“Okay.” Court was allowed to pass, and when he stepped out into the arrivals hall, he saw more uniformed Russians, as well as a large group of men in business suits pulling along hand luggage. These men, Court assumed, were Iranians: either diplomats, businessmen, or a mixture of both, getting ready to leave on the Airbus he’d seen on the tarmac.
The other mercs from his flight all found their rides, and they trickled out of the terminal. Court, on the other hand, stood there in the middle of the small arrivals hall for a few minutes, and then, when he saw no one there to greet him, he walked out the front of the building and into the sunshine.
Across the parking lot he saw a beige pickup with a machine gun mounted in the back and four men standing around it. They wore Western-looking desert-print military uniforms, but they were all clearly Arab men. They didn’t look his way, so Court kept hunting for the KWA man he had been told he would meet here at the airport.
He noticed a bald man in cargo pants leaning against a newer-looking white Toyota pickup truck. He was just a couple of spaces away from the four men in desert camo, but he didn’t seem to be associating with them at all. The man gazed in Court’s direction, standing with his hands on his hips and a pair of wraparound sunglasses hanging out of his mouth by one of the arms. He was stocky, with a thick chest and forearms covered in tattoos, and he wore a black T-shirt.
The man made no move in Court’s direction, but he kept looking right at him.
It was no big trick for Court to identify the person he was here to meet. Court would be interacting with some hard men on this operation, so he’d not expected balloons and a banner. He walked over to the man and extended his hand. “I’m Wade.”
The bald man put on his shades, pushed off the vehicle, and ignored the handshake. He replied with a Cockney accent. “Remains to be seen.”
“What’s that?”
“You are whoever your KWA deployment orders say you are.”
“Yes, sir.” Court was in cover now, and he knew he needed to act and talk like a private security officer on a high-threat contract. He’d worked around such men on different assignments around the world, and he’d trained with some of the more high-speed contractors stateside.
He fished out his KWA folio from his backpack and handed it over to the Brit.
The man took the papers, looked them over, then returned his gaze to Court. He spoke softly, even though there was no one in earshot. “First things first, mate. I’m Saunders. I’m not ‘sir.’ I’m labor, not management, and I don’t need some terrorist sapper thinking differently. We straight on that?”
Court doubted there were any insurgents sneaking around here at a Russian/Syrian regime air base, and if there were, he felt confident they would have higher-priority targets around here than a couple of guys in T-shirts standing in a parking lot. But he didn’t argue. “Saunders. Got it.”
Court could tell Saunders had been around. He had an impossibly hard, weathered air about him. Even though this guy might have been labor, he was clearly a veteran employee of Klossner’s organization, and since he was British, this probably meant he could well have been former Royal Marines or SAS, Special Air Service, the UK’s elite special operations unit.
Court couldn’t help but wonder what had befallen the man to where he now found himself working as a mercenary, employed on a contract with a militia of cold-blooded murderers in Syria.
But he didn’t ask.
Saunders said, “All right, ’ere’s what’s gonna happen. Those blokes are with us.” He nodded to the four men in camo uniforms standing around the technical. They were all looking Court’s way now. “They are Desert Hawks Brigade, and they go where we go, just to make sure we get there.
“We’ve got a long drive ahead, all the way to our base just east of Damascus in Babbila. It’s three hundred klicks, and it’s not gonna be a joyride, so we’re gonna tag along with a convoy that’s forming up in Jableh, just fifteen minutes from here.”
Saunders led Court to the passenger side of the white Toyota, and Court opened the door. A set of body armor and an SA80 bullpup rifle lay on the floorboard.
“Is this for me?” Court asked as he sat down and put his feet on the gear.
Saunders climbed in on his side. “No, mate. That’s my kit. You’ll get your kit once we get down to Babbila, but we’ll find a surplus weapon and armor for you to take along on the convoy.”
Both men had to show their credos twice before leaving the airport, but once outside, the bald man stomped on the gas and raced to the south. Behind them the Desert Hawk technical followed, with one man standing in the bed holding on to the machine gun.
They rode in silence for a moment, but just when Court thought Saunders wasn’t going to do any talking, the man said, “Today’s your lucky day, Wade. That is, assuming you came down here to see some action. You and me are gonna get shot at this afternoon.”
“On the road to Damascus?”
As they made the turn off the highway that led towards Jableh, the Brit nodded. “It’s been a bloody shooting gallery for the past few weeks. I came up here in a convoy the day before yesterday on the same road we’ll be taking back. We got hit twice in the hills. Small arms, nothing coordinated. Still, two SAA blokes traveling with us were hit. One of the poor sods didn’t make it through the night. Shot in the bum, he was, which would be a laugh if it hadn’t clipped his femoral.” He looked over to Court. “And last week Daesh cut off the highway for ninety minutes. Killed seven civilians and two Syrian cops. FSA, Daesh, Al Nusra . . . that highway goes right through the middle of the territory of a lot of enemy groups.”
Court nodded, in a casual manner. “How are we supposed to know who is who?”
The question seemed to surprise Saunders, and he thought about it for a moment. “Sometimes you see blokes wavin’ flags, sometimes you see kit or clothing that tells you who you’re up against, but you usually only have time to ID the colors on the bodies after you kill the buggers. Does it matter? If some bloke is shooting at you, shoot back at them. We gotta hard job down here, Wade, but that part’s dead easy.”
“Right.” Except it wasn’t so easy for Court. Jabhat al Nusra was the local brand of Al Qaeda, and Daesh was ISIS. He’d pour lead at either of those groups if he ran into them, no questions asked. But FSA was the Free Syrian Army. While it was a loose coalition made up of a lot of different disparate elements, in theory, at least, they were the good guys in this fight. Court, on the other hand, was most assuredly working on the side of the villains down here. Would he really open fire on an FSA unit attacking the Russian and Syrian regime forces?
He told himself all he could do was hope he didn’t come into contact with FSA fighters, and sort out what he would do if the time came.
As they drove along in silence, Court realized Saunders wasn’t going through the typical security contractor process of asking who he knew and where he’d been. It was commonly referred to in the industry as “butt sniffing,” a way of sizing up others in the field to establish one another’s bona fides. Court had answers ready if Saunders asked, and he’d expected a grilling. “Wade” was a pseudonym, but Court was here in place of a real man, with a real background Court had studied on the flight from Munich to Beirut.
But Saunders hadn’t asked a thing about his past or his experience.
Court appreciated the silence, but on top of this it only made him more certain of his assumption that the guys he’d come into contact with down here would be cut from a different cloth than the private military contractors he’d worked around in the past. These men were straight-up mercs, and they were not here for the camaraderie or any belief in the righteousness of their mission.
* * *
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