by Matt Rees
Touma put his hands to his head. “Wyatt, screw your sister’s cunt, you son of a whore. That fool was just playing around. He was posturing. He wasn’t going to shoot you.”
“I always did hate a show-off.” Wyatt hooked his arm around the hostage and went into the stairwell.
“How the hell am I going to get out of this, Wyatt?” Touma yelled.
“You’re a dealmaker, Marwan. You’ve still got the head of the Hezbollah military chief in Beirut there. I bet these aren’t the only Islamic State guys you know who’d look mighty kindly on the guy who killed Abu Aisha. Meanwhile, Hezbollah will want revenge, and you’ve got the bodies of the three guys who killed their boss right here. Leastways you can sell it to them that way. I think I gave you a pretty neat gift. You love to play both sides against the middle, don’t you? Knock yourself out.”
“Screw you, Wyatt.”
“You’re welcome, partner.” Wyatt went down the stairs to the Mercedes with the hostage. Before he sat him in the passenger seat, he shot off the manacles. With each report from Wyatt’s pistol, the man shuddered and whimpered.
Wyatt reversed the Mercedes down the alley and out into the main street of the camp. He pulled onto the highway toward the airport. “We’re going to stop and get you cleaned up, buddy. Then we’re going to fly out of this dump.”
“They—They—” The man doubled over and wept.
Wyatt knew the need in hostages to tell a rescuer what they had endured. He didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t need to imagine. He’d been on the receiving end more than a couple of times. Anyhow, this guy had to pull himself together quickly. “No need to explain, buddy. You’re with me now.”
“Who are you?” He still sounded scared.
“I’m Colonel Lawton Wyatt, and I was a Delta Force operative just like you, son.”
He took out his cell phone and swiped to a preprogrammed number. He dialed and held it so the man in the passenger seat could see who he had called. Tears filled the guy’s terrified eyes. He took the phone shakily from Wyatt and held it to his ear. “What do I say?”
Wyatt steered with his left hand through the weaving madness of the Beirut airport highway. With his right hand, he reached the pistol from his waistband and thrust it against the passenger’s head. “You say whatever I tell you to say. You got me?”
The man nodded. The curt voice of a woman sounded from the phone. The man’s jaw shivered, and he was unable to speak. The voice came again, asking for a response. Wyatt shoved the pistol against the man’s temple, harder.
“It’s me,” the man said. The woman’s voice on the line went silent. Through his tears, the man said, “Gina, I’m alive. Gina, baby, I’m alive.”
CHAPTER 11
The German policeman yawned and blinked at the luminous hands of the clock over the window. He stretched back in his chair. “Aren’t you hungry?” he asked.
Du An watched him from the corner of the dark office. White men never stop eating, he thought. He shook his head and turned back to the window. The parking lot outside Hall Six was empty, except for his black Jansen Trapp Insignia and the policeman’s cruiser. The production line had closed two hours ago. The workers had gone home. He picked up the desk phone.
“Who’re you calling?” The policeman was tired. Since 8 AM, he had been watching Du An do nothing much of anything except sweat. But the policeman was a German, and he had his job to do.
“The security gate.” Du An dialed.
“When the American agents arrive, the security gate will call us. They will send them straight over here. Don’t worry.” The policeman stood and adjusted his pants around his belly. “I’m hungry, even if you aren’t.” He checked his watch. “The cafeteria is closed, right?”
“There’s a vending machine at the end of the corridor.”
The policeman belched slightly. He shifted the holster to make it comfortable on his bulky hips and went out.
The security office at the front gate of the Jansen Trapp factory picked up Du An’s call. “Hi, this is Heinz again,” he said. “Yes, Chinese Heinz.”
He would have thought An was an easy enough name for these Europeans to remember, but they only stared at him when he spoke it. So like most Chinese, he took a Western name. In Germany he was Heinz.
“Okay, well, you’ll call me as soon as they arrive, right? I’m waiting.” He hung up. He touched the flat of his hand to the top of his head. The short hair, growing back from the close shave he had given it a month earlier, prickled against his palm. He brought his hand down in front of his face. He would have sworn he could see little welts on his palm, as though the hair was poisoned. He would have shaved it all away again. But that was most certainly not allowed.
Something crashed down beyond the office door. Du An jerked away from his desk, shooting on his rolling chair toward the dark corner. He heard the pop of a tab being pulled on a soda can and realized the thunderous sound was only the policeman getting a drink at the vending machine.
The air wheezed in his throat. He hadn’t drawn a relaxed inhalation since Feng Yi picked him for the project. But the last couple of days had been worse. When the warning message arrived from Su Li in New Jersey, his asthma started to crush his chest as if it knew time was running out for it to inflict pain on him. Someone was coming for them. The killing started with Gao in Detroit. That hadn’t surprised him. After all, Gao had defied them. He had changed the execution date. Du had known it as soon as he heard the squealing tires and the crushing impacts and the sirens on the streets of Rüsselsheim. It was the Dariens, he had thought. The German chancellor broke out of a summit meeting with the French president to talk of terrorism, and skinheads sprayed swastikas on the mosque near Du’s home and burned down the local Turkish kebab restaurant. But Du had known that Gao had issued his warning to the world, and killed thousands of people in doing so.
There has to be a better way. Those were the last words Du had spoken to Gao over a Skype connection to Detroit. His attempt to persuade the guilt-ridden fool to wait until they could figure out a way to stop it. To stop themselves. All the engineers had agreed that they would defy any order to activate the plan, but Gao was impatient. Perhaps he didn’t trust Su Li to go up against Beijing, or he figured Jin Ju wouldn’t risk her family. Then there was Turbo, who was completely unreliable. Gao trusted me though, Du thought. Didn’t he? Yet Gao had brandished an ultrasound photo of his unborn child in front of the webcam. “If I knew that this baby was evil, I would kill my wife and the baby. Without hesitation,” he had bellowed. Du hadn’t doubted him. General Feng made each of them crazy in their own way. Gao had simply cracked worse. Or first.
He wondered if one of the others had made a mistake, let the secret of their opposition to the crash plan slip out. Maybe that was why someone was coming after them, rubbing them out one by one, before they could betray the whole project. But General Feng needed all of them in place, inside the car companies and able to manipulate their computer networks, or the plan wouldn’t work. Unless the general had figured out a better way to make it happen.
Du had found a better way to stop it, at least, as he had promised poor Gao. Rather, a better way had found him. Thanks to the American agents, he had hope now for the first time in months. The German police had come to him in the Jansen Trapp factory just after he arrived for another day at his computer. They told him the Americans had traced Su’s message to him. The Germans would watch over him here until the Americans arrived to question him. The cops refused to let him leave the factory. They wouldn’t even take him to the police station. The Americans had insisted that he was in danger and that he should be kept secure wherever they found him. Even a few minutes on the road would be enough—that was the message the German police received from the US agents. Du didn’t ask them “enough for what.” Gao was dead, and he assumed Su was gone too. A few minutes outside the Jansen Trapp compound would be his last few minutes on earth.
He listened for the policeman’s foo
tsteps. The big man was still down the corridor by the vending machines. Du picked up his phone and dialed a number in Cologne. “Turbo, it’s Du,” he said. “The Americans contacted me. Gao’s warning worked. It got their attention. I’m going to make them protect us.”
The man on the other end of the line spoke fast and loudly. Du barely listened. Turbo seemed high, even when he wasn’t. He sounded as though he had mainlined panic and fear. “I will kill whoever comes for me,” he yelled. He made a machine-gun noise. “Say hello to my little friend. I’m going to kill you, Al Pacino.” Then he wept, calling out the names of the dead engineers.
Du heard footsteps in the hall. The policeman was coming back. “Turbo, if the Americans don’t get to me in time, you must be the one to warn our last comrade. Do you hear me, Turbo? Go to Saskia. She will help you.” He set the phone down softly.
He glanced up at his whiteboard. Saskia Hütz’s phone number was there, hidden in plain sight among all his equations and meetings scrawled across the wall. Turbo could hide out at Saskia’s environmental watchdog agency in Cologne. It was a short drive from the Wolfwagen subsidiary in Holland where Turbo worked. Saskia didn’t know what they were up to, but she was glad to have inside sources at the auto companies. They fed her leaks on the carbon dioxide emissions that she devoted her life to stemming. In return they knew they had an underground bolt-hole when they needed it. Du stood quickly and rubbed Saskia’s name away. He cleared the entire whiteboard. Just in case.
In case the Americans didn’t get to him first.
The phone trilled. The sudden noise in the silence made Du jump. He wasn’t used to the quiet. Throughout the day, the production line buzzed and rumbled beneath him. He snatched the handset to his ear. “This is Heinz.” He listened. “Thank you. Yes, I am waiting for them.”
He went to the window. The moonlight glimmered on the rippling surface of the wide Main, flowing to the Rhine. The Americans had arrived to protect him. He smiled with relief. They could put him in an orange jumpsuit and waterboard him for all he cared. They weren’t about to kill him. He would tell them everything, and they would stop it all from happening.
The front gate was a three-minute drive, unless they took a wrong turn between the identical green-roofed factory buildings. His mouth was dry. Someone moved in the parking lot. He stared at the motion, squinting and blinking. It was just a cat. He puffed out his cheeks in relief.
He went to the door and opened it. He leaned into the corridor to alert the policeman to the arrival of the Americans.
At the end of the corridor, a man was bent over the prone body of the German cop, his back to Du. He straightened up at the sound of the door moving on its hinges.
Du ran to the other end of the corridor and scrambled out onto the gantry overlooking the factory floor.
The killer’s footsteps approached behind him.
Du backed away, tripping to the far corner of the platform.
The man came out onto the gantry. He raised his head and smiled cruelly. His skin was ridged and scaled like a crocodile’s hide. Du An opened his mouth to scream.
CHAPTER 12
The security guard glided the shuttle to a halt in the parking lot outside the Jansen Trapp factory. The complex was enormous. It seemed to take an age to get from the gate to the building where Du An waited for them. The driver had the radio on a German news station. It rounded up the news on the crash. The House majority leader in DC wanted the president to act against the terrorists with a strike against areas of Syria controlled by Islamic State. As if there were only one terrorist group in the world. The White House response was that the terrorist plot was still under investigation and it was too early to act. But Verrazzano knew that the politicians wouldn’t be able to wait long, and when they pushed the button, it would be guys like him who would end up either dead or with a conscience bad enough to blight the rest of their lives.
He stepped out of the bus beside a parked police car and a lonely sedan he assumed must belong to Du. Dull orange lights glimmered over the lot. The factory and the offices built along the edge of its roof were dark. On the tarmac, Jahn stretched and groaned. Verrazzano felt a sudden chill in the summer air off the river.
From inside the factory, there was a loud buzz and three electronic warning bleats. Then the quiet night gave itself up to the rattling thunder of machinery. “What’s that?” Jahn said.
The security guard frowned. “The production line has been turned on. That is not right. It was shut down already.”
“It’s a cover for something,” Jahn said. “Something noisy. Like a killing.”
“The Krokodil is here.” Verrazzano charged toward the door. He drew his H&K. Jahn cursed and followed.
The entrance to the factory was dark and the door was locked. Gunfire sounded above, three single shots. The security guard fumbled at the keypad.
“Open the goddamned door,” Jahn shouted.
The guard got the right number into the keypad and stepped back to let the Americans through.
Verrazzano opened the door. The handle was grubby from contact with the oil-stained hands of thousands of workers. In the massive, dark hall he glimpsed the movement of the robotic arms and the crane gantry up by the roof.
The security guard activated the lights. They flickered a moment and then lit up the confusion of the assembly line. Immediately above them, unpainted car bodies glided past on the roof-mounted crane. Across the shiny gray floor of antislip epoxy, the crane dipped the sections down into the paint pools.
“Turn off the production line,” Verrazzano told the security guard.
The guard stared at the button board mounted on the wall and waved his arms to show that he was confounded by it.
Jahn’s cell phone trilled. She glanced at the screen and rejected the call. “Du An?” she called out. “Do you hear me, Du An?”
Feet stumbled on the observation gantry above them. A Chinese man stood outside the offices. It was the spot where a boss would survey his workers. But there was no command in the Chinese man’s features. His face glinted with sweat.
“Du An, I’m a US agent,” Verrazzano called. “We’re here to help you.”
“He’s here.” Du An climbed onto the railing over the factory floor. “I can’t let him have me.”
Jahn’s phone rang again. She muttered a curse and rejected the call once more.
“Where, Mister Du? Where is he?” Verrazzano walked carefully toward the metal steps that led to the office platform. “I’m coming up to you now, Mister Du. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Du was poised, ready to jump. “Whatever happens, he mustn’t get me alive. I’m a dead man. There’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t help me, and you can’t help the rest of them.”
“The rest of who?” Verrazzano was halfway up the steps.
“The Happy Five we called ourselves. Now there’s only three. Soon—” He pointed at his chest. “Soon just two.”
“Two computer engineers?”
Du looked along the platform, searching for the killer. Verrazzano reached the platform. “He doesn’t need us alive,” Du said. “It’s easier for him this way.”
“Easier for who, Mister Du?”
Jahn’s phone sounded once again. This time she accepted the call. “Maybe it’s something,” she muttered. She put the phone to her ear.
“Who’s he?” Verrazzano spoke quietly. Du was spooked already, scared enough to climb up where he could throw himself to his death before the man with the crocodile skin might reach him. “Why are they trying to kill you?”
“We were supposed to do the job for him. But something has gone wrong. Someone else got involved. I don’t know why.”
“What were you supposed to do?”
“Now they’re silencing us. One by one. You have to find the others. Save them.”
Jahn hung up, shaking her head. She walked quickly to the stairs and started coming up behind Verrazzano.
“I’m going t
o find them, Mister Du,” Verrazzano said. “Tell me who your friends are and where, and I promise I will get to them first. But what were you supposed to do?”
The overhead crane clanked and jarred. Du frowned at it. Then he looked back to Verrazzano. “Every car sold in the last year. Every one of them will accelerate. Hundreds of thousands of people will die. Unless you find my friends.”
Jahn mounted the stairs. She came level with Verrazzano. “We’ve got to get into cover. Mister Du, come with me now.”
“It’s okay.” Verrazzano glanced toward her. Jahn’s impatience could spook the engineer enough to make him jump. “I’ve got this.”
“You’re taking too long. We’ve got to move. Mister Du, come on now.”
Du seemed to notice Jahn for the first time. He backed away. “Who are you?”
“Gina, go wait down below,” Verrazzano said.
Jahn shoved past him. “Du An, come with me right now.”
Du got down from his suicide perch on the railing and stumbled away from her to the end of the platform. He looked about him for an escape.
“Gina, do not approach,” Verrazzano called.
She turned on him. “You don’t know what you’re doing. Did you not hear what he just said? This thing is huge. We have to get this guy into—”
Verrazzano saw a flash of raddled skin under the steel body of a sedan passing along the elevated robotic line under the ceiling. He bellowed at Jahn, “Down.”
A man in gray camouflage dropped out of the swinging car body, holding on by his knees like an acrobat on a trapeze. His face was a mass of peeling, scabbing crusts and welts. The Krokodil addict. He thrust down and, with two slices of his knife, he cut through the Chinese man’s throat and, as the crane carried him away, sheared off his scalp.
Verrazzano pushed by Jahn to get off a shot, but the crane had taken the Krokodil around a bend in the assembly line. The assassin lifted himself back inside the car body.