Richard Castle - Wild Storm

But his most distinctive feature was a wine-colored stain that started just below his scalp and splashed down the right side of his face.

“How the hell am I supposed to know?” he said in reply to whatever question had just been posed to him. “What do you want me to do, knock on the door and ask him for a dang business card?”

The voice on the other end spoke. The man with the wine stain picked up the Bushmaster and used the scope like a pair of binoculars to study the Chevy that had taken Storm out to Hercules.

“Well, it’s definitely a government car, that’s for sure,” the man said. “It’s got the white tags and all that. But it ain’t got no markings that—”

The man was interrupted. He listened for a moment then said, “No, no. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It ain’t the locals. They’re treating this whole thing like McRae just walked off. They haven’t found nothing because there wasn’t nothing to find. I keep telling you, we did that part real good. Plus, she always goes to them. They ain’t come to her since the first couple days.”

He lowered the gun. There was more talking on the other end.

“Beats me,” he replied. “Maybe she called someone who called someone who knows a fed? It don’t look like FBI. They drive them big cars, Caprices and whatnot. I’ve been thinking maybe the car is military, but the guy who got out didn’t look military. He was big like he was in the military — Special Forces big. But no uniform. And the hair was wrong. Hell, maybe he’s from the census or something?”

The man listened to an instruction.

“Okay. I’ll shoot him as he comes out.”

Another pause from the other side of the conversation. He picked up the gun again, and was looking through the scope as he spoke.

“Yeah, yeah. You get the stuff I sent earlier?”

He got a quick affirmation, then continued: “No, I’m telling you, she didn’t see nothing. She ain’t laid eyes on me once. I was in my little hiding place when I took those, but it looks like I was right next to her. Ought to keep that scientist of yours plenty motivated. Just let me know if you want more.”

He was nodding as more squawking came from his Bluetooth.

“Yeah, I’m straight. I can take her out anytime you want. You just give me the word and the old lady is as good as gone.”

The voice on the other end began wrapping up the conversation, but the man cut it off. There was movement in his scope. The big guy who had come in the government car was coming down the front steps. The man with the wine stain trained his crosshairs on the big guy’s head.

“Hang on, hang on. I gotta go. He’s coming out. I’ll shoot him right now.”

He kept the big guy in his scopes for another long second.

Then he lowered his gun and reached for his camera, which was at his feet. It had a 300-millimeter lens, which he used to zoom in tight on the big guy. After the autofocus did its work, the man with the wine stain jammed down the shutter button. The camera motor clicked off two dozen shots in less than two seconds.

The man quickly peeked at the screen on the camera, ready to fire off a few more if need be.

But it wouldn’t be necessary. He had captured this stranger — whoever he was — quite clearly. He plugged the camera into his laptop and began uploading them to his employer.

SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Tall and angular, with close-set eyes, a nose that dominated his long face, a ratty beard that obscured his chin, and a white turban wound atop his head, Ahmed heard it all the time: he looked like a young Osama bin Laden.

He took it as a compliment. Many of the people who said it were admirers of bin Laden, even if they’d be careful around whom they’d admit that. They’d considered bin Laden a brave leader, even if they hadn’t agreed with his ultimate tactics. Nothing wrong with being compared to someone like that.

Also, bin Laden had enjoyed the company of many wives. Ahmed wouldn’t mind that part a bit. He didn’t even have one.

He leaned back at his desk. People often thought men like Ahmed didn’t have desks, that they spent their lives out crawling around in the sand like some oversized scarab beetle. But no, he had a desk and an office. It was a large office, with plenty of room for a television that he kept tuned to Al Jazeera and for the prayer mat that he reverently unrolled five times daily and turned in the direction of Mecca.

The room was located in a building that was older than Ahmed’s great-great-grandfather, within a walled compound that had been in Ahmed’s family for many generations before that.

It did not look like much now, he knew. Long ago, Ahmed’s family owned all the land around it, giving the compound the look of an estate. But slowly, through the generations, his forefathers had sliced off one piece of land after another, until only a handful of acres were left. The area, which had once been rural, had slowly been developed until now it was a densely packed residential neighborhood. The compound was fronted by a narrow street that carried its share of traffic. Unremarkable houses, far younger than the one Ahmed sat in, ringed it on all sides.

Had any of his neighbors been asked, they would have said that Ahmed was a quiet businessman who mostly kept to himself.

They might have said they found the razor wire atop those walls to be a bit excessive, not that Ahmed was particularly interested in their opinions on the subject. They certainly wouldn’t have known about the fully automatic rifles he kept at the ready. Or the men he hired to wield them. Or the things he asked those men to do with them. The guns would not have been in keeping with his businessman persona.

That was part of what the walls helped hide. Ahmed loved those walls for that reason and for others. The walls were what turned his house into a sanctuary. They had protected his great-great-grandfather and all the men in his family who had come since. Whatever havoc was going on in the world around him, the compound — its buildings and its land — could be protected.

And there had long been havoc here. This part of the world was called the Fertile Crescent, the cradle of civilization. Many, many generations before, Ahmed’s ancestors had been among the first humans to form sedentary agricultural settlements, domesticate animals, and cultivate grains. They made calendars by tracking the waxing and waning of the moon, learned to predict the floods of the mighty rivers, built trenches to irrigate their crops, made the land into something valuable.

And then they started fighting over it — and had been doing so ever since.

Ahmed’s family had gotten out of the farming business long ago. There were better ways to make money. The land and climate had changed much. The Fertile Crescent was not as fertile as it had once been.

And yet still people fought over it. They fought because of religion, because the old maps had different lines on them than the current maps did, because new factions took over governments and used their power to make life miserable for old factions.

Ahmed was no mere bystander in these battles, of course. Far from it. War. Chaos. Confusion. These things were all good for Ahmed. If people in this part of the world ever stopped beating their plowshares into swords, it might be trouble for Ahmed. He was one with the sword-bearers. The peace that do-gooders kept thinking they could bring to the Middle East did not interest Ahmed in the slightest.

There was a knock at his door.

“Come in,” Ahmed said at the start of a conversation that would take place in Arabic, both men’s native tongue.

A young man with a long beard and a turban that matched Ahmed’s entered the room. “We have the promethium secured,” he said.