“Maybe so.” Marc shrugged. “But the night is the same everywhere.”
– – Sameh returned from his errand feeling thoroughly ashamed. His face burned from the look the storekeeper had given him while handing over Sameh’s second package. He stepped into the alley where the vehicles were parked and handed Marc the paper sack the storekeeper had drawn from a locked closet. “I have never bought alcohol before.”
Marc drew the pint bottle from the sack. “Did you get the other thing?”
“This is the largest they had.” Sameh gave him a dark jacket.
“It doesn’t have to fit perfectly,” Marc replied.
One of Major Lahm’s men stood sentry at the alley’s entrance. The other eight men watched as Marc dropped the jacket into the dirty roadway. He used both feet to walk the jacket around. He then reached down, took a double handful of grime, and rubbed it all over his trousers and his shirt. Two more handfuls were applied to his face and hair. “Now the booze.”
Marc opened the bottle and splashed it liberally over his jacket. More on his face and neck, some into his hair. The men watched him in openmouthed astonishment.
Marc pointed to Major Lahm’s second-in-command. “Ask him if I can borrow his headgear.”
Lahm ordered, “Give him your koufia.”
The officer looked at Lahm, but did not object. He handed it over, then helped Marc tie the kerchief properly. Marc made careful adjustments so it appeared only barely in place, yet covered most of his face. The man stepped back and said, “My wife will smell this and accuse me of drinking during Ramadan.”
Four of Lahm’s men slipped away. Two were instructed to halt any approach made by guards from neighboring houses. The other two, led by Major Lahm’s second-in-command, made their way toward the target house’s rear. The rest followed the major, Sameh, and Marc as they circled back several blocks to approach the house through a darkened lane. Lahm and his men were dressed in midnight blue trousers and T-shirts and Kevlar vests. Marc stank of booze. Sameh had never felt so out of place in his entire life.
When the house came back into view, Lahm opened his cellphone and punched numbers. He whispered, listened, then said, “They are in place and awaiting my signal.”
Marc said, “Tell them to hang tight. Let’s watch the guards for a while.”
Lahm relayed the orders and settled in beside him. Sameh heard him ask the American, “Why you do not contact your military?”
“They’d do exactly what I asked you not to. Go in cowboy style. Storm the house and risk harming the children.” Marc’s voice was a careful murmur, soft as the night breeze. If he felt any fear, Sameh could not detect it. “Besides, why should I phone the cavalry when I’ve got you guys?”
The house showed the street a blank face. Now and then people strolled past, likely returning home from the stores and the cafes. This far from the city center, in an area so well guarded, life was relatively safe. The night was almost welcoming. The absence of streetlights meant the stars overhead shone brilliantly. There was no moon. A couple walked past the house arm in arm, their footsteps tapping the new pavement, their voices jarringly normal. They pretended not to see the guards patrolling the houses, who responded in kind.
Marc straightened. “Okay. I make one guard stationed outside the garage gates, another by the entry, and one on foot patrol inside the wall.”
“I confirm.” Lahm offered Marc a pistol. “Take this.”
“I can’t. If they notice it, my cover’s blown. And I intend to get in close and personal with those guys.” He mashed the kerchief down tight on his head. “Don’t you or your men move until you see the gate open up. You understand what I’m saying? If I go down, you fade away. I’m just one man. Stick your prisoner back underground, go to the judge tomorrow. Keep a team on patrol around here in case they shift their location. Maybe you can strike when they’re out in the open. Bring an army.”
Major Lahm gripped the sleeve of Marc’s jacket and demanded, “How will you take out the man on the inside without a gun?”
Marc’s teeth flashed in the starlight. “What’s the Arabic word for luck?”
Major Lahm released his grip. “There is no such word. Not here. Not this night.”
Sameh watched as Marc started down the side street, one that would take him back toward the shops. Sameh’s entire body was gripped by a fear the American seemed incapable of feeling for himself.
When Sameh was certain he could hold his voice steady, he used an expression more than a thousand years old. The Abyssinian caliphs called their highest military force the hajib, the group that formed the caliph’s personal bodyguard. Nowadays the term hajib referred to the barriers an Iraqi used to protect his feelings, his spirit, his family, his life. Sameh said, “This American is managing to penetrate my hajib.”
Lahm grunted his agreement. “For the sake of those children, I hope he can create the luck we have learned to live without.”
Chapter Fourteen
O n the bumpy ride from the prison, Marc had allowed himself a moment’s worry whether he still had a grip on tradecraft. After all, he had been effectively retired for three years and counting. But here in the street, with the rush of terror and thrill, it all came back. Like taking the proverbial bicycle out for the ride of his life.
He had no such worries about his other skills, the ones that would be required if he managed to get in close to the three guards. As Marc had told the Arabs, he had indeed studied accounting during his wife’s illness. But he’d also spent hours at a full-contact gym. It was only there, standing barefoot on the mats, facing opponents with backgrounds as rough as his own, that he could unleash the weight of fate’s cruelest hour.
Marc emerged from the side street just beyond the shops’ illumination. He stumbled down the center of the otherwise empty thoroughfare, his passage followed by those inside the cafes. Marc weaved about and mumbled to himself. One of the guards he passed laughed softly and spit in the dust.
He angled toward the house, walking sideways and leaning so the kerchief dangled about his face. Quick glimpses from beneath the checkered curtain confirmed that the two guards were watching his approach.
The front wall had two openings, a pair of sheet-metal doors for the garage and a gate of iron bars by the entrance. A guard stood sentry before each. As he passed, the guard by the garage said something to him, a bark of Arabic. Marc teetered closer to the front gate.
The garage guy moved over to where his mate stood and spoke again, more sharply this time. The second guard stepped forward and shoved Marc away. He went down hard.
Marc made an ordeal of picking himself off the road. He dusted himself off, his gestures slow, deliberate. As he did so, he stumbled back toward the front gate.
The two guards were angry now. Their words attracted the attention of the third guard on patrol inside the wall. He stepped up close to the bars. Which was exactly what Marc had been after all along.
Now both guards grabbed for him. Only Marc was no longer there. He ducked under their hands and reached through the bars.
The inside guard was still waking up to the fact that the drunk was not a drunk at all. Marc gripped the guard’s lapel with one hand and his hair with the other. The guard’s hair was long and plastered with some sort of oil or pomade smelling vaguely of lilacs. Marc yanked the inside guard forward with all his strength. The guard’s forehead clanged against the bars.
Marc did not wait for the man to go down. Nor did he take time to turn around. Instead, he leaped straight up and double-kicked, using his grip on the gate’s bars to steady his aim. His spread-eagle attack took one guard in the throat and the other on the chin.
The guard to his left, the one he had struck in the throat, went down on one hand and choked out tight breaths. The other guard spun and almost fell, but managed to hold himself upright. He turned back, drawing his pistol as he moved.
Marc rushed forward and chopped hard on the arm, paralyzing the hand. The gun clattered to the sidewalk unfired.
Marc closed in, striking the man in the chest and the temple. Two blows so fast they hit as one. The man was out before he hit the asphalt.
