Talia Rashid allowed a furtive smile to erode what had been up until that moment a primarily petulant frown.
“Do not assume you have seen even a small amount of our preparation. There is a warehouse on the level below these laboratories that houses many interesting and, I might add, far more efficient variations on what you have just witnessed. Even if you were fortunate enough to live long enough to tell your government what you have seen here, it would serve little purpose.
“I tell you this because your notion of escape is little more than a foolish fantasy. You will no doubt be captured and shot long before you can tell others what you have seen.”
This time it was Bogner who indulged his own small smile.
“We have a saying in my country, Mrs. Rashid. We tell people not to count their chickens before they hatch. Which is another way of saying your so-called Nasrat security people haven’t caught me yet.” Then he turned to Matba.
“Look around, see what you can use to tie up our friends.”
“You go back on your word,” Mrs. Rashid bristled.
“You said you would return us to our quarters.”
“Apparently you didn’t learn too much about Americans when you were going to school in the States,” Bogner said with a grin.
“If you did you would know we tend to be somewhat spontaneous.
We have a tendency to change plans every now and then, and in your case I’ve just changed mine. My little Iraqi friend and I have decided to leave you two here with all your toys. But just to make certain you two don’t run out and start activating security alarms, we’re going to tie you up and put you somewhere where it will take your colleagues a while to find you.”
Bogner turned off the lights and with Matba’s help, the Rashids were bound, gagged, dragged into the laboratory, and left on the floor in a place where they would be in plain sight when the lights were turned on.
Outside, in the central corridor leading away from Rashid’s laboratories, Bogner, with Matba still in tow, followed the diagrams to the service elevator and took the lift up one level to the supply access tunnel. When they got off the elevator, Bogner programed it to return to the laboratory level, waited until the light went on, pried the cover off the elevator’s service panel, tore out the wiring, and shorted out the controls.
“The way I’ve got it figured, it won’t be long until someone discovers the Rashids. The minute they do, they’ll hit the alarm system and this place will be flooded with your security guards — which is exactly what I need, another diversion. In the meantime, we’re headed back to the hangar. From there I can get to the switching yards.” Bogner paused and bolstered the Mk 2. He realized he had been talking far too fast for Matba to understand everything he was saying. He measured his words before he added, “From here on, little man, you’re on your own. This could get a little dicey.”
Matba obviously didn’t understand; like so many other terms Bogner had used, the word “dicey” was new to him.
“You mean you go home?
Home is America?” he asked.
Bogner weighed each word in an effort to make certain the little man understood him.
“America,” he said, “home.” Then he added, “But that’s a long shot. First I have to finish my work here. Then I worry about getting out of here.”
Matba pointed to himself.
“I help — sagheer.” Once again he was holding up his thumb and forefinger to let Bogner know how much sagheer meant.
“Then we need the quickest way back to the hangar. When they hear that security alarm in the Nasrat complex they’ll figure that’s where they’ll find me.”
Once again it took several moments for Matba to process what Bogner had just said, but finally he began pointing. Just as they did they heard the first security alarm.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Bogner shouted.
In all, there were six of them, Langley, Rogers, Kizil Burgaz, the Turkish Hormone pilot who had eluded Baddour’s patrols on Langley’s first trip to Koboli, and Rogers’s three handpicked Incursion Squad members.
The six men stood huddled around a crude, handmade table while two of the IS men held flashlights on the map Andera was sketching for them. She was painstaking in detail, pausing frequently to remind them it had been several years since she had worked at the Ammash facility.
“Take your time,” Langley cautioned.
“Anything and everything you can remember can and will help us.”
As the Kurd woman drew, Rogers compared her sketch to his series of satellite photos. Thus far
Andera had been accurate on everything she was telling them. The location of the hangars, the roads, and the location of the rail switching yards.
“Focus on the Nasrat building,” Rogers told her.
“How many entrances and where are they located?”
Andera pointed to her sketch.
“As I remember, there is an entrance here, on the southwest. It is the one used by most of the people who work there. One gate gives access to the traffic leading in and out of the village. It is seldom used. In the old days, the people who were stealing materials and medicine from Nasrat said that it was the easiest to get in and out of because there was only one guard.” Then she added, “Now very few people from the village work at Nasrat. Baddour has brought in people from other countries.”
“Is this the rail access?” Rogers asked.
Andera nodded and pointed.
“That is where they load the boxcars with the medicines Baddour sells. Most of the people that work at Nasrat are good people; they know nothing of what goes on in the lower levels of the building. They know only the rumors — rumors that Baddour makes and stores his weapons there.”
“Then you’ve never actually seen where the weapons are made?”
Andera admitted that she hadn’t.
“I heard one of the guards talking one time, and he said there was a network of underground supply tunnels that ran to all the buildings. They could be anywhere inside the complex.”
Langley, like Rogers, was beginning to understand how what was now Fahid’s operation worked. The NIMF made its weapons and transferred them via the underground tunnels to the hangars or wherever the tests were to be conducted, and the Nasrat employees as well as the people in Ammash were none the wiser. It also helped to explain why Baddour had had so few troops at Ammash. First, he had not needed all that many to conduct the tests: a handful of pilots, ground support personnel, and security. Second, by holding the number of people actually involved, it was easier to control how many actually knew about the real mission of Nasrat.
Baddour had been clever in more ways than one. By keeping the bulk of his troops and their command at three larger bases to the south, the Ammash/Nasrat complex had remained largely unnoticed until N1 and the people at Rockwell took notice of the anomalies in the satellite photos.
“That explains a lot of things,” Langley said with a sigh.
“It explains why the majority of his aircraft are helicopters and why most of them are Hormones at Ammash. That’s all he needed to conduct his tests. He used the Hips to handle his patrols and everything else was incidental. It also explains why we were never able to get any satellite shots of activity on the tarmac or any kind of operations moving between Nasrat and the airstrip.
It was all taking place underground.”
Rogers went back to the sketch.
“Our sources estimate that Baddour — or rather, Fahid — had anywhere from eight hundred to one thousand men stationed at his Ammash facility. Can you verify that?”
Andera shook her head.
“I would be surprised if it were that many. At the hospital where I worked we seldom saw men in uniform.”