9

 

Abdul pored over the limestone monolith crowning the mountain. He saw caves everywhere. “He thinks he is clever.”

Ratib scanned the numerous caves and shook his head. “He is clever, Abdul. They have no weapons so their only chance was to hide. We see many caves, but there may still be others we cannot see.”

“Be that as it may, we must find Brandt and the woman quickly and we cannot look in all of these caves. Maram, go back to the vehicle. Bring our flashlight, our sound gun, and the Voice Activity Detector. Make sure that you get all the cables so we can connect the VAD and the sound gun.”

“VAD,” Maram mocked Abdul, imitating his voice. “You make it sound so sophisticated. It is just an old telephone you dismantled.”

“It is a very new telephone. From it I created the VAD.”

“Whatever.” Maram made no effort to comply with his order. “Ratib knows what you want and he can run faster than me. Send him.”

“Do as I say. Ratib and I will guard the caves at the base of the rock until you return. When we couple the sound gun with the VAD you will see who is clever.” Abdul’s patience with Maram was gone and his need for her…it was waning.

Maram resented making the steep climb.

He could hear her grumbling as she set out.

“I solidified the alliance with the cartel. I went in first. Winning their confidence required haraam—forbidden things—still, they treat me like an infidel, because I am a woman.” Lately, Maram was always grumbling.

Abdul watched her walk carelessly down the steep slope. When she stumbled and fell, scraping her arms, she spewed a long stream of complaints interspersed with Spanish profanity. The influence of the drug lords. Still, she did his bidding. But for how much longer would she do so? Could he trust her any longer? He rephrased the question, making it a statement. I will trust her no longer.

When Maram was out of earshot he turned to Ratib. “I want you to keep this in mind. If we think the two might possibly escape we must shoot to kill. But if possible, I want to trap and capture them. We need to find out how much they know and who, if anyone, they talked to before they left the building.”

“Suppose we capture them and they refuse to talk?”

“If we catch them we can make them talk. We will simply start torturing the woman. Brandt will talk.”

“How do you know that? Isn’t he a Christian? Sometimes they—”

“Do you know nothing? These Christians value women more than men. If we torture the woman Brandt will tell us whatever we want to know. But I did not want to discuss this with Maram present. I think she spent too many months with the drug lords. Her thinking has been corrupted and she might not approve of our tactics. She no longer thinks like a true Muslim woman.”

“I believe you are right, Abdul. Might this be her last mission?”

“Her very last. Maram’s mission will end when we return to the SUV. After we kill Brandt and the woman we will have no further need for Maram. However, if she objects to torturing the woman as I suspect she might, we will kill her immediately.”

“I agree. We have no choice. But tell me, Abdul, how do you plan to find the two infidels using the listening devices?”

“I will take the output of the sound gun and attach it to the input of the VAD. We must work quickly though, because the sound gun only runs for about four hours on fully charged batteries and we do not know how much charge is left in them.”

Ratib frowned as he stared at the limestone spire. “I know we must hurry. But what is our strategy for finding this man, Lee Brandt, and the woman?”

“Speaking in caves is like talking through a hose. If we listen at the mouth of the cave we will hear them from the end of a hose.”

“But what if they are very quiet?”

“That is why we attach the VAD to the amplified sound from the gun. Any sound from human vocal chords can be detected separately from background noise. All VoIP phones have basic voice-detection capability. For whisper detection I borrowed a chip from one of our friends who works for an Asian cell-phone manufacturer.”

Abdul was proud of his ingenious invention. Using an off-the-shelf phone he employed his software skills to tweak the firmware, splicing in the whisper detection. The final part, amplifying the input signal using a sound gun, only required bypassing the phone’s microphone permitting the sound gun to provide the input. A telephone technician showed him how to configure the bypass,and even told him what electronic components he needed including the addition of the LED voice-indicator light to complete it.

Abdul originally designed the device for eavesdropping and use in the border-crossing tunnels. Later, he found other applications. This day’s application didn’t require hearing what Lee and the woman said. He only needed to detect their voices to locate them. He expected the VAD to perform very well in these caves. In fact, today’s use of the VAD might be his crowning—

“Abdul, are you listening?”

He must stop basking in his glories. “Yes, Ratib. Please continue.”

“So…we point the sound gun into the mouth of each cave for a while and continue until we locate their hiding place?”

“That is correct. Now, while we wait for Maram to return we will remain quiet and listen for any sounds indicating where to start searching.”

For nearly forty-five minutes Abdul waited quietly, but impatiently, for Maram’s return. His mood grew fouler by the minute. Precious time trickled away. He knew the search undoubtedly under way for Brandt and the woman would soon bring the police somewhere near this mountain. The two must be dead or removed from here before the police found their vehicles. With Brandt and the woman out of the picture, provided the two hadn’t disclosed details of his plan, their mission would still succeed.

Ratib shifted, and then broke their self-imposed silence. “Abdul, what do you suppose the woman’s role was? The news we heard on the car radio gave no details about Jennifer Akihara.”

“I know about Lee Brandt’s skills. I worked with him for several weeks. He could not have located our computer specialists and pinged their machines from his work location. He needed the woman to accomplish that. The radio news report said she has a degree in computing security. So we must assume she has the necessary skills to trace even well-disguised Internet communications.”

“If so, what she did was very impressive. Could she be of any value to us or our associates?”

“Ratib, she is an infidel and she knows too much. Her only value to us lies in her death. Even if she has great skills we could never trust her. She could deceive us too easily. And, as I already said, she is an infidel. She must die.”

A clattering sound announced Maram’s return. She collapsed at Abdul’s feet breathing hard, but she held the sound equipment and the flashlight. “Here…are your…play toys, Abdul.” She spoke between heavy breaths and made no attempt to disguise her disdain.

Abdul glared at her. “Then let us play,” he quipped, but his icy stare conveyed no humor. “When I use the equipment both of you must remain absolutely silent. If I detect any human voice activity I want it to be theirs. Do you understand?”

Ratib nodded.

Maram stared at Abdul for several seconds, and then nodded.

With a sigh, Abdul subdued his anger at Maram before it could turn to rage. “We will move from cave to cave spending no more than five minutes at any opening. You must help me keep track of where we have been. Also we must look for other caves.”

Abdul started by monitoring the largest cave at the base of the limestone spire. An hour later they listened at the mouth of the last visible cave. But they found no traces of human voices.

“Abdul, is the device working properly?” Ratib asked.

“Yes, I know it is working.”

Ratib stared at the cobbled voice-detection equipment with his hands on his hips. “Can it detect them even when hidden deep inside these massive rocks?”

“I have no doubt that it can. They must know of a cave we have not yet found. Maram, hold the sound gun while Ratib and I explore the sides of the rock.”

Ratib headed for the southwest corner of the large spire.

Maram walked with him for a few yards towards the northeast corner of the huge rock.

He glanced at her as she sat down on a flat slab of limestone. She set her weapon down and slumped forward dropping the sound equipment into her lap.

Abdul’s gaze explored every part of the easternmost shoulder of the huge monolith. While he looked high up on the rock towards the pinnacle of the spire he saw something in the periphery of his vision. He turned his head in response. The bright red LED on the VAD blinked out a most welcome message.

“Maram, be very still.”

Maram froze in her sitting position on the rock. When she stiffened the sound gun slid from her lap. She grabbed it just before it toppled to the rocks below.

“You fool!” He exclaimed. He took a deep breath and sought a kinder tone of voice. “Maram, please place the sound gun in your lap exactly as it was before it fell.”

Maram carefully positioned the gun pointing it to the shoulder of the rock nearly fifty feet above her.

He sighted along the sound gun until he focused on a slight depression in the rock near the top of the cliff face where the morning sun now lit the upper portion of the spire. He scanned the lower portion of the cliff. They could not climb to the suspicious location without rock-climbing gear.

Above the depression a little to his left, Abdul noticed a discolored area on the limestone. He walked to the base of the rock and looked closely at it. Moss was scraped off the rock above the depression. At his feet Abdul saw bits of green moss scattered among the shards of limestone. Someone climbed down from the top of the rock to the depression. The depression must be a ledge. What did it host? Perhaps the opening to a cave? “Let me have the sound gun, Maram. Be absolutely silent.”

Abdul pointed the sensor directly at the depression on the rock and waited. In less than minute the light on the VAD again blinked out the portentous message.

“Maram, keep monitoring that spot on the rock above us. Do you see it?”

“Yes, I am tired, but I am not blind.”

“I am going to get Ratib. I think we have found our mice. Now it is time to behave as all cats do.”