MAC WALKER'S BENGHAZI: The Complete Collection (6 page)

Before passing them out to each of his men, Mac scanned the four identification packets that were located in the glove box. They appeared to be of high quality. Over the years, Mac had certainly had to work with much worse.

Angelo parked the SUV next to an older turboprop Antonov An-24 transport craft. Mac was familiar with the Antonov and its relatively slow flying speeds, and estimated the flight to Benghazi would take a little over two and a half hours.

Angelo opened his door and jumped out onto the tarmac.

“Come on then – the flight is scheduled to leave soon.”

Mac’s voice called out from inside the SUV.

“Angelo! You forgetting something?”

Angelo glanced back at Mac, a frown showing his confusion over the question.

“No…everything is ready.”

Mac opened the passenger door and made his way around the SUV as Jack, Benny and Minnick followed close behind him. They already knew what Mac was referring to.

“Tilley said there would be forty thousand waiting for us here. He said you were to be the one to get it to us.”

Angelo’s wide eyes grew wider as his hands flew to the sides of his round face.

“Oh, of course! Yes! I have it right here!”

The Italian reached into an inner pocket of his light brown blazer and removed a simple white envelope.

“Here you go – forty thousand dollars per my instructions from Mr. Tilley.”

Mac’s lips tightened as he took the envelope from Angelo and passed it to Minnick.

“Make sure it’s all there.”

Minnick quickly counted the currency, which was in Euros, and then confirmed to Mac it came to forty thousand.

Angelo smiled back at the four men, his head nodding repeatedly at Minnick’s confirmation of the amount.

“See – no problems! Now, everyone, please follow me. They are preparing for takeoff already. We need to go.”

Less than three hours later, sitting in the back of the An-24, Mac and the others landed at the Benina airport just outside of Benghazi. Mac’s watch indicated it was nearly three in the morning, Benghazi time.

The devil’s hour…

VIII.

Mac had the team wait until all of the food supplies had already been unloaded from the plane before leading his men to the tarmac outside. Angelo already had another United Nations’ vehicle waiting for them – this one was a simple white minivan.

“Ok gentleman, now I’ll take you to the safe house. It’s about ten minutes drive from here, so remember that. If you need to get out of Benghazi fast, get to this airport and demand to speak to a man by the name of Louis Danton. He is the ranking U.N. humanitarian official here at Benina. He has my direct contact, so if there’s trouble, he can get to me quick and help will be on its way for you. If anyone attempts to prevent you from seeing Mr. Danton, a hundred Euros or so should easily remove that interference.

Do any of you have any questions so far?”

Mac and the others remained silent for a moment until Jack spoke up.

“This Danton, is he French?”

Angelo nodded.

“Yes, though he speaks very good English as well as Arabic.”

Jack followed up with another question.

“And do you trust him?”

Again Angelo nodded.

“Of course.”

Jack didn’t looked convinced, but by then was already stepping into the van.

The streets of Benghazi were oddly quiet. Even at this early hour, Mac thought a Mediterranean port city with well over a half million occupants would have much more activity. He glanced at the passenger seat’s rear view mirror and saw the faint outline of headlights some hundred yards behind them. They were being followed. Besides their van and the vehicle behind them, no other cars were on the road.

“Does this van have any weapons Angelo?”

Angelo appeared startled at the question as he shook his head no.

“There are weapons and ammunition at the safe house, as I said earlier.”

The vehicle behind them had sped up slightly. Mac turned to look at his men seated behind him.

“Be ready.”

Jack, Minnick, and Benny knew that when Mac spoke those two words, he meant it. Each of them quietly removed their handguns from their holsters, their adrenalin already beginning to heighten in preparation of potential trouble.

Mac looked over at Angelo, who continued to appear oblivious to the other vehicle tailing them.

“Angelo, I need you to turn onto a side street please, preferably to make a hard right and then speed up before pulling off to the side of the road. I want you to do it at the next available street…I see one coming up to us now.”

Mac’s voice was calm, but his team sensed he too was readying himself for battle.

Angelo, looking confused, pointed a finger at the windshield.

“We are not to the safe house yet. Five more minutes.”

Mac’s hand snapped across the space between he and Angelo and grabbed the steering wheel, sending the van veering onto a narrow side road.

“Give this thing some fucking gas Angelo – NOW!”

Angelo’s eyes widened again as he pushed down on the van’s accelerator, moving the vehicle quickly past rows of single level residential homes.

“Now stop – and cut the lights!”

The van screeched to a halt, though before it had come to a full stop, Mac was already outside, his P226 at the ready. The residential street was silent but for the scraping of boots over tightly packed gravel as Jack, Benny, and Minnick moved to positions approximately thirty yards from one another, quickly fading into the darkness of the dimly lit street.

Mac stayed by the van, keeping an eye on both the ends of the street, as well as Angelo’s movements as he moved out slowly from the driver’s seat. In the distance, the barking of a dog carried across the humid Benghazi pre-dawn air.

The silence was suddenly ripped away as a speeding van identical to the one they were riding in with Angelo, approached their location with its headlights turned off. It appeared to be doing at least sixty miles an hour. Mac knew that very soon the van’s high beams would be turned on in an attempt to momentarily blind them.

“I need one of you to get yourself behind that incoming. Be ready.”

Mac made out the form of Jack moving swiftly down the street, hiding along the way where he could find a tree or shrub to do so. The van was now less than fifty yards away and closing fast.

It was at that moment Mac heard Angelo attempting to sneak behind him. He had been expecting this from the Italian as soon as he noted they were being followed out of the Benina airport. Nobody who was to have been as integral to the assignment as Angelo could have been so oblivious to being tailed. The only question in Mac’s mind now was if he would keep Angelo alive, or simply kill him dead now.

“Angelo, don’t make the mistake of underestimating me. Anyone who has done that, finds themselves leaving this earth soon after.”

As predicted, the approaching van turned on its headlights. That was Mac’s cue to hit the ground, rolling almost too fast for the eye to follow as Angelo strained to see what was in front of him. Mac fired a single round into Angelo’s right wrist, causing the Italian to drop his gun and cry out in shock and pain. Mac was already up and running to the back of their van as the other van’s occupants began firing in his direction. Soon their gunfire was met with return fire from each side of the street as Minnick and Benny emerged from the shadows then almost immediately followed by Jack squeezing several rounds off from behind. It took Mac’s team no more than ten seconds to kill the five men from the other van.

Walking back to the side of their own van, Mac saw Angelo’s body crumpled against the rear tire, his chest heaving for air. Given the blood soaking through the front of his shirt, it appeared he had taken a bullet from one of the men firing from one of the other vans. Mac leaned down and looked Angelo in the eyes before delivering a hard slap across the man’s face.

“I need you to focus Angelo, ok? Who did you make this deal with?”

Angelo’s stared back at Mac, his face expressing the shock over the realization he was dying.

“Angelo – who are you working for?”

The Italian found a fragment of whatever courage he may have once lived his life with, raising his head from his chest and sneering back at Mac as he spit out a response in Arabic.

“Fuck you American pig. There’s nothing you’ll do to change any of this…it’s already done. We win – you lose.”

Angelo’s last breath was cut short as his lungs filled with his own blood, and a gurgling rasp wheezed from his throat as his body slumped to the side and onto the street.

Mac stood up as his mind raced to assess the situation. The safe house was not an option – Angelo clearly had no intention of taking them to any such place, and besides, they had no idea where it was. Angelos’s final words were spoken in perfect Arabic, though the accent was not Libyan. Mac had spent years learning that language, and had worked throughout the Middle East. The accent was unmistakably Turkish, which though somewhat similar to Arabic, was its own language. What that meant as far as who Angelo may have been associated with, Mac had no idea and at present, it didn’t really matter. His job now was to relocate and keep his men as safe as possible until further options presented themselves.

“Benny, Minnick, check the bodies. Look for any identification – and be quick.”

It took no more than a minute for Minnick to report back.

“Nothing Mac. The van is the same as ours, but there’s nothing in it, and no identification on any of the bodies. I took their weapons. They were all carrying brand new, matching Makarovs. What are a bunch of Libyan thugs doing carrying Russian handguns Mac?”

Mac didn’t know, and at that point, he didn’t care. His job was to get him and his men the hell off this street.

“In the van – let’s go.”

The other three in Mac’s team followed the order without speaking. Like Mac, they too already fully understood how dire the situation already was, and the fact that in their immediate future, it was likely to get much worse.

As he drove slowly back onto the main road, Mac could hear Jack’s sarcastic remark from behind the driver’s seat.

“Are we enjoying our stay in Benghazi yet?”

Mac ignored Jack’s words, his mind struggling to come up with a viable plan, though each time he returned to a question that remained blaring back at him, its implications chilling the former Navy SEAL to his core.

Can I trust Tilley – or was he part of this? And if he was, then why?

Without Tilley’s help, his team’s chances for getting out of Benghazi alive were greatly diminished. Tilley was the one who lined up Angelo, but that didn’t mean Tilley was involved in whatever Angelo was. He could be though.

“Shit.”

Mac didn’t intend to say the word out loud, but after he did, Minnick, who sat in the passenger seat, nodded in response.

“Yeah – shit. That about sums it up doesn’t it? And you’re probably thinking the same thing I am, aren’t you? Can we trust Tilley to help bail us out of this mess, or was he part of it?”

Benny leaned forward, his head emerging from the darkness of the van’s back seat.

“Bullshit. Tilley had nothing to do with this. I heard that Angelo speaking to Mac in Arabic. He wasn’t Italian, or if he was, he was a Muslim first. Tilley got burned by whoever Angelo really is the same as we did. We can’t afford to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater Mac.”

Mac was heading back to the Benina airport. With all of the matching U.N. vans located there, they would be able to blend in enough to buy them just a little more time – enough time for him to decide whether or not to risk reaching out to Tilley for help.

The airport security remained as non-existent as when they had left it. Mac simply drove past the gates and into the primary facility area, parking the van next to a row of three other identical vans.

“What do you think Jack
? Do I give Tilley a call?”

Jack remained motionless in the back seat, his eyes closed as he focused on his breathing as Mac waited patiently for a response. Finally Jack opened his eyes and offered a thin smile back at Mac.

“We don’t have much choice at this point Mac. The way I see it, either you call him, or I will. He’s our best shot right now of getting out of this shithole.”

Mac didn’t take Jack’s words as a sign of disrespect. In fact, they were just the opposite. They cleared Mac’s head of options, and made the decision a simple one – he had no choice but to reach out to Tilley. Mac took out his cell and dialed Tilley’s direct contact number, the one used only for assignment emergencies.

Tilley picked up the call on the second ring.

“What’s wrong? This seems early for a check in.”

Mac paused as he considered his words carefully.

“We’ve been compromised. The Italian contact was bad. No safe house available.”

Now it was Tilley’s turn to pause. Mac waited him out, staying silent as well.