Page 76 of Edge of Danger

“What kind of plane?” Alex asked.

Piper supplied, “A Cessna 210.” She rattled off the tail number, adding, “But that number may be a fake.”

Alex sounded distracted as rapid typing fired off behind his voice. “Lemme look into it. I’ll call you back.”

“Roger,” Ian bit out. The call ended.

She stared up at him. “Did you see anything in Khartoum to indicate that El Noor wasn’t real?”

Ian frowned. “There was something…” His voice trailed off. “I’d have to review my scope footage…”

Whoa. His gun sight also recorded video? Her scope hadn’t been anywhere near that high-tech. He picked up the telephone receiver mounted on the wall and asked for a laptop computer to be brought into their room right away.

It took a few minutes to get him connected to the Internet, but in short order after that, Piper sat beside him, shoulder to shoulder, watching him fast forward through video telemetry from Khartoum.

“Here it is,” Ian announced.

She recognized the dusty street. From the angle of the sun that would have been a morning shot. Ian slowed the footage down to normal speed. A group of men in El Noor berets piled out of a Jeep in front of a store and disappeared inside?—

“Hey! I recognize that!” she exclaimed. “That’s from the day we met. They dragged out that shopkeeper and beat him to death. You must have taken this footage right before I spotted you.”

“And I spotted you back,” Ian retorted. “Here’s the piece I was looking for.”

She looked at the screen and flinched as one of El Noor’s thugs slammed a rifle butt into the shopkeeper’s skull. “God, that’s violent.”

“And efficient. Watch the precision with which these guys kill their target and then pummel his corpse into hamburger.”

It was nauseating to witness again, but in spite of feeling sick she leaned forward to watch the attack more closely. Now that he mentioned it, Ian was right. Those guys were military in their precision. Each punch and kick was targeted with incredible efficiency. Minimum effort for maximum damage.

“Is that Krav Maga they’re using?” she asked.

“A little hard to tell, since Krav Maga is based on an actively resisting opponent. But that would be my guess,” he replied.

“Where did a gang of illiterate Sudanese kids from the slums learn sophisticated Israeli self-defense tactics?” she murmured. A flash of white at one of the attackers’ throats caught her attention. “Wait. Go back. What was that?”

“Where?” Ian asked.

“Pause it…right…now.” She pointed at the screen. “See there? This attacker’s throat is weird. It’s white.” And it didn’t look like a scarf or piece of clothing at the guy’s collar.

Ian highlighted the section of the shot and enlarged it. “Lemme see if I can enhance the pixilation on this.”

It took a minute for the computer to clarify the rough edges of the screen shot, but when it finished, Ian lurched back hard in his seat while she just stared.

The white patch was skin. Which was to say, the dark skin of the man’s face was make-up. The picture showed clearly where the make-up smudged and smeared at the guy’s collar, revealing definitely Caucasian skin at the base of his neck.

“Look at his facial features,” she breathed. “His bone structure. He looks European, not North African.”

“What the hell is El Noor doing, using white guys who know Krav Maga to impersonate a Sudanese street gang?” Ian demanded.

“I guess we have our proof that El Noor is a whole lot more than a Sudanese slum lord.”

Ian nodded. “If he can credibly fake an entire street gang, he’s fully capable of orchestrating a major terrorist attack.”

“Who is he?”

“That’s a question for later. Right now, we have to figure out where he’s launching his attack.”

She stared at him. “Do you think El Noor is pointing Yusef Abahdi and—“ her voice hitched a little, “—my father at the same target or at two different targets?”

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