The Socotra Incident Read Online Free Page B

Muslims who lived on the border of Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Ritter smiled and laughed along, not caring for the crass humor, but one had to maintain appearances. He wore a white thawb , a calf-length tunic his Soldiers in Iraq had dubbed a “man dress,” and a dark-blue vest. With his deep tan, three-day beard, and gold-rimmed sunglasses, he almost fit in. His Arabic had a Saudi accent, which matched his cover story of working for a Saudi import/export, a subsidiary of Eisen Meer Logistics.
    Red and blue lights flashed in the corner of Ritter’s eye. He and the rest of those in the café looked around and watched as three blue-and-white police trucks tore past the café. The truck beds were packed with uniformed police, who leaped from the trucks before they could stop. The police, AK-47s in hand, swarmed around the Internet café but didn’t go inside.
    “Cops, cops, cops,” Ritter murmured for John as the patrons in the café rushed to the windows for a better look at the show.
    Shouts in Arabic hit Ritter through the earpiece loud enough to make him wince. The transmission cut off a second later, and Ritter watched as the police frog-marched a cuffed and hooded John into a police truck.
    There wasn’t any use in playing hero to rescue John. He had diplomatic immunity, and whatever “misunderstanding” had led to his arrest would be cleared up in the next few hours. None of the police seemed interested in him, which meant only John had been compromised.
    He hadn’t wanted to involve the local CIA support element. Shannon had sent him on this errand alone, and the station chief had insisted his officer could operate without a tail. So much for that idea.
    Ritter had more pressing concerns.
    The door to the Internet café opened, and Ritter saw the mark push his way past the crowd growing around the cordon. The man, in his early twenties, wore a janbiya , a wide-bladed, curved knife sheathed in a cloth belt at his waist; and a black-and-white keffiyeh cloth headdress. The mark walked stiffly and kept looking over his shoulder at the Internet café. Men and a few women cloaked in niqab, only their eyes visible beneath the flowing black cloth, walked along a street crowded with white vans and beat-up trucks.
    The typical disorder of the Arab world was something Ritter had never grown accustomed to. Cars and trucks were parked at strange angles to the curbside. Speed limits were a joke, and drivers used their horns as often as the brake pedal.
    He couldn’t wait for this surveillance mission to end and return to Vienna. The Germanic people followed the rules like it was their religion.
    Ritter peeled a few bills from a roll of Yemeni rials and left them on the table. He waited for the mark to look away, then stepped over the waist-high fence next to his table. Ritter increased his stride and gained on the mark.
    With no backup and in a city full of al-Qaeda sympathizers, his options with the mark were limited. Ritter closed the distance to ten feet and saw an opportunity—an alleyway just ahead of the mark. The goon play might work. Shove him into the alley and demand restitution for an unpaid debt, rough him up and lift whatever he was carrying.
    The mark stopped at a stall of folks selling batches of khat wrapped in banana leaves. The seller, a stick of khat sticking from the corner of his mouth, asked the mark a few questions. Ritter heard the seller repeat himself in different Arabic dialects for the benefit of his potential customer, but the mark stood stock still, his shoulders bunched high with stress.
    Ritter looked past the mark; the route into the alleyway was clear.
    He was a few steps from the mark when he saw what the mark was looking at. In the reflection from a storefront window, the mark was looking right at Ritter, and he had his hand on the hilt of his janbiya .
    When wielding a big, heavy blade like a janbiya , amateurs tend to put too much swing into their strikes. Ritter took a quick step back and