The Hit

by David Baldacci

  screens, screaming people were suddenly running down the streets of Damascus. Guns were being fired into the air. Sirens were starting up.

  “What the hell?” barked Potter.

  Tucker was transfixed by what was happening on the screen.

  Potter grabbed him by the shoulder. “What’s going on?”

  Tucker spoke into his headset, demanding an explanation for the sudden chaos on the streets.

  “They’re trying to find out. They don’t know yet.”

  “Dial up Robie,” demanded Potter. “He’s right there.”

  Tucker attempted to do so. “He’s not answering. He’s gone silent.”

  “Reel, then. Get somebody, for God’s sake.”

  “Look,” said the three-star.

  Syrian security forces were hanging out the window of the room where the sniper’s nest was set up.

  “How the hell did they get there so fast? Reel isn’t even there. She hasn’t fired a shot yet,” added the DHS director.

  “The whole operation has been compromised,” said Tucker. “There’s been a breach somewhere.” He exchanged a glance with Potter. “This was not supposed to happen.”

  “And Ahmadi got away? Again?” snapped the three-star.

  “He was not supposed to get away,” Tucker muttered under his breath.

  “For Christ’s sake,” said Potter. “Can’t we get anything right?”

  “Hold on,” said Tucker. “Something’s coming through now.”

  He listened to the voice in his ear. His expression went from stunned concern to absolute amazement.

  “Copy that,” he said.

  “What is it?” screamed Potter when Tucker didn’t say anything else.

  Tucker turned to the others, his face white. “Ahmadi was just shot outside the government building, while he was getting into his car. He’s dead. It’s been confirmed through reliable sources.”

  “Thank God for that,” said the three-star. “But I don’t understand. Did the mission change? The hit was supposed to be outside the hotel.”

  “The mission didn’t change. Not on our end,” said Blue Man calmly.

  The DHS director was staring at the Syrians swarming over the sniper’s nest. “What I don’t get is how they were onto the sniper’s nest so fast.” He turned to Tucker. “It’s almost like they knew the hit was coming.”

  “A breach, like we said,” Tucker responded, still looking ghostly pale.

  “But Reel and Robie must’ve known about it. That’s why they made the switch to the government building and did the hit there,” explained Potter quickly.

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” said the three-star.

  “Why not?” asked Tucker.

  “You said Robie just reported in. He was getting into position as the spotter outside the hotel. And he also reported that Reel was expected to be in place in ten minutes. The hotel and government building are nowhere near each other. Why would he communicate to his own agency one thing and then do something else entirely? It was almost as though he didn’t trust—”

  The three-star stopped talking and turned back to the screen, where the Syrian security forces were still screaming from the balcony of the sniper’s nest.

  Then the three-star glanced back at Tucker with a suspicious look.

  Tucker looked over at the DHS director and found his gaze boring into him as well.

  Tucker started to say something and then stopped. All he could do was stare at the screens.

  The three-star said, “But the kill was still made. Under the, um, unusual circumstances I’d say that was the finest hit I’ve ever, well, not seen.”

  “Same for me,” said the DHS director.

  “And me,” added Potter lamely, which drew a long glare from Tucker.

  “Robie and Reel deserve this country’s thanks,” said the three-star firmly.

  The DHS director added, “And we’ll see that they get it.”

  “If they get out of Syria,” said the three-star darkly.

  If they get out of Syria alive, thought Tucker.

  CHAPTER

  84

  OTHER THAN NORTH KOREA AND IRAN, Syria was arguably the most difficult country in the world to escape from for a westerner.

  Foreigners were inherently suspect.

  Americans were hated.

  American operatives who had just killed a potential Syrian leader were good for only one thing: execution and then being dragged through the streets headless.

  The only positive element was that Syria’s borders were not secure. They were flimsy and ever-changing, just as the politics of the moment were, in one of the countries constituting the “cradle of civilization.”

  Robie and Reel understood this fully.

  They had a chance, a slender one.

  Reel had delivered the kill shot from a building across the street from where Ahmadi had been about to get into his limo. It would have been easier to don a full burqa face covering and escape that way. However, Syrian women didn’t wear traditional Islamic garb for the most part. And full facial veils had been banned in universities and other public settings by the increasingly secular government, who felt it was a security risk and promoted extremism. Thus putting one on would have been a red flag, not a disguise.

  But she could still wear a hijab. This would reveal part of her face, but she had stained it darker and simulated wrinkles and sun damage. And in the long black robe she had incorporated a harness and padding that added about sixty pounds to her frame. She stooped as she walked and looked as though she were about seventy.

  She picked up a market basket and left the room, waiting patiently at the elevator with another man who was standing there. The elevator doors opened and she got into the car. It headed down. When it reached the ground floor she stepped off.

  She was swept to the side as police flooded the building. They grabbed the man who had been in the elevator car with her and pulled him, as well as several other Syrian men, along with them. They stormed into the elevator and up the stairwell.

  Reel waited for a few moments and then continued on. When she got outside, police cars were everywhere. Swarms of people were screaming. People were crying. Others were marching in the streets, chanting.

  A car caught on fire. Guns were racked back and fired into the air. Shop windows were smashed. There was a small explosion down the street.

  Reel followed another group of women down the street and into an alley.

  Under normal circumstances, it would have been unthinkable for men to search a woman on a Syrian public street.

  These were not normal circumstances.

  Police swept into the alley and started grabbing everyone, pulling at their clothing, looking for weapons or other signs of culpability.

  One man had a knife. The police shot him in the head.

  A woman ran screaming. She was repeatedly shot in the back and dropped to the pavement with blood pouring from multiple wounds.

  The police were now closing in on Reel. She didn’t look like an assassin. She looked like a fat old woman. But the police apparently didn’t care. They were only a few feet from her as she backed away.

  Her hand reached inside her basket.

  They were just about to surround her, their guns drawn and pointed at her.

  Her back was against a brick wall. One of the police reached out to grab her arm. Once they saw the padding, it would all be over. They would shoot her right on the spot.

  The loud voice reached to the alley.

  The police stopped, turned.

  The voice yelled out again and again. In Arabic it said, “We have the shooter! We have the shooter!”

  The police turned and ran back down the alley toward the voice.

  The crowd closed in on Reel. Sobbing people bent down to the dead bodies.

  Reel pushed backward, away from the crowd, and managed to ease into a sliver of a side alley.

  She walked quickly down it and reached another street, a
busy thoroughfare. A taxi pulled up to the curb and she climbed in.

  “Where to?” the bearded driver asked in Arabic.

  “I think you know,” she said in English.

  Robie hit the gas and the cab sped off.

  He glanced in the rearview mirror. “Close?”

  “Close enough,” she said.

  She pulled the remote from her basket and held it up. “This came in handy. Once they find the source of the ‘We have the shooter’ voice they won’t be happy.”

  “A little boom box in the street never hurts,” said Robie.

  As they rounded a turn she tossed the remote out the window.

  He looked in the rearview mirror again and saw the crowds spilling into the streets behind them. “They’ll know the shooter got away. So we’re not free and clear yet.”

  “Face it, Robie, we’ll never be free and clear again.”

  “They found the sniper’s nest. Even though you didn’t fire from it.”

  “Big surprise. But at least it validates what your guy told us about the double cross.”

  “I wonder how they felt back in the ops room watching?”

  “One of my greatest regrets in life will be missing the looks on their faces. Especially Tucker’s.”

  He turned right and then left and sped up again. Traffic was lighter now. But Robie could envision roadblocks being set up right this minute.

  Damascus to Israel was a short trip, but that would be the exit the Syrians would be expecting. And also the one designed by the CIA. So that option was out.

  The trip to Amman, Jordan, was a little over a hundred miles. But the border between the two countries had been strengthened, with limited crossing points. So that was also out.

  Iraq was to the east. It was a long border with many ways across. But neither Robie nor Reel saw much advantage in sneaking across the northern border of Iraq. They would most likely die there.

  That left one option. Turkey, to the north. It was also a long border, hundreds of miles. The closest major Turkish city was Mersin, about 250 miles distant. There was a shorter route they could take through a narrow section of Turkey that poked like a misshapen finger into Syria a little north of Al Haffah. But Mersin, though farther away, would have more options for their onward travel, and a large city was easier to hide in. Besides, Robie wanted to put greater distance between them and the Syrians than the finger of Turkish land provided.

  But they had to get there first.

  And though the border had many holes in it, Syria and Turkey were also informally skirmishing with each other. Bombs dropped from planes and guns fired by roving packs of soldiers were becoming the standard of the day around the border. Plus there was a lot of illegal activity involving the trafficking of drugs, immigrants, guns, and other contraband through the region. And the criminals typically had one response to pesky witnesses.

  They killed them.

  “On to Turkey,” said Robie.

  “On to Turkey,” she parroted back.

  She didn’t take off her disguise. Not yet. She had papers, in case they were stopped. She had to hope they would be good enough.

  As Robie looked up ahead, he knew they were about to be tested.

  He had shaved his head, grown a trim beard, and stained his entire body darker. His blue eyes were hidden by tinted contacts. He could speak Arabic fluently, with none of the accent of a westerner. Reel, he knew, could as well.

  The checkpoint had been set up quickly, faster than Robie had thought possible. He wondered if the double cross had anything to do with that.

  Security checkpoints were far more frenetic in the Middle East than in other parts of the world, barely controlled chaos where guns were pulled at the slightest misstatement or an ill-timed glance.

  Robie slowed his taxi to a stop. There were three cars and a truck in front of his. The guards were searching vehicles, and Robie saw one of them with a glossy piece of paper in his hand.

  “They have our photo,” he said.

  “Of course they do. Fortunately, we don’t look like that anymore.”

  The guards reached the taxi. One of them yelled at Robie. He produced his papers and the man carefully examined them. Another guard poked his head in the back window and yelled at Reel. She kept her eyes down, showed her papers, and spoke deferentially. He looked in her basket and found a chunk of bread, a bag of nuts, a jar of honey, and a bottle of spices.

  The car was searched and nothing out of the ordinary was found.

  The first guard gave Robie a searching look and even tugged on Robie’s short beard. It remained firmly attached to his face. Robie cried out in pain and the man laughed and then yelled at him to continue through the checkpoint.

  Robie put the car in gear and drove on.

  They cleared Damascus and Robie pointed them north.

  Nearly two hundred miles later they arrived on the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city by population. It was dark now and they managed to slip into Aleppo without incident.

  They had arranged for a safe house there. They changed, ate, and rested up for the second leg of their journey.

  The next morning they climbed aboard bikes and started off with a touring group that would cycle through northern Syria to the Turkish border fifty miles away. The trip would normally take three days, a leisurely affair through ancient ruins and beautiful countryside.

  They reached the Church of Saint Simeon Stylites, where the biking group planned to bed down for the night.

  Robie and Reel didn’t choose that option. They left the group and biked on, past Midanki, made several exhausting climbs over poor roads, and then entered a downhill sprint to Azaz.

  They continued on to Turkey, making their border crossing in the middle of the night. They watched military aircraft soaring overhead and dropping bombs, which destroyed targets on the ground. Gunfire also sounded during the night, but they ignored it, pushing ahead.

  Two days later they biked into the outskirts of Mersin.

  A day later they ferried across the Mediterranean to Greece, and from there they flew west. They landed in the United States a week after Ahmadi’s bloodied body hit the pavement in Damascus.

  As soon as they reached America, Robie made a phone call. “We’re coming in,” he said. “Get the champagne ready.” And then he clicked off.

  Evan Tucker slowly put down the phone.

  CHAPTER

  85

  ALMOST ALL AWARDS CEREMONIES CONDUCTED by the CIA were held in secret. That was the nature of the beast. This one was particularly so.

  It involved the Special Activities Division of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. Within that division was the SOG, or Special Operations Group. They were the best of the best, running around the world doing the bidding of the United States either with a gun or by inserting themselves in the riskiest settings for purposes of intelligence gathering. They were the most clandestine special ops force in America, if not the world. Most of the members came from the military elite.

  Most, but not all.

  The ceremony was held in an underground room at the agency’s installation at Camp Peary in Williamsburg, Virginia. It seemed appropriate that the event was below ground, in the shadows, and unknown to the rest of the world.

  In attendance along with about two dozen others were Evan Tucker, APNSA Potter, the three-star, and the DHS director, who had watched the events unfolding in Damascus. And Blue Man.

  Robie and Reel were each awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Cross, the highest award given out by the CIA. It was analogous to the Medal of Honor and was usually given posthumously. It was only bestowed