The Asset: Act II (An Isabella Rose Thriller Book 2)

by Mark Dawson

  “Hello, Daisy,” he said.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Pope was only ten metres away when the fracas broke out. The sight of the two women with AK-47s was unusual enough as it was, and he had followed them as they moved around the periphery of the square. He knew about the al-Khansaa Brigade, the women who were responsible for ensuring that local women met with the moral standards that had been laid down for them. His attention was on them as they had approached the other woman similarly clad head-to-toe in niqab and abaya, and he had watched as the woman had taken issue with something that had been said and done, freeing herself of the hand on her shoulder and then kicking one of them to the ground. He had watched as the niqab had been torn from her head, and had watched, agog, as the third woman had turned just enough for him to see that she was white, and blonde. And then, as she had reached down into her robe and produced a pistol, he knew that he recognised her.

  Isabella.

  She had run from the women but had not got very far before one of the men had caught her and wrestled her to the ground. The man was wearing the desert camouflage of the execution squads that had become infamous from the caliphate’s slick propaganda videos. He must have outweighed Isabella by sixty pounds, but she struggled mightily and he was having difficulty in restraining her.

  Pope had no idea what she was doing in the square, but he knew she couldn’t hope to get away from it. Even if she could have freed herself, she couldn’t have been in territory more hostile than this.

  A second man collected Isabella’s pistol, crossed the distance to her and pressed it against her head. He said something, and Isabella stopped struggling.

  Pope reached into his pocket again, collected the remote trigger and put his thumb over the stippled depression.

  The sandstorm was gathering strength. The wind in from the desert poured down the streets, meeting at the square. It blew in from all directions, and the black and white flags snapped this way and that as they were snagged by competing gusts. Isabella could feel the tiny motes of grit and sand as they were blasted against her cheeks and forehead. A storm was coming, but it was going to be too late. The executions might have been delayed if they had been scheduled for an hour or two later on; but now, just minutes away, there would be no stopping.

  Isabella was picked up by two men on either side of her: the man who had tackled her to the ground and Abu. They each had her by an arm, and there was nothing that she could do to get away from them. Abu had put her pistol into his belt; she eyed it jealously—desperately—but knew that there was no way that she could get to it. Even if she had been able to arm herself, there would have been nothing that she could have done. Her anonymity was gone and she was among dozens of enemy soldiers. How could she have escaped? It was impossible.

  She bitterly regretted her decision to come back to try to help Aqil. It was foolish. Idiotic. She should have run. She’d had the chance to get out of the city and make for the border. She could have done it. Her mother would never have been so weak. Beatrix would have been furious with her. Isabella clenched her fists in frustration. Had she forgotten everything that her mother had taught her? Had it all been for nothing?

  Abu turned her around so that she was looking at the platform. “Watch,” he said into her ear.

  The wooden crosses on the platform were lowered to the ground, and the al-Khawaris and Aqil were lined up before them. One of the men collected a leather satchel, and from it he withdrew a hammer and a fistful of nails. He held them aloft, his expression masked by the scarf that protected his face from the storm. The crowd signalled their approval.

  Abu leaned in close again. “You will be next,” he said, speaking a little louder to make himself heard over the whine of the wind.

  The explosion was deafening.

  It came from behind Isabella, a gut-shaking boom that tore through the howl of the wind and the noise of the crowd. Isabella heard it a moment before a wave of pressure rolled out and slapped her down to the ground. The detonation reverberated around the square, bouncing back off the walls of the buildings, the crowd toppling like skittles. The men on either side of her were thrown down, too, the difference being that Isabella reacted faster than they did. Abu had been thrown down a pace or two ahead of her, and as he rolled onto his side and looked back toward the source of the explosion, the angle of his body opened up enough so that Isabella could see the Glock. It was there, shoved in his belt, within reach.

  She stretched out her hand, snagged the butt of the pistol and yanked it away.

  He protested, rolling onto hands and knees and scrabbling toward her.

  She shot him point blank. The bullet struck him in the top of the head, blowback splattering across her face. His body slumped face down on the cobbles.

  The other man who had secured her had also been knocked down by the explosion. He was on his back, and he tried to scramble his feet beneath him, his efforts given additional urgency by Isabella’s display of ruthlessness. He crabbed away from her, but he never really had a chance to save himself. Isabella braced the gun in a tight two-handed grip with her left hand canted toward the ground and fired a single round. He jerked at the waist, his torso collapsing back until he was lying prone, staring up at the darkness.

  Isabella turned, ready to run, but found herself looking into the barrel of an AK-47. It was one of the women who had accosted her earlier. Her abaya was covered in sand and dirt from head to toe, but she had regained her feet and her rifle. Isabella saw everything in tiny increments: the tiny black hole of the muzzle, the way the spotlights glinted against the metal of the barrel and the receiver, the gloved finger curled around the trigger. She knew that she was about to be shot, that this was the end, but that, at least, she had taken two of them out with her.

  She heard the sound of gunfire, but as she stood there with her eyes squeezed shut, she didn’t feel anything.

  Was this what it was like?

  She heard something heavy falling to the ground.

  “Isabella.”

  She opened her eyes and turned.

  “It’s me.”

  The man was wearing a scarf, and realising that she couldn’t see his face, he pulled it down. It took her a moment to recognise him; the delay was because it was incongruous. He had no business being here.

  “Mr Pope?”

  He was dressed like one of them, all in black, with a backpack slung across one shoulder. He was holding a Beretta M9 in his left hand. Isabella jerked her head around and saw that the woman was on the ground, her AK lying across her chest.

  “Quickly,” Pope said. His right hand was extended toward her.

  She allowed him to take her by the hand.

  The onlookers were still recovering from the shock of the blast. Those who had regained their feet looked at the burning hulk of the Humvee and then up at the sky, searching for the aircraft that must have been responsible. Salim, Khalil and Aqil were hustled off the platform and back down to the car.

  It was chaotic, and in the chaos no one noticed them as they ran. Pope led the way toward one of the roads that fed into the square. They passed the burning Humvee. It had been raised up and then dumped down onto its side, hungry flames dancing over it and spilling a column of jet-black smoke that was ripped apart by the wind. The crowd diluted as the bystanders started to panic. They spilled away from the square, fearing another attack. Pope gripped Isabella’s hand more tightly and dragged her with him.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Isabella held onto Pope’s hand as he led the way through the square. The men and women were scattering into the streets that fed into the square like the spokes of a wheel. The crowd bulged as they approached the first junction, and as Isabella glanced through the throng of people, she saw two people on the ground. They had fallen, and now they were causing others to stumble and fall. Pope saw the congestion, too, and he changed course to avoid it. Isabella held on tightly to his hand as they skirted the scrum and ran hard for a quieter way out o
f the square.

  Pope led the way, turning left and right until they reached a side street, then ran to a pickup truck that was parked in the mouth of an alley between two buildings. It was a technical, with a big machine gun fitted to the flatbed and plate armour welded to the front. He opened the passenger door for her and then ran around to the other side. Isabella got in.

  “Get down,” he said. “You’ve lost your veil. If they see you—”

  “I know,” she said.

  She cranked the seat until it was back as far as it would go and then slid down into the space between it and the dash. The engine rumbled as Pope turned the ignition, pumping his foot on the gas until the engine started. The pickup jerked forward and then turned sharply to the right.

  “Are you okay?” he said.

  “I’m fine. Thanks to you.”

  “Don’t thank me,” he said. “I should never have got you involved in this.”

  He spun the wheel and hurled the pickup around a bend.

  “Do you know where they kept al-Khawari?”

  “The same place they kept me,” she said. “There’s an old factory on the north side of town.”

  “Could you find it?”

  “I think so. Why?”

  “That’s probably where they’ll take them.”

  “What does it matter?”

  “I need to get al-Khawari out.”

  He swung the wheel again and the pickup swerved to the left. Isabella couldn’t see anything. She looked up, around the edge of the dashboard and through the windscreen. The top floors of the buildings on either side of the road formed a canyon that they raced along. A ribbon of velvet sky ran between the shoulders of the buildings.

  “You understand why I need to do that?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Something is going on that I don’t understand. He’s central to it. I need to speak to him.”

  “You don’t need to explain. Salim has been set up, hasn’t he? We were used to set him up.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “They questioned me. They told me. That’s what they think.”

  “It’s what I think, too,” he said. “I will get you out. I promise. I just have to do this first.”

  Pope drove north, turning this way and that through a confusing mess of streets. On more than one occasion he turned onto a street that was impassable thanks to rubble from collapsed buildings, and had to reverse out and choose another way. He glanced in the mirrors frequently, concerned that they might have drawn attention to themselves, but there was no sign of pursuit. The explosion and the panic that it had created had terrified the men and women in the square and had seemingly sent the regime’s soldiers into hiding. The streets were quiet. They had been able to slip away amid the confusion.

  Isabella looked up at Pope. He was staring through the windshield intently, his jaw clenched. “Was that you?” she asked. “The explosion?”

  “Yes,” Pope said. “I had a mine.”

  They raced along a narrow street between rows of decrepit six-storey apartment blocks, only the upper storeys of the buildings visible to her. They sped out from between them and into a neighbourhood that was characterised by warehouses and factories, most of them burnt out.

  “It’s all right,” Pope said. “You can get up. No one’s around. Do you know where we are?”

  She slithered back up and onto the seat and looked around. They were on the north side of town, the same area that she had passed through with Aqil as they made their ultimately futile attempt to escape. Many of the buildings had been flattened, the debris left where it had been strewn. Street lamps had been twisted and bent, others plucked out of the ground and tossed aside. Great piles of litter had been blown against the mounds of rubble. The wind continued to wail, eddies of dust and sand drawn up from the ground and tiny stones rattling against the truck’s bodywork and chiming off the glass.

  “This is the right area,” she said. “The place they held us is around here.”

  “Do you know where?”

  She gazed out at the wrecked buildings through the scrim of the storm. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s difficult to see anything. And they all look the same.”

  They were approaching a crossroads. Pope was about to reply, when he cursed and stomped down on the brake. The pickup shuddered to a halt, the back wheels sliding out until Pope steered into the skid and brought it back under control. Isabella looked to the left just as a convoy of vehicles raced across the crossroads. There were three vehicles: two technicals sandwiching a saloon car. There was a fighter in each of the flatbeds of the two trucks, scarves wrapped around their faces as they held onto the big machine guns for dear life. None of the vehicles was running with lights.

  Isabella recognised the car in the middle. “That’s the car from the square,” she said. “The one Salim and the others were brought in.”

  Pope pressed down on the gas and the pickup jerked forward again. He swung the wheel, turning to the right onto the block that the convoy was already halfway along. The three vehicles were travelling fast, and Pope let them draw farther away from them. The roads were otherwise quiet, and even though they were running dark and the storm had reduced visibility to eighty or ninety metres, it was still simple enough to follow them.

  They raced through the neighbourhood, the buildings flashing by on either side of them.

  “Down,” Pope said as he pressed down on the brake.

  She saw that they had drawn in close to the last technical. The convoy had slowed, and the first pickup was turning off the road into the courtyard of a building that she recognised. The building was badly damaged, with huge chunks of rubble on the ground, naked pillars topped by iron girders but without roofs to support, and a wide parking area that was covered by earth and dirty sand.

  “That’s it,” she said. “The prison. That’s where they held us.”

  “Get down.”

  She did as she was told, sliding back down into the footwell again. Pope pulled around the technical at the rear of the convoy and drove on. Isabella looked up at him and saw that his eyes were on the rear-view mirror. “What do we do now?” she asked.

  “Find somewhere safe to stop so we can work out what to do.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Pope drove for another minute before he slowed the pickup and turned off the road. Isabella climbed back into the seat as they bumped over a raised kerb and then traced a path between two metal fence posts, the mesh fence that would once have been suspended between them now flattened to the ground. The headlights of the truck reached out through the darkness into a courtyard that lay between two buildings. Both structures had been damaged: the one on the left was a lost cause, with just one wall left upright and the remains of the roof collected within the building’s old curtilage. The building on the right was in better condition; the headlights revealed an ugly gash in the wall, but the structure was otherwise intact.

  Pope drove carefully across the rubble, the pickup’s old suspension creaking unhealthily, and rolled to a stop next to the second building. He reached around and down and collected a rifle from the footwell in front of the rear seats; then he opened the door and stepped outside. Isabella did the same; the wind whipped around her, snatching at the folds of the abaya and scouring her face with sand. She covered her eyes with her arm and hopped over the bricks and rubble, carefully making her way inside the building.

  Pope had the rifle out in front of him; Isabella saw that it was an M4. A picatinny rail had been fitted to the front sight base of the rifle and he had taken a flashlight and slotted it into place. A beam of bright white light shone out to the left and right as he checked that the building was vacant. Isabella followed the beam as it stretched out into the large room: she saw overturned tables, hulks of industrial machinery and rows of racking. Isabella waited as he disappeared around a partially collapsed wall, and then saw the beam of the flashlight through a hole in the ceiling as he checked the fl
oor above her.

  He took his time and she went back to the opening in the wall and gazed out into the storm as she waited for him to return. She could see the dim shape of the building on the other side of the parking area, and the occasional glimmer of light from the town, but the storm had filled the air with a curtain of sand and grit. The road beyond the fence was empty.

  She heard the crunch of Pope’s footsteps and turned to see him approach, the rifle pointed down at the floor. “Clear,” he said. “There’s no one here. It’s just us.”

  “Where are we?”

  “A block away from where they pulled off the road. We’ll be all right here. The storm helps. We’re lucky—no one will be out tonight.”

  Pope went back to the pickup and returned with his backpack. There were large wooden pallets on the floor of the building. He took two of them and propped them up against the opening. The pallets were formed by slats of wood with gaps between them, and wind continued to blow inside, but they baffled the worst of it and reduced the amount of grit in the air.

  Pope switched off the flashlight, rested the M4 against the wall, turned to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “No injuries? They didn’t hurt you?”

  “No. I’m fine—really.”

  “So what happened?”

  “When?”

  “Everything. Start with Khalil’s party.”

  It had been only five nights ago, yet it seemed like it was a lifetime away. She told him that she had planted the device, just as she had been instructed, but that she had been disturbed by Jasmin al-Khawari before she could leave. She told him about the fight and about how she had knocked the older woman unconscious and tied her up. She told him how she had been stopped by Salim and Khalil. “Something happened outside the house. They said it was a raid.”

  “They?” Pope said. “Who said that? Salim?”