Time Hayes didn’t have to waste.
By the time he looked back to the west, the convoy was halfway to the intersection, and while the jury was still out about the man in the tan plate carrier, there was no doubt about the men behind the wheels. They were pros and they dissected the traffic with a surgical precision, never allowing more than three feet of separation between each vehicle as they raced toward the intersection.
After watching them drive, Hayes knew the convoy wasn’t going to sit around and wait for him to cross the street. He had to go—now.
During his time in Africa, Hayes had been amazed by the ethnic and cultural barriers that spanned the country. Even with his practiced ear for language and preternatural ability to absorb the local cultures, he was constantly reminded that he was an outsider.
But at the end of the day, Hayes knew that no matter where you were in the world or what language was being spoken, there were two things that needed no translation: cash and guns.
“Well, I’m sorry it had to come to this,” he said, drawing the Beretta from his hip.
Hayes stepped out into the street. Before he had a chance to level the pistol on the rusted bread truck barreling toward him, the driver had locked up the brakes. He got the same results with the rider of the red moped occupying the inside lane.
“You fucking crazy, man?” the rider demanded in French.
“No, just late,” Hayes replied, checking the soldiers at the end of the block before stepping onto the concrete median that separated the four-lane road.
As a singleton operator, Hayes knew that his survivability hinged on not drawing attention to himself. But like all men in his position, he was a natural gambler, and while the stunt with the pistol had broken one of the cardinal rules of the profession, the gamble had paid off. Not only had the soldiers at the end of the block not noticed the gun, as an added bonus, the ripple effect from the bread truck had snarled the traffic.
While the Land Rovers tried to extricate themselves from the traffic, Hayes jogged across the street. He hopped onto the sidewalk and weaved through the window-shoppers milling outside the shops selling handmade souvenirs.
“You want a keychain?” one of the vendors asked.
Hayes shook his head no without breaking stride, and by the time he was nearing the final shop, the lead vehicle was pulling into the turn lane. He pulled the case from his back pocket and was shifting left, trying to get into the driver’s line of sight, when the familiar brush of cold air up the back of his neck stopped him dead in his tracks.
In an instant he saw it all: the pedestrians streaming down the sidewalk, the Land Rover inching forward, its driver ready for the left-hand turn that would take the convoy northbound, away from Hayes and the hotel.
Then, like a scratched DVD, the scene jumped back into real time—the crash of the glass shattering followed by the banshee scream of the RPG from the window, and the chalk-white tail as it screamed across the street, slamming into the hood of the lead Land Rover.
Then he saw it—a flicker of movement, a figure standing on the roof of the building across the street, a flash of flame from the tube on his shoulder followed by the bloodcurdling wail of the RPG.
32
GRAND-BASSAM
The heat scalded Hayes’s skin. He raised his arms to his face and was turning away, trying to get to cover, when the overpressure swatted him off his feet and sent him tumbling toward a Peugeot 504 stopped in the middle of the road.
He hit hard, the impact spiderwebbing the glass beneath him, the crack of his skull against the pillar turning the world black.
It was the pain that brought him back. The dull ache that started in his lower back and raced up his spine like a fuse. His eyes fluttered open, but instead of the earlier blue sky and bright sun, the street was on fire. Thick black smoke coiled from the burnt-out Land Rover, the air dense with the scent of comp B and the muted screams of tourists over the staccato chatter of gunfire.
Hayes twisted free of the glass, rolled across the hood, and dropped into the gutter. He shook his head, tried to clear the fog, and pushed himself up to a knee, where he conducted a functions check: inspected his body for any holes, tears, or broken bones. When he was sure there was nothing wrong that a few aspirin couldn’t fix, he turned his attention to the street and the firefight unfolding twenty yards to his front.
After being hit by the RPG, the lead Land Rover had rolled across the intersection, bumped over the curb, and nosed into a building, where it sat burning like a funeral pyre. The rest of the convoy was still in the turn lane, boxed in by a pair of brown Ford Excursions and under fire from men in gas masks and black body armor.
Hayes studied the scene, noting the deployment of the Excursions and the knot of assaulters as they flowed toward the convoy—the lead shooters keeping a steady rate of fire on the vehicles while the security element fired canisters of CS gas toward the street.
It was a textbook ambush and Hayes realized that whoever had planned it knew what they were doing. But while the plan was conceptually solid, all it took was one look at the closest Excursion for Hayes to find a flaw in the execution.
For a blocking position to work, a driver must pin the target vehicle in place, either against an immovable object or by—
But the driver had stopped short, leaving a gap that the driver of the Land Rover was working to exploit.
The driver shifted into reverse, cranked the wheel hard over, and backed up.
“Keep going,” Hayes urged, but the driver didn’t listen and immediately shifted into gear and stomped on the gas.
Then everything went to shit.
But before he could exploit the situation, one of the security men saw him standing there and sent a gas canister skipping down the street. It hit ten feet in front of him, bounced into the air, and exploded in a chalk-white cloud.
Looks like that’s our cue, the voice urged.
Hayes had been gassed enough times to know he didn’t want anything to do with the cloud of CS coming his way, but instead of turning to leave, he dropped to a knee, eyes locked on Zoe’s Land Rover.
They’re not going to make it.
The thought had no sooner crossed his mind than the Land Rover slammed into the Excursion’s front quarter panel.
Just stay down. It’s not your fight, the voice said.
For once, Hayes had to agree.
He’d done his job. Held up his end of the agreement when he delivered Zoe to the hotel. The rest is up to her protection team.
The thought had no sooner crossed his mind than the right passenger-side door of the second Land Rover was flung open and the man in the tan plate carrier bailed out.
He laid his rifle against the doorpost and yelled, “Get on line,” before opening up on his attackers.