Zero 22, p.22
Zero 22, page 22
part #8 of Danny Black Series
They drove in silence for a minute.
‘I don’t believe you,’ Bethany said.
‘Well, sweetheart, I guess I’ll have to learn to live with it. I believe your guy here has his orders to extract me from Amman, so I suggest we—’
‘Why wait?’ Bethany interrupted him. ‘If you know the President’s been trying to oust you, why haven’t you released the footage already, while you’re still in office?’
‘Isn’t that obvious?’
‘Not to me.’
‘The peace conference,’ Danny said.
‘It’s a big deal,’ the General said. ‘The Turks and the Kurds keep knocking chunks out of each other, it destabilises the whole region.’
‘It’s destabilised anyway,’ Danny said.
‘Right. So any chance we have of calming tensions goes to the dogs if these peace talks fail. Like it or not, I can bring the warring factions to the table. I know the decision makers. I can appeal to their better natures. End of the day, peace doesn’t happen through military action. It happens round the table. It happens with handshakes, not mortars. You just need to get the right guys in the room. Better or worse, I’m one of those guys.’ The General looked out of the side window. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I was one of those guys. I guess they’re on their own now.’
There was silence as they drove on.
‘It’s what the Russians want,’ Danny said.
‘Huh?’ the General replied. His thoughts had obviously been elsewhere.
‘The Russians have been supporting the Syrian regime. The Syrians want the Kurds out of the way. So destabilising the peace process by taking you out – it’s what the Russians want.’
‘Oh sure,’ the General said. ‘Two birds, one stone. The President gets to put in a puppet to control the army, the Russians get to control the conflict in the Middle East. Lot of good reasons for sending a hot chick with a razor blade into my hotel room. Doesn’t mean they know I’m on to them about the deepfakes.’
‘Where’s the footage?’ Danny said. ‘Have you uploaded it somewhere?’
‘I guess there’s a reason you’re a soldier and not a software engineer,’ the General said.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘He can’t store it on the cloud,’ Bethany said. ‘Not something like this. The FSB, the NSA, they’d be all over it.’
‘Your little lady’s right,’ said the General. ‘Only time to put that material on the internet is when I want to make it public. And that has to be at a time of my own choosing. Poliakov gave me the footage on a memory stick, and that’s where it stays. I don’t transfer it to any computer or any device connected to the internet.’
‘So where’s the memory stick?’ Danny asked.
The General didn’t reply.
‘You’re going to have to tell us sometime,’ Danny said. ‘Sooner or later. You know we’ll get it out of you if you don’t.’
‘You threatening me, soldier?’
Danny didn’t reply. Another silence filled the car.
‘It’s back in DC,’ the General said finally. ‘Safe.’
‘Where in DC?’
‘You’re persistent, Black,’ the General said. ‘I like that in a soldier. But you might as well stop asking me that question. It’s somewhere safe is all I’m saying. And before you make any more veiled threats of enhanced interrogation, remember that as soon as you deliver me up to your superiors, this ceases to be your problem. I’m still a five-star American general, and right now your bosses are working out how to stab each other in the back and shift the blame for ordering an assassination attempt on me. They’re not going to make a bad situation worse.’
Danny thought of Sturrock and he knew the General was right.
An overhead road sign directed them towards various suburbs of Amman, including As-Salt, which told him that they were heading in the right direction: north-west. Time check: 20.58 hrs. Seven hours till they needed to be at the pick-up point, which Danny estimated was still thirty miles away. There were tenement blocks on either side of them, but the road ahead was clear, and he had just increased his speed from thirty to forty when it happened.
The vehicle was a BMW X5. It had been on Danny’s shoulder in the other lane of the dual carriageway for no longer than thirty seconds. But in that moment, every instinct he possessed shrieked at him. Everything was wrong. The X5 was accelerating up the inside. Its windows were tinted and, as it sped up, the rear passenger window was sliding down. ‘Duck!’ Danny shouted. ‘Now!’
Both Bethany and the General reacted quickly. Bethany slumped in her seat. The General crouched. Danny had only a fraction of a second to strategise. He could accelerate further, but the X5 was the faster vehicle and would surely catch them up. Better to slam the brakes. Force the X5 to overtake at the moment of Danny’s choosing. It would put them momentarily and unexpectedly in the line of fire as the two cars came alongside each other again, but the shooter would be disorientated and the shot would be almost impossible. Danny checked his rear-view mirror. The car behind – a white hatchback, no indication that it was hostile – was twenty-five metres away. He allowed the X5 to creep closer in the adjacent lane. Its nose was in line with the back of his vehicle. In his wing mirror, he could just see the muzzle of firearm protruding half an inch from the open window, preparing to take the shot when they came alongside.
He hit the brakes hard. The tyres screeched on the road and the handling became loose. The X5 whizzed past. Danny caught sight of the shooter: shaved head, leathery skin. Not Arab. More than likely a Wagner Group Russian. He had a long-barrelled pistol, suppressed. Then he was out of sight ahead of them and all Danny could see was the firearm protruding from the rear passenger window. A muzzle flash as it fired, too late, across the road.
There was the sudden, urgent sound of a horn increasing in volume from behind. The white hatchback was closing in fast. He yanked the steering wheel to position the vehicle into the other lane, behind the X5. The white hatchback shot past, its horn still blaring. The X5’s brake lights lit up. The distance between the two vehicles quickly closed from fifteen metres to five. The shooter was leaning out of his window, now aiming backwards towards Danny’s vehicle, weapon raised, ready to take a shot directly at the windscreen.
There was an exit up ahead. Thirty metres. Danny yanked the steering wheel again, manoeuvring his vehicle to the exit. He saw another muzzle flash in his peripheral vision and this time the pistol’s bullet was not harmless. It slammed into the windscreen of another small car that had innocently found itself behind the X5. As Danny accelerated towards the exit, he saw the windscreen shatter. The small car veered sideways and collided with another vehicle. A third car smashed into the back. A pile-up was happening on the dual carriageway behind them, but Danny couldn’t focus on that. The driver of the X5 had realised that Danny was making for the exit. He was swerving too, heading for the same exit. But he was too far ahead. He couldn’t cross the traffic to make the exit in time. Danny could. As he left the dual carriageway, he half-watched the X5 speed out of sight, away from the pile-up. Then the exit road twisted round to the left and Danny had to brake heavily to avoid a collision of his own with another vehicle in front.
‘What the hell?’ the General shouted. ‘Won’t you keep a handle on this goddamn vehicle?’
Danny didn’t answer immediately. His ears were filled with more horns sounding at him as he brought the vehicle back down to a safe speed while checking ahead, back, behind for any more threats. They were on a much narrower road now, which was winding uphill into one of the busy districts on the outskirts of Amman. They were heading south-west, which took them in the opposite direction to their route out of the city centre towards the RV point. Sweat was collecting in the nape of Danny’s neck. His mouth was dry. He inhaled deeply to bring down his pulse, forced himself to think rationally. Only then did he speak.
‘They know which vehicle we’re in,’ he said. ‘They’re tracking us somehow.’
‘A tracking device on the car,’ said Bethany. She sounded a damn sight calmer than the General.
‘It’s possible. Even if there isn’t, they know our registration number. We can’t guarantee they don’t have contacts in the Amman police.’
‘What do we do?’ Bethany said.
‘We need a different car,’ Danny said. ‘And we need it now.’
EIGHTEEN
Cincinnati, Ohio. 13.30 hrs, Eastern Standard Time
Hamoud and his family were not used to airports.
They stood close to each other as if for protection. Almost touching, but not quite. Even Melissa was quiet. They had a single shabby suitcase between them, the only one they owned. Rabia had carefully packed it with the family’s clothes, old but clean and neatly pressed. They each wore more layers of clothing than they really needed, to save space. Hamoud himself had eschewed the robe he normally wore to prevent his scars hurting, in favour of three tops and a jacket. They were all too large for his bony frame, as were his jeans. He would be much too hot when they arrived in Orlando, but the concourse here at Cincinnati Airport was air-conditioned and he was so thin that he sometimes found it difficult to keep warm. For now, he was glad of the extra layers.
He carried the suitcase in one hand and the FedEx package in the other, gripping both of them tightly as if somebody might rip them from him. Crowds bustled past the family, swerving round them and making no attempt to avoid staring at Hamoud’s gruesome facial scar, as they stood gazing up at the departure screens. The 15.25 flight to Orlando was there, sandwiched between flights to Los Angeles LAX and New York JFK. ‘We need to go to the check-in area,’ said Rabia. ‘Come on, children. Stay close.’
There was a line to check in. Maybe twenty or thirty people. It took half an hour to reach the desk, but it felt longer than that. Anxiety burned in Hamoud’s chest. Surely they would be turned away. Or worse. The lady at the check-in desk looked kind, but would she call for security when she realised Hamoud and his family were trying to board a flight under false pretences? Hamoud was understandably nervous of men in uniform. Each time he saw one of the airport security guys, with their peaked caps and their weapons on display, he suppressed a shiver. He had to stop his mind flashing back to the prison camp. He had to look at his wife and children, to remind himself that everything was much better now.
There was a tremor in his hand as he gave the lady the documents. She didn’t seem to notice. ‘Where are we travelling to today, sir?’ she asked.
‘Orlando,’ Hamoud said. He had to repeat himself because the word stuck in his throat first time round. ‘Orlando.’
She was silent as she checked the documentation. Hamoud scratched his palms hard. His children were either side of him, looking up at the desk, wide-eyed. He realised they were nervous too. Nervous that this was all a mistake, and their trip wasn’t really going to happen. The woman kept looking up from the documents to glance at Hamoud, and he knew she was looking at the scar on his face. Then she smiled at the children, and it was as if the whole family exhaled at the same time. Hamoud lifted the suitcase on to the conveyor belt to be weighed. Rabia took the boarding passes and gave the children a grin and a thumbs up, and they were clearly so excited Hamoud thought they might hyperventilate. And as they walked away from the desk, asking their mum a thousand questions about where the airplane was and how long it would take to get there and if they would be allowed on all the rides or just some of them, Hamoud felt a little lighter. As they walked towards security, he listened to the children’s chatter and Rabia’s patient responses, and it all felt real.
Then something made him stop. The security area was very busy. There were more lines at the luggage and body scanners. Airport staff were shouting instructions over the crowd. Belts and shoes off. Tablets and laptops out. A man in a suit stood at the far end of the scanners. He appeared official, but he wasn’t shouting like the other members of staff. He was looking across the security area directly – or so it seemed – at Hamoud and his family. Hamoud caught his eye and inclined his head. Then a large African woman in a colourful headdress stepped in the way and Hamoud couldn’t see him any more. When the woman moved on, the man in the suit had gone. Hamoud searched for him, but there was no sign.
Rabia touched his arm tenderly. She gave him that enquiring expression that he knew meant ‘are you okay?’ He smiled and nodded. He was okay. Everything was fine. He took his son’s little hand and together they walked to the body scanner.
Finding a car would be easy. Finding the right car? That was a different matter altogether.
Danny ditched the Passat in a dark, quiet alley. On either side were the back entrances to restaurants, cafes and shops. Bins overflowing with rubbish. ‘What about our suitcases?’ Bethany said.
It was true. Danny was still in his suit, Bethany in her jacket and skirt. But this wasn’t the time or place to change, and they could hardly move quickly and carry their cases at the same time. ‘We’ll leave them,’ he said, even though leaving such evidence of their presence breached just about every standard operating procedure Danny could think of for a covert op like this. Question of priorities. If they were being tracked, they had to move fast.
‘What do we do?’ the General said. ‘Rent something?’
Danny gave him an incredulous look. ‘You’ve been a General too long,’ he said.
‘Then—’
‘We steal something. But not just anything. The driver needs to be in it so that we can get the keys. And it needs to be something run down.’
‘Crap,’ the General said. ‘If we’re going to take a vehicle, we’ll take something modern and reliable that we can count on to get us the extraction point.’
Danny shook his head. ‘The better the car, the richer the owner. The richer the owner, the more likely the police are to take him seriously.’ He opened up the boot of the Passat and located his night sight, which he stowed in his shoulder bag along with the Sig. He turned to Bethany and the General.
‘Hold hands,’ he said. ‘Look like a couple. It’ll stop people interfering with you. Follow me at a distance of about twenty metres. I need to be able to see you every time I look back. Stop if I stop.’ He pointed at some litter in the gutter and some Arabic graffiti scrawled on a nearby wall. ‘Looks like we’re entering a rough area. Keep your heads down, don’t make eye contact with anybody, don’t get into any arguments. We don’t want anyone to remember us.’
If Bethany and the General felt patronised by his comments, they didn’t show it. But the General did look uncomfortable, and Danny guessed he wasn’t relishing the idea of holding hands with the woman who’d been seconds away from slaughtering him like a pig earlier that evening. It was Bethany who made the first move, grabbing his hand in hers. It occurred to Danny that as foreigners they would attract attention despite presenting as a couple, and that maybe he should leave them here, in this deserted street, while he found them a new vehicle. Not an option. The operation had been turned on its head. The General’s safety was his responsibility now. And he wanted to keep Bethany White close at hand. He cleared his mind and focused on his strategy for the next couple of hours. They had to get out of this Amman suburb and return to the drop zone in the desert – the sooner they got out of country, the better.
‘Let’s move,’ he said.
They walked to the end of the side street and took a left into a much busier road. It was narrow and cobbled and on a steep hill. Danny was right about this being a rough area. There was nothing overt, but the signs were all there. Groups of young Jordanian men in Western clothes, congregating outside grotty bars. Music seeping from third-floor windows, flung wide open against the heat of the night. Shops closed up with sturdy metal grates. The stench of drains.
There was traffic, too. A constant line of cars crawling up the hill in the darkness. Danny’s sense of direction told him that this route was still heading south-west–north-east. He suppressed a moment of anxiety at the need to get back on to the main north-westerly route out of town. It was important that they lost the Wagner Group trail, otherwise they’d be leading them directly to the RV point.
Exhaust fumes were thick in the air. Appropriating one of these vehicles on the main road through this suburb was out of the question. There were too many people around to see it happen. He considered looking for a taxi and getting the driver to take them to a deserted area before overcoming him and stealing his car. Bad move. Vehicles for hire could routinely have tracking devices fitted. They wouldn’t know until they saw the Jordanian authorities bearing down on them. No, he needed a private car, nothing fancy, just like he’d told the General.
He checked behind him. Bethany and O’Brien were following. Danny himself was drawing attention from passers-by. In this district his suit marked him out. He took care not to catch anybody’s eye. A misinterpreted glance could easily lead to trouble. He couldn’t quite be the grey man, dressed like this. But he could at least be monochrome.
Danny had been walking for a couple of minutes when he spotted an opportunity. Up ahead, a young man was leaving a bar. There were two things that made Danny notice him. The first was the set of car keys in his hands. The second thing was his gait. He was having a little difficulty walking in a straight line. He’d been drinking. Danny felt a moment of gratitude that alcohol was not frowned upon in Jordan to the same extent as in some other Muslim countries. He locked on to him like a guided missile. He was the perfect target: a driver, easy to overcome and unlikely to go to the police, at least until he’d sobered up. By which time Danny and the others would be in a stealth chopper out of here.
He had to slow his pace to keep an unremarkable distance from his target, who was still weaving erratically as he walked. When the guy turned into a side street, Danny loitered for a few seconds at the corner. He watched his target stop to take a piss against a closed-up shop before continuing along the street and stopping by a parked vehicle. Danny couldn’t see what type of car it was at first, because his view was blocked by another vehicle parked in front of it. He upped his pace, striding over the stream of urine that trickled down into the gutter. He checked once to see that Bethany and the General had appeared at the street corner and were waiting there for a moment, just as he had. The guy was fumbling with his keys and seemed completely unaware of Danny as he approached. Danny could smell the booze on him from a good three metres away. He instinctively sized the guy up. He was five inches shorter than Danny, for a start. He was wearing Western clothes. The loose material of his badly fitting leather jacket told Danny that he had a light frame, was unlikely to be strong. Danny bore the guy no ill will. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He didn’t want to hurt him, but he did need to put him out of action for a while.
