by Mark Terry
“Eat something anyway.”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Shut up and eat.”
Hammond nibbled at the pita. “Now what?”
“Can you walk?”
“Sure.”
Derek stared at him, waiting. Hammond struggled up, made it to his knees, swaying. Slipping under one shoulder, Derek helped him the rest of the way to his feet. All the color in Hammond’s face drained away.
“Okay, back down you go.” Derek helped him sprawl back to the floor. He contemplated him for a moment before saying, “Drink. Eat a little. Let me study this map.”
But he already knew part of the problem. They were maybe three-quarters of a mile from their rendezvous point. Would Hammond be able to walk that far?
Derek tried to push that thought from his mind. They had five hours until the rendezvous. They would leave here no later than six o’clock.
He ate some of the food and drank some of the water and took several of the Motrin. Glancing over, he saw that Hammond was out again.
Taking out the map al-Atrash had scribbled, he studied it, comparing it to the maps he had memorized before their mission. He knew where they were. He knew where they needed to go. If they got a car, he knew several different ways of getting to where they needed to go, although needed to go best fell into the category of: Anywhere But Here.
Periodically he got to his feet and slipped around the interior of the building, peering out shattered windows. Toward the back of the building, which had collapsed into a pile of rubble, he found several two-by-fours, splintered and broken, but usable. He took several of them back to where Hammond slept.
Hammond stirred and looked at him. “Building a car out of wood?”
“Crutches. Or a travois, if I have to.”
Crouching, Derek measured out one of the two-by-fours. It was about eight inches too long. He scratched a line where he thought it should be and took it back out into the building. He found several suitable concrete blocks. He inserted the wood into the holes in the block and slowly applied pressure to it, levering it toward the ground. With a crack, the wood broke. Derek worked it back and forth. It was a splintered mess, but he could work on that. He snapped off the smaller chunks, then turned it down and pounded it against the hard floor.
The building had been pretty well stripped, but Derek found a wad of yellow insulation and what looked like a remnant of carpet. Plastic-coated electrical wire stuck out of several walls and the ceiling. Derek yanked on it. He only needed a couple feet. Having something sharp to cut it with would be nice. He wished he’d asked al-Atrash for a knife or a scalpel. Searching some more, he found a rusty length of rebar. He sawed away at the wire until the plastic and wires parted. Taking it all back to Hammond, he noted that the CIA agent was sitting up.
“How you doing?”
“Peachy-keen.”
“Glad to hear it. I’ve got a crutch and some padding. We’ll tie it all together.”
“You’re sweating like mad. You okay?”
“May have overexerted my shoulder a bit. I’ll be fine.” Which was a lie. His head ached, his shoulder blazed with sharp electrical pain and his stomach churned. He was exhausted, stressed, and wounded.
“Sit your ass down. I can do this. You take a break.”
It was worthwhile advice. Derek slumped to the ground. Hammond took the wood, the padding and carpet remnant and the wire. He fitted the padding over one end, wrapped the carpet over it, wound the cable around it, tied it in place.
He used it to climb to his feet, slipping the padding under his armpit. Hammond took several tentative steps, nodding. “Stillwater, you’re a genius. We’re doing this.”
“Couple hours. Then we’re out of here.”
Hammond moved around a little, and sat next to Derek. “I’m awake. Why don’t you sleep for an hour.”
Derek made himself as comfortable as he could, which wasn’t very. Usually he was able to sleep anywhere. Maybe this was a function of getting older.
Maybe it was a function of having faced too much shit and wondering when his luck was going to run out.
“Can’t sleep?” Hammond said.
“No.”
“I heard you were with the Agency once.”
“Back in the ’90s. Yeah. Didn’t last very long.”
“Why?”
Derek laughed. “I started out doing a lot of analysis, bio and chem weapons. Then they wanted me to go to Cuba and infiltrate a drug company and determine if they were making bioweapons. The thing of it is, it went to hell. And I’m pretty sure, in retrospect, that they knew it was going to go to hell, that the whole mission wasn’t for me to succeed, but to drive out whatever mole they had in their network in Cuba.”
“How hairy?”
Derek laughed. “Dude, I stole a kayak and paddled from Cuba into the Gulf of freaking Mexico in a tropical storm.”
Hammond laughed. “No shit?”
“No shit. So they chewed me out then sent me off to Afghanistan to hunt for chemical weapons hidden by the Taliban with an Army general and a Mossad agent. This might sound a little familiar, but we got stuck in the middle between a couple Muslim warlords trying to divvy up the country after the Russians split.” He was quiet for a moment. “And get this. I had an encounter with Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar.”
“In the early 90s?”
“Yeah. 1992.”
“You should have shot them both in the head.”
“Here’s the depressing part. I had them in my sights. But they weren’t my targets and things were literally blowing up around us, so I didn’t pull the trigger. If only I’d known, man. How about you? Why the Agency? You were Delta?”
“Spent a couple years in Delta. Primarily I was involved in rescuing hostages from freighters hijacked by Somali pirates. The thing is, the owners of the freighters would rather pay the ransom and get their ships and cargo back. So most of the time we were on standby and told to wait while a negotiator got the pirate’s Swiss bank account number. But mostly it was my wife. I spent half my time in Africa or the Middle East and she wasn’t even allowed to know where I was. So I thought with my language skills that the CIA might be a little better. Less deployment, more flexibility.”
“Huh.”
“Crazy, right? Ever been married?”
“Once. Long time ago. She’s an Army doctor. We were never in the same place at the same time. I was traveling all the time. Working for the U.N. mostly, doing some private consulting. But one year she was deployed at the time I was home and she was at home during the period I was in Iraq and we saw each other about two days out of eighteen months.”
They contemplated that for a moment.
Derek looked at his watch. “I’m going to try and sleep again. We’ve got maybe an hour before we should head out.”
“Go for it.”
Derek closed his eyes and tried to make his mind a blank, but his thoughts drifted to Simone, his ex-wife, and to Irina Khournikova, the mother of his son. That had been a fling, three weeks in the Caribbean on his boat, The Salacious Sally. And he drifted off.
An explosion blasted him awake. Rolling to his side, clutching the AK47, he said, “What the hell?”
“Mortar fire,” Hammond hissed. “The war’s started up again and it sounds like we’re at ground zero.”
11
Nazif had finished burying his dead and saying prayers for his son. His headquarters had burned, some of his men killed. But the Nazif Brigade was larger than that and growing all the time. He returned to Aleppo and went to an apartment building near the city center. Three of his best lieutenants were there, watching the news on TV and working on computers.
They looked up when he walked in. “Any news?” he demanded.
Shai Mudada said, “Praise Allah you’ve returned! The SAA is entering the city. We don’t have much time. We’re expecting a major assault today.”
He waved it away. “I meant about the Americans.”
Shai was a tactician.
He had served with Nazif in the Egyptian Army and knew a great deal about battle strategy, and was very valuable in fighting the Syrian Army. Shai shook his head. “We have to pay attention to this! We’re under attack!”
“Deal with it. I’m dealing with the American spies. Ebo, do you have anything?”
“Maybe,” Ebo said. “I’ve been talking to my whisperers. One of them says he thought he saw one of them in the market. That a crowd was going after him, they thought he was one of the Black Brothers.”
“And what happened?”
Ebo hesitated. Nazif knew Ebo was too cautious, but part of that was because he dealt with spies and rumors and shreds of intelligence and doubted much of it. He did not like to make guesses and he did not like to pass on inaccurate information.
“Say it,” Nazif said. “Tell me. Any clue to where these Americans have gone. Give them to me. If we wait too long, they will escape.”
“He thought the man was rescued by a doctor.”
Nazif’s eyes grew wider. “A doctor?”
“Yes. The crowd was surrounding this man, he had a bad arm, but he carried a rifle and wore a T-shirt and something on his head and wrapped around his face, but he thought it was him. And a man intercepted him and led him out of there. My whisperer, he asked someone who he was and they said a local doctor, al-Atrash.”
Blood rushed to Nazif’s face, his pulse beating hard in his veins. Turning to two of the men he had come with, he waved them to follow. “With me.”
12
Another explosion rocked the building. Dust filled the air and something large collapsed with a roar. “Shit,” Hammond said, staggering to his feet. “We’re in the target zone. This building will collapse on top of us if anything gets too close. Time to boogie.”
Derek agreed with him. He handed Hammond the makeshift crutch, collected their AKs and their gear, and slipped under Hammond’s other arm. They staggered to the doorway, peering out.
“Oh, man.”
Derek agreed. Several blocks down appeared a line of tanks. The Syrian Army was starting an offensive.
“Exit stage left,” Derek said, pointing. “And no dawdling, junior.”
They moved as fast as they could, which wasn’t very fast. The rebels were fighting back from both sides of the road, primarily guerilla tactics. It was clear to Derek that they had anti-tank weaponry and snipers set up on top of some of the remaining buildings.
Four rebels sprinted past them, shouting in Arabic. Hammond shouted back and they kept going.
“What was that all about?”
“They accused us of being cowards. I said we were both wounded.”
“True enough.”
Gunfire split the air. They dodged into a doorway. Hammond breathed in deep, fast gulps. Derek took a slug of water and raised his rifle, watching carefully. Around a corner appeared two uniformed soldiers. Aiming carefully, he took out the first. The second hit the ground and rolled, disappearing from sight.
“Looks like you just took a side,” Hammond muttered.
“Keep an eye out for him. We’re stuck here until he makes a—”
The Syrian soldier sprinted into the open, spraying the area with bullets. Derek silently counted breaths, tracking the man, and fired off a three-round burst. Blood sprayed and he was down.
“Let’s go.”
Grabbing Hammond, they continued on their route. Off to their left a mortar landed on a building, blowing it to rubble. They staggered, almost falling from the blast. Dust and smoke cloaked their passage, but made it hard to breathe and see. Derek
pointed. “That way.”
They stumbled in the direction he pointed. More gunfire split the air. A lone gunman walked toward them, dressed in the black-on-black that Derek had been informed was an unfriendly. The figure shouted at them in Arabic. Hammond pushed away from him so he was standing on his own. Speaking in Arabic, he responded. Derek noted that John’s finger had tightened on the trigger of
his own AK.
Derek moved slowly away from Hammond, so as to make less of a target. Their conversation was heated. The Syrian, if he was Syrian, kept jerking his own rifle at them, threatening. Slowly, so as not to escalate the encounter, Derek lifted his barrel bit by bit.
Suddenly Hammond lurched forward, shouting. The Syrian shouted back.
Hammond fired his AK. The Syrian fell backward, dead.
“That went well,” Derek said.
Hammond bent over, swayed, and fumbled a handgun from the man’s belt and tossed it to Derek, who caught it and tucked it in his own belt. How Hammond was managing to juggle the makeshift crutch, his AK and searching a corpse was beyond Derek. “He thought we were running away. He was going to force us back to the fighting.”
“Seems like a recurring theme.”
“I’d pretend to be a photographer if I had a frickin camera. Let’s go.”
They moved on, trying to avoid the main fighting. It seemed to be shifting off to their west, but Derek was also afraid they were moving too far east of their target. Finally he started veering back the way they were headed. Their pace was glacial. Hammond, despite moments of adrenaline-inspired speed, would then drag as he wore out. He never asked for a rest, but it was clear to Derek that the man was on the edge of his reserves.
Stopping to check the scrawled map, Derek nodded. “Almost there.” The Citadel loomed ahead of them. The café they were looking for was about two blocks ahead. The fighting was moving away from their location.
They ran into a handful of people, mostly women, watching them suspiciously from doorways. Finally, ten minutes later, they found the café. Pushing through the door, they discovered about fifteen tables, a ceiling fan batting at the air.
“Holy shit,” Hammond breathed, instantly shifting to the side and raising his rifle.
Derek instinctively moved to the other side of the door.
The café was filled with a dozen corpses. They appeared to have been gunned down. All men, most of them looking older with gray beards. There was food on the tables and glasses of tea. Playing cards scattered across tabletops and on the floor.
Picking his way around the bodies, Derek peeked into the back. Two more bodies. One middle-aged, one younger.
“Dear God,” Hammond said.
Derek nodded. The older one appeared to have been crucified. He was roped to a support beam, spread against the wall with spikes driven through his wrists and ankles.
Approaching the man, Derek pressed his fingers to his throat. He almost jumped out of his skin when the man lifted his head and moaned.
“Help me with this,” Derek said. He tried to pull the spikes from the man’s wrist and arms, but they wouldn’t budge.
“Nazif … ”
The man opened his eyes a moment. He said something in Arabic. Glancing at Derek, Hammond translated, “He’s asking about his son. Can we get him down?”
“I don’t know. If we just pull him down the trauma will probably kill him. But he’s in pretty bad shape as it is.”
The man muttered something else. Hammond translated: “He said the Sheikh is hunting for us.”
“Specifically us?”
“The Americans.”
“That probably means us. Let’s try to get him down. If you think you can support him, I’ll try to get his arms and legs loose.”
Derek hunted around the kitchen and found a hammer, probably the one that had been used to nail in the spikes. It was spattered with blood. Derek’s stomach clenched as he thought about what he had to do. Hammond tried to get a grip around the man’s waist and lift him, but it was obvious the CIA agent was at the limits of his strength. With brutal efficiency and the screech of metal being torn from wood, Derek pulled the spikes from the man’s hands. The rope around his waist kept him from collapsing to the floor. He groaned once and sagged.
Derek made a similar move on the spikes in the ankles. Blood soaked the man’s clothing. He edged Hammond aside and levered the man to the floor.
The man muttered in Arabic. They leaned over him, Hammond listening. Derek found several towels in the kitchen and used them to wrap the wounds in the hands. He was working on the ankles when Hammond said, “You can stop.”
Looking up, he saw Hammond, face gray, his ear to the man’s chest. “He stopped breathing a couple seconds ago. No heartbeat.” He raised the man’s shirt to show where he had been stabbed repeatedly.
“What did he say? There at the end?”
“Nazif will hunt us to the ends of the earth. That the Sheikh tortured and killed his brother, killed his son, and will kill us. And for Allah to have mercy on our souls.”
Gunfire rattled, followed by an explosion nearby.
Derek quickly searched the bodies, looking for car keys. He found a set that had Fiat stamped on it. Creeping to the café’s windows, he looked up and down the street. There were half a dozen cars and one of them was a faded blue Fiat.
“Ready to go?” he asked Hammond.
“I can’t walk to Turkey.”
Derek held up the keys. “Let’s go.”
They were halfway to the car when a truck roared around the corner. In the back stood two men with AKs. Seeing Derek and Hammond, the truck raced toward them. The men in back fired, bullets chewing at the dusty air.
Both Derek and Hammond turned and returned fire, backing toward the Fiat. Through the truck’s windshield Derek thought he recognized Sheikh Nazif. He took careful aim at the man, firing. The truck swerved and the men all piled out, hiding behind the truck.
Derek and Hammond ran as fast as they could—which wasn’t very damned fast at all—to the Fiat. More gunfire erupted. Out of the corner of his eye Derek saw Hammond fall.
Turning, he emptied the AK, aiming not at the shooters, but at the truck. Spinning, he crouched next to Hammond. A bullet had punched through Hammond’s shoulder. “Leave … me.”
“No.” Dropping his empty rifle, Derek grabbed Hammond by the collar and dragged him twenty feet to the Fiat. It was unlocked. Bullets whined around him. Three men ran toward them, firing. With a heave, Derek pushed Hammond into the car and dived behind the wheel. Derek jammed the key in, praying they had the right car. The engine coughed, sputtered, and died.