Abruptly he turned on a heel. “Raoul, you and Gerard get rid of the body. Remove all identification, everything. In fact, bring the clothes. I’ll burn them myself.” He turned to Deladier. “Paul, call the charter pilot.”
“Where are we going?”
“We’re flying up to the mine tonight. Something’s going to happen there. I feel it. Let Etienne know we’re coming.”
Deladier merely nodded. Then he asked, “What are you going to do, Marcel?”
Hurtubise regarded his colleague with a shark’s flat eyes. “I’m going for a walk.”
41
Steve Lee hung up the phone and turned to Daniel Foyte. “Gunny we’re set. That was Roosevelt. He says the 130s are landing tomorrow and we’ll have the final briefing two days later. That allows for some slack in the schedule, mainly for deploying the helos up north.”
Foyte was helping himself to a pinch of Redman, an old habit. He only used smokeless tobacco, as it gave little indication of his presence whenever the urge hit on an ambush site. He settled the wad in his cheek, then said, “Very well, sir. I’ll tell the guys. Uh, when do you want to spring it on the two action platoons?”
“Not until we’re ready to board the Hercs. Far as the troops will know, we’re just conducting a mobilization drill. Colonel Malloum might go along but he understands it’d just be for show.”
The former Marine went to work on the chaw, nodding his approval. “Yessir. Uh, what about the choppers?”
Lee suppressed a yawn; he had been up much of the night, finalizing arrangements for the operation. “Keegan and Marsh are checking out two Alouettes today. The attache will help them test fly two birds and get them headed for the border tomorrow afternoon at the latest.”
“What about maintenance?”
“Already handled, Gunny. Our pilots brought a guy who knows Alouettes inside out, and one or two Chadian mechs are going along with some spare parts.”
Foyte was working on his wad now, savoring the juice. “Well, all right, Major. But I’d be damn nervous riding in a machine that wants to tear itself apart on a good day, let alone one maintained by some of the boys in this neck of the woods.”
Lee sat upright, looking Foyte full in the face. “Gunnery Sergeant, this has come up before, and I need you to tune your command set to ‘receive.’ Are you reading me?”
Foyte knew what was coming. “Yessir. I read you five by five. No more talk about ‘boys.’“
“You got it.”
Marcel Hurtubise walked rapidly, covering ground in a purposeful stride that led nowhere. Hands in his pockets, uncharacteristically looking at the ground rather than 360 degrees around him, he realized with a start that he had circled a city block for the second time. He looked at the sky.
He resumed walking.
In his lonely, violent forty-four years, Marcel Jules Marie Hurtubise had learned to rely upon himself. Oh, there had been the comradely nature of the Legion—
Gabrielle.
He saw her again in his memory for the first time: the defiant, skinny teenager who could use a good meal and a hot bath. He had seen many like her: frightened, angry runaways seeking temporary shelter, both physical and emotional. Somehow, it had worked with her. Most of the time, anyway. It had not been easy, getting her off drugs and off the street. But in months rather than years, his attention and his patience had won her. He remembered the first time she had given herself to him. And with something approaching remorse, he recalled the only time he had forced her — the result of a simple job that had gone terribly bad and there was no one else to take his wrath. She swore that if he ever did that again, she would kill him, herself, or both of them.
He believed her.
After that, the years had been more good than bad. She grew to mental maturity, if not emotional, and occasionally shared in his work. She was a natural in some ways — coy, manipulative, astute about people. Especially men. But eventually he had seen the edge return, something hard and bitter behind the big blue eyes. When she had wanted to execute the Israeli, he knew she had turned a corner that offered little chance of return.
Raoul’s question forced its way to Marcel’s consciousness again.
He had answered, “I have my reasons.”
True, Clary and any of the others could have handled the intrusive American female, but Marcel wanted Gabrielle to do the killing. She had arrogantly asserted that she could handle the con job, and when she failed, it became her responsibility to put things right. If she did it, maybe there was a chance she could recover. If not… well…
Hurtubise bit his lip until it hurt. He thought he tasted the salty tang of blood.
Now that was gone. It was partly her fault, partly his, and partly theirs.
By God, the Americans were going to pay
He turned around and strode back to the apartment.
42
Steve Lee was a professional pessimist. He spent much of his life contemplating what might go wrong, and shared that philosophy with the SSI team’s final briefing for the raid.
“As I see it, the biggest problem we might have is the people north of the border.” He indicated the boundary with Libya, barely forty kilometers from the uranium mine. “Now, there’s no reason to think that they’ll get involved, but in my experience that’s reason to think they might.” He gave an ironic grin that prompted polite chuckles from his audience.
“If we take them by surprise, there shouldn’t be much trouble. But if they ‘make’ us inbound, if they have much warning at all, they could have some yellow cake on a couple of trucks hightailing it for Colonel Qadhafi. From there, the load could go anywhere. Like Iran.”
Bernard Langevin, monitoring the briefing from the back row, raised a hand. “Steve, I agree that’s a concern. But I just don’t think the Libyans are going to pick a fight with the U.S., not even in Chad.”
Lee laid down his pointer and turned to the scientist. “Look at it from their boots, Bernie. They won’t know we’re Americans. Hell, officially we’re not even involved in this op. That’s the whole idea behind SSI: deniability.”
Before Langevin could respond, Brezyinski posed a question. “Sir, doesn’t Iran have uranium? I mean, why go to all the trouble to smuggle the stuff from Chad or someplace?”
Langevin nodded. “Reasonable question. But you’ve just had a hint of the answer from Major Lee: deniability.”
Breezy wrinkled a brow. “How’s that, Doc?”
