PROLOGUE
Algeria
SIX MONTHS AGO
Dez sits in a compound on the coast of Algeria. His back is to the door of a great house and his eyes are on the gate to the manor’s walled grounds.
He has recently ushered fourteen mates through that gate into the compound, and then through the door into the house.
What they do inside is not his concern. The door and the gate are.
The compound is outside Oran and consists of the massive old house, four stories tall, with white sandstone walls and the ubiquitous sooty, dusty red terra-cotta roof of that coastal region of Algeria. The compound is surrounded by a wall, six meters high, crenellated in the old Moorish and French styles. The walkways atop the wall are lined with twelve earthen pots, all hand-fired a deep cinnamon and filled with flowering bougainvillea. The pots—each the size of a Smart car—were placed up there a decade ago so that riflemen could hide and shoot down and inward at marauders who’d breached the gate.
The grounds are a lovely mosaic of green grass laced with winding pathways of crushed white seashells. In the rear of the compound is a garage large enough for the owner’s fleet of eleven vintage automobiles. Outside the garage, the grounds are spacious enough to park twenty sedans, which the owner, Djamel M’Bolhi, often does when hosting like-minded criminals, or Eurotrash narcotics enthusiasts, or those who wish to monetize terrorism.
Dez and his mates arrived in Oran individually or in groups of two, spaced out over three days and two nights. They came by boat and train and jitney. Fourteen men, one woman. Some of them had worked together before; others were strangers. They come from eleven different countries, speaking about a dozen languages. But all of them understand English, so that’s their language for this job.
Dez has his eyes on the gate to the grounds and the door to the house. The gate into the grounds and the door to the house are both painted red. While they belong to Djamel M’Bolhi, right now Dez owns them both. He is the gatekeeper.
Dez is powerfully built but not all that tall. He has sandy hair and ruddy, pinkish skin. He wears a black-and-white-checkered keffiyeh, plus fatigues the color and pattern of oil-fire smoke.
When Dez hears the first pop pop pop of small-arms fire from inside the house, he thinks, Well, there goes Plan A.
Now he can hear cars roaring up the dusty old cliffside road. More than four. As many as seven. Lots of cars with men carrying assault weapons, he assumes.
A tall and gangly man known by some as Rafik has been guarding the interior side of the front door of the manor house, as Dez has been guarding the exterior. Rafik steps outside now, dressed much like Dez. He’s rail-thin, with a thick, matted beard and skin burned to dinosaur hide by desert work. He says, “Cars.”
Dez checks the connections to the remote control in his lap. He’s got great night vision. He says, “Aye.”
“There’s shooting inside. They ran into oppo.”
“Aye.”
“Wasn’t supposed to be no oppo inside the house, chef.”
“Aye.”
“We get caught in a crossfire, all hell’s to pay.”
Dez nods but does not get up off his butt.
Rafik points to the remote. “What’s that?”
Dez squints up at him. “Borrowed a couple of batteries from M’sieu M’Bolhi’s fleet of cars. Also borrowed one of his lawn sprinklers. Buying us some time, should we need it.”
“We safe to stay here, chef?”
“Safe is a relative word.”
“True,” Rafik says, scratching his beard, and now they both hear more of it; more opposition than their intelligence told them to expect inside the house. “Then again: shooting inside. Cars arriving outside. Starting to hot up a little. N’est-ce pas?”
Dez nods. But he still doesn’t rise.
They hear a scrambling and the squeak of rubber soles on tile, and four of their mates burst out of the house, sweating, all dressed much like Dez and Rafik. Two of them are carrying a filing cabinet horizontally, like a coffin. They thump it down none too gently, draw their Belgian FN Minimi assault weapons, which are strapped to their bodies by leather cords. Two men stand and scope out the compound; two take a knee, eyes to their gunsights, and do the same.
One, a surly Basque, hunkers over, fists on his knees, dragging air into his lungs. Sweat pours off his face. He has a puckered scar running from his hairline, down his left cheek, to the point of his chin. He rasps, “Got it.”
“Most excellent, squire.” Dez, in fact, has no idea what it is. None of his business.
Fourteen went in, and so far five have emerged. Nine have not.
Rafik eyes the four newcomers. “You were with her. Where is she?”
The four shrug. The her in this case is the shot-caller from elsewhere for this little caper. They do not know her name. They do not know where elsewhere is. They do not know why she gets to call the shots, but they accept that she does. Well, most of them do.
The unidentified woman provided the details and the intelligence. She set the objectives. She established the definitions of win for this job.
One of the guys wipes blood off his lower lip with the back of a gloved hand and spits a pinkish gob on the oyster-shell walkway. He says, “The intel was shit.”
Dez laughs. “The intel’s always shit, sweetheart.”
“Fucker’s soldiers are supposed to be in Algiers.”
Dez nods. So they’d been told. Oh well.
Two more of their group step out of the house and one of them, a Swede, has been shot in the thigh. He’s cursing a blue streak. He’s holding a hard drive the size of a hardback novel, two wires still dangling from the back of it, showing copper, ripped rather than disconnected from one of Djamel M’Bolhi’s computers. The Swede waggles it in the air, shows Dez he has what he went in for. Plus, apparently, a bullet. His left fatigue pant leg glistens black in the darkness.
Seven out, seven still inside.
Rafik eyes the big red double gates of the walled compound. “They be on us soon, chef.”
Dez sits and says, “Them lot? Nah.”
* * *
Outside the compound, seven Jeeps have arrived and two dozen armed men are dismounting. Dust roils and swirls in the air. Their radios crackle, telling them of the assault on their master’s compound. One of the leaders of the group marches up to the great iron handles of the red double gates of the compound wall, grips them both in calloused fists, then screams, his body in spasm, swirls of smoke escaping his palms. His body stands, rigid, long muscles locked, a rictus of death transforming his face into a carnival mask.
* * *
Dez points to the car batteries that he’s attached to the gate. Nobody on the outside is going to be opening those gates by hand. And Djamel M’Bolhi, that most paranoid of criminals, has hardened the gates so much that it would take a tank to knock them down.
The Basque spots the jerry-rigged trap. “You do that?”
Dez bunches up the right sleeve of his shirt and proudly displays the tattoo of Janus, the two-faced Roman god, on the inside of his forearm. He thrusts a chin toward the thick stone wall. “Doors an’ gates, friend. Doors an’ gates.”
Three more of their team come scrambling out of the great house. One is wounded, hopping on one foot, supported by the other two. They carry an attaché case with a digital lock and half of a built-in handcuff.
The Basque says, “We got to go.”
Dez says simply, “Can’t.”
Fourteen entered. Ten out. Four to go.
“Got what we came for. The boat’s waiting.”
Dez nods. They’ll be heading due north via a small fishing boat, set to rendezvous with a larger boat steaming their way from the Spanish city of Adra.
The Basque says, “We got to get to the boat.”
“All in good time, my darlin’.”
Rafik lowers himself down onto his haunches, his face on a level with Dez’s. He says, “Hear them cars, chef? We’re outnumbered.”
Dez says, “What d’you know about California?”
Rafik blinks several times. “Pardon?”
“California.”
Rafik repeats that. “California.”
“Aye.”
“Dunno. Scenic, I hear. They make wine. Silicon Valley. Hollywood. Pretty girls.”
Copyright © 2022 by James Byrne
