Chapter 15
Fifteen
Omar pulled up to the aviation school just before ten o’clock. The main building was dark and the parking lot was empty, save for a rusted pickup truck and a motorcycle under a tarp. But light spilled from a hangar in the back.
He followed the bright triangle of light across the tarmac and parked the Peugeot just outside the wide open hangar door. As he exited the car, he cracked his stiff back and rolled his tight shoulders. He ached all over, like he’d taken a beating. Oh right, he had.
He walked toward the hangar. His footsteps echoed with a series of sharp cracks. The cool air smelled like aviation fuel and night-blooming jasmine from somewhere beyond the fence line.
Inside the hangar, he found Jake and Trent hunched over a workbench covered in maps, schematics, and satellite photos. They looked up at the sound of his footsteps.
Jake’s expression was equal parts exasperation and resignation. “Of course you came.”
There was no heat in it. Just weary acceptance.
Trent grinned. “Took you long enough.”
Then they were back to work, no time wasted on sentiment. Omar joined them at the table, and within seconds he was caught up: the Potomac extraction team was trapped in the Marseille safe house, and they were going to get them out.
A door at the back of the hangar opened, and a wiry man walked in carrying four beers by their necks. A scar ran through his left eyebrow and silver stubble covered his jaw. He wore faded jeans and a t-shirt with the French tricolor on it.
Frank “Squirrel” Weller earned his Air Force call sign thanks to his habit of eating peanuts during missions and constantly leaving shells everywhere in the cockpit.
He set the beers on the workbench and nodded at Omar. “Saw you pull up, Khan. Didn’t know you were the third man.”
“Neither did we,” Jake said dryly.
Unperturbed, Squirrel twisted the cap off his beer and took a long pull.
Jake eyed him. “You sure you’re still up for this, Squirrel? We could use a pilot, I won’t lie. But with Omar, I could fly the bird, and he and Trent could go inside.”
Squirrel nodded once. “Three men inside is better than two. Not to mention, I’m a better pilot than you.”
Jake nodded. “I owe you.”
“Not even close.”
A look passed between the two old Air Force friends.
Omar knew the broad strokes of their history.
Jake had saved Squirrel’s life in Afghanistan during a mission to rescue French soldiers pinned down by heavy fire in the Korengal Valley.
Their chopper took an RPG hit on approach.
Squirrel was wounded, shrapnel in his shoulder, blood running down his flight suit.
Jake had climbed into the cockpit, kept pressure on the wound with one hand while helping Squirrel work the controls with the other, and talked him through the landing. They’d crashed hard but walked away. Saved the French soldiers, too.
Both received medals from the French government. A Croix de Guerre for Jake. The Médaille Militaire for Squirrel.
After Squirrel retired from the Air Force, he resettled in France—partly for his connection to the country, partly for a fresh start from his three ex-wives. He ran the aviation school mostly as a hobby and as cover to help out his old buddies when they needed off-the-books air support.
When Jake called, Squirrel answered.
They drank their beers, and Omar devoured several slices of cold pizza while Jake laid out the mission to get past the takeout and get their people out of the apartment where they were trapped.
Jake spread the intel on the workbench and went over each piece one by one. Satellite imagery. Building schematics. Street maps. Photographs of the safe house from multiple angles.
“Someone,” Jake said, his voice tight, “put our team on a terrorist watch list. Ryan convinced the French authorities not to act on it, but they also aren’t going to do anything about the operatives staking out the building.
“How many?”
Trent tapped the satellite photo. “Four positions we can confirm. Probably more we can’t.”
“The moment our guys try to leave,” Jake continued, “they’ll get grabbed.”
Omar studied the setup. It was elegant in its simplicity. The team couldn’t stay—they’d starve or be raided eventually. And they couldn’t leave—they’d be arrested or disappeared the moment they stepped outside.
“Did Ryan find out which agency is running the stakeout?” he asked.
Jake’s face went grim. “Every avenue’s been shut down. He hit walls everywhere. Called in every favor he had, got nowhere.”
“The commandos at the inn?”
“Same. No intel. No leads. Nothing.”
“Oof.” Squirrel made a sound like he’d been punched in the gut.
Someone with real power was behind this. Someone with the juice to shut down inquiries, erase digital trails, and mobilize assets across international borders.
“So we’re going in blind,” Trent said grimly.
“Blind and fast,” Jake confirmed.
They turned to logistics. The plan was as basic at they came.
They’d ’borrow’ one of the white work vans parked in the lot for the plumbing supply company across the road from the hangar.
Squirrel said the workers usually left the doors unlocked and the keys tucked up under the visors.
But if not, Trent could hot-wire one in his sleep.
Driving the kind of van that was invisible in any European city, they’d go in at dawn dressed as maintenance workers. Squirrel had already scrounged up some orange safety vests, hard hats, and toolboxes.
They’d park in the back alley. Enter through the rear service entrance that building management used for repairs and deliveries. Nobody looked twice at maintenance workers. It was a universal truth.
But if anyone did stop them, Omar would do most of the talking, speak Arabic. He’d play a North African laborer, explaining that they had to get the job done before the tenants woke up.
Once inside, they’d breach the flat, grab the team, and get them to the roof. Squirrel would be overhead in the helicopter. When he saw them on the roof, he’d land. Thirty seconds to load. Then gone.
Trent pointed out the obvious problem. “What happens when the stakeout teams notice a helicopter landing on the roof?”
Jake’s answer was blunt. “We have to move fast. We don’t give them time to react.”
It wasn’t a perfect plan. It relied on speed and audacity and the assumption that people didn’t look too closely at workers in orange vests.
But it was the best they had.
Omar studied the building schematics, memorizing entry points and stairwells. Squirrel calculated approach vectors and escape routes, factoring in wind speed and building height. They worked in focused silence, each man doing what he did best.
Once they were satisfied the plan was a tight as it was going to get, they cracked open fresh beers and kicked back on a pair of couches in Squirrel’s office that looked and smelled like they’d been liberated from the basement of a fraternity house.
Trent finally asked the question they’d been dancing around. “So who do we think is dirty?”
Theories flew.
Jake thought it was someone protecting Bradford Hampton, the Vice President’s son. “If Hanna talks about what she saw on that yacht, Hampton goes down. Maybe his father, too. That’s the kind of thing people kill to protect.”
Trent was more cynical. “Or it’s someone protecting Idris’s father. Ben Mahmoud’s the kind of guy who can reach into the US government whenever he wants.”
Squirrel, the outsider, offered a third option. “Maybe it’s both. Maybe they’re working together. Powerful people protect each other. That’s how it works.”
The one thing they couldn’t agree on was whether someone at Potomac was involved. Jake insisted it was impossible. Squirrel argued it was inevitable. Trent and Omar wisely kept their mouths shut.
As the temperature rose and the conversation grew heated, Omar spoke up. “We can work this out with Ryan when we’re back in the States. First things first. Get our guys out.”
Everyone agreed.
Mission first. Politics later.
The operation was set for dawn, which meant they had a few hours to sleep. Instead they had one last round of beers.
And the conversation drifted, as conversations tended to do, to women. Specifically, Omar and Marielle.
“You still pretending to just be friends?” Trent poked him.
Omar took a long pull of beer and said nothing.
“Don’t wait ten years to figure out she matters, Kahn.” Jake’s advice was tinged with personal regret.
He’d been set to propose to Chelsea more than a decade early, but picked the job over her. They only reconnected by chance because turned out to be Olivia’s cousin. He’d often remarked that he wished he could go back to his nineteen-year-old self and kick his own ass.
Omar put down his beer and blurted, “I want to take my shot. But I see now what you mean about the tension, Jake. I don’t think I could pick a mission over Marielle’s safety. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if something happened to her.”
“Yes, you would.” Trent’s voice was low and somber. “After Carla, it took years of therapy to work through the fear. That’s why I almost didn’t let myself fall for Olivia.” He stared into his beer. “But I finally accepted it: the fear doesn’t go away. You have to learn to live with it.”
Squirrel shook his head and snorted. “This is why I stay single. Easier that way.” Then his mouth turned down and he added, “Gets lonely, though.”
The mood had turned morose.
After a moment, Jake elbowed Squirrel in the ribs. “You better stay single, Weller. Three alimony payments is plenty. You add a fourth and you’ll be sleeping on this couch that smells like cheap booze and sweat.”
They laughed harder than the joke warranted, glad for the distraction from mortality, love, and loss.
They finished their beers and cleaned up the workbench, stacking the maps and photos in neat piles, and gathering empty bottles and greasy napkins.
Jake set an alarm for 0430. Four and a half hours of sleep if they were lucky.
And they bedded down in the hangar in sleeping bags from Squirrel’s storage locker.
They were military surplus, thin and scratchy, but warm enough.
They spread them on the concrete floor near the space heater that hummed in the corner.
The smell of aviation fuel and old metal permeated the dark space. Through the closed metal door, Omar could hear the distant sound of traffic on the highway.
Omar lay awake longer than the others, staring at the curved metal ceiling and listening to the occasional creak of the hangar settling and the constant white noise hum of Squirrel snoring.
He thought about Marielle back at the cottage and hoped she was asleep, hoped she wasn’t worrying.
Tomorrow everything could go sideways.
But for now there was nothing to do but wait for dawn. He punched his rolled up pants into a pillow, turned onto his side, and closed his eyes.