Vengeance: A Derek Stillwater Novel (Derek Stillwater Thrillers Book 8)

by Mark Terry

Flipping open the phone, Derek held it to his ear, thinking it was possible to place a small charge of C4 or Semtex in a phone that would be enough to blow a hole in your head.

  “Yes.”

  “Still alive, I see.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want you dead.”

  “We’ve established that. Your brother’s on his way. He’s probably six or seven hours away from landing in Qatar. If you kill Mandalevo before he lands, there’s nothing stopping them from turning that plane back around and putting him back in Guantanamo. Or shoving him out of the plane somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.”

  “I am aware of that. That is why I’m willing to make a deal with you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “They are flying my brother to Qatar. There are closer locations.”

  “I’m the wrong guy to try and negotiate this with, dumbass. You’ve got to talk to somebody with the State Department or the Department of Defense. That’s way above my pay grade.”

  “I’m sure they’re listening in.”

  “I’m sure they’re trying to. What do you want from me, assuming there’s anything to negotiate?”

  “If you can guarantee my brother’s safe release, and you meet me alone at a location I let you know about in forty-five minutes, I will provide the location of Secretary Mandalevo.”

  Derek clamped down on his desire to tell Nazif that he wasn’t going to meet him anywhere. He’d already come this far. “I will have to relay this information to the embassy, who will—”

  “I will call you at 4:45.”

  The phone went dead.

  “Well, that was totally useless.”

  Johnston: Not quite. NSA is tracking the phone.

  Hammond: I think I might have something useful from the satellite footage, too.

  Spinning the wheelchair, Derek headed back to the truck.

  Simultaneously, Noa screamed, “Move!”

  He bolted out of the wheelchair. A gunshot coughed from a distance. A bullet struck the wheelchair, which jumped. The ricochet whined past.

  Racing for the ambulance, his bad leg and injuries slowed him down. Another gunshot pocked at the air. A chunk of pavement split only inches away.

  Both Noa and Kadish were outside the ambulance, firing MP5 bursts toward the stadium.

  And then something slammed into his back and he smashed into the ground, pain radiating through his body.

  Gasping for breath, he rolled, trying to get to his feet. His back hurt like hell. The vest had stopped it from penetrating—he hoped—but it still felt like getting hit with a sledge hammer. He could barely get to his knees, could barely breathe.

  Noa kept firing. Kadish rushed to him, dragged him to his feet and pushed him toward the ambulance, shoving him in the back and jumping in after him. Noa pulled the doors shut and shouted, “Go!”

  With a shriek of metal on pavement, Schmuel punched the gas and the ambulance rocketed toward the exit. A hole appeared in the back of the ambulance. Kadish shouted, “Harah! Harah! Ben Zona! Harah, harah, harah!”

  The bullet had ripped through the thin skin of the ambulance and tore through his thigh, slamming into bone. It was a huge wound, gushing blood, broken bone visible.

  As the ambulance careened through the streets Derek shouted, “We need a hospital! Now!”

  Grabbing a cloth, he pressed down on the leg. Kadish howled in pain. “Look for a pressure bandage and some QuikClot.” In seconds the cloth was soaked scarlet. Kadish had stopped shouting and seemed dazed. Shock.

  “Hurry!”

  Colonel Nate Brigham led four embassy security forces and a half-dozen men from the Egyptian Army who had been told to help out with anything Brigham’s team was doing. His team hadn’t been doing much after the chlorine gas attack, but RSO Sholes has given them a head’s-up that Stillwater was up to something and seemed closer to Nazif than anyone else had been. He’d taken a hit of speed and ibuprofen and if his heart didn’t burst, he was good to go.

  Sholes had told him that Stillwater and his team didn’t trust the embassy after the CIA and the contact in Egyptian intelligence had set him up.

  Couldn’t much blame him for that.

  But as soon as they heard about the stadium the ten of them had raced there.

  And then the shooting started.

  Brigham and the entire crew rushed the entrances, racing up the ramps to the higher levels. There were too many ramps, levels, corridors and tunnels, but the sniper must have been at the very top overlooking the entrance.

  Off to his right machinegun fire echoed through the stadium.

  One of the Egyptians shouted into the microphone in Arabic. Brigham’s Arabic was decent–they had found the shooter.

  “Spread out.”

  Racing out into the open air from the concrete hallway, he was nearly blinded by green turf, a blue track, blue and white seats, and harsh white sunlight. Spinning, rifle to his shoulder, he sighted around, looking for the ongoing firefight.

  Off to his left, three sections over, one section up. He rushed up the metal and concrete steps, boots clanging.

  The sniper had hidden himself away behind a concrete pillar. Brigham figured he had a decent cross-section of the stands, but was totally blocked from his right.

  From the direction he and two of his team were coming from.

  “If at all possible we want him alive,” he muttered into his throat mic.

  He slowed down. The Egyptians had discovered they needed cover and chose to hide behind benches and pillars. Occasionally one of them would pop out and fire off a burst at the sniper. The sniper, however, took his time and waited.

  Zwang!

  A strangled shout and one of the Egyptians collapsed, clutching his neck. Blood sprayed.

  Making eye contact with his people, Brigham directed Simmons to circle around to the left, Jacobsen to the right. He would go straight forward.

  Slowly.

  The sniper’s attention was on the other Egyptians. At least they had him pinned down.

  Brigham crouched down. He did not have a clear shot at the sniper, who was partially hidden behind the concrete pillar. But every few seconds the sniper took a step back.

  For this mission Brigham had chosen an M16A4 with a scope. He was about fifty yards away from the sniper.

  Might as well be point-blank.

  The sniper fired at one of the Egyptians.

  Then stepped back.

  Brigham squeezed the trigger.

  The sniper screamed and collapsed, clutching his leg.

  Brigham’s team rushed forward. In seconds they had the sniper secured.

  Joining them, he looked down at the man. It wasn’t Nazif. That had probably been too much to ask for.

  48

  Noa, pulse rushing in her ears, gently pushed Derek aside. Slapping QuikClot onto Kadish’s wound, she skipped the step of a pressure bandage and applied a tourniquet. The wound was too serious and bleeding too intense. “How close are we to the hospital?” she called to Schmuel.

  “Couple blocks. How’s he doing?”

  “Alive, but it’s pretty bad.”

  “Almost there.”

  Tightening the tourniquet, she saw that much of the bleeding had slowed thanks to the coagulant. Glancing at Derek, she saw him wince in pain as they hit a pothole.

  “How bad’s your back?” she asked.

  “Bad,” he said.

  Like most people, men and women, who made it through Special Forces training in any military, Derek was tough with a high pain tolerance. Just today she had seen everything he could deal with. She couldn’t decide if he was extraordinarily determined or obsessive. There was a fine line between the two and she suspected Derek crossed it a long time ago.

  And what did she know about him? An intense experience in Afghanistan two decades ago? A day or so this week? A look at a Top Secret dossier compiled by Mossad?

  And then they were pulling into the Emergency Department entrance of
the Mohammed Youssef Mousa Hospital. She pushed thoughts of Derek out of her mind and concentrated on the job at hand. Schmuel was talking to the staff. She and Derek levered Kadish onto a gurney. Derek grimaced, bent over.

  “Anything broken?”

  “Hopefully just bruising.”

  Noa and Schmuel dealt with the hospital officials. When she turned around, Derek was nowhere to be seen. She found him standing out front of the hospital, talking into the phone.

  Sholes: They’ve picked up your sniper. He claims they’ve taken the Secretary to a safe house near the Hotel Concorde. The Egyptians are sending out people to scour the area now.

  “Hope it’s a real lead,” Derek said. He was skeptical. So far all the information the Egyptians had gotten out of members of the Nazif Brigade had been traps. He told her so.

  Sholes: Noted. What’s your plan now?

  “I don’t have one. I’ll get back to you.” He looked at Noa. “Khadish is probably in surgery. Do we have anything else besides what the sniper says?”

  Hammond: Maybe.

  “Okay,” Derek said. “Signing off.”

  Sholes: Wait—

  Hammond: I don’t think she likes it when you do that.

  “I don’t care. She’s awesome, but she’s in a building filled with people who would gladly trade me for Bob. What’ve you got?”

  Hammond: Jim and I have been analyzing the commercial satellite footage. Backtracking the vehicles that came and went around the stadium. We’re pretty sure we identified the one that dropped off your sniper and the box. So we followed it back. It gets a little confusing, but we’re fairly certain it went very close to the Ministry of Defense. It’s not that far from the

  International Stadium.

  “You’re saying Nazif is working with someone at the Ministry of Defense?”

  Johnston: No, we don’t think so. But consider this, Derek. The other attack was on the Armed Forces Mosque. Your own report about your interview with Abdul Nazif at Gitmo indicates a lot of hostility toward the Egyptian military on the part of

  Hussein Nazif.

  Irina: Our analysis of the phone call you just received puts Nazif very close to that location.

  Derek looked at Noa. “Should we head over there?”

  She nodded. “Schmuel will stay here with Kadish. I can drive.”

  “We’re on our way. But something a little more detailed would be helpful.”

  Irina: Boris’s drone is headed that way now.

  “Flying a drone over the Ministry of Defense? That ought to go well.” He and Noa headed for the ambulance. “Patch Sholes back in, okay?”

  After a moment the Security head was back on the line, frothing at the mouth. “What the hell is your problem, Stillwater?”

  “Have Brigham call me. We’ll update you shortly.”

  Sholes: Don’t you—

  “Um,” Derek said. “Did someone cut her off?”

  Irina: I did.

  “Oh.” He cocked an eyebrow at Noa. “Um, thanks.”

  Irina: My pleasure.

  Brigham called him back. “Sholes is a bit pissed at you.”

  “I have no problem with her except that I’m not confident that what I tell her doesn’t get passed on to the CIA guy. Him I don’t trust.”

  “O’Bannon? Hmmm. Yeah, I can see that. Keeping in mind that Sholes is my boss, what do you want?”

  “I want to know that if I ask you for help you won’t go running to O’Bannon.”

  “That’s a given. I don’t answer to him.”

  Derek told him where they were headed and said they wanted some backup. “Think you can do it without drawing a crowd?”

  “Be there in about twenty minutes. And Stillwater? Don’t get killed or blown up before my team arrives, okay? I owe you that much.”

  “No promises.”

  The Ministry of Defense was a complex of buildings in Nasr City, a particularly modern district of Cairo, with high rises and condominiums, malls and modern construction. Ever since the Arab Spring the year before access had been limited, with barbed-wire set up around many of the buildings.

  Derek gestured at a gold pyramid-like structure as they approached. “What’s that?”

  “The Unknown Soldier Memorial,” Noa said. “It’s also where Anwar Sadat is buried.” Anwar Sadat had been the President of Egypt until he was assassinated by army officers in 1981. Derek was a little fuzzy on the history, but he was pretty sure Sadat had been involved in the overthrow of King Farouk before him. Egypt’s recent history of political secession wasn’t particularly peaceful.

  As they approached the Ministry of Defense, he said, “Okay. We’re here, but here is a pretty big space. Where should we go?”

  Hammond: Where are you?

  Noa said, “El Tayaran Street, between the Abeer Al Eslam Mosque and the Ministry of Defense complex.”

  Hammond: Jim wants to talk to you in private. Irina?

  Irina: In five … okay, now.

  Johnston came on the phone line. “Here’s the deal,” Johnston said. “We think that Nazif at one point in the last hour was on the grounds of the Ministry of Defense. Over on the other side of the compound from where you are, closer to Ahmed Tayseer, we backtracked a vehicle from the stadium back to the Ministry of Defense. From our satellite footage there are a lot of military vehicles in that area. We backtracked a little bit to see the van we think Nazif was in arrive, but we lost it going back further.”

  “If you’re suggesting we sneak into these grounds, you’re crazy,” Derek said, looking over the facility. “That’s a little bit like trying to sneak into the Pentagon.”

  Johnston sighed. “Um, no, we’re not. I made a telephone call just a little while ago to, um, an old friend from my days in the Army.”

  “Am I going to like this?”

  “I phoned General el-Sisi.”

  “Jesus Christ, Jim! He’s the head of the Egyptian military.”

  “Yes. He wasn’t when we knew each other. And my contacting him directly would not be appreciated by the current administration. Anyway, I’ve told him that you’ll be there and he or someone with his staff is going to meet you there.”

  Rolling his eyes at Noa, Derek said, “If they arrest me and turn me over to Nazif I’m going to be seriously pissed at you.”

  “Trust me on this.”

  “I trust you. Do you trust el-Sisi?” As he said these words he saw several vehicles heading toward them, including what looked to be an armored personnel carrier.

  “Reasonably well.”

  “Give me a percentage.”

  “Eighty-nine percent.”

  Well, it could be worse, Derek thought. “I think they’re here now. Patch us back in. And Sholes, too.”

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “Fuck no. Do it anyway.”

  In a few seconds he had everyone on the line. Derek quickly explained what was happening.

  Sholes: The general was the one who recommended Ali Urabi. Which is how O’Bannon got into the middle of things.

  “This is sounding better and better. If I end up in prison shortly, please have Brigham work with my team, if at all possible. Company just arrived.”

  Two uniformed soldiers with assault rifles approached the ambulance. Derek said, “Stay here.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Give you time to drive away if necessary.”

  “Derek—”

  He pushed open the door and clambered out of the ambulance, back protesting. Face twisting in pain, he walked around the front of the ambulance, hands out to his side.

  One of the soldiers said something in Arabic. Derek shook his head.

  Leaning out the window, Noa said, “He asked if you’re Derek Stillwater.”

  “Yes,” he said, nodding.

  The other soldier, in English, said, “We would like both of you to join the general in the carrier.” He gestured to the armored personnel carrier.

  “I would
prefer that my partner stay in her vehicle.”

  The soldier frowned, walked back to the carrier and spoke through a window, then returned. “Very well.”

  Derek slowly followed the soldier back to the armored personnel carrier. The door opened and Derek slid into the seat opposite the man he recognized as General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Commander-in-Chief and Minister of Defence and Military Production of the Egyptian military.

  “Ms. Shoshan does not wish to join us?”

  “Not at the moment,” Derek said.

  The general held out a hand and Derek shook it. El-Sisi said, “Jim Johnston speaks highly of you. It has been quite a few years since we spoke. He tells me that if anyone can solve this problem, it would be you.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Is there a reason I should not take you into custody and announce that we will trade you for Secretary Mandalevo? If the secretary were to be released, even if you were killed in the process, many problems would be solved.”

  “Aside from my unwillingness to do so and the ill will that would generate between Egypt and the U.S. Secretary of State?”

  El-Sisi shrugged and splayed his hands. “It is one solution. What do you want?”

  “Johnston and my team in general believe Nazif or someone with the Brigade traveled recently onto the grounds here.”

  The general was probably a good poker player, but the surprise showed on his face. “What evidence do they have of this?”

  Derek explained the satellite imagery.

  “And you can communicate directly with Johnston right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wish to speak to him.”

  With a sigh, Derek handed over his phone. He declined to share the information that his team, including Lynn Sholes, was listening in.

  “Jim?”

  Derek could still hear through his earbud.

  “Abdul,” Johnston said. “Is Derek there?”

  “Yes. Why did you not tell me you thought Nazif was nearby?”

  “We were still analyzing the satellite data.”

  “The U.S. has satellites looking at the Ministry of Defense?”

  “Of course, but these are commercial satellites.”

  “Can you send me the data you’re looking at?”