A gentleman_s game (queen and country)

by Greg Rucka

  "So you're screwed?"

  "That's what I'm telling you."

  "I'm sure Chace knows just how you feel."

  Cheng fumed at him, then ran a hand through her hair, thinking.

  "I could get onto Langley," she said. "Langley gets onto the White House, the White House jumps all over the Israelis, Chace and Wallace, they don't go anywhere."

  "No, you can't," Crocker said. "It would require the White House to do a complete volte-face, and for what? A single agent? They want that camp shut down, Angela. At best, they apprehend Chace and hand her to the Saudis, you've still got the same problem."

  "You son of a bitch," Cheng said.

  "Because I figured it out?" Crocker crushed his cigarette into the bottom of the ashtray. "Because I tried to protect my people? Because you lied to me?"

  "I didn't have a choice, don't make it personal."

  Crocker laughed. "It's not personal, Angela. It's never been personal, however many gifts you give my daughters for their birthdays."

  She exhaled sharply, then fell back, resting in the chair.

  "When are they going in?" Cheng asked. "Do you know?"

  "No."

  "No you don't know, or no you won't say?"

  "I don't know. They may be in already, they may go tomorrow, they may never go."

  "Fuck."

  "If you say so."

  "Can you at least get a message to them, can you try to do that? Just let them know there's a friendly, let them know he won't fire on them, that's how he'll identify himself, he'll be unarmed."

  "What do I get in exchange?"

  Cheng looked sincerely incredulous. "You really are a son of a bitch."

  "What are you offering?"

  Cheng's chin dropped onto her chest, mouth tightening, thinking.

  "You want her back in the Pit when all this is over," she said finally. "Langley will push it, we'll smooth any of the feathers that get ruffled."

  "No," Crocker said. "Not good enough."

  "Jesus Christ, Paul, what do you want?"

  "I want it in writing that Chace undertook the covert at the request of CIA London."

  Crocker had never seen her look stunned before.

  "No way."

  "The only way," Crocker said. "It's her job insurance. And mine, for that matter. You come on the chopping block with us, you'll have a vested interest in seeing the blade doesn't fall on any of our necks."

  Cheng scowled, then leaned forward, grabbing one of the pens resting on Crocker's desk. He reached into the second drawer on his left, pulled out a pad of paper, handed it to her, then sat back with another cigarette, watching while she wrote. It took her the entirety of his smoke, and when she was finished, she tossed the pen down on the desk and nearly threw the pad at him as well.

  Crocker read it over carefully. "You're exonerating the Agency."

  "I'm not going to give you a document that could end up with a congressional inquiry, Paul, I don't care how big the pistol is that you hold to my head. I'm taking responsibility for it, that's enough. You, me, Chace, all in it together. Happy now?"

  "No. But I'm marginally less unhappy than I was when you came in here."

  "And here I am, much more unhappy than I was when I came in here."

  "I'll make copies," Crocker said.

  "Hold it, hold on a second."

  He stopped, halfway to his feet.

  "She has to get our man out alive, Paul. That's my condition. I've given you what you want, now I want something, too. She needs to get him out alive and with cover intact."

  "You don't ask for much, do you?"

  "You've got a hell of a lot of gall, saying that."

  Crocker thought about that, then nodded.

  "Yes," he said. "I suppose I do." • It was past eleven by the time Crocker saw Cheng out of the building, and after leaving her he went straight to the Ops Room. The night staff was on duty, Gary Draper at Duty Ops, Max Fletcher at Coms.

  "D-Ops on the floor," Draper announced as Crocker entered.

  "Easy," Crocker said. "Max?"

  "Sir?"

  "We have a direct contact for Noah Landau at Mossad?"

  "Checking, sir."

  Crocker waited, hands in his pockets, looking at the plasma screen wall. There were two operations running currently, one in Singapore, the other in Accra, both of them run-of-the-mill jobs, missions named Lightbulb and Bookstore, respectively. There was nothing marking Saudi Arabia.

  "We have a contact number, yes, sir," Max said. "Two in the morning there, I'm not sure we'll be able to reach him."

  "Make the call, then run it through to my office."

  "Very good, sir." Max hesitated, then added, "Shall I log it, sir?"

  Crocker pretended not to hear him as he left the floor. • He caught the phone on the first ring. "D-Ops."

  "Noah Landau on the line, sir," Max said.

  "Patch him in." Crocker waited for the click, then the line noise to resolve, the slight whining in the background scrambling the conversation. "Mr. Landau?"

  "Mr. Crocker." Landau's voice was distorted but understandable. "Very late to be calling."

  "I need you to pass on a message to Chace and Wallace," Crocker said. "There's a friendly in the camp, he won't raise arms against them, that's how he'll identify. They need to get him out. Can you pass that along?"

  The whining on the line grew louder, then faded before Landau spoke again.

  "I'm afraid that won't be possible."

  "Why the hell not?"

  "Because, Mr. Crocker," Landau said, "they're already there."

  44

  Saudi Arabia-Tabuk Province, the Wadi-as-Sirhan 22 September 0121 Local (GMT+3.00)

  The helicopter had flown in so low it hadn't actually descended to let Chace and Wallace jump out. As soon as their feet hit the ground, their hands shielding their eyes from the whirling sand spiraling around them, the helicopter banked swiftly away, and for a moment Chace thought the bird would end up nose down on the desert floor. But as she and Wallace ran for cover, dropped to their bellies, their submachine guns in their hands, she heard the sound of the rotors receding to an echo and then to silence.

  It was warm, the earth beneath her still holding the heat from the day, but not unpleasantly so. Borovsky had said it would be in the low seventies Fahrenheit, "good weather for walking," he had told them.

  "Want to come along, then?" Wallace had asked, and Borovsky had laughed that annoying laugh of his and shaken his head, saying that he thought the two of them would have more fun without him.

  Later, as Chace and Wallace had been kitting up, Wallace had said, "He knows we're shagging."

  "It's your fault," Chace said. "You're too loud."

  "Right, and you're a churchmouse."

  "Oh, so it's bestiality you're after now, is it?"

  "I'd say 'moo,' but you might accuse me of calling you a cow."

  They'd pulled on their camouflage fatigues, supplied, like all the rest of their kit, by the Israelis. The camo was dark gray, splotched with black, and wouldn't do a damn bit of good for them in daylight, but they weren't planning on spending daylight anywhere they might be spotted. They blacked their faces, checking each other for spots they had missed, and wore black watch caps to hide their hair. The boots Landau had supplied were comfortable and fit well, and he'd even presented them with an extra pair of socks, as requested.

  "Anything to help," he'd told them. • She'd returned to Tel Aviv via bus, a ride that had taken almost fourteen hours, getting her back to the apartment at six of two in the morning to find Borovsky waiting with Wallace. They'd already heard the news, and Borovsky had once again offered a proposal of marriage.

  "I drink, I smoke, I swear, I can't cook, I don't do laundry, I won't clean, and I don't like children," Chace told him. "Why marry me?"

  "No woman is perfect."

  "You've never met my mother," Wallace said.

  Chace went to take a shower then, scrubbing the journey and
the act from her skin as much as she could, examining her bruises. Her left arm was tender to the touch where she'd taken the baton, but the swelling had finally gone down, and her knee was apparently content for the time being to keep its silence.

  She'd been under the spray when Wallace came in, taking a seat on the closed toilet, watching her behind the pebbled glass.

  "Borovsky gone, then?" Chace asked.

  "Just left."

  "Then you should get in here."

  So he did, and they made love in the shower, or at least tried to, but the stall was too cramped and the danger of slipping seemed to grow exponentially the more aroused they became. Ultimately, they retired to the bed, taking things slowly, Chace basking in Wallace's touch and attention.

  Afterward, lying together, bodies idle but for their hands, Wallace said, "I have a plan."

  "Does it include this bed?"

  "For the Wadi."

  "Oh, that."

  "You seem uninterested."

  "I'm easily distracted."

  "Seems to me I should be the one who's distracted." He propped himself up on his elbow, brushing her hair with his fingers. "Landau's still saying they can't put anyone on the ground, but he's willing to arrange the infil by helicopter."

  "Nice of him, considering the favor we're doing for him."

  "They're making a drop tonight, equipment, they'll put it down about twelve kilometers west of the camp. Tomorrow night they'll drop us in, twenty kilometers west of the camp. We'll have GPS, move to the cache, load up, close on target."

  "Why two drops?"

  "Time over target," Wallace said. "We want to limit it as much as possible."

  "And what are they dropping?"

  Wallace's grin indicated the degree to which he was pleased with himself, and from it Chace concluded he was very pleased indeed.

  "Claymores."

  "The swords?"

  Wallace put his head to her shoulder and nipped at her skin, and she yelped, pushed his head away.

  "Mines," Wallace said. "Sixteen of them, four hundred feet of det cord, two timers, one for a backup."

  "Daisy chain."

  "Exactly."

  "You're a clever man, Mr. Wallace."

  "I do have my moments," he agreed. "They'll also cache food and water for the exfil."

  "So we're going to mine the camp and let it fly?"

  "Landau's giving us P90s, suppressed, and I asked for two hundred rounds apiece. We'll set the mines, pull back, wait for the detonation-"

  "And shoot the survivors."

  "Quick job. Brutal, efficient. Crocker would approve."

  "Not of this, he wouldn't."

  "Let go of that, that's not yours."

  "I disagree. I have staked my claim."

  He gently moved her hand away, then wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close, and stayed that way until he fell asleep. • Wallace got to his feet slowly, the P90 held ready, and he turned a slow circle in place, checking their immediate perimeter, while Chace used her GPS unit to get a bearing on the cache. The P90s were suppressed, which added roughly a pound to their weight but didn't appreciably affect their handling. The weapons were loaded with fifty rounds; the remaining 150 for each of them with the cache.

  In addition to the guns, they each carried a GPS unit and a knife on their person, and that was it. Nothing else was truly needed, at least not yet, and as soon as Chace had the bearing, she rose to her feet and indicated their desired direction. They spread out, putting twenty feet or so between each other, and began walking. They moved as quickly as silence would allow.

  There was no moon, but the stars were brilliant and gave off a surprising amount of light, and she felt better about the fact that they had forgone NVG, relying on their eyes alone. She remembered a story from the SOE days, before the Special Operations Executive had transitioned to become SIS, during the Second World War, when agents had been taught to keep one eye closed during night maneuvers. It was the kind of detail that stayed with you, and she wondered at it, wondered at the way the mind could detach from the action surrounding it.

  The terrain was even for the most part, and barren, and she had expected sand and was mildly disappointed that there wasn't much of it to be found. They made good time, and when they reached the cache and found the canister lying on its side, its self-deploying camouflage blanket making it look like nothing more than a large rock, Chace slid back her sleeve to check her watch. Oh-one-fifty-nine.

  She stood watch while Wallace broke open the canister, removing the backpacks first, and set about loading them. He divided the claymores evenly, eight for each of them, as well as the det cord and the timers. When he had loaded both backpacks, he dug out the extra magazines for the P90s, handed three of them to Chace, kept the remaining three for himself.

  Two hundred rounds apiece, sixteen claymores, Chace mused.

  If that wasn't going to be enough to get the job done, she didn't know what more would've.

  The backpacks loaded and closed, Wallace reached into the canister again, this time removing two plastic bottles of water, factory sealed, labels removed. He cracked one, drank it down, then closed the bottle and returned it to the canister before getting to his feet and offering the other to Chace. She drank it while he stood watch, then repeated his procedure, putting it back where he'd found it. Inside the canister were another sixteen bottles and six MREs, to be used later, on the exfil.

  Getting out was as important as getting in, after all.

  The plan, as it stood, had them hitting the camp in the next ninety minutes, returning to the cache before dawn for resupply. After loading up on the food and water, they would strike out to the west, making for the GPS coordinates Borovsky had supplied, across the border with Jordan. It was an eighty-six kilometer hike and would take them the better part of two days to accomplish. Once they reached the lift site, they would wait for pickup, scheduled twice every twenty-four hours, at twenty-two hundred and oh-four hundred.

  They had no radios because radios wouldn't do them any good. Who were they going to call but each other?

  Chace closed the canister, let the camouflage blanket fall back over it, blurring its lines once more. She hoisted her pack, feeling the thirty-six pounds of landmines on her back, a substantial weight but not an unmanageable one.

  Wallace was watching her, and Chace moved her P90 to a low-carry, nodded, and they struck out again, this time for the camp.

  Ready to kill.

  45

  Saudi Arabia-Tabuk Province, the Wadi-as-Sirhan 22 September 0146 Local (GMT+3.00)

  "I told you to take it slowly," Matteen said.

  Sinan shot a glare at him, then turned the look on the front right tire of the SUV, deflated and useless.

  "Get the spare and the jack," Sinan said.

  Matteen sighed, gesturing around them at the expanse of sand. "We can wait until dawn, Sinan. We can sleep in the car."

  "I want to get home."

  "You wanting to get home is why we have a flat tire in the middle of the desert."

  "Fine, I'll do it." Sinan threw his Kalashnikov onto the backseat of the Land Cruiser, went around to the back, opened the hatch. Matteen followed after a moment, grumbling, then reached inside to help him free the spare. They rolled it around the side of the vehicle, loosened the bolts on the flat tire, and then set about raising the car with the jack.

  It had taken them far longer to get out of Egypt than it had to get in, and Sinan had been surprised by how swiftly and how viciously the Egyptian authorities had responded to the bombing, for all the effect Nia's death had had. It puzzled him, and it puzzled Matteen, and it was only by Allah's grace, Sinan was sure, that they had not been stopped in the airport in Cairo, where they had boarded the flight south to Hurghada.

  Their contact had met them in Port Safaga and put them up for the night, then brought them to the fishing boat that would take them to Duba.

  It was in Port Safaga that they learned what had happened
to Muhriz el-Sayd, how he had been murdered by the police.

  "They take our best from us," Sinan had lamented. "They take our best, again and again, and we make no gains."

  "Our gains are not for this world but the next, Sinan," Matteen had answered. "Do not lose your faith."

  Sinan hadn't responded, dwelling once more on Nia, telling himself he had done what he had to do, that he had done what was required of him. She hadn't left him a choice.

  They'd crossed the Red Sea and made port in Duba, finding the SUV where Abdul Aziz had promised them it would be, the keys in the hands of a local imam who fed them and prayed with them before sending them on their way with their rifles once more at their sides. The drive was a long one, and while they made good time on the immaculate and barren highways for the first part of it, as they closed in on the camp the going was slower, and they were required to leave the roads. Before night fell, they stopped and prayed.

  "Let's wait until morning, Sinan," Matteen had suggested. "I don't like driving in the dark."

  "I want to get back home."

  "If we get hung up on a rock or boulder, we'll end up stuck out here and have to walk."

  "Allah will not let that happen," Sinan had said simply, and then climbed back behind the wheel of the Land Cruiser. • They had the tire changed in only a few minutes, and Sinan's dour mood was only slightly helped by the fact that Matteen didn't say "I told you so."

  Once the flat was stowed, along with the tools, Sinan moved to get behind the wheel, but this time Matteen stopped him.

  "No, I'll take it for a while."

  "I can drive."

  "I know you can drive, Sinan, but you're impatient, and we only had the one spare. We'll get there when we get there."

  Sinan thought about digging in, being stubborn. Instead, he moved around to the passenger's seat, climbing in, waiting while Matteen got behind the wheel. The engine came back to life without hesitation and the headlights splashed onto the baked earth.

  "I just want to go home," Sinan said to no one in particular.

  46

  Saudi Arabia-Tabuk Province, the Wadi-as-Sirhan 22 September 0222 Local (GMT+3.00)