'I've called the cops, you f.u.c.kwad, I've called the fire department-'

'Got your cuffs?' Rebecca called out. The young man jerked and struggled and she smacked him hard across the back of the head, then forced his face into the gla.s.s. William tossed her the cuffs from his belt. She caught them through a swinging arc of foam.

Rebecca's broad, well-defined shoulders, smudged with soot, glistened as she bound the young man. With dripping hair askew, black bra.s.siere revealed, slacks halfway down her hips-showing the top stretch of pink panties-she looked absolutely amazing. The young man gasped as she lifted her knee off his lower spine. The manager's foam finally ran out and he flung the tank against the stucco. It bounced and rolled. They were all covered with hissing, dripping r.e.t.a.r.dant.

'Careful with the girl, she's pregnant,' Rebecca warned William.

She had had humped up strangely. He eased her over on her side. The girl moaned between quick bursts of prayer. humped up strangely. He eased her over on her side. The girl moaned between quick bursts of prayer.

Gun. He leaned far enough to see a pistol on the floor of Rebecca's room, far out of anyone's reach. He leaned far enough to see a pistol on the floor of Rebecca's room, far out of anyone's reach.

'Room's clear,' Rebecca said.

Below, tenants were backing out their cars and leaving. The manager shouted over the railing: they hadn't paid their bills.

Chest heaving, Rebecca toed a blackened, sodden roll of toilet paper. 'What the h.e.l.l was that?' she asked William.

'Advanced tactics,' William said.

She sucked in her breath, pulled up the shoulders of her blouse, and gave him the sweetest smile. 'You b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' she said.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

Turkey/Iraq.

The Superhawk hit a wall of air over the endless wrinkled blanket of the Zagros mountains. It shuddered like a stunned ox and fell for a few hundred feet until the blades growled, bit air again, and whanga-whanged like a Jamaican steel band. Fouad had never heard a sound like that and it made him go pale. He clutched at the belt over his slung seat.

Across from him, Special Agent Orrin Fergus signed a thumbs up and then tapped his nose. Fergus shouted, 'The s.h.i.t is mostly over. We're coming into Diyala. That's an Iraqi muhafazah muhafazah. Province or whatever.'

'Governorate,' said the master sergeant on Fouad's left. He was a compact, well-muscled man about Fouad's age, fully tricked out in flak plate and desert camouflage, helmet overlaid with headphone and gogs and a rucksack full of folded plastic maps. His dedicated satlink kept him fully informed about activity in the area-what little activity there was. He was a connected kind of guy and looked like a robot samurai.

The crew chief moved to the rear. 'Down in thirty. Use the green bucket if you are so moved. Captain Jeffries does not like a slippery deck.' He looked hard at Fouad. 'First time?'

Fouad nodded.

The crew chief used his boot to shift the bucket next to Fouad.

'I will be fine,' Fouad said, looking up with wide black eyes.

The crew chief grinned and walked back to his position on fire control.

'They call Kifri UXO Central,' Master Sergeant said. 'Decades of back and forth between the Kurds and the Sunnis. The national animal is the Gambian rat. They use 'em to sniff out mines and ordnance. Happy little beasts, work like sonsab.i.t.c.hes. Last time we were through here an Iraqi film company was making an epic about Arabs stomping Persians fourteen hundred years ago. Pretty big deal. Then the director stepped on a Coalition bomblet and blew off his leg. Took out a cameraman, too. s.h.i.t. They were feeling pretty low that day.'

'Do they mind that we are here?' Fouad asked.

'The folks in Baghdad mostly don't give a f.u.c.k,' Master Sergeant said with a grin. 'They're supposed to be our allies, so we turn a blind eye when they kick Kurdish b.u.t.t.'

Orrin Fergus moved over to Fouad's side and shouted into his ear. 'We're going to meet up with Tim Harris's team in Kifri. You'll conduct the interrogation for us. Harris's accent just makes 'em blink. How's your skill at the local dialect?'

'I don't know,' Fouad said, feeling unsure of himself, and for reasons other than his stomach. 'Here they may speak Arabic, but also Kurdish, Turkish, or even Aramaic or a.s.syrian. If they are Yazidis-'

'This year, they mostly speak Arabic,' said Master Sergeant. 'At least that's what we've been told. I love surprises, don't you? We'll find out when we get there.'

'If we find bodies, I'll be busy,' Fergus said. 'So keep your eyes and ears open. Talk to the locals, if any, but keep your cards close. I hear there's a fellow named Tabrizi or something like that waiting in town. They don't need to know anything from us. Since we haven't been issued MOPP gear, just filter masks and BAMs, anything requiring major decon will delay our start by ten minutes while the crew seals the cabin. We'll have to wait for decon until we get back to Incirlik. And if we're dirty or acting weird-well, I hear Kifri is outstanding this time of year.'

Fergus specialized in bioweapons and had been qualified as a medical examiner before joining the FBI. Fouad muttered the acronyms under his breath: MOPP was Mission Oriented Protective Posture, BAM was Biological Agent Monitor.

The Superhawk circled the town.

'Drop in five,' the captain announced. 'Master Sergeant is your G.o.d. We drop and then we go park and we will pickup, and you will be there on his command.'

Fouad nodded compliance, though the pilot could not see him.

Most of Kifri looked like a collection of s...o...b..xes kicked open by unruly children. Shattered brown domes and hollowed-out two-story houses cl.u.s.tered around the skeleton of a bazaar. Only a few of the houses and buildings were still standing. Six years of civil war and Kurdish cleansing and decades of tyranny before that-including phosphorus bombs from Saddam-had sucked most of the life out of the town. The Superhawk flew south over a ruined military installation, an antique, war-stamped moonscape.

These were the leftovers from when Americans had briefly dreamed they could save the world from terrorism, one miserable tyranny at a time. Now, a few Yanks still flew in, around, and about, and the Iraqis did very little if anything to stop them-everybody knew they were just buzzing, like flies.

Kifri was a poster child for the cancer of history and hatred and nation-building. Nations don't get built-they grow like mold. Iraq was a whimpering mess, abandoned on the sidelines of a new war. Iran was the center of action now. Defiantly nuclear, it was being taken on-diplomatically, so far, but with many threats covert and otherwise-by the UN, Europe, Russia, and even China. The Americans had opted in as junior partners, allowing that its allies had a bigger stake because they were within range of Iran's missiles.

Americans no longer had much heart for direct fighting in Iraq, so they flew support and reconnaissance and pounded the ground in a few areas, hunting up intelligence.

Fouad tried to keep from shivering. Fergus and Master Sergeant shared a smoke. The sun through the windows swept brilliant squares over their chests as the Superhawk circled, and then they slowed and dropped. Master Sergeant unstrapped, found his balance, and motioned for the crew chief to throw open the door. The mid-morning glare blinded Fouad. Then he saw pale brown houses, broad unpaved streets, dry potholes, craters, broken windows under shattered wooden awnings, a two-story government building, Iraqi guards sitting and standing around the brick steps, smoking cigarettes and watching-and a Humvee flying a blue and yellow flag from its high antenna.

Fergus grabbed Fouad's arm. 'Let's go.'

They jumped to the dirt street and ran from under the shadowy wind of the blades. A man in a khaki shirt and pale green cargo pants with lots of pockets, a camera around his neck, a big red head of hair and no hat matched speed and pumped Fouad's hand and then swung about and waved to the Superhawk pilots. Fergus introduced him. This was Special Agent Tim Harris, Diplomatic Security, liaison in Iraq between the FBI and the CIA and definitely part of BuDark.

The pilot lifted the chopper away. Fouad looked over his shoulder.

'Welcome to Kifri, home of the stupid and the brave,' Harris said. 'The weather today is dry and slightly uncool, sporadic p.i.s.sing contests with the police guard, but no sign of a storm. We now proudly fly the blue and yellow flag of official Baghdad approval because they want to know who's using anthrax to kill Kurdish Jews in a town where there should not any longer be Kurds, much less Jews.'

The Master Sergeant opened the Humvee's door and sat shotgun. He carried a machine pistol with an a.s.sault clip like a flattened ram's horn. Harris had two Glocks, one in a shoulder holster, the second under his left cuff, above his boot. The Humvee had a ROAG-Remotely Operated Autotargeting Gun-a rapid-fire twenty millimeter mounted over the roof like a small steel sewage pipe.

Inside, with the engine running, the Humvee cooled quickly. They were surrounded by two inches of punch-suck armor, just barely enough to stop an old RPG, not enough to worry the nose-heavy, slag-splat anti-tank sh.e.l.l currently in fashion in these parts. Three UAVs-automated aerial drones-relayed data from hundreds of meters in the sky. Screens in the dashboard popped up as Harris spun the vehicle about. Sensors started pinging like sonar in a submarine, scoping out potential targets. Echoes from around corners attracted particular attention. Sound trackers on the roof could zero in on weapons action and coordinate return fire through UAVs and their only other air support, the Superhawk.

The vehicle had a Combat Guidance unit-it could drive itself to a rendezvous if its drive train and wheels were intact but humans inside were incapacitated. Fouad could not help but believe that it had eyes and ears and a will of its own. Machines had evolved faster than men in the fog of war.

The large white house on the outskirts of Kifri might once have been comfortable: a cement-walled single-story square surrounded a courtyard, the square itself fenced in by battered black iron and what might have once been a cactus garden. For blocks around, all the other houses were rubble.

The Humvee rumbled over a toppled gate and stopped. An older man in a worn dirty business suit with a white kerchief wrapped round his head stood up from the porch and lifted his arm. Fergus stepped out first. Master Sergeant was more cautious. He moved slowly, surveying everything with critical eyes.

'Superhawk is parking, gents,' he announced, tapping his headphones. 'We have forty-five minutes and you know I will pull y'all out before that.'

Harris opened his door last, throat bobbing.

Fouad followed Fergus and they stood by the Humvee.

The older man in the white kerchief approached Fouad with a suspicious glance at the others and cautiously extended his right hand. 'As-salaamu aleik.u.m,' he greeted. Then he hugged Fouad and sniffed his cheeks. 'I am glad you are here. It is not proper, what happened. We must be careful. This still is a house of death.'

All heads turned. An engine roared far off down a deserted street. A small rust-pocked Subaru Forester drove up to the gate in a cloud of dust. A tanned hairy arm stuck out and waved. Master Sergeant tapped his headphones as if to knock out what he was hearing. His lip curled.

'Gents, home office says we have a mandatory guest.'

'h.e.l.l, Kifri is the last place I'd expect to find Saddam's hidden stockpiles,' the large, barrel-chested man said as he approached the group through the gate. 'My name is Edmond Beatty. Friends call me Beatty. To whom am I addressing my concerns?' He held out his hand and raised a bushy eyebrow.

Master Sergeant introduced the group but the older Iraqi held back in the shadows, glaring resentfully.

Harris said, 'Beatty and I know each other already.'

'Pleasure's mutual,' Beatty said.

Fouad shook hands but felt he was missing something crucial-history. 'And why are you here, Mr. Beatty?' he asked. Boldness seemed called for-Harris did not like the man and neither did Fergus. Master Sergeant seemed irritated but also amused.

'I'm a retired colonel,' Beatty said. 'I served in Iraq in GW 2. Don't ever call it the Coalition War to my face. Right, friends?'

'Colonel Beatty is something more than local color,' Fergus said. 'He was given a State Department a.s.signment, at the behest of six senators, to continue the search for Saddam's chemical and biological weapons. That a.s.signment has not been revoked, unfortunately.'

'I heard about your plague house on the weed vine,' Beatty said. 'I wish you gentleman had called me. I could have scurried up here and gotten the facts and that would have saved the U.S. taxpayers some real money. Superhawks are expensive pieces of machinery. Bright and shiny. I am well acquainted with Dr. Mirza Al-Tabrizi. He represents the Shiites in Kifri, kind of a pooh-bah for the oppressed majority. The Kurds seem to like him, too. That does not make him an objective source, in my book.'

Al-Tabrizi folded his arms and leaned against the closed door.

'We'd appreciate your standing second fiddle on this one, sir,' Master Sergeant advised in a low tone.

'That's play play second fiddle, not stand. I've been here, continuously, longer than any other American soldier,' Beatty said. 'A true gentleman never gives up on a good cause.' He turned to Fouad. 'Sir, like Fergus, you are Special Agent, FBI, am I correct? And connected somehow with this Bureau of Ultimate Darkness, or whatever the h.e.l.l it's called now?' second fiddle, not stand. I've been here, continuously, longer than any other American soldier,' Beatty said. 'A true gentleman never gives up on a good cause.' He turned to Fouad. 'Sir, like Fergus, you are Special Agent, FBI, am I correct? And connected somehow with this Bureau of Ultimate Darkness, or whatever the h.e.l.l it's called now?'

Fouad was about to speak when Beatty moved in, towering over him. 'They drag you in here to interpret?'

'His ident.i.ty is not important to you, Beatty,' Harris growled. 'Bad enough you know who we are.'

Beatty swung around and looked them all in the face in sequence. 'I speak Kurdish, Turkish, Farsi, Urdu, Pashto, and Arabic,' he said. 'Six or seven dialects.'

'All with a Tennessee accent,' Harris added.

'True, but I am understood wherever I go in this country. And who are we interviewing? Any live people, this time?'

'Sir,' Master Sergeant said, more forcefully. 'You are subordinate to our mission. Whatever help you can render will be appreciated but you are not in charge here.'

'Well, who in h.e.l.l is is in charge? On the ground, I mean.' in charge? On the ground, I mean.'

'That would be me,' said Harris.

'Lead on,' Beatty exclaimed with a broad smile. He clapped Harris on the back. 'I will call you sir, and mean it. Just explain to me what in h.e.l.l anthrax is doing this far north.'

Inside the house the stench of death was strong, but carried on wafts of cool moist air, the smell seemed somehow unnatural and frustrated. Fouad watched the men move through the empty trash-filled rooms with detachment. He did not like this strange sense of calm. There was a perversity in him that his mother would not have appreciated but that his father might have understood too well, and it had been exaggerated by his training at Quantico. To see the awful things is to see life as it really is. It makes you sharper, stronger, superior. You can stand it when others cannot. To see the awful things is to see life as it really is. It makes you sharper, stronger, superior. You can stand it when others cannot.

That is why young men go off to war.

The house had looked better from the outside. Most of the rooms were open to the air, with gaping sh.e.l.l holes in the roof. The courtyard was filled with broken and burned sticks of furniture. Someone had tried to stay warm in the winter.

Al-Tabrizi took Fouad by the shoulder. 'Be at ease with me,' he said in Arabic. 'I take solace that Muslims at least sometimes speak with these men and temper them. The bull, Beatty, is not respected around here. He has made too many deals, spoken from both sides of his mouth to gain information.'

'I heard that, you old b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' Beatty called out.

Al-Tabrizi ignored him.

'Then tell me, what brings you here?' Fouad asked the old man.

'A pious man spoke out of turn for the sake of his closeness to G.o.d. Some of my people went at his behest to this house and found the Kurds, these Jews, dead. Ice was brought by police. Had they been Muslims we would have buried them...' He shrugged. 'It is possible the Sunnis have been doing experiments with our poor Jews. I do not know. They have no respect for life.'

'Amen,' Beatty said.

Walking around the courtyard, they approached the back of the house-the kitchen. A pump handle stood in one corner before a small stone and mortar cistern.

Fergus slipped on rubber gloves. He removed from his rucksack more gloves and fine-filter masks with little rubber bellows and a jar of nose cream and handed them around. 'Slip these on and fasten them tight.'

'n.o.body else has fallen ill,' Al-Tabrizi said, this time in English.

Past the kitchen, stepping over broken gla.s.s and empty cans, they came to what might have once been a workshop or a storage room. In the center of the room, blocks of ice had been arranged in a flat igloo and shaved ice had been sprinkled over a tarp that partially covered the blocks. Naked feet stuck out from under the tarp, heels soaking in puddles of filthy water.

Master Sergeant put his gloved hand over his mask. Harris stood with hands on his hips staring critically at the wrinkled and discolored feet.

Al-Tabrizi handed Fouad an old and battered compact flash memory card. 'We took many pictures before the ice arrived, donated by a hotel and a hospital. The people who did this left Kifri two days ago in a truck. We have pictures of them as well. If we have disturbed the truth of what is here, I apologize, but you understand...There was urgency.'

'All right,' Fergus said. 'Gentlemen, lend a hand. Let's pull one of them out.'

'Then they haven't been here more than a few days,' Beatty said. His voice had dropped by half in the smelly chill of the back workshop.

Fouad moved to help Harris and Fergus tug a corpse from beneath the nearest igloo of ice. It was an older woman, naked but for a single undergarment. Her face was a mask. Her mouth fell open in a dead scream. Her tongue was swollen and black.

'They are not from Kifri,' Al-Tabrizi said. 'They were brought here from farther north by men in trucks. Workers who were paid to clean this room and prepare have told me the men who delivered these poor souls were bragging they had something that would kill only Jews, and that the planet would soon be cleansed.'

'Jesus,' Beatty said.

Fergus checked the woman's skin. Her legs, torso, and one arm were covered with wide black scabs. He removed a microlume, a small plastic plate, from his belt pack, pulled out a red tab, turned her head, and rubbed the tip over her tongue, then examined the read-out. He did the same on an eschar-one of the flaking black lesions on her chest.

'It's anthrax, both pulmonary and cutaneous,' he said. He pointed to black marks and splotches on her stomach and around her ribs. 'GI as well. They must have made her eat some of it.' He examined the card's display from a few inches, scowling. 'I see protective antigen, edema factor, and lethal factor-PA, EF, LF-but I'm also getting something unfamiliar. Could be a new plasmid.' He looked up at Al-Tabrizi. 'I have to take internal samples. It would be better if you left the room. I will do my best to be respectful.'

'I will stay,' Al-Tabrizi said. 'It is my duty, and the necessity is clear.'

'Sir, we're talking about the likely release of bacilli made even more virulent by vegetative mutation inside a victim,' Fergus said. 'Please leave.'

Al-Tabrizi glanced at Fouad. 'He is a good doctor,' Fouad told the Shiite.