Gallagher took in as many details of the area as possible, all with a goofy “dude, check this out” look plastered on his face. Didn’t want to look like he was casing the joint.
They’d arrived under the guise of being humanitarian filmmakers making a documentary on the atrocities being perpetrated on the country by guerilla regimes.
Kissing the provisional government’s ass, along with a hefty dollop of monetary lubrication, had not only gotten them in the country within twenty-four hours, but had gotten their “camera equipment” bags in, as well.
Now the true vigilance had to kick in. Nobody—whether they claimed to be with the provisional government or not—could be trusted. And Gallagher, Rossi and O’Brien all in one spot looked like exactly what they were—a group of guys ready to kick the shit out of any takers.
Since Rossi would, if all went well, spend the entire mission in and around the Hotel Jardin, he got to wear the padding. Just a little strategic lining here and there to disguise the muscle definition and make him look like a guy who’d made a few too many trips to the buffet line in a country where the food was actually edible.
O’Brien was nominated as the geek. Non-prescription black-rimmed glasses, a T-shirt with some nonsense equation emblazoned on the front. Ridiculous shorts. He wore a soft elastic brace designed to encourage him to slouch a little, and an oddly-shaped insert in one shoe to keep him from swaggering.
Carmen had her hair in two braids down the side of her face, a pink ball cap on backwards and, with pink tennis shoes on her feet and a T-shirt preaching environmental responsibility, she looked about fifteen.
Gallagher went with his traditional loud-as-hell Hawaiian shirt and didn’t wash his hair. Distracting details were key. Anything to keep people from looking too closely at their faces—into their eyes. You couldn’t disguise the look in a person’s eye.
When the door of their two room, so-called suite was closed and locked, every one of them grabbed a bottled water and collapsed with relief. It was draining, being aware not only of what everybody around you was doing, but being conscious of your own body language and the vibe you were putting out there.
“You’re absolutely sure Donovan’s cover checks out?” Rossi asked him for the thousandth time.
“It’s clean. As long as Le Roux doesn’t have rat-sniffing superpowers, getting in should be a piece of cake.”
It was the getting out—with a traumatized female package—that had Gallagher rummaging through his pack for the ibuprofen.
The set-up was simple on the surface—Arceneau was released due to a lack of strong evidence, but his finances were under the microscope. He couldn’t get the 6.5 million to Le Roux, but he could substitute an equivalent amount of American and Russian arms. He knew a highly-recommended guy willing to provide the arms with Arceneau’s holdings as collateral for future payment when he was cleared.
Le Roux, knowing he wasn’t going to get his money, but smart enough to walk away with more than a dead girl, had agreed almost immediately that Hans Koenig could enter the compound. The Group was in the air an hour later.
Now they were in the hotel, unpacking gear, setting up the computers and the communication system. Or rather, Gallagher was working on setting things up while O’Brien rummaged through the oversized bag Gallagher had brought.
“Jesus, G, is there a kitchen sink at the bottom of this?”
“Flunked out of the Boy Scouts, but the Be Prepared stuck with me.”
O’Brien held up the harness of a rapid extraction method developed in the Fifties. “Kickin’ it old school?”
“Oldie but goodie, dude. It’s my good luck charm for jungle jobs.”
“You ever had to use it?”
“No, that’s why it’s good luck.”
“I hope it works, man, because if ever we needed luck…”
Chapter Eight
There was nothing like walking totally alone into the compound of one of the most brutal regimes in history to get the old adrenaline pumping.
As the front gate opened, Jack Donovan calculated less than two minutes remained until he knew which way it was going to go. One, he’d be admitted and they’d start negotiations. Two, Le Roux was smarter than he was greedy and Jack would be tortured, skinned and tossed in the body pile.
He lost count of the guns pointed at him, but took special note of the one poking him in the chest. “You have weapons?” the guy attached to the trigger finger asked.
That was kind of like asking a Rolex dealer if he had the time, so he gave the thug a scornful look. “Of course.”
A flurry of hands relieved him of both guns, the knife and his phone in a matter of seconds. They rifled through his briefcase, then declared him clean. Thankfully they’d never seen James Bond or Mission Impossible because they left him his watch. Maybe they didn’t have cable.
His focus snapped back with a vengeance when the crowd parted for the man whose real name nobody even remembered—Le Roux.
He wasn’t a big guy. A little on the short side, and wiry. Sporting the full camo favored by the international killer warlord set. Skin, eyes and hair like the darkest mahogany.
They, whoever they were, had begun calling him Le Roux—the redhead—when he was still in his teens. A foot soldier in the first of several regimes to terrorize Matunisia, he’d taken part in the well-organized massacre of four key villages. That was the first time he’d painted his hair red with the blood of innocent victims. It wasn’t the last.
While his hair was clot-free at the moment, Jack had heard the man grew more vicious and batshit crazy with every body he’d stepped on to get where he was. He could see it now in the man’s eyes.
Le Roux’s nostrils flared and Jack got the impression he was sniffing. What, exactly, did a Matunisian pseudo-general expect a German arms dealer to smell like?
“You come alone? Very strange for a rich man.”
“I’m the only person I trust.”
His answer and eau d’international flight must have passed muster because Le Roux gestured and Jack was handed his briefcase before being herded into the largest building in the compound. It was a big common room, dominated by a massive table and a map of Matunisia.
Unfortunately, as the thugs spread out, straddling chairs or holding up walls, they didn’t put their guns down. They simply holstered them, swung them back on their straps, or set them on their laps. This wasn’t a bunch likely to let down their guard.
“You come, show me this list,” Le Roux ordered, gesturing toward a chair at the big table.
Jack withdrew the catalog of doom from his briefcase but he didn’t toss it onto the table, nor did he sit. It was time to play ball. “I want to see the girl first.”
Le Roux hesitated and Jack forced himself to keep his face a blank slate. Was she already dead?
“Why?”
“If she’s dead, Arceneau’s not going to pay me, and I don’t want to have to kill him. It’s bad for my reputation when my associates turn up missing.”
Everything hinged on how badly Le Roux wanted the guns. Because he had no hostage with which to control the arms dealer, he’d have to let him walk out unharmed in order to get them. But Jack had to be careful how hard he pushed because the terrorist’s volatile temper wasn’t exactly a secret.
Finally the man made a gesture to one of his men and three minutes later Isabelle Arceneau was shoved into the room so hard she landed sprawled at Donovan’s feet.
Forcing dispassion into every part of his face and body, he stared down at the young woman. She was bruised, bloody, her clothes in tatters. And her hair…
Her long blonde hair was gone. All that remained was a too-short frizzy cloud around her head, and the ends appeared to have been singed.
“What happened to her hair?”
Le Roux shrugged. “Kitchen accident. The fire or something. Get up.”
Isabelle pushed herself to her knees, and then painfully made it to her feet, but she kept her eyes on Jac
k’s feet.
He made a sound of disgust. “She was more attractive in the photograph Arceneau showed me. I intended to use her to make this worth my while. Interest, if you will, while I wait for my payment.”
The list of weapons available must have caught Le Roux’s attention, because he didn’t waste any time shoving her at Jack. “The parts of her you want are still attractive enough, my friend. And the tits on this one make up for the ugly hair, yes?”
He reached out and ripped Isabelle’s top away, but she barely flinched. And, though it turned Jack’s stomach, he had no choice but to look. Young and firm breasts, a little on the smaller side, but it was the bruises that drew his eye. Bruises up and down her arms, across the top of her shoulder. Two larger ones on her abdomen, one bearing the faint shadowing of boot tread, made him sick.
“She’s part of the package,” Jack said, and it definitely wasn’t a question.
“The bitch isn’t leaving here until I get my money or my guns, but you can use her while you’re here.”
Jack nodded. “I’ll get my money’s worth from this one.”
He hadn’t believed for a minute Le Roux was just going to let Isabelle leave with him, but at least she was relatively unharmed and he’d have access to her.
For now it would have to be enough.
The Group had audio from Donovan through his watch. It was risky, but Charlotte had hooked them up with some top-notch components even Gallagher had trouble spotting.
Major drawback—it was one-way comm. They couldn’t communicate with Donovan short of standing outside the compound gate with a bullhorn.
O’Brien did most of the listening. He was Donovan’s primary partner and he knew him better than anyone. If Donovan tried to give them anything, O’Brien would be the one to catch it.
Carmen had spent some time dropping American dollars at the bakery, apparently a hotbed of female gossip, where she’d learned an unpleasant fact from a couple of women who’d been favored whores until they hit their twenties. Le Roux’s men never put their guns down. They drank, ate and picked their noses left-handed if need be and, since it was unlikely the entire army consisted of natural southpaws, that spoke of discipline and training.
“He’s not going to get out of there easily,” Rossi said. The men were going over what they had while Carmen was out interviewing women who’d worked in the compound for their imaginary documentary.
Every second she was gone took another minute off Gallagher’s life.
He stopped looking over O’Brien’s shoulder and pulled up some couch. “We knew going in getting him out was going to be a crap shoot.”
They both stared at the aerial satellite shots spread over the coffee table. As Jack’s casual comments to the guerillas during a tour of the camp fed them tidbits of info, they were marking the photos they’d scrounged from old US intelligence reports, but a viable weakness had yet to pop out at them. Bad idea trusting outdated intelligence, too, but it was all they had.
Gallagher shifted some of the photos around, leaning over the coffee table to get a closer look. It was frustrating as hell to be coming up with a plan after sending a guy in, but they’d had no choice. They had to get the offer on the table and Donovan inside before Le Roux killed the girl.
“If we could get a couple of masks to them, we could gas the camp. Just put everybody to sleep for a while.”
Rossi shook his head. “Too many innocents. Not safe for the very young or very old. I’d rather this go down clean. But we can’t trust Le Roux to hand over the girl even if we gave up the weapons.”
Which was something they wouldn’t consider. Even though the Group could get its hands on anything, they couldn’t swap an arsenal capable of taking thousands of lives for one life. If Donovan couldn’t talk Isabelle out of there and he refused to leave without her, they’d have to get them out.
So far they hadn’t even come up with a Plan A.
“That small cliff behind the compound might work,” Gallagher said. “If I conceal a rope and gear in the crevice and create a hellacious diversion around the front, he could help her climb out. He’s a hell of a climber.”
“Was.”
Something in Rossi’s voice made Gallagher look over. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not comfortable sharing this, but since it might affect the job—Donovan hasn’t climbed in three years. There was an accident and his friend’s gear failed. Donovan couldn’t hold him.”
“Shit.” He turned back to the photos, sifting through scenarios in his head. “He might have to choose between his fear and the girl.”
“He hasn’t managed an ascent since. He could freeze halfway up and they both die.”
“This was never a job with a guaranteed happily ever after, dude. He knew going in the odds sucked and any chance is better than no chance.”
There was a knock on the door—the opening bar of The Addams Family theme song—and Carmen slid in. She was dressed in colorful native garb, her hair hidden under a turban. While her Latina skin wasn’t nearly dark enough, with a scarf she passed for interracial if nobody looked too hard. The women she’d been talking to thought she was an American trying to respect their customs. Everybody else, they were hoping, wouldn’t look twice.
“I can’t get in,” she told them as she peeled off layers of garments. “Well, I can get in, but not legitimately. Laundry women, cooks, whores, you name it. All personally vetted by Le Roux or one of his so-called lieutenants. And, God, could it be any hotter out there?”
“Smoke bombs and a small chopper?” Rossi offered.
Gallagher shook his head. “Rocket launchers in a wide perimeter. Only his helicopter flies over the camp. Le Roux was close enough to the watch we could hear him brag about it. Donovan must have scratched his head or something so we could eavesdrop.”
Down to a tank top and spandex shorts, Carmen grabbed a bottle of water and sat on the other end of the couch. “Can Jack hijack it? Fly themselves out?”
He tried like hell not to be distracted by the tangy scent of her overheated body. “No. We can’t take the chance he has it rigged for a remote detonation in that situation. Le Roux might be jungle raised, but money and brute force have bought him association with some pretty savvy people.”
“I found out something interesting from a cleaning lady,” Carmen said. “It seems the provisional government has a spy in Le Roux’s camp. Whenever he can he sends info back, which is kept in a file in the Ministry building. A guy by the name of Keita manages him.”
“No shit.” Gallagher nodded. “We need that file.”
“They won’t let us see it,” Rossi told him. “They took the bribe to look the other way on our luggage, but this is a whole new level. There’s been an abatement of hostilities and they don’t want anybody pissing him off. They also won’t want to risk their guy being exposed.”
“Then we take it,” Carmen said.
Gallagher snorted. “There are people in that building around the clock, and it’s their primary government building.”
Carmen smiled and looked at him, a challenge in her dark eyes. “Guess it’s a good thing you brought me after all, huh?”
“Four hours of surveillance isn’t enough.”
Carmen blew out an aggravated breath and scooted back away from the edge of the roof on her stomach. “Ticking clock and we don’t know how many ticks we have. We have to do it tonight and it’ll be dawn in a couple of hours.”
“It’s stupid to rush it,” he argued as he followed, keeping his head down as two men passed below them on the street.
She didn’t bother responding this time. She could have schematics and a S.W.A.T. escort and Gallagher would still bitch like an overprotective mother.
There was a difference between rushing a job and abbreviating the timeline.
Shortly before public hours ended, she, Gallagher and Rossi had entered the ministry building under the guise of wanting to interview government officials for their documentary. T
hey hadn’t expected to get beyond reception, but they’d managed to establish there was no security panel inside the door, nor any sign of security cameras. If they had them, they’d have them in the lobby.
“We’re supposed to interview a Mr. Keita,” Rossi had told the receptionist, who had a less than stellar mastery of English. “We can just go on back. He’s on the second floor, right?”
“No. Floor three. But he’s…gone now. Tomorrow. We closing now.”
They’d made a small show of being put out, but left before they upset her enough to make her nervous.
Now she had a vague destination—the third floor—which was dark. The rich and powerful top-floor denizens apparently got to work normal hours. The first two floors spilled light from several of the windows she could see.
And wonder of all wonders, the ministry building had a fire escape, right there in the back, hidden in the shadows cast by surrounding buildings.
“In about three minutes that guy’s going to come out for a smoke break,” she told him. “As soon as he goes in, I am, too.”
“I’ll be here. And if you have any trouble at all, I’ll be wherever you are in thirty seconds flat.” She went back down the tree that had given them access to the neighboring roof, leaving them to communicate through the comm.
“If I need you, I’ll let you know.” The back door of the ministry building opened and there was a clunk as the smoker propped it with a cinder block.
“This time if I tell you to get out, you get the hell out,” Gallagher said, and then the almost imperceptible beep told her his handheld had synced with hers so he could monitor her location. “You didn’t listen to me in Canada and look what happened.”
“If I’d listened to you, we wouldn’t have found the diary and Arceneau probably wouldn’t have turned himself in. You do your job and let me do mine.”
The silence was crushing as they waited for the smoker to stub out his butt and head back inside. When the door clanged shut behind him, Carmen went. She crossed to the fire escape and, situating herself as close to the brick wall as possible, began to climb. She moved carefully, with slow movements that shouldn’t attract attention.
No Surrender: The Devlin Group, Book 3 Page 7
