“Raphael? What’s the holdup? Is it on the way?”
“This isn’t Raphael. He can’t talk right now because he took a bullet through the head. Who’s this?”
Garrett disconnected the phone, incredulous. He sat for eight minutes, contemplating his options, somewhat in shock. The voice on the phone was distinctly American. Somehow, the United States had managed to locate his men inside Syria. It was unfathomable. He’d conducted plenty of counterterrorist operations in U.S. Special Forces, and they were lucky to find the man they were looking for one out of ten times, with the entire intelligence apparatus of the United States on their side. And these men had found his like a laser beam.
How? How had they done that?
Breathing heavily, his anger building, he glanced out the window to a car approaching the security checkpoint. It prevented the vehicle from entering, and a man leaned out, clearly arguing with the uniformed officer. The passenger door opened and a woman stood on the footwell, shouting over the cab of the vehicle.
And he recognized who they were. The predators from Rome. They’d found him here, in Israel.
He snarled, put the SUV in gear, and began racing across the parking lot.
Chapter 70
Knuckles slithered through the folds of the earth, scraping across the rocks and following behind Brett in a low crawl, his head in the earth, his weapon dragging behind him. He saw Brett stop moving and waited. Brett turned and pointed to the top of a hillock, then inched his way up. He reached the crest, glanced over, then pushed himself back down.
He whispered, “This is the best spot. The road comes in at an angle, then veers away at this point. The shot will be less than seventy meters.”
“Can they see us? Do we have defilade?”
“Not really, but the scrub growth up top will give us concealment. They won’t see us until we start shooting.”
“Did you get eyes on them?”
“Yeah. They’re loaded and ready to go.”
Knuckles crawled up the side of the hill himself, slowly moved to the crest between the scrub brush, and used the scope on his weapon to survey. He saw a truck about two hundred meters away, a man in the cab, waiting. Another man was in the bed of the pickup, crammed in between the steel of the truck and the rack holding the UAV. In his hand was a rope. Knuckles surveyed the road and saw Brett was correct, this was the best place to engage.
He glanced back down to Brett and whispered, “Come on up. Get ready.”
Brett slithered up next to him and pulled his rifle forward. Knuckles dialed the scope to its highest magnification of six-power and scanned the road to their location. He said, “I’ll take the cab. You take the man in the back. Roger?”
Already in the prone, building a firing position, Brett said, “Roger.”
Knuckles saw the man in the cab talking on a satellite phone, then holler at the man in the back. The man in the bed pulled out a GPS, loaded something in it, then connected the GPS to the UAV.
Knuckles said, “They’re prepping. Get ready.”
Brett said, “I’m on it.”
“Wait until you can call your shot. We don’t take them out quickly, and they’ll be by us and gone.”
The truck started moving down the road, coming closer and closer. It gained speed until it was doing nearly thirty miles an hour. The man in the cab held his hand out the window, and Knuckles shouted, “That’s it! Start shooting.”
He broke the trigger, the first round penetrating the windshield, followed by three more. The truck veered off the road, and he knew he’d struck the driver. He went to the bed, saw the man hit by Brett’s rounds, but he was still moving. He fired as well, and the man jerked upright, then tumbled out of the bed, the rope wrapped around his arm.
The drone released, launching into the air. They watched it fly over their heads and disappear. The truck kept going, slamming into the hill they were on, coming up the slope before the angle became too much. It tumbled back down, flipping over and over, finally stopping on its side.
Knuckles said, “On the truck. Let’s go.”
They raced down the side of the hill, slipping in the loose gravel, their weapons at the ready. They reached the truck and Knuckles said, “Check the guy who fell out.”
Brett ran to the body, his weapon leading the way. Knuckles circled the cab, aiming through the spiderwebbed windshield. He saw a body in the cab, eyes open, the skull with a split in it creating a trench through the forehead. He heard a ringing on the floorboard and saw a Thuraya satellite phone. He reached through the broken glass and pulled it out. He glanced back to Brett and saw him running back to the truck with a GPS in his hand.
He answered the phone and heard, “Raphael? What’s the holdup? Is it on the way?”
Brett reached him and he held up a finger, saying, “This isn’t Raphael. He can’t talk right now because he took a bullet through the head. Who’s this?”
The phone disconnected. Knuckles said, “Guess he didn’t want to talk. What do you have?”
“I’ve got the GPS with the grid to the terminal point for the UAV.”
Knuckles pulled out his Inmarsat phone, dialing it and saying, “What is it?”
“I don’t know the exact location by reference. Only by the grid numbers. This GPS’s map isn’t that good, but it’s in Israel, and the closest thing on this graphic is the Megiddo National Forest.”
The phone connected and Knuckles said, “We took out the targets, but they managed to get the UAV in the air. It’s on the way, and it’s headed to Megiddo.”
Pike said, “Shit. That’s not good. We’re driving there right now, about ten minutes out. How much time do we have?”
“Just a guess, but I’d say thirty or forty minutes. I go with thirty.”
“Send me the grid to be sure, and the exact time of launch.”
“Will do. I’ve also got a Thuraya number from someone who called asking about the status of the drone.”
“Someone called the men there?”
“Yep. I answered, and he didn’t want to talk to me.”
“Send that as well. What’s your status right now?”
“There are two other UAVs in the shed and a Toyota Land Cruiser. I figured I’d blow them up, then start hauling ass in the Toyota. I don’t suppose you have a direction we should go yet?”
“Not yet. Sorry. I’m going to have my hands full for a little bit. Besides that flying bomb, we have one other Turtle on the loose and no idea what he’s trying to do.”
“Yeah. I figured that’s what I would hear.”
“I gotta go, sorry. I need this phone.”
Knuckles said, “See you at the wedding. Maybe.”
He lowered the phone and Brett said, “Let me guess—we’re on our own.”
“At least for a little while. Let’s check out that building.”
They approached at an angle, using whatever cover they could find, entering through the wreckage the drone had caused. It was a simple three-room structure, the main room destroyed by the UAV.
They silently went forward to the room on the right, clearing it rapidly and finding three dead men, all apparently killed somewhere else and dragged here, judging by the scuff marks and blood trails.