A close-in, high-resolution, color photo of his face. The photograph taken by immigration at Charles de Gaulle was perfect, and it was of Drexler, not Takala. Drexler would have no time to change his appearance much or at all before he left the continent again.
Voland had two missions now, and he was fully engaged in both. He told himself he would not rest until he got the kid and the nanny out of Syria, and he would not rest until he found Sebastian Drexler and made him pay for what he’d done.
CHAPTER 57
From a dead sleep the sounds and the movement of the infantry fighting vehicle came to him in a rush, and then Court’s eyes opened as he woke with the taste of grease and fuel in his mouth.
He wiped his sweat-drenched face with a towel he had jammed in his load-bearing vest, swigged warm water from a plastic bottle in his pack, and splashed more onto his face and down the back of his neck. He looked down at his rubber watch and synchronized the bouncing of his head with the swinging of his arm so he could focus on the numbers on the display. It was noon; he figured he’d slept on and off for close to four hours, which meant he’d really needed it, and it also meant the Desert Hawks Brigade convoy should be getting close to their destination.
The BMP drove along a poorly maintained road; this Court could tell from the jarring bumps, but he couldn’t see anything from his position. He looked over closer to the rear hatches and saw that Van Wyk was on the headset that allowed him to communicate with the vehicle’s three-man crew, and he was struggling to write something down on a notepad propped on his knee.
Saunders was awake next to him, and he caught Court’s eye. The two men looked at each other but neither spoke.
Just then Court heard a boom outside the vehicle, and he looked around to see that the other men in the back of the infantry fighting vehicle were all reacting to the same sound. It was either a large weapon firing or a shell detonating, and though it wasn’t much louder than the noise of the machine surrounding him, he figured it had to have been pretty loud for them to hear it at all.
Another boom, then another.
Van Wyk shouted to the men around him. “That’s outgoing! One hundred millimeter.”
The main weapon of the Russian-built BMP-3 was the 2A70 launcher, a 100-millimeter gun that could fire high-explosive or antitank missiles. Court found himself hoping Ali Company of the Desert Hawks, the company he and his team were embedded with, had not come into contact with tanks, because the Gray Man had no magic ninja fighting solution to avoid getting blown up the same as everyone else.
If the BMP Court was riding in was hit with an antitank round, Court’s body would just turn into canned beef stew along with the other eight guys in the vehicle.
Seconds later Court heard the unmistakable sound of heavy machine guns firing, and his feeling of helplessness and claustrophobia only increased.
“Outgoing,” Broz confirmed.
The 30-millimeter gun on Court’s BMP joined the fray, and the sound was deafening.
The team leader put his hand on his headset to press it closer to his ear, and he spoke to the driver of the vehicle for several more seconds. He looked up and said, “Look alive! We’re heading into an oil refinery, one kilometer square. Two dozen buildings in all, all either partially damaged or completely destroyed. Opposition presence is unknown, but Ali Company is taking some small-arms fire from some of the structures. Our target is the central control building in the middle of the complex. It has been used as an SAA command post in the past. Daesh took over the refinery last month, and SAA intel is guessing Daesh will be using the same building as their HQ. We’re being sent in to clear it so the Hawks can use it as their battalion CP for the clearing operation.”
Saunders said, “Why don’t the Hawks do this shit themselves?”
“They are sending Bashar and Chadli Companies one klick north to hit an enemy encampment in the hills. Ali Company is with us, but they will secure the other refinery structures while we clear the central control building.”
Broz said, “This is grunt work, boss!”
“And you’re getting paid fifty times what any of those grunts are getting paid, so put on your helmet and deal with it! Ali Company only has one platoon of special forces, and they are hitting the three pumping stations.”
Court could see on the faces of the others that none of the KWA men seemed interested in this fight, but they all tightened straps, took last swigs of water, and hefted their weapons.
Van Wyk said, “Our crews will deploy smoke ahead. Both of our BMPs will get us up to the building. We will go out the rear hatches and continue straight on for twenty-five meters to the door of the target building. From there we will clear the building bottom up.”
It was a suffocating feeling for Court to have someone relay secondhand info about the area right outside the armor from where he sat. An area he was about to attack into. He couldn’t see a thing now, and he didn’t imagine he would see the location he was hitting at all until he crawled out through the rear hatch.
Anders shouted to be heard over the thirty-cal firing above his head. “Are the BMPs taking fire from the control building?”
Van Wyk spoke into his mic, then addressed the team again. “Unknown, but the gunner reports possible movement on the third floor of the building.”
Fun, Court thought. After rolling for hours with his knees to his chest, he was about to bound out through a smoke screen and race into a building that might be full of ISIS fighters.
But the movement reported could also have been noncombatants. Court eyed the men around him and told himself he wouldn’t put it past any one of them to commit an atrocity or two before nightfall today.
Court heard the outgoing pops of smoke being deployed via the grenade launchers on the turret of the BMPs, and then the vehicle stopped so violently that at first Court thought it had taken a hit from an RPG. The BMP then turned 180 degrees on one of its tracks, lurched backwards a few feet, then stopped roughly again.
The main gunner began firing the PKT vehicle-mounted machine gun. At what, Court had no idea.
“Go!” Van Wyk shouted. Anders opened the left rear hatch and Broz opened the right. Court was the third man out on the left. His boots crashed down into broken bits of concrete big enough to break an ankle if he didn’t watch what he was doing, but he ran on through it, into thick gray smoke spewing from the grenades fired from his BMP. It was hard to tell with all the machine-gun fire from his vehicle, but Court didn’t detect any incoming rounds as he made his way through the smoke. Soon all he could see was Saunders’s back and helmet ahead of him, and in seconds he slammed with Saunders and the others against the wall of the building, flattening their backs out so they couldn’t be seen by a shooter inside any of the shattered windows.
They were next to the door, or at least next to where the door used to be. Instead there was a massive hole where it looked to Court like a main gun round from a tank had blown the door and a good portion of wall away.
But Court hadn’t heard any of the Desert Hawks’ T-72s firing, and he didn’t see any tanks around now. So if this had been from a tank, it had been in a battle fought earlier.
This was Syria, so for all Court knew, the destruction could have been seven years old.
Court stacked up at the back of the six-man team, and seconds later the half dozen KWA mercs from the other BMP appeared through the smoke and arrived at the other side of the big hole. Together the team breached the building—Van Wyk’s six went right and the other KWA unit went to the left.