War Lord

by David Rollins

  ‘Maybe he’s right,’ I said. ‘And maybe someone should remind him it was Adolf’s fault for declaring war on us.’

  ‘I’m sure he knows that.’

  ‘How does he feel about you guys – the Brits? You won that war too, didn’t you?’ I grinned at her.

  ‘We’re okay. We’re Anglo-Saxons, almost as pure as the Aryan master race, don’t you know. The Nazis saw us as brothers in the great fight.’

  ‘The great fight . . . ?’

  ‘The one against the Jews. The fact that the States is such a supporter of Israel is where his tirades usually end up.’

  Was von Weiss’s hatred of the US the driving force to steal a nuke and use it against us?

  ‘He rubs his hands together with joy at the problems you’re having in the Middle East – with Iran, with Afghanistan and Pakistan. He believes Islam will one day triumph. All they need is a standard to rally behind. Or a leader perhaps.’

  I drank my drink. Von Weiss – when all was said and done he was just another nutcase with a grudge.

  ‘What else can I tell you about O Magnifico,’ she said, joining me in a sip. ‘Well, fortunately for me, he’s not the kind of man who likes to fuck.’

  ‘Then what kind is he?’ I replied, doing my best to keep my tone nice and even while wiping my nose with the back of my hand, catching the trickle of Cutty I’d just snorted back through it. Shilling was cool, the way a gin and tonic in a long tall glass with ice and a slice of lemon is cool. I had to admit thoughts about the nature of her relationship with von Weiss had crossed my mind.

  ‘He’s the kind who prefers to watch. He likes to dress women in uniform – a Nazi SS uniform, preferably – and watch them masturbate with whatever comes to hand. He’s got a python. He likes to watch me do it with that.’ She picked up the bottle. ‘Y’know, I probably shouldn’t drink scotch. It’s my own personal sodium pentothal . . .’

  Twenty-two

  I swallowed hard. Just then, a key fumbled in the front door lock.

  Jeb Delaney strode in. ‘That’s twenty minutes. Time’s up, y’all. Let’s go.’

  ‘Give me a minute,’ said Shilling. She put her glass down and went to find the bathroom.

  I was still thinking about her little bedroom admission.

  ‘In the confusion, we made sure Vee Dubyah and a couple of his flunkies got caught up with the anti-terror cops,’ Delaney reported. ‘We separated him from one of his bodyguards so it wouldn’t look too suspicious. Ms Shilling couldn’t be the only one of his people to get cut from the herd. Just got word they had to let Vee Dubyah go a couple of minutes ago. The guy was screaming for his attornies.’

  The British agent walked back into the main room off the kitchen, her hair and makeup fine-tuned.

  ‘You hear that?’ I asked her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’d best get you back soonest, ma’am,’ Delaney told her.

  ‘Please,’ she said.

  ‘What about Petinski?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, they stalled her too,’ Delaney said. ‘Got caught up in a group of about a hundred people with Vee Dubyah and co. ID checks and so forth. The local boys put on a good show. Looked completely legit.’

  ‘How do you want to handle the return?’ I asked Shilling.

  ‘Get me to a place where I can catch a cab,’ she said, walking to the door. ‘I’ll take it from there.’

  ‘How do I contact you?’ In fact, what I wanted was to stop her returning to von Weiss’s snake pit, but there was no way I could make that happen. And I had a suspicion Shilling wouldn’t allow it even if I could. She was doing what she was trained to do, the total professional.

  ‘You don’t, Cooper. I do the contacting. If something happens and I need to get hold of you, I’ll find a way.’

  *

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me that’s what you were doing?’ Petinski asked when I walked back into our room at the Palace.

  ‘Me? I didn’t do anything,’ I told her. ‘I didn’t tell you about the bomb scare because I didn’t know there was going to be one. I called Delaney up from the bathroom at the restaurant and asked if he could cause a diversion, something that would give us some time with Shilling, on account of we couldn’t get near her. The bomb scare was what he came up with.’

  ‘I turned around when we got outside and you were gone.’

  ‘Same,’ I said.

  ‘What did you get out of her?’

  I took the card from my pocket and handed it to her. ‘The guy we saw poolside this morning with the Whites, the man von Weiss has been entertaining. His name is Gamal Abdul-Jabbar. He’s a Somali pirate, as well as being a hit-man. He likes to shoot Italians.’

  ‘I know,’ she said and turned her iPad around to face me. Abdul-Jabbar’s mug shot and rap sheet were up on screen. A CIA logo was in the bottom right-hand corner. ‘He’s working for this man.’ She pressed a key on her laptop and another rap sheet came up.

  The face on screen was the color of an oil spill, black and shiny, with a cheekbone that had been broken at some stage of his life and poorly reset. Slap this guy on the back and one of his yellow eyes might pop out.

  ‘His name is Mohammed Ali-Bakr al Mohammed,’ she continued. ‘A former Al-Shabab, an Islamist who’s decided he prefers money and power to achieving martyrdom. He’s set his sights on being Somalia’s number-one war lord, and he’s a real charmer. There’s an unverified story that he took human heads after a battle against a rival gang and used them in a bowling tournament with his lieutenants. Over the last few years, he’s had several piracy operations thwarted by American warships. Word has it he’s vowed revenge on us.’

  ‘I’m trembling,’ I said.

  ‘She tell you anything about Randy?’

  ‘No, nothing further. But she has placed Ed Dyson with von Weiss,’ I said. ‘Ty Morrow, too. Shilling positively identified both of them. That’s a breakthrough.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes.’

  The way she said it suggested a problem. ‘What?’

  Petinski took a deep breath and let it out. ‘Langley doesn’t think von Weiss is the man we should be chasing.’

  I blinked, mock-stunned. ‘That’s Langley, as in the CIA?’

  ‘Yes, Cooper, I’m a Company employee. I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now.’

  She had that right. ‘So why the subterfuge?’

  ‘Thank your supervisor.’

  ‘Arlen?’

  ‘He said you wouldn’t be so keen to work with the Company. It was his idea to keep up the NTSB cover and then switch to some other federal agency. The DCIS just seemed to work best.’

  ‘And the sudden burst of honesty is because . . . ?’

  ‘Because we’re done here, washed up. As I just told you, Langley’s shifted focus.’

  ‘That is bullshit, Petinski. We—’

  She held up her hand to stop me going any further. ‘You know there are other teams on this case. Stronger leads have been chased up, other suspects. Top of the list is some one star and a colonel, both of whom were formerly at Bragg and are now in the DoD. Imagine that, seems Mr Big and his pal were right under everyone’s noses.’

  ‘What about that lecture I got from you about having a murder suspect that you’re sure has done the crime, blah blah?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘And what about Ed Dyson – weatherman, nuclear fallout expert – hanging out with O Magnifico? We’ve got that confirmed now.’

  ‘Forget it, Cooper. The people who pay my salary have changed their minds. I’m off the case.’

  ‘Then what are we chasing here in Rio if it’s not a nuke?’ I asked.

  ‘What you started out with in the first place, probably – weapons stolen from US bases and sold to the highest bidder. That’s von Weiss’s operation. It’s just not the Company’s priority right now – understandably.’

  ‘I’m sure you’d agree that Langley has gotten it wrong before once or twice.’

  Petinski was
unmoved.

  ‘What about the severed hand with Randy’s ring and the damn ransom note? What about that whole “trigger” shit you were so fired up about? What about the deadline?’ My voice was raised.

  She saw mine and raised her own. ‘Jesus, Cooper, none of it has taken us anywhere! We’ve got no leads – nothing except a few air miles. And the deadline . . . No one’s buying it anymore.’

  ‘What about Randy, Petinski? You turning your back on him too?’

  Petinski jumped up, fists clenched. ‘Fuck you, Cooper! Jesus!’

  I took some breaths, got my heart rate under control and waited for Petinski’s anger to come off the boil. ‘So what now?’ I asked as she turned her back on me and walked a circuit of the room. ‘Put your feet up?’

  ‘You want me to tell you again what I think you can go do, Cooper? I head home and get rebriefed. More than likely I’ll get reassigned.’ I caught a glimpse of her face as she snatched open the door to the bathroom. Plump tears were rolling down her cheeks. She went in and slammed the door behind her. A few seconds later, I heard the shower running.

  So that was that. Case unsatisfactorily closed. Nothing more to do than pour a couple of Glenfiddich minis into a tumbler with ice and bitch about my employer. I got up, went to the minibar. As it looked like this was my last night in the Palace, I figured I might as well drink like a king. With a glass in hand, I sat at Petinski’s command station set up on the desk and fiddled, pulling up the footage feeding through from the camera in the favela. It was still doing its job, unlike Petinski and me, its motion sensor kicking it into life whenever something moved within view. I watched twenty-four hours of footage compressed into minutes: a dozen or so changing of the guards at the front gate and the arrival and departure of a number of motorcycles, the time code jumping forward with each cut. Nothing exciting. I switched the view to real time. It was now after one a.m. and the activity had dropped to zero. For something to do, I changed the program’s preferences so that the computer chimed when the camera began rolling. The bell went off almost immediately and a small box on the computer screen opened to show two bikes leaving through the main entrance, a pillion passenger on one of them waving a machete around his head. Then the box on the screen closed and the security system went back to sleep. Maybe I should do the same. I yawned, and took a gulp of single malt.

  The water in the shower had stopped running for a while, though I’d only been vaguely conscious of that. The bathroom door opened and Petinski came out in a hotel toweling bathrobe, her hair up and her face covered in some kind of shiny goop. She turned her back on me and put pajamas on under the robe before tossing it onto a chair.

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ she announced as she climbed between the sheets. ‘You’re still on the couch.’ She reached over and turned out her bedside lamp.

  Damn, if Petinski wasn’t starting to remind me of my ex-wife . . .

  *

  ‘Cooper, wake up for Christ’s sake . . . !’

  I came awake to Petinski shaking my shoulder like she’d tried doing it gentle but gentle hadn’t worked.

  ‘Okay already,’ I snarled. I had a Glenfiddich hangover, which is to say a quality hangover aged in the cask for twelve years. My body was locked solid in the seating position facing the various blinking and winking standby lights of the electronics gear assembled on the desk in front of me. I pulled myself out of the cramp, stretched out, leaned forward then back, the odd bone cracking.

  ‘Have some water.’ Petinski handed me a bottle of chilled Evian from the now almost empty mini fridge. ‘Why didn’t you go to bed?’

  ‘I forgot,’ I said, drinking the Evian, enjoying the feeling of ten or so chilled US dollars sliding down my throat.

  Petinski checked the minibar drawer. Empty. ‘Jesus, Cooper . . .’

  I was too hung over to care.

  ‘Here,’ she said, putting a couple of Advils into my hand. I threw them back, which wasn’t the best idea, my head pounding with the movement.

  ‘Did you wake me for a reason?’ I asked her, my voice croaky.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Get dressed.’

  I looked down and realized I was in my undershorts. I also noticed at this point that Petinski’s pajama bottoms had been replaced by pants. Her boots were on. She leaned across me and tapped the keyboard, and the screen brightened with a frozen frame from the security camera. ‘This woke me. Look,’ she said, motioning at the screen.

  She tapped the space bar and the recording from the security camera played, the time code beginning at 03:37:42. What followed sobered me up good and proper. The black Mercedes SUV, the one I’d seen coming and going from von Weiss-owned territory, arrived inside Céu Cidade’s main gate. All four doors opened and those Aryan bodyguards spilled out. Two of them went to the rear of the vehicle, opened the tailgate and hauled out a person whose head was covered with a hood: a woman. Her hands were tied behind her back and she wore a t-shirt and brief underpants.

  The extra-big one – Dolph – put her over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift and carried her out of view. The hood slipped a little and blonde hair fell out. The screen froze on the last frame. Thirty-one seconds of footage.

  ‘That was Shilling,’ I said unnecessarily, aware of the cold sweat on my back.

  ‘I’ve called Delaney. He’s going to meet us at the Céu Cidade post office.’

  ‘Is he bringing a tank?’

  ‘No, a unit of BOPE, the local anti-terror people.’

  ‘Those guys? You’re filling me with confidence.’ I got up and found my pants, crumpled on the floor. ‘Maybe we should just get Salvadore’s number from von Weiss and let him know we’re coming.’

  ‘Can you please hurry?’ she asked.

  ‘Can you slave the camera feed to your iPad?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then set it up and bring it along. Some real-time intelligence might be helpful.’

  We were in a cab five minutes later, speeding across town in a tropical downpour, water filling the gutters, water vapor steaming up the windows. The Advils had done the trick, clearing my head, and twenty minutes later we pulled up in the warehouse area below the favela and let the cab go. It was a five-minute jog to the rendezvous, fog drifting slowly across the slick roads.

  ‘Where you been?’ Delaney asked when we arrived.

  ‘Sleeping,’ I said.

  ‘You carrying?’

  I showed him the Walther.

  ‘Where’d you get that?’ he asked, but then thought better of it. ‘Actually, I don’t want to know. Kim?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Here,’ he said, passing her a Glock 23 and three mags.

  She said thanks, checked the weapon over, pocketed the mags, then secured the pistol in the back of her belt.

  Delaney went back into a dirty old white Hyundai. ‘Here, put these on,’ he said, and producing two urban black armor vests and Kevlar helmets from the back seat.

  A black truck lumbered around the corner and came to a stop behind us with a squeal of brakes.

  ‘I see you passed on my suggestion about the tank,’ I said to Petinski. She looked at me and adjusted her armor.

  The tank was actually more like a security vehicle, only with a top-mounted machine-gun turret. A door opened and a squat, bull-necked man climbed out of the front passenger seat and jumped onto the road.

  ‘Hola,’ Delaney said, raising his hand, and went to meet him. A rapid-fire conversation in Portuguese followed between the two men as they walked slowly back toward us. ‘This is Sergeant Adauto Robredo of the Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais,’ Delaney announced when they were close enough.

  Petinski and I introduced ourselves, shook hands. Robredo’s was warm, hard and a glossy gunmetal black. His arms and neck appeared to be made from the same material. A short, coarse beard covered his face and followed the contours of his cheeks and neck. His coveralls were black, the only color being the emblem on his shoulder, a white skull impaled on a
dagger with two crossed flintlock pistols behind it.

  ‘The sarge’s English ain’t so good,’ Delaney explained, ‘so he asked me to tell you not to worry that he and his men haven’t been in this favela before.’

  ‘I’ll try not to,’ I said, and gestured at the turret on the truck. ‘It looks like they’re expecting trouble, or is this standard practice?’

  Delaney translated and got a grin and a burst of Portuguese from Robredo. Delaney said, ‘Adauto says it won’t be needed, and he says he’s got enough men to handle any situation that might arise.’

  ‘How many men?’

  ‘Ten, includin’ himself and the driver.’

  Meanwhile, Petinski, fiddling with her pack, had extracted her iPad. She fired it up, presented the screen to the sergeant and said to Delaney, ‘Inform the sergeant we have a camera in the favela. It’ll allow us to check out what’s going on in there when we get closer.’

  From his smile, Robredo was either enthusiastic about this, or her – I couldn’t tell.

  Petinski seemed pleased that he was pleased.

  I would be pleased to inform him that there was a chance she could do the splits. Maybe later.

  ‘Please, for you to get in truck now,’ Robredo said haltingly.

  Yeah, pretty much everyone seemed pleased.

  Delaney locked his vehicle with the remote and we followed the sergeant to the rear of the truck. As he opened the door, a wave of body odor and gun oil rolled out over us. Inside, men in helmets and body armor with FN FAL 7.62mm assault rifles between their knees were pressed together like black-clad sardines. The sergeant barked an order and room was made for us somehow.

  Petinski stepped up first, followed by me, then Delaney.

  ‘Agent Petinski, now, is it?’ I asked her behind. It chose not to reply.

  Petinski got to her seat, shaking everyone’s hand along the way. The door closed and red light flooded the darkness, illuminating all manner of equipment on the walls of the truck, from axes to climbing gear. The truck shuddered as it got underway, the smell of diesel exhaust leaking into the cabin. We accelerated up the hill, everyone swaying from side to side, then lurched around a corner. The incline got steeper and the corners sharper, but that didn’t seem to slow the truck at all. Either Robredo and his driver were in a hurry, or they didn’t care to be a slow-moving target.