past few hours pull hard on him. His last conscious thought before he passed out was, “They knew we were coming.”
CHAPTER 23
VICTOR LOGAN SAT AT A SMALL table, pecking at a laptop computer to input the names of the Marines killed in the crash. His big, thick fingers were blunt instruments, meant for things much more coarse than dainty taps on a keyboard, and he found this work both laborious and somewhat insulting. Clerks did this kind of shit, not warriors. He detested having to wear reading glasses when he worked on this machine. They were a sign of weakness, of getting old, past the prime, but Logan had decided to adopt the modern age to get the technological edge. Just because a gorilla eats leaves does not mean he is any less of a mean son of a bitch.
He could tell the sun was up by the steady increase of the temperature in the room. Finally, he finished copying the names that Jimbo Collins had culled from the dog tags and clicked the key to save the file to a directory. He called up another list that had been downloaded from Washington several hours earlier, did a cut-and-paste job with the one he had just written, and compared the two. He highlighted one name in bright red, increased the font size to make it bold, then pushed away from the screen and studied it. “I was right, Collins. Somebody’s missing. The Washington list has one name more than the dog tags on the kill list. You damned sure you got them all?”
“All of ‘em, Vic. I pulled the tags off every one of those crispy critters.” He held up a plastic bag filled with dog tags and shook it with a definitive rattle of metal against metal. Collins was at his own computer, working with his camera to freeze-frame individual images of each of the dead Marines, inject them into a folder, and adjust the color and clarity.
There was a knock and a shout at the door, and both men grabbed weapons. Security was always on their minds, and they kept an extra AK-47, locked and loaded, on two pegs directly above the front door for emergencies. “What?” called Collins. He went to the front wall and put his back to it.
“Open up! Something else has happened!” The English came in a familiar French accent.
Collins held a mirror to the window and angled it to confirm who was there. “It’s the frog. He’s alone.” Logan nodded, and Collins opened the door.
A small man, thin but muscular, came in. He had a sharp face with prominent cheekbones, dark eyes, and a slit of a mouth that never smiled and was almost invisible in a long, thick black beard. Pierre Dominique Falais was a familiar figure in Sa’ahn, where he had settled after getting out of the Foreign Legion. As a converted Muslim, he was welcome everywhere, despite his European background, and he would drive to other towns and villages to buy crafts, wool, and rugs and load them into his white Toyota truck, then usually find a reason to stay overnight in order to smoke and eat and talk with the locals. The Syrian villagers considered Abu Mohammed to be a most generous man and an honest trader. Success in the little trading enterprise and some carpentry meant nothing to him, for his real money came not from peddling items to stores and bazaars, but by selling his intelligence services to the governments of Syria, France, and Russia. He was able to work openly with all three countries because their policies were seldom in conflict.
For the time being, however, these two large American mercenary soldiers, who had deposited five thousand dollars into his bank account in Damascus, had his total cooperation. A similar amount would come in when the task was completed.
“The fuck you want, Pierre?” snapped Logan, turning back to the name on the laptop screen.
The Frenchman stepped inside and closed the door. The place stank. These little homes were usually kept very clean by the women, with the pungent aromas of hard tobacco and cooking food welcoming visitors like a pleasant cloud. In here, the smell of human waste, sweat, and filth offended him. He shrugged it off. They were, after all, Americans, a disgusting people. “Two guards at that checkpoint a few klicks to the west have been killed. Bullet holes all over the bodies, and a villager described some open wounds that sound to me like they may have been made by grenades. I’m going out there.”
“Sounds like our runner, Vic. Somebody had to have some firepower to do that,” said Collins. “Want me to check it out?”
Logan grunted and waved them both away, absorbed by his work.
“Okay, Pierre. Lead on.” Collins followed the Frenchman into the light and over to the pickup truck, a well- maintained vehicle with extra suspension and wide desert-quality tires with deep treads. The custom heavy-duty engine turned over on the first try and the straight exhaust pipes rumbled low. Falais wheeled the Toyota onto the road and sped away. Jimbo Collins immediately started talking to him about different kinds of shock absorbers.
Vic Logan kept staring at the name in red and studying the kill list: McDowell, Harold. Lance corporal. Radio operator. Twenty years old. He had heard lots of stories about people walking away from a plane crash or an automobile pileup that killed everyone else. It was possible. So the kid grabs the bike and takes off for Israel and just surprised the lazy guys at the checkpoint. It was the logical play. “Fucking Syrians can’t even stop a damned radio operator,” he grunted. The Marine would be picked up soon. He probably had a little spec ops training in escape and evasion, but it was a long way to the border, and most of it was either over open territory or on busy roads. He was good as caught and just didn’t know it yet.
Logan opened an encrypted file to transmit to Washington. Collins could send the pictures later. It took him only fifteen more minutes at the keyboard to finish his report, and he saved the work, leaving space at the bottom to add whatever details Collins picked up at the roadblock.
There was nothing more he could do now. Logan felt he had earned some relaxation. He rose, stretched his six-foot-five frame, and peeled off his clothes as he went into the small bedroom. It was a little cooler there.
On the bed lay a terrified, wide-eyed girl, tied to the four corners, spread-eagled and naked. A piece of gray duct tape was across her mouth, and although she could not scream, she wiggled in terror when she saw the huge American approach. He had first spotted her at the local store, where the fourteen-year-old beauty worked with her mother and father, and had checked her out as best he could while he bought a few items. Not really much to see, since the small girl wore one of those damned black bedsheets. But the flashing eyes were unafraid of the foreigner, and Vic imagined there was a flawless body with long, coltlike legs and budding breasts under all that cloth. He snatched her the first night he was here. Knowing the ragheads really thought their women were something special, he went to great lengths to keep her out of sight and quiet. She was tight that first time, struggling, fighting hard, just like he enjoyed his women. A little tiger. Lots of blood. When he was through, the young body was no longer virginal and wore a number of ugly bruises, varying shades of green and purple and yellow. The eyes were no longer unafraid. She had been taught respect.
The only question for Logan at present was whether to feed her or give her a chance to pee before he raped her again. The hell with it. Those helos going down had changed everything and he would be out of here as soon as Gates decided what he wanted done with the general, who lay trussed up in the next room.
Just thinking about the general pissed Logan off. The mercenary was angry that he couldn’t hit that one-star asshole in the face or anywhere that would show a bruise, because they were going to need him looking good for another television show. So he turned his frustrations on the girl instead, and went to her again, his hand moving to his penis. He wasn’t hard yet. This dirty whore was going to have to work to get him aroused.
He struck her hard across the face with his right hand, just to make sure she was paying attention. Her head snapped to the side like that of a doll, and the tears began to roll. Too bad he had to leave the gag on, he thought as he rolled his belt around his fist, leaving the sharp brass buckle dangling free. He slapped it on her thigh and a bloody gash opened in the smooth olive skin. Again, and a crimson streak flowed down the ribs as her body arced in pain. Again, clicking the metal buckle across both nipples. The screams would have been nice.
He looked down at himself with growing frustration. He still wasn’t hard, because she wasn’t working to satisfy him. “Bitch!” he yelled, and the belt came down again, on the side of her head, and dark blood oozed through the tangle of black hair. “Move it, damn you!” Logan’s fury grew like the heat that cooked the room, and he beat the girl without pity. No matter how hard he struck her, no matter how much he made her bleed, his goddam dick would NOT get hard.
A pounding sound drew his attention. The damned general was kicking the wall. Tied up like a turkey and still a
