Renegade (2013) (14 page)

“Roger that, Indigo Nine Leader. Indigo One, Three, and Four are en route. ETA is two minutes.”

Pike ran harder. Two minutes could be several lifetimes in a battle.

TENDRILS OF SMOKE
climbed into the air southwest of where Yaqub sat in the SUV his men had stolen less than an hour ago. Through the bug-smeared window, he kept watch over the Noor Jahan Hotel, where American journalists often congregated to file their reports and receive information from military liaisons.

The structure was three stories tall and had red-tiled roofs. Flags fluttered above the hotel. A dozen cars were parked in the dirt lot in front of the building. Nearly all of them were SUVs and minivans used by the reporters.

Several reporters ran from the hotel to their vehicles. Most of them were young men pursuing fame available to those who reported from the battlefield. The Westerners loved beating their breasts, so certain of their military superiority even after so many years.

In disgust, Yaqub watched those men fling open their doors and clamber aboard. Today they would not be broadcasting messages. Today they would
be
a message.

Dismissing the young men, Yaqub kept watch through his binoculars for the man he awaited. But when the last of the reporters had driven away in their vehicles, the man had not appeared.

Yaqub turned to Wali. The young scout sat in the driver’s seat. “Wali, you are certain Jonathan Sebastian arrived at the hotel?”

“Yes. He is here.”

“Then he did not leave the building.”

“Perhaps he is not as willing to risk getting killed as his younger counterparts. He has achieved his fame and fortune.”

Yaqub opened his door and stepped out. “Then if Sebastian is content to do his coverage of the news from this place, our mission here will be even simpler.” He strode across the dirt parking lot toward the hotel.

Wali stepped into position beside Yaqub, followed by four other men.

Lifting the radio from his pocket, Yaqub spoke briefly. “Faisal, send our warriors after the journalists.”

“At once.”

Yaqub continued walking without being contested all the way into the hotel. In the lobby, a handful of men stood watching breaking news on a laptop on a coffee table. From the dialogue exchanged between them, Yaqub knew they were Westerners, probably Americans, British, and others who felt they had a vested interest in the future of Afghanistan. They were probably planning on bringing their Western ungodly ways to the country—and on taking advantage of the low labor cost that would be available in a recovering country.

Around the lobby, bellboys and the managers behind the desk took immediate notice of Yaqub and his entourage, sensing that something was wrong.

They look like lambs that have discovered a wolf among them.
The thought brought Yaqub pleasure. He drew the silencer-equipped Makarov pistol from hiding and pointed to the group of men surrounding the laptop. “Kill them.”

One of the men turned and guessed at what was coming. He tried to yell a warning to the other men and flee at the same time.
Scarcely had the breath left his mouth than Wali pulled out the silenced Ingram MAC-10 he carried and opened fire.

The machine pistol spat a spray of bullets that chopped down the men and shattered the laptop. The silencer nearly muffled all sounds of the shots. Wali ejected the spent magazine and fed in a fresh one.

Two of Yaqub’s men separated from the group and walked through the journalists. Some of them still moved. Using silenced pistols, the two men shot each of their targets through the head whether they were moving or not.

Behind the hotel desk, a closed-circuit television camera recorded everything, exactly as Yaqub wanted. Two men worked behind the hotel desk. The younger one ran for the door.

Yaqub shot the runner three times. Staggering, the younger clerk grabbed for the desk and managed to knock down an advertisement. Yaqub leaned over the counter, pointed his pistol at the younger man lying on the floor, and shot him through the head. The man went slack.

Face cold and neutral, knowing that the surviving man was afraid of him, Yaqub stepped closer to him. “Do not run.”

The man trembled visibly, and sweat broke out upon his brow. “I will not run.”

“There is an American staying here. His name is Jonathan Sebastian.”

The clerk’s voice cracked and he had to clear it to continue speaking. “Yes, he is here.”

“What room?”

“I will need to look at the computer.”

“Do so.”

Fumbling, the man tapped the keyboard, studied the results, and looked back at Yaqub. “He is in suite 317. Third floor, then to the left.” He trembled. “Please, I ask in God’s name, do not kill me.”

“God will not protect you. You should have been making war
on the Americans, not serving them. I am God’s vengeance.” Yaqub pointed his pistol and squeezed off two rounds in quick succession. The clerk was dead before he hit the floor.

Taking aim again, Yaqub looked up into the security camera, then squeezed the trigger once more and reduced it to scrap metal. Sparks flew for a moment as pieces rained down.

Yaqub turned from the desk and swapped out magazines in his weapon. He led the way to the elevator and the others followed.

Paul Schofield sat tensely in the SUV as it raced down narrow streets toward the area where black smoke streamed into the sky. He was twenty-two years old, barely out of journalism school, and had hoped the assignment to Afghanistan would be a route to easy money. All he needed was a little fame, a little notoriety, and he’d be able to write his own ticket.

At least, that was what his journalism professor had told him.
“Get out there in the soup. Don’t be afraid to make a difference. Take risks. That’s how you get ahead in this business. You can’t just report the news these days. You have to
be
the news.”

That was his line of thinking until three days ago, the first time Schofield had seen dead people anywhere other than in a funeral home. Seeing a corpse on the street was a lot different from seeing a body a mortician had worked on. Paul’s grandmother had looked better the day they had buried her than she had the last few days in the hospital.

But the four people Paul had seen three days ago had been IED victims. Paul didn’t even know what the improvised explosive device had been rigged up to look like. All he could remember was the blood and the stink and the way the bodies had been torn to pieces. It had looked like a lot of the video games he had played in high school and
college, almost familiar, only all too immediate. But in the games, he hadn’t been able to
smell
the carnage.

That odor haunted Schofield, and his appetite hadn’t yet completely recovered. He was beginning to think it never would.

“You okay, Paul?” Carter Pierce turned toward him from the middle seats of the SUV. He was tall and dark-haired with eyes that could cut right through a person. His profile was absolutely photogenic, a Bruce Campbell kind of chin. A guy could make a lot of money with a jawline like that.

“I’m fine.” Paul wished his voice didn’t sound like a croak, but something was caught there.

“You look kinda sick to me.”

“I said I was fine.” Schofield had always hated being the new guy. In junior high gym, that meant getting picked last. In college, it meant being the guy none of the professors remembered. In Afghanistan, it meant being the brunt of everybody’s sometimes-cruel observations about how shocked he was at what he was seeing.

“I was just thinking that if you decided to hurl inside here, the way you did when you saw that IED site, there’s not a lot of room in an SUV.” Pierce brushed at his jacket lapels. “I don’t want your weak stomach to mess with my close-up.” The two reporters in the backseat smirked at Paul’s expense.

“Hey, Pierce.” That was Brett Snyder, a stringer for the Associated Press and a four-year veteran of the conflict in Afghanistan, the guy among them with the most time in. He was divorced and had a drinking problem that nobody was supposed to talk about but everybody did. He was also more sympathetic than the others. When he wasn’t half in the bag. “Shut up and leave the kid alone.”

“Hey, it’s a concern. I want to look good.” Pierce slumped back in his seat. “Don’t want to spend the rest of the morning smelling like puke either.”

“Do what I told you to do.”

Paul was relieved, and he knew that Pierce would do as Snyder ordered. Snyder was the go-to guy with all the contacts in the American military, the UN, the ANP, and the ANA. If a reporter wanted to talk to somebody in those camps, it was better to go through Snyder to get there. He had the juice to make things happen.

Pierce looked at the window and checked his appearance, smoothing his perfect hair, breathing into his palm to check his breath.

The SUV swerved and the tires screamed as the vehicle floated around a sudden turn. The black smoke was closer now, thicker and more foreboding.

That would be an awesome shot if I could get it.
Schofield imagined himself standing in the foreground of the shot, one hand in his pocket as if he were relaxed while carnage reigned through the rest of the city.

Harsh ratcheting sounds came from outside the SUV, penetrating the constant feed from the military band radio. The soldiers spoke in cryptic responses. Schofield was picking up the militaryspeak, but a lot of it remained Greek to him. Still, the intensity in the voices, knowing that guys were out there laying their lives on the line, excited him.

All he needed was one of those soldiers telling him the story of today. That story could make Schofield’s day.

A rapid-fire popping noise increased in decibel level. Schofield recognized the noise as motorcycle engines. They were two-stroke dirt bikes. He’d ridden those back in New Mexico, where he’d grown up. He turned in his seat and looked behind them.

Four motorcycle riders wearing scarves, turbans, and backpacks roared up the street toward them.

In the front passenger seat, Snyder turned and cursed. He slapped the driver on the shoulder. “Get us out of here!”

Pierce sat up straighter as he gripped the seat in front of him.

The SUV driver wove back and forth across the street, barely controlling the vehicle as it careened between the ramshackle buildings and ruined structures.

Schofield’s stomach spasmed, and he knew he was going to be sick. He couldn’t help himself. He hunkered low in the seat, thinking that the motorcyclists were going to pull out their rifles any minute and start shooting the SUV. Or maybe they had rocket launchers. Schofield had seen vivid proof of how destructive those weapons could be.

Instead, the drivers spread out, each one matching speed with the journalists’ SUVs.

“Turn right! Turn right now!” Snyder pointed at the coming intersection. He was holding tightly to his seat belt with his other hand.

The driver responded immediately, tapping the brake to slow down, then clawing at the steering wheel to turn the vehicle.

Paralyzed with fear, Schofield watched the motorcyclist who had targeted their vehicle. The rider maneuvered his machine with surprisingly expert precision. He cut back to the right, sweeping behind the SUV as it turned, then seizing the inside track as they rounded the corner. In a split second, the motorcyclist was once more beside them.

Snyder cursed again. Beside the window where the motorcyclist was, Pierce suddenly tried to claw his way over the top of Schofield. Events became very confused as Schofield instinctively fought being manhandled by the other reporter, slapping and pushing at Pierce to force him to stay where he was.

Then, while the SUV was still nearly out of control in the turn, fighting for balance, the motorcyclist blew up. Blood painted the side of the SUV, and shrapnel shattered the windows and peppered the vehicle as the concussive impact added to the centrifugal force already pulling at them through the turn.

Losing traction, giving in to the laws of physics, the SUV flipped
onto its side and skidded along the street until it crashed into a knot of people. On the other side of the windshield, two men struggled against the vehicle’s weight as it pinned them against a building. One of the men suddenly vomited blood and collapsed. The other screamed in pain.

Down the street, bodies lay on the ground in one of the market areas. Black smoke continued to plume in the sky. Schofield realized then that they had reached ground zero of the firefight. The steady stream of small-arms fire dimmed when louder explosions crashed over the area.

“Out! Get out of the vehicle!” Snyder tried to follow his own advice by disengaging the seat belt and struggling to pull himself through the broken passenger window.

Schofield instantly became aware of Pierce’s deadweight lying on him. He looked at the other reporter and stared into the man’s open, unseeing eyes. A scream caught in the back of Schofield’s throat and wouldn’t rip free.

Snyder was halfway out the broken window when harsh cracks sounded close by. The man stiffened, then dropped back into the SUV.

“Move! Out of the way!” The man behind Schofield fought to get out from under his weight. Schofield tried to explain that he was trapped by his seat belt and by Pierce’s corpse, but he couldn’t speak.

Then, abruptly, a young, cold face appeared in the broken window. For a moment, Schofield thought maybe someone had come to rescue them. Someone wearing the digital camouflage of the United States military or even someone from the UN forces would have been more calming.