Ambush

by Barbara Nickless

  The guard signaled for us to stop.

  “Take the wheel,” Dougie said.

  “He’s just a contractor.”

  “No, he’s not.” He slid his foot off the accelerator. “Take the wheel.”

  I ordered Clyde to lie flat and reached over him to grab the steering wheel. It bucked in my hand as the truck slowed and the tires fought the ruts.

  “Stop!” the guard yelled.

  Dougie lowered the window.

  The guard raised his weapon. A bullet punctured the windshield and thumped into the seat, missing Dougie by less than an inch.

  He leaned out the open window and leveled his own rifle.

  The guard’s head burst apart in a red rain.

  Dougie brought in the rifle, took the wheel, and stomped the gas pedal. We roared around the dead man and through the barricade, shattered wood flying into the air.

  I stared out the back window at the man lying in the road.

  “Shit,” I said. My hands were shaking.

  “He would have sounded the alert.”

  “What if he’s expected to call in?”

  “Then they’ll be waiting for us.” Dougie threw me a harsh look. “From here on, follow my orders. No questions. No arguing. We’re heading into a kill zone. Do you understand?”

  The dead man vanished in a swirl of dust. In his place stood a ghost—staved-in head, fingers gripped around the cord to an electric burner.

  Fadden.

  “I understand,” I said.

  A few minutes later, Dougie pulled off the road and drove the truck behind a thick grove of cottonwoods growing on the bank of a shallow creek.

  “Five minutes,” he said. “Then we head out.”

  While he fieldstripped the rifles we’d taken from the strip club and checked the rest of our gear, I ran Clyde through a series of maneuvers we’d practiced with Clyde’s trainer. I went through each of the most critical commands in English, German, and Hebrew, then ran through them all again using hand signals.

  Clyde performed flawlessly.

  I called him in, gave him his fill of water, then buckled his Kevlar vest around his stomach and chest and shrugged into my own vest. I slid on my thigh harness with my personal Glock and the shoulder holster with the stun gun and grabbed Cohen’s jacket—the fleece I’d borrowed from him and never returned. I tied it around my waist. At the back of the truck, Dougie was loading his backpack. The last thing to go in were explosives and a few remote detonators.

  “I thought this was a quick in and out,” I said.

  “Plan B. Things go wrong, we’ll want leverage. I’ll go in first and set things up. If Cohen can’t walk, I’ll acquire a vehicle.”

  “How long?”

  “I’ll be fast.” He glanced down at my hands. They were still shaking. “Clyde and I can do this alone.”

  “It’s Cohen. I’m going.”

  He gave me a measured stare, then handed over one of the suppressed M4s, a folding knife, and a pair of binoculars. I hung the glasses around my neck and slung the rifle over my right shoulder. The knife went into my pocket. We clipped on headsets and ran through a radio check. Then I whistled up Clyde, and the three of us headed south at a jog toward the ridge.

  The land stretched dry and golden brown around us, the day heating up as it moved toward midmorning. The stream soon trickled to nothing, but the dry arroyo wound steadily south. The wind became a beast, flattening the grass and swirling grit through the air.

  Fifteen minutes brought us to the ridge we’d noted on the maps. I signaled Clyde, and the three of us dropped to our stomachs and crawled up the last few yards, not sure whether the compound would be a hundred yards away or almost three miles. And if they’d be watching for us.

  We edged over the top and peered down.

  The hill dropped steeply on the other side, flattening into a plain of tall grass and the occasional tree. A quarter mile away, a handful of man-made structures rose from the earth like ancient ruins.

  Dougie and I eased up on our elbows and glassed the site.

  I recognized it immediately. The angle was different. But this was the subject of Kane’s photographs.

  In the center of a large leveled area rose a two-story tan brick building, a plain rectangle whose only adornment was a series of narrow vertical windows up high, like those used by archers in medieval times. On the near side of the building, an obstacle course sprawled across a chunk of acreage. Rope ladders, a set of hurdles, muddy trenches covered by barbed wire. At the far end were scaling walls and a fifteen-foot-high wall used for rappelling.

  “They’re running a training center,” Dougie said.

  “But for who?”

  “Good question.” He kept panning. “I don’t see any security cameras on the buildings or near the fence. They’re probably still hooking things up.”

  Most of the rest of the site was still open prairie. But on the far side, just visible, a steel-and-concrete airplane hangar spread across a large area. A metal door covered the opening. Nearby, two private jets sat behind a chain-link fence. In one corner of the fenced area was a small collection of backhoes and tractors.

  Next to the hangar, a concrete runway ran north-south.

  “The planes are Cessna Longitudes,” Dougie said. “Set you back twenty-five mil. They probably keep the really expensive aircraft inside the hangar. You see the green rectangle with the white sword painted on the sides of the jets?”

  I turned the focus on the binoculars. “What is it?”

  “Flag of Saudi Arabia, minus the Muslim creed. Whatever’s going on out here, it’s a big deal. Saudi involvement would explain why this area was blurred out on the maps. It was probably done at their request.”

  “Friend of mine who retired from State said that James Osborne kept company with the Saudis in Baghdad. Maybe he was wooing potential clients.” I lowered the glasses and palmed sweat from my forehead. “I heard on the news maybe a month ago that an unnamed US company employing ex-CIA officers is negotiating with the Saudis to help them create their own spy empire.”

  Dougie moved the binoculars from his eyes. “It’s true. The organization will be modeled on the Special Activities Division of the CIA. But the fact that there are former CIA officers involved has some people in Washington questioning its legality.”

  I didn’t ask him how he knew all this. I was sure he had connections. “You think the company is Valor?”

  “Looking at this complex? I think it’s Valor and Vigilant. Vigilant trains the men and builds the organization. Valor supplies it with weapons. They have some damn powerful backers.”

  This could explain the Alpha’s recent aggression in her efforts to hide Valor’s treasonous arrangement with Iran. A multibillion-dollar contract with Saudi Arabia would float the company for years. Even decades. And provide entrée to Saudi Arabia’s allies—the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Egypt, and Kuwait.

  The wealthiest countries in the Middle East.

  A cash cow, there for the milking.

  Unless someone could prove that Valor Industries also worked with the Saudis’ deadliest enemies—the Islamic Republic of Iran.

  I lifted the binoculars.

  Scattered around the rest of the complex were twenty construction trailers arranged in four clusters. A large P was stenciled on their sides, presumably for Phlage Construction. They all had a single central door flanked by two windows covered with aluminum blinds. Roughly ten feet by thirty-six, the trailers looked like matchsticks next to the rest of the complex.

  Unless they’d moved him, Cohen had to be inside one of those matchsticks.

  A road from the distant highway entered the complex from the southwest, a guard shack just visible. Another road ran between the compound and the runway.

  Eight vehicles sat in a large paved lot a short distance from the brick building—seven black SUVs, their sides streaked with dust, and an incongruous red Mercedes sports car. Allowing four people per SUV and two
in the sports car meant somewhere between eight and thirty potential threats inside the complex. More, if people were bunking down on-site.

  But only two men were visible. One on patrol, walking the perimeter. And another on the far side of the compound, standing guard atop a twenty-foot-high wooden platform.

  We timed their activity. The guard on the platform made a slow rotation of the area every ten minutes, watching the horizon through his binoculars. He seemed less concerned with anything that might be happening closer by—maybe that was the purview of the guard on the ground. Between his scans of the horizon, the man occupied himself with his phone, eyeballing something on the screen.

  The second guard made a complete circuit of the area every fifteen minutes, walking just inside the chain-link fence that encircled the compound. The first time he walked the perimeter, he stopped and spoke with the guard on the tower. On his second circuit, he didn’t pause.

  Dougie said, “Watch the trailers farthest away.”

  I shifted the binoculars. A door to one trailer stood open. A man came down the stairs, talking on his phone. He crossed to one of the other trailers and disappeared inside.

  “Five to ten men, probably,” Dougie said. “Or there could be an army inside that building. But no workers. Maybe because they’ve got Cohen here.”

  We divided the area into sectors and assigned labels to each cluster of trailers from T1 to T4, and designated the large building as Country Club and the hangar as Zeta. This would allow us to communicate our whereabouts inside with a minimum of talk and no chance of being understood by eavesdroppers.

  My phone vibrated. Sarge again.

  I ducked out of the wind below the ridge line. Grasshoppers pogo-sticked around me.

  “I’ve got the phone,” Sarge said.

  My heart smacked against my chest. “You’re holding it?”

  “Affirmative. It’s an old Nokia, just like I remember. Sealed in a manila mailer with all kinds of interesting postage.”

  Relief swept through me. “It’s working?”

  “Battery’s dead. We’ll have to find a charger. Want to know what else was in there?”

  “First, are you back on the road?”

  “Yeah, I’m driving. And I left behind about half a million dollars, all tightly packaged in bundles of hundred-dollar bills. TSA would throw my ass in jail if they caught me carrying that much money. But now you know I love you. I could be hanging out poolside in glorious Bullhead as we speak, getting drunk and enjoying some female companionship. A half-million fucking dollars.”

  I processed the news, wondering if Laura Almasi was also looking for the cash. But five hundred grand didn’t seem like enough to interest her. Not against Saudi billions.

  “Get on that plane,” I said. “I’ll text you the coordinates of our location. We’re going in.”

  “I’ll call when I’m about to board. You don’t answer, I’ll try again when I land. If you still don’t answer, I’m calling the Feds.”

  We disconnected, and I elbow-walked back to Dougie and filled him in on Sarge’s news.

  “We’re going to nail her.” He lowered the binoculars and reached for his backpack. “I’m going in now. Wait ten minutes, then follow me once the guard is on the far side. As soon as Clyde locates Cohen, notify me. Then find cover and wait.”

  “Got it.”

  “If I’m not there in ten minutes, extricate Cohen and get to the truck. Keys are on the driver’s side front tire. Then get the hell out. I’ll follow as soon as I can.”

  “Check.” As if I’d leave him.

  “No heroics. You wait for me, you could die.”

  I crossed my fingers. “I won’t wait.”

  “Go in fast and go in hard. Don’t give them time to react. Anyone sees you, take them down.”

  The thought of more deaths made the air in my lungs evaporate.

  “Lethal force, Rosie. If we don’t extricate your friend, they’ll kill him. Even if they’ve kept him blindfolded and drugged, he’s too big a risk. He’s a cop. So don’t hesitate. Because they won’t.”

  I sucked in air and gave him a single clipped nod. “Chin up, head down, one round in the chamber. Let’s do this.”

  His grin was fierce. “See you on the far side.”

  I watched through the binoculars as Dougie crouched in the grass at the base of the ridge, waiting for the man on the tower to finish his study of the horizon. Waves of heat flickered up from the ground, turning Dougie into an apparition.

  As soon as the man put down his binoculars, Dougie sprinted toward the complex.

  At the fence, he knelt and used bolt cutters to snip an opening in the metal. He wriggled through and darted to the nearest structure—the first trailer in the section we’d designated T1—then began working his way around the complex in the direction of the airplane hangar.

  I watched him until he disappeared behind the training center—the Country Club—then coordinated my own approach with the actions of the guards. As soon as the tower guard returned to his phone and the grounds patroller was out of sight, Clyde and I took off at a full sprint. At the fence, we dropped to our stomachs and wriggled through the gap. When we reached the cluster of trailers designated T1, we snugged up to the closest. I signaled Clyde to stop and crouched next to him.

  The wind moaned around the buildings. I heard a door and a snippet of voices, but they quickly faded. The wind caught something on the obstacle course, a plastic flag maybe. It snapped over and over.

  “I’m in,” I whispered on the radio.

  “I’m at bravo,” Dougie answered, letting me know he’d made it to his first destination. We’d decided to skip what would normally be our term for the first designation—Alpha.

  Alpha had a whole different meaning for this operation.

  Now for the hard part. Staying out of sight while Clyde did what he did best.

  I gripped his harness to signal the start of his work. He watched my face, ready.

  Game on.

  I gave him a hit from Cohen’s jacket. His tail wagged.

  I said softly, “Seek!”

  CHAPTER 25

  Sooner or later, we all come to the ultimate contest, when it’s just us and the devil.

  And the devil hates to lose.

  —Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.

  Clyde lifted his head, scenting the air. My heart crawled all the way up into my throat while I waited. What if I was wrong? What if Cohen was a hundred miles away, his hand splayed on a table, his torturer standing over him with a knife, ready to butcher him?

  The seconds ticked by as the wind continued its incessant moan and the nearby crack-snap of plastic on the obstacle course sounded like small-arms fire. Clyde worked against the wind, struggling to pull out every scent molecule that whirled by.

  Then his ears perked, and his tail rose like a flag.

  He had a hit.

  Relief swept through me. Cohen was here.

  I kept my grip on Clyde’s vest and signaled him to go slowly as we clung to the cover of the trailers.

  We moved east.

  “Charlie,” came Dougie’s voice in my ear. And a few minutes later, “Delta.”

  That was three targets, wired and ready to blow if we needed that. The big stuff, probably. The training center. The airport hangar. Maybe the Saudi planes.

  Leverage.

  Clyde and I moved forward, staying at a good pace despite our stops to duck behind cover and avoid the guards. Clyde halted at the corner of each structure and waited for my go-ahead before proceeding. After the third perfect performance, I took him off the lead.

  Twice he lost the scent in the boom and shudder of the wind.

  Each time my heart stopped. And each time he found the scent again, and we kept moving.

  Our next dash took us to the training center. I caught a glimpse of the sign over the front door as we sped around to the back.

  VALOR INDUSTRIES

  TRAINING CENTER

  At
the back of the building, a section of the airplane hangar was just visible. Beyond that were the two jets parked outside and the runway. I kept my eye on a single door set smack in the middle of the otherwise featureless exterior wall.

  “Frosty on,” Dougie said. “They know we’re here.”

  As if in response, the door flew open. Clyde and I slipped back around the corner and then to the nearest set of trailers. We crawled underneath. A minute later, two men walked by, accompanied by radio static.

  “Fuckers blew him away,” one of the men said.

  Dougie’s voice in my ear. “Six on patrol.”

  I waited until the sound of footsteps receded. “Roger. Proceeding to T3 and T4.”

  “I’m at Zeta.”

  The airplane hangar.

  I peered out from beneath the trailer. No sign of movement. Clyde and I returned to the training center, sprinted past the now closed back door, and stopped at the far end.

  The next cluster of trailers was a hundred yards away. No one was in sight. I gave Clyde the go sign, and together we dashed across the open space.

  As soon as we reached the first trailer in the cluster, Clyde took a final sample of the air, then lay on the ground, his eyes on me, tail swishing through the weeds.

  Just like that, he’d won the game.

  He’d found Cohen.

  We scooted into the dying grass that filled the two-foot space beneath the trailer. I shifted the rifle around to the front for accessibility, then pulled my Glock with the suppressor.

  Voices floated down through the floor.

  “You want me to keep going?” a man asked.

  “Hold off,” a woman said. “We might still need him.”

  Radio static. Then, “Ms. Almasi, there’s a Detective Gorman from the Denver Major Crimes Unit to see you at Gate 2.”

  Well, that was certainly interesting.

  “Get him the hell away.” Laura Almasi. Her voice was a sexy rasp. A smoker’s voice. “We have a situation here.”

  “I told him you weren’t on the compound, but he says he saw your vehicle. Says he’ll wait.”

  “He’s been watching the road?” The rasp turned cold. “Tell him I’m in the middle of a meeting and will join him to go over his contract when I’m finished. Then suggest he and I meet at four o’clock at the Capital Grille instead. Let me know what he says.”