“You men be careful with the president’s golf clubs,” Hasty admonished.
Both men snapped to attention.
“Sir!” One of the men’s eyes were centered on a spot an inch or so above the colonel’s head. “The president’s golf clubs, along with the rest of his gear, will be loaded last, probably not until just hours before departure.”
Again the fingers touched cap brim. “Very well, then.”
Hasty stood akimbo on the cement floor of the hangar, looking up at the plane he had just vacated. He had done all he could at this stage to make sure the president was delivered safely to Egypt.
The rest was in the hands of what Hasty’s experience had taught him was a very capricious God.
47
Jason watched for what seemed an eternity, but the bedclothes remained as placid as a pond with no wind. He flicked his eyes around the room, searching for the phone.
There wasn’t one.
As far away from the bed as he could get, perhaps three or four feet, he stooped, reached up his pants leg, and came up with his killing knife. One step and the tip of the blade was lifting the top sheet.
What happened next took place as a blur in his memory. The sheet lifted and something struck, something long and brown and angry.
The thing had made a leap, or strike, that was long enough to have reached Jason, had it not hit at the knife’s point instead. Now it was on the floor, twin needles of fangs facing Jason. Anvil-headed, dappled brown, with Satanic horns above each catlike eye, and a flicking tongue that seemed to be savoring a victim already. From long ago desert training, Jason recognized the deadly horned desert viper.
A native of the nearby Sahara, this one was unusually large at just over a couple of feet. Its venom was a witch’s brew of toxins that affected everything from kidneys to heart to bowels.
And it was definitely not in a good mood.
The snake had no intent of giving ground; and if the strike from the bed was any example, Jason was within easy range even adding the length of the blade. Attempting to use the knife was going to get him too close to those fangs. Keeping his eyes on those of the serpent as though they might telegraph intent, Jason poked the sheet with the knife again as he slowly backed up to put the bed between him and the snake. The creature advanced quickly across the tiled floor, a sideways movement like the sidewinder rattlesnake of the American Southwest, a movement adapted to the loose, shifting sands of the desert.
In less than a minute, Jason was going to be out of room.
Impaling the sheet on the tip of his knife, Jason waved it in front of the viper, drawing another strike, this time at the fabric.
A second attempt achieved what Jason had hoped for: The snake’s fangs were caught in the cotton threads of the sheet.
Swallowing the almost atavistic fear of snakes, Jason quickly stepped on its head, pinning it to the floor. A single stroke of the knife and the headless body wriggled furiously, leaving a thin trace of blood and slime across the tiles before it went still.
Jason carefully lifted his foot, unsure if he might still be in danger from some death spasm that could send those fangs into his foot or leg. If he ever could have used a shot or two of Viktor’s vodka, it was the time.
He started for the door, to get someone up there to remove that thing before he stepped on it in the dark.
No, wait.
The viper didn’t get in here on its own, and there is no point in alerting the would-be assassin it failed. Let him wonder. Mental advantage Jason.
Jason speared the head on the tip of his knife, carried it into the bathroom, and flushed it down the toilet followed by sections of the snake’s body he fed into the spinning waters one at a time.
Jason placed his knife and a recently unpacked .40-caliber Glock on the bedside table before turning out the light. Armed or not, sleep was not going to come easily.
48
Breakfast consisted of rice porridge floating in sorghum and injera, a bread made from flour, honey, and rosemary. And, of course, coffee, thick, aromatic African-bean coffee. Overhead, a fan spun lazily, doing little but rearranging the already hot, dry air in a room empty except for the four men at the same table. The one next to theirs could have been a display case at a photography store: cameras with varying attachments, tripods, strobe lights and klieg lights on stands.
The four were dressed almost identically: khaki safari jackets over V-neck T-shirts and cargo pants stuffed into military-style combat boots. Only in headwear was there a difference: One Indiana Jones — style broad-brimmed hat, a tightly woven straw Stetson, and two long-billed caps.
Jason was finishing relating the events of last night. “… And I’ll be damned if I can figure out why they didn’t try something more certain. A gunshot, perhaps. Why would they put a two-foot horned viper in my bed?”
Emphani smiled. “Perhaps because they could not find a five-foot cobra.”
“You complaining, Artiste?” Andrews chimed in. “Advantage of your dying of snakebite is that the police could treat it as something other than murder. I’m sure the one in your bed wasn’t the first varmint to creep in from the desert.”
Jason put down the piece of bread at which he had been nibbling. “Why do I have the feeling the sudden demise of a foreign infidel would not cause a great deal of concern among the local gendarmerie?”
Viktor, astonishingly chipper in view of the volume of vodka he had consumed the previous evening, spoke for the first time. “Important thing is someone knows is not crew from magazine.”
“Thanks a lot, asshole,” Jason said good-naturedly.
Viktor grinned, holding up both hands. “Mistake. Is important next to you being alive.”
Andrews pushed back from the table, the legs of his chair protesting against the floor’s tiles. “OK, now that someone knows our business isn’t glossy pictures in a magazine, what do we do?”
Do? What the hell could they do, Jason thought. Damn Momma and her duplicity that put him and his men in a place synonymous for remoteness with their cover likely blown and no way to identify their enemies.
“Don’t see we have much choice,” he answered. “We continue the masquerade.”
“Continue?” Viktor protested. “How is possible? Our enemies know we are here.”
“What would you suggest?” Jason asked patiently, all too aware Emphani and Andrews were listening with more than passing interest. “We can pack up and run, leaving the good folks who tried to kill me in our rear, free to contact their Tuareg buddies to set up an ambush if they don’t get to us first. It’s not like we can just go to the airport and skedaddle.”
“And why not, Artiste?” Andrews wanted to know. “You sure as shit aren’t planning to return the same way we came.”
Jason turned to face the former Navy man. “Our extraction plans do, in fact, call for us to depart by air, although hardly by commercial service. They also call for pretty precise timing, which we can discuss tonight along with our attack plan for tomorrow. The Timbuktu airport has only two flights a week direct Paris. All the others go to Mopi or Bamako. If we succeed, I doubt anyone will be eager to wait at either place for a flight out of country. No, I believe the safest thing is to stick with the plan we have. We’ll just have to be extra careful.”