And a case of bottled water.
God bless The Camel Man!
He tore free one of the bottles and unscrewed the cap, downing as much as he could before coming up for air. After a few more swigs he carefully refilled his smaller bottles, those easier to carry on foot. As he made himself comfortable, he realized the van had been tricked out by its owner to double as a mobile home, most likely for when he was making distant deliveries. All the side and rear windows were tinted a dark black and a thick curtain could be pulled across the front seats blocking any light to the back seats. The driver side seats in the rear, two extra rows, were already positioned down with fresh linens, Camel Man’s wife obviously caring enough to keep him comfortable, and he showing his appreciation by having a picture of her and several children in a wood frame screwed into the roof.
You’ll definitely get your van back, my friend.
These personal touches humanized his “victim”. Though Dawson didn’t feel guilty—he had done what needed to be done for the greater good—it simply reinforced the need to make amends when it was possible.
A small gas lantern hung from a rope strung across the back. He lit it and turned the light up about halfway. A toiletry bag stood out and he took a bottle of water along with the soap, toothpaste and shaving kit, and gave himself a quick bird bath with the side door open and the lamp turned off so he wouldn’t be seen. Refreshed, he climbed back inside, opened the windows enough to let a breeze flow through, locked the doors, and lay down in Camel Man’s bed, the broken satellite phone and his multi-tool lying beside him.
After fiddling for half an hour, he decided it was beyond his ability to repair, and instead put things back together, praying it still had the non-communications functions intact.
It did.
As he turned down the lamp and settled in for the night, his weapons and the handgun from the glove compartment stripped and cleaned, he almost immediately fell asleep only to be woken minutes later by gunfire in the distance. He jumped up, grabbed the phone and exited the vehicle. Down below in the valley he could see the muzzle flashes. He quickly snapped several photos then changed the phone to low light mode and took several more as what he figured was celebratory gunfire continued at the edge of the village for a few more minutes.
And what better thing to celebrate than the capture of a dozen Western hostages?
Hamashkoraib, Sudan
James Acton jolted awake, gunfire erupting from outside along with laughter and cheering. He looked around the plain room to find most of his companions were awake as well, Reese frightened the most it seemed, the soldiers all taking it in stride, quickly returning to their attempts at slumber. Reese made eye contact with him and rose, taking her blanket with her as she approached him. She knelt down in the empty space beside him.
“Do you mind if I sleep here?”
Acton shook his head, his mind immediately wondering what Laura would have to say to that. Niner rolled over and gave him a quick grin and a wink as Reese lay down her blanket then snuggled in with him. He realized—or at least hoped—she was just terrified and was looking for comfort from the one person she had known the longest—an entire 48 hours. She was flirtatious, but even the most flirtatious woman wouldn’t try something in a room filled with a dozen hostages.
Would they?
He hoped not. He had never been unfaithful to any woman in his life, and he wasn’t about to start now. But she was pressed up slightly against his private bits, so he let his right leg roll toward the floor some more, leaving him mostly on his back—he preferring to sleep on his side—but at least he felt the situation was a little more platonic this way.
“Thanks,” she whispered in the dark, her body trembling in genuine fear as the gunfire continued outside.
“Get some sleep,” he said, closing his eyes and trying to shut out the racket from their captors. He had noticed some of them eyeing Reese earlier, their lust-filled stares mentally undressing the southern belle, the only other woman, the androgynous looking Chinese observer apparently not catching their eye.
No wonder she’s terrified. She probably thinks she’s going to be gang raped at any moment.
The gunfire died quickly when someone yelled at those outside, the words eliciting a few snickers from within the room, some of his fellow captives’ Arabic better than his. Laura was the fluent Arabic speaker in the duo, his progressively getting better, but not good enough to understand a Sudanese dialect.
Reese seemed to sense his curiosity. “Someone told them to stop shooting otherwise they’d give their position away since no one else in town had anything to celebrate.”
More snickers as the translation was heard.
“Let’s just hope someone is out there to have witnessed the idiocy,” commented the British observer whose name Acton had never heard. In fact, he had heard hardly any of the names of his companions and most seemed content to keep it that way, probably due to their “day jobs”.
Murmurs of assent filled the room as Acton’s thoughts drifted to Laura. She would know by now that the plane was missing, and with the message he had left her, which he could only hope she had received, they would know it was a hijacking and not a crash—even though that was how it ended. He had no idea how far off course they were. He assumed they would have stayed on course until they left Eritrean airspace, then after that they had been in the air less than an hour. He didn’t know what the top speed of the Antonov was, but he had to assume it was around 500mph, which meant that in that hour they could have gone at least that distance.
“How far off course do you think we were?” he finally asked the room, his voice low, his head turned toward Niner.
“The cruising speed of an Antonov Ruslan is about eight-hundred kilometers per hour,” came a whispered, heavily French accented voice.
“And they wouldn’t have changed course until we were below radar,” added one of the Italians, causing Acton’s heart to leap in hope, realizing that very little of their journey was low to the ground.
“We have to assume they didn’t change course until we leveled out after the decompression,” added Niner.
“We travelled for no more than half an hour after that,” said Lee Fang.
Acton sighed. “So we could be as much as four hundred kilometers away from where they’d start looking.” He felt Reese push closer to him, her trembling obvious again.
“Assuming they’ve started looking, it could take days for them to find the wreck,” said the British observer. “And that’s assuming they’re looking.”
“Wh-why wouldn’t they?” asked Reese, her voice trembling.
“This is the Sudan,” replied the Brit. “If they know about the gold, they’ll want it for themselves, so they could simply refuse to allow other search aircraft over their airspace and search themselves. If they don’t know about the gold, I can’t see any reason why the skies haven’t been filled with search aircraft, especially with a carrier nearby.”
“I could see them refusing the US military from participating,” said Lee Fang. “Sudan isn’t exactly on friendly terms with America.”
A Russian accent responded. “America isn’t exactly on friendly terms with most of the world.”
“Shut the hell up, Rooskie!” snapped Niner. “If it wasn’t for you and your buddies, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
Acton had almost forgot that their two prisoners had been cut loose by the Sudanese and lumped in with the rest of them. It was clear from the lack of questioning that their new captors had no clue about the gold and seemed simply thrilled at the prospect of getting ransom for their release.
One of their captors threw open the door to the room. “No talking!” he screamed, then slammed the door again, leaving an uncomfortable silence for several moments.
“I’m really going to hate killing those guys,” said Niner, his voice low.
“True,” agreed the Brit. “They seem a lovely bunch of lads.”
Somebody sni
ckered and was joined by another and within moments the entire room was laughing including Reese, her shoulders shaking against Acton’s chest. Somebody pounded on the wall, Arabic spat, and the moment of nervous tension breaking waned, the room quieting down as people adjusted themselves once again for sleep.
And with Reese’s trembling gone, Acton was pleased to feel her rhythmic breathing beside him as he drifted off to sleep moments after her, wondering what Laura was doing this very second.
Westin Excelsior, Rome, Italy
Laura Palmer bolted upright in bed, looking about her hotel suite to see what had woken her. Light was lining the fringes of the blackout curtains indicating it was far later in the day than she had planned to awaken, and a glance at the alarm clock confirmed it.
7:03am
Grabbing her phone, she double-checked the time and noted that the alarm she had set on the phone had been turned off over an hour ago, something that was known to happen occasionally, especially if she was exhausted.
And she was—or at least had been.
A knock at the door and she leapt out of bed, grabbing her robe, realizing what had woken her in the first place. A quick look through the peephole and she smiled, recognizing four faces of men who just might be able to help her. A quick check to make sure she was decent and she unlocked then opened the door.
“Miss Palmer,” said Red, nodding with a smile as she held out her arm, inviting them inside. Jimmy, Spock and Atlas followed, all shaking her hand, the massive Atlas’ “ma’am” rumbling through her being, his voice impossibly deep.
She glanced up and down the hallway, seeing no one, then closed the door, locking it. She pointed to the living area of the suite, essentially a one-bedroom apartment with kitchenette, then knocked on the door to the adjoining room. “Hugh, we’ve got company!”
She heard a grumble from the other side, Reading having arrived around one in the morning. They had discussed the situation for some time before she realized she had no memory of the conversation ending. She blushed slightly as she realized she must have passed out and Reading had put her to bed then retired himself.
“Make yourselves at home, gentlemen. Feel free to order some breakfast if you haven’t eaten. Your vacation is on me.” She headed toward the bedroom. “I’m going to get washed up and dressed.” She pointed toward the adjoining room. “And don’t shoot whoever comes through that door, he’s a friendly,” she said with a wink.
Atlas laughed, as did the others, though they were easily drowned out by his foghorn.
Laura ran through the shower quickly, feeling completely safe for the first time in days. She trusted these men, though their introduction had been less than stellar. They had saved her life numerous times, as well as that of her fiancée, James, and she would be eternally grateful.
Dressing, she tied her still damp hair back in a ponytail then joined the others. “Good morning,” greeted Reading, sitting in one of the easy chairs, the others spread about the room.
“Good morning,” she replied, grabbing a cup of coffee from the kitchenette, somebody having brewed a pot while she was in the shower. “Where do we stand?”
Red, who she knew was Bravo Team’s second-in-command, handed her an iPad with satellite photos. “These came in about an hour ago from a friend.”
Laura’s eyebrows narrowed as she noted the Russian Cyrillic writing. “Are these Russian?”
Red nodded. “Yes, from a specially tasked satellite.”
“What do you mean?”
“It means that the Russians took one of their spy satellites and changed its course so that it would be over this location at this day and time.”
“And what am I looking at?” To her it simply looked like a shot of pretty much anywhere in the world from tens of thousands of feet.
“Flip through them. They zoom in.”
She flicked her finger across the screen, the next photo zooming in, each additional photo getting closer and closer to the ground. It soon became clear it was an arid area, then she gasped as the next photo appeared and she realized she was looking at an airstrip.
With the smoking wreckage of a large aircraft.
Her hand darted to her mouth as her eyes threatened to erupt with tears. “Oh my God,” she gasped, dropping into the chair offered her by Atlas.
“Keep flipping,” said Red, curiously not upset by this discovery.
She flipped through several more photos and then she stopped. “There’s a second plane.”
“Yes,” agreed Red. “And if you notice, the smoke is coming from a broken off wing, not the main body of the Antonov the Professor and our guys were on.”
“So…”
“These photos show the plane landed, though roughly, and that most likely those on board survived.”
“How can you conclude that?” asked Reading.
“You don’t fall out of the sky and land on a runway where your getaway plane is waiting for you.”
Reading’s head bobbed in agreement as he made eye contact with Laura, hope restored for both of them. Laura wiped her eyes dry with the back of her hands and handed the iPad back to Red. “So you think they’re alive?”
“I think at least some people survived the crash. How many and who, I have no idea. We know BD is dead, but if there’s any chance Niner and the Professor are alive, I think we have a duty to go in there and find out.”
“I agree,” said Laura. “What do you need from me?”
“I suggest another hundred grand be placed into the account I sent you just in case we need to do some real palm greasing or if we get ourselves into some real shit down there and need a fast extraction. The unexpected always costs more.”
Laura nodded, sending an encrypted text to her banker to move the money as Red continued to brief her.
“We’ve already got a plane chartered that leaves in two hours. We’ll be over Sudanese airspace in five hours on our way to Kenya. Over our target zone we’ll do a HALO jump—”
“What’s that?” interrupted Laura.
“High Altitude-Low Opening skydive,” boomed Atlas. “Seriously fun shit.”
“And dangerous,” added Red. “By jumping from a high altitude our charter simply continues on its way as if nothing happened. By opening low, we minimize our time in the air so there’s less chance of us being spotted.”
“So what you’re telling me is that we”—Laura motioned between herself and Reading—“aren’t qualified to do that jump.”
A series of flustered half words burst from Reading’s mouth as he tried to figure out a dignified way of suggesting there was no bloody way in hell he’d even consider it, qualified or not.
He failed, ending with a “bah!”
Red shook his head. “No, I need you two to remain on board. You’re going to Kenya. If the plane showed up with no passengers, it would look pretty suspicious. Once there, you’ll establish satellite communications with us from your hotel—I’ve already booked the best for you and all of the equipment you’ll need will be in your room waiting for you—and we’ll keep you posted on our progress.”
Laura pulled at her hair. “Why not just bring what we need with us?”
“You might be searched. I want nothing on board that might suggest a problem.”
Reading leaned forward in his chair. “Won’t they be suspicious when the flight manifest has six passengers and only two get off?”
“One of our guys back home will modify everything that’s necessary once we’re in the air.”
“Seems like you’ve thought of everything,” said Laura, impressed. “What about weapons?”
“Everything is already on the plane.”
“What now?”
“You two pack, then we’ll head to the airport using whatever method you normally would, get on our chartered plane, and leave Italian airspace as quickly as possible.”
Laura stood, picking up the hotel phone. “I’ll call for a stretch to meet us out front in fifteen minutes.” She was abo
ut to make the call when she stopped. “Wait a minute.” She turned to Red. “You said you got the satellite images from the Russians.”
“From a contact there, yes. Definitely not through official channels.”
“And they had to retask the satellite.”
“Yes.”
“And that’s a big deal.”
“Yes.”
“So the Russians knew.”
“Absolutely.”
Laura felt her blood start to boil and could feel her cheeks burning red as she looked at Reading who appeared as equally pissed.
“Goddamned Russians!” finally erupted from her as she stormed into the bedroom, hammering the keys on the phone as if shoving pins into a Vladimir Putin doll.
Hamashkoraib, Sudan
Acton awoke with a gentle moan, giving Laura a squeeze as he rolled into her, wrapping his arms around her body. She moaned too and as he felt her lips press against his neck, he suddenly froze and opened his eyes.
Reese!
He pushed away and saw Reese staring at him with a smile on her face. “Good morning,” she whispered, her flirtatious self back it seemed.
“Um, good morning.” Acton completely extricated himself from her, sitting up on his blanket and saw most of the room was already awake, Niner and the Brit in one corner, both grinning at him. He gave them a look which had them both laughing at his expense as he stood. Still a gentleman, he offered Reese his hand and pulled her to her feet when she accepted.
“I hope they let us go to the bathroom soon,” winced Reese as she danced from foot to foot.
Acton nodded in agreement, he too in desperate need of facilities.
“Here they come,” whispered the Brit from the window he was standing near. The entire room went silent and Acton saw two men walk by the windows, looking in as they did so, their tough looks almost amateurish, these “men” barely boys by the standards of the soldiers in this room.
Pompeii's Ghosts (A James Acton Thriller, #9) Page 20