by Mark Greaney
The three security men took up watches in different parts of the sprawling office, leaving Sauvage and Medina effectively alone together.
Bianca recognized this as an opportunity, and after several minutes to ensure no one was close enough to listen in, she looked over to the French police officer. “I’ve been sitting with you in a van for over a day, and you’ve barely said a word.”
Sauvage seemed surprised that the woman spoke to him at all. He shifted in his chair uncomfortably. “I don’t have much to say.”
“How do you fit into all this?”
Again Sauvage shuffled in discomfort. “I’m just happy you have been rescued, madame.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“No? Well then . . . if you must know the truth, just as you were a captive in Paris, I am a captive now. Drexler has involved me in all this, and I came along unknowingly, until it reached a point when I could no longer walk away.”
Bianca said, “I am sorry.”
Sauvage looked at the woman a long time. Bianca smiled at him a little, and he looked away. “You shouldn’t be sorry. This isn’t your fault. It’s mine.”
Bianca checked the Mukhabarat officers on the other side of the room to ensure they couldn’t hear her. Then she said, “This European. Monsieur Drexler. He wants me dead, doesn’t he?”
Sauvage looked down at the floor. “Why would you think that?”
She didn’t answer him. “And since you just admitted he was the one who got you involved in this, I guess that means you want me dead, as well.”
Now Sauvage looked up to her. “No. Of course not. I haven’t wanted anything that’s happened in all this. I just wanted . . . I wanted money for a vacation house in Nice, for my kids’ university days.” He shrugged and sighed. “And a little more. A lot more, I guess. I was a fool, but I am not a murderer.”
“What is your first name?” she asked.
He looked at her again, nervously now. “Why does it matter?”
“Because I would like to know.”
“It’s Henri.”
“Perhaps, Henri, you and I can help each other.”
Sauvage looked away once more, out the window and towards the harbor. He stood up, ready to move farther away in the office. “Je suis désolé.” I’m sorry.
“Attendre!” Wait! “Listen to me. I see good in you, Henri. You are not like the others. I know you don’t want to have anything to do with this.”
Henri shifted on his feet now, kept looking out the window, but he did not walk away.
Bianca said, “You must ask yourself why you are here.”
“I am helping them get you to safety in Syria. Since I am a police officer, I have credentials they need in case—”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You must know they have you along for another reason, and when they are done with you, Drexler will kill you. Think about everything you know about what’s going on here. Why would men like Drexler and Malik allow a man with that knowledge to return home? Ever.”
Sauvage sat back down slowly. Soon he put his face in his hands.
Bianca said, “Non! You must remain strong. We must help each other if either of us is to survive.”
“How are we to survive?”
“That depends.”
“Depends on what?” Sauvage asked.
The Spanish woman looked him over a long time. “On whether you are brave enough to fight for your life.”
CHAPTER 68
Court Gentry wore a threadbare gray T-shirt with a black track jacket zipped over it, brown cotton pants, and tennis shoes. He’d gotten the clothes from FSA fighters here at the outpost in the hills, and with these clothes he looked just like most anyone else here, even though word had spread around the camp about the new visitor.
He donned a chest rig that carried his AK magazines, but no body armor. Few of the guys in the FSA had plates, so he’d opted to go without himself in case he was spotted by someone close enough to notice he wasn’t outfitted like the others.
He’d taken the dressing off his head; the fourteen stitches over his ear were holding, and the wound wasn’t visible through his hair without really looking for it.
He went through his gear one last time before departing. He had a large backpack full of equipment, food, and water on the ground next to him, a worn Beretta M9 pistol in good working condition, and an AK-47 with iron sights and a folding wire stock. He wore the pistol on his belt, and the AK lay on the ground next to his pack.
All this he considered extra equipment, because his main weapon for this mission lay cradled on a cushioned case in front of him. It was a McMillan TAC-50, a fifty-seven-inch rifle that fired the .50 caliber Browning machine-gun round.
Court didn’t know the TAC-50 at all, but he’d hit living targets in the field at over one mile distance with fifty-cal sniper rifles, and he’d spent the last half hour with the Terp and the FSA sniper who operated the gun to ask specific questions about the weapon and the scope attached to it so he’d know how to best employ it when the time came. He’d been given a laser range finder and notes on the ammunition, the air density in the region, and other relevant data that would make it possible for him to hit a one- to one-and-a-half-mile shot.
He zipped up the camel case, slid three ten-round box magazines into pouches on the outside of it, and slung it over his back on the right side, slinging his other pack over his left shoulder.
The AK he carried in his hand, and then he struggled forward to the pickup truck waiting for him at the edge of the camp.
Captain Robby Anderson met the American a few yards from the waiting vehicle, already loaded with the five Syrians. The vehicle would take the sniper, the Terp, and the two-man recoil-less rifle team to a spot in the desert a few miles from Palmyra, and then the Terp and the American would go on alone to the northwest, and the Carl Gustaf team would head due north. The technical driver and the machine gunner in the cab would return to base, while the four men on foot would spend the nighttime hours doing their best to remain undetected as they infiltrated the security cordon to get as close as possible to where their target was due to arrive the next day.
Court shook Anderson’s hand, and the younger man said, “Good luck, Slick. If this works, you’re gonna be famous.”
“If I become famous, a black helicopter is going to land right here and pick you up for a conversation.”
Robby nodded at this. “My lips are sealed. Same as the other guys. I just mean . . . if you actually do it, you will be making a hell of a difference around here.”
Court looked out over the hills and down to the desert in the distance. “Who knows?” He gave a nod to the other Green Berets standing near buildings higher on the hill, then turned to leave.
“Any chance you’ll tell me your name? I’d look you up back in the States. Maybe we could grab a beer.”
Court smiled. “Let’s keep this a one-night stand. Trust me, you won’t respect me in the morning, anyway.”
Court slapped the younger man on the shoulder good-naturedly, then began lumbering down the hill towards the pickups.
* * *
• • •
The stranger Robby called “Slick” had climbed into the technical, and the vehicle had just begun to roll out behind the others, when Danny walked up to Robby. Both men watched the FSA truck disappear around a bend in the hills.
Danny said, “I hate to state the obvious. But that dude is a dead man.”
Robby shrugged. “Yeah, probably. But can you think of a better way to go?”
“Got me there, Captain. You think he understands this is a suicide mission?”
“I think that man understands the odds, and understands what’s at stake. He figures his life is a worthy trade for a shot at taking down a monster.”
The two men turned and began walking along a s
witchback that climbed up the hill. They’d have to heighten their defenses for the next couple of days, because if the FSA technical was caught in the open and any survivors were taken, it was a good bet someone would come looking for their tiny outpost in the desert hills.
* * *
• • •
Court sat in the bed of the Toyota Hilux pickup with the Terp next to him. Both men had handheld radios with earpieces, and these had also been given to the Carl Gustaf crew and the driver of the vehicle. All four men spoke through the back window to the driver about their route as they picked their way across the rough ground. The Terp had a good map of Palmyra, so he and Court could make even more detailed plans about the ingress phase of their operation.
The Terp knew of a tunnel Daesh fighters had used when they owned this territory a year earlier. According to the young interpreter, the tunnel attached to the sewer system in Palmyra, and it extended outside the city to the south, connecting with an irrigation canal there that had brought water to farms ringing this ancient city out in the middle of the desert.
The Terp asked the other men in the technical while they traveled, but none of them knew if the sewer system or the pipes that ran into the fields had been damaged, destroyed, or filled in. Still, Court decided heading to the farmland south of the city seemed like it might be the best way to get a couple of men close to and then inside the city itself without being seen.
* * *
• • •
After three hours driving across open desert, Court and the Terp’s technical stopped in a deep channel created in a wide alluvial fan. All four men on the operation climbed off the truck, grabbed their gear, and took a reading with both the GPS on Court’s watch and a compass. By their calculations, Court and the Terp had three hours’ walking ahead of them to reach the farmland, and from there it would take another one to two hours to get into the city of Palmyra itself.
Court said, “Five hours carrying gear and hoofing it, kid. Can you do it?”
“Of course. Can you?”
Yusuf and Khadir had just as much equipment, but their walk would be shorter, because they would find a hide sight on the eastern side of the supposed Russian base.
Court and the Terp said good-bye and good luck to the others, then headed off to the northwest across the alluvial fan, towards a point in the distance they could not yet make out. Khadir and Yusuf heaved their heavy equipment on their backs and went north, planning on finding a layup position as close to the area as possible without compromising themselves.
CHAPTER 69
The dishes were piled one upon the other. There was the breakfast egg soufflé dish, then the lunch croque monsieur dish, and now Vincent Voland placed the green salad and onion soup dishes on top of the rest.
Voland had purchased all three of the day’s meals at the café downstairs from his office, and he had devoured all three of the day’s meals at his desk. Now that it was seven p.m., the thought occurred to him that he should clean up his mess lest the rats he often heard in the attic above him find the courage to risk coming down into his office in search of the source of the scents.
Just as he rubbed his eyes, breaking the staring contest with his monitors so he could get up to go wash his dishes and return them downstairs, an automatic e-mail popped up on his screen. It was a potential facial recognition hit on Drexler’s image.
He’d received a half dozen of these so far this afternoon, and none had played out, but he still felt the tingles of anticipation as he blew up the file and the picture loaded on his screen.
He looked at the picture carefully to orient himself, and then he rubbed his eyes again, possibly for the hundredth time of the day.
A group of people walked along a sidewalk in front of the window of some sort of shop. The camera that took the image was apparently positioned across the street, but it was a small road, and the light was perfect for photography.
Voland zoomed in on the people, and the software cleaned up the resolution.
“Mon dieu,” he said. The man in the tan sport coat with blond hair was Drexler, no question in Voland’s mind. Next to him was Malik, and next to him was an unknown man of Western appearance. Behind them were three dark-complected and dark-haired men, close enough to where Voland could tell they were all together.
And there, right in the middle of the entire entourage of men, was a tall and thin woman with long black hair.
He zoomed on her. Bianca Medina looked even more tired and fraught than she had the last time he saw her, but she was very much alive. He had no idea how he could have missed her leaving with the Syrians the other night on the driveway, but he was elated that she had not been killed.
Voland’s hands shook as he clicked the file to read the details. The image came from a camera at a travel agency on Kastoros Street near the Port of Piraeus, the location where the cargo ship caught smuggling into Syria had picked up its contraband nearly a year earlier.
He went online; his hands still trembled with excitement, and he found a nonstop Aegean Air flight from Charles de Gaulle leaving in an hour and a half. Flight time to Athens was three hours, fifteen minutes, and before Voland had even checked what time the flight was due to touch down in Greece, he was out the door of his office, with phone, briefcase, and passport in hand.
He had contacts in Athens he could call, and he could get them to canvass that area around the port. If Drexler and Malik had not left with Bianca for Syria already, then he would damn well know about it when they did try to leave.
CHAPTER 70
Court and the Syrian known as the Terp thought it would take three hours to make it across the strip of desert and into the farmland just south of the city, but five hours after setting off on foot, they still hadn’t arrived.
They had a lot of good excuses for their slow advance: rolling Syrian Arab Army patrols to the southeast of the city; small temporary outposts; BMPs and trucks, and even a T-72 tank sandbagged out in the desert with an entire platoon of infantry encamped around it.
Upon seeing the T-72 the Terp admitted he’d never run into that sort of defensive setup before, and this just gave Court more reason to believe Azzam would show up near the airfield the next day.
The mobile patrols were sporadic, but even these, the Syrian said, were more prevalent than he’d seen in the area, especially this far away from population centers. The two men had to go to ground several times while vehicles passed, but with the wide expanse of desert around them, it was difficult for anyone with a light on their vehicle to sneak up on two men on foot, so Court and the Terp managed to remain undetected.
After dealing with the tank and the patrols, they spent a half hour lying flat in a low wash as a pair of Mi-24 attack helicopters circled high overhead. The FSA soldier couldn’t tell if the helos were Syrian or Russian—both nations used the Russian-made Mi-24—but Court worried the Russians might have thermal equipment on board that would make them easier to see if they were up and moving around, so they remained small, flat, and still.
After the helos moved back to the north, the men climbed back to their feet, reorganized all the gear on their bodies that had been displaced when they hit the deck, and began walking again.
It was past midnight when they entered the trees and farmland just south of the city. It was like an oasis to Court; the air smelled better, the cool of the night felt better with the moisture off the plant life.
But more than anything, the chickpea and lentil fields, and the rows of trees that grew alongside them, made it easier to move without too much worry of long-range spotters in the city seeing them approach.
They arrived at the irrigation canal and found the tunnel supposedly dug by ISIS when they were under siege by the SAA.
Court shined a tactical flashlight into the hole, and even though the beam stretched out for a hundred yards, it still ended in blackness. “How far till the tunnel
attaches to the sewer?”
The Terp admitted he had no idea.
“I thought you said you knew this town.”
“Even when we were fighting here, we didn’t live in the sewer. Once we get into the city, I’ll show you what I know about the area, but this part right here . . . I don’t know. It looks tight. Maybe we should just stay above ground.”
Court shook his head. “We’ll just take it slow, turn around if it gets too tight.”
Court went first and began crawling through the tunnel with his small tactical flashlight in his mouth.
* * *
• • •
The two men spent a miserable, arduous, backbreaking hour below ground, but when Court and the Terp finally did find a place to climb back to the surface, it was easier than he’d expected. Court had envisioned a heavy manhole cover that would have to be pushed away, or rusty metal bars of a storm drain that would have to be prized apart, but instead the men simply climbed up on a pile of rebar and concrete rubble where an aerial bomb had impacted the street above the sewer line, and they emerged into a darkened neighborhood of seemingly abandoned buildings.
There was no light or movement on this street, and at first the Terp did not know where he was, but when he climbed totally out of the sewer and struggled with his cramped muscles and heavy equipment to move down to a nearby intersection to look for street signs, Court could barely make out that the young man was waving him forward.
When Court showed up a minute later, encumbered by his own various weapons and packs, the young man took him over to the stoop of a ruined building to sit down.
The Syrian man said, “Okay, I know where we are. Not far from the eastern edge of town.”
“Good.”
“There will be SAA patrols, but no one else will be outside. Better we use rat holes to move, so no one sees us on the street.”