Jacob returned to consciousness to find himself in the middle of a pile of bodies. With a grunt he shoved Chingis off him, looked down and found himself tangled with Jana, who was still sleeping it off. The old man who had been keeping watch was down for the count as well. Both looked a bit battered, but not badly hurt.
Jacob staggered to his feet, blinking one eye as some blood trickled into it. His or someone else’s? He wasn’t sure and didn’t have time to check. Through the ringing in his hears he heard police sirens wailing in the distance, coming closer.
He couldn’t have been out long. No one had come to investigate the alley, and the police weren’t here yet. He had no doubt someone had called them the moment the shooting started. Plus Chingis was still unconscious. Jacob was amazed he’d woken up first.
With one hand he grabbed the sentry’s gun off the ground. A compact .38 revolver. Not his first choice of weapon but better than nothing. With his other hand he grabbed Jana by the wrist and unceremoniously dragged her down the alley. No time for chivalry. They needed to get out of here.
He emerged into the street to find it clearing out. The crowds of a few minutes before had dissipated into a few fleeing figures and a city block of closed windows and doors. The people of Lebanon had long since learned to lie low when faced with trouble.
Gunfights and police sirens both counted as trouble.
A taxi rushed down the street, the driver staring around, obviously not knowing what had just happened.
He got a quick lesson when a bloody Westerner dragging a Western woman staggered into the middle of the street and leveled a gun at him.
“Do as you’re told and you won’t get hurt,” Jacob announced as he approached the vehicle. The taxi driver kept his hands where Jacob could see them.
Jacob tossed Jana into the back seat and climbed in.
“Get us out of here,” he ordered.
The taxi driver let out a yelp. For a second Jacob was confused as to why, and then saw Chingis rushing out of the alley bellowing a battle cry and swinging a table leg he had found somewhere. Maybe it had gotten blown out the door when the grenade went off.
“Move!” Jacob bellowed.
The driver needed no encouragement. He hit the gas. Chingis swung his table leg and shattered the windshield. The taxi swerved, sideswiped a parked car with a teeth-shattering screech of metal, overcompensated to take out three scooters parked on the other side of the road, then evened out and sped away.
Jacob looked over his shoulder. Chingis was still chasing them, waving the table leg over his head.
“Nice friend you got there,” Jana said.
“You’re awake!”
“I wish I wasn’t,” Jana moaned, rubbing a large bruise on the side of her face. “That guy didn’t pull any punches.”
“We’re lucky to be alive.”
“Is that a police siren I hear?”
“Yes.” Jacob switched back to Arabic. “Driver, get us to the old quarter and drop us off. We’ll take it from there.”
“The police are coming,” the driver said. “And if a traffic officer sees this windshield, he’ll stop me. You’re not going to shoot at the police, are you?”
“The cops are going to come down the main road to the west of us to respond to the fight we just left behind. Take the back roads. We can avoid them easily enough.”
“And what of the traffic police? I don’t want to be in the middle of a gunfight.”
“You’re a lot tougher than the last taxi driver I kidnapped,” Jacob said with admiration. “Most people don’t talk back to a man holding a gun.”
The cabbie shrugged. “I’m from Lebanon.”
“The last guy was from Syria.”
The cabbie clicked his tongue. “Syrians are weak and stupid.”
Jacob smiled, pulled out a stack worth $500, and threw it on the front seat.
“For your trouble, my friend.”
The cabbie’s eyebrows shot up. “For this, I would drive you to Kabul.”
“Don’t give him any ideas,” Jana said, still nursing her bruises.
“Just drive us to the historic quarter.” Jacob gave him an address not far from the hotel. He didn’t want to have the guy drop them off too close, but beaten up as they were, he didn’t want to walk too far and attract a lot of attention either.
He leaned back in his seat, casting a sympathetic eye on Jana. She was rattled, beaten up, and obviously afraid, but she was holding it together.
Most definitely Aaron Peters’s flesh and blood.
“You did good back there,” he told her.
“I guess.” She looked down. “We didn’t find out anything, though.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
The only thing they had learned was from that ex-French Foreign Legion soldier, whose trick with the bottle was making Jacob’s left arm throb. Absentmindedly he pulled out a compact First Aid kit from his jacket pocket, rolled up his tattered sleeve, and began to dress the wounds, still thinking.
Before the whole situation had gone south, the guy had said something interesting. He had been training The Sword of the Righteous in the Syrian desert. That was one of their strongholds. Made sense. But then they had let him go, saying they were moving operations and acting all hush-hush about it. Somehow he had found out they were moving to the Sinai.
And that’s what made Jacob’s ears perk up. The Sinai was of huge strategic importance and a hotbed of illegal activity. That’s why he had asked what part of the Sinai they had gone to.
Because that would give him a clue as to what they were up to.
The Sinai Peninsula was Egyptian territory. If the terrorists had moved to the northeast part, they might be planning attacks on neighboring Israel, or taking over gunrunning operations into the Gaza Strip. Southern Sinai, and they were probably looking for isolation and to tap into the Bedouin smuggling network.
Northwestern Sinai was the possibility that gave him the most worry. A branch of ISIS had infiltrated that region, and while the Egyptian army had smacked them down hard, elements of that foul death cult remained.
Was The Sword of the Righteous trying to muscle in? And did they have their eyes on the Suez Canal that ran right along Sinai’s northwestern edge?
Because if they had a nuke, that would be a global game changer.
Damn it, why did Chingis have to interrupt just when I was going to get some important intel!
Then something the Lebanese mercenary had said jogged his memory. He said he didn’t deal with the group because he was a Shiite and The Sword of the Righteous, like ISIS, wanted to kill all Shiites.
The center of the Shiite brand of Islam was Iran.
And there was an American force gathering against Iran right now.
He hadn’t been paying much attention to that operation because he had been assigned to other threats, but hadn’t he heard that some ships had been peeled off the Atlantic fleet to go to the Persian Gulf?
The quickest way to do that would be to pass through the Suez Canal.
And if they did that, The Sword of the Righteous wouldn’t have to get too close to set off their nuke and take those ships out.
And who would the U.S. blame? The Iranians.
Starting a war that would claim thousands of Shiite lives. Maybe even a full-scale invasion that would tie American troops down in a bloodier occupation than they had seen in Afghanistan or even Iraq.
The Shiites would suffer. The West would suffer. Hell, everyone would suffer, because the radiation would block a major shipping route for months. Back in 2021, a container ship had gotten wedged in the Suez Canal for only six days and caused nearly ten billion dollars in lost trade revenue. What would six months do to the global economy?
Global recession. Food shortages. Starvation in the Third World. Persecution of Shiite minorities in Egypt, Lebanon, and all the other Middle Eastern nations, which would force Shiite terror groups to make reprisals, causing more persecution.
Before the dust settled, millions, perhaps tens of millions, would die.
Jacob leaned forward to speak to the cabbie. “I’ve changed my mind. Take us directly to our hotel. I need to make a phone call. Now.”