“That’s for Jackie and the others, you asshole,” Camille whispered before letting him drop.
Chapter Eighty-Four
Shangri-la
Hunter was a kilometer away from the camp’s perimeter when he heard a single gunshot from somewhere directly between him and the compound. He stopped and held his closed fist in the air and GENGHIS halted. Neither man could see anything, so Hunter radioed Iggy.
“TIN MAN this is SABER TOOTH. Request IR recon. One click, my twelve o’clock.”
“SABER TOOTH, TIN MAN. Two heat signatures inside a small fixed structure at your twelve o’clock.”
Hunter started running as fast as he could toward the shack. If Stella was wounded, he might still be able to save her.
Camille didn’t want to touch Chronister, but forced herself to run her hands over his body in search of a knife or other weapons. He was traveling light with only a smashed roll of Mentos in his pocket. She devoured them. Al-Zahrani’s tennis-shoe taste wouldn’t leave her mouth.
Using the water bucket as a bidet, she washed herself although she knew it would take a while until she felt clean again. She took longer than she should have, but less time than she wanted. The polyester jilbab made a lousy towel and she hated wearing it, but her pants were left in al-Zahrani’s tent. The bastard probably kept her panties under his pillow. She spat, but it didn’t help.
She stripped Chronister of his Glock and Kevlar vest, put it on, then pulled up the jilbab so she could run. Lying on her back near a wall, she kicked as hard as she could with both bare feet. The plywood splintered.
The cooler night air felt good as she sprinted toward the camp and al-Zahrani’s tent.
Iggy’s voice came over Hunter’s earpiece. “SABER TOOTH this is TIN MAN. I’m tracking a runner three hundred meters and twelve o’clock from your position, leaving the structure.”
Hunter scanned the area, but was too far away. The lights of the tango camp extended his NVG’s range, but he couldn’t see out more than two hundred meters. The thought of Stella, lying only a few hundred meters from him, bleeding out, made him push harder.
Fifteen seconds later, he could see a shack. He ordered GENGHIS to continue into the camp and take out the generators. If the runner really was Stella at the edge of the compound, he could always call GENGHIS back, but if it wasn’t, he wanted the advantage of total darkness as soon as he could get it.
GENGHIS sprinted ahead past the concrete pillars of the construction site while Hunter circled to the front of the shed. Tools were thrown into a pile just outside the door as if someone had hastily emptied it. His experience told him that’s where they had held Stella. He slipped inside, fanning his weapon from side to side in case someone was there. Then he saw the body and dropped to his knees.
“Oh, my god. Stella.”
Then he saw a bearded face and an under-the-arm gunshot wound, angled to avoid body armor and pierce vital organs. A dead tango and an operator’s signature.
Stella’s alive.
Hunter heard Ashland’s voice over the earpiece. The guy sounded out of breath. “SABER TOOTH. Ashland here. Don’t shoot me. Can I come in?”
“Cleared to enter,” Hunter said, then keyed his mike. “SABER TOOTH to CHALK ONE. Confirmed one dead tango. Suspect GRACKLE is the runner. GENGHIS, attempt intercept.”
GENGHIS confirmed the order as Ashland came into the shed and bent down beside the corpse. “Jesus. That’s Joe Chronister.”
Hunter looked more closely at the tango, then he recognized him. He’d seen the man before, clean-cut and dressed as a Westerner-the interrogator he knew as Zorro. “Who the hell is Joe Chronister?”
“The CIA SOB who put both of us on that flight to hell.” Ashland tried to catch his breath.
“What the hell is the CIA doing working with Rubicon? Oh, forget it. Until we get the lights out, you’re the only one of us who can walk into that place after her without alerting them. You better haul ass right now or I’m shooting you right here.”
It was a new moon and Camille could barely see where she was going. At least her feet were untied so she could run, but her bound hands threw her off balance. She could see the flicker of the lamps of the debating circles in the mess hall.
She moved into the deeper shadows along the base of the cliff rising above the compound, but the ground was a giant mound of loose debris that had fallen from the rock face. The study groups’ lamps were dim, but bright enough to reach the rubble. Rather than double back and move along the edge between the tent and the drop-off to the next lower level of the mine, she lay flat on her belly and crept like a sniper. Even though the jilbab was partially tied around her waist, her knees kept catching on the cloth, tripping her and pulling it loose.
A minute earlier, GENGHIS had been able to see someone running ahead of him at the edge of his sight, then the figure disappeared. The closer he got to the first tent, the more the light from the tangos’ lamps increased the range of his night vision, but he still couldn’t see her. That girl was sure slippery and if he wasn’t running toward a few hundred tangos, he would’ve enjoyed the chase a lot more. He keyed his mike, “SABER TOOTH, GENGHIS here. Contact with the runner has been broken. Proceeding on to generators.”
There was a rock pile blocking Hunter’s passage between the tent and the ridge. He didn’t like to risk sky-lining by walking along the drop-off on the other side, but it was so dark, only a stargazer would notice someone moving between the camp and Orion’s belt. He decided to veer around the tent and hug the edge of the cliff that dropped to the lower level.
He tapped Ashland on the arm and whispered. “This way.”
Ashland pulled off his NVGs and his comm set and stuck them into his duffle bag. Then he walked straight ahead into the light of the camp.
Hunter ran as far as he dared, then dropped to his knees to lower his profile and crawled along the edge. He heard Ashland speak to the men in Arabic as he walked on into the heart of the camp.
Camille was shocked at the tangos’ lack of internal security, but she wasn’t about to complain. They were sleeping everywhere and they all had AKs at their fingertips, but there were no lookouts, no sentries anywhere. As she crawled past the second row of barracks, she was starting to think she might be able to escape or at least die trying. Al-Zahrani was in a tent, not a fortress. If she took him out quietly, she might be able to steal one of their trucks and get away. She just needed a knife to free her hands and slit his throat.
The half-dozen electric lights hanging outside were dim, but enough for her to see and be seen. Camille searched for one of the snoozing terrorists who was separated from the herd. Along the outside of the group, a teenager wearing a knife attached to his belt was curled up on his right side on a rug that was too small for him. She crept over to him and held her breath while she slowly slipped his knife from its sheath.
Suddenly he rolled over on his back and opened his eyes. Stella shoved her right forearm down on his mouth to mute any screams. The knife was in her right hand, positioned behind his left ear. She raked her forearm across his mouth, thrusting the knife into the soft spot behind his left ear. She kept her arm pressed against his mouth for a few seconds in case he used his dying breath to scream.
Back in the shadows, she cut off the rope and rubbed her sore wrists, then moved them in a luxurious range of motion. But if she was going to pull this off, she needed full movement and not only in her wrists. She crept back to the dead tango, grabbed his ankles and dragged him into the darkness where she undressed him.
His stinky clothes were liberating, even if they weren’t the best fit. She rolled up the pant legs and tried on his sandals. They were several sizes too big. The hard sandy ground wasn’t too punishing and her bare feet were quieter anyway, so she pushed them aside. Slinking back to his sleeping mat, she kept her body out of the light and stretched her arm as far as she could as she reached for his AK. Violating every safety rule she knew about firearms, she grabbed it by the barrel and pulled it toward her.