by Mark Greaney
So he hoped a confrontation would start without him being the one identified with starting it.
And to that end, things looked like they were going his way. The Russians were up and heading over towards the commotion, with a couple of the Tigers in tow.
A big Russian stepped up to Court, and he spoke in English. “You take this guy’s mobile phone?” It appeared one of the Tigers was a Russian speaker, and he wanted a translator he thought would be on the side of his friend missing the device.
Court stood from his chair, not aggressively but certainly not passively. A group of a dozen Russians and Syrian special forces men stood around the KWA table now, so all the other KWA men at the table stood up, ready to defend themselves if necessary.
Court lifted his shirt and turned around, exposing his bare stomach and back. In English he said, “This guy is full of shit. I don’t have his phone.”
The Russian spoke in Russian to the Syrian special forces man, Walid butted in with a comment of his own, and several Arab men began shouting at Walid.
Court stepped forward a half step, and the big Russian saw it as a provocation. He put a hand out and shoved Court in the chest. It was an aggressive move, but it didn’t constitute the opening to a brawl. Court realized if he started slinging punches it would be obvious he was the one who started the fight, and if that happened, it would further single him out among the other patrons in the bar.
Walid and the Tiger soldier whose phone was now in a garbage can in the back alley began yelling at each other again, and the KWA men had more or less squared off against the Russians. Brunetti—the Argentine—put his finger in the face of another Syrian and began threatening him in Spanish that was understood by no one else in the room save for Court.
The semispontaneous fight Court had been hoping for was gathering steam. But none of the confrontations going on in the room had crossed the line to the jumping-off point where all the testosterone present would lead to the massive melee he was looking for.
An idea came to Court that he hoped might just make the fight break out without him being the one to throw the first punch. The big Russian—still looming over him—looked like he was about to turn around and go back to his seat, so Court addressed him in Russian.
“My friend here with the Desert Hawks thinks you Russian Air Force guys are pussies because you are afraid to fight on the ground like men.”
The man looked at Court cockeyed. Court’s mastery of Russian wasn’t complete, but he’d clearly gotten his idea across. The Russian turned to Walid and pointed angrily but he spoke to Court in Russian. “Take this militia loser out of here before we beat his ass.” Court put his hands up, as if to say Okay, and he smiled, and the Russian Air Force soldier glared a moment more before looking back to his friends. The Tiger Forces men seemed to think the drama was over, so they, too, seemed to relax their guard a little.
But Court turned back to Walid, and as he did he dropped his smile and adopted an expression of astonishment.
Walid saw the look on the Westerner, and he’d heard Court speak to the Russian in his own language.
In Arabic, Walid asked, “What did he say?” He looked to Saunders for the answer, but Court understood the question, and he replied in Arabic.
“Something in Russian. Just talk. Forget it.”
But all Court’s facial cues were controlled to give the impression the man had said something horrible while pointing to Walid. Not satisfied with Court’s answer, the Syrian major shouted now. “What did he say?”
The Syrian men turned back towards the table with the mercs and the Desert Hawks officer.
Court took a brief moment to weigh his options. He had been in the Middle East many times with the Goon Squad years ago, and back then he and the guys had a running tally of all the creative ways people swear in Arabic. Court’s personal favorite was Khalil aire wa kloo, which meant “Pickle my dick and eat it.” But for purposes of sending Walid over the edge right now, he decided to take a bigger tool out of his toolbox. “He said, ‘Yelan el kees hali khalakak.’”
Court knew there might have been a ruder phrase to an Arabic man than “Curse the pussy that made you,” but if there was, he sure couldn’t imagine it.
Walid’s eyes narrowed, and then they flashed over to the Russian. The big Russian saw the anger, and he froze to evaluate the Arab’s look. The special forces soldier missing his phone turned to the Russian in surprise, not having heard what the Russian had said but hearing Court’s translation over the music.
Other Arabic speakers near Court’s table gasped.
It was as if all the air in the room had been sucked away in a breath.
And then, in the center of nearly twenty angry men, Walid was the first to move.
With a jolting and frantic motion, he reached behind his back, under his shirt, and he pulled out a gun.
CHAPTER 36
Court hadn’t known that Walid was in possession of a firearm, which meant the major had done a good job concealing it, both from Court and from the bouncer downstairs. Apparently the other contractors also were clueless, because they all reacted with shock and surprise.
Broz was closest to Walid, and he saw the pistol as the militiaman swung it up towards the Russian. The Croatian’s reflexes were damn good, but consistent with the principle that action beats reaction, all he could do was stick a hand out for the gun as the Syrian leveled it at the Russian.
Walid got a shot off but managed to miss a room full of people and hit the ceiling. Broz disarmed Walid with a shoulder shove and a pull of the weapon, but not before the Tiger Forces man who had been looking for his phone pulled his own pistol.
Anders, the Dutch KWA man, kicked a chair across the floor and it slammed into the Tiger’s legs, knocking him forward. His weapon went off before he had it leveled, and the round struck the table between Saunders and Brunetti, and by now all the women in the bar and half the men had either hit the deck or begun running for the exit. The other half of the patrons, including all the Russians and the Syrian Tigers, had enough training to know better than to turn away from a gun when it was in range of their backs, so some of the men attacked in the direction of Broz to get the pistol he’d yanked from Walid, and the others began swinging at what they perceived to be the greatest threat within reach.
The bar fight that Court wanted so badly had begun, but he was already regretting it.
The big Russian was only four feet away from Court, and he turned to grab a vodka bottle off a table behind him. On Court’s right Saunders, Brunetti, and Anders began mixing it up with a group of Syrians. Court counted three Russians grabbing bar stools and coming his way, while Broz swung the pistol he’d pulled from Major Walid up towards the Tiger Forces man who, while now flat on the ground, still had his gun raised.
But the gun in the hands of the man on the floor was accidentally kicked away by a Syrian who tripped and fell on his back, and at the same time, Broz was tackled hard from the right.
The weapon the KWA contractor held skidded away from him and across the floor.
Court ducked a flying bar stool, deflected the swing of the vodka bottle by the big Russian who’d accosted him, and fired a hard forearm into the man’s trachea, temporarily collapsing the man’s windpipe and dropping him to the ground. To his right Saunders had been tackled by a Syrian, and together he and his attacker rolled over the table where Court and the KWA men had been sitting.
Brunetti threw a beer bottle that hit a Syrian holding a chair over his head, and Anders blocked a hook from a Russian and countered it with a punch to the stomach and an elbow uppercut to the jaw.
As Court moved towards one of the pistols on the ground, he couldn’t help but notice that this bar fight had devolved into an every-man-for-himself situation on the part of the KWA contractors; the mercs weren’t engaged in helping one another but instead were either fighting for the
pleasure of it or fighting to beat back the men attacking them.
The camaraderie Court had known while working on a paramilitary team in the CIA or around other civilian security contractors over the years was nowhere in sight with these mercs.
The armed bouncer from downstairs came through the stairwell with a gun in his hand and was immediately set upon by a pair of Russian soldiers, who both decked him and hit him with a beer bottle, sending him crawling out of the room and back down the stairs.
Court blocked a spinning bar stool with a chair, and then he slung the chair fifteen feet across the center of the room, where it slammed into the back and head of a man kneeling to pick up one of the two loose firearms on the floor. The man went down hard after taking the hit, but the attacker with the bar stool got a second swing in, and Court could only fire an arm up to absorb it.
The blow caused Court to stumble ten feet to his left, all the way over to the windows that looked out to the street in front of the club. The Russian who hit Court charged again, but this time the American ducked the swinging bar stool, causing the man to spin with the momentum. Court used the opportunity to grab him from behind, and he slammed him into the wall between the windows.
The man crashed face-first against the bricks, and the bar stool left his grasp and slammed hard against the window, sending fissures across the one-meter-by-two-meter pane.
The Russian was dazed but not out of it. Court grabbed him by the head and tried to drive him again into the wall, but the man spun and caught Court in a bear hug and lifted his feet off the ground for an instant, nearly toppling him. An elbow into the eye of the Russian short-circuited his offensive move, and while he recovered from the stunning blow, Court separated himself enough to deliver a heel kick to the crotch. He spun back around and sent a knee hard to the falling man’s nose.
The knee sent the man’s head snapping back as he fell backwards, and it slammed into the cracked windowpane, shattering it outright.
As soon as the sounds of breaking glass dissipated, Court could hear sirens outside in the street. It sounded like several emergency vehicles were just pulling up out front. This would mean guns and truncheons and handcuffs and express rides to jail, and Court didn’t want to hang around for any of that.
As the Russian dropped onto his face and out of the fight, Court turned around to see Saunders pounding a Syrian on the floor behind the table, and Anders and Broz kick-stomping the Tiger Forces soldier whose phone Court had stolen. Brunetti was bleeding from the head and face, standing in the middle of the room looking for another challenger, and Walid had miraculously staggered closer to the stairwell without taking a beating from anyone involved in the fight.
Court saw him there, legs unsteady, with the half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s in his hand. He wasn’t wielding the bottle as a weapon; he was holding it up to his mouth to take another swig.
Court had missed a Syrian on the floor on the far side of the table till the man pulled himself back to his feet just three feet from where Court stood. The soldier lunged at Court, but the American’s reflexes were good enough to wristlock the man’s hand, spin behind him, and yank him pitilessly back down to the floor onto his back, where he kicked the man in the head, knocking him unconscious.
Quickly Court scanned around the room for the loose pistols; he saw one on the floor and the other in the hands of a bartender, who picked the weapon up and took it behind the bar, as if to protect his bar against any attempts to steal the booze.
Court started again for the one gun he could spot on the floor, but a young bearded Syrian got to it first. He lifted it into the air and fired a single round over his head, bringing the fighting around the room to an immediate halt.
From the direction of the stairwell Court heard the whistles, the fresh shouting, the sounds of voices that could have only come from police or soldiers here to break up the fight and break the heads of anyone who resisted.
The armed man dropped the pistol, but a Russian standing near the stairwell threw a punch at the first uniformed officer through the door.
Court knew there would be a lot more cops behind that one, so he decided to make a break for it. He still planned on using the fight as a means to slip out to make a call, so he hustled to the shattered window and climbed out, careful to avoid lacerating himself in the process. He put his feet on the window’s ledge and looked down, but just as he did so he heard the police in the room behind him. A large commercial window unit air conditioner was in the next window, and he decided that if it was braced from the bottom, it should support his weight. He climbed over and up onto it quickly, shielding himself from being seen from inside the second floor.
He saw no fast way down to the ground floor other than a straight drop of twelve feet. It was just sidewalk below, so he decided against this approach. Instead he lay down on his stomach on the window unit, and it creaked and squeaked against the strain. Feeling down below it he was happy to find braces that led at 45-degree angles to anchor into the wall of the building, and he held on to one of these, lowered himself off the unit, and swung down below it.
With his feet just three feet off the ground now, he dropped the rest of the way onto the sidewalk. Here dozens of men and women—patrons of the bar, mostly—stood around. Parked in the street not far away, Court saw two Toyota Hilux pickup trucks bearing the symbol of the NDF, the National Forces, the pro-government militia that had been co-opted as a secondary law enforcement entity here in the police state of Damascus. The vehicles seemed to be unmanned, and Court thought about stealing one to get away, but since there were people watching him right now, and since the phone he’d gone through so much to get was still sitting in the garbage behind the disco, he decided to go for that instead.
Court entered the front door of Bar 80 now, heading to the back exit. There were a surprising number of patrons still inside, idiots all, Court told himself, and the police and NDF were all over the place. With Court’s dark hair, beard, and civilian clothing, he didn’t stick out in the crowd, so he just moved through, heading to the back exit so he could get to the alley.
As he passed the stairwell, a group of police and NDF descended, with Saunders at their center. He was handcuffed, his upper lip was fat, the buttons of his shirt had been ripped off, and sweat mixed with a little smeared blood on his bald head. The Brit, who had been cursing out the cops in Arabic, saw the man he knew as Wade and switched into English.
“You lucky prick, how did they miss you?”
Court kept walking, but gave the man a wink.
“Find Walid and get back to base. Don’t go alone. You’ll get popped at a checkpoint if you try. We’ll be out in a few hours, but Brunetti’s got ’imself a busted nose.”
Court nodded but kept walking towards the back; he didn’t want the cops to pay any attention to him.
At the back door he turned around and looked towards the stairs. Brunetti, Anders, and Broz all were being led out in restraints by NDF and police, along with Russians and even Syrian Tiger Forces soldiers.
Court was alone.
He exited the back door, stepped into the alley, and walked over to the garbage can. The phone was still there, lying on a pile of beer bottles. He plucked it out, wiped it on the leg of his cargo pants, and then began running off, back in the direction of Walid’s car.
He realized the opportunity he had now. This was no longer about finding five minutes to make a phone call before deploying to another part of the nation tomorrow.
Instead, Court knew he had to go for the baby. Right now.
No . . . this wasn’t a perfect situation . . . Far from it. But he would have to make it work.
CHAPTER 37
Court was astonished to find Walid in the parking lot by his car, still holding the bottle of Jack Daniel’s in his hand. The Desert Hawks officer had apparently staggered out of the club with the booze, and while he was obviously sh
itfaced drunk, Court determined he was not drunk enough to suit Court’s purposes.
Together both men took a swig out of the bottle, and they spent a few seconds talking about the fight that had just taken place. Court’s sudden rudimentary Arabic surprised the major. Walid took a second swig of the booze, and then Court directed him to the front passenger seat of the car.
Court climbed behind the wheel, took the keys from a compliant Walid, and then began driving west through Old Town Damascus.
After less than a minute on the road, however, Walid looked out the windshield, then told Court in slurred Arabic that he was going the wrong way. In response Court encouraged him to drink some more whiskey. Walid did so, and as soon as he lowered the bottle, Court removed his own seat belt, then carefully shifted in his seat. He turned his body to the side so he could face Walid and drive at the same time with his left hand. Walid noticed the odd positioning, and he looked at Court with dopey, tired, and just slightly puzzled eyes.
“What are you doing?”
Court answered by firing a blazing right jab out, connecting with Walid’s left eye socket and knocking him flat against the passenger window. The big man went unconscious, then slumped forward, hanging there by his seat belt.
* * *
• • •
A minute later, Court pulled into a dark parking lot at the edge of the Old Town. Here he climbed out, then looked under the dashboard of the car, using the light of the mobile phone to help him. He began identifying fuses that led to different lights in the vehicle. He pulled out the fuses for the rear lights and the brake lights until the lights went out when he tried to deploy them, but he left the fuses barely in place so he could unplug them easily. Righting himself in the driver’s seat, he leaned down and indexed the correct fuses so he could both disconnect and reconnect them without looking.
He spilled a little of the Jack Daniel’s on the major’s tunic and put the bottle in the unconscious man’s right hand. He pulled Walid’s head back to where he didn’t look completely out of it, and when the drunk man’s head drooped forward again, Court lowered the angle of his seatback a few degrees so that his head would stay up.
