Tripoli's Target (Justin Hall # 2) (9 page)

“Hurry up! Come here! Quick,” Justin shouted.

The helicopter rattle rose above his cries. Another missile flew out. Then came the shrill of the explosion. The warhead blew up at the base of a tall sandstone boulder. It smashed it into two large blocks ten feet away from the sheikh’s position. A downpour of rocks and sand covered him. Bullets from helicopters’ gunners began scraping away bedrock fragments around his position.

“Sheikh, Sheikh Ayman,” Justin shouted.
Is he wounded? Dead?

No reply. The sheikh’s machine gun was silent.

“Is he dead?” Carrie asked.

“I don’t know.”

Justin turned around underneath the BMW, careful to avoid bumping his head against its rear axle. Bullets thumped against the doors.

“What’s Ali doing?” Justin’s eyes followed the helicopters. They had ascended over the cliffs and resembled two black dots against the background of a cotton-ball cloud. Justin had no illusions the attack was over.

“There’s three, no, four guys still fighting.” Carrie looked at the gunmen around the tents. “One Rover’s hit; a tent’s on fire. A dust cloud is around the cave . . . Looks like a missile landed there.”

“We need a heavy gun, an RPG will do.” Justin searched the clearing for the best vantage point. “There.” He pointed to his left toward the narrow opening leading into the valley.

Carrie followed his hand gesture. She saw a bullet-ridden Land Rover with two doors ajar. The front tires had caught fire. “Negative. Too far and too hot,” she said. “Rover by the cave is a better option.”

Justin shook his head. “We don’t know if there’s a mole in Ali’s band. Cover me.”

He began sprinting toward the Land Rover. Carrie turned her attention back to the cave. None of the gunmen scrambling by the tents were paying attention to Justin running bent at the waist. But the helicopters were taking notice. A long barrage of machine gun fire burst from the air. Bullets kicked up dirt as they struck a few feet away from him.

“Cover fire, cover fire,” Carrie shouted at Ali’s gunmen.

She blasted her rifle in rapid succession. Two gunmen followed her calls.

Justin was crisscrossing between clusters of small dunes. He rolled down a gentle slope while one of the helicopters circled over the clearing. Justin pointed his carbine toward the flying target, firing quick bursts before resuming his sprint. Seconds later, he reached the burning Land Rover.

Two gunmen lay sprawled beside it. There was nothing he could do for them. But they could still do something for him. An RPG-7 launcher was lying at the feet of one of the dead gunmen. He made sure the weapon was intact and the grenade was loaded properly at the launcher’s muzzle. Then he shouldered the grenade launcher with a swift gesture. Justin estimated the distance from the helicopter at about a thousand feet. The rotor blades and the dolphin nose shape of the fuselage were visible as his sight locked onto the closest target.

He pulled the trigger.

The grenade screamed, leaving the launcher at over three hundred feet per second. Justin’s eyes followed the diagonal flight of the warhead through the gray smoke curtain mushrooming around him from the weapon’s breech. The helicopter swung abruptly to the left. Justin bit his lip, thinking the grenade would miss its target. But the warhead hit the tail boom close to the engine mount.

The helicopter lost altitude, nose-diving into the valley. It dashed at full speed, straight for a head-on collision with the mountain ridge. A trail of black smoke followed its unstable course.

The helicopter struggled to soar up before reaching the sheer rocky walls. It seemed to succeed in scaling the two hundred feet high climb and almost cleared the entire face of the ridge. At the last moment, the two rear wheels banged against an overhanging cliff. The helicopter crashed over the peak. Black smoke clouded Justin’s view, just before an overwhelming explosion. Scorched debris from the wreckage rained over a wide area down in the valley.

Justin turned his attention to the second helicopter. Carrie and Ali’s gunmen had concentrated all their firepower on bringing it down. The helicopter began its retreat, gray smoke pouring out of its tail shaft. Its getaway flight was erratic, with constant dips and dives. He wondered if the pilot had little control over the helicopter or he was dodging rocket-propelled grenades exploding around the helicopter’s tail.

It was the latter. The helicopter rocketed high above the ridge and disappeared over the narrow pathway connecting the valley to the rest of the desert.

“The bastard escaped.” Justin let the grenade launcher fall to the ground, looking up at the empty sky.

A car engine cough startled him. He turned on his heels, drawing his Browning pistol from his ankle holster. A Land Rover stopped next to him.

“Get in,” Carrie called from the driver’s seat. A gunman was sitting in the front with her.

Justin noticed a bruise on the left corner of her lips and scratch marks on the right side of her chin.

“You’re wounded.” Justin walked to the car. “You OK?”

“I’m fine. You got clipped too.” She pointed to his left knee.

A trickle of blood was trailing over his torn pants.

“A sharp rock.” Justin shrugged.

“Get in. We can still catch the pricks.”

“You think so?”

“Positive. I poured two mags into the chopper. Khalid here believes an RPG tore through its tail. That’s on top of your grenade. They can’t go too far.”

Khalid nodded, his white teeth flashing against his dark skin.

Justin sat behind him and Carrie gunned the Land Rover. They passed by the checkpoint and Carrie slowed down. She avoided the debris and the dead bodies littering the area. The two BMWs were burning slowly, bright orange flames chewing through the front tires and the rear doors. A column of dark smoke was rising up. It followed sudden gusts of a soft breeze changing direction almost every second.

“No survivors,” Justin said.

Khalid spat out the window. “Good. Those Arabs brought death here, like they always do. They deserved to die.”

Carrie entered the narrow pathway. She drove fast through the broken terrain. The Land Rover bounced over natural speed bumps, its wheels turning dangerously with every swinging curve. The left side of the hood scraped against the wall.

“Maybe you want to slow down,” Justin suggested as the Land Rover jumped over a pile of rocks.

Carrie eased on the gas pedal but only for a few seconds.

“What’s the status of your team?” Justin asked Khalid.

The gunman took a moment to process the question. “Some men dead. Seven, maybe eight. Two or three still alive,” he replied in broken English.

“Ali, how’s Ali?” Justin asked.

Khalid shook his head. “He got shot in chest by shrap . . . rocket pieces.”

Justin frowned.

“How did they find us?” Carrie asked.

“The Arabs. They gave enemy our location,” Khalid replied.

OK, but who is this enemy?
Justin wondered while they passed through the last turns of the pathway.

They had not reached the open desert when an ear-splitting explosion caught them by surprise.

Carrie steered around a sand dune, and the helicopter crash site appeared in front of them. Reddish dust had begun to rise over the wreckage about five miles away from the ridge.

“Unlucky bastard,” Justin said in a low voice. “Escaping the battleground only to fall to his death.”

They drove toward the crash site. Justin took in the scene, imagining how the crash might have taken place. The tail boom of the helicopter was split in half and the cabin was turned to its starboard side. The fuselage was buried halfway into the sand, evidence of a violent but fireless crash. The rotor blades were twisted and tangled.

“Watch out for survivors,” Carrie said.

They surveyed the area from a distance of a few dozen feet without leaving their vehicle.

“I don’t see anything moving but let’s push in carefully,” Justin said.

They stepped out of the car and began to advance very slowly. Guns drawn, they carefully covered every direction and every angle.

“Pilot and co-pilot dead.” Justin peeked at the flight deck through the crushed windshield. He sidestepped around a mound of sand and fragments of rotor blades to reach the port side of the helicopter.

“Gunner’s toast.” Carrie pointed to the body of a young, dark-skinned man.

Justin looked around.

“What’s that?” He gestured toward a brown square-shaped object tossed about fifty feet away from the helicopter’s mangled doors.

“I don’t know,” Carrie replied.

She walked over to the object. “It’s a military pack.”

“How did it get there?”

“Thrown by the crash, I assume.”

A deep sigh, almost a rasp, followed by a muted cough startled them.

Justin pointed his gun to the left, in the direction of the sound, which came from behind a small dune.

“Did you hear that?” he asked Carrie in a hushed voice

Carrie nodded. “A survivor.”

They fell down, their noses inches away from the sand.

Carrie said, “He’s wounded but probably armed.”

A short burst of automatic gunfire confirmed her words.

“I’ll go left. You cover me.” Justin pointed to the small dune.

“Let’s do it.”

Carrie cocked her rifle and gestured to Justin to move forward. He began crawling, his pistol in his right hand and ready for fire. After Justin had covered about twenty feet up the gentle slope, Carrie got up to her feet and began pounding the dune. She fired short bursts, two or three rounds each time, advancing a few steps between the shots. The return fire was weak, sporadic, and not on target.

After reloading, Carrie switched her rifle to automatic. She fired a long barrage, about half of her 30- round magazine. Her bullets pierced through the crest and the slopes of the dune. Their purpose was to force the shooter to stay down and seek cover. She glanced at Justin, but he had already edged around the dune and out of sight.

A couple of seconds later, she heard a loud shout. “Drop it,” Justin barked in Arabic. “Drop it now! I said put down your gun!”

There was no reply.

Carrie rushed to the top of the dune. She saw Justin pressing his pistol against the head of a young man. He was wavering on his knees, struggling to balance his weak body. The young man had raised his right arm over his head in sign of surrender. His left arm dangled along his side like a withered branch. He was no older than thirty, clean-shaven and was wearing a beige shirt and matching pants. They resembled some kind of uniform, the same as the clothes worn by the dead helicopter crew. A camouflage pattern bulletproof vest and a rig with ammunitions and supplies covered his chest and his waist.

“Justin, you’re OK?” Carrie asked, moving behind the captive.

“Yes, I’m OK.”

“Is he Sudanese militia?”

“Haven’t questioned him yet.”

The young man gasped, his head falling over his chest. Khalid ran toward Carrie.

“Oh, good, one of them alive,” Khalid said in English while catching his breath. He switched to Arabic and asked the captive, “What’s the name of your unit?”

The young man shook his head. When Khalid repeated the question, the young man barked his reply in two short, broken sentences.

“What did he say?” Carrie asked impatiently, her eyes bouncing between Justin and Khalid.

Justin’s gaze was fixed on the captive’s chest. Khalid shook his head and spat on the ground.

“What the hell did he say?” Carrie asked.

“Not the words but how he speak,” Khalid replied. “This man, this fighter, he’s no Sudanese. He’s no Egyptian.”

“So, where did he come from?” Carrie glared at the man’s dark face. Justin could tell what she was thinking:
he looks Arab to me.

Justin locked eyes with Carrie. “Come here,” he said.

He was paying more attention to Khalid, who was headed toward the helicopter, than to the captive’s hands. When she got really close, he whispered in her ear, “I think he’s Israeli.”

“What? Impossible!”

“He’s wearing a necklace and the pendant is the Star of David. See for yourself.”

Carrie pushed down the young man’s shirt collar with the muzzle of her rifle. A thin gold chain held a small pendant in the hexagon shape, the well-known symbol of the Hebrew nation.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Carrie blurted out. “Who the hell are you? IDF? Mil Intel? Mossad? Tell us!”

The captive offered them a tired but stoic grin.

Justin sighed. “Whoever this man is, our mess just got ten times harder than we thought.”

Chapter Seven

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

May 14, 1:55 p.m. local time

Zakir clutched the BlackBerry in his small hand as if the tight grip would make Monsieur Burgoyne at the other end of the call change his mind. He took a deep breath to gain a few precious seconds, then selected another word instead of the string of obscenities served by his enraged mind. “The prince will be extremely displeased and very, very disappointed.”

His tone of voice conveyed a terse edginess. Like Saudi Prince Husayn bin Al-Farhan, Zakir, the prince’s personal aide, was not accustomed to people saying “no” to his demands.

“My sincerest apologies to you and to the prince. I apologize on behalf of our staff and of our company.” The Frenchman’s apology came with his trademark politeness and nasal accent. “It is impossible, simply impossible to satisfy the prince’s request. Bugatti Veyron Super Sport creations, like all our editions, have to fulfill very strict international standards of safety. We cannot, simply cannot, boost the engine horsepower in order to increase the speed. You see, the other parts of the automobile, the tires, headlights, mirrors, they cannot withstand such radical changes.”

“I’m not interested in a crash course in car mechanics. I’m interested in making sure the prince owns the fastest and the most powerful car in the world,” Zakir said. “You will hear from me again, once the prince is informed about your refusal. I promise you, it will not be pleasant.”