‘Are you expecting company?’ Sophia said. ‘Other than Schlosser and the bodyguard?’
‘No,’ Grace said. ‘But I’m preparing for it.’
Chapter Twenty-One
Damien moved from the van to the jeep and deposited the backpack in the rear. Sophia gave him her P99. It had one round in the chamber and three in the magazine. Not ideal but it was all she had. He asked Nasira and Jay to take everything out of the backpack, including two empty daypacks. Jay filled each daypack with an MP7 and a spare mag, handing off a single round from his pistol to Damien for his P99.
‘Wow, thanks,’ Damien said, using his thumbs to feed the single round into the P99 mag.
‘We’re both on five rounds now,’ Jay said. ‘That’s fair.’
Jay slipped his oxygen tank from the backpack into the rear of the jeep. Damien didn’t question it; oxygen tanks had their uses. He threw his daypack over both shoulders and debated with Jay over where to put their pistols. They settled on the back of the waistband, concealed under their T-shirts. As long as they kept their daypacks on, no one would notice the pistol-shaped bulge. Not a great look inside an airport. Jay was also carrying an EMP grenade in his daypack, although Damien doubted it would be much use. Grace had given another EMP grenade to Chickenhead, and kept two for herself.
‘Passenger is collecting luggage,’ Freeman said in Damien’s miniature wireless earpiece.
That was Schlosser’s on-air name: Passenger. The radio communications were encrypted but this was still protocol.
Neither Damien nor Jay was required to acknowledge the message. They couldn’t risk being seen talking to themselves every few minutes, otherwise they’d be pegged either as foreign intelligence or crazies.
Along with the earpiece, Damien wore a wireless mic concealed under the neck of his dark-colored T-shirt. Both earpiece and mic were linked to the radio in his jeans pocket. In his other pocket were a bunch of folded pesos, his GPS receiver and one of Grace’s flashguns. And in his back pocket, a cheap prepaid Nokia with temporary numbers programmed in for Jay, Freeman, Grace and Sophia. The phone was off; it’d only be required in an emergency. Once the operation was over, he’d bin it.
Damien sat himself on the edge of a row of chairs in the lobby. His daypack, slung over both shoulders, pressed against the seat. He wanted to do as little loitering as possible until Schlosser was nearby, so for now he took it easy and analyzed everything around him. The terminal looked a bit dated. The sand-colored marble floors, ceiling made of chocolate and cream squares and walls that warped inward made it look like a post-apocalyptic underground shopping mall built during the Cold War. Concrete balconies on the level above were emblazoned with video ads. The one straight ahead told him about the airport’s fifty airline partners. They broke occasionally to update on the US riots. The picture wasn’t crisp enough for Damien to lip-read the newsreader but the title below read Food Riots Turn Violent Across America. The news report cut away to show two riot police officers beating a man with their batons. Damien watched as the man’s girlfriend tried to protect him. An officer cracked his baton across her ribs and then her leg, bringing her to her knees. The camera closed in on her crying on the footpath while other protestors, incensed, shouted at the police. The news report cut to the weather.
A family of four walked past Damien, pushing trolleys swelling with baggage. It was staggering how people could pack so much. Then again, he’d never owned more than a dozen things at any one time. He couldn’t fill a single luggage bag if he tried.
‘Passenger queuing at customs,’ Freeman said.
‘Get to it, boys,’ Grace said.
Damien stood and moved past customs. He scanned the queues, trying to see Schlosser. The best Freeman could do this morning when he hit the internet café was a decade-old photo of the scientist courtesy of Google Image Search. But it was enough for Damien to spot him.
Schlosser wore small circular glasses with thin brown rims. He had a trimmed white beard that had thinned on the sides since his Google photo. His large ears looked enormous, with thick outer ridges, and his short brown hair was thinning on top. His eyebrows were faint wisps and his lower lip hung slightly open under his white mustache. He looked tired and stressed, which was unsurprising.
He clenched a passport and immigration papers in one hand and a black leather satchel in the other, a gray woolen coat slung over one arm. Damien couldn’t see much below Schlosser’s waist, but he was wearing a pale blue business shirt and a black tie with the occasional rogue white dot. The tie was loosened just a notch and his cuffs folded back to his elbows.
Damien checked the man behind Schlosser. Slightly out of shape but clean-shaven, a touch over six inches and with a nose like a pointed arrow. He held his passport firmly under both hands and stood motionless. Probably the bodyguard, but Damien couldn’t be sure until he watched them move in tandem.
‘I have visual,’ he muttered into the mic before sitting down again.
He adjusted the straps on his daypack to make sure it was sitting firmly on his shoulders, then waited for Schlosser and his pal to emerge. Judging by the pattern of people walking out of customs, he’d give them four minutes before he rechecked their place in the queue.
Jay emerged from around a pillar and sidestepped a woman in a striped singlet. He cast a glance over Damien, but didn’t linger. Damien watched as he kept moving at the slow tourist pace expected of him.
‘No red flags yet,’ Jay said, his mic doing a remarkable job of isolating his voice from the background noise. Or maybe that was just Damien’s enhanced hearing, he couldn’t be sure.
Damien slipped his hand between the daypack and his back, felt for the pistol grip of Sophia’s P99 and pushed it further down his waistband, trigger guard and all, so only the grip protruded. Reaching over behind his daypack, he checked the pack’s zips were closed.
Schlosser crossed his peripheral. Damien tried his best to continue his movements and not react. The arrow-nosed man was behind him, about ten feet on Schlosser’s seven. The best that one bodyguard could do, really. Damien studied his movements. His hands were half-closed in fists and his steps were rigid and crisp. Ex-military. This had to be the bodyguard.
Damien fake-checked his watch, lifted his eyebrows in mild fake-surprise and stood up. He adjusted his daypack again, discreetly checking his P99, then moved slightly off direction to Schlosser.
He pulled out his Nokia and fake-talked into it. ‘Passenger and plus one in lobby. Bearing north to taxi rank.’
Jay walked past him. ‘Rank is clear, going six.’
Damien pocketed the Nokia and did a casual I-don’t-know-where-I-am-so-I’ll-look-at-everything glance. He soaked everything in. Man standing to his ten, white business shirt, jacket held behind him in both hands, looking in Schlosser’s direction. Damien watched, but the man didn’t produce anything from under his jacket. His focus was past Schlosser, at something in the distance.
Girl in pink top, minding a trolley of luggage. Older man with ponytail and canary yellow T-shirt walking lazily in front of Schlosser. Damien saw the bodyguard tense up, his footsteps striking harder in Damien’s ears. Nothing.
It was Jay’s job to spot the party, but Damien had to make sure the coast was clear. The bodyguard had Schlosser covered so Damien powered ahead, ignoring them both. He paused outside the automatic doors, feigning uncertainty and using the time to absorb everything. The air-conditioning vanished; he was wrapped instantly in a cloying humidity. Even though Jay had been here moments ago, Damien still checked every vehicle on either side. A queue of seven yellow taxis on his left; nothing on his right or on the other side. Aside from employees and security, he couldn’t see anything suspicious.
He walked the zebra crossing to the metal barriers ahead. This was where Schlosser and his bodyguard would queue for the van pick-up. About sixty people were corraled there like cattle, with three indifferent security guards waving them through in portions.
Damien walke
d past the queue, checked every face. He was mostly looking for foreigners. He spotted two white men towering over the locals and tuned in to their conversation: Russian. They looked like tourists but he kept tabs on them anyway. Russian would be a plausible cover for a surveillance team, or shocktroopers. He joined the end of the queue, turning outward so he could see Schlosser and his bodyguard. They were halfway across the zebra crossing, in single file and far enough apart to be taken for separate travelers. So far, the bodyguard was doing everything right. That’ll make my job easier, he thought.
To be honest, he probably wasn’t even needed, but he kept his focus on the queue ahead anyway. He didn’t want to give himself away as being interested in Schlosser. The two Russians stood in front of him, sixty-liter backpacks strapped across their shoulders and stomachs.
‘All clear in the lobby,’ Jay said.
‘This taxi queue is packed,’ Damien said aloud.
One of the Russians overheard him and nodded in agreement.
Damien wondered if their backpacks were a cover. They seemed to sit low on their hips, suggesting genuine weight inside.
He turned his head slightly, allowing Schlosser to slip into the edge of his vision. A white van had stopped at the zebra crossing to let him pass. At first Damien thought it was Grace’s van, but the numberplate was different. Schlosser reached the curb and joined the queue three people behind Damien. The bodyguard was ten paces behind. The van continued on its way. Damien made fleeting eye contact with the driver but didn’t recognize him.
Before Damien knew it, he was at the front of the queue with a handful of other travelers. One by one, they called out to the guards as their friends or family arrived to pick them up and the guards let them through the barrier. Damien realized there was no queue at all; it was just a group of people waiting for their rides.
He pulled out of the crowd and pretended to check his Nokia. ‘Ready for pick-up,’ he muttered.
‘Acknowledged,’ Grace said. ‘We’re moving in now.’
As he looked up, he spotted Jay inside the lobby. Jay was doing the same thing, fake-checking his Nokia. Then he moved off, looking around as if for a restroom. Damien scanned the taxi rank behind him again. A young couple in singlets and flip-flops disappeared into a taxi. It drove off and the other taxis dutifully shuffled forward to fill the spot. Damien turned around, finished with his phone, and surveyed the crowd for new joiners. He spotted three more locals.
He checked the A gate, where Schlosser would be picked up. Grace’s van pulled up at B gate.
Schlosser was moving through the crowd, waving to the guard at B gate. His bodyguard squeezed in behind him, not drawing attention to himself. He was checking the crowd too. When the bodyguard checked him, Damien made sure to be looking somewhere else. When he looked back, the bodyguard was helping Schlosser into the side door of the van. He looked like he was about to pass out from the stress. The two Russians stepped forward and Damien could see the passenger in the front side. She was staring straight ahead, but she wasn’t Grace.
The side door closed.
‘No!’ Damien yelled.
He pushed through the crowd and vaulted over the barrier. A guard held his hand out, shouting for Damien to get behind the barriers.
‘Wrong van!’ Damien shouted.
He didn’t need to shout that loud into the mic, but he couldn’t help it. He glanced west, spotted Grace’s van. Still a hundred yards off.
‘Wrong van!’ he yelled again.
The guard’s hand pushed his chest. Damien buckled, absorbed the blow and locked the guard’s elbow in. He held the guard’s wrist and brought his other arm against the elbow. He didn’t want to break the guy’s arm, so he kept the pressure on and took the pistol from his holster — Glock 17, nine mil. It was already cocked with a round in the chamber. Damien aimed at the escaping van’s rear tires, using the guard’s rigid arm to steady his shot. He snapped off four rounds. The last round made the tire ripple, but the van didn’t slow. Run-flat tires.
‘Fuck fuck fuck,’ Damien said.
The guard further down the queue had his own pistol out and aimed at Damien.
‘Jay!’ Damien yelled. ‘Where are you?’
He kept his disabled guard as a shield against the guard ahead and checked over his shoulder. Jay was sliding across the hood of a taxi, daypack over both shoulders and Sig drawn. He pulled the driver out at gunpoint, jumped into his seat and, with the door still open, accelerated hard, tires squealing. He dodged a family on the zebra crossing and sped out of the taxi rank.
Grace’s van pulled up beside Damien. He pointed his pistol into the guard’s head and, eyes on the other guard, dragged him to the side door. It slid open. Damien released the guard but kept the Glock pistol. Chickenhead helped him inside and Big Dog slammed the door shut. DC hit the gas hard, scattering the guards.
‘The bodyguard!’ Damien yelled, handing the Glock to Big Dog. ‘The bodyguard helped him in.’
‘That wasn’t the bodyguard,’ Freeman said.
‘Jay,’ Grace said, ‘do you have visual?’
Damien could hear Jay thrashing the car engine over the radio. ‘I did, but they took a corner,’ he said.
Damien moved to the front seats and looked over Grace’s shoulder at the smartphone fastened to her wrist. She was tracking Jay’s position. He was a good length ahead of them. DC pulled onto Ninoy Aquino Avenue just as Jay turned off it, onto NAIA Road.
‘Sophia, where are you?’ Grace said.
‘Right behind you,’ Sophia replied.
‘Good,’ Grace said. ‘Stay with us until I give further orders.’
She seemed calm. Too calm.
‘You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?’ Damien said, aware that his mic would be transmitting every word.
‘Everything I know I told you,’ she said.
‘That’s why you wanted us here. You knew he was being followed.’
She looked over her shoulder at him. ‘How could I know that? How could I possibly know that?’
‘You knew it was a distinct possibility,’ Damien said. ‘And if you told us that, we might have bailed on the mission. And you couldn’t let that happen.’
‘We can’t lose him,’ Grace said.
The jeep weaved in front of them.
‘Sophia!’ Grace yelled. ‘Tell Benito to pull back!’
Through the windshield, Damien saw Sophia give Grace the finger. The jeep accelerated hard into the corner and onto NAIA Road.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jay floored the taxi as he approached the intersection ahead. It was Roxas Boulevard and the lights were green. Cars started peeling left and right. The van cut across them and took the right.
By the time Jay hit the corner, the lights were red. He applied the brake as late as possible and tried a smooth arc. He almost clipped the curb as he took the taxi across all four lanes and smashed the gas again. The road was clear, but ahead he could see a cluster of cars and a bus. Somewhere ahead of them was the van. Ignoring the beeps and voices from the taxi radio, he clutched into fourth, then fifth, maneuvered around the cars. He could see the van a hundred yards away. He felt his jaws clenching as he dropped in behind it.
‘You’ve been a very bad van,’ he whispered.
‘I need you to get your GPS receiver onto that van,’ Grace said.
‘With what?’ Jay yelled, weaving around a bus. ‘My Spiderman web?’
‘Whatever sticks,’ Grace said. ‘Make it happen.’
‘Fuck!’ Jay said.
He overtook the bus, his headlight clipping the corner of the bus and shattering. The van was three cars ahead. The road wasn’t clear any more. All the lanes were filling fast. Jay dropped to fourth. He skipped over two lanes and fell in on the far right. There was nothing ahead of him for a good length — this was his best shot.
A necklace of beads and a Christian cross rattled around the rear-vision mirror. Through the mirror he noticed Benito’s jeep, Sophia r
iding shotgun. Not literally, but she would surely have a round in the chamber of her MP7. That reminded him. He’d need more firepower than the Sig sitting in his lap. As he carved up the right lane he dug into his daypack, still over both shoulders, swapping the Sig for the MP7. He placed the MP7 in his lap and, knees clamping the wheel, flicked the already cocked weapon from safety to semi-auto, grabbing the wheel again just in time to avoid a rapidly braking bus. The passengers looked horrified. They’d probably just seen him take the safety off the MP7.
In his rear-vision he saw Grace’s van. Further back, he spotted pulsing red and blue lights. Police. Just what they needed right now.
The cars ahead slowed rapidly. Jay changed into the middle lane, now five cars behind the van. He drew to a halt and couldn’t do much except wait. At least the van was trapped too. He checked his pockets. His GPS receiver was in one. How the hell was he going to get it onto the van?
He opened the glove box, hoping to find electrical or gaffer tape. He pulled everything out but found nothing except a cigarette lighter and some user manuals and maps. He looked for anything in the car that was adhesive. Nothing.
Wait.
The corner of the permit sticker was loose. He leaned over to the passenger side and pulled at it. It was a long rectangular green sticker. He peeled it gradually until it came free from the windscreen. Carefully, he placed the GPS receiver in the middle. There was plenty of room on both sides for it to adhere. He wrapped it around his left forearm tightly. It wasn’t going anywhere.
He got out of the car. With the GPS taped to one arm, MP7 in the other and his daypack on his back, he ran one lane across from the van so they wouldn’t spot him in the side mirrors. He made his approach from the next lane, keeping low. He needed to cross to the rear of the van at the last moment and slap it on while he was outside their field of vision. They couldn’t know what he was doing otherwise they’d just remove it later or switch vehicles once they lost Jay and his team. They’d probably switch vehicles at some point anyway, so his time frame was slim.
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