“Turn right, up ahead,” Dieter said, monitoring the iPad on his lap from the passenger seat.
Bad Allah was at the wheel of a black Peugeot Boxer delivery van, bouncing along the N27 in upper Normandy. Maggie sat in the bench seat behind with John Rae. Dusk was descending on the lush rolling countryside, turning a deep green in the falling light, and the commute traffic in and out of Dieppe was winding down. Bad Allah made a tight right turn onto the narrow country road, the long van fishtailing.
Lead foot, Maggie thought. She had changed into fresh jeans, turtleneck sweater and a roomy windbreaker before checking out of the Shangri La a few hours ago.
“La Ferme is approximately one kilometer away,” Dieter said. “On the left. We’ll park farther up. There’s a lay by.”
“And you’re sure this is going to work?” Maggie asked.
“Absolutely, Fraulein,” Dieter said, turning to look at her, scraps of daylight flashing off his John Lennon glasses. “And if it doesn’t, well, we try something else.”
The plan was for Maggie to find out whether Kafka was already at La Ferme. There was a good chance he hadn’t arrived yet. She was to approach the farm house solo and say she had a dead battery, ask for help. Hopefully, someone would let her in and she could get a look around. Meanwhile, Dieter and John Rae would be outside, checking out the property.
“And just to confirm,” Maggie said, “no one’s going to get shot—right?”
“Not unless it’s one of us.” Dieter grinned. “But then that would be our own stupid fault. I believe in talking my way out of things if something goes amiss. I’m a chicken from way back.”
Maggie doubted that.
“And no one’s going to get beat up, either,” she said.
Dieter made a comme ci, comme ça motion with his hand as the van bumped over a pothole, making them all bounce in their seats. John Rae grabbed the handle on the roof the van. “Dieter would regard that as an operational malfunction, Maggie. He sets his standards higher.”
“I prefer ‘absolutely not’ for an answer,” Maggie said. “SDAT are our allies—technically.”
“Not very cooperative allies, though,” John Rae said. “You’d still be sitting in a holding cell if I hadn’t intervened.”
“We can’t afford another nastygram to Washington is all I’m saying,” Maggie said.
“Duly noted,” John Rae said.
“They won’t be expecting visitors,” Dieter said. “This is a black site facility. Never more than a handful of people on staff. And this is the French countryside. Idyllic. They’ll buy you being lost, Maggie, asking for help.”
Maggie was trying to determine whether Dieter was one of those people who thought everything was easy, until it actually came down to all hell breaking loose. That’s the way John Rae was.
“Up there, Bad.” Dieter pointed out a gap in the wavering line of a rustic stonewall flanking the field on the left. Bad Allah nodded. He wasn’t much of a talker. He was too busy driving on two wheels. The squeal of tires seemed to be his favorite sound.
An old ornate wrought-iron sign over an entrance to a darkened dirt road reading Le Plessis whooshed by. A plessis was an old hunting lodge. It was nestled back up behind a hill of verdant shrubbery. The sloped roof just showed, accented by moonlight.
“Over here,” Dieter directed Bad, who swerved the van into a small gravel patch alongside the road, nestled in overgrown hedges.
Bad Allah parked in the lay by. Dieter dispensed an assortment of X3 multi-shot Tasers and Mace OC guns to Maggie and John Rae, along with mini flashlights, then threw a small day pack over his shoulder, no doubt loaded down with other goodies. Maggie got the feel of the Mace gun. It looked like a small blue flare gun made of thick steel, and held a can of the toxic spray. You could shoot Mace up to twenty feet away. No one was carrying a real gun. They couldn’t afford another international incident if a tussle broke out. This op was strictly low profile.
“John Rae and I will be waiting for you up at La Ferme, Fraulein,” Dieter said, retrieving a ski mask, pulling it on top of his head like a cap for the time being. “Bad Allah will stay behind, keep an eye out, wait for our call, ready to pick us up if need be. Bad, you get in the back seat and stay down when we leave so the van appears to be empty. Everybody have their Rinos up and running and set to silent mode?”
Maggie checked her Rino phone, as did the others. “Yep,” she said. She gathered her hair back, pulled a dark beret over her head, to one side, affording a measure of disguise.
“Knock ’em dead, Maggs,” John Rae said, putting his fist up in the air for her to bump. He’d pulled a knit ski mask over his face and looked a good deal less trustworthy, along with his good luck pigskin jacket zipped up to his neck. Cool night air was settling in.
She gave John Rae’s fist a knock, then did the same with Dieter and leaned forward, followed up with Bad, who gave her a solemn nod as he, too, fist-bumped.
“Let’s do it to it, gentlemen,” John Rae said, then added, “And lady.”
Dieter hopped out, yanked open the windowless side door to the van.
“Be good up there, Fraulein,” he said, helping her down from the van. “I know you will.”
“This isn’t sexist at all,” she said. “Sending me up there to pull a ‘damsel in distress’ routine.”
“You think they’d open the front door for an old goat like Dieter?” John Rae said, climbing out behind her. “Or me, for that matter?”
Maggie pocketed her Mace gun. “You’re assuming those agents are men.”
“We play it by ear,” Dieter said. “John Rae and I are taking the back way. You stay on the main road, as if you’ve just left the van here—broken down. The building you want will be directly in front of you when you get to the top of the private road—an old lodge. I’ll be in the small chapel to the right of it. John Rae is going to be stationed in the stables to the left.”
“Seems an appropriate place for him,” Maggie said.
“See what I have to put up with?” John Rae said to Dieter.
“I don’t know, John Rae—maybe she’s calling you a stud.”
Maggie blushed as she and John Rae traded looks, John Rae’s through the eyeholes of his ski mask.
“Come on, John Rae,” Dieter said. “Time for a jog.” He and John Rae pushed through the tall, thick hedges, then dashed across a fallow field in a low run. Maggie took the narrow country road. The nutty smell of earth wet from recent rains filled her nostrils. Off in the trees surrounding the farmhouse, nightingales twittered to each other. Her eyes adjusted quickly to the moonlight.
At the wrought-iron lodge sign she turned right and marched up a dirt road tunneled under trees to where a clearing laid out the buildings Dieter had described—an old stone stable and other more functional buildings to the left, a lovely old stone chapel to the right, and a stone farmhouse with a slate roof in front of her. It looked like a country retreat where one might spend a relaxing weekend. A single light glowed through a window. Maggie crunched gravel up to the front door, getting out her civilian cell phone, which she had powered down.
Stepping up to an ancient oak door with blackened ironwork on it, she noted John Rae’s silhouette to her left, just visible in the dimness behind a Dutch half stable door. To her right, standing inside the picturesque little chapel, lurked Dieter. In the shadows she saw him give her a silent nod. Both men were well hidden.
She banged the knocker several times.
Light footsteps padded up to the door.
Someone eyed her through a peep hole.
“Oui?” a woman’s voice said. So much for the man theory.
“So sorry to bother you, madame,” Maggie said breathlessly in French, “but my van died—just up the road. Battery—dead!” She stood back, held up her phone to the peephole. “And now my phone battery is gone too. Can you believe it? I’m hoping you can let me use your phone. To call for a tow truck.”
“You won’t get a garage to send anyone out here this time of night,” the woman said in a curt voice through the grill in the door.
So helpful. “Not even from Dieppe?”
The woman gave a staccato laugh. “No.”
“A taxi then?” Maggie said. Whoever was in there was not eager to let her in and Maggie wasn’t going to ask and raise a red flag. “They must have taxis in Dieppe, no? They could send one out. I’m willing to pay the cost.”
The woman behind the door laughed the laugh again. “Where do you think you are? Paris?”
“Or a bus?” Maggie said. “Is there a bus I could take?”
“No buses out here. It’s the country, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“If I could just try to call a taxi then, anyway, madame,” Maggie said again.
“I’ll call one for you but I don’t like your chances.”
“Merci,” Maggie said, adding, “Do you think I could use your toilet? I’m a little bit desperate.”
“There are bushes everywhere.”
The French. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. Thank you for calling the taxi. I’ll be at the end of the road. Good night!” Maggie turned around, walked away, not making eye contact with either John Rae or Dieter in case she was being watched.
She headed back down the dirt road.
Well, that went pretty damn well. But there didn’t seem to be a hive of activity at La Ferme. No vehicles parked either, although they could have been garaged.
She was halfway down the tunnel of trees, peering into shadows, when her Rino phone buzzed. She pulled it, looked at the tiny screen lit up in the darkness.
Group call in progress, originated by Bad Allah.
She dialed up the volume.
“Dieter,” Bad said in a crackle of static, “a French National Police fourgon just drove by.”
A fourgon was a long van.
“Head’s up,” Dieter said. “This could be our boy arriving.”
“It’s turning into La Ferme right now,” Bad said. Not much seemed to faze him.
Down the end of the road, Maggie saw headlights, fuzzy in the darkness, bouncing up the narrow lane. She joined in the call. “He’s right, guys. They’re coming up the road toward me now. I bet that’s our guest of honor. They’re bringing in Kafka.”
“Stop that van, Fraulein,” Dieter said, his lips close to the phone. “Keep them talking. We’ll be right there, ready to jump in. Let’s go, John Rae. Mach schnell! We’ll cut across the field. Bad Allah, start your engine and motor down to the entrance. Stay out of sight but wait for us.”
“Ten-four,” Bad said, the engine firing up in the background.
“Geronimo!” John Rae said, and Maggie could hear him already in a dead run, breathing heavily. “Hang in there, Maggs. Turn your phone down so they don’t hear us.” He signed off.
Maggie silenced her phone, stuffed it in the pocket of her jacket. The van was halfway up the dirt road. She stood out in the middle of the constricted lane, waving her arms.
The van slowed to a crawl, headlights blinding, and came to a stop ten feet away.
Maggie dashed around to the driver’s window, pulling her best helpless face. The window rolled down. A grizzled man in a police uniform leaned his head out. He had a bushy mustache, like a broom.
“Are you lost?” he said in a working class accent.
“My van broke down,” Maggie said, blinking in feigned confusion. She gripped the Mace gun in her jacket pocket. “Just up the road. I was trying to get help up at that farmhouse. No luck. And my phone’s dead. Can you call a taxi for me? Better still, can I wait with you while you do? It’s a little scary out here. I’d be forever grateful.”
“Not sure about that . . .” the driver said, turning in his seat. “What do you think?”
“Wait a minute,” a very familiar voice said from the back of the van. Captain Bellard. “I know that voice . . .”
Maggie’s hackles rose. Bellard was accompanying Kafka. She pulled the Mace gun from her pocket.
The driver turned back around to face Maggie, mouth open, just as she squeezed the trigger, filling his face with noxious wet white spray.
Almost immediately the driver burst into a coughing jag, hands up to his eyes, his face covered in near foam. He screamed as Maggie aimed the jet to the far side of the cab, hitting the passenger on the side of the face before he could put his hands up. The other occupants in the van began shouting before the window started rolling back up. Maggie blasted the driver again, ear to ear. He collapsed down into the leg well, coughing violently, rubbing his eyes.
“I can’t see!”
Maggie climbed up onto the running board, her arm inside the half-open window, spraying into the back. There were seven shots per cartridge but she didn’t want to overdo it and cause permanent damage. The inside of the cab became a wet cloud. The driver and passenger yelled out in pain, as the rear of the van echoed with cries and shouts as well.
“Go, go, go!” she heard Dieter yell as he and John Rae leapt from the bushes on the other side of the van.
Dieter yanked open the passenger door, stepped aside as John Rae hauled the man from the passenger seat, threw him down on the ground. Dieter tasered him with a snap. John Rae leapt up into the cab and gassed everybody in the rear with more Mace.
Bellard and Kafka, in cuffs, tried to cover their faces but both were clearly hit and out of control.
Maggie stepped down, her own eyes burning and watering copiously. It felt as if someone was holding a cigarette lighter to her face and she had only gotten a mild dose. She battled the panicky feeling of not being able to breathe. Her throat tightened up.
The SDAT crew, including Bellard, were soon duct-taped and coughing inside their van. Maggie got Kafka outside and onto his feet, shaky as a newborn colt, unable to see. Arm around him, she led him swaying down the dark road, his face puffy and swollen where he had been beaten. Tears streamed over his bruises from the Mace.
“My eyes are on fire!” he shouted in Arabic. “I can’t breathe!”
“It will pass,” Maggie said. She didn’t tell him it would take thirty minutes to two hours. “It’s Maggie de la Cruz. We’re getting you out of here.”
“Shukran,” he muttered between coughs. He kept rubbing his eyes with his cuffed hands and gasping for air.
“We’ll cut you loose when we get to our van.” She helped Kafka down the dark road. Behind her she heard John Rae and Dieter hurling the policemen’s pistols and cell phones into the empty dark field.
“You call that a throw?” Dieter said to John Rae. “My granddaughter could make a better job of it.”
John Rae laughed. “Don’t forget to lock our buddies inside the van.”
“Always got your thinking cap on,” Dieter said, and she heard him return to the van where he pulled keys from the ignition. He and John Rae shut the doors and locked the van. Then the keys tinkled off into the darkness as well, landing in the field.
The last thing Maggie heard was the hiss of a tire as someone worked on it with a knife.
“Merci beaucoup, everyone.” John Rae banged on the van. “Sayonara, gentlemen!”
John Rae and Dieter laughed as they broke into a run and came hustling down the road after Maggie and Kafka.
“Feeling any better?” Maggie asked Kafka, her arm still around him as they stumbled along.
“I think so.” But his mouth quivered. Maggie stood back while he bent over and vomited onto the ground in splashes. He reared back up, wheezing, his mouth glistening. He wasn’t able to get his words out but he made bleary eye contact with her for a moment. Good enough.
Behind her, she heard Dieter on his Rino to Bad Allah. ‘Pull up to the entrance by the side of the road, get the door open, and prepare for some of your classic high-speed driving. We are bringing a guest.”