A gentleman_s game (queen and country)

by Greg Rucka

  It took another hour, because they went much more slowly now. Both Wallace and Chace had agreed that it was unlikely HUM-AA was expecting trouble or that there would be static defenses in place. Certainly, there would be sentries, but they were dealing with a training camp, one where the trainees and the trainers felt secure in their work. The residents were there to learn and to train, their days would be full, their nights dedicated to rest.

  But Chace and Wallace weren't going to take any chances.

  They climbed down into the actual physical wadi, roughly two kilometers from the camp, picking their way down the sides, cautious with their footfalls, and once at the bottom stopped and took stock. The sides of the wadi rose roughly three meters on either side, and where they had entered was narrow, perhaps only four meters across. The ground beneath their feet was hard earth, cleaned by the rare floods that rushed through it in the spring. Chace saw tire tracks but had no idea how recent they were.

  Wallace checked his GPS, showed his findings to Chace, and she nodded, then took the lead, now heading northeast.

  After fourteen minutes, the wadi widened considerably and its walls had slowly begun to drop. Another GPS reading put them within five hundred meters, and here they spread out again, Chace to the eastern side of the wadi, Wallace to the western. Chace moved the P90 to her shoulder, made certain the safety was off and the selector was on burst.

  They moved very slowly now, listening hard, trying to ignore their own sounds, trying to control their own fear.

  With one hundred meters to go, the wadi curved again, and Chace hugged her wall as she followed it around. Over the emptiness, she heard a rustling, the scraping of a foot, and peering the rest of the way, she saw the sentry, Kalashnikov held in one hand, covering his mouth to suppress a yawn.

  She looked to Wallace, could barely make him out in the darkness across from her. She held up a finger, hoping he could read the sign, and she saw him return it, then made a circle, then showed him all five fingers. She lowered her hand, went back to watching the sentry, counting seconds.

  The time the sentry had left to live.

  47

  Saudi Arabia-Tabuk Province, the Wadi-as-Sirhan 22 September 0248 Local (GMT+3.00)

  Matteen stopped the car.

  "What are you doing?" Sinan demanded.

  Matteen grinned at him, opening the door and dropping out of the vehicle. "Relieving myself, if you don't mind."

  Sinan groaned inwardly, closed his eyes, wanting nothing more than to be back in the safety and sanity of the camp, where the world was ordered, where doubt could not exist. He remembered Nia's head in his lap, felt a pang of guilt.

  Outside the car, he could hear the sound of Matteen passing water.

  "Come on."

  Matteen climbed back behind the wheel, started the car once more. He drove carefully and slowly, and when at last they entered the wadi proper, their progress, it seemed, slowed to a crawl.

  "It would be faster if we walked," Sinan complained.

  "You are too impatient, Sinan. You must learn to take things as they come."

  "And what has that gotten us? Patience, what has it brought?" Sinan gestured angrily. "This is holy land, Matteen, and it has been defiled time and time again by those kufr who would destroy everything we believe. Patience! Did patience remove the American air bases?"

  Matteen just shook his head, concentrating on negotiating the wadi.

  "Action," Sinan said. "Action, not patience. We act, that Allah, praise His name, acts through us."

  "There is a time for action and a time for planning. The unseen knife cuts cleanest, Sinan, and your way would shout out to all who would hear what it is we do, what it is we are planning."

  "They should know! They should know, and they should be afraid!"

  "They already are. They live in fear, haven't you seen it? The West awakens every morning, anxious for news, nervous and scared, wondering where we will strike next. That is terror, Sinan. And when they talk about a war against terror, they don't understand that they have already lost, because they are already afraid. And they will never sleep safe again, no matter how many missiles they drop on our camps, no matter how many of our brothers they capture and torture and murder. They fear us already, and thus we have already won. It will just take time for the victory to be complete."

  Sinan looked out the window at the rough terrain bathed in the headlights. He could hear the truth in Matteen's words, and it soothed the heat in his blood.

  He thought about Nia again, wondered again if she had been afraid. He hoped not; he didn't want her to have entered Paradise afraid.

  He wondered if she would be happy to see him when his time came.

  48

  Saudi Arabia-Tabuk Province, the Wadi-as-Sirhan 22 September 0253 Local (GMT+3.00)

  Chace reached three hundred, uncovered the scope on the P90, raised it again to her shoulder, and settled the crosshairs on the man's chest. She moved her finger onto the trigger, pulling gently, exhaling, and the burst flew, the weapon hissing at the sentry, and through the scope she watched him jerk and topple, and she was moving forward again before he hit the ground. She looked around as she went, scanning, and saw no movement, no light.

  She debated about moving the body, then continued past it, thinking it a waste of time.

  There were eleven tents, the largest cluster of them centered in the wadi, with camouflage netting draped above them. Smaller tents hugged the walls. She worked from the eastern wall first, setting down her pack and removing the first claymore, extending its legs, setting it to face the nearest tent, some fifty meters from her, then stripping the end of her det cord with her knife, prepping it before attaching it to the mine.

  She repeated the procedure with the remaining seven claymores, placing them roughly twenty-five meters apart, in a gentle semicircle, until the entire line was covered. She returned the pack to her back, its weight now negligible compared to what it had been, then attached the end of her remaining det cord to the daisy chain and quietly worked her way through the center of the camp.

  Wallace was already finished and waiting for her with his end of the cord. She stood watch while he prepped the line, joining the segments, and then followed her back the way she had come. Back across the claymores, they stopped again, and Wallace took his timer, fitting it to the recess on the mine nearest the center of Chace's chain. He checked his watch, set the timer, and then showed Chace four fingers.

  She checked her watch, noting the time. Oh-three-oh-four, kick-off at oh-three-oh-eight. She slid her sleeve back down, nodded to Wallace.

  Wallace pointed at himself, then at the western side of the wadi, then at her, then the eastern.

  She nodded again, and they parted. Chace had to sling the P90 to climb out; although the wall was shallow, it was steep, and she needed both hands to get above it.

  Once up and out, she scanned the terrain for cover and found an indent in the earth that met with the wadi wall. She rested in it, checked her watch again.

  Oh-three-oh-six.

  She readied her P90, looked across the wadi, trying to spot Wallace. She didn't see him. She'd have been worried if she had.

  She waited, hearing the night, counting down the seconds, waiting for the inevitable. Each claymore held 650 grams of explosive and 700 small steel balls, and when the timer ran down, the whole line would detonate in sequence. At their optimum distance from target, fifty meters, and placed as they had been some twenty-five meters apart, each mine would send its explosive load in overlapping coverage. The steel ball bearings would fly in a sixty-degree arc, covering up to two meters in height, and would tear through the tents as if they weren't there, and tear through the people asleep inside them in much the same way.

  For Queen and for country, she told herself.

  Then the timer reached zero, the daisy chain detonated, exploding in a sequence of flashing orange and red flowers, spitting steel that tore fabric, flesh, and bone.

  49
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  Saudi Arabia-Tabuk Province, the Wadi-as-Sirhan 22 September 0308 Local (GMT+3.00)

  Sinan jerked awake, thinking at first that the flashes of light were something from a dream. He leaned forward, hands on the dashboard, and the bursts of fire continued in sequence, then vanished behind the wadi wall.

  Matteen stopped the car, killed the lights, saying, "Did you see that?"

  The heat came rushing back to Sinan, and he reached up, flicking the switch on the dome light so that it wouldn't illuminate the interior of the vehicle as he opened the door. He grabbed his rifle, slipping out, and as soon as the door was open he heard the explosions, but worse, he heard the screams, echoing through the wadi.

  "Matteen, quickly!" he hissed, and closed the door, clambering onto the hood of the SUV and then jumping from it onto the wadi wall, holding his rifle with both hands, fitting his finger through the trigger guard. He sprinted low, the Kalashnikov ready, atop the wall of the wadi, stumbling as his pace grew more desperate, driven by the cries of his brothers.

  50

  Saudi Arabia-Tabuk Province, the Wadi-as-Sirhan 22 September 0309:03 Local (GMT+3.00)

  There weren't many survivors, but there were enough to keep Chace busy. She hopped her sights from one to the next, squeezing each burst carefully, timing the shots, placing them precisely. She went for center mass, tracking shots where she needed to, one burst for most, two when required.

  She reloaded and heard the sounds of the dying, and then heard something else, and whipped around, dropping to her back and bringing the P90 up at the same time, seeing the man twenty feet behind her, his hands folded on his head. All the same, her finger had almost descended on the trigger before she registered what she was seeing, and it took another half a second before the adrenaline coursing through her allowed his words to register.

  "Friendly," the man was saying over and over again. "CIA, friendly, CIA."

  Chace scrambled to her feet, sprinting toward him, the P90 in one hand. She grabbed his hair and yanked him over onto his back, dropping to a knee and driving the muzzle against his neck. He looked at her with pure alarm, his mouth working inarticulately.

  "Friendly," he gabbled. "Friendly, in the name of God, I'm friendly."

  "Who the fuck are you?" Chace hissed in return, and she pushed the muzzle harder against his neck.

  "Matteen Agha," he said, and his English was accented, vaguely American. "My controller is Dennis Heppler at Langley, Juliet-ought-eight-nine-nine-two, please, I'm a friend, you must believe me."

  "Nobody told me that I could find friends here."

  The man closed his eyes, whispered, "I am unarmed, I am unarmed, please, you must believe me."

  Chace gritted her teeth, the frustration and impatience raging. "Where did you come from, why the hell aren't you in the camp? Did you know we were coming?"

  Matteen Agha shook his head, or tried to, saying, "No, we were on our way back, we were in Egypt. There were bombs, I warned Heppler, I told him there were five-"

  "We?"

  "-of the bombers, we were paired with them to act as their handlers-"

  Chace yanked on his hair, hard, trying to silence him. "We?"

  "My partner and I-"

  The realization was utterly horrifying, and she released her grip on him, trying to get to her feet, turning to look across the wadi, opening her mouth to shout the warning.

  Too late.

  51

  Saudi Arabia-Tabuk Province, the Wadi-as-Sirhan 22 September 0309:18 Local (GMT+3.00)

  Thirty meters, and Sinan could see it, looking down the short drop, at the place that had been his home.

  The tents were shredded, in tatters, and in the starlight that reflected off the desert, he saw his brothers, slain as they had slept. Their blood shone black on the earth, and he heard their sobbing, their pain. He saw survivors, struggling to get their weapons, to get to their feet, to escape the tents, and he saw them twist and fall, one after the other, as if touched by the breath of the Angel of Death.

  Sinan looked around, frantic, and he saw the flicker to his left, blue light suppressed, and he heard another of his brothers scream, and he dropped back, still in his crouch, bringing his rifle to his shoulder, trying to circle around behind the shooter. His heart had climbed to his throat, and he tasted a bitterness in his mouth, something acrid, and he felt his hands trembling, his whole body shaking with his rage.

  He tried to move slowly, though everything inside him screamed to hurry, telling him the more he delayed, the more his brothers died.

  Sinan was perhaps ten feet from the man when he stopped, rolling to his side to reload his weapon, and the man looked up, saw him, and realized what was about to happen.

  The man tried to roll, slapping the fresh magazine into place, scrambling to raise the gun and fire.

  "Go to hell," Sinan said, and he pulled his trigger, held it down, watched as the muzzle-flash lit the man like a fiery strobe, watched as the man's body rattled and shook as the Kalashnikov tore him to pieces.

  52

  Saudi Arabia-Tabuk Province, the Wadi-as-Sirhan 22 September 0309:31 Local (GMT+3.00)

  Chace heard the echo of the shots, saw the muzzle-flash light them a hundred meters away, the man with the rifle, firing and firing and firing, and it wouldn't stop, he wouldn't stop, and she cried out in Tom's agony, saw his arm rise and then fall again. She brought the P90 against her hip, tearing the trigger back, all her control gone. Brass rained around her feet, spent and smoking.

  The strobe went off, the man twirling away, and Chace's eyes burned with the memory of light. She heard herself choking, jumped down the wall of the wadi, sprinting its width, her boots pounding the earth almost as hard as her heart, and when she reached the opposite side she scrabbled up it, losing the gun, not caring, pulling herself atop on her knees.

  The brutality of his death forced a sob, caught in her throat. There were pieces of him missing, as if torn out by an angry, spoiled child who would rather break his possessions than share them. His eyes and mouth were open, and there was pain and fear in them, and his skin was splashed and painted in his own blood.

  The emotion fractured her, stole her mind, too strong and too cruel, far beyond anything she had ever allowed herself to feel. Chace screamed without knowing she was screaming, and she put her hands to him, trying to hold Wallace one more time, trying to feel him warm and alive and hers.

  Then the world exploded magnesium-flare red and white, and she came back to herself with blood in her mouth, facedown on wet earth. Disoriented and confused and still lost in the grief, she tried to push herself up. Pain ruptured in her back, sent her flat again, and somehow her mind connected that this was wrong, that she was being hurt, and she snapped her right arm back and up and surprised herself when it connected with bone. She felt another blow, this to her right shoulder, and she realized it had been meant for her head, and that she must have moved out of the way.

  She pitched her legs up, to the side, twisting on the ground, and her boots connected with flesh again, not seriously, not enough to do anything but send her assailant back a few steps. She used the momentum to follow through, bringing her legs over and down again, flipping on the ground, getting her feet under her, and again she moved her head just in the nick of time, felt the brush of the Kalashnikov's stock as it stole the watch cap from her head.

  Her thought was that it had been Matteen attacking her and that she would kill him for lying, but this wasn't Matteen, it was the other one, the one who had killed Tom. In the fraction she had to see his face, the details burned. He was young, younger than Matteen, and Caucasian, and he was swearing at her, cursing at her, spitting at her, spittle on his lips, swinging the Kalashnikov at her like a club. Blood ran from torn fabric along his left arm, and she wondered that she'd hit him only once, so poorly, and the Kalashnikov was coming at her head again.

  She ducked beneath it, sprang up from her haunches, trapping the arm with her right while turning her back into him,
driving her left elbow hard into his sternum. He grunted, twisting away, giving her only half the impact, and she felt the blow high on her left side, where her breast joined her ribs, and she screamed louder, yanking him forward, trying to flip him with the trapped arm.

  Again, it half-worked, and the man dropped the Kalashnikov, struggling to free his arm as she brought him off the ground, twisting over her in the air, his hand dragging along her neck, pulling her hair, trying to take her down with him. Chace fell into him onto the ground, punched once at his throat, caught the mass of muscle at his shoulder instead. She felt her hair tearing as he pulled her down toward him, his mouth opening, trying to bite her face, and Chace snapped her forehead into his nose, felt the cartilage shatter and melt, and he roared and pounded at her back and side with his free hand, kicking at the earth, rolling them until she was on her back and he was pinning her with his weight.

  It was impossible to breathe, agony to breathe, and Chace felt his hand hot on her throat, and something else digging into her skin above her right hip. She reached for it, found the hilt of her knife, and her vision was swimming, and he was over her, and his other hand left her hair, and the world cracked, jumped, as if badly spliced, and she felt wet heat spreading from her nose as he punched her face a second time, then brought that hand to join the first, squeezing the life out of her.

  She stabbed him then, felt the blade slide over bone, then sink deep into his side, and the man howled, loud enough that she heard it through the roar of the surf crashing in her ears. Chace yanked the blade toward her, keeping it inside him, with everything she had, feeling it slide through hollow insides, and then she forced it back, in the opposite direction, turning the hilt. His grip on her faltered, and his eyes began to empty, and she turned the blade as if working the throttle of Kittering's motorcycle, ran it down, and felt the eruption of hot blood gushing over her hand.