John Ringo: Ghost

“He will be there soon,” Assadolah said. “You can go, now. How is traffic?”

“Baid,” Mike said. “But Ah figur Ah kin git back in plenty of tahm fer the evenin’ shows.”

“That is well,” Assadolah said. “Have a safe trip.”

“Bet on it,” Mike replied, hitting the disconnect. He immediately dialed OSOL and went through the scramble routine.

“Got a call,” Mike said.

“We were listening in real time,” Pierson replied. “One hour until the pope’s mass.”

“He cut it kind of close,” Mike said. “That tech, whoever he is, isn’t going to have much time to get out of town.”

“The tech turned out to be a former IRA member,” Pierson said. “The bomb is not only encased in lead, it’s filled with booby traps. The French had never seen anything like it but the British had; it was a full IRA rig. IRA bombs are…”

“The toughest in the world,” Mike finished. “Fuck, I hate those Provo bastards. Now they’re selling their expertise to the mujahideen.”

“We talked to the Dutch police,” Pierson said. “They’re willing to not flood the place to find Assadolah, for obvious reasons. But there are a couple of undercover cops moving around as well. And there’s a tac team on standby if you need backup.”

“Nice to know,” Mike said, walking back to the street. “I have to keep looking.”

“Terrible job, I know,” Pierson said, chuckling blackly. “Nero only fiddled while Rome burned.”

“You wouldn’t believe the tab that Fagan is running up,” Mike agreed, looking over at the colonel. “I’m surprised he can still stand with all the blowjobs he’s been getting.”

“Oh, thanks very much,” Fagan said, shaking his head. “You realize all those calls are recorded.”

“So is most of what goes on in the lap dance rooms,” Mike replied. “I wish we could get access to the tapes; it would make this a lot quicker.”

They crossed the street, dodging traffic, and headed to the next strip joint. This one was rather seedy: the cover was only three euros and the girls were pretty worn out. The crowd was also different, running a lot more to Middle Eastern males. Mike spotted on that looked a bit like Assadolah and did a double take. But he was pretty sure it wasn’t him. And there was no evidence of a phone on the guy. He looked like a day-laborer and was staring at the girl on stage like she was the Holy Grail.

He passed around the stage and back to the front, meeting up with Fagan, who had also noticed the guy and dismissed him, then headed to the champagne room with one of the halfway decent-looking women.

This champagne room had larger cubicles, with couches that were wide enough to be beds, and Mike caught more than one guy going at it when he looked behind the curtains. Most of them didn’t notice, but the girls under them did. In the third cubicle he saw the target. He was sitting on the couch, lying back with his eyes closed, being fellated by a naked redhead. Her hair was obviously out of a bottle since her exposed pubic tuft was dark brown and flecked with gray.

Mike dropped the curtain disinterestedly then took one step forward, drawing his sidearm, and stepped back to the cubicle. He stepped through the curtain, took a double-handed grip and carefully shot Assadolah Shaath in the right shoulder, covering the whore in front of him in blood-splatter.

The whore backed away, screaming, as Mike crossed the room and grabbed the terrorist by his shot arm, dragging him to the floor, face-down, as he screamed in pain.

“Which one is the disconnect code?” Mike growled, stepping on the terrorist’s wounded shoulder to hold him down and socketing the .45 into his ear. “Which one?”

“Fuck you!” Assadolah shouted, then switched to Arabic for a long, solid, curse.

Mike plucked the phone off the terrorist’s belt and pitched it across the room as the first bouncer came into the cubicle in reaction to the shot and screams.

“Back off,” Mike said, pulling out his diplomatic passport and holding it up. “This is a terrorist we’ve been looking for. Call the police, they know all about it.”

“Put the gun down and I will,” the man said, drawing his own sidearm.

“This is a diplomatic passport,” Mike said, waving it at him and then tossing it across the room. “You shoot me, for any reason, and you’re going to jail for the rest of your life. Put your own gun down, call the police, and in the meantime I’m going to talk to this gentleman.” He leaned his weight into his foot as the terrorist screamed, and then shifted his pistol to the other shoulder. “I can go for two. Which one is the disarm code?”

“ICE!” Assadolah screamed. “Ice. Fire for the explosion, ice for the disarm. Ice.”

“Thank you,” Mike said, lifting up his weight. “Don’t try to move or I’ll gladly shoot you some more.”

“He said ‘Ice’ was the disconnect.” Mike was back in the airplane, his chair reclined, a drink in his hand and the headset of the sat phone plugged in his ear. The Dutch police had been less than happy about the shooting, not to mention the torture of the suspect. But it was amazing how well diplomatic passports worked. He was, however, persona very non grata at the moment. Which was why he was sitting in an airfield in France, well away from Paris.

“So we heard,” Pierson said. “Along with how you got the information. You’re a regular one-man coalition breaker, you know that?”

“Hell, the Dutch couldn’t even hold Sbrenica,” Mike said. “What do we need them for?”

“What’s the chance the information was good?” Pierson asked.

“Zero,” Mike admitted. “I just wanted to see what he would say. Look something up for me on the Internet, will you? Google: ‘Some say the world will end in fire.’ ”

“Robert Frost,” Pierson replied. “I know the poem: ‘ Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice .’ That one?”

“That’s it,” Mike said musingly. “Both of them could be a disconnect, but I don’t think so. If the pope got held up, if something happened to slow down the crowds, they’d want to wait. There’s probably a timer, with the cell phones as backup controls. The output isn’t going to him, is it?”

“Nope,” Pierson said. “It goes to a phone in Germany which is connected to a webserver. Then it posts a text message to the webserver. Anybody can view it. NSA cracked the server and took a look at who was visiting. All the links have been coming out of Iran. But we know some of the Al Qaeda leadership are still there. The circuit on the phone is set to detonate if the phone doesn’t connect to the right number. The French are talking about spoofing the server and the phone output system, but it’s a bit tricky. Frankly, they don’t want to fuck with it if they don’t have to.”

“I looked at his cell phone before it got taken away by the Dutch,” Mike said. “He’d only called the sentry on the bomb and he hadn’t received any calls in two days. So I don’t think the take-down is going to cause a problem. Sunni bombers. Shia supporters and fighters. Who says the Sunni and Shia can’t get together to fight the jihad?”

“Democrats,” Pierson said. “Academics. The Council on American-Islamic Relations.”

“Wise people, all,” Mike said. “We’re down to less than a half an hour. I’m calling Chateauneuf.” He hit the disconnect and dialed the colonel.

“ Mon cher ,” Chateauneuf said after they were on scrambler. “I understand you had an interesting time in Amsterdam.”

“I’d like to say it was enlightening,” Mike replied. “But it wasn’t. How goes it?”