by Joshua Hood
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
Hayes started at the airport, told her about the altercation with Dábo’s men and their arrival at the hotel. He told her about Zoe leaving her insulin on the table and was just getting to the ambush when the man lying on the bottom of the booth came to with a pained groan.
“What was that noise? Is someone else there?”
“No, it’s just . . . hold on a second,” he said, covering the mouthpiece and toeing the man in the side with his ruined boot. “Hey, man, can’t you see I’m on the phone?”
The man grunted and rolled onto his stomach with a “F-fuck you.”
“Do yourself a favor and stay down.”
But instead of heeding the warning, the man pushed himself into a sitting position, and after steadying himself took a swipe at Hayes’s leg. “I-I’m gonna bust you up . . .”
Is this guy serious?
“Knock it off,” Hayes said, pushing the man off balance.
“Are you there? Who are you talking to?” she demanded in an aggravated voice.
“Just some bum hassling me for cash,” he said.
“Well, get rid of him.”
“Yeah, just give me a second,” he said, setting the phone atop the housing and grabbing the empty beer bottle.
By the time he turned around the man was holding on to the edge of the phone booth, trying to pull himself to his feet.
“I told you to stay down,” he said, clubbing the man across the back of the neck with the bottle.
The blow had the desired effect and sent the man tumbling to the ground, but Hayes made sure that he was down for the count before retrieving the phone.
“Sorry about that,” he said.
“I don’t like talking about this over an open line, but I think I know who took Zoe.”
“How?”
“Listen, I can protect you, but you need to get out of Grand-Bassam.”
“Protect me? From who?”
“These men who attacked you, they know your face, do you really think they are going to let you leave?”
“They’ve got to find me first.”
“You are a white guy in Africa flying a vintage American plane, how hard do you think it is going to be for them to track you down?” she asked.
She’s done this before.
“Fine, tell me where to go.”
37
GRAND-BASSAM
Hayes stood outside the stolen Mitsubishi studying the map he’d spread across the hood. The light of the Streamlight Micro clutched between his lips formed a golden halo around Angola.
He shook his head, marveling at his continued streak of bad luck and the fact that out of all the cities in Africa, all the hellholes she could have sent him to, of course it had to be Luanda.
Hayes had tried to beg off, telling her it was too far, but Mallory wasn’t having it.
“That’s almost fifteen hundred miles away,” he’d said.
“Something wrong with your plane?”
Once again he found himself trapped by his cover, unable to tell her that the problem with his plane was that it was parked at an airfield about an hour’s drive from where he’d left a stack of dead bodies.
Dammit.
“No, I just figured . . .”
“I think it is time we got one thing clear. You aren’t paid to think. You are paid to do what the hell I tell you, when I tell you to do it,” she’d snapped. “You got that?”
“Yeah.”
“Good, now get your ass to Luanda,” she’d said before hanging up.
“Might as well get this over with,” he said now, killing the light and climbing back into the SUV.
He started the engine and drove east, knowing the first order of business was to ditch the stolen Mitsubishi. Usually he’d park it on the street near his destination, leave the keys in the ignition, and let the local underworld handle the issue of getting rid of the car. But one look at the interior, the seats, and door handle stained rust red from his blood, and Hayes knew this time, that wasn’t an option.
Going to have to find a place to ditch it. Someplace close to the airport.
He found an abandoned cannery a quarter mile from his destination, pulled the SUV inside, and cut the engine. Grabbing the remnants of his shredded assault pack off the passenger seat, Hayes eased out of the vehicle, taking his time so that he didn’t drop any of his meager belongings, when the rotten fish guts smell sent the contents of his stomach racing into the back of his throat.
“The hell with this,” he said, pushing himself into a hobbled jog.
By the time he made it to the airfield he was drenched in sweat and beyond giving a shit. He approached the gatehouse, brushed past the guards at the gate with a hard look that dared them to try and stop him, and limped across the tarmac—the only thought on his mind getting the hell out of Grand-Bassam.
Hayes unlocked the troop door, yanked the chock blocks and drip pans and threw them inside the cargo hold with his ruined assault pack, and then climbed up after them, slamming the door shut behind him before scrambling up to the cockpit.
He sped through the startup sequence, and when the engines were running smoothly, he grabbed the radio and tuned the dial to the tower frequency. “Tower, this is Pilgrim three-niner x-ray ready to taxi from cargo ramp.”
“Pilgrim three-niner x-ray,” the voice answered, “cleared to taxi. Advise hold short of runway zero-three.”
Hayes repeated the transmission and swung the nose toward the taxiway, head swiveling left to right, searching for traffic and obstructions. Once he was sure it was clear he eased off the brake and guided the Provider down the taxiway, slowing as he approached the double yellow lines that marked the runway holding position, knowing that if Dábo or his men were going to make a move this is where they would do it.
“Tower, this is Pilgrim three-niner x-ray, holding short,” he said. “Request clearance to take off runway one-one.”
“Negative, Pilgrim three-niner x-ray—hold for incoming aircraft.”
Incoming aircraft?
The night was clear, and with the moon shining bright overhead, Hayes had a clear view of both the runway and the sky, and there wasn’t a cloud or an approaching aircraft in sight.
“Tower, this is Pilgrim three-niner x-ray, say again your last.”
Silence.
He leaned forward in his seat and twisted his neck back the way he’d come in time to see a pair of army Jeeps closing in fast on his tail.
In all his years of flying, Hayes had never even considered disregarding the tower, but that changed when he saw the finger of yellow flame emerge from the muzzle of the M60 machine gun mounted to the roll bar of the lead Jeep.
“The hell with this,” he said, letting off the brakes and advancing the throttles, ignoring the controller’s angry voice in his ear.
“Pilgrim three-niner x-ray, you are instructed to hold. You are not cleared—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Hayes said, leaning forward and killing the radio, waiting until the nose was centered on the runway before shoving the throttles to full power.
But the troops in the Jeeps weren’t giving up that easily.
While the drivers bounced across the grass median, desperate to cut the aircraft off before it reached takeoff speed, the gunners kept their triggers locked to the rear.
Hayes watched the coil of green tracers arcing past the nose, knowing it was just a matter of time before one of the gunners found their range, sending a hail of bullets through the glass, or worse, one of the engines.
He hadn’t even reached the halfway point of the runway and one look at the airspeed indicator told him that she wasn’t going to make it—not on her own, at least.
But luckily the old warbird had one final trick up her sleeve.
Hayes leaned forwa
rd, finger extended over the red safety cover marked JATO. He paused and double-checked the airspeed indicator. Realizing it was the only way he was getting out of Grand-Bassam alive, he disengaged the safety and flipped the toggle switch—igniting the eight external rocket bottles mounted below the rear landing gears.
The rocket motors screamed to life; the sudden acceleration of the jet-assisted take-off system shoved Hayes back in his seat. “Later, fellas,” he hooted, holding on for dear life as the Provider hurtled down the runway. The white cloud from the rockets inundated his pursuers, obscuring their view.
At ninety knots, he pulled back on the yoke, and the moment he was airborne retracted the landing gear. He leveled off at eight hundred feet and banked hard to the southwest, flying fast and low over the Gulf of Guinea.
Hayes waited until he was six miles over international waters and well out of the Ivorian Air Force’s reach before climbing to twenty thousand feet. He adjusted his course, banked east, and then reduced the throttles to cruising speed. After checking the gauges, he let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
But despite the relief that came with making it out of Grand-Bassam alive, Hayes couldn’t shake the feeling that all he’d accomplished was to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire.
* * *
—
Three hours later, Hayes landed on a dusty airstrip fifty miles north of Luanda. After he shut down the engines, he grabbed his travel bag and the envelope of cash Mallory had given him and climbed out onto the tarmac, limping to the hangar.
The man at the counter saw him coming and his eyes went wide, hand dropping below the desk for the pistol Hayes assumed he had stashed there.
“I just need fuel and a place to clean up,” he said. “How much?”
“First I need to see your passport,” the man said.
“No problem,” Hayes replied, slapping a thousand dollars on the counter.
The man glanced down at the stack of cash, frowned, and then looked back up at his bloodied and beaten customer.
“I am afraid that—”
“Oh, yeah, and no police,” Hayes said, adding a second stack of fresh one-hundred-dollar bills to the first.
“Of course, sir,” the man grinned, scooping up the cash before handing Hayes the key to the washroom.
That’s what I thought.
The washroom was about what he’d expected, a dingy rectangle of tile with a sink, toilet, and rusted metal bench in front of an open shower. It was filthy, but Hayes had made do with worse.
His clothes and hiking boots were little more than rags after being thrown from the truck. He stripped off his shirt and dropped it on the floor. He sat down on the bench and was about to tug the hiking boots off his feet when he felt something hard sitting low in his back pocket.
“What the hell is that?” he asked.
Then he remembered.
Zoe’s insulin. Had it survived?
He pulled the case from his pocket and studied the scuff marks across the lid and the dents that came from where his body had slammed into the street. The hinges creaked when he opened it. The undamaged vials inside took him back to the ambush. How small she looked when the men tugged the black bag over her head and rag-dolled her into the back of the Excursion.
The fear in her eyes when he’d tried to get her to jump.
You need to forget the girl, get the hell out of here while you still can, the voice urged.
There was a part of Hayes that wished it were that easy, but he knew that quitting wasn’t an option.
Hayes had his mission and, live or die, he was going to see it through.
He kicked off his boots, stepped out of his pants, grabbed the pile of ruined clothes off the floor, and dumped them into the trash before taking the bar of soap into the shower.
Even with the knob turned wide open, the water wasn’t more than a dribble, but as Hayes lathered up he knew that nothing short of a pressure washer and a new set of skin would have made a dent in his appearance.
After ten minutes of scrubbing, he gave up, and dressed quickly in a pair of tan Carhartts, a faded denim button-down, and a pair of Ariat Ropers.
He was still tired when he stepped out of the washroom, but the shower and the change of clothes had their effect and there was new life in his step when he returned to the counter.
“I need a truck, nothing special, it just has to run,” he told the man behind the counter.
Hayes knew the moment the words were out of his mouth that the man was going to try and screw him, but he didn’t care. All he wanted was to get on the road and get to Luanda before the sun came up.
Twenty minutes later he climbed into a beat-up Land Cruiser, the envelope of cash considerably lighter than it had been when he walked into the hangar, but at least he was moving.
It was an easy drive from the airfield to the capital and, as he’d hoped, Hayes arrived just as the sun was coming up.
After the languid decay of Grand-Bassam, the scene waiting for him in Luanda was a breath of fresh air. The towering glass skyscrapers sparkled like diamonds in the morning sun, the well-paved streets and luxury sedans cruising the waterfront a far cry from how it had looked in the early 2000s when the country was still locked in a vicious civil war.
As Hayes continued south along the coast, the glitz and glamour of Luanda faded away as he entered the working-class municipality of Belas. Here the residents were too busy trying to make a living to bother with hiding the scars of war, and there was evidence of the fighting on the buildings that lined the Lar do Patriota.
But Hayes wasn’t complaining. In fact, he found the pockmarked walls and chipped concrete façades oddly comforting.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s not normal, he thought as he arrived at his destination.
Instead of pulling up to the hotel, he circled the block before pulling the SUV into an alley across the street. He cut the engine, pointed the binoculars across the street, and thumbed the focus knob, trying to negate the mirage dancing like a dervish across the blacktop.
Despite the end of the hostilities and the economic growth that followed, Angola was by no means safe. And while the heavy police presence around the city center kept the thieves and kidnappers at bay, those tourists brave enough to venture into the surrounding municipality found themselves easy prey.
To combat the ever-growing threat and to ensure the continued safety of their guests, the proprietors of the working-class hotels began upgrading their security. Some hired armed guards, while others constructed eight-foot walls around their property.
Not to be outdone by his competition, the owner of the Hotel Sunshine turned his lodging into a miniature fortress, adding an eight-foot wall and concrete-reinforced gatehouse manned by round-the-clock guards in tactical gear.
While the proprietor was sure the guests saw the AK-wielding gate guards and the razor wire stretched atop the wall as proof that the Hotel Sunshine was the most secure venue in Belas, Hayes saw a prison.
Yeah, I’m not going in there without some serious hardware.
He returned the binos to their spot on the passenger seat and threw the Land Cruiser into gear. He pulled out onto the street and turned north, the SUV’s asthmatic A/C blowing lukewarm air in his face.
Hayes’s reputation as a loner was well earned, but it was not because he liked being alone so much as he disliked most of the people he’d run across during his time at Treadstone. Like most male-dominated professions, it had an overabundance of assholes. Alpha males with testosterone-inflated egos and quick trigger fingers.
But despite the effort he’d expended in his war of self-sufficiency—and against his better judgment—Hayes realized that he needed help.
38
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Levi Shaw was sitting at his desk, staring blankly at the laptop before him, w
hen there was a knock at the door.
“Come in.”
The door swung open and a plain-faced woman with short black hair stuck her head through the crack. “Director, your car is here.”
“Thank you, Linda,” he said.
Shaw closed the laptop and shoved it into his battered attaché case, grabbing the holstered Walther PPK from the drawer before getting to his feet. He clipped the pistol to his waist and retrieved a worn Donegal tweed coat from the wicker rack by the door before stepping out.
“You work too much, Linda,” he said, pulling on the jacket.
“Almost done, sir,” she smiled up at him.
“Fine, but make sure someone walks you out to your car,” he said, heading for the door.
“Yes, sir.”
With the sun heading down, the temperature had dropped, and Shaw pulled up his collar before starting down the steps to the Lincoln Town Car waiting for him at the curb.
He climbed inside with a weary sigh and set the attaché case on the floorboard.
“Carter, put the game on, will ya?” he asked.
“Roger that,” his driver said, fiddling with the radio knob as he pulled away from the curb.
“And if you put on the Yankees again, you’re fired.”
“Understood, sir,” Carter laughed.
They drove east, Shaw half listening to the game as they turned onto Wisconsin Avenue and headed south across the Key Bridge. His mind drifted back to Hayes and their conversation the night before.
That Hayes wasn’t coming back was a foregone conclusion; Shaw had known that before the call. And while he didn’t blame the man, having to relay the news to the Senate Intelligence Committee had not been the highlight of his day.
Senator Miles had taken the news surprisingly well. In fact, instead of the ass-chewing he’d expected, the man barely raised his voice. But instead of finding relief in the senator’s mellow response, it left Shaw with a growing unease.
He’s up to something. But what?
Shaw looked out the window and stared down at the gunmetal-gray waters of the Potomac flowing beneath the bridge, knowing the answer to the question and wishing like hell he could do something about it.