The Libyan in charge of the base at Edri was a Captain Mustafa, a short, squinty-eyed individual with something unusual for a Libyan: a little round gut that looked solid with no fat.
He looked across the folding table that served as his desk at “Liam O’Devlin” and “Jack Wade.”
Tea boiled on a field hot plate behind him, but he made no offer of it to these new arrivals, nor did he offer them a chair. He had glanced over their passports and compared the names thereon with a list of names on a sheet of paper before him.
A Libyan soldier who had met them at the landing strip and accompanied them here stood in the doorway, an AK-47 over his shoulder, eyeing Cody and Caine with an open distaste matched by Mustafa.
The commandant made no immediate move to hand back the passports.
“Mr. O’Devlin, there is no mention of this American on my roster. You are nearly twenty-four hours late, and I was told you would be arriving alone.”
Caine, leaning back against the wall with his hands in his pockets, regarded the Libyan with a distaste that mirrored Mustafa’s own.
“Maybe I changed itinerary,” he snapped with mild belligerence. “Maybe I didn’t reckon on some piss-ass raghead in the middle of the fucking desert giving me shit about it.”
He delivered the line just right, with just the right amount of contempt tempered by his relaxed attitude, offering no sign of aggression.
Mustafa started to rise angrily, then regained control of himself. He did not reach for the pistol on his hip or the AK-47 propped in a corner near him.
He stood, both hands on the makeshift desk, leaning forward, his eyes staring poison at “O’Devlin.”
“I should perhaps remind you that you are a guest of this country, a courtesy extended to the organization you represent, and as a guest, you—”
“Take that garbage and stow it where the sun don’t shine,” Caine snarled. “I know why I’m here. You were letting me know I wasn’t much of a welcomed guest. Thought I’d just let you know the feeling was mutual. You want to start over again, why, that’d be all right with me.”
Mustafa considered this, then sat back down. He motioned with his head for the soldier to leave.
When they were alone, he said in a civil, though far from cordial, tone. “Very well, Mr. O’Devlin. Or, ah, do you prefer”—he glanced at the passport—” “MackeyV ”
“O’Devlin will do.” Caine nodded to Cody. “I picked up Wade here on my way through London. My people were supposed to notify you that I was carrying a bodyguard.”
“It is not the first time our lines of communication have broken down,” Mustafa conceded. He made no indication for either man to take a seat. “It is late. I have had a long day. I apologize for my abruptness.” He looked at Cody. “You are American.”
He said it as an accusation.
“I was an American until I got screwed so damn bad that the name of the place makes me want to puke,” Cody growled.
Mustafa tossed the passports back across the table. He looked at Caine.
“And why should you want a personal bodyguard here, Mr. O’Devlin?”
“Why do you think? I’ve done business with some of these laddies attending your “camp.’ Sometimes a man makes enemies in business.”
Mustafa shrugged.
“Frankly, approximately half of the others have their bodyguards with them as well.”
“How many are attending?” Caine asked.
“With the bodyguards, I should say there are three dozen in attendance, mostly Palestinians, of course, but a few such as yourself from other organizations.” Mustafa glanced at a chart beside the list of names on his desk. “You will have trailer seven. The man outside will show you the way. Orientation begins promptly at 0600 hours. You will be sharing quarters with Ibu Monsour and Aba Waddi from Lebanon.”
“That will have to do, then.” Caine pushed himself away from the wall. “Any real big shots I’ll be seeing here? Never hurts to make a few new friends wherever you go, eh?”
Mustafa rose to his feet, the interview over.
“Trailer A is quite off-limits, Mr. O’Devlin. You will find it a good practice to mind your own business at Edri. Oh, and I neglected to mention that tomorrow every man attending will give us his fingerprints.” His squinty eyes centered on Cody. “We have ways of checking on those we may choose to deem… undesirable. If anything is out of order after we run a check, steps will be taken. Good evening, gentlemen. May Allah grant you a peaceful night’s rest.”
“Yeah, same back at you,” Caine grunted hollowly. “Let’s go, Jack.”
They let themselves out of the trailer.
The soldier outside started to lead them across the compound.
“This way, effendi.”
“We’ll find our own quarters,” Caine growled. “Our bags are still out on the airstrip. Be a good little soldier and fetch “em for us, will you?”
The soldier did not like that, but he stalked off without another word in the direction of the landing field.
“Appears like the out-of-towners have the clout around here,” Caine said to his “bodyguard” with a chuckle.
They continued across the compound toward the line of trailers that formed an L along two walls of the wire-fence perimeter.
“They want to keep the IRA happy, and the rest of the groups represented here.” Cody nodded as they strode along like they owned the joint. “They trade intel with each other. Invaluable, but it doesn’t mean they have to like each other.”
“In other words”—Caine smiled—“you’re congratulating me on playing “Liam O’Devlin” with just the right touch, eh? I daresay you’re right.”
“Since you’ve taken care of congratulating yourself,” Cody agreed, “we can move on to more serious business.”
The Brit got serious in a hurry.
“You mean that bit about Trailer A. VIPs.”
“Kamal and Vronski.” The “bodyguard” nodded.
They paused at the approximate center of the dimly lit compound.
Nothing about the base at Edri appeared changed from the satellite photo viewed aboard a U.S. carrier sailing the Med less than six hours earlier.
They had arrived in Tripoli late that afternoon, aboard an EgyptAir flight from Cairo and had been met at the airport by a representative of the Libyan government, a low-ranking civil servant whose presence indicated how carefully Kaddafi’s government monitored people entering the country, passenger lists of arriving planes computer-checked at points of departure, and obviously the name Mackey had been enough to have a car waiting for “Liam O’Devlin.”
The car whisked Caine and Cody south of the city to an airstrip where the Libyan had turned them over to the car of a pilot aboard whose small plane they had flown into the desert as the spreading purple of the eastern sky devoured the remnants of daylight to leave the world a dark place by the time the plane touched down at Edri.
Caine felt his heartbeat quicken as he and Cody stood there in the center of this nest of what Caine considered to be the worst vipers in the world.
This was it.
From Rome to Bulgaria and now into Libya, to this base in the Sahara.
He noticed Cody looking in the direction of Trailer A, a bit plusher than the other units, a standard mobile home rather than the other rectangular steel trailers transported around the desert on trucks, a common sight across this desert, camps that looked just like this one, the reason the U.S. had been unable to locate any of these terrorist bases.
Until now.
“If Vronski has gotten hold of a picture of me,” said Cody, “we could be finished before we begin.”
Caine followed his friend’s eyes toward the VIP trailer.
“You’re sure it’s them, aren’t you, John? You know that Vronski and Kamal are here, don’t you?”
“It can’t be any other way,” Cody nodded. “This is the end of the line, the end of the chase. The big blowup.”
The base was partially illuminated by low-wattage lights on occasional poles, but there was no need for much lighting for security measures. Kaddafi’s Desert Corps would have the surrounding vicinity well covered. Some of the trailers had lights on in them; others were dark.
They had received weapons from the Libyan who met them at Tripoli. Each man wore a 9-mm Beretta, openly shoulder-holstered . They had both gone over the pistols carefully during the flight from Tripoli and found the pistols in perfect working order, fully loaded, freshly oiled, and with spare ammo clips.
It figured that this collection of terror specialists would live in a perpetual state of terror themselves, principally from their own kind.
Caine had seen enough of the world to know that religious and ideological fervor did little to erase the power-grabbing drives that fueled men like these who had become numbed to the deaths of others, regarding it as nothing but a means by which to gain their own ends. There was much factionalism and fierce power struggles, like the one Kamal was embroiled in. among the world terrorist networks, and so those attending this session would not attend unless guaranteed the right and means of self-protection.
The men in this camp, this collection of assassins and child killers and destroyers of any hope of communication between disparate cultures that maybe could connect if allowed to without the self-defeating presence of terror and hate would not be overly concerned with any threat from outside this camp’s perimeter. They would only fear each other: the reason Caine had played O’Devlin the way he had in front of Mustafa.
To have done otherwise would have drawn immediate attention to Cody and himself.
Caine felt it too. They had come a long way after two terrorists named Yuri and Abdul, and yes, it was going to end here.
A lit window shone at one end of trailer number seven, the one Mustafa had assigned them.
“Looks like the guys we’re sharing the bunkhouse with are still up,” Cody noted. “Let’s pump them for what we can get. Then watch my cue and we’ll slip out and see what we can do.”
Caine took one last look at Trailer A.
“Too bloody bad we can’t storm over there right now and strangle those two snakes in their sleep.”
“We’ll have our chance at them soon enough,” the “bodyguard” assured his “boss.” Now, what say we go back to being Liam O’Devlin and Jack Wade and see what kind of information we can get out of our roommates.”
To Mustafa’s left a door opened. He turned from having seen off the final two arrivals.
Colonel Vronski and Abdul Kamal stepped into the shabbily furnished office.
Mustafa regarded Vronski with a shade too much respect.
“I did well, my colonel?”
Vronski ignored him. He stepped to the window, Kamal hovering at his shoulder, and together they watched the two men who had just sent away the Libyan regular leading them to their quarters to stand looking around the compound as if with mild interest before continuing on toward the trailer Mustafa had assigned them.
Vronski turned from the window to face Kamal with inquiring eyes.
“Well?”
“I did not see his face,” Kamal said, “but I recognize from a distance the way that man carries himself. It is he. It is Cody.”
Vronski watched the two striding across the camp.
“How?” he snapped. “How could they have tracked us all the way here from Bulgaria?”
“It matters not,” Kamal replied, gazing beyond Vronski, out through the window to where Cody and the man who had posed as Liam O’Devlin reached their trailer. “It is as I prophesied, Colonel. You remember? In Bulgaria I said we would meet this man Cody in a death match, that it could be no other way. This is the time I spoke of. It is Allah’s will that Cody not live to see another day.”
Across the compound, Cody and the other man disappeared into their trailer.
“For once, friend Abdul”—Vronski smiled thinly—“I think we are in complete agreement.”