Bolan nodded. His duffel bags were stowed in sections of the jeep that had been cut away to provide compartments for concealment. It would take a thorough search to find them, let alone work out how to access them without prior knowledge.
“Then all I can do now is wish you well, Cooper. We’ll wait and pray. May your God go with you.”
Bolan acknowledged the touch of the forehead from Hassim, and climbed into the jeep. Laying the smartphone on the seat beside him to act as a compass, he put the jeep in gear and left the other vehicle in his wake. He did not look back, but if he had, he would have seen that Hassim stood watching for some while, a thoughtful expression on his face.
“Crazy bastard,” Hassim murmured softly. “No wonder I never went back...”
* * *
BOLAN PUSHED THE engine to its limit. Looking at the time, he could see that Hassim had made good progress to get them close to the border quicker than had been estimated. But he would still be cutting it fine.
By the GPS and the jeep’s own distance indicator, he should be hitting Jordan any minute. He had cut across scrub from his starting point and had taken to the roadway as soon as he could. He figured he was running parallel to the border at present, and the curve of the road would take him over shortly. There was no sign of any border guards or patrol, either before or behind him. With luck, he would get into the country unimpeded. But even if this was the case, he still had a hell of a journey.
The West Bank was the big problem: in order to avoid the issues that arose when trying to cross there, they had been forced to travel out of their way until they passed the Governorate of Irbid and had reached the border of the much larger, but less important Mafraq. Over twenty-six thousand klicks square, it was by far the biggest single expanse of land in Jordan, and also the most sparsely populated. Irbid was one twenty-fifth the size, yet had four times the number of people squashed into it. This was partly because it was close to Jordan and also bordered Israel and the West Bank. Trade, merchant links, and the fact that it was about as near as any Jordanian could get to the sea accounted for much. But it also had a lot to do with terrain. Bolan was presently, by his reckoning, in Jordan, and heading west. Doubling back on himself, in a sense. If he could have crossed straight, it would have saved him time. At least he wasn’t headed east. The land he currently drove across was dry and sandy—farther east and he would have been traveling on the plateau that the country mostly stood upon. Hot, arid desert land that was unwelcoming. At least, as he headed toward Irbid, he was moving into the more mountainous and hilly region of the Jordan valley, where the climate was a little more temperate and the land less forbidding.
But not entirely. As he kept the jeep steady on the slowly unwinding, empty road, he referred to the material Kurtzman had forwarded to him.
The auction was to be held in Ar Ramtha, which was the first section of Irbid that he would hit. It was an independent section of the governorate that had devolved a degree of its own administration. From what he knew of Jordan, he figured that despite this, it would be no easy task for the cartel staging the auction to quiet the locals in the same way that their predecessors had managed in Syria. Jordan had less corruption, less unrest, and was generally a more settled territory.
So, why there? What had made it an ideal place?
According to the maps that Kurtzman had sent him, the auction was to be held on the edge of an area of irrigated land that had been part of an agricultural development area. During the upheavals of the previous year, the project had fallen prey to neglect, and the farmers in that area had deserted it in droves.
So it had good communication with the cities and was also relatively empty. It was therefore easy to get to and unlikely to be overlooked, with no major center of population to disturb the business at hand.
Even though it was as close to the edge of Irbid as it was possible to get, it was still too close to the densely populated regions for comfort. It smacked of a compromise between the need for security and the need to get the bidders in place quickly.
That should suit him fine.
When he came to the first empty dwelling, he pulled the jeep off the road and parked where he could cover the vehicle. He took the duffel bags from their hiding place and checked that he had enough water and provisions to keep him afloat. Looking at the time, he had five hours before the auction was scheduled to take place. Using the GPS on his smartphone and taking account of the details sent by Kurtzman, he figured that if he took a course bearing north by northeast, then he would be able to circle the auction location.
He walked at a steady pace, keeping up his speed. It was odd to be hiking through a territory that should be busy with farmers gathering in a citrus fruit harvest. The trees were a strange combination of the withered and those that could still take moisture from the ground and were bearing a strong crop. That these were few and far between spoke volumes of the irrigation problems. He paused to take an orange, eating it as he progressed through deserted groves.
After three-quarters of an hour, the groves began to thin out even more and he was in a territory that had been deserted for longer; the land was more sparse scrub than anything else, and even empty dwellings became thin on the ground. As he moved, keeping one eye on his GPS, he noted that this was a flat land that would make it hard to find cover. The closer he got to the target area, the more he would have to keep low. There was nothing in the sky, and given the no-fly zone he was pretty sure that he would not be spotted by from above.
Three klicks, according to the information he had been given. The auction site should be dead ahead. He came up over a rise, careful to keep himself low to the ground. He scanned for motion detectors and cameras: there were none that his limited tech could pick out. He would have to rely on sight and instinct to carry him on—but at least he had field glasses.
It was an interesting conceit. A limo, two Humvees and a trailer were gathered around a Bedouin tent that was likely to serve as the auction room. There were four security men in view, though he knew there must be more. Despite the fact that they were in a deserted area and the auction was not due for a few hours, they looked on full alert. There was little sign of life, though he could not see inside the tent.
The trailer, like the kind used on movie locations, was large enough to keep three or four people comfortable while still being easily transportable. If his target bodies were anywhere, they were there.
Keeping his distance and a low profile, he circled the encampment. A 360-degree orbit revealed that there was no real cover for him at any point—which meant that the site was left exposed, too. But this was a minor consideration, as the security could be prepared before any large forces—easily visible—came within range.
It was as good a location as could have been selected in the time available. And he was certain that they had been pressed for time. There was no indication of any motion sensors or cameras at any point in the circuit he had proscribed. Something that suited him fine, as he had stopped at evenly spaced points along his circuit, planting small charges of C-4 and Semtex, timed to go off in an irregular pattern and at irregularly spaced, albeit close, intervals. He had been careful to use only a little of the explosive for each plant—it wouldn’t pay to waste his resources. There was no chance of the charges doing any damage at that distance, but they would create the impression that there was more than just the one of him, and by their irregular nature cause some confusion about the direction of any assault.
Having come full circle, he settled back into position. Tracking the guards with his field glasses, he worked out that they moved in two patterns, each overlapping, and in opposite directions so that there was no section of the circumference that couldn’t, at any point, be covered with ease by the defending forces.
They were good—or, at least, whoever drilled them was good.
He checked the time: two hours until
the auction. He figured that the bidding parties would not risk arrival until just before time. Could he bank on that, though? Best not to, which was why he had set the charges to begin going off in the next fifteen minutes.
He prepared himself for the attack. The HK G3A4 with collapsible stock and 20-round mag would be the best choice under the circumstances; he also made sure that he carried shrapnel, CS and concussion grenades. He had a Glock 23 semi-automatic pistol, which would be a useful backup should the HK go down. He didn’t want to go in with too much ordnance to slow him down.
Get in, cause chaos, locate and secure the targets, and use one of their own vehicles to effect a getaway while disabling the others. Hardly a detailed battle plan, but given the time and resources it would suffice.
Chapter 10
“My friend, we are set?”
Piotr leaned over the table in the trailer. Although he spoke to the man behind him, his bulging eyes, cold and watery, were fixed on the two men who sat before him. Hoeness and Gabriel were bowed and ragged, aching and miserable. Neither man knew what to expect from the future, though both had dark suspicions. They could not look at the Russian. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, punctuated only by the rattle and hum of the trailer’s air conditioner.
The silence was eventually broken by the laconic tones of Piotr’s tall, scarred compatriot, who stood in the doorway of the trailer, eyeing the two scientists with a wry contempt.
“The business room is laid out, and the area has been secured. Our men now patrol as proscribed.”
“Your English is progressing strongly, my friend. Would that I had your grasp of the language.” Despite the words, there was no humor in his voice. He continued, “But perhaps I would be better speaking in German? A language I believe we all understand and speak to a greater degree?” He switched languages midspeech, and could see immediately that the two scientists understood him more easily. He, too, felt more comfortable. “Right, you two pieces of shit. I can speak plainly and to the point. You are here, and you will be sold. I look at you now and you are crap. Who would believe that you have the ability to unlock secrets that are worth millions of dollars? You look like shit and you are sitting like you are morons. Who would buy you?”
“Can you blame us?” Hoeness muttered, with all the resistance he could muster.
Piotr reached out and hit him hard across the face with an open palm. “Shut up, you shit. We have been paid a lot of cash to bring you here and oversee the auction. We have to get a good price for you, or else we will suffer. And if no one wants you because they think your product is shit, then you will know what pain is. No easy end for you, my friend. If you want to live, then you sharpen up. If we suffer, you will suffer first. Understand?”
He stared intently at the two men, who shuffled fearfully in their seats before grunting a mild assent.
“Good,” Piotr nodded. “This trailer has a shower unit—use it. There are clothes in the cupboard that should fit and are clean. Wear them. And sharpen up. Now!” He turned away toward the door and his partner, whose mouth quirked into a savage grin.
“You always were a motivator of men, Piotr.”
Piotr spat on the floor of the trailer. “Men? Don’t make me laugh,” he snarled in Russian. “I will be glad when this is done. We are soldiers, not fucking used car salesmen. This part of the mission should have been down to others. We should just deliver.”
Vladimir shrugged. “Time is tight, my friend. What is that stupid English saying? ‘Needs must when the devil commands’? Something like that.”
Piotr looked at him strangely. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Thinking on our feet, Piotr. That is what our paymasters are doing, and what they require of us. I am no more comfortable with this than you, but as we move so quickly, then who would be able to catch up with us before our mission is complete?”
Piotr did not answer immediately. He looked out of the door of the trailer at the desert and scrub that extended as far as he could see, and at the men they had hired on recommendation, so far performing more than adequately.
“Who indeed?” he murmured. And yet there was still that uneasy feeling in his gut that they were out of their usual territory—something that made Piotr nervous.
It was then that the silence of the desert was ruptured by an explosion.
* * *
BOLAN CROUCHED DOWN and watched intently, not flinching as the blast went off forty-five degrees to his right. His attention was focused entirely on the encampment.
Although it was too far away to actually be an attack on the camp itself, its shock factor caused the kind of confusion he wanted. He saw the open door of the trailer, and the fat man and the tall one he recognized from the deck of the gunboat conversing before the explosion attracted their attention. He saw the guards suddenly interrupt the patterns they had been making. As he’d surmised, they were going through the motions, but had not been expecting an attack. Complacency was a bigger threat than a man with a gun sometimes.
They broke their formation and began to rush toward the area of the explosion. He could see the two Russians—who from his intel, he had little doubt were ex-KGB or OGPU men gone freelance—yelling and trying to establish control and some kind of order.
He couldn’t let that happen—time to mix it up a little more. He triggered an explosion that was just a little less than 180 degrees opposite.
The reaction was immediate. Half of the men changed direction, partly from reaction to the blast and partly because of the yelled orders they received. As the complete force seemed to have congregated at the sounds of the blast, Bolan had them all within a narrow band of range.
There was no way that he could take them all out, but he could certainly even the odds. Sighting, he tapped off four short bursts. In the ensuing confusion, only three of them hit—two men dropped, one with his face blown away and the other losing half the side of his head. A third guard was wounded but by the way he spun as he fell, it was clear that he was still alive, albeit incapacitated.
Having given away his own position and attracted some return fire, he needed to move. He triggered an explosion that was only fifty yards away from him in order to throw up a cloud, deflect his opponents’ aim and provide cover to move. Where fire had pitted the sands around Bolan, forcing him low, it now moved to his left, enabling him to crawl at double speed in the opposite direction. As he moved farther from the field of fire, he straightened a little and broke into a run, triggering another explosion that would take the opposition fire away from him.
Relocating, Bolan took aim and fired another three short bursts into the rapidly dispersing opposition forces. This time he only took out one man, caught in the back of the head as he turned to try and follow the direction of the blasts.
As he circled before the return fire could pick out his location, Bolan wondered how he would progress from here. He could try and pick them off, but he was running short of charges to distract them. Come to that, the Russians were smart even if their troops were not, and would soon catch on...if they hadn’t already.
* * *
IN THE TRAILER, Hoeness had been moving toward the shower unit in a despondent fashion when the first explosion sounded. He screamed and hunkered down on the floor. Gabriel went rigid with fear. After what had happened to them in the past thirty-six hours, both men were stretched to the edge of sanity. They were used to the quiet of the laboratory—this was not what they had foreseen in any way.
But there is a stronger instinct than fear in most men—that of self-preservation. While Hoeness screamed, almost fetal on the floor, Gabriel felt a wave of calm sweep over him. He knew that if they stayed like this, they were certainly dead. To keep alive meant to keep hope. They were sitting ducks in the trailer—and Gabriel had little doubt after recent events that they were the target of this att
ack. They had to move.
With a slowness and care that didn’t truly reflect the way that his mind raced, he rose to his feet and went over to Hoeness, gently lifting the man up. Hoeness was still screaming. Gabriel hit him, hard, across the face. The older man suddenly stopped screaming and looked at him with an expression of complete bewilderment. It sort of felt good—Gabriel felt in control of something, and God only knew that this was a rare feeling of late.
“Tomas, what the hell is happening?” the older man asked softly.
“More of these fucking lunatics wanting to take us,” Gabriel replied flatly. “We should never have gotten into this, but it’s too late now to worry about that. We need to make sure we are safe. Maybe we can even escape.” He paused, waiting for an answer. He was rewarded by a look of hopelessness.
“No...how? Where are we, even?”
“Who knows? Who the fuck even cares? I know it’s desert, but in which one of these godforsaken Arab lands is beyond me. All I know is that if we hang around, then all that’s going to happen is that we’ll keep getting this shit and sooner or later we’re going to die. If we can make a break, then at least we have a chance.”
Hoeness was apparently not convinced—perhaps he saw it was just another way to die.
“Okay. What do we do?” the older man said, with more than a little hesitation.
“I’m fucked if I know. Just play it by ear and try and find a jeep, then drive and hope for the best.”
“That’s a plan? Hardly scientific.”
“These are hardly lab conditions. Now shut up and follow me,” Gabriel snapped in reply, heading for the door.
He looked out at the confusion: shouting and gunfire. Only a hundred yards from the trailer he saw the two corpses of the guards who’d been shot, their heads almost unrecognizable, bleeding into the sand and already attracting flies as men hurried around them, ignoring what was at their feet.
Gabriel felt his stomach churn, but he fought and bit back the bile. Tearing his eyes away, he could see a jeep standing at the edge of the encampment, miraculously isolated from the activity around as the guards’ attention was distracted in another direction.
Cold Fusion Page 10