Blood Moon Rising (A Beatrix Rose Thriller Book 2) (19 page)

Chapter Thirty-Three

S
he could have exfiltrated by retracing her way in with Faulkner, driving south across the border to Kuwait and then flying out from there. That route would mean she
would be
less likely to be detected and it would be much safer, but she was weak. She was frightened of how feeble she felt, and the prospect of that long drive was so daunting that she was not prepared to consider it. There were other options. She could find her way to Baghdad and fly out, or she could gamble and depart from Basra. In the end, ease won out. Basra was closest. She knew it was a risk, but it was one that she was prepared to take.

Because there were other benefits in that risk, too.

She was ready to lay some bait.

That was not to say that she was blasé about the dangers. She returned to the tailor’s shop and asked him to collect the things that she would need. He had a small flat above his shop, and he showed her up to it and told her she was welcome to stay for as long as she wanted. There was a tiny bathroom adjacent to the bedroom, and she stripped off and showered, washing the sand and the grime from her skin. That helped. She scrubbed her hair and hung her head, watching as the dirty water drained away.

She turned off the water, wrapped herself in a towel and got out. She sat down on the bed and took a moment. She was finding it difficult to breathe. She knew that dyspnea was a symptom of the cancer, one of the symptoms that was most usually suffered as the disease reached its conclusion. It felt as if she had liquid in her lungs that she couldn’t clear. She knew that there were medicines that would help alleviate it, but she would have to wait until she was back in Marrakech to see about that.

She took two Zomorph tablets, slugging them down with a glass of tepid water, and lay back on the bed for a moment. She had intended to wait there only until the shortness of breath was under control, but she slept as soon as she closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, it was dark outside.

The tailor must have heard her stir. He knocked softly on the door and brought her the things that she had requested. There was a small carry-on suitcase with a change of clothes inside. There was an envelope with a fake passport and a ticket to
Casablanca
.

“Is there anything else you need?”

“A taxi.”

“It’s alright. I will drive you.”

“Thanks.”

“Mr Pope has contacted me. He wants to know that you are alright.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Did you tell him about Number Twelve?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“He hopes that you are alright.”

She nodded, the fatigue buffeting her again.

“
Are
you alright?” he asked.

“I’m just tired,” she said. “I need to get home.”

The tailor left her alone again. She listened to the noises of the city outside the window: car horns, engines, a jet streaking across the sky. It was busy, and yet she felt utterly alone.

She took out her cellphone and dialled the only number that she carried in her memory.

Mohammed’s voice sounded very far away. “Hello?”

“It’s me.”

“It is good to hear your voice.” Like her, he was careful not to use names on an unshielded line. “How are you?”

“It’s done.”

“Very good. And you?”

“Tired. Very, very tired.”

“Where are you?”

“In theatre.”

“You can get out?”

“Yes,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

“Would you like to speak to your daughter?”

“Yes.”

There was a pause, a quick conversation conducted sotto voce, and then Isabella’s voice.

“Mummy?”

Beatrix felt a surge of emotion, and for a moment, her throat felt tight and choked.

“Mummy?”

“Hello, sweetheart.”

“Are you alright?”

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“I’ve been practising on the range. I’m getting better all the time.”

She winced, more remorse. “That’s good,” she said, substituting enthusiasm for the regret she felt.

“When are you coming home?”

“Today.”

“I’ve missed you, Mummy.”

“And I’ve missed you, sweetheart. I’ve missed you very, very much.”

“It’s nearly done though, isn’t it?”

“Nearly done,” she said, noticing that her hand was gripped tight around the phone. “Two more and that’s it.”

Connor English sat at the row of leather chairs in the departures lounge at Basra International and watched with a mixture of disbelief, wariness and elation as the woman he clearly recognised as Beatrix Rose went by. He had a picture of her from a decade ago on his phone, and he looked down to
double-check
that he was right. She had been younger then, obviously, but there was no mistaking the sharp cheekbones and the cobalt-blue eyes. She was wheeling a small suitcase behind her and had no other possessions with her apart from her boarding card, a bottle of water and a copy of the
Chicago
Tribune
.

The disbelief was because he couldn’t believe she would have been so reckless as to exfil from out of an airport.

The wariness was because he knew exactly what she was capable of doing.

The elation was because now, maybe, he would be able to put an end to the threat that had been dogging his sleep ever since
Oliver
Spenser had been gunned down outside the
dacha
in the Russian steppes. Four down already and just two more to go. Him and Control.

Perhaps now he could put an end to the fear that he wouldn’t wake up or, if he did, that it would be with one of her knives pressed against his throat.

Because English had been in her house that afternoon almost a decade ago. He had been Number Nine then. He knew that his name was on the list she was methodically working through. He had not expected to be in a position where he might have the advantage of surprise over her. That was the prerogative of the hunter, not the hunted.

Now, though?

Now, he would.

He got up and followed her as she walked to her gate. She moved gingerly, as if in pain, although there was nothing visibly wrong with her, and when she stopped to gather her breath, he caught the reflection of her face in the window of a book store. She was grimacing in discomfort.

She continued on to Gate Fifteen and took a seat where she could look out at the passengers circulating around the terminal. Inherent caution, tough to shake. English walked by, pretending to compare the information on his boarding card with the flight details displayed above the gate. He moved on another two gates and took a seat where he could keep an eye on her. He wanted to be sure that she got on the plane.

He took out his encrypted phone and dialled.

“Yes?”

“It’s me. I have her.”

“Where?” Control pressed impatiently.

“Basra. She’s at the airport.”

“What
?”

“I know. I couldn’t believe it either.”

“What is she
doing
?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, sir. But she looks like she’s been through the mill. Moving very gingerly. Looks like she’s in pain.”

“Maybe Duffy . . .”

“Maybe,” English finished for him. Duffy was nowhere to be found, and Beatrix was in town. Joining those dots didn’t look too good for him, but maybe Control was right: maybe he had gone down swinging.

“Why would she leave from the airport? Surely she’d drive south?”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“So where’s she going?”

“I’m checking that.” English looked up. “Hold on.”

There was an announcement that Gate Fifteen was boarding. He watched as she hobbled to the desk and presented her boarding card. She disappeared into the air gate.

He got up and walked quickly to the gate to make sure that she hadn’t tried to elude him, maybe trying to escape onto the runway. He looked out of the windows, and there was no sign of her.

“Casablanca, sir,” he said. “She’s going to Casablanca.”

“Very good,” Control said. “Send me the flight details. There will be someone waiting for her at the other end. Wherever she’s been hiding, we’ll find her now. We’ll flush her out.” There was a pause, and all English could hear was the static on the line. “It’s nearly done,” Control said finally. “Nearly over.”

English looked out of the broad window to the 747 outside. Control had never been on an operation with Beatrix Rose before. He just selected the targets and sent his agents out to do his
bidding
.

But English had worked with her.

Just the once, a job in Shibuya, Tokyo, that had led to the elimination of six Yakuza gangsters. He remembered it vividly, in living colour. He remembered the hostess bar and the six tattooed men and Beatrix Rose, her knives and her bullets, and the damage she had wrought.

A storm of blood.

Connor English knew, better than most, what she was capable of doing.

He was a soldier, an assassin, but Beatrix was of another
magnitude
.

He wasn’t afraid to admit it: the thought of going after her kept him up at nights.

But that was what he was going to have to do.

An extract from the concluding novel in the Beatrix Rose trilogy,
BLOOD
AND
ROSES

Beatrix Rose’s story concludes with
Blood and Roses
. For launch information (plus a FREE novel and John Milton bonus material), sign up for Mark’s mailing list. You’ll find details at the end of this exclusive extract.

Here’s an exclusive extract from the first chapter:

Connor English sat in the open doorway of Falcon One, his legs hanging outside the cabin. He was wearing night vision goggles, and the arid and desolate desert below was washed with a ghostly green, the scrubby trees and lonely hamlets passing beneath the hull as the chopper maintained a steady pace of a hundred knots. The pilot hugged the contours of the landscape,
the chopper’s
altitude
never rising above fifty feet, keeping
it
beneath the line of the hills.

The pilot came over the troop net. “Falcon One to Zero. We just crossed the border. Now entering Morocco. Morocco comms, no chatter.”

“Zero to Falcon One,” responded mission control at the Lodge in North Carolina. “Copy that. Green to proceed.”

Everything was unfolding as they had planned: they had evaded Moroccan radar coming in, and now they had a clear run to the
target
. English leaned forward a little, the hot wind tugging
greedily
at the desert scarf he wore around his neck, and looked aft. He had a good visual of the trailing helicopter, Falcon Two. It was a 
hundred
yards to starboard, maintaining the same careful altitude, head down and tail up, racing though the night.

Both birds were painted black and carried no markings or running lights. The two Black Hawks had been modified at the
Manage
Risk shop at the Lodge so that their radar cross-sections were
minimised
. Stealth panels, similar to those used on the B-2 Spirits, had been fitted. The rotors had been modified with
decibel
mufflers. There were engine shields, a retractable undercarriage and refuelling probe, rotor covers, an extra rotor blade and a totally redesigned and enclosed tail boom. The Navy had done something similar with the birds that had been used on the mission to take out bin Laden, but one of those had crashed. The Pakistanis had sold the wreckage to an anonymous subsidiary of Manage Risk for twenty million, and then they had taken the basic modifications and perfected them. The cost was significant, but they would sell it back to the government eventually, and in the meantime, their efforts were going to prove very useful.

Especially tonight.

The price of all the extra work was that they flew more slowly than a standard MH-60 and packed less punch, but they had
excellent
radar defeat. English had been with the rest of the team when the hangar had been opened to the North Carolina sunlight and the birds revealed. The R&D guy responsible for the program admitted that he had been tempted to kill it more than once and that although the birds had been tested, they had never been tested with a full load inside them, and had certainly never been tested on something like this.

This illicit trip into Moroccan airspace was their maiden
outing
.

The men inside the Stealth Hawk bore no identification.

The helos and their complement of twenty-four were
anonymous
.

Deniable.

Unsanctioned.

Criminal, even, when you came down to it.

If anything went wrong, if the birds crashed or were shot down, if they compromised the mission in any way, they would be on their own.

English scanned the hills and valleys, looking for landmarks that he might recognise. He had studied the satellite intel that they had bought from the CIA. That had been helpful, but not nearly as profitable as the week that he had spent in the city itself. He had taken advantage of that time to acclimatise himself to the target and the surrounding neighbourhood. They had considered several ways of achieving the mission objective. They could have assaulted the riad from the ground, but it was buried deep within the medina, with very poor access. Some of the alleyways that they would need to negotiate were barely wide enough for travel in single file; this was especially true for the big men in the chopper with their hefty packs. The alleys were potential choke points, and that made
English
 nervous.

So he had proposed this alternative.

They would fly in.

The initial plan had been to take the target out when she was outside the riad, but in the time that English had spent in the city he hadn’t seen her once. She was holed up. That wasn’t really a
surprise
. She had received the same training as he had, and she would have known, without question, that what she had already done demanded a response.

Oliver Spenser.

Joshua Joyce.

Lydia Chisholm.

Bryan Duffy.

The four of them had been assassinated, and they hadn’t
managed
to lay a glove on her.

She had a list, and there could only be another two names on it.

Himself.

And Control.

They had to strike first.

The roar of the chopper’s twin General Electric T700
turboshaft
engines filled the cabin. Little else was audible beyond that and the beating of the rotors. He
leaned
back and pressed the wax plugs deeper into his ears. He could just make out the shape of the crew chief holding up five fingers.

Five minutes.

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