by Marc Cameron
“When in Rome,” Gaspard said. “Or Lisbon . . .”
Gaspard’s bodyguards perked up. Farrin, especially, grew apoplectic about anything or anyone who got between him and his boss, but Gaspard waved them away. He’d warned them as soon as he’d seen the woman—targeted her, really—that he wanted space, ordering them to keep watch from a comfortable distance of at least twenty meters away. Having bodyguards showed everyone he was rich. Bodyguards who treated him as if he might shatter at any moment only made him look frightened, weak. It was a delicate balance.
Lucile was close enough to smell now, earthy, Gaspard thought, like warm rain.
“You are visiting Portugal?” Gaspard said.
“Small talk?” Lucile said. “I thought we were dispensing with such things.”
“Touché,” Gaspard said.
“Are you well and truly rich?”
The Frenchman smiled. “More money than you could possibly imagine.”
“Oh.” Lucile scrunched her freckled nose. “When it comes to money, I can imagine quite a lot. Do you really want oil on your back?”
“I do indeed,” Gaspard said.
“And you will buy me dinner?”
“Indeed.”
She leaned toward her bag. “I have some oil here—”
Gaspard grabbed her by the toes—tan things, painted pink—and thought that his reflexes were still very good. “You must use my oil,” he said. Farrin marched over an instant later, shoving a plastic bottle of suntan oil at the woman. It was greasy from recent use.
“Thank you,” Gaspard said to Farrin. “Now go away.” He released the woman’s foot and let his face fall forward, toward the towel. He turned slightly toward Lucile, words muffled. “I know it may be difficult for you to comprehend, but it is possible to kill someone with poisoned suntan oil.” He raised wildly overgrown eyebrows up and down. “The process will be easier if you straddle me.”
“Are you being serious?” Lucile knelt beside him. “Poisoned suntan oil?”
He wallowed deeper into the sand, head on his hands again, squinting into the sun. “There are people who do not like me very much.”
“I find that difficult to believe,” the young woman said. She threw her leg across his rump, climbing aboard to pour a line of oil onto the leathery folds below Hugo Gaspard’s hairy shoulder blades.
The book lay in the sand beside her right knee—within immediate reach.
5
Domingo “Ding” Chavez stood on the edge of the limestone cliff above the eastern end of the Praia de Benagil, eyes fixed at the small screen on the controller in Bartosz “Midas” Jankowski’s callused hands.
“She saw it,” Chavez said, gritting his teeth.
“Relax, boss,” Jankowski said. “How about you exhibit a little faith?”
“I’m telling you, she saw it.”
“That’s a big nope,” Jankowski said, popping the p for emphasis. “I’m keeping the bird in the sun. She didn’t see anything but glare.” Working the bird—a pocket-size unmanned aerial vehicle called a Snipe Nano—the retired Delta colonel swung his legs easily, as if he were sitting on a boat dock and not perched on the edge of a sheer seventy-foot drop. He was tied in, but that little factoid didn’t do much for Chavez’s churning stomach.
“You better be right,” Chavez said. “The last thing we need is for some beach bunny to tip off the target that we have an eye in the sky.”
Chavez had let his hair grow out over his ears, as he often did on ops where he didn’t want to look like the former Army NCO that he was. Even absent the military haircut, it was obvious to anyone with experience downrange that Chavez had been around the combat block. That wasn’t exactly rare in this day and age. There were enough war-fighters coming home who’d seen the elephant that he could at least blend in at the mall.
Domingo Chavez was in that height range that tall people called short and short people called tall. Good genes and a lifetime of PT gave him an athletic build, even in his late forties—an age his son reminded him was “too old to die tragically young.” JP was a good kid, but had he known the dangers his father faced “for reals, yo” on a daily basis, he wouldn’t have been such a smartass.
Chavez and Midas had counted four bodyguards, three on the beach plus the guy guarding the vehicles—a gray Mercedes that served as Gaspard’s limo and a dark Peugeot they apparently used as a follow car.
The rest of Ding’s team was doing some bouldering this morning while they watched. Hiding in plain sight was the only way to operate in these small villages where there was a hundred percent chance that you’d run into your target a dozen times a day. Scrambling around the rocks allowed Chavez and his team to blend in, to be noticed for something other than what they actually were—operatives from The Campus. The off-the-books intelligence organization worked under the guise of the financial arbitrage firm Hendley Associates, across the Potomac from D.C.
Free climbing over the ocean was fairly safe—so long as you knew what you were doing. Chavez did not, so he spent his time at the top, looking down, happy to keep his feet planted on the level. Hands and fingers were made for pressing triggers and slapping the shit out of bad guys—not hanging on to minuscule rock nipples on the face of some cliff. Still, he’d dressed to look the part—nylon running shorts, a tank top, Scarpa approach shoes with sticky soles, and a harness for a small bag of climbing chalk. Midas was dressed much the same, while Jack Ryan, Jr., worked his way up the rock face, shirtless, wearing skintight Lycra climbing shorts and pointy La Sportiva climbing shoes that made him look like some kind of ballet dancer. Chavez was just old enough that he would have looked like the creepy old dude in bicycle shorts had he tried for the same getup. Lisanne Robertson climbed with Jack, also wearing Lycra shorts—which she wore much better than Ryan did—and a black sports bra.
Not officially a Campus operative, the former Marine and police officer was the transportation coordinator and in-flight attendant for the Campus/Hendley Associates Gulfstream. Because she often pulled security when the plane set down in hostile situations, John Clark, director of operations—and Ding’s father-in-law—folded her into tactical training sessions and range time. She had zero experience running surveillance detection or tailing a target, but she was as savvy as Chavez had ever seen. She was also an accomplished climber, often hitting the rock gym in Bethesda after an evening team PT workout that left Chavez looking for the nearest couch and a cold beer.
Lisanne’s voice came over the net, as if she knew Ding was pondering her climbing skill. “I don’t think either of them saw it,” she said.
“Told you so,” Midas said, without looking up from the palm-size controller. “I still have eyes on our arms-dealing asshole—and the girl is still clueless. You gotta learn to trust me, boss.”
* * *
—
Lucile Fournier used her left hand to distribute the oil, keeping her right hand dry. Clasping with her thighs, she leaned forward, digging into the fleshy back with her forearms and elbows now, paying particular attention to the base of the disgustingly flabby neck—searching for just the right spot. Gaspard’s hair was well groomed but longish, the dark curls reaching below his collar, had he been wearing a shirt. Good. That would help to hide what she had in mind.
He moaned under her rough ministrations, his alligatored skin shining bronze in the sun.
Plouc, Fournier thought. Such a slob. Gaspard might have money, but he would never have class. But she laughed as though she were oh-so-lucky to be riding on this fat pig. She shot a quick backward glance under the crook of her arm, checking the location of the three bodyguards. As she suspected, they were behind her, slumping on the gunwales of a couple of fishing skiffs that were pulled up on the sand, more than twenty meters away. The black bottoms of her swimsuit had a small rip over her left cheek, and she was certain that all three men, including
the more astute Farrin, were completely mesmerized by the flexing muscles of her toned derriere as the rip opened and closed and opened again in concert with her movements.
“Have you been in Portugal long?” she asked.
Gaspard grunted in time to her kneading. “Now . . . you start . . . the small talk . . .”
She ignored the gibe. “Do you know sebastianismo?”
“I confess that I do not,” he said.
“King Sebastião,” she said. “He was also a rich man. Like you, he too had an important meeting, his against the Moors. Unfortunately, he was forever lost in the deserts of North Africa. The word sebastianismo comes from that. A failed venture—hope for something that can never be.”
“Stop,” Gaspard said, sounding pained. “Your history lesson depresses me.”
“As you wish,” she said. “But I do like the word. Sebastianismo . . .”
She leaned forward now, kneading with her left arm, pressing her breast against Gaspard’s back. Her right hand slipped into the paperback book at her knee and retrieved the MSP derringer hidden in the hollowed pages. A whirring noise above her head, like a dragonfly—or a passing bullet—almost caused her to fumble with the pistol. She regained her composure and brought the gun up quickly before the bodyguards could see it, covering it with a cupped palm. Pistol secure, she turned, looking for the source of the noise, half expecting to see Farrin standing there, ready to blow her head off. Merde! She released a pent-up breath. Nothing but a blinding sun. Maybe it really was a dragonfly. She willed her body to relax and become more fluid, and then returned to the task ahead.
The Soviet-era Malogabaritnyj Spetsialnyj Pistolet fit her hand perfectly—better, in fact, than the Beretta she customarily carried. The Small Special Pistol had first seen action with KGB units in the early 1970s. Its specialized ammunition utilized a captive piston inside the brass casing that drove a 7.62x37 projectile, similar to that of an AK-47, out a short barrel at a speed just shy of five hundred feet per second. The gases from the detonated propellant—and nearly all the resulting noise—remained trapped inside the cartridge, rendering the MSP very close to “Hollywood quiet.” The ballistics were quite limp, something around half of the diminutive .32 auto. But the Russians had proven many times over the last four decades that a Spitzer bullet delivered at point-blank range more than made up for the round’s middling performance.
Lucile leaned forward slightly, digging in with her elbow to draw a grunt of pleasure from Gaspard. She nodded to herself. That would be plenty loud enough to cover the noise.
He groaned. “Masterful. Are you certain you are not French?” He clenched his buttocks beneath her groin, making her want to vomit. “I am usually the one to do the riding,” he mumbled. “If you know my meaning.”
Pistol hidden between her breasts now, Lucile clutched with her thighs to retain her balance and leaned farther forward, lips touching Gaspard’s ear. The smell of his sweat was nauseating.
“. . . courir sur le haricot,” she said. Literally “run on the bean,” the phrase more figuratively meant he had gotten on her last nerve.
Gaspard froze, suddenly realizing Lucile was not who she’d said she was.
“Tu es française,” he whispered, face still buried in his towel. You are French!
Instead of answering, Lucile dug deep into the muscles of his back with her left elbow. With her right hand, she pressed the MSP against the depression at the base of his neck, just below his skull, aiming downward. She pulled the trigger in perfect time with the resulting grunt brought on by her elbow.
Gaspard sagged in the sand, all the air leaving his lungs with a heavy, gurgling groan, his brain stem clipped at the base. Fini.
Lucile continued to knead Gaspard’s flaccid muscles, chatting amiably. This man had never been anything more than a hollow shell, so it was not at all difficult to talk to him when he was dead.
She stopped abruptly as if he’d said something to her, then tugged at the seat of her panties, drawing the bodyguards’ attention there, away from the blood and bone on the towel where this pig’s lower jaw had been. She looked up at Farrin.
“He wants some wine,” she said, sotto voce, as if she were letting Gaspard drift off to sleep.
Farrin scowled.
Lucile gave him a Suit yourself shrug. “I have a bottle in my car if you want to get it.”
The bodyguard gave a toss of his bulldog head up the hill as if to say Get it yourself. She knew that’s what he would do, if only to watch her walk away in the torn bikini bottoms.
* * *
—
A scant twenty feet below the edge of the cliff where Ding and Midas had set up shop, Jack Ryan, Jr., wedged a knife hand into a rock crevice, made a fist, and used the resulting friction to pull himself closer to the face. The pain against his knuckles was a welcome penance. He’d decided to swear off women for a while, at least the conquest of them. Climbing above him, a perfect triangle of perspiration where tight climbing pants met the small of her back, Lisanne Robertson was making the decision difficult. She was pleasant to climb with and behind, but she was also a workmate and friend, certainly not someone he should be fraternizing with. Don’t dip your pen in company ink, Clark had baldly warned everyone after Dominic Caruso and Adara Sherman had become an item. It didn’t matter. Ryan had had such shitty luck with women lately that he’d decided to remain celibate in the near term anyway.
Lisanne was the better climber and took the lead, picking the route. She moved effortlessly, slowing down for Jack’s benefit. He was plenty athletic, getting more than twenty miles a week on the roads around his home in Old Town Alexandria and at least two nights a week with a local soccer league. If climbing were simply a function of strength and size, he should have been able to match this lithe woman pitch for pitch. Fitness was vital, and though Jack’s six-foot-plus wingspan definitely helped, it turned out that climbing had a lot in common with ballet.
Lisanne hugged the rock face, stretching her Lycra climbing shorts to reach with an incredibly long leg for a toehold as high as her waist. Directly below her, Ryan behaved as a warrior monk and did the gentlemanly thing, turning away to look down at the beach and their target.
Ryan had little doubt that Hugo Gaspard was here to meet with the two Russians who had just arrived in the village of Carvoeiro, some five kilometers along the coast to the west. According to Dom Caruso, the men might as well have had GRU tattooed on their foreheads. The location of the meeting was still up in the air. Caruso and Adara Sherman kept an eye on the Russians, while John Clark kept an eye on them, providing countersurveillance and protective overwatch.
As with the lion’s share of Campus operations, the road to action had been prefaced with a hell of a lot of reading, analysis, and conjecture—some of it educated, some more along the lines of a WAG—or wild-ass guess.
Hendley Associates’ proximity to the Pentagon allowed the Internet gurus of The Campus to strain terabytes of raw data in the way of intelligence information from daily encrypted transmissions from Fort Meade. Mary Pat Foley, the director of national intelligence and confidante of the President, was fully aware of the broad mission of The Campus, but details were kept in house, giving Liberty Crossing—home of the director of national security—and the White House deniability. Sort of.
A transmission grab from Creech Air Force Base had shown eleven seconds of footage from an MQ-9 Reaper drone loitering over Helmand, Afghanistan. The video was grainy, but analysts were fairly certain the guy in the picture had gotten his hands on a half-dozen MICA rockets.
Jack Junior had worked up the report, identifying the ISIS leader in the video as Faisal al-Zamil, a Saudi national—or at least he had been until the Hellfire missile from the MQ-9 had turned him into fine desert shellac. Zamil came from a wealthy family with bank accounts in various locations around Europe. With the help of Campus Internet savant Gavin Biery
, Ryan had been able to follow money from an account in Amsterdam to several pass-through shell companies that would have fooled a casual observer—to a mid-level French arms dealer who thought he was more important than he actually was, named Hugo Gaspard. A tap on the Frenchman’s Paris phone had revealed the appointment with the Russians in Portugal.
After an unofficial and off-site deconfliction meeting with DNI Foley to be certain that no one from any of her sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies were already birddogging Gaspard, John Clark brought his little team to the Algarve coast—to watch a very tan and wrinkled walrus of a French arms dealer wallow around on the beach with a cute brunette in a black bikini.
“The girl’s leaving.” Ryan spoke into the cell-phone mic hanging next to his lips. “Our rabbit’s meeting must be imminent.”
“Maybe,” Ding said. Ryan caught a flash of him peering over the edge.
Below, the brunette trotted up the trail toward the road. “She left her bag and towel behind,” Lisanne said.
Ding’s voice crackled in his ear. “I think she saw the drone.”
“Would you stop with that, boss?” Midas said. “She didn’t see—holy shit!”
Ryan looked at girl—running faster now—and Gaspard, still hanging out on his towel. All three bodyguards were slouching by the overturned boat.
“What?”
“Jack,” Midas said. “You and Lisanne should keep eyes on the girl.”
“Roger that,” Ryan said.
“Talk to me,” Ding said. “What are you seeing?”
Midas held up the drone controller’s display. “See right here in the upper corner of the screen? Unless I’m mistaken, that’s a chunk of Hugo Gaspard’s brain in the sand next to what used to be his face.”
Clinging to the rock with one foot and a fist, Ryan scrambled up and over the edge behind Lisanne. On his belly, he looked down toward the beach in time to see two bodyguards running to their boss while the third, a short, stocky man, sprinted up the path leading toward town, pistol in hand.