Ark Storm (38 page)

Next he took out a stick of face camo.
Roughie-toughie makeup
his Brit friends in the SAS called it, so dubbed by their girlfriends. He dabbed the stick onto his face, rubbed it in streaks, secured it back in the kit bag. Last, he took out a condom, stashed it in his pocket. Then he locked the kit bag in his car. On a hunch, he grabbed Gwen’s pocketbook, slipped it into the large inner pocket of his rain jacket. Next he locked his car and zipped his keys into his jacket pocket. The rain had soaked his jeans already and slicked his hair to his head. It was cold and he shivered. He needed to get moving, but first he had one more job.

He moved into the undergrowth, gathered an armful of branches. The shoulder holster dug into him as he bent and stretched, but he found the pressure reassuring. He arrayed the branches over his car, starting with any areas that reflected light; windscreen, lights. Quickly he covered the Cougar. It helped that it was black. He would only ever drive black cars.

He straightened up, checked the job from a number of angles and distances, satisfied himself. The wind would blow off the branches sooner or later, but he’d done what he could.

The visibility was poor. Thanks to the cloud cover and rain, the darkness was almost total. A haze of light pollution from San Francisco and Monterey provided just a hint of light.

He unzipped his pocket, pulled on the single-eye night-vision goggle. He knew well enough the problem with NVGs was that if there were a flash of light, like from a gun barrel, he’d be blind for about four seconds. By choice, he always used a single goggle, leaving one eye uncovered.

No turning back now. If he were found by any law enforcement types who happened upon the scene he was beyond any doubt equipped to kill. He unzipped his jacket, took out his Heckler & Koch from the shoulder holster, opened the condom and slipped it over the barrel. He probably didn’t need it, the weapon wasn’t going to get submerged in water, but just in case …

He moved from the scrub, H & K held securely, an extension of his arm. Out into the open, he stopped, listened, and looked. Again nothing.

He had a rough idea of the topography. He should be able to walk an unimpeded course to Hurricane Point unless the tide were very high. He cast his mind back to the last time he had surfed, worked the calculations since, smiled. He headed for the beach. Luck was on his side; the tide was out. But when he walked onto the sand he thought he must have miscalculated. Huge waves were breaking and shuddering and racing up the beach. There was room to walk, but a rogue wave was a distinct possibility.

He hugged the contours of the cliff, not just to avoid the raging sea, but to stay hidden, to blend his own outline with the rough bushes that clung to the sloping land that edged the sand.

He couldn’t afford to linger, to move as slowly as he would have liked. Gwen could be at home right now with the killers closing in. He moved at a lope, long legs covering the ground. His kit was not as silent as he would have liked, but here the raging seas, the rain, and the rising wind were his allies. He moved through the dark, armed like a knight of old, and with the sole intent that the knights would have found worthy. He went in defense of someone he loved, futile though that love might be. It would be him against however many men Messenger or whoever was behind the operation decided to throw at them: four, five, maybe more. Certainly not less. Those weren’t great odds. He’d faced better. He’d faced worse.

He didn’t want to die, but like the Shuhada’, he was ready to if need be. Difference was, he knew there would not be seventy-two virgins awaiting him in Paradise. He didn’t know what there would be. A void, or a something … A Heaven or a Hell.… and with what he had done and seen, even if Heaven existed he doubted he would be admitted.

He ran on through the darkness. He slowed, stopped as a detail in the rock caught his eye. Mostly the beach was bounded by rough ground sloping down to the sand, but for stretches there were rocky cliffs. He stopped beside one now, noting the indentation, a cave of sorts. He moved in, out of the rain, glanced around. It was about fifteen feet deep. He filed it away, moved out and on along the beach.

He rounded a contour, saw above him the light shining in Gwen’s house. He felt his pulse quicken. He paused. No room for impulsive dashes, no room for mistakes. Now he had to slow, to move undetected.

He approached as close as he could on foot, veiled by the darkness, any slight noise he made covered by the waves. Then he had no choice but to fall to his stomach and leopard crawl, yard by yard, H & K extended in front, closer and closer, stopping, listening, straining all his senses to pick up anything human.

He got close enough to observe the front of the house. Gwen’s car was not there. He let out a slow breath of relief. He prayed she had some bolt-hole neither he nor the surveillance team knew about. No other car was there either, but then he hadn’t expected the killers to roll up and park in full view. He waited, watched. The rain sluiced down on him and the wind chilled him as the minutes ticked by, but he stayed where he was. He’d waited hours in far worse conditions. He’d forgotten the misery of it, told himself the special ops mantra: pain, discomfort of any kind, is just a sensation. It has no power beyond what you choose to give it.

Ninety-five percent of his mind was utterly focused on waiting, watching, on readying himself. The other five percent wandered. He froze suddenly. He had forgotten to turn off Gwen’s cell. He heard his trainers’ voices dripping scorn.
Amateurs die. You cannot afford a single mistake.
Feeling a flush of shame, he set down the H & K, reached into his pocket, took out the pocketbook, felt around for the cell phone. It seemed to have hidden itself. His fingers probed. In the night, all the senses were heightened in normal times, and as his fingers brushed over a stud, one in a row, larger than the others and out of sequence, his senses leapt. Keeping his finger in place, he pulled the bag up to his goggled eye, carefully wiped the rain from the lens, scrutinized the stud, smiled slowly. He let it go, found the phone, switched it to silent, as was his own phone. He rapidly made a new plan.

He picked up his weapon, turned, crawled forward until the scrub shielded him, then he ran at a crouch back down to the beach. It took him four minutes to get to the cave. He took Gwen’s pocketbook from his jacket pocket, stashed it in the furthest corner of the cave, then moved out, looking for cover closer to Gwen’s house.

If his calculations were correct, the tracker beacon he’d found in the bag would lead the killers straight to the cave. They might wonder what Gwen Boudain was doing in a cave, they might be suspicious, but they would have no choice but to check it out.

He found the perfect spot, another small cave about two hundred meters from where the pocketbook was stashed. He settled down just inside, lying on his stomach. He switched the goggle to the other eye so that he could just peek round the edge of the cave and watch the approach from the house. He felt fairly sure that the killers, when they came, would come that way.

He switched off all other thought, just focused on the night. He heard the surf roaring in. The tide was turning, he could hear it, could see the waves encroaching. They were getting bigger, propelled up and in by the growing wind, and by a storm, a bigger storm, far out to sea. Coming his way. He had maybe two hours before he would be forced to move. In his mind the images flooded back, the killing moves. He had tried for years to keep them at bay; now he called them up, reveled in them, felt the blood flow.

103

THE SUPER-YACHT,
ZEPHYR
,
9:30 P.M.

Sheikh Ali stood in his stateroom, feet braced against the pitching and tossing. The windows, uncurtained, gave out onto unrelieved blackness. Rain lashed the glass and he could hear the wind roaring. His yacht was still in control, but the storm was challenging her.

He was speaking on his encrypted cell phone with The Man. He was on the edge of control. “Have you found Gwen Boudain?” he demanded, voice fast and clipped.

“We’ve not closed with her. Not yet. But we know where she is.”

“Then go in and eliminate her. Every second passes she could be on the phone to the cops.”

“I don’t think there’ll be a signal where she is.”

“Meaning?” Sheikh Ali bent down, took a mouthful of hot coffee, slammed down the cup. The contents lurched over the side of the golden cup and dripped from the mahogany low table onto the handwoven carpet.

“She’s in a cave, hiding out, on the beach one mile north of her home.”

“Since you know where she is, why the delay?” The Sheikh’s voice rose with disbelief.

“We think it could be a trap. We cannot find her car, nor Jacobsen’s, just the signal coming from her pocketbook.”

“How many men are out there?”

“Five.”

“And you are hesitating, with five men up against one woman, possibly with a man at her side. A meteorologist and a journalist.
Have your men killed before?
”

The Sheikh held the cell phone in a death grip. His fury, his disbelief was threatening to overwhelm him. He struggled to control himself, not for the sake of The Man, but for his own clarity. Loss of temper was a weakness he despised.

“You know they have. They are your men. Handpicked.”

The Sheikh nodded slowly. “They have the blood of many on their hands, and you hesitate to use them against these amateurs. Send them in
now
. Kill them. Leave no trace of the bodies. Do you think if they had called the cops they would be hiding in some cave on a seashore?”

“No. I just don’t know why they would feel the need to hide. Doesn’t make sense. That bothers me.”

“They probably spotted your surveillance guys! Maybe old Freidland told them something new.
Khalas!
Enough! It’s their time. Send in the men. Now!”

The Man nodded. What choice did he have? And as the Sheikh pointed out, even if Jacobsen were there with Gwen, the man was a journalist. Neither of them posed any real threat.

104

HURRICANE POINT

It had been three years since he’d been active, since he’d last killed, or been in the theater, as they called it. He knew he must have been rusty, but he didn’t feel it. Every sense was screamingly alive. He felt them coming. He felt it before he saw them. Some animal instinct that went beyond training. You just had to silence the noise to let it speak, to hear it. He heard it now. He held the SIG in his left hand, the Heckler in his right. He would prefer not to use his own weapons in case they were traced back to him, but he would if he had to. He had used them in Iraq, had them smuggled back to him. Were they traced back to him, there would be a furor that would stretch from the Pentagon to the White House; the trained killer gone rogue on home soil.… No, better he killed by knife, or hand. If he had the choice.

He waited. He saw the party split, saw two men aim off, up the hill. They would come at the pocketbook, at where they thought he, or Gwen, or both of them were, from left and from right. That would have made it harder, had he not foreseen it, had he not moved. They weren’t complete amateurs. He still didn’t think he would die. He never did. It was always an academic possibility, but he never allowed it to feel real. Never allowed himself to imagine the bullets slicing into his own flesh, or the knives, or any of the weapons he had used on others.

*   *   *

Two came forward from the south. They should coordinate with the two coming from the north, to the second, if they were good. He waited in the shadows, breathing, listening, feeling. The roar of the surf and the growing storm drowned out most sound. But not all. He could hear the soft fall of their feet as they closed on him. He could smell them. Aftershave, coffee, cigarettes. And adrenaline. Not fear. That was a rank smell, deeper and harsher and stronger. They didn’t fear him. They didn’t know who he was.

One followed the other. He holstered his weapons. He let the first man pass, so near he felt his heat. Then he straightened, grabbed the second man’s head, twisted. The click of the broken spine was immediate. The man slumped. Dan laid him down, took his knife from the ankle holster. Two strides and he got the man in front. Some instinct made this man turn at the last moment. He locked eyes as Dan plunged the dagger into his throat, deepened, slashed, watched the eyes roll back, heard the futile attempt as the man tried to cry out, drowned in his own blood. Dan laid him down, pulled him out of sight. The man’s blood spurted over him. He felt the flare of revulsion, brutally shoved it down. He hid the other man, then took both sets of weapons: one a
Š
korpion machine pistol and the other a Makarov pistol, both Soviet weapons.

The two other men should be nearing the cave now. Dan moved slowly. He could feel his blood throbbing in the pulse points: throat, neck, temple. He could feel it coursing through his veins, in protest, in thrill, in horror, and in screaming, defiant life.

He saw them ahead, creeping along the cliff wall, glancing right and left, unaware. He waited until they had entered the cave, then moved closer. He wanted to get them in a range of ten meters or less.

He heard them crashing around inside. Heard the dismay, unmistakeable, even in Arabic. He could decipher their repeated questions:
Where were Ashgar and Jaffar?

The first one rushed out, the second close behind. Dan fired the Makarov, taking down the first man with two shots to the body, another to the head, rolling as he fired, aiming at the second man with the
Š
corpion. He fired off three head shots. The
Š
korpion had a far smaller caliber round than the Makarov, making it more accurate. Dan wanted instant death and that meant hitting the cerebral cortex. All three shots hit and the man crumpled. Neither man had moved fast enough to fire back a single shot. But there should be another man.

Dan moved back into the cover of the cave, hunting him. There should always be a fallback guy. If he were good, he would come after Dan now. But there
was
no fallback guy. Most likely he was in a depth position further away. If he had guts he would come now, slowly hunting Dan. Most likely he would run. Dan waited in the cave. He heard the waves roaring nearer. He couldn’t stay long. Fifteen minutes later, the spray from the waves gusted in, lacing his face with brine. Time to go. In a fight with the waves, the waves would win.