Blood Moon Rising (A Beatrix Rose Thriller Book 2)

by Dawson, Mark

  Duffy nodded and cracked his knuckles. “That’s all I had for you, sir. Thank you.”

  “Keep me posted.”

  Control ended the call.

  Duffy stood and collected his holstered pistol from the back of his chair. He put it on.

  Time to go to work.

  Duffy and McNulty drew up at the hotel. They were in an unmarked Land Rover, with the four men that they had brought along for the job in another Land Rover behind them. Each man was armed with a semi-automatic, and McNulty had a Remington Model 870 Pump in a sports bag that was stowed in the back.

  Duffy picked up the handheld radio and thumbed the channel open. “Wide awake, boys,” he said. “The target is a serious player. Eyes open.”

  “How serious?” McNulty said beside him.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Duffy got out of the Land Rover and made his way to the hotel’s entrance. It was plush, at least as far as Basra went, and he was a little surprised that Beatrix Rose would have considered this a suitable place to stay. It was hardly low-key, for one. It would have been more usual for a member of the Group to find somewhere deep in the city, somewhere that no self-respecting tourist would ever consider, in order to rise out of the background, do the job and then fall back out of sight once again. But his contact in the local police had reported that a foreigner who matched Rose’s description had checked in to the hotel. She was a striking woman, especially here. There couldn’t be many like her in a city like this. It was a good lead, the best that they had received. They had to check it out.

  His contact from the Basra police department was waiting in the lobby with two of his colleagues. The man was called Tariq, and he was the most crooked man that Duffy had ever met.

  “Did you get it?” Duffy asked.

  “I did.” He held up a sheet of paper. “A judicial search order.”

  “Any trouble?”

  Tariq smiled his brightest, most avaricious smile. “No trouble, Mr Duffy. You have something for me?”

  “Sure.” He handed over an envelope. “Five hundred dollars for you and your friends. Knock yourselves out.”

  “We must come up with you. We will open the door, and then if she is there, and you happen to go inside?” He spread his hands wide. “What can we do?”

  The blonde woman and her companion had checked into adjoining rooms on the fourth floor. Duffy left one of his men in the lobby and sent another two up the stairs. The Iraqi police went up in the first lift, and Duffy, McNulty and the fourth operative took the second.

  “Think she’s here?” McNulty asked him as the lift ascended.

  “I don’t know.” He slipped his hand inside his jacket and drew out the Walther PPK that he had holstered beneath his arm. “Best to assume that she is.”

  The fourth-floor lobby was empty. The two operatives who had taken the stairs appeared, and Duffy told them to stand guard. Tariq told his two colleagues to do the same and set off down the corridor, stopping outside room 415.

  Duffy followed. McNulty was behind him, the Remington held in both hands.

  Tariq took the key card that he had requisitioned at reception and, after checking that Duffy was ready, slipped it into the slot.

  The lock changed from red to green, and the door clicked open a fraction.

  “Ready?” Duffy asked McNulty and the other operative.

  Both men raised their weapons and nodded that they were.

  Duffy kicked the door open.

  He went inside, nerves afire, clearing the en-suite bathroom and then the bedroom beyond.

  Empty.

  It was a decent enough room; clothes lay scattered across the bed. He picked up a white T-shirt. There was a towel on the floor, still damp.

  “She’s been here,” he said. “Not long ago.”

  McNulty came out of the bathroom. “Shower’s only just been used,” he said.

  “Dammit.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Go down to the lobby. Close the hotel down and call for backup. No one goes in or comes out. She might still be in the building.”

  “Will do.”

  McNulty and Tariq left him alone.

  There was a box of bullets on the bed. Nine-millimetre hollow points. He picked up the box. It was empty.

  It was her. She had been here. They had missed her by a matter of minutes.

  This had been his chance. His best and only chance. There had only been one opportunity, and it had passed. She knew, for sure, that they were onto her now. She would be a ghost. They wouldn’t see her again until she decided to come for them.

  For him.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Faik had been alone for almost twenty-four hours. They had brought him to the punishment wing after the riot had been pitilessly quelled. Solitary confinement. He had only seen fleeting glimpses of his fellow inmates as they returned from interrogations, and he had heard the sound of prisoners moaning in their cells after heavy-handed beatings. The long hours of the night had been filled with desperation and restlessness, and it had continued into the day. He had no idea what was planned for him, and into that void came doubt and terror. His sleep was haunted by awful dreams that he couldn’t make stop.

  The isolation cell was tiny. He could touch the walls with both hands when he stretched out his arms. There was a bucket for a toilet, no chair and nothing to sleep on save the cold, hard, concrete floor. He had been given no food or drink, and the cell was so stiflingly hot that he felt woozy.

  A door opened and closed, and he heard footsteps approach from down the corridor. His stomach clenched. Part of him willed the footsteps to continue to another cell. The other part wanted them to stop and his door to be unlocked and opened so that he might have fresh air and water.

  A key was inserted into the lock and turned. The door opened.

  It was Donkey, with two other guards behind him.

  There was no water and no food.

  He was carrying a hood and a pair of handcuffs. The hood was stained with little smudges and smears of brown.

  Donkey’s expression was gleeful.

  Faik shrank away, but there was nowhere for him to go.

  The guards crowded into the cell.

  Donkey pressed him back against the wall.

  “It is time for a little chat,” he said.

  The two guards took his arms and restrained him as Donkey pulled the hood over his head. It was made from burlap, coarse against his skin. Little pinpricks of light hovered before his eyes. They fastened it with a drawstring, yanking it so hard that it bit into his throat.

  Something heavy smacked into his face, his chin, and the pinpricks of light were extinguished.

  He was too woozy to pay much attention to where he was being taken. Two of the guards were on either side of him, dragging him down the corridor, the rubber soles of his sandals squealing against the linoleum. A door was opened and he was thrown inside. His hands had been cuffed, and he landed heavily, the resounding impact against his chin snuffing out the consciousness that had started to return.

  Minutes passed.

  The hood was yanked away without warning.

  Bright, artificial lights.

  Starbursts exploded in his eyes.

  He squeezed them shut.

  Strong hands scooped beneath his shoulders and hauled him to his feet. He lolled helplessly as his arms were held out, cold steel bracelets snapping around his wrists. His arms were released, and there was a clank as the chains to which the cuffs were fastened took his weight.

  “Wake up.”

  His head drooped loosely, his chin against his chest.

  “Wake up, you son of a whore.”

  He gasped as a pail of cold water was upturned over his head. The shock ousted the last wisps of his stupor, a
nd his eyes flicked open.

  He was in the same interrogation room as before. The hose had been curled in the corner next to a sodden blanket. He was suspended from two chains which ran up to pulleys fixed into the ceiling. The guards held a chain each and they pulled down hard, jerking his arms straight up into the air, lifting him so that his toes just barely scraped against the floor. His sandals slipped off his feet. The muscles in his shoulders and the tops of his arms protested from the sudden effort of bearing his weight.

  There was no camera this time. The tripod was still there, but it was empty.

  Two powerful lights burned into his face.

  Donkey was in front of him.

  Faik still felt giddy, his sight distorted, double vision that made everything look blurred and ghostly.

  “You are a terrorist,” Donkey said to him.

  Faik mumbled a denial.

  “What?”

  Faik mumbled again.

  “I can’t hear you.”

  “I am . . . not . . .”

  “You organised the riot, did you not?”

  “No . . . I . . .”

  “You persuaded the others to break out of the cell. You attacked the guards. You murdered them, Faik. Didn’t you?”

  “No . . .”

  “You are a terrorist. You are part of the Promised Day Brigade.”

  “No . . .”

  “You know that dog Muqtada al-Sadr, do you not? You know that son of a cur.”

  “I do not . . .”

  Donkey walked across to the other side of the room. Faik followed him with his eyes, watched as he bent down to a table that held a jumble of tools and other objects that he did not immediately recognise. He picked up an oblong object that looked as if it was heavy. Cables dangled from the object. The cables ended in tarnished crocodile clips. It was a battery.

  “No,” Faik begged as Donkey brought it over to him. “No, please, I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “They always say that,” the man said. “But I get them to sing a different song.”

  Donkey nodded, and the guard to Faik’s left reached across and tore open the jumpsuit, yanking it all the way down to his waist.

  “Please,” Faik begged. He pulled at the cuffs, but all that achieved was to swing him gently forward and back. His toes scraped along the concrete and then his momentum swung him forward and he dangled there. His muscles screamed from the strain.

  “Do you think I am sadistic?”

  Donkey rested the battery on the floor and held up the crocodile clips.

  Faik tried to swing away from him. He could not.

  “You would be right. I am sadistic. It is my only pleasure in this hellhole.”

  Faik struggled again. It was futile. Donkey reached over with his right hand and held him by the hip, deadening the impetus, holding him still.

  “Let me tell you something,” he said. “I will share some information with you. I am going to get you to confess to everything, but only because it pleases me that I can. There was a trial this morning. You were convicted of murdering three guards. There is no right of appeal to this conviction. It is binding. It cannot be changed. Do you know what that means?”

  “I did not . . .”

  Sneering, Donkey reached up with his left hand and gripped Faik’s face. He squeezed his fingers, pushing his cheeks together so that he could only murmur and mumble.

  “You can say what you want. You can deny everything, but it does not matter. Confess to everything, and it won’t matter. You have been convicted of murder and treason. You, and all the others. You have been sentenced to death.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Beatrix had been in her room when she had heard the men outside. She had showered, changed, and prepared her weapons, and then she heard the lift and the men getting out of it. There was an interconnecting door between her room and Faulkner’s, and she had very quietly opened it and slipped through. Beatrix and Faulkner had waited quietly, her FN F2000 assault rifle aimed at the door in anticipation of it opening. It hadn’t.

  The men had burst into her room instead, and that had given Beatrix and Faulkner the moment that they needed.

  They had hurried down the corridor, away from the men in the lobby, and disappeared down the outside fire escape.

  They ran across the parched gardens to Faulkner’s Freelander. Beatrix dumped the kit in the back.

  “They’re onto us,” he said when he had slid inside next to her.

  “We need to be careful from now.”

  “We could have taken him there.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. There were a lot of them. It would have been messy.”

  “But . . .”

  “I want him alive.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we still need him. We don’t know where West is. He does. And I have another use for him.”

  “And are you going to share that with me?”

  “We’re getting a man out of custody.”

  “I know,” he said impatiently. “Mackenzie West.”

  “Someone else, too.”

  Faulkner frowned. “Alright. Humour me. Who?”

  “His name is Faik. He’s the brother of someone I met yesterday. But she didn’t know where he was, other than that Manage Risk had him. Duffy will be able to help us find him.”

  “And then?”

  “Yes,” she said. “And then, that’s that.”

  There was nothing else to say about that.

  “Where are we going now?”

  “I need you to find somewhere we can stay. It needs to be quiet. Out of the way. An abandoned building, somewhere we won’t be disturbed.”

  “Okay. Fine. And you?”

  “I’m going to tail him.”

  “He’ll see you.”

  She reached into the kit bag and took out the hijab that she had borrowed from Mysha. She quickly pulled it over her head and arranged it so that it fell comfortably to her shoulders. “I don’t think so,” she said.

  She got into the driver’s seat.

  “I’ll call you.”

  She drove the Freelander out of the car park and placed it in a position away from the hotel and yet still close enough that she had a decent view of the entrance. Two cars pulled up and disgorged half a dozen men, all obviously ex-military and all, she guessed, in the employ of Manage Risk. Four police cars followed soon after, and between them, the hotel was quickly locked down. The Freelander was parked in an unobtrusive spot, and she was able to loiter there without attracting attention.

  She waited fifteen minutes until Duffy came out, lighting a cigarette and talking to another man and one of the Basra police. He looked agitated, gesticulating angrily as he spoke.

  He had a reason to be agitated.

  He went back inside, but, after an additional ten minutes, he returned and got into one of the Manage Risk Land Rovers, negotiated the security measures and set off into the streets beyond.

  Beatrix followed him north.

  The damage wrought by the war had gone unrepaired. Street lights had been bent at unnatural angles by tanks. A deep crater in the road evidenced an IED. Several of the buildings in the street had gaps in the middle of them, neat surgical excisions where laser-guided munitions had carved them out, leaving tangled girders and piles of debris. Strangely, the blasts had spared the neighbouring properties.

  They passed into an area of office buildings, and Duffy pulled over and parked next to one of them. It was four storeys tall and, compared to the dilapidated state of the building stock in the area, reasonably well maintained. Beatrix looked out as she passed him. The building bore a sign with the Roman insignia of the Manage Risk logo.

  She drove a little farther and then turned the SUV around and drove back. She passed the office and parked fifty yards fart
her down the road. Making sure that the hijab was properly obscuring her face, she set off back towards the office.

  She looked left and right. She passed an Iraqi in a cheap, shiny suit.

  There was a small group of people sitting in a shaded bowyer, eating sandwiches. None of them paid her any heed.

  As she closed in on the office, the front doors opened, and a tall, brawny military type stepped out. He cursed as the heat washed over him, shook his head in disbelief at how a place could be as hot as this and walked straight at her. He gazed in her direction, but looked right through her. The hijab made her almost invisible.

  She slowed as she reached Duffy’s vehicle. She reached into her pocket, took out the GPS tracker and slapped it so that it fastened to the chassis of the Land Rover above the wheel, obscured by the wheel arch.

  She went back to the Freelander.

  She waited.

  Duffy drummed his fingers on the desk as the encryption software exchanged handshakes with the server in America. Control was at his desk when the connection was made.

  “Duffy,” he said. “What is it?”

  “She’s here. We were checking a lead. Western woman who might’ve matched her description had checked into the International. We went up to the room. It was her, alright. We’d just missed her.”

  “Alright. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: be careful. She got up close to Spenser and Joyce and close enough to Chisholm. Expect something like that. I doubt she’ll do it from a distance. You’d already be dead if that was good enough for her.”

  “So I have to look over my shoulder.”

  “Yes.”

  “How long do I have to do that for?”

  “Just a few days. I’m sending Connor English to you. He has a team. Our best men. He’s been preparing them for the last two weeks. They’ll fly out tonight and be with you tomorrow. And then you can take the fight to her.”

  “Fine,” he sighed.

  “Don’t fuck this up, Duffy. She’s more dangerous when she’s in the shadows. You’ve flushed her out. Stay alive long enough for English to get to you. Then it’s your turn to have some fun.”