All his problems behind him, right here in this alley, and all he needed for this to happen was for Sauvage to reach for his gun.

Just then, Sauvage glanced to Bianca, nodded to her, and then his right hand went into his jacket.

Drexler sensed something was wrong, and he went for his own weapon.

* * *

? ? ?

Henri Sauvage’s legs would barely function, but he forced them forward, and though he had similar trouble reaching for his weapon, the moment Drexler reached into his own coat he knew he had to act.

As he felt the grip of the revolver under his coat, Malik put his hand to his ear and said, “Wait.” He stopped, and Drexler stopped in midreach for his pistol. Sauvage took his hand away from the gun in the small of his back lest the man behind him see him telegraph his draw.

Without turning around to face Drexler, Malik said, “The skiff reports an old man running down the street a block to the west. I don’t know who—”

Sauvage saw Drexler begin moving again, executing his draw stroke. With speed and skill he raised his weapon to the back of Malik’s head. The GIS man walking just behind Drexler saw the movement and began to call out to his boss, but Sauvage reached back for his gun, spun around on the balls of his feet, and fell to his knees.

The GIS man in back shouted, “Malik!”

Malik tried to spin away, but Drexler’s gun cracked in the narrow street, and the GIS leader stumbled forward into the street.

Sauvage’s pistol fired into the chest of the man just behind him a fraction of a second later.

Drexler swiveled to shoot one of the two standing operators, and Sauvage spun back around 180 degrees towards the man who had been walking in front of him but was now turned towards Drexler and drawing a submachine gun from under his jacket.

Drexler and Sauvage both fired at the same time, both their targets fell, and the man closest to Sauvage dropped onto his back with his submachine gun out in front of him.

Sauvage dove for it.

Sebastian Drexler swiveled his Beretta towards Henri Sauvage now, just as the French cop leapt for the little Uzi, but as Drexler was about to press the trigger, he felt an impact on his right side.

Bianca Medina slammed into him, grabbed his gun arm with all her might, and threw her 110 pounds of weight into his torso, knocking him off balance.

But Drexler did not go down. He fought to free his arm, then stumbled back as he pushed her away and down to the asphalt, and as she landed on her back below him next to a parked car, he leveled his gun at her face.

The sound of automatic gunfire chattered in the alley now, and Sebastian Drexler arched forward, his weapon spun away, and his face slammed hard into the hood of the parked Citro?n.

He slid off the hood and fell onto his back between the Citro?n and the car parked in front of it.

Henri Sauvage fought his way back to his feet, took a step forward, and leveled the gun at Drexler, prepared to shoot him again.

Bianca screamed, “Henri!” She pointed to Malik. He sat up in the street on Sauvage’s left, his pistol out in front of him, the right side of his face red with blood.

Sauvage turned to the man, but another crack and flash of gunfire in the alley sent Henri Sauvage tumbling backwards, shot through the chest.

Bianca rolled onto her hands and knees and crawled between two parked cars. She continued around to the dark and narrow sidewalk, but soon she heard the grunt of a man blowing out his last breath, then the thud of Malik as he fell onto the cement on his back. She then heard the clanking sound of his pistol falling away.

“Bianca?”

Bianca stood up from behind the cars, looked down the street in the direction of the port, and saw a man running through the low light towards her. Behind him, some 150 meters away, she could see the black skiff full of men landing at a dock there. Men leapt from it and began running in her direction.

* * *

? ? ?

“Bianca!” Vincent Voland ran up to her and helped her away from the scene of blood and bodies, and then together they scrambled up the street and back towards Voland’s car. They climbed into it a minute later and raced off through the night, with shadowy figures just appearing in their rearview as the Frenchman floored it around a corner.

Bianca hyperventilated for over a minute while Voland drove.

“It’s all right, my dear. You are safe. I promise you, you are safe. It’s over.”

But when she could finally speak, Voland realized it wasn’t her own safety she was concerned with. “The American. He . . . he took Jamal?”

“Oui, mademoiselle. He took him and delivered him somewhere safe.”

“Where? He is in Jordan? In Paris?”

Voland hesitated.

“Where is he?” she demanded.

“He is still in Damascus, but tonight we will get him out. It’s all arranged.”

Bianca went catatonic. She sat quietly in the passenger seat for over a minute more. When she finally spoke she said the last thing Voland expected her to say. “I want to return to Syria.”

“What?”

“I want to die with my child.”

Voland shook his head. “No one is dying, I promise you.” He turned to her as he drove. “No one else will die. I will get Jamal out. Please, believe me. Just give me until tonight.”

* * *

? ? ?

Back in the alleyway, the bodies of six men lay motionless. The dawn’s light increased, seemingly by the second, as did the sound of approaching sirens.

But the men did not move.

A new sound entered the alley: the noise of racing footsteps, coming back from the north, the opposite direction from the port. Five men in black, pistols in their hands, skidded to a stop when they reached the figures, and they began checking each body for a pulse.

They almost missed the sixth man, but one of the Syrian operatives from the ship noticed a pair of feet sticking out from between two parked cars. He shined a light on the feet, tracked it up the body, and saw a blond-haired man, lying on his back. His eyes were open and blinking.

“I’ve got one alive!” he shouted.

The leader of the group turned and looked at him. “That’s Drexler. Get him to the boat.”

* * *

? ? ?

Sebastian Drexler offered the men no help at all in extracting him from Greece. He’d been wearing a Kevlar vest, but when Sauvage shot him multiple times in the back, it knocked him into the car. He’d banged his head and lost consciousness. When he’d come to, the GIS men were already on top of him, and he had no choice but to go with them back to the skiff.

But still, he wasn’t going to make it easier. He lay limp, and they carried him, one man on each appendage, and as soon as they were back on the landing craft and racing towards the ship, they checked his wounds and found them to be nothing more than bruises, and then they began interrogating him about what had happened.

Drexler couldn’t answer at first; all he could do was stare ahead, at the ship out in the distance. That ship meant Syria, and Syria meant Shakira, Ahmed, and certain death.

And the ship kept nearing. Despite him willing it to get smaller, it got larger with every second the skiff churned the water towards it.

One of the Syrians leaned over him, asking him again about who showed up to shoot Malik and the others and to steal Medina, the precious cargo. As the man spoke, his pistol in his shoulder holster hung tantalizingly close to Drexler’s reach.

In a moment of panic the Swiss operative went for it and tried to draw it free, but the Mukhabarat officer subdued him. Others came and pinned him to the hull of the boat, and then they shined a light in his eyes.

Drexler spoke perfect Arabic, so he understood what they said.

“Fucker tried to take my weapon!”

Another said, “Bastard’s in shock. He thinks he’s still fighting back there. Just watch him, and we’ll get him some help when we get him on board.”

Drexler went limp now, because there was nothing left to fight for. No matter what he did now, he knew.

He was a dead man.

CHAPTER 74

Ahmed al-Azzam had been waiting to hear reports on the pickup of Bianca from Athens before deplaning, but no word had come, and he knew the Russian military reception was waiting just outside the main cabin door. He stood from his seat, moved forward within his cluster of guards, and climbed down the air stairs pushed up to the door of the Yak-40.

When he stepped onto the tarmac of the Palmyra airport, feeling the cool morning desert air, he realized he hadn’t set foot in this part of his nation since well before the beginning of the civil war. Even though his armies and militias had taken back the territory over a year earlier, much fighting had remained close by, so it had been too dangerous for the president to make such a journey.