by Mark Greaney
“What will you do when the war is over?”
The young man gave Court a strange look. “When the war is over I will be dead.”
Court glanced at him a moment, then crawled back to his rifle’s scope to scan the Russian base. “You don’t think you’ll live through this?”
“No. I will die Shahid. You call it . . . a martyr.”
Court just sighed, and the Terp heard the noise.
“You don’t want to be Shahid?”
“I’ll let some dumb son of a bitch on the other side be a Shahid.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Patton,” Court said. “General Patton. That was his line. Well . . . sort of.”
This did nothing to rectify the young Syrian’s confusion. “Who is that?”
“I’m just saying . . . that if you go into a war ready to die, then you’re probably going to die. And if you die, then the other side wins.”
“Of course, but I know that Allah can take me at any time.”
Court took his eye out of the scope and looked at the Syrian. “You think you could ask him to wait till I’m done with you?”
The young man smiled. “It . . . it does not work that way.”
“You guys talk five times a day and you don’t get to ask him for stuff?”
The Terp laughed. “You are a Kuffar. A nonbeliever.”
Court shrugged. “A nonbeliever thinks they have all the answers. That’s not me. I don’t know what’s out there beyond my ability to see. All I know is that I don’t know, and I do know that a hell of a lot of people in this world are dead set on killing each other over stuff they seem so damn sure of.”
“Yes, my country has been crying blood for a long time. My friend, we share the same destiny. You and I are going to die like everyone else.”
Court scanned to the south again, at the airport. There were no fixed-wing aircraft in sight, which he found interesting. He said, “I don’t plan on dying till I kill at least one more asshole.”
“Azzam?”
“Can you think of a bigger asshole around here?”
“No . . . He is definitely the biggest asshole around here.”
As he finished saying this, Court took his eye out of his scope and looked out at the blue sky in front of him. Off his right shoulder an airplane came into view, flying low, its gear down. Court recognized it as a Russian Yakovlev Yak-40, an old but trusty transport jet.
The Terp said, “The airport is open!”
In the sky above it both men saw a pair of MiG-29 fighter planes circling. These were not preparing to land, but they were clearly protecting the transport.
Court said, “And a VIP has arrived.”
“Do you think it’s Azzam?”
“We’ve come a long way, so I’m shooting whoever gets off.”
The Terp said, “I like this plan.”
Court reached into his backpack and took out three liters of water. It was all he had left. “Kid, I need you to pour this all around the floor and on the walls, three meters in every direction.”
“But . . . why?”
“When I shoot this gun, it’s going to kick up a lot of dust. If we don’t wet the area, I’ll have to wait for follow-on shots.” Court added, “We won’t have time for that.”
The young man opened the first bottle and began pouring it on the floor, sprinkling it on the walls around him.
CHAPTER 73
Just before seven a.m. Bianca stood with the three Syrian GIS men, their leader Malik, Drexler, and Henri Sauvage inside the door to the office building. The ship from Syria was just offshore, and a skiff would be arriving in the marina shortly to pick everyone up. Malik was on his phone, talking to a man on the skiff, and she could hear him coordinate the exact location for the pickup.
Malik slipped the phone back into his pocket and turned to the group. “We want to arrive at the dock at exactly the same time the launch does. It’s still dark. We do this right and no one sees us.”
Drexler looked out the window, then back to Malik. “Let’s go. What are we waiting for?”
The Syrian Mukhabarat operative shook his head. “We have a minute to wait so it is timed properly.”
“What the hell does it matter if we get to the water a few seconds before they do?”
Malik just shook his head. “My operation, Drexler. My rules.”
Drexler wiped sweat off his brow.
* * *
• • •
Vincent Voland parked his rented Toyota Yaris four-door compact on a hill just a block away from the camera that had recorded the sighting of Bianca Medina, Drexler, and the Syrians the day before. It was not yet seven a.m.; he’d come straight from the hotel after his late-night flight and his early-morning check-in, and he’d just spoken with the two watchers he’d hired to keep an eye on the port and told them they could go home for a few hours’ rest.
His men had seen nothing, so Voland worried the Syrians were no longer in the area.
Voland needed more rest himself, but he was too wired to sleep. He figured there was little chance he’d see Drexler and company walking around the dock, and that he’d probably already boarded a ship, but as soon as offices at the marina opened up he’d start pumping the workers there for information.
In the meantime, however, he wanted to walk the area to get a feel for the location.
He walked along Akti Kondili, where the images had been taken, and then he went down to the water. An occasional car drove by behind him, but this was near the closed private marina, so there wasn’t much going on this early in the morning.
He turned to go into the city a few blocks, to try to get a feel for where Drexler and his entourage had been coming from on their way to the port, because he felt certain he knew where they’d been going. They’d gone to the marina to board a boat, and that boat was gone.
On the corner of Egaleo and Kastoros he heard a noise off to his right. It was a door closing, and this surprised him, because the only buildings he saw were commercial, and none of the offices would open for hours.
In the dim light a block away, he saw a group of people walking south, towards the water.
There were six men and one woman. The woman was tall and beautiful; the Frenchman could tell this even from a block away.
Vincent Voland turned and began running down Egaleo, parallel to the group but out of sight behind a row of buildings. He didn’t have a gun, and he didn’t even know the number for the police here in Athens. He was a sixty-five-year-old man with no hand-to-hand fighting skills, and after half a block he was already feeling the pounding of exertion in his heart. He had no plan other than to try to see if this group was, in fact, Bianca and her captors.
If these were the people he’d come from France to find . . . he hadn’t a clue what he would do about it.
* * *
• • •
Drexler had pushed and pushed for Malik to begin the movement towards the docks, for the simple reason that he knew his plan to kill the three Syrians, then Sauvage and Medina, would only work if there wasn’t an additional skiffload of Syrian operatives on the shore to stop him.
Malik had pushed back, of course, because he wanted the skiff to arrive at the water’s edge at the same time as those boarding it to reduce the chance that any passing police or harbor official would see the illegal transfer.
But Drexler had won the fight. Although he would have liked to have left the office minutes ago, so there was no chance the men in the boat would be near enough to the marina to see what happened, he decided instead to rely on the darkness of the alleyways leading to the docks and a quick getaway.
Malik put his earpiece in so he could stay in constant communication with the men on the skiff, and then the entourage walked down Etoliku, a two-lane street with cars parked on both sides, making for a n
arrow advance. The street ended perpendicular to the docks, and already in the distance Drexler could see a dark skiff approaching, with several men dressed in black on board. He had positioned himself behind Malik and one of the GIS men. Bianca was walking along silently at his right shoulder, and Sauvage was on his left a few feet away, behind one of the GIS officers.
The last GIS man brought up the rear.
Drexler looked right at Sauvage as he walked, willing him to look his way. When he finally did, Drexler saw the terror in the man’s eyes.
The Swiss operative only needed the French cop to fire his gun twice, shoot or slow down two of the four operatives, and then, when he invariably tried to shoot Drexler himself, Drexler would simply kill Sauvage and then Medina.
All his problems behind him, right here in this alley, and all he needed for this to happen was for Sauvage to reach for his gun.
Just then, Sauvage glanced to Bianca, nodded to her, and then his right hand went into his jacket.
Drexler sensed something was wrong, and he went for his own weapon.
* * *
• • •
Henri Sauvage’s legs would barely function, but he forced them forward, and though he had similar trouble reaching for his weapon, the moment Drexler reached into his own coat he knew he had to act.
As he felt the grip of the revolver under his coat, Malik put his hand to his ear and said, “Wait.” He stopped, and Drexler stopped in midreach for his pistol. Sauvage took his hand away from the gun in the small of his back lest the man behind him see him telegraph his draw.
Without turning around to face Drexler, Malik said, “The skiff reports an old man running down the street a block to the west. I don’t know who—”
Sauvage saw Drexler begin moving again, executing his draw stroke. With speed and skill he raised his weapon to the back of Malik’s head. The GIS man walking just behind Drexler saw the movement and began to call out to his boss, but Sauvage reached back for his gun, spun around on the balls of his feet, and fell to his knees.
The GIS man in back shouted, “Malik!”
Malik tried to spin away, but Drexler’s gun cracked in the narrow street, and the GIS leader stumbled forward into the street.
Sauvage’s pistol fired into the chest of the man just behind him a fraction of a second later.
Drexler swiveled to shoot one of the two standing operators, and Sauvage spun back around 180 degrees towards the man who had been walking in front of him but was now turned towards Drexler and drawing a submachine gun from under his jacket.
Drexler and Sauvage both fired at the same time, both their targets fell, and the man closest to Sauvage dropped onto his back with his submachine gun out in front of him.
Sauvage dove for it.
Sebastian Drexler swiveled his Beretta towards Henri Sauvage now, just as the French cop leapt for the little Uzi, but as Drexler was about to press the trigger, he felt an impact on his right side.
Bianca Medina slammed into him, grabbed his gun arm with all her might, and threw her 110 pounds of weight into his torso, knocking him off balance.
But Drexler did not go down. He fought to free his arm, then stumbled back as he pushed her away and down to the asphalt, and as she landed on her back below him next to a parked car, he leveled his gun at her face.
The sound of automatic gunfire chattered in the alley now, and Sebastian Drexler arched forward, his weapon spun away, and his face slammed hard into the hood of the parked Citroën.
He slid off the hood and fell onto his back between the Citroën and the car parked in front of it.
Henri Sauvage fought his way back to his feet, took a step forward, and leveled the gun at Drexler, prepared to shoot him again.
Bianca screamed, “Henri!” She pointed to Malik. He sat up in the street on Sauvage’s left, his pistol out in front of him, the right side of his face red with blood.
Sauvage turned to the man, but another crack and flash of gunfire in the alley sent Henri Sauvage tumbling backwards, shot through the chest.
Bianca rolled onto her hands and knees and crawled between two parked cars. She continued around to the dark and narrow sidewalk, but soon she heard the grunt of a man blowing out his last breath, then the thud of Malik as he fell onto the cement on his back. She then heard the clanking sound of his pistol falling away.
“Bianca?”
Bianca stood up from behind the cars, looked down the street in the direction of the port, and saw a man running through the low light towards her. Behind him, some 150 meters away, she could see the black skiff full of men landing at a dock there. Men leapt from it and began running in her direction.
* * *
• • •
“Bianca!” Vincent Voland ran up to her and helped her away from the scene of blood and bodies, and then together they scrambled up the street and back towards Voland’s car. They climbed into it a minute later and raced off through the night, with shadowy figures just appearing in their rearview as the Frenchman floored it around a corner.
Bianca hyperventilated for over a minute while Voland drove.
“It’s all right, my dear. You are safe. I promise you, you are safe. It’s over.”
But when she could finally speak, Voland realized it wasn’t her own safety she was concerned with. “The American. He . . . he took Jamal?”
“Oui, mademoiselle. He took him and delivered him somewhere safe.”
“Where? He is in Jordan? In Paris?”
Voland hesitated.
“Where is he?” she demanded.
“He is still in Damascus, but tonight we will get him out. It’s all arranged.”
Bianca went catatonic. She sat quietly in the passenger seat for over a minute more. When she finally spoke she said the last thing Voland expected her to say. “I want to return to Syria.”
“What?”
“I want to die with my child.”
Voland shook his head. “No one is dying, I promise you.” He turned to her as he drove. “No one else will die. I will get Jamal out. Please, believe me. Just give me until tonight.”
* * *
• • •
Back in the alleyway, the bodies of six men lay motionless. The dawn’s light increased, seemingly by the second, as did the sound of approaching sirens.
But the men did not move.
A new sound entered the alley: the noise of racing footsteps, coming back from the north, the opposite direction from the port. Five men in black, pistols in their hands, skidded to a stop when they reached the figures, and they began checking each body for a pulse.
They almost missed the sixth man, but one of the Syrian operatives from the ship noticed a pair of feet sticking out from between two parked cars. He shined a light on the feet, tracked it up the body, and saw a blond-haired man, lying on his back. His eyes were open and blinking.
“I’ve got one alive!” he shouted.
The leader of the group turned and looked at him. “That’s Drexler. Get him to the boat.”
* * *
• • •
Sebastian Drexler offered the men no help at all in extracting him from Greece. He’d been wearing a Kevlar vest, but when Sauvage shot him multiple times in the back, it knocked him into the car. He’d banged his head and lost consciousness. When he’d come to, the GIS men were already on top of him, and he had no choice but to go with them back to the skiff.
But still, he wasn’t going to make it easier. He lay limp, and they carried him, one man on each appendage, and as soon as they were back on the landing craft and racing towards the ship, they checked his wounds and found them to be nothing more than bruises, and then they began interrogating him about what had happened.
Drexler couldn’t answer at first; all he could do was stare ahead, at the ship out in the distance. That ship meant Syria, and Syria m
eant Shakira, Ahmed, and certain death.
And the ship kept nearing. Despite him willing it to get smaller, it got larger with every second the skiff churned the water towards it.
One of the Syrians leaned over him, asking him again about who showed up to shoot Malik and the others and to steal Medina, the precious cargo. As the man spoke, his pistol in his shoulder holster hung tantalizingly close to Drexler’s reach.
In a moment of panic the Swiss operative went for it and tried to draw it free, but the Mukhabarat officer subdued him. Others came and pinned him to the hull of the boat, and then they shined a light in his eyes.
Drexler spoke perfect Arabic, so he understood what they said.
“Fucker tried to take my weapon!”
Another said, “Bastard’s in shock. He thinks he’s still fighting back there. Just watch him, and we’ll get him some help when we get him on board.”
Drexler went limp now, because there was nothing left to fight for. No matter what he did now, he knew.
He was a dead man.
CHAPTER 74
Ahmed al-Azzam had been waiting to hear reports on the pickup of Bianca from Athens before deplaning, but no word had come, and he knew the Russian military reception was waiting just outside the main cabin door. He stood from his seat, moved forward within his cluster of guards, and climbed down the air stairs pushed up to the door of the Yak-40.
When he stepped onto the tarmac of the Palmyra airport, feeling the cool morning desert air, he realized he hadn’t set foot in this part of his nation since well before the beginning of the civil war. Even though his armies and militias had taken back the territory over a year earlier, much fighting had remained close by, so it had been too dangerous for the president to make such a journey.
But now he was surrounded by over three hundred Russian soldiers, a half dozen Russian attack helicopters, and even more Syrian army and air force personnel and equipment. Beyond this cordon of protection, he’d been told, his militias had fanned out and pacified the towns and villages for twenty kilometers in all directions, solely for his ninety-minute visit.