by David Nees
“I’m not after work as you describe it.”
“What then?”
Dan took a breath. The man had nailed him. He was one of the few who could see through his disguise. No disguise was perfect and Dan knew he always had to rely on no one being able to examine him in detail. He had placed his trust in others being more interested in what he could offer and therefore would not look too closely at his cover, either his disguise or his story. He had nothing to lose at this point. With this man, his cover was blown, even as he tried to keep up the charade.
“I’m looking for a man, a man in the Arab community, a jihadist.”
“Now that’s interesting. We have those sorts in Marseille. They are scum as far as I’m concerned. They only want to kill civilians and are not interested in proper criminal enterprises. They interfere with our markets. I won’t have anything to do with them.”
“But you know of them. You run this part of the city and I bet you know what’s going on in much of the rest of it.”
Gaspard didn’t answer but just looked at Dan.
Dan continued, “Can you help me find this man?”
Gaspard’s face broke into a broad grin. “That is bold. I brought you here to explore hiring you and now you want to hire me.” He smiled. “Just why should I help you?”
“I can pay you well for your help, if that’s what you mean.”
“Maybe you can, maybe you can’t. Maybe you can do something for me in return, if I help you.”
Dan shook his head. “I don’t want to get involved in your affairs. I’m not that person and I don’t go after civilians.”
“But you’re willing to go after jihadists, killers of civilians. You’ll even pursue them into strange cities. You have the look of a hard man. I expect you have killed before. What I might ask of you is not that hard and it doesn’t involved civilians. I, too, respect them if they don’t interfere with my business.”
Dan could see he was not going to buy this man’s help. What might he want in return for helping Dan find Jabbar?
“What would you want me to do in exchange for your help?”
“There’s a man making a try for my territory. The bosses won’t put a stop to him. They haven’t disciplined him. He has a relative higher up who protects him. Not close, an older second cousin, but close enough to allow him the freedom to hound my operations. I can’t take him out directly. That would bring the bosses down on me, but an outsider could do it. And he could just disappear back from wherever he came. My men, my operation would be clean.”
“And if he goes, his threat goes?”
“Precisely.”
“How do I know you can help me?”
“Who are you looking for?”
“An Arab named Jabbar Khalid. He would have arrived here from Frankfurt. He was in charge of the attack on the airport.”
“And you followed him here? I suspect there is more to you than just a street tough. Are you with a government agency?”
“I’m on my own.”
“But on the trail of a jihadist. I think you are some sort of assassin, so what I want you to do will be exactly what you are experienced at doing. Do we have a deal?”
Dan looked back at Gaspard. Thoughts swirled in his head. Should he turn this offer down and ask Jane to find Jabbar? He doubted the CIA could locate him before the terrorist left for the mid-East; that was the only reason Jabbar was in Marseille, to get back there. Did killing a gangster at another’s request cross a line that shouldn’t be crossed? What would Jane or Henry say about it? He had no answers, but a conviction arose in his mind. A sense that he should go ahead. It was what he did, improvise. He made a decision.
“Find Jabbar first.”
Chapter 55
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I t only took Gaspard a few days to locate Jabbar. His men connected with Dan in the same bar as before. They took him to Gaspard’s apartment.
“You have the information on Jabbar.”
“I’ll give it to you after you do the job for me.”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
The man shrugged. “I’m a man of my word and always pay my debts. I have no love for this Jabbar. He’s not worth my helping to remain alive. I would welcome you killing him just as I welcome you killing Léon, the man trying to take my territory.”
Dan’s newly sharpened senses flooded him. His mind sifted the information he was receiving. He had a strong sense the man could be trusted. Dan marveled at how clear this intuition was. Could he trust it? Everything he was sensing told him Gaspard would keep his word.
Gaspard gave Dan the address where Léon lived. It was another apartment building similar to the one Gaspard lived in. After checking it out, Dan located a building two blocks away. He found a back door that was locked. It was one he could pick. Dan spent one morning going through the building, still in disguise, locating the roof access. It was a little used stair, almost a ladder, at the end of the top floor hallway. At the top was a landing with a locked door. Dan successfully picked this lock as well. He pushed the door. After some effort with the door scraping across accumulated dirt and debris, it opened and Dan stepped out onto the roof. He found a spot at the far corner that had a good sight line to the front door of Léon’s apartment building.
With his sniper location selected, Dan had to establish Léon’s pattern. He had his M110 sniper rifle used in Evangeline’s rescue. With the silencer the direction of the bullet would not be easily determined and he would be long gone before anyone figured out where the shot had come from.
Dan had no connection to the target. He could care less about the man’s fate. He was another gangster. They all had blood on their hands just like the mob in Brooklyn. Live by the sword, die by the sword. The maxim may not have been a perfect fit, but it was close enough. These men lived in a violent world, outside the law. They knew what they were doing and what the consequences of mistakes were. It didn’t matter to Dan whether Gaspard or Léon ran the neighborhood; someone would. What mattered to Dan was that he find Jabbar before the man left Marseille.
It was the end of August. Dan waited three days while an early-appearing mistral blew through Marseille. Wind speeds could get up to fifty miles an hour or more with a strong one and Dan didn’t want to try a shot from two full blocks distance in such a wind. It was funneled through the streets by the huge apartment buildings, creating a shifting confusion of direction that made a long shot almost impossible.
Finally, the evening of the third day, the wind subsided. It usually diminished at night, but this evening held the promise of a quieter day to follow. He set out before sun up and entered the apartment using the rear door. Once on the roof, Dan set up his rifle. He would be shooting to the north, north east. The sun would be on his right, but not in his eyes. He was using the .300 Win Mag rounds.
He settled into the familiar routine of waiting. He had checked the distance earlier and now, after factoring the early morning breeze, made his final scope adjustments. Gaspard had no clue that today was the day Dan would take his shot. As a precaution, Dan had made sure that his activities after making the deal were not known to Gaspard or his men. He would do the job and then visit Gaspard to collect his payment.
The sun came up as Dan waited. Léon generally went out for breakfast and coffee, often meeting others in coffee shops and small restaurants. Dan hoped today would be no different. Striking from a distance was the way Dan liked to operate. Lately that had not always been possible. Today felt more comfortable and familiar.
People had been leaving the building singly and in small groups all morning. Dan watched them all through his scope. Gaspard had given Dan pictures of the man he was going to kill. In his reconnoitering he had seen the target leave the building more than once. He felt comfortable that he would be able to spot him in his sights.
At 9:30 am the door opened. Dan watched through the scope. Two men stepped out and looked around. There was a large BMW at the
curb; its rear door opened. The men nodded and a third figure went through the door followed by two more men. It was Léon. Dan centered his scope on the man’s head. Leon paused for a moment to take in the day. It was a fatal move. Time stood still; Dan’s breathing and heart rate slowed. He squeezed the trigger and the rifle bucked in his arms. The bullet entered Leon’s left temple. His head flopped sideways, blood and brains erupting from his right side. He slumped to the ground.
Dan didn’t watch as the bodyguards drew their weapons and looked around for the shooter. It was a futile effort. There was nothing to see. He quickly disassembled the M110, packed it in his bag and crawled to the roof access door. Once downstairs and in the alley, Dan walked to the next street and away from the scene two blocks behind him. He kept walking until he saw a bus coming.
Dan ran to the nearby stop and boarded the bus. In minutes he was blocks away. In a half hour he was back at his apartment. He spent the day inside. If there was going to be a blowback in Gaspard’s direction, Dan didn’t want to be in the middle of it. He placed a call to Gaspard to let him know the task was completed. It would give the man notice in case Léon’s men came after him.
Dan knew the situation between Gaspard and Léon’s crew would be tense. Gaspard would have his tracks covered but he had no doubt that the man was in for a rough ride in the aftermath.
He waited one more day and then went to visit the man, taking care to be certain he was not followed. True to his word Gaspard gave Dan all the information he had come up with on Jabbar. The terrorist was holding up in a safe house closer to the waterfront. It was near the Font Vert cité or housing complex. He was in a row of townhouses that sat across the Rue Font Vert from some of the huge apartment buildings that populated the area. It was located just off the Rond Pointe Pierre Parraf, a circle going over the railroad tracks and surrounding an ugly dirt construction site and a crumbling, abandoned bridge that crossed over the tracks.
In his disguise, Dan spent a few days walking the area. He maintained a low profile, looking like a strung-out bum, and being careful to not trigger any confrontations. He was scouting shooting or ambush sites and escape routes. It was going to be harder this time. Dan didn’t hold out much hope of using nearby apartment buildings. They were too high and much too hard to get in and out of without being challenged. He resigned himself to the fact that the job would have to be done up closer than he would like.
Chapter 56
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T he townhouse held ten men, as near as Dan could count. He didn’t know where they all would sleep. He had seen Jabbar only once but that was enough. The man didn’t go out. Dan would have to go in. The hit would have to be done late at night in the deep hours before sunrise. People generally entered their soundest sleep after 3:00 am. And someone waking from a deep sleep was likely to be too confused or disoriented to react quickly. The advantage would be on the attacker, who would be fully awake.
Still Dan had to stack the odds further in his favor. He knew he might have to take out all the men in the apartment to insure he got Jabbar and to eliminate pursuit. He would purchase an older car and just abandon it if he couldn’t get back to it after the hit. It would be stolen before the police found it.
Dan found a beat up, Citroën Jumpy panel van. It was cheap, only five hundred Euros and looked it. The motor burned oil and made some unhealthy sounds but it would be highly desirable to anyone doing business in the city. Someone could probably get another two or three years of hard work out of the beast before it died and, with an engine swap, maybe double that life span. He purchased the van as Abdullah ben-Wassal. If the vehicle was traced to that name, the police would never find the person.
The night of the operation, Dan dressed in black. He wore a bullet proof vest and brought along a light weight, black balaclava to cover his face. His tactical knife was sheathed and on his belt. He reluctantly left his M4 behind and took his CZ 9mm with a suppressor. In addition Dan packed a Walther PPK .22 semi-automatic pistol with a suppressor, shooting sub-sonic rounds. Such a weapon would be hard to hear, even in an adjacent room. Dan took the two long guns, disassembled them, packed them in a bag, and put them in a rented locker at the Gare de Marseille Saint Charles train station.
Next Dan paid up his room through the following day. He didn’t plan to return but wanted no troubled raised about the bill. He lay down that afternoon and tried to rest. Sleep wouldn’t come; it never did before an operation. But just laying still on the bed letting his mind go over the operation enabled his body to get the rest it needed. That evening he went out to eat, getting some food at a street vendor selling falafel. Dan washed it down with just water.
At 1:30 in the morning he slipped out of his hotel room and drove off. The Jumpy was not a quiet vehicle so Dan had to park it a couple of blocks away from the target. He pulled into an empty lot in front of a row of three businesses: an auto repair shop, a laundromat, and a small grocery store. Next to the row of shops was a medium-rise apartment building. Across the street a five-foot high wall ran along the road. Dan vaulted over the wall and was now concealed in a green area choked with overgrown bushes. It represented an attempt by the city to break up the bleakness of the apartments with green spaces. Fortunately for Dan the city neglected to keep up with the landscaping. They had become thickets which hid his presence.
He moved to his right along the wall fully concealed. When he got to the row of apartments Dan paused and waited. An occasional car drove up and parked, with the occupants quickly going into one of the townhouses. By 2:30 a.m. that traffic had ended; everyone was in bed. The night was still. Dan continued to wait in the cover of the brush, biding his time. He would have to walk down the townhouse row to get to his target. Jabbar was in the second to last unit.
Just beyond the row were train tracks. They were down in a gully with the streets running over them. The tracks went from northwest to southeast, ending in the Gare de Marseille Saint Charles, the major terminal for the Paris to Marseille run. A couple of kilometers to the northwest there was a freight terminal which was working that night. Dan could hear the low rumble of switching engines as they formed up the freight cars that had been loaded from the docks. Just before 3:00 am a train from the station came by. Dan waited for it to pass and then stepped out onto the street.
He walked casually on the sidewalk, as if he belonged. If seen, he hoped he would not be of any interest. At the door, Dan readied his .22 pistol and started to pick the lock. The tumblers fell into place and Dan opened the front door with light click. He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. Standing still, he let his eyes adjust to the dark. The entrance had a closet on the left and a short wall on the right. The wall ended opening to a living room on the right. It was faintly lit from the street lighting filtering through the blinds on the front windows. Just beyond the opening, stairs ascended upward into more darkness. The hallway at the front ran back into what Dan guessed was the dining room and kitchen. All the bedrooms would be upstairs.
He peeked around the corner. One figure was on the couch, another lying on a pad on the floor. Dan unsheathed his knife. He slowly stepped into the living room, his eyes darting from one sleeping form to the other. He picked up a pillow from a chair he passed. The man on the floor was lying on his right side with his face buried into a pillow, his back to Dan. His neck was exposed. Dan knelt down behind him. He put the pillow on the side of his head, pressed his body over him, and plunged his knife into the man’s neck severing his carotid artery. There was a soft moan which Dan muffled with the pillow and his body as the man jerked and spasmed. In ten seconds the man grew still and there were no more sounds from him. Dan felt the body go limp. Blood soaked the pillow.
He got up and stepped back, taking stock of the room. The man on the couch had not stirred. He was lying more face up, his head tilted slightly towards Dan. There was a low coffee table between Dan and the couch. He reached down and picked up the blood-soaked pillow
. Then he backed up and stepped inside the low table. Two steps and he would be at the man’s face. Some sleepers could sense a presence, even in their sleep. Dan had learned to do this during his training in the military and his experiences in the field. He would need to move swiftly.
He stepped forward, pillow in his left hand, knife in his right. The man stirred and mumbled something unintelligible as Dan reached him. His eyes opened as Dan shoved the pillow on his face and fell forward, pinning him down. His knife found the man’s neck. He gave out a muffled yell and twisted sideways violently. The pillow slid off of his face.
The man yelled out, “Saeidni! Qutil!” Help me! Murder!
Dan’s knife found his artery. Dan slid the knife from the side of his neck to his throat and the man’s words died in a gurgle of blood. Dan got the pillow back over the man and held it tight until he felt his body go limp. He stood up. He was panting, his heart was racing. He got back up and went to the entrance of the room so he could watch the stairs and hallway. He waited with his .22 pistol drawn. His breathing slowed as his heart rate came down. All was quiet. The cries of the dying man did not seem to have disturbed the sleepers on the second floor.
After waiting for two minutes with nothing stirring, Dan began climbing the stairs. He stepped near the edges of the steps knowing that putting his weight there would create less chance of a step creaking. At the top, there was a short hallway going forward with one door, probably a bedroom at the front of the building. Towards the rear of the building there were three doors indicating two more bedrooms and a bathroom.
Dan turned to the front of the building. He would check this room first. It was a bit more separated from the others and his chances of neutralizing the occupants without waking the others were good. He padded the few steps from the stairs to the door. With his .22 in his right hand, he slowly turned the door knob. Once the bolt had fully retreated into the door, he gave the door a gentle push with his shoulder. It opened with a soft creak as it cleared the door frame.