43. Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter forty-three
Captain Zeqiri sat in the passenger seat of a Range Rover, a Kalashnikov rifle between his knees.
Sergeant Besnik was behind the wheel, piloting the truck over deep divots in the dirt track that lead to the junkyard.
The three other members of Zeqiri’s squad crowded together in the back, swaying as the Rover rumbled up an incline.
Every man was outfitted with rifles and extra magazines.
They had no idea what they were walking into. They had to be ready for anything.
“Not quite like old times, my friend,” said Stafa.
He had a thick mustache that did nothing to disguise his receding hairline.
He sat shoulder to shoulder with Osmani.
They’d been a team in the war. Sniper and spotter.
Inseparable. Stafa said, “I’m fourteen kilos heavier than I was when we started this war. ”
“Too many sweets.” Osmani elbowed his friend’s belly.
“We’ve all had too many sweets,” Zeqiri commented. “Too much easy living.”
Sergeant Besnik slowed the Range Rover to a crawl as they covered the last two hundred yards to the scrapyard. He leaned forward for a better look out the window. His brows pinched together over his hook nose. “I don’t like this. It’s obviously a trap.”
“What choice do we have?” Zeqiri asked.
Mehmet, always the quiet one, said, “We could walk away.”
Zeqiri turned to face him. Mehmet rode at the very back, a rifle balanced atop his chest harness.
His face was an expressionless mask. He stared back in stony silence.
Since the war, Mehmet had gotten married, started his own roofing business, and raised two beautiful daughters.
He had answered Zeqiri’s call readily enough, but of all the men under Zeqiri’s command, Mehmet was the biggest outlier.
Mehmet was the one Zeqiri questioned the most; not his loyalties, of course, but his motivations.
Wealth and comfort make men soft.
Zeqiri held Mehmet’s gaze a moment, then turned back to the front windshield.
The junkyard was less than two hundred meters away now.
Zeqiri could see the first faint outlines of the towering heaps outlined against the dark sky, like jagged black hills constructed of society’s capitalist excess.
“Nobody walks away,” he said. “We deal with Goodman, then we use the virus to avenge our fallen comrades on the Serbian pigs.”
Osmani nodded, “Then we all retire very rich men.”
A small smile spread over Zeqiri’s face. After taking their revenge, they would sell the virus. The Doctor already had buyers lined up. They would all be very rich men. Who says you can’t have your cake and eat it too?
“This is far enough. Stop the car,” Zeqiri directed. “We’ll go on foot the rest of the way.”
Besnik stepped on the brake and Range Rover eased to a halt.
The doors opened and Captain Zeqiri’s team silently stepped from the vehicle into the darkness.
Every man knew his job and went about it without having to discuss anything.
They spread out from the truck, took a knee and waited while their senses acclimated to the warm summer air and the night song of crickets in the tall grass.
When five minutes had ticked slowly past, Zeqiri rose to a crouch, signaled for his men to follow, and they started toward the distant junkyard, going slow, high-stepping over hilly tussocks and easing through overgrown vegetation. Zeqiri kept his eyes open for any sign of movement.
There was always the possibility the American had been telling the truth, that he had not been alone, and that a team of American commandos waited to ambush Zeqiri and his team.
But if that were true, why hadn’t the Americans swooped down on them while they were questioning Goodman? Too far away perhaps?
The captain shook his head. Too many questions and not enough answers. He should have taken his time with Goodman, done a more thorough interrogation. It was a mistake Zeqiri would not make again.
When they were less than a hundred meters from the site, Zeqiri signaled his men to stop. They all took a knee. Sergeant Besnik whispered, “Orders?”
Zeqiri took a moment to survey the landscape. If he were trying to lure someone into an ambush, where would he set up?
There seemed to be a thousand possibilities and no way to cover every angle with just five men.
Sweat had formed on Zeqiri’s forehead and ran down over his cheeks.
His harness, with the extra magazines, felt stiflingly hot.
For the first time since they’d launched this operation, Zeqiri began to worry.
The doctor had planned this all to the last detail. He’d spent thirty years in prison, carefully orchestrating his revenge. He’d accounted for every eventuality, except for an American operative. Who could have foreseen that?
Perhaps Mehmet was right? Perhaps they should walk away.
But that meant walking away from a fortune.
No way was Zeqiri turning his back on millions.
If he had to kill and American agent, then he’d kill an American agent.
He’d kill a whole battalion of Americans, if it meant taking revenge on the people who’d locked up his commanding officers, stripped him of rank, and destroyed his honor. His eyes turned hard.
A large crane rose up from the southwest corner of the junkyard, with a boom arm and a claw for moving heavy scrap from one end of the yard to the other. A crushed automobile dangled thirty meters above the ground.
Zeqiri pointed, “I want Osmani in the crane. Mehmet and Stafa will go in from the north. You and I will circle around and enter from the east. We’ll meet in the middle.”
Sergeant Besnik passed the orders and the group quietly moved off in different directions, deadly shadows in the dark summer night.