Time to Kill: A Sniper Novel

14

Karam, the concierge at the Blue Neptune Hotel, along with his sister and his brother-in-law in the travel agency, were toiling hard. News of what had happened out on the Red Sea had finally been absorbed by visitors and residents of the playground city, and simmering worry replaced the holiday joy. Some of the big yachts were already gone, the huge white cruise ship was gathering its passengers for an emergency departure, and most of the other guests were making plans to leave. At the Blue Neptune, Karam was the one who could make the necessary arrangements. Missiles sinking ships and a pending environmental disaster meant his family had to make as much money as they could before the tourists evaporated, with no way of knowing when they would come back. Secret auctions and lavish tips would secure passage on tomorrow’s planes.

Brigadier General Suliamin and Youssef Gaber had flown back to Cairo at seven o’clock that evening after the long conference with Swanson and Bialy. The two officials had given the friendly governments of the West the best overview the allies had had in months concerning the real situation within Egypt. Kyle was to personally deliver a flash drive containing the information to London, and he felt there might be a glimmer of hope for future stability if the political picture painted by the money man and the military leader was accurate. The key was to keep Iran on the sidelines and let Egyptians decide their own future.

In any case, he was confirmed for departure, and he decided to have a final truce with Tianha, for there was nothing to be gained by letting personal animosity upset their superiors, who already had enough problems. Swanson was just glad to be out of it all.

It was eight o’clock, and they were having dinner in the near-empty hotel restaurant. Tension and nervousness had caused many of the other guests to order room service while they packed. The bar was doing a brisk business, and there was no chance the two of them would be overheard.

“You’re crazy,” he observed with a smile that softened the words. “Did you know that?”

“I must establish contact with this source,” she replied as she finished a small bowl of seafood bisque. “He, or she, needs control.”

“Seems to me that your source’s information is always a day late and a dollar short, and he’s shopping his stuff to too many people,” Kyle said. “He warns you of nothing beforehand that would let you plan some action to stop it.”

Tianha dabbed away a dollop of stray dressing from her chin. “He still provides a lot of rich background material that proves that Iran is deeply involved.”

“Having him say that, and basing your decisions on his word, are two different things, Doctor.”

“Which is why we have to control him from London. We can assume he is highly placed but untrained in what to report. An experienced case officer can remedy that, and this agent may be invaluable in years to come. Just imagine if we had reliable eyes inside the Tehran government.”

Kyle looked around. Nothing happening, and no one watching. “I don’t like your plan to draw him out by putting out the word that you are an MI6 agent. He probably will show up with a gun in his hand.”

“Knowing that I am not a threat will make it easier for him to contact me, I’m sure. I expect him to be cautious.”

The waiter appeared with their main courses, a steak for Kyle and shellfish for Tianha, refilled their wineglasses, and left them alone. “Do me a favor, then. Keep Omar nearby if this meeting ever actually takes place. It never hurts to have backup.”

“Of course,” she said and sipped the wine. “I thought when we started this adventure that you were going to be my bodyguard.”

“Nope. As the man said, you are a trained agent and you know Egypt as few others do. Just use good sense, and get out if something dangerous starts to cook.”

She actually giggled. “You mean like here in Sharm? I don’t think anything is going to happen here. It’s holiday heaven in the middle of nowhere.”

“Remember the Harpoons? Bad things are coming this way. Sharm’s a very strategic piece of territory. Cairo has the government, but Sharm controls the petroleum path for the whole world. It’s the cork in the bottle for the oil business. How much longer are you staying?”

“Another day or two. If there’s no contact by then, I will go to Cairo. Most likely that is where the Pharaoh will make contact. What about you?”

“I will stick around London visiting Jeff and Pat for a few days, then go back to Washington.” He put down his fork and leaned across the table. “I’ll keep an eye on you from afar. If there’s trouble, send up a flare, and I’ll do my damnedest to help.”

“Oooh. You’ll ride to the rescue like the famous 7th Cavalry?” The wine and food and excitement of the day were brightening her mood.

“Not exactly. That was General Custer, and he was slaughtered. I don’t get slaughtered.”

At military airfields surrounding Tehran, a sky train was being assembled. Hundreds of soldiers of the Iranian Army of the Guardians were nervous in the night. They had moved to the airfields in trucks from their training sites, and officers had gathered the men assigned to each plane and personally inspected them. As with any army, the infantrymen settled down to wait. They smoked cigarettes and wrote letters to loved ones, aware they were facing the biggest challenge of their lives. Each wondered whether he would survive as a hero, die as a brave martyr, or perish in deserved shame if he proved to be a coward.

Cargo was loaded first, the ammunition, food, and minimum equipment to sustain them until aerial and maritime supply routes could be firmly established. While loading crews lashed down the crates and a few vehicles, mechanics and flight engineers combed the planes to be sure they were ready for the long flight ahead. Finally, the commander of each company stood before his men and announced the mission: Egypt had officially requested assistance to put down counterrevolutionary forces within that country’s army. They were reminded of the annihilation of the Iranian national soccer team and of how only yesterday an Iranian naval utility vessel — not even a ship of war — had been sunk in the Red Sea in an unprovoked assault by Egyptian missiles. The Guardsmen were chosen to stop that aggression.

Iran had assigned fifteen jet airliners and cargo planes to the task, including huge Boeing 707s and 747s, and there would be about two hundred soldiers with their equipment on each aircraft. It was to be a long and perilous journey out of the country and through the airspace above Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, with the permission of those Muslim governments. They would not fly over Israel. Finally, the planes would form up in one long line and fly down the Suez Canal to the target, the airport outside of the coastal resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

It was after midnight, but Kyle Swanson could not fall asleep. Normally, he could order his body to shut down and grab a rest period whenever he wanted. Even in fierce battle situations, sleep discipline was important. He lay on the king-sized bed, between soft 1,200-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets, and stared up at the ceiling for an hour. He turned on the light to read a paperback murder mystery but found it impossible to concentrate. The television set offered a menu of movies guaranteed not to hold his interest. From his window, he could see the reddish orange glow that marked where the tanker Llewellyn still burned fiercely. Within a few days, the pristine coastline would be slick and sticky as oil rode in with every wave. He wished he had not yet given most of his guns to Omar. Throwing those two duffel bags into the trunk of the Mercedes felt like tossing his own child over a cliff. Omar could retrieve the MI6 weapons shipment at the airport on his own.

He thought of knocking on the door of the connecting suites to see if Tianha was awake, too. No. Don’t even go there. One o’clock. Two o’clock. Every sense he possessed tingled with the ominous feeling that something just wasn’t right, although there was absolutely nothing going on. Hell with it. I can sleep when I get to London.

He got up, dressed in a comfortable black sweat suit, laced up his gray Nikes, tucked his personal weapon, the Colt .45, in a belt clip holster beneath the shirt, pocketed the cell phone, and headed out for a run along the beaches of Hotel Row. The Blue Neptune was strangely active for so early in the morning, as the hired help was preparing to handle the expected morning rush of departing guests.

Kyle did not stop the elevator at the lobby level but descended to the parking area and walked the aisles until he found Omar’s white Mercedes parked nose-out and tight against a wall as an extra precaution to keep its cargo safe. Swanson patted the car affectionately, then set off at an easy lope along the main traffic route, heading into the stillness, hoping to do five miles.

The town of about thirty-five thousand inhabitants was mostly asleep as he trotted along, staying within the sphere of illumination from the hotels on his right to avoid tripping over some obstacle along the unfamiliar road. He soon settled into an eight-minute-mile pace and felt the start of the familiar burn as his body shook off the fatigue and the muscles stretched. No one bothered him. With plenty of time and breathing easily, he decided to increase the distance to three miles out, then three miles back. Twenty-five minutes from the Blue Neptune, he found a traffic circle that could serve nicely as a halfway point, ran around it, and headed back, changing his route to rack in some running on the hard sand of the beach.

Then something clicked in his brain, a familiar sound that should not be there, the distant rumble of multiple outboard motors. He took a few more steps, slowed, and stopped and stared out at the water. Already the sound seemed closer. Why would motorboats be out there in the middle of the night? There were the usual warning lights on ships in the channel, and the distant fire on the Llewellyn, but that was all, other than the new, ominous humming. It could mean only one thing, and Swanson was too experienced a Marine not to recognize the opening phase of an amphibious assault. Boats were coming in. He ran to an outcropping of rocks and ducked into the darkest shadow he could find, pulled his pistol, and waited.

Swanson got the telephone out of his pocket and hit the speed dial button for the number of Tianha Bialy. It rang three times before her sleepy voice answered, “Hello? Kyle?” She had checked the voice ID. “What—”

“Tianha, listen up. I’m down on the beach, and big trouble is brewing. It looks like an attack is about to begin.”

“Hunh? An attack?”

“You’ve got to get out of there right now. Call Omar and get him up, and meet me at his car. We need to get out of this area as fast as possible.”

“Kyle, are you sure?” A yawn.

“Dammit, Tianha. You don’t have any time to waste. There’s going to be a lot of shooting soon.”

“Kyle, I’m standing at the window of my room now, and I don’t see anything unusual.”

“Stand there much longer and you might be a dead woman. Get out while you can. I’ll meet you both in the underground garage.” Kyle folded the phone to cut the connection. Whether she did the right thing was now up to her, because the motors were louder and closer. If they were inflatables, commandos would be clinging to handholds with all of their strength as the boats reared out of the water for the final dash to shore. He leapt from the shadows and ran for his life.

In her room, Tianha turned from the window. She was naked. “Kyle says we should get out, Omar. Something about an assault. I don’t see anything, though.”

Omar Eissa crawled out of bed and went to stand behind her, wrapping her in his arms and holding her close. He turned her loose, stepped to one side, and slid the big window open to the chill of the night air, instantly hearing the shrill screams of approaching outboard motors. At the same time, they saw the crests of white foam at the bows of speeding boats that were otherwise still invisible in the darkness. “He’s right, Tianha,” he snapped. “I think the Iranians are here.”

Major Mansoor Shakuri stood about ten feet back from the waterline and slowly moved a flashlight-sized infrared green laser signal toward the incoming boats. He had flown in the previous day from Cairo to be the advance spotter for the raiders and to assume overall command once they had all landed. It felt good to be out from under the thumb of his demanding superior and back in the field, doing some of the real work for which he had spent his lifetime in training. This was a command worth having.

Ten boats had been scheduled to be put in the water by a wallowing, nondescript cargo ship that had carried the entire seaborne attack force to within ten miles of the beach. Each boat was to contain ten commandos, so there would be a hundred men coming up in the first wave. They would do nothing more than secure the beach while the boats went back for a second load and then fetched in the third and final wave. Shakuri would have three hundred soldiers across the beach by 0400. Even if detected, they were not to move out until ordered. Defend only, not attack, at this point, Colonel Naqdi said. Be patient and give the plan time to unfold.

The first boat hit the sand and slid forward, with the assault force jumping out and running past him to the shelter of a belt of small sand dunes at the top edge of the beach. One soldier, hard and lean with a grease-blackened face, and dressed entirely in black, peeled away, came close, and saluted. A belt of machine-gun ammunition hung around his neck, and an officer’s tab was on his tunic. “First Lieutenant Taghavi reporting, sir. First wave is present and accounted for. One man lost his grip and fell off. Perhaps the boats can pick him up on the return trip, although he probably drowned.”

“No matter, Lieutenant. Spread your men in good defensive positions and hold. It won’t be long before a force this size is spotted, and we cannot be certain of the Egyptian response. And have the men dig, Lieutenant; the deeper the hole, the better they are going to like it if a firefight breaks out. Assign someone to take over this signal laser for me.”

As Major Shakuri turned, he saw the shadow of someone darting away nearby but ignored it. The first wave was safely on the ground.