East of the Jordan (A Logan Connor Thriller Book 2) Read online

  Walker snorted when he heard that. Sydney didn’t know he was no true believer.

  Sydney went on, “Seriously. There was a girl who died in a house in Amman. Abu Kishaa went into the house and said she was only sleeping. He told her to wake up, and the girl woke up.”

  Walker rolled his eyes. “Or she was just sleeping.”

  Eric said, “What is the difference between death and sleep to Chemosh? He created death and sleep. He changes them as easily as you or I think a new thought.”

  The kid is good, Logan thought. Even his cadence and his tone sound like those of a true believer. He’s got what it takes. Maybe I was wrong.

  * * *

  They reached the desert outside of the Dead Sea after a few hours. The land was an endless rippling sea of tans and reddish-browns. It looked as if God crumpled a sheet of paper and only slightly smoothed it back out. The mountains resembled massive wasps’ nests, layers and layers of sediment built in uneven stacks. There were holes poked in the side of several of them, leading to dark caves away from the light.

  From one of these caves a farmer found 2000-year-old manuscripts that came to be known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

  They pulled the truck up to a nest of tents around one cave in particular. People seemed to be milling about, but it wasn’t the frenzy of activity. This looked like the fields of tents at a music festival; some people played guitars or sang songs, others cooked over open fires, and some even used barbecue grills. A few kids rode ATVs in the desert, sending dusty comet’s tails spraying behind them.

  “We’re here,” Sydney said and put the car in park.

  Everyone hopped out. One of the Brothers walked up to meet them. He wore the keffiyeh wrapped around his head and face, so only his eyes were visible. This could have been any of the dozen men known as the Brothers.

  He held out a hand to Logan. “A-salaam Alaykum.”

  Logan shook his hand, “Wa-Alaykum salaam, but I’m better in English.”

  The Brother responded in French, “My English is atrocious. How is your French?”

  Logan responded in French, “My French is pretty good unless you ask a Frenchman.”

  They both chuckled. An Arab who speaks fluent French? I’d bet on Lebanese.

  The Brother motioned them towards the cave. In French, he said, “Abu Kishaa wants you to meet Hiba.”

  The Brother led them past the tents and into the cave. As soon as they entered the cave, the entire atmosphere changed. The cave was hot, but it wasn’t a dry heat. It was wet and swampy. The air felt thick like breath. That meant there must be water somewhere nearby. As Logan’s eyes adjusted, he listened. In the distance, echoing through limestone walls, he heard a stream trickling.

  A woman came to meet them. Her dark brown hair hung in sweaty curls all over her head. She was short and just a tiny bit overweight. She probably looked pretty attractive without the dirt all over her face. She looked lovely, even with the dirt. She wore cargo pants and a dirty button-down shirt. Her shirt pockets were stuffed with gardening tools, shears, handfuls of soil, and such. She extended a dirty gardening glove.

  “You look American,” she said in English.

  Another spy?

  His face must have betrayed his confusion. So, she said, “I’m American too. Where are you from?”

  Logan replied, “Indiana.”

  She shuddered when he said that. “I’m a Florida girl. I can’t do winter.”

  Logan chuckled. “You can always put on more layers.”

  Hiba shrugged. “I’m a botanist. Plants don’t wear coats.”

  That’s when the Brother stepped in. “Sister Hiba has come to us from the University of Florida. Abu Kishaa reached out to her when he read her dissertation.”

  She added the title, “Ancient Roman Remedies and Ailments: Rediscovering Silphium in the Modern World.”

  The title barely meant anything to Logan, but he nodded along. Hiba could see his confusion. She waved him deeper into the cave. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Logan, Sydney, the Brother, and Eric followed Hiba deeper and deeper into the cave until no light from the outside filtered in. They felt like they were going straight, but they must have been turning slightly because when he looked back, Logan couldn’t see the opening of the cave. They pressed on further and further, the air getting thicker and hotter. Eventually, the walls of the caves sweated an algae slurry. How old was this water? It must have been circulating untouched by humans for thousands of years.

  A beam of light shot through the cave ahead of them. Dust and damp air floated in it, making it a diffuse gray color.

  Hiba pointed at the light and spoke excitedly, like a little kid recounting the narrative of a cartoon. “The limestone is porous. So, in certain places, the light can come through, but it’s not direct. It bounces around in all these different little holes in the stone. That’s why it’s so dull and gray, but it’s the only light that can grow the silphium.”

  They finally got to the tiny little brook that Logan heard. Water trickled through the rocks of the cave floor. The stones around it had grown smooth and slippery over thousands of years. The slow-moving stream also left a sloppy layer of thin mud. A plant grew in that thin sludge right on the stream’s edge and directly in the murky stream of light. The plant’s spearhead shaped leaves, a thin spindly stalk produced a delicate yellow flower emerging from a bulging pod.

  Hiba knelt next to it and stroked a leaf. “This is it. This is silphium.”

  “Qedex,” the Brother corrected.

  Hiba shrugged. “Right. Right. I’ve tried everything I can to transplant some of them to different soils but, I can’t find anything commercially available to properly mimic this Dead Sea runoff. The Dead Sea is ten times saltier than the ocean. Thirty-five times saltier than pickle juice. But, you see, it’s not just salt.” She was starting to get excited. “There’s potash, calcium, magnesium, and the fascinating thing is very little sulfate. I think that and the bromides are what make the sil…the qedex grow.”

  Eric scratched his head. “Couldn’t you just put one in, like, Miracle-Gro and then water it with Dead Sea water?”

  Hiba snapped her fingers. “I tried that. There’s something in the cave walls mixing with the water. Something I can’t identify. For now, this is the only source of silphium.”

  “What’s it do?” Logan asked.

  Why would Abu Kishaa fly a botanist all the way here from Florida?

  The Brother pulled a hardened clump of greenish rock out of his pocket. “You will have to see for yourself.”

  * * *

  Every spy bone in Logan’s body was screaming. You simply do not take drugs with your targets, especially experimental drugs from some cult leader’s cave. There was another rule, though, a simpler rule from the vice cops he knew: you never turned down a hit. You turn down a hit, and they instantly mark you as a narc.

  They sat in a tent with a Brother. It could have been the same Brother or a different one. There was a jumble of people at the mouth of the cave, and they could easily have switched out one Brother for a different one. They all looked about the same height and weight.

  A low fire crackled and spat in the middle of the tent. Red-orange flames cast wobbling shadows on the tent walls, and the air was hot and smoky. Logan wiped the sweat off his brow.

  The Brother held a marble-sized chunk of greenish rock in his hands and flicked it into the fire. They were told it was a hunk of dried silphium—qedex—sap. The sap crackled and bubbled, melting and blackening on a burning log. The fire danced a brilliant virescent color.

  Logan watched the green fire as the flames jumped high above the rest, twirled and bounced for a moment, and then sank back into their chaos. The light threw green-rimmed shadows on the tent wall. The shades of the others sitting around crawled up the walls, bending over his head. Eric’s shadow swelled in size, growing up towards the center of the tent above his head. The shadow pulled away from Eric and marched along the walls b
y itself, moving in herky-jerky motions like a flame itself. The shadow stretched a claw-like hand out towards Sydney’s shadow.

  Eric’s shadow grabbed Sydney’s silhouette around its ethereal throat. Logan gasped. Sydney’s shadow writhed and struggled, swatting at Eric’s ghostly hands. Sydney’s shadow crumpled and fell towards the floor. It slithered across the floor as if being sucked back into the green flames. The flames swallowed the shade and left only jerking light on the wall. Logan tried to shout, stand up and point, move from or do anything, but he was glued. His body was glued, but he felt his mind sucked into his shadow. Soon, Logan was a two-dimensional shadow on the wall, buffeted and bullied by the ever-moving light. He slid along, jerking and convulsing. Eric’s shadow grabbed the shadow of the Brother. With a swift motion, he snapped the shadow’s neck. Logan taught him that move.

  From somewhere far away, Hiba asked, “What do you see?” Her voice sounded muffled and deep as if she were speaking into a karaoke microphone from the end of a long hallway.

  Her echoey voice said again, “Logan, what do you see?”

  He tried to say, “The shadows have come alive,” but didn’t know if he was actually speaking.

  Hiba said, in her muffled voice, “Use the fire. You are everything now.”

  Use the fire?

  Logan reached out to the fire and sucked it into his shadow hands. It boiled and writhed like a sphere of snakes. He took a breath, or what he thought was a breath, and threw the fire like a baseball. The fire hit Eric’s shadow and exploded, washing the tent wall in green flame. Eric’s shade screamed and flailed. The fire consumed it, and it vanished.

  Now, Logan was the only shadow on the wall. He found his body and leaped for it. His shadow peeled off the wall like old wallpaper and splashed against his body, and, for a quick second, Logan saw through his own eyes again. Then, everything went black.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Logan awoke in a tent. Desert sunlight streamed through the open tent door, bringing with it the hot, briny air of the Dead Sea. Logan blinked against the daggers of sunlight, stabbing him in the eyes. His head throbbed, filled with thick cotton. His tongue felt dry and swollen, almost too big for his mouth. His muscles ached. His fists were clenched, and his toes curled. He spent those first few minutes just trying to relax different muscles. They felt sealed in stone as he struggled to loosen his body.

  He rolled onto his back and let out a long sigh. A shadow appeared in the doorway. He tensed again. Was this another living shadow? The shadow moved closer, and his eyes adjusted. It was a tangible form. Hiba.

  She smiled and waved. “You probably feel like you’ve been rode hard and put away wet.”

  Logan rubbed his forehead. “That’s one way to put it.”

  She nodded. “Silphium has a nasty hangover. This will help.”

  She handed him a warm coffee cup. He brought it to his lips. It smelled like the ocean, like seaweed and hot salty water. He drank a swallow and nearly gagged. It was saltwater. The salt caked on the tip of his tongue, burning hot and dry. He flexed his mouth open and closed, jabbing his tongue out, scraping it against his teeth.

  Hiba laughed. “I call it Dead Sea Tea. Dead Sea water, kelp, and mint.”

  “It’s awful,” Logan said.

  “Just keep drinking it.”

  Logan kept sipping it, and she was right. His head started to clear a little, and his muscles seemed to unclench.

  Hiba shrugged. “It’s the craziest thing. The silphium seems like it’s made for this place. You’ll feel fine in a few minutes. Just choke down the whole cup.”

  Hiba left. Logan kept sipping the saltwater. It was, hands down, the saltiest thing he’d ever tasted. Saltier than pasta water, saltier even than a cup full of hot chicken broth. It was a wonder this much salt could even dissolve in water. The mint didn’t help it any. It just felt like a perfume of chewing gum over salty ocean water. After a few minutes, though, he did begin to feel better.

  After he finished the entire thing and got to his feet, he felt almost as good as new. He was starving, though.

  He walked out into the desert sun. He realized he was barefoot as the soft sand singed the bottom of his feet. He did a hot potato dance for a minute before adjusting. He was in loose linen pants and a loose shirt like all of Abu Kishaa’s followers.

  Someone stripped him naked while he was passed out from the qedex (silphium). They’d searched him, no doubt. Yet another reason why a spy never did drugs with his targets.

  Abu Kishaa seemed to float across the sand, heading straight for him. Abu Kishaa carried a staff of gnarled wood as tall as he was.

  He stopped in front of Logan and stabbed the staff into the dirt.

  “Do you renounce the Deceiver?” He asked in perfect English.

  Logan replied, “Where’d you learn English?”

  Abu Kishaa replied without a single hint of emotion, “I am not speaking English. You are hearing English.”

  “What?”

  Abu Kishaa explained, “The Lord Chemosh makes me understood to all who need to understand me. What other language do you speak? French?” He switched to perfect French with a Paris accent. “Now, you will hear me in French.” He began changing languages rapidly, each time his pronunciation shifted to the accent of a native speaker. “Arabic. Hebrew. Aramaic. Turkish. German. The Lord Chemosh can do all things that glorify Him.”

  That’s a neat trick, Logan thought.

  Abu Kishaa sighed. “You think it a trick.”

  Holy sh…

  Abu Kishaa replied, “I thought the qedex might open your mind to Chemosh’s teachings. I see now the Deceiver has hardened your heart. The Lord will make me work much harder.” He thought for a second and said, “Kill the agents of the Deceiver. Bring me proof of their deaths. Then, I will trust you.”

  “What?” Logan remarked, shocked.

  Abu Kishaa leaned close enough that Logan could smell salty brine and mint on his breath. “The one called Sydney worked for Titus Crow. She has not told me this. Chemosh has told me this. Kill the agents of the Deceiver, or I will consider her an agent of my opposer. I will kill her and the boy if you refuse me. Prove to me your loyalty.”

  He shoved a piece of paper in the pocket of Logan’s linen pants and walked away. He dropped his gnarled wooden staff to the ground. When it hit the ground, it sprang to life as a king cobra. The snake slithered across the desert sand, leaving S-curls everywhere it went.

  Logan leaped backward.

  I’m still high, he thought. I must be.

  He shook his head to clear it. The snake disappeared between tents, if it ever existed at all.

  He read the note Abu Kishaa stuffed in his pocket. It was a list of six names. The first name was “Haile Gibran: Interpol—Addis Ababa.”

  Logan was going to Ethiopia. A plane ticket fell out of the folded sheet of paper for a flight scheduled to land in Addis Ababa. It was a one-way ticket.

  He folded the ticket into the paper and placed them both back into his pocket. “What language do they speak in Ethiopia?” He muttered to himself.

  Behind him, Eric said, “Amharic.”

  Logan jumped. He didn’t even hear the kid walking up. Damn, he really was rusty.

  Logan responded, “Like, what Jesus spoke?”

  Eric chuckled and shook his head. “Jesus spoke Aramaic. Amharic is like that but not the same thing. He probably spoke Koine Greek and Hebrew too.”

  Logan rolled his eyes. “Dang. I wish you were coming with me.”

  Eric smiled and flashed a plane ticket.

  Logan smiled. “Excellent. Where’s Sydney?”

  “The glorified Abu Kishaa has special tasks for Sydney to handle here.”

  The glorified? Well, the glorified probably just wanted a hostage.

  Logan shrugged. “We’ve got a plane to catch. Which truck is ours?”

  Eric pointed at a set of Honda dirt bikes sitting on kickstands off to the side. They were missing plates, the seats were
tattered, and the handlebars looked bent from repeated crashes. It was a wonder they would even run.

  “Of course,” Logan said. “1993 called. They want their dirt bikes back.”

  * * *

  Though the dirt bikes were decrepit and rusty, the engines were strong. The 250cc 2-stroke engines whined and snarled through the desert. The tires churned up sand as they bumped and bounced along the desert at 50 miles per hour. The things nearly rattled Logan’s teeth out of his head.

  At the Ma’an airport, a Brother met them with a battered Toyota Tacoma. He loaded the dirt bikes into the bed of the truck, and Logan helped him strap them down. His time in Alabama was coming in handy.

  After he hopped out of the bed of the truck, Logan said, “Couldn’t you have just driven us in the this?”

  The Brother gave no visible reaction behind his wrapped keffiyeh. He closed the door on the truck and spun tires.

  Logan and Eric held one passport each. It was too risky traveling with multiple. Logan’s identified him as an Australian named “Niles Landon.” Eric’s was for an Israeli. “Binyamin Rabin.”

  “How’s your Israeli accent?” Logan asked.

  Eric replied, “It’s alright. Let’s just hope we don’t meet any real Israelis. You ever heard a fake Midwestern accent? It’s like that.”

  “Oof. Okay. Let’s avoid any Aussies, too.”

  They didn’t meet any Australians or Israelis in the Jordanian airport. Soon, they were on a plane and headed for Cairo, Egypt. They landed in Cairo, raced to their connecting flight, and quickly took off for Mogadishu, Somalia.

  They got off the plane in Mogadishu, deplaning right onto the tarmac. At first, Logan thought he was feeling the jet blast from the running engines. The air hit him in a straight line. It wasn’t from the engines, though. He’d stepped out of the Jordanian frying pan and into a Somali one. What was it about the desert? He couldn’t be hunting an Interpol agent in Tennessee or London or somewhere tolerable?

  He wiped the sweat off his forehead and headed towards the terminal.