Murdock pushed the MP-5 out the canvas and drilled three shots into the chest of the soldier on the left, slamming him backward into a quick death. At almost the same time, DeWitt shot the other soldier in the forehead with one round.
Franklin saw the left-hand man go down, pushed on the gas, and hit the rear end of the Jeep with the truck’s left front bumper and jolted it out of the way. The truck rolled on through, down eight blocks, then over one, and back onto the main highway into town.
They stopped three miles down the road, which was now engulfed with houses and small businesses and what had to be small manufacturing buildings.
Franklin went into a food store, and came out a few minutes later with a sack of goods and a written note telling how to find the house they needed.
They had been supplied with funny-looking paper money before they boarded the plane. They were Syrian pound notes in denominations of twenty, fifty, and one hundred. Fifty-eight Syrian pounds were worth one U.S. dollar.
“Got the directions,” Franklin said, passing the sack over to DeWitt. “Also some delicious sweet rolls that look like cinnamon rolls, and taste ten times as good. Hang on.” They passed the rolls around. Khai leaned out and passed the sack to Ostercamp.
Franklin drove like he knew where he was going. He made several turns, backed up once and went in the other direction, then came to an unpaved street and grinned.
“Almost home to Mama,” he said. He noted house numbers, and parked at the side of the street in front of a house. It was what the natives called an Old House, Khai told them. “It’s made of unbaked bricks, often dried in the sun, and of wood and stone. Most of these are very old.”
DeWitt and Khai left the truck and went to the rear of the house. They carried weapons, and hoped anyone watching in the darkness would mistake them for Syrian soldiers. At the rear of the house they found a door with a bell. DeWitt rang it and stepped back, giving the play to Khai.
A small panel in the door opened, and a face with two dark eyes looked out.
“Yes?” the woman asked in Arabic.
“We are looking for the one true believer.”
The woman sucked in a breath, and they heard a bolt come free and latches open. Then the door swung outward, showing a shadowed narrow space. A woman in long flowing skirt and brilliantly colored blouse watched them with a frown.
“Come in quickly,” she said in English. “Yes, you have found the right place. Get rid of the truck at once. Even though it is dark, bring in the others by twos. This side of the house. Then drive the truck down a mile and leave it. You stole it, right?”
DeWitt nodded. “I’m DeWitt, miss. We’re grateful for your help.”
“Hurry. If the neighbors see any of you, we all could die rather unpleasantly.”
DeWitt went back to the truck, ushered the men inside, and told Franklin where to drive the truck and leave it.
“No trouble so far,” DeWitt said. “Let’s keep it that way.”
The men slipped through the nighttime shadows and around the house, then inside. Murdock watched the truck drive away slowly, then went inside himself.
“Franklin should be back in fifteen minutes. Somebody keep the clock on him,” DeWitt said. He turned to the woman. “I understand we are to call you Yasmin, which isn’t your real name.”
The woman was in her thirties, tall and graceful and a little on the full-figured side.
“Yes, Yasmin it is. I will do what I can. My sources say the warhead is here, but we’re not exactly sure where.”
“We’ll need to know an exact location before we can do much,” DeWitt said.
They had moved into a room from the entrance, and some of the men sat and some stood. Yasmin glanced at them, and paused when she came to Kat.
“One so young, he’s just a boy,” Yasmin said.
Kat laughed. “Not so, Yasmin. I’m twenty-eight, and as you can hear, I’m not a boy.”
Yasmin put both hands over her face. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I had no idea. Dressed this way…”
“Yasmin, let me introduce you to Katherine Garnet,” DeWitt said. “Kat works for the U.S. government the way you do, only Kat is our scientific expert on nuclear warheads. The rest of us are just delivery boys bringing her here to do her extremely sensitive work.”
Murdock looked at his watch. Franklin had been gone almost twenty-five minutes. Where was he?
Four blocks down the street, Franklin stared at the two Syrian soldiers who had stopped him moments before.
“No one runs in Damascus unless they are criminals or enemies of Syria,” one of the soldiers told Franklin.
Franklin looked at them, and saw two soldiers probably not out of their teens. They held their rifles slung over their shoulders and muzzles down.
One of them motioned with his free hand. “Come on, we’re going to have to take you into headquarters if you won’t talk. You could tell us what branch of special Army teams you’re with, and we could let you go and finish our patrol. Going to be a lot of work for all of us.”
Franklin understood every word they said in Arabic. He knew he had to do something fast. He just didn’t know what.
28
Franklin had kept the MP-5 with him when he drove the truck down the street away from the safe house. Now, facing the two Syrian soldiers, he carried the weapon in his right hand by the hand-piece with his finger on the trigger.
He shrugged and screeched and pointed behind the two men. They turned to look, and he brought up the sub gun and sprayed the men with two bursts of three silenced rounds each. The soldiers went down, both dead or dying before they hit the ground.
Franklin turned and ran down the street, the MP-5 in both hands and held in front of him. He finished the rest of the mile in record time, and went to the back door of the safe house as they had told him to do. J.G. DeWitt stood there outside waiting for him.
“Any problems?” DeWitt asked.
“Two,” Franklin said. “Couple of Syrian soldiers came out of nowhere and stopped me coming back from the truck.”
He told the J.G. what happened, and they hurried inside and Franklin told their host.
Yasmin frowned when she heard the story. “This will make problems. What you must do is go back to the truck, put the bodies inside, and drive it five miles down the street. Then come back here. It is the only way. Otherwise we would have soldiers all over this area asking questions, looking for strangers.”
“Franklin, you’re up. You know where the bodies and the truck are,” DeWitt said. “Take Jefferson with you. Then get back here without attracting any more attention.”
The two men picked up their weapons and hurried out the door.
“There’s not much we can do tonight,” Yasmin said. “I know, you want to do the job and get away, but it can’t happen yet. I’m meeting two people tomorrow morning who should have some intel about where the Army has the warhead. Best I can do. Your men can sleep upstairs. Two rooms with mattresses on the floor. Not the best accommodations.”
“We’ve slept on lots worse,” DeWitt said.
“Any idea at all where the warhead might be?” Murdock asked. “Would it be on an Army base, here in town, out in the country somewhere they consider safe?”
Yasmin nodded. “Oh, yes, we know a little. It was flown here by commercial jet and taken at once to military headquarters near the edge of town. They were so afraid of it that they ordered it moved to a safe place until they could get engineers in to look it over and convert it into a drop bomb. My source said the top Army brass were almost paralyzed with fear of the warhead. They are afraid it might suddenly trigger itself and explode and kill most of the people in Damascus.”