Dead Shot (14 page)

He booked a Lufthansa flight to Paris, with a brief layover in Frankfurt, Germany, and took a cab straight to the house in the Nineteenth Arrondissement.

Saladin was concerned the moment he laid eyes on Juba. He looked like a man who was crawling out of a pit of despair. “Talk to me, my son,” he said. “What has happened?”

Juba handed over the briefcase. “The experiment was successful, and I confess it was difficult to watch. Afterward, we were attacked and the canisters of the gas exploded. I barely made it out alive.”

“Who did this?”

“I don’t know. Maybe some politicals trying to free some of the test subjects.” He rubbed his palms over his eyes. “No one survived except me and the helicopter pilot. It was too dangerous to allow him to live.”

Saladin walked to the windows and looked out. It was a bright and pleasant day. “Can you continue?”

“Of course,” Juba said. “I was just shaken by the thought that the gas had gotten to me. I am ready.”

Saladin opened the briefcase. “This is everything about the formula?”

Juba nodded. “Yes. The site was almost empty, and the rest of the computers and paperwork were destroyed during the attack. We should go ahead and transmit this data to the facility in Mexico. Prepare enough of the gas for the demonstration.”

“And you are certain that you will be able to continue on schedule?”

“Without a doubt,” Juba replied. “I can be in the United States by the end of the week.”

That brought a smile to Saladin. His man was still strong. Anyone can stumble at some time. “There is no urgency about that, so I would like for you to stay here for a while. We will study and talk and let you prepare for the mission ahead. I will send the formula today, but our lab in Mexico will still need some time to produce the gas and transport it.”

“Thank you, Father.”

“And you look as if you could use some good news, my son, so let
me give you some: We already have six entries for the auction. That’s sixty million dollars before the real bidding even begins, and I expect more.”

“They will all come after us.”

“They can try.” Saladin laughed. “They can certainly try, but with you running our security, they will certainly fail. We will leave this house together and return to America in a few days, so if our enemies want us, they will have to first enter the U.S., which will be on very high alert. Then, after we collect the money, you and I shall just disappear.”

CAMP BAHARIA
IRAQ

O
N ARRIVAL BACK AT
the Marine base outside of Fallujah, Swanson turned over the captured material to an intelligence officer who had been awaiting the helicopter. Sybelle Summers was also at the pad, wearing a dark green sweater and black jeans, a small pistol tucked into a black leather waist holster. She looked over the Marines as they hopped from the bird. They seemed okay. Her first look at Delara Tabrizi made her smile, for the small woman seemed like a child among the heavily armed special ops team, but her walk was steady and confident. For a woman who had been a civilian schoolteacher only a few hours ago, and had since endured two major raids and had seen her friend and her brother slain, she had done okay, Sybelle decided. A sister.

Swanson, Tipp, and Hughes brought Delara over, and Sybelle led them to a small office she had used in supporting the mission. “Not that I care, but the brass is raising hell about this unauthorized job,” she said, plopping into the chair behind the desk and putting her boots on the top. “We didn’t get enough papers stamped and authorized and all that bullshit.”

Kyle dropped his gear on the floor. “Doesn’t matter. What we found and brought back will more than shut up the critics. Loads of recordings of voices, papers and records, some computer disks, pictures. And eyewitness accounts of how this new poison gas works.”

“Can Tipp and Travis do the debrief by themselves?”

“Sure. They saw everything I did, and Trav took the pictures.”

“Good,” said Sybelle, “because you and I are out of here.”

Kyle agreed. He needed to keep his cover intact, and that would be hard on a base filled with Marines. “Then I want to take Miss Tabrizi along with us. I don’t want her falling into the system. Once she is debriefed, the intel pukes will hand her to the political types, and God only knows where she will end up. She helped us a lot. We owe her.”

Delara was seated, watching the exchange. The woman was obviously an important person and spoke to the Marine like an equal, but they were talking about her fate. “I cannot return to Iran!” she said. “I want to kill these people who made this poison!”

Sybelle laughed quietly and looked over at Kyle. “So let’s take her out to the boat with us and let Jeff figure it out. He has a ton of diplomatic contacts and is good at that sort of thing.”

“Who is this Jeff?” Delara asked. “What are you going to do with me?”

Kyle touched her shoulder, and she immediately relaxed. “Jeff is a good friend, and by the time he finishes working his magic, you will pretty much have anything you want. A new country and a new future. A new you.”

Sybelle was on her feet. “Joe and Travis, we’ll leave you here. Good job, guys. Thanks for the help.”

“Sure, Captain,” said Tipp. “Anytime.”

“Y’all take good care of our girl Delara,” called Travis Hughes. “I already taught her how to say Semper Fi!”

A Humvee was parked outside, and the three of them got into it, with Sybelle at the wheel. “I didn’t want to mention it in there, but there’s another reason we have to get back on board the
Vagabond
.” She glanced back at Delara, whose eyes were already closed.

“The Lizard has flown out from Washington to meet us there. You have a Green Light package.”

“I would like to get some sleep first.”

“And I would like to be thinner,” Sybelle said. “Neither is likely.”

T
HE
L
IZARD HAD EVERYTHING
ready when Swanson, Sybelle, and Delara flew out to the
Vagabond
. Delara was turned over to Lady Pat for the time
being, while Sybelle and Kyle met in Sir Jeff’s private office with Lieutenant Commander Freedman. A big pile of documents was at the Lizard’s side, and his computer was already running on secure circuits.

“This is the voice of Ahmad Hikmat Aseer, a known al Qaeda operative, in conversation with another al Qaeda leader. The NSA Big Ears picked it up. The caller is so furious that he ignored normal security precautions and made contact from his home telephone.” The Lizard tapped his keyboard and turned up the volume. A torrent of French sprang from the speakers in an angry and threatening tone, so fast that Kyle could not follow the words. It sounded like the guy was spitting on himself in his rage.

The Lizard handed transcripts to Sybelle and Kyle. “It seems that Ahmad had a brother named Youcef, who happened to be the head of al Qaeda operations in France. Youcef’s body was found floating in a Paris canal several days ago. That’s when Ahmad made this call.”

Kyle read carefully. Ahmad said that his brother was last seen alive before an important meeting at his home in Paris with the outcasts Saladin and his bodyguard Juba. “They killed him and his own guards in his own house!” Ahmad Hikmat Aseer sputtered. “Not only that, the arrogant pigs have confiscated the house as their own!”

He demanded revenge, insisting that al Qaeda send in an execution team, and that was when the other man realized the danger of the call and challenged Ahmad about making it. He hung up.

“By then it was too late; the Big Ears had it. NSA gave it to the CIA, and they turned up an address in Paris for the deceased Youcef Aseer.”

“So why give us a Green Light? Let the CIA handle it.” Sybelle skimmed the transcript again.

“I don’t know that. Too far above my pay grade. I could guess that if the CIA mucks up the arrest of Saladin, there would be an embarrassing trail back to Washington. Anyway, General Middleton gave me the assignment to brief you and get you on your way. I have a military jet standing by on shore. You’re going to Paris.”

“What about me?” asked Sybelle.

“We go, but to a support point in a separate location. Kyle comes back there when he finishes.”

“When do we leave?” “Now,” the Lizard said.

PARIS

The Lizard had reserved him a businessman’s suite at a nondescript and out-of-the-way hotel that catered to executives of companies that did not allow lavish expense accounts. Paris on the cheap. Kyle checked in without any problem. He called down to room service for a steak and salad and a bottle of water. The sun would be setting soon and he could move. Then he stripped down and got under a shower, alternating hot and cold water.

He let it cascade over him for five minutes. Drying off afterward, Swanson stared into the brightly lit bathroom mirror and did not particularly like the man he saw looking back. Bleary-eyed, tired, the mouth a grim line, and blue-gray eyes as hard as stones. The tanned body was nicked with scars and the puckered skin of healed bullet holes. His hair had returned to its normal shade of brown from streaky surfer blond. He splashed more water on his face and went back to bed, with the Glock 17 pistol handy on the night table.
Are the weapons still just tools, an extension of me, or have I become an extension of them and what the fuck kind of question is that, anyway?
He laced his fingers behind his head on the fluffy pillow. A psychiatrist would have said he was undergoing severe depression. Swanson believed this was deeper than any shrink’s diagnosis.
I think I am about one step away from going nuts. One small step for man, one giant leap for me
.

There was a knock on the door, and he put on a robe, picked up his Glock, and answered. A waiter pushed in the food cart. Kyle unwrapped his hand from around the Glock in the pocket of the robe and signed the check with a generous tip. He pushed the plastic
DO NOT DISTURB
card into the exterior electronic key slot and closed the door.

He surfed the television channels while he ate the steak, watching
British newscasters, CNN and Fox, and American sitcoms translated into French. Nothing. Kyle pushed away the food cart, washed his hands again, and then smoothed a white towel over the tufted bedspread. He spread out his personal weapons, which he had been able to keep in his possession because they had come in on a military flight and did not have to go through customs.

Glock, Ruger, Gerber. Marine armorers had given both pistols Limited Technical and Procedural Firing Inspections before he had left for the Middle East, but they needed a good cleaning after the raids into Iran. He opened a small gun-cleaning kit and arranged the toothbrush, the bore brush, cotton swabs, the vial of oil, and a soft rag.

The push of a lever in front of the trigger took off the slide of the Glock, leaving the pistol in two pieces, the barrel assembly and the butt. With the slide out, he removed the spring and began a careful examination to see that nothing was frayed or chipped. A look down the barrel confirmed it was neither dented nor warped. He only wiped down the butt section, because doing a proper job on an intricate trigger assembly was the task of a gunsmith. Swanson spent five minutes cleaning it, then reassembled the Glock and did an ops check to make sure it worked. He pointed it at the mirror on the back of the door. The trigger clicked on empty.

He had four magazines with fifteen rounds in each clip, and Kyle thumbed out the bullets one by one to personally examine them for any defect. The shiny brass cartridges were laid out side by side on the white towel, gleaming in the overhead light, each a marvelous little piece of engineering built precisely by Beretta to fit the barrel of the 9 mm pistol. They were all soft-tipped rounds designed to avoid a ricochet indoors. The bullet would create an entry wound as small as a dime, but once it slammed into bone, the soft nose would splinter with the impact of a small grenade and shred everything around it. It was not supposed to exit the body. Swanson always enjoyed watching movies in which shooters used their knives to carve an
X
on the tip of a bullet to make it open up. Fantasy. The rounds were already designed to do that. Start screwing around with your rounds and you will screw up the
barrel and the accuracy of the weapon; then you are the one who is screwed. He reloaded the magazines.

The little Ruger five-shot revolver was even easier, but the maintenance was performed with the same amount of care. Open the cylinder, visually inspect it, clean it, load it, and bingo, it was ready. The Gerber knife was easier still. Just wipe down the blade, which gleamed along the cutting edge that had been honed in the armorer’s shop. Field strip and op check on all weapons. Good to go.

Comfortable with his personal arsenal, he slipped into his night outfit: black jeans, black sneakers and socks, long-sleeved black turtleneck T-shirt, and black windbreaker. A woolen balaclava mask was rolled up into a watch cap and adjusted for a firm fit and so his eyes could see out of the openings. The Gerber went into one pocket; the Ruger was on his ankle and the Glock snug in the shoulder rig. He turned out the lights and lay on the bed to let his eyes adjust to the gathering darkness.

Swanson closed his eyes and lay there for thirty minutes, breathing slowly, trying not to fall asleep because he had work to do tonight. Thoughts of Shari Towne flitted at the edge of his consciousness. As a lieutenant commander in the Navy, she had been given a hero’s funeral at Arlington, her coffin rolled to the gravesite on a horse-drawn carriage. The box was virtually empty because she had been riddled by gunfire and blown apart by two satchels of explosives. There was no family present at the funeral. Shari’s father had died years before, and her beautiful mother died in the same attack that stole Shari’s life. Shari was the end of the family line.

Kyle wasn’t there for the ceremony because he had been stashed in a secret medical clinic abroad recovering from bullet wounds of his own. He now considered it ironic that he and Shari were both officially buried at Arlington, yet neither was really in that hallowed dirt. He felt that they were still together, and she occasionally visited him in dreams that were so vivid he could describe exactly what she was wearing. They could not speak to each other, they could not touch, but they could be together for an almost tangible moment, no more than a heartbeat, and
she always had that glorious smile. Now another face was also showing up, unbidden, in his thoughts, that of Delara Tabrizi.

Stop it,
he commanded himself.
This is getting me nowhere. Keep on the mission, and the other stuff will sort itself out. God, I need some rest.

Green Light. That order came straight from the top. Finding out so unexpectedly where the man known as Saladin was provided a very narrow window of opportunity. This was the person responsible for the poison gas attack on London, and he was now blackmailing the world. The decision was made to take him off the board while there was a chance and to seize the formula and plans for the weapon. The president was absolutely right that the United States did not assassinate people. But the dead man who used to be Kyle Swanson did.

Darkness had fallen, and it was raining when he opened the window, a nice French rain that alternated between a fine mist and a wet mop in the face. Anyone watching would avoid looking upward, and amateurs would seek shelter. Since he had turned off the lights, the assumption would be that he was sleeping. Three floors below, an alley stretched along the back of the hotel. Empty. No darker shadows huddled within the other shadows.

Kyle stuffed a hotel towel into his jacket, stepped through the window onto a ledge, faced the wall, and closed the window behind him.

The Lizard had provided maps and layouts from satellite imagery and building blueprints, and the room had been chosen because of its proximity to steel latticework erected for some outside renovation. The Lizard had measured it to be exactly eleven feet from the window. Kyle scooted carefully along the wet ledge, grabbed the scaffolding, and was down in the alley in seconds. He went into the shadows of a garbage bin, dried off with the towel, and tossed it.

Turning his back to the street and cupping his hand to shield the light, he pushed a button and the dial of his watch illuminated with a soft blue glow. It was almost 2200 on the dot, two hours before midnight, and Paris was open for business.

Swanson used a combination of taxis and the subway system, frequently doubling back and walking through stores to check for followers, and only when he was convinced that he was alone did he edge to the northeast and into the Nineteenth Arrondissement.