Chapter 35
CHAPTER 35
I DIDN’T HEAR from Tia the following day. Or the next one. The day after that, a Monday, I got a text message from Arabella.
Arabella: Tia says thanks for her schoolwork. Luke’s confiscated her phone and her laptop and she’s not allowed to use the house phone. She’s waiting for him to calm down and then she’ll call you as soon as she can.
I fired off a quick reply.
Emmy: I understand—tell Tia to keep her chin up.
On Tuesday, I returned to the States. I had things to do there—some good, some not so good—and with no further news from Tia, there was nothing to keep me in England.
I couldn’t wait to see Stan and Lucy, and Carmen called to say she’d organised a teppanyaki night. One of my regular clients also sent through a couple of interesting projects, and they’d keep me and my team occupied for a week or two. Not so enjoyable were the meetings with my accountants and investment managers—yawn—talking to my lawyer about Miriam, and dealing with paperwork.
Oh, and Alex was waiting for me to land, with bated breath and cracking knuckles.
The icing on the cake was my new tattoo, the one I’d got on Saturday, which itched like poison oak as it healed.
I’d thought I couldn’t sink much lower after the run-in with Luke last week, but Wednesday proved me wrong. Most mornings, the senior team met to discuss upcoming jobs, and today was no different. One look at Nate’s face when I walked into the conference room and I knew there was something on the agenda he wished he could erase.
Still, he kept me guessing while he dealt with the mundane stuff.
“Come on, spit it out,” I said when he umm-ed and aah-ed then launched into a detailed account of an elderly widow’s missing cat. A cloned cat worth $25,000, and the old lady was a wealthy heiress, but a cat nonetheless.
Nate sighed and fiddled with his tablet. “Okay, so we’ve had a request in from the CIA. They want a team, meaning Emmy, to go into Syria and look for evidence the Syrians are building chemical weapons they claim not to have.”
“Isn’t that the same brief they gave us a few weeks back?” I asked, recalling the request I’d knocked back just after I returned to Blackwood. “The one that was more of a suicide mission than a spying job?”
“Exactly the one. Except now there’s a new twist. After you blew them off, the CIA sent their own team, which has now disappeared. So the job’s gone from looking for weapons to looking for weapons plus hostages if they’re lucky, bodies if they’re not.”
“From the way the Syrians treat their hostages, I’d say being dead was the better option. Why can’t the CIA send their own people, being as they seem to think this mission actually has a chance of being less than a total disaster? A sentiment I have to say I don’t share.”
“The CIA already sent their best team.”
“So their best team couldn’t do the job, and now they want us to sort out their mess?”
“Emmy, they already sent their best team.”
Oh. My blood drained to my feet as I realised what Nate meant.
“Jed?”
“Jed,” he confirmed. “Plus one other, a guy called Phillip Farrow.”
Now I didn’t know Phillip Farrow. But I knew Jed. And Jed’s bosses at the CIA knew I knew Jed. And as they knew a lot, even if it wasn’t quite as much as they liked to think they did, they likely knew how well I knew Jed.
So now they were asking me to go into Syria to find him and complete their job while I was at it. Manipulative little… I had to hand it to them. It was something I’d have done myself.
“So…” I started.
“You’re not doing it, Emmy,” Nate jumped in.
“That’s got to be a decision I make, Nate.”
“You’ve already made it. I saw it on your face the second I mentioned Jed.”
“So you understand there’s not much you can do or say to change my mind.”
“Unfortunately, yes. But it doesn’t mean I won’t try. You’ve only been back a few months, and without Black here your head’s not in the right place.”
“I know as well as you do I’m not playing with a full deck at the moment. But I’m still going.”
“I’ll come with you,” Nick said.
Nick’s proposition meant he was literally putting his life on the line for me. But I had to turn him down.
“No, Nick. Not that I don’t appreciate your offer, because I do, but that’s not a part of the world you’re used to operating in.”
“Who do you want, then?”
“Logan Barnes, if he agrees to it. Plus the support of everyone around this table because I’m going to need it.”
“Goes without saying that you’ve got our support, Emmy,” Nate said. “That doesn’t stop us all wishing you wouldn’t go.”
“I have to.”
And not only because of Jed. When I started working with Black, he showed me I could make a difference. Some of the things I did, although unpalatable, would ultimately lead to a greater good. If I gathered information on weapons the Syrian regime didn’t want people to know about, the world could act. Would I trade my life for the potential to save many? In a heartbeat. It was why I existed—I’d just got lucky so far.
Nate knew that, and he sighed as he hit a button on the intercom.
“Someone find Logan, please.”
And that was why, a little over a week later, I sat in premium economy eating shrivelled peanuts as the plane descended into Damascus.
“Want one?” I offered the packet to Logan.
He mock-shuddered. “I can only stomach those with beer.”
What I wouldn’t do for a pint. We were off alcohol until we got back, not that it was easy to come across in the Middle East, anyway.
The first miracle befell us as the ageing plane landed in one piece, and the second happened when the rickety luggage carousel cranked into life and all our bags appeared on it. Logan picked up the hefty case holding his cameras. We’d travelled under the guise of freelance reporters, both on French passports. Logan had his French accent tuned to perfection, and it did squishy things to my insides just listening to him. I’d already made him read the weather report twice.
Of course, flying commercial limited us somewhat in the weapons we could bring. The knives hidden in our suitcase frames would have to serve us until we sourced something better. The CIA had promised their support—I’d have settled for nothing less seeing as it was them who’d messed up in the first place—but I never completely trusted them. On past experience, I’d found the CIA looked out for the CIA and screwed everyone else. I’d sent them a shopping list two days ago, but whether they delivered any of it remained to be seen. I certainly wasn’t holding my breath.
The hotel we spent the night in claimed to be five-star, but turned out to be five-cockroach. Logan and I took it in turns to keep watch, and as the call to prayer echoed off the battle-scarred buildings the next morning, we packed up for the next stage of our journey. At least our CIA contact had turned up with just over half of my requests. I felt happier with a gun under my baggy shirt.
The driver of the decrepit taxi hunched over the wheel, listening to crackly pop songs the whole way to Homs. Occasionally he sang too. I should have brought those earplugs from Black’s along.
“Home, sweet home,” Logan muttered as the car pulled up outside the dilapidated apartment sourced by the local CIA station chief.
I wafted exhaust smoke away as I pulled my kit out of the trunk. “This is luxury. It’s got a roof and everything.”
Plus two lumpy mattresses, a hotplate I wouldn’t have dared to turn on even if the electricity worked, and a whole variety of insects. If it flew, climbed, crawled, or scuttled, there was a specimen. An entomologist’s dream.
“Look on the bright side,” Logan said. “If we get hungry, we can fry them on the windowsill.”
No, there was no air conditioning either.
We dumped the bags inside, careful to keep anything valuable with us. The rusty padlock on the door wouldn’t keep anyone out. The sun beat down on us as we stepped into a war zone just feet from the front door. No matter how many denials the government issued, there was no mistaking the reality.
A tiny child ran up to me, hand out. I placed a few of the livres syrienne I’d brought for the purpose in his palm, which only attracted more kids. I hated places like this. The West could donate pound after pound, dollar after dollar, but aid seldom got to where it was needed most. Handing out notes on a street corner made me feel better for an all-too-brief moment, but it was like trying to stop a leaking reservoir with my thumb. Pockets empty, I backed away with the mission on my mind. Helping to cut the legs off the so-called-leaders who’d brought this country to its knees was the biggest way I could make a difference.
Those youngsters might have tugged at my heartstrings, but the older ones got to me more. A twelve-year-old boy walked past with an AK-47 slung over his chest, pausing to look at me with dead eyes. Just one of thousands who’d lost their humanity.
Time to go to work, Emmy .
The base we were investigating lay four kilometres outside town. When we set out at dusk a couple of days after we arrived, I’d changed into a loose-fitting abaya, complete with veil and gloves. Logan walked alongside me, acting as my mahram , the male guardian who accompanied many ladies in the area. Our first two trips out there had been uneventful, preliminary excursions to see the lie of the land.
Tonight, we hunkered down at the boundary as we prepared to test their security. We’d seen roving patrols walking the fence line, but what else did they have?
As midnight passed, I threw a handful of stones at the chain-link fence then stuck my fingers in my ears as a siren wailed. A jeep pulled up and five guards leapt out, guns drawn. They spent several frantic minutes running up and down the fence line before their movements slowed.
“ Lashai ,” the leader muttered. Nothing.
The group piled back into the vehicle again and took off back to the cluster of buildings in the distance. Reality TV and coffee beckoned, no doubt. Lucky people. My mouth watered at the thought of the latter.
The second time the alarm sounded, they rushed out again, still alert, but they didn’t look around quite so hard. The third and fourth times, they left their weapons in the jeep, and I heard their muttered curses from my hiding place behind an abandoned car. That was the last we saw of them, and the eighth time I threw the stones, the alarm remained silent. Obviously, they’d come to the conclusion the system had malfunctioned and shut it off.
Perfect.
I beckoned Logan forward from the derelict building thirty feet behind me, and together we hopped over the fence. Sticking close, we crept towards the main part of the base. Only my eyes showed from under my niqab, my freshly dyed black hair hidden away. Dressed as I was, I blended into the background, almost invisible. I could have been the cook, the cleaner, the shadow you weren’t quite sure existed.
As well as being deadly in all the right ways, Logan easily passed for native. A few days in the sun gave him a tan to make an Essex girl jealous, and he’d spent enough time in Syria to adopt the colloquial Arabic spoken by the locals. We’d liberated his Syrian military uniform from an unlocked car two days ago, and I’d traded food in return for his machine gun with a little girl who couldn’t have been more than ten. The AK-47 wasn’t in the best nick, but it still worked—we’d taken it for a quick test run in the desert. Nobody around here batted an eyelid at the noise anymore. Gunfire was engrained in daily life.
Keeping alert for signs of the enemy, we combed through the base, slowly and carefully, a section each night. When we got back to the apartment, we’d use our satellite phone to send the photos we took back home, hundreds of them. That base housed a lot of interesting stuff.
The fence alarm was still down on the fifth night. Clearly, maintenance crews had been on the list of government cuts. We snuck past the buildings we’d already checked, along a dusty track, and stumbled across the underground weapons facility. Quite literally. I almost tripped over the emergency exit, a trap door set in concrete alongside a ramshackle warehouse.
“Good going,” Logan whispered once we’d shimmed the padlock and opened the hatch. “Do you want to go first, or shall I?”
“I’ll go.”
Lead from the front, that’s what Black taught me.
The extra guards didn’t present us with too much of a problem, but the sprawling maze of tunnels meant we didn’t find Jed and Phillip until our seventh night of trying. I’d nearly given up by then, convinced they must be dead, their bodies either buried or left in the desert for the birds to pick at.
Which might have been the better option. When we found them, I almost wished we hadn’t.
The two dingy cells, each no more than ten feet square, festered at the end of a darkened passage far away from the main storage area. Probably so the soldiers wouldn’t be disturbed by the prisoners’ screams.
I opened one door, and Logan took the other.
I got Phillip. And the only reason I knew I got Phillip was because when Jed limped into the room, his arm over Logan’s shoulder, he slumped forward and choked out a string of profanities.
Words weren’t enough. Words would never be enough.
Phillip had been crucified. Rusty nails pierced his palms and ankles, thin rivulets of congealed blood seeping from the holes and taking their natural course towards the floor. His head slumped towards his stomach, where his intestines spilled out through a ten-inch gash. Some monster had caught them in a bucket, and they lay swollen in a pool of blood and faecal matter. The stench choked me. Putrid fumes coated the back of my throat like a thin layer of fur, and I gagged as my stomach tried to evacuate. Flies rose around my head as I stepped forward with my camera, ready to take an identification photo. I hated to do it, but I’d been trained to complete a job no matter what. Work came first.
Work always came first.
Then Phillip coughed.
If I’d felt ill before, that quiet splutter multiplied my urge to throw up by a factor of ten. I hated this part of my work. The part that fuelled my nightmares. The part I needed to talk out with Black afterwards to keep my sanity.
“Leave,” I told the other two.
“We have to do something…” Logan began.
“Leave.”
Jed caught my eye and understood what I was about to do. He backed out of the room with Logan following.
I walked over to Phillip and caressed what was left of his cheek. If nothing else, he’d know at the end someone cared. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
Then where the back of his neck was exposed, I drove my trusty Emerson CQC-7 through his brain stem. One twist of the knife, and the light in his remaining eye blinked out.
He wasn’t suffering anymore, but that didn’t make it any easier. Turn off the emotions, Emmy . I grabbed my tiny camera and snapped a burst of photos: face, torso, mangled extremities. Don’t think; don’t think; don’t think . For a brief second, I’d been glad it was Phillip hanging there. Why? Because it wasn’t Jed.
And I hated myself for that.
As I stepped into the corridor, a commotion sounded from around the corner, followed almost immediately by the pew pew pew of a rifle on full-auto. The horrors of the night were far from over.
Instinct took over, and I jumped over the body of a guard, lying on the floor as he breathed his last. Footsteps echoing off the concrete walls told me reinforcements were on their way. I stripped off the abaya so I could move properly and grabbed the dead guy’s still-warm rifle from the stained concrete.
“Move,” I barked at the other two. We didn’t have time to waste.
Jed tried to hide his injuries, but every time he landed on his left leg, his face twisted up in pain. Logan half carried him as they ran, which left me to cover the back and sides. I sensed movement to my right and took out two soldiers before they raised their guns. One round each. I needed to conserve ammo. Up ahead, Jed shot another, using the hand not hanging on to Logan.
Things only got worse outside. Soldiers appeared from every direction, forcing us backwards. We ended up hunkered down between an old tank and a raised bank as the moon lit up the grim scene before us. I glanced back at the carnage we’d left in our wake. The nearest body was still twitching.
Fascinating though that was, I blocked out the sight and willed my brain to think.
“How much ammo have you got left?” I asked the others.
Jed dropped his magazine out. “Nineteen rounds.”
“Seventeen,” Logan said.
“Same.”
I slammed my gun back together and flattened myself to the gritty earth as another barrage of bullets flew at us. A car was on fire, and in front of the wild flames, shadows danced as the guards milled around, plotting how to get us out of our hole or, better still, kill us in it.
We had something in common. I was plotting how to get us out of there too.
“You remember you once complained I never took you anywhere exciting?” Jed asked.
“I never said that.”
“One night on the sofa when I was feeding you chocolate ice cream. You said, ‘movie and junk food, what could be better?’”
“Huh? I enjoyed that.”
“Oh. I thought you were being sarcastic.”
“Guys,” Logan interrupted, waving his arm at the trained killers in front of us. “Hello? Gunfight? Would you mind rehashing your failed love life later?”
“Sorry.”
I got back to thinking about the situation we were stuck in. There had to be at least two hundred soldiers out there by that point, so unless they helped us out by lining up four deep, we didn’t have enough bullets to go around.
Jed was injured, and despite his sense of humour being intact, his body wasn’t. The sharp angles of his jaw hadn’t escaped me, nor had his hipbone digging into my side. He’d been starved. How much use would he be when the Syrians started shooting? He’d fight all right, to the death, but death might come sooner rather than later if I didn’t come up with a decent plan.
Our only advantage was that they didn’t know who they were up against. The troops were currently being cautious, waiting for us to make the first move. Their patience wouldn’t last, though. We didn’t have long.
I looked to the heavens for inspiration, and amazingly, it came. In the bank above my head, a black opening yawned from the gloom. Some sort of pipe? I plastered myself against the dirt and stood on tiptoe. The mouth gaped at me. Maybe it was part of an old drainage system? I hadn’t seen it on any of the maps I’d studied, and where it went, I had no idea. But I was about to find out. I whispered my plan to Jed and Logan.
“You’re crazy, but what’s new?” Jed said.
Logan just rolled his eyes, the whites glinting in the moonlight, but they both knew we didn’t have any other options. Either I could try to find a miracle, or we’d die together.
“Help me up?”
Jed leaned over and kissed me roughly, desperation in his lips. Was that a final goodbye? Please say it wasn’t. I could still taste him as Logan squeezed my hand in a silent show of support then gave me a boost into the pipe.
Welcome to a new nightmare…