Rogue force, p.18
Rogue Force, page 18
She pouted now, like a child. “What if I have to go to relieve myself?”
“Already thought of that,” Troy said. There was a stack of large white buckets among all the supplies. He went over, took a bucket, and brought it back. He slid it next to where she was sitting.
“Instant ladies’ room.”
She shook her head. There almost seemed to be tears in her eyes again.
“You’re a terrible person.”
He nodded. “You’re not the first to tell me that.”
Dubois went over to a shelf and came back with a fat pill bottle. “This is the substance called melatonin. It will help you sleep.”
“I know what it does,” Aliz said. “Who do you think stored it here?”
Dubois shrugged. “So, take one. Sleep for a while. By the time you awake, it will be time for you to be free.”
She opened the bottle and held it out to her. Aliz reached in with her free hand.
“Take two,” Dubois said.
Troy watched Aliz take the melatonin out. They were gummies. “Yeah,” he said. “Good idea. Take a nice long nap. Look! They’re shaped like teddy bears.”
Aliz put the two gummies in her mouth.
Troy picked up the lantern. “Nighty-night. We’ll see you soon.”
“Wait!” Ali said. “You can’t leave me in the dark.”
Troy sighed. “We need to find our way back outside. Anyway, the darkness will help you sleep.”
They left, pulling the door almost, but not quite closed.
“She’s a trooper,” Troy said. “I think she’ll be fine.”
They wound their way back out through the castle, then down the stone stairs to the lower courtyard. As they came out of the staircase, a small man was just pushing an old scooter type motorcycle up the driveway and onto the property.
“Hello?” Troy said. He had the Uzi strapped to his back. For an instant, he considered taking it down. Where there was one, there could be more.
“Hello!” the man said. He raised a hand. “Good evening to you!”
Troy looked at Dubois. “Go inside and get your stuff ready. If Aliz has any bread, cheese, coffee drinks, anything good we might want to take, bring it along. I’ll handle this guy.”
“Who is he?” she said.
Troy shook his head. “I don’t know. But I’ll move him along.”
Dubois backed toward the house, her eyes still on the man. Troy walked over to the guy. It was Alex.
“Can I help you, sir? This is my house. We don’t get many visitors.”
Alex gestured at the bike. Its headlight was dim and flickering. “Oh, I was just having some problems with my moto. I saw the gate and thought this would be a good place to repair it. I know what’s wrong. It will only take a few moments.”
Alex opened the storage compartment and pulled out a small toolbox. He opened the engine compartment and got down on one knee. He seemed to be playing around in there with something. Probably not, though.
“Sir, I don’t have all night. I need to drive to France very soon.”
“It’s a nice night for a drive. A little late, though. Where in France?”
“Will you even remember, if I tell you?”
Alex shrugged. “I don’t need to remember. I let tiny machines do my remembering for me.”
Troy nodded. “In that case, I’m going to check out an old convent called Lumiere de Dieu. That’s the Light of God in English.”
Alex smiled up at him. “Your French is impeccable.”
Troy nearly laughed. “Thank you. The convent is near the city of Reims, in champagne country. The man who owns it is a wealthy gentleman by the name of Lucien Mebarak. Sometimes he goes by Lucien or Luc Willems. Sometimes he goes by other names. Nice guy. Thought I might acquire the place from him. Or at least the stuff that’s in it.”
“What’s in it?”
“I don’t know yet. Could be drones, I suppose. That’s going to be the big surprise.”
Alex nodded.
“A man left me a gift in a forest last night. It was kind of a surprise, too.”
“Oh? What was it?”
“It was an Albanian gangster by the name of Besnick Shkodra. He operates out of Brussels, normally. But not anymore. There are lots of Albanians in Brussels these days. They run the drug trade mostly, and in a big way. They also do some prostitution and gambling. It’s hard to penetrate their little world. Family ties, and all that. They seem to have made friends with some of the Islamic extremists in Molenbeek, though. The two groups have some shared enthusiasms. Money. Weapons. World domination.”
“That’s very interesting,” Troy said. “I’ll tell you something else that’s interesting. See that big castle up there? It was built a long time ago. Deep inside the oldest part of the castle is a rich lady named Aliz Willems. She’s a clever lady, wrote a book about something or other. I don’t think she played any part in this, but I think her brother Lucien did. I think she might like to contact him and let him know I’m coming for a visit. But at the moment she’s tied up with other things. It might be nice if someone checked on her for me. Not right away, but in a little while. Made sure she was still breathing or whatever. Also, it’s good that we have her here, in our possession so to speak, on the off chance that she was involved.”
Alex nodded. “See? It only took me a moment.”
The flickering headlight had come back on full power. He stood and started to put his tools away. His hand came out of the storage compartment with a Rock Star Zero. He passed the slim can to Troy. It was warm, but that was okay.
Alex got on the bike. He revved the motor just a touch.
“There’s security video of the little scrape you got into last night. Also, there’s some mobile phone video, shot by terrified partygoers who were crawling on the floor. A man of your description is wanted for questioning pretty much everywhere in Western Europe right now. Two security guards died in the attack. No other bodies were recovered so far, but there’s suspicion that a few of the kidnappers were killed.”
“They were,” Troy said. “Their buddies must have removed them.”
“Persons says if you get busted, just clam up. You don’t know anything. There are friendlies embedded who will pull strings and try to get you off the continent.”
Troy nodded. “Understood.”
“Nice talking to you,” Alex said. He walked the bike so that it was pointing back down the driveway, put his feet up, and drove away. At the bottom, his turn signal indicated left. A second later, he was gone.
Troy turned around and Dubois was coming out of the house with their bags.
“Who was that?” she said.
“I don’t know. Some guy who needed to stop here and fix his motorcycle. He spoke English, a little. I didn’t find him the least bit suspicious.”
She gestured at the Rock Star. “Where did you get that?”
Troy shrugged. “The guy gave it to me. He insisted. He wanted to pay me for letting him work on his bike here, but I said no. Then he gave me this. I tell you: life is like magic sometimes. This is just what I needed. You want a sip? It’s warm.”
She shook her head. “Let’s just go, all right?”
He nodded. “Fair enough.”
They headed for the garage and the Porsche Cayenne. Troy checked his watch. It was coming up on 2:30 am. With a little luck, they’d pull up to the convent in the hour before dawn. Maybe they’d catch whoever was there napping.
“You navigate,” he said. “I’ll drive.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
4:45 am Central European Daylight Time
Lumière de Dieu Abbey
Outskirts of Reims
France
“People are there,” Dubois said.
They were on a hill near a copse of trees, overlooking the medieval abbey, maybe half a mile away. It was quiet here, and dark. The only sounds were breezes rustling through the trees and the grasses, and what seemed to be the bell of a cow in a field somewhere nearby. The stars spread out above their heads, a billion of them, sweeping across the night sky.
They had ditched the car by the side of the road about a mile back and hiked up here with all their gear. Troy stood in shadow near a tree, not moving at all. The heavy bulletproof vest weighed on him. It was cumbersome. He watched the abbey, much of it a large dark spot looming darker than the surrounding darkness. To the left was a large house with a couple of lights on.
Dubois was on the ground, lying on her stomach, peering down at the scene with a pair of high-powered binoculars.
“How many?” Troy said, very low.
“I count two at the moment. Men. Each one has a rifle slung over his back. One is smoking a cigarette. See him?”
Troy looked across the distance. Now that she said it, he could see the tiny red end of the butt light up each time the man took a drag.
“Armed guards,” he said.
“Yes.”
He nodded. “No need to protect the nuns.”
“The nuns are gone,” Dubois said.
“It’s them.”
There was a long moment of quiet. Troy could hear Dubois breathing below him. He listened intently, trying to see if he could hear the men across the distance. Standing around, pulling guard duty, usually you talked. But he couldn’t hear them.
“How do you want to play it?” Dubois said.
Her voice cracked, just a touch, giving away her nerves. Of course, she would be anxious out here. She was going into combat, again. Fighting to the death wasn’t her forte. She could have died earlier tonight. She could still die. The fact that she was still here was a testament to her guts. Troy could respect that. It was enough for him.
“You don’t have to come,” he said. “You got me this far. You can walk back to the car, and drive to your flat in Lyon. Sleep until nighttime. I’m sure all will be forgiven, if not today, then tomorrow, or the next day.”
“I’m coming with you,” she said.
He nodded in the darkness. Okay. She had her reasons.
“Are they moving?” he said.
“The men?”
“Yes. Are they moving around at all?”
“Yes. They seem to be chatting a bit, moving around a little. One walked off before, then came back.”
“Then there’s no motion detector lights where they are,” Troy said. “If there were, then they would have flashed on by now. So we come down the hill. We get into the trees there by the edge of the building. We take these two out silently. Then we go around to the other side. There will be more over there. Take those out.”
“Take them out?” she said.
He could almost hear the gulp as she swallowed the frog in her throat.
“Yes.”
“It’s pre-meditated murder.”
“It’s war,” Troy said. “They’re the enemy. They’ve killed over 50 people in New York and Belgium.”
“We don’t know that,” she said.
“You don’t have to come,” he said again. “You got me this far.”
“I told you I’m coming with you.”
He felt the urge to gesture down the hill, but he didn’t move at all. He felt the urge to raise his voice, so he spoke even more quietly than before. “I believe the drones are down there, or the people who launched the drones are. It would be foolish to get yourself killed pretending those guys you see are good guys. They have guns because… why?”
He paused, letting total silence spin out between them. She didn’t answer him or make a sound.
“Okay?” he said.
Slowly and carefully, she pushed her way back into the shadows of the trees, before she worked her way to her feet. “Okay.”
Troy watched the red light at the end of the cigarette spark again. “Then let’s roll,” he said.
They headed down the hill, through overgrown fields where vines once grew. Troy took them on a path to the right, and further away from the abbey. They couldn’t come straight toward the men. They needed to come from the side, from a place the men would never expect opposition to appear. Further, they needed to move like shadows, like wraiths, and to kill silently, without mercy.
He glanced at tiny Dubois beside him. This was not her job description. She was a good fighter; she kept her head in a tight spot. But a silent killer? Not her.
They moved through an area where the land dropped. There was a chill in the air at the bottom of the undulation, and a place of thick fog. He touched her shoulder, and guided her along the dip, staying within the fog instead of climbing out again.
At the far end of the dip, there was no choice but to move up to higher land again. The land was steep here, a perfect defilade if he planned to take a shot, but he didn’t. He didn’t have a sound suppressor, and even if he did, it wouldn’t matter. The best suppressors in the world still made a sound. And some guys, when the man next to them suddenly dropped with a bullet in the head, they also dropped before you could line up the next shot. Then they started shouting for help.
No. This had to be done close quarters.
They reached the lip at the top of the drop-off. Troy poked his head over the edge. He was deep in the overgrown grass. The corner of the abbey was right there, looming in the darkness, maybe 50 meters away. The subjects were further away, along the front of the building. He could see them clearly now. He spotted the light from the cigarette again. He ducked down.
He and Dubois were lying along the edge of the dip.
“Listen,” he whispered.
They sat and listened. There was the chirruping of crickets. Somewhere a night bird called. And there was the sound of two men talking in low voices. Their conversation carried across the night air. A man with gravel in his throat, probably the smoker, said something. The other one laughed and said something in return. The sound of their language was guttural.
“French?” Troy said, already knowing the answer.
Dubois shook her head. Not French.
“What?” Troy said.
She shrugged.
Okay. That ruled out several languages at once, languages she spoke, along with languages she might recognize by the sound. Two guys in France, with rifles over their shoulders, at a medieval abbey owned by a notorious weapons trafficker, and they weren’t speaking French, or any language that a French person knew. That sealed it. If they weren’t fair game before, they were now. These guys were either gangsters, terrorists, or aliens from outer space.
Troy put his head very near to hers. “We crawl,” he whispered. “You follow me. The building is very close. We move along it.”
He showed her two fingers walking. She nodded.
“I attack. You cover me. Don’t shoot unless necessary. We need to be silent from here on out.”
There was a pause between them, and he yawned. He was tired. He hadn’t had real sleep in… he couldn’t remember when. This job was for the birds.
Without another word, he turned and, very slowly, crawled out of the heavy grass. He got down on his belly like a worm. He looked across. The men were there. He turned his face away from them and began to move across the open gap, going so slowly, it was as if he wasn’t moving, pressed so close to the hard ground, it was as if he was a low curb or some other feature of the pathway.
The bulletproof vest limited the mobility of his arms and shoulders, which might be a good thing. He reminded himself to go even slower.
Slowly, like a turtle, he glanced back. She was following, mimicking his movements, taking his lead. This was the hard part, being out in the open. The alarm could be raised at any second.
He slithered across into the darker shadows of the building. He sat up behind the corner, his back pressed to the wall, his hands feeling the cool stones. A moment later, she slithered up next to him.
He nodded to her and put a finger to his lips. It was good. She was doing well.
He gave them both a moment to catch their breaths. Again, he put his head very close to hers.
“Now we go quicker, but still silent.”
She nodded.
He unclipped his knife sheath from his belt. He didn’t take the knife out. The sheath was made of a dark fabric, not leather, and wouldn’t reflect any light. The big hunting knife itself would practically glow in the dark.
“You follow me, right up the wall,” he whispered. He made a gesture with his hands, one hand the wall of the abbey, one hand moving along it.
“I’ll take them out. You cover me. We want to be as quiet as possible. There are more of these guys somewhere around. Don’t shoot unless you absolutely have to.”
She looked at him, eyes wide. He flashed back to her reluctance to shoot the Albanian gunman in the car earlier in the night.
“But if you do have to shoot, then please shoot.”
She was still staring.
“All right?”
She nodded.
“Say it.”
“All right,” she whispered, very low. “I get it.”
She took her pistol out of its holster, checked it, and kept it in her hand.
“Okay,” he said. “Ready?”
“Yes.”
“Here we go again.”
He pushed himself up the wall. He glanced around the corner. The two guys were there, still talking. Just a couple of guys out in the cool night air, shooting the breeze. Rifles over their shoulders, guarding… something or someone.
Troy took a deep breath. He got low, turned the corner and moved quickly along the wall in a sort of half crouch. The shadows here were good, a darkness within the darkness. He felt her there behind him, fast and quiet, like a cat. Her martial arts training served her well.
They were closing, closing. The guys were ahead, and then increasingly, ahead and to the left, out on the flagstones of the ancient courtyard. In a second, two seconds, very soon, they had to become aware of his presence.
Closer… closer…
He was four steps away, maybe five. He was exquisitely close. He was too close.
NOW.
He broke cover, ripped the knife from its sheath, and darted out from the wall. He crossed the short distance between himself and the men. They caught a glimpse of him at the last second. They turned, eyes wide, guns not ready.
