Hostile Dawn

Ahmet wasn’t sure if he’d killed the ranger, but he wasn’t about to take any chances. Setting down his two guns, he grabbed the sledgehammer and lofted it into the air, then brought it crashing down on the other man’s head with a sickening thud.

By now Ahmet was bathed in sweat and breathing heavily, but there was no time to rest. He cast aside the sledgehammer and quickly snatched up the bolt cutters. Snipping the ankle restraints was easy enough, and with considerable more effort he was able to prop the cutters in such a way that they could chew their way through the links of his handcuffs. Liberated, he shook his legs and then waved his freed arms back and forth, loosening the stiffened muscles. Now able to move more freely, he dragged the ranger’s body to the truck and maneuvered it up into the rear bed. Once he’d stripped the man of his uniform, Ahmet set the clothing aside and draped the body with a tarpaulin. He would worry about where to dispose of it later.

The fugitive backtracked to the fence posts for his stolen guns, then returned to the truck and quickly peeled off his sweat-drenched jumpsuit, stuffing it under the tarp next to the ranger’s body.

The ranger had been slightly taller than Ahmet, and when he put on the dead man’s clothes they fit loosely. It served the fugitive’s purposes, as the long sleeves and pant legs enabled him to conceal the severed cuffs still clenched around his wrists and ankles.

The pickup’s keys were in the ranger’s pockets. Ahmet took them, climbed into the truck and set his two weapons on the bench seat beside him. He grinned with satisfaction as he started the engine and put the truck in reverse. So far, so good.

Backing away from the work area, Ahmet came to a dirt service road. He shifted gears and followed it northward, winding past the campground and mountain foothills, a cloud of dust trailing behind him. He made his way without incident, encountering no one until he reached the park entrance. There, another ranger was standing outside a small wooden shack stocked with parking stickers, brochures and maps of hiking trails. Normally, the man would have been posted inside, dealing with visitors as they entered the site. Due to fire conditions, however, the park was closed, as Ahmet realized when he saw a drawn gate barricading his way to the main road. The other ranger, it turned out, was taking advantage of the closure to paint the shack’s clapboard exterior.

Ahmet cursed under his breath as he approached the shack. Reducing his speed, he took one hand from the wheel and grabbed a wide-brimmed hat resting on the seat beside the two pistols. He propped the hat on his head, brim pulled down low. He doubted the ruse would work, but if it bought him a few seconds, that would be all he’d need.

The pickup had come to within twenty yards of the shack when the other ranger turned from his painting and glanced Ahmet’s way. Head bowed slightly, the fugitive offered a slight wave, taking care not to expose the handcuff tucked beneath his shirtsleeve. The ranger glanced fleetingly at Ahmet and waved back nonchalantly. He was about to return to his painting when he did an apparent double-take and looked back. Confirming that an impostor was driving the truck, the ranger dropped his paintbrush and grabbed for the walkie-talkie clipped to his waist.

Before the ranger could send out a distress call, Ahmet fired twice, pumping two 9 mm rounds into the man’s chest. The ranger staggered backward, bounding off the shack and then falling to the ground, fresh paint imprinted on the back of his uniform.

Ahmet shifted into neutral and jammed the parking brake, then bounded out, quickly dragging the ranger to the back of the truck. He dropped the tailgate and strained again as he hoisted his latest victim up onto the truck bed. He shoved the corpse next to that of the ranger he’d killed earlier, then raided the man’s pockets for his keys and wallet. Once he’d covered the bodies and raised the tailgate, he went to the gate, trying seven different keys before he found the one that worked the lock. He swung the gates open, then drove through to the other side and brought the truck to another stop, getting out long enough to close the gates behind him.

Moments later, he was on the main road, heading for the two-lane highway that, in time, would take him to the major arterial freeways. Once there, he would head west and meet up with Mousif Nouhra and the members of his al Qaeda sleeper cell. Yes, they would be disappointed that he’d failed in his attempt to smuggle in rocket launchers from Mexico, but once they learned of his daring escape, he was sure that they would be impressed enough to abide by his supervision. There was, after all, a mission still to be carried out.

CHAPTER FIVE

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

“Bastard slipped through the cracks,” Aaron Kurtzman groused as he filled his coffee grinder.

“For the moment, perhaps,” Hal Brognola conceded.

A high-pitched whine sounded throughout the Computer Room as Kurtzman ground the beans. Carmen Delahunt glanced up from her keyboard and grinned at the burly strategist.

“Sounds like my brain about now,” she said. “Whirrrrrrr…”

“Your brain would probably make for a better cup of coffee than whatever Bear’s whipping up,” Akira Tokaido quipped without taking his eyes off his computer screen.

“I’m feeling the love,” Kurtzman said, taking the wisecracks in stride. His addiction to superstrong coffee was a running joke among the cybercrew, and he was more than willing to let himself be the butt their humor. It was, after all, a more benign way of managing the inevitable stress of their jobs than throwing things or hitting walls.

“Okay, people,” Brognola interjected. “Can we stay on task here?”

The “task” was deciding how best to proceed in dealing with Kouri Ahmet’s ground escape after the Lebanese renegade had bailed from the hijacked Gulfstream that had been transporting him back to the States to stand trial on conspiracy charges. Able Team’s Pol Blancanales and Gadgets Schwarz had arrived at the San Jacinto Wilderness Preserve within an hour after Ahmet’s getaway plane had been shot down, and, working in tandem with a search party made up of county sheriff officers, FBI agents and helicopters from the Camp Pendleton Marine base, they’d undertaken an intensive dragnet of the rugged terrain where it had been determined that Ahmet had most likely touched down. With aerial help from the search copters, the runaway’s parachute had been tracked down in an isolated ravine and footprints had led to a spot where blood on the ground hinted at the likelihood that Ahmet had overpowered a forest ranger as a means of continuing his escape. Two rangers were reported missing along with a Forest Service pickup. An APB was out for the truck as well as for Ahmet, but so far there had been no sightings. It was dark now on the West Coast, and with each passing minute the trail was getting colder.

“Carl and Jack just caught up with Rosario and Gadgets,” Huntington Wethers, the third member of the Farm’s cyberteam, reported. He was on the phone with Lyons, linked to Able Team’s field leader by way of a scrambled signal. “They want to leave Ahmet to the Bureau for now and focus on tracking down that al Qaeda cell.”

“Tell them to go ahead,” Brognola advised. “But if Ahmet comes back on radar, I’ll want them to be ready to shift gears again.”

“If you ask me, if they’re looking for al Qaeda there’s a good chance they’ll bump into Ahmet anyway,” Kurtzman stated. “I still think there’s got to be a link there somewhere.”

“You could be right,” Brognola said.

“I’ll have Carl keep that in mind,” Wethers suggested.

“Good idea.”

As Wethers tapped his headset to pass along instructions, Brognola unwrapped another of his cigars. He began working it between his fingers as he turned to Delahunt.

“Anything on that arms deal Ahmet was involved in when he was arrested? Was he buying or selling?”

“Buying,” Delahunt responded.

“You’re following the money?”

Delahunt nodded. “It took some doing but we’ve traced the currency back to an offshore account in the Caymans. The bank there is stonewalling, but we’ve got records on them brokering a lot of action with heavyweights in the Middle East, including a Lebanese financier who’s been funding Hezbollah training camps in the Bekaa Valley.”

Brognola frowned. “That reporter Phoenix just freed from Hamas…Wasn’t he looking into an angle about Lebanon being in the loop on those nuclear materials Iran is shuttling out of the country?”

“Now that you mention it, yeah,” Delahunt replied. “You think these training camps might figure in?”

“Worth looking into,” Brognola said.

“Hold on,” Kurtzman interjected. “Let me make sure I’m following this. We’re saying Iran’s moving nuclear materials to Lebanon by way of Iraq and Syria?”

“That’s what Ferris claims,” Brognola said. “I haven’t had a look at his sources or what kind of intel he’s working with, but that’s the corridor he’s talking about.”

“But do you see what I’m getting at?” Kurtzman said. “The northern provinces in Iraq are al Qaeda strongholds these days. Syria’s underworld is run by Hamas. And in Lebanon we’ve got Hezbollah calling the shots. Granted, those folks all would like nothing better than to see us flushed down the toilet, but it’s not like they’re working hand-in-hand.”

“Or are they?” Barbara Price spoke up. “It’s not like Ferris is some crackpot. He’s got a track record for solid reporting, so if he’s putting this out as some cooperative effort, we need to start rethinking a few things.”

“None of them good,” Brognola added. “Factionalism between those groups has always been one thing holding them in check. The last thing we need is them rallying behind the same game plan.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Kurtzman piped in over the gurgling of his coffeemaker. “And the idea of those groups breaking bread together is bad enough. Throw nukes into the mix and…I don’t even want to go there.”

Brognola nodded gravely. The implications of Walter Ferris’s news story had a bearing not only on the situation in the Middle East but the one in California, as well.

“Kouri Ahmet is Lebanese,” he recalled, thinking out loud. “If you’re going to lump him in with some terrorist outfit, it’s Hezbollah or Hamas. But if it turns out he’s in cahoots with that al Qaeda cell in L.A., that already proves half of Ferris’s theory.”

“Hang on, everyone,” Akira Tokaido interrupted. While the others had been brainstorming, he’d been clicking away at his keyboard, culling through the Farm’s databases for cross-links between Ahmet and a possible transport conduit between Iran and Lebanon. He’d found something.

“Get this,” the young hacker told his counterparts. “Ahmet trained in Bekaa Valley at a Hezbollah camp near Baalbek. I’ve got the place linked to funding from a Lebanese financier named Nasrallah Kassem. That ring a bell with anyone?”

“Here,” Delahunt said. “That’s the money guy behind those accounts in the Caymans I was just talking about.”

“I’ve heard of him, too,” Brognola said. “Yes, he’s a Hezbollah sympathizer, but he’s made his fortune off the Tokyo Stock Exchange and deals in the Far East.”

“Meaning he gets around, same as Ahmet,” Delahunt said.

“See what you can find on Kassem’s Pac-Rim dealings and run them through the Caymans mix,” Brognola suggested.

“Will do,” Delahunt responded.