Blood Trust (48 page)

The tear-gas grenade smashed through the glass and detonated. Now it was only a matter of waiting until the driver lost consciousness. The car would begin to weave, then veer off the road as the driver lost control. Perhaps it would come to rest in a ditch or sideswipe a tree. In any event, Yassin’s turn would come. It was a beautiful thing, Baltasar thought, when everything proceeded according to plan.

He waited, but the car did not weave. It slowed. Asu put on the brakes and the military vehicle paced the car. Baltasar frowned. He wondered whether the driver, in his semiconscious state, had the presence of mind to step on the brake. But the moments of losing the headlights still bothered him, and he couldn’t rid himself of the nagging notion that something was wrong.

The next moment, the car stopped. Baltasar unscrewed the grenade launcher and changed magazines to regular rounds. All the time he kept his eyes glued to the car.

“Let’s go! What are we waiting for?”

He heard Yassin’s whisper from just inside the hatch. Yassin was right; they should be on the ground now, approaching the car. But something stayed Baltasar’s hand.

He ducked back down and said to Yassin, “Change in plan. Take one of the AK-50s and go over to the car. Asu will cover you with the thirty caliber.”

Asu popped his head out of the open hatch. He flipped the safety off the forward machine gun, then signaled that he was ready.

Yassin climbed out of the hatch and dropped to the ground. He circled the car warily, crouched down, the AK-50 at the ready. It was loaded with heavy, maximum-grain ammunition. Except for the chirrupping of insects, there was absolute silence. No traffic, and whatever wind there had been had died.

Yassin had made half a circuit around the car without seeing any sign of life. Then, a single shot caused him to spin around. Asu lay sprawled across the roof, his head a bloody pulp.

Yassin, instantly calculating the direction of the shot from the way Asu’s body lay, opened fire with the assault rifle while darting behind the protection of the car.

A second shot, coming from directly behind him, pitched him forward. He struck the rear fender of the car, then slid off onto the ground. He did not move. His blood became a black pool around him.

At once, the military vehicle rumbled into life, swinging around to face the spot where the second shot had come from. A thin whine was followed by a long gout of flame that penetrated the first line of pine trees with a blast of searing heat. First, the flames set the carpet of fallen needles alight, but soon enough the trees themselves were engulfed in flame and dense, black, chemical smoke.

*   *   *

F
OR WHAT
seemed like several moments after that, nothing happened. Then a figure, black and peeling beneath a hellish coat of flames, rushed from the smoking trees. Halfway to the military vehicle, it jerked upright, as if on a leash. Then it collapsed onto its knees, slowly folding over onto itself, forming at length a pyramid of crisped flesh and cracking bones.

The vehicle came to a halt, the rear battle slits snapped open, and a hail of machine gun fire bit into the trees on the other side of the road. In that moment, Annika ran from cover near the smoldering trees, primed a grenade, and slammed it between the front wheels. She was almost back inside the tree line when the blast blew the near-side wheels off and a hole appeared in the vehicle’s armor plate, into which the stinking smoke from the blast was drawn as if down an open flue.

Seeing this, Jack broke cover, sprinted across the road, and leapt into the back of the vehicle, which was stalled and hotter than an oven. As the top hatch popped open and Baltasar emerged, eyes streaming, Jack grabbed him and hauled him bodily out of the vehicle, throwing him down onto the road, where Annika was standing.

Baltasar grunted as he hit the pavement on his left shoulder. Annika kicked him in the stomach, and he flopped over. By this time, Jack had checked to make sure the vehicle was empty. Now he dropped down beside Baltasar. Together, they dragged him over to the pile of bones within which tiny flames still flickered and danced. Mostly, though, the superheated chemical fire had turned everything to brittle ash. But the nauseating stench of roasted meat was still in the air.

“Vasily!” Annika called.

Jack looked up to see Vasily, the remaining
grupperovka
member, striding over. Right behind him were Thatë and Alli. Jack could see how protective of Alli the kid was, and he was grateful.

Annika signed to Vasily.

The big Russian gripped Baltasar by the back of his head and slammed it down and ground it into the smoking pile of bones. Flames leaped into Baltasar’s beard and thick, curling sideburns and he began to yell. No one paid him the slightest attention. Then Annika delivered a vicious kick to his kidney and he fell onto his side. She rolled him onto his back so that he was looking directly up at her.

“Where is Arian Xhafa?”

He stared at her, his lips clamped firmly together.

“You
will
tell me what I want to know.”

He smiled up at her. His beard continued to smolder.

“Vasily, please stay with our friends,” Annika said.

She signaled to Thatë, who left Alli’s side. He grabbed Baltasar by the back of his collar, and together they dragged him into the woods.

Jack and Alli stood together, with Vasily’s tattooed hulk.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Jack said in Russian.

Vasily grunted, but Jack could see that he was grateful. The big man turned and went to scavenge weapons from inside the military vehicle.

As soon as the car had entered the swale, the driver had doused the lights and, at Annika’s direction, they had exited, sprinting for the safety of the first line of pines. All except the driver, who had switched the lights back on and had set the car in motion with a homemade mechanism that had gradually released the gas pedal, so that the car would slow several thousand yards farther down the straightaway.

“What will Thatë do to him?” Alli said.

As if in answer, an unearthly howl pierced the night. It came again. There was nothing human about it, nothing familiar. The third howl made Alli shiver. It was impossible to imagine what kind of creature could make that sound, or what could be causing it.

Alli made a motion to go into the woods after Annika and Thatë, but Jack put a gentle hand on her forearm.

“I wouldn’t,” he said.

She looked at him. “She’ll get what she wants, won’t she?”

“I believe she always gets what she wants.”

Alli nodded. “Did you suspect that Thatë was hers?”

Jack sighed. “I should have.”

“In retrospect, it all makes so much sense: his position inside Xhafa’s network, his being sent to Tetovo to spy on Xhafa, his commanding an elite group of Russians in Western Macedonia.”

They saw Annika walking toward them. Thatë appeared out of the pine shadows a moment later. He was cleaning something on a wad of fallen pine needles; they couldn’t see what and Jack refused to speculate on what it might be.

“I know where Xhafa is,” she told them when she came abreast of them. “I also know where he’s holding Liridona. Unfortunately they’re on opposite sides of the city.”

Thatë now joined them. There was no sign of whatever he’d been cleaning off, no sign on either of them that they had been interrogating a member of the enemy.

“These were not Xhafa’s people,” she said to Jack. “They were the Syrian’s.”

“I don’t understand,” Jack said.

“I didn’t, either, until Thatë and I convinced this man—Baltasar—to confess. As I told you, the Syrian has stepped into Berns’s shoes and become Xhafa’s arms connection. This has been beneficial for Xhafa because, believe it or not, the Syrian’s access to cutting-edge weaponry is better than Senator Berns’s was. But the situation is now far more explosive. In return for the weapons, Xhafa allows the Syrian to export his particular brand of terrorism all over the world via Xhafa’s private fleet of planes. The Syrian has connections with the Colombian and Mexican cartels, who are moving massive amounts of drugs from Afghanistan and the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia for perhaps a half-dozen Muslim extremist organizations who are using the drug money to pay the Syrian for arms. It’s a toxic global network with the Syrian at the center.”

Jack had to stop himself from calling Paull immediately to tell him how much more dire the situation had become. Arian Xhafa was merely a symptom; the Syrian was the disease. He needed some answers first.

“What does all this have to do with the Syrian sending a death squad after us?”

“Let’s get back in the car,” Annika said.

When they were on their way back to the highway, she said, “For the past four months, the Syrian has been trying to get to my grandfather. Having failed in those attempts, I fear he’s now coming after me as the only other way he can think of to get to Dyadya Gourdjiev.”

“What does he want with your grandfather?” Alli asked.

“Dyadya Gourdjiev’s brain. It’s a storehouse of secrets,” Annika said.

“That sounds pretty vague,” Jack interjected.

All he got in response was one of Annika’s enigmatic smiles. “Here’s our problem. We need to get to Xhafa and the Syrian as quickly as possible, but the same holds true for Liridona. She’s being held in a safehouse in the western part of Vlorë. The Syrian’s compound is in the northeast.”

“Which means we need to split up,” Alli said. “Thatë and I will get Liridona.”

“And I said no.”

“You haven’t,” Alli said hotly. “Not explicitly.”

He was about to once again expound on the subject of letting her loose in hostile territory when he caught Annika’s expression, and he remembered their discussion about knowing what was best for Alli. He recalled how he’d bridled when she’d told him that she’d made the decision about what was best for him to know. He tried to tell himself that this was different, but the argument wasn’t holding water.

He steeled himself for one of the most difficult things he had to say. Difficult because he suspected he knew what Annika’s answer would be. “I promised Alli that she could ask you your opinion.”

“I think she’s right, Jack. We have two objectives that need to be addressed immediately.” She searched his face. “If you agree with me, I’ll send Vasily with her and Thatë, while you and I go on to the Syrian’s compound.”

Jack looked from her face to Alli’s. This was an important moment for all of them, there was no question of it. But beyond the operational imperatives, he recognized this as an emotional crossroads in Alli’s development. Despite her defiance and Annika’s arguments, he knew the decision was on his shoulders. No matter her own feelings. Alli wouldn’t go unless he gave her his blessing. In an odd way, he recognized this as the moment when a father gives his daughter to the man she is about to marry. In a very real way, she was passing out of his protection into a world filled with peril, heartache, and exultation. He also knew that she would never forgive him if he forbade her this mission. The intimate bond that had been forged between them would be ruptured and nothing he would ever do or say would restore it.

He thought of all the mistakes he’d made with Emma and, perhaps inevitably, he felt the cool wind as she settled in beside him.

—Emma?

“This is what must happen, Dad.”

—Do you know? he said. Do you know if she’ll be all right?

“I’m not a seer, Dad.”

She had told him that already.

“But I’ll be with her. I promise.”

Jack took a deep breath. His gaze on both the women, he said, “What are we waiting for? Let’s roll.”

*   *   *

M
ORNING IN
Washington found John Pawnhill eating eggs Benny at an old-school dive west of Dupont Circle. It was the kind of place where the same people came to have breakfast or lunch every day of the week, the kind of place tourists never heard about.

In the booth with him was his laptop, which he had hooked into the Middle Bay Bancorp secure server. It amused him no end that InterPublic Bancorp had hired his firm to perform the due diligence on Middle Bay’s books. Of course, he had envisioned an endgame when, following Caroline Carson’s detailed plan, he had set up the Syrian’s cash flow business, via Gemini Holdings and a host of subsidiaries, through Middle Bay. It was just the kind of bank the Syrian needed in order to keep from being a PEP (a Politically Exposed Person) like Liberia’s Charles Taylor, high-profile targets like deposed heads of states, paramilitary leaders, heads of drug cartels, and arms dealers like Viktor Bout, all powerful and clever individuals who, nevertheless, had eventually been caught. Caroline deemed Middle Bay a perfect target: large enough to have international connections, but small enough to pass under the radar of the various federal task forces involved in ferreting out terrorist and money laundering operations.

Pawnhill, Caroline Carson’s eyes and hands on the ground, hadn’t found the actual work all that difficult—she was the genie who lit his way. The American government’s fractured intelligence structure allowed so much illicit international activity to fall between the cracks that you had to make an egregious mistake to come to its attention.