The Jericho Pact

by Rachel Lee

“Ja,” Leutnant Bräuburger said. “Yes. But we have our orders.”

  The platoon leader was nearly as angry as Neufel was. Schulingen’s death had shaken both of them. While it had been Bräuburger’s duty as an officer to write a letter of condolence to the family, he had turned to Neufel for help in drafting it. Neufel, in turn, had asked the other men in his crew to add a few words. Yet they all knew that not even their combined efforts could frame an adequate tribute to a lost comrade and son.

  Neufel had a new loader, a man named Schiffer who, until the day before, had been cooking in the battalion mess. Neufel had no doubt that Schiffer was a better cook than he was a tank loader, for he could not be worse. If Bräuburger’s information was correct, Schiffer’s former tank commander had worked at great length to get the young private out of his tank and into the mess tent. Neufel could well understand why.

  It was not that Schiffer was incompetent. He could perform the task of loading the tank’s twelve-centimeter cannon adequately when he felt motivated to do so. But to motivate young Schiffer was a task that would have frustrated Job. The fact that he was replacing a man who had been killed in combat seemed to lend no sense of urgency to his actions. Quite simply, Otto Schiffer did not want to be a soldier, and he did everything within his power to avoid his duties.

  “He will get us killed,” Neufel said.

  “Who?” Bräuburger asked.

  Neufel realized he had begun speaking in the middle of a thought, as if his lieutenant could follow the thought with no need of context. It was the kind of mental error he had made increasingly often in the past two days.

  “Schiffer,” Neufel said. “He does not belong in the army.”

  “Perhaps not,” Bräuburger said. “But Schulingen’s ghost still sits in your loader’s seat.”

  “Ja,” Neufel said.

  Perhaps that was it. His crew and Bräuburger’s had gone into combat together. Men with whom he had once joked now had the hard eyes of men who knew what it was to kill and to see one of their own killed. The other tankers in the platoon looked at them differently, almost with a kind of reverence. In those few terrifying hours, Neufel’s and Bräuburger’s crews became the alte Hasen, the old hares, men who had been where the rest had not. How could Neufel expect Schiffer to fit in immediately?

  And yet there would be no time for Schiffer to ease his way into the crew. In hours, perhaps, they would be in combat again. Would Schiffer do his duty? Or would he pause for the critical second that would mean death for Neufel and the others?

  “Why are we waiting?” Neufel asked, looking down at the French pontoon bridges. “Do they think it will be easier to fight the French on this side of the Kinzig?”

  Bräuburger looked at him, his eyes hard, his face unyielding. “It would be better to spend your time training Schiffer rather than asking questions for which there are no answers.”

  “Ja, Herr Leutnant,” Neufel said.

  Bräuburger climbed off of Neufel’s tank. As he began to walk back to his own position, he turned. “And, Hans, try to get some sleep.”

  As if that were possible, Neufel thought. He would sleep when he was dead.

  Göschenen, Switzerland

  Renate looked out between the pilots as the Alps swept past the helicopter. Despite the headphones, the noise in the helicopter was almost deafening. “How much longer to Mulhouse?” she yelled.

  “Forty minutes,” one of the pilots replied.

  Forty minutes. She looked at her watch. They had fifteen hours left. Every second seemed to pass in slow motion. During their stop at Aviano, the U.S. Air Force briefing officer had told them that the French had finished bridging the Kinzig River east of Kehl. They would surely try to begin the crossing tonight.

  She wondered if they were already too late. Surely no one could expect the Germans to hold their fire all night and all day tomorrow as the French infiltrated their positions. The Bundeswehr was disciplined, but there was a limit to discipline. Her helicopter and the two beside it were racing against that limit.

  At least the operation had gone smoothly thus far.

  The thought had no sooner crossed her mind than she saw a red light begin to blink on the cockpit panel. “What is that?”

  “Oil temperature warning,” the pilot said.

  “Is it serious?” she yelled.

  “We should make it to Mulhouse,” he said.

  Should? Renate bit her lip, picturing the maps on the wall back in Rome. They were over neutral territory, and so far as she knew, they had not secured overflight rights for this operation. Putting down between here and Germany could get very awkward. Questions would be asked, not only of the pilots but also of Renate and Lawton. Questions neither of them could answer.

  “We must make it to Germany,” Renate said.

  The pilot nodded. “Then maybe you should let me focus on flying, ma’am.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  She changed back to the rear bench, where Lawton was holding his seat belt with both hands, his knuckles white. The pain on his face was evident whenever the helicopter banked to follow the twisting Alpine passes.

  “Are you hurting?” she asked.

  “I’ll live,” he said. “I just hate helicopters.”

  “You shouldn’t have come. I can do this part alone.”

  He shook his head. “I need to be in Mulhouse.”

  That was as much as they could say here, where the helicopter crew could overhear. The rest—the next mission that Jefe had given her, a mission she both loathed and needed in a way that made her hate herself—was restricted information. Office 119 only.

  So far as the others knew, she was riding along to begin the interrogation of Vasquez. She would begin it on the return flight to Mulhouse and pass the information they gained on to Steve Lorenzo’s contact at the Vatican.

  And she and Lawton would do that—first.

  But they would not be returning to Italy with the rest of the task force. The rest of their mission awaited in Paris. Jefe’s sources had confirmed that Michel Sedan had betrayed Margarite, and that betrayal had led to the attack on Office 119 and her death.

  She tried to pry one of Lawton’s hands from the seat belt, but his fingers were clenched tight. She forced a smile. “The pilot said we should make it to Mulhouse.”

  “He said should,” Lawton replied. “I don’t like that should part.”

  “They’re excellent pilots,” Renate said.

  Lawton nodded. “I’m sure they are. And it’s a good aircraft. And blah, blah, blah. I still don’t like that should part.”

  “You are a strange man,” she said. “I would not have thought you were afraid of flying.”

  “I don’t mind flying,” he said. “It’s crashing that scares me. Helicopters do that way too often.”

  “Yet you will chase down a man who throws a bomb, or fling yourself at an assassin with a pistol.”

  “Can do,” he said, smiling weakly. “So long as they’re on the ground.”

  Renate laughed.

  “And listen,” he added. “When we get there, we don’t do anything extra. It’s just another mission.”

  Just another mission. No, it was more than that.

  She was going to commit cold-blooded murder.

  She would pay her debt to Margarite. In full.

  37

  Strasbourg, France

  R enate tried not to think about her lurching stomach as the helicopter rose and dipped and banked its way into Strasbourg after leaving Mulhouse. They were flying NOE—nap of the earth—less than one hundred feet off the ground and well below the coverage of French radar. Because of that, every hill, tall tree or building was an obstacle to be avoided or, if that was impossible, to be hopped over and then ducked behind.

  She looked at the special ops team around her, all dressed in dark street clothes: blue jeans, dark sweaters looking bulky over body armor, knit caps now turned down into balaclavas and black poly-cotton gloves. They wore no dog
tags and carried false French identification papers. All spoke fluent French. If anything went wrong, they could vanish into France and make their separate ways back to Italy without anyone ever knowing that the United States military had made an armed incursion into an ostensibly allied nation’s territory.

  And armed they were, with Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine guns, flash-bang grenades and black ceramic combat knives honed so sharp they could slice through human flesh as if it were water. More than that, they were armed with finely tuned combat instincts, born of exacting training and perfected over dozens of covert missions around the world.

  The pilots, who served exclusively with the special operations teams, were equally at home with the difficult task of ducking along river valleys at two hundred knots, watching the terrain flicker past through the pale green glow of night-vision goggles.

  Apart from having to leave one helicopter at Mulhouse due to mechanical problems—and they had planned to bring only two helicopters to Strasbourg regardless—it had been a seamless operation.

  So far.

  Tension drew every muscle of her body taught just short of cramps. Her heart raced hard enough for her to feel its rapid beating in her chest. Her palms sweated as if the day were tropical, and her stomach was a knot.

  The helicopter seemed to stand on its side as it rocketed into a tight turn, and Renate felt her stomach roll again. The men around her seemed calm and relaxed, as if this were just another training mission in Georgia or California. She wondered if that seeming relaxation was real or feigned. The only clue came from eyes that flicked over the city like the eyes of hawks, searching out danger, searching out prey.

  “Two minutes to target,” the pilot announced.

  The target. A rooftop among thousands of similar rooftops. Glancing out the window beside her, Renate wondered how they would ever be able to find the right one. A sea of rooftops filled Strasbourg and its environs. True to his word, Jefe had provided them with photographs of the roof they sought, both as seen from neighboring buildings and from high above in satellite images that were available on public web sites. But looking out, Renate had no idea how the pilots could pick that one rooftop out of the maze below them.

  “Thirty seconds. Ropes at standby,” the pilot said.

  The two men of the Black Hawk’s cabin crew stood, their torso harnesses hitched to safety lines, their legs flexing to absorb the pitch and roll of the aircraft, and secured the ends of two-inch-thick black nylon ropes to the booms that extended out above the helicopter’s side doors. The rest of the ropes lay coiled at the crewmen’s feet like sleeping serpents, almost invisible in the darkness.

  Suddenly the helicopter flared, its nose rising, its engines straining against inertia as it came to a halt in midair. Renate felt as if she were going to fly out of her seat and gripped the restraining strap. The men, however, simply leaned into the g-force, moving their weight onto the balls of their booted feet.

  “Ropes out!” the pilot called.

  “Ropes out!” the two crewmen answered in unison, flinging the heavy coils out the doors.

  In moments the ropes seemed to dance under the tension of their own weight. The six assaulters were already on their feet, in two lines of three.

  “Go! Go! Go!” the crew chiefs yelled, signaling out and downward with their hands.

  The second “Go!” command had not left their lips before the first of the assault team grasped the ropes tightly in their gloves, clamping them between their boots, and disappeared into the night. Six seconds later, the last of the team had left the aircraft.

  The crewmen released the ropes from the booms, and then they, too, dropped onto the rooftop below. The pilot pulled pitch, and the massive Black Hawk reared away, throwing Renate back into her seat. She keyed her radio mike.

  “Adder is on the ground.”

  Five blocks north, over the Parc de l’Orangerie, Steve heard the radio call. He glanced at his crew chief, who nodded confirmation. The primary strike team had begun its assault. Now his helicopter turned into the park, dropping quickly, then slowing in the instant before he felt the shudder of the skids impacting the ground.

  Despite the preflight briefing and the reminders during the half-hour flight from Freiburg to Strasbourg, Steve hesitated for a moment. But Miguel was already up and reaching for the buckle of Steve’s harness.

  “Vamanos, Padre,” Miguel said. Let’s go.

  The rotor wash was both deafening and disorienting, and Steve let Miguel guide him away from the helicopter alongside their two companions from Saif Alsharaawi. Steve had objected to their presence, but they had insisted on participating in the operation. Now, on the ground, preparing for a kind of activity he had never undertaken before, he was glad to have them along.

  “We will stay in the woods as we cross the park,” Miguel said. “But we must move quickly.”

  Despite the friendly lights along pedestrian paths, the woods were dark, nearly dark enough to cast Steve back into the mountainous jungles of Guatemala and the terrifying memory of being hunted. Seconds stretched to eternity as his heart hammered loudly. His feet knew an aching desire to glue themselves to the ground, but Miguel’s hand on his arm prevented him from showing cowardice.

  Shortly, however, saliva returned to his mouth and his feet moved more easily. He had a job to do, as important a job as any he had ever done as a priest. Fearing death was hardly cowardice, but it was certainly a waste of energy.

  Death inevitably came, and beyond it lay union with God. If tonight carried him into the arms of his savior, he could count himself a lucky man.

  But first the job. First the pyramid.

  His step grew surer as he darted along with his companions, staying in shadow as much as possible, stopping abruptly at each noise. As each sound was identified and determined not to be a threat, they dashed again, feet silent on soft grass, toward the building where Soult presided over the mess he had created.

  A flicker of anger lit in Steve’s stomach, burning hotter with each step. While his eyes remained attentive to the world around him, his mind served up a repulsive smorgasbord of recent events, of removal trains, of the Nice massacre, of the wounded and dead at the European Bridge, many his fellow believers.

  Abomination, he thought, the anger surging through his muscles. Abomination.

  With his final breath, he would fight it.

  Sixty seconds, Major Peter Conrad thought, watching his men affix their rappelling ropes to the parapet of the rooftop. The noise and vibration of the Black Hawk’s rotor wash must have roused everyone in the building, but they would have awakened in a state of shock and confusion. The goal was to make entry and seize the target before he could recover his senses. Sixty seconds.

  The Black Hawk was rearing away above, its huge engines straining, adding to the vibration, making the rooftop a swirl of dust and deafening noise. Like his men, Conrad had long been inured to that effect. They had done this countless times, until the brutal, hellish combination of shrieking wind, biting sand and thundering noise was simply their normal operating environment.

  His own rope fixed, Conrad gave the signal to his men, and they kicked out over the side of the building, quickly dropping the eight feet that placed them immediately above the windows of Vasquez’s apartment. Leaning back into his rappelling harness, he pulled a flash-bang grenade from his belt and tore the pin free.

  Two of his men had done the same, and now, in unison, they reached their arms back and hurled the grenades down and through the windows, the shattering of glass quickly lost in the ear-popping cracks and blinding blue-white flashes of the trio of explosions.

  Moving as one, the six men again kicked away from the wall, dropping only five feet this time, arching backward in their harnesses, feet together, knees flexed, and letting gravity and the pendulum effect of the rappelling ropes propel them through the windows, eyes closing at the moment of impact and then opening an instant later when they were clear of the glass.

&nbs
p; Conrad pulled the quick-release on his harness and curled his body forward as he passed through the window, letting his legs fold under the impact with the floor of the apartment, rolling smoothly in a somersault that bowled over a small side table and left him on his feet, hands already clutching the grip of his machine pistol and turning it to follow his line of sight.

  He had entered the dining room, exactly as planned, and he now looked down as the terrified face of Hector Vasquez briefly poked above the corner of the dining table. Conrad placed his left foot against the table and pushed through it with his entire body weight, toppling it and driving it across the floor, revealing his quarry.

  “Haut les mains!” Conrad bellowed. Hands up!

  Vasquez seemed to ponder the command for an instant before his eyes fixed on the barrel of Conrad’s MP-5. He lowered his head, arms up, and Conrad moved in from the side, grasping Vasquez’s right hand with his left, then driving his boot into Vasquez’s shoulder, taking him to the floor with his twisted arm up behind him. Instinctively, Vasquez fought against the pain, and Conrad seized the man’s thumb and twisted it over and behind his wrist, adding to the tension, as his boot slid up to the side of the Vasquez’s neck.

  “Ne resiste pas ou je vais vous blesser!” Conrad yelled. Do not resist or I will hurt you!

  The combination of noise, aggression, pain and a clear command cowed Vasquez, and Conrad felt him go limp. Conrad twisted the man’s hand into the small of his back, folding a thigh around it to secure it, then grasped the other hand and brought it back, as well. In less time than he needed to think through the maneuver, he drew a nylon flex cuff from his belt and encircled Vasquez’s wrists, pulling the end, hearing the harsh zip as the metal tooth passed over the grooves of the nylon, holding it tight in the man’s skin.

  As he drew a black woolen capture hood from his belt and prepared to pull it over Vasquez’s head, he saw movement in the doorway. He looked up just as a man raised a pistol and aimed it, not at him, but at Vasquez.

  “Door! Door! Door!” Conrad shouted, but the man beside him had already reacted.