Christopher Reich - Rules of Betrayal

The man slid behind the wheel and shoved the gearshift into first. The Land Rover lurched forward, the underinflated tires gripping the sand nicely. Sky filled the windscreen as the vehicle climbed a dune. The next moment the nose fell, and blue was replaced by brown as the car slid down the back side. His destination was an anonymous point in the desert thirty kilometers due west, where Emma Ransom had last been seen. Satellite imagery taken after her video feed was cut showed the heat signature of six vehicles departing from the airfield and traveling deep into the desert. Enhancement of the images identified five of the vehicles as belonging to the national police. The sixth was a Mercedes SUV and belonged to Prince Rashid.

“One of my operators is missing,” Connor had said when he’d called hours earlier. “This one is a priority. To be found at all costs.”

The man drove for an hour, his neck growing tense from the vehicle’s continual rising and falling. One kilometer from the destination, he crested a rise and braked before the Land Rover could plummet down the other side. Cautiously, he stepped out. The dune sea ended just ahead, giving way to a moonlike expanse of hard sand, rock, and scrub. With his binoculars, he scanned the landscape. Almost immediately his eye caught a patch of color where none should be. There, precisely where the satellite had last mapped Prince Rashid’s position, was a black garment impaled on a thorn bush.

Lowering his binoculars, he listened. The desert was a vacuum and sound traveled far. He heard nothing. Senses on alert, the man guided the vehicle down the last dune. Leaving the motor running, he walked to the bush and removed the garment. It was a cotton T-shirt, and he noticed at once that all of its labels had been cut out. It was a spy’s garment, and as such, verification that Rashid had brought Emma Ransom to this place. One corner of the shirt was dry and crusted, and when he ran a thumb over it, it came away the color of rust.

A few meters away, tire tracks raked the dirt. The man approached and observed a storm of footprints in a semicircle around a smoothed patch of sand. Cigarette butts littered the area. Kneeling, he ran his fingers through the sand. He came away with various rocks and pebbles and sticks. There was something else, too. A tooth. A human molar with a silver filling.

The man returned to his car and drove over to a dune that looked down on the spot where Emma Ransom had been tortured, and more than likely executed. Using his binoculars, he studied the area. After a moment he spotted a set of tire tracks leading farther into the desert and, centered behind the tracks, a rough furrow. He knew the rumors about the prince. It was not the first time Rashid al-Zayed had dragged someone behind his car.

The man followed the tracks until they ended abruptly one kilometer farther on. He stepped down from the car and surveyed the area, but he found only a single set of men’s footprints. One impression was exceptionally clear and showed a partial name of the shoe brand. He snapped a few photos with his telephone and sent them to Connor with the hope that some of his technical whizzes might be able to deduce something or other. He kicked around the sand, feeling miserable.

And then he saw it-a chunk of plastic no bigger than a thumbnail. He brought it closer. It was a cellular telephone’s SIM card, the all-important chip containing the telephone’s user information: numbers, addresses, photographs, and records of calls made to and from that apparatus. Near the SIM card, blood had dried into a hardened pool, as black as obsidian.

Rising, he made a final walk around. With a heavy heart, he placed a call to Connor.

“You were right. Rashid took her out into the desert with all his buddies and had some fun with her.”

“Any sign of her?”

“I found her shirt, a tooth, and a SIM card. There’s a lot of blood, too.”

“Jesus.”

“I wouldn’t hold out much-” The man stopped mid-sentence. “Holy shit.”

“What is it?” demanded Frank Connor.

The man bent at the waist and peered at something in the sand. “She’s alive.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’m looking at her footprint. She walked out of here.”

The MV-22 Osprey flew high over the blue waters of the Persian Gulf, maintaining a speed of 180 knots on its course south-by-southwest from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Seated in the passenger compartment, Jonathan Ransom glanced out the window as a pair of F-18 fighters whizzed past a mile to port. The helicopter passed directly above a guided missile cruiser, the Stars and Stripes flying boldly from the fantail. For the last ten minutes they’d been overflying the naval vessels of Carrier Task Force 50. He’d left one war zone only to enter another.

“Touchdown in six minutes,” said the pilot.

Jonathan checked his shoulder harness, making sure that the belt fit tightly across his chest and waist. The Osprey dipped its nose and began a rapid descent. He had the sensation of being sucked into a vortex against his will.

Since climbing onto the chopper at Tora Bora one week earlier, he’d been constantly on the move. From Tora Bora to Bagram. Bagram to Camp Rhino. Camp Rhino to the embassy in Kabul. Back to Bagram. At every stop he’d endured another debriefing. He’d related the events as best he could. He’d asked to go home. Always he received the same answer: “In due time.” And he waited to be moved again.

The aircraft touched down. Two MPs led the way to a hatch in “the Island,” the imposing tower rising from the flight deck. Jonathan followed, climbing a set of stairs to reach the flag bridge. His destination was an anonymous wardroom with a table and chair and an American flag stuck in one corner like an afterthought.

The hatch opened and a stocky middle-aged man dressed in a rumpled gray suit entered. He was carrying two china mugs and held a leather folder beneath an arm. “You drink tea, right?” he said, thrusting one of the mugs toward Jonathan. “I got you Darjeeling. Two bags and plenty of sugar. Figured you needed something to keep you going. Me, I’m a coffee guy. Don’t care what kind as long as it’s black.”

Jonathan took the mug and looked on as the man struggled to set his coffee and dossier on the table, spilling quite a bit in the process. “Want to join me?” he asked as he pulled out a chair and sat down. “No? Suit yourself. Me, I have to sit. I swear these long flights give me thrombosis in my legs. Hurts like the dickens.”

“You should make sure you walk around during the flight,” said Jonathan. “Helps the circulation.”

“Yeah, that’s what they say.”

The man unzipped his leather folder and took out a legal pad and some papers and arranged them neatly, as if he were a clerk setting up for business. Jonathan knew better than to be fooled. Whoever this man was, he was anything but a clerk.

“Some shit-storm you went through,” said the man. “You all right?”

“I’m fine. The other guys weren’t so lucky.”

“You want to tell me what happened?”

“You want to tell me your name?”

“What’s the point? I’d probably be lying to you.”

“You’re Connor.”

The man pulled his jaw into his neck, either surprised or bewildered. “Emma told you?”

“She might have let something slip when we were in London. She said you were a prick. I just put a face to a name.”

Connor found this amusing. “Did she tell you anything else?”

“That you tried to have her killed when she was in Rome.”

“I understand you’re upset. No one likes to be manipulated without their knowledge.”

“I’m still working on your sending a man to put a knife in my wife’s back.”