by Flynn Vince
Rapp nodded and moved to the door. “I’m going. If I’m still alive in fifty yards, follow me.”
Before Coleman could answer, Rapp slipped out and started sprinting along the edge of the street. Incoming fire was intermittent and, as he’d hoped, always led him by a few yards, trying to drive him back. Another rocket was fired and he was forced to drop, but it struck a building well ahead. Halabi’s men were playing it safe. None of them wanted to go back and give their dear leader a bucket containing what was left of the prize he so desperately wanted.
Rapp leapt back to his feet, charging through the scattered flames left by the RPG and starting up the slope on the east side of the village. He could make out five separate guns all sparking in the darkness ahead of him. Despite that, he fought his natural instinct to zigzag and vary his pace. Unpredictability was a good strategy when faced with an enemy that wanted to kill you, but counterproductive when facing an enemy dedicated to near misses.
He heard gunfire erupt from behind him and looked back to see four figures in hazmat suits falling in with him. The guns in front went dark, as did the sniper going for long shots from the south. Halabi’s men had finally figured out what was happening and were having to recalibrate.
Rapp put the shooters to the north and south out of his mind for the time being. He could see lights coming on in his peripheral vision and assumed they were headlamps being used by the men as they ran to reinforce their comrades to the east. They were hundreds of yards away, though, crossing moderately difficult terrain. It was unlikely that they would figure in the fight over the short term.
Human figures rose up from the earth about fifty yards ahead, their outlines just visible in the moonlight as they began to charge. Based on the way they were holding their rifles, it appeared that they were planning to use them as clubs.
Completely insane, but pretty much what Rapp was counting on. While these men were a serious step up from the average terrorist psychopath, they were still ISIS. And that meant they’d follow the man they believed to be God’s representative on earth right off a cliff. In fact, they’d be happy to do it. More virgins for them.
The men coming in from the sides started shooting again, but were still making sure not to hit anything. Coleman’s team engaged them while Rapp focused on the men coming at him. Individual rounds from his M4 dropped the first two and left two remaining. They were running crouched now, zigzagging to reduce their chance of being hit. Rapp, still on a collision course with them, fired on the run at the man to the right. It took nearly his full magazine, but he finally spun him around with an impact to the right side of his chest.
Less than a second later, he collided with the last man. They went down locked together, starting to roll back down the slope. Some of the rocks beneath them were sharp and while the chances that Rapp had any deadly germs stuck to his chem suit were low, he wasn’t anxious to puncture it.
He managed to arrest their momentum but ended up with Halabi’s man on top. Predictably, he went straight for Rapp’s mask so he could get a look at who he was fighting and thus determine the rules of engagement. While Halabi’s orders would have been to keep Rapp alive, he doubted Coleman and his men would receive the same courtesy.
Rapp grabbed the man’s finger just before it went under his faceplate, wrenching it hard enough to feel it snap. When he jerked back in pain, Rapp scissored a leg up and used it to slam his opponent to the ground. After a brief struggle, the CIA man managed to get hold of one of the rocks he’d been worried about a few seconds before and slam it into the man’s forehead.
He was just getting back to his feet when a man went streaking by—undoubtedly Wick, a fast and light sniper who would be anxious to set up in the high ground before the men approaching from the north and south could close in.
Rapp let Coleman and the rest of his men pass by before he started up, protecting their flank. A few quick bursts in the direction of the headlamps emptied what was left of his mag. There wasn’t much chance of hitting anything, but he might be able to persuade them to slow down.
By the time Rapp made it to the top of the slope, Wick already had his McMillan TAC-338 rifle set up on a bipod and was sighting through the thermal scope. He pulled the trigger and a single round exited the barrel.
“Hit.”
A second shot followed three seconds later.
“Hit. They’re taking cover.”
Rapp lay down among Coleman and his men, glancing behind him and seeing a barely perceptible band of light on the horizon.
• • •
Rapp wiped the dust from his faceplate and watched the jet’s angle of descent steepen. Contrails appeared, followed by a massive wall of fire rising from the earth. Another jet dropped a similar payload, spreading the firestorm.
Unfortunately, the air support had nothing to do with him. The Saudis had finally gotten around to incinerating the village, which was about four miles back now. The sun was still low on the horizon, but the heat was already starting to climb. In another hour, running in the chem suits they were still wearing would no longer be doable.
Rapp picked up a set of binoculars and scanned across the six ISIS operatives pursuing them, finally settling on a man using his hand to shade a similar set of lenses against the sun. They were persistent and well organized, but seemed content to prosecute their chase from just out of rifle range.
His earpiece buzzed and he picked up the satellite call. “Go ahead.”
“Do you see the Saudi jets?” Claudia said.
“They’re hard to miss.”
“According to the pilots, you’ve got two groups coming in on you. One from the northeast and the other from the southeast. As many as twenty vehicles in total. Another seven vehicles are coming in from the west to reinforce the men chasing you.”
That explained why their pursuers were keeping their distance. Halabi had called in the locals still loyal to him. Probably nowhere near the quality of the men they’d been dealing with so far, but it didn’t matter. The terrorist leader’s plan to capture him didn’t really demand crack troops. Just a lot of warm bodies willing to turn cold in an effort to overwhelm them.
“ETAs?”
“Call it twenty-five minutes for the forces approaching from the east. A little longer for the western reinforcement because now they’re going to have to go around the fire.”
“Can the Saudis take them out?” Rapp asked.
“Irene’s working on it and she’s gotten the president involved. He’s tried to contact the king directly, but he’s sick and not taking calls. I don’t think they’re going to help us, Mitch. The people Irene has reached out to are angry that the Agency’s operating in the area without notifying them and they’re throwing up a bunch of red tape.”
The fact that the two jets had turned back toward Saudi Arabia suggested that she was right. Yet another pain-in-the-ass development in what was turning out to be a serious pain-in-the-ass day.
“Mitch? Are you still there?”
“I’m here.”
“What can I do to help?”
“You tell me.”
When she spoke again she sounded like she was on the verge of breaking into tears. “I . . . I don’t know.”
“No problem. Can you do me a favor?”
“Of course. What?”
“Make us a reservation at that new Japanese place in Manassas for Saturday. I’ve had sushi stuck in my mind all day.”
She actually managed a choking laugh. “You’re getting better at this relationship stuff. I appreciate the effort.”
“It’s going to be fine,” he said and then cut off the call.
When he walked back to Coleman and his men, he found them all crammed into a sliver of shade provided by a boulder.
Bruno McGraw was the first to speak. “What’s the plan, boss?”
“We take off the monkey suits.”
That order was met with more enthusiasm than probably any he’d given in his career. The strict proto
cols necessary for the safe removal of the suits felt painfully slow, but after ten precious minutes, they were down to their custom desert camo. Despite the fact that temperatures were already hovering around ninety, Rapp felt like he’d just plunged himself into a frozen lake.
He squinted into the sun and pointed at two dust plumes now visible to the east. “Twenty vehicles total with an unknown number of men. ETA to us is about fifteen. Seven more vehicles coming in from the west to reinforce the men chasing us. ETA’s probably around twenty-five minutes.”
“What about the Saudis?” Coleman asked.
“Forget them. We’re on our own.”
The mood that had been elevated a moment before by the removal of the chem suits started to slide again.
“We’re limited on ammo and water,” Rapp said. “And there’s nowhere around here to get more.”
“The nearest village is a long way away,” Maslick pointed out. “And there ain’t much in it.”
“We could reverse course and charge the guys coming up behind us,” Wick suggested. “If they still don’t want to shoot us, it’ll be easy to whack them and take their gear.”
Rapp shook his head. “If they’re smart—and I think there’s a good chance they are—they’ll just run and lead us straight into the reinforcements coming in behind them. If you figure five men per vehicle, we could be facing a force of over forty men. They’ll blitz us and absorb whatever casualties they have to.”
“And even if we kill them all,” Coleman said, “by the time we do, we could have as many as another hundred men on top of us from the east.”
“Well, we can’t wander around on foot in the flats,” Wick said. “They might just be a bunch of pricks in pickups but that’s still cavalry as far as I’m concerned. And who’s to say those are the only people coming to the party? There could be another fifty vehicles gassing up somewhere.”
Rapp nodded. They were trapped on a narrow plain with a steep rocky slope rising about five hundred yards to the north and an equally steep and rocky one descending the same distance to the south.
“Seems like an easy decision,” Coleman said. “We climb. We’ll be way faster than the guys on foot, it’ll give us the high ground, and it’ll neutralize the advantage of the trucks.”
“What then, though?” Rapp asked. “You saw the map. That slope tops out into a mesa that’s about a quarter mile square.”
“Chopper extraction?”
“Based on what I’m hearing, I don’t think we can count on it.”
The group fell silent as Rapp walked back to a vantage point that allowed him to see the men digging in to the west. He scanned with his binoculars again, and again found a man scanning back. Rapp lowered his lenses and let him get a good long look at his face.
“You all are going up the ridge to the north.”
“What do you mean ‘you all’?” Coleman replied. “What are you doing?”
“I’ll head down the slope to the south. They don’t care about you. Their orders are to capture me or die trying.”
“Screw that,” Coleman said, and his men mumbled their agreement with the sentiment. “We’re not leaving you to roll down a canyon with a hundred guys coming in on you.”
“You have your orders.”
“Kiss my ass, Mitch. You don’t give orders anymore. The Agency pays me and you don’t even work there. As far as I can tell, you’re just an unemployed tourist.”
“Then let me put it this way,” Rapp said, starting to gather his gear. “I’m going south and I’m shooting anyone I see behind me. If it’s one of you guys, I probably won’t go for center of mass. But I’m gonna make it hurt.”
CHAPTER 11
WESTERN YEMEN
VICTORIA Schaefer leaned out the window and once again squinted into the sunlight. Nothing had changed. It probably hadn’t for hundreds of years. Three- and four-story buildings rose across from her, separated by narrow dirt and cobble paths. Beyond, she could see the land drop off steeply and the terraced mountains beyond. The splashes of vibrant green created a stark—and strangely beautiful—contrast with the reddish brown that had made up her universe since arriving in Yemen.
For what must have been the thousandth time, she studied the sheer drop from the tower they were locked in and for the thousandth time calculated it at just over fifty feet. The nearest building was only about ten feet away, but instead of the empty arched window frames that dominated the village’s architecture, it presented a blank wall. Signs of humanity were fleeting, and over the past few days she’d become convinced that all were men loyal to Sayid Halabi. What had happened to the original inhabitants, she could only imagine.
Schaefer turned and focused her attention on the room that they were imprisoned in. The entire space was no more than fifteen feet square, with rock walls and two heavy wooden doors. One led to the stairway they’d been brought up and the other was a mystery. The ceiling was supported by beams that had been darkened by what she suspected was centuries of cooking fires. Good for hanging yourself from if it became necessary. And it appeared that it might.
Since their star turn in Halabi’s video three days ago, they’d had no contact with anyone. A water jug, now almost empty, had been provided but no food. The bucket they used for a toilet was in the far corner and was in danger of overflowing. She wanted to dump it on an unsuspecting scumbag who wandered beneath their window, but Otto kept stopping her. Always the voice of reason.
The worst, though, were the nights. The cold wind flowed freely through the windows, and the uninsulated stone turned the room into a meat locker. They slept—probably only a few minutes a night—huddled together in a corner. Gabriel Bertrand had finally gotten his chance to grind up against her but didn’t seem to be enjoying it as much as he’d expected.
She turned her attention to the Frenchman, who was sitting with his back against a wall and knees pulled to his chest. She’d been doing her best to ignore him, and he took her flicker of interest as an invitation to speak.
“They’re going to just leave us here to starve.”
He was already cracking. Hunger, lack of sleep, and uncertainty were potent weapons against anyone. But they were particularly potent against a man who had led a charmed life since the day he was born. The only son of a wealthy Parisian family, he’d been gifted with an exceptional mind and spent his entire adult life coddled by top universities. His research in Yemen had been the hardest thing he’d ever done, and he wouldn’t have lasted an hour if he hadn’t been certain it was his path to blazing academic glory.
Otto Vogel, on the other hand, was an almost perfect counterpoint to the French scientist. He was sprawled on the floor, deftly spinning a twig on the tip of his index finger. As always, his armor seemed impenetrable.
“Anthrax isn’t that dangerous,” Bertrand continued as she turned back to the window. “And they filmed us. Why? So they can put the videos out on the Internet to scare people. But that will backfire, yes? People will be frightened, but they’ll also be wary. If they have symptoms, if they come into contact with some unknown substance, they’ll go to the doctor and get antibiotics. And the governments of the world can’t allow the manufacture of weaponized anthrax. They have to come. They have to rescue us.”
The suggestion that they should build a bioweapon to bring about their rescue prompted Victoria to look at him over her shoulder. He averted his eyes.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
Vogel stopped spinning the piece of wood, a rare glimmer of anger crossing his face. He’d had enough of the Frenchman within an hour of their first meeting and now he was reaching his limit.
“The Americans were motivated to find Osama bin Laden, too. How long did that take? And even if they are able find us, what is it you think they’re going to do? Send soldiers to assault this mountain in order to save us? Risk their men’s lives and maybe give Halabi a chance to escape to save three people?”
“What are you saying?”
“
I’m saying that they’ll blow the entire top of this mountain off. You’ll hear a slight whistle and then you’ll explode into—”
“Otto!” Schaefer interjected. “You’re not helping.”
He frowned and went back to spinning his stick.
“They aren’t going to be satisfied with making movies and they’re not going to give us a choice,” Bertrand said. “How long can we hold out? They’ll starve us. Freeze us. Torture us. And finally, they’ll kill us.”
In truth, none of that would be necessary, Schaefer knew. It wouldn’t take much more than a mild rash to get Bertrand pumping out every dangerous pathogen he knew how to create. Trying to get him to grow a backbone was a waste of time. As she saw it, there were two paths ahead of them. The first was to throw the man out the window and let his incredible knowledge of microbiology die with him. Undoubtedly, Otto would enthusiastically sign on to that strategy, but to her it was just an abstraction. She’d never knowingly harmed anyone in her life.
That left only one option: convincing him to focus that magnificent brain on something other than the hopelessness of their situation.
She sat next to the Frenchman and motioned Vogel over.
“Listen,” she said, speaking quietly in case there were listening devices. “We’re scientists, right? There’s a lot of equipment in that room, and we can probably ask for more if we play our cards right. All we need to do is figure out how we can use it to get ourselves out of here.”
“Agreed,” the German whispered.
“Agreed?” Bertrand said, the volume of his voice high enough that Victoria clamped a hand over his mouth.
“Don’t talk, Gabriel. Think. Gas? Poison? Explosives? You keep telling everyone you’re a genius. Prove it.”
• • •
Sayid Halabi climbed the stairs with Muhammad Attia hovering directly behind. The voices of his prisoners had dipped to below what his microphones could pick up, suggesting that it was time to pay them a visit.
Undoubtedly, they’d begun plotting. They would pretend to cooperate and use the equipment he gave them to create some kind of weapon. Perhaps a disease that they inoculated themselves against. Perhaps a poison. Perhaps even a way to contact the outside world. It was to be expected.