Gil sat watching him across the table. “You fought in Chechnya, right?”
Zhilov rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Don’t ask me about Chechnya, Yankee. I don’t want to remember. Those goddamn guys with the Martyrs’ Brigade…” He shook his head again. “Salafi fanatics, they make these goddamn guys you’re hunting look like girl who suck penis for a living.” He laughed. “That I tell you for free, you goddamn Yankee. Now, you ready to eat yet or what?”
Gil smiled and stood up from the table. “I got a feelin’ I’m gonna regret it, but yeah, I’m ready.”
Zhilov got to his feet. “Come on. I show you good place for last meal.” He clapped Gil on the back, laughing uproariously as if it were the funniest thing he had ever heard.
Gil smiled without humor, watching the Russian guardedly. “I’m glad we never had to fight you people.”
Zhilov laughed some more. “Me too! You goddamn Yankees still think you playing cowboys and Indians!”
6
Abdu Bashwar was a thirty-two-year-old soldier of Allah, and though he had yet to personally kill another human being, he had participated in the attack on the CIA annex in Benghazi as a spotter for the mortar team that bombarded the building. His compatriot Cesar Koutry was a twenty-nine-year-old deserter from the Saudi Arabian army who had spent the last seven years of his life designing bomb vests and other explosive devices for AQAP insurgents.
Koutry’s dream was the total overthrow of the al-Saud monarchy — which was greatly supported by the United States — and to one day return to a Saudi Arabia governed solely by Sharia law. In Koutry’s world, Saudi Arabian oil would be sold only to other Muslim nations, and the profits would belong to the people — not to any so-called royal family.
They had arrived in Casablanca the month before with orders to begin preparations for a renewed insurgency in Morocco. With the recent influx of international businesses, Western influence was growing, and as a result, Morocco was beginning to experience a slight resurgence in both Christianity and Judaism. Though Islam was the official legal religion, the Moroccan constitution did allow for freedom of belief — so long as non-Muslims did not attempt to convert Muslims to their own religions. To do so was considered a crime, but most Christian and Jewish missionaries ignored the law.
AQAP had decided that it was again time to make Westerners less comfortable in Casablanca. The last significant terrorist attack there had taken place in 2007, when two brothers blew themselves up in front of the American Consulate. Things had been comparatively quiet since then, with the brief exception of the Arab Spring protests that took place during 2011 and 2012.
Koutry sat in a beat-up chair surfing through the channels on the television until at last he yawned and tossed aside the remote. “There’s nothing to watch.”
Bashwar sat at the table behind him eating a late supper. “There has to be a soccer game.”
“I’m sick of soccer.” Koutry glanced over his shoulder. “Where is Izaan? The little turd is late.”
“He’s always late,” Bashwar answered through a mouthful of couscous. “This isn’t new.”
“I think we need a new contact. That kid is a little stupid for this kind of work.”
“He’s all we’ve got right now. I’ve already asked for another.”
The door burst open, and sixteen-year-old Izaan barged into the room, causing both men to nearly jump out of their skins. “The big man with red hair!” Izaan blurted. “He’s parked on the street in a black van. He has an American commando with him.”
Koutry jumped up from the chair, looking at Bashwar. “I told you that fat Russian was trouble!”
Bashwar gulped down a glass of water and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand; then he took a Czech-made pistol from beneath his shirt and got up from the table. “How do you know it’s an American commando?”
Izaan shrugged. “He looks like one to me.”
“Did they follow you here?”
“No, Bashwar. They were already parked there when I came down the street.”
Bashwar thumbed back the hammer on the CZ-75. “Why didn’t you keep walking instead of letting them see you come in here?”
Izaan became frightened. “What have I done wrong? I only wanted to warn you.”
Koutry stepped over and took the teenager by the arm, patting him down to find a cellular in his back pocket and tossing it to Bashwar. “You could have called to warn us.”
“I didn’t think of it. I’m sorry.”
Bashwar stood thumbing through the call list on Izaan’s phone, checking his messages and phone book for anything suspicious. After a moment, he looked up and said, “Kill him.”
Izaan tried to jerk his arm free, but Koutry was too fast. He grabbed the kid around the head and gave his neck a vicious twist, breaking his spinal cord with a crunch and letting the body fall to the floor with the forehead thudding against the tile.
“What did you find?” Koutry asked, putting out his hand for the phone.
Bashwar tucked the phone into his pocket. “I didn’t find anything, but this house is obviously compromised, and there’s no way to be sure that fool wasn’t working for the enemy.”
Koutry grew angry. “You had me kill a boy for no reason?”
Bashwar shrugged. “Who else knows we’re in Casablanca? No one. But still there’s a Russian mercenary parked down the street—with an American commando.” He pointed at the body. “How else could that imbecile know he was an American commando? You said yourself he was too stupid for this kind of work.”
Koutry straightened his shirt and stepped over the body, pointing his finger into Bashwar’s face. “Next time, you do your own killing.”
Bashwar pointed the CZ-75 into Koutry’s face with the intention of making some kind of tough guy remark, but Koutry grabbed the weapon from his hand, knocking him backward over the chair and pointing the pistol at him.
“Hear me well,” Koutry said quietly. “Until you’ve learned how to kill a man, you had better never point a gun at me again.”
Bashwar nodded slowly, slightly concerned that Koutry might actually shoot him.
Koutry let down the hammer and tossed the weapon onto the table. “Now we have to deal with the fat Russian and his friend. I think I’ll send them both to the moon.”
7
To Gil, the old Medina district looked like something out of a Jason Bourne movie, with its narrow streets and old houses built on top of one another, and all of them looking exactly alike to his eye. They were old stucco homes, most of them constructed around the turn of the twentieth century, before the French arrived to take the country under its “protection.” The street vendors had packed away their wares for the night, and the cobblestone alleys were relatively empty, save for a few parked cars and empty vendor carts.
“A guy could get lost in the neighborhood.”
Zhilov chuckled. “If you get lost in Casablanca, just walk toward the sea until you hit the coastal road. The sea is very big. Not even a Yankee can miss it.”
Gil checked the side-view mirror, but all he could see was a wall. “I don’t think there’s a straight road in this entire district.”
“This is the Anfa,” Zhilov said. “The original part of the city, before the French took over and tried to make the city look like Paris.”