Deception Game (19 page)

The whole movement took less than two seconds. It was time enough to get what he needed. Ducking back down, he turned to his companion.

‘What do you think?’ Mason asked.

There was only one way to find out if this was the man sent to help them.

‘I’ll circle around him to make contact,’ he decided. If the van driver proved to be less than friendly, at least he wouldn’t know which direction to look for the rest of the team. ‘Cover me, and be ready to pull back in a hurry.’

With luck, their friends in the Zodiac wouldn’t have left the area just yet. There was a good chance they could summon Hoyes back for an emergency extraction if the shit hit the fan.

‘Copy that.’

Wary of making undue noise but increasingly aware of their limited time, Drake crept along the edge of the slope, keeping just out of sight as he moved through the shadows. The Browning automatic was a solid, comforting weight in his right hand. He knew it wouldn’t offer much protection if this turned into a shooting match, but it was an awful lot better than nothing.

Judging that he’d covered about thirty yards, Drake reached up and hit the radio transmitter at his throat. ‘Set.’

‘Copy,’ came Mason’s tense reply.

Taking a breath and focussing his awareness, Drake rose to his feet, gripping the weapon tight. The truck was straight ahead, maybe ten yards away, and the owner was beside it, standing near the driver’s side door. His back was to Drake.

Raising the silenced automatic, Drake took a step towards him.

‘You’re late,’ an old, raspy voice remarked with the kind of casual irritation one might ascribe to a delayed train.

The stub of a cigarette was thrown on the ground, and the man turned slowly, unhurriedly, to face him. He looked just as he sounded; old, worn and hardened by a life neither short nor easy. Five foot ten, with the spare, angular frame of a man used to both hardship and physical toil, he seemed almost lost in the drab, stained juba and waistcoat that he wore. A scraggly grey beard trailed down from a gaunt, deeply lined face.

He eyed Drake’s weapon without a trace of concern. Drake suspected it wasn’t the first time this man had had a gun pointed at him.

‘You are Ryan, yes?’ he asked. For some reason he pronounced the name Ree-ann.

‘That’s right.’

‘I am Aarif. Jonas sent me.’

‘Are you alone, Aarif?’ Drake asked.

‘Are
you
?’ he echoed. ‘I was told there would be four of you. Where is the rest of your team?’

‘Around,’ Drake said, unwilling to give him more than that. ‘You didn’t answer my question.’

Aarif smiled, revealing a set of teeth that looked like they hadn’t seen a toothbrush in a very long time. ‘A man like you is wise to be cautious, but do not confuse caution with fear, Ryan. I am not your enemy, and you are not my friend. I was sent to bring you and three others to Tripoli, and this I will do, but not at gunpoint.’ He shrugged. ‘Or...you could kill me right now and take your chances. But then, you do not know which roads to take, which checkpoints to avoid, which soldiers to bribe.’

Drake lowered the weapon, feeling somehow like a child being scolded by an impatient teacher.

‘Better,’ Aarif decided, his tone softening just a little. ‘To answer your question, yes, I came alone. My instructions were to deliver you to the Gargaresh district in central Tripoli. Jonas said you were very specific about the location?’

‘Yeah.’

‘It will not be easy. There are many embassies and government employees living in that area – security is tight.’

‘That’s what we’re paying you for,’ Drake pointed out.

Again he saw that crooked smile. ‘Jonas said you would say that. But lucky for you, I know a way in. Getting out will be your own business, of course.’ Turning away, he hauled open the door of his dilapidated van. Old hinges creaked with the effort. ‘If you are a shepherd as Jonas says, now would be the time to gather your flock.’

Without waiting for a reply, he turned the ignition, coaxing the tired engine back into life. It was plain he was going to leave shortly, with or without Drake and the others.

Holstering the weapon, Drake reached up and hit the transmitter at his throat. ‘All units on me now. Good to go.’

Within moments, Mason, Frost and McKnight had emerged from cover and were hurrying towards him, weapons up and ready.

‘In the back, all of you,’ Aarif called out over the rumble of the engine. Like its owner, it sounded rough, tired and in need of serious attention. ‘The door is unlocked.’

‘This ought to be good,’ Frost mumbled, heaving the rear door open. A dark, rubbish-strewn cargo compartment awaited her.

Within moments, the remainder of the team had piled in after her. Aarif gunned the engine, swinging the van around in a wide arc to head back towards the coastal road before Drake had even closed the door.

They were on their way to Tripoli.

Situated on a rocky spur of land at the edge of the vast and largely uninhabited Sahara Desert, the ancient capital of Libya had a long history stretching back nearly 3,000 years, to when it had been established as a trading port by the Phoenicians. Since then it had been fought over and ruled by everyone from the Greeks to the Romans, the Ottomans and the Italians, and finally by one Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi.

Colonel Gaddafi had been the sole leader of the country since coming to power by military coup in 1969. In the four decades since then, the fickle and unpredictable leader had charted a meandering course between advancing the cause of Islamic Socialism, stirring up border conflicts with Egypt and Chad, financing and supporting foreign militants and terrorist groups, sabre-rattling against America and occasionally torturing and executing anyone who posed a threat to his stranglehold on power.

He was generally seen as a loose cannon by most of the power brokers in Washington and London, particularly since he’d been implicated in blowing up a US airliner over Scotland back in the 1980s. A loose cannon he might have been, but he was also sitting on some of the largest crude-oil reserves outside of Saudi Arabia, making him the kind of pain the Western world was prepared to endure.

For now.

With this newfound spirit of cooperation in mind, UN sanctions on Libya had been lifted back in 2003, and foreign investment had promptly flooded the country. Decades of isolation and economic decline had been reversed, and nowhere had these effects been more profound than the city that Drake and his companions now found themselves in.

Everywhere Drake looked he saw building sites – the steel and concrete skeletons of hotels, office blocks, skyscrapers and shopping complexes rising into the night sky. Even at this late hour, sleek late-model saloons and SUVs cruised by on the brightly lit main drag, many carrying foreign executives home after a night out on the company’s dollar. The ancient city was being dragged rapidly into the twenty-first century, its headlong rush fuelled almost entirely by oil.

‘It is impressive, yes?’ Aarif said over his shoulder, speaking to Drake through the small ventilation grate joining the driver’s cab to the cargo compartment. ‘There is much money in Libya these days. Like America, but less fat people.’

‘I’ll take your word for that,’ Drake said. He was more interested in Libyan intelligence officers than fast-food chains. ‘How long ’til we get there?’

‘Three, maybe four minutes.’ Tapping a cigarette from his packet, Aarif lit one up and took a slow, thoughtful drag, then held it up to Drake. ‘Smoke?’

Drake shook his head.

‘Clean living. Good for you, Ryan. You will live longer, yes?’ He chuckled at his own joke. ‘Me? I don’t worry. If God wants me dead, it will happen. If not, it won’t.’

Drake wasn’t so sure about the clean-living part. There were other vices apart from smoking. ‘How long have you been doing this?’ he asked instead.

‘Helping people like yourself? Not for a long time. I was...retired when Jonas contacted me. But I owed him a favour, so here I am. After tonight, I consider my debt repaid. And that is good.’

Drake frowned, intrigued by his statement. ‘How do you two know each other?’

‘It is, like you say, a long story. One I do not wish to share with a man I barely know.’

Before he could say anything further, Aarif tensed up, having spotted something on the road up ahead. A couple of military-patterned vehicles were parked on either side of the road, with several armed men in uniform milling around between them.

‘Checkpoint ahead,’ he warned. ‘Stay down. Do and say nothing until we are clear. Understand?’

He did. That didn’t mean he liked the idea of waiting in silent darkness, wondering if they were about to be caught by Libyan security services before they’d even reached the house. ‘Will they search the van?’

‘Depends how well they have been paid this month,’ Aarif admitted. ‘Now be still!’

Reaching behind him, he pulled the little grate closed, plunging Drake and the others into darkness.

‘What the fuck’s going on out there?’ Frost asked, glancing up from her handheld satellite-navigation unit as they began to slow down.

‘Checkpoint. Kill the GPS, and the radios. No lights, no sound,’ Drake said quietly, lowering himself onto the steel deck.

‘Got it,’ Frost mumbled, powering down the unit she had been using to monitor their progress.

The van slowed before finally coming to a stop, engine idling and exhaust venting steam and fumes. Straining to hear, Drake detected the murmur of voices outside. They didn’t sound raised or angry, but rather seemed to be conversing casually in Arabic.

Drake was far from fluent in the language, but he’d assimilated enough over the past couple of years to understand the basic flow of the conversation. Aarif seemed to be trying to bluff his way past, remarkably using the same delivery-driver bullshit that Drake and his team had employed four days earlier in Paris. The only question was whether the guards would buy it.

The seconds crawled by with no discernible change in the situation outside. Then an answer of sorts came a moment later when the metal interior of the van resounded with a loud, reverberating thump as something hammered against it. The effect was not unlike being inside a steel drum while someone laid into it with a baseball bat, and Drake and his companions instinctively flinched at the sound.

The sudden noise was accompanied by an angry shout, almost certainly from Aarif. Several voices were then speaking all at once, louder and distinctly agitated now. It was difficult for Drake to follow the confused clamour of different voices, but he caught a few angry curses and a remark about having to follow orders.

With the grate closed and no windows fitted to the cargo compartment, the darkness inside the van was absolute. Drake couldn’t even see the hand in front of his face, but dared not risk even the smallest light in case some unseen hole in the chassis alerted the soldiers outside.

Instead he reached down, gripped the butt of the Browning automatic and gently eased it from the holster, thumbing the safety to the off position. The faint scraping and metallic clicks around him told him that the rest of the team were doing likewise, preparing to defend themselves by unspoken mutual consent.

The thin metal walls of the van would offer no protection if the men outside decided to open fire on the vehicle. He hadn’t gotten a good look before the grate was slammed shut, but Drake was willing to bet they were armed with AK-47s or some derivative. The powerful assault rifles could punch through the vehicle’s skin like damp paper, tearing through anyone unlucky enough to be caught in their bullets’ path with equal ease.

For a moment, Drake considered the option of making the first move. If they were quick, they could throw the doors open and come out shooting, hoping to kill or injure as many of their enemy as possible before making a break for it. From there, they would hijack one of the many civilian vehicles that were still cruising the main highway, and use it to try to get back to the coast. As with most operations thrown into disarray by an unexpected problem, they would have little choice but to improvise a way out.

The sound of raised voices was almost equal to the pounding of Drake’s heart as adrenaline flooded his bloodstream, urging him to either fight or make a run for it. Simply sitting there in deathly silence with armed men just feet away was enough to strain even the nerves of experienced operatives, yet nobody made a sound. Disciplined and professional, they wouldn’t do a thing unless Drake ordered it.

But he didn’t, partly because he knew their chances of survival would be slim, but mostly because it felt like the wrong call. The only thing worse than being caught off guard was to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by panicking at a crucial moment. There were times to cut one’s losses and make a break for it, and times to stick it out and see if the situation might yet right itself. Drake’s instincts told him this was the latter.

Sure enough, something must have been said to calm the tense situation outside, because soon the voices began to quieten, returning to something like normal volume. At one point, Drake could have sworn he even heard a brief snort that might have been laughter.

And then, just like that, he heard the faint thump of a hand against the driver’s door up front. The engine rattled back into life as Aarif gave it some gas, and they were on their way once more.

It was another twenty seconds or so before the grate slid open.

‘I don’t know if they were well paid this month,’ the driver announced over his shoulder, taking a draw of his cigarette. ‘But they are a lot wealthier after tonight.’

Now off the main drag and into the maze of small roads and tight junctions that characterized many of the residential quarters of Tripoli, Aarif led them on a winding route that took them in a generally south-westerly direction, through what appeared to be a fairly affluent area by Libyan standards. Most of the houses here were two- or even three-storey affairs, surrounded by walled gardens and imposing security gates that were probably sufficient to deter most opportunistic thieves.

According to the sporadic research Drake had been able to conduct before leaving the UK, this was where the rich dentists, company directors, foreign investors and generally well-to-do people of Libya based themselves. It was like the North African equivalent of Kensington.

‘This is it, just up ahead,’ Drake said, indicating an area of waste ground in the midst of this suburban splendour that seemed to be in the midst of being cleared for new developments. Most likely an old or neglected building had been bulldozed away, ready for some new apartment complex to be erected in its place.

Pulling off the main road as instructed, Aarif switched off the lights and manoeuvred the van between heaps of weed-clogged rubble that were all that remained of the previous building. Satisfied that it was more or less hidden from view, he switched off the engine and twisted around in his seat to regard Drake and the others.

‘This is as far as I go, Ryan,’ he announced. ‘The rest is up to you. The van is yours if you want it.’

‘What about you?’ Drake asked.

‘Do not worry about me.’

It was at this moment that Aarif did something quite unexpected. Reaching up, he tugged at the grey scraggly beard sprouting from his face, pulling until the glue holding it in place came loose and it separated, taking much of the fake wrinkled and sallow skin with it. The teeth, yellowed and crooked, were next to go, followed by the unkempt mane of grey hair partially hidden beneath a tatty woollen cap. Last of all, he pulled his juba robe over his head and tossed it on the passenger seat, revealing a Libyan army uniform beneath.

The overall transformation was startling, even to one like Drake, well versed in the art of disguise. In less than a minute, their driver had gone from a wizened, gaunt and careworn man in his sixties, to a relaxed and confident army officer in the prime of his life.

‘As I said, this is not the first time I have done this, but it may be the last,’ Aarif said, his voice suddenly much younger, stronger and smoother than it had been before. He smiled, revealing a set of straight white teeth. ‘Good luck to you, Ryan.’

With that, he pulled open the driver’s door and vanished into the night.

‘Fuck me,’ Drake whispered.

‘Where’d he go?’ Mason asked, unable to see what Drake had just witnessed.

Blinking, Drake returned to himself and glanced at his watch. Time was not on their side. They would have to hurry if they were to get what they needed and be out of here by sunrise.

‘He’s gone, like we need to be,’ he said, moving to the rear door and unlatching it. ‘Keira, get your gear and be ready to move. Time to do your thing.’

Easing the rear door open, with the Browning at the ready, he found himself facing out into a stretch of dusty, barren ground interspersed with tangled brush and mounds of broken concrete and masonry. The area was barely lit by the dim glow of street lights some distance away.

‘Spread out, cover the area and be ready to move,’ Drake ordered. Straightaway McKnight and Mason were out the door, fanning out to secure the immediate area around the van.

‘Got a fix,’ Frost reported, studying the handheld GPS unit in her lap. ‘Looks like we’re right on the money.’

Drake nodded. ‘You know what to do. Move.’