Agent in Place
Walid changed into civilian clothing in the parking lot, then crammed his uniform in a backpack in his trunk, and the six men began heading towards the bar.
A pair of what appeared to be eighteen-year-old boys wearing the uniform of the Syrian Arab Army and carrying polymer-stocked AK-47s stepped up to the men on the sidewalk. Court proffered his papers along with all the other men, and the two privates scanned each person’s documents with a flashlight. The Desert Hawks major exchanged pleasantries with the soldiers, but Court noticed that Walid had to show his papers as well, and the SAA soldiers didn’t treat his much-higher rank with much deference at all.
He was militia, and they were part of the conventional forces, so he wasn’t an officer as far as they were concerned.
Court and his crew for the evening left the soldiers to their foot patrol and stepped into Bar 80, a two-level disco mostly full at eleven p.m. on a Saturday night. They were frisked by an armed bouncer at the front door, then wound their way to a bar on the second level, passing armed security men dressed in polos and jeans.
The six men sat at a table in the middle of the dark room. Court offered to buy a round for everyone, and then he and Saunders went to the bar to order.
After returning with the drinks, Court sat and sipped his Irish whiskey and focused on the men at the table with him. He quickly got the impression this wasn’t going to be much of a party. Most of the men ordered scotch or whiskey, and they sat quietly drinking and smoking while looking around, not talking to the other men at the table. Walid was clearly the only one seriously enjoying himself, because he began to look buzzed by the end of his first drink.
At the table with Court were Saunders, Major Walid, the Croatian, the Argentine, and the Dutchman. The Croatian introduced himself as Broz, though Court didn’t know if that was a first or last name. He was a big man with a crew cut and a flat nose that made him look like a boxer. The Argentine went by Brunetti. He was dark complected with a beard and mustache. A handsome face but dark, angry eyes.
The Dutchman was Anders. He was tall and blond, with a mustache and goatee that told Court the man desperately wanted to grow a beard but his face wouldn’t accommodate his desires.
As Brunetti brought back a second round of drinks, Court began looking around the room, marveling at the revelry going on. There was a group of a dozen or more Russian military men—from their look and grooming standards Court figured they were probably air force, and from their burly bodies he took them for ground crew and not pilots. The nucleus of the group sat in a corner, mostly keeping to themselves, but a few of the men had ventured out on solo missions around the bar, hitting on attractive Arab girls or moving to the stairwell to head downstairs to the dance floor.
But the vast majority of the crowd in this room was clearly Syrian. Court found himself confused and fascinated by this. Here they were, within miles of rebel resistance pockets, and it appeared like life was going on without a care for these people. Around him a hundred people drank, smoked from hookahs, laughed and talked and flirted and joked, in the geographical center of so much horror.
Men, women, children were being bombed and starved and uprooted and slaughtered throughout the country—more than a half million dead in this nation in the past seven years—but in Old Town Damascus it was just another freewheeling Saturday night.
There was another surreal aspect of the moment for Court. This wasn’t Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, with strict moral codes enforced; this looked like a bar in Vegas or Chicago or Boston. There were no hijabs on the women here at Bar 80, and none of the men in view had long beards. There was a lot of jewelry and hair product on male and female alike, and the average age was below thirty.
Most of the places Court had visited in the Middle East had been a lot more conservative, but the vibe here in Damascus did remind him of the time he spent in Beirut, Lebanon, just seventy miles to the west.
But that was before Hezbollah took over and the party lights dimmed somewhat.
Saunders leaned over to him. “Right bunch of sorry bastards, we are.”
Court cocked his head. “What do you mean?”
“Look around. Most of these Syrian blokes are soldiers, but they’re havin’ a laugh. Us mercs? We come to pound down drinks to keep the demons at bay. Warning you, Wade. You won’t get much conversation around us.”
“I’m not in Syria to make friends.”
“Well then, you’ve come to the right place.”
Saunders returned to his drink, and Court began scanning the crowd, slowly and carefully, with a new sense of purpose. To anyone paying attention to him, it would have looked like he was just another single guy looking for a girl to talk to, dance with, or take home.
But Court wasn’t looking to hook up tonight. He was looking for a cell phone.
While he did this, Brunetti asked Saunders, the only fluent Arabic speaker at the table who also spoke English, to question Walid about the deployment to the north the following morning. Court could hear in Walid’s voice that the alcohol was having an effect, even though he had just finished his second drink. The slurred Arabic was even harder to decipher than normal, but Saunders helpfully translated.
“He says something big’s going on at a Russian special forces base near Palmyra in a couple days, so SAA is setting up a protective cordon. We’re going to fill in gaps of the outer security ring to the east of the city . . . total shit part of the country. Desert and rocks, is all, but there are some small towns along the M20 highway.”
Court said, “Russian Spetsnaz can’t protect themselves?”
Saunders relayed this to Walid, who answered back. Saunders said, “He thinks some generals or government officials are going to be visiting the base. No other reason the SAA would insist on installing a security cordon themselves around a Russian base.”
Walid said something else, and Court could hear displeasure, almost despondence, in the militia captain’s voice. Saunders said, “This fucker got out of goin’ himself. He’s staying back with brigade command in Babbila.”
Court said, “He doesn’t seem happy about it.”
Saunders shook his head in disgust. “It’s not because he likes to fight. No, he’s pissed he’ll miss out on what the Hawks will do when they take a town. They come back to base like they’ve spent the weekend at a bleedin’ shopping mall.”
Court made a face like he didn’t understand, and off this look Saunders said, “Looting. The Desert Hawks are top-flight pillagers, but first they wait for blokes like us to clear the area.”
Saunders said something to Walid, then drank the rest of the whiskey in his glass. He stood and turned to Court. “I told him not to worry. I’ll bring him back some gold fillings, because everyone knows the Hawks send us KWA chaps in to commit the real atrocities.” His face flashed a quick smile Court’s way, but Court saw through it. Saunders was a haunted man.
He turned away and headed for the bar to get another drink, but called out as he walked, “I’m bringing back a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.”
CHAPTER 34
The five nondescript sedans were already running with drivers behind the wheels when Sebastian Drexler drove his rented Mercedes out of the evening rain and through the open doors of the large warehouse just off the grounds of Toussus-le-Noble Airport.
The airfield was just southwest of Paris, but more importantly it was only three kilometers northeast of where Henri Sauvage had determined that Bianca Medina was being kept, so Malik had rented the off-field storage facility to use as a safe house. His men had already outfitted it as a location where they could bring and hold Medina after the raid. If all went smoothly in Malik’s plan, once Medina was in pocket they would fly a private aircraft into the airport; Malik would load Medina, Drexler, and some men for security aboard; and then they would all fly out. From there they would head to Serbia, far from where anyone was looking for the Spanish model. They would hold her in a safe house while they worked on getting documentation for Drexler and Bianca to go to Russia so they could finally travel back to Syria.
Malik had offered his plan to Drexler, and Drexler had agreed, although he had no desire to fly to Syria, Russia, or Serbia, or even to bring a living, breathing woman back to the warehouse by Toussus-le-Noble Airport.
But he’d go along with the plan tonight, and continue with the plan until Malik and his men left the operation behind so that Drexler could be alone with Bianca. At that point he would kill her and fake his own death at the same time, thereby slipping out of Shakira’s grasp.