The terrorist commander swallowed audibly. “I, er, thought that with the information we learned from the American archaeologist our presence here is no longer necessary. We now know that our belief that the original Suleiman Al-Jama’s hidden base was in this valley, to the south of the “black that burns,” as the legend goes, is wrong. Al-Jama and the Saqr based out of another old riverbed in Tunisia. The men we sent there should have found it anytime now.”
Again, all he could hear was the buoy clanging and an occasional blast of an air horn.
“Where are you?” Abdullah asked impetuously.
“None of your concern. Continue.”
“Well, since we no longer need the pretext of reopening the coal mine, the burning black we mistook for the legendary sign, I figured blowing up the bridge was the best course of action. Two for the price of one, as it were. We kill all of the escapees and begin to dismantle our operation here.”
“How many of our elite forces remain there?”
“About fifty,” Abdullah answered at once.
“Do not risk those fighters on something as trivial as prisoners. Send more of the less trained men, if you must. Tell them that to martyr themselves on this mission will find them in Allah’s special graces in Paradise. The Imam so decrees.”
Abdullah thought better of explaining that there wasn’t time to withdraw their crack troops from the bridge. Instead, he asked, “What about the woman Secretary?”
“Helicopters should be arriving there in about thirty minutes. One of them has orders to take charge of her. Your primary concern is the prisoners’ deaths and making certain that our forces in Tripoli are at full strength. There will be legitimate security personnel at the gathering who they will have to overcome to gain entrance to the main hall. Once inside, of course, the targeted government officials aren’t armed. It will be a glorious bloodletting, and the end of this foolish bid for peace.”
That was the longest Abdullah had ever heard the other man speak. He believed in their cause as much as any of them, as much as Imam Al-Jama himself. But even he had to admit there were levels of fanaticism on which he wouldn’t dwell.
He’d often listen to the boys they had recruited chatting among themselves, youths from slum and privilege alike. They made almost a game of thinking up sadistic tortures for the enemies of Islam as a way to bolster one another’s confidence. He’d done the same years earlier, during the Lebanese civil war, when he had come of age. But secretly each knew, though never admitted, that it was only a diversion, a way to boast of your dedication and hatred. In the end, most were too petrified to even hold a pistol properly, and suicide vests had to be made as idiotproof as possible.
But not so the man on the other end of the phone. Abdullah knew he reveled in slicing off Westerners’ heads with a scimitar that reportedly dated back to the Crusades. He had roasted alive Russian soldiers in the desolate mountains of Chechnya and helped string up the mutilated bodies of American soldiers in Baghdad. He had recruited his own nephew, a teenager with the mind of a two-year-old who liked nothing more than to separate grains of sand into precise piles of one hundred, to walk into a Sunni laundromat in Basra carrying forty pounds of explosives and nails in order to flame sectarian violence. Fifty women and girls perished in the blast, and the reprisal and counterreprisals claimed hundreds more.
Abdullah would do his duty, as he saw it, for Allah. His contact within the Imam’s inner circle, Al-Jama’s personal bodyguard, killed and maimed because he enjoyed it. The open secret within Al-Jama’s organization was that the man didn’t even practice Islam. Though born a Muslim, he never prayed, never fasted during Ramadan, and ignored all the faith’s dietary laws.
Why the Imam allowed such an abomination had been the subject of debate among senior commanders like Abdullah, until word of such discussions reached Al-Jama’s ear. Two days later, the four who had questioned the Imam’s choice of top lieutenant had their tongues cut out, their eyes plucked from their heads, their noses and fingertips removed, and their eardrums punctured.
The meaning had been clear. By talking about the man behind his back, they had shown they had no sense, so they would forever-more have no senses either.
“The Imam’s will be done, peace be upon him,” Abdullah said hastily when he realized he should have replied. The line was already dead.
“LINDA, GET YOUR BUTT up here with the M60,” Juan shouted over the radio. “And as much ammo as you can carry. Mark, I need you to separate the Pig from the boxcar.”
“What?” cried Murphy. “Why?”
“You can’t go fast enough backward.”
Linc came over the tactical net. “I thought our problem was slowing down this crazy caravan.”
“Not anymore.”
Seconds later, the .30 caliber machine gun from the Pig’s roof cupola landed with a thud on the railcar’s tarry roof. Cabrillo rushed back to give Linda a hand with the unwieldy weapon. Behind her Alana Shepard stood with an ammo belt slung around her neck like some deadly piece of jewelry. At her feet were two more boxes of rounds. She handed up the boxes, and he helped boost her up.
“Trying to earn that fedora, I see.” Juan smiled.
Spying the bridge for the first time, Linda Ross understood why the Chairman needed the heavy firepower. As soon as she reached the front of the car, she extended the M60’s stumpy bipod legs and was lying behind the weapon, ready for him to feed the first belt into the gun. With Alana pulling a second hundred-round belt from one of the boxes, Juan loaded the M60 and slammed the receiver closed. Linda racked back on the bolt and let fly.
The bridge was well beyond the weapon’s effective range, but even random shots pattering against the wooden trestle would force the terrorists to find cover and hopefully buy them the time they needed.
Her whole body shook as if she were holding on to a live electric cable, and a tongue of flame jetted a foot from the muzzle. Watching the string of tracers arcing across the distance, she raised the barrel until the bead of phosphorus-tipped rounds found their mark. At this range, all Juan could see were small explosions of dust kicked off the blanched timbers when the rounds bored in. It took nearly a third of the first belt before the men working under the railbed realized what was happening. None had been hit, as far as they could tell, but soon they were all scrambling to hide themselves in the tangle of crossbeams.
Using controlled bursts to keep the barrel from overheating, Linda kept the men pinned, getting one lucky shot that yanked a terrorist off the delicate trestle. His body plummeted from the bridge, falling soundlessly and seemingly in slow motion, until he slammed into a beam and cartwheeled earthward. He hit the ground in a silent puff of dust that drifted lazily on the breeze.
Mark Murphy could hear the chattering .30 cal but had no idea what they were firing at. He had unhooked himself from his safety straps, climbed up and out of the Pig, and was now crouched over the rear bumper, trying not to notice the ties blurring under his feet.
He had woven a tow cable back and forth around the bumper and the railcar’s coupling to keep them attached. Linc was accelerating slightly faster than the car was rolling down the tracks, so there was no tension on the line. Using a large pair of bolt cutters, he attacked the braided steel, snipping at it as fast as he could. If the car started pulling away from the Pig, the tension would snap the cable, and Mark’s legs would most likely be taken off at the knees.
They started going through a curve. Murph noticed Linda’s machine gun had gone silent and realized the hills were blocking her aim. The car also started picking up speed. The thin cable stretched taut, and braids began to part, curling off the line like silver smoke.