by Mark Greaney
Rima had warned her that someone with this group had been working with Shakira and had been involved in the ISIS assassination attempt. But even though Rima didn’t specify the attractive blond-haired Westerner standing on the far side of the warehouse floor, Bianca Medina had decided all the Syrians were working for Malik, and Malik was definitely in the Syrian intelligence services. That left two possibilities as to the identity of the man working for Shakira Azzam.
There was the gruff man who’d said not a word to her during the drive from the field to the warehouse, and the blond man . . . she thought he might be Swiss because of his accent and word choices. He had shaken her hand and told her he had been sent here to Paris by Ahmed himself to help with her recovery.
He seemed genuine, and sincere, but she had met many men who could charm and deceive simultaneously.
She didn’t dare say anything to anyone about what Rima had told her. Any hint that the Halabys had allowed her to escape or had communicated information to her would tip off Ahmed’s people that she had been complicit in her own disappearance. If not at first, then at least after the fact.
She just lay down on her little cot and stared up at the rafters ten meters above her. She thought about the American down in Damascus, about Jamal, and about the things Rima had told her and shown her about the crimes of Ahmed Azzam, and she wondered what the hell she was supposed to do now.
* * *
• • •
Sebastian Drexler gazed across twenty meters of dusty warehouse floor to the beautiful young woman lying on the cot, just barely visible through an opening in the bedsheets hanging around her. He looked her long, slender physique up and down, then fantasized about pulling his pistol from his coat right now, firing a round into that exquisite body of hers, and then spinning around and dispatching Malik’s men with perfectly placed bullets to their heads. He could then burn this building to the ground and catch the next train to Bern or Zurich or Gstaad or Lauterbrunnen.
It was fantasy, of course. There were still eleven GIS operators here, nine of whom were fit enough to fight effectively.
No . . . Drexler would have to wait, but he didn’t think he’d have to wait too long.
An opportunity would arise to kill Bianca as they traveled to the east; he just had to be ready to take advantage of it.
As he thought about the hours and days ahead, he looked down at his phone and saw that he had four missed calls and a text on his encrypted commo app. He opened the text.
Answer your fucking phone.
It was the first lady. He sighed, long and hard, because he’d have to call and give her the news that Bianca was still alive and, for now, at least, she was surrounded by men who would give their lives to protect her.
He walked over to a darkened distant corner of the warehouse and dialed the number to her satellite phone.
Shakira answered on the first ring. “Dammit, Sebastian!”
Missed you, too, he thought. “The woman has been recovered.”
“Dead or alive?”
“At present she is alive. I have a plan to—”
“There was a shoot-out in Mezzeh tonight. In Western Villas. A man escaped. It’s on the news, and I’m having my staff bring me updates from GIS.”
Drexler was utterly confused and had no idea how this related to him. “Wait. What man? What are you talking about?”
“They are saying this man kidnapped a baby after fighting security forces! He killed several Ba’ath security officers, and more NDF forces that chased him until he disappeared.”
“Who was the baby?” Drexler asked, but he knew the answer.
“On television they aren’t saying anything about the identity of the victims, but they wouldn’t, would they?”
Drexler’s eyes closed and squinted shut, and he gripped the phone just as hard. He understood now, understood even better than Shakira what was going on. “A highly skilled killer who can slip into Syria and kidnap the child of the president. There is only one person who fits that description on this Earth.”
“Who is he?”
“They call him the Gray Man. He is American.”
“What’s he doing in Syria?”
“Apparently, he was working for the Halabys.”
Shakira gasped. “The man who rescued Bianca in Paris?”
“One and the same. And then he went to Damascus to rescue her son.”
Shakira said, “Once Bianca is dead, this won’t matter. He can put the kid on CNN for all I care. Ahmed won’t admit to being his father.”
Drexler did not reply.
“When will you do it? When will you kill her?”
“I am told we will fly to Serbia in the morning. There we will wait for documents to be sent to us so we can continue on to Russia. From there we’ll come home. I’ll take care of everything before we leave for Russia.”
“You had better,” Shakira said.
Drexler passed on a few more promises to the first lady that it would all be over soon, and they would be together again. Then he hung up the phone and looked up to see Henri Sauvage standing over him.
Drexler wasn’t in the mood. “What?”
“Why am I still here? I have done every last thing you asked.”
Drexler knew Malik was the only one who could release Sauvage at this point, and Drexler figured the only reason Malik had not released Sauvage already was that Malik was going to shoot the French cop in the head at some point and dump his body in a muddy field, simply to tie off one of the many compromises of the past week.
Drexler said none of this. Instead an idea came to him. “Henri . . . you might not know it, but you are crucial to this operation, and you are in a position of power right now.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“The next phase, you might have gathered, involves getting Medina back to Syria. To do that we have to travel across Europe. I do not have credentials that can pass scrutiny, and neither does Malik. Unlike me, he is here in Europe legally, but as soon as Rima and Tarek are found dead in that house, men with Syrian diplomatic credentials traveling across Europe are going to be looked at with the highest suspicion.”
“What does this have to do with me?”
“You are a French citizen and a law enforcement officer. If you came with us, you could facilitate any dealings we had at airports, with chance encounters with police or others. You could go out and purchase supplies, rent cars, things of that nature. Logistically you would be a tremendous help.”
“And in the process I would incriminate myself even more into this crime?”
“My dear captain, at this stage of the game I imagine you are already in as deep as you could possibly be. Why not make, say, another one hundred thousand euros in the process? That money could help you as you transition your life to someplace safer for you.”
Sauvage just stared Drexler down. Finally he said, “Two hundred fifty thousand euros.”
Drexler didn’t imagine Henri Sauvage would see fifty cents of this money they were discussing, so this was purely a hypothetical conversation. But to the Frenchman he said, “Two hundred. This will be two days of work. Three at most. Then you can have the rest of your life.”
Sauvage did not look happy, but Drexler doubted this man ever looked happy. He nodded slowly. “Fine. But three days at the most and then I return.”
“Agreed.” Drexler didn’t really need the Frenchman along on the journey; he could tend to any logistical arrangements himself, using his powers of persuasion and charm, but he saw how Sauvage could prove useful.
A plane would land at the airport in a few hours and it would only accommodate four people apart from the pilot. That was Drexler himself, Malik, Medina, and one other person. The Swiss operative would find himself in the air with fewer threats around him, and more opportunity to deal with Bianca Medina.
If Drexler managed to kill the passengers and crash the plane, and if Sauvage’s charred remains were found in the wreckage of a smoldering aircraft crashed on a mountain or somewhere along the way between here and there, and if in said remains Drexler’s watch, glasses, and other personal effects were found, then Shakira would think Drexler died along with Medina.
This would satisfy Stefan Meier at the bank, it would satisfy Shakira Azzam, and it would more than satisfy Drexler himself.
Just as Drexler had used the dead body of the Finnish photographer to get into Europe, he would use the dead body of the French police detective to finally free himself of Shakira Azzam.
Now the only real concern he had was to figure out where the hell he could find a parachute between now and when he boarded the plane in the morning.
CHAPTER 54
Court had Saddiqi drop him off three hundred yards from the hole in the gate of the Desert Hawks’ base, and he went the rest of the way on foot.
He made it through the hole after five minutes of prizing open the metal links, then belly-crawled through the dirt behind the shack next to the motor pool. He brushed himself off and then, when he felt sure the coast was clear, he ran across the street. He then made his way in the shadows through row after row of metal buildings until he arrived back at the KWA barracks.
Infiltrating the facility turned out to be as easy as exfiltrating, if not more so, because there was so little going on in the area at four a.m.
He saw that the lights were off in the team room, and he slipped inside, heading to the back for the barracks.
The lights were off in here, too; a dozen men lay in their bunks, and some snored.
As Court moved to his own bunk he was surprised to see that both Saunders and Broz had already made it back to base after getting picked up by the cops and National Defence Forces militia. He did not see Brunetti or Anders anywhere in the room, but he wondered if Brunetti’s broken nose might have had something to do with their absence.
He sat down on his bunk and pulled off his shirt, shoving it in his backpack. Just as he leaned over to untie his boots, he heard a banging on the back door of the barracks. KWA men all around him leapt up out of their bunks, grabbing rifles and pistols as they did so.
Saunders was first to the door and he looked out, then unlocked and opened it.
Four Desert Hawks officers moved into the room aggressively, and behind them, several armed militiamen. The mercenaries in their underwear leveled their guns at the new arrivals in the confusion, and shouts were exchanged.
Court saw from the action of his teammates that, whatever the hell was going on, this was definitely not a nightly occurrence.
The overhead lights came on, and Court was in the center of the action, standing there shirtless; his lean upper torso had several scrapes and bruises he’d picked up in the past few hours.
Van Wyk, the South African KWA team leader, addressed the Desert Hawks colonel angrily. “What the hell is this all about?”
The Syrian officer spoke reasonably good English. “There has been an attack in the Western Villas neighborhood in Mezzeh district tonight. A boy and his caretaker were kidnapped, and several security forces were murdered. We have been ordered to do a bed check to make sure all KWA contractors are present.”
Van Wyk looked around the room. “We’ve got a guy in the hospital and another there with him. Everyone else is present and accounted for, so we’re obviously not out kidnapping children.” He stuck a finger in the colonel’s face, treating the militia officer with no deference at all for his rank. “I want to know why you are lookin’ at us for a crime across town.”
The colonel replied coolly. “There was a fight tonight at a bar in Old Town Damascus between Western security contractors, Russian Air Force personnel, and SAA Tiger Forces soldiers. Four KWA men were arrested but not charged. This tells us at least four of you were off base, within a few kilometers of the attack.
“In addition to this, the security forces in Mezzeh told the police that the kidnapper had top-flight abilities. It wasn’t an insurgent group that pulled this off. It was one man. He killed or wounded multiple highly trained men in commission of his crime.”
Court saw Saunders flash a quick look his way. Court did not meet his gaze.
Van Wyk said, “Look, a few of the boys went out for drinks. No harm, but some Tigers were lookin’ to start a row. They got picked up by the police, but the cops let them go.”
As he’d feared, one of the young militiamen pointed at Court. “Sir . . . the others are in their underwear. But this one has his boots and trousers on.”
All eyes in the room turned Court’s way.
The colonel asked, “Where did you get those marks on your body? That cut on your head?”
Court said, “I was in action yesterday afternoon on the road from Latakia. You must have heard about that.”
The colonel nodded. “I did hear about that. But those look fresher.” He walked over to Court, looking him up and down.
“Yeah . . . I was in the bar fight tonight, too.”
The colonel seemed to accept this explanation, and Court thought the danger was behind him, but the Croatian contractor Broz spoke up. “Wait a minute. You were the one guy who didn’t get arrested. And when we got back here an hour ago, you weren’t in your bunk. Where you been for the past four hours, Wade?”
What an asshole, Court thought. There was no other team he could have run with in any other part of the world where one teammate would sell out another so quickly.
These mercenaries were hard men who didn’t give a shit about camaraderie.
Court looked around him. He couldn’t fight all these guys, and he didn’t see a way to talk himself out of this.
But just then Saunders said, “He’s not your man, gents.”
Now the attention in the room turned to the British mercenary standing there in his underwear.
Saunders said, “Tell ’em, Wade.”
Court said nothing.
“It’s all right. Go on, now. Tell ’em where you were.”
“I . . . uh . . .” Court thought Saunders was trying to help, but it wasn’t working. “I was . . .”
Saunders took over. “After the NDF brought me and Broz back to base, Broz came back here and I went to the loo. Not the one off the team room, but the one off the loadout room, the next building over. Wanted some peace and quiet to take a shit without all the other smelly asses. I walked into the loo, took one look, and turned back around.
“That bastard right there was pukin’ his guts out in the sink, but it was all over the floor, as well. Tell me you cleaned that shit up, Wade.”
“Uh . . . yeah. I did. Not a hint anything even happened,” Court replied.
The Desert Hawks colonel turned to Court. To make sure he understood the English slang, he said, “You were sick? Vomiting?”
Saunders answered for him, “Aye. Somethin’s got a hold of him. It’s either the killin’, the booze, or the food.”
After a moment Court shrugged. “It’s not the killin’.”
Broz looked incredulously at Saunders. “You told us this man can really fight. He shows up tonight, disappears, and later the Syrians come in and tell us someone with special skills snatched a kid. You’re certain you saw him after we got back from the police station? Because I sure as shit didn’t.”
“On me mother’s grave,” Saunders said.
The colonel addressed Court again. “If you were not arrested with the others, how did you get back to base?”
Court didn’t bat an eyelash. “Met a girl on the street in front of the bar who spoke English. I told her what happened. Figured she could help me get a taxi back, but she offered to drive me herself. Tried to pay her, but she wouldn’t take it.”
“The girl, what’s her name?” the colonel asked.
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br /> “I didn’t ask. I just needed a ride.”
Broz and Saunders both looked at Court now. They’d known that Walid had been their driver, and he hadn’t gotten himself arrested, so they figured Court would have returned to base with him. But even though his story was confusing to them, they weren’t going to say anything about Walid in front of the colonel that might get him in trouble.
It wasn’t that they were being kind. No, he was their ticket off base, and they’d do nothing to screw with that setup.
The Desert Hawks colonel left the room with his men a moment later, satisfied he could report to his higher-ups that his highly trained contractors had nothing to do with any crimes in the city that evening beyond cracking a few bottles over heads in a disco.
Court wondered how long it would take for the Desert Hawks forces to find out Walid wasn’t anywhere to be found, and what danger that might bring to his operation.
Broz and Van Wyk both asked about Walid as soon as the militiamen were out of the room. Court just shrugged and said he went looking for him after the fight but had no idea what had happened to him.
* * *
• • •
Thirty minutes later Court lay on his bunk, his eyes open, staring into the darkness above him. He had a million worries on his mind, but he wasn’t able to process them all, because he knew this long night was not quite over yet.
When Saunders appeared standing over his bunk, Court told himself he’d finally be able to deal with the last hanging thread of his interminably long first day in Syria.
