* * *
PAUL JANSON TRIGGERED his second grenade. The rocket ignition lit him up again, but before the SR men could concentrate their fire the grenade spiraled into the helicopter. It exploded, thunderously. The shock wave lifted the parachute several feet and blew out all the windows in the house. Janson immediately grabbed the Bushmaster and the shotgun and pounded the quick release on his harness.
As he fell, he jerked the rip cord of a landing chute strapped to his back. It popped open; he steered as far as he could from the SR men who could see his new chute by the light of the fireball consuming the helicopter.
* * *
KINCAID STRUGGLED THROUGH thorny brush to the top of a low rise. When she spotted the second blockhouse, a stone hut similar to the first, she flung herself flat and planted the Knight’s bipod. She flipped back her goggles and got the blockhouse in her sights, but before she could acquire the DShK itself, it acquired her and the once-heard, never-forgotten earsplitting din of a stream of .50-caliber bullets was bracketing her head.
“Fuck!”
Alerted by the explosions and the roar of their sister gun up the road, the SR gunners must have been looking for whoever had started the battle to blunder into their field of fire. She slid backward down the rise, dragging the Knight’s with her, and tore madly to the right even as the Dushka got the range and gouged holes in the ground where she’d been one second before.
She knew two ways to deal with them. One would be to leave the Knight’s and advance through the brush with pistol and knife. But that would take way too long. She had to find a new shooting position, fast. Bursts of small-caliber gunfire in the distance told her that Janson had his hands full at the house. And silence behind told her that the Corsican contingents were sensibly waiting for the all clear.
She pulled on her panoramics again and inspected the lay of the land. It was less flat than at the beginning of the peninsula and offered more shooting positions, but each of those would be visible to the men manning the Dushka. She kept crawling to the right, taking care not to shake tall bushes that the machine gunners could see. A tree, one of the very few, appeared in her vision. She slithered to it and got the Knight’s in approximate position before she raised her head to look around it.
A burst of fire cut the tree in half, hurling splinters and dropping the top to the ground. Son of a bitch! Of course they were watching the tree nearest her last position, waiting for a dumb football clod like her to crawl to it. This time she stayed where she was, counting the twenty seconds it would take to crawl with the gun to the next likely position. Then she eased the Knight’s muzzle under the fallen trunk, swiftly found the Dushka in her scope, and fired once, smashing the machine gun’s bolt chamber.
She had to hand it to the SR guys. They had balls. With their weapon blown out of commission, both came charging into the brush, fixing to hunt her down. They were well trained, too. They spread apart, a smart by-the-book tactic to put a sniper at a disadvantage. Forced to slew the rifle from side to side to acquire widely separated targets in the night scope, she might miss both. They came fast, leaping through the brush, the taller one pulling ahead.
Kincaid shot the one behind him first. That bought her precious seconds. Before the leader realized that the man behind him had fallen and dove for cover, she found him in her crosshairs.
* * *
TSK! SHARP IN Kincaid’s earpiece.
“What.”
“I could use a hand.”
That was the closest Janson had ever come to asking her for help.
“Would you settle for the French Foreign Legion?” she asked.
“As soon as the road is clear.”
“It’s clear.”
“Good girl! Bring ’em on.”
* * *
A LOW-SLUNG SHERPA 4x4 personnel carrier raced up the peninsula’s narrow road, closely trailed by a heavy Renault TRM 10000 6x6 truck swaying on the bends. The convoy stopped in sight of the house where the burning helicopter cast garish light on trampled gardens and shattered windows.
A bullet-headed sergeant leaped from the Sherpa bellowing orders. The Renault’s canvas sides flew open. Squads wearing green berets, drab fatigues, and jump boots piled out of both vehicles and fixed bayonets to FAMAS-1 rifles.
Some of the mercenaries defending the building had encountered the fearsome Legionnaires of the Deuxième Régiment Étranger des Parachutistes rapid-intervention unit in North Africa and the Ivory Coast—an experience none wished to repeat. Those few threw their guns out the windows. The rest protested angrily in a polyglot chorus of French, Russian, Chinese, Afrikaner, and English, “Fight, you cowards.”
“You couldn’t pay me enough,” said a big Australian who stepped through the bullet-riddled front door with his hands in the air.
A Russian raised a pistol and took deliberate aim at his back.
A Chinese smashed the pistol to the floor with his assault rifle, breaking the Russian’s arm.
* * *
THE SR TROOPS guarding Iboga had been disarmed and herded into the Renault before they heard the distant wail of police sirens on the mainland. They exchanged puzzled glances when their captors splashed gasoline on the high grass and brush downwind of the house, ignited it with a thermal grenade, and cheered like banshees. But only when they threw their berets into the jagged flames did the SR men realize that they had been taken by a gang of separatists, displaced fishermen, Union Corse, thieves, ecologists, and arsonists disguised as the French Foreign Legion.
* * *
JESSICA KINCAID WAS sprinting up the road when she saw the fire coming her way. The brush was dry and the sea wind strong, fanning the fire into twin walls of flame divided by the narrow road. She saw immediately that it was moving too fast to outrun. She poured her water bottle on her sleeve, breathed through the wet cloth, clutched her Knight’s close, and ran between the fiery walls.
She burst through the last of it, coughing and gagging, straight into the powerful arms of Freddy Ramirez, who smothered the flames on her backpack with his gloves. “You okay?”
“Terrific. Where’s Janson?”
“In the house. Tell him the hoist is rigged.”
She found Janson rummaging through the arsenal the SR had left behind in the house’s library. “Ran out of grenades. You all right?”
“Woulda been nice if someone told me burning the place down was part of the plan.”
“Sorry about that. The Corsicans got caught up in the moment.”
“Where’s Iboga?”
“Barricaded in the wine cellar with the senior Securité Referral guy. Just spoke to Ondine. We have about ten minutes to get him down to the boat before the gendarmerie rustle up a helicopter.”
He snatched up a stun grenade and led her down the stairs to a stone-walled basement. The wine cellar was behind an oaken door. Splintery holes pocked the wood. “He shoots when you talk to him,” Janson explained. “President Iboga!”
A slug tore through the wood and smacked into the opposite wall.
“Who’s shooting? Iboga or the SR guy?”
“Hard to tell.”
Kincaid called, “Iboga!” A woman’s voice was not expected.
“Who is there?” Iboga’s voice was deep, guttural, and slurred. “Who are you? What is going on?”
“He sounds drunk.”
“He’s in a wine cellar.”
“Who? Who? Speak, woman!”
Kincaid shouted back, “We’re not exactly friends. But we guarantee you safe passage to the World Court in The Hague!”
Janson and Kincaid flung themselves back as another slug splintered the door. Janson handed Kincaid the stun grenade, leveled his Bushmaster at the knob, and flicked the fire selector to AUTO. But before he could blast the lock, they heard angry shouts inside, then another gunshot, which didn’t penetrate the door, then a heavy thud.
“They’re fighting,” said Kincaid.
“We need him alive or Isle de Foree will never se
e their money. Ready!”
“Go!”
Janson triggered the full 20-shot magazine into the lock. Even with the suppressor, the noise was deafening in the confined space. Kincaid kicked the door. It sagged open and she whipped her arm back to underhand the stun grenade.
“Hold it!” said Janson.
Two men were struggling on the stone floor, Iboga, the three-hundred-pound giant, on top, with his hands on the throat of the man under him and his sharpened teeth tearing at his face. Iboga’s opponent was pounding him with powerful blows to his belly and groin. They appeared evenly matched in ferocity and combat skills and it was hard to tell who would win. Iboga’s superior weight was offset by his age. He appeared to be fifty or so, while the powerful man under him was less than thirty.
“Look at his arm,” said Janson.
Kincaid saw the bandage and breathed an astonished, “Jesus H.” She drew her pistol and jammed the barrel to his head. “Fight’s over, Van Pelt. Break it up.”
Janson pressed the Bushmaster to Iboga’s head.“Let go!”
The two separated violently, Iboga backhanding Van Pelt’s nose as he loosened his grip on the mercenary’s throat, Van Pelt rolling out from under with a boot to Iboga’s groin that doubled the former dictator into a fetal crouch, gasping for breath.
Janson flipped Iboga on his belly, swiftly cuffed his hands behind his back, and hauled him to his feet. “We’re outta here.”
“Stop!” said Van Pelt. Blood was streaming from his cheek.
Janson said, “Try to follow us, you’re a dead man.” He pulled a second set of steel cuffs from his windbreaker and tossed them to Kincaid. “Lock him to that,” Janson said, pointing at a massive iron ring in the floor and covering him with the Bushmaster.
Van Pelt jerked his hands away. Kincaid moved like lightning, slapping one cuff around Van Pelt’s ankle and the other to the ring. Van Pelt’s eyes slid toward a pistol he or Iboga had dropped in their fight. Kincaid kicked it out of Van Pelt’s reach.
Van Pelt pointed a finger in her face. He was trembling with rage. “I’m warning you. Don’t cross SR.”
“You’re warning me? You’re warning me!”
“Jess!”
“Right. We’re outta here. Come on, President for Life. We’re going for a boat ride.”
“I’m warning you!” Van Pelt screamed.
“Warn the French police,” Janson said. “They’ll be here any minute.”
“I know who you are,” said Van Pelt.
“No, you don’t,” Janson said, herding Iboga out the door. The former dictator was limping and half doubled over, still gasping.
“I know who you are!”
“You think you know me. You don’t.”
“I know about the do-gooding.”
Janson paused in the doorway. “What?”
Van Pelt said, “Iboga is my client. Return him to me immediately.”
Kincaid pushed back into the cellar, eyes hot, nostrils flaring. “And if we don’t?”
“Secure Iboga,” Janson ordered softly. “Pat him down. He’s got a ton of pockets in that bush jacket. Confiscate everything—weapons, phone, money, passport—everything on his person. I’ll take care of this.… Do it!”
“Yes, sir.” She backed out the door.
“Answer her question,” said Janson. “If we don’t return your client? What will you do? Report us to the police? Press charges for delivering a bloodthirsty dictator to the World Court to stand trial for crimes against humanity? Go ahead. We’ll be long gone. You’ll still be nailed to the floor.”
Hadrian Van Pelt stood to his full height. His bloodied face was tight with rage, but it was controlled rage. “I give you one final warning,” he said with deep conviction. “If you do not return Securité Referral’s client this minute, we will hound you to the ends of the earth. You will stare over your shoulders for the rest of your lives. You will be so busy struggling to stay alive that you will never do a do-gooding job again.”
“Who will lead this hounding? You?”
“Believe me.”
“I believe you,” said Paul Janson. “You leave me no choice.”
He picked up the fallen pistol and aimed it at Van Pelt’s head.
Van Pelt laughed at him. “A do-gooder would pull the trigger on a man chained to the floor?”
“Twice.”
Van Pelt stopped laughing. His lips turned white. “Twice?”
“As assassins are trained to,” said Paul Janson. He did it so fast that the two shots sounded almost like one.
PART FOUR
Ambush
Evening
29°45′ N, 95°22′ W
Houston, Texas
THIRTY-SIX
Doug Case was leading “Chair Night” at the Phoenix Boys Shelter—his halfway house for teenage gangbangers crippled in gunfights—on the south side of Houston when his cell phone buzzed with the one call he would never block, even when he was visiting the kids. The Voice was calling, sooner than five days, breaking pattern. Events must be coming to a head if even the cool, dispassionate, wise, and cynical Voice was getting anxious.
“Guys, I’m really sorry,” Case apologized. “I gotta take this call. Who’s going to fill in for me?”
He chose two from the eager hands and watched the kids proudly as he backed his own chair toward the door. Those who had already earned their superchairs presented the new kid who had earned his by painstakingly learning to master the multiple controls with the fingers of one hand. The other had been paralyzed along with his spine in a gun battle the kid had lost defending a crack-cocaine business in an abandoned house on Higgins Street.
A male nurse lifted the shrunken form, which was all that remained of a hefty teenager, out of his ordinary chair and placed him in his customized super.
Case wheeled out to the foyer. There was an armed guard at the front desk and wire mesh on the small windows to discourage attacks by gangstas not yet crippled from the shoot-outs they had fought in backyards of the Sunnyside neighborhood. Case glanced through the window at his black Escalade idling at the curb. His driver was sitting at the wheel with a pistol in his hand.
Case parked his chair in front of a glass case displaying trophies that Phoenix shelter boys had won in qualifying events for the Paralympics, wheelchair basketball, wheelchair fencing, wheelchair tennis, power lifting, judo, and archery.
“George,” he called to the guard.
“Yes sir, Mr. Case.”
“Still indulging in your coffin nails?”
George grinned. “ ’Fraid so.”
“Why don’t you step outside and have a smoke. I’ll cover for you.”
George stepped out eagerly.
Case answered the vibrating phone: “Hello, Strange Voice.”
“Took your time picking up.”
“I had to create some privacy. Sorry.”
“How are you making out with Paul Janson?”
This was a happy subject and Case answered, “Janson bought it hook, line, and sinker.”
“He really believes that you’re quitting ASC?”
“Better than that.”
“How so?”
“Janson believes I switched sides. He thinks I’m now his mole inside ASC.”
“Mole?” Digitally distorted, the caller’s laughter squeaked like a slipping fan belt. “Where’d he get that idea?”
“I let him recruit me.”
The Voice laughed harder. “Well done! Very, very well done, Douglas. You are a man after my own heart.”
“I’ll take that as high praise, sir.”
“What does he want of his mole?”
“Nothing specific, so far,” Case lied. “General observations.”
“Let me offer you a word to the wise.”
“Please do,” Case answered hastily. All the distortion in the digital spectrum could not muffle the suddenly icy tone of threat.
“Don’t get so caught up in your performance that you come t
o believe it.”
“I won’t.”
“What makes you so sure? Paul Janson is a man who can offer a broad array of temptations.”
“I’m not mole material.”
The Voice was not convinced. “Don’t get so caught up that you believe that becoming mole material would be in your interest. It would not be in your interest. It would lead to unbearable pain and suffering.”
Case was enraged that anyone would dare to threaten him. If he could, he would reach through the phone and crush the life out of The Voice. But when Case looked at his reflection in the trophy case, he saw a man in a chair. The poor devil mirrored back a crumbling smile of remorse and regret. The days of crushing the life out of men who challenged him were gone forever. Savagery these days would be of the mind.
As he shook with thwarted anger, it took all his strength to force himself to answer mildly, “Not to worry. I know who butters my bread. And I am grateful.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
They rang off.
Case gazed inquiringly at his reflection.
The threat was not characteristic. The Voice had never threatened him so openly. Even when the mysterious caller had risked his first overture, he had never tried to control Case by sowing terror. He had a funny feeling—a gut feeling born of a lifetime of plots and counterplots—that The Voice had inadvertently revealed that he was deep inside ASC, not outside. Inside and very, very high up. Why else would he be so paranoid that Case might betray ASC’s strategy to Paul Janson?
Then a funnier feeling hit Case. Was the revelation not inadvertent, but deliberate? Was The Voice subtly signaling that he trusted Douglas Case more than ever by revealing more about himself? Were they nearing the time when they would deal face-to-face as equals?
There was a way to find out.
Case made two quick calls, then stared into the trophy case, waiting for his phone to ring. It did. The Voice.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve just received word that Iboga was snatched from Securité Referral.”
Robert Ludlum’s The Janson Command Page 27