Gone Black (19 page)

Novak and his team had touched down on an airstrip outside the French city of Marseilles, a good seven hours or more after Claire had left Cedar Bend Lodge on the helicopter. They had made good time, caught good tailwinds, and Nick Black's GPS signal was blinking steadily at the same coordinates as it had been during the entire flight. He had not been moved, so thank God for that much good luck. Claire had not been so lucky. Novak's greatest concern was that they would take her somewhere else entirely. If that happened, he knew that they'd never find her in time to save her life.

Novak also thought it was highly suspicious that they'd found both of Claire's tracking devices but missed one of Black's. He was their primary target, was he not? Why hadn't they searched him more thoroughly? Or maybe he wasn't the one they were really after. Maybe it was the other way around, maybe Claire was their target and they used Nick as bait to draw her to them. God, he hoped that wasn't the case. She sure as hell had as many enemies as Black did, had really tangled with some dangerous people during her tenure as a homicide detective, no doubt about it. She had put so many people behind bars that it could very well be a grudge thing against her. She'd left others dead. Maybe it was one of their family members exacting vengeance.

Once the plane hit the ground and rolled to a standstill, Jack left his copilot on board to guard the aircraft. Black's jet had been blown up while under guard. According to his men, he always left an armed pilot on board. Things were already out of control. Fortunately Booker's copilot was an older man, retired military, maybe in his late fifties, but he was an old friend of Jack's and a long-term employee at Holliday Aviation and was heavily armed. The aircraft would be safe enough with him. Jack told them the guy could be trusted, and Novak didn't have any reason to doubt him. Truth was, Novak was suspicious of everyone connected with this mission. Mistakes had been made already, mistakes that might cost Claire and Nick their lives. They better not make any more.

Grabbing two heavy backpacks, one with his weapons and ammo, the other filled with enough military-issue M112 blocks of C-4 and blasting caps to take down a house, he followed Booker and Holliday down the lowered steps and out in the darkness and through a large field of tall wild grass to a double-door garage, completely hidden inside a thick grove of white oak trees. The night was very quiet, and when Booker unlocked and rolled up the right-hand door, the sound it made seemed loud in the stillness. The vehicle parked inside was a small, dark gray 2010 Renault, probably legally licensed and used for transportation whenever Black's three-man team were on French soil. He still didn't know exactly what kind of covert missions they embarked on, probably rescue ops or covert surveillance, but he did know enough not to ask nosy questions. Truth was, he didn't particularly want to be privy to that kind of information. He had a feeling that it wouldn't be good for his health.

One thing for sure, too, they sure as hell weren't gonna tell him. He didn't want to know why Nick was involved, either, a civilian and well-known psychiatrist. If he had to guess, he'd say it had to do with psyops missions so Nick was in charge and team leader and did the job very well. Nick was a smart guy, knew what made people tick. That would serve them in good stead most of the time but right now did the opposite. If Nick planned and executed their extraction operations, they were at a distinct disadvantage without him. Right now, all Novak wanted was to find Claire and Black, get them the hell out of France, and the sooner he could do that the better. Without a word spoken, the three of them stowed their gear in the boot space but kept their personal firearms close at hand.

“This car is licensed and legit over here, right?” he asked Booker, certainly not wanting to be picked up by the Marseilles police for some insignificant traffic violation.

“Yeah. We all have false identity papers and driver's licenses, too. Do you?”

“Yeah, for about twenty years. Except all my stuff really is legal.”

“Good, your connections over here just might come in handy before this thing is done.”

Novak didn't reply. He had lots of close relatives that he could call on for help if need be. He had already contacted a couple of them and given them a quiet heads-up about what was going down. He also asked them to try to find out where the Soquets had last holed up and if the chateau to which they were headed was the correct destination. They could do some digging without detection, and they were blood relatives. They would keep their mouths shut. The only thing they wouldn't do for him was break French laws. But if Novak got caught doing something illegal, they could and would intervene. And that was a very good thing, since just about everything they were getting ready to do was completely illegal in France. Just the weapons and other munitions in their possession were enough to put them in a French prison for a long time.

Still, and all things considered, it appeared to Novak that Nick ran a well-trained and efficient team of paramilitary men, and Novak was glad to let them control things and set up the rescue attempt. He was just along for the ride and for additional firepower and to make sure that Claire made it out alive. She had shown him a helluva lot of courage when she climbed on that damn plane with a bunch of bomb-making, grenade-tossing terrorists, unarmed and unable to contact anybody for help. His two companions got into the front seat, and Novak sat in back by himself behind the passenger's seat with his weapon on his lap. Marcel and his demon spawn had proved themselves adept at taking people down so he was going to remain alert until that entire Soquet family was either dead or rotting in jail.

Holliday turned and draped his arm across the back of the seat. “Nick's got a safe house close to here, not far outta Montpellier. It's got everything we'll need to get into that chateau.”

“How far?” Novak asked.

“Fifteen minutes tops. It's about twenty clicks outside Gardanne.”

Novak knew that village well; he knew this whole area of southern France. His uncle lived in Marseilles and worked in the city government. Armand also had a house in Paris now, but he kept his country home, too, a large chateau near the port. If worse came to worse, Novak could contact him for help. However, he didn't want to involve any of his French kin in any way, not unless he had to. It could compromise them if they were to get involved.

Novak was fairly certain that the two guys in the front seat, who moved with such swift intention, confidence, and experience, knew exactly what they were doing and how to do it. They had to be good. He hoped to hell they were. He was just along for the ride because Claire Morgan had asked him to be her backup. He was glad to follow Booker's leadership as long as he used good judgment and kept a realistic grip on how to proceed without getting anybody killed. If and when they went off the rails, though, Novak would have to get Claire out of trouble on his own and let them concentrate on saving Nick. If Nick was even still alive. From what he and Claire had read in Black's files on Marcel Soquet and his psychotic children, Black might already be dead or wishing he was.

But Claire probably wasn't dead, not yet, and she probably wouldn't be as long as she remained an important pawn in Marcel's plot of revenge. She would be safe enough until they stopped torturing Black with threats against her, or even worse, tortured her in front of him. As soon as Black breathed his last, so would Claire. She would die hard at the hands of his mortal enemies. That's how Novak saw it working out, with both their lives depending on Soquet's attention span and thirst for revenge and just how long he would enjoy tormenting Black and making him watch Claire scream as horrendous kinds of injuries were inflicted upon her. Nothing was the least bit good about anything so far, and Novak worried that it was likely that nothing would turn out well for any of them. He was not a pessimist by nature, but Soquet was holding all the cards, and he sure as hell knew how to play them.

Thirteen minutes later, they turned off the highway and eventually reached the dirt road that led back through deep woods to the safe house. Booker had driven at a high rate of speed down A7 that wound its way along and not far off the Mediterranean Coast. The overgrown track barely accommodated the width of the Renault. Tree branches and bushes whipped against both side windows as Booker gunned the car along. They were now in a forest of conifers and oaks and all kinds of bushy green undergrowth that had probably never been cleared. Nick Black had chosen a good place for them to plan and reconnoiter. Very isolated. Very remote. One road in and thick, impenetrable forest on the other three sides for sheltered escape if ever the need arose.

As they bounced their way over rocks and brush, a low structure eventually loomed up, a farmhouse that looked pretty much identical to any other old French country building built years ago and now displaying weathered white stucco walls. It was built with the steep roofline and tall casement windows so often used in the French countryside. A small structure sat out behind the house, backed up to more thick woods. Yeah, Nick had chosen well. Novak doubted if more than a handful of people even knew the place existed, which made him feel a little more secure about Nicholas Black surviving whatever atrocities were being done to him. As a Ranger, Nick would have been trained in SERE, all the special ops teams were. Novak was, too, when he was in the SEALs and working his own covert missions in enemy territory. Survival, evasion, resistance, and escape. He hoped Claire knew something about those techniques, too. But he was afraid she didn't. She was not military, but she was a very well-trained and gutsy police officer.

Nick probably planned everything these guys did and used in their missions, and down to the last letter, and made damn sure all their covert ducks were in a row. This was another reason to wonder how and why he'd been taken so easily by the Soquets. Or maybe it hadn't been so easy. Maybe he put up one helluva good fight before they took him down. Still, the man had to be aware, was definitely aware, according to John Booker, that Soquet had been gunning for him. That should've made him wary of any kind of trap. Especially when he traveled in Europe.

The farmhouse had been closed up tight for a long time. All the windows were shuttered, the house securely battened down. Everything was quiet in the yard, the leaves rustling on the spreading limbs of the oak trees nearest the house. Birds were roosting as if nothing was so terribly amiss. Booker and Holliday quickly and silently cased out the place on foot, looking for signs of intruders, moving around opposite sides of the farmhouse, but they found nothing suspicious and unlocked the front door with the key Nick kept buried in an air-tight container under the third flat paving stone on the garden path.

Once inside and the house cleared, Holliday went through the rooms unlocking and opening windows. It was stuffy and stifling hot inside, but it looked like any typical farmhouse, and Novak had been inside plenty. Sparsely furnished, peeling white paint on thick stucco walls, heavy arched wood doors, and tall French windows in every room. This place had been around a long time, probably a hundred years or more.

As the other two men busied themselves setting up laptops and a portable satellite dish, Novak began to grow impatient. Procedure and preparation were fine, precautions necessary, but two people Novak happened to care about were about to die in the most vicious way imaginable, and they were wasting a hell of a lot of time. “We need to get this show on the road, Booker. They don't have this kind of time.”

Booker glanced over at him from where he was typing quickly on the computer. “We always prepare for every eventuality. It saves time in the long run or if we have to fight our way in. You know that.”

“Yeah, I do know that, but I also know quite a bit about Marcel Soquet now. He's not gonna keep them alive forever. He'll tire of them once he breaks them, and I think you know it. Another thing, I'm as surprised as you are that he's actually brought them back so close to his home turf in Marseilles. That's not smart, and he is very smart. He has to be, as long as he's evaded capture by INTERPOL and every other agency in Europe.”

“Yeah, but Nick's the grand prize in his eyes. He'll keep him alive a long time so he can sit back and watch him suffer. That's what he does when it's personal to him. He takes plenty of time to enjoy it. Nick told me as much. He said this was what Soquet would do if he ever got his hands on him. And he knew they'd go after Claire, too. That's why he made us swear to keep her out of it.”

“Which we didn't.”

But they should have listened to Black. He had been right and now they had lost contact with her. Booker was right in his assessments, though, and Novak knew the other two men were suffering as much guilt as he was for involving Claire in such a dangerous way. Still, Novak was uneasy, impatient at the delay, and ready to move in.

“Okay, let's get to it. We've already discussed how we're going in. We know from the sat images that he keeps guards all along the perimeter wall. We've gotta take them out first, and we've gotta do it without setting off alarms. They're most likely keeping him on the third floor or in the cellars, maybe. We'll have to get in without being seen, make it past the guards after we get inside the house, and check out both areas. There's no other way to get to him, not that I can see. It's pretty simple but dangerous as hell. Once we find him, we'll probably find Claire, too.”

Jack nodded. “Okay, after we take the guards down, we separate and go in quiet, take out his men as we find them with silenced ARs. There are probably too many of them for us to attack with guns blazing, not with just three of us. You both got it?”

Novak had heard enough. “Okay, let's go. Waiting around is gonna get them killed. I'm telling you. We don't have this kind of time. From what I've read, Soquet's unpredictable. He might give in to his rage and just kill them quickly.”