by Mark Greaney
Court followed the other two into a large room. At the far corner, Saunders stood over a group of bodies lying by the window.
“What you got?” Van Wyk asked.
“Three dead.”
“Combatants?”
Saunders spit on the floor. “Enemy sympathizers.”
Court lowered his weapon a little and walked across the room to the bodies. Two women wearing hijabs, both in their twenties, were perforated from their collarbones to their pelvises. A third body was a boy of no more than fourteen. He had taken a round through the stomach.
Blood splattered the wall low behind them, giving Court the impression they had all been sitting on the floor when they were shot.
The three had been living in this wrecked storage room; that was clear from the blankets and boxes of crackers and trash and the two half-empty plastic jugs of water nearby. None of the three had any weapons Court could see.
“You motherfuckers!” Court couldn’t help it. He said it out loud.
He knelt to check for a pulse on the boy.
“What are you doing?” Broz asked from across the room.
Court did not reply. The boy was dead, and the ladies appeared dead, as well, but he began checking them both for a pulse.
Van Wyk said, “Kilo Nine is new here. You boys popped your cherries once. He’ll get used to it.” After a moment Van Wyk called out to Court. “That’s enough, Nine. Come on, a lot of rooms to check.”
Reluctantly Court climbed back up to his feet and rejoined the mercs, his jaw flexing as he thought about flipping his weapon to fully automatic fire and gunning down all five of these men from behind.
But he didn’t flip his selector switch, and he didn’t fire. Instead he spoke to himself. “Stay in cover, Gentry. Stay in cover and end this fucking war.”
CHAPTER 58
President of the Syrian Arab Republic Ahmed al-Azzam smiled, looked into the eyes of his beautiful wife Shakira, and kissed her sweetly. They hugged tenderly, and then they both looked up, to a point across the room.
Ahmed wore a blue pinstripe suit, warm in the hot lights around him, and a thin sheen of perspiration glistened on his forehead, despite the makeup he wore. He spoke in his native tongue. “Shakira and I have been blessed with a beautiful family, wonderful friends, and work that we both find fulfilling. While ours is a happy life, many of our fellow countrymen are less fortunate. You know I am engaged tirelessly keeping Syrians prosperous and safe from terrorists and foreign invaders, but you should also know that my lovely wife works day and night on the social programs that help the impoverished among us live healthy and gratifying lives.”
Shakira took her husband’s hand and squeezed it tightly. “Thank you, darling. We hope you will all join us in making a contribution to the First Lady’s Children First antipoverty campaign by calling the number on your screen now. Operators are standing by, ready to receive your donations.”
Ahmed put his arm around his wife and looked into the same camera. Together they said, “Shukran, jazelaan.” Thank you very much.
The lights flipped off, the director called “cut,” and the Azzams unfolded from their embrace without another glance towards each other. Shakira stood from the sofa in the main reception room of the palace to speak with her assistant, while Ahmed launched from the sofa himself, stepped over to his bodyguards, and left the room without a glance or a word to anyone, least of all his wife.
In the long corridor that would take him back to his office he felt his phone vibrate in his coat pocket. He answered it.
“Yes?”
“Ahmed? Ahmed, it’s me.”
His eyes narrowed as he heard Bianca’s voice. The facial expression belied a look of mistrust, but his own voice carried a light and thankful tone. “How wonderful to hear you. How are you feeling, my darling?”
“Thanks to God I am safe. Your men rescued me last night. I’m sorry I was too exhausted to talk when they freed me. My emotions had been so strained over the last days.”
Ahmed stepped over to a huge window that looked out over the gargantuan thirty-acre front court of the palace grounds. As he did so he waved his guards and attendants away. He spoke softer now. “Were you hurt in any way?”
“No, Ahmed. I was locked in a basement, but I was fed, attended to. I managed to escape just as your men attacked. The terrorists holding me tried to burn me to death, so I’m glad I was able to get out in time.”
“Yes, I heard. Very fortunate for you.”
It was silent for a few seconds. Then Bianca said, “When will I see you, my love?”
“The men who are with you now are competent. They will bring you home to me soon, inshallah.”
“Good. I can’t wait to return to you and Jamal.”
Ahmed analyzed every word Bianca said, each inflection, each breath he could hear. “Bianca . . . what did you tell your captives?”
“Tell them? I told them nothing.”
“Nothing? Did you mention anything about Jamal, perhaps? It is all right if you did, I just must know so I can keep him protected.”
“I . . . I said nothing. Not a word. Why . . . ? Is something wrong?”
Azzam did not know if something was wrong. He couldn’t detect a lie over a satellite phone. No . . . he needed to see his lover face-to-face to find out if she had told the terrorists about the existence of her son and where she lived.
“Nothing is wrong. Everything is just right, now that you have been rescued.”
“Good,” she said. “When I get off the phone with you, I will call Yasmin.”
Ahmed’s narrow expression of mistrust returned. He said, “I have ordered Yasmin and Jamal moved, for their safety, and there is no phone where they are. You will see them as soon as you return.”
“I . . . Yes, all right.”
“Come home to me. We have much to discuss.”
“Yes, love. Inshallah.”
Ahmed hung up the phone and adopted an impassive expression for the benefit of the men across the corridor. But in truth his body steamed with rage. His child had been taken from his city, and it would be days before he knew if his mistress was involved in the crime.
But for now he had to hurry to the airport. His flight north to Homs to appear at an Iranian base would be tomorrow, and then, the next morning, he would go to Palmyra to a Russian facility on the edge of the desert.
He didn’t want to go to these places. His son, the heir to his reign here in Syria, was missing, and even though he had thousands of police and internal intelligence officers looking for him, while this was going on it was hard for Ahmed to focus on other matters.
And doubly so because of Bianca. When she came home he was going to have her visited by his best intelligence interrogators under the guise of asking about her captors. But the real objective of his people would be to find out if she had any culpability, either in her disappearance or in Jamal’s disappearance. His people had been extracting the truth from terrorists, rebels, dissidents, turncoats, and political rivals for a long time. They would find the truth from beautiful Bianca, and if the truth was what he feared, he would have her tortured and then executed for her disloyalty.
As he walked back to his office, he decided he might even take part in the torture himself.
* * *
• • •
Bianca Medina did her best to keep from crying. She handed the satellite phone back to Malik, who stood there with Drexler and the French police officer, who clearly did not understand a word of Arabic.
After sleeping through the morning, Bianca had asked to call Yasmin, but Malik reminded her that the president himself was waiting to hear from her. She did her best to sound innocent, to reveal nothing about the Halabys, the American killer, the French spy. But she did not think Ahmed believed her.
She did not believe him for a moment that Yasmin and Jamal had be
en moved to somewhere secure. No . . . the American had taken them, and that was why Ahmed was suspicious of her. Ahmed had determined the truth: that she had told her captors everything.
If she returned to Syria, she would be killed; this she knew without a shadow of a doubt. But she saw no opportunity to get away from the men who held her now.
She did not believe she would ever see her son again, and she did not believe she was safe in Europe, or safe at home.
She returned to her cot amid the hanging bed sheets, and she sat down, and there she could hold it no longer.
She started to cry.
* * *
• • •
Malik and Drexler watched the woman cry alone for a moment, and then they turned away and stepped into an office in the warehouse building to talk. Drexler knew all about the kidnapping of Bianca’s son, from Shakira, but Malik knew nothing about the child, even of his existence. All he knew were his orders—to get Drexler and Bianca back to Syria—and he knew that this plan had hit a stumbling block.
Drexler said, “You told me we’d go to the airport at noon. It’s five till.”
Malik said, “I had one of my men go to Toussus-le-Noble. He says French military troops have arrived and are searching it top to bottom. They are setting up tents off the tarmac, preparing for a longer stay. We won’t be flying out of there.”
Drexler rubbed his face in frustration.
Malik said, “You shouldn’t have left Voland alive. This is his doing.”
Drexler shook his head. “No, it’s not. I wanted a peaceful resolution so we could exfiltrate France quietly. Voland did his best to give that to us. But the massacre and the fire that could be seen from a jumbo jet . . . that is what brought the authorities out en masse.”
Malik turned away. “I have my men acquiring some vans. We will drive east. Not to Serbia; I don’t feel confident in the private flight to Russia any longer.”
“Why not?”
Malik shrugged. “Again, you left Voland alive. I think he will be involved in the search for us. He could have distributed photos of Bianca everywhere, even to a small airport in Serbia.”
“So . . . where are we going?”
“We will go to Athens, and then—”
“Athens, Greece? That’s a twenty-four-hour drive!” Drexler shouted.
Malik kept his voice calm. “We will drive for twenty-four hours. When we arrive in Athens, we will wait for a ship to pick us up. You, Bianca, and I will travel to the Syrian coast.”
“What is this ship?”
“It’s been used in smuggling operations for years, but right now it is off the coast of Lebanon. A dozen of my Mukhabarat colleagues working in Beirut will board today, and it will make the two-day crossing to Athens, where it will meet us.”
Drexler thought this over. He wasn’t getting on board that ship, obviously, but he saw how this change of plans might work to his advantage.
“When do we go?” Drexler asked.
“We will leave here within the hour.” Malik looked over at Sauvage, sitting and smoking at the front loading dock of the warehouse. “What about the cop?”
“He will come with us, he might be useful,” Drexler said. “I’ll see that he earns all the money that I have promised him, even if he never lives to see a cent of it.”
CHAPTER 59
At the refinery in central Syria, Van Wyk finally announced the “all clear” to his KWA mercenaries, after twenty minutes searching the control building. In all that time, the two KWA teams found a grand total of three armed enemy: the one Van Wyk sighted in the first room, and a sniper-spotter team on the roof that was killed by the men from the other BMP.
While this was going on, there had been a lot of shooting taking place all over the refinery as an entire company of Desert Hawks Brigade militia, some two hundred men, took outbuildings, pumping stations, storage facilities, and other structures, but Court couldn’t tell much from the cadence of fire. It could have been that the Desert Hawks were involved in multiple skirmishes with the enemy in different parts of the massive property, or it could have been that they were simply executing civilians they found hiding in the ruins.
As soon as the control building was clear, the battalion command of the Desert Hawks Brigade began pulling up in trucks, armored personnel carriers, and other vehicles. As the building had been used as an HQ by the Syrian Arab Army when they owned the refinery, there was already space for them to move their equipment into. Three large command center rooms on the second floor were used to bring in communications equipment, maps, headquarters staff, and senior officers, while a platoon of security was positioned on the roof and in the large building’s windows.
The twelve-man KWA strike force climbed back in their BMPs to catch up with the main element of Desert Hawks Brigade, but when they didn’t move out after twenty minutes, Van Wyk got on the radio with company command and found out that Ali Company had been ordered to halt here at the refinery to await further instructions. The mercenaries filed out of the vehicles again, went back into the command building, and found a shattered, ruined office with blasted-out windows on the top floor in which to wait.
The body of a man well into his fifties, perhaps even his sixties, lay in the center of the room. Blood splatter on the floor told the story. He’d been engaged from the doorway; the blood was fresh, so Court knew it was someone on the KWA team that shot him. The body wore a simple white button-down and brown slacks, he wasn’t geared up in any way as a fighter, and there was no weapon nearby.
Court couldn’t say for certain this man had been a noncombatant, and for all he knew the dead man had charged right at the men who came through the door, but Court seriously doubted it. From what he’d seen and heard of KWA, he assumed this man had just been squatting here in the building and was shot dead while unarmed by the mercenaries who encountered him.
When the team moved into the office, Saunders and Broz picked up the body in the middle of the room, dragged it over to the blasted-out window, and swung it out, letting it drop down onto the concrete below.
Court just looked away.
Van Wyk had been with the Desert Hawks leadership in the command post to find out the reasons for the delay, and now he leaned his head into the room. “Bashar and Chadli Companies are heavily engaged to the northeast. They think it’s FSA, company strength at most, but well dug into the hills. Nothing for us to do; it’s long-range engagement, snipers and mortars and RPGs. Definitely not the CQB stuff they use us for. The militia is calling the Syrian air force for assets to disrupt the enemy in the hills, but so far nothing’s available.
“We’re to wait here at battalion HQ for orders, but I don’t expect it will be long before the Hawks need us. I’ll be downstairs in the CP.”
The rest of the twelve-man team found places to sit or lie down around this ruined office. Court took off his rifle and his backpack and leaned against the wall. He was still fuming about the murder of the noncombatants, but he knew the sooner he focused his attention on his real mission here, the sooner he’d be done with these KWA assholes.
And he was well aware that being positioned here near the Hawks Brigade command post had presented him with an opportunity. Court knew he needed to find a way downstairs into the CP. There would be maps, plans, men discussing the tactical needs of this security operation, and, somewhere in all that intelligence, Court was hopeful he’d find some information about Ahmed Azzam’s rumored trip to Palmyra.
Sure, Court was embedded with one militia unit that, from what he had been told, had been positioned at the outer edge of the security ring around Palmyra. It was too much to hope for that that tactical operations center for the Desert Hawks Brigade was going to have all the plans for the entire operation laid out for him to see, but he didn’t necessarily need to know everything.
He was looking for a definite time and an exact place,
and he would love to know as much as he could about the security setup for the president during his visit.
He had no illusions that he’d learn everything he needed to know. Still, he’d take whatever he could get and he’d make the most of it, but first he needed a way to get into the TOC.
Court had been thinking this over for several minutes, lost in his thoughts, when he looked up and saw Broz leaning back on his backpack, sitting on the floor by the wall and staring at him from across the room.
Court looked away, but the Croatian mercenary said, “What’s your problem, Kilo Nine?”
“Go fuck yourself,” Court answered.
Saunders was sitting nearer to the window. He said, “Don’t worry about him, Broz. The new bloke will come through when the fight is on.”
“Yeah? Sounds like he wants to do an interview with every son of a bitch in every firefight before deciding whether they get a bullet. Is this asshole going to have my back when he sees some lady pull out a pistol on my six? I don’t trust him.”
Court turned back to the Croatian. “So you don’t trust the guy who doesn’t shoot innocent kids? Are all you guys that twisted?”
Saunders gave Court an “eat shit” look, while some of the others mumbled curses Court’s way. But Broz was the one who stood up from his position. He left his M4 rifle on the floor where he’d been sitting, but he walked over to Court.
Court stood up and faced him.
Broz said, “You’re a little better than the rest of us, aren’t you, Wade?”
“I didn’t come here thinking that, but you guys aren’t impressing me much with your actions.”
Broz stuck a finger in Court’s face. “Bastards who look just like those three we shot downstairs wear S-vests all the time!”
“Which three? You mean the boy and the two ladies? I didn’t see any S-vests on them.”
“I’ve lost men to women and kids before. You might not have to worry about that in Toronto or wherever the fuck you come from, but you’re in the real world out here in the desert.”
