The man drew a handgun from the inside of his jacket and directed the business end into Cameron’s back. “Sir, you better step away from the elevator.”
“Okay,” said Cameron. He slipped one foot far to his side and then slowly began to drag his other foot to meet the first. The gunman’s muzzle followed Cameron. Above them, the digital floor indicator dinged and the doors to the elevator began to slide open. The doors were divided no wider than a fist when the sound of two mosquitos whizzed past Cameron into the forehead of the gunman. Two men in technical service jumpsuits emblazoned with the swirling logo of the Dubai Fountain stood in the elevator. Each of the men wore a heavy utility belt, had a balaclava mask drawn down over his face, and held an MP-5 submachine gun in hand.
Cameron entered between the two and then spun around to face to opening.
“We done here?” asked Pepe.
“Yep,” said Cameron.
Pepe and Alastair let go of the doors.
“You seem back in the game,” said Pepe. From a duffel bag at his side, he removed another MP-5 and balaclava facemask for Cameron.
“Reluctantly,” said Cameron, rapidly inspecting the weapon.
Alastair slid the keycard the Saudi had given them into the elevator console. “I never left,” said Alastair. He tapped the numbers one, zero, and five and then punched the code, eight, two, and three.
“Going up,” said Alastair.
The elevator floated to the next level in an instant. The interior console dinged with the same tone that the digital floor indicator had resonated in the corridor below. This time the doors did not separate. A thin crimson LED rectangle lit up high up on the console panel in front of Alastair’s face. Within the rectangle glowed a crimson LED circle.
“I figure thirty seconds before downstairs looks in on us,” said Cameron. He fit the facemask over his head.
“I wouldn’t worry about the cameras. I was able to rig the elevator on a loop,” said Alastair. He eased his head to the side to inspect the ocular scan from a different angle and then reached out his hand in front of Cameron. Pepe unsnapped the leather cover of one of the front utility belt pockets. From within he retrieved a hard sunglass case, a Ray Ban logo imprinted across the top.
Alastair saw the case in a side glance and then shifted his head around, “Oh, you didn’t. I was looking for that. That’s my sunglass case.”
“I had to put them in something safe,” said Pepe. He flipped open the case to reveal a plastic baggy filled with ice and the two plump eyes of Taufiq Sawar. “This is a good case, strong.”
“Just hand the thing over,” said Alastair.
Cameron sucked in his chest as Pepe passed the cadaver specimen across the elevator. He curled his lip. He was not disturbed the two gruesome jelly orbs peering up from the case. Rather, he was displeased with Taufiq’s fate.
“It was necessary,” said Pepe. “You see that now.”
Cameron cleared his throat and rolled his eyes to Pepe. “I knew that then. I don’t have to like the situation.”
Pepe was undeterred by his friend’s suggestion of empathy. “Did I hear you correct that all of the women in Abbo’s harem look like Christine?”
“This should do fine,” said Alastair. He held the case up to the ocular scanner. The backlit LED circle and rectangle flicked from crimson to emerald.
“Yeah,” said Cameron, “he has a fetish for caucasian women with green eyes and chestnut hair.”
“Then I have no problem with the situation,” said Pepe. “Get ready.”
The elevator doors separated.
Outside of the elevator were two suit dressed security men, each with a hole in his forehead before he could draw his own weapon. With a mechanical rhythm stemmed from engrained training, Alastair stowed Taufiq’s eyes, secured his duffel, and then entered the corridor. Alastair’s comrades followed in fluent motion, Cameron holding left, and then Pepe squatted to drag his duffel out between the two dropped men. Pepe methodically sifted through the clothes of the corpses for radios and access cards. Alastair merely reached back to receive the coming bounty, his gaze fixed on the door of the 105th floor master suite.
Pepe finished rifling through the suited dead, set a charge beneath the sleeve of one, and then the three men edged toward Abbo’s door.
It occurred suddenly to Cameron that after years of focusing on building a reputation as a restaurateur, he was now executing his second direct action infiltration and exfiltration in a week.
The three stopped at the door, each in position to charge and indiscriminately fire. Alastair pressed the muzzle of his MP-5 firmly against the surface of the door. He placed three fingers on the steel latch and between his index finger and thumb held the access card to the mouth of the slot. Calmly he asked, “Ready?”
The responses were as cool. “Clear,” said Pepe.
“Clear,” said Cameron.
Alastair slid the access card into the slot below the latch. The crimson LED on the top of the access reader blinked off and the neighboring LED lit bright emerald.
“Vive la Légion,” said Alastair as he pressed down on the latch with his other three fingers and forced the door open with the muzzle of his MP-5.
* * * * *
Chapter 35
Abbo’s Suite, Burj Khalifa Level 105, Dubai
The guard assigned to monitor the closed circuit video of the corridor outside of Abbo’s 105th floor suite had his back to the door and his feet up on the small table that made up his makeshift security desk. Rather than watching the small screen in front of him, he was flipping through a comic book. He did not so much as flinch when Alastair forced the door with his MP-5. Too many years babysitting the secure suite had made the man complacent. Perhaps the guard thought one of the men from the corridor was coming in to use the restroom, or perhaps he did not hear the door as he was so wrapped up in the colored pictures of his magazine. Whatever the reason the guard did not bother to react did not matter. Alastair, Pepe, and Cameron would never find out. Before the door swung wide, the cheap pressed paper of the comic book was soaked with blood and brains.
In a mindful instant, the three men surveyed the hallway before them. The commandos had studied the floor layout from an acquired set of blueprints. Abbo’s suite was supposed to mirror the harem suite a floor below and so far the entrance appeared as expected. They had entered into a hallway that opened to a larger central room. Along the hall were two doors. They expected one to be the bathroom and the other, they had decided, was a room for the guards. Cameron flipped off the power switch for the light. The other switches were at the far end of the hallway, past the doors, before the central room. Even Pepe, forced to wear glasses to read, was at home in the dark. The three edged forward. Light music rose from another far off room in the suite, as well as deep bellowing laughter, the unmistakable laughter of Abbo Mohammed. Cameron slipped into the first side door, a darkened bathroom, and then, confident no one was hiding inside, eased back behind Alastair. Pepe ducked into the room on his side of the hall and then returned with a nod designating that space also clear.
Each planted small charges along their path.
The three stopped at the end of the hallway. Mere meters away from where they stood, the edge of the suite met the Dubai night. The Middle Eastern horizon beyond was crystal clear from this height.
Cameron had already been through the harem suite below. Level 104 had not been modified from the layout they had read. Since the entrance hall and the two side rooms matched the plans, Cameron was confident that Abbo’s suite would be similarly unchanged. From the blueprints, they learned that a central room encompassed a large area of the suite. To the left would be the kitchen, dining room, and a few small bedrooms, similar to where Mary led him to Babette in the floor below. Wrapping to the right would be another small bedroom, and then Abbo’s master bedroom. The Burj Khalifa tower utilities and other elevators made up the rest of the floor on the opposite side of the corridor.
The
number of guards in the suite was an unknown factor and a major risk. Striking the lights in the central room could signal additional guards and unwanted issue. There had been no immediate response to the clack of Alastair’s spent MP-5, loud even with the attached suppressor. That was a good sign, yet the burnt odor already filled the confines of the hallway and would shortly be spreading through the suite, demanding attention.
The bellow of Abbo’s laughter echoed again. The warlord’s laughter paired with images of Christine shot a pang through Cameron he did not recognize. He wanted to charge the master bedroom regardless of the plan.
A greater will seized him.
The tactician within Cameron introduced a scenario.
Cameron had deduced the warlord must be in the master bedroom, in the bedroom with Christine. That was the direction Abbo’s laughter was coming from. Cameron had been in the master bedroom below with Mary. The room Abbo used on his visits to the harem. Cameron figured an easy gamble, for Abbo’s own comfort, the harem suite and this floor, would share roughly the same decor. He tapped Alastair’s shoulder and then eased himself as forward as he could without entering the central room. Directly outward from their position at the end of the hall the glass walls formed a corner. Relying on the reflective surface of the wall, they surveyed the room. From the reflection they could see two large sofas to their right.
Cameron’s suspicions were correct.
Cameron calculated there would be at least one guard in that direction. Somebody more important than a guard, somebody Abbo could call on to fetch something. There had been a bodyguard in the restaurant, a dark Somali the size of a titan. Abbo had called the bodyguard Theal. That bodyguard had not gone down to the harem and was not one of those the three had shot upon entering the suite. Cameron tilted his head out a bit further, wary that reflections show two ways.
On one of the sofas, Cameron could see a man reclining, facing out into the night. A large black man with his eyes closed, possibly sleeping. The man was Theal. Cameron signaled to Alastair. Alastair understood there was a man sleeping around the corner. Cameron also gestured to Pepe that he would march out around toward the kitchen.
The three matched eyes and nods and then flowed from the hallway. The three filed from out in a well-rehearsed formation, three bulldozers clearing the space. Alastair circled around Cameron to cover the right side of the room where the giant slept while Cameron launched from the shadowed hall into the opposite direction. Behind him followed Pepe, scanning from the left and then settling next to Alastair. They found no confrontation. The only guard in the central room was the man on the sofa, and he would never wake again.
Cameron continued to sweep his wing of the suite, the kitchen, dining room, and other bedrooms. All were clear, no guards, no Christine.
Christine was the woman in the master bedroom with Abbo.
Cameron spun back toward that end of the apartment, his MP-5 forward, his steps wide and swift. He recounted the rooms in fleeting checks, deck clear, walls clear, ceiling clear, check, check, and check. Departing gifts for each room, charge engaged with a twist, applied to the inside of the door jam.
Cameron’s heartbeat was in his neck, closing his throat. His body and action were truly autonomous. He crossed the central room and pressed down the hallway toward the master bedroom.
Alastair and Pepe waited outside of the slightly open bedroom door, set to pounce.
The hallway was long and the last steps eternal.
From the bedroom Abbo laughed again deeply, sickly, and there was the sound of another, of a woman, breathing in heavy rhythm, fornicating.
Cameron’s eyes were locked on Alastair and Pepe. Their heads subtly nodded in a rhythm to his steps, timing his entry, their launch.
The door burst open to let Cameron cross the threshold.
“Don’t move!” screamed Alastair as he and the other two commandos stormed the room and surrounded Abbo, naked on the master bed, beneath the woman he was enjoying an instant before.
Abbo’s bright white eyes beamed wild, practically lunging out of his skull toward the three invaders. Mounted on Abbo’s groin, her back to the three, was a woman, naked and beading in sweat. His large hands firmly clutched the thin waist of the woman, almost encircling her, a Caucasian woman with long flowing chestnut hair.
* * * * *
Chapter 36
Abbo’s Suite, Burj Khalifa Level 105, Dubai
Cameron, Alastair, and Pepe had long ago learned through early on that compartmentalization is the perfect unconscious psychological defense mechanism, used to avoid cognitive dissonance or the mental discomfort and anxiety caused by having conflicting values, cognitions, emotions, or beliefs. Perhaps that is why, when still physically and mentally acute, they mustered out. To scan a room out of the corner of ones eye and then, in less than a second, calculate the next action may appear an inhuman mechanistic ability, yet the judgment to make the instantaneous call, stems from the soldier’s humanity.
Humanity was the reason soldiers were not sent on missions that involved them personally.
Soldiers could not be expected to compartmentalize a hostage situation involving their sister; at any point in the operation the risk was too high that soldier could compromise himself, could compromise the mission.
Yet there was no one else for this mission.
Perhaps Pepe had lost his edge.
Perhaps Pepe was merely a super soldier.
Pepe did not utilize his attuned peripheral vision entering Abbo’s bedroom. When the door burst wide, he focused on those two bright white beaming eyes and in an instant he was directly over Abbo, the muzzle of his MP-5 thrust into Abbo’s forehead.
The window of Pepe’s mask revealing his upper face and eyes blazed varying shades of red. On no other mission had his blood burned. The rapidly forming beads of sweat appeared pink across his brow.
The muscles through Pepe’s chest and upper body clenched and flexed tight as his arm extended forward, sinking Abbo’s skull deep into the pillow. A vein shot up on Pepe’s forehead and neck and, though anatomically incorrect, appeared to pierce right down into his hand, into the submachine gun, into Abbo.
Abbo cried out, a blood ring saturated where muzzle cut into flesh.
“Pepe,” said Cameron.
Pepe did not respond. He leered at Abbo, into Abbo, he owned Abbo Mohammed.
“Pepe,” said Cameron again. “It’s not her. She’s not Christine.”
Pepe blinked heavy, his stare still given to Abbo, first one blink and then another, a wince, and then another.
“This isn’t Christine,” said Cameron, his voice somber.
Pepe’s eyelids blinked heavy again, then again, meaty steaks slapping his eyes to attention, and then slowly he shifted his gaze up across the bed to Cameron and Alastair.
“Quoi?” asked Pepe.
“This is not Christine,” said Alastair.
For the first time since entering the room, Pepe, the once super soldier trained to be mindful, to see all at once, looked into the face of the woman mounted naked on Abbo.
The woman was hyperventilating, crying, her cheeks streaming with tears. From far inside her throat, barely audible sighs and squeaks escaped in rapid burst. Her entire body quivered and she was barely able to hold herself up on the man she had been entertaining seconds ago.
“This is Antoinette,” said Cameron.
* * * * *
Chapter 37
Abbo’s Suite, Burj Khalifa Level 105, Dubai
Alastair removed the crumpled linen from the foot of the bed to drape the trembling woman’s nude body. He tenderly placed his hands on her now covered shoulders and gently removed her from the groin of the titanic warlord. She let Alastair ease her to the floor. Her breathing, already elevated, increased, and her lower lip began to rapidly quiver. The subtle sighs and squeaks that had fought to escape her an instant before became squawks and caws as the woman, really not more than a girl, slipped into hysterics.
“Shhh,” said Alastair. He held the girl’s shoulders firm and gentle in his hands. “We’re not going to hurt you. You’re okay.” He squatted to her height then matched his calm blue eyes to hers, “Breathe. You’re okay. Breathe in through your nose, like this.”
As Cameron watched Alastair calm the woman, he thought how different she was now from earlier in the evening, from the playful young woman at the table in the At.mosphere restaurant. The woman in the restaurant floors above had been flirtatious and seductive, but that had been before three armed commandos stormed the master bedroom and mentally overwhelmed her. She was now in shock and as a broken child.
“Out through your mouth,” said Alastair, “there.”
Her name was Antoinette.
“Again, breathe in through your nose, that’s right.”
Antoinette and the other girl that had been with Abbo, Mary, each had green eyes and wore their chestnut hair in the same fashion as Christine. That was Abbo’s thing, his fetish. All of the women in the warlord’s harem could pass for Christine, or sisters she never had.
“Okay, now, can you take a walk with me?” asked Alastair. He began escorting Antoinette out of the master bedroom.
Cameron had seen girls like Antoinette on countless missions. Things were going to get worse in her world before they got better. For the moment, though, she would be okay.
Cameron rolled his eyes back over to Pepe.
Pepe was calm now. The window in his mask was no longer the index shades of Dante’s inferno. There had been a time when the stress of the moment would not have edged Pepe. Fortunately, his tactical training kicked in with a slight push from Cameron. Cameron had said his name a number of times before the outside world registered and then Pepe literally blinked himself back to the moment.
The muzzle of Pepe’s MP-5 was still pressed against the warlord’s head. Not with the same skull crushing force he applied during what Cameron could only define as a rage, yet with still enough pressure to ensure Abbo was not going to flinch.
The Somali Deception (Cameron Kincaid Book 2) Page 14
