State of Honour (30 page)

“You really gonna let him live?” Lester asked, pulling Tom up.

“Yeah,” Tom said, wiping blood from his forehead.

“That’ll need stitches.”

Tom bent over at the waist, breathing hard to clear the haze and reduce his pulse rate.

“I thought you were gonna kill him.”

“I guess I prefer protecting people more than killing them.”

“Sometimes that’s one and the same thing,” Lester said.

Yeah, I know, Tom thought. But not this time. He eased his torso up, his hands pressed against his lower back as he cricked his neck. “Let’s get you fixed up. Take the secretary home.”

“Me? You need a mirror, man. And what about Karen?”

Tom closed his eyes and massaged his temples. He consoled himself by thinking that her body would be cared for by the French. Besides, there was no alternative. If they took her body on the jet with them, rigor mortis would set in after three hours and bloating after that. The thought made him almost gag. After what she’d said about her parents, he didn’t want them to see her in that kind of state. Leaving her behind would’ve been what she’d have wanted. She would be preserved as well as possible in the local morgue, the made-up cadaver a less gruesome sight for her parents to identify.

Wiping spittle from his lips, he said, “The French will take care of her. We ain’t got the facilities on the plane. You know her parents?”

“No. But I’ll track ‘um down real quick.”

“Thanks, man.”

Tom looked at Proctor. He was in bad shape, still semi-unconscious. He’d leave him for the French. His word was good.

Lester stared hard at him. “You shoulda killed him. For Karen.”

Tom sighed, patted his friend’s good arm. Shaking his head, Lester said he’d go ahead to fetch the Land Rover, adding that he could manage it for the short distance to the chateau, and that it wasn’t the first time he’d had to drive wounded and one-handed.

With blood falling in small clots from his forehead, Tom walked out of the room. As he got to the makeshift cell he turned the key, swung back the hinge and opened the door. He saw the secretary lying on the bed. She was still suffering from some form of drug. He guessed that she’d been sedated to enable her murder to be carried out more easily. That and the beating Proctor had given her.

Her eyes flickered open and she gasped as she registered him. He could see even more clearly now that her captivity had taken its toll, her face almost unrecognizable. He picked her up in his arms and carried her from the cell like an exhausted child.

“We should be in DC in the next nine hours, ma’am,” he whispered.

As he walked towards the vestibule he passed Karen’s shrouded body in the entrance hall. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine her in the afterlife. He’d grieve for her, although now wasn’t the time. He’d go home to Louisiana, hang out for a couple of weeks. Mourn her there.

When he got outside, a light drizzle was falling.

He stood still, holding the secretary in his arms, the moisture playing upon his face. He thought about his mother. He’d saved a woman’s life, but one he had grown to care for had died in the process. But he was just a man. And men had no right pretending to be anything else.

Attempting to clear his mind of extraneous thoughts, he saw the car heading up the gravel roadway. As Lester got out and opened the rear passenger door Tom laid the secretary onto the back seat, feeling her body trembling beneath the blankets. He asked Lester to gather up the guards’ cellphones, if he could manage it.

Watching his friend walk back into the chateau, he phoned Birch. Birch went into a rant at first, but calmed down after Tom confirmed that the secretary was safe and that he was bringing her home. He relayed everything that had happened, including the whereabouts of those kidnappers who’d died and those who were still alive, emphasizing where he’d left Proctor. Birch ordered him to wait there for the French to arrive, but Tom said that he didn’t trust anyone at this juncture and that he wasn’t going to let Lyric out of his sight until they’d landed in DC, even if it meant his pension. He cut Birch off then.

With a reddened piece of torn cloth around his head like a bandana, Tom drove the Land Rover back to the private airfield near Rouen, due to Lester’s bullet wound. The trunk was loaded with the seized weapons, the lasers and sound system. The secretary was lying across the back seats, her head propped up on one of the backpacks against the door. Sitting beside Tom, Lester was tending to his injury as best he could with the contents of a med kit he’d brought with him from onboard the jet. But Tom knew he’d been hit in an artery, and that he might have to risk a detour to the nearest hospital.

No one had spoken since they’d left the chateau. The drizzle had turned to rain and the car’s wipers were on full power. Tom turned off the highway to Rouen onto the back roads that led to the airfield. After thirty seconds or so, the sound of a helicopter could be heard as it passed above them, although the overhanging branches meant that it couldn’t be identified.

“That French Special Forces?” Lester asked.

Tom pressed the electric-window switch and craned his neck on a straight section of road, the raindrops splashing on his face. He still couldn’t see the helicopter, but it was clear from the noise that it was heading in the same direction as them, rather than towards the chateau.

“If it is, they need a new navigation system.”

“Good job we acted when we did, then,” Lester said. “Just wish Karen had been going home with us, too.”

So do I, Tom thought. So do I.

He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the watch that the secretary had given him back in Islamabad. He thought he’d use it as a tool to break her silence. He flipped the watch over, glanced at the back:
To Tom with heartfelt gratitude. Linda G. Carlyle. US Secretary of State
.

“I still got it, ma’am,” he said, holding it up behind his head as he drove. “Your middle name, ma’am. Maybe I’ve earned the right?”

He put the watch back and adjusted the rear-view mirror. The secretary looked blank and closed her eyes, coughing.

It was the look, a split second, no more. But it was enough for Tom.

“Ma’am,” he said. “What does the T stand for?”

The secretary coughed again.

“The T, ma’am?”

“Hey, Tom, ease up, man,” Lester said.

“The T?” Tom said, ignoring him.

“Theresa,” she mumbled.

“Jesus!” Tom said, smacking the steering wheel with his palm.

“Shit, man, what’s up?” Lester said, pulling out his SIG and checking for a tail.

Tom slammed down the brake pedal. The car juddered to a stop by a grass verge. The woman fell into the footwell.

“Why you stopping the goddamned car?” Lester asked, rebounding back in his seat.

“The secretary’s middle name begins with a G,” Tom said.

“It’s the drugs, man. Drugs do that. Least as far as I recall they do.”

Tom drew his SIG, turned and stared hard at the woman as she struggled up onto the seat. “If you got a weapon, take it out with your thumb and forefinger.”

“A weapon? Tom, you lost it or what?”

Tom didn’t blink. The woman put her hand behind her back and eased out a Ruger LCP. The Ruger was a six-round pocket pistol that weighed a little over a quarter of a kilo. But Tom knew it was as deadly as a Glock at close quarters.

“Toss it in the footwell,” he said.

She did so.

“Now take it off,” he barked. “All of it. Or I’ll do it for ya.”

The woman removed the green-coloured contact lenses before licking her fingers and digging them into her face, ripping off blemish-ridden skin-like layers, false scabs, a plastic lesion and a made-up bruise. Lastly, she rubbed her face clean.

Tom froze, his heart racing. Then he blinked, shook his head. He couldn’t believe it. He felt bile rise in his throat, choking him.

“You gotta be freakin’ kiddin’,” Lester said.

It was Karen.

As Swiss’s Range Rover took a sharp right-hand bend into a field a mile or so from his apartment in Pentagon City, he saw his private helicopter parked on the asphalt helipad about thirty metres away. I’m safe, for now, he thought. The allotted time for the secretary’s death had passed, but no one had rung him to confirm the kill. Nothing had appeared on the Internet, either. Briefly, he wondered if the Saudi ambassador had decided to have her killed in accordance with the timeframe imposed by the video, but dismissed the idea. He was the conduit to Proctor and his men. He wouldn’t be bypassed on such an important decision. Besides, Proctor had no notion of the ambassador.

When he’d tried to contact the chateau, no one had picked up. Likewise the various disposable cells of his men, which had been switched off. He knew that something had gone wrong. The operation had been compromised, not because it was a flawed plan, he’d thought, but because someone knew something.

He’d been unsettled by the conversation with General Dupont; and the special agent, Tom Dupree, might have talked to someone before he’d been taken to the warehouse. Although if he had, he’d taken it to the grave with him. But Proctor had told him that there were three intruders at the chateau. He couldn’t conceive of how two men and a woman could’ve overpowered his men there. They were the best he had, handpicked especially for the task. But there had been only one option for him in the short term. Get to somewhere safe, find out what exactly had happened, and take it from there.

The car hit the tarmac roadway that led over the field to the helipad and Swiss unbuckled his seat belt. He heard the sound of the sirens before the buckle strap snapped back into place. He turned and saw three black SUVs speeding up behind. FBI, he thought. Even if his two bodyguards managed to kill them all, the helicopter would be tracked, forced to land, or shot down by an F-35 stealth fighter within the hour. But then he figured the chance of his bodyguards taking out a dozen or more agents was about as likely as him getting invited to the next presidential dinner at the White House.

“Don’t resist,” he said.

“But, sir,” the Russian woman said.

“It’ll be the FBI. I’ll take my chances. Stay in the car.”

“Are you sure?” the male bodyguard asked.

Swiss nodded, rubbing his clammy palms together.

The Range Rover slowed to a stop and Swiss saw the cars encircle them. Suited agents wearing shades, ball caps and FBI emblazoned windbreakers disembarked. They crouched down, raising handguns, pump-action shotguns and MP5s. He opened the door and stepped out. An agent eased himself up and walked over, aiming his handgun and shouting at Swiss to get down and put his hands behind his head. Obeying, he knelt down, although he raised his face to the morning sun before assuming the position on the tarmac. He didn’t know how long it would be before he’d feel its warmth again.

The agent ran over and he was cuffed brusquely.

After his two bodyguards and driver received the same treatment and had had their weapons removed, Swiss was dragged up and manhandled towards one of the SUVs. His head was pushed down and he was told to get into the rear passenger seat.

As the car drove off he said, “I want to make a call to my lawyers. Now.”

There were four agents in the car. Apart from the driver and the one who’d used the cuffs, the two other agents sat either side of him. The seats were covered with plastic sheets, the footwell, too. It struck him as odd, that and the fact that no one had apprised him of his Miranda Rights.

“Are you arresting me?” he asked.

The agents didn’t speak. But the one sitting to his left took out a cellphone and played a video of the scene at the warehouse where he’d shot Hawks and ordered Tom Dupree beaten and murdered. How the hell did they get that? he thought.

“You do not need lawyers,” the agent in the front passenger seat said. “Not unless they can bring back the dead.”

“That’s funny,” Swiss said. “Where’s that accent from?”

The man in front turned around and Swiss saw the handgun fixed with a suppressor. The two men sitting either side of him acted in unison, pushing his shoulders back and keeping his head level.

“Pakistan,” the man said.

Swiss attempted a smile, but closed his eyes at the last moment. The bullet entered his forehead between his eyes and killed him instantly.

A second later, the shooter took out a secure satphone and rang Brigadier Hasni’s office, informing an ISI operative in code that Swiss was dead.

In Islamabad, it was late afternoon and Mullah Kakar was feeling isolated and nervous because one of Brigadier Hasni’s men had called him and had said that he would be picked up outside a hookah lounge on the outskirts of the Blue Area in an hour. That meant alone. The man hadn’t said why. They never did, and Kakar knew that it would have been pointless to have asked.

He sat in his dim house and thought about what had happened and who might have talked already. In truth, it didn’t really make any difference, since, if the West found out he was in fact alive, he was already one of the most wanted men in the world. Besides, the war would go on irrespective of the fact that ISAF had left Afghanistan. As far as he was concerned, the war with the West would go on for decades. There were other hotspots he could utilize to mete out his lust for revenge: West Africa, Egypt, Syria … the list was growing rather than diminishing. And there were an increasing amount of unlikely allies, too. Leftists, disillusioned Westerners, anarchists. He didn’t like it and the allegiances wouldn’t last, but he would use whatever was available to him for now. He’d already done so.

After meeting Proctor in the foothills of the Hindu Kush, he’d taken him to the training camp at an ISI-owned cluster of buildings twenty miles north of Islamabad. At the camp, the Englishman had joined up with other foreign mercenaries and ISI paramilitaries. Kakar had tutored them in the techniques of terrorism, including IEDs and kidnapping. When he’d been satisfied of their readiness, he’d reported to Hasni, a few days shy of a month before they’d kidnapped the secretary in Islamabad. It had been his passion.

But now he was preoccupied with what was going to happen in the next hour or so.

As the black Mercedes pulled up outside the hookah lounge he slid onto the rear passenger seat. The driver was the same one who’d picked him up the first time he’d been driven to Brigadier Hasni’s house. He was still chewing gum and wearing shades. Kakar didn’t bother attempting to strike up a conversation with him, knowing the man wasn’t so much taciturn as ignorant.

Less than five minutes later, as the car slowed down at a red stop, Kakar saw someone standing on the wide sidewalk. They looked a little strange, dressed in a ball cap and Coke-lens eyeglasses, their left hand carrying a cellphone. In truth, he couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. Seeing the car, the person sprinted towards a narrow alley bordered by high walls.

“There–” Kakar said, pointing.

It was the last word he said. The car exploded in a ball of flames and rose three metres into the air, the blast shattering the chassis and turning the metal into lethal shards that travelled upwards. Kakar’s already dislocated and fatally wounded body was shredded into a hundred pieces.