“I’ve been a heart surgeon for almost thirty years! You think cutting living flesh is beyond my abilities? Are you a fool? I did her a favor. She’s better off dead than having to return to that monster you work for!”
The man at the door to the wine cellar called out across the kitchen. “Sir! There is a lot of wood in this farmhouse. That fire is going to spread. We have to get out of here!”
Malik put his hands in his curly hair now, on the verge of panic. Drexler could see that the man knew Medina’s death meant his own death, as well. He paced the room for a moment, in full view of his men.
Then he looked at Rima again.
Drexler sensed the thinking of the Syrian. He said, “We need Dr. Halaby. We take her back to Damascus. She is the one person who can corroborate the story of what happened to Medina.”
As Drexler watched, Malik brushed his slung submachine gun behind his back, drew his pistol, and stormed over to Rima. He jammed the barrel of the weapon between her breasts.
“Think, Malik!” Drexler shouted. “Don’t do it!”
Rima whispered, “I die a proud daughter of Syria.”
Malik fired once into Dr. Rima Halaby’s chest, knocking her back against the wall. She slid slowly down to the floor.
Drexler shook his head in frustration. He didn’t care anything about the woman, but the Swiss operative wanted her to confirm to Shakira that Bianca was dead.
Just then, smoke began pouring out through fissures in the wooden door.
Malik stood over the dead woman on the wooden floor as he said, “I want two men with hoses spraying water on the fire to slow it. The rest of you, check upstairs for anything of intelligence value. You have fifteen minutes until exfiltration.” His men began following his orders, although it was clear they would all rather get the hell out of the burning building.
Drexler stood nearby and was still nearly euphoric about his good fortune, but he did his best to feign the same worry that Malik felt. He said, “You really think it will help to get intelligence on the FSEU?”
Malik shook his head. Softly to Drexler he said, “Not really. I think Azzam will have us all shot because Medina is dead. But I don’t want my men to know this, so I’ll give them some hope.”
He turned away from Drexler and began following his men out of the kitchen.
Drexler smiled after the man had turned away. He knew he sure as hell wouldn’t be shot by Azzam, because he wouldn’t be returning to Syria.
As for the rest of them? Of course they would die.
CHAPTER 49
The entire time Court had been sneaking his way into Bianca Medina’s gated neighborhood, he’d also been planning his route to get out. Exfiltration would be harder than infiltration, he’d known full well, because he wasn’t hauling a baby and a nanny into Bianca’s house. And it wasn’t hard for him to determine that getting out of Western Villas would not be something he could pull off with stealth. No, he was a realist, so he knew escaping with the girl and the kid was going to require revving engines, squealing tires, gunfire, and car crashes.
The gunfire had begun almost immediately, but now as he barreled along up Zaid bin al-Khattab Avenue, directly towards a green Toyota Hilux with NDF markings, he knew it was time to ratchet up the noise and drama. The truck full of regime-aligned militia started to move, turning perpendicular so as to block the Range Rover’s escape. Men in the back raised their weapons, and men in the cab leapt out and leveled their rifles over the hood.
Court knew that four AKs dumping rounds into the Range Rover’s engine block would knock the vehicle out of commission in seconds, so he decided his best defense would be a good offense—he’d give the gunmen up ahead something more important to do than shoot at him.
With the pedal to the floor he raced directly at the pickup. A short burst of AK fire came from a man shooting over the hood, tearing into the windshield of Bianca’s SUV just to the right of Court’s head, but then the shooting stopped, and Court saw four men sprinting away from the pickup in multiple directions. Two dived onto the sidewalk to the east of the road, and the other two flung themselves over the hood of a car parked along the sidewalk on the west side. Court turned the grill of the SUV away from the Hilux and towards the sidewalk, sideswiped one of the men as he climbed back to his feet, and knocked him back into the road like a rag doll.
The three other men at the roadblock had only a brief chance to grab their weapons and fire again before Court smashed through the gate at the end of the street, and their rounds went high and wide.
Court jacked the SUV to the east as two men came out of the guard shack with pistols, firing off rounds, but Court weaved back and forth across the four-lane road and then took a hard right just a hundred meters on.
The window in the tailgate shattered just before he weaved out of the line of sight of the men at the guard shack, but he knew he wasn’t out of the woods, because the sounds of sirens, screeching tires, and revving vehicle engines echoed through the streets from all directions.
He shouted to the girl on the floorboard behind him. “?a va?” Are you okay?
“Oui, ?a va,” Yasmin replied, but Jamal was wailing now.
“What’s wrong with the baby?”
“He’s a baby! He’s upset, of course!”
“Right. Look, we’re going to switch cars and we have to do it very quickly. Be ready to move, okay?”
“What about Mr. Alawi?”
“Who the hell is . . . ? You mean the guy in the back?”
“Yes.”
“He’s coming with us.”
This was problematic, of course, because Court already had Walid bound, gagged, and drunk in the trunk of the Hyundai, but he figured there was room enough for both, even if it would be a tight fit.
As he drove to the parking garage close to the pool and fountain store to pick up Walid’s car, he rolled down his window and listened to the sound of sirens on several streets around him. While there was certainly a large law enforcement presence hunting for him, it didn’t seem like anyone was right on his heels at the moment, though he knew that could change any second.
He’d given some thought to the likely response there would be to this crime here in the city. He felt sure the guards would call in an immediate police report about some sort of attack in Western Villas, and they might even say that a woman and child had been kidnapped out of a house, but Court knew the guards at the house would not broadcast to the local police that the child who had been taken was the illegitimate son of Ahmed al-Azzam.
Crimes of various kinds in other parts of Damascus were commonplace with the war going on and the insurgency active in the city, so even though this was undeniably a big event and different from a regular terrorist attack, it wasn’t going to cause one fifth the uproar it would have caused if word got out about what had really taken place.
* * *
? ? ?
Just six minutes after stealing the Land Rover, he parked it close to the Hyundai in the garage and leapt out. He pulled the dead guard from the back of the Land Rover, opened the trunk to the Hyundai Elantra and dropped the body in the back right on top of Walid. He shut the trunk lid again without even checking on the Desert Hawks Brigade officer.
From the lack of any noise, it seemed as if Major Walid was still passed out drunk, and if he wasn’t, Court wondered if he’d be able to tell that the dead man sharing the tight space with him happened to be wearing his uniform.
Court then helped Yasmin with the backpack and had her climb into the backseat of the car and get down low, as before. Quickly he changed out of the dark suit and back into the gray pants and black T-shirt he’d worn since changing at the KWA base hours before.
Yasmin was more focused on the baby and his cries than on the foreigner taking his clothes off outside the Hyundai.
The entire vehicle transfer took just over three minutes, and soon they were back on the road and heading to the south, in the direction of Jordan.
Court knew he needed to get in touch with Voland, but he decided for now he wanted to concentrate on avoiding checkpoints.
* * *
? ? ?
For five more minutes they drove along in very light traffic; only once did Court need to leave his route and find another road to avoid a checkpoint. All the while he questioned Yasmin about which way he should go, where the roadblocks could be found, and which suburbs would have less military and militia activity.
But in this endeavor, Yasmin Samara had proved utterly useless.
Finally Court asked, “How is it you don’t seem to know anything about the police and military situation around here?”
“Because I haven’t been outside Western Villas since Jamal came home from the hospital, and I haven’t been out of Mezzeh since last fall.”
“I thought you used to live in Paris.”
“Yes, but I moved home last year, and as the granddaughter of a minister I was told it wasn’t safe to leave the regime strongholds of the city.”