by Dalton Fury
The Canadian finished the dregs of his coffee, all but slammed the little cup back on the plastic table. “I don’t want to see you again.”
“It might be safer for you if you did. I think I will just follow you around for a while. For your own good.”
Marris looked back over his shoulder at the crowd in the courtyard café. There were easily seventy-five people there, all male. “Mr. Meriwether. I am calling you that because I do not know what else to call you, not because I am so naive that I think you gave me your real name. All I have to do is shout out to the room, in Arabic, in French, or probably even in English, that you are an operative of the CIA, and then, I am quite certain, you will be otherwise engaged from following me through the streets for the rest of the day. Maybe for the rest of your life.”
The African-American did not seem fazed by the threat at all. Instead he just smiled. “My real name is Curtis. And you might want to think first about how badly you want to draw even more attention to yourself right now, because I have friends who can get me out of any jam I might get into today. You … on the other hand, only have me.”
Renny Marris did not speak. Instead he collected his satchel, stood from his thick cushion, and headed back through the courtyard café toward his car.
* * *
The big Canadian made it back to the parking lot by the Old British Consulate. The early afternoon pedestrian traffic had tapered off to almost nothing, so after he unlocked the door to his car and looked back over his shoulder, he had no problem picking out the black American crossing the street toward him.
He tossed his bag in the backseat angrily.
Curtis called to him as he approached. “Dr. Marris? One more quick thing.”
Renny sat down in his car. He reached to close the door but first said, “No! I told you! I do not want to talk to you.”
“Then don’t talk. Just listen.” Curtis grabbed the door and held it open.
“I certainly do not want to listen to anything you have to say.” Marris fought for the door. He found Curtis surprisingly strong.
“All right, then. Don’t listen. Just look.” The CIA man pulled a small mirror from his microfiber sport coat. It had a telescoping arm on the back of it, and this Curtis extended to its full length.
“What’s that?” Marris asked.
Curtis did not answer. Instead, he just said, “Don’t leave home without it.” He held the arm and lowered the mirror to the dusty cement, just outside the passenger door, and he angled the mirror to reflect just under the car.
Marris leaned out of the car and looked down at the reflection. An odd device was attached to the bottom of his car. A cylinder the size and shape of a coffee thermos. It was wrapped in gray electrical tape and a coiled insulated wire ran out of one end and disappeared off the edge of the mirror.
“What is that?”
Curtis replied, “Surely, Renny, a man with your expertise can recognize a car bomb when he sees one.”
“How … how did you…”
“How did I know? An associate of mine saw the three men in the green four-door attach it five minutes ago. My associate took pictures — we can review them back at the embassy. Fortunately, they didn’t have time to rig a pressure plate under the driver’s seat, they just wired it to your ignition system.”
“No,” the Canadian said with a quavering voice.
“No? Look at it!” Curtis held the mirror steady and Marris looked down at it again. “Have you had your nose stuck so deep in those briefing reports and technical manuals of yours that you’ve lost the ability to ID a real weapon when you see one?”
Marris looked at the American. “No…” He said it with reservation, but then he shook his head forcefully. “No. It’s a trick. A cheap, cruel, patently obvious scheme to get me to jump into the arms of you, the CIA, like you are my only hope. You put that there to scare me.”
Curtis shook his head. “We didn’t do it, and we are your only hope.”
Marris held his car key up in his right hand. “I’m going to turn the ignition, Curtis. You are bluffing.”
“If you turn that key, you and I are both going to be barbecue. The local medical examiner is not going to know where your charred remains stop and mine start.”
That sank in a moment, and the Canadian lowered his hand and slowly climbed out of his car. “I still think this is a CIA trick, but I do not know if the bomb is real or not. You might be just cynical enough to plant an actual device.” He grabbed his messenger bag out of the back of the car. “I want that thing off my vehicle, and I want my vehicle towed back to the Corinthian.”
Curtis just said, “Call the JSO. We didn’t do it, so we aren’t undoing it. We are offering you the safety of the embassy. You need to come with me.”
Marris just shook his head and turned toward the street. “Good-bye, Curtis.”
“You walk away and you will be dead in a day.”
Dr. Renny Marris did not respond. Instead he crossed the street through angry traffic.
Curtis stood there in the little lot, watching him go. On the far side of the road, the bearded Canadian turned to the south, then disappeared into the warrenlike market stalls of the Old City.
Seconds later three Arab men in blue suits followed him into the alley from the street.
Curtis spoke softly to himself. “One day, nothing. More like one hour.” He pulled his mobile phone from his pocket and dialed a local number.
An American voice answered on the other end. “Yeah?”
“Are you at the Corinthian?”
“Affirmative. We are in Tripwire’s suite. We’re photographing everything in place so we can put it back like we found it.”
“Don’t bother. Scoop it all up. Everything. Clear the place out.” Curtis paused to watch two more men enter the alleyway, walking like they had someplace to be.
Curtis said, “Tripwire will not be back.”
SEVEN
Dr. Renny Marris walked north through a narrow alleyway, moving against the flow of the few passersby strolling in the hot afternoon. He knew he would not find a taxi back to the hotel here, he’d have to leg it all the way back to Al Kurnish Road.
He worried he would not get back to his suite at the Corinthian in time for his afternoon interview, but that was not his only worry at the moment. The bomb on the bottom of his car had not rattled him so much at first, but now he found the palms of his hands sweating and his heart beating harder and faster than normal. He also found himself looking back over his shoulder from time to time, nervously scanning the crowd.
While he still thought it likely the CIA had planted the device, he did have to admit that it was not beyond the realm of possibility that someone affiliated with the ex-JSO officers running the arms-smuggling enterprise might indeed be after him. They were serious criminals, no question about that, so it was likely they were dangerous, as well.
Dr. Marris knew only the larger roads of the Old City, and now, forced to go on foot to hunt for a cab, he found himself utterly lost. After a minute of twists and turns, he looked up and caught a glimpse of the minaret of the Ben Saber Mosque behind him on his left, and this told him he was headed in the right direction.
But the road dead-ended and the small shops were just little kiosk shelters and did not have exits on the other side.
Marris turned back around and retraced his steps.
Just before veering to the right to head up another dark alleyway, he noticed the three men for the first time. Just as Curtis had claimed, they wore bad blue suits and they had bushy eyebrows.
Renny Marris turned away and walked faster.
Even though the adrenaline from finding a bomb under his car was coursing through his thick body, he discovered a new sensation within him, a fear that came with the realization that Curtis may have been telling the truth.
Deep here in the Medina, the afternoon foot traffic was almost nonexistent, with the return of the workday after lunch. He headed up a narrow alleyway lined on both sides wi
th small kiosks selling hand tools and copperware. Other than a few shopkeepers who were focused on their own business, Renny Marris found himself alone.
As the alleyway ended in a T, he chanced a glance back over his shoulder. The three men were still there, closer now than before. He turned to the right and followed a path up a hill, thinking that might bring him back closer to the main road, and he picked up the pace. As he walked he fumbled through his satchel for his mobile phone. With his thumb trembling from adrenaline, he dialed the number for his office. The afternoon heat seemed to grow by the second, his shirt was wet from sweat under his coat, and cold rivulets of perspiration ran down his lower back into his trousers. He walked even faster now, and even thought of breaking into a run, but he was too self-conscious to do so.
“Bonjour, Dr. Marris. Where are you? We just called your suite and no one picked up.”
“Listen carefully, Amelia. I’m in the Old City. I think I am being followed.”
“It’s probably just the police. They follow our investigators all the time. They are perfectly harmless, you know that.”
Before Marris could answer, he walked past a shop selling local clothing. At the front door was a large full-length mirror, and he used this to look back behind him. The three men in the blue suits, their jackets unbuttoned now, had closed to within fifteen meters.
“Oh, God.” He wasn’t being followed from a distance. These men were not trying to stay back or in the shadows, they were doing nothing to remain undetected.
It was almost as if they were hunting him.
“You sound like you are walking. Where is your car?” Amelia asked, a worried tone in her voice now.
“I … I left it … Can you send a car for me now?”
“Dr. Marris … if you really feel like you are in danger, you need to get to a place with many people around.”
The Canadian had just made a left to head up another small alley. It felt to him like this direction would take him closer to the coastal road. He could not be far from Al Kurnish now, he reasoned, and he knew there would be hundreds of people, locals and tourists alike, walking and driving there. There he would be safe, but for now the alleyway wound to the right, and it was covered by a long arched roof. It was essentially a tunnel, as there was no light from the sky, only lamps outside of the few shops in this dark and quiet part of the Medina.
Marris had no choice but to continue on. The men were too close behind him. He heard their footsteps echo in the passage.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.”
“Dr. Marris?” Amelia asked, more tension in her voice now.
“I–I do not know where I am. Call the police. Tell them I am in the Old City. Tell them to please hurry.”
“That’s a very big place. Tell me what you see.” Amelia was nearly frantic now, following the fear in her boss’s voice.
Marris lowered the phone from his ear. He could see now that this passage was another dead end. With a quivering thumb, he hung up his phone and slid it into his front pocket. Then he turned slowly around to face the men following him.
He would talk to them. He would diffuse this situation.
Marris saw the three men standing there, facing him, with no attempt on their part to avoid detection. They were ten meters away at most. Their suits strained against their big bodies, and their ties hung loose around their thick necks. As before, their coats were open.
In Arabic tinged with fear, Dr. Renny Marris asked, “May I help you, my friends?”
As one, the three men reached into their coats.
Marris only saw the hilts of the three knives before he started running.
A paint store on his left had an open storefront, and the middle-aged Canadian ran inside, stumbling over a tall stack of paint cans, sending the display crashing to the floor. He ran behind the little counter, pushed past the proprietor of the shop, and here he found a curtain that led to the back of the store.
Mercifully, this shop had a rear exit, and Dr. Marris slammed his shoulder into the tin door and stumbled out into a tiny back alley only two meters wide. He ran now, no worries of embarrassment to slow him down, and he found himself to be surprisingly fast when motivated by a team of knife-wielding assassins. He heard the three men close behind him in the alley, and he screamed in fear.
He rushed headlong into another covered passage, the ceilings arched and blackened with hundreds of years of torch smoke. He glanced back over his shoulder as he stumbled, already out of breath after running no more than thirty seconds.
He saw the knives again, but this time it was not just the hilts; the blades were out of the men’s jackets. They were long and curved, and they swung through the air as the three men ran toward him.
Murder in broad daylight, Renny thought, and his heart felt as if it would explode from terror. He had no weapon of his own, he was a pacifist, after all, so his only chance at survival was to run for his life.
Frantic, Marris stumbled around the corner, but found it to be yet another pedestrian cul de sac, a dead end. He tried to spin around in the direction of his killers in the hope he could rush past them before they could plunge a knife into his chest.
But Marris tripped as he spun. He brought his arms up to break his fall, but a strong hand reached out from a recessed doorway and grabbed him by the collar, catching him before he hit the pavement.
The hand pulled him into the darkness of the doorway. Marris landed on his back and a figure stepped over him quickly, a man in local dress — an open Holi cloak over a dirty brown T-shirt and local blue jeans, sunglasses, and a cream-colored head wrap concealing all of his face not obscured by his five o’clock shadow. He moved quickly, heading out into the tiny alleyway.
Marris shouted a warning to the man. “Watch out! They have knives!”
* * *
“No shit,” Kolt Raynor said to himself as he stepped quickly into the passage.
Kolt did not pull his weapon, a Glock 23, hidden in a Thunderwear holster hidden in his jeans, just above his crotch. As he faced the approaching men, his hand hovered there, between his legs, but he did not reach into his waistband and draw the pistol.
Not yet, anyway.
Kolt would have loved to just pull his handgun and waste the three assholes in front of him, but gunfire in the Old City of Tripoli would ensure more gunfire, and he would do everything in his power to avoid that. On these types of low-vis operations, weapons were only used as a last resort. Standard operating procedure on a mission like this was to keep himself and his team as low-profile as humanly possible, so as not to create a political shitstorm for the United States. But keeping this action low-pro was easier said than done, seeing as how this extraction involved pulling Tripwire from the clutches of death.
“Bonjour!” Kolt said to the three men with a smile, and he offered a handshake to the closest man. He had no real illusions that his conversational jujitsu would stop this fight before it started, but he had seen some quick and oddly timed hellos confuse enemies for a few precious seconds in the past, so he figured it was worth a shot.
The center goon was closest. At a six-foot distance, the man ignored the offered hand and took one fast step forward. At the same time he raised the eight-inch blade over his right shoulder like a hammer.
Kolt saw this, and he knew that his training in Brazilian jujitsu would have to be better than his skills at making friends.
Kolt half stepped to the left, raised his left hand, and caught the man’s right wrist from behind as the knife arced downward. Kolt’s left hand forced the knife hand on and maintained the momentum as his right hand reached up and over his taller opponent’s head. Kolt grabbed the man by the back of the head and forced him on, as Kolt’s left hand directed the man’s knife to the rear. As a second attacker, the man on Kolt’s left, lunged forward, Kolt caught him unawares by directing the center man’s knife straight into his thigh as he approached.
The first assailant let go of his knife and it remained embedded high in his
partner’s leg, three inches deep.
A bloodcurdling scream filled the covered passage.
Raynor remained in contact with the center assassin, his right hand still controlling the man’s head and his left hand on the man’s wrist. He pushed the wrist skyward behind the man’s back, forcing the Libyan’s head toward the ground while stepping left to keep the man’s body between him and the third attacker. Only a somersault or a flip by the assassin would have prevented his shoulder from dislocating or his arm from breaking at the elbow joint, but the man just shouted and struggled against Kolt’s grip.
Three seconds after the fight started, Kolt heard the Libyan’s arm snap and felt the humerus pop from the scapula.
It was a sickening sound that he’d heard before.
The Libyan in the center of the trio dropped to the ground and rolled in agony as Kolt Raynor’s earpiece came alive with Slapshot’s voice. “Racer, this is Slapshot, two crows down.”
Kolt was in combat himself, and in no position to execute effective command and control over his teammate at the moment. Slapshot was covering the entry to the alley fifty meters up the street, and Kolt had no idea who he had neutralized or why.
Kolt figured Slapshot must have used his suppressed 9mm pistol to take down the two men just up the street, otherwise the pistol’s report would have echoed through the Medina.
At that instant it occurred to Raynor that he had forgotten his own silencer, having left it in the safe house. Not ten minutes earlier, Racer, Slapshot, and Digger had been waiting in the nearby safe house watching Bachelor Party Vegas on the tube when the call from the CIA’s chief of station came in. This rushed them out the door, and Raynor forgot his “can.”
In-extremis assault mode is a come-as-you-are party, and sometimes things get left behind.
Kolt had no time to dwell on the fact that his can was on the coffee table at the safe house, because two large arms suddenly appeared below his waist and wrapped around his knees. He looked down and saw that the man he had stabbed in the leg was now on the ground behind him and trying to pull him down. Kolt tried to keep his balance, but as he looked back up, the third man sent a roundhouse right fist to Kolt’s chin. The punch buckled him like a folding knife. Kolt fell to his left side and tumbled on top of the wounded man on the ground. There he reached over and grabbed the knife handle and jammed it in his attacker’s leg down to the copper hilt.