When six crates had been loaded onto the biggest of the two trucks, the supervisors held another quick conference and then barked orders to the men, who armed themselves from a pile of rifles near the gate and ran into the hotel. Several minutes dragged by before a group of civilians stumbled from the building and moved to the rear of the first truck, directed there by the gunmen. Still more joined them in a few moments, and soon there was a steady procession of young and old making their way to the trucks while the supervisors watched and the gunmen prodded those who seemed hesitant to climb aboard.
By the time the loading was done, Jet had seen enough. Between the crates and the refugees, she could see something big was afoot, and she resolved to follow them to wherever they were headed, her thirst for revenge set aside when she realized what she was likely witnessing. She ferreted in her robe and withdrew the sat phone and, after getting a lock on a satellite, placed a hushed call to headquarters and advised them of what she’d seen.
Jet finished her report, powered the phone off, and replaced it in the satchel with the binoculars. After checking the hotel one more time, she lowered herself back down the drainpipe and was nearly to the sidewalk when the roar of engines sounded from the street. She dropped the rest of the way and landed hard. Her ankle telegraphed pain up her leg, but she ignored it and retreated into the recesses of the doorway as four pickup trucks motored by on the way to the hotel.
This time the gate didn’t open immediately, and the trucks pulled up out front, blocking the street. When it slid open, the gunmen from inside came at a jog and climbed into the backs of the pickups, rifles slung from shoulder straps, some of them smiling in the darkness. Jet waited until everyone was aboard and the gate had been opened wider before darting away to where her scooter was parked, the sharp spikes of discomfort from her ankle reminding her with each step that one small mistake could cost her everything.
Jet swung onto the seat, pausing to roll her ankle a few times before starting the engine and heading toward the hotel, her lights extinguished. She was sixty meters from the gate when the row of pickups began to move, their headlights bright at street level. They rolled away, and the pair of cargo trucks with the refugees trundled from the compound and followed, heavy and low on their springs from full loads, the larger one that contained the crates bringing up the rear.
Jet waited until the sound of their engines started to fade before setting out after them, their brake lights dim at an intersection two blocks away. She was determined to avoid detection, and at that distance she felt secure in the knowledge that she’d be able to hear them if they made a turn that she missed.
As she followed the caravan, she quickly realized it was headed to the harbor. When it reached the waterfront, there were likely to be more of the terrorists waiting for the trucks, which meant that she’d need to improvise a plan or risk being unable to stop them.
When Leo had been wounded, she’d understood that there would be nobody to stop the terrorists, but she hadn’t thought through whether she was willing to risk everything in order to try. Now she was in the thick of it, and she couldn’t in good conscience ignore what was taking place any more than she was willing to allow Tariq to get away with murdering Salma. Which meant that she’d have to come up with something extraordinary on the fly – preferably something from which she stood a decent chance of walking away.
Jet accelerated and drew within thirty meters of the truck with the crates. The MP7A1 was hanging from its strap beneath her robe, and she had her pistol, so she could shoot out its tires. But then what? She’d have to contend with at least thirty gunmen in the pickups, and there were the women and children in the cargo bays to consider. Even with her skills, the idea of taking on thirty gunmen was lunacy, and she knew it.
An idea leapt to mind, and she eyed the truck’s tarp and ribbing. It seemed impossible at first sight, but she’d learned that nothing was if you approached it correctly. She kept pace with the vehicle as she thought the move through, and nodded to herself. It would be tricky, but relatively straightforward if she timed it right.
Jet pulled the robe over her head and tossed it onto the street, freeing herself up for the maneuver to come. If the driver sensed her rolling up on him, he didn’t give any indication, and she goosed the throttle until she was parallel with the truck bed and only a few feet off the passenger side. She squinted into the darkness ahead to ensure that she wasn’t about to plow into a parked car, and then edged closer until she could reach out with her left hand and touch the wood and steel ribbing of the bed.
Her fingers locked onto one of the planks, and then her right hand abandoned the throttle and grabbed a vertical steel rib that supported the tarp covering the bed. The scooter immediately began to slow, and Jet pulled herself off the bike so her legs were hanging in midair, her feet only a few inches off the street. The bike veered off to the right and smacked into a building, but by then Jet had scissored her legs up, and her feet were on one of the lateral metal beams of the frame.
The bobtail accelerated as it approached a larger thoroughfare, and Jet reached higher with her right hand and felt for a support. Her fingers found one, and she repeated the maneuver with her left, inching up until she was lying flat on the tarp near the cab. Cautiously she crawled forward, using the beams for support.
She glanced over the roof of the cabin at the truck in front, which was ten meters ahead. The streets were inky black from the power being out, so she had little concern over being spotted. She tried to recall whether the driver had climbed into the cab alone or whether one of the gunmen had accompanied him, but couldn’t remember, and so prepared to contend with at least two in front, and possibly three.
Jet pulled herself forward until she was on the roof of the cabin, and then swung the MP7A1 forward and flicked the firing selector from safe to full auto. She thought through how she’d make her next move and, when she was confident she’d be able to pull it off, pointed the barrel down at the sheet metal of the cabin like a nail gun ready to secure a tarpaper roof.
Twenty rounds punched through the roof of the cab in a straight line along where the seats would be. She didn’t wait for the outcome and instead slung the gun aside, pulled herself to the passenger side, and twisted and dropped onto the hood, facing the windshield.
Which was spackled with blood from the passenger and driver, both of whom had been hit multiple times.
As the truck slowed, Jet kicked in the windshield, which had been punctured by four ricochets and was a collage of starbursts. The glass crumpled inward on the wounded men, and Jet followed it in and kicked the passenger’s head as hard as she could, slamming it into the side window. She followed through with a brutal elbow strike to the driver’s throat as she twisted to face forward, and then yanked her pistol free and put a bullet in each man’s head while gripping the wheel with her free hand to keep the truck from running off the road.
The immediate danger neutralized, she dropped the gun on the seat and reached across the driver’s corpse to open his door. It swung wide with a clank, and she gave the dead man a powerful shove. His body seemed to hang in the doorway for an instant, and then it was gone, tumbling along the pavement as she took the bloody seat and stomped on the accelerator.
Jet glanced over at the dead passenger, and her nose wrinkled at the familiar stench of blood and bowels, offset by the wind rushing through the windshield frame. Safety glass littered the seat and floor, the chunks painted with crimson, and she felt for the pistol and slid it into the satchel before downshifting and shutting off the lights so her next maneuver wouldn’t be spotted by the other vehicles.
Chapter 46
Jet slowed at the next intersection and took the turn as fast as she dared with a truck filled with human cargo and what was likely enough nerve gas to kill half of Tripoli. She ground the gears before finding one she liked, and accelerated again as a pair of headlights swerved into the lane behind her from a side street.
Two of the pickups fi
lled with gunmen had peeled off from the convoy and come after her, which left Jet with few options but to fight it out on the run. Her MP7A1 only had ten rounds left in the magazine and a spare in her satchel, but the driver and his companion had carried AK-47s that were wedged between the seats. She pulled one free and waited for the pursuers to make a move.
It didn’t take long. Gunfire exploded from behind her, and panicked screams rose from the cargo bed as she jerked the wheel back and forth to make her trajectory less predictable. The gambit didn’t work for long, though, and one of the trucks sped up until it was nearly alongside her. She watched it approach in the side mirror and yanked the steering wheel hard left, driving the side of the big truck into the lighter pickup, which sent it skidding out of control and into a parked van.
The second pickup driver was more patient than the first, and kept just off her rear bumper on the passenger side, where it was hard for her to keep tabs on it. She tried running it off the road twice, but both times the driver avoided the slam that would have ended its run.
Another intersection brought the pickup closer, and she simultaneously stood on the emergency brake and turned the wheel hard right. This time the pickup’s driver was an eighth of a second too slow, and the smaller vehicle’s hood plowed beneath the side of the cargo bay. The big truck yawed precariously before righting itself and coming to a stop, and Jet leapt from the driver’s seat with the AK as the last of burning brakes and rubber smoked from the wheels.
She crouched low and took aim at the pickup’s tires. Two short bursts flattened them, ensuring the terrorists wouldn’t be going anywhere once she got underway again. Boots landed on the street, and she emptied the rifle at them, cutting the gunmen off below the knees. Agonized screams rewarded her shooting, and she returned to the cab, heaved herself behind the wheel, and floored the gas as answering fire dimpled the passenger door and the side of the cab.
The big truck lumbered forward, dragging the pickup for several meters before it dislodged and ground to a stop, and Jet ignored the thumping of one of the two rear tires on the passenger side that had been flattened by gunfire. She knew she couldn’t motor around Tripoli all night, and was painfully aware that the truck made her an easy target, especially given the dearth of traffic on the streets.
Another turn, and the steering was markedly more sluggish and pulled to the right, telling her that the right front tire was now flat as well, curtailing much more driving and leaving her stranded with a vehicle full of nerve gas and refugees. Her eyes scanned the road and narrowed at the sight of a filling station two blocks up on the left.
A pair of attendants watched in shock as the big truck shuddered to a stop by the pumps and Jet stepped from the cab wielding two AKs. They put up their hands, and she shook her head. “I’m not going to hurt or rob you. Get out of here. Now.”
The men didn’t need to be told twice, and took off at an unsteady run down the deserted street. Jet moved to the back of the cargo bay and pounded on the tailgate. “Party’s over. Time to get out. Hurry. This thing’s going to blow any second.”
She unfastened the latches and dropped the gate, and a hundred pairs of eyes stared at her from the dark interior. Jet stepped back and pointed the rifles inside. “I said move. Anyone still in there when I get back gets shot, understand?”
Jet walked away and approached the nearest pump. She set one of the AKs down beside it, removed the nozzle from the slot, and moved to the cab, where she squeezed the pump handle and fired a stream of gasoline into the cabin. She continued until there was a foot of gas on the floorboards, and then soaked the hood and roof before walking with the nozzle toward the rear, sending a golden fountain of fuel skyward and onto the tarp.
The truck was empty when she reached the back, the refugees alarmed enough after the ride and the shooting and the sight of a madwoman with assault rifles to elect prudence over curiosity and scatter down the street. She set the nozzle on the gate and climbed into the bed, and made her way to the nearest crate. The barrel of the AK served as a reasonable lever, and she pried the top off and eyed the green metal canisters inside, their Chinese script unmistakable even in the dim light.
When she returned to the nozzle, she hosed down the interior of the bay until all of the crates were soaked and the wooden floor was slick with fuel, and then ejected the AK magazine and wedged it into the nozzle so it continued pumping fuel, and left it in the bed. A lake of gasoline slowly spread beneath the truck, and Jet walked unhurriedly to the gas station office, where she found a disposable lighter beside a package of cheap local cigarettes.
A wadded-up newspaper and part of a cardboard fuel conditioner display served as reasonable kindling, and within a minute the office was glowing with flames. Jet noted the spreading pool of fuel seeping from the truck and calculated that it would reach the doorway of the office within a couple of minutes, and smiled in satisfaction when she saw a bicycle leaning against the exterior wall.
Jet was a block and a half away when the station exploded in an orange fireball that lit the surroundings like a flare, and cringed at the deafening blast that accompanied it. When she’d made it another four blocks, she paused and extracted the sat phone and placed a call to the director to let him know how his “routine extraction” had gone, and to tell him what she needed if she was going to make it out alive.
He listened until she was finished, agreed to her terms, and she signed off, the sound of approaching vehicles commanding her attention. Jet pedaled hard down an alley, heading in the rough direction of the harbor, where if she was lucky, Tariq was waiting for his shipment but was instead going to receive the ugliest surprise of his life.
Chapter 47
Jet pushed the bicycle the final block to the harbor and leaned it against a lamppost in the parking lot where Leo had parked his scooter. The Vespa was still there, and she tried Leo’s keys until she found the right one and confirmed that it turned. The engine caught on the first try, and she steered it across the boulevard and stopped in the gloom to peer through her binoculars at the middle section of the waterfront where the commercial boats were moored.
She could hardly miss the activity at one of the warehouses, where the smaller truck with the refugees was parked alongside a dozen pickups and SUVs inside a fenced area. A few lights on the building illuminated the grounds, where at least a hundred gunmen ringed the compound. She scanned the scene and froze when she spotted a man in a white robe gesticulating at the truck, the men he was speaking to clearly deferential by their body language. Jet wasn’t close enough to confirm it was Tariq, so she dropped the binoculars back into the satchel and eased the scooter forward to close the distance between herself and the commercial dock.
Jet kept to back streets until she estimated that she was close enough, and parked the scooter in an alley behind a wrecked car, where it wouldn’t be easily seen from the street. She made her way to the waterfront and, when she was two blocks from the commercial port, stopped in a doorway and scanned the dock again.
This time she was more than close enough to see the man in the white robe, and she could make out Tariq’s features in the high magnification like he was standing across the room. He was engrossed in a conversation with another man, and both were clearly agitated. After a few moments, Tariq snatched a handheld radio from the man’s hand and raised it to his lips, his face twisted in fury.
Jet lowered the glasses and headed toward the warehouse, the AK in one hand, the MP7A1 in the other. When she reached the empty boulevard, she took cover behind a half-height wall that ringed a government building and peered over the top. She was too far for a guaranteed kill – she estimated the distance to the gate at about a hundred and fifty meters – so she ran along the wall to a particularly dark area and cut across the boulevard to an overpass almost directly across from the warehouse.
When she was no more than a hundred meters away, which was well within the accurate range of both the small submachine gun and the larger assault rifle, she
stopped. She was switching the AK firing selector to full auto when Tariq made an abrupt gesture, pushed past the larger man with the radio, and stalked to one of the SUVs.
Jet watched the others run toward their vehicles, and readied the AK when Tariq’s SUV surged forward to the gate. A gunman unchained the lock and rolled the barrier aside, and when the SUV was passing through the gate, she fired a twenty-round burst at the SUV’s windshield.
The vehicle coasted to a stop, the glass a spiderweb of white, and six gunmen ran to it, four of them firing indiscriminately in her direction. Ricochets pinged around her and she ducked behind a concrete support column, but not before she saw two of the gunmen drag the driver from the SUV.
The gunfire intensified, and Jet didn’t dare peer around the column for fear of a stray taking her head off. She waited for the inevitable lull in the shooting and, when it came, opted for survival over vengeance and sprinted back across the boulevard, keeping the column between her and the gunmen to the extent possible. The marine layer that had cloaked the harbor in gloom worked to her advantage, as did her black outfit, but only for a few critical moments, after which she could hear shouting from behind her as the gunmen gave chase.
The shooting stopped while they crossed the boulevard behind her, and then started again, but the rounds went wide, which told her that the shooters were firing blindly in her general direction rather than at her. She dashed into the alley where she’d stashed the scooter, and rolled it from behind the car, and then started the engine and ducked low over the handlebars as she tore along the narrow passage, the motor revving far too loudly for her liking.
The gunmen reached the alley mouth and began shooting at Jet, but she was moving too fast and had successfully put enough distance between them so that they had no chance of hitting her. She weaved and stayed low and, when she reached the next street, skidded around the corner and juiced the throttle. The scooter responded agilely, and within two minutes she was coasting slowly toward the harbor again, to take stock of the effect of her efforts.
Sahara Page 24