Direct Action - 03 (52 page)

The former SEAL Team Six operator started down the road towards Damascus. They might be light on manpower, but he knew damn well that he had the ultimate equalizer riding in the backseat. They would push hard for the capitol through the night and by early morning it would all be over.

Deckard looked down at his satellite phone as the battery continued to dwindle.

Pat had gotten him on the line and forwarded the GPS tracker information to Deckard so he could follow the last weapon, assuming they hadn't changed cars. Deckard could feel his entire mission slipping through his fingertips. If Bill was able to detonate that weapon in the middle of Damascus, it was likely that the entire Middle East would explode. More so if the rebels coupled the attack with an effective propaganda campaign.

Thirty minutes prior, he had driven through the smoking remains of what was probably a roadside checkpoint. The stench of smoke and burning flesh had seeped in through the crack in the window of his hotwired car.

Looking down at the blue dot moving across the map on his satellite phone, Deckard saw that the vehicle he was after was nearly half way to the capitol already. They were tearing down the highway, pushing for Damascus before dawn. Deckard was already driving recklessly fast through the night in an attempt to catch up with them. He only had one more replacement battery for the satellite phone. If he had to improvise a recharger with some copper wiring to the car's internal electrical system, it would only waste more of his time.

He was gradually gaining on the blue dot. For now, anyway.

One way or another, he knew that it would all be over soon. If Bill had his way, he would murder thousands of civilians with mustard gas and drag the Middle East into a massive war, all because his mysterious employers had designs on the region.

Deckard floored the gas.

He couldn't let that happen.

40

Bill tugged on the black canister stuck to the back of his car. Whatever adhesive it used was powerful stuff, as even a physical specimen like him had a hard time yanking the tracker off the car. Locking the canister in a vice grip, it wasn't the glue that gave way but rather the canister itself when it shattered in Bill's hands. The exposed guts of the device were left in Bill's hands. At just a glance, it was clear that it was a GPS device. His car had a tag, track, and locate device stuck to it, probably since Homs.

Deckard.

The former SEAL Team Six operator smiled. So much the better. It would save him the trouble of tracking the traitor down. Instead, Deckard would come to him.

With Tiger's help, they lifted the chemical weapon out of the back of his car.

It was morning by the time Deckard rolled into central Damascus.

He had killed way too much time skirting around several city checkpoints, and now the blue dot on his map had been stationary for half an hour. They would be preparing the weapon for deployment. At least now he knew the target area. The vehicle had stopped smack dab in the middle of the city. That told Deckard that Bill was still on track for hitting their original target, Umayyad mosque.

The Al-Hamidiyeh market was also nearby, and the deployment of a chemical weapon was likely to kill people in the nearby market as well
. Both targets were central features of life in Damascus with high visibility. Either target would ensure a high body count, but Deckard was putting his money on Umayyad Mosque since it also carried the religious significance of being the holiest site in Syria and perhaps the fourth holiest site in all of Islam. Destroying the great mosque of Damascus would almost certainly drag the entire Middle East into a conflagration of death and destruction.

Deckard parked his car several blocks away from where the tracker stopped and moved out on foot. The streets were already growing busy with people setting out for work in the morning. While the war raged outside and even within Damascus, the people of the city still had to get up everyday and find a way to earn a living. He blended in with many of the morning workers as he was still wearing his native garb, even if the clothes were now dirty and torn. The AK-47, on the other hand had to be concealed. He folded the buttstock and wrapped the weapon in a towel he found in the backseat. Extra magazines went into his pockets.

Deckard shook his head as he closed the car door behind him. This operation was so half-assed that it was a miracle he had even gotten this far. He was shooting from the hip and making it up as he went along at this point. His only consolation was that Bill was doing the same, as his initial mission plan was now lying in ruins. If Bill was making as many mistakes as Deckard was, there might be margin of error for him to exploit and get the drop on his opposition.

This was the oldest part of the city, where narrow streets twisted through ancient buildings. Many of the walls and pillars dated from far into antiquity. Untold numbers of conquerors and empires had occupied the city over the course of human history. The remains of Roman temples stood side by side with mosques. The scenery all blended into the background for Deckard, however. He was focused on dodging between the locals on the streets as he made his way to the tracker, looking down at the screen on his phone occasionally to make sure he was heading in the right direction.

Deckard kept the concealed Kalashnikov in the crook of his arm, holding it low and hoping to go unnoticed. The entire city was on a war footing and all it would take was for one police officer or soldier in the street to get a hint of suspicion, and it would all be over for him.

Moving several blocks deeper into the city, Deckard slipped down another narrow side street until he was almost on top of the signal coming from the GPS tracker. The blue dot looked to be broadcasting from inside the squat, two-story apartment building he was standing in front of. He tried to remain in the shadows cast by the walls and keep well away while doing a quick visual reconnaissance. A metal gate blocked ingress through the front door. After his hasty assessment, Deckard decided that there was no way he was going in through the front, even if he could force the door open.

The side street was quiet, just a few merchants shifting around and opening their shops. The whole thing felt like a trap.

Finding another alleyway, Deckard looked for an appropriate place to scale a wall. He would climb onto the roof of the adjacent building and then creep over to the target building. His arms strained as he found hand and footholds on the stone wall as he climbed up. The wall was on a slight incline, which made it easier, but his joints felt like they were about to pop out of their sockets. He had enough urban climbing in the last few days to last him a lifetime, however much longer that might be.

Up on the roof, he loaded the Kalashnikov and extended the buttstock, making the weapon ready before hitting the target building. Over on the next rooftop, Deckard was able to look down into an open courtyard in the center of the building. A carpet hung over a railing. There was a small pool of water on the ground level where a few birds were having a drink.

The GPS was accurate enough to pinpoint what building it was in, but not enough to tell exactly where it was without doing some searching around. If Samruk had TTLed the car then the GPS tracker must be on the ground level somewhere in a garage. He could only hope that the weapon was still nearby. A gap in the roof was covered over with a piece of plywood with an old car tire used to weight it down. Deckard carefully removed the covering to find a stairwell, and descended into the apartments below.

On the second level, Deckard followed a set of marble steps down to the courtyard. His eyes swept around for an entrance to a garage or basement where the car could have been stashed. Spotting another narrow doorway, he walked towards it.

Suddenly, the sound of a rifle's bolt being racked startled him. As Deckard spun around, the sound of the bolt slamming home into the chamber echoed through the courtyard. A young Nusra fighter on the terrace of the second floor stared down at him. Several more rifles also clacked as bullets were chambered. More Nusra fighters appeared on the balconies and terraces above him.

Deckard was boxed in. It had been a trap and he walked right into it.

He was about to make a mad dash for the door, see if he could smash through it before hundreds of 7.62 bullets tore through him. It was a pointless gesture, but better than being taken alive.

“
Deckard
.”

His name was said like a curse.

Bill came walking down the steps. Tiger, the Chechen rebel leader walked alongside him.

“Go ahead and drop the weapon.”

“I'll take my chances,” Deckard said.

“You have no chance dumbass, open your fucking eyes,” Bill told him as he waved towards the gunmen standing above them. “You're a dead man walking.”

“That's nothing new,” Deckard replied. “For either of us.”

“I have to say though, this really is a first for me.”

Bill stood just in front of him with the bearded Chechen at his side. Both of them appeared unarmed.

“My time with Dev. My Liquid Sky teams. I've seen operators come and go, believe me. Some of them were more talented than you, but it's like I told you back in Mauritius. You've got something extra that none of them had. You challenged the odds just because you could. You like having nowhere to run, don't you?”

“Whoever can make the biggest grandstand play. Guess my luck finally ran out.”

“You had a good run, Deckard. You got this far, after all. Where the fuck is Ramon and The Operator?”

Deckard said nothing.

“Exactly. You cut right through them. I'm beginning to think that the fucking cunt is the only smart one of us. Nadeesha pulled a fade. She's probably sipping a Mai Tai and having herself a good ride with a Cabana boy on some island by now.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“I don't get you Deckard, I really don't,” Bill said with a frown. “You had a seat at the table. It's like everywhere you go you piss everyone off and burn all your bridges. I'm not even going to ask why because the truth is I don't even care.”

“So what are we doing here?”

“I'm going to take your scalp, Deckard. I'm even going to tell you exactly what we are doing so that it will motivate you to cut the shit and hand over that AK of yours. Tiger is about to leave with the bomb. He is going to detonate it once he gets near the
Umayyad mosque. The moose limbs are finishing up their morning prayer, so now we're going to help them go and find Allah.”

Tiger had a shit-eating grin on his face as Bill patted him on the back. The Chechen was joined by several other Nusra fighters who came down the steps behind them. Bill gave him the thumbs up.

“Make it happen Tiger.”

“
Insha'Allah
,” the Chechen commander replied. With that, he disappeared with three gunmen out the side door that Deckard had spotted.

“So here is the deal Deckard,” Bill told him. “You get to square off with me. Bone to bone to see who is bigger. First, you drop that weapon; then, I call off the dogs and it will be just you and me. If you somehow get past me, maybe you've got a fifty-fifty shot of catching up with Tiger before he detonates the weapon. Then maybe you've got a slim chance at stopping him. Who knows, crazier shit has happened. So which is it? Me or the firing squad?”