Alghani opened the briefcase and emptied the bundles of American dollars on the floor before retrieving his phone and replacing the battery. He stood by the window, peering out and trying to slow his breathing. A few moments later he saw headlights flash on and move away. When the darkness and silence had descended again, he made a move for the door but stopped with his hand on the knob.
What should he do? Call Rapp’s people and tell them that the man he’d met with wasn’t the one they’d expected? Or should he just run? What would give him the best chance of forever disappearing from the gaze of Sayid Halabi and, even more important, from the gaze of Mitch Rapp?
CHAPTER 5
Al-Shirqat
Iraq
REPEAT that,” Rapp said into his throat mike. “I lost you.”
No response.
Despite having to deviate from the initial plan and take the truck, the operation was going pretty smoothly. Mohammed’s lifelong familiarity with the area had gotten them on the road out of town without being seen and with no wrong turns. Al-Shirqat was five miles in Rapp’s rearview mirror and he was estimating that they’d arrive at the LZ in another six. The road surface was better than his intel had suggested and the bottomed-out pickup was negotiating it with no significant problems. Its maximum speed wasn’t much over thirty, but the wheels hadn’t fallen off and all the gauges looked good.
“Marcus! Come in!”
“Hold . . .” came the static-ridden reply. “Trying to fix . . .”
Marcus Dumond was a computer hacker who would have been in prison if it weren’t for Rapp intervening and giving him a job. Over the past couple of years he’d become increasingly involved in these kinds of operations and had proved his worth many times over. In a way, he was a victim of his success. He despised being involved in life-or-death situations and knew precisely nothing about military tactics. His grasp of technology, though, was second to none.
“Penetrating the army’s jamming is a pain in my ass!” he said when he came back on the comm. The military was doing everything it could to keep electronic communications down in ISIS-held territory, and Dumond had set up a narrow encrypted band to cut through. Unfortunately, its effectiveness was spotty.
“I’ve got you back,” Rapp said, slamming into a deep rut that the feeble headlight hadn’t picked up. He glanced back to confirm the people riding in the bed hadn’t been thrown out. Gaffar anticipated his concern and gave a few encouraging slaps on top of the cab.
“The good news is that the chopper’s on schedule,” Dumond said.
“And the bad news?”
“You’ve got a patrol coming at you from the north. Same road.”
“How far out?”
“Call it two miles. You should be seeing their lights pretty soon.”
“Any detours I can take?”
“None. Can you just go off road a hundred yards? They’ll drive right by.”
“We’d be lucky to make it ten feet before we bog down.”
“They probably won’t do any better, then. Go as far as you can and then move fast to the LZ on foot. They’ll probably see your truck and come after you, but, traveling as the crow flies, you’d just have to stay ahead of them for about four miles. Mostly flat terrain with a few moderately rocky sections.”
An easy task if he’d been with Coleman’s team, but this crew would get chased down inside of five minutes.
“Not a chance.”
“Then I’m out of ideas, Mitch. I can tell you this, though: if you keep on like you are, you’re going to run right into them.”
Rapp swore under his breath. “What’s happening in town?”
“I’ve got the drone over top of you, so my view isn’t as good. They’ve definitely found the mess you made and have patrols converging on the area. One vehicle seems to be tracking your path out of the city somehow, but too slow to be a problem for you.”
Not necessarily true, Rapp knew. While the U.S. had been successful at shutting down cell and satellite communication in the area, they hadn’t been able to do much about short-range radio. It was possible that the patrol ahead of them knew what was happening in town and was looking for them.
“Understood. Stand by.”
Rapp looked over at Mohammed and switched to Arabic. “We’ve got a patrol coming in our direction.”
“A patrol?” he said, twisting in his seat. “What do you mean? There are no turns off this road. They—”
“Calm down. We’re going to be fine. You’re probably going to have to take over driving, though. Just stay on the road and follow the directions I gave you to the LZ.”
“I don’t understand.” His words came out in a barely comprehensible jumble. “Why would I have to drive? What are you going to do? Where will you be?”
Rapp ignored him, instead banging a fist on the window behind him. A moment later Gaffar leaned around and stuck his bearded face in the open driver’s-side window.
“Do we have a problem, Mitch?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. There’s a patrol coming down on us. Tell everyone to look friendly.”
He nodded and pulled back into the bed to get his people in line.
“Mitch . . .” Mohammed started.
“Not now,” Rapp responded. A slight glow was becoming visible in the distance, but it wasn’t the approaching patrol that made him grip the wheel tighter. It was Mohammed’s face in his peripheral vision.
“I need to ask you a question.”
Rapp remained silent, hoping that the young Iraqi would lose his train of thought as the threat of the men coming at them increased. Not surprisingly, the opposite was the case. Mohammed didn’t want to leave this world without knowing how his sister had died.
“What happened to Laleh, Mitch? General Mustafa was stabbed to death and we found her body lying next to his with a gunshot wound to the chest. You were there, weren’t you? When she was killed?”
Again Rapp didn’t answer. The oncoming patrol vehicle wasn’t going to save him, though. It seemed to be moving in slow motion.
“She had a knife,” he said finally. “I didn’t see it. She attacked Mustafa.”
Mohammed nodded, a vengeful smile just barely visible in the glow of the gauges. “My brother thought it was you who had killed that pig. But I knew. Laleh was the strongest of us. Ever since we were children.”
Rapp pressed harder on the accelerator, but the truck wouldn’t respond. Even downhill, thirty-five miles an hour was all it would give him.
The silence between them lasted only a few seconds before Mohammed broke it. “So one of General Mustafa’s guards shot her?”
Rapp knew he could lie. No one would ever know. He was the only living witness to what had happened.
“Mitch?”
“It wasn’t one of the guards.” He’d known this conversation was inevitable when he’d come back for Mohammed and his people. And he’d made his decision about what to say long before he’d set out for Iraq. Laleh deserved to have her story known. Her real story.
“Who then?”
“I shot her. The general was bleeding out on the floor. His guards were going to take her.”
He wasn’t sure how Mohammed would react but was surprised when he just sank a little deeper in his seat.