August 6, 2016, THE BACK ALLEYS OF MARRAKECH, MOROCCO
11:45 P.M.
Isadore Grant stood in the shadows of the narrow Moroccan back street deep in the medina, the old quarter, of Marrakech. Except for a dim bulb shining over a blank metal door about fifty yards away, there was no illumination. The weak light revealed a few other doors, all metal, all tightly closed, and a few high, shuttered windows protected by metal grilles. No one was in sight, and she could hear no sounds from within any of the houses.
She smiled. One good thing about the Muslim world was there was no nightlife. The ban on alcohol took care of that. That meant empty streets at this hour. Perfect for night work.
Her target was a door just a little way down the alley. At first appearance, it wasn’t much different from the rest except that it appeared older, made of wood, and decorated in the old style, with ornate arabesques and studded with brass knobs. A big bronze knocker in the shape of the Hand of Fatima hung at the center of it. The door looked as if it entered onto some old traditional home, perhaps of some leading family of religious scholars.
Her local contact told her different.
“That is the place,” Amir whispered. He was a typical young Moroccan tough, decked out in jeans and a leather jacket, with a baseball cap stuck low on his head to shroud his features in shadow. Amir was on the CIA payroll and didn’t mind doing a bit of extra work for Corbin on the side—for a price, of course.
“Tell me what you know.”
“It is run by a man named Mohammad el Aoufi. It is like a hotel, but no one has to register with the government like at other hotels.”
“Sounds like a place our targets would end up. How do people find out about it? I don’t see a sign or anything.”
“Word of mouth. Secret chat rooms on the Dark Net. Other ways.”
“Who stays there?”
Amir shrugged. “All sorts. Arabs. Europeans. Africans. People who have something to hide or do not want their movements traced. Mohammad el Aoufi does not let in the worst criminals, the human traffickers and such people, but he does not ask many questions. He has one rule—the guests do not talk to one another.”
Isadore nodded. That was smart, and fortunate. That meant no one else knew what Jaxon and her friends were up to.
“So how do you know they stayed here?”
Amir looked proud. “I am the one who took the picture. I had received a message to be on the watch for such people, and when I saw them in the medina, I took a photo on my phone and followed them here. They did not see me.”
Isadore studied him. From what General Corbin had said, this guy knew the streets like the back of his hand, having been raised in them. With the crowding of the average Moroccan street during the day, Amir could probably tail Grunt without being spotted.
“So you only saw two enter, the big one and the young one?”
Amir nodded. “But my men saw the others come. The southerner and the blonde woman came together. Then a young fat man, an older man, and an Asian woman. My men have been watching this place since I alerted the general.”
Isadore suppressed a smile. His “men” were a bunch of teenage street toughs. Back in the States, none of them would be old enough to drink. Half of them weren’t old enough to drive. Still, no one knew the streets better than street kids. They were the eyes and ears of the medina, ignored by decent folk but seeing and hearing everything.
“Have you been inside?” she asked.
Amir shook his head. “Only Mohammad el Aoufi and his family go in there, and the guests. Some of the guests have bodyguards, so be careful.”
“What else do you know?” Isadore asked.
“The two I photographed bought weapons from one of the gun merchants.”
“What did they buy?”
“You think I knock on the door and ask?”
Isadore shrugged. “Fair enough.”
“They buy two Land Rovers too.”
Isadore’s eyes narrowed. Land Rovers meant an overland journey. Had they struck out into the desert? But why? What would be out there for them?
“Did they leave?” Isadore asked. Amir hadn’t mentioned that.
“All but one. They left five days ago, but do not worry,” Amir quickly added. “The fat one is still in there.”
Isadore had studied photographs of all the suspects, and none of them were overweight, unless you counted the hundred pounds of muscle on Grunt as a weight problem. It certainly had been a problem for Isadore when he had been pummeling her back in the Chinatown ambush.
Amir’s descriptions of the people he and his “men” had watched jibed with all the known members of Jaxon’s group, assuming when Amir said “southerner,” he meant Jaxon herself. An odd turn of phrase. The kid must think Jaxon was African.
So the fat fellow must be the hacker. Why had he stayed when everyone else had left?
“You sure he’s still in there?”
“He never come out after he go in. He was not in the Land Rovers, of that I am sure.”
Isadore glowered at him. “He better still be in there for your sake. Ready?”
Amir pulled a 9mm automatic from the pocket of his leather jacket and then hid it again. “Ready.”
He turned and signaled down the alley. A low whistle told them that his gang lay in wait in the shadows.
“Go do your thing,” Isadore ordered. She handed him a small metal canister with a pull tab. “And remember what I told you.”
Amir took the canister and sauntered up to the door. Isadore stayed where she was in case there was a hidden camera that might spot her.
Amir rapped the knocker, the sound echoing loudly in the quiet back street. Isadore reached into the deep pockets of her overcoat and pulled out an automatic pistol with a silencer in one hand and another metal canister with the other.
There was a long pause then a muffled question in Arabic from the other side of the door. Amir replied in the same language. Isadore wished she had learned some Arabic. She hated not knowing what was being said.
There was a back and forth for a minute, with Amir sounding increasingly insistent. Finally, a little window opened in the door, covered by a thick grille.
Amir and Isadore came to the same conclusion at the same time—Mohammad el Aoufi was not about to open his door in the middle of the night to some street punk.
As Isadore tucked the canister and pistol back in her pockets, Amir popped off the pull tab of his canister and pushed it through the grille.
“Looks like we’ll have to do this the hard way,” Isadore grumbled.
There was a shout from behind the door, followed by a faint hissing sound. That would be the sleeping gas shooting out of her little bomb. Amir backed away, holding his hand over his nose and mouth.
Isadore fished out a small gas mask that she put over the lower half of her face and hurried over to the door just in time to hear a low thud on the other side. That would be Mohammad el Aoufi falling to the floor unconscious.
She peeked through the door and, through the haze of the sleeping gas, saw a short marbled hallway leading to a courtyard. Someone farther inside the building shouted a question in Arabic.
Isadore cursed and bent in front of the lock. Pulling out a vial of acid and a glass siphon, she poured a generous amount of hydrochloric acid onto the mechanism.
Stepping back from the acrid smoke, she watched as the lock melted away. Then she took a short crowbar, fitted it in between the door and the frame, and gave it a good tug.
The door popped open.
She retrieved her pistol and gas bomb and stepped through. Behind her, Amir’s street gang had shown up, each with a kaffiyeh covering nose and mouth to hide their features and to protect themselves from the last traces of the sleeping gas.
Mohammad el Aoufi lay at her feet, knocked out from the gas, his mouth hanging open.
“Sorry, but you’re a witness. Nothing personal,” she told him.
She aimed the pistol at his head and pulled the trigger. The silencer dampened the sound enough that the neighbors wouldn’t awaken, but that voice farther inside the hotel was shouting again, and this time, whoever it was sounded worried.
Stepping over the mess she had made, Isadore went to find the source of that voice and shut it up.
Isadore motioned to Amir. The gang leader hurried up to her.
“What’s he saying?” she asked.
“It’s this man’s son,” Amir said, indicating the mess lying on the floor. “He’s asking what’s going on.”
“Tell him you’re a guest who had just arrived and Mohammad el Aoufi has fallen ill.”
Amir called up to him. Isadore told Amir and his followers to stay where they were and moved up to the end of the entrance hallway, peeking out into a courtyard with a fountain in the center, open to the sky above. The three floors of the hotel looked onto the courtyard, but as far as she could see, all the windows remained shuttered and closed.
Isadore cursed. This place looked bigger than she’d been told. How was she going to find the hacker—kick in every door and gun down everyone who didn’t fit the description?
She shrugged. If that was what it took…
She heard the sound of feet running down unseen stairs. She readied her pistol.
A young man in a djellaba hurried around the corner. Isadore was about to shoot him through the skull when at the last moment she had a better idea and used her free hand to give him a karate chop to the solar plexus. The man doubled over with a groan.
Isadore stuck her gun in his face.
“Amir, tell him to keep quiet or I’ll shoot him.”
The hotel worker froze in terror, eyes wide as he focused on the black circle of the gun barrel inches from his eye.
“I think he already understands this,” Amir said.
“Then ask him where the computer hacker is.”
Amir asked the question in Arabic. The man stuttered, trying to spit out a reply, and then looked beyond the menacing pair looming over him to the bloody corpse of Mohammad el Aoufi lying in the hallway.
His face contorted in shock that quickly turned to rage. Slapping the gun away, he landed a punch into Isadore’s stomach.
Or at least he tried to. Isadore was already turning to dodge it and only received a glancing blow to the ribs. Snarling, she aimed the gun again and sent him to join his father.
“Okay, we’re doing this the hard way,” she said, turning to Amir and his men. “Pretty straightforward. We go to each of the rooms one by one. You, Amir, will knock on the door, saying you have a message from Mohammad el Aoufi. When whoever is inside opens the door, I shoot them if it isn’t the hacker. Then we go to the next room until we find the nerd. Have some of your men guard the entrance. Stop anyone trying to leave or who tries to raise the alarm. Use knives, not guns. We need to keep the neighbors from hearing. If the police get called, we’ll have a tough time on our hands.”
Amir struck a cocky pose. “I am not afraid of the police.”
Isadore glared at him. “I’ll make you afraid of me if you mess this up. Now get your men in order and follow me.”
Amir’s eyes narrowed, but he did as he was told. He was getting paid enough to swallow his pride, and Isadore knew none of the other members of his gang spoke English, so he hadn’t lost face in front of them.
He issued some curt orders, and his men moved out. Two stuck with him and followed as Isadore methodically moved through the hotel, checking each room.
Fortunately for the guests, she only had to kill five rooms’ worth of them before she hit upon the room the hacker was staying in.
As soon as she got to the door, she sensed this was the right one. Despite the late hour, she could see light shining from under the door.
Amir knocked and called out, “I have a message from you from Mohammad el Aoufi. A letter came!”
“Slip it under the door,” an American voice replied.
“It is too big. A package.”
“Huh? Hold on,” the voice said, sounding annoyed.
The door opened, and Isadore immediately knew she had the right place. The man looked in his midtwenties, dressed in an old Superman T-shirt and sweatpants, neither looking as if they’d been washed this month. His hair was unkempt, his eyes bloodshot from staring at the computers sitting on a desk in the other corner of the room, and he didn’t look as though he’d ever seen the inside of a gym.
Isadore sneered. “And to think you people are taking over the world.”
She pointed the pistol at his head.
“W-Who are you?” the hacker said, raising his hands.
“Your new best friend,” she said, giving him a mocking smile. “You’re going to share all your secrets with me. You might think you won’t, you might try not to, but you will. Oh, but you will.”