The CIA officer had been on plenty of covert ops himself but never in as hostile a place as this and usually only to meet a contact or act as an observer while others did the heavy lifting. Those were mostly passive exercises, although certainly with an element of risk. But this was all risk, all the time. This was an armed infiltration that could get bloody without notice. The idea was to ghost in and ghost out with no one the wiser. But plans gang aft agley as his old Scots grandma used to say.

  They were out of the prayer hall and making their way along the back of the qibla wall through a dark space. Blair sensed Priest stopping before him in the gloom. Blair halted close behind him.

  “NODs on” Priest said in a barely audible hush.

  Blair removed his night vision lenses from the bag slung about his shoulder and fixed them in place on his scalp. Everything around them leapt into brilliant resolution through the twin lenses. The room had a lower ceiling than the vaulted prayer chamber. Its original function was unclear. Now it served as a storeroom with crates stacked on pallets at the center of the room leaving just enough space around the walls for them to pass single file. The crates were unmistakably ammo containers with rifle and machine gun ammo along with larger crates of mortar and artillery rounds and metal containers for grenades. The mosque was a serious weapons dump for one of the rebel factions. Blair was willing to lay real money that it was the same black jammies bunch that were holding the hospital.

  They both had the volume level in their earbuds dialed down. The SEALs outside were running into some kind of hassle from locals. It settled down after a moment. Chili’s voice addressed them to tell them they’d be breaking contact for now and moving on to overwatch positions.

  Blair and Priest reached the rear of the room where they found a portico accessed by archways. They opened a doorway there and exited into the open air to a kind of walled courtyard common to mosques. It was empty of any worshippers. They quickly crossed the cracked tile surface to a row of single story structures that backed against the rear wall that bordered the hospital grounds. Priest chose a door and entered one of the structures. He hissed from the dark interior and Blair joined him.

  It was a lavatory, a pissoir, or what passed for one in this part of the world. One wall was lined with stone basins and the other with a trough to urinate in. Private stalls were against the third wall; very modern for a set-up in a backwater like this. The place reeked from the centuries of piss that had soaked into the stone walls and floor. The trickle of water running along the bottom of the trough to a drain did nothing to carry away the stink.

  Around the back of the stalls was a wooden ladder mounted on the wall that led up to a trap in the ceiling. Priest tilted his head up at it and Blair nodded agreement. They were up the ladder and onto the roof in seconds.

  From that vantage point they were level with the second tier of the parking garage to one side. They moved along the terracotta tiles to a place where they could see into the rear area of the hospital. There was a loading dock with closed garage doors. One of them had a man door mounted in it. There were overflowing dumpsters and a broken down ambulance on flat tires. There was also a diesel generator humming along; it was the size of a minivan, one of the big towable models that kicked out major wattage.

  Along the shared wall between the hospital’s rear yard and the mosque were stacks of fuel drums. This monster could keep a building the size of the hospital powered up enough for all necessary functions. But it drank diesel like a frat boy and would need to be refilled every four hours or so depending on demand. Heavy bundles of electrical cables snaked across the loading dock platform from the terminal on the boxy generator and through a one-foot gap open under one of the garage doors.

  At the moment, no one was guarding the generator. The most likely scenario was that the crew who serviced it were inside the garage. The enclosed area was lit by a few bulbs that left broad pools of gloom around them. To reduce the strain on the generator and the fuel supply, someone either removed or knocked out a lot of the exterior fixtures. Through the NODs, every detail lay in stark contrast under the digitally magnified light. To the black jammies wandering the place it would be dim and shadowy even with their eyes adjusted to the dark.

  Priest tossed his AK to the sandy floor of the courtyard and dropped down the wall after it. He stood and caught Blair’s rifle as the CIA officer followed him. Blair dropped to a knee in the shadow of the wall and eyed the roofline of the parking garage for any moving shapes. Priest crossed to the generator and crouched by it. The SEAL undid a hatch on one side of the generator that gave him access to the terminals where the thick power lines ran in. He grabbed a fistful of the bundled lines, twisted once and tugged sharply.

  The pinpoint glare of the bulbs above the loading dock vanished. The garage building went dark as well. Blair trained the ring front sight of his rifle on the garage. He could hear calls and responses echoing from within but no sign of movement within his range. They were blind for now. Someone would be coming soon to check on the generator. He moved closer to Priest who was by the generator and scooping up a handful of sand. The SEAL had another compartment on the generator open and reached inside to unscrew the top of an oil intake. Priest tipped his hand and dumped the sand down the throat of the motor oil intake. The generator chugged on. Priest dumped another fistful of sand down the tube. The engine began running more irregularly and coughed diesel fumes that spread from it in a visible fog.

  Voices were coming closer. Blair could see a glow bobbing toward them from within the garage complex. Someone was running with a flashlight in hand. From the other side of the garage doors more voices rose in argument. Priest touched his arm and jerked his head toward the wall of the loading dock. Together they made their way to a place between the dumpsters and the bullet-riddled ambulance. Just as they found their place in the shadows, the man door banged open. Chattering voices came closer behind the harsh glare of a flashlight. Shouts came from the garage building and the twin sources of light converged on the throbbing generator.

  They were never going to get a better opportunity. Priest and Blair levered themselves up onto the loading dock and walked across to the open man door like they owned the place.

  A violent verbal exchange broke out around the generator. One of the men opened the terminal hatch and began replacing the plugs that had come loose. The lights began to blink back on. By that time Priest and Blair were inside the loading area and moving at a walk for the interior of the building. They’d dropped their NODs gear and fixed disapproving grimaces on their faces. No one paid them any attention; their focus was on the strobing lights and the shouting match outside. The SEAL and the spook pushed through a door and went in a service stairwell leading down to the lower levels.

  Sand in the crankcase was as elegant as it was a low-tech solution for covering their infil. It would appear to the crew maintaining the machine that some malfunction caused the generator to begin running rough. The power lines came loose with the vibrations. The generator would only supply power for a while longer as the grit worked into its innards and turned the oil to sludge and interfered with the finer gears. The black jammies would blame it on poor maintenance rather than sabotage. The grease monkeys would be days rebuilding the generator. Until then the hospital and garage complex would lose even the minimum degree of power they had in one…two…three…

  Outside the irregular whump of the generator went to silence and the lights in the stairwell died to pitch black.

  Priest and Blair replaced their NODs and continued down into the lower levels of the building.

  They were sighted in a world of the blind.

  They owned this place.

  Until dawn anyway.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE WILDERNESS

  The streets were alive in the cool of the night. Chili and Pig took up positions across the lane from the mosque. They watched for Heath and Woody from where they lounged in the shadows of a store awning. The pair disappeared for a bit while the Woodman took a latrine break.

  After a few minutes their wayward SEAL brothers came back into view and on station. Heath and Woody took a seat against the curtain wall around the mosque. The kid Gharib brought Woody a juice bag to help him rehydrate. Woody waved him away and sat sipping from a bota filled with clean purified water.

  Pig nudged Chili and nodded toward the mosque. The hospital building, visible over the tiled rooftop, went dark. After a few minutes the lights came back on and then, after a bit, off again. Priest and Freeman were inside. Chili turned to their frequency again and gave his sat radio a squeeze through the cloth of his tunic. A pair of answering squelches sounded in his ear. They were inside and all was good for now. He touched the palm of his hand to his ear and, down the street, Heath caught the gesture and switched on. A triple squelch. They were all on line now, connected by an invisible band traveling twenty-thousand miles into space and back, just so they could stay in contact here on the ground— separated by only a few hundred feet.

  Now they waited.

  They each used whatever trick they knew to drop into a relaxed state of intense watchfulness. To the crowd passing by they looked no different than the other hundreds of idle armed men seated and standing along the streets. Sullen, silent, with eyes constantly moving, they fit right in with this grim jihad Mardi Gras.

  It was Chili who first noticed the man taking an especially keen interest in them. He turned away and kept the man in his peripheral. The guy was the right height for the average mujahideen and not armed except for a handgun holstered in a belt around his waist. He stood on the broad walk in front of the mosque allowing the pedestrians to walk around him. What concerned Chili were the guy’s unwavering gaze and a gap toothed grin seen through a dark beard.

  Chili made a casual sweep of the street and noted a trio of other guys making an effort not to appear to be watching him and Pig. These three were strapped with rifles and vests packed with magazines. Chili sensed Pig tense and knew his partner had these guys on his radar too. The four weren’t making any moves but the gap-toothed guy wasn’t making any secret about staring at them.

  Came with the job, Chili thought to himself. You go trick or treating in this neighborhood, you had to expect to get the stink eye now and then. The thing about jihadis was that they didn’t like anybody and that included each other; especially each other. In the history of radical Islam, the group that suffered the most violence was Muslims. The first thing terror groups did after taking over a region was turn on each other. Left to their own devices, these clowns would probably eventually kill each other off. The only problem with that scenario is that they’d take a lot of innocents with them. Chili sometimes thought the West should wall off countries like Libya and Iraq and Afghanistan and just let them go smack down until there was no one left.

  The gap-toothed dude stepped off the walk to cross to them. His three asshole buddies maintained position. They didn’t shift their weapons or anything but Chili could feel the change in their vibe. It was going to jump off. What was going to jump off was anyone’s guess.

  “Gentlemen,” the gap toothed guy said in accented English as he joined them under the awning. The smile stayed, easy not fixed.

  “What are you wanting?” Chili said in his excellent Arabic.

  “Only to talk. Only to satisfy my curiosity,” Gap-tooth said in equally fluent Arab.

  “Curiosity is a dangerous thing,” Chili said, switching to Farsi.

  “I find ignorance to be even more deadly,” the man said, his grin widening. He followed Chili into Farsi.

  “What’s up your ass, bitch?” Chili said in pure Alabama redneck.

  “We need to go somewhere quiet to talk,” Gap-tooth said nodding to the far corner. “Tell your two comrades that all is cool. We are all friends here. We will only talk. Only talk and no more.”

  Chili did the calculations. The mission was not compromised yet. If this guy wanted he could have blown the whistle on them already. Going anywhere with this guy was not good. Staying here and drawing down was worse. Taking this guy out at a secondary location, away from the street, was the best option available.

  “We can do that. Me and my friend and you and one of your friends,” Chili said.

  “And all the rest of our friends stay here and play nicely,” Gap-tooth’s grin returned.

  “Stand easy,” Chili said for the mike. Two squelches answered.

  Gap-tooth motioned with his eyes to the armed guy nearest them. The guy stepped up and the four men stood regarding one another. Gap-tooth laughed then walked away, gesturing to his guy to follow. Chili and Pig trailed six paces behind.

  They followed the street to an intersection where an open-air restaurant dominated one corner. There were a few empty tables. A six-piece band of musicians was playing Sufi pop loud enough to drown out the conversations from the other tables. They chose a place along a bare wall and took seats across from one another. Gap-tooth shooed away a waiter offering a carafe of evil-smelling coffee.

  “Let’s cut the bullshit,” Chili said, leaning over the scoured metal surface of the table. “You think you know something about us.”

  “I have been watching you,” Gap-tooth said. “Back at the park. You are very good. You hide well in plain sight. But I am a student of people. And your gestures, your walk. You are Americans.”

  “Yeah. We’re over here to join the struggle.”

  “Like John Walker Lindh? You are Jihad Johnnys? I don’t think so.”

  “You tell me what we are, asshole.”

  “Maybe Delta?”

  “Do we look like stewardesses?” Pig put in, knowing full well this stranger meant the elite Delta spec ops unit and not the airline.

  “No matter,” Gap-tooth shrugged. “I think we are here for the same thing. I do not need to know your unit. I know who your boss is. That is enough.”

  “And who’s your boss?” Chili said.

  “The same one Moses had,” Gap-tooth smiled.

  They were Mossad: Israel’s spy agency and some of the world’s most expert operatives and effective killers.

  “So, you think you know what we’re here for,” Chili said.

  “Yes I do. And it is not in the hospital.”

  “Where is it then?”

  “In a bank,” Gap-tooth said with a chuckle.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE SNARE

  The sat-comm line was open. Blair and Priest heard the whole exchange. As intel it was of limited use to them. As far as updating their mission goals it was bad news all around.

  Priest keyed his radio to clear the channel with a long squelch.

  “Change of plans. Return to the park. Breaking contact.” He switched off and Blair did the same.

  They were in the lowest hospital basement level in a pitch-dark corridor lined with free-swinging doors. They moved past an open morgue area with bagged bodies stacked along the walls and piled two to a cart. A choking stench filled the room and both the floor and the air were alive with insects. Weapons up, the pair moved down the hallway. They covered their arcs of fire to include all before them. A hospital orderly stumbled sightless toward them comically hugging the wall. Priest and Blair drifted silently past him, the way clear to them in the stark light of their NODs lenses.

  The mission was a wash. They needed to exfiltrate as swiftly as possible before being discovered. The way back was no good. The black jammies wouldn’t take long figuring out that the generator failure wasn’t due to poor maintenance. They’d also know that the saboteurs would be inside the hospital not out.

  Priest found a stairwell at the end of the hall. He shouldered the door open and held it for Blair. Priest closed the fire door noiselessly. They both stopped to listen. Voices echoed down to them from above; people who were in the stairwell when the lights went out. The voices called to one another from several floors above. There were no sounds from the stairs or landings immediately above them. The way was clear to the ground floor.

  Taking the lead, Priest climbed the steps with his AK held up and aimed before him. Blair followed keeping one half-flight below to cover behind them. The basement was deep. They made their way up four flights and two landings before reaching a door marked with a block letter “G” by the corresponding swirling Arab letter.

  A glare of harsh light flashed through the observation port set in the door. Barked commands could be heard through the steel door. The hunt was on. The black jammies down at the generator had a radio and raised the alarm. They were between two arms of an organized search. The immediate demands of this operation were sliding from exfil to clusterfuck by the second.

  Priest rushed up to the next flight with Blair on his heels. They crouched to watch a knot of black-clad men push through the door and charge down the stairwell led by a man holding an AK with a flashlight duct-taped to the forestock. One of them held a radio in his fist and responded in single syllables to the tinny voice calling from it. Their boots hammered down the stairs following the glare and they were gone. Blair looked over to Priest and saw that the SEAL had a long-slide .45 in his fist and trained on the backs of the retreating black jammies. A long tube suppressor was attached. Blair hadn’t seen him draw it.

  “Walk like you belong.” Priest sotto voce in Blair’s ear. The SEAL spoke low enough only to be heard through the sat line. He replaced the pistol under his mufti and returned down the steps to the ground floor landing.

  They made their way out of the stairwell into a wide hallway lined with doors open to numbered rooms. It sure smelled like a hospital with the sharp tang of alcohol and disinfectant failing to cover the richer odor of sweat and feces. There was a coppery stench of blood hanging thick in the air as well. Another smell was prevalent that would never be tolerated in any hospital Blair ever knew: the stink of stale tobacco. He realized with a start that most of the men were smoking cigarettes. A bluish haze swirled weirdly in the virtual light. It struck him with bitter irony that this shocked him more than anything else in this abattoir.