The Colonel's Mistake (30 page)

“We need a better plan than this,” said Daria, as she took another rock for herself.

It was sunny out, a gorgeous day. The deep green of the forest to their left contrasted with the blue of the sky and the white of the few lingering clouds. Mark wondered for a moment whether it was as magnificent a day back in Baku, and he imagined it was. He thought of what it would be like to be sitting out on his balcony. For a moment he grew irrationally nostalgic for the smell of petroleum.

“This is our plan. We’ve already drawn two of them away from the house.”

“That’s not a plan. That’s putting the best face on a disaster.”

“There’s a difference?”

“I still don’t trust Decker.”

“I do.”

“We can’t rely on him. The two of us need to think our way out of this.”

“I am thinking. I’m thinking all we have to do is hold these idiots off until dark and stick with the plan we already agreed on. End of story.”

“That’s four hours from now.”

“We’ll make it.”

At first Amato didn’t pay much attention to little ribbon of black smoke he saw snaking its way up into the gray, twilit sky. He figured it was probably a farmer, burning brush in a nearby field.

It was nine o’clock at night and he was driving through the French countryside. The trip from Washington had taken longer than he’d hoped. But he’d make it in time. The takedown wasn’t scheduled to go down until ten.

Then he rounded a corner.

Good God, that trail of smoke is coming from a church
.

He checked the coordinates on his GPS unit as he sped up, hurtling past a wheat field at top speed. And that wasn’t just any church, it had to be
the
church, where Daria was.

When he looked up, he could see the first tiny flickers of flame creeping up through a giant hole in the roof.
No. NO. I am not seeing this. Those heathen beasts.

Amato called Martinez. “Captured alive! Those were my orders! What the hell do the Iranians think they’re doing! Burning a church! In the middle of France! Are they fucking insane!”

“They didn’t have anything to do with it, sir. The targets set the fire themselves a couple of minutes ago.”

“If that whole roof goes up—”

“Stay back and let us handle it, sir.”

“Who’s going in for Buckingham and—”

“Sir! Please! Stay back and let us handle it!”

First there’d been just a hissing sound as the lithium from Mark’s camera battery, which he’d cut up and thrown down one of the holes in the church roof, reacted with the water he’d poured over it. Next came a tiny orange glow and the faint hint of a burning smell as the flaming battery parts ignited both the hundred-year-old insulation in the church attic and the gothic vaulting just below it, vaulting that Mark—on his way in—had noticed was constructed of wood instead of the more costly stone that an older church would have used.

When flames had begun to creep out of the hole, Mark had flipped open his phone and dialed the international number for emergency.

Now, having been transferred to a local police dispatcher, he said he wanted to report a fire coming from the roof of a church on Route D928. “It’s the Eglise Saint-Martin. And if someone doesn’t get here quick, it’s going to take down the whole roof.”

Minutes later, the fire was roaring loudly and, despite being twenty feet above it in the stone bell tower, Mark could feel its heat. He imagined what the Iranians inside the church must be thinking. They must be getting a little frantic by now, unsure of whether to stay where they were or to wait outside, potentially exposing
themselves. It didn’t really matter, he decided—when the cops and firemen arrived they’d have to leave.

Soon after a portion of the roof collapsed into the church, Mark heard sirens in the distance.

A police car pulled up and the gendarme got out and ordered a few locals who’d gathered in front of the church to step back. A minute later a fire truck pulled up, sirens blaring. Four firemen jumped out. Mark stood up.

“I’ll go first,” he said to Daria.

“I’ll be right on your heels.”

Below he hoped Decker was already on the move, either disarming the Iranians if they were still in the church, or hightailing it to the farmhouse if the coast was clear.

He descended the circular steps as quietly as he could, silently choking on the smoke that was making its way up the tower. When he reached the last step he grabbed the ladder that he’d pulled up through the stairway’s central chute, quickly lowered it to the floor, and slid down it as if it were a fireman’s pole. When he hit the ground he rolled into the church then sprinted to a marble pillar halfway between the altar and the rear exit. He flattened himself against it. A second later Daria was at his side.

If Decker had managed to take out the two guys inside the church, Mark figured he and Daria could be at the farmhouse within a couple minutes. The men guarding Minabi would be distracted by the fire and vulnerable.

In front of him a few piles of collapsed ceiling timbers were burning, while thirty feet above them the fire continued to rage, sucking so much air into the church now that Mark felt a strong breeze on the back of his neck. Soon the whole ceiling would collapse.

He peered out from behind the marble pillar, searching for Decker, but he couldn’t see any sign of him. The rear exit was a fifty-foot sprint away, underneath a crucifix-shaped collection of bolts in the wall.

He stepped out from behind the pillar and began to run. Then he felt his head snap to the side. As his legs collapsed, he was overwhelmed by the sensation that he’d stumbled into a bottomless pit.

Through the flickering smoke-filled gloom, Daria saw a black shadow slam Mark’s head into a stone wall.

On the opposite side of the church, the side that faced the road, police lights flashed wildly and a gendarme pushed people back from the chain-link fence. Daria figured she could be out on the street in a matter of seconds. The police might try to detain her, but she’d figure out a way to ditch them.

She clenched her fists, poised to run to safety.

Dammit, Mark!

Screw him, she thought. She’d told him not to get involved. She’d warned him. He’d pushed himself on her anyway, for $2,000 a day.

She turned toward the flashing police lights. Firemen were rolling out a hose. In the confusion, she might even be able to blend into the crowd.

This was your fault, Mark! Your plan!

At Daria’s feet lay a narrow four-foot-long board smoldering among the ceiling debris. She grasped the end that had gone untouched by the fire. It was heavy, made of oak she guessed. The blackened end had a cluster of rusty old nails sticking out of it.

She eyed the potential safety of the street one last time. Then she turned toward where she’d last seen Mark and began to run after him.

Mark regained consciousness as he was being dragged through a gap in the chain-link fence outside the church. He heard voices, one of them a woman’s—Daria, he thought—and cries of pain.

He tried to flip on his stomach and grab his attacker’s legs, but as soon as he landed a hand on the man’s thigh, a knee rammed him in the temple. When he came to again, his hands were being bound behind his back with plastic FlexiCuffs and he lay at the edge of a forest.

He heard distant shouting coming from the church, which was now just a tiny glow barely visible through the trees.

“Martinez?” called a voice from the darkness.

“Yes, sir.”

The guy named Martinez was maybe six feet tall with a goatee. His thick forehead was covered with blood that was dripping out from a knot of puncture wounds above his right eye. He wore loose brown pants, a long-sleeved black shirt, a radio headset, and a night-vision monocle. His right hand gripped a pistol and he was breathing heavily.

“What happened? I heard shooting.”

“I’ve apprehended one of the subjects.”

A tall barrel-chested man, with a partially bald head and silver temple hair that stood out in the darkness, emerged from behind
the black shape of a car. He wasn’t wearing night-vision equipment and he held only a small hand radio. He looked at Mark and grimaced.

To Martinez he said, “Where’s Daria Buckingham?”

“Someone else was in the church that we didn’t know about. He’s fucking with everything. One of the Iranians is down, his weapon’s been taken.”

“Answer my question.”

“The bitch came after me. I took her down—”

“She wasn’t supposed to be harmed!”

“I had to defend myself, sir. She’ll live.”

“Davis was supposed to stay on her!”

“He got ambushed and lost his weapon. One of the Iranians might have also got hit. Whoever’s out there knows what they’re doing.”

Mark’s head was suddenly yanked back so hard he thought his neck was going to snap.

“Who are we dealing with?” asked Martinez.

Mark didn’t answer.

The older man said, “I’ll watch this punk. You’ve got to go back for Buckingham! Now!”

“There are firefighters and cops out there. I can try to avoid them, but I’m telling you, before I go after Buckingham I need to take out the guy who—”

A shot rang out. Martinez clutched his thigh, fell to the ground, and fired into the trees.

A second later, Decker came up from behind and smashed the butt of his pistol into Martinez’s face five times, rapid-fire. Then he tackled the old guy into a tree, knocking the wind out of him.

Decker cut Mark’s hands free with a knife and handed him Martinez’s pistol. “Cover them,” he whispered, then he retrieved a
couple of plastic FlexiCuffs from Martinez’s back pocket and used them to secure both of his prisoners’ hands.

Martinez was unconscious. The older man was groaning.

Mark’s head was wobbly on his neck and throbbing so much it felt as though his skull were going to split open. He didn’t know if he could stand. “You gotta go back for Daria.”

“The Iranians just bagged her. I was going for you, I couldn’t stop them.”

“Is she alive?”

“I think.” He added, “I took down one of the guys who was on you—he’s tied up just outside the church, the cops have probably found him by now—and I was going for the second when I realized there were more people out there. I don’t know how many. It’s a cluster, man.”