Still holding his arm, Vandal stomped down hard on the side of Malicar’s throat. He took a second to gather his strength, and then with a sharp pull snapped the man’s neck.
24
KORHOGO, IVORY COAST
Next door to the detention room, Theresa Mallory pulled another cigarette from the pack of Marlboro Reds and lit it off the butt of the previous. As a rule, she only allowed herself five cigarettes a day, but that had gone to shit when she arrived on the flight line, found the plane shot to hell and General Dábo seconds away from putting a bullet through the pilot’s forehead.
What would have happened if I hadn’t arrived when I did? What would I have told the boss?
She knew that she might have been able to handle the loss of one or the other, but both? The thought sent a shudder up her spine.
Just like everyone else who worked for Cabot, she was afraid of him. But unlike the gun thugs, fixers, and money men he used to keep DarkCloud afloat, Mallory wasn’t afraid that he would kill her—though she had no doubt the Frenchman wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger if he thought there was something to be gained by her death.
No, there was nothing he could do—no physical pain or psychological trauma—that hadn’t already been inflicted on her in the charnel house of her birth, the public housing where she’d learned firsthand that there was nothing sacred about human life. It was just another commodity, a pound of flesh to be bought for a handful of quid or stolen at the point of a knife. For Mallory, physical pain was nothing; her fear came from the emotional coldness that Cabot used to control the women in his life.
Even now, standing there in the detention room, the cigarette smoke tumbling free of her mouth—only to be immediately inhaled through her nose—the thought of failing him was a fate worse than a thousand deaths.
She heard boots in the hallway and turned toward the door. The shadow that fell across the threshold was followed by a respectful knock.
“Come in,” she said in French.
The door swung open and General Dábo stepped inside, a shorter man in gray coveralls behind him.
“I have brought the head mechanic, as requested,” he said with an obsequious nod and one of his polished smiles.
Mallory had met hundreds of Dábos in her life, big men with eggshell-thin egos who used charm and guile to get what a gun could not. It was this ability to see past a man’s façade and into the innermost recesses of his being that had attracted her to Cabot in the first place—and the reason she’d risen so high in his organization.
“Thank you, General,” she said.
“But of course, madam,” he replied. “Is there anything else that I can—”
“You can wait in the hall,” she snapped, ignoring the blaze in his eyes.
She waited until the door had closed and she heard Dábo’s footfalls receding down the hall before turning her eyes to the man in the coveralls.
“What is your name?”
“Drissa . . . Drissa Zadi,” he gulped.
“And you have inspected the plane?” she asked, stepping closer.
“Yes, madam.”
“Can you fix it?”
“The damage to the fuselage is mostly cosmetic. I have my men patching it now . . .”
Mallory advanced on the mechanic, the ice in her eyes dropping the temperature in the room by ten degrees.
“That is not what I asked you!” she snapped.
Like most of Africa, Ivory Coast was deeply patriarchal, a male-centered society where women were to be seen but not heard. Mallory’s sudden aggressiveness caught the mechanic off guard.
He stepped back, recoiling like a man who’d reached into a basket for a piece of wood only to find a snake. “O-of course, madam, m-my mistake,” Zadi stammered, pulling an oil-stained shop rag from his coveralls and wiping it across his glistening brow.
Mallory moved to the bench next to the window, where the pilot’s passport was laid out next to her bag. “I need that plane ready to fly to Grand-Bassam in four hours,” she said, taking out a stack of cash and holding it up for Zadi to see, “and I am willing to make whoever does this for me a very rich man.”
The mechanic’s eyes widened at the sight of the money. He licked his lips, his earlier fear forgotten.
“Now, what I need to know is if you are that man, Drissa Zadi,” she said, placing the cash on the bench before retrieving the suppressed Walther, “or do I need to keep looking?”
The mechanic looked from the cash to the pistol and then back to the cash, his tongue flicking across his lips.
“Think carefully before you answer,” she warned.
“I am that man,” he said.
“Then I suggest you get to work.”
“Of course,” he said, edging toward the door.
Once the mechanic was gone, Mallory scooped the pilot’s passport from the table and reclaimed her spot at the mirror. She thumbed through the booklet, the feel of the paper against her fingers and the dull shine of the optically variable ink under the light telling her everything she needed to know.
It’s fake.
The ability to spot a forged note or government document was not a skill set possessed by many of the white-collar types who worked for Cabot. And even if it was, an employee would never find himself in a position to offer it, because when the boss called it wasn’t to converse. He ran his company like the military that had molded him, and direct communication was a one-way street—Cabot giving the orders and the underling listening.
But thanks to years of hard work and her unprecedented winning streak, Mallory had set herself apart from the pack and moved through the hierarchy to become one of his chief advisers, which was why she’d been surprised when Cabot called and told her that he needed her in Korhogo.
She’d been in Paris, on the second day of a much-needed vacation, when her phone rang.
“There is a plane waiting to fly you to Crete, where you will meet up with a team and fly to Côte d’Ivoire.”
“I wasn’t aware we had any interests in Ivory Coast,” she’d said, grabbing her suitcase from the closest.
“It’s a special project,” Cabot had said, “one that requires a woman with your delicate touch.”
By the time he hung up, Mallory had packed up and was heading out the door.
She’d spent the four-and-a-half-hour flight to Heraklion wondering what in the hell was going on, hoping the answers were waiting for her on the ground. But when she landed and met up with Wikus and the rest of the team, all Mallory found were more questions.