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Based on what the Agency had been able to glean from analyzing historical satellite photos, the loading of prisoners would take about forty minutes. After that, the truck would take roughly another four hours to reach the ambush point.
T minus two hundred and eighty minutes and counting.
CHAPTER 42
SOUTH OF AL-QADR
SYRIA
RAPPturned the motorcycle off the asphalt, immediately bogging down in the silt that his pickup had handled with no problem. He killed the headlight and got off, using a combination of throttle and muscle to get the bike out of sight behind the rocky berm.
As expected, two men had beat him there—Arab operators Coleman had worked with in Egypt. They barely acknowledged his arrival, instead focusing on exposing the pits he’d dug. Rapp grabbed one of the canvas sheets they’d tossed aside and used it to cover his bike. The addition of a few rocks and some loose dirt made it disappear satisfyingly into the terrain.
He joined their efforts and by the time another motorcycle arrived, all the gear was uncovered. Rapp grabbed another loose tarp and tossed it to Scott Coleman, who dumped his bike on its side and covered it in a similar fashion.
“I have confirmation that everybody’s safe and on their way,” the former SEAL said. “ETA of the last man is sixteen minutes.”
“And the Russian truck?”
“Last report said forty-nine minutes. I’ll get a couple more updates before it reaches us.”
“All right. Let’s get to work.”
They joined the Arabs, retrieving equipment and arranging it in neat tiers based on the numbers and letters on the labels. They left the tires alone until Joe Maslick and Kadir arrived on a bike that looked barely adequate to hold them.
The big man jumped down into a hole and single-handedly wrestled one of them out, passing it off to someone who then rolled it to the other side of the road. Kadir tried to follow them, but Rapp grabbed him by the arm.
“Are you still with me?”
“Of course.”
Based on Maslick’s periodic reports, Kadir was reasonably solid when he had a simple, well-defined task to focus on. But what lay ahead wasn’t simple and might demand last-minute improvisation.
“You can still do this?”
“I’ve practiced it a hundred times. A thousand. With Joe.”
“This isn’t practice, Kadir. It’s the real thing.”
“You’re asking me if I can kill the infidels who destroyed my country, killed my family, and made me the way I am? Can I serve God and go to Him? Why wouldn’t I want this?”
What he was saying rang true. Rapp wondered if it wasn’t his own reticence that was the problem. He’d lost men before and he blamed himself for every one of them. He was in charge and that’s where the buck stopped. But this wasn’t some unforeseen variable, bad luck, or intelligence glitch. Kadir’s death wasn’t a bug, it was a feature. For the first time in his career, Rapp had created a plan that turned entirely on the death of one of his team.
The Syrian seemed to read his mind and clapped him on the shoulder. “I can see it in you, my good friend. You are one who fights. Whosurvives. But you can hold on too tightly to this world. Sometimes death is better.”
By the time all their men were accounted for, the gear had been secured and Coleman was passing out communications equipment. Rapp put on his throat mike and earpiece, toggling it to transmit.
“Test. Count off with the numbers you were given.”
He got the full count loud and clear, including from Charlie Wicker, who was dug in around half a kilometer to the north. Coleman came on a moment later, updating the ETA of their target. Twenty-two minutes.
“All right, suit up,” Rapp said as Maslick and McGraw walked past carrying a large windshield.
The remaining men approached a line of duffels, retrieving the fatigues and body armor assigned to them, and stripping off the civilian clothes they’d arrived in. Rapp kept Kadir with him, helping him empty his duffel before opening his own. In a few minutes, everyone was clad in the desert camo favored by Russian troops in Syria. Kadir looked a little uncomfortable, tugging compulsively at the uniform for understandable reasons.
Like Rapp, he was clean-shaven, but the effect seemed to have backfired a bit. Instead of making him look more regular army, it just served to expose dark skin permanently damaged by his life as a mountain hermit. Nothing to be done about it now, though. The time to have figured out how to buy light foundation in war-torn Syria was long past.
“How do I look?” he asked.
