Liberation Day

Chapter 39

The man’s voice was very calm. As he moved forward I could see his ponytail. “Arrêtez, police.”

I kept walking, head down, and did my best to look confused. I didn’t want to open my mouth unless I had to.

The woman moved in step with him, following the waterline no more than two yards behind. She kept at an angle to her partner so she had a clear field of fire. The man kept jabbering in French as he got closer to me, moving slowly, like a stalking cat, bending his legs and hunkered down a bit, treating me as if I were an unexploded bomb with a tremor switch. The woman sensed this was wrong: I hadn’t stopped. Never taking her eyes off me, she moved her right arm, pulling back the jacket to get to the pistol somewhere on her hip.

No more than three yards separated us now. I stopped as I heard the squeak of leather as the woman’s pistol came up. I hadn’t exactly helped calm the situation down by not talking to them or looking as if this had never happened before. Her hair flicked up as she jerked her head around, checking everywhere to make sure I was alone, before getting eyes quickly back on me.

Ponytail moved forward while she stood her ground, covering him. He had a couple of days’ stubble to go with his hair. He thrust his ID at me with his left hand. A National Police badge, looking very much like a sheriff’s star with the word Police set in a blue center.

“Police,” he said, in case I had trouble reading.

He flicked the fingers of his right hand upward, but at first I didn’t understand the gesture. Then I got it; he wanted my hands out of my pockets and up where he could see them. His eyes never left mine, looking for signs that I was going to try something. This guy was really experienced; he knew that eyes give away an action a second before it happens.

He gestured upward again with his right hand. “Allez, allez.” He wanted my hands in the air, or on my head, I wasn’t sure which.

What the fuck was I going to do? Jump into the water and swim for it? To where?

He was just a pace away as my hands went up onto my head. He was pleased with that and continued to talk to me in confident, subdued tones as he closed his ID and shoved it between his teeth.

She was still static at the water’s edge, behind him and to my left.

Ponytail closed in and ran his left hand over the front of my jacket. His right hand was still free to draw down if necessary. Encountering the Sony, his eyes narrowed. He breathed through his nose, kept the ID in his mouth, and gave a muffled but calm, “Pistolet.”

Even I knew what that meant, and the woman moved in closer until she was at right angles to me. I could almost feel her tongue in my ear as she whispered something along the lines of “Move and I’ll kill you.”

She was too close. You should never be within arm’s reach. I had to do something, anything, before he got down to the Browning.

He started to pull on the zipper of my jacket, yanking it with such force that it snagged about a third of the way down and I got tipped forward.

It was time to act.

His eyes were still staring into mine. My hands were still on my head and my left elbow was level with her pistol. Taking a slow, deep breath, I counted to three, then forced my arms forward to push the muzzle away from me. She shouted out, as if Ponytail didn’t know what was happening. I made a lunge to the left and body-checked her, toppling her into the water.

Ponytail came at me. I tucked my head in and got my forehead into his face. There was a crunch of bone on bone and he dropped to the ground. I followed, my head flashing with pain. It felt like I’d headbutted a wall.

He arched his back, trying to draw the weapon, which he had holstered behind his right kidney, as Leather Girl splashed about below us. His jacket fell open. I saw a cell phone clipped to an inside pocket. It was quicker to get to than my Browning or his pistol hand. Grabbing the phone upside down in my right hand, I knelt astride him and stabbed at him, using the stubby antenna like a dagger blade, stabbing into his shoulders and chest. I didn’t want to kill him, but I needed to mess him up for long enough for me to get away. He screamed in pain and I felt his blood warm on my hand as my own ran into my eyes. The pain in my head was a nightmare. I kept on stabbing, maybe six or eight times more, I wasn’t counting. Fuck him and his weapon, I just wanted to make some distance between them and me. Scrambling to my feet, I ran toward the concrete steps.

Ponytail cried out in pain as he writhed on the ground behind me, and I could hear people calling out from the boats in a cocktail of languages. I wasn’t too worried about the girl. When she got out of the water, she’d stay with him, fixing him up. It might have been worse. I might have gone for his face or throat.

I was taking the steps two at a time when Lotfi’s voice burst in my left ear. “Hello, N — N, radio check.” Almost simultaneously, I saw headlights coming from the direction of the town, down toward the marina entrance. I jumped over the “I fuck girls!” bench and hit the Sony pressle as I stumbled into the scrub. “Keep going, we have a situation, do not stop. Go to H’s vehicle. You’ll see mine there, wait there, wait there. Acknowledge.”

Click, click.

Mud caked my bloodstained right hand, as well as the cell phone. Lotfi’s lights continued on by the entrance and passed me as I grabbed the towel and the OP gear and scrambled along the hedge, leaving the screams and lights going on in boats behind me.

As soon as I was out onto the road I started to sprint uphill as fast as I could, ready to leap back over the hedge as soon as any vehicle came along the road. My throat was bone-dry and my lungs hurt as I sucked in oxygen and pumped my free arm to get me up the hill and past the bend. I found Hubba-Hubba and Lotfi waiting in the Focus, lights off and engine on. Lotfi unlocked the doors as he saw me approaching.

I jumped into the back. “Let’s go! Drive toward Monaco and get off the main drag — quick as you can, come on, let’s go, let’s go!”

The Focus revved up and we screamed away from the curb as I tried to catch my breath.

I shoved the cell phone with the OP gear into the towel, wiping the mud and blood from my hands as I did so.

“The boat — it’s gone. At least, I think so. I only got to check two piers. The van, it was definitely the police. I’ve been stopped by them.”

They didn’t look at all happy.

“It’s okay, I think they just want to know what the boat is up to. The guy who owns it is a drug smuggler, small-time, that’s all.”

I finished wiping my hands as the Focus hit the first of the hairpin turns, and stuck the corner of the towel on the split in my forehead, just inside my hairline.

Hubba-Hubba’s mind was already jumping ahead. “The device…if they are on their way to Algeria, we must stop it now.”

“It’s an option. We could make the call, if it’s still in range. But we’ve got other things to consider first. It could have moved to a marina along the coast, so the Romeos can still make their collections. As far as they’re concerned, yesterday was a success.”

Lotfi shifted down to get up the incline.

“Look. Maybe the alarm and the police scared them last night. Maybe Greaseball is wrong and they move each day…maybe it is still down there….”

I had regained my breath now. Letting go of my head, I fished inside the towel and brought out some water to finish cleaning my hands and face as well as getting some down my throat. “Maybe they’ve spotted us and moved, hoping to shake us off for the next two collections. Maybe they’ve even prepared an ambush in case we find them again.”

I much preferred the first two possibilities. Lotfi’s face was set in a frown as he concentrated on the road. “If we call in the device now, we might stop them getting to Algeria. But what if they’re still here? Not only do we fuck up the mission, we might kill real people, and that’s something we’re here to stop. So, I reckon, forget about the police, forget about the boat missing. These things can be dealt with. We’re here for the hawallada, remember? One down, two to go.”

I leaned back in the seat. “Look, we are in the shit, and right now checking the marinas seems the best way of getting out of it. What do you think?”

It was pointless me telling them what I wanted to happen. Playing the dictator always leads to a gang fuck. You’ve got to bring people along with you. They looked at each other, mumbling away in Arabic, then both nodded.

“I have already been to the bins and got more information about the guy I saw with Greaseball on Wednesday night and on board last night. The Ninth of May belongs to him. He’s a small-time dealer and another pedophile. Him and Greaseball are mates.”

I could hear heavy, angry breathing from both of them.

“I know how you feel, but we have to forget about that and get on with the job. Remember what we’re here for. We’ve got to find the boat. If we have that, we have hawallada. We have to keep focused.”

I let it sink in, which gave me time to think. There wasn’t really a plan: it was just a matter of getting out there and finding the boat. If not, we were going to have to stake out both Nice and Cannes tomorrow, and hope they came to us.

“Okay, we have to check every marina in our areas. I’m going to see what Greaseball knows. We’ll meet at six A.M. in the parking area Hubba-Hubba uses to cover me at the DOP. I want to get together while it’s still dark, so if we’ve found the boat again, we can get an OP in to trigger the Romeos before first light.”

They nodded.

“If anybody doesn’t make it to the meeting place, for whatever reason, the other two must carry on with the job.”

I continued my quick change-of-plan briefing as it bubbled up in my head.

“Anyone who doesn’t make the meet this morning is to stake out the Nice address. See if you can raise anybody on the net. If not, tough. We all meet up again, twelve-thirty tomorrow morning in the same parking area, whether or not we’ve dropped another hawallada off first.

“If we don’t find the boat, we’re going to have to put triggers on the Nice and Cannes addresses and hope they turn up to collect. We do that for two days, and if no luck, that’s it, we’ll have fucked up. Any questions?”

Lotfi raised his right index finger. “What if only one of us makes the meet tomorrow morning?”

My stomach rumbled. “The one who makes it has the choice. Put a trigger on the Nice addresses and carry on as before, or just can it and go home, accept the failure.”

Hubba-Hubba’s eyes scoured the coastline. “It’s got to be here, it’s got to be somewhere,” he muttered. “We can’t let the money leave.”

Lotfi babbled off in Arabic and I got just one of the words. Allah. He turned to me as Hubba-Hubba shrugged his shoulders and looked back out to sea. “I’m sorry, Nick, I forget. I was saying that he is not to worry. If God wants us to find them, we will, and he will protect us, believe me.” His eyes shone with conviction.

I hoped like hell he was right.