Gideon's War/Hard Target (3 page)

Despite the sick feeling rising from the deepest part of himself, Gideon found himself nodding his head.

CHAPTER FOUR

“COULDN’T YOU AT LEAST have wiped off the poor guy’s blood first?” The artist frowned as he studied the passport.

The bearded man in the camouflage baseball cap didn’t speak. The crown of his hat bore the prominent outline of some kind of pistol. The artist—his name was Barry Wine—had never met anyone he liked who wore a hat with a picture of a gun on it. Or a gun logo. Or a gun joke. Or a gun anything.

Gun people were morons. Barry Wine detested morons.

Wine was a freelance document forger. In the trade, document forgers are called “artists.” Once upon a time he’d been with the Company. But there had been a minor misunderstanding about some receipts for supplies, and now he had to take whatever work he could get. Even for guys like this troglodyte creep in the baseball cap. Barry Wine had operated out of Singapore for a while, but the tax situation was better here in Mohan. And now he was holding the bloodstained passport for some poor bastard named Cole Ransom. The humorless guy in the baseball cap wanted him to replace the photo of the real guy with a photo of himself. Artists referred to this as a “face pull.”

Barry Wine was a perfectionist, so he didn’t like face pulling. It offended his dignity and professionalism. Face pulling was a crude and thuggish procedure that any high school art student could do. If you were a serious professional, you did a “fab”—a complete fabrication of the passport. But a perfect fab took two to three weeks. And that was only if you could get your hands on the right kind of paper.

“Did I ever tell you about that Bulgarian passport I did for our mutual friend?” Barry Wine said. “The Bulgarian passport—it’s the one and only artistic achievement of any note in the entire history of the Bulgarian people. Absolute work of art. The flash page is intaglio printed if you can believe that. All the paper is manufactured at this very small factory near the Turkish border. Seven unique colors of hand-dyed security threads. Silk threads. They even have a security feature that’s unique to the Bulgarians. An integral magstripe made from powdered magnetite that’s literally impregnated into the paper. Impregnated! No plastic film involved. None whatsoever. I had to paint it in with this tiny hog-bristle paintbrush—”

The bearded man looked at Barry Wine with his empty black eyes.

“Sorry,” Barry Wine said. “Sorry. I just need to get your picture inserted in the passport. It’ll take awhile. Feel free to grab some lunch and come back.”

The bearded man didn’t move.

The artist was eager to do anythisoe D‡ng that would get the man’s eyes off of him. He pushed the Gucci bag with the rest of the documents in it across the table toward the man in the camouflage hat. “It’s all there. Feel free to review them. Company IDs, Social Security card, credit cards, you name it. I even threw in a library card from the Baton Rouge Central Library. Which I thought was a nice touch.”

Barry Wine waited for some kind of approval or appreciation for his extra effort. But all he got was a tight nod. So he returned his attention to the passport.

He sharpened his X-Acto knife on a 1200-grit diamond stone using a small jig of his own design and then carefully slit the plastic that sealed Cole Ransom’s picture into the passport. It took about twenty minutes to affix the new image. He used a special solvent he’d developed himself to make the line between the new overseal and the old overseal fade away. You could never make it completely disappear of course. It would get his client past most customs agents and border patrol checkpoints, but Wine still scowled at the passport. Hackwork. This was absolute hackwork and butchery. Nobody cared about quality anymore. Back when he’d started you actually had to learn your craft. Engraving, printing, dye work, the list went on and on. But now all these assholes wanted you to do was slap something in a copy machine. You might as well just go to Kinkos!

He slid the face-pulled passport across the table to his customer. “Here. Notice what I did with the—”

The bearded man swept it up and stuck it in his pocket.

“You’re not even gonna look at it?”

The man reached across the table, picked up the X-Acto knife.

“Careful,” Barry Wine said. “That’s very sharp.”

“I know,” the bearded man said, before he plunged it deep into Barry Wine’s left eye.

Two hours later Detective Senior Grade Wafiq Kalil walked into a small office in central Kota Mohan with a sign that said B. WINE DESIGN on the door. A handful of blue-clad state policemen were milling around the room aimlessly. Wafiq knew the older of the two men, a sergeant named Mustaffa.

“What have we got, Sergeant?”

“An American named Barry Wine,” Sergeant Mustaffa said. He beckoned Wafiq over and said, “You’ll want to see this.”

Wafiq peeked over the counter in the front of the room. A dead white man lay in a pool of blood. Some kind of thin metal cylinder was sticking out of his eye. Before he had died, though, he had apparently managed to write something on the floor in his own blood.

Wafiq squinted, trying to make out the bloody letters. It was not easy. The dead man’s handwriting left a little to be desired.

Now that the sergeant had said it, he could see the letters, too. “Clear this room,” Wafiq shouted. “Now!”

CHAPTER FIVE

WHEN GIDEON AND PARKER d m T‡deplaned, they were greeted by a furnace blast of muggy air and a phalanx of heavily armed soldiers who had formed two parallel lines, creating a corridor between the plane and the gleaming modern air terminal. They wore tropical tan uniforms and olive drab berets. They faced outward, their eyes scanning for potential threats.

“These guys look serious,” Gideon said.

“They are,” Parker muttered.

A small Mohanese man in a military uniform burst out of a doorway from the terminal, trailed by four more uniformed men. Gideon counted four stars on his epaulets. Clamped between his teeth was a corncob pipe, canted at the same angle favored by General MacArthur, which he removed as he shook Parker’s hand.

“Mr. Parker,” the military man said. “A pleasure as always.”

“General Prang, this is Gideon Davis.”

Prang studied Gideon’s face as they shook hands.

“This way, please.” The general indicated a Range Rover parked near the jet. Flanking the Range Rover were two Chevy Suburbans and a Lincoln Town Car. Next to each Suburban stood more uniformed men. They all carried MP5s and wore small earpieces and throat mikes. These were elite commandos, not the ceremonial window dressing typically sent to impress visiting dignitaries.

Parker turned and said to Gideon, “General Prang will brief you on the operational details, and we’ll meet after you’ve picked up your brother.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m picking up our ambassador, then heading out to the Obelisk.”

“What for?”

“That’s where we’ll meet once you’ve got Tillman. I set up an official state visit as a cover for the exfil operation. I’ll be making a public statement to the media about our solidarity with the Sultan and our pledge of continued economic support—all the usual bullshit. Your brother will be safer on the rig than on the mainland, until we transport him to a U.S. naval vessel.”

“Fine. Except I still haven’t heard how this is going to happen.”

“I told you, General Prang will explain everything.” He leaned toward Gideon and lowered his voice. “Prang’s a good man. Tillman trusts him—as much as he trusts anybody right now. Do what he says, and he’ll get you to Tillman.”

Gideon studied Parker for a moment before he nodded his okay.

“Good luck,” Parker said. Gideon watched him get into the waiting Lincoln Town Car, which sped away.

“This way, Mr. Davis. Please.” General Prang was gesturing impatiently toward the Range Rover. His accent was more English public school than Southeast Asia. “Not to rush you, but the longer we stay here the more exposed we are.”

“Exposed?”

Prang took his pipe out of his teeth and swept the horizon with it. “Snipers.”

“Is it really that bad hheiá that badere?”

“Just precautions, Mr. Davis. Just precautions.”

As soon as Gideon climbed into the idling Range Rover, the door slammed, and the motorcade leapt forward.

Gideon turned to Prang. “Tell me where I’m meeting my brother.”

The general took off his sunglasses and wiped each lens carefully with a small handkerchief before placing the glasses in his breast pocket. His eyes never left Gideon’s.

“I hope you have not been misled, Mr. Davis, but what you are about to embark on is not, as they say, a walk in the park.”

The motorcade was speeding down the empty two-lane road. Not a single other vehicle was in sight. Given the size of the city in the near distance, the complete absence of traffic could only mean that the road had been closed off so their motorcade could travel on it unmolested. Normally this was the sort of accommodation made for visiting heads of state. Gideon took it as a measure of how important this mission must be to the Sultan.

“It has not been widely reported, but the Sultan’s government is losing ground quickly. The jihadis and their proxies control four of the nine provinces in the Sultanate.”

“The briefing book I just read said they controlled only two provinces.”

“That was last week,” General Prang said drily. “Now the insurgents are gathering on the outskirts of KM—”

“KM?”

“Kota Mohan, our capital. The city proper is secure, as are the provinces to the west of KM. How long this will last . . . no one can say.”

“So where are we going? Where exactly?”

Prang drew deeply on his pipe. Smoke filtered from his mouth as he spoke. “You look different than him. Except for the eyes.” Gideon squirmed under the general’s scrutiny. “I considered your brother a friend, you know. He is an extraordinary man. Great force of will. But there was always a darkness inside him that kept him distant from his true friends. His betrayal was painful to me, but it was not surprising.”

Gideon bristled. Whatever truth there might be to what Prang was saying, Gideon resented hearing it from a stranger. It was something he’d never admitted to anyone, not even to himself, but Gideon understood the source of his brother’s darkness better than anyone. Even though their paths had diverged, their lives had been stained by the same tragedy. Gideon didn’t need a psychiatrist to tell him that the seeds of his work as a peacemaker were sown in the anger between his parents. Although their anger would erupt into violence only occasionally, during one of those eruptions, everything had changed forever. Had the pull of that ancient ugliness finally dragged Tillman down some dark hole that he couldn’t return from? Gideon still couldn’t bring himself to believe it.

“Watch your back,” General Prang said. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

“Tillman would never turn on me.”

“I thought the same thing,” said Prang wistfully. Clearly, he stied árly, he sll carried with him the pain of Tillman’s betrayal. Then, suddenly, he snapped his fingers, and an aide in the front seat handed the general a plastic map and red marker.

Prang spread the map on his knees. “We are traveling along National Road 7. Here. Next we will turn onto Provincial Road 91. Then we’ll cut across on a smaller rural road. At a town called Alun Jong we will turn you over to a river pilot.” The general circled a dot on the map with the red marker. “He will take you upriver. Local security has been arranged. You’ll be safe . . . at least until you get to the upper reaches of the river.”

“And then?”

“Things could get a bit spicy for a kilometer or two. Once you hit the fall line, though, you’ll reach territory controlled by your brother. His base of support is in the uplands.”

“So we’ll be going through rebel territory before we reach him.”

“Just a brief stretch.”

As General Prang spoke, their convoy turned onto a new road. There was traffic now, but it was all going in the opposite direction. Trucks piled high with personal belongings, cars stuffed with extra passengers. Alongside the road, people were walking or riding in carts pulled by water buffalo. Occasional herds of goats scattered as the convoy blasted through. Gideon recognized the look on these people’s faces, their grim determination barely covering their uncertainty and fear. It was the face of the refugee.

The Range Rover was tearing along at nearly a hundred miles an hour, the driver pressing his horn repeatedly as Prang continued. “At the headwaters of the river, you’ll have to go by foot. A guide will lead you through the mountains, to a place called Kampung Naga. That’s where you’ll find your brother.” He made another circle, then wrote the name of the town. Nothing printed on the map itself indicated the location of Kampung Naga. “Ideally you’ll both return by river. If that becomes impossible for any reason, your government has a chopper crew standing by. The contact code and frequency are on the back of your map.” He turned the map over. A seven-digit sequence was printed on the reverse. “We’ll give you a radio transmitter when we reach Alun Jong.”

Gideon frowned at the map. “Are there no roads leading to Kampung Naga? Why aren’t we going by land?”

“There is some . . . uncertainty regarding the roads right now. The river, on the other hand, is still patrolled by boats from the national police.”

“Why not go by air?”

“Because the insurgents have shoulder-fired missiles. Thanks to your brother, I might add. Not many, but some. And there are more extremist sympathizers inside our government than the Sultan will admit. All it would take is for one of them to give away your flight plan. No, the river is the safest route.”

Gideon’s success had been built on his willingness to take personal risks, to step outside the comfort zone of resort hotels and government compounds. Only by ignoring diplomatic protocols and going it alone in the Colombian jungle had Gideon been able to negotiate an agreement between the rebels and the government. Still, a voice in the back of his head was whispering that he was being sent on a fool’s errand, that he should tel foá should tl the general to turn around and take him back to the airport.

If Tillman weren’t his brother, he might have done just that. Despite their estrangement, Gideon had always told himself that he would be there for his brother no matter what. And viewed in that light, he had no choice except to see this through.

“We’ll be traveling into the backcountry now. The road may get a little rough, but my people tell me this is the safest route to Kampung Naga.”

As he spoke, the vehicles screeched off the road onto a narrow, unpaved track. They barely slowed down, though. They were well past the city limits, tearing past rice paddies and houses roofed with corrugated iron and plastic tarps. Chickens pecked at the ground, and pigs rooted here and there. Water buffalo aimed their dull eyes at the passing motorcade.

Gideon felt a pinprick of concern. “Excuse me for speaking so bluntly, General Prang. But if Tillman betrayed you, tell me why I should trust you with his safety. Or mine for that matter?”

The left corner of General Prang’s lip curled upward, an unconvincing attempt to cover his anger at Gideon’s question with a smile. “I carry the Sultan’s personal guarantee.”

“With all due respect, I don’t know the Sultan.”

“With all due respect to you, Mr. Davis, you don’t have a choice in the matter. Not if you wish to see your brother again.”

Gideon locked eyes with the general, who held his look. Sensing no duplicity, just a matter-of-fact appraisal of the situation, Gideon said, “Fair enough.”

General Prang nodded.

“We’re close. A few kilometers before we reach the river. I’m sure you have many questions. I’ll answer as many as I can before we get there.”

“I got dragged straight from a function at the UN,” Gideon said, waggling the corners of his black bow tie. “I feel just a hair overdressed. You think I might be able to change somewhere along the way?”

General Prang laughed. “I’m sure we can find something for you when we reach—”

The explosion that interrupted the general’s sentence lifted the lead car in the motorcade into the air and tossed it into a nearby rice paddy like a Tonka truck flung by an angry child. The shock wave blew the entire windshield back into the Range Rover, shattering the safety glass, which sprayed over the two men in the front seat.

Before the lead vehicle had even come to rest, bullets began thumping into the general’s vehicle, each one making a sharp thud, like the blow of a small hammer. Prang began shouting orders in a language Gideon didn’t understand.

But whatever the general was telling his driver quickly became irrelevant. Blinded by the shattered windshield, the driver struggled wildly to control the wheel. The Range Rover cut sharply to the right, the left front wheel digging into the soft dirt at the edge of the road. The vehicle shuddered, listed hard to the left, and began to flip end over end.

On a few occasions of particular stress in his life, Gideon had noticed that time seemed to slow down, to stt uádown, to retch like taffy. This was one of those occasions. The crash unfolded at a strange, leisurely pace, the Rover rotating as slow as a Ferris wheel. Once, twice, three times—the bullets whacking into the car as it bounced and flipped.

When it finally stopped, the car lying upside down, the bullets continued to thud against the steel body. They blew out windows, bits of seat cushions, the television screen on the back of the passenger seat, and several pieces of the general’s rib cage. Miraculously, nothing hit Gideon.

Just as suddenly as the onslaught had started, it stopped. Dead silence. Gideon’s vehicle had landed on its roof in a flooded rice paddy. Brown water leaked rapidly into the cabin.

Gideon was hanging upside down, retained by his seat belt. He tried unbuckling the belt, but it was jammed. He shifted his weight until he managed to open the buckle, then fell into the stinking brown water that was quickly flooding the inverted roof.

The general was also hanging upside down, blood dripping down his face and into the quickly collecting water. The corncob pipe was still clamped between his teeth. Gideon took the Benchmark knife the general had clipped on his pocket, cut his seat belt, and eased the man down into the water. Red circles bloomed where the shrapnel had sliced through his uniform and into his torso. From one of the frag wounds, blood was spilling in powerful pulsing surges, which meant the shrapnel had hit an artery.

Prang’s rheumy eyes locked on Gideon’s. “Alun Jong,” he whispered, his voice hollow and cracked. “Go to Alun Jong. A boat pilot named Daryl Eng . . . he’ll get you to your brother.”

Then General Prang’s face went slack, and the pipe slipped from his lips and tumbled into the water with a soft splash. It hissed, then went silent.

Gideon heard men shouting commands and the sound of their feet sloshing through the rice paddy. How close were they? He couldn’t tell, but he could hear them getting closer.

Gideon’s eyes fell on the general’s holstered pistol, a chromed Colt 1911 autoloader with ivory grips, cocked and locked. He grabbed the pistol, freed it from the holster, checked the chamber. A brass cartridge gleamed in the throat of the gun.

It was the oddest sensation, how easily it all came back. The sensation of the pistol, the sound, the feel. The 1911 felt—as it always had to him—like an extension of his own hand. For a moment, he froze. It had been almost twenty years since he’d touched a gun—any gun. A complex mix of feelings flooded through him. The first sensation was of pleasure, of the rightness of the thing, the purity of it in his hand.