“I don’t see any exposed trip wire,” Katzen said. He shined his flashlight on the road and walked around the sheep slowly. “It doesn’t look as if the dirt’s been dug up.” Hi reached the sheep and shined the flashlight down. The blood glistened a bright, oxygenated red in a wound which was nearly four inches in diameter. Katzen touched the blood. “There’s been no coagulation at all. This thing was killed within the hour. And it’s definitely a gunshot wound.” Katzen bent low and looked under the sheep. He slid his left hand under and felt around. “There’s no wire or plastique as far as I can tell. Okay, gang. I’m going to move this sucker.”
The pounding of Coffey’s heart and temples drowned out the gentle hum of the ROC engine. Coffey knew that it wasn’t necessary for the body to be wired. It could simply be lying on top of a mine.
The attorney watched as Katzen set the flashlight on the road and grabbed the sheep’s hindquarters. Though Coffey was afraid, it wasn’t fear which kept him from joining his coworker. He stayed back because if anything happened to Katzen, he would have to help Mary Rose and the Strikers reach their destination.
Mary Rose squeezed Coffey’s hand as Katzen held the sheep tightly and took a step back. The sheep moved an inch, then another. Katzen put it down, went to the other side, bent low, and flashed the light under the carcass.
“I don’t see any booby traps,” he said.
He returned to the hindquarters and pulled the sheep a little more. After it had moved another few inches; Katzen went back and checked beneath it. Again he saw nothing.
In just over a minute the environmentalist had moved the sheep entirely away from the space it had occupied. There was nothing beneath it, and Katzen quickly pulled it off the road. He was perspiring heavily when he returned to the van.
“So what the hell was that all about?” he complained.
Coffey was looking out into the dark. “The dead sheep could’ve been the result of army target practice, like we thought,” he said. “Or maybe someone was out there, watching us. To see who we’ve got inside.”
Katzen shut the door. “Well, now that they think they know,” he said, “let’s get the hell over this hill.”
Mary Rose shifted the van to drive. She breathed deeply before pressing down on the gas. “I don’t know about you two, but that did a number on my stomach.”
Katzen smiled weakly. “Ditto.”
While Mary Rose guided them toward the rise and the hillock beyond, Coffey went back to explain the delay to the Strikers. As the attorney knelt on the floor, he began to feel dizzy. He rested his forehead on his knee.
“Hey, Phil,” Coffey said, “are you feeling okay?”
“I’m feeling a little drained,” he said. “Why?”
Coffey’s ears were beginning to ring. “Because I’m having… a little trouble here. Dizzy. Buzzing in my ears. Have you got that?”
When Katzen didn’t answer, Coffey turned toward the front of the van. He was just in time to see Katzen fall heavily into the passenger’s seat. Mary Rose was leaning forward, her forearms against the steering wheel. She was obviously struggling to keep her head up.
“I’m going to stop;” she said. “Something is… wrong.”
The van slowed and Coffey rose. As he did, he was overcome by a sense of vertigo which brought him back to the floor. He reached along the backs of the two chairs beside the computer stations and struggled to pull himself up. Nausea filled his stomach and rose in his throat and brought him back down again.
A moment later, as black clouds swirled inside his eyes, Lowell Coffey felt himself hoisted up bodily and dragged backward.
EIGHTEEN
Monday, 8:35 p.m.,
Oguzeli, Turkey
They look without seeing, Ibrahim thought.
The young Kurd had shot the wild sheep and dragged it into the road to stop the van. When the driver braked to avoid hitting it, Ibrahim climbed from the ditch in which he’d been hiding. He crept from the side of the road to the back of the van, plugged the exhaust pipe with his T-shirt, and snuck away again. The windows were closed. Once the door was shut, he knew it would take less than three minutes for the passengers to be overcome by carbon monoxide. He had selected a relatively flat stretch of roadway so that when the driver fainted, the van would simply glide to a stop. Then, removing his T-shirt from the exhaust, Ibrahim entered the van and opened the windows. He was both surprised and delighted to find it filled with computers. The equipment and perhaps the data itself would be useful.
Ibrahim checked the three Americans. They were still breathing. They would survive. Dragging the unconscious man to the front of the van, Ibrahim sat him and the others back-to-back behind the passenger’s seat. Using his knife to cut out the seat belts and shoulder harnesses, he tied the three people together by the wrists. Then he bound their legs at the thighs and shins.
He took a last look around the van before slipping into the driver’s seat. As he sat down he thought he heard something behind him. It sounded like someone gagging. Noticing the flashlight between the seats, he shined it into the back of the van. For the first time he noticed that there were doors in the floor. Drawing the .38 from his belt holster, he walked over. He stopped at the compartments and looked down.
Each compartment was large enough to hold one person. He heard the retching sound again.’There was definitely someone in the left-side compartment.
Ibrahim fought the urge to put bullets into the floor before raising the door. But he knew that whoever was inside would have been incapacitated by carbon monoxide just as the other three had been. Bending, he pointed his gun down and threw open the first door.
There was a woman inside. She was conscious, but just barely so. There was a pool of vomit below her head. Ibrahim opened the other door. There was another soldier inside. He was unconscious. Trapped in the unventilated compartment closest to the exhaust, he had obviously been the most seriously affected of the five. But he too was still alive.
So the American officer did warn these people, Ibrahim thought. They were trying to sneak these two people in to kill them. But Allah was looking out for them, blessed be His mighty name.
Pulling the man out, Ibrahim slipped off his black shirt. Tearing it into strips, he draped the man over the back of the chair and tied his hands to the front legs and his feet to the back legs. Then he went to the woman, threw her over the back of the other chair, and tied her up using the rest of the shirt.
With a self-satisfied smile, he surveyed all his captives one last time before slipping his gun back into his holster and returning to the driver’s seat. Flashing the van’s headlights three times to signal Hasan to let him through, he put the vehicle into drive and quickly covered the short distance to the hillock.
NINETEEN
Monday, 2:01 p.m.,
Washington, D. C.
There was a ping from the side-mounted speakers of Paul Hood’s computer. Hood looked at the monitor and saw Bob Herbert’s code on the bottom of the screen. He pushed Ctrl/Ent.
“Yes, Bob.”
“Chief, I know you’re in a rush,” Herbert said, “but there’s something you’ve got to take a look at.”
“Something bad?” Hood asked. “Is Mike okay?”
“It may involve Mike directly,” Herbert said, “and I’m sorry. Yeah, it does look pretty bad.”
“Send it over,” Hood said.
“Right away,” Herbert replied.
Hood sat back and waited. He’d been busy downloading classified data onto diskettes to take with him on the airplane. The diskettes were specially designed for use on government flights. The jackets became superheated in a fire, though they, could not burn. In the event of a crash, the disks as well as their data. would be reduced to slag.
The White House was sending a chopper to Andrews and putting him and Assistant Deputy Director Warner Bicking on a three p.m. State Department flight to London. Hood was scheduled to meet Dr. Nasr at Heathrow Airport and catch a British Airways flight to Syria an hour later. Hood watched as the computer finished copying files onto diskettes. When the hard drive stopped humming, Hood continued to stare at the blank screen.
“Hold on a second,” Herbert said. “I want the computer to animate the stuff for you.”
“I’m holding on,” Hood said, a trace of impatience in his voice. He tried to imagine what could possibly be worse than Mike Rodgers having been captured by terrorists.
Mike Rodgers a hostage, he thought bitterly. Your wife disappointed in you. A new problem will give you a hat trick. Still, it was a record he didn’t feel like shooting for.