The man in the front passenger seat reached toward his jacket, going for his weapon. Unfortunately, he was closest to where the disk had landed, and thus the first to inhale the invisible, odorless gas the device secreted. He swayed sideways into the passenger-side door, blinking rapidly, then fell forward against the dash, unconscious.
The second the passenger started to sway, the agent had moved the sign so that it perfectly covered the driver’s-side window. The gas quickly moved through the vehicle, incapacitating Varela and his remaining associates within seconds of their registering they were in trouble.
The sign holder waited until the last man had passed out before tossing in a second disk, which released a deactivating agent that would turn most, but not all, of the gas into harmless particles. He then walked toward Omega Prime, the car directly behind the van, as if continuing his informational trek.
The moment he started walking away from Varela’s vehicle, the passenger door of Omega Two’s sedan opened and the agent inside exited. The agent approached the van, slipping a small, almost unnoticeable respirator into his mouth and pulling on a pair of glasses with clear plastic side guards. He unlocked the driver’s door through the still open window and opened it.
The agent disconnected the driver’s seatbelt, pushed the unconscious man onto the floor, and climbed behind the wheel. After a quick visual check to make sure all of his passengers were still unconscious, he signaled the man on the earthmover.
The faux construction worker climbed back on and “tried” the engine again. This time it miraculously restarted.
The sign holder hurried back to his position and, as soon as the earthmover moved out of the way, waved the cars through.
The convoy of the three Omega cars and the Varela van proceeded to a plane waiting at Afonos Air Force Base, approximately twenty kilometers from the ambush site. From there, the now former arms dealer and his men would be flown to a black site in eastern Europe for several rounds of intense questioning.
Varela’s capture was a pleasant bonus to the El-Baz operation.
A similar abduction procedure had been considered for the Falcon and his party. But the fact that the terrorist would probably be traveling with a larger group and require multiple vehicles—both of which turned out to be true—the idea was dismissed. Better to get him out of his vehicle and into the location of his meeting.
Juarez’s team had studied the warehouse’s plans and gone over the satellite images until each member had committed the information to memory. The only thing they had not done was physically visit the site. Though surveillance indicated the building had remained empty for the two days prior to the meeting, Juarez didn’t want to chance that Varela was also having the place watched. So, the building was to remain off limits until Varela had been neutralized.
Word of the arms dealer’s capture arrived at 6:48 p.m., as Juarez, Sala, Crist, and Choi sat in a sedan a few blocks away from the warehouse.
As soon as Juarez finished reading the text, he clicked on his comm mic. “Juarez for Quinn.”
“Go for Quinn.”
“Varela has been removed. We are officially a go.”
“Copy.”
Juarez looked over at Sala in the driver’s seat. “Let’s go.”
Hannah and Dominic received a text from Juarez with the same information, as they sat in the bar of the Prodigy Hotel, which was connected directly to the passenger terminal at Santos Dumont Airport.
Dominic downed the last of his cola while Hannah set more than enough cash on the bar to cover their drinks and tip.
They rode the elevator up to the fourth floor, Dominic carrying an extra wide briefcase, and proceeded toward the rooms where the two pilots of El-Baz’s jet were staying. Twenty minutes earlier, they had witnessed the men arriving. As the pilots checked in, Hannah had approached the checkout counter between them, and asked the clerk what time breakfast would be served the next morning. As the clerk answered, Hannah adhered tiny tracking disks to the bottom of each pilot’s suit coat.
She had returned to the bar, where she and Dominic monitored the pilots on a handheld tracking device as the men went up to their rooms. One of the disks had continued to move around its pilot’s room the entire time. The other, however, had become stationary within a minute after that pilot entered his room, meaning the man had probably removed his jacket. The two agents had been keeping an eye on the lobby in case the latter pilot reappeared, but by the time they headed up, he hadn’t.
They stopped in front of the first pilot’s door, the man whose tracker had continued to move. From the briefcase, Dominic removed one of two gas canisters, and attached the wide flat nozzle to the canister’s valve. Hannah removed her scarf and tucked it along the bottom of the door, leaving just enough space for the nozzle to fit.
“Here,” Dominic said, handing her a mask to cover her mouth and nose.
After donning one himself, he inserted the nozzle under the door until it would move no further, and opened the valve. For the next ninety seconds, the same type of gas the Omega team had tossed into Varela’s vehicle flooded into the room.
Hannah monitored the pilot’s movements on her tracking device. At first, he continued to move around like before, but twenty seconds before the last of the gas escaped the cylinder, he slowed. A few seconds later, nearly in sync with the canister running dry, she and Dominic heard a thump inside the room. On the tracker, the bug had stopped moving.
Dominic pulled the nozzle out, removed it from the canister, and screwed it onto the other one. While he did this, Hannah snatched up her scarf and used an electronic lockpick to disengage the lock. Quietly, she pushed the door open until she could see the pilot lying on the floor, near one of the beds.
She gave Dominic a thumbs-up and shut the door again.
They moved to the other pilot’s room. On the tracker, the bug was still in the same spot. Hannah put an ear to the door. For a few moments, she could hear nothing, then faintly, she picked up the sound of snoring.
They replayed the door trick with the second canister. Once it had delivered its contents, Hannah entered the room. The pilot was on the king-sized bed, tucked under the covers. He wasn’t snoring any longer but still breathing deeply. The fact he’d gone to bed was a welcome break. It saved Hannah and Dominic some work. Plus, when he woke the next day, he would have no clue anything unusual had happened.
They left him there and went back to his buddy’s room, where they stripped the man of his clothes and put him in bed.
The pilots had both been identified within minutes of the jet leaving Saudi Arabia, and before the aircraft had even been in the air for half an hour, dossiers on both men had been transmitted to Juarez’s team. From this, Hannah and Dominic had learned both pilots enjoyed a few drinks when they weren’t in the air.
They opened several beers and two small containers of whiskey from the minibar—the drinks of choice of the pilot in this room. The contents they mostly poured down the drain, but they left a little in one of the glasses, splashed some on the counter, and sprinkled the remainder on the man’s clothes and face.
The nice thing about this particular gas was that it had the tendency to fog one’s memory. So while the pilot wouldn’t recall drinking and getting into bed, the evidence would convince him that’s what had happened.
Hannah and Dominic left the hotel and made their way into the airport terminal. Using badges obtained via Peter, they entered the employees-only section and worked their way to a storeroom near an employee exit to the airfield. They changed into plane-maintenance uniforms they had stashed there earlier, and proceeded outside where an electric cart waited for them.
Driving through the area like they’d worked at SDU for years, they made their way to the jet El-Baz had arrived in and let themselves on board.
Hannah stood watch while Dominic installed the remote control gear, but it was unnecessary. No one came over to see what they were doing. Once he was done, she sent Juarez a text.
Plane is ready.
She and Dominic left the same way they came, then, out of their uniforms, retreated to a bar in the terminal, where they planned to wait until they received word the bodies were on the way.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The clean team’s van sat in an empty parking lot near the op location, with Quinn, Durrie, and Ortega inside. Five minutes earlier, word had reached Quinn of Varela’s removal from the equation. If all was going according to plan, that meant Juarez and his team were in position for El-Baz’s arrival.
A little known fact of the secret world: everything wasn’t always secret meetings and gunfights and body removals. In fact, the majority of a field agent’s time was spent waiting.
Quinn certainly hadn’t anticipated that aspect of the job when he’d accepted Durrie’s offer of an apprenticeship. He’d been antsy to get to work, and had spent a lot of those early months fidgeting and thinking, Come on, come on, come on, as he and Durrie waited in a van or an out-of-the way room for the signal that they could start.
“You want to die young?” Durrie had asked him once.
“What? No. Why would you say that?”
They’d been in New York City, sitting in an unused apartment, their backs against the wall and their butts on the floor, waiting for the call that would spring them into action.
“Just chill out, all right?”
“I am chilled out.”
A snort and a dismissive shake of the head. “I can hear your heart beating a mile a second from here.”
Quinn grimaced and rolled his eyes.
“And then there’s that,” Durrie said, looking at the floor in front of Quinn.
Following his mentor’s gaze, Quinn saw his own right foot rapidly bobbing up and down. He forced it to stop.
“You keep wasting all that energy,” Durrie said, “someday you’ll miss something on a job that will get you killed.”
“I was just…” Quinn fell silent.
The smirk on Durrie’s face was replaced by a slit of a mouth under a pair of steely eyes. “You were just what?”
Quinn struggled for a word to finish the sentence that wouldn’t get him into more trouble, but really, there was only one thing he could say that wouldn’t sound ridiculous. “Nothing. I’m sorry.”
Durrie stared at him for a moment and then looked across the room, his expression unchanged. “Damn right, you’re sorry. Do you realize how many hours you’re going to spend sitting around in rooms like this?” A brief pause. “Don’t even try answering that. I’ll tell you. So many that you’re going to lose count before this year is up. Tattoo this in your head. Being anxious takes away focus. When you’re waiting, you’re resting, so that when you’re working, you’re all there. Get me?”
“I get you.”
“Are you sure?”
Quinn had answered yes at the time, but the truth was, he didn’t understand what was wrong with being a little wound up.
Over the following months, however, as he participated in more and more jobs, he began to appreciate what Durrie had meant. And in the years since, he’d worked hard at perfecting the art of the wait, until he had it down to a near science.
Sitting in the front passenger seat of the van now, Quinn kept his eyes closed and his breathing slow. He visualized the path El-Baz and his people would take into the warehouse, followed by the moment Juarez activated the gas that would render the terrorists unconscious. After that would come the administration of a much more merciful execution than El-Baz deserved. But dead was dead, and the man’s removal from this existence would more than compensate for the lack of a more deserving method.
“Beta One for Juarez.”
Quinn opened his eyes. Beta One was charged with following El-Baz.
“Go for Juarez,” the ops leader said over the comm.
“Target eighteen minutes out.”
“Copy, Beta One. We’re ready and waiting.”
“Copy.”
When Beta One radioed that El-Baz was fifteen minutes out, Quinn balled his fingers into fists and extended them, then turned to the back of the van, where his two team members sat. “It’s time.”
The plan was, while Quinn and Durrie moved into the primary staging position, closer to the warehouse, Ortega would wait at the van, in case things went wrong and they needed to make a quick getaway.
Quinn moved through the van, opened the rear door, and stepped outside. The moment his back was to the cargo area, Durrie held up three fingers.
Ortega nodded, and Durrie hopped out after Quinn.
Alone now, Ortega removed a disposable phone from his bag. There were two texts on it, both written by Durrie, each destined for a different number. Ortega sent the first, letting the others know the countdown had begun.
He then brought up the second, and confirmed the receiving number matched the one Durrie had made him memorize.
Where Durrie had gotten the number from, Ortega had no idea. But it had become clear in the months Ortega had been working with him that even though many people were actively working against the man, Durrie still had contacts almost everywhere.
Ortega stuck his hand in his bag again, this time removing the palm-sized sap he and Durrie had picked up on their errand run.
He took a breath. He couldn’t deny being a little nervous, but there was no turning back now. And besides, Durrie had been unfairly targeted, so what Ortega was about to do was the right call.
He checked his watch. Ninety seconds left.
After placing the phone in his pocket, he quietly opened the door and slipped outside, then headed in the same direction as the other two.
Quinn and Durrie passed the first of the two buildings between them and the ops location.
As anticipated, the area was deserted. The collection of half a dozen warehouses had sat empty for over a year, as the estate of the deceased owner continued to be argued in court. Normally, two security guards would be working the property, but Varela had conveniently fixed things so that no one was here tonight.
Quinn sneaked up to the door of the next building. Though each structure was equipped with an alarm, Juarez’s tech man, Dominic, had hacked into the system earlier that afternoon and disabled all the alarms.
Quinn picked the lock, opened the door, and smiled at the blessed silence that greeted him.
Ortega stopped behind the cover of a couple of old barrels. Ahead, he could see Quinn crouching in front of the door to the warehouse.
Ortega checked the time and pulled out the disposable phone.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
He pressed SEND.
Durrie glanced at his watch and felt a sense of gratification. His three-minute countdown had just expired, meaning he’d timed things perfectly. His hand unconsciously touched one of the pouches under his shirt, the one that sat at the base of his ribs.
A second after Quinn opened the door, Durrie put a hand on his apprentice’s shoulder. “I got this.”
He pushed past Quinn and hurried into the dark warehouse.
“Hey, slow down,” Quinn said. “We need to make sure this place is clear first.”
Durrie kept going.
Omar Urabi, in the front passenger seat of the lead SUV, scanned the road. He made no judgments about the people he saw. He was focused only on picking out anyone who might be a threat to El-Baz’s safety.
When his phone beeped, he pulled it out, thinking it was a text from either El-Baz in the trailing vehicle or from his second in command back at their training camp in Pakistan. The text, however, was from a blocked number.
Abort your meeting with Varela. He has been arrested, and the Americans are waiting at the warehouse to kill you. Do not return to your aircraft. Hide and find some other way out of the country.
A concerned friend.
“Stop!” Urabi yelled.
As the driver hit the brakes, Urabi called El-Baz.
&n
bsp; “What’s going on?” El-Baz said. “Why have we stopped?”
Urabi told him about the text.
Cars honked at the two SUVs now blocking the road.
“Do you think it’s true?” El-Baz asked.
“I don’t know. But I do think it is better to be safe and reschedule.”
A beat. “Stay on the line. I’m going to call Varela and I will conference you in so you can listen.”
A couple of moments later, the sound of Varela’s line ringing came through Urabi’s speaker.
“Yes?” a male voice said.
“Who am I speaking to?” El-Baz said.
“It that you, Fawar? It’s Matis. Matis Varela. Are you running late?”
A pause so short, Urabi was sure he was the only one who noticed. “Yes, about ten minutes at most.”
“No problem. I’ll be here.”
“I will see you soon.”
Varela was disconnected.
“Was it him?” Urabi asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Then we need to get out of here.”
A pause not much longer than the last. “Yes. Do it.”
Beta One was five cars back when El-Baz’s SUVs came to a sudden stop. The cars behind the Range Rovers waited only seconds before starting to pull around them, several of the drivers honking as they did.
There was nowhere for Beta One to pull over, so he was forced to also go around the Range Rovers. He found an open spot about thirty meters ahead and dived into it, then watched the SUVs through his rearview mirror.
The man in the front passenger seat of the lead vehicle was talking on his phone. But why would they stop to take a phone call? Beta One clicked on his mic, and was about to report in when the man he’d been watching lowered his phone and said something to the driver.
Both SUVs pulled U-turns, garnering the scorn of drivers not just on their side of the road but also on the other, and raced off in the opposite direction.
The Damaged Page 16