The sum of all fears - Tom Clancy [98]
"Broke his neck?" At least the man was not a plant that is, if the policeman had really died, and this was not an elaborate ruse of the Americans, Greeks, Israelis, or God only knew who.
"Like a twig."
"His contacts in America?"
"They are few. He is hunted by their national police. His group, he says, killed three of them, and his brother was recently ambushed and murdered by them."
"He is ambitious in his choice of enemies. His education?"
"Poor in formal terms, but he is clever."
"Skills?"
"Few that are of use to us."
"He is an American," Qati pointed out. "How many of those have we had?"
Ghosn nodded. "That is true, Commander."
"The chance that he could be an infiltrator?"
"I would say slim, but we must be careful."
"In any case, I have something I need you to do." Qati explained about the bomb.
"Another one?" Ghosn was an expert at this task, but he was not exactly excited about being stuck with it. "I know the farm - that foolish old man. I know, I know, his son fought against the Israelis, and you like the cripple."
"That cripple saved the life of a comrade. Fazi would have bled to death had he not received shelter in that little shop. He didn't have to do that. That was at a time when the Syrians were angry with us."
"All right. I have nothing to do for the rest of the day. I need a truck and a few men."
"This new friend is strong, you say. Take him with you."
"As you say, Commander."
"And be careful!"
"Insh'Allah." Ghosn was almost a graduate of the American University of Beirut - almost because one of his teachers had been kidnapped, and two others had used that as an excuse to leave the country. That had denied Ghosn the last nine credit hours needed for a degree in engineering. Not that he really needed it. He'd been at the top of his class, and learned well enough from the textbooks without having to listen to the explanations of instructors. He'd spent quite a bit of time in labs of his own making. Ghosn had never been a frontline soldier of the movement. Though he knew how to use small arms, his skills with explosives and electronic devices were too valuable to be risked. He was also youthful in appearance, handsome, and quite fair-skinned, as a result of which he traveled a lot. An advance-man of sorts, he often surveyed sites for future operations, using his engineer's eye and memory to sketch maps, determine equipment needs, and provide technical support for the actual operations people, who treated him with far more respect than an outsider might have expected. Of his courage there was no doubt. He'd proven his bravery more than once, defusing unexploded bombs and shells that the Israelis had left in Lebanon, then reworking the explosives recovered into bombs of his own. Ibrahim Ghosn would have been a welcome addition to any one of a dozen professional organizations anywhere in the world. A gifted, if largely self-taught engineer, he was also a Palestinian whose family had evacuated Israel at the time of the country's founding, confidently expecting to return as soon as the Arab armies of the time erased the invaders quickly and easily. But that happy circumstance had not come about, and his childhood memories were of crowded, insanitary camps where antipathy for Israel had been a creed as important as Islam. It could not have been otherwise. Disregarded by the Israelis as people who had voluntarily left their country, largely ignored by other Arab nations who might have made their lot easier but had not, Ghosn and those like him were mere pawns in a great game whose players had never agreed upon the rules. Hatred of Israel and its friends came as naturally as breathing, and finding ways to end the lives of such people was his task in life. It had never occurred to him to wonder why.
Ghosn got the keys for a Czech-built GAZ-66 truck. It wasn't as reliable as a Mercedes, but a lot easier to obtain - in this case it had been funnelled to his organization through the Syrians years before. On the back was a home-built A-frame. Ghosn