again.
“Etienne!” The leader’s bark stopped the offender in midswing.
The leader turned to the other victim, who stood trembling visibly. “You, dig for both of you.”
The younger man looked to his partner, vainly seeking guidance. There was none — the older prisoner was still gasping for breath, rubbing his shoulder.
After an agonizingly long age — perhaps closer to an eon — the younger man found himself. “I won’t dig, either.” He spit into the dirt for emphasis, though his mouth was cotton-dry.
“Oh, I think you will.” The leader turned to the senior prisoner and, with practiced ease, drew a 9 mm Makarov from his belt and fired into the kneeling man’s cranium from four meters away. Eighty kilos of dead weight pitched face forward, twitched imperceptibly, and expired.
The executioner holstered and kicked the second shovel toward the survivor. No words were necessary.
The doomed survivor sucked in lungs full of arid Saharan air. He looked upward, saw cumulus clouds in the direction of the Atlas Mountains, and tried to control his bladder. Briefly, he thought of running.
With trembling hands, he picked up the shovel and began to dig.
“You see, Etienne? What did I tell you? Some men choose to die on their feet, but most will lick your boots for five more minutes of life.”
It was longer than five minutes, for the spade man was neither strong nor eager to finish his task. But at length he reached a satisfactory depth. “Enough,” the leader said. He drew the pistol again. “You wish to pray?”
The victim merely nodded, lowered his head, and cupped his hands. He mumbled the ancient words, dredged up from a far-off childhood.
The leader intended for the man to die before the prayer was over — as much a kindness as one could muster at such times. He motioned to the driver, who nodded compliance, raised his own pistol, and began to press the trigger.
“Let me.” It was the woman.
The leader waved a hand. “My God, Gabrielle, you’ve seen men die before.”
She leaned toward him, fists clenched before her. “But I’ve never
Mentally he catalogued the progress of the situation. Her insistence on accompanying the killers; her pledge of silence on the drive, which had mostly been honored. Now, however, he recognized the signs: the little-girl petulance, complete with pouting lips.
With an eloquent shrug, the leader drew his Russian pistol and handed it to her. He was going to remind her about the safety but she was familiar with the weapon. She raised the pistol in both hands, flipped the lever, took two seconds to align the sights, and three more to press the double-action trigger.
The 9 mm round spat out, impacted the supplicant’s left temple, and he collapsed into the hole he had dug.
She decocked the weapon and handed it back, butt first. The owner changed magazines and holstered it, faintly shaking his head.
“What?” she demanded.
He leveled his brown eyes at her baby blues. “Curiosity satisfied?”
“It’s nothing.” She shrugged as unconcernedly as possible and reached for a cigarette. She almost managed to suppress the tremor in her hand.
“Congratulations, my dear. Welcome to the club.” He picked up both shovels and handed one to her. “Now you can help bury them.”
Two hundred thirty meters away, partially concealed by a low-lying dune, two men watched the proceedings through precision optics. An observant bypasser would have pegged them in their thirties, though neither’s face was visible. One had draped a sand-colored veil over his head to break up his outline and shield his Zeiss 8x25 binoculars. The other wore a white
Both had light-colored Saharan robes over French and Italian military fatigues, and both wore Israeli Army desert boots.
The observer carried a Romanian AKM with Egyptian ammunition. His partner had a British AWC sniper system with an integral suppressor on the barrel. It was loaded with match-grade 7.62x51 manufactured in America.
The mythical observer would have noted that both appeared accustomed to the desert.
When the executioners were finished with their chore, they climbed into their vintage Land Rover and drove off, leaving their handiwork buried in the lee of a dune. The distant witnesses watched them go, headed south across the Mourdi Depression toward Oasis Fada.
In their native tongue the two men discussed their options.
The sniper asked, “Should we check the bodies for papers?”
The leader thought for a moment. “No. No point. Any additional information probably isn’t worth the risk of being seen. Besides, with the homer attached to the Land Rover we can track the Frenchmen wherever they go.” He put his compact Zeiss in its case and consulted his map: Libya lay 165 kilometers to the north. “We’ll walk back to the helicopter and have David call ahead for a jet. I want to be in N’Djamena before tomorrow morning.”
4
Frank Leopole was the last to arrive. He shut the door of the conference room and took the last vacant chair. The SSI brain trust seldom met in full session for other than monthly planning sessions, so the secure facility usually had room left over.
This time was different.
Seated at the head of the polished table, retired Rear Admiral Michael Derringer nodded to Lieutenant Colonel Leopole. The former Marine returned the gesture, taking in the audience. Besides Derringer and himself, Leopole counted five men and four women, including all the heavies. He saw that Derringer’s personal secretary, Peggy Singer, was taking the minutes. That fact was not lost upon the head of SSI’s operations division.
As chairman of the board, Derringer presided at the meeting. He glanced at his Rolex and saw the sweep hand tick through the twelve. The old radio call from his fleet days swam upward to surface in his consciousness:
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for all being here on such short notice. The subject of this meeting is important enough to call a special session because we’ll need a consensus to present to the board of directors next week.”
Seated to Derringer’s right was George Ferraro, SSI’s vice president and chief financial officer. To Derringer’s left was Marshall Wilmont, president and chief operating officer, looking haggard as ever. Leopole had no trouble reading the lay of the land: Wilmont occasionally attended planning meetings; Ferraro almost never. They were big-picture men, far more concerned with corporate policy and finances. In the argot of the trade they were bottom-line oriented.
Dominating the atmosphere in the room was the forbidding presence of Lieutenant General Thomas Jackson Varlowe, U.S. Army (Retired). Though retired nearly a decade, he still seemed to wear three stars on his starched collar. Leopole was barely acquainted with him but knew him as one of those generals who never quite adjusted to retirement — sometimes Varlowe even had to open doors for himself. However, he was astute and connected, and for those reasons Derringer had courted him as chairman of SSI’s advisory board.
Leopole’s reverie was broken as Derringer spoke again. “We have been approached by the State Department
