Court thought he could quiz a random twenty-something-year-old girl in Wichita about the situation in Syria right now and she might know more details than this woman did.
He began to worry about Yasmin’s potential for allegiance to the regime. She worked for Ahmed Azzam, obviously, but if her grandfather was one of his ministers, he thought it likely she would be fully indoctrinated into the belief system of the regime. “Tell me about your grandfather.”
Her response surprised him.
“He’s dead. Ahmed Azzam had him hanged.”
“What? When?”
“Over a year ago. I am not supposed to know. I was told Grandpa had a heart attack. But I heard Azzam’s men talking about it late one night in the living room. My grandfather had business dealings with Azzam’s brother. There was an argument over money, and Ahmed sided with his brother.”
“I’m sorry,” Court said, although he felt this news lessened the chance Yasmin would hit Court over the back of the head with a baby bottle and bolt out of the Hyundai at the next intersection.
Next Yasmin said, “But my uncle is a minister, too. He will be killed if I flee the country.”
Court fought an eye roll. Jesus, he thought. I don’t have time to save every motherfucker in this country from imminent peril. But instead, he feigned concern. “Who is your uncle?”
“A member of the National Council.”
Then to hell with him, Court thought, but again, he did not say it.
“He’s your only family remaining?”
“My brother was killed in the second year of the war. I have cousins . . . all in the Army or Air Force.”
Good fucking riddance to them, too, Court thought. He said, “You are doing your part to end the war.”
He looked in the rearview mirror and saw her making a face like what he said made no sense, and it was an expression Court had found himself adopting from time to time on this operation, but he dropped the conversation. Yes, she was probably right. Her loved ones would be put to death for what he was, in effect, forcing her to do. But that wasn’t going to stop him from doing it.
Court said, “Bianca said Azzam was going out of town.”
Yasmin said, “He leaves tomorrow. He told me he would return Tuesday afternoon.”
This matched with what Bianca told Court the other day about Azzam’s trip to review troops at forward bases with the Russians and Iranians.
“Did he tell you where he was going?”
She shook her head. “The president does not tell me things like that. But one of the guards from his detail said something about flying back to Damascus via military helicopter on after a meeting with the Russians.”
“Tuesday morning,” Court said, mostly to himself.
Yasmin changed gears. “When do we see the other people helping us?”
“What? You’re not happy with my performance?”
After a pause, Yasmin sat up fully in the backseat, the baby in her arms. “You are alone, aren’t you?”
“Just until Jordan.”
“So . . . the entire time you are getting us out of the country, you are working alone. But once we are safe . . . others will help?”
“Doesn’t sound so great when you say it like that.”
They began driving along through the Damascus suburb of Daryya, and here they found fewer cars on the highway than in the city. This unnerved Court because he’d felt some safety in numbers, plus the roadblocks had been easier to spot when there were long lines of red taillights ahead to tip him off.
There was a turn ahead in the highway and Court worried that there might be a roadblock ahead he could not see; it had been a long time since he’d skirted the last checkpoint, after all. So he decided to take the off-ramp before the turn, then pick his way through the suburb before rejoining with the highway to the south.
Court said, “I might need your help reading signs if they aren’t in English.”
“You speak English?” she asked.
In Arabic he said, “I speak many languages.”
“Poorly,” she replied.
Court smiled a little; he’d expected Yasmin to be a mousy and scared little nanny with a conservative Muslim countenance, but instead he found she was handling all this pretty well.
He made a left to follow the road under the overpass, and then, as soon as his headlights centered on the street in front of him, he slammed on his brakes.
Right in front of him, blocking the oncoming lane, was a stationary Syrian Arab Army T-72 tank surrounded by a low wall of sandbags. Uniformed men stood there in the dark. When they saw the Hyundai they flipped on spotlights and motioned for Court to pull over to the side of the road.
There was an urgent intensity to their actions. Court didn’t know if this meant they were somehow looking for Walid’s vehicle, or if they were surprised to see any vehicles here at two in the morning.
Court began rolling forward to where they were leading him, but then he cranked the wheel and floored it, streaking by the tank and the men, racing under the overpass, and then pulling across the road and into a narrow alley that went up a hill.
Lights flashed on, gunfire roared behind him, and the strikes of heavy-caliber bullets sparked the street to his left and in front of him on the broken alley. He completed his turn, then quickly reached down to the fuses he’d readied under the dashboard. He extinguished all the lights in the vehicle, but this did nothing for him at present, because within seconds the heavy beams of light from multiple pursuing vehicles glared in his mirrors.
“Shit! Get down on the floorboard!” he shouted. There were no streetlights in this area, which seemed odd to him at first, but when he made a quick turn, away from the lights behind him, he looked out the driver’s-side window and, at first, thought he was looking at a steep hill just off the road.
A second glance showed him that it was the rubble of a huge apartment building. The lights from behind reappeared, and as he raced down the street, he looked ahead. More mountains of rubble in all directions. It appeared this entire town had been razed.
The buildings on the hill were nothing but wreckage; this neighborhood had been bombed to broken bits by the regime years ago to uproot a rebel stronghold. The devastation seemed to go on for miles, but it was clear some of the rubble was, in fact, occupied. As he shot along in the darkness, Court saw lights in deep recesses of the buildings or dark human figures standing by the side of the road watching the sedan flee the pursuing military.
Court floored the Hyundai. He drove faster than he felt comfortable with, especially with the absence of streetlights or headlights. He took turns that led him towards higher elevation, but just before each turn, the lights of the military trucks flared in his rearview.
After five tense minutes of this he thought he was in the clear. He pulled up onto a raised overpass, now looking for a way back to the highway to the south. He made it just a hundred yards, then saw four green UAZ-469 light utility vehicles parked at the National Defence Forces militia checkpoint on the overpass. They were Russian in manufacture, but they looked like slightly larger and more robust WWII-era U.S. Army Jeeps.
Court slammed on the brakes, reversed, and executed a J-turn that had both Yasmin and the baby crying out in back. One of the UAZ-469s was in hot pursuit as he shot along an empty four-lane road running through the bombed-out buildings.
Court looked into his mirror and saw the UAZ-469 bearing down on him. The NDF truck got closer and closer, its driver unencumbered by low-light conditions.
Gunfire erupted behind them, Yasmin screamed and the baby wailed, and more glass in both the rear window and the windshield shattered. The rearview mirror spun off the arm holding it, and Court felt a sharp sting on the right side of his head, just above his ear.
He felt blood running behind his ear, down the back of his neck. He didn’t know if he’d been shot or cut, but he could still see, still drive, so he kept going.
And he could still think. The UAZ-469 closed to within fifty feet of the Hyundai, and Court pulled the steering wheel to the right. He stomped on his brakes again, even yanking the parking brake up, and put the sedan in park. The utility vehicle overshot him on the hilly road, and then it, too, slammed on its brakes, but before the driver could put his Jeep into reverse, Court had jumped out of the Hyundai, leveling his pistol in the passenger window.
The passenger swung his AK up to the threat, but Court shot him through the forehead, knocking him sideways and out of the way of the driver.
The young National Defence Forces soldier just had time to switch his focus from Court to the barrel of the gun in his hand before Court shot him in the face, killing him instantly.
Court opened the passenger-side door and dragged both bodies out of the UAZ. He helped a now nearly unresponsive Yasmin and the baby in her arms out of the Hyundai, then reached to pop the trunk to drag Walid out.