by Mark Greaney
There was no question that it was a nice residence, but considering that the man paying the bills for the place was the most powerful and wealthy man in the nation, it wasn’t all that ostentatious. All around in the neighborhood were dozens of properties of similar size and luxury.
Court knew that Ahmed crafted everything towards Shakira not finding out about Bianca and the baby, so even though Bianca had been living in plain sight here, Ahmed wasn’t going to have her living in a home so grandiose it invited special scrutiny from the neighbors.
Through his glass Court saw a single guard on the flat roof of the villa sitting on a chair on the eastern side and facing the street in front of the property and the short circular driveway to it. The large court area in back seemed to be unguarded, but Court suspected there would be cameras and motion detectors.
After a minute of searching he saw a patrolling guard with a flashlight and a short-barreled weapon with a folded wire stock walking slowly around the grounds.
Nope, Court said to himself. No motion detectors to worry about.
He’d asked Bianca about the security force, and she’d said nothing about a patrolling sentry. Court hoped this was the only way Azzam had beefed up the security of the residence in the past few days.
It would be tough to get in, but it didn’t look like it would be much tougher than the hundred other buildings Court had infiltrated in his career.
Court continued scanning the scene over and over, back and forth with the binos. Softly to himself on the rooftop he said, “What am I missing?”
There had to be another level to the security. Ahmed Azzam knew Bianca was missing up in France, and he also knew this was where her son, Ahmed’s son, was being kept. Because of matters out of his full control, Ahmed could not risk moving Jamal, but even if Ahmed trusted Bianca implicitly, Court couldn’t believe for an instant the one stationary guard, who looked as relaxed as he could be, plus another bored guy roving the grounds would be the full measure of the external security set up here.
“Where are you?”
Through the binoculars he scanned the property once more, then widened his search to the streets nearby.
And now he had his answer.
Bianca had warned there would be security at the front gate of the neighborhood, but scanning around inside, Court saw vehicles of the NDF, the National Defence Forces.
Three parked NDF trucks in all. It could easily mean fifteen armed militiamen. All within two hundred yards of the front door of Bianca’s house. This was why the regular security force had relaxed its guard despite the heightened threat to the location.
The neighborhood was protected, the actual block Medina lived on was protected, the front gate of her property was protected, and the grounds were protected, albeit by only a couple of goons who realized they were the fourth ring in from danger, and therefore probably assumed they would be well aware of any threats long before the grounds were breached.
And Court figured it would be safe to assume there would be security men inside the home, as well.
He focused on the closest National Defence Forces unit, parked in a military SUV ahead and on Court’s right, equidistant between himself and Bianca’s home. Through his binos he saw three men standing by the vehicle, all with rifles slung on their shoulders. He figured these guys had no idea they were here protecting one particular home; they’d just been sent to an intersection, likely night after night after night, and although he was certain their leadership read them the riot act about remaining vigilant, it was human nature to let one’s guard down as the hours and days began adding up.
He figured if he could get over the fence into the gated neighborhood, he could probably get close enough to take these bozos out without making too much noise.
But maybe he didn’t have to. He looked down to the uniform he wore, and compared it to the uniform worn by the NDF men. Other than some extra patches on the shoulders of the Desert Hawks Brigade tunic and a slightly more involved camo pattern, the tunic and pants looked virtually the same. The NDF men had black berets, and Major Walid had left the base with only an olive green baseball cap in the back pocket of his trousers, but Court figured his own dark hair, and his short beard that looked just like the short beards worn by a third of the men in their twenties and thirties around here, along with his “I know what I’m doing” attitude, would get him close to the compound, especially if he moved outside the glow of the electric lights of the streets in the neighborhood.
Court took another minute to plot his approach through the streets, alleys, commercial spaces, and residential property between himself and Bianca’s home near the bottom of the hill, then climbed down from the pool and fountain shop.
He muttered to himself as he descended. “Okay, Gentry. Time to steal a baby.”
CHAPTER 40
Former French Foreign Legionnaires Boyer and Novak stood on the rear steps of the farmhouse outside Paris with their Heckler & Koch MP5 subguns held on their shoulders at the ready, their barrels aiming to a figure approaching from the woodline. In the distance the single flashlight bobbed and jittered as it closed, a man clearly walking behind it.
Boyer said, “Call it in to the others.”
As Novak radioed Campbell and Laghari at the front of the house, warning them to be ready, the door to the hearth room off the farmhouse opened behind them. Boyer chanced a look back, and he saw Tarek Halaby standing there in corduroy pants and a dark cardigan, his eyes on the light closing on the house from the back lawn.
His voice revealed his concern. “Who is that?”
In French, Boyer answered, “We don’t know. But if he tries anything, he dies.”
When the light was just forty yards away, Boyer called out in English, “Stop where you are.”
The light stopped moving, and then it clicked off. A voice in French replied, “I am unarmed. I will comply with all your orders, monsieurs.”
The two men illuminated the figure with their weapon lights. The man covered his face and eyes with his hands to block it from his eyes.
“This could be a trick,” Tarek said, and this annoyed Boyer, who hadn’t spent the vast majority of his fifty-five years in third-world hellholes just so he could be told how to do his job by a surgeon with an address on the Left Bank of Paris. Still, Halaby was the client, so Boyer just said, “Go back inside, Doctor. We’ll search him and bring him to you for questioning.”
Halaby did as instructed, shutting the door behind him.
Novak called out to the man in the light now. “Turn around and step backwards with your hands raised.”
The figure obeyed, but as he stepped up a gentle slope in the grass and through a waist-high hedge, he looked back in the direction of the two men holding guns on him.
“Turn back around!” ordered Boyer.
But the man only halfway turned, and he stopped moving. After a moment, he called out. “Paul? Paul Boyer? Is that you?”
Boyer looked to Novak, who looked back to Boyer. The Frenchman said, “Who the fuck is asking?”
The man with his hands raised laughed loud enough to be heard across the patio. “What are the chances, my friend? It’s me. Sebastian. We worked together in Malawi. Again in Entebbe. Not so many years ago.”
Boyer lowered his weapon. “Drexler?”
“In the flesh. As I said, I’m unarmed, so if you would do me the courtesy of not shooting me, I would greatly appreciate it.”
Boyer looked to Novak now but kept his gun up and on Drexler. “Go check him out. And be careful . . . he’s a sly fox.”
Drexler heard this, and he chuckled in the dark. “How’s that exquisite wife of yours, Paul?”
“She left me. Married a Kenyan government minister.”
“Never could stand that bitch, if you don’t mind my saying.”
“Not in the least. How’ve you been, Drex?�
�
* * *
• • •
Tarek Halaby stood in the hearth room at the back of the house, his hands on his hips, as Sebastian Drexler was brought inside by the two ex-Legionnaires. Novak returned to the rear grounds, but Boyer remained behind Drexler, his weapon low, but ready to raise it in a hurry if necessary.
Tarek spoke to the prisoner. “Do you speak French?”
“I do, Doctor. In fact, you and I have spoken before. On the phone the other day.”
Tarek’s eyes widened. “Eric?”
“Correct.”
“Why are you here?”
Drexler said, “With apologies and with respect, I will speak with Monsieur Vincent Voland alone, or I will not speak at all. I should, however, let you know that I have colleagues close by and, unlike me, they have not come this evening to talk. I only ask that you allow me to speak with Vincent with an aim to preventing a very unfortunate event from taking place tonight.”
Tarek asked, “What makes you think I know this Vincent Voland you speak of?”
Drexler smiled. “Because five minutes ago I saw him enter this door right here. Please, Doctor, there is not much time. Let’s not play games.”
CHAPTER 41
Like a knife through butter, Court passed the first and second rings of defense with ease. He’d entered the grounds of a mosque, then climbed the wall into Bianca’s gated Western Villas neighborhood via a Turkish pine, and dropped down into the paved and walled rear courtyard of a patisserie. He moved in the dark through the café tables of the closed eatery, then climbed a smaller stone lattice wall and found himself two streets over from Bianca’s home.
Just as Bianca had suggested, it was clear now to Court that security here had indeed been heightened in light of what had happened in Paris. But also as she’d guessed, it was also clear that Jamal was still here. Court could imagine no other reason for all the guns and guys.
A Toyota Hilux pickup bearing the colors and insignia of the NDF drove by with two men in the cab and two more sitting in the bed. Once they were past, Court crossed the two-laned street and entered the property of a small apartment complex, passing a lighted guard shack and the man inside it by no more than twenty-five feet.
At the rear of this property he looked down a gentle hill, through a gardened property, and to a road beyond. Halfway down the road, an NDF vehicle was parked, and at the far end sat the target location.
Medina’s Mediterranean-style home.
Court descended the hill in the dark and walked through the property, and a motion light turned on. A door opened on a second-floor balcony and a man looked out into the light.
Court gave the man a bored wave and kept walking.
The man waved back—seeing the uniform, no doubt—and closed the door behind him.
Court marched along the street for a moment, still in the dark, and was seen by a pair of teenagers holding each other while leaning against the wall of a parking garage adjacent to an apartment building. They paid him little attention and quickly returned to their intimate moment.
It occurred to Court that in many of the Middle Eastern nations he’d visited, this unmarried girl alone with this boy would find themselves in a great deal of trouble. Here in Syria, however, the nation’s liberal views protected them, even if its leadership threatened to condemn them all to death in a never-ending civil war.
He skirted the NDF men in the street by moving through another apartment building property, but this meant he found himself walking through lighted areas next to men and women still out past one a.m. on this Sunday morning. A small market was open, an outdoor café cooked sizzling meat on a grill, and he passed a tea shop with tables spilling out into the common areas of the apartment building where men and women smoked hookahs.
Court marched straight through it all, even past a pair of Syrian police officers who acknowledged him with little head bobs, but he maintained his visage of authority, his air of entitlement to be exactly where he was, doing exactly what he was doing.
No one gave him a second glance, and no one thought of him after he passed.
A minute later he moved back into the dark, through the private gardens next door to Medina’s walled home. His eyes scanned for lights, guards, motion detectors, homeowners, and dogs, and when a Syrian police car rolled to a stop next to the NDF vehicle, Court just held his position against the wall in the forecourt of the residence until he satisfied himself that the arrival of the cops did not mean he’d been sighted. He moved out again and soon reached the wall that adjoined Bianca’s rear courtyard.
He pulled himself up onto the eight-foot-high masonry partition. Once he was settled, he peeked over the edge of the wall in an attempt to spot the roving guard. It was too dark to make out the man, but he could see a flashlight moving around the northern wing of the home towards the front of the grounds. He hoisted himself quickly over and then hung down, dropped silently onto the tiles along the wall, and began moving up towards the house. He avoided pathway lighting by stepping into garden beds, and soon he passed the tiled pool and arrived at a cluster of patio furniture protected just under the second-floor balcony that ran the length of the base of the U-shaped house. Court moved between a sofa and a large chair and knelt down, placing his back to a wall that ran perpendicular to three sets of doors to the home.
A large set of glass double doors was in the middle, covered on the inside with curtains, and next to the doors on the outside wall was a keypad for the alarm system. Twenty feet to the left of the double doors was a single sliding glass door. Court imagined it would lead to a downstairs bedroom. And on the far right, fifty feet from where Court knelt, was a single wooden door. This might have led to the kitchen or perhaps to a garden room.
He saw no movement through any of the windows, but he was sure there were armed men inside. Bianca had explained to him that the guards he’d find on the property were a Ba’ath Party security unit made up of only Alawis. Ahmed pulled from this unit to staff his presidential protection detail, so it was no surprise he used other members as his clandestine security force to look over the woman he saw as the future first lady. And since they were Alawi, they would not hold any sectorial or familial allegiance to Shakira Azzam, a Sunni Muslim.
Whoever was in the house right now, Court knew they would have more skill than the NDF men he’d waltzed past to get there. And since he could see the red light on the alarm keypad by the door, he also knew the three exterior doors at the rear of the home would all be alarmed and, most likely, locked.
Getting inside the house itself was always going to be one of the trickier parts of his operation. Coming here tonight, without the benefit of the tools he’d hoped to acquire for a successful break-in, meant he had to be flexible about his points of entry, and he’d have to be as patient as he could be, while still keeping in account the fact that he wanted to be at the Jordanian border before the sun came up in six hours.
He had the alarm code that Bianca had given him, but he had no way of knowing if it had been changed since she’d been kidnapped, and the last thing he wanted to do was key in a string of numbers that would set alarms squealing all over the grounds.
He knew he could grab one of the outside guards and get the number from him, but he was hoping to avoid any chance of detection as long as possible. He moved to the sliding glass door, careful to keep from being seen through the glass by anyone in the room. As he got to the wall next to it, he peered around the side and saw it was, indeed, a bedroom, but there was no one inside.
He didn’t try the door; even if it had been unlocked, the home alarm system was engaged, so opening it was the last thing he wanted to do. Instead he looked inside at the track the door would travel along to open, checking it for any secondary bracing or locking system. He saw nothing and decided this door would be his entry point when the time was right.
For now he retreated a f
ew feet on the patio, tucked himself into the darkest corner of the grounds near the door, and waited, his eyes on the alarm keypad by the double doors, twenty-five feet away. He was hoping a roving guard might switch positions with a static man inside, a man inside might step out to check on his mates, or a person in the house would decide they needed some fresh air. In any of these cases someone would have to turn off the alarm, and Court told himself he’d be ready.
Court couldn’t wait all night for good luck, but he told himself he’d give it an hour before tackling the guy with a flashlight and beating the alarm code out of him.
Brute force often wasn’t the best option, but sometimes it was the only option.
CHAPTER 42
Vincent Voland had dressed for bed and lain down on the sofa in the library of the farmhouse, on the far side of the property from the activity at the back, but after taking a minute to change back into his suit and arm himself, he was brought into the kitchen by one of the Syrian guards. Here Tarek Halaby told him the man he’d been warning everyone about was sitting on a bench in the hearth room, he was unarmed, and he said he had come to prevent a tragedy.
Voland smiled at this. Drexler probably had a car full of half-drunk French cops up the road whom he’d use as a bargaining chip to get Medina handed to him without a fight. It wouldn’t work; Voland would simply take Drexler into custody and pass him over to French authorities, and if the dirty cops came up the drive, the houseful of armed Syrians and the four veteran security men would make short work of them.
Voland took an extra moment to compose himself, to steel his mind to finally meet Drexler face-to-face, and to control his hands from shaking with the excitement of finally catching this elusive quarry. To Tarek he asked, “Are all six of your men inside the house?”
“Yes. The Legionnaires are outside, but my men are inside. I have three resting and three watching the property from second-story windows.”
