“That’d be a safe assumption,” I said, nervously looking around. Tailor gave me a thumbs up through the glass.
“Very well,” Ling said. “What sort of help do you need, then?”
“I need to get out of here,” I said flatly. “As soon as possible. Normal methods of transportation aren’t workable. I need to just disappear.”
“Just you?” Ling asked.
“No, me plus three others. People I trust. I don’t care how we go, and right now I don’t even care where we go, we just need to go.”
“What’s going on?”
“Look, I can’t stay on the line too long. If we’re gone too long they’ll notice, and then there’ll be questions, and that will cause problems.”
Ling chewed on that for a moment. “I see. I see. So tell me, honestly. Why should I help you? How can I even trust that you’re not now working for someone trying to set a trap for my organization?”
“Because a bunch of my friends died trying to help get that girl off that boat before she disappeared. Because I, personally, risked my life to keep her safe, even though you never even told me why she was important. I have money. I’ll pay if I have to. I just need your help.”
“As luck would have it,” Ling said after another long pause, “I’ll be in that part of the world shortly. Do you have a way for me to contact you?”
“Not securely, no,” I admitted. “I have a phone, but it’s probably monitored. I’m on a pay phone right now.”
“I see. Okay, I’ll need you to call me on May fourth. We’ll set up the meeting then.
“Meeting?”
“Yes. I want to meet with you face-to-face. If all goes well, we’ll have no problem getting you and your friends out quickly after that.”
“Can’t we all just go the first time? Things are circling the drain here.”
“We can do it my way, or I can go back to bed, Mr. Valentine,” Ling said, ice in her voice. “It’s up to you.”
I exhaled. “Okay, okay, we’ll make it work. I’ll call you on May fourth and we’ll go from there.”
“Good,” Ling said. Her voice softened just a bit. “Please be careful.”
“Thank—” Ling hung up on me before I could finish thanking her.
Chapter 13:
Hasa Market
LORENZO
May 3
I was in the kitchen when my phone buzzed, indicating a new text message.
Hasa Market. 4:00 at the fountain.
Wait for further instructions. Come alone.
I scowled. Come alone? Why did he need to specify that? Did he somehow think that this was all some sort of scheme to get him into the open? Was he afraid Dead Six was coming for him, too? Or maybe he thought that I just wanted to get the info out of him and then cheat him out of the money. . . .
Or it was a trap for me. There were plenty of people in this country who would pay Hosani good money for my head. “Carl, check this out,” I called.
My partner joined me a second later. He only glanced at the phone for a second. “Trap, it sounds like, maybe.”
“Could be. But we need the info. It’s worth the risk.”
“You going alone?” Carl asked suspiciously.
“Of course not. Hasa is a busy place. It’s that fish souk right off the docks at the end of Umm Shamal. Plenty of places for you guys to stay incognito.”
Carl shook his head. “No vehicles in there. I can blend in. Reaper, not so much.” That was true. Our techie was about the palest white boy we were going to find in five hundred miles. I had given Jill crap about walking like an American, but she was a master of disguise compared to Reaper. “I miss Train.”
I missed Train, too. The big guy had been a virtual killing machine and had been great backup for situations like this. “We’ll stick Reaper in the van back a ways. He’s our ride out if we need him. We’ll stay in radio contact.” I tried to keep Reaper away from the hands-on part of the work. It wasn’t exactly his area of expertise. But he was street-smart enough to keep his eyes open for anything suspicious.
“One problem,” Carl said slowly. “What about the girl?”
“Aw, hell.” He had a point. We couldn’t just leave Jill here alone. I suppose we could have tied her up, but that didn’t really go along with trying to get her to trust us. If this meeting didn’t go well, she was still my ace in the hole. The other times I had gone out since she’d been here, there had always been at least one member of my crew here to make sure she didn’t try anything stupid. She had behaved, so far. Drugs were an option.
Then Carl surprised me. “We take her.” He caught my look of confusion. “Extra eyes we could use. I saw her after that bomb went off. She was tough. Most folks don’t do that good first time they see a bunch of guts blown all over the street. We used to have a girl on the team.”
He knew how much I hated when he brought up that bit of our past. “Her and Kat don’t have very much in common,” I said.
Carl shrugged. “Personality? No. But both pretty girls, skinny but still with big tits and a nice ass. The good parts are in common.” As usual, Carl was a subtle poet of a man. “Pretty girls come in handy in this business, go places we can’t, talk to people we can’t. But that’s not what I meant. This girl, she’s a good girl.”
“Carl, oh man, I can’t believe this,” I laughed. “You’re getting soft in your old age. She’s grown on you, hasn’t she?” I didn’t think Carl was capable of actually liking anyone.
That got him. He raised a meaty hand threateningly and waved one stubby finger in my face. “We’ll stick her in the van. Make her feel helpful. This don’t change nothing. It sure don’t change the plan. So don’t you give me no shit about getting soft. I’ve burned fucking villages. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Good.” He folded his arms. “That said, I don’t like your backup plan no more.”
“Me either,” I said slowly, but it wasn’t like he had a better idea. For us, it was either find Dead Six or die. Nothing else would stop Big Eddie’s rampage. “Hosani had better come through.”
The four of us were gathered around the kitchen table. I had just outlined what was going down this afternoon. Reaper pulled up a Google Earth view of the Hasa neighborhood on one of his laptops.
“That’s a pretty open area, Chief,” Reaper said. “I can’t see them trying to take you out in the middle of all that.” The market was right off the docks. There were warehouses to the north, and a school and a mosque to the southwest. There were three roads in. At any given time of day, the place was packed with witnesses.
“If it is a trap, they’ll send another text, telling me to walk somewhere else quieter. That gives them a chance to see if I’ve got anybody tailing me.” I nodded at Carl. “You’ll need to be discreet.”
“What do you want me to do?” Jill asked quickly. It was almost like she was eager to prove that she was worth something.
I glanced at Carl. He shrugged. I already knew his opinion.
More than likely, nothing was going to happen. Hosani would give me an address or something, and I would slide him the backpack of cash. That was it. Odds were that this was going to be relatively boring. But then again, I had thought the same thing about Al Khor, and that had ended up with blood raining from the sky.
I placed the Bulgarian Makarov in the center of the table with a metallic clunk. “You said you know how to use this?”
She looked at me suspiciously for a second, then back to the gun, then back at me. “Who am I supposed to shoot?”
“Nobody in particular. You’re going to be a lookout if Hosani tries to bring in help or if Dead Six shows up. Early warning, that’s it. This is just for self-defense.”
“Got anything bigger?”
“No. You get the chick gun.” I rolled my eyes. “That’s one of the most common guns in this part of the world for a reason. It works. It’s concealable. And that’s really important because like most shitty countries, Zubara’s got strict gun-control laws.
So unless you want to go to prison forever, don’t get spotted with this. If you need to ditch it, I’m not worried about it, just drop it in a garbage can and keep walking.”
Without further hesitation, she picked up the gun. I noted that she was careful to keep it in a safe direction and her finger was indexed outside the trigger guard. Maybe she had been taught well. “It’s . . . double action. The safety works backwards from Dad’s Beretta . . .” It took her a second to find the magazine-release. The Makarov had its magazine release button in the heel of the grip, unlike most American guns. She dropped the magazine on the table, then pulled the slide back, looking inside the empty chamber. She grinned maliciously. “Do I get bullets, too?”
I had to admit that she had a pretty smile. “We’ll work up to that.”
VALENTINE
Fort Saradia National Historical Site
May 3
1030
Tailor, Hudson, Byrne, and I were already sitting in the classroom when Hunter came striding in, Sarah in tow. “I’ll be brief, gentlemen,” he said, opening his laptop and hooking it up to the display screen. “You’re moving out shortly.”
“We were told that we’ve got a lock on our next target, sir,” Tailor said.
“That’s right,” Hunter replied, bringing up a picture on the screen. “This is your target, Jalal Hosani.” Hosani was an average-looking Middle Eastern man, with styled hair and a scruffy, stubbly goatee. He was dressed in a brown suit and a white shirt with no tie, as was the fashion. “He’s going to attempt to flee Zubara today. He’s not going to get out of the country alive.”
“How do we know this, Colonel?” I asked.
“Asra Elnadi,” Hunter replied. “During her interrogation, she told us that one of Hosani’s bodyguards was an ex-lover of hers, and they kept it on the sly. She was able to contact him and get him to sell out his boss.”
“No employee loyalty,” Byrne suggested.
“Not in this business, son,” Hunter said. “With his boss skipping town, this guy’s probably out of a job anyway. So he tipped off our contact without knowing who she’s working for.”
“How do we know this information is credible?” I asked.
“I made it clear to Ms. Elnadi that there would be severe consequences if the information she gave us proved to be false,” Sarah said coolly. “She’s afraid of us. I don’t think she’d try anything stupid, especially since we’ve kept her alive so far.”
Hunter switched the screen to a map of the city. “The target will be attempting his escape from a small warehouse that he owns in the Hasa Market, in Umm Shamal. This warehouse is right on the pier. According to the information Ms. Elnadi gave us, Hosani owns a boat. His escape plan is to load up his boat, hoist anchor, and sail away. Asra’s ex-boyfriend told her that he’s meeting someone in the warehouse around sixteen hundred hours, and that he’ll be leaving immediately after.
“There are several places he could go, so if we lose him he’s probably gone for good. Your mission is to intercept Jalal Hosani at the docks and kill him. There are no secondary targets. Tertiary targets are any of his employees and bodyguards that you encounter.”
“We’re going to kill him in the middle of Hasa Market in broad daylight?” I asked. “Sir, that’s one of the busiest markets in the city. It’ll be packed by mid-afternoon.”
“I’m aware of that, Mr. Valentine, but it is this or nothing. Any questions?”
We had plenty of questions. We spent the next two hours in the classroom, formulating the plan.
LORENZO
May 3
I had been dropped off several blocks from the Hasa Market and had walked in. Umm Shamal was the middle peninsula and was relatively middle-class, so I wore jeans, a soccer jersey, and a good pair of running shoes instead of sandals. I carried the money in a small backpack.
I liked baggy jerseys. They were handy for hiding stuff, including the relatively soft Level IIIA armor vest. My STI 4.15 Tactical was on my hip, concealed beneath my shirt. Between it and the two spare longer twenty-two-round magazines on my off-side, I had sixty-three rounds ready to go. Also concealed on me was my Greco Whisper CT knife. It had a five-and-a-quarter-inch blade and was perfectly balanced. If Hosani tried anything, I was going to stick to my promise to take him with me.
There was one benefit if I bought it today. Once Big Eddie found out, that would probably get Carl and Reaper off the hook, temporarily. But he had leverage on them too, so even though they couldn’t do this job, he would find some way to use them again. Believe me, I’d thought about faking my own death rather than finishing this job. But if Eddie ever got any inkling that I’d cheated him, he’d kill every single person in that folder.
The market was bustling with humanity. It was a miniature city, with buildings made from portable stands and wandering streets of weathered stones. This was where all the small-time fishermen sold their catch, so it was the best place in the city to get fresh fish. The violence in poor Ash Shamal and rich Al Khor hadn’t really hit here yet. This was the part of town where the actual work got done. This was the home of the regular people, and they just wanted to live their lives in peace, earn their money, and raise their kids. Too bad for them they were stuck between a bunch of fanatics.
There was a line of speakers placed over the central row of booths. They were playing traditional music, which was actually kind of pretty in a haunting way. Every now and then the music would cut out and a fast-talking announcer would tell the customers about some special at one of the booths.
The fountain dated back to the British and was styled to be vaguely ancient Greek. It was out of place between all the tan brick buildings. I took a seat on the edge of the fountain, waited, and watched bus drivers and school teachers buy sea bass. My Bluetooth earpiece wasn’t very out of place in this group.
“I don’t see anything yet,” Carl said. I knew he had stationed himself at the opposite end of the market near the corner of the school. He had dressed in full-on man pajamas and baggy vest. Carl was too stocky and muscular to pass for a Zubaran, but there were a lot of foreigners in this country, actually more foreigners than natives since the boom began, and he had grown a bushy beard that would make any mullah jealous. “I’m at the bootleg DVD table.”
“Anything interesting?”
“They’ve got a Robert DeNiro five-pack. I’m watching the windows on the mosque. If I was gonna snipe you, that’s where I’d be.”
That was comforting.
“Lots of traffic, but nothing suspicious,” Reaper said. He and Jill were parked about a block away to the south.
I noted a man standing near one of the fish stands. Skinny guy, wearing Ray-Bans, he was making good use of the crowd to cover himself but was obviously watching the people clustered around the fountain, waiting for something. He had the look of a local, so that was probably one of Hosani’s men.
My phone buzzed. The text was short.
Walk north. Go to the first warehouse.
So the exchange wasn’t going to be in public. The thin man saw me looking at my phone, right on schedule, so now he knew who I was. I bent down, as if to tie my shoe, but primarily so he couldn’t see me speak. “Got the message. Moving north to the first warehouse. I’ve got at least one guy watching me. Stay low.” I adjusted the backpack and started pushing through the crowd in the direction of the docks.
VALENTINE
Umm Shamal District
May 3
1555
Hasa Market was a sprawling, confusing maze of tiny shops, stands, and carts that emanated out from an old fountain in the square. To the north were a trio of warehouses on the pier. Tailor parked our Land Cruiser between a mosque and a small schoolhouse on the west side of the square.
Hudson and Byrne were supposed to park their vehicle on the opposite side of the square. As much as we could, we always took two vehicles on a mission. It gave us a backup option should we not be able to make it to our own vehicle. Also, we figured that with
all of the chaos we were about to cause in Hasa Market, we’d have less chance of getting snagged by the cops if we split up.
The situation still sucked. Four of us were going into an unknown building against an unknown number of opponents. Because we had to go through a crowded marketplace in the middle of the afternoon to get to that building, we could only bring weapons that we could conceal, i.e., handguns. Going into a gunfight with nothing but a handgun is stupid and should be avoided if at all possible.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible. Hunter had suggested that we use compact assault rifles, concealed in backpacks, that we could drop if we needed to disappear into the crowd. Gordon Willis had overruled him on that one, apparently. He said it caused an unacceptable risk of getting made.
It seemed the risk of us getting our asses shot off trying to go into a gunfight with nothing but pistols didn’t bother him. By that point I’d had more than my fill of Gordon Willis. But there was nothing we could do except carry on with the mission and try not to get killed.
Tailor and I made our way through the cluttered mess of Hasa Market, doing our best not to be noticed. We were both wearing khaki cargo pants, dark T-shirts to conceal body armor underneath, sunglasses, and untucked shirts to hide our sidearms. We looked undeniably American, but even with the recent chaos, no one seemed to pay us any mind.
The market stunk of fresh fish, and squawking seagulls filled the air. The rows of booths, carts, and shacks weren’t laid out in any discernible order. They were gaudily decorated with what looked like Christmas lights, loudspeakers playing music, and signs in six languages. Most of the shoppers at Hasa Market weren’t Zubaran citizens, or even Arabs. Most were imported labor from India, South Asia, and the Philippines.
The market sold more than just fish. Goods of every variety could be bought, from bootleg DVDs to clothes to medicine of dubious medical value imported from Asia. As Tailor and I made our way past various stands, the vendors would blurt sales offers out at us in broken English, telling us they had a great deal that was perfect for our needs.
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