“I know,” said Christine. “He looks like a Moby.” She dipped her chin and the lab lapped at her again. “You like that name? Moby.”
“What is a Moby?” asked Cameron.
“He is a Moby.
“Doesn’t Moby mean immense, enormous, like the whale?”
Christine pushed her nose down into Moby, “Vous avez un immense amour? Yes, you do, a Moby heart.” Christine glanced up to where Cameron’s eyes would meet her, “He has an immense love like you.”
Whether the warmth came from her green eyes or from the words she chose, Christine stoked a fire within Cameron’s core that burned throughout his limbs and straight up the back of his neck, stiffening his skull with the anxiety of a small boy. She dropped one brow ever so slightly. A quiver shot through him, a nauseous jolt that forced Cameron to widen his eyes and pull his attention toward the road.
“We may still have some luck,” said Cameron. He lowered his head to look out and beyond the bonnet of the Citroen. “The sun has broken through.”
“Marvelous, we can still have our picnic.”
* * * * *
EPISODE III
* * * * *
Chapter 41
The May Fair Hotel, London, Mayfair
Pepe’s eyes fixed on his reflection in the stainless steel of the service lift doors. He extended the back of his neck to lengthen his height and then pulled in his gut. He frowned at the result.
“You’re just now noticing,” observed Cameron. He peered at his own reflection. He raked his fingers above his ears through the wafts of hair that appeared to hold more grey than when he had left New York only days before. “We’re all getting older.”
Pepe slid his hands to the inside of his grey sport coat. He hoisted his trousers and then smoothed his maroon mock turtleneck above his waist. He patted his belly in place and then smirked at his faux thinner appearance. “Speak for yourself.”
“I’ll have you know I run every morning and hit the gym every night,” said Cameron. “I have to be in shape for the cameras, at least. You can’t tell me you still run.”
“I am as fit as ever,” said Pepe. “No, I don’t run. I still do my katas though, and yoga now, too.”
Cameron lifted one brow. “You do yoga?”
“Yes, yoga,” said Pepe, indifferent to Cameron’s skepticism. “Keeps me limber,” he paused, then added, “For the ladies.”
Cameron grinned.
Pepe shrugged. “Too much food on the plane is all. Every plate is served American now.”
“Now that is cognitive dissonance.”
“Guh,” said Pepe. “You know, I think he should have come anyway. His connections here in London could have been useful.”
Cameron flexed his head to one side and then to the other. “I would have liked Alastair to come as well. Heading back to Kenya was a good idea, though. He can work with Eazy to trace back the satellite imagery from the time of the hijacking. If we would have done that rather than following the false intel we would—”
“I know,” said Pepe. “We would have her by now.”
“Besides, Alastair is Kenyan. We have as many connections here as he does, easily. We have all of the connections we need.” Cameron readied the SIG P226 9mm hidden beneath his jacket, making sure not to reveal the handgun to the camera in the upper corner of the cabin. “We are almost there.”
“I’m ready,” said Pepe. He hoisted the small black nylon duffel from the floor between them, swinging the bag up to his side to swallow his other hand.
The doors to the service lift opened onto the fourth floor, the luxury level containing many of the May Fair Hotel’s illustrious suites. The two were explicitly there to revisit the Amber suite. Though the décor of the May Fair corridor was the same as their last visit days before, the same carpet, same wall covering, same indirect artificial candlelight, their intent brought a new vibrancy to the place. Abbo Mohammed’s last words were that Ibrahim Dada was behind the Seychelles hijacking of the Kalinihta, behind Christine’s abduction. If what Abbo told them were true, then this visit would play out much differently than the last.
The service lift opened to a hidden alcove near the stairwell at the end of the corridor. The lift bay for the hotel guests Cameron and Pepe had arrived in on their prior visit was at the opposite end of the hallway and from there, halfway down the adjacent corridor, was the Amber suite.
Cameron and Pepe acted with a sense of urgency, their strides rhythmic and their motion direct. Hammers ready to strike nails.
As they rounded the corner of the corridor, Cameron removed the Sig P226 from under his jacket. The same titan was guarding the suite, his posture impressively statuesque, unwavering. Cameron was impressed that the mammoth man, after peripherally dismissing their first steps, snapped toward a defense pose with such immediacy. The nimble sentinel appeared more machine than organic. The guard’s impressive defensive move was no matter, however. The micro second hesitation was enough for the MP5 inside of Pepe’s nylon duffel to release two bursts. The massive bodyguard slammed to the carpeted floor before gaining his stance.
Crossing the front of the door without losing stride, Pepe slapped a sticky charge on the area where they had seen the added interior locks. Stopping short of the door, Cameron slipped his forged keycard into the lock slot, and then added a second sticky charge below. Both men pressed their backs firmly against the wall and glanced away. The sides of the door above and below the lock slot disintegrated in a loud thud. Cameron pulled the security keycard back out of the lock slot. The small scarlet LED blinked out, the emerald light went on, and no alarms were triggered downstairs.
Pepe threw his hand down on the latch. Cameron swung a barrelhouse kick into the door.
There was a loud crack and then the sound of thunder.
The door bluntly slammed onto the second titan, forcing him back into the wall. The sawed off shotgun he held met his chest, and erupted into his shoulder.
The large man howled.
Pepe immediately took his place to the front of Cameron. He was well past the door when, still pinned against the blood-spattered wall, the giant’s body buckled. As Cameron passed the mangled guard, his sinuses filled with the hot metal odor of the newly spent shotgun shell, and the pungent urine soaking the whimpering man’s clothes.
Cameron jabbed the door again. With another howl, the giant collapsed to his knees.
For the second time, Pepe and Cameron entered the heart of the large beige and brown luxury suite. The objects d’art and many amber lamps in the room were still the same, yet as the corridor, the Amber suite had changed.
In the center of the large L-shaped amber plush sofa sat Ibrahim Dada, in his impeccable Savile Row tailored suit, appropriately the centerpiece of the room. Despite the shotgun blast and howls from the hallway, the well-groomed dark African again appeared indifferent to Cameron and Pepe entering the room. A football match, different teams from the last visit, was in play on the plasma television.
Apart from Dada, the room was clear. Pepe and Cameron were silent, their weapons drawn toward the warlord statesmen.
A long moment passed and nothing happened, not even on the screen. The players volleyed the ball to and fro and nowhere, meandering around the field.
From the couch came a long tired sigh, almost a yawn, yet somehow more polite. Then Dada carefully pinched the knees of his trousers and lifted himself from the sofa. He slowly turned from the television to Cameron and Pepe and said, “A dull game, really, wouldn’t you say?”
Cameron and Pepe said nothing.
“Gentlemen, there was no need for all of the fuss. You are welcome here, particularly since I seem to be in your debt.”
“We wanted your attention, Mister Smith,” said Pepe.
“Or should we call you General Dada?” asked Cameron. “Or do you go by Admiral now?”
“Well, many titles, actually. As I mentioned to you the last time you visited, I am in this country on diplomatic status.
Anyway, as we appear to know each other now, let’s say we cut the formality, Mister Kincaid. May I call you Cameron?”
“Kincaid will be fine.”
“Then call me Dada.”
* * * * *
Chapter 42
The May Fair Hotel, London, Mayfair
Pepe and Cameron were in a state of war. They were on a mission. The mission was direct action infiltration and exfiltration, objective one being to secure and rescue Christine Laroque, and if she was not in the suite, then objective two was to identify her location.
Neither Cameron nor Pepe were pure soldiers anymore. Neither lived the constant rigor that was a lifestyle yet also the mental fortification that kept them bound to honor. Since neither man was as they once were, each was beginning to deal with the toll of the last few days in a different way.
Cameron kept using the crutch of rationalization for his actions and he was well aware that his old friend Pepe was becoming a new man altogether. Pepe would not be burdened with rationalization and that would ultimately lead to something vacuous, of pure blind intent. Cameron understood that Pepe was distinguishing civility from direct action less and less by each hour, becoming an untempered lethal force that would not hesitate to consider anyone in the way of his mission expendable or collateral damage. They had both been trained to know when to put blinders on and when to create a two-color world. Cameron was not compartmentalizing when he took his blinders off and Pepe was leaving his on. Cameron and Pepe needed to find Christine soon, for their sake as well as hers.
Before Cameron and Pepe was Ibrahim Dada, deceivingly groomed in the fashion of a wellborn patrician, far in manner and creature comfort from the pauper fisherman that had turned to fighting early in his country’s civil war. Appearing calm, cool, metered, and indifferent, Dada was as deceiving in manner as the whole of Somali piracy. No wonder that no westerner understood the core of Somali piracy, marketed to the western world as simple-minded marauders driven by greed.
There were those evil men, simpleton thugs and rapists, abducting tourists and aid workers for unheard of ransoms. They were gangsters no different than the kidnapping bands of thieves of South and Central America, or the street clans that owned the shadows and slums of every global city.
True piracy was something else, something so much larger, on a far greater scale. Men such as Ibrahim Dada did not conduct their business alone. They held seats at the table, with men and women educated at Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, and Yale. They parleyed with officers of major corporations and financial institutions, modern day corporate aristocrats that by all but description were pirates themselves. Men such as Ibrahim Dada held court with those that shared a vision, a grand vision. In them, he saw himself grand, immaculate, impeccable, and though that is how Ibrahim Dada portrayed himself and believed himself to be, to Cameron he appeared otherwise. As through the psychologist’s Johari window, where part of the subject is hidden to himself and revealed to others, Dada appeared to Cameron as the true sociopath he was, a psychopath without empathy, remorse, or trepidation. The flawless Savile Row suit tailored to fit Ibrahim Dada clothed a monster, not a man.
“You wasted no time coming from Dubai,” said Dada. “You must be thirsty.”
Dada walked slowly to the side bar. “I would offer you food as well,” he gestured toward the hallway, “but unfortunately I am a bit understaffed at the moment.”
“It was you that hijacked the Kalinihta,” said Cameron.
“Now, let’s see,” Dada clasped his hands together, “what do we have? Honestly, I have not had to make a libation for myself in quite some time.”
“Why did you lie to us?”
“Here we go, what would you like? Gin, whiskey, American bourbon, perhaps?”
The black nylon duffel let loose a short burst.
The lamp at the end of the sidebar shattered.
“We are not here to drink,” said Pepe.
A veteran of combat, Dada did not flinch. “Your choice,” he said. “I will have a bourbon.” Dada lifted a rectangular crystal container from the back of the side bar and removed the cork. “I am not so much a practicing Muslim, really.”
“We have an idea of what’s going on,” said Cameron. “We wanted to hear it from you.”
Dada faced them and lifted his newly poured rock glass to his chest, letting the index finger of his other hand lightly surf the rim. He sighed, then said, “What is going on? I tell you, more than you can imagine.”
“The girl from the yacht,” said Pepe. “You knew we would come for her, now where is she?”
From behind Cameron and Pepe came a deep recognizable voice, “She had a lovely scream, musical.”
Cameron and Pepe spun to face each other. They and Dada were still the only three in the room. The voice had come from Pepe’s right, through an empty open door in the far corner, behind the long glass-topped dining table. They each eased back toward the walls behind them, Cameron toward the inner wall, still covering an indifferent Dada, and Pepe, backing to the outer wall, focused on the open doorway. When Pepe reached the far wall, he flashed a subtle finger gesture to Cameron to signal that his line of sight through the open door was clear. The owner of the voice within the next room of the suite was behind the wall.
“You remember Colonel Tijon,” said Dada. “You have met before.”
Cameron was bitter. “We were never properly introduced.”
“So beautiful, that one,” bellowed the voice. “Trembling and quivering.” From the adjoining room the tall bald man, dressed again in his fine white suit, crept partially into the frame of door, his head tilted to the side to make him fit. “I do not know if she had ever seen a black man so large before.”
Pepe’s lip curled, “You bastard.” His right arm shot erect, the black nylon duffel almost falling away. A rapid cascade of holes appeared in the plaster above the incredibly nimble Colonel Tijon as he dove behind the long dining table, his own submachine gun in hand.
Pepe trailed the flying white suit with another immediate burst while simultaneously Tijon sent a volley of bullets up from the floor. Assailed from two directions, the thick lead glass tabletop disintegrated. Pebble sized glass fragments sprayed the entire end of the room.
The P226 in Cameron’s hand, unable to target, hovered in an uncertain circle toward the floor behind the table, while Cameron flashed his head over to Dada, and then to Tijon again.
The MP5 extended in Pepe’s arm appeared to lead him in a march around the end of the topless table.
Cameron moved toward the table from his side of the room.
In a surreal gymnastic maneuver, Tijon launched a chair toward the MP5, using the momentum to bring himself to his feet. The MP5 dislodged from Pepe’s grip. Pepe threw his weight toward the rising man, skullcap first. They connected head to shoulder. Tijon’s height and Pepe’s girth collided, and both men spun at the opposing force.
Cameron lifted his hand to fire. In his peripheral, Dada was moving away. He spun back toward Dada, who was briskly making his move for the master bedroom.
“Hold on,” said Cameron. He bolted behind Dada, not wanting to shoot him. Dada reached the master bedroom. The door swung toward Cameron. His arm extended, Cameron lunged to catch the door, but failed. The door slammed his fingertips. He could hear the metal engage and then click inside of the frame. Cameron still attempted the latch. He thrust his shoulder into the thick solid wood. They had brought no more sticky charges.
“Cut him off, he is going out into the hall,” shouted Pepe.
Cameron spun back toward Pepe and Tijon. Fists raised, they were now trading punches. A clue Tijon was educated abroad was that he held a traditional boxing stance. His form was rigid and predictable. Pepe was trained in a variety of martial arts—Taekwondo, Kung Fu, Karate—and he was a Judo master. Pepe had an array of techniques at his disposal, and of the many, he chose to mock Tijon with the Wushu form Zui quan, that of the drunken boxer. Tijon continued to throw blows that could not
connect. Even when Tijon dared to be creative, stout Pepe easily out maneuvered him. Pepe dodged an elbow strike that cratered the sidewall, and then returned with a solid uppercut.
Pepe was faring on his own. Dada was the priority.
Cameron realized that of course Pepe was right. Dada would only have gone into the master bedroom if there were a way out, an escape route. He let his brain go calm and hurried to the hallway. The steel doors of the guest lift were already sliding shut.
* * * * *
Chapter 43
The May Fair Hotel, London, Mayfair
The large carcass outside of the Amber suite door reeked from loosened bowels. The sides of Cameron’s sport coat spread away from him as he launched over the corpse into a full run down the fourth floor corridor. He did not slow for the corner, or to mess with the guest lift, rather he burst directly through the door of the stairwell and leapt over the steps to the landing below. Cameron took more time spinning around the half flight landings than the short bounds across each set of steps.
At the lobby level, he thrust himself through the stairwell door into a calm and empty hallway. The serenity struck him hard and sent him reeling back to the near wall. He was holding a handgun in a country where he should not have one, and the cameras had only been rigged for the fourth floor. He stilled himself. He remembered stealth. Nonchalantly, Cameron straightened his posture. He slid the P226 beneath his coat and then, with a brisk and study stride, made his way toward the lobby.
The Somali Deception (Cameron Kincaid Book 2) Page 16