Ambush

by Barbara Nickless

  “He will hurt her. When she was twenty, I told Arvin this had to stop. I said I would tell Miriam what he’d done. He hired a man to snatch her off the street, to rough her up. A warning.” She was blinking faster now, holding back the tears. The rage had dissolved, and pain held full sway. “She has her own life now. A husband and children. My silence buys her life and that of her family. Valor is all I have left. And my brother. If I am in prison, we lose everything. And the Iranians win.”

  “This place here. You’re training men who will turn around and train the Saudis?”

  She lifted her chin. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

  “Meaning what, exactly?”

  “James will win that contract to help the Saudis. We will teach them. Arm them. I cannot guarantee Saudi Arabia will try to destroy Iran. But with James’s help, I can promise that Iran will never get the thing it most craves. It will never be the leader of the Muslim world.”

  Cohen spun away from the window. He bore down on us, his eyes ablaze with murder. He thrust out his hands, and I thought he would slam the table into Almasi.

  Then he stopped abruptly. He lowered his hands and gave a soft shake of his head.

  He said, “You killed Jeremy Kane because he discovered what you were doing out here. He was connecting the dots, and that threatened to ruin your plans.”

  She stayed silent.

  He leaned on the table and thrust his face into hers. “And if the Feds learned of your agreement with Iran, you’d lose everything. Your daughter. Your business. Your aspirations. You’d spend a couple of decades in prison and come out so old you’d piss yourself every time you rolled over in bed.”

  She reared back. “Miriam. Arvin would—God knows what he would do.”

  “You’ll never stop, will you?” He grabbed her head. “You’ll keep killing and killing, knocking everyone out of your way as if they were nothing more than pieces on a chessboard.”

  His knuckles whitened, and the tendons stood out as his hands tightened against her skull.

  She moaned.

  Part of me wanted him to kill her. Part of me knew he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he did.

  I touched his shoulder. “We need to go.”

  He looked at me, his chest heaving with his rage. “If we leave her, she’ll kill us.”

  “No, she won’t. She knows that if we die, the video she wants goes to every news agency in the country.” I touched him again. “Come on.”

  Cohen held on a moment longer. Then he shuddered and dropped his hands. He shot me a look I couldn’t read and returned to the window.

  But Almasi smiled, a straight seam in the granite of her face, as cryptic as the Mona Lisa’s.

  “What video?” she said.

  My hand brushed the pocket holding my phone. I hadn’t heard from Sarge, who should have boarded the plane by now.

  And nothing from Dougie.

  “We have company inbound,” Cohen said. “Two men.”

  “Guards?”

  He nodded. “That ride coming?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  My gaze met his. A question stood in his eyes as clearly as if he’d spoken. He was asking who I was. What I was willing to do. Which lines I would back down from and which lines I would cross.

  I knew he was asking himself the same questions.

  “This is your show,” he said. “You’ve been fighting this battle as long as I’ve known you. I’ll play it however you want.”

  I nodded.

  We could throw open the door and shoot the men before they knew what happened. Dougie would have told us to do just that.

  He would have been right.

  But every death leaves a mark, no matter the justification. No matter what you might tell yourself. Ask any combat veteran. Or any cop who’s had to fire on someone.

  My eyes went to the man I’d killed, lying on the floor of the tiny kitchen.

  We all have to live with our ghosts.

  I dropped the pliers, returned to Almasi, and pushed aside the table. “Looks like you’re our golden ticket.”

  I yanked away the tape and lifted her out of the chair. She wasn’t a big woman, but she seemed made of iron—rigid and strong. I pulled her close and pressed the muzzle of the Glock to her temple.

  “Know this,” I told her. “Your life means nothing to me. Less than nothing. Because as long as you’re alive, I’m dead. So if you don’t convince your men to let us pass, I will blow your brains out.” I shook her. “You still have something to lose. Remember that when you’re talking to those men out there.”

  Her throat moved as she swallowed. “I understand.”

  Cohen went to stand by the door. Our eyes met again, and in his I saw an echo of my own rage, formed by his realization that darkness was not only ever present, but also wide reaching.

  For a moment, I thought the dark would swamp him.

  But he shook it off. “We’re going to fix this.”

  “Yes, we are. But first, we’ve got to get out of here. Don’t leave my side.”

  “Like shit on a shoe.”

  I thought he had the shoe and the shit mixed up, but I didn’t argue.

  “Okay,” I said. “Here we go.”

  I half dragged Laura to the door. “Tell your men to hold their fire. Shout it so they can hear you. We’re going out.”

  “You want to be Butch Cassidy?” Cohen asked. “Or the Sundance Kid?”

  CHAPTER 26

  You can do everything for the right reasons, and still fuck it up.

  —Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.

  “Don’t shoot!” Laura said as I kicked open the trailer door.

  I shook her. “Louder.”

  “Hold your fire!”

  We emerged from the trailer into the heat and wind. The sun stood almost directly overhead, casting everything in high relief and giving the world an over-bright feel of unreality, as if we were actors on a studio set. The only sounds were the unrelenting distant snap of plastic and the creak of Cohen’s footsteps as he moved down the stairs and took a position to my left, the M4 comfortable in his arms.

  Clyde remained beneath the trailer. Silent.

  Safe.

  Another man had joined the first two. All three had their weapons tight on us, fingers in the trigger guards. Their eyes moved back and forth between me and Cohen, assessing.

  “Nobody panic,” I said.

  I dragged Almasi down a couple of feet to the section of the trailer that held the kitchen. The refrigerator would provide extra coverage in case someone decided to try a shot from the other side.

  Cohen followed.

  The men swiveled, tracking us.

  They were professionals—early to midthirties, athletic builds, all of them wearing a casual uniform of cargo pants and black T-shirts. No Kevlar—which suggested a careless degree of confidence. They stood with their feet apart, rifles snugged comfortably into the meaty part of their shoulders as they leaned ever so slightly forward, mirrored sunglasses glinting in the light.

  Only their taut jaws betrayed any uncertainty.

  I tightened my forearm against Almasi’s throat. “Their weapons. Tell them.”

  Almasi said, “Put down your guns.”

  “Bad idea, ma’am,” said one of the men. A Latino with close-cropped hair and a tattoo that snaked out from under his sleeve and twined around his forearm and wrist.

  “Almasi.” I pressed the gun harder against her skull. “Be convincing.”

  “Put down your weapons!” she said in a voice that promised to flatten everything in its way.

  “Ma’am, we can’t—”

  “Now!”

  The men eased their guns to the ground—at least the guns we could see.

  “Now, flat on the ground,” I said. “Good. Lace your fingers behind your heads and cross your ankles.”

  The men complied.

  “Any of you so much as breathe hard,” Cohen said, “I will shoot you.
”

  I imagined Dougie’s voice in my head. Shoot each one. Back of the head. Do it fast and get out.

  I pushed Laura down to her knees and crossed to the two closest men. I collected their rifles and slung the straps over my shoulder. Then I patted them down and found three more pistols. I cleared the guns and tossed the ammo in one direction, the guns in the other.

  I approached the third man. He lay farther away, near the end of the passageway between the trailers, where the corners led to blind spots. As I approached, he looked up.

  “Eat dirt,” I said.

  He lowered his head.

  With the Glock extended, I checked each corner—nothing. I turned back toward the third man, then heard a faint scuff in the dirt behind me. I spun around as a bearded man moved into position from the far side of the trailer, his location blocked from Cohen’s line of fire.

  He grinned at me over his pistol. “Drop the gun. Now, hands up.”

  I lifted them. Strapped across my back, the rifles clanked together.

  Cohen said, “Don’t move,” to one of the men. Then, “Sydney?”

  “I’ve got this.”

  “Bit of a troublemaker, aren’t you?” The bearded man was still grinning. Maybe thinking about his bonus in next week’s paycheck.

  Training, I told myself. It was all in the training.

  I kept my eyes on the man as I curled my fingers in toward my palms. A crease appeared between his eyes. But he didn’t have time to puzzle it over.

  Clyde rocketed out from beneath the trailer and sailed across the ground, his lips peeled back in a silent snarl. The man screamed as Clyde leapt and sank his teeth into flesh. My partner’s momentum drove them both to the ground, Clyde a furious storm on top.

  The man yelled a string of curses. He still had a grip on his gun and was trying to work it under Clyde’s belly.

  I scooped up the Glock.

  “Out!” I yelled to Clyde.

  The man kicked and thrashed, his heels pounding the ground.

  “Clyde, out!”

  Always the toughest part of the job—getting a Belgian Malinois to let go of his prey. But Avi and I had drilled Clyde on this over and over, and this time Clyde heard me. Or maybe he heard my desperation.

  He released the man and danced away.

  The man raised his pistol, his focus still on Clyde. I fired. The bullet plowed into his navel, ran up his chest, and exploded out the back of his spine. I fired again. The second bullet entered below his ribs and exited his shoulder in a bloody spray.

  He twitched, then lay still.

  I spun around. The other three men remained prone. Someone muttered, “Shit.”

  “You good?” Cohen said as I approached.

  “I’m good.”

  I hauled Almasi to her feet. She was red faced and sweating, strands of hair clinging to her damp cheeks, her eyes bright with fury.

  “I need the keys to one of the SUVs,” I said.

  “Fuck you.”

  “I still have those pliers.”

  Her eyes promised one thing. That someday I would be at her mercy. And she would have none.

  She pointed with her manacled hands.

  Clyde and I walked over to the man she’d indicated, a hulk with white-blond hair, and dug my toe into his stomach. “Keys?”

  He ground out the words. “Right front pocket.”

  His right hand edged down.

  I pressed the Glock to the back of his neck. “Don’t.” I crouched, slid my hand into his pocket, and pulled out the keys. Clyde and I returned to the trailer.

  “Let’s go.”

  I was looking back at the three when a hole opened between the shoulder blades of the man with the white-blond hair, accompanied by the meaty smack of high-velocity metal drilling flesh. From somewhere east of us came a soft pock, like the sound of champagne popping.

  The man twitched, then lay still.

  Almasi dropped to a crouch, hands over her head. Cohen shoved me against the trailer wall. “The hell?”

  The white-blond man didn’t move. Two more swift pocks and neither did the others.

  Dougie’s voice sounded in my ear. “We’ve got movers coming in from the east. Get out. I’ll cover you.”

  “Sydney?” Cohen said.

  I unshouldered the M4s I’d collected and laid them on the ground. “Company’s coming. We have to move fast.”

  I ordered Almasi to her feet. “Slow us down, I’ll shoot you.”

  She rose without protest. Her face said all the fight had gone out of her.

  We moved along the cluster of trailers, not stopping to clear the corners. The periodic burst of gunfire told me Dougie was true to his word.

  He said, “Get across the field.”

  “Cut left,” I told Cohen as we approached the end of the row. “Sniper’s got us covered.”

  We burst into the sunshine. The parking lot was two hundred yards away across a stretch of weedy ground. A quick sprint for everyone except maybe Almasi.

  I glanced to my left. Three vehicles heading our way, still distant but closing the gap. Sunlight glinted off their bumpers and mirrors, their headlights hazy in the undulations of heated air rising from the ground.

  “Move,” Dougie said.

  Almasi stared at the field, then sank to a crouch and buried her face in her hands.

  “I’ll get the car,” Cohen said.

  I squinted in the direction of the approaching vehicles. Still a long way off. I tossed him the keys, and he snatched them out of the air. Our eyes met briefly, and in his I saw a riot of conflicting emotions. Fear, understanding, anger. And beneath all of it, what I chose to see as love.

  Then he spun on his heel and took off across the field.

  Clyde, sensing the game was changing, had his eyes on mine.

  “Go with Cohen,” I said, wanting my partner out of reach of the reinforcements.

  Clyde raced after the detective.

  “More movers to the south,” Dougie said. “I need you to get across that field in the next five.”

  “Roger that.”

  I jammed my hands under Almasi’s arms and hauled her to her feet. She sagged against me, and I pushed her upright. She was weeping. She staggered forward a few steps, then stopped. Her head drooped, and her chest heaved as she sucked for air.

  “Can’t,” she wheezed.

  I pushed her again. “Can. And will.”

  She lifted her head. Her moist eyes held a dull cast like those of fish laid out on ice. A froth of spittle glistened at the corner of her mouth.

  “Move,” I said. “Or you’ll never see your daughter again.”

  She moved.

  The parking lot seemed a thousand miles away, the world vaster than it had been an hour earlier. The field carried the exposure of mountaintops. My spine drew as tight as a piano wire, waiting for a bullet.

  Halfway across the field, Almasi stumbled and went down.

  “Get up,” I said.

  She rose to her hands and knees, head down, body swaying.

  “Come on,” I said.

  But she stayed in the weeds. “Go ahead. Shoot me.”

  Dougie said, “Leave her.”

  “She’s our protection,” I said.

  I bent over and grabbed her around the waist.

  She twisted at the hips as I pulled, and her arms came up fast. Her manacled hands slammed into my temple. Pain burst in my head like a bomb going off. I staggered, then went down hard, my head striking the ground. My gun flew into the weeds.

  Then she was on top of me, her knees pinning my elbows as she pressed the handcuffs against my throat. In her right hand she held a knife. My knife.

  “How’s it feel?” she snarled.

  The blade was a whisker’s breadth from my eye. Sunlight glinted on the steel as she turned the tip toward my eye.

  I raised my knees and hips to buck her off. My own momentum pushed the knife forward. It slid into my flesh at the cheekbone. Pain roared its fire
across my face.

  “First blood,” Almasi said.

  On the edge of my vision, I caught a blur of gold and black. Clyde. He had seen me go down and now was running toward us, his body a bullet arced in our direction.

  The knife bit a second time.

  “Second blood,” she said. Her eyes bulged, wild and savage, her lips peeled back from her teeth, spittle slicking her chin. She shoved all her weight against my throat.

  I got one arm free and grabbed her wrist.

  Then I heard Clyde yelp. An instant later, the sound of a rifle cracked across the world.

  The bastards had shot Clyde.

  Rage fizzed across my brain, popping and sparking behind my eyes.

  I let go of Almasi’s wrist and scrabbled for the holster on my belt, my hand soft with sweat and sliding around the leather as I dug for steel. My fingers found the handle, and I worked them around the grip of the knockoff TASER I’d gotten in Mexico. I jerked it free, pressed the gun against her ribs, and squeezed the trigger.

  Her body jerked and flailed as the twenty thousand–volt jolt hit. Her eyes went wide, and a guttural shriek tore out of her throat. Fire licked up my own arm—the knife making its final mark against my flesh as she convulsed.

  I shoved her off, rolled over, and crawled toward Clyde.

  “I’m coming, boy,” I whispered.

  He lay on his side in the weeds, his right leg tucked under him. When he saw me, he lifted his head and whined. He tried to get up.

  “Stay down.”

  A puff of dust rose as a bullet struck the ground twenty feet away. A second one came closer. The lead SUV roared toward us, but now another vehicle cut across the field from the parking lot, tires slewing in the dirt, the horn blaring to make sure we knew he was coming.

  Cohen.

  I curled next to Clyde, my body between his and the oncoming vehicles. His tail gave a single thump, and he tried to lick my face.

  Blood streaked his fur, just outside the protection of the Kevlar vest.

  In my ear Dougie said, “Get up. Get out of there.”

  Cohen brought the vehicle to a shuddering stop, placing the SUV between us and the Alpha’s reinforcements roaring toward us. The driver’s door flew open, and Cohen jumped out.