OUTCAST Ops: African Firestorm

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Dante Alvarez was uneasy.

The others had checked in with him and Danielle, relaying the name of Kamal Hassan for Danielle to research as well as that of another possible connection to SeaStar Ventures. Dante knew Danielle well enough to know she was in full data-mining mode, not in the mood to talk.

Something nagged at Dante's mind as he stared out the window at the city. His cumulative experience with the Secret Service was telling him that something was wrong, but there was nothing he could put his finger on. He looked back at Danielle, who sat hunched over her laptop, while the tablet next to her ran a different program.

"I'm going to take a look around," he said, moving away from the window.

Danielle looked up. "Something wrong?"

"My subconscious is telling me yes, but I don't see anything to confirm it. I'm going to go down to the lobby and maybe walk around the building. When I come back, I'll use three knocks, pause for a count of two, then two more knocks."

Danielle pulled out her H&K SOCOM, and placed it next to her. "Don't forget to knock.”

Dante nodded, then checked his own pistol. While combat was not Danielle's primary job, she had been rigorously trained by both Tanner and Liam so that she wasn't a liability if she did get involved in a firefight.

He left the suite and headed to the elevators. The hallway was typical of hotels everywhere, a thick, multi-colored carpet, textured wallpaper in shades of browns and grays, the room doors white with golden room numbers, and overhead recessed lighting. The hallway was almost quiet except for the faint sounds of a TV from a room he passed on his left, and a shower from a room on his right.

He smiled and nodded to a young couple who looked to be tourists emerging from a room ahead of him. He was tall, athletic looking, and blond, while she was shorter, short reddish hair, and on thin side. "Good morning," the man said pleasantly in English with a strong Dutch accent.

"Good morning," Dante replied. "Going out to see the sights?"

"Yes," the man answered. "Do you happen to know any interesting places close by? It’s our first day here, and we want to start nearby."

They walked to the elevators, Dante recalling what knowledge he'd gleaned from a Capetown tourist magazine he'd read on the plane. The couple, on their honeymoon from the Netherlands, were friendly and polite, a change from most of the people Dante dealt with when in the field as a member of OUTCAST. The man, Gilpin, did all the talking, while Anke, his bride, stayed silent, content to let her new husband lead the conversation.

When they emerged from the elevator, Gilpin asked, "Richard, are you here on business or vacation?"

"Business," Dante said, unflinching at the mention of his cover name. "A few of my colleges are out running down industry leads, so I’m holding down the fort here until they get back."

Gilpin nodded. "What sort of business are you in?"

They walked into the lobby and Dante's senses screamed trouble. The lobby wasn't huge, but still large enough to have a gift shop, a restaurant, a couple of sitting areas, and the front desk. A couple dozen people milled about the lobby, some entering, some leaving.

"Information security," he said, eyes scanning the room, picking out three men who didn't seem to belong.

"Indeed?" Gilpin said, not noticing that he had lost Dante's full interest. "Do you do any work in the Netherlands?"

"No." Dante turned his head so that he could see the three men out of the corner of his eye. The trio, all Middle Eastern, with dark hair and sun-soaked skin, was sitting in the lobby near each other. One dressed in a suit was reading a newspaper, while a second, wearing an oversized rugby jersey and jeans, was sprawled in a chair, apparently asleep. The third, also in a suit, stood near the front doors, perusing a rack of brochures.

"I hope to see you again."

Dante was mentally startled, but managed to hide it behind a smile. "You too, Gilpin, Anke. Have a good day."

Dante changed directions toward the front desk as the couple walked across the lobby, toward the front doors. As they did so, all three men, even the one that had been faking sleep, watched the couple walk out. The two sitting looked at the third man by the door, who gave a subtle shake of his head.

As the fake sleeper readjusted himself in the chair, for an instant Dante could see the outline of a pistol in the man's belt, under the jersey. A jolt of electricity spiked down Dante's spine. He glanced at the other two, looking for the tell-tale bulge of weapons. Now that he was focused, Dante noticed that the other two were also armed.

Senses now fully awakened, Dante surreptitiously scanned the lobby again, looking for anyone else that was suspicious. He hadn't spotted anyone else by the time he reached the front desk, but his instincts told him something was going to happen, and soon.

He exchanged pleasantries with the desk clerk, picked up a copy of a newspaper from the rack, folded it under his right arm and walked back toward the elevator. As he did so, four more Middle Eastern men walked in, and immediately the gunman by the door stepped away from the brochures and started talking to the largest of the four newcomers. Dante continued walking, appearing to ignore the discussion by the front door. He palmed his cell phone and pushed the preset for Danielle. She answered on the second ring.

"Yes?"

"We may have a problem."

"What is it?"

Dante walked up to the nearest of the two elevators and pushed the button. “There are seven men in the lobby, all Middle Eastern, three of them armed."

"Let me check the hotel security camera."

Dante heard her tapping on the keyboard. One of the first things she had done when the team had taken the rooms was to hack into the hotel's security system.

"Okay… Where are you now?"

The elevator's signal dinged and the doors opened to Dante's right. He waited until the half a dozen people got out of the car before he stepped in and pushed the "6" button, the phone still held to his ear.

"On the elevator," he said. The door closed and the car started rising.

"I have you and I have our guys," Danielle reported. "A couple of them just went into the restaurant and two more into the gift shop. One's heading for the bathroom and the other two are sitting in the lobby, far apart from each other."

"Setting a trap?"

"I have no idea, but I'm calling the others right now."

From his location at a table just inside the hotel restaurant’s entrance, Wahid Tamrez could see most of the lobby and the two men he'd left sitting there. He was seated with Dahab, one of his most trusted men. They'd both ordered coffee, and to satisfy his sweet tooth, Dahab also ordered biscuits. Neither man said much to the other as they waited for their prey.

One of Hassan's secrets of success was that he had contacts everywhere in South Africa and beyond, and at all levels of society. Hotels were one of the best places to pick up valuable information and to scope out targets to either rob or kidnap for either ransom or the underground slavery market. It hadn't taken too long once word got out that Hassan was looking for six individuals when a clerk from the Cape Africa Hotel called.

The employee described the six people as “definitely Americans”—four men and two women, one of the women being black — and how all six had come in early that morning after what one of them described as, "One hell of a night on the town." He had also said that four of them had since left, and he didn't know when they would be back.

Tamrez had wanted to kill the two who were already up in the rooms, then take out the others as they arrived, but Hassan vetoed the idea when Tamrez called to report his progress.

"I don't want to take the chance any of them will get away," Hassan said. "Wait until they they're all in their rooms at once, then get them. If we kill two of them first, the others may get suspicious if they call their associates and receive no reply. Don’t do anything to spook them. And remember, make sure one of them is still alive for questioning, especially if they are American.”

The possibility that Americans were involved worried Tamrez. He knew the Northstar Venture had a valuable cargo, but for once, Hassan had not told him what that cargo was. If the Americans were interested in SeaStar Ventures, which almost certainly meant they were interested in the unknown cargo, then that could lead them to Hassan's connections with the ICA.

As he sipped his coffee, Tamrez considered the clerk behind the front desk. The man had run up a gambling debt of over fifty thousand rand in one of Hassan's establishments, and was eager to do something about it. In return for clearing his debt, the clerk had agreed to signal Tamrez when the other Americans arrived.

Under the circumstances, Tamrez had decided to let the targets go up to their rooms, then go up and kill them there, out of sight of the public. He would lead a team to hit all three rooms at once, killing them before they could react. Then they would escape down the fire stairs and drive away before the police showed up.

To steer the authorities away from investigating the coming massacre, Tamrez decided to use a trick he'd learned in the past. One of his men was carrying a briefcase with half a kilo of heroin, twenty thousand U.S. dollars, a testing kit, syringes, and a few pairs of latex gloves. Once the targets were dead, they would disperse the briefcase's contents and the room to make it look like a drug deal gone bad. With a little pressure from Hassan's agents inside the SAPS, the matter would be dropped and the case listed as “gang violence."

Tamrez waited with the patience of a long-time predator. His men were spread out all over the place outside. The net was cast. If things went right, it would all be over with in less than five minutes.

Now, all he needed was for the Americans to show up…