Men began pouring out through the front door of Bianca’s villa now, running towards the Range Rover and shouting, but Court ignored them, hoping like hell these guys knew better than to start slinging lead at a car carrying the son of their president.

The crack of a pistol told him he’d neglected to consider that these guys just might be unaware the kid had been kidnapped at all. All they were sure of at the moment was that someone was trying to steal Bianca’s car.

Shit.

More pistols snapped off and glass shattered behind Court; he threw the transmission into drive and floored the accelerator.

“Stay down!”

CHAPTER 48

The gun battle inside the farmhouse southwest of Paris turned against the Syrian expat rebels and in favor of the Syrian government commandos the moment Malik and his remaining men linked up with the squad that had assaulted from the front of the building. Malik had left one of his team in the kitchen to cover the stairs to the wine cellar for the purpose of trapping Bianca Medina down in a hole, while he and his unified team fought their way through the ground floor and then up the stairs, where three of the six remaining Syrian guard force members had set up a hasty block. After being bogged down there for a couple of minutes, one of Malik’s commandos threw a pair of grenades over the blockage, killing the surviving Syrians, and then the team raced up the stairs on their hunt to find and kill all the remaining FSEU gunmen, one by one.

And as the commandos working for Ahmed Azzam cleared the big farmhouse, Sebastian Drexler waited in the kitchen with Voland’s pistol in his hand, just feet away from the lone paramilitary left guarding the stairwell. Drexler listened to the broadcasts over the radio announcing the positions of Malik and the rest of the team, and he fantasized about shooting this one GIS man in the back of the head, strolling down the stairs, and dispatching Medina, but he saw no way to do this without running the risk of Malik finding out about it. Further, he didn’t know what he would encounter once he got downstairs, and he assumed Medina would be protected. He needed Malik’s men just to get to the girl, and there was no way he could do it without them.

No . . . Medina was safe from Drexler, at least for now.

After five minutes, Malik announced a cease-fire over the radio, proclaiming the two main levels of the property clear. He’d lost three of the ten commandos who had raided the home, and three more were walking wounded, but these men he positioned in upstairs windows to keep an eye out for police.

Then all his attention turned to his preparations to assault the wine cellar. As Drexler watched, Malik stacked his team up by the door in the kitchen that led down to the lower level. The breach man opened the door, then peered around the corner, shining the light on his P90 submachine gun down the darkened stairs.

Drexler called softly over to Malik. “Have you encountered a middle-aged woman with red hair?”

Malik shook his head but kept his eyes on the stairwell as the first man prepared to descend.

Drexler moved up close behind the stack of men and shouted out, startling the gunmen. “Rima Halaby! If you are down there, you need to come up now! You have no chance!”

Malik looked back angrily at Drexler, but then a voice called out. “I’m coming up! I am unarmed!”

Drexler spoke to Malik now. “You are not to harm her if she complies with your orders.”

Malik reluctantly relayed this order to his men, and they stepped back into the kitchen but kept their weapons high on the doorway.

When Halaby did not appear at the top of the stairs after thirty seconds, Drexler called to her again. A few seconds later she did appear, however, and she shut the door behind her. She was grabbed by a Syrian, spun around, and pushed roughly up to a wall. She was frisked by a second man, while the rest of the unit re-formed at the door, ready to descend.

Malik spoke to her in Arabic. “Anyone else down there other than Medina?”

Rima spoke with her face against the wall. “I wish to make a statement.”

All eyes turned to her. Drexler said, “You can say whatever you want once we have Bianca. Is she still locked in the back room on the right?”

Rima shrugged off the hands on her and turned to face all the men in the room. With a brave gaze she looked to Drexler. “You are Eric.”

“I am.”

“And Monsieur Voland told you where Bianca was being held?”

“Yes.”

“My husband. Is he dead?”

“I am sorry. He resisted.” He added, “He was brave, but foolish. Don’t be the same.”

She looked on the kitchen floor now. There, lying near a heavy wooden table, was the body of Firas, her nephew. He had been the man who opened fire on the commandos as they breached the door from the hearth room, and he’d killed one of them before he himself was shot to death.

Malik said, “No time for this. Let’s go.”

The veins in Rima’s throat pulsated, and her face reddened, but she kept her shoulders back and her head high. “We have failed . . . but so have you.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Drexler.

Rima said, “You won’t be returning to Syria with Bianca Medina. I killed her.”

“You what?” He turned and looked at Malik, then gave him a nod, urging him to go down the stairs with his team.

Malik instantly gave the order in Arabic to his team. The door was opened, and one by one they headed down the stairs in a tactical train, their weapons’ lights probing the darkness below. Malik himself joined the rear of the stack.

He’d advanced just a few steps down before he smelled smoke.

The breacher—the first man in the line—was already at the bottom of the stairs in the wine cellar. His voice crackled over the radio.

“I’ve got smoke pouring out of both doors at the back of the—”

Malik shouted down the stairs, ignoring the radio. “Get in there and get her out!”

By the time the Syrian commandos arrived at the door on the right, the smoke in the wine cellar was choking them. The breacher put his hand on the iron door latch. Even through his gloves he felt the searing heat. He fought the pain, urged on again by his leader shouting from behind, and opened the door.

Flames launched out into the fresh air of the wine cellar, nearly enveloping the men there. The inside of the bedroom was completely ablaze.

Malik shouted over the radio, “Put the fire out! Find the woman! That’s an order!”

But the door to the storeroom on the left burst open now, and flames roared out and traced along the wooden ceiling of the wine cellar, above the heads of all the men standing there. Fire spread in seconds to the wall tapestries and area rugs and licked across the wooden wine racks along the walls. None of the commandos had anything with which to put out a fire so large, and no one dared penetrate deeper into the room to enter the servant’s quarters where Medina was supposedly being held. Clearly large amounts of flammables had been ignited in both rooms, and the men knew if they did not evacuate instantly they could all be consumed by smoke and fire.

Despite the direct orders to recover the woman, the commandos began pulling back to the stairwell. Malik himself tried to push past them and into the room, but in seconds, he, too, turned around and ran for the stairs.

* * *

? ? ?

Sebastian Drexler stood at the top of the stairwell, saw the flames and the smoke, and listened to the frantic transmissions over his radio.

While the men downstairs fought the outright terror that came with the realization that they’d failed their mission to recover the Spanish woman, Drexler fought the urge to grin from ear to ear because he could not believe his good fortune. Turning around into the kitchen, he met the stare of Rima Halaby.

In French she said, “You wanted her dead, didn’t you?” she asked.

Drexler had no idea if the Syrian holding Rima up against the wall spoke French, so he maintained his cover by saying, “Of course not!”

“Voland told me you did.”

“Voland has misjudged everything, and it has led to your husband’s death. But I will see that you are not harmed, as long as you do as I say.”

Rima smiled. In Arabic she said, “What will Ahmed Azzam do to all of you now when he finds out you failed?”

Malik was the last man up the stairs, smoke pouring from his clothing and gear. One of the commandos slammed the door shut, cutting off flames that had already swept to the top of the stairwell.

Malik dropped to his knees, coughing and hacking for several seconds, but once he recovered, he stood and staggered over to Rima Halaby. He wrapped his hand around her throat. “What did you do?”

Drexler turned to him. “Malik!”

Rima looked into the eyes of the dark-haired commando leader. She laughed wildly. “I slit her throat in bed, poured turpentine on her body, and set it alight.”

Malik shook his head. “Liar! You don’t have the stomach for—”