Realizing they were running out of time, Harwood became concerned. He knew very little about Sassi Cavezza, but so far, she had seemed both loyal and capable. Harwood didn’t see her as a killer, but that could be due to his own prejudice. He knew women could kill as easily as men. All he needed to do was think of Valerie Hinojosa and add up her body count as an FBI special agent on the Team Valid mission last year.
After a few more minutes of lying in the gravel beneath the tall grass, Harwood pushed up, ready to move.
“This way,” Sassi said. She was breathing hard, as if she’d just sprinted.
He followed her behind the tracks. They jogged past the two guards, both of whom were bound with the flex-cuffs that Sassi had retrieved from his rucksack and gagged with what looked like socks.
“My flex-cuffs?”
“I’ve been staring at those things when I’ve followed you. Glad I knew where they were.”
Harwood’s lips twitched as close to a smile as he was going to get under these circumstances.
“I’m guessing you’re not the average United Nations employee … if you’re one at all?” he commented.
“I am one, and for the record, you’re not the only person with skills.”
“Obviously. I’ll move forward to the trucks. Stay here. Use your judgment on the tire shredders.”
He took the lead as they knelt next to the open gate. The crane had one of the containers loaded into its maw as it swung around toward the waiting tractor. The two drivers watched intently.
Harwood crossed the gate and jogged to the terminal control building. It was a low-slung redbrick job with pillbox windows. A single glassed-in door provided access. Harwood slid beyond the door and crossed the asphalt before kneeling behind a generator. He turned and looked for Sassi, who had stopped at the guardhouse and had activated the tire shredders that would slow the egress of the trucks.
The two SUVs started and quickly U-turned in the container yard about a hundred meters from the gate. Harwood was trapped, as was Sassi. She quickly ducked back into the guard shack, lowered the tire shredders, and slid out the other side, hiding behind concrete poles designed to prevent trucks from ramming into the shack.
Harwood had fifty meters of open yard between him and Sassi. If he moved, he would be seen. He slowly lay flat on the asphalt and extended the bipod on his SR-25 and tracked the two SUVs as they approached the gate.
Pulling away from the scope, he turned and saw the crane’s boom swinging around with the second container.
The play had been to penetrate the more vulnerable trucks as opposed to confronting the heavily armed SUVs. He had about thirty meters to the trucks, over halfway there from the guard shack. One thing Harwood had learned in his combat tours was that a 50 percent plan violently executed was better than a perfect plan poorly executed.
The SUVs approached the gate. Harwood turned and looked at the tractor lifting the first container. The crane lowered the second container. He had maybe five minutes. The plan, such as it was, was all predicated on the notion that the trucks were going to the same location as the SUVs. It made sense, though. The containers had been loaded at the port. The big man had come from the compound Harwood had attacked. There had to be a connection.
After he placed the second container on the tarmac, the crane operator swiveled the boom back into place and turned the engine off. They were off-loading only the two containers, not the hundreds of others.
The driver of the tractor with the giant crab claw that would pick up the containers and place them on the trucks had summoned the two truck drivers and was pointing at the ship, maybe asking if he had the right containers. Harwood knew this was his opportunity.
He looked over his shoulder at Sassi. The SUVs slowed as they rolled through the gate. He could see her crouched low. Given the angle of the SUVs, the drivers wouldn’t be able to see her unless she moved.
Harwood quietly retracted his bipod and slung his weapon in the snap hook on his outer tactical vest. He knelt as if he were a runner in the starting blocks. The rucksack was heavy on his back, but this was his window, like a batter ripping a solid single to the outfield and then taking second base when the outfielder bobbled the ball. It was a perceived opening. The outcome was unknown. Did the outfielder have a rifle arm? Was his jump good enough?
To avoid lateral movement that the human eye more easily detected, Harwood ran directly at the men’s backs as they conversed. The huddle was breaking up, and the tractor driver was loading the container on the back of the truck Harwood was now pressed against. It was an extended cab, an interesting choice for an island. It appeared either new or well maintained.
Without hesitation, Harwood moved to the passenger-side door and opened it. The latch clicked louder than he’d hoped, but there was nothing he could do about it. He crawled into the cab and removed his rucksack, pushing it into the sleeping compartment. The door was heavy as he pulled it toward him. He tugged open the handle to try to deaden the noise and prevent the latch from clicking again.
The tractor roared as it hefted the container onto the rig. The truck cab shook as the weight settled on the trailer, and Harwood used that moment to slam the door shut. He crawled into the sleeping compartment, pushed his rucksack to the side, and readied his knife.
Next to him were wadded-up sheets and some magazines written in Greek or Turkish. A half-full bottle of Diet Coke leaned in the corner next to some Little Debbie wrappers. The interior had the pristine odor of a new car. These trucks were in mint condition.
Like a good sniper, Harwood used the time available to improve his position. He moved to situate himself behind the driver’s side, out of the driver’s line of sight unless he looked in the compartment and turned in his direction.
The tractor roared again. Metal clanked on metal. The drivers shouted. Finally, the cab door opened. The driver climbed into his seat, slammed the door, buckled his seat belt, and cranked the engine, which hummed like the finely tuned machine it was. Before placing the truck in gear, the man reached back into the sleep compartment, searching for something. His hand was bouncing around, not finding what he was looking for. He muttered something Harwood guessed was an expletive and then leaned forward to unbuckle his seat beat. Harwood looked across the sleep compartment, saw the Coke bottle, and quickly placed it closer.
The seat belt came off, and the man twisted to look in the compartment when he saw the Coke bottle, grabbed it, muttered another expletive, and repositioned himself forward in the driver’s seat.
The truck lurched forward and began rolling. Harwood could see across the passenger side and out the side mirror. He wasn’t sure if they were leading or following. The trucks had been parked nose to tail, with this truck being behind the lead truck. They appeared to be following because they had not made a turn.
They looped around, passed the train tracks, and approached the gate before stopping.
Sassi had raised the tire shredders again. At least that was the plan; Harwood had no idea what was actually happening. After seeing the two guards bound and gagged on the railroad tracks, he figured she could be single-handedly taking down both drivers. Not the plan and not likely, but she had the skills.
After a minute, his driver buzzed down his window. Another man, most likely the driver from the lead truck, spoke to him, presumably in Greek. It was a quick conversation, most likely an update. Something like, The shredders are up, and the guards are gone, but I fixed the problem.
The trucks coughed again, and they were moving. He hoped that Sassi had executed her part of the plan and was with the two-truck convoy. Either way, he hoped she was safe.
His truck lurched and spun around winding turns, Harwood having to hold on so that he didn’t spill forward or backward and make a noise. After thirty minutes, the trucks pulled through a different gate. An airfield loomed in the distance, and when the truck pulled around, a gigantic airplane was in plain sight with its cargo ramp leaning on the tarmac like a gaping jaw waiting to be fed. H
e searched for the SUVs and the cooler but didn’t see them.
He had more decisions to make in an unknown environment. Were they boarding Clutch on the aircraft? Had they already? Still, were the containers and Clutch connected? Was Sassi there, or had she missed the convoy? Where was the plane going? What was in the containers?
The driver stopped the truck. The brakes hissed. A similar tractor to the one at the port began moving to the trucks. This was a well-oiled operation.
Harwood waited for the driver to exit, but he didn’t. He turned back toward the compartment, this time reaching with his whole body. It was impossible for Harwood to avoid detection. He gripped his knife in one hand and his pistol in the other. Ready.
He saw the arm. The back of the head. His right shoulder. All fluid momentum coming back, perhaps to change or to get another Little Debbie. It didn’t matter. He would have to be violent and quick.
Someone pounded on the driver’s door. The man snapped back around. More Greek, but Harwood was thankful for the interruption. The man opened the door, and the conversation began to float away, drowned out by the tractors and whining airplane engines. The truck shifted, unburdened from the weight of the container as the tractor snatched it away and drove toward the airplane, where a roller would slide it into the cargo hold. Harwood had been on many C-17 airborne jumps with heavy equipment. This was no different; only it was a civilian operation.
He could see out the passenger window. The drivers were near the tractor. Everyone was looking at the airplane. It was time to move.
Harwood placed his rucksack in the passenger’s seat and then eased around the console. Sliding his legs beneath the steering wheel, he checked the dome light, switched it off, and then opened the driver’s-side door. He clutched his rucksack and lowered himself backward from the truck. Once on the tarmac, he took a position behind the giant wheels. He scoped out his options.
There.
He saw the two SUVs near the private terminal maybe fifty yards away. Three big men were standing outside next to the vehicles, long guns held professionally at a 45-degree angle across their body armor–covered chests. He counted a total of six men, which probably included the drivers. Same as at the port. If they’d bothered to look in his direction, he would have been visible to them. The old army saying, “If you can be seen, you can be hit,” popped into his mind. He slid beneath the truck, using the chassis for protective cover and an opportunity to conduct reconnaissance.
The SUVs were here, which meant that Clutch was probably here. The tractors were loading the containers on the airplane, which meant that they were going somewhere inaccessible by ship or they needed to be somewhere sooner than a ship could get them there, whatever their cargo might be. Sassi was nowhere to be seen, nor was there any commotion that might have indicated she had been compromised.
Again, he told himself, either way, she was better off than before. Free and tough, able to do whatever she needed to do to get back to Italy, her home country. His rationalization didn’t make him feel better. He still believed he had an obligation to her. He could have let her go in Lebanon. She could have headed north to the UN base camp in Turkey, but he had made a calculation that she could be useful in the hunt for Clutch, and she seemed to want to stay.
Two men came out of the operations building. One was the man from the compound. He was big. Six and a half feet tall and almost as wide, like a solid farmhand. He walked as if he owned everything in his path and that everything was his dominion. The man walking directly toward the trucks, toward Harwood, pushed outward with his feet. His legs were tree trunks that somehow managed to move. Harwood wondered how such a large man had been so quick in the basement and managed to escape. Carrying Clutch was most likely the easiest task, given the man’s size. The registration of the vehicle they had taken from the compound had Tankian Logistics Group as the owner. The company’s logo had crossed knives branching off from the stem of the K. Was this Tankian? He must be.
Harwood’s mind cycled back to where all of this started. The man walking toward him had the same stride and presence as the man who had been controlling the drones attacking them in the sniper hide site.
The CIA wanted us to have eyes on this guy, so I’m in the right place!
The SUVs followed him as he walked. The bodyguards, save the drivers, walked on the outside like infantry guarding tanks. Tankian and the SUVs slid past his position and stopped at the ramp of the airplane. He slid behind the tires on that side of the truck, feeling secure in his makeshift hide site.
He counted the guards again. They had started with six. Two were driving. Two were visible. Where were the other two? Harwood spun around and checked the length of the undercarriage. Nothing.
He low crawled to the rear tires to recon from a different angle, hoping to see the two guards who were missing. Were they looking for him? Sassi?
He caught a hint of blue out of the corner of his eye. Two men had lifted the cooler from the SUV and were struggling with the weight. Both of them had to weigh 250 pounds apiece. Clutch probably checked in at 200 without his gear. More convinced than ever that Clutch was in the cooler, Harwood considered his options again.
He could attack now. Stow away on the plane. Call for reinforcements, though he knew neither whom he might call nor what they might do. Stoddard seemed of little use and was probably out of range to do anything.
No, saving Clutch was his fight. He didn’t need to make the call and definitely didn’t want to do it. He’d held the demons that haunted him every night at bay. LaBeouf and Samuelson were dead. Could he save Clutch? It didn’t matter whether he was the son of a United States senator or a poor orphan; he was Harwood’s spotter.
He steeled himself for what he was about to do.
With the first container loaded, Tankian, an older man in a white navy uniform, a short bald man with glasses, and two guards watched the tractor back away as two of the other guards pulled the cooler up the ramp, rolling it on its two black wheels.
Still two guards missing. Harwood looked over his shoulder in each direction. Nothing.
And still no sign of Sassi. Harwood blocked her out of his mind for the moment. He studied the aircraft. This was a Ukrainian-made An-124 airplane, one of the largest airplanes in the world. It swallowed the two containers as if they were appetizers. The two men and cooler looked like miniature toys as they climbed inside. The thing had to be four stories off the ground.
The men walked off the ramp. Tankian was talking to the navy man in an animated fashion. They were arguing about something. Despite his size and presence, Tankian did not appear to be winning the conversation.
Was the argument about a payment not made? Was he supposed to be rewarded for delivering Clutch to someone?
The tractor roared as it backed away from the cargo ramp. Harwood had one chance left to get on the airplane in a clandestine manner. He slid from beneath the trailer at the far end. Checked in every direction. Lifted his ruck and shouldered it. Found a handhold on the trailer and lifted himself onto the back. He was completely blocked by the container but could hear the tractor approaching. A perimeter fence was about a hundred meters from him. A thin forest lay beyond that. To his right was the gate they had entered through. To his left the runway. Behind him, the SUVs, the other truck, and the airplane.
He checked all the angles and thought it could work.
The container had two locking bars running vertically from top to bottom. He grasped one in each hand and used his feet to “walk” up the front of the container. He flipped over the top and lay faceup, ready to fight. After a few seconds, he leaned far enough over to see everyone following the tractor, which was headed in his direction.
He slid back to the middle of the container and lay flat, both hands holding his rucksack. His rifle bit into his chest. The jaws of the tractor clamped onto the container with a loud clang that rocked his eardrums. He narrowly avoided the center bar of the jaws that ran coincident with the length of the con
tainer. It slammed down with force directly in front of his face.
The upside was that the arm and bar would provide him cover and concealment should he need them. The container lifted from the truck and swung high over the tarmac. Harwood lifted one hand from his rucksack and used it to hold on to the center bar. Hydraulics hissed, and the movement felt like a carnival ride. The center bar had a logo in black letters against the yellow paint: SANY REACH STACKER.
The container hovered in the gaping maw of the cargo hold, and for a brief second, Harwood didn’t believe he would fit in the gap. He pressed himself into the metal, made his body as thin as possible. The frame of the cargo hold scraped across his outer tactical vest as the container moved along the rollers on the ramp and into the belly of the aircraft. Once he was through the narrow gap, the ceiling of the airplane was a good six feet above him. This airplane was a cargo workhorse with rollers and tie-downs throughout. Looking up, he saw that the first container was in front of him. Beyond that, it appeared there were a couple of rows of seats, all facing forward as in a standard airliner. To the right just in front of the lead container was the blue cooler, possibly carrying Clutch. So close. He could move now, but there was activity at the back of the airplane.
He looked at the container in front of him again, this time lifting his head a fraction more. Sassi Cavezza was not lying on top. Unless she had stowed away in one of the containers, she was on the ground and not making this trip.
The cargo ramp closed with a loud snap. Two men walked past the containers. It was Tankian and the short bald guy with glasses. His handler? His assistant? They buckled into the seats at the front. The engines whined. The airplane rolled and turned left, then right. The engines raced to high throttle, and then the pilots released the brakes. They shot forward and lifted into the sky, Harwood feeling the transition from bouncing along the runway to gliding smoothly into the air.
After a few minutes, as soon as the airplane leveled into a smooth ascent, Tankian unbuckled his seat belt, drew his knife, and walked to the back of the aircraft toward the containers.
Reaper: Drone Strike: A Sniper Novel Page 19