Jaber strode alongside him. The man was huffing like he had already sprinted a mile. This wasn’t going to be easy.
“We just walk past those guards,” Alex said. “They won’t try anything aggressive. Not out here in public. Then straight through the gate. Okay?”
Alex’s pulse thundered in his ears as he approached the guards. To his left, the men that had come from the temple were only five yards away.
“I’ve got these guys in my sights if shit goes bad,” Skylar said.
He could not let it come to that. A massacre at a famous tourist site in Amman was not a good way to start a mission. And having come unarmed, he did not relish the idea of relying solely on Jaber’s pistol and Skylar’s single sniper rifle against the nine men she’d spotted.
Just get through the gate. Then you can run.
He didn’t make eye contact with the guards. They were only a few yards away now, headed straight toward Alex.
He maneuvered to make it around them. But they matched his steps.
“Hold on, my friend,” one said in English.
“Is there a problem?” Alex asked.
The guard looked over Alex’s shoulder, toward the other men that had been following him and Jaber.
“We need to see your ID,” the guard said.
“Can I ask why?”
The man’s smile vanished. He held out one hand. With his other, he tapped the rifle strapped over his chest. “My friend, your ID.”
Alex started to reach into his pocket. The other guard grabbed Jaber’s arm.
As they did, three more men in suits appeared at the gate to the citadel.
What in the hell had they gotten themselves into?
-7-
Skylar traced a finger over the curve of the trigger. She sighted up the security guard nearest Alex.
“Just say the word, and you’re free,” she said.
But Alex didn’t say the damn word.
“Am I in trouble for something?” Alex asked the guard instead. “My friend and I were just—”
“ID,” the guard said, taking a step closer, one hand on the stock of his rifle.
Skylar took her aim off the man for a second. The other men were forming a ring around Alex and Jaber. Bystanders were beginning to watch like kids sensing a schoolyard brawl.
Two cars pulled up to the gate to the citadel. Two more men got out of each. Secret Squirrel types, all suits and sunglasses. She didn’t know who in the hell these people were, but she did know Alex and Jaber weren’t escaping through that gate.
“Vector One, you need a new exfil route,” Skylar said.
There was one clear path she saw right now.
Clear because it was dangerous. Stupid.
But it was the only way that Alex and Jaber didn’t get dragged into those cars and taken away to only God knew where.
“You’ve got maybe ten seconds before you’re completely surrounded,” Skylar said. “Get rid of the guards and start running south. Straight for the wall around the hill. On my mark… go.”
She watched through the scope as Alex twisted the arm of the guard. His pained yowl screamed through the comms.
Then Alex struck out at the man holding Jaber. A blow to the guard’s elbow then one smashing into his nose caused the man to double over in pain.
“Let’s go!” Alex said.
Skylar watched him drag Jaber straight south. They sprinted for the stone wall surrounding the citadel, and the group of men closing in on them gave chase. A couple pulled out weapons, yelling for them to stop.
Skylar traced her aim over the gunmen. None opened fire. They didn’t seem to actually want to kill Alex and Jaber.
At least not yet.
“You’re going to need to get over the wall at the right spot,” Skylar called through the comms. “Wrong place and you fall down the cliff face.”
“Where do I need to be?” Alex asked.
“Ten yards to your right,” she said.
She watched them run along the wall. The other men were gaining. The spooks near the gate ran back to their cars then started racing over the winding road that would lead down from the citadel. They were aiming to intercept Alex and Jaber.
“Now!” Skylar said.
The wall was only five feet tall. Alex scaled it easily. But Jaber wasn’t exactly an athlete.
Alex had to pause atop the two-foot-wide wall and reach back to the asset. The first of their pursuers was only ten feet away.
Skylar took in a deep breath then guided the crosshairs over the center mass of the first guy.
This was why she’d wanted to be closer. Shit had hit the fan, and she had only one way to help her partner.
The first man reached Jaber before the administrator could make it over the wall. He grabbed Jaber’s ankle and tugged.
“Vector One, I can take the shot!”
“Don’t!” Alex called back.
Screw that.
The guy was pulling harder on Jaber. The customs officer looked like he was going to fall backward, right into the clutches of this unknown enemy.
And they hadn’t even found out what he knew about Ballard.
They had been so close. So damn close to a lead. Her finger tightened on the trigger.
Then, with a heaving tug, Alex pulled Jaber backward. They both fell over the side of the wall. Momentum carried them too far, and they rolled for a few yards. A cloud of dust plumed behind them. They were tumbling toward the steepest part of the slope. Straight toward the part that dropped off into a cliff.
The exact spot Skylar had tried to guide them away from.
Four of the pursuers stopped at the top of the wall. One drew out a radio, and Skylar could see him yelling into it. They were pointing at Alex and Jaber. If those two didn’t fall off the cliff and into the pointed rocks at the bottom of the thirty-foot drop, then that guy was going to tell all his buddies exactly where to pick Alex and Jaber up.
Come on, Alex. Pull it together.
Alex recovered enough to slow their descent and yanked on the back of Jaber’s coat before the hapless guy tumbled off the side of the hill. A waterfall of rocks and pebbles fell over the cliff, smacking against the ground where Jaber had almost plummeted.
The two of them continued half-sliding, half-running down the steep slope, back to safer ground.
Three of the men following Alex scaled the stone barrier and started their descent.
They had no cover.
Easy shots, all out in the open.
But already, the onlookers had their cell phones out. They were recording the chase without knowing what they were recording.
She didn’t want to be the first to open fire. It would look like a terrorist attack on these seemingly normal Jordanian authorities.
And hell, they really could be innocent. Might’ve realized Jaber was up to no good and just wanted to arrest the man and his accomplices.
Shit.
She was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Or rather, stuck in a damn hotel with a sniper rifle. All this firepower and she never felt so much like broke dick.
“Three contacts on your tail, Vector One,” she called.
Alex and Jaber made it to the street. Jaber’s face was red. He was soaked in enough sweat to keep a camel alive in the desert for a good twenty years. Alex dragged him, goading him on.
“We need to lose these guys quick,” Alex said.
Skylar scanned their surroundings. Jaber wasn’t going to outrun their pursuers. He and Alex needed cover.
“Two blocks to your southeast, there’s a market,” Skylar said. “Crowds are just coming out of the mosques too. This is your best chance.”
“Got it,” Alex said.
With that, he took a hard right. He and Jaber disappeared from Skylar’s view. She couldn’t keep tracking him up here anymore.
“Vector One, I’m packing up,” she said. “Going to the street. See you soon.”
This time, he didn’t argue.
C
ramped alleys and streets twisted before Alex, bathed in shadows as the blazing orange sun dropped out of sight. Stalls with everything from produce to scarves filled every available space, illuminated by streetlights, lanterns, and lone incandescent bulbs dangling off cords. People scoured through racks of clothes. The smells of humanity pressed together in the claustrophobic alleys, mixed with the aroma of garlic, onion, grilled meat, and oil from small restaurants and food stands.
“I can’t keep running,” Jaber said, sounding breathless.
The guy looked like he was two seconds from a heart attack.
Alex scanned behind them as they merged into the crowd. He spotted their three closest followers. All wore unnecessary sunglasses, thin black jackets, and dark jeans. A woman let out an angry curse when one of them shoved past her, and the bag of nuts and fruits she’d just purchased spilled to the ground. The other two men trampled over the goods.
“Do you know these people?” Alex asked, taking a corner between the stalls.
“I have never seen them before in my life,” Jaber said. He sounded too frightened to be lying.
“Is there somewhere safe we can lose them?” Alex asked, dragging Jaber with him between stands filled with vegetables. Shopkeepers beckoned them to try their fresh tomatoes and peppers.
“My home is safe.”
“No. If these people followed you to the citadel, they know where you live.”
All three men navigated between the vegetable stands. One had a cell phone pressed to his ear. No doubt calling in their positions. Those other people that had been up at the citadel with them were still unaccounted for. But Alex had a feeling he would see them again soon.
“We’re not going to outrun them,” Alex said.
“Then what… what do we do?” Jaber said.
“Just follow my lead.”
Alex rushed into a restaurant. He ignored the man at the door trying to find them a seat and barged straight into the kitchen. An older woman and young man were working over a vat of popping hot oil.
They started yelling at Alex. He continued past them and shoved straight out a door into another alley. Only a few people were walking between the leaking trash bags lining the sandstone buildings. From other doors, Alex heard the bang and click of cooking utensils against pots. With those sounds came the hiss and pop of frying foods. He ignored the half-rotten odor drifting in the air and Jaber’s protests to slow down.
“This way.” He opened another door into a bakery.
A sweltering tide of heat rolled over them from an open oven. A baker was pulling a tray full of hot bread from the oven. He yelled at Alex and Jaber as they surged past him and around the counter at the front of the store.
They were back out onto another busy street. This one was filled with clothing stands and tables full of folded fabric. Alex looked both ways, heart pounding.
No sign of their followers.
But he had no illusions he was out of the woods yet.
He heard shouting coming from the bakery. It sounded like more than just the baker now.
Far down at the north end of the street, he spotted another three men searching the crowd. All wading through the thronging mass of people, moving like they had a mission. And to the south, he thought he saw two more men headed their way.
“We’re going to be cornered,” Jaber said.
“Not yet we aren’t,” Alex said.
They had seconds to escape. Alex ducked into a clothing shop. A man walked casually from behind the counter.
“My friend, can I—”
Alex pointed at a track jacket then a dark blue cap on a mannequin. Something to hide his blond hair. “I need those. And for my friend, these.”
He indicated a larger tan sweatshirt and sunglasses.
“Do you want to try these on?” the salesman said.
“That won’t be necessary,” Alex said. He handed the tan jacket to Jaber. “Put this on. Now.”
Jaber looked confused but did as Alex told him.
Alex donned his jacket and the hat. He handed over his suit jacket to the surprised salesman. “Throw this away for me.”
He gave the guy a wad of dinar then ushered Jaber back outside. Alex did his best to keep his head down, blending in with the flow of foot traffic.
“Keep your eyes on the ground,” he whispered to Jaber. “Do not catch their gaze.”
Jaber gulped and managed a slight nod.
Two of their pursuers gazed over the crowd. Hopefully, they hadn’t gotten a good look at Alex’s face. They would be looking for the clothes he had been wearing.
All he needed was a few seconds to pass them. Then he and Jaber could escape the tightening dragnet.
They were mere yards away now. Alex kept his eyes aimed toward the carts of produce nearby, doing everything he could not to draw the two men’s suspicion.
But Jaber’s cheeks were beet red. Sweat rolled down his face, already staining the sweatshirt under the arms and down the back.
The guy was a mess. Out of his league. The guy must’ve woken up thinking the citadel would be a simple chance at a payday. A bit of a shakedown, maybe. He hadn’t expected to be running for his life.
One of the men craned his head toward the other end of the road. He seemed to be signaling to his comrades there. The second man’s head swiveled back and forth. Alex could practically feel his gaze burning over him despite the dark sunglasses.
But after just a few more seconds, Alex and Jaber were past them.
“Don’t look back,” Alex said to Jaber, daring to peek over his shoulder. “Forward then we’re taking a left. We’ll—”
The man in the sunglasses had turned on his heels and was following them.
Son of a…
Alex tried to push past the people milling around him, picking up the pace. But Mr. Sunglasses was catching up. He was a few strides behind Jaber. The man opened his mouth as if to call his colleagues.
All Alex’s efforts to evade these people had come to an abrupt end. Either he could run, hoping he got away with Jaber huffing and puffing.
Or…
He needed a new distraction.
He strode toward Sunglasses and hit him with a heavy punch to the gut. The impact knocked the wind out of him, and Alex followed up with a knee crushing the guy’s groin. More than enough to send the man to the ground.
A few people nearby stared, unsure of what had just happened.
Alex broke out his Arabic. “He’s having a heart attack. Help!”
As the crowd broke into a roiling wave of chaos, people crowding the downed man and others relaying the call for help, Alex pushed past with Jaber. He cleared the people then looked back to see Sunglasses’s partner bend over him. The guy stood back up to look frantically up and down the street.
“Go,” Alex said, moving faster. “Hurry, damn it.”
Jaber needed no further encouragement.
Alex broke into a slow run. Just slow enough to keep Jaber from going into real cardiac arrest. “Headed west, Vector Two.”
“Copy,” Skylar called back. “I’m nearing your position.”
Alex took Jaber down the sidewalk. Sedans, cabs, and SUVs passed them, headed toward the heart of the city. The noise of the vehicles drowned out the commotion from the frenzied market they had left behind. Maybe the distraction was enough to give them some breathing room.
But the squeal of tires as a van raced toward him dashed those hopes.
“Quick,” Alex said, grabbing Jaber by the shoulder.
The man stumbled. He could barely walk, panting and gasping.
Alex tried to drag Jaber away from the side of the street and toward another alley. The van barreled straight at them, blasting through a vegetable stand. Produce smashed against the windshield.
Turning on his heels, Alex tried to guide Jaber back the other direction. The van screeched to a halt mere feet from them, and the side door slid back. Two masked men in black rushed out with rifles shouldered. One fired into t
he air.
People in the streets scattered or threw themselves to the ground. The shopkeepers retreated into their stores, yelling and cursing. Alex tried to scramble away with Jaber, but the men stomped toward him before he could move.
Jaber seemed to have given up. Either from sheer physical exhaustion or mentally destroyed by the constant chase, he seemed to have accepted his fate was no longer in Alex’s hands.
“Come on,” Alex urged.
The gunmen screamed in Arabic, “Stop!”
The first gunman reached Jaber and began dragging the guy back toward the van. The second pointed his rifle at Alex’s chest, motioning for him to follow.
Big mistake.
Alex grabbed the gun barrel and twisted it. The man fired on instinct. Bullets ripped from the rifle and punched into a sandstone wall. More screams from somewhere behind him. Sirens howled in the distance.
Cold adrenaline shot through Alex’s vessels.
He tore the rifle out of the man’s grip and then kicked him over. The man stumbled backward, sprawling onto his backside.
“Let him go,” Alex said, pointing the rifle at the other gunman, who had already gotten Jaber into the back of the van.
Instead of answering, the man slammed the door shut, and the van took off, leaving the dazed gunman whose weapon Alex had stolen behind.
Alex wanted to fill the back of that van with lead, but that wouldn’t solve anything. There were too many people around. Too many innocents hiding behind the other vehicles in the street or ducking near the stores or food stands. And the last thing he needed was to hurt one of them or kill Jaber by accident.
Already, the other pursuers were coming after him, and the gunman was starting to recover.
“Vector Two, they took Jaber. They’re getting away in a van headed southwest.”
Alex started running after the van. The van raced over the sidewalk and back into traffic. There was no way he could keep up with it.
His only hope now was that Skylar could stop them. They needed Jaber and the intel he had. Or else this entire mission would escape between his fingers like smoke from a hookah.
-8-
The van barreled straight at Skylar. It straddled the street and sidewalk, swerving past other cars and motorcycles. People scattered and dove away from tables as the vehicle plowed through them.
Demon Mind (Vector Book 2) Page 7