The Taste of Fear (A Suspense Action Thriller & Mystery Novel) Read online

  He snubbed out the fag on the window ledge, returned to the bed, and looked to the part of the laptop screen where the program monitored the battery life remaining in the transmitters.

  He had exactly two days, eleven hours before he lost the signal.

  CHAPTER 17

  Friday, December 27, 12:01 a.m.

  Macau, China

  “Manyak,” Danny Zamir swore under his breath in Hebrew as he skipped through the television channels. He exchanged the remote for his cell phone and dialed Sal’s cell number. He didn’t expect an answer and didn’t get one.

  He paced the hotel suite.

  The last time he’d spoken to Sal had been approximately twenty-four hours before. He’d told him that Don Xi was dead and gave an update on what he’d learned about the Irishman named Redstone, which, as it had turned out, hadn’t been much. Even Danny’s shadiest contacts had heard only rumors about the man. One was that his alias, Redstone, was chosen after the first man he’d killed, a Malcolm Ruby. Another was that he was the son of a late London crime lord. Another still was that he’d single-handedly taken out an entire Russian mob.

  According to that last rumor, after the Irishman had put a half-inch-wide bullet from a Barrett M107 through the heart of a high-ranking member of a Moscow-based mob, the mob’s boss, Alexander Noukhaev, tracked the Irishman down to a small house on the coast of Northern Ireland.

  The Irishman wasn’t home, but his wife and daughter were. They were found by police dismembered, their limbs pinned to the living room wall like some kind of macabre art exhibit.

  Less than a month later, the severed heads of Noukhaev’s three sons were discovered in a garbage bag in the center of Cathedral Court, in the heart of the Kremlin. Over the next two years the rest of the mob was systematically picked off one by one—big daddies, little sixes, thirty-three men in total—until only Alexander Noukaev remained. Then one day he simply disappeared.

  Regardless of whether that tale was true, Sal had not been cheered to hear any of it. The initial plan Danny had devised had called for his boss to skip the Prince Tower’s opening and return to the US, pronto, avoiding all public events, while Danny stalked the stalker. Now, it seemed, those concerns had become secondary.

  Kidnapped in Africa, he thought. Christ, capo.

  He punched another number into his cell. “Yeah, I saw it,” he snapped. “Why do you think I’m calling? Round up six of our guys and meet me at the hangar at first light.” He paused. “And bring some sunscreen. Africa’s going to get hot.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Thump, thump, thump.

  Scarlett opened her eyes. Blackness. The thumping continued, loud and hollow, from somewhere above her. She heard the hum of tires, felt the sense of speed. “Hello?” she said.

  “Scarlett?”

  “Sal?”

  Suddenly hands cradled her head, fingers brushing her hair back from her face. She smelled the spicy-rose scent of Sal’s cologne. She struggled into a sitting position and hugged her husband fiercely. “How?” she mumbled into his shoulder.

  “You’re all right,” he said.

  “That noise? The banging?”

  “It was me. I was kicking the damn door.”

  “Where are we?”

  “In a van. They took us.”

  She recalled the explosion, the dead Marines, the car crash. Her gut knotted with reawakened fear. “Thunder?” she said. “Where’s Thunder?” She looked around, but couldn’t see anything in the dark.

  “Big fellow? He’s here. They brought you in together.”

  Scarlett crawled blindly forward and discovered an inert body lying in the center of the van’s cargo body. Thunder. She traced her fingertips up his shoulder to his face and felt something sticky on his forehead that had to be blood. She probed gently, finding a gash just above the left eye. She pressed the pads of her index finger and middle finger in the hollow between his windpipe and the large muscle of his neck. Relief filled her. His pulse was strong, the rhythm regular. She settled down beside him, resting his head on her lap.

  “Who is he?” Sal asked. She heard him shift, as if he was settling down as well.

  “The man whose car you wouldn’t get into.”

  “Him? He drove you all the way to the embassy? What were you thinking anyway? I had no idea where you went—”

  “Not now, Sal. Please.” It still sounded as though she were hearing everything through cotton. “How long have I been out?”

  “Only a few minutes,” a woman said.

  Scarlett jumped. “Who are you?” She spun her head. “How many people are in here?”

  “My name is Joanna Mills.” Her voice came from where the cargo body met the cab. “I’m the vice consul at the embassy.”

  “I’m Miranda Sanders,” a soft, barely-there voice said. “I’m a clerk in the passport office.”

  “They were in the atrium with me when the blast occurred,” Sal explained. “We were thrown to the floor. Then the gunmen came in and took us outside. That’s when I saw you at the gate. What the bloody hell were you doing just standing there?”

  “Thunder and I had just arrived. We saw a bunch of men in scarves shoot the Marine at the gatehouse. Thunder went to see if any of them were alive and I followed.” She swallowed. “Who were they anyway? Al Qaeda?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Joanna said.

  “How do you know?” Miranda asked. She sounded young—young and scared.

  “Who else blows up American embassies?” Sal quipped.

  “Watch how you speak to her,” Joanna said sharply.

  “I’m in no mood for imbecilic questions right now.”

  “1965,” Joanna said authoritatively, “the Viet Cong detonated a car bomb outside the US Embassy in Saigon. 1979, Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and held fifty-two American hostages for 444 days. 1983, two truck bombs, this time Hezbollah, against the American barracks in Beirut—”

  “And in 1998,” Sal cut in, “Al Qaeda terrorists blew up the embassies in Nairobi and, guess what, this same city. Last I checked it was 2008. That makes it exactly ten years after the original bombings. Anniversaries, as you should know, are big for these guys. So unless you’re telling me this is all some grand coincidence, and in fact some Viet Cong who’s just woken up from a coma—”

  “Shut up.”

  “—and still thinks Johnson is president has decided out of all places to bomb why not—”

  “I said shut up!”

  “I just want to make it clear that, yes, it was a very imbecilic question.”

  “Enough!” Scarlett shouted. “Enough. Everyone’s stressed. Okay. But we need to think this through. Figure out what’s going to happen next.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s going to happen,” Sal said, still using his boardroom tone, authoritative and in control, as if he were talking about quarterly forecasts. “They take us somewhere, call up the most important politician they have the number for, and start ransom negotiations.”

  “That’s if they want money,” Joanna said.

  “What else would they want?”

  “You said so yourself, Mr. Brazza. This is Al Qaeda. Not some South African syndicate going after children and businessmen. Nor Somali and Sudanese tribal clans snatching up journalists and foreign aid workers.”

  “It’s not political,” Sal stated flatly.

  “How can you say that? They bombed an embassy.”

  “Bombings, assassinations—that’s political, sure. Kidnapping is all about money.”

  “How can you know that? How can you possibly, categorically know that?” Joanna sounded half flustered, half incredulous, like Sal had just told her Mars was pleasant to visit in the spring. “Maybe they want to put us on the internet and—” She bit back the words.

  “Cut off our heads?”

  “My lord, you’re a horror! Don’t you know Miranda is just a girl?”

  “She better grow up fast.”

  “Stop it!”
Scarlett shouted again. “Would you two please stop? We’re on the same side here.”

  Silence fell. Scarlett found it almost as bad as the infighting. She could taste despair in the coffin blackness.

  The van lurched around a corner, throwing her onto her side. She pushed herself back upright, repositioning Thunder’s head on her lap. The engine made a dirty, revving sound, as though the driver had left his foot on the clutch for too long. She prayed the bastard would get a speeding ticket, or the van would blow a tire and flip—or swerve to avoid a pothole and shoot through a cable-and-post guardrail. Ironically, she would have welcomed such a fate right now. God, how quickly one’s fortune could change.

  Scarlett cleared her throat. “Let’s stick to the facts, okay?” she said, trying to remain rational. “Have there been any other Al Qaeda kidnappings in Africa?”

  “There were those eleven Europeans in Egypt,” Miranda said.

  “No, hon,” Joanna said. “Militiamen from Darfur were responsible for that.”

  “The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat,” Sal said.

  “Who are they?” Scarlett asked.

  “A rebel group that’s been fighting the Algerian government in a civil war for the past decade or so. When they couldn’t win support at home, they started looking global. With Al Qaeda’s support, they’ve become an umbrella for radical Islamic factions in neighboring countries like Morocco and Tunisia. They run training camps in the Sahara and ship fighters off to Iraq, where they make up as much as thirty percent of the foreign fighters there. Recently they’ve become known as the Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.”

  “You know a lot about terrorists, Mr. Brazza,” Joanna said, and it was tough to tell whether there was suspicion or deference in her voice.

  “They fascinate me,” he said simply.

  The truth, Scarlett knew, was that before settling on Mauritius as the site for a future hotel-casino, Sal had looked into several other African nations, and he would have received regular reports on their political and economic environments. “Are these Salafist guys involved in kidnapping?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Joanna said. “In 2003 they kidnapped thirty-two Europeans. I believe the German government paid a five million ransom. Last year, again, they kidnapped two Austrian tourists in Tunisia. Eight million ransom that time.”

  “You see,” Sal said. “It’s all about money.”

  “But remember,” Joanna said. “Salafist is North African.”

  “Who was responsible for the East African embassy bombings ten years ago then?” Scarlett asked.

  “The Jihad Organization. They’ve been around since the late seventies.”

  Sal grunted. “It’s all the same thing. They all follow bin Laden.”

  In the silence that followed, Scarlett thought about everything that had been said. It made her head spin with incredulity. Cold and bleak depression washed over her in waves.

  She saw the black smoke curling above the embassy.

  She saw the young Marine’s half-missing face.

  She saw the crazy bastard with the third-degree burns staring at her madly before running her and Thunder off the road.

  She shoved the images aside decisively and forged her resolve. Sal was right. The kidnappers likely only wanted money. No problem. Name a price. One million? Ten? God, when they found out how much Sal was worth… “They’re going to wants tens of millions, Sal,” she said.

  “Will you pay them?” Miranda asked. “Whatever they ask?”

  “Of course,” Sal said shortly. “What good is money if you’re dead? Besides,” he added, “I’m insured against this type of thing.”

  A new thought stuck Scarlett. Maybe in a normal kidnapping-hostage situation, the kidnappers wanted money. But this wasn’t a normal situation. She and Sal were one of the most famous couples in the US. Al Qaeda was well-funded. Money was secondary to them—a means of achieving the end goal of spreading propaganda and terror. So what if whoever was calling the shots decided that no amount of ransom would be worth the coverage their deaths would bring?

  It was a chilling possibility, one which she kept to herself.

  Several hours later the van stopped. The rear doors swung open, letting inside gray light. Three gunmen dressed in drab-colored clothing, including the driver with the burn marks on his face, shouted at them to get out. Scarlett gently moved herself out from beneath Thunder, whose head was still resting on her lap, and got to her feet. She followed Sal and hopped to the ground. Her cramped legs immediately gave out and she almost toppled over. The nearest gunman laughed at her; she resisted the urge to spit in his face.

  She looked around. It was dusk, but the dying light seemed bright compared to the complete blackness of the van’s cargo body. The air was fresh and earthy, with not a trace of civilization in it.

  They were in some sort of forest clearing. Tall, foreboding trees surrounded them on every side. Two primitive huts faced each other across an open hearth. They were constructed from sturdy wooden poles, thin branches for horizontal tie-beams, and thatch. In fact, they resembled crude facsimiles of the villa Scarlett and Sal had stayed in up on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater, only she didn’t think these would boast interiors flush with long-stem roses and Persian silks. Definitely no bathrooms with hand-beaded chandeliers and views of Africa’s Eden.

  The gunman who’d laughed at her ran his grubby hands up and down her arms and legs and fondled her crotch and breasts. She gritted her teeth and endured the harassment. He stuck his knobby fingers into the pockets of her dress and found the two Australian fifties Thunder had given her, which he kept. Next he examined the lion claw and compass-pendant around her neck. Apparently he decided they were worthless and left them where they were. He ordered her to take off her wristwatch. She fumbled with the clasp and handed him the gold jewelry piece. He held it up in front of his face for inspection, then dropped in it the same pocket that held the fifties. Finally he pointed to her engagement ring and wedding band.

  Scarlett glanced over at Sal. He was surrendering his three hundred thousand dollar Patek Philippe wristwatch to the gunman with the burns. Joanna and Miranda were also shedding their valuables. It was the first time she had seen the two embassy women. Joanna was somewhere in her fifties with a sharp, intelligent face and short-styled hair. Miranda was the complete opposite—early twenties, mousey features, long, flat hair. Her cheeks were streaked with tears, and she was biting her lower lip.

  The gunman in front of Scarlett barked something at her. She returned her attention to him and quickly twisted off the diamond engagement ring and platinum wedding band. She dumped them into his greedy, outstretched hand. He grinned at the size of the diamond and made a crack in Arabic to his buddies. They laughed. He tied a black piece of cloth around her eyes. Blinded, Scarlett felt a renewed surge of panic. He gripped her roughly by the shoulder and steered her across the clearing. She stumbled and fell to her knees twice. Thirty or so steps later he shoved her inside what she thought was one of the huts and tied her hands behind her back to a thick corner post. She heard more movement and grunts. Booted footsteps left the hut and the door clattered shut.

  “Sal?” she said.

  “I’m here.”

  “Joanna? Miranda?”

  They answered as well.

  Scarlett tested the rope binding her wrists. There seemed to be about two feet of slack. Enough to lie down, enough to touch feet with the others, but that was all. She listened for the terrorists, but didn’t hear them. Even so, that didn’t mean they weren’t right outside, standing guard. She swallowed hard. She hated not being able to see. She felt perfectly exposed and vulnerable. What if the bastards decided to rape her? What would she do then—what could she do? She imagined their hot, smelly bodies rubbing against hers, their rough beards scraping her face, their snorts of pleasure as they mounted her one after the other.

  She would bite them, she decided. She’d rip off their goddamn noses with her teeth if they tried anything.


  They didn’t try anything. The hours slipped away without event. The night grew colder. She didn’t speak to anyone, and no one attempted to speak to her. What was there to say really? How’s it going over there? Sort of like camping, huh? Got any marshmallows?

  Mosquitoes feasted on her exposed flesh, their incessant whining around her head almost as bad as their pinprick bites. She couldn’t slap them away because of her restraints and had to lay there for them, a blood buffet. From somewhere not far away an owl hooted, a deep, resonant ooh-hu. It almost sounded like “who you?”

  Who am I? she thought vaguely. My name’s Scarlett Cox. You might have seen some of my films? No? Well, next time you’re in Times Square or cruising down Hollywood Boulevard take a gander around and you’ll probably see one of my billboards somewhere. Maybe the Estée Lauder one. It’s right across from the Kodak Theatre. You can’t miss it.

  More minutes ticked away. More silence. Scarlett’s shoulder muscles began to stiffen and her wrists ached. She stretched out on the lumpy dirt floor and remained like that until her left arm went numb below the elbow, then she shifted to the other side. She heard the others tossing and turning as well. At some point—by then, time had ceased to mean anything to her—she ended up going over everything that had led to the current nightmarish predicament.

  The safari had started out well enough. The morning in Arusha had been nice. Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti had been fun too—until she’d overheard Sal on his phone in the balloon. That’s when it all started to go downhill, wasn’t it? Yes, because if she hadn’t overheard him in the balloon, she wouldn’t have confronted him about Don Xi later on. He wouldn’t have felt the need to go off into the forest to make another call during dinner. If he hadn’t done that, he wouldn’t have stirred the lionesses. They wouldn’t have gotten in the subsequent argument. They wouldn’t have been on non-speaking terms during the flight back to Arusha the next day, and they likely would have sat down for coffee or tea while waiting for a legitimate taxi to show up.