“Marhaba,” Camille and her interpreter said.
A voice returned the greeting from the back room. Camille nosed around. The shop was hardly bigger than a dog kennel and it was crammed with every imaginable cell phone accessory and pizza-box-sized satellite dishes were mounted along the top of the walls all the way around the room. Camille stretched and peeked behind the counter. A prayer rug and a sleeping mat were rolled up and stuck in a corner. A picture of a man with the cuddly look of an Islamic extremist was tacked to the shelf. She pointed to it and whispered to her interpreter. “Any idea which one that is? I’ve seen his picture all over today and I can never remember which is which. Long mangy beards, serenely rabid eyes-they both look alike to me.”
“It’s al-Zahrani. He claims he is bin Laden’s chosen one. He says al Qaeda has become weak because of heresy from within. He says its membership must be purged of all of Abdullah’s heretics.”
“I know, Abdullah, the other Crown Prince of Evil. Succession problems will get you every time.” Camille picked up a Hello Kitty cell phone skin. “Isn’t that how the whole Sunni/Shi’a thing started? Not that I’m comparing Mohammad’s ascent to heaven with Bin Laden’s descent to hell.”
The shopkeeper ducked down as he squeezed through the low doorway. He spoke in Arabic, revealing a mouth full of gold fillings. Camille assumed that he was apologizing for the delay.
“I’m Sally Winston, a correspondent for Newsweek. I’m doing a story on yesterday’s skirmish here in the souk.” She paused for the interpreter, hoping Omar hadn’t caught on that American journalists hadn’t dared to venture out on their own in Iraq in years, but rather relied on their Iraqi staff to do the real reporting.
The man pursed his lips, shook his head and waved his hand. She didn’t need a translation. She had received this same message all day.
“Look, all I want to know is how this guy got away from the soldiers. Was anyone helping him?” Camille showed the man an old picture of Hunter. He was clean shaven and his hair was shaved in a Marine flattop, a look she much preferred to his current beard, civilian-length hair and moustache. She pulled out a hundred dollar bill and waved it in front of him. “I’m really getting sick of everyone playing dumb.” Camille turned to the interpreter and said, “Don’t translate that last part.”
Omar spoke, then the interpreter said, “Perhaps I know someone who saw him leave the souk. Perhaps he had friends.”
The shopkeeper snatched the banknote between two fingers. Camille held on.
“I need more, Omar,” she said.
“You made an offer. I answered your question.” He tugged on the bill.
“You’re right. You did.” Camille released the bill and he jerked it away.
“Come back in one hour and bring more of these. Many more.” The shopkeeper shoved it into the pocket of his dishdashah.
As soon as they left the shop, Omar flipped open his cell phone and hit speed dial.
Chapter Seventeen
Anbar Province
The hokey-pokey started blaring from a cell phone in the other room while the tangos stood around, watching Hunter as he gyrated on top of his temporary wife, the American hostage named Jackie Nelson. Every thrust was like a knife stabbing into his gut. He despised what he was doing, what he had to do. Hunter tried to get the hokey-pokey out of his head, but it wouldn’t leave.
He heard footsteps as someone ran to the phone, then the music stopped and Fazul’s voice answered it. Fazul listened for several moments without speaking, then he shouted at the caller. Hunter closed his eyes and focused on the jerking motion of his hips as he tried to listen in, but he couldn’t make out the words above Jackie Nelson’s cries.
A few moments later, Fazul jogged back into the bedroom and kicked Hunter.
Hunter rolled away from Jackie and Fazul pointed his AK at him.
“My cousin tells me that a woman came into his shop today in Ramadi. She’s looking for her friend-the one the Americans were taking away at the souk yesterday. Her friend is an American, she says.”
Stella. Oh god, what have I done? Hunter’s gut clenched so tightly that he felt like vomiting. Stay in character. It’s the only way out.
“It’s a CIA trick,” Hunter shouted, channeling his rage through Sergei the Chechen. He felt the heat rising up his neck. “They lie. They lie that I’m American so that no one will help me. I am the enemy of your enemy. You saw them taking me away.” His voice raised in a crescendo. He threw up his arms and took a measured breath. “I am helping you prepare for the wedding, insh’allah. Would an American do that? Do you want a car bomb or a martyr vest? I recommend a car bomb because I can wire it for remote detonation with one of these cell phones, but you could send the boy in a vest, insh’allah.” He pointed at the teenage boy.
The boy snorted. “I am not a martyr. I am an executioner.”
One of the twins waved his finger at the teenager. “You, an executioner? You only hold their feet down while I am the one who chops off the heads.”
“Someday, I’ll be the one who whacks off the heads. You wait and see.” The boy pointed to himself.
“Enough!” Fazul held one hand in the air; the other kept the gun pointed at Hunter. “You will build a car bomb, then we will decide if you live.”
Hunter sifted through the nest of wires, tape, blasting caps, rusty tools, torn brown paper sacks of nails, screws and other unrelated hardware. The half brick of Semtex was not much for a serious car bomb and would be better suited for suicide vests, not that he was going to volunteer any advice. At first he hadn’t liked the idea of building a bomb for tangos, but then he’d realized that helping one al Qaeda splinter group take out another was probably a good thing. If he could get at least two of them to leave for the wedding, he was confident he could take the ones that remained and rescue Jackie. He piled the blasting caps together and started to untangle the wires.
“What are you doing?” Fazul said. “We don’t have time for this. We need to leave within an hour. You have more to work with than you know. Come.” Fazul motioned with his hand and stepped toward the doorway.
An old Passat station wagon was parked beside a beaten-up seventies-vintage Nissan pickup missing its passenger door. Several blue plastic gas cans were crammed into the small truck bed along with a rotting wooden pallet. Fazul lifted the pallet. Underneath it were two faded green artillery shells with Russian markings. Duds. Hunter had been on enough training missions to Twenty-nine Palms to know that even a good percentage of American artillery shells didn’t go off-fuses malfunctioned; propellants were faulty; shit happened-and these puppies were unstable and dangerous.
“Use these,” Fazul said as he knocked on the weathered shell.
“Stop! Don’t do that!” Hunter waved his arms in the air. All it took to set off a shell with a piezoelectric fuse buried in the ground was for a shadow to fall across it on a hot day, and movement would generally do the trick for most other detonator types. Shells were designed for rough handling and the brutal launch from howitzers and their cousins, but the firing sequence began a process that successively withdrew the safeties. For some reason that Hunter would rather not find out, at least one of the safety mechanisms in each of the shells had failed to withdraw.
That could change at any moment.
He took a deep breath. The hot air carried away the last drops of moisture from his sweating body. “You found this in the desert somewhere?”