The Paris Betrayal by James Hannibal (the dot read aloud .txt) 📗

chopper had dropped Ben off five klicks outside the Chechen village of Vedeno for his first mission for the Company—a solo job. It went south fast.

Posing as a South African buyer, he met with an arms dealer who claimed to have the market cornered on one-kiloton suitcase bombs. As it happened, Company intelligence said a similar weapon had gone missing from a classified Spetsnaz outpost near Grozny two weeks earlier.

They met in the garage of the town’s only mechanic—Ben, the Chechen dealer, and a third man who arrived two minutes late. Ben lifted his chin as the extra man sauntered in. “Who’s this?”

“Didn’t I tell you? This is not a simple buy.” The Chechen slapped a black hardened suitcase down on the garage table, bouncing the ratchets and wrenches. “It’s an auction. Who wants to start the bidding?”

The newcomer and Ben sized each other up. Ben cocked his head. “Spetsnaz, right?”

The Russian’s lips spread into a thin smile. He nodded. “And you are CIA.”

“Close enough.”

They both turned to face the dealer.

Ben grabbed the case and ran.

One bullet grazed his side on the way out of the garage. Another lodged itself in his arm. But the real damage came from the grenade. The Chechen didn’t have much of an arm, so the toss came up short. An old Lada parked in the gravel parking lot and the Russian, who’d raced after Ben, took the brunt of the blast. Still, four small fragments penetrated Ben’s leg and back. He used the cloud of dust for cover, evaded the dealer, and called for armed medical support.

Not too many top-notch surgeons hung around the North Caucasus in those days—even fewer with the clearance to patch up a wayward agent carrying a suitcase nuke. The Company sent in a three-year field ops veteran who’d allegedly been shipped off to Nowheresville Dagestan for losing an earring inside a senior agent’s abdominal cavity.

Just rumors. Probably.

Ben found the medic—Tess—at the rendezvous site, a converted shack north of Grozny. In his rush, and thanks to the lowered mental capacity that comes with severe blood loss, he failed to check the suitcase for a GPS tracker.

Tess found the tracker moments after she arrived, checking the case before checking her patient’s wounds. She ripped it out, but disconnecting the tracker killed the power source. The last bread crumb it transmitted would lead the dealer straight to the covert medical suite. She chucked the device at a woozy Ben in frustration. “Way to go, rookie. Your dealer will be here any minute. Except this time, he’ll bring friends. We’ve gotta move.”

As night fell, the two piled blood bags, drugs, and instruments onto a gurney and pushed it fifty meters into the trees. The dealer and two thugs showed up minutes later.

Ben lay chest down on the gurney, following their movements through the scope of an M4 while Tess cut away his clothes. “So, you come here often?” he said, keeping his voice at a whisper.

“Cute,” she whispered back. “Like men haven’t been hitting on me since the moment I touched down in these worthless mountains.” Without the slightest warning, Tess cut into him with a scalpel and began digging the first bit of shrapnel from his upper thigh. “I’m so sick of this place. The handsy law enforcement. The obsession with knives. The lurid looks and catcalls from every man everywhere”—Ben felt a chunk of iron yanked from his body—“including outside the mosques. But you know what I hate most about this place?”

Ben let out a grunt, feeling her slice into his back to go after the next piece. He kept his eye pinned to the scope. The arms dealer located the disconnected tracker and held it up. The men shouted at one another, shaking their heads. “I don’t know. The grenades?”

“The food. That’s what.” Tess rooted around in the wound with surgical pliers. “If I never see a slice of goat meat again, it’ll be too soon.”

The dealer shoved one of his friends, a little larger than himself. The guy shoved him back.

Tess held her train of thought. “Man, I could go for a burger right now.”

With killers so close, Ben should’ve hushed her, but he fell victim to the irresistible pull of her Georgia accent and kept the conversation going. “I’ll see your burger and raise you some crinkle fries. You went through the schoolhouse, right?”

“Yeah.” She got to work on the next chunk, digging in with the scalpel. “So?”

“So, remember that place all the students used to go in Mt. Vernon, the one with applewood bacon burgers and the frozen custard? If we get out of this alive, I’ll take you there. I promise.”

The third piece of shrapnel left his body. Ben had almost grown addicted to the sudden rise and fall of pain when she pulled them out. He heard Tess’s sweet southern laugh. “You’re thinking of the Shake Shack off Highway 1. I love their burgers. It’s a date. Roll onto your side. I need to get at that bullet.”

The Shake Shack. Highway 1. Ben kept an eye on the restaurant from across the parking lot at the Sunshine Motel, wearing the blue Bill’s Squirrel Stop sweatshirt and ill-fitting jeans he’d purchased at the station.

He’d paid cash for the room. The clerk hadn’t argued, and she hadn’t asked for a name, giving Ben the impression she made similar transactions all the time. He stood at the window to peek through the curtain. Would Tess remember their conversation from so many years ago, in the heat of a secret battle? He touched the scar the Chechen’s bullet had left in his arm. If only he’d come to see her for lead and iron poisoning this time, instead of the horror he faced now.

61

A black Honda Accord pulled into the lot. The woman behind the wheel climbed out and stretched her arms. Tess had dressed the part for a fast-food lunch date, wearing a faded green jacket and Levis. Ben pressed a cheap truck-stop