Blood Trust (32 page)

Her flight was being called, but it was not yet time for her to board. She had one more task to perform. While she took out her cell phone, she thought about Alli, about how the girl had touched her so unexpectedly and deeply. The two of them shared similar histories of kidnap, imprisonment, and abuse. From the few intimate stories Alli had shared, it was clear that she and Annika were kindred spirits. And, despite Annika’s steely reserve, her fierce armor, she had fallen in love with Alli, the way, Dyadya Gourdjiev had told her, her mother had fallen in love with her the first time she had rested her tiny head on her mother’s breast.

Now both Jack and Alli were lost to her.
Christ, emotion tears your guts out,
she thought, as she stared at the blank face of her phone. For the first time in her life she was aware of two forces battling for possession of her soul. The knowledge set her mind to thrumming.

Then she thought,
Fuck it!
and dialed a local number.

“Henry,” she said, when Carson answered, “I’m leaving.”

“Everything is in place on this end.”

She could hear the relief in his voice. “This is far from over,” she warned. “You still need to exercise caution.”

“I’m covered.”

She rose and, grabbing the handle of her rolling carry-on, said, “Naomi Wilde is on a collision course with Mbreti.”

“Do you think that wise?”

“We’ll find out shortly.” She walked out of the lounge, riding the escalator down to the gates. “Henry, remember what I told you at the very beginning.”

“‘Trust eats its own children.’” His laugh was metallic. “Jesus, Annika, how could I forget such a dire fucking warning?”

T
WENTY

N
IGHT HAD
passed its zenith. More stars appeared as the highest peaks of the Korab mountains shredded the clouds to ribbons. Dolna Zhelino was far behind. So were Arian Xhafa’s dead guerillas. Thatë’s men had found a satellite phone on one of the corpses, but it was unclear whether the man had communicated with his headquarters during the firefight.

“We have to make the assumption that Xhafa knows a force is on its way to attack him,” Thatë said.

They all agreed. They were camped on the narrow rolling plateau of the final ridge beyond which lay the outskirts of Tetovo, its lights flickering indistinctly through the black mesh of trees.

Paull looked at the kid. “Do you know what happened to the American unit sent to eliminate Arian Xhafa?”

“They were annihilated,” Thatë said. “I was in D.C. at the time, but these men told me. The American soldiers were killed within minutes. They didn’t get within ten miles of Xhafa’s headquarters.”

“Fuck me. So they’re dead, every one of them.” Paull gave Jack a sharp look. “How the hell could these guerillas destroy a heavily armed SKOPES unit in a matter of minutes? Christ, this situation gets worse by the second.”

Jack felt it imperative to move on. “Have you been to Xhafa’s stronghold?”

Thatë nodded. “All too briefly. I was made. I had to get the fuck out of there.”

“Tail between your legs.” Paull nodded. “No wonder you’re so hot to go back there.”

“How many men?” Jack asked, to ease the tension.

“Twenty to twenty-five.” Thatë shrugged. “His is a decentralized system, like the Muslim terrorists. The bulk of his men are deployed, some in other countries arranging deals, receiving payments, or overseeing smuggling shipments. The cadre in and around the stronghold are personal bodyguards, the fiercest fighters.”

“The Praetorian Guard,” Paull muttered.

An owl hooted and there was a flurry of wings overhead, a soft cry, and then a small spray of blood as the owl carried off its prey.

“A fantastic hunter, the owl,” Thatë said. “Its wings make no sound. That’s how we will be.” He indicated Paull with his chin. “Did your people give you a way in?”

Paull nodded, spread out the plastic-covered map, and lit it up with a penlight. The beam was powerful but didn’t spread. He traced the path with his finger. Xhafa’s stronghold was in the northeastern section of Tetovo, at the summit of a small rise.

“Do you have a problem with this section of the route?” Paull’s voice was a challenge.

Thatë shook his head.

“The stronghold itself,” Jack began.

“It’s a stone structure of approximately fifty-two-hundred square feet,” Paull said before the kid could answer. Once again, he was showing off the expertise of the American clandestine services. “No basement because in that area the bedrock is so hard it’s apparently not worth the effort. There are two entrances, front and rear, and, here, on the west side, is what appears to be a soccer field, presumably to help keep the men in shape when they aren’t on a killing spree.”

“The intel comes from satellite imaging.” Jack looked at Thatë. “Accurate?”

“Oh, it’s accurate,” the kid said, and Paull looked smug. “As far as it goes.”

Paull scowled. “Meaning?”

“Xhafa’s stronghold is actually a school. The soccer field is for the students.”

“Sonuvabitch.”

“It gets worse,” Thatë said. “The students are orphans. They live there.”

Another silence settled over the group. They stared through the trees at the lights of Tetovo. Somewhere out there Xhafa and his men were waiting for them.

“Well, that neutralizes our rockets and other middle-range weaponry,” Paull said sourly.

“Not necessarily,” Alli interjected.

They all turned to stare at her.

“We’ve got to get the children out of the school,” she said.

“One of us needs to come up with a real plan,” Paull said, pointedly ignoring her.

Jack held up a hand. “Wait a minute, Alli may be on to something.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

Jack busied himself clearing away debris and drawing a map for himself in the dirt. Because he himself was drawing it, he could better visualize the terrain and how to navigate it. He stared at what he had created for some minutes.

“What if we split up into two groups? Dennis, you and I and Alli will form a traditional frontal assault.”

“But Xhafa will be expecting that,” Thatë said.

“Precisely,” Jack said. “But what we’ll put up won’t be an assault at all. It will be a diversion under cover of which, Thatë, you and your men will silently take out the rear guard, infiltrate the schoolhouse, round up the kids, and herd them out of there. Once the building’s clear, we can move in on both fronts.”

Paull rubbed his chin. “It sounds good.”

“Yeah, except it won’t work.” Thatë looked at them. “The kids are taught to be scared shitless of anyone who isn’t in Xhafa’s cadre. They’ll never willingly come with us.”

“They might,” Alli said, “if they see me.”

Jack reacted immediately. “Now just a minute—!”

“No.” Thatë was nodding vigorously. “Alli’s got it locked in. She doesn’t look all that much older than the students, who range more or less from eight to seventeen. When they see her with us, they’re likely not to bolt, especially if she talks to them.”

“I don’t speak Macedonian,” Alli said.

“No problem. The older students speak English. They’ll translate for the younger ones.” Thatë saw the look on Jack’s face. “This is by far our best shot to get Xhafa, trust me.”

Jack glared at him. “I’m not exposing Alli to such a risk.”

Thatë shrugged. “Then there will be collateral damage.”

“There will be no collateral damage,” Jack said slowly and deliberately.

“Then Xhafa’s cleverness has stymied us,” Paull said. “Our mission—”

“I know what our mission is,” Jack said tightly, “and it doesn’t include subjecting Alli to this level of extreme risk. She needs to be where I can keep an eye on her.”

“Fine,” Thatë said. “But with you or without you I’m leading my men in.”

“Not if I kill you first.”

It seemed, then, that all the weapons came to bear at once.

“Men,” Alli said disgustedly. She stood up. “Did any of you testosterone machines think about asking me? It was my idea, I like it.” She turned to Jack. “It’s a good plan, or as good as we’re going to get. I’m going in with Thatë.” She held out a hand. “Now give me the iPod and earphones.”

The kid looked into Jack’s surprised face and laughed. “Fucking piece of work, ain’t she?”

*   *   *

T
HE TWO
groups decided to take different routes, so Thatë and his men, with Alli in tow, headed out before Jack and Paull, who would take the route outlined by the satellite intel. Each group had a sat phone for coordinating their assault—one Thatë’s men had, the other that had been confiscated in the firefight at Dolna Zhelino.

Before he left, Thatë went over the topography Jack and Paull would encounter, seemingly leaving out no detail. Jack was grateful to him, but he was also terribly apprehensive as he watched Alli, amid Thatë’s band of Kazanskaya thugs, vanish all too quickly into the dark.

“Another insane scheme that’s dependent on whether or not we can trust that kid,” Paull said as he hefted his assault rifle. He checked to make sure the magazine was fully loaded. “Talk about a delicate balance.”

Jack stood brooding. Then they set off, following the path laid out for them by the geotechs at the DoD.

*   *   *

A
LLI WAS
aware of the tension in the men as one is aware of the electricity in the air during a lightning storm. The stars were very clear above them, winking in and out as gaps in the trees presented themselves and then closed. No one spoke, for which she was grateful. After last year, one of the things she had done to help her overcome her grief was to learn Russian from the Rosetta Stone program. She was astonished at how effortlessly she picked up the language, and she suspected that she’d be able to learn most any language with similar ease. She recognized root words almost instantly, and making sense of the grammar allowed large chunks of phrases to slot into her rapidly expanding understanding.

Oddly, she felt comfortable among these thugs. They didn’t resent her or think she was a freak. On the contrary, they understood her function in the plan—a function none of them could fill, and which might very well lead to victory. She felt like their little sister; she felt as if she belonged, as if she had been born to the wrong parents in the wrong country. Now and again, her nostrils flared. She smelled Russia on them; she liked that smell.

For one hundred minutes, they moved silently without incident. By that time, the forest had given way to plowed fields with the occasional stone barn, then the farms were stamped out by a jumble of houses. Then the paved streets began and, along with them, the gridlike order imposed by all gatherings of human habitation, whether they be villages, towns, or cities.

The men grew more cautious and, for a time, their progress was slowed as they took more and more frequent detours to avoid the citizens of Tetovo. Skirting the town proper, they moved northwest with the intention of looping around and coming upon the stronghold from the north.

Of course, there were obstacles to that route—knots of Xhafa’s guerillas strategically placed along the perimeter of Tetovo. But guard duty was inherently boring. Night after night, peering into the flickering darkness could cause the attention of even the staunchest fanatic to occasionally waver. There was no antidote for this boredom, Thatë had explained to her when they had begun their trek, and it was this inattention he proposed to exploit.

The first to present themselves to Thatë’s men were three guerillas. He kept Alli beside him as he used hand signals. Three of his men nodded and melted into the darkness. They returned soon enough with trophies: AK-47s, daggers, and a satellite phone. Not a sound had been uttered. The band moved on. Alli saw the three guerillas sprawled on the ground, their throats slit. Their blood glittered black in the starlight.

*   *   *

“T
HERE HE
is.”

Paull’s whisper came to Jack along with the other night noises.

“We could go around him,” Jack pointed out.

“We can’t go around them all.”

They were crouched in the protection of a clump of underbrush. The guerilla was outlined against the starlight. To his right was a ridge, black as a pit. To his left were lights at the outskirts of Tetovo.

Paull scrambled off and Jack put down his assault rifle, shrugged off his backpack and camouflage jacket. Then he ducked out into the starlight, came around a bend and, seeing the guerilla, continued on.

The guerilla, for his part, came immediately alert and brought his AK-47 down to the ready position.

Jack stopped several feet in front of the guerilla and said,
“Më falni, unë jam I humbur.”
Excuse me, I’m lost.

“Ju jeni shqiptare?”
the guerilla asked with a good deal of suspicion. You’re Albanian?