by Dawson, Mark
She had to get through this.
She wasn’t finished yet.
Her work wasn’t done.
She could smell the explosive from the mines on the roof. They had not been easy to source, but for the right amount of cash, Abdullah had managed to find them. She had daisy-chained the mines together with detcord and linked them to an infrared motion-detection system, calibrated carefully to disregard the neighbourhood cats that gathered up there most nights.
But a soldier, fast-roping down to the roof?
Yes, he would be more than big enough.
That had been one hell of a big bang.
She had counted five soldiers lucky enough to have descended to the courtyard. The dark shadows had slid by her window, dressed in black and with night vision goggles fixed to their helmets. They were equipped with MP-5s and grenades. No insignia. No markings of any kind. That figured.
There was no profit in Manage Risk announcing themselves, but she knew that it was them.
She had seen Connor English skulking around in the medina.
She had allowed him to see her at the airport in Basra.
She had allowed them to follow her.
She wanted him to come.
She popped up above the stone parapet and brought the M14 to bear.
She saw a flash in her goggles and focussed on the open larder that they used to store their food. There was a silhouette there, limned in green, crouched in the doorway. The figure was in cover, and there was no shot, but Beatrix aimed above and behind the figure to where they kept the propane tank that supplied the range in the kitchen.
She wedged the stock into her shoulder, pressed her cheek against it and sighted quickly.
She pulled the trigger.
The barrage of six shots streaked out, each round slicing through the thin skin of the tank. The gas detonated in a huge bloom of orange fire that billowed up to the low ceiling and then blew outwards.
Beatrix’s night vision flared sudden white and then settled back down, silver streaks crackling across the lens until they, too, had vanished.
The crouching figure was no longer to be seen.
English was buffeted by the sudden blast from the other side of the courtyard. He hurried to the entrance to the staircase and pressed himself inside. The shots had come from the second storey.
It had to be Rose.
He was sweating heavily.
It was all going to shit.
Already.
He had to assume there were only four of them left.
They were on her turf.
And she had been waiting for them.
Fuck fuck fuck.
Even if it was just her, alone, it was even odds now, at best.
Come on, he said to himself. Keep it together. Do your job.
He held his position and then swung around so that he had a decent view of the courtyard. The three men had checked the remaining rooms down here and indicated with closed fists that they were clear.
English nodded and pointed upwards to the first floor.
They skirted the outside of the shaft as they made their way to his position.
English saw the man in the robes a half second too late. He had been hiding in what looked like the dining room. They had missed him. He came out of the room with a Glock in his hand and plugged the operative nearest to him with three shots, all of them finding their mark. The man jerked and fell face down, tripping over an ornate glass table and toppling into the illuminated blue waters of the plunge pool.
English raised the MP-5 and fired on full automatic, sending a volley in the direction of the man in the robe. At least one round found its target and the man fell back into the dining room again. English put his hand to his grenade pouch and took out an M67 frag. He pulled the pin, counted to two, and tossed it into the open doorway. The grenade detonated with a muffled crump, the thick curtains billowing out.
If Mohammed was still alive, Beatrix couldn’t see him. She popped the top of the smoke canister and rolled it down the stairs, waiting until the thick, cloying, acrid cloud had started to gush out. The stairwell was unventilated, and the smoke would gather and sink. It would be impossible to see anything if they were coming up.
That would buy her a little time.
She cradled the M14 and sprinted around the balcony to Isabella’s room.
The door was open.
Her daughter’s bed was empty.
“Isabella,” she hissed.
There was no reply.
“Isabella. It’s me.”
There came the awful chack chack chack of an automatic rifle, and the glass in the window went opaque and then crashed into the room. The rounds passed through the aperture, missing her by inches, and stitched a jagged pattern across the ceiling.
The shots were coming from below.
One of the men had stayed in the courtyard rather than come up.
She had been lazy.
Lazy and lucky.
She risked a quick look down and saw him, rifle aimed at her. She ducked as another burst of fire pulverised the rest of the glass. Sharp fragments showered onto her.
There came two crumps as second and third fragmentation grenades detonated.
The explosions came from the balcony that led to the stairwell.
They were clearing and coming up.
She popped up and looked down again. Smoke was swirling out of the door from her grenade. The soldier had slipped into cover, but there was a large mirror fixed to the wall overlooking the plunge pool. She saw the reflection of the dead man’s body in the glass, and beyond that, she saw the soldier who had shot at her pressed up against the wall directly below, otherwise out of sight. She fixed his position in her mind, readied herself and then, in a sudden dart, she plunged ahead, leaving the shelter of Isabella’s room, reaching the balustrade and aiming the rifle over the edge and down.
She fired blind, emptying the magazine.
The moan of pain told her that at least one round had found its target.
Return fire from the stairwell missed her by fractions of inches.
She darted back into cover.
She had a small remote control in her pocket. She took it out and held it in her palm, her index finger resting on the single button.
Connor English and the last surviving member of the team crept out from the foul-smelling cloud of white smoke and pressed themselves into cover. They had Beatrix’s position now. English had seen her take out the soldier in the courtyard, and that had come at a price. He knew where she was, and he knew that she was trapped there.
She had an automatic rifle, though, and he only had the advantage of one extra shooter. It was close to being a stalemate. He would have to proceed very carefully.
He indicated to the other man that he wanted him to advance and then fired a quick covering burst to keep Beatrix in her hole. The man scurried to the corner of the balcony and crouched down behind the balustrade. He was fifteen feet from the entrance to the room where she was hiding. Close enough to roll a grenade right into the doorway.
English kept his rifle aimed steady as the man took two frags from his belt. He had pulled the pin on the first of them when the wall directly adjacent to him detonated in a sudden and shocking eruption. Fragments of stone and plaster blew out into the balcony in a lethal hail, and the compressive force collapsed the balustrade, sending jagged chunks of stone down into the courtyard. The soldier was killed outright, his brutalised and lifeless body tossed like a rag doll into the branches of the orange tree below. His grenade, blown aside, detonated five seconds after the blast from the mine.
English blinked hard until his night vision had cleared.
Another claymore, remotely detonated, hidden behind a false panel.
There was a thick Berber drape on the wall t
o his left. The force of the explosion had disturbed it, and as it flapped backwards, he saw a pair of feet in the alcove that was revealed behind it.
“Come out,” he said.
Nothing. He stepped carefully over to the drape, moving away from the cover of the stairwell.
“Come out or I will shoot you.”
He held his breath as the drape was moved aside, and a young girl emerged from behind it.
She was holding a Glock semi-automatic.
English aimed his MP-5 at her. “Okay,” he said. “Put that down.”
The girl kept the gun up. Her hand was shaking.
“You’re not going to shoot me,” he said calmly.
He took a step towards her.
“Stay where you are,” she stammered.
He recognised her. She had been younger then, much younger. But then it had been nearly ten years ago that Control had sent them all to her mother’s house to eliminate her. That had set in train a series of events that had threatened to kill them all. He took no pleasure in what had happened. It had been business, pure and simple. Beatrix would have done the same, had the shoe been on the other foot. English had children. Two of them. And she would shoot him in front of them if that was the only way it could be done.
“It’s Isabella, isn’t it? I remember you.”
“Stay where you are.”
“I’m going to count to three.”
“I mean it.”
“No, you don’t. I’m going to count to three, and you’re going to drop that gun.”
He took another step towards her.
“One.”
Her aim wavered again.
“Two.”
Her arm began to fall.
“Good.”
He took the gun from her and tossed it over the balcony, then reached out and grabbed her shoulder tightly with his left hand. He yanked hard, spinning her around and clutching her against his legs and chest.
He raised his voice: “Rose,” he called out. “I’ve got your girl. No more tricks. Come out. No weapons. Let’s get this over with.”
He moved backwards to the stairwell, the girl in front of him as a shield.
“I’ve got no quarrel with her. She doesn’t have to be hurt. There’s no reason why she can’t walk away from here.”
He didn’t see the blow to the back of the head that knocked him to his knees. He put a hand down to steady himself and turned around to see the man in the bloodied robe raising the stock of a rifle before he drove it, for a second time, into his skull.
Chapter Two
The riad was burning freely. The conflagration in the larder, where the propane tank had exploded, was the worst, but there were smaller fires on the roof, and the drapes in the stairwell had been ignited by the grenades. Thick clouds of smoke were uncoiling into the courtyard and rising inexorably into the night sky. She looked up, half expecting to see the Black Hawk framed there, but the chopper had not returned.
The rest of the building had been wrecked. There were bullet holes in the walls, one whole stretch of the balcony had been destroyed and she knew that the roof, with its beautiful views of the city and the mountains beyond, would have been totally obliterated. There were dead bodies strewn around. A couple of the soldiers were still alive, groaning as they came around, but they did not pose any sort of threat. Beatrix would normally have put them out of their misery, but there was no time for that today.
Mohammed had been shot in the shoulder and was bleeding freely. Beatrix took a combat dressing and applied it to the wound, trying to staunch the flow.
“We need to be away from here, Miss Beatrix,” he said. “The police will be on their way.”
“How’s that feel?” she said.
He flexed his shoulder, wincing from the pain. “It is fine.”
She looked at him. “You need to get away from here.”
“No,” he said firmly. “Not until I have helped you and Miss Isabella.”
She indicated English. “I need to get him to the Jeep.”
“It is in the usual place.”
“Weapons?”
“Yes, and money and documents. Everything is there.”
Beatrix turned to her daughter. “I need you to go to the garage and get the Jeep ready, Bella. Take the keys and get it started. Don’t stop for anyone. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she said, quietly.
“What is it?”
“I’m sorry, Mummy. I should have shot him. I hid. They didn’t see me. I could have . . . all the training . . . I thought . . . But I couldn’t . . .”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It’s one thing to shoot a target. A person is different.”
“I let you down.”
She smiled at her daughter, trying to reassure her. “No, you didn’t. You were very brave. And you mustn’t worry, Bella. We’re going to be fine. Take your Glock and hurry, alright? We need to move fast now.”
Isabella retrieved the pistol from the tiled floor, collected the keys to the garage from the hooks in the lobby, opened the big wooden door and disappeared out into the narrow alleyway beyond.
English groaned and his leg spasmed. He was waking up.
The thought of dragging English’s dead weight through the warren of alleyways to the garage reminded Beatrix how weak she felt. The spike from the amphetamines had receded now, and the numbing curtain of fatigue had started to settle over her once again.
Mohammed noticed her weakness.
“Come on,” he said. “We will do it together.”
They each draped an arm over their shoulders and half-carried, half-dragged English out of the riad and into the darkened alleyway. The riad was buried deep in the medina in the heart of the confusing nest of streets and alleys, and after just a minute, they had put enough turns behind them that even the sound of the growing fire could no longer be heard. Locals had been roused by the explosions and the gunfire, and they gaped at the two of them as they dragged English’s limp body between them. Beatrix knew that the police would be on their way. It would take them a short while to locate the source of the fire, and that would, she hoped, be long enough for them to get off the street.
The garage was located in a line of similar garages in a side street that fed into a small market square. Isabella had raised the door and had driven the brand new Jeep Cherokee outside. The headlights were burning and the engine was still running. Beatrix opened the back door, and Mohammed grunted with pain as he muscled English inside. He pushed him across the seat and got in next to him, taking a semi-automatic from beneath his djellaba and aiming it across his lap into the man’s ribs.
Beatrix went into the garage and dragged a large bug-out bag out from the wall so that she could open it and check the contents. There was an AR-15 with folding buttstock, a Glock .45mm and a serrated knife. There was a large amount of money and, in a plastic sleeve, two different passports for herself and Isabella. The credit card hidden in one of the passports accessed a blind account in the Cayman Islands. She winced in pain as she hoisted the straps up onto her shoulders and carried the bag to the Jeep. She returned to the garage to close the door, fastening it with a padlock, even though she knew that she would never return.
Isabella had shuffled across to the passenger seat. Beatrix got in, put the Jeep into gear and drove away.
Connor English felt the bite of plastic cuffs as he came around properly. His hands were behind his back, between his body and the leather seat that he was sitting on. He pulled gently and felt the edge cutting against the soft flesh on the back of his wrists.
He remembered what had happened.
He opened his eyes a crack. They were on the outskirts of the city. He saw the road signs for Tahnaout and Asni and knew that they must be heading south, into the desert, most likely along the R203. He lay still for a
moment, preferring that they think he was still unconscious so that he might better assess his situation.
He was in the back of a car. The man in the robe, the one who had been shot and wounded, was next to him. There was a semi-automatic in his lap, the muzzle pointed at him and the man’s finger through the trigger guard. The girl, Isabella, was in the passenger seat. Beatrix was driving. It was quiet, no conversation. The only sound was the rumble of the tires as they traversed the uneven asphalt.
He would have been able to take out the man in the robe, even with his arms restrained, but not Beatrix Rose.
They drove on until the overhead street lamps that striped across the front and then the back windows of the Jeep became less frequent, and then, after thirty minutes, they did not come again. He opened his eyes a little and looked out the window. The angle offered a restricted view. He could see the swaying tops of palm trees, but no buildings. They were out in the desert proper now.
The car slowed and bumped as they left the road for a rutted track. They drove for another five minutes until they slowed again and rolled to a halt.
“Stay in the car,” Beatrix said to her daughter.
The girl did not argue.
The driver’s side door opened and closed, and then the door next to English opened. Cool night air swirled inside. Hands grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him out, dumping him face first in the dust.
“Get up,” she said. “I know you’re awake.”
He managed to get his knees beneath him, worked his right foot around so that he could push and stagger upright.
They had driven off the road along the course of a wadi. The desiccated watercourse petered out just ahead, no longer passable for the Jeep, and the moonlight illuminated a seemingly unending landscape that stretched out beyond. Dunes rose and fell as far as he could see, an endless lunar landscape.
He turned. The Jeep’s headlights were on, shining right into his eyes. Beatrix was silhouetted by them, but even as he squinted, he could see that she had a pistol aimed at his head. She flicked it in the direction of the dunes. He turned away, and she kicked him in the backside, propelling him onwards.
