by Joshua Hood
But as they approached the outskirts of Grand-Bassam, it was immediately obvious that time had not been kind.
What had once been hailed as “little Paris” was gone. Its streets had been torn up, the bricks used to build houses in the northern section of town. The villas that were still standing were now cadaverous caricatures of their former selves, the shattered doorways and empty window casements yawning black as the eye sockets of a skull.
“You sure this is the place?” he asked.
“This is the old town,” Zoe said. “It was abandoned in 1896 during the yellow fever epidemic.”
“So, it gets better?”
“Much,” she said, motioning for him to take a right at the next intersection.
The road took them south and the ruins of the old town gave way to modern buildings and sidewalks full of pink-faced tourists.
“See,” Zoe said, pointing to a pair of blond-haired girls in bikinis walking arm in arm down the sidewalk. “Perfectly safe.”
“For them, maybe,” he muttered.
“What was that?”
“Never mind,” he said.
He parked in front of the Hôtel la Commanderie and hopped out, grabbing her bag from the back of the car.
Hayes wasn’t sure what it was about the girl that fired up the protector in him. Maybe it was the innocence he saw in her eyes, or the pained frown when she talked about her father, but whatever it was, he wasn’t leaving until he was sure that she was safe.
“Want to join me for lunch?” Zoe asked before climbing out.
“Not sure I can afford this place,” Hayes answered, eyeing the doorman.
“Daddy’s paying,” she said with a grin.
“In that case, lead on.”
Just as they finished a delicious meal, Zoe’s phone vibrated across the table, and Hayes glanced down, memorizing the number on the display before she scooped it up.
“It’s Jean Luc,” she said, picking up the phone.
“We are pulling up now,” a voice said in French, “you need to be ready to move.”
“I will meet you at the door,” Zoe said in French, ending the call. “I’ve got to go.”
Despite the previous ten years of practice, Hayes sucked at good-byes, mainly because he never knew what to say. Most of the time he went with the tried and true “have a safe trip,” followed by a handshake, but for some reason this time it didn’t seem to fit.
“You got everything?” he asked lamely.
“I think so,” Zoe answered, sliding her phone into her back pocket and shouldering her backpack.
“Well . . . all right, then,” he said, sticking out his hand.
But instead of taking his hand, Zoe stepped in and wrapped her arms around him.
“Thank you,” she said.
Caught off guard by the embrace, all Hayes could think to do was give her a friendly pat on the back followed by, “Yeah, sure . . . no problem . . .”
He was wondering if he should walk her out but was saved from the decision by the arrival of three black Land Rovers.
The convoy pulled up to the front door and before the lead vehicle had come to a complete stop, a serious-looking man in a desert-tan plate carrier hopped out of the second SUV and bounded into the hotel.
“Oh, I forgot l’addition—the bill,” she said.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, no problem.”
“Zoe, let’s go,” the man at the door snapped.
“Better get going,” Hayes said.
She turned to leave, but only made it a few steps before spinning on her heel and hurrying back.
The sudden about-face caught Hayes off guard and he was about to ask if everything was okay, but before the words could form, Zoe pushed herself up on her tiptoes and kissed him lightly on the cheek.
“Wh-what was that for?” Hayes stammered.
“For being a good man,” she said.
“Zoe, we have to go now!” the man at the door barked, and then she was gone, her shoes click-clacking on the floor as she scurried across the lobby and out the door.
Good luck, kid, he thought as the man marched her to the SUV.
Hayes paid the bill and grabbed his bag and was thinking of using some of Mallory’s cash to get a room for the night when he heard the waitress’s voice behind him.
“Excuse me, but the mademoiselle, she left this on the table.”
Shit, her insulin.
Hayes snatched the case from her hand with a hurried “thank you” and shot across the lobby. He was halfway to the door when the lead Land Rover pulled away and, knowing he wasn’t going to make it in time, he shouted at the doorman, “Stop that truck!”
“Quoi?” the puzzled doorman asked.
“The truck—le camion—stop the fucking truck!”
But by the time the man figured out what he wanted it was too late.
“Good job, Stevie Wonder,” Hayes spat before shouldering past the doorman and blasting out into the porte cochère in time to see the convoy already halfway around the circular drive.
He hurtled the hedges and ran across the lawn, angling for the trail Land Rover ten yards away. Hayes ran straight at the driver’s-side door, screaming at the top of his lungs and frantically waving the case over his head, desperate to get the man’s attention.
He wasn’t sure if the driver simply hadn’t seen him or if he had orders not to stop. Whichever the case, the man never checked up and by the time Hayes made it to the drive all that was left of the Land Rover was a cloud of dust.
It was barely twenty yards from the front of the hotel to his current location, but the heat plus the prawns and rice he’d stuffed down his throat at lunch left him feeling sluggish. He slowed his pace, breathing heavily through his mouth.
Hayes knew that if he was running Zoe’s protective detail, he would have made sure that each truck had extra insulin just in case something happened.
You willing to bet her life on that? the voice asked.
Hell, no, he thought.
Hayes shoved the case into his back pocket and forced himself into a loping run, angling for the line of shrubs that separated the hotel property from the road. He ran hard, legs pumping like pistons as he charged across the grass and dodged around the knot of spectators who’d gathered at the edge of the sand volleyball courts.
By the time he made it up the gentle incline and stopped before the hedges he was soaked in sweat and the skin around his hip was raw from the sandpaper rub of the Beretta’s grip. But the physical discomforts vanished when he made it to his destination.
From the inside of the Pathfinder there’d been nothing daunting about the decorative shrubs that marked the edge of the hotel’s property, but the view from the ground was a different story. What he’d thought were decorative shrubs were actually more akin to the hedgerows the allies had faced in Normandy—too tall to jump over and too thick to plow through.
Just great, he thought.
Hayes dropped into a crouch and scanned the bottom of the brush. He found what he was looking for a few yards to his left: a rectangular break at the bottom of the bush wide enough to accommodate a man of his size.
With no time to waste, Hayes threw himself flat and began low-crawling beneath the bush. It was easy going for the first few inches, but then the space started to narrow, and the only way Hayes could continue was by keeping his arms pressed tight against his sides.
Hampered by the tight confines, and with only his feet to propel him, Hayes was in no position to defend himself from the swarm of mosquitoes attracted to his body heat. All he could do was curse ineffectually while they bit his face and darted in and out of his mouth.
He twisted and turned his upper body, drilling through the undergrowth, the volume of his curses gro
wing with each branch that raked his skin. The sidewalk was less than a yard to his front and Hayes knew by the slowing of the foot traffic that the pedestrians could hear him, but he was beyond giving a shit.
With a final push of his legs he wormed free of the bushes and climbed to his feet, ignoring the open-mouthed stares of the pedestrians on their way to the beach. He patted his back pocket, and after making sure he still had the case, was brushing the leaves and dirt out of his hair. He turned to his left and started down the walk, toward the intersection half a block away.
From his position on the south side of the street his view was limited by the row of budget hotels and a large white triangular building at the corner, but he had a clear view of the traffic running east and west and was almost in position when the convoy made the turn onto Route d’Azuretti, engines howling as the drivers stomped on the gas.
Hayes shot a glance over his shoulder and wasn’t surprised to see a man in a floral shirt standing at the crosswalk, the toe of his sandaled foot tapping on the concrete as he waited for a break in traffic. It was perfectly normal behavior for Europe or the States. But this was Africa, where there was no such thing as a “licensed driver” and traffic laws were treated more like suggestions than rules. Hayes had spent enough time on the continent to know that waiting for a break in traffic before crossing the street could take hours.
Time Hayes didn’t have to waste.
By the time he looked back to the west, the convoy was halfway to the intersection, and while the jury was still out about the man in the tan plate carrier, there was no doubt about the men behind the wheels. They were pros and they dissected the traffic with a surgical precision, never allowing more than three feet of separation between each vehicle as they raced toward the intersection.
After watching them drive, Hayes knew the convoy wasn’t going to sit around and wait for him to cross the street. He had to go—now.
During his time in Africa, Hayes had been amazed by the ethnic and cultural barriers that spanned the country. Even with his practiced ear for language and preternatural ability to absorb the local cultures, he was constantly reminded that he was an outsider.
But at the end of the day, Hayes knew that no matter where you were in the world or what language was being spoken, there were two things that needed no translation: cash and guns.
“Well, I’m sorry it had to come to this,” he said, drawing the Beretta from his hip.
Hayes stepped out into the street. Before he had a chance to level the pistol on the rusted bread truck barreling toward him, the driver had locked up the brakes. He got the same results with the rider of the red moped occupying the inside lane.
“You fucking crazy, man?” the rider demanded in French.
“No, just late,” Hayes replied, checking the soldiers at the end of the block before stepping onto the concrete median that separated the four-lane road.
As a singleton operator, Hayes knew that his survivability hinged on not drawing attention to himself. But like all men in his position, he was a natural gambler, and while the stunt with the pistol had broken one of the cardinal rules of the profession, the gamble had paid off. Not only had the soldiers at the end of the block not noticed the gun, as an added bonus, the ripple effect from the bread truck had snarled the traffic.
While the Land Rovers tried to extricate themselves from the traffic, Hayes jogged across the street. He hopped onto the sidewalk and weaved through the window-shoppers milling outside the shops selling handmade souvenirs.
“You want a keychain?” one of the vendors asked.
Hayes shook his head no without breaking stride, and by the time he was nearing the final shop, the lead vehicle was pulling into the turn lane. He pulled the case from his back pocket and was shifting left, trying to get into the driver’s line of sight, when the familiar brush of cold air up the back of his neck stopped him dead in his tracks.
In an instant he saw it all: the pedestrians streaming down the sidewalk, the Land Rover inching forward, its driver ready for the left-hand turn that would take the convoy northbound, away from Hayes and the hotel.
Then, like a scratched DVD, the scene jumped back into real time—the crash of the glass shattering followed by the banshee scream of the RPG from the window, and the chalk-white tail as it screamed across the street, slamming into the hood of the lead Land Rover.
Then he saw it—a flicker of movement, a figure standing on the roof of the building across the street, a flash of flame from the tube on his shoulder followed by the bloodcurdling wail of the RPG.
32
GRAND-BASSAM
The heat scalded Hayes’s skin. He raised his arms to his face and was turning away, trying to get to cover, when the overpressure swatted him off his feet and sent him tumbling toward a Peugeot 504 stopped in the middle of the road.
He hit hard, the impact spiderwebbing the glass beneath him, the crack of his skull against the pillar turning the world black.
It was the pain that brought him back. The dull ache that started in his lower back and raced up his spine like a fuse. His eyes fluttered open, but instead of the earlier blue sky and bright sun, the street was on fire. Thick black smoke coiled from the burnt-out Land Rover, the air dense with the scent of comp B and the muted screams of tourists over the staccato chatter of gunfire.
Hayes twisted free of the glass, rolled across the hood, and dropped into the gutter. He shook his head, tried to clear the fog, and pushed himself up to a knee, where he conducted a functions check: inspected his body for any holes, tears, or broken bones. When he was sure there was nothing wrong that a few aspirin couldn’t fix, he turned his attention to the street and the firefight unfolding twenty yards to his front.
After being hit by the RPG, the lead Land Rover had rolled across the intersection, bumped over the curb, and nosed into a building, where it sat burning like a funeral pyre. The rest of the convoy was still in the turn lane, boxed in by a pair of brown Ford Excursions and under fire from men in gas masks and black body armor.
Hayes studied the scene, noting the deployment of the Excursions and the knot of assaulters as they flowed toward the convoy—the lead shooters keeping a steady rate of fire on the vehicles while the security element fired canisters of CS gas toward the street.
It was a textbook ambush and Hayes realized that whoever had planned it knew what they were doing. But while the plan was conceptually solid, all it took was one look at the closest Excursion for Hayes to find a flaw in the execution.
For a blocking position to work, a driver must pin the target vehicle in place, either against an immovable object or by—
But the driver had stopped short, leaving a gap that the driver of the Land Rover was working to exploit.
The driver shifted into reverse, cranked the wheel hard over, and backed up.
“Keep going,” Hayes urged, but the driver didn’t listen and immediately shifted into gear and stomped on the gas.
Then everything went to shit.
But before he could exploit the situation, one of the security men saw him standing there and sent a gas canister skipping down the street. It hit ten feet in front of him, bounced into the air, and exploded in a chalk-white cloud.
Looks like that’s our cue, the voice urged.
Hayes had been gassed enough times to know he didn’t want anything to do with the cloud of CS coming his way, but instead of turning to leave, he dropped to a knee, eyes locked on Zoe’s Land Rover.
They’re not going to make it.
The thought had no sooner crossed his mind than the Land Rover slammed into the Excursion’s front quarter panel.
Just stay down. It’s not your fight, the voice said.
For once, Hayes had to agree.
He’d done his job. Held up his end of the agreement when he delivered Zoe to the hotel. The rest is up to her protection team.
/> The thought had no sooner crossed his mind than the right passenger-side door of the second Land Rover was flung open and the man in the tan plate carrier bailed out.
He laid his rifle against the doorpost and yelled, “Get on line,” before opening up on his attackers.
The rest of the security team bailed out of the SUVs, formed up at the back of the Land Rover, and began laying down a base of fire.
“Set,” one of the men yelled.
The moment the team leader heard the command, he stopped firing and tore a smoke grenade from his kit. He pulled the pin, and after flinging it toward their attackers, moved to the back door of the Land Rover and pulled Zoe out.
During his time in Afghanistan, Hayes had been forced to break contact when his team came under fire by larger elements. When this occurred, the time-tested method for getting the hell out of Dodge was the “peel drill.”
On paper the tactic was simple enough—the team was formed into a column with the number one man suppressing the enemy on full auto. Once the shooter ran out of ammo, he “peeled off” from the column, allowing the next man in line to open fire while he retreated back the way they’d come.
It was the perfect tactic for the situation and would have worked if the man in the tan plate carrier hadn’t taken a bullet to the back of the skull.
Shit.
The moment the team leader went down, it was every man for himself, with the majority of the team turning west and rushing back the way they’d come. Leaving Zoe quivering in fear beside the dead man.
“You sons of bitches,” he said, tugging the Beretta free.
The man with the launcher was in the process of sending another canister toward the Peugeot when Hayes burst from cover. The man hastily fired the munition and dropped the launcher, hands scrambling for the MP5 hanging from the sling around his neck. His hand was just closing around the pistol grip when Hayes hit him with a controlled pair to the chest.
The gas enveloped Hayes like artificial fog, clawing at his eyes, the particles sticking to his sweaty skin, burning his face like battery acid—robbing him of his bearings.