A Gentleman's Game

44

Saudi Arabia-Tabuk Province, the Wadi-as-Sirhan 22 September 0121 Local (GMT+3.00)

The helicopter had flown in so low it hadn't actually descended to let Chace and Wallace jump out. As soon as their feet hit the ground, their hands shielding their eyes from the whirling sand spiraling around them, the helicopter banked swiftly away, and for a moment Chace thought the bird would end up nose down on the desert floor. But as she and Wallace ran for cover, dropped to their bellies, their submachine guns in their hands, she heard the sound of the rotors receding to an echo and then to silence.

It was warm, the earth beneath her still holding the heat from the day, but not unpleasantly so. Borovsky had said it would be in the low seventies Fahrenheit, "good weather for walking," he had told them.

"Want to come along, then?" Wallace had asked, and Borovsky had laughed that annoying laugh of his and shaken his head, saying that he thought the two of them would have more fun without him.

Later, as Chace and Wallace had been kitting up, Wallace had said, "He knows we're shagging."

"It's your fault," Chace said. "You're too loud."

"Right, and you're a churchmouse."

"Oh, so it's bestiality you're after now, is it?"

"I'd say 'moo,' but you might accuse me of calling you a cow."

They'd pulled on their camouflage fatigues, supplied, like all the rest of their kit, by the Israelis. The camo was dark gray, splotched with black, and wouldn't do a damn bit of good for them in daylight, but they weren't planning on spending daylight anywhere they might be spotted. They blacked their faces, checking each other for spots they had missed, and wore black watch caps to hide their hair. The boots Landau had supplied were comfortable and fit well, and he'd even presented them with an extra pair of socks, as requested.

"Anything to help," he'd told them. • She'd returned to Tel Aviv via bus, a ride that had taken almost fourteen hours, getting her back to the apartment at six of two in the morning to find Borovsky waiting with Wallace. They'd already heard the news, and Borovsky had once again offered a proposal of marriage.

"I drink, I smoke, I swear, I can't cook, I don't do laundry, I won't clean, and I don't like children," Chace told him. "Why marry me?"

"No woman is perfect."

"You've never met my mother," Wallace said.

Chace went to take a shower then, scrubbing the journey and the act from her skin as much as she could, examining her bruises. Her left arm was tender to the touch where she'd taken the baton, but the swelling had finally gone down, and her knee was apparently content for the time being to keep its silence.

She'd been under the spray when Wallace came in, taking a seat on the closed toilet, watching her behind the pebbled glass.

"Borovsky gone, then?" Chace asked.

"Just left."

"Then you should get in here."

So he did, and they made love in the shower, or at least tried to, but the stall was too cramped and the danger of slipping seemed to grow exponentially the more aroused they became. Ultimately, they retired to the bed, taking things slowly, Chace basking in Wallace's touch and attention.

Afterward, lying together, bodies idle but for their hands, Wallace said, "I have a plan."

"Does it include this bed?"

"For the Wadi."

"Oh, that."

"You seem uninterested."

"I'm easily distracted."

"Seems to me I should be the one who's distracted." He propped himself up on his elbow, brushing her hair with his fingers. "Landau's still saying they can't put anyone on the ground, but he's willing to arrange the infil by helicopter."

"Nice of him, considering the favor we're doing for him."

"They're making a drop tonight, equipment, they'll put it down about twelve kilometers west of the camp. Tomorrow night they'll drop us in, twenty kilometers west of the camp. We'll have GPS, move to the cache, load up, close on target."

"Why two drops?"

"Time over target," Wallace said. "We want to limit it as much as possible."

"And what are they dropping?"

Wallace's grin indicated the degree to which he was pleased with himself, and from it Chace concluded he was very pleased indeed.

"Claymores."

"The swords?"

Wallace put his head to her shoulder and nipped at her skin, and she yelped, pushed his head away.

"Mines," Wallace said. "Sixteen of them, four hundred feet of det cord, two timers, one for a backup."

"Daisy chain."

"Exactly."

"You're a clever man, Mr. Wallace."

"I do have my moments," he agreed. "They'll also cache food and water for the exfil."

"So we're going to mine the camp and let it fly?"

"Landau's giving us P90s, suppressed, and I asked for two hundred rounds apiece. We'll set the mines, pull back, wait for the detonation-"

"And shoot the survivors."

"Quick job. Brutal, efficient. Crocker would approve."

"Not of this, he wouldn't."

"Let go of that, that's not yours."

"I disagree. I have staked my claim."

He gently moved her hand away, then wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close, and stayed that way until he fell asleep. • Wallace got to his feet slowly, the P90 held ready, and he turned a slow circle in place, checking their immediate perimeter, while Chace used her GPS unit to get a bearing on the cache. The P90s were suppressed, which added roughly a pound to their weight but didn't appreciably affect their handling. The weapons were loaded with fifty rounds; the remaining 150 for each of them with the cache.

In addition to the guns, they each carried a GPS unit and a knife on their person, and that was it. Nothing else was truly needed, at least not yet, and as soon as Chace had the bearing, she rose to her feet and indicated their desired direction. They spread out, putting twenty feet or so between each other, and began walking. They moved as quickly as silence would allow.

There was no moon, but the stars were brilliant and gave off a surprising amount of light, and she felt better about the fact that they had forgone NVG, relying on their eyes alone. She remembered a story from the SOE days, before the Special Operations Executive had transitioned to become SIS, during the Second World War, when agents had been taught to keep one eye closed during night maneuvers. It was the kind of detail that stayed with you, and she wondered at it, wondered at the way the mind could detach from the action surrounding it.

The terrain was even for the most part, and barren, and she had expected sand and was mildly disappointed that there wasn't much of it to be found. They made good time, and when they reached the cache and found the canister lying on its side, its self-deploying camouflage blanket making it look like nothing more than a large rock, Chace slid back her sleeve to check her watch. Oh-one-fifty-nine.

She stood watch while Wallace broke open the canister, removing the backpacks first, and set about loading them. He divided the claymores evenly, eight for each of them, as well as the det cord and the timers. When he had loaded both backpacks, he dug out the extra magazines for the P90s, handed three of them to Chace, kept the remaining three for himself.

Two hundred rounds apiece, sixteen claymores, Chace mused.

If that wasn't going to be enough to get the job done, she didn't know what more would've.

The backpacks loaded and closed, Wallace reached into the canister again, this time removing two plastic bottles of water, factory sealed, labels removed. He cracked one, drank it down, then closed the bottle and returned it to the canister before getting to his feet and offering the other to Chace. She drank it while he stood watch, then repeated his procedure, putting it back where he'd found it. Inside the canister were another sixteen bottles and six MREs, to be used later, on the exfil.

Getting out was as important as getting in, after all.

The plan, as it stood, had them hitting the camp in the next ninety minutes, returning to the cache before dawn for resupply. After loading up on the food and water, they would strike out to the west, making for the GPS coordinates Borovsky had supplied, across the border with Jordan. It was an eighty-six kilometer hike and would take them the better part of two days to accomplish. Once they reached the lift site, they would wait for pickup, scheduled twice every twenty-four hours, at twenty-two hundred and oh-four hundred.

They had no radios because radios wouldn't do them any good. Who were they going to call but each other?

Chace closed the canister, let the camouflage blanket fall back over it, blurring its lines once more. She hoisted her pack, feeling the thirty-six pounds of landmines on her back, a substantial weight but not an unmanageable one.

Wallace was watching her, and Chace moved her P90 to a low-carry, nodded, and they struck out again, this time for the camp.

Ready to kill.