“Inside joke. You have Convertino?”
“Affirmative. I have him on satellite tracking and satellite visual. My current visual window is two hours. After that I’ll have to switch to a different orbiter. I predict a ten-minute visual lag, but you’ll have constant from the transmitter.”
“Copy that. Give me visual.” Bolan watched as his screen lit up with a gray-green scene observed from overhead by a thermal-imaging satellite. Sangin Base was a constellation of lights, and a vehicle was tearing away from it with reckless speed. There was little to do but wait. Convertino would abandon his vehicle once he had covered some distance and then use his skills as a Marine scout sniper to make his way into the city unseen.
“I might just have something for you, Batman.”
“What’s that?”
“The woman, Reema.” Bolan’s screen split. Ous and Keller leaned over to peer at it. The NCIS sketch took up one-half of the screen and the other was a photo of a woman sitting in a café. She was blonde, wearing oversize sunglasses, and someone who wasn’t a professional surveillance artist had taken the shot from across the street, but there was a similarity.
“Who is she?”
“I called in a few favors and got this from Israeli Intelligence. Last year an Israeli military industrialist was suspected of leaking information. This woman was suspected of being his mistress. The day after that photo was taken the man was found in his office with his brains blown out in an apparent suicide.”
“And the woman?” Bolan queried.
“Disappeared without a trace.”
Bolan had guessed that. “What else?”
“Working backward, the Israelis believe a woman matching her description may be linked to the death of several prominent Israeli and Lebanese citizens, but they can’t prove anything,” Kurtzman stated.
“They have a name?”
“All they have is a first name.”
“Lay it on me,” Bolan said.
“Zurisaday.”
It was a beautiful name for a beautiful woman.
“A few clues lead them to believe she might be Jordanian,” Kurtzman continued. “But they’re not sure.”
Keller echoed Bolan’s thoughts. “A beautiful name.”
“It means ‘over the earth’ in Arabic,” Kurtzman said.
Ous scowled. “It should mean ‘viper.’”
“Well.” Keller sat back. “Convertino got bit, and bit bad.”
“It is said the righteous man cannot feel their sting.” Ous gazed long upon the sketch. “Though I must admit I have yet to meet such a man.”
The feed suddenly switched to the satellite imaging. “The vehicle has stopped. Convertino’s just outside the southern end of the city and proceeding in.”
“We’re moving,” Bolan said. Ous pulled the truck out of the alley and began negotiating the winding, narrow back streets of Sangin. Bolan checked the load of 9 mm subsonic hollowpoint rounds in his machine pistol and screwed the short black tube of a sound suppressor onto the muzzle.
“Be advised the corporal has changed course.”
Bolan grimaced. Convertino had first met the woman at an after-hours club that catered to Western soldiers. That was the first place he was supposed to try. Failing that he would try to establish contact with some of her friends. “Where’s he headed now?”
“North and west. He’s moving toward the outskirts of the bazaar.”
Keller was incensed. “Son of a bitch! Does he really think there’s any place to run? I say we get the chopper in the air and scoop him up. This mission is over.”
Bolan was confident that he had a pretty good read on the young corporal. “He’s not trying to escape.”
“Well, he sure as hell isn’t sticking to the plan!”
Bolan nodded. “He’s still in love. He wants to see his woman one more time, and confront her alone before we pick her up and he goes to jail for the rest of his life.”
“Well, that’s so sweet I might just throw up.” Keller shook her head in disgust. “And you knew he was going to rabbit on us in the name of love all along?”
“I knew there was a chance. It was a chance I was willing to take. We still have him, satellite eyes on and GPS tracking. The mission is still go.”
“I concur,” Ous said.
“We’ve lost visual,” Kurtzman reported. “He’s entered a building.”
“Vector us in, Bear,” Bolan said, using Kurtzman’s nickname. His screen zoomed and a route appeared in green across a grid of the city. Bolan started calling rights and lefts fast as Ous took the alleys at breakneck speed. “What’s Convertino’s status?”
“Signal hasn’t moved.”
The pickup pulled up in front of a patio. A flowering lemon tree grew in the middle, and a scattering of wrought-iron chairs and tables surrounded it. “Looks like a teahouse.
“Indeed I have taken tea here before,” Ous said.
“Keller, stay here and stay in character,” Bolan ordered. “And get the chopper in the air.”
Keller wasn’t pleased but she got it. “You got it.”
Bolan and Ous spilled out of the truck with their pistols drawn. “Cover me.”
Ous took a firing position over the hood of the truck as Bolan moved across the open area and kicked the door. An old man at a table looked up from a breakfast of tea and rice. A very young man nearby jumped and dropped the broom he was sweeping with. Ous came in through the door a second later and began snarling questions in Pashto. Bolan swept through the tearoom and kicked open the door to the empty kitchen.
“They see an American soldier?” Bolan called back.
“They say not.”
Bolan looked out the back door. It opened onto a blind alley jammed with carts, barrels and clotheslines. He returned.
“You believe them?”
“Indeed not.”
Bolan glanced around the room. The walls, floor and ceiling were all clay. He turned his gaze to the table the old man sat at and the carpet beneath it. He gently but firmly pulled the old man out of his chair and kicked over the table.
The young man screamed as he pulled an ancient Russian Tokarev pistol out of his sash. “Allahu Ak—” Ous cut the cry of faith short by ramming the butt of his rifle into the young man’s belly. A blow to the back of the legs toppled the adolescent and sent the pistol clattering across the floor. Bolan shoved the old man into Ous’s embrace and yanked the carpet aside. The revealed wooden hatch in the floor was a recent construction. Bolan took out his tactical light. “Ask him if it’s booby-trapped.”
Ous asked. “He says not.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I told him I would send his grandson to hell a eunuch if you were blown up opening it.” Bolan glanced at the old man, who was weeping. Ous shrugged fatalistically. “I give you a fifty-fifty chance.”
Bolan rolled his eyes. “You’re a good man, Ous.”
“One tries. I will stand over by the door and cover the prisoners in case of your demise.”
“Thanks.”
“You are welcome.”