Greg Bear - Quantico

‘I’m skimming now, sir,’ Dalrymple said.

The midge descended on a tall, lone man with dirt-colored hair and a staggering, weaving stride. He wasn’t wearing ihram ; he had on flopping socks, boots, shorts and a torn khaki shirt. Cars brushed close, one knocking him with a mirror and spinning him to his knees; buses moved to within a few inches as he stood again and weaved across the lanes. It seemed he’d be struck down at any moment, but there was something charmed about his uneven gait. He glanced up at the sky, face crinkled in a puzzled frown, as if aware he was being watched. He seemed to be listening to something or someone.

Dalrymple dropped the midge to within a few feet of the man. They had a quick close-up, full on, of the mottled face, filthy with sweat, dirt, and dried blood. His eyes were startling in the darker, stained face, staring, childlike and clear.

Green and blue.

Jane paralleled Lawrence Winter’s FBI portrait in their gogs. Except for the eyes, the emaciated face was only vaguely recognizable. But Jane was certain. ‘That’s him,’ she said. ‘We’ve found Winter. What in the hell is he doing?’

‘Looks pretty out of it,’ Dalrymple said.

Birnbaum, the pilot of the whisper bird, broke in and reported he disembarked all passengers. ‘Wind is one or two knots. Standing off at five klicks and setting out biosensors,’ he said.

A red glow flicked on in the upper right corner of Jane’s vision. Frequencies and satellite positions scrolled below the light. Then, beeps and whoops of digital decoding-somewhere in the ship’s electronic mind, complicated decrypt was being performed. Within seconds, as she held her breath, she heard…

A phone wheedling.

The phone, according to the display, was in the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood of Jerusalem.

The numbers matched.

‘Yigal Silverstein is phoning his girl,’ Jane announced. She was wide awake now like a dog on point.

‘Wonderful,’ Dalrymple said.

The midge rose to ten meters above the wandering man on the overpass.

‘Oh, Christ,’ Periglas said. Jane could see it coming as well. She wanted to turn away, but the image in the gogs followed her head.

A speeding bus, spying a gap in a neighboring lane, had zipped from behind a truck whose bed was thick with pilgrims. Pilgrims leaned inboard where they hung from the slats to avoid being knocked free. The bus accelerated, honking madly-

And the man with one blue eye and one green eye, with dirty hair and bloody face, vanished under its hood and tires. The bus did not even slow. Three more cars rolled over the tumbling pile of meat and rags, lurching on their shocks like kiddy bumper toys.

‘Suspect is down,’ Dalrymple said.

‘He’s gone,’ Periglas said.

Jane closed her eyes. For some reason, no time to guess why, former Special Agent Winter had been cut loose to wander and die.

Mina

Through the open window of the minibus, William felt the wind shift. In a few minutes, it might be just right for an opening salvo of fireworks. He scanned the gray skies. Al-Husseini was driving over the hard-packed dirt trail, not really a road. The minibus was bucking and complaining like a donkey. They were all listening to Dalrymple explain what had just been seen on the overpass.

‘Was it Winter?’ Rebecca asked.

‘We think so,’ Jane said. ‘We’ll replay-’

‘No time,’ Fouad said. ‘What else do you have for us?’

‘Agent Rowland has picked up one of our settlers,’ Dalrymple said.

‘He’s on a cell with his fiancée in Jerusalem,’ Jane said. ‘According to our translator, he’s sitting in the back of a truck and he’s not a happy terrorist. Something about having diarrhea.’

‘Let me hear his voice, if he is still talking,’ Fouad said. ‘I need to hear this man who wants to kill so many Muslims.’

Dillinger interrupted from Washington, DC. ‘Mr. Al-Husseini, we show you coming up on a gated service road outside the tent city.’

‘Yes, as I have told you,’ Al-Husseini said. ‘The gates will be open. I know the guards. That is your point of entry. Papers will be checked. I assume-’

‘Fouad, on short acquaintance, do you trust Mr. Al-Husseini?’ Dillinger asked.

The two men in the front of the minibus exchanged dark glances. Fouad looked away and grinned. ‘He is an individual with many fine traits,’ he said. ‘What more can I say?’

Al-Husseini smirked. ‘We are all excellent individuals.’

The gate was simple but effective, an opening cut through long straight kilometers of chain link fencing that had been coiled back and staked down. Five armed men in black berets and olive-green uniforms, trim and professional, stood around a sand-colored military truck open to the early dawn light. They waved their automatic weapons and Al-Husseini pulled to the left and stopped.

Fouad leaned over to listen to the conversation. Al-Husseini spoke rapidly and softly to a thin man with a full black beard. A packet of money was exchanged. The thin man riffled through the bills, then waved the barrel of his gun.

‘He will not need to check our papers,’ Al-Husseini informed them. ‘I used to be his superior officer. He works now for the provisionals-for Iraqis and Yemenis, so I hear. A true pig among pigs, just like me.’

‘We’ve lost the settler’s cell signal,’ Jane said. ‘We think they were still in Mecca, however. They haven’t moved out to Mina.’

‘There will be time,’ Fouad said. ‘The pilgrims are going to Arafat. They’ll return to Mina after sunset.’

‘We should park and drink bottled water,’ Al-Husseini said. ‘Patience is all.’

Arafat, Mina

Having prayed at the Mount of Mercy, where Adam and Eve had found each other after being expelled from Paradise, and where Mohammed (peace be upon him) had delivered his final sermon, pilgrims flowed back toward Mina. Three stone and masonry pillars representing all the temptations of the devil lay in a straight line within the confines of a huge twostory structure that could provide access to thousands at once-yet still, this was the most dangerous moment of the Hajj. Pilgrims, exalted and exhausted from their prayer vigil at the Mount of Mercy, having searched deep within their hearts, having confronted their darkest selves and found God’s mercy and forgiveness, had departed at sunset toward Muzdalifa to gather their forty-nine pebbles, then stumbled and stalked toward their final task in such numbers that the crush, even in good times, times of order and control, had left dozens and even hundreds dead. Now there was little or no control. Soldiers and would-be police kept back, standing in groups or sitting on their cars or trucks, rifles slung or raised to the dark sky, dark eyes watching with helpless bemusement. They were surrounded by a sea of human beings clad in towels or long, modest dresses, moving in one direction and with one intention: to rid themselves of the last vestiges of evil and complete their Hajj.

Fouad had instructed Al-Husseini to pull over to the side of the road just north of the King Khalid Overpass. The wind was blowing gently from the southeast. Thousands of cars, trucks, and buses swarmed out of Arafat along all the available roadways, chugging all manner of exhaust fumes. Cook stoves gasped plumes of oily smoke that coalesced into a ragged blanket over Mina, and the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of sacrificial sheep-already underway-added an invisible tang of blood.

The OSMOs were overwhelmed.

Fouad listened to the irritated chatter of security frequencies. All was confusion, even in the electronic caverns of the Navy ship sailing off the coast, but he was still in contact with most of his team.