Shadow War

Encizo disappeared around the edge of the door as he darted down the hall. Manning turned and crossed the room’s foyer to help James hoist al-Shalaan’s limp body off the floor. Behind them Hawkins had methodically made his way around to the woman’s purse, dumping the contents out onto the bar.

He let out a long low whistle as he shifted through the mess. “Jeez, how much drugs does this woman have?” He shook his head as he pulled up the menu on her phone and read some numbers, quickly scanning for prefixes that might be important. “Nothing.”

“You got everything?” Manning asked.

“Yeah. All we have time for. I haven’t found the room safe, but it wasn’t on our op plan anyway.”

“Let’s go,” James said.

Encizo came back into the room, pushing the wheelchair ahead of him. Without preamble James and Manning slung the unconscious body of al-Shalaan into the seat. The big Canadian stacked the man’s loose clothing on his naked lap. This was a discreet hotel. If a VIP was being escorted dead drunk and naked to a waiting car by his entourage, then it was best not to make the situation hotel business.

Phoenix Force moved out of the room and passed the sprawled bodies of al-Shalaan’s guards. They turned down the hallway opposite the elevator bank. They moved quickly in a quintessential VIP protection pattern.

“Let’s go, guys,” McCarter said in the earjack. “The valet is giving me grief.”

“Pay him off, we don’t need the heat. The package is naked.”

“Whose fault is that? Just hurry. This fussy little man out here has numbered days if he blows that goddamn whistle at me one more time,” the ex-SAS commando said.

“I believe him. We’d better get moving,” Manning said.

“It’s nice to know cooler heads prevail,” James muttered.

Phoenix Force reached the end of the hall and opened a door set off to the right of the stair access entrance. They stepped into an Employees Only area where the hotel maids kept their cleaning carts and the bellhops cached folding trays for room service. A freight elevator stood to one side of the long, narrow staging area.

They moved quickly to the elevator, and Manning pulled a firefighter override key from his pocket and called the lift straight to the floor.

The elevator door opened with a pneumatic hiss and Encizo pushed the wheelchair inside.

McCarter’s voice came over the com link. “I’ve got sirens.”

“Copy,” Manning said. “We’re headed to the lobby now.”

The doors sealed shut and the elevator jerked as it started its descent. The inside of the freight elevator was deep and wide, big enough for a small forklift to fit into. The walls were dented and painted a flat, institutional white above metal plating that ran about halfway up the sides. It smelled like cleaning products.

McCarter spoke into the com link. “I’m moving to Route Bravo. The first gendarme has arrived.”

“Copy,” Manning acknowledged.

The elevator slowed, then halted and the door slid open. A rail-thin bellhop with slicked-back hair looked up in surprise.

Manning stepped forward in the manner of an arrogant bodyguard and brushed past the man. “Move!” he snapped in German.

Behind him Phoenix Force rolled out of the elevator and began to navigate the warren of halls behind the hotel’s lobby, heading toward the loading docks. They caught some stares from janitors and building workers, but no one said a word to the hard-eyed men.

They hit the back dock moving briskly. As if taking a cue from some off-scene director, McCarter pulled up into the loading bay. He was driving the stretch Hummer as part of the cover, right down to the chauffeur’s uniform. He locked up the independent disc brakes and jerked the heavy vehicle to a stop. Manning heard the sound of the automatic locks disengaging and quickly jerked open the back door on the big vehicle.

Hawkins and Encizo put their hands under al-Shalaan’s arms and catapulted him out of the wheelchair as James pulled it away, thrusting him through the open limo door. There was a shout from behind them, but the team ignored it as they leaped after the unconscious man and into the vehicle.

McCarter slammed his foot to the gas pedal before Manning had time to pull the door closed behind him and the big vehicle hurtled out of the loading dock and onto a side street.

“What’d you do?” McCarter demanded.

A Fiat suddenly appeared in front of him and he jerked the stretch Hummer into the other lane to avoid a rear-end collision.

In the back, the Phoenix Force commandos rolled up against the side of the vehicle with the sudden sharp swerve. They struggled to get the unconscious Saudi into a seat and a safety belt around him. James managed to click the buckle just before McCarter slammed on the brakes.

James was thrown backward, bouncing off the granite mass of Manning and landing on top of Encizo. The men scrambled to fit themselves into seat belts as McCarter slalomed the gigantic stretch Hummer in and out of traffic.

“This is bollocksed!” McCarter snarled to no one in particular.

“Let’s just get to the jetty!” James called back. “It’ll take them a while to shift the pursuit to the water. By that time we’ll have scuttled the boat and be gone.”

“That’s what I’m doing, mate,” McCarter agreed.

He tapped his brakes, snapped the steering wheel to the left, gunned the gas and zoomed past a black four-door sedan, then he cut the wheel back to the right. Behind him a single siren and flashing light bar became three.

Hawkins crawled over the barrier between the backseat and the driver compartment through the open glass divider. He swung down, twisted and slid into the shotgun seat. McCarter darted around a heavy diesel truck stacked with crates and the motion threw the former U.S. army commando up against the passenger door. Hawkins snatched hold of the handle above the window to steady himself.

“Let’s use the improved clearance on this thing,” Hawkins said. “Cut through something, drive over something. Those patrol cars are low-slung.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Hawkins looked at the NSA field version of the vehicle’s navigation device and watched their GPS coordinates speeding through the map display of the French city. He saw a series of switchback turns coming up on the road ahead toward the team’s exfiltration point.

McCarter burned through an intersection against the light. Horns blared in sudden panic, and the Hummer rocked on its suspension like a boxer avoiding jabs. They crested a rise and through a break in the buildings, and the Briton could see empty black under a dark sky. Behind them a police cruiser gunned forward and tried to pull parallel. McCarter swerved to cut him off and bullied the cop back with the superior weight of the stretch Hummer.

“Up ahead. Take that alley,” Hawkins barked, “drive across the parking lot and down the hill. There’s no way the cops’ll follow us in their cars. It’ll buy us minutes as they try to navigate the switchbacks down to the shore.”

“That’s crazy!” McCarter shouted. “We’ll flip for sure.” He jerked the wheel in a tight, 180-degree spin then let it flip back around. “Hold on!”

The Briton reached down and flipped off the all-wheel drive, switching the custom setting to front-wheel control. He tapped the brakes and the rear wheels of the Hummer locked up, screaming in protest as McCarter just managed to slide the rear end around.

The knobby front tires of the sliding vehicle clawed at the asphalt. They met the curb of the sidewalk and bucked up into the air. The rear wheels caught hold and as the front of the Hummer bounced back down McCarter snapped the vehicle back into all-wheel drive.

“Who dares wins,” McCarter gritted.

T HEY SPED INTO THE NARROW alley Hawkins had indicated. The former SAS commando struck a pair of garbage cans with the stretch Hummer’s heavy bumper. They bounced up into the air, spilling trash across the windshield, then bounced off the hood and flipped up over the vehicle’s roof. McCarter snapped the wheel to avoid a larger, industrial-size green garbage bin and scraped the wall of the alley. There was a shower of sparks, then the screaming of metal peeling away from metal as his sideview mirror was snapped off.

“Oh, we’re having fun now,” Hawkins said.

The stretch Hummer rocketed out of the narrow alley and shot across the street. McCarter lay on the horn as he cut across two lanes of traffic. A forest-green Audi locked its brakes as the Hummer suddenly loomed in front of it. The little coupe turned sideways, its rear end fishtailing.

The Hummer’s front wheels struck the edge of the sidewalk and bounced up again. McCarter wrestled the massive vehicle over a parking divider, uprooting a sapling as he did so. He weaved in and out of sitting vehicles as he crossed the parking lot. A middle-aged couple in evening dress appeared at the edge of his headlights.

The woman screamed and the man had the presence of mind to jerk back. McCarter turned his wheel, kissed the side of a parked Fiat and shot past the terrified couple.

“Sorry!” he yelled, knowing they couldn’t hear him. He glanced at his sideview mirror to see how close the pursuing patrol cars were, and then remembered he’d ripped the driver-side mirror clean off the body frame. His eyes darted to the passenger-side mirror. He saw spinning lights emerging from the alley across the street.