Dead Six (45 page)

I sighed. She was right. A lot of people had died, and we had nothing to show for it. “I know,” I said. “The important thing is we’re still alive. We have each other. We’re going home. All things considered, I’ll settle for that.”

Sarah gave me a sad smile. “Me, too. So, uh, where are you going when you get home?”

“I don’t really have a home,” I said. “The closest thing I have to family is a cranky old bastard named Hawk. He lives in a little town called Quagmire, Nevada. I’ll probably go there, since I don’t have anywhere else to stay. What about you?”

“I managed to get an e-mail off to my mom, telling her I’m coming home,” Sarah said excitedly. “She doesn’t even know where I’ve been. Not really, anyway. I gave her a story, told her I was working as a translator for an oil company. I’ll probably go back to Modesto, where she lives. I don’t have anyplace else to stay either.”

I chewed in my lip for a moment. “Modesto is a long way from Quagmire,” I said.

“You know, I hate living in California anyway,” Sarah said, smiling again. “I could, I suppose, be talked into leaving. You know, with the right incentive package.”

I raised an eyebrow theatrically. “Baby, I’ve got an incentive package right here,” I said, gesturing to myself while grinning stupidly.

Sarah laughed out loud. “You’re cute when you’re being a retard, you know that? Are you asking me to move in with you?”

“Eh, you might want to let me find a place to live first,” I said.

“Oh no, it’s not going to be that easy,” Sarah said, eyes twinkling. “You’re going to have to meet my mother first.”

“Oh boy,” I said without enthusiasm.

“Stop it, my mom is a sweet lady.”

“Wow,” I said after a moment. “This is all surreal. We’re really doing this, aren’t we? Holy shit. We’re going home!”

“I know, right?” Sarah said, squeezing me again. “Thank God.”

I closed my eyes, holding Sarah tightly. “Thank God.”

LORENZO

Carl and I sat in the van. It had turned out to be the hottest day so far this year, so of course, the air conditioner in our secondary van had died. We had one other vehicle stashed in a storage unit but it would stick out way too much in this neighborhood. The heat was like a stifling blanket, burning the air in my lungs. Sweat dripped down my back and pooled in my armpits. I finished the bottle of water and tossed it. Tonight was the night.

“You ready?” Carl asked from behind the wheel.

“Yep.” I cracked the vertebrae of my neck after securing the transmitter around my throat. This was it. “Radio check.”

“I can hear you fine. I’ve got a clear view of the gate, and the guards don’t seem to be checking anything,”
Jill said.
“I think it’s too hot for them to care.”

She was out of sight, a couple hundred yards up the road, closer to the fort. Alone, unarmed, and ready to step out into traffic on a moment’s notice. She sounded excited.

“I’ve got you, chief,”
Reaper’s voice echoed in my ear. I knew that he would be sitting in the darkened apartment, half a dozen screens open in front of him, joystick in hand, four radio channels going at once, processing absurd amounts of information, and totally in his element. Even though he was ten miles away, Reaper was going to be my eyes. “Little Bird can see the van just perfect, nice and bright on thermal, too.”

Circling high overhead was Reaper’s favorite toy and the single most expensive thing that I had ever purchased, and that included sports cars, yachts, and houses. Little Bird was basically the world’s fanciest remote-controlled plane. Well, at least that a regular person could actually purchase. No matter how bad Reaper wanted one, we couldn’t afford a Predator drone.

L.B. had a wingspan of only ten feet. When you took it apart, the whole thing fit into two big suitcases. It wasn’t fast, it didn’t have any guns, but what it did have was the ability to stay in the air for damn-near forever running off what was basically a glorified leaf-blower engine, all while snooping with every type of camera you could think of. It was like having my own portable spy satellite.

Old Fort Saradia was visible at the end of the road. Those twenty-foot walls had been built over a hundred years ago by the British Empire. There were only two entrances, one off the road, and a smaller one on the opposite side overlooking the rudimentary dock, and thermal showed that both of them were being guarded.

Inside the walls were several other buildings. Some old battered historical things, then a couple of large steel buildings that dated back to the forties, and finally a dorm that had been built more recently when Fort Saradia had been used briefly as the oceanographic institute for the emir’s new university. The whole thing was supposed to be unoccupied now except for a couple of caretakers.

“You gonna stick with the plan this time, Lorenzo?” Carl asked.

“Sneak into a den of professional killers, find the box, walk back out. Right?” I was nervous, but I tried not to let it show. The shakes would come later, now I needed to be cold and professional.

“Walk in the park,” Carl muttered. I knew he didn’t like this at all. He wanted to go with me, but Carl was a warrior, he wasn’t built for stealth. And no matter how satisfying it would be, kicking in the door, guns blazing, was just going to get us all killed.

Rather, I was going to do what I did best. And that meant being one sneaky son of a bitch. I needed to be fully in touch with my inner ninja. I checked my gear again. I was moving light. Speed and silence mattered more than firepower. Forty of them, one of me, it didn’t matter what I was armed with. If I got caught, I was going to die. I had my STI, several extra mags of 9mm ammo, the excellent Silencerco suppressor, a pair of knives, one fixed blade and one folder, radio, lock picks, night-vision monocular, and finally a length of piano wire tied between two small wooden dowels. I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy.

My clothing was neutral, all gray and tan, cargo pants, plain long-sleeve T-shirt, soft desert boots, one of those cargo vests with ten million pockets, and even a khaki ball cap. The Dead Six types that we had seen tended to be dressed in that contractor-chic style, so I hoped that if somebody spotted me, their first inclination would be that I was just one of them, and by the time they recognized that I wasn’t, they’d be quietly dispatched.

After some internal debate, I had worn my lightweight, concealable armor vest, because even though it made me a little less mobile, this was a very trigger-happy bunch that we were dealing with. It would stop pistol rounds, but rifle bullets would still zip through like it was made of butter.

Now we were waiting. From the Fat Man, we knew that all of Dead Six was coming here, and with the curfew in effect, they couldn’t risk being randomly pulled over anymore than we could. Once Carl dropped me off and picked up Jill, he was going to park out of sight.

We were hoping for a vehicle that I could either carjack or ride unnoticed. Preferably the latter, as the former introduced some real bad complications into the mix. It was too early in the evening to start popping people. Reaper had already notified us of a couple of potentials, but they had been traveling too closely together. Luckily, the fort was the only thing at the end of this road other than shabby ramshackle housing, so if it was any sort of decent vehicle, it was obvious where it was going.

I didn’t like this plan. There were way too many things to go wrong. But if this didn’t work, then I was going to be reduced to trying to climb over walls that were probably under video surveillance. “I hate winging it,” I muttered. Carl grunted in affirmation.

“I’ve got a truck on camera. He’s at the base of the road, ETA, one minute,”
Reaper said.
“No thermal hits from the back.”
Carl started the engine. The plan was to come up behind potential vehicles and tail them to the last roundabout. If it was a good one, we’d go for it. If it wasn’t, then we’d take the turn and come back here to wait for the next target.

It was a Mitsubishi truck, with a ragged tarp covering the back. It passed us slowly. The driver was a blond Caucasian and the passenger was a black guy, so they probably didn’t live here. It didn’t have a tailgate, so that was one less thing to worry about. “This one looks good,” I whispered. Carl nodded and rolled out behind him. “Jill, the white truck. Get ready to intercept.” I pulled the hat low onto my head and placed my hand on the door handle. The metal was scorching hot to the touch.

“Have visual. Truck’s coming toward the roundabout. Distraction time,”
Jill reported matter-of-factly.

“Good luck, everybody,” I said. The van rolled up behind the Mitsubishi. “Now, Jill. Go! Go!”

I opened the passenger-side door. We had disabled the interior lights. The truck was slowing on the roundabout. We had one shot. Jill was dressed as a local, weighed down with bags of groceries. She blundered right into the path of the truck, playing oblivious to the hilt. The driver of the Mitsubishi hit the brakes. Red lights illuminated my world. I was out of the van in a heartbeat, Carl pulling the door closed behind me. I could see the passenger’s profile in his mirror, his attention on Jill.

The tarp was dusty with talcum-powder sand. Trying not to make a sudden impact against the shocks, I slid under and right onto the burning heat of the truck’s diamond-plate bed. The horn sounded, making me flinch involuntarily. I heard Jill shout back at the driver and could imagine her shaking her fist.

“I’m in,” I whispered.

Jill heard and continued on her way across the road. Carl pulled through the roundabout and headed in a different direction. I lay on the metal that was hot enough to fry bacon and tried not to cry. The truck rolled forward. I slowly shifted myself around on the greasy, hot surface until I was squished in the shadow of the cab as much as possible. After another minute we left the paved road and the tires began to make a different noise on the gravel. We were getting close. The brakes whined as we stopped.

“
You’re coming through the gate
,” Reaper informed me.

I could barely hear the passenger. “Hey, Studley, what’s up, dawg?” I couldn’t make out the guard’s response. “We’ve got the last of the stuff from Safe House Five. . . . I know, right?” There was laughter.

“
Interior guard is waving them past. You’re inside
.” Then music started playing in my earpiece. It was some techno-remix of the
Mission: Impossible
theme.

“Turn that shit off,” I hissed.

It stopped. “
Sorry, just trying to set the mood
.”

The brakes whined as we rolled to a stop. The smell of diesel was strong in the air. The engine died with a gurgle, and the doors slammed. I heard voices speaking in English, somebody laughed, and then it was quiet.

“
They’re walking away from the truck. You’re parked just south of Building One
.” I had memorized the overhead layout of the place, and we had numbered every structure inside. “
You’ve got somebody on the wall directly above you. Hold on a second—I’ll warn you when you’re clear.
”

I scurried around until I could see out the back. The interior of the fort was getting darker by the minute. There were only a handful of exterior lights scattered about, and luckily most of them were low wattage. Once it was fully dark, this place was going to be my playground.

I’m coming for you, Valentine.

Chapter 18:
Civil War

VALENTINE

1955

As darkness fell on the tiny Gulf emirate, the Zubaran Civil War began in earnest. Fighting had broken out all across the city as forces loyal to the Royal Family clashed with the numerically superior forces of General Al Sabah. According to news reports, there was heavy fighting near the palace. As expected, the Royalists attempted to retake Zubara’s seat of government.

By now, most everything we were taking with us was packed onto pallets, ready to be loaded onto the boat when it arrived. Everything else was being systematically destroyed. We were leaving nothing behind for the Zubarans to capture.

A lot of us didn’t have anything to do. Everything had been broken down and packed away, so we didn’t even have a television to watch. We ended up gathering on the roof of the dormitory, where we had a pretty good view of the city, to watch the fighting.

It was like a grim fireworks show. The occasional stream of tracer fire arced into the darkened sky. We could see flashes and hear distant rumbling as both sides shelled each other with artillery. Jets roared overhead, and ancient air-raid sirens screamed throughout the city. Several large fires had broken out. Volleys of rockets were exchanged. We watched in awe as a Zubaran jet, engulfed in flames, plunged into the bay.

I sat on an old metal bucket and played my harmonica. I was rusty, but I’d been pretty good back in the day. I played a sad, lilting tune. I didn’t know what it was called, but no one seemed to mind me setting things to music as we watched Zubara burn.

“We caused this,” Anita King said. She stood near me, arms folded across her chest, looking off into the distance. “We destroyed this country.”

“We were trying to prevent this,” Holbrook said, looking through a pair of large military binoculars.

Tailor’s face was briefly illuminated as he lit a cigarette. “This was bound to happen sooner or later,” he said, snapping the lighter shut. “There was no way a handful of guys was going to come in and change the course of this country.”

“Then why did you sign up?” Holbrook asked.

Tailor shrugged. “It was something to do. I was bored.” He cracked a smile, and Holbrook shook his head.

Frank Mann, the armorer, was with us. “It’s been nice working with you guys,” he said. “You didn’t abuse my weapons. I appreciated that.” We all chuckled.

“You know what really pisses me off?” Holbrook asked. “You know they’ll try this again.”

“Who?”

“Whoever the hell we work for. These black-ops guys. Project Heartbreaker failed. But you know they’re going to try this again somewhere else. Might be a year from now, might be twenty years. But they
will
try again. And a handful of guys will die trying to accomplish a mission an entire army would have trouble with.”