by Mark Greaney
Court would have appreciated Klossner not saying a thing about him to the men he’d be with down here, but that cat was out of the bag now.
Court said, “I’ll give you my best.”
“From the sound of it, you already have.”
Saunders asked, “We rolling out on a raid tonight, boss?”
“Good news,” said the South African. “We’ve got the night free. Bad news. Tomorrow at oh six hundred we’re heading northeast. Looks like a multiday deployment, working with the spearhead company of the brigade’s First Battalion.”
Court could tell by his expression that Saunders seemed surprised by this. “Why the hell are we doing that?” the British mercenary asked.
“New security sweep east of Palmyra. Big op, by the sound of it. Russians and SAA at the heart of it, Iranians to the west, militia to the east. That’s all I really know, other than we’ll be helping pacify opposition centers both in desert and urban terrain.”
Saunders looked at Court. “These days the desert east of Palmyra is FSA to the north, ISIS to the south, split by the M20 highway. We could be fighting anybody and everybody on this run.”
“Terrific.” Court’s mind was racing. He’d considered himself immensely lucky to be sent by Klossner to live on and work at a base in a Damascus suburb, considering how his target here in Syria was also in a Damascus suburb, albeit on the other side of the city. But now he had just learned that first thing tomorrow morning he would be saddling up and moving out somewhere else in the country entirely.
On top of this, he desperately needed to communicate with Voland and Bianca to find the location of Jamal’s home, and for that he needed a phone or a computer. But phones and computers were off-limits for mercs. Klossner had told him the KWA team leader here was only allowed to use commo equipment in the Desert Hawks Brigade communications room, and even then, only under watch by an English-speaking intelligence officer from the militia group. Court had no expectations he’d be seeing the inside of the communications room himself, so he knew he had one night to think of how to reach out to Voland, because it didn’t sound like he’d get much opportunity to buy a mobile phone and an international calling card in the combat zone where they were heading.
He didn’t know if Jamal had that kind of time, or if Bianca did, for that matter, because Court imagined Drexler would be working hard to locate her in France.
Saunders had peeled his body armor off and tossed it on the floor by the door. He looked over the cuts and bruises he’d picked up during the gunfight earlier in the day. “I promised the new bloke I’d buy him a pint for savin’ me arse. Rally back here in thirty minutes for all who fancy coming with us.” To Court, Saunders said, “Tomorrow morning at oh five hundred we’ll get you kitted up like a proper operator. But tonight . . . let’s celebrate our victory against Al Nusra.”
Court cocked his head at this. “So . . . we can just leave and go out to a bar whenever we want? By ourselves?” The Mukhabarat officer at the airport had told him he was not allowed to travel anywhere without an officer of the Desert Hawks.
“Not exactly, but we’ve sussed out a way to slip off base, and we’ve got a Desert Hawks major complicit in our scheme. He’ll go with us as long as we keep a drink in his hand. And it’s not a proper pub. Sadly, you won’t find too many of those here. It’s a disco, and it’s utter shit, but it’s got booze. Better we go get pissed than sittin’ ’ere all bleedin’ night.”
Court didn’t feel like going to a disco, because he was tired, and also because he didn’t like discos, but the opportunity to learn a tried and tested way to sneak out of the base was just too good to pass up.
“I’ve only got euros.”
Saunders said, “They’ll gladly take euros, so you can buy the first round.”
* * *
• • •
Van Wyk, the team leader, showed Court to an empty bunk in the back, and here he dumped his armor, his rifle, and his ruck. He went to the bathroom, took a one-minute shower, and changed into fresh clothes: gray cargo pants, Merrell boots, and a plain black T-shirt. Once he was dressed he grabbed a bottle of water from the little kitchen and headed back into the team room.
Court was surprised to see that Saunders was dressed in casual civilian attire: blue jeans, a polo shirt, even a gold chain around his neck and a bracelet on his wrist. A couple of the other men looked like they were ready for a night on the town themselves.
* * *
• • •
Fifteen minutes later Court crouched in the dark behind Saunders and three other KWA contractors next to a building in the motor pool, staring at the fence line of the base just across a gravel road and a small lot full of trucks and cars. A pair of sand-colored Ural-4320 armored trucks lumbered by towards the main gate, well illuminated a hundred meters off to Court’s right.
He was still surprised to be doing this; he felt like he was in the middle of one of those World War II escape films he used to watch with his dad and his brother when he was a kid.
A clean-shaven and thickly built Arab man in uniform stepped around the side of the metal building, just feet from where the men knelt. At first Court thought he and the other men had been busted by base security, but when the man raised a hand up to the group of men in the dark, Saunders called out to him. “Keef halik, habbibi?” How are you, friend?
Court was told the man’s name was Walid, which was a first name, but no one mentioned his surname. He was a major in the Desert Hawks Brigade, and it appeared to Court he was a more than willing participant in all this. He knelt down with the KWA contractors, watched the front gate, and waited to make his move along with the others.
An outbuilding at the edge of the motor pool was only twenty feet from the fence, and this shielded a small portion of the fence from the main guardhouse. Saunders explained that this was their target, and together they waited for the trucks to arrive at the gate. When they did, the drivers each stopped to speak with the guards as they left the base.
The men moved out one at a time; Saunders led the way, sprinting across the road, through the motor pool, to the darkened fence line. Then he ran along the wire before disappearing behind the small outbuilding.
The Dutchman went next, then a Croatian, the Syrian militia major, and then Court. As he crossed the road, a light from a distant Jeep glowed in Court’s direction, but he made it to the lot of the motor pool and ducked down behind an old two-ton truck as the vehicle passed, thus remaining undetected.
A minute later Court was behind the outbuilding with the others, and seconds after that they were joined by a KWA contractor from Argentina. The others waited while Saunders and Walid worked together on a small part of the fence, unfastening links that had previously been cut, then twisted back together individually to make it appear undamaged.
In just a couple minutes’ work they opened a section large enough to crawl through.
It occurred to Court that if any enemy knew about this weak link in the base’s security, they could just as easily exploit it as the men using it to go barhopping. Even though he knew this weakness was good news for him and his mission here in Damascus, he was curious about it.
As Saunders stood back so Walid could crawl through first, Court leaned over to him. “You don’t worry about somebody coming through that hole in the middle of the night?”
“We came down here to fight, and anybody around here with the tactical muscle to find and exploit that tiny compromise would have to be one ballsy fighter. We all keep our rifles and our kit close by.” He shrugged. “What can I say? If you work for KWA, booze is more important than safety. You’ll learn.”
They piled into Walid’s personal vehicle, a new and well-equipped Hyundai Elantra. Court didn’t think a militia soldier, even a midgrade officer, would normally make much money in the Middle East, but since he’d been told the Desert Hawks Brigade was a criminal organ
ization at its core, it came as no great surprise to him that the man had some money.
With six men in the sedan it was a tight fit, but Court was more comfortable now than he’d been on much of the day’s ride in the back of a hot truck. As they headed back towards the Damascus Airport Motorway with Walid behind the wheel, the Syrian tuned his stereo to 107.5, an English-language station, and the DJ played hits from the UK and the United States. Court found it hard to accept the fact that he was in Damascus with West Coast rap blasting on the radio.
Over the next half hour Court was treated to a master class by Walid on avoiding checkpoints in Damascus. He seemed to know where they were all set up, because he’d drive along the main drags for a few minutes, then pull off, roll through back streets, alleyways, or even parking lots, then slip back onto the main drags with his headlights off. He would pick up speed and turn his lights back on, then repeat the process again and again.
The major explained he had no fear of the checkpoints; he wasn’t doing anything wrong that the National Defence Forces personnel that manned them would care about, since they couldn’t give a damn about a Desert Hawks officer sneaking off his base. He simply didn’t want the delay and hassle of the traffic stops and ID checks.
* * *
• • •
Court imagined they’d only traveled three or four miles by the time they hit the rustic Old Town Damascus section, but it had taken them nearly thirty minutes of driving. They found a place to park in a lot near the bar on Al Keshleh Avenue in the Bab Touma neighborhood, and the men stepped out of the car and stretched their legs.
Walid changed into civilian clothing in the parking lot, then crammed his uniform in a backpack in his trunk, and the six men began heading towards the bar.
A pair of what appeared to be eighteen-year-old boys wearing the uniform of the Syrian Arab Army and carrying polymer-stocked AK-47s stepped up to the men on the sidewalk. Court proffered his papers along with all the other men, and the two privates scanned each person’s documents with a flashlight. The Desert Hawks major exchanged pleasantries with the soldiers, but Court noticed that Walid had to show his papers as well, and the SAA soldiers didn’t treat his much-higher rank with much deference at all.
He was militia, and they were part of the conventional forces, so he wasn’t an officer as far as they were concerned.
Court and his crew for the evening left the soldiers to their foot patrol and stepped into Bar 80, a two-level disco mostly full at eleven p.m. on a Saturday night. They were frisked by an armed bouncer at the front door, then wound their way to a bar on the second level, passing armed security men dressed in polos and jeans.
The six men sat at a table in the middle of the dark room. Court offered to buy a round for everyone, and then he and Saunders went to the bar to order.
After returning with the drinks, Court sat and sipped his Irish whiskey and focused on the men at the table with him. He quickly got the impression this wasn’t going to be much of a party. Most of the men ordered scotch or whiskey, and they sat quietly drinking and smoking while looking around, not talking to the other men at the table. Walid was clearly the only one seriously enjoying himself, because he began to look buzzed by the end of his first drink.
At the table with Court were Saunders, Major Walid, the Croatian, the Argentine, and the Dutchman. The Croatian introduced himself as Broz, though Court didn’t know if that was a first or last name. He was a big man with a crew cut and a flat nose that made him look like a boxer. The Argentine went by Brunetti. He was dark complected with a beard and mustache. A handsome face but dark, angry eyes.
The Dutchman was Anders. He was tall and blond, with a mustache and goatee that told Court the man desperately wanted to grow a beard but his face wouldn’t accommodate his desires.
As Brunetti brought back a second round of drinks, Court began looking around the room, marveling at the revelry going on. There was a group of a dozen or more Russian military men—from their look and grooming standards Court figured they were probably air force, and from their burly bodies he took them for ground crew and not pilots. The nucleus of the group sat in a corner, mostly keeping to themselves, but a few of the men had ventured out on solo missions around the bar, hitting on attractive Arab girls or moving to the stairwell to head downstairs to the dance floor.
But the vast majority of the crowd in this room was clearly Syrian. Court found himself confused and fascinated by this. Here they were, within miles of rebel resistance pockets, and it appeared like life was going on without a care for these people. Around him a hundred people drank, smoked from hookahs, laughed and talked and flirted and joked, in the geographical center of so much horror.
Men, women, children were being bombed and starved and uprooted and slaughtered throughout the country—more than a half million dead in this nation in the past seven years—but in Old Town Damascus it was just another freewheeling Saturday night.
There was another surreal aspect of the moment for Court. This wasn’t Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, with strict moral codes enforced; this looked like a bar in Vegas or Chicago or Boston. There were no hijabs on the women here at Bar 80, and none of the men in view had long beards. There was a lot of jewelry and hair product on male and female alike, and the average age was below thirty.
Most of the places Court had visited in the Middle East had been a lot more conservative, but the vibe here in Damascus did remind him of the time he spent in Beirut, Lebanon, just seventy miles to the west.
But that was before Hezbollah took over and the party lights dimmed somewhat.
Saunders leaned over to him. “Right bunch of sorry bastards, we are.”
Court cocked his head. “What do you mean?”
“Look around. Most of these Syrian blokes are soldiers, but they’re havin’ a laugh. Us mercs? We come to pound down drinks to keep the demons at bay. Warning you, Wade. You won’t get much conversation around us.”
“I’m not in Syria to make friends.”
“Well then, you’ve come to the right place.”
Saunders returned to his drink, and Court began scanning the crowd, slowly and carefully, with a new sense of purpose. To anyone paying attention to him, it would have looked like he was just another single guy looking for a girl to talk to, dance with, or take home.
But Court wasn’t looking to hook up tonight. He was looking for a cell phone.
While he did this, Brunetti asked Saunders, the only fluent Arabic speaker at the table who also spoke English, to question Walid about the deployment to the north the following morning. Court could hear in Walid’s voice that the alcohol was having an effect, even though he had just finished his second drink. The slurred Arabic was even harder to decipher than normal, but Saunders helpfully translated.
“He says something big’s going on at a Russian special forces base near Palmyra in a couple days, so SAA is setting up a protective cordon. We’re going to fill in gaps of the outer security ring to the east of the city . . . total shit part of the country. Desert and rocks, is all, but there are some small towns along the M20 highway.”
Court said, “Russian Spetsnaz can’t protect themselves?”
Saunders relayed this to Walid, who answered back. Saunders said, “He thinks some generals or government officials are going to be visiting the base. No other reason the SAA would insist on installing a security cordon themselves around a Russian base.”
Walid said something else, and Court could hear displeasure, almost despondence, in the militia captain’s voice. Saunders said, “This fucker got out of goin’ himself. He’s staying back with brigade command in Babbila.”
Court said, “He doesn’t seem happy about it.”
Saunders shook his head in disgust. “It’s not because he likes to fight. No, he’s pissed he’ll miss out on what the Hawks will do when they take a town. They come back to base like the
y’ve spent the weekend at a bleedin’ shopping mall.”
Court made a face like he didn’t understand, and off this look Saunders said, “Looting. The Desert Hawks are top-flight pillagers, but first they wait for blokes like us to clear the area.”
Saunders said something to Walid, then drank the rest of the whiskey in his glass. He stood and turned to Court. “I told him not to worry. I’ll bring him back some gold fillings, because everyone knows the Hawks send us KWA chaps in to commit the real atrocities.” His face flashed a quick smile Court’s way, but Court saw through it. Saunders was a haunted man.
He turned away and headed for the bar to get another drink, but called out as he walked, “I’m bringing back a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.”
CHAPTER 34
The five nondescript sedans were already running with drivers behind the wheels when Sebastian Drexler drove his rented Mercedes out of the evening rain and through the open doors of the large warehouse just off the grounds of Toussus-le-Noble Airport.
The airfield was just southwest of Paris, but more importantly it was only three kilometers northeast of where Henri Sauvage had determined that Bianca Medina was being kept, so Malik had rented the off-field storage facility to use as a safe house. His men had already outfitted it as a location where they could bring and hold Medina after the raid. If all went smoothly in Malik’s plan, once Medina was in pocket they would fly a private aircraft into the airport; Malik would load Medina, Drexler, and some men for security aboard; and then they would all fly out. From there they would head to Serbia, far from where anyone was looking for the Spanish model. They would hold her in a safe house while they worked on getting documentation for Drexler and Bianca to go to Russia so they could finally travel back to Syria.
Malik had offered his plan to Drexler, and Drexler had agreed, although he had no desire to fly to Syria, Russia, or Serbia, or even to bring a living, breathing woman back to the warehouse by Toussus-le-Noble Airport.
