by Peter Nealen
“Get Aziz in here,” Brannigan said, staring at his captive. “I want to talk to this son of a bitch.”
“I’ll get him,” Childress said, as he bent over the body of the man he’d disabled, digging a single spare Glock mag out of his pockets. He shook his head. “Fuckers didn’t even have enough ammo on ‘em.” Without another word, he jogged toward the back of the warehouse.
Brannigan kept his basilisk glare on the prisoner while they waited, saying nothing, but tapping the barrel of the Tokarev against his leg. He was careful to keep his finger well away from the trigger; the Tok didn’t have an external safety, and it wouldn’t do to accidentally shoot himself in the leg while trying to intimidate a captive.
Finally, Aziz came out from behind the pallets, carrying an AKMS. Brannigan looked up at him and his eyes narrowed. “Does Childress have a long gun?” he asked as Aziz walked up to them.
Aziz shrugged. “There might have been another one back there,” he said.
Brannigan maintained his stare. Aziz started to look a little uncomfortable. “So, the one man we have on rear security only has a Glock and one reload?” he asked quietly.
Aziz swallowed. Hancock was pointedly keeping an eye on their surroundings, but both Brannigan and Santelli now had the other man pinned with identical glares. “I’ll…I’ll go trade with him,” he said lamely, after a minute.
“You do that,” Brannigan said, keeping his voice low. “Hurry up.”
Aziz turned and jogged back toward the far end of the warehouse, disappearing behind the pallets. Santelli shook his head. “I really wish I could have gotten Rocky,” he muttered.
“We got who we could,” Brannigan said. “He’ll work out or he won’t. Too late for ‘might have beens’ now. We’ve got to make it work.”
Hancock said nothing. His own silence spoke volumes about his opinion.
Aziz came back in, carrying the Glock, pointedly avoiding looking directly at either Brannigan or Santelli. Brannigan decided to let it slide, for the moment. They had more pressing matters to attend to.
“Ask him where the weapons are,” he said.
Aziz translated in to Arabic, and got a frantic, stammered answer in reply. “He says he doesn’t know.”
“Were there any weapons or gear in the first place?” Brannigan asked, continuing to stare down at the prisoner, death in his eyes. “Or was this all a setup from the get-go?”
The prisoner looked up at him as Aziz translated, then started yammering rapidly in Arabic, shaking his head emphatically. “He says that it wasn’t, it never was a setup,” Aziz translated, contempt dripping from his voice. “He’s lying. He’s full of shit.”
Brannigan glanced up at him. “What makes you say that?” he asked. He didn’t necessarily disbelieve Aziz, but he wanted to know the other man’s reasons for saying so.
“He’s a fucking Arab,” Aziz snapped. “He’ll tell you whatever he thinks you want to hear, especially when he’s at this kind of a disadvantage. He wants to save his own skin, and you’ve got a pistol in your hand.”
“Then press him,” Brannigan said, turning his cold eyes back on their captive.
Aziz barked at the man in Arabic. He apparently was not impressed with the reply he got, because he raised the Glock as if to pistol-whip the man. The captive cringed away, speaking rapidly and frantically.
“He doesn’t know,” Aziz finally said. “He thinks maybe there were some weapons, but Al Fulani didn’t tell him anything. He was just there to do his job.”
“Really?” Brannigan asked skeptically. “Somehow, I find that difficult to believe, given that he and his buddies were well-prepared to try to snatch us.” He glanced at his watch. “Are we going to get anything else out of him?”
“Short of hooking his nuts up to a car battery?” Aziz asked. When Brannigan gave him a look that was considerably less than amused, he hastened to say, “No, I don’t think so. He’s muscle, nothing more. I really don’t think Al Fulani told him shit.”
Brannigan nodded. “Tie him up and drag him back into the pallets back there,” he said. “Carlo and I will gather up the rest of the weapons and head out to the vehicles. Once you’ve got him stashed, grab Childress and get out front. I don’t think we’ve got a lot of time left to linger around here.”
Aziz nodded, and stepped forward to grab the prisoner by the arm. When the man started to let out a wail, Aziz rapped him on the head with the butt of his pistol. The plastic of the Glock didn’t have as much impact as if he’d full-on pistol-whipped the man, but the guy got the point, and shut up.
A quick search of the bodies produced a couple of FN FiveSevens, a Steyr TMP, and two more Glocks. There really wasn’t enough ammo to go around, but it was more than they’d had to begin with.
Brannigan exchanged his Tokarev for one of the FiveSevens, then stripped the expensive sport coat off of Al Fulani’s corpse and used it as a sack for the rest of the weapons and ammo. Hancock sent a piercing wolf-whistle toward the back of the warehouse to let Childress and Aziz know it was time to move, and then they were heading back out the way they’d come, Brannigan carrying the coat full of weapons over his shoulder.
Flanagan and Curtis were already behind the wheels of two of the Land Rovers. The previous drivers were stuffed into the back seat of the other one, piled on top of each other, tied and gagged. Brannigan didn’t know where they had found the materials, but he knew that both men were resourceful. It looked like the gangsters had been tied up with bailing wire, and they’d probably been gagged with their own socks.
“Doc’s already on his way back to the hotel,” Flanagan said as Brannigan and Hancock got into his Land Rover. “We got the cash out of the car, too. Didn’t think we wanted to leave that behind.”
“Good,” Brannigan replied. He turned to Santelli, who was staying next to his door, the AKS-74U still in his hands, watching for Aziz and Childress to come back out of the warehouse. “Once we get clear,” Brannigan said to Santelli, “we’ll split up. Take as long and roundabout a route back as possible; if the local cops get wind of this, I don’t want them following us back to the hotel.”
Santelli nodded, as the last two men came running out of the warehouse, Childress still carrying the AKMS. “And make damned good and sure those weapons are hidden before anyone goes back inside,” Brannigan added.
“Common sense, sir,” Santelli replied. “We’ll see you back at the barn.”
The two Land Rovers peeled out of the warehouse district and headed north into Sharjah, even as the wail of UAE police sirens filled the mid-morning air.
CHAPTER 6
The room where the hostages were being kept had once been some kind of meeting or banquet hall, Ortiz thought. It was spacious and surprisingly chilly for the region; he could only assume that the thickness of the ancient stone walls was keeping most of the heat out. The Iranians were not furnishing their hostages with much in the way of blankets or bedding; they slept on the floor, waking shivering and stiff from the hard marble tiles.
Ortiz had just awakened from another fitful night’s sleep. Morning light was coming in the arched windows high in the wall. It was the only light that ever entered the room; their captors did not provide them with lamps or turn on the chandeliers overhead, either.
Finding his little scrap of rock that he’d managed to palm, Ortiz turned to the wall behind him and scratched another faint mark on the tile. Fifteen days had passed since the fanatics had stormed aboard the Oceana Metropolis and murdered Carver and his fellow contractors. So far, the rest of them had managed to survive. It seemed that the Iranians were satisfied with keeping them as human shields. At least for the moment.
He remembered the look in that little man’s eyes as he’d shot Carver in the head. It had been over two weeks, but the scene was just as vivid in his memory when he closed his eyes as it had been while he’d watched it happen. He doubted that it would ever really fade. But that look haunted him more than the violence.
That little man wanted to kill more of them. And it was only going to be a matter of time before he found an excuse.
Slowly and carefully, as much because of his own stiffness as to avoid alarming the guards stationed at the single entrance to the hall, Ortiz stood and stretched. He had to keep his worries to himself; while some of his crew might be able to handle the situation, not all of the American hostages were members of his crew, and the tourists especially had not been in any way mentally prepared for this. Ortiz had had some training; Tannhauser Petroleum and the companies that shipped their oil had mandated hijack survival classes. These people had not.
It had taken a great deal of effort and patience to get the wealthy, forty-something woman in the white sundress to calm down after she had been manhandled and dragged into the Citadel. She had been nearly hysterical.
Fifteen days. How much longer could they hold out? When was the Navy coming?
Ortiz didn’t doubt that they would come. There was no way that the US could just leave them in captivity. The United States did not negotiate with terrorists. That was government policy. He knew it was.
But several past incidents involving the Iranians nagged at him. The original Iran Hostage Crisis had dragged on for four hundred forty-four days. That Navy gunboat that had been captured by the Iranians had finally been liberated by a cash payment, not by Navy SEALs.
He had to assure himself that this was different. Americans were dead. Somebody had to do something about that.
The doors banged open suddenly. Several of the hostages who were still sleeping, many of them trying desperately to escape the misery of their circumstances in unconsciousness, started awake, more than one with a faint cry. Ortiz peered into the shadows near the door, and his heart sank.
The man called Esfandiari was stalking into the hall, flanked by six more of his shooters. And the same little man who had murdered Carver was walking next to him, with that same eager, murderous look on his face.
“Everyone get up!” Esfandiari bellowed, his voice echoing around the hall. “Now!” The shooters started chivvying the hostages to their feet and herding them into a corner, behind the massy pillars that held up the tiled ceiling. Esfandiari waited, his arms folded, watching with implacable black eyes.
Once the hostages were up and gathered in a tight knot, Esfandiari walked up to them. He looked at Ortiz. “Come out here, Captain,” he said mildly.
There really was no other choice. Ortiz advanced out of the group, coming to stand in front of Esfandiari.
“Despite our warnings, an American Navy aircraft overflew this island early this morning,” Esfandiari said, in the same mild tone of voice. “Unfortunately, I think you know what that means.” He turned to the short man beside him. “Mehregan!” he barked. The little man snapped to attention. Esfandiari gave a brief command in Farsi. A vicious little smile creased Mehregan’s face, and the man stalked over to the group of hostages.
Another command was given, and soon the guards had all of the hostages line up against one wall of the great hall. Mehregan, evidently enjoying himself immensely, walked down the line, pausing in front of each hostage for a moment and studying them before moving on.
“Commander, this is unnecessary,” Ortiz tried to protest. He got a rifle butt to the stomach for his troubles, and sank to his knees, wheezing in pain.
“Unfortunately, it is entirely necessary,” Esfandiari replied, almost regretfully. “Although, I will admit, that Mehregan’s theatrics are somewhat…excessive.” He barked at the smaller man in Farsi, and Mehregan stopped, taking a deep, angry breath, before grabbing one of the hostages—Ortiz was momentarily thankful that it wasn’t one of his crew, then cursed himself for thinking it—and dragging the middle-aged man into the center of the room.
Ortiz knew what was coming. It became even more obvious to the rest when one of Esfandiari’s soldiers drew out a video camera and turned it on.
“No! No, no, no!” a half-dozen voiced chorused. The middle-aged woman in the sundress was the loudest; the chosen victim was her husband.
“Silence!” Esfandiari shouted. “Your own country has brought this upon you. They were warned, and they chose to disregard that warning. Now you must pay the price.” He turned on his heel and marched to the hostage’s side, where the balding man was down on his knees, shaking, his head bowed, with Mehregan’s fist clenched in the back of his shirt.
Esfandiari took a deep breath, then turned to the soldier holding the camera and nodded. The soldier signaled that he was ready, and Esfandiari began to speak.
“This morning, at 0455 local time, a US Navy aircraft overflew the island of Khadarkh,” he said, his English precise. “To the President of the United States and the commander of the US Navy task force who sent the aircraft, I must ask, did you not think that I was serious? Did you think that your decades of imperialism in the Middle East meant that you could ignore my warning with impunity? You chose to disregard it, and now this man must pay the price.” He turned and looked down at the hostage. “What is your name? Tell your countrymen, so that they know whom they have killed by their arrogance.”
The man just knelt there and shook. Mehregan kicked him in the ribs and he nearly fell over. Esfandiari glanced sharply at the smaller man and shook his head. “Answer me,” he said, almost gently.
“M-my name is Trevor Ulrich,” the man said, in a small, frightened voice.
“Trevor Ulrich,” Esfandiari said, turning back to the camera. “That is the name of the man you have killed. Trevor Ulrich has paid the price for your transgression.” He turned and nodded to Mehregan.
The little man drew the Makarov from his belt, placed the muzzle to Ulrich’s temple, and pulled the trigger.
Ortiz could not help but flinch at the sharp report, as blood, bone, and brain matter spattered out of the side of Ulrich’s skull. The man flopped on the floor, twitching slightly. The sudden odor of blood and excrement filled the room, as his bowels loosened in death.
Esfandiari looked at the camera. “This time it was one,” he intoned. “Next time, two will die. After that, three. Keep your ships and aircraft beyond the limits I set last time, or you condemn more of your countrymen to death.”
A couple of the hostages vomited as the soldier turned off the camera. Mehregan stalked over to the lineup, and picked out two more, pointing to Ulrich’s corpse. “Carry him out,” he ordered.
None of the selectees thought of resisting. They had just seen what would happen if they tried. And there was still an ugly light in Mehregan’s eyes. He would welcome the opportunity to add to the pile of American corpses.
The two that he had picked out shuffled over and gingerly picked up Ulrich’s corpse. It was difficult going; even after fifteen days of relative privation, Ulrich had still been a heavy man. And dead weight is always harder to move. They lost their grip on the body twice before reaching the door, the corpse flopping obscenely on the floor each time, the ruin of Ulrich’s skull leaving bloody splotches on the floor.
Esfandiari left with Mehregan and his guards, without a backward glance.
Ortiz sank to the floor against the wall, nursing his bruised midsection, and prayed that, somehow, rescue would come. Because they were never going to survive if it didn’t.
***
They didn’t have a lot in the way of comms back Stateside, but Brannigan had brought a small, ultralight laptop and a satellite internet puck, both of which he had bought with funds from the shell company that Chavez had set up. He needed some kind of connection, if only to get updates from Chavez, who was maintaining that level of involvement, if no more. If asked, he was simply emailing updates on a situation of some interest to an old friend.
The morning after the incident with the Suleiman Syndicate, Brannigan found an email waiting for him. And it wasn’t pretty.
“Everybody bring it in,” he called, turning the laptop so that everyone in the suite could see the screen. “We’ve got an update. Apparently, the Navy tried probing Kh
adarkhi airspace last night. This was the response.” He played the video.
The men watched in grim silence as Trevor Urlich was cold-bloodedly murdered while he knelt on the stone floor.
When the video ended, Brannigan leaned back against the side of the desk and folded his arms. “Clock’s ticking, gents,” he said. “Right now, I’m told that between the Saudi lobbyists and the imminent threat to the hostages—including the reluctance of the politicians in charge to risk having those hostages’ blood on their hands—the Navy is going to be held back for a bit. I don’t know if the negotiators are here in Dubai, or in Abu Dhabi, but they are reportedly on the ground.”
“Have they made contact with the Iranians on the island?” Flanagan asked.
“From what Hector’s telling me, they’re getting the cold shoulder,” Brannigan replied. “They’ve tried talking, and the Iranians aren’t interested. Which has just about everyone stumped.”
“Yeah, how do you negotiate for the release of hostages when the terrorists ain’t interested in negotiating?” Childress asked.
“You can’t,” Curtis said.
“It was a rhetorical question!” Flanagan said, exasperated.
“How do you know?” Curtis demanded. “You didn’t ask it!”
“Enough!” Brannigan said. “With the Suleiman deal going bad, we’re back to square one, and now we’re going to have even less time to prep once we finally do find a contact that can get us what we need. On top of that, the clock is also ticking for us, because the gangsters we didn’t kill will probably have provided the police with descriptions, along with some detailed bullshit story about what happened. Which means we have a limited amount of time to get what we need and get the hell out of Dubai before the police come after us.”
“And that’s probably a very limited window,” Aziz put in. “The UAE police have some serious high-tech toys for tracking people. And their street patrol cars here in Dubai are all Lamborghinis. There won’t be any running if they do find us.”