“General Sabah’s supporters are getting braver. See, with all of the killings lately, his followers are getting fired up that the emir isn’t doing enough to stop it. If the emir loses enough support from the right people, then I bet you money the general is ready to have a coup to restore order, for the good of the people, of course.”
Jill looked around nervously. I signaled that she could speak. “They talked about the general at the embassy. That’s one of the reasons we got the order to get out. He hates Americans.”
There was a concrete bench nearby, and these sandals were hurting my feet. I gestured for her to take a seat. A bunch of pigeons immediately surrounded us. They were probably escapees from the rooftop cages that littered the city. Pigeons here were a delicacy, and these once-fat things were reduced to scavenging for crumbs. I shooed one away.
“Men like him hate whoever is convenient to put them into power, and then they’ll hate whoever’s convenient to keep them in power. Sabah’s side is supported by the Iranians. The emir screwed up. The Zubaran army hardly has any natives in it. Once the people started getting rich, they farmed out all the low-paying jobs to imported labor, and they included the army in that.” I gestured around the street. “Notice that all of the waiters, taxi drivers, janitors, they’re all Indians, Filipinos, Malays, or Sri Lankans? Sabah did the same thing with the military, but he filled it with Iranians and Syrians.”
“So why doesn’t the emir just fire the general?”
I pointed at the mob. “Because of useful idiots like them. The emir wouldn’t just fire Al Sabah, he’d execute him if he could get away with it. But then half the city would get burned down, and that’s assuming the emir’s got the manpower to take him anyway. I’m guessing probably a quarter of the security forces would go with the emir, if that. Either way, an overt move by either one to topple the other would blow this place right up. I’ve seen it before.”
“Where?” Jill asked, obnoxiously curious.
“Sixteen years ago I helped overthrow the democratically elected government of an African country,” I explained. “It wasn’t pretty. When a country collapses, the scumbags run free, raping and murdering. It’s like nothing you can imagine. Think slaughter on an industrial scale. You take any city, take away their electricity, food, and water for a week, and it’ll turn into Mad Max, guaranteed. And there’s always some asshole ready to take those things away for his own benefit. I’ve seen it up close in Africa twice, Mexico, Chechnya, Haiti, Burma, Afghanistan, you name it, anyplace that has fallen apart, I’ve been there, and I see it coming soon to Zubara. I can smell it.”
Jill studied the mob. “You’ve seen a lot of suffering.”
I snorted. “I’ve caused a lot of suffering. Naw, that’s just what I do. I seek out chaos. I make my living off the men that cause chaos. Assholes like Sabah are my meal ticket. Regular thieves steal from normal people. I steal from assholes.”
“So, you’re trying to say you’re Robin Hood?” Jill scoffed.
“No, of course not. Assholes just have more money, and it isn’t like they can cry to the cops when they get taken. It’s worked out well for me.”
“So, you justify being bad by only victimizing bad people.”
“It’s like karma, or something . . .” I trailed off as I noticed a black limo roll past us. It parked before the protestors at the front of the building. Apparently the mob was blocking the garage. A group of blue-uniformed security forces came down the government building’s steps and surrounded the limo, rifles shouldered. The mob pulled back instinctively in the face of the guns. A young man in a designer suit stepped from the back of the limo.
“I think that’s the Interior Minister,” Jill said. “He’s like the emir’s nephew or something. He came to an embassy function once.”
I surveyed the crowd. The students were full of noise but weren’t so tough facing half a dozen men with rifles. In fact, they were quieter now. The chanting had stopped. The black-hooded agitator with the bullhorn was suspiciously missing.
“Jill, get up. Let’s go.” I stood. She started collecting the bags. I grabbed her arm. “Leave them.”
The emir’s nephew was met by an older man in a suit. They greeted each other warmly, surrounded by their loyal security forces. The young man adjusted his tie and smiled. My eyes narrowed as I picked out one person moving against the tide of the mob. Jill sensed the urgency in my grasp and sped up. We walked quickly back the direction we’d come. “Don’t run. Don’t look suspicious. Don’t look back. When I push you down, cover your ears and keep your head down.”
I glanced back. We were too far away to understand whatever it was the suicide bomber screamed. Probably just a teenager, he opened his vest, exposing stacks of gray wrapping his torso, and raised his arms wide. There was a long moment in time as the security forces and the nephew froze and the crowd right around the bomber instinctively recoiled. The pigeons leapt skyward in a cloud. I threw my arm around Jill’s shoulders and took us both to the pavement.
The blast rippled across the ground and through my lungs. The concussion was massive. A wave of sound and energy rolled over us. Windows half a block away shattered.
Lying there, eyes clenched shut, hands pressed flat over my ears, I kept my weight on Jill, but no secondary explosions came. I uncovered my ears. First I could only hear a high-pitched whine, and that eventually settled into car alarms. Then I could finally hear the screaming of the wounded. As I rolled over, a wall of smoke and dust hung around the front of the government building.
People were wandering, dazed, bloody. Mangled bodies were splayed everywhere. The limo was twisted back into itself, jagged metal protruding. Severed limbs and bits of tissue littered the street. The shattered steps that had held the Interior Minister were coated in a red slurry of ribs and organs. The mob was gone.
Children were crying. A dog was barking. Where the hell had a dog come from? Already people were pulling out their cell phones. Some idiot’s first inclination was to use his camera phone to take a picture of the carnage.
I got shakily to my feet. The café we’d been standing next to was a mess. Tables overturned, awning broken and hanging at a bizarre angle. One of the waiters was down, a giant chunk of hurled glass embedded in his throat, gurgling and thrashing on the sidewalk. Jill grabbed my thobe and hauled herself to her feet. Her facial scarf was dangling down her chest as she looked about in bewilderment, a stream of blood trickling from her nose.
“Got to keep going,” I ordered. I put my hand on her shoulder and propelled her in the correct direction.
“Okay. Okay.” Snapping back to reality, Jill realized her face was exposed and pulled the scarf back into place. We walked briskly down the street, part of a herd of humanity trying to get away from the terror. I guided her into an alley. Already I could hear the first sirens.
The alley was dark and cool. I got us behind a loading dock. “Hold your arms out,” I ordered. Jill was confused but did exactly as I ordered. I ran my hands down the insides of her arms, then through her voluminous robes, patting her down, looking for blood. I’d seen people bleed out from shrapnel wounds to arteries without even knowing they’d been hit. Torso clear, legs clear. No blood except the superficial amount on her face. “Are you all right?”
“I’m . . . I’m fine. All those people . . .”
“Dead,” I responded as I took my radio earpiece out of my shirt. “Nothing you can do about it. Hang on! Carl, come in, Carl!”
“What was that?” he bellowed in my ear.
“Suicide bomber. We’re moving back toward Ensun and the Gamal Parkway on foot. Once we’re clear of the responders, I’ll call for pickup.”
“Stay low and watch your back,” Carl ordered.
“You, too.” I pulled the earpiece out. “We’ve got to keep moving. This place is going to be swarming with security forces fast, and we don’t want to get picked up for questioning.” Jill nodded quickly. Her head was still in the game. Good. I took a handker
chief out of my vest and roughly wiped the blood from under her nose. “Keep your head down and keep up with me.”
We went out the other side of the alley and started walking. The streets were full of workers now as people flooded out of their respective buildings to see what was going on. A pillar of black smoke rose into the air behind us.
The war had just arrived in Al Khor.
We were back in the apartment within an hour of the bombing.
My crew sat around our kitchen table. There was a white leaflet in the center. These things had been posted all over Ash Shamal within minutes of the explosion. I’d had Carl pull over and pick one up from one of the little kids that were passing them out on every single corner in the neighborhood.
The leaflet told all about how over twenty innocent students, most of them from this very district, were peacefully protesting in front of the interior ministry and had been massacred by the emir’s personal guard. Apparently there had been another attack by the Zionist murderers, this one against the emir’s own family, and he was still too emasculated to root them out; rather, he reacted in a heavy-handed and inept way against the innocent students of Ash Shamal’s madrassa. Zubara needed the strong leadership of General Mubarak Al Sabah to get us through these tough times, not the Jew-loving emir . . . so on and so forth.
“That’s such bullshit,” Jill spat as Reaper finished translating it for her. “That’s not what happened at all.”
“Reality never matters,” I muttered. “Just feelings. Get the masses riled up enough and you can do anything. Propaganda doesn’t have to be true—it just has to feel true to enough stupid people. Make them feel picked on, then fill them full of hope about how you’ll change stuff. Works every time.”
“I so hate this place.” Jill put her head down on the table. “Have you got any more of that ibuprofen? My head’s killing me,” she muttered through her arm. Shockwaves tend to have that effect on people. Reaper got her the bottle.
Carl glanced at me. “The bomb, how big?”
“At least twenty pounds. I was too far away to get a good look, but I’m guessing it was packed in nails or something from the mess it made.”
“Good thing you weren’t close enough to get a good look or we wouldn’t be talking right now. These guys ain’t fucking around,” Carl responded. He’d been at the receiving end of a bombing during a job involving the Tamil Tigers several years back. That one had been wrapped in industrial staples. My friend still had one embedded in his back. It occasionally set off metal detectors. Carl didn’t like bombs, unless he was the one setting them.
I sighed. This was it. If the country was moving into a full-blown revolution, then Dead Six was sure to bail. It was now or never. I glanced over at Jill. It was time to put her out there and see who tried to kill her. She still had her head down. She’d had a really tough day. Shit.
“How’re you doing, Jill?” Reaper asked, a real note of concern in his voice.
“I’m fine,” she lied. She slowly raised her head and moved her long hair out of her eyes, neatly tucking the stray strands behind her ear. She was remarkably composed, all things considered. “I’ve just never seen anything like that before. It was terrible, absolutely terrible.”
“It’s probably going to get worse,” I added, “before we can get you out of here safely.” Lies.
“So what do we do now, chief?” Reaper asked hesitantly.
I didn’t know what to do. My one option sucked. Even the hardened killer, Carl, didn’t like it, and Reaper would probably openly revolt. I have to figure out how to play—then my phone buzzed. It was from another unknown number. I flipped it open.
“Hello, my friend,” Jalal Hosani greeted me. “I do not have much time.”
I covered the speaker and mouthed Hosani to the others. Jill looked round, still confused. She was still in the dark about everything related to this job, and I intended to keep it that way. “What’ve you got?”
“I have some information about those friends you’ve been seeking to reunite with. I’m happy to say that they’re still in town. I will need you to meet me the day after tomorrow. I will call you that morning with the location.”
“Thank you, my friend.” I said. “And how appreciative will I need to be for you doing this favor for me?”
“Do you remember how appreciative you were of the favor I did for you in Dubai? I believe that five times that should suffice.”
I had paid him a hundred thousand American dollars for what he’d done for me that time, and that had been outrageous. So now Jalal was asking for half a million. “You’ve got to be kidding . . .” Reaper and Carl looked with mild curiosity. I took a pen and wrote $500 K on the bottom of the leaflet.
“Holy shit,” Reaper said.
“Be cheaper just to beat it out of him,” Carl suggested.
“Believe it or not, there are other people who would be even more appreciative of this information. But we are such old friends that I thought you should have the first opportunity. And also, I do believe that I will be going on a vacation shortly after, as the climate around here has gotten a little warm for my tastes, so I would like physical appreciation, rather than digital.”
He wanted half a million in cash. “Physical?” I responded slowly, looking to Reaper, who thought about it for a second, then nodded in the affirmative. “Okay. But two days is short notice—are you cool if it is European appreciation?” Reaper hurried from the room.
“English, Euro, or other?”
“You picky bastard. Well, mostly British, God save the Queen, and some Continental, because I do love all those pretty colors, you know how it goes. And for this much love, it had better be damn worth it.”
“Such a sense of humor! You are a good friend. I will be in touch.” He sounded happy, and he should be.
I put the phone away. “Greedy, conniving son of a bitch.”
“What just happened?” Jill asked.
“For information on Dead Six, Lorenzo just agreed to fork over half a million bucks,” Carl explained. “Lorenzo has always sucked at negotiation.”
Jill seemed absolutely stunned. “Where in the world are you going to come up with that kind of money? That’s insane!”
Reaper came back into the room with a backpack and a big silly grin on his face. He dropped it in the middle of the table with a theatrical grunt. Carl, temporarily inconvenienced, was forced to move his beer out of the way. “I’ll have to pull some out and recount it,” Reaper said as he unzipped it. This particular bag was mostly U.K. pounds, neatly stacked 100 pound notes, fifty per stack, rubber-banded together. There were at least fifty stacks in this particular bag that we had smuggled into the country. Reaper pulled one out and flipped through it. “I’ll have to check today’s exchange rate first.”
Zubara had been a British protectorate, and they still had a lot of influence here. So we’d smuggled in mostly pounds. We also had a mess of euros, dollars, and a giant pile of local riyals.
Jill made a whistling noise as she opened the bag wider. “The movies always make it look so much bigger. . . . How’d you get all this?”
I’d been stealing professionally for years from everybody from Al Qaeda to FARC, from the Yakuza to the Russian Mob, and I was about the best in the world. My exploits were the stuff of legend. I was worth a lot more than Jill could easily comprehend. I wasn’t even really sure how much I had stashed in various encrypted accounts around the world dating back to my days working for Big Eddie. Personally, I was easily worth millions. I could have given up this lifestyle years ago, but then again it had never been about the cash. It had been about the challenge.
“I told you assholes always have more money,” I answered with a smirk.
Chapter 12:
Broken Arrow
VALENTINE
Location unknown
April 21
0700
Nine of us sat in the back of a V-22 Osprey, wondering where in the hell we were going. Well, eight of us we
re wondering. The ninth, Anders, seemed like he knew what was going on, but he wouldn’t tell us anything. We’d been suddenly roused from bed and rushed to the desert, where we’d been picked up by the Osprey.
Anders wasn’t really part of Dead Six. He answered only to Gordon and seemingly came and went as he pleased. I’d heard that he’d helped on a few missions, and he had a ruthless reputation. He never spoke to anyone else, and his background was a complete mystery. Holbrook was former Navy and said that he’d spotted a SEAL trident tattoo on Anders’ forearm. Other than that, we knew nothing about the guy.
Tailor and Hudson were with me, as was Singer’s entire chalk. Also with us was a new guy, a heavy-set dude with a buzzcut. His name was Byrne, and he was Wheeler’s replacement. Like me, he was former Air Force. We’d heard that new guys were showing up here and there to augment our losses. Obviously, those rumors were true.
Singer had been around since day one, and he was a solid team leader. Tall, lanky, and possessed of a sick sense of humor, Singer had probably the best track record of any of the chalk leaders, a fact which drove Tailor insane. With him were Holbrook, Cromwell, and Mitchell, all good guys.
We were roused out of bed in the middle of the night and were driven out into the desert again. Instead of the stealth helicopter they’d flown us around in before, I was surprised to be picked up by the awkward-looking tiltrotor aircraft.
We’d been in the air for over an hour. No one talked; it was too loud in the back of the aircraft. We were all wearing earplugs, and most of my teammates had fallen asleep. The tiltrotor’s cramped cabin was illuminated by red overhead lights. Anders sat toward the rear, away from the rest of us, and was carefully studying something on a PDA.
We were all fully kitted up in battle rattle, too. My Mk 17 rifle was slung across my chest, with the muzzle hanging between my knees. My vest was covered with magazines, grenades, and other ridiculously heavy crap. We’d even been given fancy new A-TACS camouflage fatigues to wear.
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