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"Still ... someone ... an enemy could have found out." Sayyed tried to keep the options open.
"Let me ask you," Mughniyah said, leaning forward, "can you think of anyone you know who has a reputation for cheating people out of their money?"
"I don't want to be in the position of defending Ivanov, but I think we need more evidence before we settle on him as the thief."
"You didn't answer my question."
Sayyed nodded. "You are correct. Mikhail Ivanov is not exactly the most honest man I know."
"And let's not forget the little falling-out he had with our Turkish friend," Badredeen added.
Sayyed was the one who had passed on the information he'd picked up from Damascus. Hamdi Sharif, the arms dealer whom they had worked with for close to a decade, had reportedly had a fight with Ivanov over a business deal. A month later, Sharif ended up assassinated on a park bench in front of his house. He had asked Ivanov about it, but of course the man had denied any connection.
Mughniyah placed his big hairy right hand on the table. He tapped a thick finger and said, "Moscow is a den of thieves. I warned all of you about this years ago. The collapse has turned it into a free-for-all where the most brutal simply take what they want."
Sayyed could not argue with what he had said. "So what do we do?"
"You say the Russian will be here Friday?"
"Yes."
"Good. We are going to have a little auction."
The word seemed to wake up Radih. "What kind of auction?"
"The kind where we sell the American spies to the highest bidder."
"What bidders?" Sayyed asked.
"Don't worry," Mughniyah cautioned. "Just make sure the Russian is here, and I'll take care of the rest."
"What about Damascus? I must report this missing money."
Mughniyah shook his head. "Not yet. Give me a few days and then you can tell them."
CHAPTER 54
RAPP stepped out into the hot afternoon sun and looked over the edge of the veranda. The narrow street that snaked its way up the hill was barely wide enough for a single car to pass. Down at the bottom, maybe a hundred yards away, he could see the Toyota pickup truck blocking the street. The houses on this little goat hill were all flat-roofed. Clotheslines were strung up and shirts and pants and other garments flapped in the breeze. Beneath him, in the tiny courtyard, three vehicles were packed in with no more than a few feet in between. The ten-foot wall had a ring of razor wire strung from one end to the other. He looked to his right and found a stack of green fiberglass crates. Stenciled on the side in black letters were a string of numbers and letters that he didn't understand, then a few that he did.
Each crate contained multiple M72 LAW antiarmor weapons. Next to those were a crate of rounds for an M203 grenade launcher that was leaning against the wall. Above that, affixed to the wall, was a hand-drawn laminated map that marked the distance and elevation to certain landmarks up to a mile away. Rapp was wondering what all this stuff was for when he heard the voice of the man who had pulled him out of the safe house the night before.
"We call this the sky box ... not anymore really, but during the height of the war we would sit up here and watch it all unfold."
Rapp turned around to find Rob Ridley sipping on a bright red can of Coke. "Sky box?"
Ridley approached the edge of the balcony, pointed toward the ocean to the north, and then drew his hand south. "See that big, ugly scar that runs from the north to the south?"
"Yeah."
"That's the famous Green Line. We'd sit up here and watch them fi
ght, like a football game. That's why we called it the sky box."
Rapp pointed to the stack of U.S. Army crates. "Looks like you guys did more than watch."
"That shit is more for self-defense, although I saw some badass snipers roll through here. That's the unwritten story about this little war ... the snipers. They did most of the damage. We found that they were getting a little close." Hurley pointed up at the overhang. "They started sending rounds in here on a daily basis. We put up sandbags, and then after one of our guys got killed, we put in a request for a couple of those badasses from Fort Bragg. Two of them showed up five days later." Ridley pointed at the map on the wall. "They put that thing together. In six days they had thirty-one recorded kills, and that pretty much solved the problem. Kinda like bringing in an exterminator." Ridley laughed and then added, "That's classified, so don't go around telling that story to just anyone."
"How long have we had a presence up here?"
