by AJ Stewart
Then he got it.
It was like clockwork. Major Bradshaw had said he was operating alone. He had no men to follow Dennison because he didn’t know who he could trust. So he wasn’t requisitioning satellite movements. He was piggybacking what was already up there. Pulling the relevant shots from a database of images that the military was already taking. From satellites that were tasked well in advance.
Dennison knew when the satellites were overhead. He knew when to time his run. He kept his speed moderate on the highway, not because of any notion of safety or road law. He did it because he was timing his run. The trip was five hours at best. He would be open for that long. Impossible to not be seen in that kind of timeframe. Iraq was a major operation. There would be plenty of birds in orbit, watching. But Major Bradshaw wasn’t getting the whole picture. Dennison knew when the sats would be blind.
Dennison was biding his time. Hiding from the satellite that was probably passing right overhead now. Tomorrow Major Bradshaw might have a shot of Fontaine lying on the ground in the middle of the desert. But he wouldn’t see Dennison. And he wouldn’t see the truck. That sat in the shade under the corrugated iron canopy. Covered by a layer of dirt. Hidden in a natural depression in the earth.
Fontaine could wait for him to come out. But by then Yusuf might have gone. And he might need the ride if something happened to the truck. He glanced at the bright sky, and then he glanced at the dark doorway of the building. And thought to hell with it. There’s no time like the present.
Chapter Twenty-Four
When there’s nowhere to hide there’s no point in hiding. It was one of Colonel Laporte’s many sayings. Fontaine recalled them all. This one seemed to fit. He stood and walked out into the open area before the building and then slowly moved toward the darkened door. He kept his hands easy and away from his hips. Away from his PAMAS G1 sidearm. He didn’t want to spook the staff sergeant.
Fontaine approached the door like he was wandering up to the front of a house in the suburbs. The big truck was making noises like a badly manufactured clock as fluids and oil and diesel settled through the hot engine. A drum of diesel stood by the truck, freshly pumped into the truck’s tank. He looked into the building. And saw nothing. Just darkness. It was as black as the hot desert sky was white.
He stepped over the breach and stood still. There was no point in going further or moving fast. He was an open target, a sitting duck. Nothing he could do about that. So he waited for his eyes to adjust. As they did he made out straw-like material on the floor. It would have been a good pen for goats. Maybe it had been, once upon a time, because it smelled of animal and urine and gasoline. The building was one single room. No interior walls. He saw short, stocky objects form in his vision and realized they were petroleum drums. That explained the gasoline smell. Why they were there was another matter. It could have been a filling station for Dennison, but his tractor-trailer ran on diesel, not gasoline. The staff sergeant had a stockpile of fuel for any occasion.
Dennison was standing at the far rear of the space. The light reaching through the window barely met his feet. But Fontaine could see enough of the staff sergeant to know he was wearing more than his standard t-shirt. He had donned his combat uniform coat and body armor. Like Fontaine, he wore an advanced combat helmet. Unlike Fontaine’s it was not surplus. Dennison stood at an angle to the door, feet splayed. His gun was aimed at the top third of the doorway, which put it right at Fontaine’s chest.
Dennison was sweating. Fontaine’s vision improved and he saw the sheen across his face. The staff sergeant licked the moisture from his lip. He wasn’t used to being out in the heat. He wasn’t used to wearing the full ACU. His stance was a close approximation of good technique, but Dennison’s arms were too far away from this body, and the weapon looked heavier than its loaded weight of 1.162 kilograms. The muzzle was dipping slightly. Fontaine knew the other man was tiring.
“You have no business being here,” Dennison said.
“Nor you,” said Fontaine.
“This is not your war. You chickened out, remember?”
“As far I know, it’s no one’s war. You won, didn’t you? That’s what I heard on TV. You won, and you’re pulling out.”
The staff sergeant licked his lip again and snarled.
“Who are the eight?” asked Fontaine.
“They are the air you breathe, moron. Your very last breath.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Nobody knows.”
“Where are they?”
“Everywhere and nowhere. You see them every day but you’ll never find them.”
“Même le croque-mitaine ne peut pas cacher éternellement.”
“What?”
“Even the bogeyman can’t hide forever.”
“You’re a traitor,” he spat.
Fontaine had heard it all before. Many times. He took two steps into the room.
“You need to come with me.”
“I said, you’re a traitor.”
Fontaine smiled. “You’ll need to do a lot better than that, Sergeant.”
“You’re a disgrace to your country. You turned your back on your people, and fought for the enemy.”
“I hunt the enemy. Now I hunt you.”
“I am a soldier in the United States Army. You don’t have the—”
“You’re a shopkeeper. You work in supply, you run the mess hall. And you distribute drugs. And now you’re supplying arms to insurgents. Guns that get fired against your own men. So don’t talk to me about being a traitor.”
“You don’t have the authority.”
Fontaine swiftly drew his gun from his holster and aimed at Dennison.
“I have all the authority I need. Now drop your weapon, and let’s take a little drive to Camp Victory.”
The sergeant blinked hard. Fontaine could see the salty sweat burning Dennison’s eyes. He clearly wanted to rub them but couldn’t take his hand from his gun. He was stalling, thinking. Working the angles. Deciding how and where Fontaine fit into things. He clearly knew Fontaine was Legion, but that meant French military and France was NATO and that complicated matters. Potentially. In the field, things happened. People disappeared. Fontaine saw him working it through.
Dennison had organized for Fontaine to be killed by the suicide bomber, and then he had organized for him to be caught taking a bribe. In that order. That meant somewhere along the way something changed. Or someone had ordered Dennison to change. Kill, and then not kill. As if somehow Fontaine’s status didn’t allow for it. As if his death would cause more problems than it solved. So the staff sergeant was unlikely to shoot him.
Dennison was also working under a false assumption about Fontaine. He figured Fontaine’s status meant he had rules and procedures to follow. Rules that certainly prevented him shooting a US soldier. There would be hell to pay if he did. An international incident, like the Gulf War all over again. So the staff sergeant assumed he planned to deliver him to the MPs at Camp Victory in Baghdad.
But the staff sergeant’s status had also changed. Fontaine knew he didn’t directly kill Babar, and he didn’t think Dennison took the lives of the suicide bomber’s family with his own hand. But he was responsible for it happening. That was for damned sure. And that changed Dennison’s status a whole lot. Especially out in the desert. In the Bermuda Rectangle. Where no one knew where he was. Where no satellites could see him. Fontaine was on the fence. He could take the staff sergeant in, but he was just as comfortable leaving him out in the desert.
“I’m going to need the money back,” the sergeant said.
Fontaine frowned. “Are you serious?”
“Deadly. My people will want the money back.”
My people. “You try to set me up with a bribe and when it doesn’t work, you want it back?”
“They’ll want it back.”
“Well, they aren’t getting it. The money will go into evidence, and you will go into the stockade. And if you’re helpful, th
e army won’t send you to Guantanamo, they’ll just send you to Leavenworth. And whoever they are can go to hell.”
The two men watched each other. Fontaine felt good. He was fit and used to the heat in a way that the staff sergeant would never be. He held his pistol steady. Dennison did not. They both had essentially the same weapon, variants on a Beretta 92. But one could stand like this all day, and one could not.
“My people won’t go to hell,” the sergeant said. “They own hell.”
Then he fired.
Fontaine was glad for two things: laziness and kick. Dennison’s lack of range time meant he wasn’t prepared to fire. He was in a war zone and should have treated it like such. But he didn’t. His lack of practice showed in everything he did. His stance was too stiff. His grip was too tight. He didn’t allow for the long pull on the first shot from the Beretta. It meant in untrained hands the muzzle lifted as the trigger was pulled. Fontaine heard the close-quarters blast and saw the flash of fire, but he knew the shot was high and wide.
He also knew the second shot might not be. A good marksman would take aim at the largest available target. That was usually the torso. Hence the body armor. But Fontaine figured with Dennison the second shot might go anywhere. It might be just a little less high and just a little less wide. It might end up aimed at his head. He wasn’t waiting around for that. He hadn’t moved. He was a good marksman. Not sniper quality. He could never get the breathing down to hit a target at a thousand meters. But at closer range he was a good as any. So he aimed for the largest target available. Not the torso. That was covered with body armor. Fontaine wanted to hit flesh. So he aimed and fired.
The second shot came faster than Fontaine expected. He should have known better. Dennison wasn’t firing, assessing, aiming and firing. He was just firing. In a general direction. More hope than expectation. But sometimes hope is all you need. It wasn’t one of Laporte’s gems, but it could have been. The second shot hit Fontaine in the chest.
It wasn’t the force so much as the surprise that dropped him. The impact was immense. He felt the sting in his arm as he spun and fell backward. He knew he’d been shot, but he knew that the body armor had taken some of the impact. It was the collision with the wall of the building that did him in. Hard-baked clay. Like a tonne of bricks. He pivoted in the air and the side of his head hit the wall. There was no pain, no shock. He was out before his body came to rest on the straw.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Yusuf took the keys. He wasn’t getting stranded as a result of some bandits driving off in his vehicle. He didn’t wear a uniform and had no camouflage and no weapon. But he heard the shots and he saw the smoke and felt a cold chill. So he kept low and ran along the depressions as much as he could. Before he reached the open space in front of the building he stopped behind a bank of earth. Black smoke billowed from the doorway and the window. Another plume of smoke spilled from the side of the building he couldn’t see, near the big truck they had followed. He couldn’t see anyone. Not the American sergeant, not Fontaine. He left the cover of the bank and dashed across to the building.
He skidded to a stop in a puff of dust between the doorway and window on the front side of the building. He could hear the crackling of the fire. The smoke stunk like a burning vehicle. Like a roadside bomb. He pressed himself against the wall and eased to the doorway and peered into the darkness.
It looked like the inside of the clay oven where his wife baked bread. Fire spread across the floor. The smoke seemed to emanate from the back of the space. He searched the darkness for movement. There was a window in the wall on the side of the building. Smoke spewed out of it. He thought he saw a flash of movement, or maybe just the smoke playing games. Then he saw the boots.
A pair of boots on the floor, between the light coming in the doorway and the fire ebbing toward him. The top of the boots were covered by trousers, and the trousers were a plain sand color. Not camouflage patterned. Fontaine’s boots.
Yusuf stayed crouched but moved inside. He put his arm up against the heat. Grabbed the boots and pulled. The body was heavy and he had to stay below the smoke. He pulled and tugged. Got the boots outside. Fontaine’s waist lay across the threshold. Yusuf dug his heels into the dirt and pulled hard and the body slid out of the room. He kept going, working hard, until Fontaine lay outside between the door and the window. Yusuf let go and fell backward on the other side of the window. He was covered in dirt and sweat, and he was panting hard. He lay on his back getting his breath. There were no clouds in the sky. Nothing to give it perspective or interest. It was the white hot sky of his people. Then it got hotter.
The explosion rocked the building. Flames burst from every opening like the tail end of an American space rocket. Apollo, he thought. His vision was filled with nothing but flame and he wondered if this was what the prophet meant when he spoke of Jahannam. Hell. Eternal flame. It filled Yusuf’s view completely. But it wasn’t eternal. As quickly as the flame came it rescinded. The sky reappeared and Yusuf lay on the ground and realized he was not breathing. He took long gulps and his chest convulsed as if he were drowning in air.
Yusuf gathered himself and sat up. Flame lapped gently at the window sill. Fontaine lay on the ground. Yusuf crawled to him. He had a bad gash on his head but that was the only blood he could find. He was breathing low and shallow. Yusuf rolled the body over and then lifted from under the arms. It was dead weight and heavy. A big man. Yusuf tore off the helmet and threw it into the oven that was the interior of the building. He repeated the dose with the body armor. Then he lifted again. Fontaine was still heavy. He was tall and muscular. Much taller than Yusuf. But Yusuf dropped to a knee and worked the unconscious man across his own shoulder.
He stood like an Olympic weightlifter, his feet unsteady and tapping a little dance. But he gained his footing and the weight settled across his shoulders and he took off. Not fast but not slow, staggering rather than striding. The realization that walking was actually the act of falling forward and catching oneself. He stayed to the same depressions in the earth and followed his own footprints to the Highlander. With one hand he opened the rear door and dropped Fontaine’s buttocks on the seat. Then he ran around the opposite side and pulled the body across the seat by the hands.
There was no point hiding, so he tore across the open ground directly to the track for at least the pretense of a smoother ride. Then he hit the accelerator hard and dust sprayed behind like a speedboat at full throttle and burst away. Someone would see the smoke. Someone would come. He didn’t want to be anywhere near when they did.
Fontaine dreamed of hell—the cinematic version—all flame and red embers and heat. Babar was there, offering a smile and a nod. Then Babar walked away and left Fontaine alone. Except not alone. The faces came. All of them. At least all the ones he had seen. The compartments opened and his dreams were filled with the faces of those they had lost, and those they had failed to save. The faces of bad men doing unspeakable things, and the faces of innocents whose innocence had been torn away.
He woke in a pool of sweat. A damp sheet was wrapped around him like a shroud. The room was hot but dark. He blinked hard. Blinds had been pulled but at the edges he could see it was daylight outside. He felt his head. Bandages wrapped around tightly. The door opened. He turned and saw a woman. She wasn’t old but she was worn down. She offered him a smile.
“I am Yusuf’s wife,” she said in accented but perfect English.
“Where?” Fontaine choked on his words. His throat was dry. Yusuf’s wife stepped to him and took up a glass of water. She held it to his lips. It felt like the water was seeping into him rather than going down his throat.
“Where am I?”
“Baghdad.”
“Your home?”
She nodded.
There was movement at the door and they both turned to see Yusuf walk in. He offered Fontaine the same smile as his wife had.
“Hello, my friend. How do you feel?”
Fontaine touc
hed the bandages on his head. “Better than I deserve, I think. You saved me.”
Yusuf shook his head.
“You did,” said Fontaine.
“You should rest.”
Fontaine edged up onto his elbow. He winced as he felt the pain in his arm. A bloodied bandage was wrapped around it. Where Dennison’s shot had hit him. He looked at it and realized he had been lucky. It was a flesh wound. His body armor had taken the bulk of the impact.
Yusuf’s wife put her hand gently on his shoulder and pushed him back down.
“My team?” groaned Fontaine.
“They are gone.”
Fontaine felt the panic rise in his throat. “Gone?”
“They left. Gorecki flew out of Basra to Germany. Manu went overland to Kuwait. Thorn was on a transport to Turkey. From there, I do not know.”
Fontaine nodded and lay back. They had done as instructed. Code noir. He took a relieved breath. And stopped it halfway through. His eyes wide.
“She is also gone,” Yusuf said.
“Where?”
“America. She said she was recalled.”
“You spoke to her?”
Yusuf nodded. “She flew from Baghdad yesterday.”
“Does she know?”
“No. I did not tell her. I did not tell any of them. They believe you to be dead. I think it is better.”
Fontaine nodded. It was better. Better that they all thought he was gone. What they didn’t know couldn’t hurt them.
“But people are asking questions,” said Yusuf.
“Who?”
“Bad people.”
Fontaine stayed inside two more days. Yusuf’s wife made sure of it. His head wound had become infected and Yusuf procured antibiotics and painkillers. Fontaine took the antibiotics. He was in and out of consciousness, dreaming of his father and his mother and of Babar; of Dennison and flames he never saw, the fire that Yusuf told him had engulfed the mud brick building with Dennison inside. His fever soaked his sheets and they dried and then he soaked them again.
