The Left Behind Collection: All 12 Books (351 page)

Maybe she was checking on Kenny. Or getting herself some tea in the kitchen. He padded out of the bedroom, stretching. “Chlo’!” he called out. “You’ve got something on the motion detector here!”

He bent over the periscope and scanned quickly. He saw nothing until he got to the southwest, where he saw a lone figure, armed. He scowled. “Chloe!” he called. “Better call George. I’ve got a bogey at eight o’clock. Chloe?”

He froze. He stood and moved toward the kitchen. It was dark. And Kenny was crying. Buck grabbed the phone on his way to Kenny’s room and punched in Ming’s number.

“Hey, big boy,” Buck said, finding the boy standing in his bed, quickly going from crying to smiling.

“Mama?”

“In a minute,” he said. “Why don’t you lie down and go back to sleep. It’s still night.”

Ming answered.

“I’m so sorry to wake you, Ming, but I’ve got a little emergency here.”

“Anything, Buck.”

“Could you watch Kenny for a little while? I think Chloe is outside.”

“Be there in less than a minute.”

He thanked her and got on the walkie-talkie. “George, you up?”

Rayford had the engines started and the plane turned around when he saw Carpathia’s glow in the distance. The potentate seemed in a hurry, but he was apparently leading Suhail Akbar and Leon Fortunato, and he had to go slowly to light the way for them a few feet at a time. That would not have been as much help without the sounds of the jet engines, however, so Rayford shut down and prayed that this mostly blind threesome would veer off course before his own trio found him.

Rayford called Mac McCullum in Al Basrah to debrief him. “Can you and Albie leave for Al Hillah today?”

“We been sittin’ here like a past-due hen.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. You’re pretty hot since Greece. How are you going to get around?”

“With bluster, charm, and only at night, of course. I figure you pretty much just want to know what NC and his boys are up to.”

“Ideal would be your finding out where they’re meeting in Baghdad and bugging the place for us.”

“Oh, sure. I’ll just tell ’em I’m his new valet and can I have a few hours in the meeting room before everyone else gets there.”

“If I thought it was easy, I’d do it myself,” Rayford said.

“Albie knows everybody. If it’s gonna get done, he’ll get it done.”

Chang, Naomi, and Abdullah appeared, each laden with boxes and cases. Naomi looked ashen. Rayford opened the door and lowered the steps. “Good timing,” he said.

“We were on it all the way, Captain,” Abdullah said. “Thanks to this young genius.”

“Just showing off,” Chang said, handing cargo in and helping Naomi aboard. “I wanted to show her how David had bugged the whole place and that we could actually listen in on Carpathia.”

“So you knew he was coming,” Rayford said, letting Abdullah edge past to the pilot’s chair.

“Could we please talk about something else?” Naomi said.

That made everyone uncomfortably quiet. Rayford sneaked a peek. The pale orange silhouette was moving more quickly now. He must have abandoned Akbar and Fortunato or they were ailing anew. The pain didn’t seem to reach Carpathia. Maybe God was saving his best till last for him.

Rayford and Abdullah eschewed a formal checklist for a quick confirmation of the cockpit flow by checking the critical switch positions. “Crank ’er up,” Rayford said.

But Abdullah just sat there, craning his neck to watch the glow grow larger as it neared the plane.

“What’re you waiting on, Smitty? Let’s move out.”

“A moment, please, Captain. How far do you assume he can see?”

“About as far as he glows. Now let’s go.”

“A moment, please.”

“What are you doing, Mr. Smith?” Naomi called out. “Isn’t that Carpathia?”

“He does not know where he is going. But I do.”

“Once we start up, he can do nothing,” Rayford said. “But I’d rather he not know who we are.”

“He won’t,” Abdullah said.

Rayford leaned past Abdullah and saw Carpathia hurry across the runway about twenty feet behind the craft.

“Here we go,” Abdullah said, firing up the engines and blowing the orange glow to the ground over and over until Nicolae was just an ember in the distance.

Once in the air, Naomi leaned forward. “Can I talk to you?” she said. Rayford removed his headphones.

“Is that stuff normal for you guys?” she said.

“Nothing’s normal anymore, Naomi. You’ve been through a lot yourself.”

“I never heard a man being murdered before. And I’ve never walked by so many hurting people without a thing I could do for them. We’re isolated in Petra, and I wanted to be where the action is. But if I never see anything else like this, it’ll be all right with me. And we can do more from our computer center than anywhere I can think of.”

“I’m sorry it was hard,” Rayford said. “It was for me too.” He told her of the woman he had tried to help and of his conversation with Nicolae’s assistant.

“We’ll watch for her uncle’s name on the system,” she said. “And I suppose we’ll hear from Mr. Weser too.”

“Hope so. What a character.”

She leaned closer, and while she had to raise her voice over the engines, Naomi seemed to speak so only Rayford could hear. “Chang’s not doing well, you know.”

“Why’s that?”

“This has been his home, crazy as it’s had to have been. It’s got to be strange leaving.”

“I should think he’d be glad to be gone.”

“I wish I could have met Mr. Hassid, the one Chang talks about so much. What they did in the palace and the setup at our place . . .”

Rayford nodded. “You going to be able to do the same thing—monitor this place—from Petra now?”

“With Chang, yes. It’s going to be wonderful to have him in our shop.”

“Is he going to be competition?”

“Hardly. I’ll just let him do what he wants. He likes the technical stuff, keyboarding and inside the box, more than managing people. But he can teach if he wants to.”

Rayford’s phone chirped. It was George Sebastian. “Been trying to get hold of you. Your phone down?”

“Had it off for the palace mission. I was going to report in when I knew you guys were up. It’s still early there, isn’t it?”

“We’ve got a situation.”

“Why are you whispering? Where are you?”

“Outside.”

“What time is it there?”

“Just before five in the morning. We can’t find Chloe.”

It hit Buck that the figure on the periscope had been Chloe, so where was she? It was just like her to be out without a walkie-talkie or a phone, which he attributed to strategy rather than impetuousness. He would have a hard time convincing anyone else of that, though.

He and George had split up, fully armed and in constant touch with each other. George had found the empty GC personnel carrier—which had to be some sort of a decoy—but no GC or Chloe. Buck hoped he wouldn’t have to call for more help and further expose his people or their location.

Two hours later, when the sun left Buck and George with no choice but to retreat inside, they had covered two square miles with nothing to show for it. In the compound, everybody was up, worried, praying, and eager to be brought up to speed. Ming Toy took Kenny and George’s daughter, Beth Ann, to her place “for as long as is necessary.”

George and Priscilla set up a command center in the workout room. Ree Woo sat at a small folding table in the corner, digging through files to see if any of their aliases had been underused or uncompromised.

Buck admitted he was going to be of little help. “I’m paralyzed.”

“Snap out of it,” George said. “You do Chloe and us no good that way.”

Buck glared at him, knowing he was right. “Easy for you to say, Sebastian. It’s not your wife out there.”

Priscilla looked away. George let his papers fall on a table and approached Buck. He put a hand on each arm of Buck’s chair and leaned close to his face. “I’m only gonna say it once. If it was my wife out there, I wouldn’t be sitting in here with my hands in my lap. I owe your wife big time. She risked her life for me in Greece. I can only imagine how you feel. Not knowing anything is worse than knowing the worst, but we know nothing. Maybe you’re just a little mad at her because she didn’t seem to follow protocol and skipped a lot of steps here.

“Maybe you’re feeling guilty about being angry with her because you’re scared to death she’s into something over her head. I don’t blame you. I don’t. I’m telling you, we need everybody on this, especially somebody with your brain. Now, you want to find her so we can get her back safe and sound, or you want to assume the worst and start grieving now?”

“George!” Priscilla scolded.

“I’m not trying to be a hard case,” George said. “It’s just that there’s nothing we can do outside in the daylight unless we know the coast is clear and we’ve got someone with a good disguise and alias. Meanwhile, we’ve got to rest and strategize, and we don’t need Buck sitting here feeling sorry for hims—”

“All right, George, I got it! Okay?”

“You and I are all right then?”

“Of course.”

“I mean, you think I was out there in the middle of the night for my health?”

“Not so good news,” Ree said. “Chloe’s ‘Chloe Irene’ and Mac’s ‘Howie Johnson’ are no good after Greece. Hannah’s ‘Indira Jinnah’ might still be okay, but only she can use it and she’s too far away. Rayford and Abdullah’s Middle Eastern brothers IDs may still be okay, but Abdullah is staying in Petra and Rayford will need R and R when he gets here.”

“Don’t be so sure,” George said. “He’ll go till he drops.”

“Tell me about it,” Buck said.

“Has Albie’s ‘Commander Elbaz’ been exposed yet?” Ree asked.

Buck nodded. “Unfortunately, yes.”

“Too far away too,” George said. “What else have we got?”

“One more. Ming’s guy persona, ‘Chang Chow.’”

“Let’s not risk Ming,” Buck said.

“Why not?” George said. “She’s still got the uniform. She can cut her hair and—”

“Hey!” Ree said. “You’re talking about my fiancée.”

“So?”

“She at least ought to be consulted.”

“No, Ree,” George said. “I thought we’d just drag her in here, hold her down, and cut her hair.”

“Cool down, boys,” Priscilla said. “Nobody knows who I am. I could be given an alias and—”

“No you don’t,” George said.

“Shoe’s on the other foot now, eh?” Buck said. “Prospect of sending your wife out there—”

“Stop it!” George said. “I’m just saying she’s inexperienced and not all that healthy.”

“Ming is not very physical,” Ree said. “Not trained in weapons.”

“Don’t give me that,” Buck said. “She worked at Buffer.”

“Handling inmates at a women’s prison is not like rescuing one of our people from the local GC.”

“We wouldn’t be looking for her to do that anyway,” George said. “Buck and I and maybe you, Ree, would have to go get Chloe. We need Ming, or somebody, just to find out where she is.”

Chloe had caught sight of two more GC vehicles, both moving, to the south as she was in the middle of her loop around the compound. As she watched, both trucks stopped and more than half a dozen troops disembarked from each. It became clear that they were walking a carefully planned grid to check for hidden encampments. And the underground safe house was in their path. They may have looked bored to Buck through the periscope a few hours before, but something had sent them for reinforcements.

These guys were serious. They had metal detectors, probes, and what appeared to be Geiger counters. Chloe debated whether she had time to race back to the compound to alert the others. If she erred, she could lead these guys right to her door.

Determined to distract them and knock them off course, she started moving again. She had to make them see her without appearing to want that. She moved stealthily, but with a purpose.

Rather than take a right at the edge of the property and circle back to the entrance, Chloe continued west on the south side. When she heard at least one of the vehicles heading her way, she broke into a trot, then a jog, then a full run. She was not going to outrun a truck, but maybe she could go where it couldn’t.

The Uzi, light as it was, weighed her down. Unless she believed she could take on an entire platoon or two of GC with it, it made more sense to ditch it and come back for it later. She would never be able to explain a weapon like that. With the sound of a truck, and maybe two of them, just a block south and closing fast, Chloe detoured and flung the Uzi and her ski mask behind some trees. She picked up her pace and sprinted about a quarter of a mile, succeeding in getting both trucks to bear down on her.

Chloe was out of sight of the underground complex and decided the best approach was indifference, so she kept her head down and kept running. The lead truck pulled up beside her, but she didn’t even turn to look. From the passenger-side window a young woman called out, “Need a lift?”

“No thanks.”

“Get in.”

“No thanks. I’m good.”

“We want to ask you a few questions.”

“Go ahead.”

“C’mon, stop and let us talk to you.”

“Talk to me anyway.”

“Where you from?”

“About six miles west.”

“That was underwater from the tsunami not that long ago.”