Hussein leaned into a doorjamb and crossed his arms. “I understand my place. I don’t understand what the Islamic State is planning. What is it?”

“You don’t need to know. You open the door, and we’ll do the rest.”

“I want to know. My father told me what happened at this hotel in 2005. Are you going to repeat that?”

Ringo scoffed and said, “Hell no. I’m no shahid. My life is worth much, much more.”

Hussein took that in, wondering what else it could be. He said, “I need to understand so I can help. I’m working in a vacuum.”

Ringo said, “The plan is mine. You just provide the entrance. Can you do that?”

“Yes. I can now. My father gave me a job.”

“Dumbass. Hope he stays away from work in two days.”

The words reminded Hussein of the threat that would affect someone other than himself. A thought that gave him an unfamiliar sense of apprehension.

He said, “Ringo, you can’t kill my father. He’s the concierge. Make sure the men know. There will be plenty of other people to make a statement. My father is just a worker. Understand?”

Ringo said, “Don’t tell me who I can and can’t martyr. The mission is all that matters here, and we’ll be moving fast. He gets in the way, he’s dead.”

Hussein shuffled his feet, wanting to push the issue but afraid of the repercussions. Ringo saw the doubt and realized Hussein could cause the failure of the entire undertaking. He said, “Look, okay, I’ll tell the team to leave him alone.”

Hussein smiled with relief and Ringo said, “What can they use to identify him?”

“He’s the concierge. He’ll have two badges of crossed keys on each lapel. Big gold things. You can’t miss them.”

Ringo slowly nodded, then said, “All right, Lost Boy, we’ll keep your father out of this, but if you fail to deliver, if we can’t get in, I’ll personally hunt him down and kill him. Do you understand?”

Hussein rapidly jerked his head up and down.

Ringo said, “Where’s the door? How do we get in?”

“I work at Thirty-Two North, a fancy restaurant on the lobby level. It has a kitchen in the back that also facilitates two other restaurants. One of my duties is taking out the trash. There’s a loading dock there with the Dumpsters. It’s in the back of the hotel, in between it and the convention center. Away from all security.”

“No metal detectors or guards?”

“No. You get in and you’ll be facing some secondary cooks, maybe a waiter or two, but no security. There’s a camera, but I’m assuming you don’t care about that.”

“No, I don’t. And the waiters or cooks can be the first to die. So you have a key to this door? You can get in?”

“Not yet. The door has an electronic entry. They say I’ll have a badge by tomorrow, my first day.”

“You can bring that to me.”

“No. I can’t. I need it to get into work.”

Ringo ignored that and said, “Can we park next to the door and get in?”

Hussein thought, then said, “I don’t believe so. They have barriers to prevent someone from parking a car bomb. You’ll have to stop outside of the perimeter and walk up. The only way to drive is to go through security. Is that a problem?” He hoped it was. Prayed it would prevent the attack. He’d done what he could, and if the kitchen door wouldn’t work, it wasn’t his fault.

Ringo said, “I won’t know without seeing it. Take me there. Can we walk from here?”

Hussein nodded, saying, “Unless you brought one of your trucks, I walk everywhere I go.”

26

I slammed my car into drive and entered the nuthouse known as Amman traffic, heading east to the Citadel and yelling into my earpiece.

“Knuckles, status?”

“Still staged to pick up Koko. Dropped her off and found a place to spell.”

“So no visual on the target?”

“Nope. I’m a block away.”

I tried Brett, using his callsign on the radio. “Blood, you have visual of Hipster?”

“Negative, negative. I was waiting on Koko’s trigger to go in. I never saw him. You want me to go in now?”

Shit.

“No, no, we’re in no rush. We’ll just repeat tomorrow, and I don’t want to burn you. Break, break, Koko, how sure are you it’s Shoshana?”

“Positive. I mean one hundred percent.”

“What the hell is she doing here?”

It was a rhetorical question, and Jennifer knew it, not even bothering to respond. Shoshana. Just what I fucking need.

She was an Israeli assassin who worked for Mossad. She belonged to a hit team called Samson that had grown out of the fabled Wrath of God missions against Black September during the 1970s. She was very, very good at her job, and if she was there, somebody was going to die. There was no way it was a coincidence. If she was sitting in the exact same coffee shop we’d chosen, she’d picked it for same reasons we had. She was looking at the same building we were. I just prayed she wasn’t looking at the same target.

Shoshana and I had originally bumped heads on another mission in Istanbul, crossing paths much like this one, only I hadn’t known her then and had come close to killing her, believing she was the enemy. I’m glad I didn’t, because she ended up saving a lot of lives.

I cleared the road around the Citadel and said, “All elements, all elements, listen up. Box the apartment. Put a net on it and let me know if the target leaves. Keep an eye out for the rest of the Samson team. I know they’re here, and odds are they’ve already seen you.”

I got a roger from all elements but Jennifer. She said, “You want me to disengage or keep eyes on Shoshana?”

“Keep eyes on. I’m three minutes out.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to brace her ass.”

Knuckles said, “I want to be there. This is going to be fun.”

I didn’t reply, but I had to admit, he was right. This mission had just gotten interesting, and I couldn’t help but feel a little adrenaline rush at the fact Shoshana was here. I genuinely liked her, and was looking forward to burning her little operation. If I had half a brain, I’d be afraid of what she’d do, because she was positively lethal. But I had an ace up my sleeve: She was sweet on me.

I jammed my Land Rover up onto a curb in a small alley and jumped out, pretty sure that there wouldn’t be any tow trucks coming. I jogged toward the coffee shop, saying, “I’m thirty seconds out. Jennifer, location?”

“At the corner on the hill. The one to the south.”

I knew where she meant. It was the same corner we’d used on our reconnaissance earlier. I held up short in an alley full of trash and running, slimy water. “I’m here.”

“Where?”

“About to pop out. Alley to your west.”

I kept walking and saw Jennifer turn the corner. She jogged up to me and said, “It’s her, Pike. I’m sure. Maybe we should let her leave instead of interfering with whatever operation she’s doing.”

Meaning, she might go nuts. I didn’t think she would, but with Shoshana, you never knew. She was impossible to predict, working on a gut instinct that sometimes bordered on clairvoyance. Actually, I hadn’t told anyone, because it sounded nuts, but I believed she was clairvoyant. There had been times in the past when she seemed to be able to read my thoughts, scaring me.

I grabbed Jennifer’s hand, dragging her with me, saying, “She just busted up our operation. Turnabout’s fair play.”

“What if she reacts?”

We reached the road for the apartment complex and the coffee shop, and I saw Shoshana, sitting by herself on the outside patio. She was dressed like a local, wearing a hijab and drinking tea, but it was her. I’d done enough operations side by side with her that I could sniff her out even if she was wearing a Darth Vader costume. I have to admit, seeing her brought a little nostalgia.