? ? ?

Thirty minutes later Court lay on his bunk, his eyes open, staring into the darkness above him. He had a million worries on his mind, but he wasn’t able to process them all, because he knew this long night was not quite over yet.

When Saunders appeared standing over his bunk, Court told himself he’d finally be able to deal with the last hanging thread of his interminably long first day in Syria.

Court sat up without a word, stood, and followed Saunders out into the team room. They continued through the front door, and walked through the dark for a full minute before arriving at a secluded area near an empty storage shed within sight of the main gate.

Here Saunders turned around and faced him. “You might think about sayin’ thank you.”

“Thank you.”

“Yeah? Well . . . I knew since you got here you weren’t who you said you were. I read Graham Wade’s CV, and you, mate, ain’t him. That shit on the road yesterday? You aren’t some old, washed-up, Canadian ex–infantry officer. You shoot, move, and communicate better than any other contractor I’ve ever worked with in me life.”

“You’re no slouch yourself. Look, what do you say tomorrow morning we tell each other how awesome we are? I really need to hit the rack.”

Saunders ignored him. “I knew you were up to something. All that wonderin’ about who we were fightin’ as if it fuckin’ matters around here. I sussed out you had another objective in Syria beyond comin’ down and fightin’ for the Hawks to earn a paycheck. I knew, but I didn’t know if whatever you were here for was good, bad, or indifferent.”

“I’m a good guy,” Court quipped.

“Right. Kidnapping kids? That’ll earn ya a sainthood for sure.”

“I had nothing to do with—”

“Sell me another. I told myself after the contact with Jabhat al Nusra that I was gonna watch you close. So I did. At the disco, I saw you leave with the Tiger Forces bastard’s phone, then walk right back in and deny it. I watched you trying to get the fight goin’ in the bar. Couldn’t figure out what your game was, but when we got back here and you still weren’t around, I went lookin’ for Walid. He’s not back, either.”

Saunders continued, “He was too bloody pissed to help out with a kidnapping, so I figure you just needed his wheels and his uniform. Is that it?”

“You’re the drunk one, Saunders.”

“Not too drunk to notice that gash on the side of your head. You didn’t have that in the bar.”

“Yeah . . . I did.”

“You aren’t the only man here with a brain, Wade. I know you’ve been moonlightin’ tonight. So . . . tell me. Who’s the little shit bird you nicked, eh? He belong to somebody important? A general, a Ba’ath Party official? Where do you have him stashed?”

“Why the hell would I come here to snatch somebody’s baby?”

“Dunno. Money, I reckon. We were at the police station when the call came in. Once word got out about the kid, the cops couldn’t get rid of us fast enough. They had a real crime to deal with. Whoever’s kid was taken was so important the whole city’s police force was trippin’ over each other to look for him. Must be a nice payday for you.”

Court did not reply.

“C’mon, man. I can walk outta ’ere and go tell the colonel that on second thought it wasn’t you pukin’ in the loo, after all.”

Court realized he might have to kill Saunders to keep him quiet. The man had done him a favor, but he was expendable if he tried to do anything to impede Court from assisting in providing intelligence on the Syrian president.

But then Saunders said something that changed everything.

“Fine . . . don’t tell me. But here’s how it’s gonna be. I want a quarter of the take, not just for getting the guns off you thirty minutes ago, but I’ll help out with your exfil. You managed to slip away tonight, but you can’t do that whenever you want, especially considering the Desert Hawks are going to have their eyes on you now.”

Court was hopeful about this turn of events, but he continued to feign ignorance about the kidnapping. “Again . . . we have to muster at six a.m. Can I just go back to the bunkhouse and—”

A look of realization flashed in Saunders’s eyes. “Wait . . . you didn’t have time to go far after you snatched that baby. Where do you have him stashed?”

Court realized arguing with this guy was going to be futile.

Saunders smiled. “I’m your problem solver. Where is the kid going?”

Court sighed. He gave up the ruse. “The West.”

The Brit’s eyes went wild. “Fuck me, mate! You have to exfil him from the country? Are you bloody mad? That’s a tall order.”

“I don’t have to do it. I just had to get him out of where he was, and deliver him somewhere else in the city. I did it.”

“Good. Is he somewhere safe for now?”

“It’s Syria, Saunders. Nowhere is safe.”

“True enough.”

“But, yeah. I think so. My job is done, but I won’t get paid till he gets out.”

Saunders started to reply, but Court cut him off. “And that means you don’t get paid till he gets out. We’ll go up north tomorrow, get out of here, do our jobs, and when we get back to Damascus I should have the money in an account I can access.”

“No tricks, Wade.”

This whole operation was nothing but a big bag of tricks, Court thought, but he simply nodded at the Englishman, then looked at his watch. “If I’m lucky, I can get myself about twenty minutes’ sleep tonight before I have to get up and get my gear together.”

“Sweet dreams then,” Saunders said. “But remember . . . I’m expecting a cut for what happened tonight.”

“You made that clear,” Court said.

Saunders led the way back to the bunkhouse with a spring in his step, because he thought he was going to make some money.

Court walked behind him, and it occurred to him that the three confederates in his scheme now consisted of a Syrian doctor with no espionage or military experience, a Frenchman who had either double-crossed or turned his back on everyone he had worked with over the past week, and now a cutthroat mercenary who seemed tickled fucking pink at the chance to take part in a kidnapping of a baby so he could earn some quick cash.

He told himself, and not for the first time on this operation, that the only one he could rely on was himself.

CHAPTER 55

There was no sleep for the Gray Man. After he lay in bed awake for just minutes, the lights came back on, the men began climbing out of their bunks, burping and farting and cussing, and within moments they were gearing up for the trip to the front lines to the northeast. As had been the norm since he got here, the team was a surly group, with little conversation between them, even after Brunetti and Anders returned from the hospital to join the others for the mission.

To Court it was as if these guys were already prepping themselves for the action ahead. Not the danger; that had a tendency to draw men together and increase comradeship. No, these guys, from the perspective of Court’s trained eye, were getting their heads ready to kill people, whether or not the killing had anything to do with the war going on.

Van Wyk took Court into the loadout room in the next building and told him to grab whatever he wanted from the well-stocked crates, racks, and shelves full of KWA gear. From the weapon racks he pulled a pristine-looking Kalashnikov with a short barrel and folding wire stock, and a desert-sand-colored Glock 9-millimeter pistol in a drop leg holster.

He chose a set of ceramic plate body armor in a plate carrier, which he then hung over his shoulder and cinched to his body by means of a Velcro cummerbund. He grabbed ammunition, a combat knife, a pair of fragmentation grenades, flashlights and batteries, and emergency medical supplies, and all this went onto a load-bearing vest he donned over the plate carrier.

He put on kneepads and elbow pads and selected a pair of tactical gloves, cutting off the trigger fingers on both hands with a tactical knife.

He filled a backpack full of bottled water, vacuum-packed rations, and a camouflage jacket.

Lastly he found a Kevlar helmet that fit him, retrieved a pair of ballistic-rated sunglasses from a case, and headed outside.

Completely geared up he looked like all the other KWA men, which meant he didn’t look too much different from the Desert Hawks Brigade soldiers themselves, except for the white hawk badge on the left shoulder of their uniforms versus the unadorned shoulders of the KWA men.

At six a.m. on the dot Court stood in front of the barracks as a long procession of trucks, infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers, T-72 tanks, and utility vehicles passed by on the way to the front gate.