One Last Scent of Jasmine (Boone's File Book 3) (39 page)

We are approaching the airport. I need a destination.

“
You will fly to London. Final destination TBD, being Tallinn or Moscow. I cannot make the determination until it is morning here. We will have the answer by the time your aircraft sets down.”

In the front seat with Lambert sat the young Saudi, being as expendable as the Frenchman in the Senior Advisor’s opinion. Her eyes flashed ahead to her escorts, the pair being quiet, watchful and professional as they wheeled nearer the hangars. She mused,
What of them?
Then she tapped out another reply.
I will need disposal services on arrival. These people I bring are not confidants.

“
This has been anticipated.”

The car arrived at the hangars, and Gerard knew as much of her planning as possible had been accomplished. She sent one last line:
  We are here. I will expect an update in London.

“
Acknowledged.
Dasvidaniya, tovarisch
.”

She closed her chat session and her browser as Lambert pulled the big car up to the far side of the hangar she had designated.
I am killing my battery.
I will need to plug this thing in once we are on the airplane.

The electrically drawn front and back doors of Novak’s hangar were already standing open per her request. Nearby, a general aviation staffer was present, ready to assist with the filing of their flight plan, she could see.

Lambert, apparently expecting to drop her off, withdrew the keys from the Town Car’s ignition and stuck them above the driver’s visor. He then exited to help with her door. Alert to their surroundings, the Saudi walked around to her side of the vehicle as well.

The aviation service’s man wasted no time in accommodating her communicated wish for an expedited departure. “Good day,
Miss
Gerard. Can I inform the tower as to your destination?” the manager efficiently inquired.

“London’s Heathrow,” she replied easily. “May we leave at once?”

“As soon as your pilot is satisfied with the condition of the aircraft, ma’am.”

“Very well, thank you,” she said in dismissing him. He spun on his heel, walking at a brisk pace toward the distant business office a moment later.

Gerard led them inside. The hangar's oversized, spotless interior held a workbench, barrels, and massive, wheeled toolboxes lined up and secured against one wall of the otherwise uncluttered expanse of sealed concrete. Looking the place over, Lambert seemed confused by their privacy. “
Mademoiselle,
where is your crew?” he inquired.

Her small pistol jammed into his neck a moment later. “Everyone I need is right here,” she said in a warning tone, her other hand going under his jacket where the bulge told her his own weapon was holstered. She yanked out the Beretta she found there, continuing to hold her own muzzle against his flesh. “Be very still. This is just a damned .25 automatic, but it is pressed against your jugular.”

The Frenchman complied. “What is this we are doing?”

“We are going to London,
messieurs
. Afterward, to my native soil … or Moscow. We will know in several hours when we are refueling.”

As Gerard watched, al-Khobar produced his own pistol, identical to the one she now held on him. “I will not be going to Moscow. You might as well shoot me here. The end result will be the same.”

“
Please
do not make her nervous, Yameen,” Lambert encouraged. “
Mademoiselle
… I am wanted in London. It is perhaps the last place I would want to travel at the moment.”

“Neither you nor I will be getting off the damned airplane,” Gerard countered. She regarded the recalcitrant Saudi. “You are nonessential to this plan. Be gone, if you have your own means of quitting this place.”

“
Gladly,
” Lambert’s subcontractor spat back at her.

There came the sounds of tires on the far side of the hangar bay, followed by the slamming of doors. A voice soon called out, “
Valka Gerard!
You are not going
anywhere!
”

The redheaded bitch. Her. Again.

Gerard tossed Lambert’s pistol to the Saudi, and he caught it one-handed. “Make yourself useful, then, Mister al-Khobar. Good luck.” She used her free hand to yank Lambert toward the steps of the Learjet. “You,
monsieur,
will get us airborne toward the U.K.”

“As you
wish,
mademoiselle
,” the man said in a resigned voice, walking ahead of her.

Al-Khobar saw three of them. The first one was the redheaded woman, she who now had been the cause of so many of his failures he hated her more than anyone. The others were his former colleagues from Geneva:  the eminently dangerous Daniel Sean Ritter accompanied by Bernard Schuster. All had their sidearms out and were entering the opposite end of the hangar structure as a team.

To hell with them.
Al-Khobar leveled both of the Beretta 9mm pistols. They had been obtained by the Frenchman from yet another contact, this one in Virginia, of his nefarious network. To Yameen's unprotected ears the reports were painfully loud, and firing the fat-gripped weapons one-handed left much to be desired as far as his accuracy was concerned. The most desired effect, forcing his opponents to seek cover while he himself gained his own, however, was met. Concurrently, the whine of the Learjet’s turbines began, promising even more ear-splitting discomfort to come.

Rounds targeted him as he hid behind a massive steel toolbox.
Perhaps I should have taken the Gerard woman up on her offer of travel.
He replied with more rounds of his own, somewhat relieved at least to still be able to hear the tinkle of the empty brass cartridges as they bounced off the steel wall to his right and danced on the floor behind him. His three attackers were behind cover now as well, and all of them were doing their best to maintain the status quo.
No … neither of us wishes to be shot again, do we, Sean?

The Learjet taxied out of the massive bay now, and the noise from the engines was incredible.
I cannot stand this,
al-Khobar thought.
I must get outside.

Again he fired both his available weapons as the jet departed the hangar, targeting his opponents’ vehicle. The sedan was parked in the open doorway of the structure’s opposite end. A hail of rounds sounded on the front quarter, accompanying the explosion of its front tire and a satisfying spiderweb of destruction in the safety glass of the windshield.

He ducked back behind cover with each 92FS in slide-lock and empty. There were no spare magazines.
See, Camille? Did I not tell you?
Al-Khobar knew his chances to be diminishing with each microsecond.
Run!

Dumping the now useless pistols, he charged from behind his cover with rounds whipping past him. He did not make it easy for them, stuttering his pace and zigzagging until he had gained the corner of the hangar entrance.
The vehicle. Lambert left the keys.
Yameen was uninjured, but despite his wish to continue the fight, retreat was now the only option available.
Another time, InterLynk.

The roar of a V-8 engine and the squeal of tires on smooth concrete sounded outside at the opposite end of the hangar, announcing to Bernie Schuster it was probably safe to emerge from his own hard cover.
Sean’s right. These sound-cancelling electronic earplugs are the cat’s ass.

Sean and Boone came out as well. The former USAF officer holstered his Browning while Boone plucked an expended magazine from the grip of her own tiny pistol.

Schuster sighed, dropping his SIG’s hammer with the decocking lever before reholstering his weapon. He glanced at Boone’s riddled vintage sedan, sitting deflated and smoking outside. The dealer tag had not even been removed from the back window.
So here’s the reason why the General’s daughter was driving this rust bucket.
“Well, isn’t
this
the shits,” Schuster observed.

“Is everybody OK?” Ritter inquired. No one appeared to be hurt.

“Fine,” Boone said, slamming another of her spare clips into place. She then stowed both her weapon and the empty ammo carrier under her tight-fitting—and to Schuster’s mind, viciously sexy—black leather jacket.

“So now what? How are we going to pursue?” Bernie wondered aloud.

Boone seemed unconcerned. As Schuster watched, she turned for the doorway, drawing her phone from another pocket. “Don’t worry about it, Bern,” she said. “Take a break, you guys—we’ve done everything we can for now. I’m going to call my car crusher and then get us another ride.” She stalked out of the hangar fiddling with her smartphone.

Schuster looked in confusion toward his friend, the ex-USSOCOM operative appearing as impassive as ever. Sean, he noted, had watched her exit as well. “She doesn’t seem as pissed as I thought,” Bernie observed.
Not like we saw her light off in Russia.

InterLynk’s Director of Field Operations, more able to adjust quickly to changing scenarios than any man Schuster had known, remained composed—as if they had just concluded a training exercise rather than yet another gunfight. The man pulled out his own earpieces and flicked their tiny switches to preserve the hearing-aid batteries housed within. “She’s a woman, Bern. She’ll tell you everything in her own time.”

“I guess,” InterLynk’s XO agreed. “Get the feeling we’re just along for the ride on this one?”

Ritter’s eyebrow twitched in agreement. Nodding, he crossed his powerful arms.

Schuster waited with him as Boone made her calls.
Take Sean’s lead, Bern. Silence is golden. If the woman’s like her father, she can probably hear us from out there.

Chapter 24 - One Last Scent of Jasmine

Yameen Amjad al-Khobar had gained at least a head start, he was sure. The make and model of his vehicle might have been obvious, but the license plate had surely been too distant for any of the opposing force to determine from the opposite end of the hangar complex.
And this is hardly the only black Town Car in the D.C. area.

Once he entered the freeway leading outbound from the Dulles complex, the Saudi felt as if he could relax. He drove with the traffic, neither speeding beyond the boundary of tolerance nor conspicuously observing the posted limits. Nothing in his rearview mirror indicated the InterLynk team had found any means of pursuing him.

Another glance in the rearview confirmed his theory.
Nothing.
His mind moved forward to his exit strategy.
Baltimore will be the best choice.
His papers, expertly forged, were still usable, and his appearance remained a sufficient departure from any circulating photograph of him.
Not even a quick stop at the flat for my luggage. I need to be gone.
His personal resources and contacts, ones carried over from his years in the intelligence field, would facilitate his disappearance.
One which, if I am wise, I will find a way to extend into infinity.

His field habits demanded another glance into the rearview mirror. The action revealed another sedan, almost as massive as his own full-size vehicle, which seemed to have taken a position at his six o’clock.
Five men inside. This is not the rush hour.
They were well back, and though al-Khobar massaged his driving speeds, neither a faster nor a slower pace seemed to provoke the car behind him to alter its own speed. The anomaly caused him to increase his sphere of awareness even farther behind him.
There … and there. Similar vehicles … also with multiple passengers. Neither have they gone ahead.

Al-Khobar decided on a likely off-ramp in order to test his suspicion. He chose one seeming to be more of a local access road than a major thoroughfare.
Here they come. It cannot be an accident.
By the time he reached the bottom of the long ramp, the Saudi was at least somewhat relieved by confirming in the rearview only one of the three cars to have followed.

Looking ahead, he prepared to turn. Momentary confusion as to the traffic pattern, however, resolved itself too late, and he again spied the two other cars which had indeed been part of his rolling surveillance. They now roared down the entrance ramp to the freeway ahead of him, having accelerated beyond the exit then reversing their course in defiance of the one-way designation.
They are not insane. The car behind me saw the ramp was clear. They have radio communications
. Even his urge to press the gas pedal to the floor and power his way out of the trap was thwarted by their close proximity behind him and ahead at either front quarter now. Men emerged, carrying distinctively abbreviated weapons with long, banana-shaped magazines.
Kalashnikovs
. The drivers of the three vehicles did not budge. Voices, when they called out to him, spoke in Russian. “Yameen al-Khobar! Exit the vehicle or die!”

I am caught.
Al-Khobar found it ironic they had presented the command as a choice since the situation left him none at all. He slammed the shifter into Park and raised both his hands.

“Unlock the door, pig!” the nearest voice ordered.

Yameen's left hand dipped only enough to toggle the switch. The driver’s door opened hastily, and two pairs of strong hands hauled him outside, levering his arms behind him while the cold steel of handcuffs snapped into place. A black bag was pulled over his head, and a drawstring at the bottom tightened around his neck. He felt himself being wheeled around and shoved into the back of his own vehicle. Sensing men were inside with him though he could not see, he heard yet another one climb inside at the front, behind the wheel of the running Town Car.

“Team, form up for escort. The operation has been successful,” the Russian driver said, apparently keying his tactical radio.

With the unyielding muzzles of two weapons pressing into his body, al-Khobar remained still and waited for whatever command they would next give him as the Lincoln’s new driver got them under way. His professional’s mind could almost admire the precision of the job he had just witnessed. The thought was eclipsed a moment later by the realization he had, rather than make a daring escape, merely played out a contingency accurately anticipated by his opposition.