The Exile (32 page)

“It is as I told you,” he said, the phone still raised to his ear. “He cannot speak—”

Kealey lunged at him, simultaneously drawing his 9mm, knowing he'd have to take him by surprise. He jammed the gun into the big man's solar plexus and shoved him back against the side of the minivan, snatching the cell phone from his grasp before he could recover his balance.

Behind him, Abby, Phillips, and Swanson had pulled their sidearms on the other bodyguards and were holding them out in two-handed grips.

“Stay where you are!” Swanson barked, motioning with his gun. “One move, you're dead!
Mat!
Understand?”

Kealey, meanwhile, pressed the cell against his own cheek, keeping the Glock buried in the tall bodyguard's ribs. “Mirghani, you there?” he shouted into the phone.

Silence. But Kealey could hear him breathing into the mouthpiece.

“Come on, Mirghani,
talk,
” he said. “There's no point pretending you can't hear me.”

More audible breaths over the phone. Then: “Why are you here, Mr. Kealey?”

“I want information,” Kealey said. “You can leave the city, keep your gold, bring whatever else you want out with you. But first you'll have to answer some questions—”

Kealey was interrupted by a sudden, startling crack of gunfire behind him and to his right. There was one shot, another, then Abby shouting, “
No!
” And three more rapid bursts.

His attention diverted by the chaotic sounds, Kealey flicked a glance over his shoulder and saw Phillips on his knees, clutching the middle of his chest, blood slicking his fingers as it gushed out between them to puddle on the sidewalk around his sagging form. Standing over him as he sunk to the pavement, his eyes wide, Swanson was still covering his man, who'd kept his hands up above his head. But one of the other bodyguards lay sprawled on his back nearby, Abby standing over him with her own semiautomatic pistol. The right side of his head had been blown apart, reduced to a horrible amalgam of bone, brains, and bits of ragged, bloody flesh.

Kealey realized what had happened in an instant. The bodyguard had reached for his gun despite Swanson's warning, and Abby had taken him out. But not before he'd caught Phillips in the chest, maybe more than once. And the rhythmic spurts of blood through his hands made it clear the field agent had been struck in his heart or a connected blood vessel.

It was with Kealey's attention momentarily divided that Ahzir seized the chance to whip a concealed gun out from under his flowing tunic. At the same time, the big man he'd backed against the minivan chopped an enormous hand up under Kealey's arm, knocking the snout of his 9mm away from his body. The brawny bodyguard locked his fingers around Kealey's wrist, digging them into it like pistons, twisting it, trying to wrest the weapon from his grip.

Kealey's reaction was automatic, his years of combat training kicking in as muscle memory—all of him, his mind and body, his entire
being,
pulled into focus. His mind stripped of conscious thought, he brought his knee up between the big man's legs, heard a guttural exclamation of pain as the breath rushed from his mouth. Kealey, unrelenting, smashed a fist hard into his jaw, hit him a second time in the face, and then the man staggered backward, his fingers loosening around Kealey's wrist. Tearing free of his grasp, Kealey spun on Ahzir, raised his pistol and squeezed the trigger, firing twice into him at close range. The front of Ahzir's tunic puffed out where the bullets struck, red splotches appearing on the white cotton fabric. Then his legs went soft and he crumpled lifelessly to the ground.

Even as he fell, Kealey had pivoted back around toward the big man—and none too soon. The man had sufficiently recovered to lunge at him, shoving a hand under his jacket to pull his own gun from its holster.

Kealey took cold aim before the weapon could appear and shot him once in the middle of the forehead. The big man looked at him with what might have been a mute expression of astonishment and disbelief, the bullet hole ringed by an aureole of seared flesh, his mouth gaping open as a thin rill of blood slid down between his eyes and over his nose. Then he produced a kind of belching croak and dropped hard onto his face.

Kealey was peripherally aware of what was going on around him on the street—cars slowing, people's heads briefly appearing from doors and windows, the sound of their keyed-up voices exchanging fearful words before they retreated inside. It was a sure thing the authorities would show before long.

He turned back toward where Phillips had been shot, saw that he was lying on the ground, with Abby and Swanson huddled over his supine body. Abby had taken off the Windbreaker she'd been wearing and bunched it over the wound in his chest, trying to staunch the flow of blood, but it was completely soaked through, and Phillips was neither moving nor, to all appearances, breathing.

Kealey hurried over, pressed two fingers against Phillips's neck, then slid one finger down the side of his jaw.

Abby stared at him. “Ryan, is he—”

“Shhh!”
Nothing from the carotid or facial arteries. Kealey lifted Phillips's wrist, felt for a pulse there, didn't detect one. And the pinkish red foam on his lips and chin was a bad sign—it meant a lung had been punctured and would have been filling with blood as he tried to draw in air. Kealey looked up, shook his head. “He's gone,” he said, snapping his eyes to Swanson's stunned face. “Where'd your guy go?”

Swanson nodded behind him. “Ran off in that direction, I think.”

“No way to tell if he's bolted or gone for reinforcements,” Kealey said, shaking his head. He motioned toward Phillips's body. “Take him back to the Jeep.”

The field op swallowed hard. “What about you?”

“I'm going in,” Kealey said, nodding toward the house. “Abby…get Mackenzie on the phone. Tell him to stay put out back.”

“And then what?” Her voice was trembling. “You can't go in alone.”

“Listen to me, Abby. Somebody's sure to have called the police by now. We have to get this done before they show. And I'll need you on the lookout,” Kealey replied.

“But Mirghani might have more guards inside—”

“I can handle them.” Kealey sprang to his feet. “I've got my cell. When you two hear the sirens, warn me if you can and get out of here. I'll meet you back at the embassy.”

He turned toward Mirghani's house, leapfrogged the low iron fence, and raced over a tiled outer court to its front door, trying the knob. As expected, it was unlocked; his men had been in the process of clearing the place out when Kealey's team arrived.

He pushed the door open, went through, and assayed his surroundings, the Glock extended in his grip. He was in an entry foyer that broadened out into a spacious, cleanly furnished oval parlor or living room with a polished hardwood floor, wide archways on two sides, and light organdy curtains over its rear windows. Kealey peered through the arch to his right, saw it gave way to another open parlor with some damask chairs and pillows, an inlaid coffee table on an oriental rug, and a number of packed and half-packed cartons on the floor. A hasty inspection revealed that another arch on the far side of that room led to a kitchen.

There was nobody in any of the rooms.

Cautiously, Kealey stepped deeper into the main parlor, moving along its left wall. Then he pivoted on his heel to look past its second archway and saw a flight of runnered stairs climbing up to the home's second story.

His gun still pointed out in front of him, he turned through the arch and streaked up the steps, taking them two at a time. On the second floor he passed two bedrooms, a bathroom, a hallway with a large walk-in closet on the right wall. Still no sign anyone was present.

He reached into a pocket for his cell. “Mackenzie, it's Kealey. I'm inside the house.”

“Roger,” the agent said. “I…I heard what happened to Phillips—”

“We can't afford to think about that now,” Kealey said. “You see anybody leave through a back door?”

“No.”

“You're positive? Not out the door, the garden, a window…?”

“Nobody left the house,” Mackenzie said. “Not through any entrance but the front. I'd have seen him.”

“Then Mirghani has to be in here someplace.” His eyes swept the hallway. “Where the hell—”

“Kealey? You all right?”

“Yeah,” Kealey said. He'd settled his gaze on the walk-in closet with its closed sliding door. “Stay where you are, Mackenzie. I'm going to need you to be there, copy?”

“Roger that.”

Kealey pocketed the phone, moved across to the right side of the hallway, flattened his back against the wall, and then sidled along to the edge of the closet's door. His 9mm in his right fist, he reached his free hand across the wall for the closet door's finger pull handle and tugged the door open on its tracks. Finally he heaved himself off the wall with a half turn so he'd end up looking directly into the closet.

There was the loud discharge of a gun inside it, and a bullet shrieked past his ear. The bodyguard hidden among the row of hanging garments had no chance to get off a second shot; Kealey, reflexively down in a squat, pumped three shots into his heart and watched him droop backward into a corner of the closet, one leg bent underneath him, the other sticking straight out across its floor.

Entering, Kealey crouched over the dead man and took the gun from his slackened grasp. It was a 9mm semiautomatic Caracal, the ammo usable for his own weapon. Depressing the catch, he ejected its magazine and shoved it into a cargo pocket on his trousers. Then he stepped over the guard's outstretched leg and pushed aside the clothes on the hanger pole—traditional Arabic robes and shawls as well as Western-style suits.

There on the back wall of the closet were the telltale seams of a safe-room door…and the camouflaged digital peephole lens above it. Kealey moved deeper inside, stood in front of the steel-reinforced panel, and rapped it with his fist. The solid thud he heard was reminiscent of when he'd tested the door of the EU team's armored BMW in Yaoundé.

Kealey heard his phone trill in his pocket. Abby probably. She must have heard the shots. But there was no time to answer.

“Mirghani, I know you can hear me!” he shouted. Exactly how much time
did
he have before the police stormed in? Not much, it couldn't be much at all, though he guessed he'd been in the house less than five minutes. “I'm telling you right now, you're coming
out.
”

No answer. Kealey hadn't figured he'd get one.

“My people have the back entrance to the house covered!” he yelled. “Either you leave with me or you aren't going anywhere.”

Nothing. Kealey's mind raced. Mirghani would know the police were on the way. Figure he could wait things out till they got here. Unless…

Whirling in a circle, Kealey holstered his gun, then sprinted over to the stairs and down to the first floor. He couldn't afford to lose a second.

In the main parlor now, he turned, ran through the foyer, and a heartbeat later was out in the courtyard. Abby was standing there inside the fence. Her cell phone in her hand, she was looking at him with tense, agitated features.

“Kealey, what's going on? I heard the gunfire inside, and when you didn't answer—”

“Just wait here,” he said. “Don't move.”

And then he went loping across the street, zigzagging past rubber-neckers toward the Cherokee, where Swanson sat tensely behind the wheel, Phillips's body covered with a blanket in the cargo section. He hurried around back without a word, yanked open the hatch, looked around for a jerrican, knowing there had to be one. This was an Agency vehicle, and here in Sudan, where you never knew when you'd be traveling hundreds of damned miles through the desert, it would be as standard as a tire wrench.

Kealey found the plastic container almost right away, reached inside to grab it from a storage slot in the rear compartment, then slammed the hatch shut and deliberately sloshed its contents around. It was three-quarters full, maybe better, meaning there had to be almost five gallons of gasoline inside.

He returned to the driver's door. “Swanson, listen,” he said through its lowered window. “The second the cops get close, I mean the
second,
you and Abby take off without looking back…and make sure they see you. I'm going to need a deke, got it? We'll have the embassy take care of the rest. These sons of bitches are going to find out soon enough we're trying to save their president's miserable ass.”

Swanson stared at him. “Kealey…what the hell are you doing?”

Kealey didn't stop to answer now, but instead dashed back across to the house with the jerrican, pausing only to motion Abby toward the Jeep before he plunged inside, this time hooking sharply right through the two downstairs parlors into the kitchen. He looked around for matches, pulled open a drawer, still didn't see any, decided to quit searching, and grabbed a dishrag from a countertop near the sink.

He wound the rag tightly into a makeshift torch, uncapped the jerrican, poured gasoline over one end. Next he went to the range, turned on a burner, and held the saturated end of the dishrag in the flame. It immediately caught fire.

Kealey went bounding to the second floor with the fiery rag in one hand and the open jerrican in the other. He'd need water in a minute, but the rag was really ablaze now, and he again jogged on past the bathroom to the walk-in closet.

“Mirghani!” He held the rag and jerrican up to the safe room's peephole now. “See this? I'm setting fire to the closet—and if you think the police are coming, you're wrong. I've got them fooled. Same if you think the firemen can get here before the smoke kills you. You watch, Mirghani.
Watch!
”

And with that Kealey began dousing the closet with gasoline, splashing it over the clothes draped over the hangers, the walls, even the body of the guard he'd shot. When he'd emptied the container, he stepped back from the door panel and tossed the burning rag into the closet.