Incident At Palmyra: A Lawson Vampire Mission (The Lawson Vampire Series) Read online

  Incident At Palmyra

  A Lawson Vampire Mission

  Jon F. Merz

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Also by Jon F. Merz

  Copyright © 2016 by Jon F. Merz

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  1

  I hadn’t heard from Niles since the incident with Amir Aziz around Christmas. So when my phone buzzed in the middle of the night one Friday, I figured Niles had either had far too much drink or else it had to be something pretty bad. I wasn’t wrong, although looking back, I wish I had been.

  Niles was curt. “Recall. Immediate.” Then he hung up.

  Ordinarily, Niles and I will shoot the shit. But not this time. His message was plain and simple: get to the Council headquarters in Boston as soon as possible. I wasted no time and pulled on a pair of jeans, boots, and a black sweater with my leather jacket over it. I strapped a pistol on and grabbed my go bag before hopping in the Audi I currently drove.

  It took me about thirty minutes to reach Beacon Hill. Fortunately, traffic was light and I didn’t break any laws getting there. At this time of night, the only people out in the middle of winter were the ones who had to be. And no one wanted to be if they could avoid it.

  Arthur met me at the entrance to the underground garage. “It’s bad, mate. A real clusterfuck, as it were.”

  “It must be if I got a recall notice.” Part of me worried that the Council had found out about me and Talya and that they were bringing me in to execute me for it. But then I shrugged the concern off. Niles wouldn’t betray me like that. And neither would Arthur.

  The retired Fixer punched the elevator button that whisked us up to the lower level. Niles stood there when the doors parted. He didn’t say a thing but just gestured for me to follow him.

  We walked down the hallway lined with plush red carpet. I resisted the urge to ask him what the hell was going on. I’d learned that Niles would only talk when he was ready, and we hadn’t reached his office yet. When we did, he waited until I’d passed over the threshold and then closed the door behind us. He sat down and looked at me.

  “Here’s the simple breakdown: we put a STA-F team on the ground in Syria. They were compromised. And now they’re in the hands of ISIS.”

  I sat down in the chair opposite Niles and heaved a huge sigh. “Jesus.”

  “He’s not going to help us on this one,” said Niles. “The Council is going apeshit. They want a rescue op launched as soon as possible. Problem is, I don’t have another STA-F team ready to go yet.” He eyed me. “But I’ve got you.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me about the op in the first place?”

  Niles shook his head. “Damned Council. Ava was determined to keep you off the mission.”

  “Why on earth would she do that?”

  “She’s got a million and one reasons and probably none of them are any good.” He leaned back in his chair. “But the good news is you weren’t on it, otherwise you’d be in enemy hands right now, too.”

  “Lay it out for me.”

  Niles spread his hands. “We’re going to insert you as soon as possible. While I put together another team, your job is to locate the hostages and get eyes on them. You are only to intercede if you determine that ISIS is going to try to execute them You get me? Only if.”

  “Even if they try, they won’t succeed.”

  Niles nodded. “Yeah, but we can’t afford to take that chance. Those fuckers videotape everything they do. The last thing the Council wants is every news station in the world getting a look at what happens to a vampire commando team. We’d be utterly exposed.”

  “How am I being inserted?”

  “HAHO from about thirty thousand feet. Semi-commercial flight. One of our people will assist you. I’ll give you the bonafides. They will have all the equipment you need to conduct the op and then some.” He checked his watch. “You leave for the UK in an hour.”

  “Why don’t we just use our own planes?”

  Niles shook his head. “Believe me, I wish we could. But everyone is on edge about that area of the world. We can’t take the risk of sending in one of our planes and maybe seeing it blown out of the sky. If it’s not the Russians, it’s the Americans, or the Syrians themselves.”

  “Or the Turks.”

  “Exactly. The whole sky over there is nuts. This flight is your best bet. And frankly, it’s the only airline flying over Syria right now.”

  “Which one?”

  “Cham Wings. They terminate at Brussels, so catch a flight to London and switch there. Your contact will be aboard the Cham Wings flight to Damascus.”

  “Gonna be a little weird when I exit a plane full of people at thirty grand.”

  “We’ve got that taken care of,” said Niles. “Leave your pistol here, you won’t need it. Arthur will meet you at the garage with a bag full of appropriate traveling gear. Leave it on the plane once you hook up with your contact.”

  “And how will I know the contact?”

  “They’ll know you. Code word is Hawkeye. Got it?”

  “Hawkeye. How come it’s not in Taluk?”

  Niles thumbed me out of his office. “We’re out of time, Lawson. Get your ass to the airport and make your flight. We can’t afford any delays on this. The longer that STA-F team is in enemy hands, the more risk of compromise there is.”

  “And they could die.”

  Niles frowned. “Do what you can to help them. Under no circumstances can we risk exposure. You understand what I’m saying?”

  I nodded. As much as I didn’t like it, Niles was telling me that if it came down to it, I would have to kill the STA-F team myself to keep the secret of our existence safe from humans.

  I shook his hand. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “Your call sign is Echo One. The new STA-F team I’m marshaling will use call sign Hotel Five. Got it?”

  “Understood.”

  “Take care of yourself,” said Niles. “We’re counting on you.”

  “Yeah,” I said. And then I walked out.

  2

  I caught the first British Airways flight of the morning out of Logan. I like airports best when it’s almost dawn. The business travelers, by and large, aren’t there yet and the place is almost eerily quiet. Even the TSA dudes were pretty relaxed. I looked the part, of course, so my inspection was cursory. My passport was genuine, sent out by our people who work in the State Department. Arthur’s traveling bag had come with a wallet full of appropriate backstopping materials, including a frequent buyer card for a local pizzeria, a dry cleaning slip for a suit, and even a ticket stub to a movie I’d recently seen. He
ll, the damned thing even had a smattering of dryer lint. That’s professional quality stuff right there. I would have complimented Arthur on it, but he would have just sniffed as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Of course it was: that was the point.

  Once on board, I ate a tasteless breakfast of eggs and toast with tea before settling back for the trip. I made the most of my sleep time. Given the situation I was going into, sleep was going to be a real luxury for the foreseeable future.

  Lucky me.

  We touched down mid-afternoon local time and I made my connecting flight on to Brussels. I had time to spare so I grabbed a cup of tea and surveyed the scene around the airport. Even after all these years in the field, I never get tired of spotting spooks and other shadowy types as they make their way through travel hubs on business. Time was, I could have spent hours cataloging everyone operating in Europe. These days, the players are a little bit tougher to spot, but some things never change: shoes, the eyes, the nondescript clothing. Everyone tries to be gray. Invisible. But sometimes they fail to remember that trying to be invisible only makes you more visible.

  The Cham Wings flight looked anything but crowded as I sat in the terminal. I got a lot of looks from people, which didn’t make me feel particularly good. Generally, I try my best to blend in, but I’m not exactly going to be confused for a Syrian or anyone else from the Middle East. I just smiled and greeted them when they looked my way. At least my hair wasn’t long the way a lot of operators wear it these days. And my bags looked expensive enough that I hoped no one would peg me as being a government spook.

  I hoped.

  Onboard the flight, I wondered what the chances were of us actually making it all the way to Syria. The Airbus A320 looked like it had been operating since 1988, and while the interior was clean, I couldn’t help but notice the turbofan engines looked tired. So did the ground crew. If I had to guess, Cham Wings was sporting a 211 variant, which meant 150 people could pack the seats. I estimated we had forty people on the flight. I just hoped we had enough thrust in the engines to actually make it off the ground. One thing was for certain: I wasn’t going to mind jumping out of the plane. I probably had a better shot of surviving the flight that way.

  We took off without incident shortly before seven in the evening and I watched as the crew served us all a light snack and some tea. I sipped it and watched my fellow travelers get themselves settled in for the flight. As expected, they started to drift off around two hours in. Outside my window, the sky was dark and I could see the starlight as the plane flew over southern Europe. Given my choice, I would have rather jumped out over Italy, landed and found a nice little family farm to wile away the time with some local vintage and good food.

  I sipped my tea instead and thought about what was coming at me.

  Niles didn’t have much in the way of specifics. I knew Palmyra had been one of the places that the idiots in ISIS had sought to destroy due to ideological beliefs. The extreme variant of Islam they followed, known as Salafi, urged a monotheistic approach rather than a polytheistic one. As far as ISIS were concerned, the destruction of these sites was in keeping with their beliefs. Then, of course, there was the fact that it garnered them a helluva lot of exposure in the worldwide media.

  Frankly, I thought both reasons were stupid.

  I figured my plan would resolve itself once I was on the ground in Palmyra. Geographically, the site is in the midst of a large oasis in the middle of the desert. If I screwed up my descent during the HAHO insertion, I was going to have a lot of miles to cover before I reached anywhere with water. I hoped my contact had been given a good reliable GPS to give me. Otherwise, I was going to be playing a guessing game.

  Once on the ground, I’d have to locate the STA-F team and then set up an observation post. I just hoped that Niles could scramble a new team quickly because the thought of hanging out so close to some awful bastards didn’t excite me very much. Neither was I crazy about not being able to be proactive. But that might not be such a bad thing. If there was a ton of ISIS on the ground, I’d stir up a hornet’s nest and compromise myself as well. Not an ideal situation by any means. My best bet was to locate the hostages, get eyes on target, and then relay the info back to the incoming STA-F team. Once they were there, I’d go in with them, get our people back, and hopefully get the fuck out of Dodge before anyone was the wiser.

  Of course, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. And I was betting that as soon as I got on the ground, I’d find the situation a lot more fluid than I expected. That was just the nature of the beast.

  So be it.

  According to the in-flight monitor, the plane was now over Turkish airspace. That meant that we’d be entering Syrian airspace soon. And I assumed that my exit from the plane would take place as we began our initial approach to Damascus. I did a couple of quick calculations in my head and knew that I’d never be able to drift all the way to Palmyra. The maximum distance you can drift with HAHO was about twenty-four klicks depending on a bunch of variables. At best, I’d reach a distance about halfway to the target site. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. If I landed exactly on Palmyra, I’d be going in right on top of the trouble. Still, the thought of having to hoof it through the desert wasn’t exactly something I was looking forward to.

  Especially alone.

  But I didn’t have to like it, I just had to do it. The lives of men I’d worked with hung in the balance and I wasn’t about to see them put through hell.

  Ten minutes later, one of the aircrew sauntered past, stopped and then came back to my seat. She leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Hawkeye.”

  I glanced up. She had dark hair and her cheekbones seemed almost abnormally high. But there was something about that I couldn’t quite place. Before I could ask, she waggled her finger and suggested I follow her to the rear of the plane.

  I unbuckled my seatbelt and followed. Most of the other passengers were already asleep, so only one or two people saw me moving. We got beyond the bulkhead and back into the crew area. As soon as we did, she turned and kissed me hard on the lips, her tongue shoving its way through my teeth, her breathing hot and quick.

  I pulled away. “Slow down…”

  She smiled at me and then reached up to her face. In one smooth move, she tore off the latex mask she’d worn. I couldn’t believe it.

  Talya.

  “Surprised?”

  “Damn right I am,” I said. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Niles contacted me and asked if I was available. He’s worried about you. And given the situation, he knew you’d need as much help as he could find.”

  “It’s not going to be fun where I’m going.”

  “Where we’re going,” said Talya.

  I shook my head. “You’re nuts. ISIS isn’t some joke. If they get their hands on you…” My voice trailed off.

  “You know I wouldn’t let you go into this alone. And as for the Daesh, they can kiss my ass. I’ve got my own score to settle with those bastards.”

  I frowned. Get on Talya’s bad side and she wouldn’t just even the score; she’d bury your soul.

  But just as quickly, Talya’s smile returned. “Come on, we’ve got to get ready. The sooner we’re off this plane, the better.”

  3

  I didn’t press Talya for details about her experiences with the Islamic State. Talya had her own life and it was one I was very much not privy to. Much the same way mine was to her. I knew she still worked for a lot of freelance clients, and those clients sometimes were governments for various countries. Any one of them could have hired her to do battle with ISIL or ISIS.

  Then there was the fact that Talya also did a lot of charity work on the side. She supported whole villages in East Africa and South America. Perhaps the terrorists had screwed around with one of her charities. That would not have been smart. I knew of one time it had happened in the past and Talya left a scorched earth policy halfway across the continent pursuin
g the bastards who did it. I know they probably prayed for death by the time she was done with them.

  Talya led me to the rear of the plane and withdrew a tall thin bag from a storage bin. “Help me get this set up.” She pulled a cylinder of some type of gas out and then handed me a gas mask to wear. I pulled it on while Talya attached a hose to the cylinder and then aimed it out toward the cabin.

  “You’re putting them to sleep?”

  She nodded. “Easiest way. Once they’re out, go around and get the oxygen masks from the overhead compartments strapped on to their faces. We’re going out the aft door and as soon as we open it, this whole thing will depressurize. The pilot will see the alarm and put the plane into a steep dive. We’ve got to time it right otherwise it will affect our drift distance. Got it?”

  “Suits?”

  She nodded. “Got them in the back along with the rest of our gear. Let’s take care of our passengers first, then we’ll get into it.” She unscrewed the knob and gas began flooding the cabin.

  It didn’t take long to work and I was glad the plane wasn’t crowded. It only took a few minutes to get all the passengers into their masks while they slept unaware.

  Talya and I then returned to the back of the plane and got dressed. I slipped on thermal underwear first, followed by my coveralls and then over that I put on a flight suit. Talya handed me a set of goggles which I strapped on. To this, I added an MBU 12 oxygen mask with an Airox VIII O2 regulator. On my head I wore a ballistic helmet. Then I pulled on my gloves and took the high altitude altimeter and strapped it on to my wrist.

  Talya nudged me and handed me a set of oxygen bailout bottle assemblies and we got ready.

  “GPS?” I asked

  Talya held up the handheld unit she had. “I’ll lead, you follow.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Talya helped me get into my parachute rig. Then I did the same for her, checking over all the straps and connections. I wished we had AODs - automatic opening devices - with us for this in case of some unforeseen calamity in the sky, but we didn’t. What we did have was a ruck full of gear that we each had to make sure was strapped to us tightly enough that it didn’t pull off when we jumped into the slipstream. Landing without our gear would mean we could spit at the bad guys and do little else.