Vengeance: A Derek Stillwater Novel (Derek Stillwater Thrillers Book 8) (29 page)

Mohammed scanned the
entire truck. Then Zizo cleared everybody a good fifty yards away. Lieutenant Hamadi had supplied the three of them with lightweight chemical suits and gas masks. Wouldn’t do them much good if there were explosives, but if the barrels contained poison gas, it might help.

She and Derek stood next to Zizo, who held metal cutters. With a heave of his chest, he leaned forward and cleanly cut the padlock.

Besides his heart hammering harder, nothing happened.

Zizo spoke and Noa translated. “He says that it’s possible that the doors are wired to blow when opened. A basic circuit.”

“Your chance to clear out,” Derek said. “I’ll go in alone. I’ll open the doors.”

Through the gas mask Derek saw Zizo’s eyes grow wide. He was a kid. Nineteen years old. For all Derek knew, this was his first real bomb situation.

Turning, Zizo grasped the door handles. “Ready?”

“Mmmmm,” Derek said, jaw tense, thinking of Lev. If he was going to die, he wanted his last thoughts to be of his son.

Zizo pulled the doors open.

Nothing.

“I’m first,” Derek said. He scrambled up, a flashlight in one hand. Toward the back of the truck a figure moved. He was alive!

Derek took a cautious step forward.

Bob Mandalevo, voice weak, said, “Derek … go … don’t … ”

Another step. Something gave under his foot.

Glancing down, Derek realized he had stepped on some sort of pressure plate. It had sunk a half-inch beneath his foot.

“Shit.”

Noa said, “What?”

“I stepped on some sort of trigger.”

She rattled off something to Zizo, who responded.

“He says don’t move.”

“Really?” Derek said. “
Really?
That’s the best he can do? Don’t fucking move?”

Zizo pulled out a flashlight and peered along the visible flooring.

From deep within the truck Bob Mandalevo said, “I’m on one as well.”

“How are you doin’, Bob?”

A rough, soft laugh wafted down the narrow passage. “Oh, I’ve been better.”

“Well, just as soon as we can figure out how to keep us from blowing up—”

“The barrels,” said Mandalevo, “are sarin gas. At least that’s what Nazif told me.”

“Lovely. Don’t move.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Glancing over his shoulder at Noa, he said, “You and Zizo got all that?”

Zizo was peering more closely around the truck. Now they were joined by Lieutenant Hamadi. “Problem?”

“Oh, a few,” Derek said.

“I think there are more pressure plates,” Mandalevo said.

Derek thought so, too. In the dim light he couldn’t be sure, but it looked like there were metal squares every couple feet along the narrow center aisle between the barrels of sarin. He also knew they couldn’t rule out any other types of triggers either.

Zizo and Hamadi were speaking in urgent-sounding Arabic.

“Hang in there, Derek,” Noa said. “They’ve got a plan. Might take a few minutes.”

It took twenty
minutes. While he stood there, trying to ignore the way his leg wanted to cramp, sweat seeping into his eyes and down his back, he and Noa and Mandalevo talked in short bursts of black humor and speculation.

“Have you been in contact with my daughters?” Mandalevo said.

“Personally, no. Midge left me a voicemail a couple hours ago.”

“I thought she might. She liked you.”

To Noa, Derek said, “I briefly dated one of Bob’s daughters, Midge. Short for Margaret. And no, Bob, I don’t think she liked me.”

Followed by a few minutes of silence.

“How many did we lose in the kidnapping?” Mandalevo asked.

“I don’t know. Joe was in surgery last I heard.” He appreciated Mandalevo asking, though.

“Sholes?”

“She’ll probably be along soon. She’s been very helpful. Kind of on my case, but good. Sometimes we blocked her out of the team’s communications. The
CIA
station chief may have set me up.”

Mandalevo grunted. “O’Bannon?”

“Yeah.”

“Sounds like a story there … .” There was a rustling sound and a low moan. “Team?”

“Yeah.” He told him. Since the Egyptians had been jamming all radio frequencies in the area, he’d been out of contact with everyone. They probably thought they were dead.

Zizo and Hamadi appeared with several industrial jacks. He approached Derek, studying the area around them. Placing the base of the jack on the pressure plate next to Derek’s foot, he extended it toward the ceiling and ratcheted it tight.

Cautiously, Derek stepped off the pressure plate. Nothing happened. Leaning forward, he closed his eyes, adrenaline surging through him. It had worked.

In a matter of minutes Zizo had neutralized the other plates and was working on the one Mandalevo was sitting on. It was more of a chore because of the Secretary of State’s relative lack of mobility. But he got it up and Derek crouched next to him.

“Up you go, Bob.”

“You’re not carrying me out of here,” Mandalevo said, weaving on his feet.

“I’ll help you. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

With one of Mandalevo’s arms draped over his shoulder, they edged their way out of the truck. On the ground, he helped the man onto a waiting gurney. Mandalevo’s face was bandaged and bloody, bruised and swollen.

But alive.

He gripped Derek’s hand. “Thank you.”

With a nod, he said, “We’ll talk later.”

As they loaded the Secretary into an ambulance, Derek turned to Noa. “I could really use a drink.”

There was almost
a line of demarcation between the city of Cairo and the site of the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx. After the urban sprawl of Cairo, the city stopped and desert began. The desert ran west to Libya and south to Sudan.

Hussein Nazif, now mostly alone in Egypt, had members of his brigade in Syria, some in Iraq, Libya and Sudan. His plan now was to travel to Sudan. He would either work his way back up along the Red Sea into Egypt and eventually back to Syria, or cross the Red Sea into Saudi and eventually through Iraq to Syria.

The young man driving the battered Volkswagen was a member of Nazif’s extended network. The young man, whose name was Omar Pili, was a third cousin. He was a soldier in the Egyptian Army and his job, until today, had been to work the security gates at the Ministry of Defense. Omar was no longer in the Egyptian military. Now he was a member of the
Nazif Brigade.

“Which way?” Omar asked.

“To Kharga.” Kharga was one of Egypt’s’ five western oases. There was a town there, fairly modern, with about 70,000 people. He had friends there who would help them along their way to Sudan.

Glancing into the back of the car, he noted several jugs of water and gasoline. It would be a long hot drive.

With a pang of regret, he wondered if his brother Abdul would be returned to Guantanamo Bay. He would pray for his release. And someday he would get his vengeance on Derek Stillwater.

Omar pulled the car onto the nearly empty highway stretching into the hot, brown desert and headed south.

Abdul Nazif had
spent the entire trip from Guantanamo Bay to Qatar in an uncomfortable hard seat in the massive emptiness of the cargo plane, accompanied by two marines. He had been allowed to use the bathroom and been given water and food. The two marines had spoken quietly to each other and mostly ignored him.

It had been a long flight and he felt his ears pop as the flight descended toward Qatar. Within minutes he felt the plane bump down.

Once the plane stopped moving, the marines uncuffed him from his chair and led him to the exit. He walked down the stairs into the dry evening air of Qatar, where a lone
TV
crew were waiting along with two representatives of the Qatar government.

Paperwork was exchanged, he was unlocked, and then the marines turned and climbed back into the plane without a word.

The Qatar representatives said, “Welcome to Qatar. We have some paperwork for you to fill out and then you are free to go. Arrangements can be made for a room in the embassy or at a hotel. Do you have relatives in Qatar?”

Blinking, surprised, Abdul shook his head. “Um, no. But perhaps, a, uh, local imam?”

The reporter, a tall, middle-aged man from Al Jazeera,told him they would like an opportunity to interview him. He agreed.

“What of my brother?” Abdul asked.

“He escaped,” the reporter said.

“And the Secretary of State?”

“He will live.”

“They’re letting me go?”

The reporter shrugged. “It’s possible they will want to return you, but the U.S. officials are so busy with other things they’re running behind schedule. Mandalevo was only recovered an hour ago.”

Abdul scratched his beard. “Can you get me out of here?”

“Just as soon as the Qatar people release you.”

Turning to the government officials, he said, “You’re really going to release me?”

“Yes. We have no orders any other way. Not yet.”

There was an unspoken acknowledgement in the words that told him if given time, the U.S. government would want him back. For other exchanges, prisoners from Guantanamo Bay had been kept in Qatar for a year before being released.

“Let’s go then,” he said.

And an hour later he was in the back of a white Mercedes van with the Al Jazeera people, who took him to a hotel and after a meal and prayers, interviewed him.

A free man.

Derek and Noa
sat in Lynn Sholes’s office at the embassy. Mandalevo had been delivered to the hospital, but he had been given cursory treatment and been flown almost immediately out of the country, heading for Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, the largest U.S. Army military hospital outside of the U.S.

The political situation had grown very tense in Cairo. The Egyptians were furious with President Morsi and there were mass demonstrations in Tahrir Square and Heliopolis Palace. The demonstrations had spread to Alexandria, Port Said and Suez. The Egyptian Army was making demands of the various political parties to meet the demands of the demonstrators.

“How’s Joe?” Derek asked of the Secretary’s Chief of Staff.

“Recovering. He’ll be fine. Broken leg, broken arm, fractured pelvis. It’ll take a while, but they’re expecting a full recovery. He sends his regards.”

“When can we go?” Derek asked.

“Once you fill out some paperwork and go through a couple after-action interviews. This is the first one.” She gestured to a recorder on the desk.

And so they talked, going through everything that had happened that day. And then they were given a mountain of paperwork to complete, and by that time it was nearly midnight. They found a room in the embassy and closed the door and locked it, took a shower together, made tired love on the bed and fell asleep.

In the middle of the night Derek woke gasping, sitting upright, drenched in sweat. His mind had been carefully reviewing the day in his dreams, including all the alternate realities where he was shot in the heart instead of the leg, or the truck exploded when he stepped on the pressure plate. Noa soothed him with soft words and softer hands and he slept.

The next morning they completed more paperwork, were interviewed by two other people, including
CIA
Station Chief O’Bannon, and spoke momentarily with the Ambassador. It took all of Derek’s composure not to kick O’Bannon through a wall. Then they visited the Israelis’ office, where they did more of the same thing—interviews and paperwork.

Then they were surreptitiously driven to the safe house where Derek had first met the Israeli team. Derek had been hoping to talk to Kadish, but after his surgery the Israelis had flown him in a private jet to Tel Aviv.

Derek and Noa and her people had a quiet meal together. One of them, a slight man with close-cropped gray hair, asked him, “Any regrets?”