by AJ Stewart
On the third day he got up. Fontaine asked Yusuf if he had recovered his phone.
“No, sayidi. I believe it burned.”
“Do you have a phone?”
“My mobile phone.” He held up his old flip phone.
“Not a mobile,” said Fontaine. “A landline is better.”
“I don’t have. But there is one at the cafe.”
“Can you take me?”
Yes, sayidi, but . . .”
“What, Yusuf?”
“You are being watched, sayidi.”
“Watched? How do you know?”
“People who do not belong are noticed. There is a man in the apartment building opposite. He watches my home.”
“How do you know?”
“The apartment is empty. I know the men who live there. They are truck drivers. They transport products to the Kurdish region in the north. That is where they are from. This is where they stay while in Baghdad.”
“So what makes you think someone is there?”
“The neighbors below hear footsteps. And people who do not belong are noticed.”
“What does he look like?”
“He looks like you, sayidi.”
“Me?”
“Your clothes. Tall, like you. Dark hair like you. His nose is bigger.”
Fontaine took a deep breath. A dull pain washed his chest. It had been some time since he had taken a deep breath, and he had been shot since then. He should have laid down and rested some more. The sleep gave his body time to heal but the dreams tore at him mentally. The visions of fire wore him out. Yet the mention of a watcher sparked him in a way that he found a touch disturbing. He felt the adrenaline surge within, and for a moment he wondered if that was the only thing that would ever keep the flames at bay.
He stood.
“Take me.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
They took the long route. Out the rear of Yusuf’s building and around and into the rear of the watcher’s building. They took the stairs and Yusuf pointed out the door of the apartment and Fontaine told him to return home.
“I will wait for you here, sayidi.”
Fontaine didn’t bother arguing. He edged to the door of the apartment and felt around to his back to confirm he still had his weapon. His gun was gone, lost in the firefight with Staff Sergeant Dennison. All he had was a large knife he had taken from Yusuf’s kitchen. He had wrapped it in a small towel and shoved it down the back of his trousers. The old phrase never bring a knife to a gun fight rattled around his head. He fully expected the man inside to be well armed.
The door was locked and for a moment he thought about picking it, but that would take time and it wasn’t silent. The so-called private would be sure to hear. Fontaine decided to use what surprise he had to his advantage. He felt the rush of energy from his fingers to his toes and every muscle in between. He kicked out at the door just below the lock and the jamb splintered and the door moved but it took a second kick to smash it open.
The apartment was small. He entered into a living room that had been converted into a dorm. Six cots took up the bulk of the space. To his left was a kitchenette. Ahead were the windows overlooking the street, across toward Yusuf’s apartment. The French soldat, the so-called private, was sitting on the edge of a cot at the window. He had been looking at the street but the door smashing in had drawn his attention and he was turned toward Fontaine. A rifle lay on the cot beside him. Flynn noted it was an American M16A2, a weapon often used by French special forces. He didn’t reach for it. He just smiled.
“I knew it,” Bandy said.
“Knew what?” asked Fontaine, taking two steps into the room. He eased his hand to the back of his hip. He knew the knife would be no match for the M16, but he wanted the soldier thinking about whether he had a handgun tucked in behind.
Bandy eased himself back on his hands.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Fontaine said.
Bandy smiled again and slowly spun around in place, on his buttocks, away from the rifle, until he was facing Fontaine. He put his boots back on the floor and relaxed.
“They all think you’re dead. I knew you weren’t that easy to kill.”
“Who thinks I’m dead?”
“All of them.”
“Général Thoreaux?”
“Sure.”
“But not you.”
“I figured I’d watch your driver. See what I’d see. Your timing is excellent.”
“Really.”
“Oui. Today was the day I would get bored. I would have pushed the issue. Interrogated them.”
Fontaine thought of the women and children in the abandoned house Ox Dennison had used as his hideout. “You like killing women and children?”
Bandy dropped the smile but his eyes never left Fontaine. “I wouldn’t go as far as to say I like it.”
“You’re not 24th infantry. What are you, special forces? DGSE?”
“Sure.”
“Who are the eight?”
Bandy frowned. “The eight?”
“Who do you report to?”
He shrugged.
“I need you to stand up.”
“Or what?”
“Or I will happily put a bullet in your head.”
“So angry.”
Bandy smiled again and then slowly stood. Now he was two seconds from shooting his rifle at Fontaine. He had to turn, pick it up, swing it around and fire. Fontaine figured he was close enough to reach the soldier before the fire part happened.
Bandy didn’t wait. He charged Fontaine. He started low and pushed away hard and pumped his arms twice so that he not only gained speed across the floor but also upward momentum. Fontaine planted his left foot behind. His father had taught him to shoot right-handed because of the way rounds were ejected on most rifles, but he was naturally left-handed. A southpaw. He tensed for impact. The man drove forward and suddenly upward and his head rocked back like he was working on good posture.
Fontaine knew the move. He had used it himself. Never as an opening salvo, not from that range. It could work, but it wouldn’t. Not this time. The man pushed up and thrust his head forward and aimed to smash his forehead into Fontaine’s face while Fontaine’s hands were bracing for a body blow. But Fontaine wasn’t bracing for a body blow. He reached across with his right arm and grabbed his left shoulder. His elbow pointed forward. It wasn’t the sanest move. The elbow was delicate. It would break with the impact of a forehead.
It didn’t hit a forehead. The man’s momentum drove his nose right into Fontaine’s elbow. The impact shattered his nose and drove on into the man’s right eye, fracturing the socket. Bandy recoiled back, his nose gushing blood. His eye started to swell almost immediately. His smile had disappeared. He drove in for a second time.
This time the impact was into the body. He hit Fontaine with his shoulder and pushed him into the wall. The entire building seemed to shudder under the impact. Fontaine chopped his hands into the soldier’s kidneys on either side, once, twice, three times. It didn’t seem to affect him, but Fontaine knew the man would be pissing blood later. If he were around to do it.
Bandy had noted the bandage on Fontaine’s head, so he reached up and grabbed Fontaine around his ears and tried banging his head into the wall, but Fontaine replied with a cracking left fist into the ear, which rocked the soldier back. He didn’t stop coming. He threw a right, which Fontaine deflected, and then a left that lacked power but landed where Fontaine had been shot in the arm. He winced. Bandy picked up on it and sent a volley of punches into Fontaine’s arm and side. Fontaine could handle the hits themselves, but the impact into the wound sapped his energy.
Fontaine drove his boot down into the soldier’s knee and he stumbled back. As he rocked, Fontaine threw a massive left that connected with the bloody mess on Bandy’s face. He stumbled again. Another shot to the face and he stepped back further.
Bandy made a decision. Perhaps he felt the tide turn. He stepped back once more a
nd then turned as if to run away. But there was nowhere to run. For a split second Fontaine thought the soldier was going to crash through the window. That didn’t work like in the movies. It wasn’t any kind of safety glass. It would shatter into deadly shards that would slice anyone going through it, and then it would rain down on the sidewalk two floors below, where the person going through it would land. The soldier was halfway to the window when Fontaine caught up. He wasn’t going for the window. He was going for the rifle.
Fontaine moved fast but not fast enough. He reached around to his back and pulled the knife from its toweling sheath but he was too far from the soldier. Bandy took one last stride and dived for the cot, reaching for the rifle. His hands wrapped around the butt and he swung it as he slipped one hand down around the pistol grip. No doubt there was already a round in the chamber. The rifle swung around toward Fontaine as Bandy rolled across the cot. Fontaine dived.
He had learned to swim in a large pool in Darwin, Australia, when his father had been serving there. The ocean was blue and inviting but populated by saltwater crocodiles, so the family kept to the pool. The starting blocks at the end had seemed ridiculously high above the water to him, like a diving board. His first attempts had resulted in feet-first splashes. But eventually, he had gotten the technique down. He had wrapped his toes around the block and pushed off with the balls of his feet, knees bent and thrusting him up and out into the water, his toes pointing back as they finally left the block.
He felt his toes point inside his boots as he dove, full stretch across the apartment floor. The rifle came up and Fontaine came down. The knife was extended out in front, and he drove it down as gravity pulled at him, into the soldier’s guts. The knife sunk deep and thrust out Bandy’s back. The Frenchman wrapped his arms around Fontaine in reflex, the rifle resting across Fontaine’s back.
Fontaine pushed the soldier’s arm off him and pulled the rifle from his grasp and slid it away across the floor. Bandy came to rest in a seated position on the floor, back against the side of the cot. He put his hands to his stomach and found the knife there, skewering him. He looked at Fontaine. It was the first time Fontaine had seen any kind of uncertainty in the other soldier’s eyes. Fontaine reached down and in one swift move pulled the knife out. Bandy winced but did not scream. Without the knife acting as a plug the blood pulsed from his body. Fontaine thought to question the man but there were no words left in him, so Fontaine just waited until there was no life left in him either. Then he stood, picked up the rifle and walked out, gently closing the broken door as best he could.
Yusuf helped him to a telephone.
“Colonel,” he said to his commanding officer.
“Mon ami, you are still alive.”
“Yes, Colonel.”
“Who knows?”
“No one.”
“Make sure it stays that way.”
“Colonel? I was being watched by a French soldier, maybe DGSE.”
“Intelligence? Where is this man?”
“Dead.”
“Will he be found?”
“Non, mon Colonel.”
“The wheels of politics are moving, mon ami. But not in our favor. An American soldier is dead, a container shipment of interest to many has disappeared and they are framing the story around you, Jacques.”
“My team?”
“They have all checked in. Gorecki is here in Aubagne. The others are on their way.”
“What will happen to them?”
“I do not know. Gorecki has been interrogated, this much I know. I could not prevent it.”
“Is he okay?”
“He is smiling like a shark. He said two intelligence officers from Paris told him they could make his life hell. He said Legion training made hell look like a vacation on the Cote D’Azur.”
Fontaine smiled. “I will be there as soon as I can.”
“No. You don’t understand, my friend. You must remain dead. Forces I cannot control want you. Your team is protected because they know nothing. You have no such luxury. It is time for Jacques Fontaine to die.”
Fontaine looked out the window of the apartment. Children were kicking a soccer ball on the dirty street. He felt like he was abandoning his men. It was something he couldn’t do.
“I need to finish this,” he said.
“You have won.”
“Won? I don’t see how.”
“Some days you win big, some days small. Some days you win with the style of Cruyff, some days you win ugly like an Englishman. Today it is the Englishman. But you win. That which the terrorists wanted is gone from them, yes?”
“Yes.”
“They will not find it?”
“No.”
“And the perpetrator is dead, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And the people behind it believe you dead. Then you win. Not neat, but such is life. You have served with honor. You have done your part, many times.” There was silence for a moment. “I know what you think, mon ami,” said Laporte. “But you can only help your comrades by remaining dead. You must promise me this.”
“My documents remain in Aubagne. I may be tracked through them.”
“No, mon ami. When we first formed the unit years ago I visited the compagnie administrative du personnel. No trace of you remains at Legion headquarters.”
“And my men? You will tell them the truth?”
“In time, oui. But not now. It is better that they not know right now. But in time, of course. You have prepared as we planned?”
“Oui, mon Colonel.”
“D’accord. Then you should go. Bon voyage, mon ami.”
The line went dead.
“Au revoir,” Fontaine said to the dial tone.
With the bandages removed Fontaine looked almost normal. Yusuf arrived with some clothes, a white shirt and tan trousers. Fontaine picked up his small backpack. It lay on the floor at the end of his bed. Next to it was the duffel, which he dropped on the bed and opened. It was full of money. It hadn’t been touched.
Yusuf drove. They headed south past Alexandria. They both held their eyes firmly to the front as they drove by the sign pointing to the old city, and the desert beyond. They drove for seven hours and made two stops. One to discard the Bandy’s body, the other for fuel. The landscape was flat and hot and hard. Fontaine had to wonder what they were all fighting for. Then he thought about what lay under the ancient ground, and he wondered if it was really worth it.
A solitary guard sitting in a pickup met them at the border crossing into the northern provinces of Saudi Arabia. He didn’t get out. Yusuf pulled up beside, handed him some cash and was waved through with a nod of the guard’s head.
They arrived at the town of Rafha just before nightfall. It was a well laid-out place with a university and a tree-lined boulevard that made Fontaine think of the Champs-Élysées. The boulevard featured a large roundabout of the greenest grass Fontaine could recall seeing. Yusuf pulled over near the roundabout and they got out and stretched. Fontaine lifted the tailgate and looked at the two bags. A backpack and a duffel. He picked up the duffel and held it out to Yusuf.
“You should keep this one.”
Yusuf shook his head. “No, sayidi. I cannot. It would only bring trouble to my family.”
“You don’t need to call me that. You saved my life. Is there anything I can do for you?”
Yusuf looked at him. Fontaine could feel a hundred generations of pride in the man’s eyes.
“Perhaps, one day you can do something for my daughter. She will finish school in a few years. It is my dream that she can go to a university in Europe or America. Perhaps this is something you can help make happen?”
Fontaine nodded. “I will do all I can. When I am able, I will contact you.”
“Until then, my friend, you are dead to me.”
They parted with a handshake. Yusuf drove away to find some accommodation for the night. Fontaine walked across the roundabout. Past incongruent fountains and green l
awns surrounded by days of desert. He marched into the night, looking for passage to another ancient city known as Alexandria, only this time in Egypt.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
He woke but wished he hadn’t.
The soft entrails of smoke still bled from the window into the area under the canopy. The whole space around the semitrailer was filled with dark smoke from the diesel that burned long and low. The gasoline had exploded. The fire was bright and hot. It came and went like a comet. Much of the diesel turned to vapor and ignited in the second explosion, but not all of it.
As night fell the fire died. The smoke was lost to the dark sky but the stench remained. Staff Sergeant Dennison was dragged into consciousness by pain. His eyes would have shot open but his left eye was badly burned and fused shut. His right eye saw fine. He lay with his face in the sand. It felt cool when everything else felt like a thousand Bunsen burners across his body.
He saw it was night. The building was still. The last thing he recalled was the fire, and the explosion. The memory brought another stab of pain. He wanted death to sweep him up quickly. His head pulsed in agony and he blacked out again.
He awoke the second time to pain. Not more pain and not less. But somehow in his sleep his body had developed a way to deal with it. He rolled over and felt his face. It was crusted with sand. Not covered—crusted. As if the sand had become part of him and fused with his skin. He looked up and saw the truck. It sat there in silence, mocking him. Impassive to his situation. It could leave or it could stay. The truck didn’t care. It didn’t care if Dennison lived or died. But Dennison cared. He closed his eye and through the pain he reached down and found will. Will to live. Will to not be beaten. He wouldn’t let them beat him. Not the eight. Not the damned desert. And certainly not the traitor.
