Mortal Crimes: 7 Novels of Suspense (177 page)

Problem with that theory is that there would have been easier ways to contact Ikanbo. A phone call, for one.

Second, maybe Ian wanted nothing more than revenge. Whatever had happened in the Kaokoland wilderness, his best friend had died. Markov now doubted that Ian had killed Kendall. His new theory was that someone had drugged Ian after Ikanbo took the man into custody. He hadn’t yet figured out who, or why.

So Ian would come back to the Blackwing camp and finish what he’d started, as he’d blurted in the Windhoek jail cell. Kill the contractors, destroy the Chinese infrastructure.

He liked this theory except for one detail. Inconveniently, it failed to explain what Julia was thinking. Okay, so maybe she was just infatuated, nothing more. No surprise that she’d fall for a handsome young field operative with a foreign accent. Not when she was married to a guy like Terrance Nolan, who apparently did not care if she lived or died, in the most literal way possible.

And that wouldn’t explain Ian’s motivation. Sure, maybe he was just as smitten with Julia—she was an attractive, bright woman, albeit a few years older than Ian—but she’d only get in the way when the time came for shooting.

So what was it?

Markov kept coming back to the software that Terrance had sent to Julia. Chang had locked her out of Ian’s implant, but she’d know that by now. And as soon as she found out, wouldn’t she have emailed Terrance again, to try to get the new access codes? Only she hadn’t.

And suddenly it came to him. There was another implant out there.

Kendall Rose.

What had happened to Kendall’s body? Blown up, Sarah claimed, by U.S. air support doing their best to cover up Ian Westhelle’s botched operation and murder of his handler. They’d recovered a few shards of bone, enough to identify the man by DNA.

Markov could verify that information easily enough, with calls to the AFRICOM field office, in Botswana, and forensics, at Langley. But say Sarah had been lying or was lied to. Could Kendall’s body still be out there somewhere?

If so, he knew exactly where to find Ian and Julia. He picked up the phone to call his men, begin the operation to intercept the pair. This time, he was sure, they would not escape.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Ian felt like it had taken as long to drive the 100 kilometers into the Kaokoland Wilderness as to drive the preceding 500 kilometers up the C13. Desert driving sucked. They’d been stuck twice, and Ian had to get out and build up the sand under the wheels, pack it down with as much water as they could spare from the back of the Land Rover and tease the car back and forth until it settled on firmer ground.

He’d been this way once before, but it seemed like the road was in a completely different place. Probably was. Road was a generous term. The way sand blew over everything, it was often unrecognizable due to sand drifts for kilometers at a stretch.

When the sand ended, the rocks and hardpan began. They rattled along in a cloud of fine dust. It coated every surface of the car, inside and out. Even after he’d turned off the vent and rolled up the windows, it still seemed to find a way in.

The only thing more constant than bad road conditions was the smell of fumes from the extra 100 liters of petrol they’d packed into the trunk and back seat. Not a smart thing, really, to load up with enough liquid explosive to finish the job for the CIA. But it bloody well beat walking back if they ran out of fuel. Fortunately, the company was good. Julia was glowing, her spirits higher than at any point so far on their travels. She’d point out each gemsbok, asked questions about Ian’s home, the Zulu nanny that raised him until his early teens. She asked about his father, about his sister who’d moved back to Johannesburg and already had four kids.

And Ian found himself drawn into the conversation, reliving memories, opening up. It was a great distraction for both of them. He had nearly died on the other end of this road, and the ridge was in range of the deadliest stockpile of weaponry in Southwest Africa, all of which would be happily directed to blow them up if anyone recognized him.

What struck Ian the most was how comfortable he felt with Julia. He’d been around a lot of women. Since high school they’d followed him like sand flies, though most were considerably more pleasant and a few were more subtle. It had been a shock to see how aggressive American women were compared to their South African counterparts, all smiles, eyelashes, and legs. He’d always been respectful, never one to take advantage or press his hand. No need to.

His intimate encounters with women were generally short-lived. For one thing, his job kept him moving. It wasn’t the sort of career that attracted women looking to settle down. Nor did Ian give off that vibe.

Even the women who tolerated that kind of lifestyle would find that they had little in common with Ian when he was dressed. And Ian soon began to find his pursuers shallow, provincial, flighty. The closest thing Ian had to a female friend was his sister, who he hadn’t seen but twice in the last three years, though they kept in contact by phone and email.

So it surprised him how easily he could talk with Julia. She was intelligent, thoughtful, different from other women he knew. She cared about what he thought, his childhood, about
him
.

But as the car approached the hill where he and Kendall had stashed their weapons, he withdrew from conversation and concentrated on the terrain. This time there was no GPS, only the landscape seared into his memory. He remembered the battle, seeing Kendall hit, the flash of exploding ordinance.

“We stop here. Sure you’re up to this?” Ian stepped out of the car and took a look around him, checking for tails on their approach. He scanned his mind. It was on. He tried again to remember when, or if, he had turned it on. He didn’t like feeling like he couldn’t control. This had to stop. But not now. Once they’d retrieved the data he could get Julia to find a way to silence the commands.

Julia’s expression hardened. “I’m ready. Let’s go get the data and get out of here.”

Ian walked up the slope, with Julia close behind. She carried the laptop. He held his Glock in hand. His senses sharpened, he noted every sound.

They crested the ridge and looked over the brush that edged the hard pan he and Kendall had fought their way up. He motioned for Julia to crouch. “Probably have this area monitored,” he whispered. “Motion sensors. Infrared.”

A haze of smoke rose from the Ondjamba camp. It had doubled in size, in a growing spiderweb of roads, tiny vehicles, buildings, cranes, and other machinery.

He retreated from the ridge and followed it to their old weapons cache. Nothing left but a pile of rubble, with charred rock and occasional glints of metal casings and exploded ordinance among the boulders.

When he stopped, Julia asked, “Where do…”

He cut her off, pointed to his ears, and then to the ground. He wasn’t sure they’d have microphones on the ground, but Blackwing were no amateurs and he wasn’t taking chances.

He walked to a collection of boulders and probed the rubble. He knew exactly where Kendall had been, but the crevice his friend had hid under was shattered, with no clear spot to mark where he had been hit.

Memories flooded back. Ian remembered running toward Kendall, grabbing the sat phone and throwing it with all his strength onto the hard pan. Kendall was pinned under a massive boulder over his abdomen and pelvis. His leg twisted at an angle, a shard of bone protruded through his torn fatigues at the thigh.

His pelvis had to be shattered, his abdomen filling with blood. Kendall was struggling to breathe, agonal gasps trying to force air into lungs that couldn’t expand. His eyes looked up at Ian, filled with terror and pain.

Ian thrust his shoulder against the boulder, screamed as the rock refused to budge. Again and again he rammed against the rock, cursing in Afrikaans at the boulder, at the CIA, at God.

Kendall’s eyes looked down at Ian’s knife, pleading. He tried to speak, but no sound came out except gurgles. Ian fell to his knees, cradled Kendall’s head in his arms and cried.

An explosion from a mortar round deafened Ian, and he saw the nose of an APC edging up the hard pan now in direct view. Ian lifted his KA-BAR knife with shaking hands and thrust it into Kendall’s chest. Blood poured onto the rock. Then Ian turned at a sprint with the bloody knife still embedded in his friend’s chest, and ran down the ravine to flank the advancing APC.

A moment later, an explosion ripped on the hillside he’d just abandoned. He glanced back to see a plume of smoke rise from the crevice where he’d left Kendall. His muscles burned with fatigue, but Ian continue to race down the crevice in a crouch, brush whipping the skin on his arms until he was at the wrecked Blackwing vehicles taken out by the C-130.

Ian crawled under a burning RATEL infantry fighting vehicle and lay panting, hoping the flames would shield his infrared signal from the planes above. There was a dead man by his side and Ian wrenched free his AK-47, searched him for ammo.

He must have shot back when they came for him, but he couldn’t remember any of it. The next thing he recalled was waking up in his Namibian cell, groggy and confused. He remembered Julia through the walls of the cell, there to take him home from the pain and inhumanity. The familiar face was the most profound feeling of relief he had ever felt.

Now he recreated the position of Kendall’s body. He looked over the ridge, remembered the advancing APC, the brush around the crevice, and started digging.

He pulled at the rocks, tried to slide them aside as quietly as possible. Julia moved to help, but he waved her back. He stood and scattered loose scree with his foot, tried to get a handhold on the deeper rocks.

It was fifteen minutes of work, and he panted, his shirt stained with sweat, but there it was. First a torn piece of clothing, then an inch deeper, the hard outline of Kendall’s leg. He motioned Julia over.

He wasn’t prepared for the emotion of seeing his friend’s body. Rage welled up at the injustice of Kendall’s death. He sank back on the ground with his head in hands, breath heavy. It was too much. He had to make it stop. Get the feeling back. He tried to make his brain change how it was feeling.
Not fast enough.
He wanted more. Slipping out of control.

“You okay?” Julia whispered in his ear. She stood behind his shoulder and rested a hand on his head.

He managed a nod and pointed to the pile of rock.

Julia already had her laptop booted and now squatted on the ground, pointed her probe at the rocks. She typed briefly on the keyboard and then sat back. “Got it!” she mouthed to Ian.

Ian looked at the computer and saw a progress bar running across the screen. When it finished, he took a few of the rocks he had removed, his breathing now more even, and covered Kendall’s leg again, then turned and walked back down the slope without another word. Julia followed silently.

A minute later their truck was back in view. So were two other Land Rovers.

Ian grabbed Julia and pulled her to the ground, where they lay prone. Men flanked the Land Rovers, armed with shotguns.

He beckoned Julia to follow him on hands and knees up to the ridge and dipped over the other side. He drew his Glock, then crept along the ridge to circle back along the cars. Once they circled around, he pointed to the ground and whispered to Julia, “Stay here.”

Then he crawled behind to where he could see Anton Markov from the rear with a sniper rifle on a tripod, trained at the hillside. He inched closer as everything slowed and he saw the moment with perfect clarity.
No way out.
Try to hide in the desert and they’d be dehydrated and dead in twenty-four hours. Approaching the Blackhawk camp with Julia would be suicide. It was over, but maybe he could get Julia out safely. If she could keep her laptop, with what she’d taken from Kendall’s implant, it might be worth it.

He abruptly stood, pointed the pistol at the back of Markov’s head and shouted, “Freeze!”

Markov whirled around with a look of complete surprise.