“For me to negotiate the terms of Voland’s surrender.”

Drexler removed the holstered Beretta from inside his jacket and put it down on the ground. He removed the revolver from his ankle and the extra magazines and a folding knife from his jacket. He took off his night vision goggles and stacked them with the other items. He then pulled out a tiny tactical flashlight from his pocket. Turning it on, he stood and began walking across the back lawn alone.

Malik called out to him in a whisper. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Drexler ignored him.

CHAPTER 39

Court had wanted high ground that would give him a good view of the movements inside Bianca Medina’s walled property, and he found it by heading up a hill to the east of her neighborhood, entering the open parking lot of a pool and fountain supply store, and climbing the wall of the building by using hand-and footholds afforded by a stone planter, a PVC pipe protecting electrical wiring, and a wooden sign.

Court was a nimble climber, and in seconds he was kneeling on the roof, Walid’s binos in his hands, looking some four hundred yards down the hill. Past a mosque, past an upscale pizza parlor, and past several other private homes, he could see right into the gated rear grounds of Bianca’s walled property. From his vantage point there were areas within her property he could not see, but the entire back half of the compound—including a tiled swimming pool, the garden around it, and the back windows of the large, two-story home—was in view.

The villa had Mediterranean architecture and was built in a U-court shape, with wings extending back perpendicularly to the main house on both sides, a courtyard in the center, and a high wall in back that closed off the courtyard.

There was no question that it was a nice residence, but considering that the man paying the bills for the place was the most powerful and wealthy man in the nation, it wasn’t all that ostentatious. All around in the neighborhood were dozens of properties of similar size and luxury.

Court knew that Ahmed crafted everything towards Shakira not finding out about Bianca and the baby, so even though Bianca had been living in plain sight here, Ahmed wasn’t going to have her living in a home so grandiose it invited special scrutiny from the neighbors.

Through his glass Court saw a single guard on the flat roof of the villa sitting on a chair on the eastern side and facing the street in front of the property and the short circular driveway to it. The large court area in back seemed to be unguarded, but Court suspected there would be cameras and motion detectors.

After a minute of searching he saw a patrolling guard with a flashlight and a short-barreled weapon with a folded wire stock walking slowly around the grounds.

Nope, Court said to himself. No motion detectors to worry about.

He’d asked Bianca about the security force, and she’d said nothing about a patrolling sentry. Court hoped this was the only way Azzam had beefed up the security of the residence in the past few days.

It would be tough to get in, but it didn’t look like it would be much tougher than the hundred other buildings Court had infiltrated in his career.

Court continued scanning the scene over and over, back and forth with the binos. Softly to himself on the rooftop he said, “What am I missing?”

There had to be another level to the security. Ahmed Azzam knew Bianca was missing up in France, and he also knew this was where her son, Ahmed’s son, was being kept. Because of matters out of his full control, Ahmed could not risk moving Jamal, but even if Ahmed trusted Bianca implicitly, Court couldn’t believe for an instant the one stationary guard, who looked as relaxed as he could be, plus another bored guy roving the grounds would be the full measure of the external security set up here.

“Where are you?”

Through the binoculars he scanned the property once more, then widened his search to the streets nearby.

And now he had his answer.

Bianca had warned there would be security at the front gate of the neighborhood, but scanning around inside, Court saw vehicles of the NDF, the National Defence Forces.

Three parked NDF trucks in all. It could easily mean fifteen armed militiamen. All within two hundred yards of the front door of Bianca’s house. This was why the regular security force had relaxed its guard despite the heightened threat to the location.

The neighborhood was protected, the actual block Medina lived on was protected, the front gate of her property was protected, and the grounds were protected, albeit by only a couple of goons who realized they were the fourth ring in from danger, and therefore probably assumed they would be well aware of any threats long before the grounds were breached.

And Court figured it would be safe to assume there would be security men inside the home, as well.

He focused on the closest National Defence Forces unit, parked in a military SUV ahead and on Court’s right, equidistant between himself and Bianca’s home. Through his binos he saw three men standing by the vehicle, all with rifles slung on their shoulders. He figured these guys had no idea they were here protecting one particular home; they’d just been sent to an intersection, likely night after night after night, and although he was certain their leadership read them the riot act about remaining vigilant, it was human nature to let one’s guard down as the hours and days began adding up.

He figured if he could get over the fence into the gated neighborhood, he could probably get close enough to take these bozos out without making too much noise.

But maybe he didn’t have to. He looked down to the uniform he wore, and compared it to the uniform worn by the NDF men. Other than some extra patches on the shoulders of the Desert Hawks Brigade tunic and a slightly more involved camo pattern, the tunic and pants looked virtually the same. The NDF men had black berets, and Major Walid had left the base with only an olive green baseball cap in the back pocket of his trousers, but Court figured his own dark hair, and his short beard that looked just like the short beards worn by a third of the men in their twenties and thirties around here, along with his “I know what I’m doing” attitude, would get him close to the compound, especially if he moved outside the glow of the electric lights of the streets in the neighborhood.

Court took another minute to plot his approach through the streets, alleys, commercial spaces, and residential property between himself and Bianca’s home near the bottom of the hill, then climbed down from the pool and fountain shop.

He muttered to himself as he descended. “Okay, Gentry. Time to steal a baby.”

CHAPTER 40

Former French Foreign Legionnaires Boyer and Novak stood on the rear steps of the farmhouse outside Paris with their Heckler & Koch MP5 subguns held on their shoulders at the ready, their barrels aiming to a figure approaching from the woodline. In the distance the single flashlight bobbed and jittered as it closed, a man clearly walking behind it.

Boyer said, “Call it in to the others.”

As Novak radioed Campbell and Laghari at the front of the house, warning them to be ready, the door to the hearth room off the farmhouse opened behind them. Boyer chanced a look back, and he saw Tarek Halaby standing there in corduroy pants and a dark cardigan, his eyes on the light closing on the house from the back lawn.

His voice revealed his concern. “Who is that?”

In French, Boyer answered, “We don’t know. But if he tries anything, he dies.”

When the light was just forty yards away, Boyer called out in English, “Stop where you are.”

The light stopped moving, and then it clicked off. A voice in French replied, “I am unarmed. I will comply with all your orders, monsieurs.”

The two men illuminated the figure with their weapon lights. The man covered his face and eyes with his hands to block it from his eyes.

“This could be a trick,” Tarek said, and this annoyed Boyer, who hadn’t spent the vast majority of his fifty-five years in third-world hellholes just so he could be told how to do his job by a surgeon with an address on the Left Bank of Paris. Still, Halaby was the client, so Boyer just said, “Go back inside, Doctor. We’ll search him and bring him to you for questioning.”

Halaby did as instructed, shutting the door behind him.

Novak called out to the man in the light now. “Turn around and step backwards with your hands raised.”

The figure obeyed, but as he stepped up a gentle slope in the grass and through a waist-high hedge, he looked back in the direction of the two men holding guns on him.

“Turn back around!” ordered Boyer.

But the man only halfway turned, and he stopped moving. After a moment, he called out. “Paul? Paul Boyer? Is that you?”