by Dana Haynes
He headed toward the door.
Schullman waited until he was out of earshot. “I don’t mind saying it: I had my doubts about him. I was wrong.”
Asher nodded. “Mr. Halliday was a gamble. But he lost many friends in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has learned to hate well.”
Schullman said, “Well, we could never have done it without him.”
“True.”
Schullman looked around the white, plastic room. “We’ll leave his body here?”
“With the canisters, yes. As far as the CIA is concerned, the trail ends in Paris.”
Schullman nodded.
* * *
The pilot of Le Tigre toggled his communications array. “The Israeli has descended into the factory. Still no sign of the Syrian.”
Unlike most conventional gunships, in Le Tigre the pilot sits forward and to the left, the gunner in back and to the right. This configuration gives the gunner an unobstructed view out the front windshield.
The pilot turned as far as his five-point seat restraints would allow. “Can I get thermal imaging? Let’s see what they’re up to.”
A heads-up display projected onto the windshield showed the factory, but via infrared. Oval orbs of light moved about.
The gunner’s voice came back through the pilot’s helmet. “We have … I estimate ten, maybe twelve hostiles, on the ground floor. That blob up there is the Israeli now on the second floor.”
The pilot relayed the tactical information to the command vehicle.
* * *
Colonel Céline Trinh wasn’t happy about losing visual on target number one, particularly when target number two had yet to be located by anyone on the ground or by her eye-in-the-sky.
“Colonel?”
She turned as one of her communications techies doffed a headset. “The Americans are halfway across the pond.”
He meant the CIA strike team heading to Paris in their modified 757. Trinh understood the subtext of the message: If the Americans were close enough to Europe before the colonel’s team was ready to make its move, the Americans would request a weapons-hold status until they arrived. They also would put pressure on the Defense Ministry and the Interior Ministry and on Parliament and on the damned wife of the president, if necessary, in order to take over operational command.
Colonel Trinh was not having any of that.
She moved her voice wand closer to her lips. “Ground units. Move in.”
* * *
Belhadj watched the military-intelligence surveillance teams, and from his perch, a hundred meters up the side of a grain silo, the change from hold to go was dramatic. Agents in vehicles and on foot began moving as if directed by an invisible choreographer. His trained ear heard the first sounds of a helicopter drawing closer. It was not a commercial bird. It was a raptor.
* * *
On the second floor of the warehouse, Daria slid the Glock out of her skirt waistband. She stepped gingerly forward, her boots falling silently on the fresh boot prints of Asher’s team. She was halfway to the stairs when one of the second-story windows, on the north side, shattered.
A high-caliber bullet tore into a floorboard, twenty meters in front of her. What the hell?
She calculated the angle: From high, coming in low. It had to have come from Belhadj.
Translation? Hurry!
Then all hell erupted.
Eighteen
Asher lifted a pack on to a sawhorse and unzipped it partway. It was as tightly packed as a parachute. It held two folded, white canvas sheaths: more body bags. Like the first two, there were places for names, infection dates, and death dates. Like the other two, the material had been picked because it would burn well once the interior of the pressurized infection tent was set ablaze.
Will Halliday had just checked the factory perimeter and sauntered back to the group. He saw Asher study the white bundle inside the pack. “What’s that?”
Asher studied the name tags, barely visible where the holdall was unzipped. They read GEORGES RABADEAU and WILL HALLIDAY. He carefully stuffed the white material back into the holdall and zipped it up. He looked up through his lenses at the big American and smiled.
“Stowing our gear. We’re moving out soon.”
Halliday nodded.
Eli Schullman casually worked his way around behind the blond American and slid a titanium hunting knife from its leather scabbard. He made eye contact with Asher, who nodded slightly.
Somewhere inside the factory, broken glass tinkled.
Schullman, sidling up behind the American, paused.
Asher pretended to brush dust off his palms as he turned 360 degrees.
Halliday had heard the noise. “You got rats, buddy?”
“We do. But they don’t generally break glass.”
Eli Schullman stepped back and slid his knife into its sheath. He reached for the ArmaLite with banana clip and vanadium barrel.
Halliday palmed a stubby, matte-black .9 mm Ruger and held it taut against his left thigh.
The Ivorian picked up the vibe next and positioned himself slightly ahead of the pathologist, whom he had been tasked to protect.
Dr. Rabadeau had missed the tensing up of the others. He refolded his pocket kerchief. “Remarkable bit of recombinant science, this. If I may?” He offered a clever smile and gestured toward the containment tent. “The Russian? Tuychiev?”
The rest of the solders were on guard now, picking up cues from their cohorts. Asher said, “You know Tuychiev?”
“Yes, yes. We have exchanged compliments from time to time. His recombinant RNA has a certain flair. I recognize his, ah, signature.”
“Ah. Fellow artists.” Asher listened for more sounds of trouble. “He’s an ethnic Tajik, you know. Tuychiev. Not Russian at all. These distinctions are important. To some of us.”
The doctor brushed lint off his shoulder. “Of course. And fellow artists may be overstating it. I am not in János Tuychiev’s league. He’s brilliant. But in my own humble way—”
A groan reached them from the street. It was a heavy vehicle on tractor treads. All of the soldiers came to a stop. They all knew the distinctive rumble. It was an armored war wagon. With the windows boarded over, pitch added between boards, and inside the white cube room, most street sounds were muffled. The fact that they heard this truck approach, then heard it rapidly decelerate, was telling.
Asher turned to Schullman and adjusted his glasses. “Exit, please.”
Dr. Rabadeau said, “Is there a prob—”
Just then, one of the boarded-over windows on the ground floor exploded.
* * *
Colonel Trinh believed in the strong opening gambit, especially against an adversary as infamous as the Syrian Mukhabarat. If the Americans were correct and this Major Belhadj had allied himself with the Israeli trafiquant d’armes, then it was best to assume he was well armed and well protected.
If the Gibron woman was in the factory, Belhadj likely was as well. Plus, one of Trinh’s advance teams had reported hearing sound-suppressed rifle fire from the general vicinity of the factory roof. No telling what that meant.
Given an armed and entrenched opponent, the urban assault vehicle was Trinh’s gambit of choice. Being smaller than a conventional tank meant it could accelerate and decelerate quickly, and could negotiate narrow urban streets. On her command, the small tank roared up the four blocks from its hiding point, the driver gunning the engine, then slamming on the brakes directly outside the factory with the dozen-or-so heat signatures clustered around the first floor.
Le Tigre flew closer, giving Colonel Trinh in her command vehicle a live feed as a rocket-propelled grenade spat from the turret of the assault tank and smashed through a ground-floor window of the factory.
* * *
The building under Daria’s feet shuddered under an impact and curtains of dust rained down from the second-story rafters.
Damn it! she thought. The “good guys” have arrived!
She abando
ned the strategy of tiptoeing on the aged floorboards and sprinted toward the stairs. A saner person might have tried to distance herself from Asher Sahar, the likely target of the assault from outside, but Daria had a tendency not to choose the safe options. The safe options rarely led to clear-cut victories.
A two-meter high, L-shaped wall, which secured the handrail, circled the stairs to the ground floor. The building shuddered under another impact as Daria vaulted over the little wall, both boots landing hard halfway down the stairs, and she was moving, Glock in hand, hitting the first floor and rolling, keeping low, landing on her shoulder then her ass then her boots and she sprang forward, hitting a thick, creosote-soaked timber that supported the ceiling.
The building shuddered again as explosions began chewing through the brick on the north side.
* * *
Colonel Céline Trinh spoke into her voice wand. “Gas.”
She watched the scene on her monitor. The other ground forces were arriving now, some in civilian vehicles, others in battle-hardened Humvees and some on foot.
The gunner in the urban assault tank stopped firing RPGs and another wider barrel appeared from the turret. Trinh saw the distinctive puff of expanding gases from the barrel as canisters were spewed into the ruined side of the factory.
Her communications technician turned to her. “Colonel? The CIA has contacted the ministry. Asking us to confirm weapons-hold status until their people arrive.”
“Please inform the ministry that you are relaying their request to me with all due haste,” the petite colonel replied, then turned to the driver of the command vehicle. “Move us up.”
The command vehicle—looking more like a UPS truck than the command-and-control nerve center of a military assault unit—began vectoring closer to the battle.
* * *
Inside the plastic cube of the white room, Eli Schullman knelt, drew his serrated combat knife and deftly dug two long, straight slices through the white plastic floor covering, coming together at a right angle. He peeled back the plastic to reveal a reinforced trapdoor built into the floorboards.
Asher thought to himself: The Tunnel Rat of Rafah was not so easily caught off guard.
Schullman dropped down, feet first, into the hole.
Tear gas canisters flew through the ruined windows of the factory. Almost everyone flinched as the canisters hit the reinforced plastic sheets of the cube room, secured to a matrix of aluminum scaffolding.
But the cube room walls worked like a vertical trampoline. Five gas canisters were hurled into the room; three bounced back out into the street.
One of the mercenaries said, “What the hell was that?”
Asher said, “The law of unintended consequences.” He hadn’t ordered the construction of the cube room in order to repel a gas attack. But it was a nice side effect.
Two more gas canisters burst through the windows, hit the white wall, but stayed within the factory. Gas began hissing from them. But they were outside the pressurized cube room and of no concern to Asher.
* * *
From behind the load-bearing support timber, Daria watched as gas began billowing from behind the weird, alien-looking plastic cube, sixty meters wide and sixty meters high. She had no idea what the hell it was, except that it was modern, sturdy, and the gas seemed to be buffeting around its perimeter.
Daria filled her lungs with air, expelled it in a rush, then filled her lungs again to oxygenate her blood. She rose, shut her eyes tight and, arms churning, sprinted blind into the heart of the mushrooming gas cloud.
As she hit the billowy, pale yellow plumes of gas, Daria slid like a baseball runner, boots first, down on her hip, gliding up against the plastic walls of the cube, her free hand snatching the spade-shaped knife from her boot.
She thumbed out the toughened plastic blade, held it horizontally, and sliced cleanly through the plastic, an inch off the ground, as far as the arc of her arm would reach. She spun on her hip, slipped through the breach headfirst, emerged inside the cube room, opened her eyes a slit, and tucked herself behind a pyramid of heavy iron canisters.
She knew that tear gas is relatively heavy and stays low to the ground in hot climates. But in the cold, it tends to hover a half-meter or so off the ground, trapping a layer of air beneath it. The slit in the white plastic should be too low to allow the gas to enter the cube room.
She heard shouting. Some of it in Hebrew.
Getting this far had not been what one could call a plan, per se. But she nonetheless seemed to be where she needed to be: nearer and nearer to Asher.
Daria grinned, revealing her canines.
* * *
Out on the street, three of the gas canisters had bounced back outside and gushed sickly yellow fumes. The heavy gas billowed but staying tightly packed due to the nearness of the buildings, the lack of wind, and the crisp, cold air.
In the doorway, Asher’s Croatian soldier panicked. He fired his pistol up at the fast approaching gunship, then eyed the assault vehicle and the quickly spreading gas, and began running away.
By sheer luck, the single bullet from his unaimed handgun hit the bulletproof windshield of Le Tigre. It bounced away, harmless.
“We are taking gunfire!” the pilot shouted into his helmet mic.
* * *
Colonel Trinh grasped a looped, leather handhold from the ceiling of the command vehicle. She pivoted to the left as the tall, boxy truck rounded a corner, her upraised arm taking the strain.
“Tigre. Show them the error of their ways.”
* * *
The helicopter’s machine cannon began pouring heavy shells into the century-old factory at a rate of five hundred per minute.
The thick plastic walls and aluminum scaffolding had repelled some of the gas canisters. But under the helicopter’s Gatling-style machine cannon, it turned to Kleenex.
Everyone awaited the all clear from Eli Schullman. The soldiers drew weapons. Not Asher. He stood with his hands folded behind his olive field jacket, wireless bifocals in place, listening and watching as the first hail of heavy shells penetrated brick as if it were cheese, zinging into the factory and burying themselves in the wooden floor, long raggedy sticks of wood erupting under the impact.
Sixty-degree angle, he thought to himself. Fired from a helicopter … military.
Good. For a moment there, he had feared it was Daria Gibron.
* * *
Daria stood and moved toward the Hebrew voices, then dove back behind the horizontal pyramid of massive iron air tanks as heavy shells began turning the brick exterior of the factory into Saint Audrey Lace.
A shell panged off one of the six-foot-long tanks and compressed air began hissing free. The impact was enough to rattle the other tanks in the pyramid, which were supported by nailed-together wooden supports and two military-issue, olive-colored web belts. The entire affair probably weighed four tons, and all of it wobbled like gelatin over Daria’s body.
Fucking hell! she thought. Thanks for the help, lads!
* * *
“What is going on!” the French pathologist screamed in Asher’s ear. “My God! What is—”
A shell flashed through the brick wall, through the tattered plastic, through the Frenchman’s knee, through the floor, into the escape tunnel between the ground floor and the sewer lines, then into the body of one of the first mercenaries to hit the tunnel, through him, and into the sewers below.
The mercenary died instantly.
The pathologist did not, although the shell didn’t just break his knee; it blew the lower part of his leg seven meters away.
Asher watched the Frenchman fall.
* * *
The helicopter gunner swung his cannon slowly, left to right, then slowly back the way he’d started.
All in all, he fired for fewer than thirty seconds.
The fusillade demolished the northern wall of the factory.
* * *
Asher Sahar heard a distinctive crack! It came, not fr
om without, but from within his factory. It was organic, not metallic. The floorboards under his feet vibrated.
Support columns were buckling as the northern wall disintegrated. The top two floors and the roof were in danger of collapsing on them.
Asher hadn’t assumed the tunnel exit had gone undetected, and he didn’t want his team caught in the tunnel where they would have been easily picked off. Eli Schullman had ducked into the tunnel first. Now he reappeared. “Clear! All the way! Come on!”
Asher said, “Yes. Shall we?”
Schullman made room as men began diving for the bolt-hole cut in the floor.
* * *
The DCRI command vehicle screeched around a corner and now the combat zone was within view. The driver activated a dashboard camera and one of the monitors in front of Colonel Trinh popped to life, showing a real-time, real-light diorama ahead of them.
Directly above them, the gunship pilot popped on his ultra-powerful searchlight. That, plus the full moon, turned night into day.
Trinh saw billows of dust erupting from the top two floors of the factory. This surprised her, in that all of her crew’s firepower had been aimed at the ground floor.
She didn’t realize then, but the dust came from upper floors that were beginning to buckle.
* * *
The demonic onslaught ended and Daria rose from behind the unstable tower of air tanks. She took four steps to her right, caught sight of the others in the room, raised the Glock and let loose with three shots.
Three of Asher’s mercenaries spun and fell.
Daria readjusted her sights. Asher himself was halfway down into the tunnel.
They made eye contact. Held the eye contact. Both froze.
Daria Gibron and Asher Sahar. Siblings, by most measures of the term.
A very thin, very dark black man knelt on the floor, bleeding from his gut. He fired in Daria’s direction. His bullet pinged off one of the air tanks and Daria dodged back. She had hit the black man; she was sure of it. She just hadn’t killed him.
