Vengeance: A Derek Stillwater Novel (Derek Stillwater Thrillers Book 8) (28 page)

Hafaz said, “Just blow it up and get it over with.”

“I want to move it closer to the Academy barracks. Follow me over.”

“It’s dangerous and they’re probably tracking us.”

“Just do it.”

Nazif slid out of the Mercedes and ran over to the cab of the truck, climbing up into the driver’s seat. With a roar the engine fired up and he pulled the truck around, heading it toward the largest concentration of barracks, where hundreds of future Egyptian military officers lived. He had hoped to detonate this truck, along with Secretary of State Mandalevo, at night near the barracks when they would all be sleeping. Now they were scattered around the complex, taking classes, working, some marching in formation. It would have to do.

As they drove from under the trees, Nazif spotted an orange ambulance racing toward them. He instantly thought of the ambulance Stillwater had used at the International Stadium. With rage at his own stupidity, he flung the cell phone out of the cab of the truck, worked the clutch and the gas, shifting up, urging the truck forward with every inch of his will. He would go out a martyr if he had to, but he wouldn’t go out alone.

The military truck
belched black smoke. The Mercedes swerved, as if the driver was startled by their appearance. Then the Mercedes pulled away from the truck, spinning sideways in front of their path.

Derek saw the driver raising a machine gun.

Noa spun the wheel, cursing in Hebrew, “
Dafuk barosh! Harah! Harah! Leh lehizdayen!
”

I should get a translation later, Derek thought. He raised the MP5 and fired a quick burst toward the Mercedes. “Nazif’s in the truck! We need to—”

“
Hatichat hara!
I know! But the truck’s not shooting at us!”

Noa spun the wheel, expertly turning the ambulance so Derek would get a better shot.

The driver of the Mercedes fired with one arm. Slugs tore into the ambulance. Something in the engine compartment coughed and smoke billowed from beneath the hood.

“Easy, easy,” Derek said. The Mercedes skidded to a halt. The driver jumped out and crouched behind the engine, AK47 braced against the hood.

“Not much left here, hang on!” She gunned it. Black oily smoke poured from the engine, but the ambulance leapt forward.

“Hang on?” Derek said, as the ambulance roared directly toward the Mercedes.

She swerved left, then right, then right again, and left, right again. They roared past the Mercedes on the driver’s left side. The driver fired off a burst as they passed. At least one round struck the vehicle, punching a hole through the side only inches from Noa’s head.

Derek slammed his fist down on the dashboard. Noa was on the Mercedes’ side of the ambulance. He couldn’t get a shot.

But she was firing her pistol with her left hand, slow, steady, regular shots. Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!

The Mercedes driver fired off another burst, scrambling away. Jaw set, eyes hard, Noa fired. Pow! Pow!

The driver of the Mercedes—Hafaz—went down on his knees.

Noa slammed the ambulance to a halt, taking careful aim. Pow!

Hafaz went down.

Derek leapt out of the ambulance, sprinting for all he was worth toward the Mercedes. One glance told him the shooter was dead.

He kicked him aside and slithered behind the wheel of the Mercedes. The windshield was gone, but the engine still ticked over. Noa jumped into the passenger seat and he slammed the pedal down, steering in an arc to head after Nazif and the truck.

Wind blasting into their faces
through the open windshield, squinting to see, they were three hundred meters behind the truck. Beside him, Noa reloaded her gun.

“Mandalevo might be in that truck,” he said.

“I know. And it’s probably rigged to explode. Any gunshots, make them count.”

He thought about saying, “This isn’t your fight. Why don’t you stay back,” but now seemed a little late in the game. For better or for worse, they had been partners today and she would have his back and he would have hers.

Slowly they gained on the truck, which was entering rows of barracks. Then the truck stopped.

In seconds they were on top of it. Derek pulled the Mercedes alongside one of the barracks. Seeing no one, they jumped out, taking cover behind one corner of the building.

Dropping low and peeking around the corner, Derek saw the truck, but didn’t see Nazif.

Plonk!

A grenade dropped onto the ground by the car. Derek and Noa dived to the ground. The grenade went off with a roar, tearing the Mercedes to pieces.

Noa pointed around the opposite side. He nodded and pointed toward the truck. The smoke and flames from the burning Mercedes would provide him some cover.

She held up three fingers, counted down.

Noa sprinted around back.

Irina: Boris says he’s around the corner of the building, about thirty yards from you, on the opposite side of the truck.

“Affirmative.” Noa’s words echoed in his ears.

Crouching behind the burning wreckage, Derek considered his best move. Nodding his head, he came out from behind cover and sprinted—if his hobbling, hitching gait could be called a sprint—toward the nearest barracks.

He was looking straight down the wall. Around the corner, Nazif was waiting for him.

Nazif peeked out, saw him, and tossed another grenade directly at him.

Scrambling back, he fell, rolling around the corner. The grenade went off. Windows shattered.

Spinning to his knees, then lumbering to his feet, Derek considered his options.

Gunfire spit the air.

And was suddenly returned. Noa had snuck up on the Egyptian.

Bursting around the corner, Derek rushed down the wall, stumbling over debris and broken ground.

Noa shouted, “He’s running. He’s got a phone in his hand.”

Nazif had detonated the truck at the Ministry of Defense remotely. They had to prevent that from happening here.

Irina: Between the two buildings, turning right, that’s, uh, north.

Noa: I’ll cut him off.

“I’m behind him.”

Sholes: We’re five minutes out. The Egyptians might be closer.

Sirens suddenly split the air. Presumably the Egyptian Military Academy had security forces on their way.

With enormous effort, Derek picked up his pace, back screaming, leg stiff, shoulder aching. Rounding the corner, gun up, he saw Nazif turn, holding up a phone.

“All I have to do is push
SEND
and Mandalevo’s dead and all of us along with him. Don’t move!” Nazif called.

Noa rounded the corner behind him in a crouch, MP5 raised to her shoulder. She shouted something in Arabic.

“Isn’t this nice,” Nazif said. “The American and the Israeli, bullying the Egyptian.”

“Drop the phone.”

“If I drop it it might go off,” Nazif said. “We wouldn’t want that, now, would we?”

“Put it down or we’ll shoot you and we won’t stop until you’re dead,” Derek said.

Reaching into a pocket, Nazif drew out another grenade. Awkwardly, he pulled the pin, dropping it to the ground, holding the grenade in the same hand as his gun, the other holding
the phone.

“Complicates things, doesn’t it?” Nazif said.

Noa took a step forward.

“Eh-eh-eh,” Nazif said. “If I toss this thing at the truck, everyone dies. Why don’t you put the gun down, bitch.”

“Not likely,” Noa said.

Derek edged closer.

Nazif squinted. “Really, Stillwater? You think I won’t do this?”

“You’re going to be surrounded by Egyptian military pretty soon.”

“How do you Americans say it? The more the—”

Noa fired a single shot.

Surprise on his face, Nazif staggered. She’d shot him low, almost in the ass.

As he crumpled to the ground he tossed the grenade at Noa.

Derek sprinted forward, flying, grasping for the phone. His arm struck Nazif’s elbow and the phone went tumbling to
the ground.

Rolling, Derek scrabbled for the phone.

The grenade went off. Derek knew the wounding radius of a typical fragmentation grenade was about fifty feet. He was about twenty-five feet away from the grenade.

Looking over, he saw Nazif crawling toward the phone. He’d taken some shrapnel from the grenade, but seemed intact. The wound from Noa’s gun was the worst thing. Noa was out of sight. Was she hit?

Derek lunged toward the phone.

They both reached it at the same time. Derek gripped Nazif’s wrist, levering him away from the phone.

With his other hand Nazif punched Derek’s bad shoulder. His grip on Nazif loosened and the man twisted away.

Reaching out, Derek swung his arm, sending the phone flying toward the truck, a dozen feet away.

Now Nazif was reaching for his gun.

Derek tackled him. They rolled in the dirt, punching, scratching, gouging.

“Don’t move!” Noa shouted. Blood oozed from a wound in her right thigh and she stood with most of her weight on her left leg.

It didn’t stop either of them. Derek kneed Nazif’s hip. The man screamed and brought an elbow into Derek’s face. Stunned, Derek fell back.

Two military heavy trucks roared around the corner loaded with a dozen armed men. They jumped out, shouting. A cloud of dust and dirt rose up around them.

Coughing and blinking, Derek lost track of Nazif. He pawed the ground for his MP5, catching it with one arm, swiftly snagging the cell phone.

Turning, he saw Noa standing with her arms in the air, her MP5 at her feet, Egyptian military aiming their guns at them.

“Where’s Nazif?” he shouted. “Where’s Nazif, goddammit?”

Five of the soldiers advanced on him, rifles raised, yelling commands at him in Arabic.

“They’re telling you to put the gun down, Derek,” Noa called.

“Where’s Nazif?”

“They’re trigger-happy, Derek. Drop the gun! They want to shoot somebody!”

Staring around, he saw a figure disappear around the corner of one of the buildings.

Derek pointed. “He’s getting away! That’s—”

One of the soldiers fired a round over his head. Very damned close over his head.

Slowly Derek dropped his MP5 to the ground and raised his hands. He clutched the cell phone in his left hand.

An Egyptian with two stars on his uniform approached him. Derek wasn’t sure, but thought he wore the insignia for a First Lieutenant. In heavily accented English the man said, “Who are you?”

“Dr. Derek Stillwater. United States Department of State. And you just let Hussein Nazif, a known terrorist, get away, dumbass.”

The lieutenant was a tall, muscular man with bronzed skin and a narrow face with a cleft chin. His nose was broad, his eyes dark brown, almost black. “And the woman?”

“Noa Shoshan. She’s with me.”

“She is Israeli.”

“I suggest you make a phone call to General el-Sisi. He knows who I am and he knows why I’m here. Meanwhile, Nazif is getting away.”

“And what is in this truck?” the lieutenant said.

“I’m hoping the U.S. Secretary of State Robert Mandalevo is in there. But Nazif had two trucks just like it filled with explosives. That’s what went off at the mosque and the Ministry of Defense. I’m pretty sure this is rigged with explosives. Do not try to get in there without an explosives team.”

The lieutenant’s face tightened. He turned and consulted with several of his men, who immediately spread out, apparently searching for Nazif. Speaking into a radio, he paced, staring at the truck. Then he turned back to Derek. “I should have the area evacuated, yes?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “Do you have identification?”

“Yes.”

“Slowly drop your hands and give it to me.”

Derek did.

The lieutenant studied Dereks’ credentials. “The woman. She is Mossad?”

“You would have to ask her.”

“I am Lieutenant Geb Hamadi. I have called a bomb squad. Do I say that right?”

“Yes.”

Turning to Noa, Hamadi said, “You may put your hands down.” Then he shouted in Arabic to one of his men, apparently a medic, who ran toward her with a medical kit.

Noa gratefully sank to the ground. Derek knelt beside her. “How bad is it?”

“Hurts, but I was able to stand on it. Took a big chunk out of my thigh.”

The medic, with some apparent embarrassment, asked to cut her pant leg away.

She nodded. Using scissors the medic went to work. It was definitely more than a scratch.

Several minutes later a truck rolled up and three men came out with bags of gear. One of them, who looked to be about sixteen years old, pulled out what Derek recognized as a semi-flexible fiberoptic lens. Before Derek could say anything, the kid approached the back of the truck, studied the steel doors and began to thread the tiny line of the fiberoptic camera through the crack at the bottom.

“Jesus,” Derek said. To Hamadi, he said, “He know the truck could be booby-trapped?”

Hamadi said something in Arabic to the kid, who paused, nodded and continued.

Another of the crew was taking out what looked like a thermal imaging camera and walking slowly alongside the truck.

“You okay?” he asked Noa, who gritted her teeth as the medic worked on her leg.

“Hurts like hell. Picked up some shrapnel.” She gestured to her calf and thigh, which had a dozen cuts. Small pieces of iron jutted from some of them. Her face was pale, covered in sweat and dirt and blood. The medic was removing the bits of metal with a pair of forceps, rinsing the cuts with sterile saline, disinfecting them and gently placing a bandage on each one, speaking to her in
soothing Arabic.

“If this thing is rigged—”

“Then we all die. But someone’s got to check it out. Let them do their jobs.”

Derek nodded, exhaustion washing over him.

He heard the tech with the thermal imager call out to Hamadi. Derek walked over to see what had caught the tech’s attention.

Peering over Hamadi’s shoulder at the screen of the thermal imager, Derek saw the ghostly shape of barrels jammed into the truck. There were no signs of a human being. But with multiple barrels, if Mandalevo was in the truck, he could be in the very center.

The tech and Hamadi exchanged terse Arabic. Derek said, “The barrels might be poison gas.”

Hamadi’s eyes opened wide. “What? Why?”

Describing his encounter in the City of the Dead with the poison gas, Derek said, “It would be consistent.”

“Mohammed says he believes these denser materials are probably plastic explosives.”

“Things just keep getting better and better.”

“You are familiar with poison gas?”

“Yes. It’s one of my specialties.”

“And explosives?”

“Less so, although I’ve had some training.”

Hamadi conferred with the tech briefly, then led Derek to the rear of the truck. Hamadi gave the younger tech the news, who nodded and held up the eyepiece for the fiberoptic viewer.

Derek gingerly took it and peered through. The view was from the floor and used some sort of light magnification system, so everything was in ghostly blacks, grays and whites. On both sides of the truck were floor to ceiling barrels. A narrow pathway cut up the middle of the truck. At the far end a human figure leaned against more barrels in a seated position.

Mandalevo.

Dead or alive?

Derek couldn’t tell.

“Is the door rigged?”

Hamadi asked the tech in Arabic. The Lieutenant translated. “He doesn’t think so, but he’s not positive. We’ll want to get Mohammed to image them before we try to open them.”

Derek asked the young tech, whose name was Zizo, how to control the viewer. Zizo demonstrated, saying something to Hamadi to translate.

“He says to go very slowly and carefully. If there are tripwires you don’t want to hit one. But he says he hasn’t seen anything like that.”

Derek thought the way Nazif had been driving the truck that something as finicky as tripwires or laser beam triggers was unlikely. The terrorist had definitely had it set to go off with a phone call. But with Nazif running around loose, they couldn’t wait much longer. He commented on this and Hamadi nodded. “We are jamming radio and phone signals in the area.”

“Good idea.”

Crouching down, he peered through the viewer, manipulating it so it rotated upward and he could look at the door and the hinges. Nothing obvious. No wires. No explosives. Nothing.

Handing it back to Zizo, Derek said, “If you get the doors open without blowing up, I’m willing to be the first one in.”

Behind him, standing awkwardly, Noa said, “Why don’t you let the Egyptians do it.”

“Bob’s in there.”

She sighed.

Hamadi conferred in Arabic with Zizo. Derek saw Noa’s jaw tighten.

“Very well, Dr. Stillwater. You and Zizo will go in.” And he smiled, his teeth crooked and yellow. “If we don’t all blow up when he opens the door.”

“I’m going in as well,” Noa said.

Staring at her, Derek said, “Why?”

“Translating. Zizo doesn’t speak English.”

Their eyes met. He considered arguing with her, but what would be the point? He nodded. “Thank you.”