Agent in Place Read online

  Just then, smoke began pouring out through fissures in the wooden door.

  Malik stood over the dead woman on the wooden floor as he said, “I want two men with hoses spraying water on the fire to slow it. The rest of you, check upstairs for anything of intelligence value. You have fifteen minutes until exfiltration.” His men began following his orders, although it was clear they would all rather get the hell out of the burning building.

  Drexler stood nearby and was still nearly euphoric about his good fortune, but he did his best to feign the same worry that Malik felt. He said, “You really think it will help to get intelligence on the FSEU?”

  Malik shook his head. Softly to Drexler he said, “Not really. I think Azzam will have us all shot because Medina is dead. But I don’t want my men to know this, so I’ll give them some hope.”

  He turned away from Drexler and began following his men out of the kitchen.

  Drexler smiled after the man had turned away. He knew he sure as hell wouldn’t be shot by Azzam, because he wouldn’t be returning to Syria.

  As for the rest of them? Of course they would die.

  CHAPTER 49

  The entire time Court had been sneaking his way into Bianca Medina’s gated neighborhood, he’d also been planning his route to get out. Exfiltration would be harder than infiltration, he’d known full well, because he wasn’t hauling a baby and a nanny into Bianca’s house. And it wasn’t hard for him to determine that getting out of Western Villas would not be something he could pull off with stealth. No, he was a realist, so he knew escaping with the girl and the kid was going to require revving engines, squealing tires, gunfire, and car crashes.

  The gunfire had begun almost immediately, but now as he barreled along up Zaid bin al-Khattab Avenue, directly towards a green Toyota Hilux with NDF markings, he knew it was time to ratchet up the noise and drama. The truck full of regime-aligned militia started to move, turning perpendicular so as to block the Range Rover’s escape. Men in the back raised their weapons, and men in the cab leapt out and leveled their rifles over the hood.

  Court knew that four AKs dumping rounds into the Range Rover’s engine block would knock the vehicle out of commission in seconds, so he decided his best defense would be a good offense—he’d give the gunmen up ahead something more important to do than shoot at him.

  With the pedal to the floor he raced directly at the pickup. A short burst of AK fire came from a man shooting over the hood, tearing into the windshield of Bianca’s SUV just to the right of Court’s head, but then the shooting stopped, and Court saw four men sprinting away from the pickup in multiple directions. Two dived onto the sidewalk to the east of the road, and the other two flung themselves over the hood of a car parked along the sidewalk on the west side. Court turned the grill of the SUV away from the Hilux and towards the sidewalk, sideswiped one of the men as he climbed back to his feet, and knocked him back into the road like a rag doll.

  The three other men at the roadblock had only a brief chance to grab their weapons and fire again before Court smashed through the gate at the end of the street, and their rounds went high and wide.

  Court jacked the SUV to the east as two men came out of the guard shack with pistols, firing off rounds, but Court weaved back and forth across the four-lane road and then took a hard right just a hundred meters on.

  The window in the tailgate shattered just before he weaved out of the line of sight of the men at the guard shack, but he knew he wasn’t out of the woods, because the sounds of sirens, screeching tires, and revving vehicle engines echoed through the streets from all directions.

  He shouted to the girl on the floorboard behind him. “Ça va?” Are you okay?

  “Oui, ça va,” Yasmin replied, but Jamal was wailing now.

  “What’s wrong with the baby?”

  “He’s a baby! He’s upset, of course!”

  “Right. Look, we’re going to switch cars and we have to do it very quickly. Be ready to move, okay?”

  “What about Mr. Alawi?”

  “Who the hell is . . . ? You mean the guy in the back?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s coming with us.”

  This was problematic, of course, because Court already had Walid bound, gagged, and drunk in the trunk of the Hyundai, but he figured there was room enough for both, even if it would be a tight fit.

  As he drove to the parking garage close to the pool and fountain store to pick up Walid’s car, he rolled down his window and listened to the sound of sirens on several streets around him. While there was certainly a large law enforcement presence hunting for him, it didn’t seem like anyone was right on his heels at the moment, though he knew that could change any second.

  He’d given some thought to the likely response there would be to this crime here in the city. He felt sure the guards would call in an immediate police report about some sort of attack in Western Villas, and they might even say that a woman and child had been kidnapped out of a house, but Court knew the guards at the house would not broadcast to the local police that the child who had been taken was the illegitimate son of Ahmed al-Azzam.

  Crimes of various kinds in other parts of Damascus were commonplace with the war going on and the insurgency active in the city, so even though this was undeniably a big event and different from a regular terrorist attack, it wasn’t going to cause one fifth the uproar it would have caused if word got out about what had really taken place.

  * * *

  • • •

  Just six minutes after stealing the Land Rover, he parked it close to the Hyundai in the garage and leapt out. He pulled the dead guard from the back of the Land Rover, opened the trunk to the Hyundai Elantra and dropped the body in the back right on top of Walid. He shut the trunk lid again without even checking on the Desert Hawks Brigade officer.

  From the lack of any noise, it seemed as if Major Walid was still passed out drunk, and if he wasn’t, Court wondered if he’d be able to tell that the dead man sharing the tight space with him happened to be wearing his uniform.

  Court then helped Yasmin with the backpack and had her climb into the backseat of the car and get down low, as before. Quickly he changed out of the dark suit and back into the gray pants and black T-shirt he’d worn since changing at the KWA base hours before.

  Yasmin was more focused on the baby and his cries than on the foreigner taking his clothes off outside the Hyundai.

  The entire vehicle transfer took just over three minutes, and soon they were back on the road and heading to the south, in the direction of Jordan.

  Court knew he needed to get in touch with Voland, but he decided for now he wanted to concentrate on avoiding checkpoints.

  * * *

  • • •

  For five more minutes they drove along in very light traffic; only once did Court need to leave his route and find another road to avoid a checkpoint. All the while he questioned Yasmin about which way he should go, where the roadblocks could be found, and which suburbs would have less military and militia activity.

  But in this endeavor, Yasmin Samara had proved utterly useless.

  Finally Court asked, “How is it you don’t seem to know anything about the police and military situation around here?”

  “Because I haven’t been outside Western Villas since Jamal came home from the hospital, and I haven’t been out of Mezzeh since last fall.”

  “I thought you used to live in Paris.”

  “Yes, but I moved home last year, and as the granddaughter of a minister I was told it wasn’t safe to leave the regime strongholds of the city.”

  Court thought he could quiz a random twenty-something-year-old girl in Wichita about the situation in Syria right now and she might know more details than this woman did.

  He began to worry about Yasmin’s potential for allegiance to the regime. She worked for Ahmed Azzam, obvi
ously, but if her grandfather was one of his ministers, he thought it likely she would be fully indoctrinated into the belief system of the regime. “Tell me about your grandfather.”

  Her response surprised him.

  “He’s dead. Ahmed Azzam had him hanged.”

  “What? When?”

  “Over a year ago. I am not supposed to know. I was told Grandpa had a heart attack. But I heard Azzam’s men talking about it late one night in the living room. My grandfather had business dealings with Azzam’s brother. There was an argument over money, and Ahmed sided with his brother.”

  “I’m sorry,” Court said, although he felt this news lessened the chance Yasmin would hit Court over the back of the head with a baby bottle and bolt out of the Hyundai at the next intersection.

  Next Yasmin said, “But my uncle is a minister, too. He will be killed if I flee the country.”

  Court fought an eye roll. Jesus, he thought. I don’t have time to save every motherfucker in this country from imminent peril. But instead, he feigned concern. “Who is your uncle?”

  “A member of the National Council.”

  Then to hell with him, Court thought, but again, he did not say it.

  “He’s your only family remaining?”

  “My brother was killed in the second year of the war. I have cousins . . . all in the Army or Air Force.”

  Good fucking riddance to them, too, Court thought. He said, “You are doing your part to end the war.”

  He looked in the rearview mirror and saw her making a face like what he said made no sense, and it was an expression Court had found himself adopting from time to time on this operation, but he dropped the conversation. Yes, she was probably right. Her loved ones would be put to death for what he was, in effect, forcing her to do. But that wasn’t going to stop him from doing it.

  Court said, “Bianca said Azzam was going out of town.”

  Yasmin said, “He leaves tomorrow. He told me he would return Tuesday afternoon.”

  This matched with what Bianca told Court the other day about Azzam’s trip to review troops at forward bases with the Russians and Iranians.

  “Did he tell you where he was going?”

  She shook her head. “The president does not tell me things like that. But one of the guards from his detail said something about flying back to Damascus via military helicopter on after a meeting with the Russians.”

  “Tuesday morning,” Court said, mostly to himself.

  Yasmin changed gears. “When do we see the other people helping us?”

  “What? You’re not happy with my performance?”

  After a pause, Yasmin sat up fully in the backseat, the baby in her arms. “You are alone, aren’t you?”

  “Just until Jordan.”

  “So . . . the entire time you are getting us out of the country, you are working alone. But once we are safe . . . others will help?”

  “Doesn’t sound so great when you say it like that.”

  They began driving along through the Damascus suburb of Daryya, and here they found fewer cars on the highway than in the city. This unnerved Court because he’d felt some safety in numbers, plus the roadblocks had been easier to spot when there were long lines of red taillights ahead to tip him off.

  There was a turn ahead in the highway and Court worried that there might be a roadblock ahead he could not see; it had been a long time since he’d skirted the last checkpoint, after all. So he decided to take the off-ramp before the turn, then pick his way through the suburb before rejoining with the highway to the south.

  Court said, “I might need your help reading signs if they aren’t in English.”

  “You speak English?” she asked.

  In Arabic he said, “I speak many languages.”

  “Poorly,” she replied.

  Court smiled a little; he’d expected Yasmin to be a mousy and scared little nanny with a conservative Muslim countenance, but instead he found she was handling all this pretty well.

  He made a left to follow the road under the overpass, and then, as soon as his headlights centered on the street in front of him, he slammed on his brakes.

  Right in front of him, blocking the oncoming lane, was a stationary Syrian Arab Army T-72 tank surrounded by a low wall of sandbags. Uniformed men stood there in the dark. When they saw the Hyundai they flipped on spotlights and motioned for Court to pull over to the side of the road.

  There was an urgent intensity to their actions. Court didn’t know if this meant they were somehow looking for Walid’s vehicle, or if they were surprised to see any vehicles here at two in the morning.

  Court began rolling forward to where they were leading him, but then he cranked the wheel and floored it, streaking by the tank and the men, racing under the overpass, and then pulling across the road and into a narrow alley that went up a hill.

  Lights flashed on, gunfire roared behind him, and the strikes of heavy-caliber bullets sparked the street to his left and in front of him on the broken alley. He completed his turn, then quickly reached down to the fuses he’d readied under the dashboard. He extinguished all the lights in the vehicle, but this did nothing for him at present, because within seconds the heavy beams of light from multiple pursuing vehicles glared in his mirrors.

  “Shit! Get down on the floorboard!” he shouted. There were no streetlights in this area, which seemed odd to him at first, but when he made a quick turn, away from the lights behind him, he looked out the driver’s-side window and, at first, thought he was looking at a steep hill just off the road.

  A second glance showed him that it was the rubble of a huge apartment building. The lights from behind reappeared, and as he raced down the street, he looked ahead. More mountains of rubble in all directions. It appeared this entire town had been razed.

  The buildings on the hill were nothing but wreckage; this neighborhood had been bombed to broken bits by the regime years ago to uproot a rebel stronghold. The devastation seemed to go on for miles, but it was clear some of the rubble was, in fact, occupied. As he shot along in the darkness, Court saw lights in deep recesses of the buildings or dark human figures standing by the side of the road watching the sedan flee the pursuing military.

  Court floored the Hyundai. He drove faster than he felt comfortable with, especially with the absence of streetlights or headlights. He took turns that led him towards higher elevation, but just before each turn, the lights of the military trucks flared in his rearview.

  After five tense minutes of this he thought he was in the clear. He pulled up onto a raised overpass, now looking for a way back to the highway to the south. He made it just a hundred yards, then saw four green UAZ-469 light utility vehicles parked at the National Defence Forces militia checkpoint on the overpass. They were Russian in manufacture, but they looked like slightly larger and more robust WWII-era U.S. Army Jeeps.

  Court slammed on the brakes, reversed, and executed a J-turn that had both Yasmin and the baby crying out in back. One of the UAZ-469s was in hot pursuit as he shot along an empty four-lane road running through the bombed-out buildings.

  Court looked into his mirror and saw the UAZ-469 bearing down on him. The NDF truck got closer and closer, its driver unencumbered by low-light conditions.

  Gunfire erupted behind them, Yasmin screamed and the baby wailed, and more glass in both the rear window and the windshield shattered. The rearview mirror spun off the arm holding it, and Court felt a sharp sting on the right side of his head, just above his ear.

  He felt blood running behind his ear, down the back of his neck. He didn’t know if he’d been shot or cut, but he could still see, still drive, so he kept going.

  And he could still think. The UAZ-469 closed to within fifty feet of the Hyundai, and Court pulled the steering wheel to the right. He stomped on his brakes again, even yanking the parking brake up, and put the sedan in park
. The utility vehicle overshot him on the hilly road, and then it, too, slammed on its brakes, but before the driver could put his Jeep into reverse, Court had jumped out of the Hyundai, leveling his pistol in the passenger window.

  The passenger swung his AK up to the threat, but Court shot him through the forehead, knocking him sideways and out of the way of the driver.

  The young National Defence Forces soldier just had time to switch his focus from Court to the barrel of the gun in his hand before Court shot him in the face, killing him instantly.

  Court opened the passenger-side door and dragged both bodies out of the UAZ. He helped a now nearly unresponsive Yasmin and the baby in her arms out of the Hyundai, then reached to pop the trunk to drag Walid out.

  Before he put his hand on the trunk, however, he saw a line of at least a dozen large-caliber holes in the rear of the Hyundai. Blood ran freely out the back, and this told him Walid had been hit by the shooting at the checkpoint.

  He shined a flashlight in and saw two dead men, both riddled with bullets.

  Court moved back to the driver’s-side door, reached in, and put the sedan in neutral. It began rolling forward down the hill instantly, picking up speed as it went.

  It veered to the left somewhat, but rolled over broken concrete and rebar on the sidewalk and then angled back, plunging once again down the middle of the four-lane street.

  Court didn’t wait to watch it roll away. Instead he turned off the lights of the UAZ and helped Yasmin and Jamal inside. He climbed behind the wheel, ignored the smeared blood on the driver’s-side window, and looked down the hill, just as a pair of Syrian Arab Army trucks pulled into the intersection two hundred yards on.

  The Hyundai rolled towards them, picking up speed.

  Men bailed out of the trucks and began shooting at the vehicle. They had no idea they were shooting at an unoccupied car.

  “Hit ’em.” Court urged the sedan on as he turned the UAV to the right and bumped up onto the low concrete rubble there.