Coup d’État

by Ben Coes

  A noise came over a radio on the belt of the dead guard, words in Urdu.

  “Their captain’s checking in,” whispered Millar. “We need to move.”

  “How many are down?” asked Bradstreet.

  “Four,” said Dewey, “including one in the back alley.”

  “You got three more dudes,” said the Bradstreet over the COMM. “Maybe four.”

  Dewey moved to the door, the suppressor on the end of the MP7 aimed at the ceiling. Iverheart and Millar crouched to their knees on each side of the door, weapons ready.

  The radio squawked again, the voice more insistent this time.

  “They’re looking for a response from the guy on the first floor,” whispered Millar.

  Millar swung his MP7 around. He extended the stock of the submachine gun, locked it into place, then moved the fire selector to full auto.

  “You’re entering at six o’clock,” said Margaret on the COMM. “Karreff’s apartment is at midnight.”

  “Quickly and quietly,” whispered Dewey. “We don’t want the general to hear us.”

  Dewey nodded at Iverheart. Slowly, Iverheart pulled the door ajar. Dewey pressed the silencer’s tip against the small crack that soon appeared as Iverheart eased the door open. Light flashed into the stairwell.

  Dewey saw the green of a uniform just inside the door. He spied brown eyes, short-cropped black hair, the silver black steel of an UZI SMG. Dewey moved the suppressor’s tip up a few inches. He pulsed the trigger of the MP7 just once. The soldier’s body catapulted violently, hit the wall, then crumpled to the floor.

  Iverheart yanked the door open.

  * * *

  Dewey went right. A tall Pakistani soldier turned and sprinted, running desperately toward the corner of the hallway.

  Dewey charged at him, submachine gun out and firing full into hail. Silenced bullets tore the wall; the bullet line approached the escaping soldier just as he rounded the corner, out of sight.

  Dewey ran in pursuit of the fleeing soldier, trying to stop him before he could alert Karreff.

  * * *

  A moment after Dewey charged right, Iverheart and Millar moved left. Two more soldiers were standing in the corner, smoking cigarettes.

  They barely had time to register the death of the first soldier.

  Millar stayed low, in a crouch, his silenced MP7 in front of him. Iverheart was trailing just behind, silenced MP7 aimed just inches above Millar’s head.

  Millar fired first, putting a hole in the first soldier’s forehead. The second man raised his UZI and fired wildly as he turned and ran down the hall toward Karreff’s apartment.

  Millar charged down the corridor and dived just before the corner. He rolled with the machine gun in his right hand out in front of him. He landed on the hard linoleum in the same instant he pulled the trigger of the MP7.

  The fleeing soldier was halfway down the corridor, still sprinting. Slugs from Millar’s weapon struck his back and he tripped up and rolled. Iverheart hurdled Millar and came upon the soldier, who he thought was dead. The soldier suddenly turned his weapon and fired. A slug passed by Iverheart, but one hit Millar, grazing his neck. Iverheart fired the silenced MP7 into soldier’s neck, killing him.

  * * *

  In the opposite side of the apartment building, Dewey dropped the submachine gun to the ground as he ran, pulling his handgun out as he hit the corner and dived. Bullets tore the wall to his right, just above his head, as he lunged, rolled, and fired. The soldier stood firing at shoulder height, but Dewey was on the ground and his first shot hit the soldier in the forehead, killing him instantly.

  “Clear,” Dewey whispered.

  “We’re clear,” said Iverheart.

  * * *

  Outside the entrance to Karreff’s apartment, they inserted new forty-round magazines into their MP7s.

  “You’re hit,” whispered Dewey, pointing at Millar’s neck.

  Millar had a clean, inch-long gash at the juncture of his neck and shoulder where the bullet had grazed him. Blood coursed down his neck. The collar of his gray T-shirt was quickly turning dark red.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “We’ll sew it up in the car,” said Dewey.

  “Karreff’s awake,” Margaret said over the COMM. “He may have heard something.”

  Iverheart pulled a snap gun from his vest. He moved to the door, pushed the tip of the snap gun into it, then pulled the trigger. He turned the device and pushed the door in, quietly.

  Iverheart stepped into a long entrance corridor, followed by Millar then Dewey, who shut the door behind him. The apartment was big and eerily quiet, save for music—classical violin—playing somewhere in a distant room.

  “What’s he doing?” asked Dewey, whispering.

  “He was getting a book,” said Margaret. “You’re still clean.”

  Dewey looked at Millar, pointed at his neck wound, then nodded toward the kitchen. Millar nodded and stepped away to clean up the fresh wound.

  “Is there a suture in the IFAK?” whispered Dewey.

  “Yes,” said Margaret. “Two. There’s also some Quik clot.”

  Dewey moved toward a doorway at the far end of the living room. His MP7 was in his right hand, tucked against his side. He opened another door, which led to a dimly lit hallway. The music was louder now. At the end of the hallway, the bedroom door was ajar. Light spilled from the room.

  The sound of violins combined with the quiet murmur of voices.

  Dewey reached out with his left hand and placed his fingers against the wood frame of the door. He pushed the door in.

  On the king-sized bed, a beautiful dark-haired woman lay reclined. She was dressed in a pink nightgown. The woman sat back against a large red pillow. A reading light attached to the white headboard articulated over her shoulder. She wore reading glasses. Her long black hair had specks of gray.

  Karreff’s mistress was a large woman. Her cheeks were red and round. Her body spilled against the nightgown’s fabric. But she was still beautiful, that was clear, her face elegant, her nose sharp and perfect. She looked up at Dewey as he stepped forward into the room, handgun raised, silencer jutting out toward the bed. The look of shock on her face paired with a sudden gasp. She attempted to gather the breath to scream, but fear gripped her throat and she could only quiver as she stared up at Dewey.

  Karreff lay next to her, on his side, resting on his arm as he read a book. Karreff’s hair was receding, gray and black, combed neatly to the side. He looked older than the fifty-two years of age he was. Karreff was a thin man and tall. His feet stuck out the end of the bed from beneath the black bedsheet.

  Karreff’s eyes followed his mistress’s, looking up at Dewey as he entered the bedroom. But if her look was one of stunned shock and fear, Karreff’s was one of calm, acceptance even. He remained relaxed on his arm, his sole reaction an involuntary jerk to his right. He casually removed his reading glasses with his right hand as he looked up at Dewey.

  In that brief moment, it was obvious that this was not some sort of typical affair. Whatever Karreff had with the woman was something different. He’d left the war front this night to be with her, to talk and listen to Mozart.

  “Please spare her,” said Karreff calmly in perfect English. “She’s innocent.”

  Dewey knew there could be no witnesses. One phone call from Karreff’s mistress and the entire mission would be over before it started.

  “Margaret, can we rendition a witness?” asked Dewey without removing his eyes or the track of the silencer from Karreff.

  “Yes,” Margaret answered.

  “Meet us in the alley.”

  Dewey aimed the silenced MP7 at Karreff’s naked chest. Karreff held up his right hand.

  “Just tell me,” Karreff whispered. “Are you American?”

  Dewey stared at Karreff. He nodded at him, then fired. A silenced bullet hit Karreff between the eyes. The blunt force of the slug jerked his skull backward. Karreff’s large frame roll
ed off the bed.

  Dewey looked at Karreff’s mistress.

  “Do you speak English?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Get dressed,” said Dewey. “Now. Don’t say a word. If you want to live, don’t say a word. Do you understand?”

  She nodded her head up and down as she wiped tears from her cheeks.

  45

  BENAZIR BHUTTO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

  ISLAMABAD

  Deputy Inspector General Wafeeq Sahi of the Capital Territory Police Department stepped into the cordoned-off area outside the restroom at the now-empty Benazir Bhutto Airport.

  Behind him, in addition to an assortment of assistants and deputies, followed the executive director of Benazir Bhutto Airport, a short, pudgy man named Karim Gola, who was dressed in a light gray suit. He was attempting to get Sahi’s attention, though Sahi wasn’t listening.

  “We now have more than a dozen flights circling in the sky overhead,” pleaded Gola. “Outside the terminal, more than three hundred people are waiting to get in. This disruption—”

  Sahi entered the restroom, stopped a foot inside, and looked down at Gola. He held his hand up, indicating that Gola was not to take another step.

  “You have two dead men in your airport,” said Sahi. “Federal agents. We’ll have this cleaned up as soon as we can. In the meantime, I suggest you make arrangements through PAF to take any planes low on fuel into another part of Chaklala until you’re back open.”

  Sahi stepped into the restroom. He nodded to one of two police officers standing inside the room, indicating he wanted the door shut behind him.

  A sheet of plastic had been laid on the floor, on top of the pool of blood that covered most of the linoleum. The bodies of Parakesh and the other customs agent, Uruquin, were next to each other in the center of the room. A woman in a white coroner’s jacket knelt between the two corpses. She’d stripped the uniforms off the dead mens’ upper torsos and was taking photos. The stab wounds were gruesome. On Parakesh, a half-foot-long horizontal incision across his chest. On Uruquin, a ghastly slash across the neck, his head nearly detached.

  “Hi, Chief,” said the coroner without stopping what she was doing. “Both are homicides, obviously. Nothing exotic, just a very sharp blade.”

  “How recent?”

  “Within the hour.”

  “Was it the same blade?”

  “I don’t know. Most likely. Does it matter?”

  Sahi shrugged. “Probably not.”

  He looked at one of his deputies.

  “Want me to dust it?” asked the deputy.

  “What’s the point?” said Sahi. “There are millions of prints in here. See if you can find any bloody ones, I guess. We’ll cross-reference them with ISI database.”

  He turned to a customs agent at the door.

  “Get me whoever’s running security at the airport now that Parakesh is dead. And get these bodies cleaned up.”

  * * *

  In a windowless conference room a floor above the terminal, Sahi and two of his deputies sat at a large table with the airport’s now senior security official, a uniformed agent named Muhammed Hasni.

  “Any witnesses?” asked Sahi.

  “None that we know of,” said Hasni.

  Sahi looked at one of his deputies.

  “Get a few men interviewing taxi drivers,” said Sahi. “Did anyone pick up any strange passengers? Anyone injured or bleeding? While you’re at it, have someone back at HQ working the hospitals; see if anyone arrived within the last hour with a knife wound or other injury.”

  “What’s our profile, Chief?” asked one of Sahi’s deputies.

  “I don’t know,” said Sahi, shaking his head, bewildered. “Let’s do an inventory. This individual killed two experienced security men, then dragged them into the corner of the bathroom. Parakesh used to be ISI; I knew him. He was a hard-ass who spent years fighting Taliban in Peshawar. These were precise, efficient kills. So that tells me this is not some sort of punk. This guy is strong, efficient. And clearly after something; otherwise why did he need to kill two federal agents? Maybe Parakesh suspected someone coming into the country and tried to stop him? I just don’t know. It seems pretty clear this was done by a professional.”

  “Professional?” asked Hasni.

  “Intelligence agent or special forces. Mossad, CIA, MI6. A foreigner.”

  He paused and removed his glasses.

  “What about passenger manifests?” asked Sahi, looking at Hasni. “I assume we can get at those?”

  “Yes,” said Hasni. “Immediately.”

  “Is the airport linked into the ISI mainframe?” asked Sahi.

  “No,” said Hasni.

  Sahi shook his head. “Let me make a call. I want you to cross-reference the names of arriving male passengers during the two hours leading up to the discovery of the bodies against the ISI database. If anyone is on the ISI list, you tell me immediately.”

  “Got it.”

  “If nobody sets off the ISI alarm bells, let’s look for someone young,” said Sahi. “Someone who could be a foreign agent. American, British, European, Russian, Chinese. Get me a list of any foreign males who arrived in the last two hours.”

  “What are we going to do with the list?” asked one of his deputies.

  “It depends on the size of the list,” said Sahi. “If the group is small enough, we’ll put out an all points bulletin.”

  “Why do you think he killed them?” asked Hasni.

  “The question is not why he killed them,” said Sahi, standing up. “The question is, why is he in Islamabad?”

  46

  DAMAC TOWER

  SOLIDERE DISTRICT

  BEIRUT

  Aswan Fortuna and another man stepped into the lobby of the Damac Tower in downtown Beirut, near the marina. Damac Tower was brand-new with marble, steel, and glass. Modern art hung on every wall. But what was most noticeable about the lobby was none of these; it was the security desk—an elegant but intimidating four-foot-high wall of steel, over which flowed a small waterfall and behind which stood two large men in black uniforms, guns prominently holstered at their waists.

  Fortuna and his bodyguard showed IDs, then walked to the back of the lobby and into an elevator.

  His bodyguard was young, dressed in a long, shiny black leather coat, with a shaved head and a few days’ worth of stubble. Beneath the leather coat, he carried two weapons. In his shoulder holster was a CZ 75 P-07 DUTY 9mm handgun. Tucked into his pants, at his front waist, was a subcompact Glock 33 .357 magnum. He walked in front of his boss. Fortuna wore a blue linen button-down shirt and jeans. As always, Fortuna was unarmed.

  They rode the elevator in silence. When it stopped on the twenty-eighth floor, they stepped directly into the only apartment on the penthouse floor of Beirut’s most exclusive address.

  It was a sprawling, open apartment. Glass was everywhere, and the midday sun, the smells and sounds of the Mediterranean, all made it feel like a beach house.

  “Wait here,” said Fortuna, nodding at a white leather Barcelona chair near the entrance. He stepped into the living room. Glass walls encased a space that was at least a thousand square feet. The floor was concrete. The only furniture was a pair of bright orange leather sofas, each at least ten feet long, facing each other near the far corner of the room, and, in the middle of the room, a stone sculpture of a reclining nude woman done by Rodin. The view was nothing but black ocean and blue sky.

  Seated on one of the sofas, smoking a cigarette, was Nebuchar Fortuna. He was wearing only a pair of red underwear. Nebuchar said nothing as his father approached. He watched as his father crossed the room and stood next to the sofa across from him, staring out the window at the sea.

  “What a view,” Aswan said, shaking his head back and forth, as if in disbelief. “Magnificent. How much did this place cost you?”

  Nebuchar took another drag but said nothing.

  Aswan sat on the leather sofa across from Ne
buchar. For several moments, he stared at his son, then attempted a smile. Still Nebuchar had no reaction other than to continue puffing on his cigarette, then ashing it carelessly on the cement floor. Finally, Fortuna leaned forward.

  “I’m sorry, Nebbie,” he said. “What more can I say? I would like to think that if you were the one who’d been murdered, and Alexander hadn’t been able to find the killer, that I would have struck him, too.”

  Nebuchar looked at his father with a cold glare, then took another puff on his cigarette.

  “Now we both know that isn’t true,” said Nebuchar. “And even if it was, a man who would strike his son is no man.”

  “How would you know what it is to be a father?”

  “I don’t. Hopefully, I never will.”

  “Now, don’t say that. You’d be a good father.”

  “Stop the flattery, Papa. Why did you come here? To blame me for Andreas getting away?”

  Fortuna stood up and moved to the opposite sofa, next to Nebuchar.

  “First and foremost, I came here to apologize.” Aswan reached out and awkwardly patted Nebuchar on his knee. “I’m very sorry for striking you. You know my temper.”

  Nebuchar nodded. “Okay, great, is that it?”

  “That’s not it. I realized something this morning.”

  “And what is that?” asked Nebuchar, a malicious smile on his face. “Did you finally realize that the only reason Candela fucks you is because of your money?”

  Nebuchar laughed at his own joke. Aswan remained silent until his son had finished laughing.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” said Aswan, controlling his anger at his son’s remark, “but I would rather be making love to a twenty-three-year-old model than a bottle of gin, like you do every night.”

  Nebuchar nodded. He stared at his father for several moments. “Don’t worry, Father, I fuck whatever I want. I just don’t have to pay for it, like you.”

  “Enough. Can we stop this? I didn’t come here to insult you or to be insulted.”

  “Yes, fine. What do you want?”

  “I came to tell you that I straightened it out with Hassan Nasralla,” said Aswan. “You’ll make a payment to Hezbollah to atone for killing Pasa. He wasn’t happy, but he also didn’t like Pasa very much.”