Demon (32 page)

Another burst erupted behind him, only to stop a second later. Mike glanced in the rearview. The gunner was reloading.

Mike straightened the car, straddling both lanes of the lonesome road. He eased off the gas as the Renault closed on his rear. The gunner had a fresh clip in and the rifle ready to fire.

He slammed on the brakes. The driver of the Renault wasn't quick enough, ramming the back bumper and trunk. The collision rocked Mike forward, and his head smacked the steering wheel. He blinked stars away and didn't linger on the pain coursing from his forehead to the back of his skull. Instead, he floored it.

The Town Car accelerated past fifty kilometers per hour. Mike checked the rearview. The Renault's front end was smashed to hell. The driver stabbed at the airbag. The left side of the bumper dangled and dragged up underneath the engine, both headlights destroyed and the grill cracked. But it was still drivable. And its driver gained ground fast after puncturing the airbag.

The Town Car raced past sixty-five. Mike tucked his Beretta under his left thigh. When he passed eighty, he lowered the driver's window.

Ninety.

He yanked up on the emergency brake and turned the steering wheel hard to the left. The Town Car skidded and spun, the tires screeching across the asphalt. Mike watched the pursuer as his car completed the 180-degree turn.

The Renault tried to brake to avoid hitting him, but its closing speed was too great. As a result, the driver had to swerve, swinging to Mike's left.

Mike leveled the Beretta out the window and fired rapidly. He wasn't a good shot with his left hand, but he unloaded enough rounds to hit the gunner twice in the chest and once in the throat before the car passed behind him.

The main threat dead, Mike shifted into reverse and accelerated. He tucked the Beretta back under his thigh and looked over his right shoulder while steering with his left hand. The Town Car slammed into the Renault's left side, smashing the door panel and shredding the right front tire.

Mike didn't let up, gunning the engine and pushing the Renault off the road and into a sand-laden ditch. The wheels spun as the driver tried his best to free the car from the soil. All he did, though, was dig the tires in deeper.

Beretta in hand, Mike bolted out of the Town Car, moving fast in a semicrouch. He kept the gun level on the driver as he swept around to his side, sites fixed on the man's head.

“Take your hand off the wheel and foot off the gas,” Mike shouted in Arabic. “Now!”

The driver looked at him. Blood poured from cuts on his forehead and formed small streams running down around his eyes and nose into a thick beard. He was young, probably no more than thirty. Mike saw the top of a tattooed letter on his chest in the V of a button-down shirt.

“Do it now.”

The driver let go of the wheel. The revving engine eased down. A look of defeat spread across the man's face.

“Get out of the car.” Mike made quick scans of the road in front of and behind him. No traffic. No other pursuers. “Let's go.”

The driver moved his left hand down slowly and activated the handle, opening the door. He raised his left hand again and stepped out of the car. Mike could tell it wasn't the first time he'd had a gun on him or had been ordered out of a car.

“Good. Now turn around and put your hands on the hood.”

The man did as ordered. When his palms were flat on the crinkled left fender, Mike moved up behind him and patted him down with his left hand. No weapons.

Mike stepped back, the Beretta trained on the back of the driver's head. “I know who you are. You're a Guardian of the Prison, right?”

The driver said nothing.

“A lot of good you guys are now. Last time I checked, the prison's gone. So either you're guarding sand or you were waiting for me.”

The driver shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Mike wanted to put a bullet in the man's skull but restrained himself. He needed information. “What do you want with me? You pissed I killed some of your buddies that night of the raid?”

“I am only following orders.”

“Orders, huh? Does Haddad give you the orders? Is he the boss man?”

No response.

“Guess I'll just have to go and ask him myself. I have ways of getting answers. Since you're not willing talk, maybe he will.”

“I do not think so.”

“Think what?”

“I do not think you will talk to Haddad.”

“Well, that's a nice thought for you. Too bad it won't happen that way.”

“No, it will. In fact, I do not think you will ever see Haddad again.”

Mike started to speak but stopped. Something wasn't right. He'd lost control of the situation. He wasn't sure how, but his gut tingled. It felt bad.

He scanned the desert over the driver's shoulder. Just sand and scrub. A whole lot of nothing.

There. A dark shape a few hundred yards away down the road. Facing him.

Shit,
Mike thought. He wanted to duck, to jump to the ground behind the car for cover. But his left shoulder exploded in a sudden burst of fire and pain. The impact knocked him back three feet and down. The Beretta fell from his hand.

The concussion of the sniper shot echoed around him. The burn spread into his chest and neck. Decent caliber round. He glanced at his shoulder, and bloody pulp stared back. No, it was only shredded bits of his shirt covered in blood.

Fuck, it hurt. Mike moaned and grabbed his shoulder, probing the wound. Good entry. Clean shot. Didn't feel like the clavicle was broken. Though, he was sure the shoulder blade was dust.

He rolled onto his side and pushed up to his knees with his right hand. His gun. He had to get his gun. The world blurred and spun around him. His heart hammered, pumping blood as fast as it could, trying to keep him conscious. It wasn't working too well, though. He fell back down to his side, barely able to stay conscious.

My gun,
he thought.
Find it.

“Do not move any further.”

The blurry shape of the driver stood over him. He saw his own Beretta pointed at him. Not good.

Mike forced deep mouthfuls of air into his lungs and tried to ignore the pain.
Stay awake,
he thought.
Don't fucking pass out.

He didn't think he could follow his own orders. His head begged him to lie down. The fire burning in his shoulder activated a flood of endorphins coursing through his body. The natural reaction to trauma.

You survived a confrontation with a fallen angel. Don't let these camel jockeys get the better of you.

The motivational thoughts didn't help. His consciousness was shutting down. Time to sleep. Mike fluttered his eyes and rested his head in the sand. He exhaled long and deep. His shoulder didn't hurt as much now.

Another shape appeared next to the driver. This one was silhouetted by the sun. All Mike could make out through his rapid blinks was a sniper rifle in its hands.

Fucking sniper,
he thought.
Probably jumped out of the car after it rear-ended me. Should have covered that contingency. Always assume there's more than one shooter. Stupid mistake.

The two conversed in Arabic, but Mike couldn't make out the words. He closed his eyes and tried to pray. He couldn't think of anything to say. If they wanted him dead, he would be by now. No, they wanted him for something else.

Might as well get some sleep,
he thought and passed out.

CHAPTER TWO

G
lenn Cheatum stood at his desk, looking down at a brief he'd prepared to present to the director, when his cell phone vibrated on his hip. He grabbed it without tearing his gaze from the paper. Deep musings on the chances of civil unrest in Lebanon. Fucking scintillating stuff. Once he finished the last line, he glanced at the phone.

Not a call, a text message. From Mike.

He read the text: 9-9-9.

“Shit.”

Glenn called Mike.

Pick up, pick up, pick up.

It rang five times before going to voicemail.

“Fuck.”

Glenn hung up and clipped the phone back on his belt and left his office. It took him three minutes to reach the Operations Center in the CIA Headquarters at Langley, Virginia. When he walked in, silence greeted him.

Four people sat at computers, monitoring operations around the world. Not a busy day. Most days, the center buzzed with life. Today, though, nothing much was going on in CIA land.

Glenn approached the guy closest to him, sitting at a flat-screen monitor watching video surveillance from the Kingdom of Saud. “What's your name?”

“Who's asking?” the guy said before he turned around. When he did, his eyes widened and his plump cheeks deflated. “Oh, shit, sorry, Deputy.”

“Don't worry about it. What's your name?”

“Terry Kolchak.”

“Terry, who owns Iraq today?”

“I do, along with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.”

Glenn nodded and put a hand on Terry's thick shoulder. “Any air assets up over southeastern Iraq?”

“Yeah, we have a Global Hawk north of Basra near the border.”

“Reroute it to Ur.”

“Ur?”

“Outside An Nasiriyah. North.”

“Any specific location?”

“I'm going to give you an asset number, and you should be able to pull up a GPS squawking. The coordinates it gives is where I need the bird to go.”

“No problem. What's the number?”

Glenn released Terry's shoulder and pulled up Mike's info on his phone. “700316.”

Terry punched in the numbers. “Got it.” He hummed.

“What?”

“Well, it's an unknown subject. Never seen an asset come up as unknown.”

“That's for me to worry about. Copy?”

“Yes, Deputy.”

Good,
Glenn thought, thankful Mike was smart and knew to leave his phone on. “How long before we've got video?”

“Seven minutes, give or take.”

“I want it on the big screen.”

While Glenn waited, he pondered what might have happened. The code 9-9-9 was for an agent in duress. Mike had gone to site R91 on Glenn's orders. The military had handed the site back over to the construction company. Work had resumed. The area should have been safe.

Should have been.

“Global Hawk on station, Deputy,” Terry said.

Glenn fished a pack of cherry antacids from his pocket and popped one in his mouth and ground it between his back molars while watching the live feed from the UAV. The real-time color imagery from the drone was displayed on the giant digital screen at the front of the Operations Center. It circled a couple of hundred feet above a black Lincoln Town Car and a blue Renault, both shot up and beat to shit.

Fuck,
Glenn thought.

“Geez,” Terry said. His pale face had turned a slight pink. “Hope no one was hurt.”

You and me both,
Glenn thought. He stared at the footage for a few more seconds. No bodies. No cars other than Mike's and the pursuit vehicle. Whoever had him now had left in a different car for sure. And Glenn had to assume they had Mike because his agent would never have left his phone behind.

You went to R91 like I told you to. Someone saw you there, remembered you from the attack last month. Wanted some payback or to finish the job.

It was the only thing that made sense. Glenn doubted it was a foreign agency or a terrorist group. No, it had to be someone familiar with R91. The only group outside coalition forces and Iraqi regulars to visit the site in the last few weeks was the little band that had attacked it.

What had Mike called them? Guardians of the Prison, or some shit like that?

He still couldn't fully swallow the whole tale. Mike had been serious when recanting the events at R91, and Glenn admitted something strange had happened, including the prison disappearing. But he had a hard time accepting whatever was in the prison was supernatural in origin or worth protecting by a bunch of desert dwellers for thousands of years. More likely the prison had been temporal and excavated by looters and sold on the black market. Nothing supernatural about that.

Of course, he didn't know what Mike meant by supernatural because Mike was going to tell him the whole story once he got back to Langley. All he'd told Glenn so far was it wasn't a weaponized hallucinogen or any other chemical agent. Getting that much out of him had taken a direct order. The rest Mike had to tell him in person, where he'd have a better chance of convincing him it was all true. If Mike had tried over the phone, he thought Glenn would have him committed or killed for being insane.

I still might,
Glenn thought.
First I need to get you back to Langley alive to hear it.

Glenn ran through possible plans. He had zero CIA assets available in the immediate area. The closest ones he wasn't willing to divert off of current operations. Not to mention he would have to admit to having a rogue agent working in-country. The chain of command would go ape shit and arrest Glenn for conducting illegal operations. Glenn would end up in jail and Mike would end up dead.

He could call in the Iraqi military. But then he'd still have to explain to his boss what was going on without giving away Mike's identity and their relationship. Not an option.

Shit. No, Glenn needed to handle this on his own if he or Mike stood a chance of coming out of this unharmed and free of prosecution. Free of the pokey.

So how do I save our asses?

“Thanks, Terry. Break off the bird and return it to its normal operation.”

“What happened, Deputy?”

Glenn shrugged. “Don't know. Probably chasing a ghost.”

“None of our people were involved in this, were they?”

“No.”

“But the GPS for the asset number—”

Glenn clamped down on Terry's shoulder and squeezed while fixing the fat man with his gaze. “Is no longer your concern, Terry. Do you understand?”