When Court showed up a minute later, encumbered by his own various weapons and packs, the young man took him over to the stoop of a ruined building to sit down.
The Syrian man said, “Okay, I know where we are. Not far from the eastern edge of town.”
“Good.”
“There will be SAA patrols, but no one else will be outside. Better we use rat holes to move, so no one sees us on the street.”
“Rat holes?”
“I’ll show you.”
The Terp stood and entered the building next to them, and Court followed along, still slowed by his gear. They climbed two flights of stairs, passed a silent family of seven living among the ruins, and then continued on through the building. Court expected they’d have to find a way back downstairs, but to his surprise, the Terp took him down a long corridor, which ended at a wall with a man-sized hole in it.
The Syrian said, “This is a rat hole. When the Syrian Army was in the street, we broke holes in the walls between the buildings so we could travel through the city without going outside. You can cover an entire city block without having to expose yourself.”
“Great,” Court said. “How many blocks do we have to cross to get where we’re going?”
The Terp pulled out his small map of the city, oriented himself, then looked up to Court. “Twelve.”
Court sighed. “Christ. Are you kidding?”
“I’m sorry. The damaged sewer means we’re farther away than where I thought we’d be.”
Court was pissed, but at the situation, not at the kid. He said, “Let’s move out.”
The Terp looked the older American up and down. “You look pretty tired. You want to rest for a few minutes first?”
Court was exhausted, but he figured he’d have time to rest once he got where he was going. “I want to be in position before daylight. We have to push on.”
CHAPTER 71
In the top-floor offices of the Athens freight forwarding company, Malik sat outside on the balcony, speaking on the satellite phone to the men on board the ship on its way into the Aegean Sea from Syria. Inside, his three remaining men rotated watches and rest. Bianca slept on a small sofa in one of the corner offices, and Henri Sauvage sat at a desk by an open window and smoked morosely.
Sauvage hadn’t seen Drexler in the past hour, so he was surprised when the blond-haired man appeared in the dim light of the room and sat down in a swivel chair in front of him. He then rolled the chair around the desk, positioning himself at whispering distance from Sauvage.
“I don’t have long to explain, but you and I are in a difficult situation.”
“Of course I know that. You put me here.”
“Perhaps I did. But I can assure you one thing. Right now I am your best chance for survival.”
“What do you mean?”
“When we get down to the dock in the morning, the Arabs plan on killing us.”
“The Arabs do?” Sauvage asked. Bianca had all but convinced him that this was Drexler’s plan.
But Drexler said, “Yes. I found out through a source inside the Syrian Mukhabarat.”
This sounded like utter bullshit to the French cop, but he played along. “Why?”
Drexler shrugged. “Loose ends, you and me. But there is something we can do to save ourselves.”
“I’m listening.”
Drexler looked around to make certain no one was around, then reached down to his right ankle and pulled out a stainless steel revolver with a black grip. Sauvage blinked hard when Drexler turned the small weapon around in his hand and handed it over.
“What . . . what is this?” Sauvage asked.
“Tell me you’ve seen a gun before.”
“Of course I have. I mean, why are you giving it to me?”
“If we went after the four men right now, we’d be slaughtered. They are separated around the entire office, they are all armed with submachine guns, and as soon as we got one man, the others would be on guard. But tomorrow morning we will all walk together to the marina. You and I can walk apart from each other; try to lag back behind the Arabs a few meters. Then, when I pull my gun to shoot Malik, you kill the two men closest to you. You must not hesitate. One bullet into each man’s back. I’ll take Malik and then whoever is left.”
Sauvage was deeply mistrustful. “I don’t . . . I don’t know.”
“Once we get on the ship we are dead men. We have to do this to survive.”
“What about Bianca?”
“What about her? We let her go. I won’t be returning to Syria knowing they have targeted me for termination. She can do whatever the hell she wants. She can get on that boat, or she can stay in Europe.”
There was much here Sauvage did not take at face value, but the fact that Drexler had just handed him a loaded gun caused him to doubt his earlier thoughts that Drexler was planning on killing him. If so, how would Drexler know Sauvage wouldn’t just shoot him last? The little snub-nosed revolver carried five rounds, after all.
He gave Drexler a nod, the Swiss man went over the timing and the order of the action again, and then he drifted off into the darkness of the office.
Sauvage looked down to the pistol in his hands.
None of this made sense to him at all.
* * *
? ? ?
Bianca Medina had finally fallen asleep on the sofa in the corner office, and she’d dreamed of her son. She’d planned on taking him to the ocean for the first time in his life this summer, and in her dream she was there with him, and it was warm and wonderful.
He’d turned to her and he’d called her “mama” and she’d smiled when he spoke, and then she started to speak back to him, but she could not say a word.
She tried again but her mouth would not move, and Jamal looked at her with suddenly frightened eyes. She tried to scream now, but still she could not open her mouth.
* * *
? ? ?
Bianca opened her eyes to darkness, but she felt the presence of the man over her, his hand pressing hard against her mouth. It was Drexler, she just knew, and he’d come to slit her throat in her sleep.
She reached up to swing at him, but a hand caught her hand. Her eyes focused on a face that came down close to hers, and she realized it was the face of the Frenchman, Henri.
Bianca went limp as her heart pounded.
“Ecouter.” Listen, he said. “You really want to fight them?”
She swallowed hard, blinking away the tears of panic. “Yes.”
“Then I’m with you.”
He took his hand off her mouth, and she recovered quickly. “You are? Good.”
She sat up in the darkness, and he sat next to her on the sofa and waved something in front of her. It was a small revolver.
Bianca gasped in surprise.
“Drexler gave me this. He told me the Syrians are going to try to kill me and him both just as soon as we get on board the ship. He wants me to shoot two of them as we walk to the marina. He will kill Malik and the other.”
“But . . . I don’t understand. He just handed you a gun?”
Sauvage nodded. “He did.” Then he opened the cylinder and dumped out the five bullets. He fished around in them for a moment. “These two? They were the ones in the cylinder next to fire when he handed it to me. These are live rounds. Three fifty-seven. Very dangerous.” He held up the other three bullets now. “But these three cartridges have been opened, and the gunpowder has been removed. The primer is intact, the bullet is back in the casing, but the weight was just slightly off, so I checked them. Drexler doesn’t know it, but I worked in the ballistics lab at La Crim for four years. I can tell if a bullet is real or a dummy round.” Sauvage smiled now. “He wanted me to shoot both men in the back, one round each. Then he would kill Malik and the final Syrian and then, when they were all dead, he could turn his seventeen-shot Beretta on me, and on you, and there would be nothing we could do about it.”
Sauvage reloaded the pistol, taking care to put the two live rounds back in the cylinder so they would fire with the first two trigger pulls. He then slipped the weapon under his shirt at the small of his back.
“What do we do? Will you shoot him?”
“Not with the revolver. We need his help killing the others, so we go with his plan. But you walk close to him. When I kill my two men, I will try to get one of their weapons. But to do that I will need time. A few seconds. You must grab Drexler, stop him from killing me before I kill him.”
Bianca nodded at this. “I can do it.”
Sauvage said, “For both of our sakes, I hope you can.”
CHAPTER 72
Court Gentry lay on his belly perfectly still, looking through the wreckage of a destroyed and empty pet shop on the ground floor of a large apartment building and out into the street. The view ahead of him was not what he wanted to see. The scene was entirely too vivid. Now that dawn had broken, the light of the morning would make crossing the next street next to impossible.