by Mark Greaney
He noticed a bald man in cargo pants leaning against a newer-looking white Toyota pickup truck. He was just a couple of spaces away from the four men in desert camo, but he didn’t seem to be associating with them at all. The man gazed in Court’s direction, standing with his hands on his hips and a pair of wraparound sunglasses hanging out of his mouth by one of the arms. He was stocky, with a thick chest and forearms covered in tattoos, and he wore a black T-shirt.
The man made no move in Court’s direction, but he kept looking right at him.
It was no big trick for Court to identify the person he was here to meet. Court would be interacting with some hard men on this operation, so he’d not expected balloons and a banner. He walked over to the man and extended his hand. “I’m Wade.”
The bald man put on his shades, pushed off the vehicle, and ignored the handshake. He replied with a Cockney accent. “Remains to be seen.”
“What’s that?”
“You are whoever your KWA deployment orders say you are.”
“Yes, sir.” Court was in cover now, and he knew he needed to act and talk like a private security officer on a high-threat contract. He’d worked around such men on different assignments around the world, and he’d trained with some of the more high-speed contractors stateside.
He fished out his KWA folio from his backpack and handed it over to the Brit.
The man took the papers, looked them over, then returned his gaze to Court. He spoke softly, even though there was no one in earshot. “First things first, mate. I’m Saunders. I’m not ‘sir.’ I’m labor, not management, and I don’t need some terrorist sapper thinking differently. We straight on that?”
Court doubted there were any insurgents sneaking around here at a Russian/Syrian regime air base, and if there were, he felt confident they would have higher-priority targets around here than a couple of guys in T-shirts standing in a parking lot. But he didn’t argue. “Saunders. Got it.”
Court could tell Saunders had been around. He had an impossibly hard, weathered air about him. Even though this guy might have been labor, he was clearly a veteran employee of Klossner’s organization, and since he was British, this probably meant he could well have been former Royal Marines or SAS, Special Air Service, the UK’s elite special operations unit.
Court couldn’t help but wonder what had befallen the man to where he now found himself working as a mercenary, employed on a contract with a militia of cold-blooded murderers in Syria.
But he didn’t ask.
Saunders said, “All right, ’ere’s what’s gonna happen. Those blokes are with us.” He nodded to the four men in camo uniforms standing around the technical. They were all looking Court’s way now. “They are Desert Hawks Brigade, and they go where we go, just to make sure we get there.
“We’ve got a long drive ahead, all the way to our base just east of Damascus in Babbila. It’s three hundred klicks, and it’s not gonna be a joyride, so we’re gonna tag along with a convoy that’s forming up in Jableh, just fifteen minutes from here.”
Saunders led Court to the passenger side of the white Toyota, and Court opened the door. A set of body armor and an SA80 bullpup rifle lay on the floorboard.
“Is this for me?” Court asked as he sat down and put his feet on the gear.
Saunders climbed in on his side. “No, mate. That’s my kit. You’ll get your kit once we get down to Babbila, but we’ll find a surplus weapon and armor for you to take along on the convoy.”
Both men had to show their credos twice before leaving the airport, but once outside, the bald man stomped on the gas and raced to the south. Behind them the Desert Hawk technical followed, with one man standing in the bed holding on to the machine gun.
They rode in silence for a moment, but just when Court thought Saunders wasn’t going to do any talking, the man said, “Today’s your lucky day, Wade. That is, assuming you came down here to see some action. You and me are gonna get shot at this afternoon.”
“On the road to Damascus?”
As they made the turn off the highway that led towards Jableh, the Brit nodded. “It’s been a bloody shooting gallery for the past few weeks. I came up here in a convoy the day before yesterday on the same road we’ll be taking back. We got hit twice in the hills. Small arms, nothing coordinated. Still, two SAA blokes traveling with us were hit. One of the poor sods didn’t make it through the night. Shot in the bum, he was, which would be a laugh if it hadn’t clipped his femoral.” He looked over to Court. “And last week Daesh cut off the highway for ninety minutes. Killed seven civilians and two Syrian cops. FSA, Daesh, Al Nusra . . . that highway goes right through the middle of the territory of a lot of enemy groups.”
Court nodded, in a casual manner. “How are we supposed to know who is who?”
The question seemed to surprise Saunders, and he thought about it for a moment. “Sometimes you see blokes wavin’ flags, sometimes you see kit or clothing that tells you who you’re up against, but you usually only have time to ID the colors on the bodies after you kill the buggers. Does it matter? If some bloke is shooting at you, shoot back at them. We gotta hard job down here, Wade, but that part’s dead easy.”
“Right.” Except it wasn’t so easy for Court. Jabhat al Nusra was the local brand of Al Qaeda, and Daesh was ISIS. He’d pour lead at either of those groups if he ran into them, no questions asked. But FSA was the Free Syrian Army. While it was a loose coalition made up of a lot of different disparate elements, in theory, at least, they were the good guys in this fight. Court, on the other hand, was most assuredly working on the side of the villains down here. Would he really open fire on an FSA unit attacking the Russian and Syrian regime forces?
He told himself all he could do was hope he didn’t come into contact with FSA fighters, and sort out what he would do if the time came.
As they drove along in silence, Court realized Saunders wasn’t going through the typical security contractor process of asking who he knew and where he’d been. It was commonly referred to in the industry as “butt sniffing,” a way of sizing up others in the field to establish one another’s bona fides. Court had answers ready if Saunders asked, and he’d expected a grilling. “Wade” was a pseudonym, but Court was here in place of a real man, with a real background Court had studied on the flight from Munich to Beirut.
But Saunders hadn’t asked a thing about his past or his experience.
Court appreciated the silence, but on top of this it only made him more certain of his assumption that the guys he’d come into contact with down here would be cut from a different cloth than the private military contractors he’d worked around in the past. These men were straight-up mercs, and they were not here for the camaraderie or any belief in the righteousness of their mission.
* * *
• • •
They arrived at a small Syrian Arab Army base just after one. Both men climbed out of the pickup, headed into a guard shack, and handed over their embossed KWA badges and travel papers. Still, they were frisked for explosive vests and the pickup was checked over thoroughly for bombs.
Back in the truck they waited for the Desert Hawks traveling behind them to make it through security, and then they all drove to a row of low buildings within sight of the ocean to the west. A group of four light-duty military trucks of various makes and models sat single file in a lot out front. Court saw two trucks with Russian military markings, and two older and larger trucks with the markings of the Syrian Arab Army.
Saunders said, “This ’ere’s our convoy. We don’t leave till thirteen twenty, so we’ve got a little time to find you a weapon.”
Court followed Saunders into a warehouse, where the British contractor spoke with some Syrian Arab Army soldiers. After yet another show of badges and some signing of some forms Court couldn’t read, a squeaky padlock was removed from a squeaky door and they were let into a room full of weaponry
: AKs stacked on tables and shelves, along with ammunition, cases of big green helmets, and stacks of steel body armor in chest rigs.
Court could see dust hanging in the air; the smell of gunpowder and gun oil was thick in Court’s nostrils.
The American said, “Let me guess. You want me to take one of these pieces of shit.”
“Like I said, you’ll get a proper weapon when we get down to our base, but we want you ready for today’s run. You can borrow what you need here for the drive down. This is what they hand out to the civilian regime-backed militias.”
The equipment was decidedly low tech, but Court had trained on, and implemented in the field, weapons of all types and quality.
He pulled on a heavy olive-drab vest that held armor plates, and then he stepped over to choose a rifle.
If given any choice for a weapon to take on a mission such as today, he would have chosen an HK416 A6 rifle with an eleven-inch barrel and a Gemtech suppressor and a second, twenty-inch barrel that he could exchange with the eleven-inch if he found himself pinned down by shooters at long range, along with a holographic weapons sight and a quick-detach three-power scope. His rifle would have a laser acquisition device, a high-lumen flashlight with a pressure switch, a six-position adjustable stock with an adjustable cheek weld, and a horizontal forward grip.
Yeah, that would have been his dream choice for a vehicle operation through a high-threat area.
But this grungy and small armory had probably never seen anything like that.
Instead he pulled a worn-out and worm-holed wooden-stocked AK-47 with simple iron sights off a rack. It was virtually identical to the model invented by wounded tank crewman Mikhail Kalashnikov back in 1947, but Court knew AKs, and he could use the weapon with deadly effect out to five hundred yards.
He checked its function and deemed it in proper working order. As he adjusted the weapon’s old nylon sling for his height and preference, Saunders loaded a big canvas satchel with rusty thirty-round magazines. He handed the satchel over to the man he knew as Wade, who immediately put the heavy sack down on a table and began counting the magazines.
“Fourteen mags. Four hundred twenty rounds,” Court said. “That’s more than I’ve ever carried in my life.” Even though he was in character, it was the truth, at least when carrying a weapon that fired a big 7.62 round like the Kalashnikov. He picked up the magazines one at a time, loaded them into his chest rig, locked one into his new rifle, and racked a round into the chamber. He flipped the safety up, then pushed the five remaining magazines away on the table. “I’ll go with two hundred seventy, just in case we get attacked by Godzilla.”
The Brit looked at him like he was an idiot. “Right. So you’ve made the Latakia-Damascus run before, have you now?”
“You know I have not.”
“Well I have, so listen to me. Through the hills east of Latakia, through Masyaf, across Hama, down around Homs, and south through the northern suburbs of Damascus, blown to rubble by the regime but still full of rebels. The entire route could be crawling with roving terrorists and marauders, popping out at every turn. You probably won’t need all this ammo, but if you do, you’ll bloody well wish you had it.”
Court thought the guy was exaggerating, but the voice of his former CIA trainer slipped into his mind again, telling him there was virtually never such a thing as too much ammunition. Court scooped up three of the five mags, crammed them into pockets in his cargo pants, then lumbered for the door.
* * *
• • •
The convoy prepping to make the run to Damascus was a multinational affair. Court and Saunders were the only Westerners and the only foreign mercs in the group, but there were two nearly new GAZ light military transport trucks containing a dozen or so armed Russian soldiers, two Russian-made ZIL-131 Syrian Arab Army trucks with what appeared to be about twenty young infantrymen, and the four Desert Hawks Brigade soldiers who’d been caravanning along with Court and Saunders.
There was also a black Land Rover with three Arabs in civilian clothes. Court nodded towards the men and asked Saunders who they were.
Saunders himself gave them a curious eye. “Probably Mook.”
“Mook?” Court asked, although he knew.
“Mukhabarat. Syrian intel. I have a meeting with the Russians and Syrians at the lead vehicle. Maybe I’ll find out, but I’m not gonna ask about them. You stay here with the Hawks.”
Saunders went forward to talk to the leaders of each group represented, and he returned a few minutes later. “Right. Those blokes in suits are definitely Mook; they’ll be riding right in front of us in the middle of the formation. The SAA will take the front and the rear of the convoy. The two Russian trucks will travel together behind the lead vehicle. We leave in five mikes.”
Even though he wasn’t a security contractor, Court knew vehicle operations in high-threat areas better than most. “What’s our plan? If we come upon a downed vehicle, or a firefight going on in the road, do we assist?”
“Negative. You and me are being paid by the Hawks, so our job is to get down to the base in Babbila and do what we’re told. We aren’t being paid to fight it out with rebels along the highway. We’ll let some other poor bugger do that. If the Russians and the SAA don’t stop, we don’t stop. If they do stop . . . well, I will make the decision on whether we keep going or stick with the convoy.”
Court said, “Seven light vehicles, forty-five men, and one mounted machine gun might scare off a small unit of adversaries, but anything larger might see us as an opportunity.”
Saunders rolled his eyes. “Off the bleedin’ bird less than an hour and you’re tellin’ me how to roll, is that it, Wade?”
“Hey,” Court said. “You’re labor, just like me. Remember?”
Saunders spit on the dusty asphalt. “We won’t be the only vehicles on the road, so the trick is just to make ourselves a harder target than the other sons of bitches out there, so the bad guys shoot somebody else.”
“That’s our plan?”
Saunders donned his body armor, pulled his rifle out of the floorboard of the pickup, racked a round into the chamber, then checked to make sure the safety was engaged. “I told you, Wade. We’re gonna get shot at today. Might as well sit back and enjoy the lovely weather till it ’appens.” He headed around to the driver’s seat.
There was nothing Court could do but slip on his sunglasses, climb into the passenger side of the pickup, hold his old Kalashnikov at the ready, and begin scanning his sector.
It was going to be a long afternoon, he could feel it.
CHAPTER 28
French Judicial Police Captain Henri Sauvage drove south out of Paris in an early-afternoon rain shower. He had a lot on his mind, but he pushed it away as much as possible to focus on the task of the moment.
Ahead on his right, halfway through a wooded area that covered a square kilometer, a gravel driveway wound back into the woods. Sauvage didn’t slow his two-door Renault as he approached it, but he peered intently up the drive while passing, doing his best to take in every detail.
And when it was behind him he kept driving. Traffic was steady, and it occurred to him he might not find a place to turn around to head back for a while. Still, his job was not to go back; at least it wasn’t yet.
And he hoped like hell he wouldn’t be given that order by the Syrians who controlled him.
He took out his phone and placed a call. As soon as he heard the call go through, he spoke. “The gate is closed at the entrance. No one is in sight.”
“Good,” came the reply. A kilometer behind him, the Syrian asset he knew as Malik sat in the passenger seat of a Volkswagen Touran van, and he drove down the same road Sauvage drove on. Sauvage could hear him relay his message to the men in the vehicle with him in Arabic.
“What do I do now?” Sauvage asked into the phone.
“We’ll pass
by the property in thirty seconds. Then we’ll meet you in Saint-Forget on the Rue de la Motte.”
Sauvage thought Malik’s French pronunciation was horrendous, but he didn’t say so. Still, he had done what was asked of him today, so the Frenchman did push back a little into the phone. “Why do you need me? I told you what I found out about the property, I led you here. Just let me go home.”
“Rue de la Motte. Ten minutes.” The phone call ended.
Henri Sauvage tossed his phone down into the passenger seat and shouted curses to himself. He had gone to Foss’s funeral two hours earlier and would be attending Allard’s the following day. Andre Clement’s body had not yet turned up, but since Sauvage saw him die, he knew it wouldn’t be long at all before he’d be going to his partner’s funeral, as well. And as bad as Sauvage’s mood was now, he figured by the time he hugged Clement’s children at his graveside, he’d be ready to kill himself for everything he’d gotten his friend involved with.
The thought of saying to hell with it all and killing himself, thereby outsmarting Eric and the Syrians manipulating him, did have a moment’s appeal to him. But then he thought better of it. No . . . he wasn’t going to kill himself. He was going to be a good little bitch for Eric; he would do what he was told, make his money, and then take his family and get the fuck out of here.
The best revenge was a life well lived, and he told himself he owed it to his dead friends to enjoy himself on their behalf. He was being paid a lot of money to find Bianca Medina, and he was reasonably certain he had done just that.
He’d spend it well.
* * *
• • •
Ten minutes later, Sauvage leaned against the hood of his car parked at a flower market in the town of Saint-Forget. The Volkswagen van pulled up and the sliding back door opened.
