” said Yaakov, “the southeastern corner of Morocco is going to be crawling with soldiers and gendarmes. It won’t take them long to find a couple of burning Toyotas and a camp full of dead bodies. And then all hell is going to break loose.”
“It already has.”
“Which is why you need to order the team to dump those weapons and make for the bolt-hole at Agadir. With a bit of luck, they’ll arrive before dawn and we’ll pull them out right away. If not, they’ll lie low in a beach hotel and leave after dark tomorrow night.”
“That’s the safe play.”
“Actually, there’s nothing safe about it.”
“And us?” asked Gabriel.
“The gendarmes will be blocking roads all over the country soon. Better to stay here tonight and leave by plane in the morning. We’ll fly to Paris or London and then catch a flight back to Ben Gurion.”
“What about Saladin?”
“He can see to his own travel arrangements.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
On the computer screen the blue lights had reached the red light, and after a moment all three were moving westward across the desert toward the village of Khamlia.
“What are you going to tell them?” asked Yaakov.
Gabriel rapidly typed out the message and clicked send. It was four words in length.
plug in the phone . . .
61
The Sahara, Morocco
They had no means for a secure upload—not in the cellular dead zone of the southern desert—so they searched the Samsung the old-fashioned way, call by call, text by text, Internet history. Natalie, the team’s most fluent speaker and reader of Arabic, handled the device itself while Keller relayed the data to the Casablanca command post over the satellite phone. They were sitting in the backseat of the Nissan Pathfinder, with Dina behind the wheel and Eli Lavon serving as her navigator and spotter. Mikhail was in the Jeep Cherokee with Olivia.
“How is she?” asked Gabriel.
“About as well as you would expect. We need to get her out of here. Tonight, if possible.”