by Mark Greaney
CHAPTER 32
Vincent Voland stood on the parking circle in front of the country estate near the village of La Brosse as the last of the day’s light faded. In front of him, just rolling up the driveway by the greenhouse, a black Lincoln Navigator flashed its headlights.
Dr. Tarek Halaby stepped outside through the side door to the property and shouldered up to Voland. He, too, watched the vehicle approach.
“I take it these are the security men you ordered up?”
Voland nodded. “The very best.”
“That money can buy,” Tarek added.
“Oui. We must face the facts. After seven years of war, many have tired of your cause. The men and women still alive who will fight for you without charge are, in large part, men and women who know little about fighting.” As the Navigator rolled to a stop, he added, “The men with the skills to fight this battle do not hold an ideological attachment to your particular fight. Nevertheless, these are men of principle. They will protect this property from anyone who threatens it.”
Tarek Halaby’s hand reached under his safari jacket and touched something unfamiliar there, and it occurred to him, not for the first time today, that he had never fired a gun in his life. All his time in Syria, surrounded by armed rebels and more than once within shouting distance of regime forces or ISIS terrorists, and he’d never taken to arming himself. He was a doctor, not a soldier.
But now he had a Walther P99 jammed into his corduroy pants, and an extra magazine in the pocket of the safari coat. Vincent Voland had offered the weapon a few hours earlier as they waited for the cavalry to arrive in the form of the four ex-members of the French Foreign Legion, and when Tarek at first demurred, Voland countered that the only thing between Syrian assassins and Bianca Medina were five over-the-hill ex–Syrian soldiers, none of whom had any special forces or advanced combat training; a nephew of his wife who taught high school physics; and a sixty-five-year-old former French spook who’d only used a weapon in anger once in his life, over thirty-five years earlier in Lebanon.
And, Voland had added, he’d missed that target in Lebanon.
When this realization sank in, Tarek took the pistol from Voland, along with five minutes’ instruction on how to shoot it and reload it and a promise from the Frenchman that he wouldn’t mention anything about the weapon to Rima Halaby, because Tarek doubted his wife would approve of him carrying a firearm as a matter of safety.
Now that the security men were here, Tarek wondered if he should hand the gun back, but only for a moment, and then he changed his mind. He didn’t know these men any better than he knew this man Sebastian Drexler that Voland kept mentioning with a bizarre combination of revulsion and awe.
Tarek would keep an eye on these men just the same as he would anyone else with the potential to put this operation in jeopardy.
The SUV doors opened and four men climbed out. They carried short-barreled submachine guns, already slung on their shoulders, and large packs on their backs. To Tarek they all appeared to be in their fifties, and two of the four men were quite obviously overweight.
They looked nothing like the American contract killer he’d been working with, and Tarek found himself disappointed.
Voland spoke softly to Tarek as the men hefted bags out of the rear of the SUV. Clearly he recognized what Tarek was thinking. “It’s been a few years since I’ve seen them, but they are a team that works together all over the world. They have quite a good reputation. Don’t worry . . . they will handle themselves.”
From his comment Tarek thought Voland seemed worried about the men’s appearance himself.
Voland stepped forward and met the men in the middle of the parking circle, greeting them with warm and familiar handshakes, and with pats on the back he walked one of the men back over to the Syrian. The Frenchman said, “Dr. Halaby, I present to you Monsieur Paul Boyer.” Tarek shook the hand of a heavy-set man with a trim gray beard and thin combed-over hair.
Boyer spoke with a French accent. “I and my men are at your service, Doctor. We’d like to be set up by nightfall, so perhaps we can do our formal introductions later.”
“Bien sûr, Monsieur Boyer.”
All four men passed into the house; the three associates of Boyer never even looked up as they walked by Tarek.
Halaby turned again to Voland, but the Frenchman spoke before the Syrian doctor could air his concerns. “Boyer is French, a former major in the French Foreign Legion. The others are Campbell from Scotland, Laghari from India, and Novak from Hungary. All Legionnaires.”
Tarek said, “Four men, Vincent? I hope it’s enough.”
Voland smiled. “If Drexler finds this house, he’ll have backup, for sure. But remember, he’s working for Shakira, not Ahmed, so he can’t use resources from the Syrian government. He’ll have some local cops, like the two you met in your apartment, and they’ll be cut down before they get within one hundred meters of Mademoiselle Medina.”
Tarek felt a little better with this reminder.
Voland said, “Now, let’s see where Boyer positions his men, so we can move your men to provide the best additional coverage.”
The men returned to the house to speak with the FSEU security staff. Another night was coming, and despite Voland’s confidence, with the darkness came danger.
* * *
• • •
On the far side of the house, Rima Halaby descended the stairs that led to the wine cellar. She’d taken to checking on Bianca twice a day, spending an hour with her, gently reminding the beautiful model that all was not lost, since the American was surely somewhere right now looking to get himself into Syria.
At the bottom of the stairs she looked across the length of the large wine cellar and saw Firas, and when she did, she sighed. He had been down here all the previous night, and all day long, so when she saw him slumped over the tiny wine table she did not get angry. As long as the door to Bianca’s room was closed and locked, Rima saw no problem with her nephew taking brief naps throughout the day.
As she walked across the concrete floor, her footfalls echoed in the room, and she expected Firas to stir. When he did not, she called to him.
“I brought a sleeping bag down here yesterday, Firas. Why don’t you use it and get some rest?”
The young schoolteacher did not move.
“Firas? How is our guest?”
The young man did stir now, but he just moved his arm a little on the table, and in so doing, he knocked a wineglass onto the floor, shattering it. Rima was surprised by this, but doubly so when she saw a second glass, half filled with red wine, on the table.
She raced the rest of the way across the small room, and now she saw the two empty bottles on the floor.
“Firas!” she shouted, and her nephew sat up, ramrod straight, but he was disoriented, confused.
Clearly, he was drunk.
Now she moved to the door to the guest quarters, put her hand on the latch, and tested it.
To her dismay, the door opened, and to her horror, the room was empty. She ran through the narrow room to the bathroom; the door was open and it was unoccupied.
Now she ran back into the wine cellar, over to the storeroom adjacent to Medina’s quarters. She threw this door open, hoping against hope she’d see the model in here, but instead she just saw racks of cleaning solvents, mops, furniture polish, and other housekeeping supplies.
“Firas!” she shouted again. “Where did she go?”
Back in the wine cellar, Firas was standing now on wobbly legs, but he wasn’t responsive to his aunt’s question.
Rima didn’t have her phone on her, nor did she have a radio. It occurred to her that she wouldn’t know the code to use Firas’s iPhone, and this was something they should have organized before an emergency. She ran over to her nephew, opened up his jacket, and checked to see if his gun was still there.
* * *
• • •
Bianca Medina opened the door from the hearth room that led out to the stone patio at the back of the home. Beyond the manicured lawn, a forest of hard woods looked dark and foreboding now as dusk set in, but she knew she had a much better chance of disappearing out there in the dark, so she fought against her fear and steeled herself to make a run for it.
She had grown more and more worried with each passing hour that Ahmed would simply kill Jamal back in Damascus, even if the American did his best to get there before he could do it. Bianca had spent the last three days thinking of nothing but her son, his predicament, and her utter inability to do anything to help him. She was his mother, and she found it unacceptable to just sit there in a tiny room off a wine cellar thousands of miles away from where her baby was in mortal danger.
So she’d decided to act with the tools available to her. Beauty, charm, intelligence, and a mother’s ceaseless tenacity to protect her child.
And one more thing . . . the ability to drink most men under the table, assisted by the fact she’d been drinking wine heavily since her midteens.
She’d knocked on the door to ask Firas for a glass of wine from the cellar, and within ten minutes of him obliging her, they were drinking Bordeaux together. She’d asked him about his life and his family, and she’d learned that he was the nephew of Rima and Tarek, and he’d lost two cousins in the war: the Halabys’ adult children.
They talked for an hour and drank two bottles of wine. Every now and then Firas would receive a text from upstairs checking on him, and he’d confirm all was well, but Bianca worried the entire time someone would come downstairs to relieve him, in which case she’d have to start all over with another guard, another life story, and more red wine.
But soon enough, the young schoolteacher’s eyes went fuzzy and he put his head down on the table, and even though he wasn’t unconscious, he was disoriented enough to where Bianca just told him she was going to the bathroom in her little cell, but instead she stepped around a rack of brut champagnes. When she felt sure his attention was not on the situation around him but instead on trying not to puke, she darted up the stairs.
She’d made it through the kitchen and the hearth room, and now it was time to flee the house entirely. She felt that if she could get to a road she could find a ride, and if she could find a ride she could get a phone. Her plan was to contact Jamal’s au pair, Yasmin, and have her get a message to Ahmed that she had been kidnapped by Syrian expat insurgents, and this would ensure the safety of Jamal.
She stood up now, took a deep breath, and started to run.
“Take one more step and I’ll shoot one of those long legs of yours!”
The sound of Rima Halaby’s voice behind her, more stern now than Bianca had ever heard it, stopped her in her tracks. She raised her hands but did not turn back around at first.
Bianca said, “Madame, I am begging you. Please just let me go. It’s the only chance for my son.”
“The only chance for your son is the American who promised to put his life on the line for him, so the least you could do is fulfill your end of the deal and stay here.”
Bianca turned around and lowered her hands.
“You and I are different, Doctor.”
“This is true.”
“I mean that you are able to trust men. I am not so trusting.”
“I don’t trust all men. But that man, I believed that he believed he could do it, and that was enough for me.”
“But you have no idea what it’s like down there in Damascus now. There is no way he’ll survive, and by failing, he will reveal to Ahmed that I told you about Jamal.”
“Believe, daughter. Allah sent him to help us.”
“If that American is an angel, Rima, then he is an angel of death.”
Rima’s face hardened. “Perhaps that’s just what my country needs right now.” She looked at Bianca. “A man is risking his life for your child. He owes you nothing, your child nothing, me nothing. But he’s doing it. Believe in him. And believe me, daughter, if you try to run away again, I will kill you with my own two hands.”
* * *
• • •
Rima led Bianca through the hearth room on their way back down to the cellar stairs off the kitchen. The gun was low in her hand; she didn’t need it, but it was there in case Bianca decided again to run.
As the women entered the kitchen, they passed by Vincent Voland and Boyer, the leader of the new team of security men. Rima gave a slight embarrassed nod, Bianca just looked to the floor, and soon they both disappeared down the stairs.
Boyer shook his head and turned to Voland. “Vincent, if you are having trouble keeping the prisoner in, you might find it doubly so keeping a motivated enemy out.”
“Well then, I’m glad I hired you all. Whatever just happened, we will be certain it doesn’t happen again. You just worry about the threats from outside, and we’ll get things straightened out on the inside.”
Boyer said, “Put your people around the house, in the windows. My team and I will split. Two of us at the front, two of us in back. We’ll cover ninety degrees per man during the evenings.” Boyer pulled the cocking handle back on the MP5 submachine gun hanging from a sling over his shoulder. “We’ll be ready if they come, mon amie.”
CHAPTER 33
Gentry, Saunders, and the two remaining militiamen had spent the entire afternoon driving south towards the Desert Hawks Brigade base near Damascus, stopping at loyalist checkpoints along the way. After the ambush up north, the men all but expected another engagement by hostile forces, but no attacks came. Even so, on two occasions between Homs and Damascus they passed wrecked-out and burned-out vehicles and evidence of other assaults on the highway, and twice more loyalist checkpoints had been hastily erected because of insurgent activity near the highway.
Originally Saunders had planned on completing the drive from the air base near Latakia to the camp near Damascus by five p.m., but it was almost eight thirty when he, Court, and the two militiamen rolled up the Damascus Airport Motorway and turned into the Babbila district to the southeast of the city. After another few minutes of driving, they pulled into a short line of vehicles waiting to enter the base of Liwa Suqur al Sahara, the Desert Hawks Brigade.
Court had been to Syria a few times before in his career, both with the CIA as a member of a hunter/killer team known as the Goon Squad and as a private assassin. He’d once assassinated the Nigerian minister of energy in the northeastern Syrian town of al Hasakah. But this was his first time in the capital. Driving around the city to get to the southeastern edge, he’d been impressed by the urban sprawl. It was well developed and modern, and from what he could tell from the highway, the city didn’t seem to have any trouble with electricity or much trouble with infrastructure, although he imagined once you got into any remaining rebel strongholds, suddenly the lights would stop working and the roads would be a disaster.
But he was in the geographical heart of the regime now, and the regime seemed to have things, more or less, in working order.
They stopped at the front gates, made it through security, passed through the concrete-and-razor-wire barricade, and rolled up to a large, long barracks building. Here the four men climbed out, all tired from their eventful day. The two Desert Hawks soldiers headed off in one direction, and Court followed Saunders through the night in the other.
Saunders took Court into the administrative building, where he was processed into the base, given a badge as a member of KWA employed by the Desert Hawks, in
troduced to a few officers working on this Saturday evening, and then the two men headed back into the night.
After a ten-minute walk through rows of barracks and warehouses, they stepped into the KWA team room positioned in a building near the center of the base. Saunders nodded at ten or so men sitting in the dark around a TV playing a DVD of a superhero film. “Lads,” he said, “meet Wade.”
There were a few nods and a couple of grunts. Half the men didn’t even look up.
It wasn’t really much of a welcome.
A muscular man in his forties wearing shorts and a tank top sat at a table and spoke up in a South African accent. “Heard you got hit.”
Saunders said, “Bloody full-on Al Nusra ambush. Twenty-five oppo personnel, minimum, and two technicals with bleedin’ cannons on ’em.”
“Friendly losses?”
“Six KIA, twelve WIA. It took an Mi-28 to end the bloody thing.”
“Jesus,” muttered a bearded and tatted American lying in his underwear on a sofa along the wall. “And all we did today was show ragheads how to throw frags through doors without them bouncing back in their faces.”
Another man—Court thought he detected a Dutch accent from him—said, “You boys murder any of the fuckers?”
Saunders slapped Court on the back. “We’ve got us a real shooter here. Our new Canuck Wade took out two ZU-23 gunners at five hundred meters.”
“Sweet,” the American said, but there were no more questions about the attack.
The South African stood up and walked over to shake Court’s hand. “I’m Van Wyk. Team leader. Got an e-mail from Klossner himself about you this morning. He told me to fold you into the unit and you’d fit in like you’ve been workin’ with us for years. High praise from a man who doesn’t deal it out.”
