She was jarred out of her melancholy when a limping man exited the house pushing a motor scooter, then kick-started it and bounced past her, the motorbike’s engine snarling as he went by. She cranked the ignition, put the Highlander in gear, and reached for her cell phone. Poor Alan wasn’t going to get much sleep today. The man on the scooter was Nasr.
~ ~ ~
Jet wove her way through traffic, which fortunately wasn’t that heavy on the outskirts of town, most of the flow going in the opposite direction as the evening commute started. The motorbike wasn’t particularly fast, which was good, because Nasr piloted it in the daredevil fashion that was the local custom, and it was all she could do to keep pace.
After fifteen minutes the scooter slowed and then pulled to the side of the street next to a large home near the perimeter wall that encircled the old town, and Nasr made a call on a cell phone. The iron gate of the complex’s main entry slid open and he eased the motorbike in, then the gate rolled shut again, sealing off the street behind a ten-foot-high wall topped with broken glass. She continued past it, noting the security cameras mounted on both corner posts, and then parked on the opposite side of the road eighty yards away, out of the cameras’ fields of view.
Alan would be there within twenty minutes, at which point they could do a more covert surveillance using at least two vehicles, so that anyone watching in the house wouldn’t see the same car parked nearby. This was a traveled-enough area that there were a fair number of cars parked, but she wanted to take no chances.
Minutes ticked by excruciatingly slowly as the light began to fade, and then the gate rolled open again and Nasr pushed his bike out onto the street and started it. Now she was torn. Did she stay there, or continue to follow him? He revved the throttle and rolled off with a puff of blue smoke. Jet cranked the ignition. Alan knew the address. He could pick up where she’d left off. She dialed him and told him what was transpiring, then took up position tailing her quarry, secure in the knowledge that Alan would be there in a couple of minutes, tops.
Three minutes later her phone rang. Alan was outside the compound.
The motor scooter traced the surface streets, going slower this time, and soon the area began to look suspiciously familiar – he was going home. Just as she was convinced that was the case, he turned a corner and parked at a mosque a few blocks from his house, where the devout were entering for the evening prayer. She called Alan again and relayed the information, and he told her that he would send Umar to the mosque to keep an eye on Nasr while he was inside, in case he met with someone. She couldn’t do so, because the women’s area was segregated from the men’s. Alan said Umar would be there within ten minutes, and to wait, and then he would take over the surveillance.
The mosque was just closing its doors when Umar’s SUV rolled to a stop and he leapt out. A man at the entry motioned to him to hurry – the devotion was getting ready to start.
She waited until he was inside and then pulled away, urging the Toyota through the tangle of cars, back towards where Alan was waiting.
When she was a quarter mile away, her phone vibrated.
“Yes?”
“We have game on. A blue van just pulled up, and Saif al-Diin got out and went into the house, accompanied by a nervous-looking entourage. Looks like they must have gotten word about the house in Sa’dah.”
“I’m a few minutes away. What do you want to do?”
“I want to hit it as soon as we can. Now that we know he’s inside, there’s no reason to wait. He may not even have the agent yet, but that’s immaterial. He can’t murder thousands if he’s already dead. Make sense?”
“Part of me thinks we should wait and see what he does, but the other part agrees with you. What kind of backup do we have?”
“Just you and me. Umar isn’t a fighter. I really wish we could get a team of wet operatives here, but that’s off the table.” The frustration in his voice was palpable. “I hate these last-minute ops.”
“Me too. But at least we know where he is. That’s better than we had when we started the day.”
“All right. It’s almost dark. I say we wait until traffic slows to a halt and dinner time arrives and hit them while they’re eating.”
“You got it. See you in about five.”
Chapter 31
The night was still, the pall of dust and smog that hung over the city blanketing everything with a toxic tinge of exhaust and chemicals. Jet had done as much nosing around as she could without being obvious, and felt like she had a reasonable sense of the immediate area around the house. It backed onto a small alley, on the other side of which was another compound wall, shielding it from intruders. The house Saif al-Diin was in was relatively large, but that could work in their favor – more entry points.
One thing she didn’t like was a rear gate in the wall as well, which would make securing the compound more difficult with only Alan and herself. Not that it would matter if they hit the house quickly enough – by the time the inhabitants could mobilize, everyone would be dead.
She walked down the street carrying the backpack, her MTAR concealed in the folds of her robe, where she’d made a slit for that express purpose. Alan was also dressed as a woman now, and they walked together as if a pair huddled for security, alone on the street – a common sight.
As agreed, when they reached the first camera Alan continued on, and Jet sprinted to the neighboring house’s wall, sprang against it, then twisted and grabbed the top, which thankfully had no glass on it. She pulled herself up and inched across to the post with the camera mounted on top, out of the field of view, and then flipped open her combat knife and snipped the wire in the back. Wasting no time, she somersaulted into the target house’s front courtyard and flitted like a ghost to the gate. It groaned as she pulled it open, and Alan was barely through it when the night exploded with gunfire, and slugs pounded into the wall behind them.
Alan uttered an expletive and then she was rolling, firing at the house as she moved towards a nearby Nissan pickup truck. She heard Alan’s MTAR join hers in harmony as they fired burst after burst at the muzzle flashes in the windows.
This was a bad situation – taking fire before they’d even made it to the house. The plan had been to sneak up on it, as they had in Sa’dah, but obviously something had gone wrong. Either there was another camera located somewhere they hadn’t seen, or there was a motion detector concealed on the interior of the gate she’d tripped; or, most likely, there was a sensor that alerted the house when the gate was opened – one of the problems with a hurried approach was that they hadn’t had the chance to do their homework, and were going in essentially blind.
Her MTAR burped death at the house as incoming rounds slammed into the truck’s chassis and engine. She heard men yelling, and peeked her head around the fender in time to see four gunmen dart from the home’s front door and take up positions behind a short wall near the entry. That would make getting inside even harder. Never mind that any surprise they’d had was now gone.
A barrage directed at Alan’s position greeted his fire, and she tried to alternate her volleys with his, trying to buy them some breathing room. The best thing they could hope for now was that the shooters would do something stupid, like try to rush them – or that the Yemeni military would show up, drawn by the shooting, which would pose its own set of problems.
An errant round hit the Nissan and she smelled gasoline. She glanced next to the rear wheels and saw a small pool of fluid accumulating below the truck. Maybe there was some way to use the vehicle as a diversion – a bomb? More rounds shattered the truck windows and she instinctively ducked, the spray of glass falling harmlessly on her robe and the ground next to it.
She peered around the fender and saw a gunman’s head sighting down a rifle barrel and firing at Alan, and her red laser dot was bouncing across his face when she gently squeezed the trigger. The little gun bucked as it coughed its staccato chatter and she saw the shooter drop back behind the wall, his weap
on tumbling on her side of it.
One down.
A grunt greeted her over the ear bud. Alan.
Gunfire continued to rain a hail of slugs around her, and she tapped her ear bud.
“You okay?” she whispered.
“Fine. I’ve got decent cover from these concrete blocks. One of them got lucky and a ricochet grazed my shoulder, but I’ll live. That’s not our biggest problem. They have us pinned down here. Barring a miracle, we’re screwed.”
“I know. I’m fresh out of miracles tonight. Any ideas?”
He hesitated. “I have two hand grenades.”
“That’s right. How’s your arm?”
“Not good enough to go all-pro, but I think I can reach them.”
“No time like the present. Let me know when you want cover fire and I’ll burn a clip for you,” she offered.
“On the count of three.”
She ejected her half-spent magazine and slammed home a full one, then switched the weapon to full auto.
“One. Two. THREE.” Jet fired at the wall shielding the gunmen, the magazine emptying in only a few seconds, and then a whump rent the night as the first grenade detonated behind it – Alan’s pitching had been more than adequate. Her weapon exhausted, she dropped the spent clip on the ground and then slapped another home, switching to burst mode so each pull of the trigger fired three rounds. She rarely used full auto mode, because a typical assault rifle would be empty in no time with thirty round STANAG clips and a rate of fire of seven to nine hundred rounds per minute.
The shooting from behind the wall stopped, and Alan’s voice murmured in her ear, still ringing from the blast. “Let’s move.”
She was just rising to her feet when a massive explosion inside the house blew through the windows in a molten shower of glass, and fireballs belched from the apertures in a blinding flare. Both she and Alan were stopped in their tracks by the detonation, and then two smaller explosions from inside followed before the propane tank blew.
Flames licked from the windows as black smoke poured into the air. Jet shook off her surprise and ran in a crouch to the wall. The three remaining fighters had been torn apart by the combination of the grenade and the blast.
“I’m going around to the back. What the hell was that?” she asked.
“They must have had the house wired with explosives. Either that or they had a bunch of Semtex lying around and someone got careless with a detonator, trying to improvise a bomb intended to take us out.”
She took a deep breath and moved, first to the house and then along the wall to the rear of the structure, which was also an inferno. She tried to approach the back door, but it had been blown half apart and flames were pouring through it from the interior.
“No way anything is still alive in there,” she said.
“That’s my take.”
Sirens ululated in the distance, the music of their wail sounding a familiar tune for the beleaguered city.
Alan joined her as she moved to the rear wall exit.
“Let’s get out of here. I don’t want to have to explain what a couple of Mossad operatives are doing dressed like women in terrorist country.”
“Sounds good. Out the front or the back?”
“We’ll probably have an audience out front. Let’s go,” he said, and trotted to the iron rear door.
Two minutes later they were back at his car, trying to make sense out of what had just happened.
“Unbelievable,” he said, shaking his head, pulling his veil off.
She studied his unshaved face and smiled. “Well, that was subtle. I think it went well. And quite the fireworks display, huh?”
“I wish we could take credit for killing the bastard, but he did it to himself. Where do these freaks get their death wish? Can you imagine?”
“I would go down shooting before I blew myself up. Then again, we don’t know whether it was an accident or not. It’s fifty-fifty that they had the house wired. Wouldn’t surprise me, though. Not a bit.” Jet smiled behind her veil. “You don’t make a bad-looking woman, you know. Big hands, but other than that...”
“Nice to hear I’ve got options.”
She looked him over. “How’s the shoulder?”
“It’s already clotting. Like I said, just a scratch. I’ll seal it up with some Dermabond and be good as new. Not like I haven’t had to do it before,” he assured her.
The sirens were close now. Jet swung the door open, leaving her MTAR on the car floor.
“See you later. You going to be busy tonight?” she asked, her tone neutral.
“I’d invite you over, but I have a feeling this is going to be a long one. I have to call the director immediately and file a situation report, and then assess where we go from here. Can I take a rain check?”
She paused at the question. “You always have a rain check with me, Alan.”
And then she was gone, the door closing behind her, a black wraith disappearing into the gloom, as silent as death.
Chapter 32
“How soon can we get out of here?” Jet asked at lunch the next day. “I still have a date in Moscow I need to make.”
“I don’t see any reason to hang around. Unless you’ve been waiting for a guided tour of Sana’a’s hotspots.”
“Did you see the news?”
“Yeah. They’re calling it a rebel stronghold that blew itself up by mistake. Playing without adult supervision around explosives. A sad cautionary tale.”
“I saw that on TV. Kind of ignores the reports of an all-out gunfight before the explosion, doesn’t it?” she observed.
“This is Yemen. Come on. You going to let a few annoying facts cloud an otherwise seamless theory?”
“What did the director say?”
“‘Congratulations.’ As far as he’s concerned, this ugly chapter is now behind us. He actually couldn’t have been happier. I suppose when your nemesis blows himself up it’s time to break out the cooking sherry a little early, no?”
“Still, it’s not what I was expecting.”
“I know. It’s surreal. But that’s what keeps the job interesting, right? Anyway, it’s over now. And as you pointed out, you have a Russian to attend to.”
“You’re coming, right?”
“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Besides, being a dead guy, I don’t have a lot else to do...”
“I know the feeling. How’s the arm?”
“Tip top. I’ll be playing tennis by the weekend.”
They ate in silence, each processing the night’s events, and when the server came for their plates, she waited until he had left before continuing.
“So, separate flights. Rendezvous in Frankfurt, or in Moscow?”
“Moscow. Safer if we don’t travel together. Besides, unlike this little disaster, we’ll want to plan that carefully. We already blew one shot at him,” Alan reminded her.
“Which brings me to the part where I swear you to secrecy. You can’t tell anyone we’re in Russia. Not the director. Nobody.”
“I got it. I still think you’re wrong about him, but it’s not worth taking the chance, I agree. As far as he’s concerned, I’m taking a few days from the terrorist beat before I decide what to do next.”
She took his hand. “Thank you for helping with this, Alan. I really appreciate it.” She stared deep into his eyes. At times, like this morning, he really reminded her of David – some of the mannerisms. Must be in his genes, she supposed.
“Sort of reciprocation, wouldn’t you say? Quid pro quo? You were here for me when I needed you. You can expect the same from me...”
“All right, so we meet up in Moscow. Tomorrow? The day after?”
“Probably the day after. I’ll stay at the Hilton again. I liked it there. I’ll try to get out tomorrow, but don’t count on it. You’ll be lucky if you can get a flight.”
“I know. I checked, and there was nothing open for today going anywhere I could easily connect. What name will you be using?
”
He thought for a few seconds. “Richard. Richard Davis. A Brit.”
“All right, Richard Davis. I’ll be on the first plane out. Paris, Frankfurt, Madrid, doesn’t matter. I can connect wherever. Are you going to be busy the rest of today?”
“Yeah. The director wants me here in case they find anything in the rubble that we can use to identify who sold them the agent, assuming it was in there. We won’t know for sure until tomorrow, but I’ve got to start spreading money around and see if we can get any information. The local cops always have their hands out.”
“Then I won’t make any plans with you for tonight...”
“I’m afraid not. I have no idea where I’ll be or for how long. I’m sorry,” he said, rubbing his face.
He was unable to read her expression. She reached over and patted his hand.
“So am I, Alan. So am I.”
~ ~ ~
The plane banked on final approach, bumping through the heavy cloud cover blanketing Moscow, turbulence jostling the passengers as the jet bucked and fell with the vicious downdrafts. The man next to her looked gray and was gripping the armrest like it owed him money; the odor of too many scotches on the rocks drifted from him, mingled with the stench of fear.
She watched out the window as they broke through the final layer and drifted down towards the runway, the wings slicing through sheets of rain hurled at them with all of nature’s possible force. When the wheels struck the tarmac and the thrust reversed to slow it, the plane shuddered as though the engines were going to tear off, and for a few jarring seconds the fuselage began to twist, threatening to skew sideways, before it righted and slowed three quarters of the way down the tarmac.
Jet 03: Vengeance Page 20