Read [Rogue Warrior 18] Curse of the Infidel for Free Online

“Ethiopia—government office—bombing used a combination of explosives and fire bombs—took out computers—interior ministry—files—terror orgs.”
    “English is your first language, isn’t it?” I asked.
    That stopped him short.
    “Uh, yeah. That and Perl. Well, maybe HLASM assembler. 3 Why do you ask?”
    “Maybe you could try using it? English, I mean.”
    By breaking into the police system, Shunt had managed to get pictures and details of the remains of one of the devices. He had then run a simple search in the databases we maintain cataloguing terror incidents around the world.
    He came up with an 85 percent match with attacks in Somalia and Kenya two years before by a group whose Arabic name translated into English as Allah’s Rule on Earth.
    Shunt went on to say that the group responsible had at least a tangential relationship to al Qaeda—it had received some money from a charity that had been used as a front by bin Laden in the late 1990s, and two men associated with the group were at a guerilla camp in Pakistan sponsored by al Qaeda around 2008.
    An al Qaeda camp in Pakistan?
    Goodness. Who would have thought?
    “Maybe it wasn’t embezzlement at all,” said Shunt. “Maybe it is a legit group, trying to cover their tracks.”
    It wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong—not even that day.
    The contemplation of my fallibility, as well as the conversation, were cut short by another incoming call. I glanced at the ID, thinking it might be Veep. I immediately recognized the name, though: Flushing Taylor.
    I would venture to say that not too many people in the world have the first name of Flushing. It just so happens that I know one of them: Chief Petty Officer (Ret.) Flushing J. Taylor, former SEAL Team Six and Red Cell member, personal security maven, and sometime drinking companion to yours truly.
    “I have a little problem, Commander,” he said. “I don’t know where else to turn.”
    *   *   *
    Flushing’s son is Garrett, and you’ve already met him—we’ve almost come back full circle to where we started.
    Garrett had just been arrested in Saudi Arabia for drug trafficking. Flushing said Garrett had gone to Saudi Arabia on a vacation, and while in the capital of Riyadh come across a man selling hookahs, those fancy water pipes used to smoke flavored tobacco. They’re common enough in Riyadh, where you can find dozens of small cafés dedicated to their use.
    You can also find dozens of policemen anxious to make arrests, which are magically “forgotten” once the proper fine is paid—to the policeman, of course. When it turned out that the dealer had included a substance other than tobacco as a deal-sweetener, they pounced.
    “It musta been a setup,” said Flushing. “The cops asked him for a bribe—not in so many words—but he had only a hundred bucks. It didn’t cut it. Now to get him out, it’s going to cost a small fortune. I’m desperate. I can’t let him stay in jail.”
    “Absolutely not.”
    “Someone at the State Department told me to hire a fixer,” he said. “But that’s a rip-off, too. What should I do?”
    “Don’t do anything until I talk to some people.”
    “Thanks, Dick. I knew I could count on you.”
    Garrett’s arrest and our bank job should have stayed two different story lines, and probably would have, had I not called a not-to-be-named source in the Saudi royal family, who owed me a personal favor for reasons that cannot (yet) be given. He took my call, listened to the situation, then promised an aide would get back to me.
    By now it was pretty late—or very early—in Berlin. It was an hour later in Saudi Arabia. You can judge how much of a favor he owed me not by the fact that he took my call, but that the aide called back within a half hour.
    “Your friend is in a very bad situation,” said the aide, whose accent was somewhere between Oxford and Cambridge. “He is involved with a drug-smuggling ring that we believe funds a terror