H
e worked his way through the darkness parallel to the highway.
Out here in the desert the stars and gibbon moon lit up the landscape in a white ghostly glow making it possible to travel quickly.
There were no city lights along the roadway to blot out the stars, no electric glow from the city turning the horizon an orange shade not normally found in nature.
He moved at a fast pace, eight minute miles that ate up the distance until he reached the edge of Idlib.
It was where Aslan arranged for a meet with a contact of his own.
Brill didn't like operating with unknown quantities, but there wasn't much to be done for it.
Barraque had zero intel inside the borders of the nation, and their contact Aslan did.
He had to rely on the man's knowledge.
With the distraction he provided to the rebel mountain group, Brill thought he could be trusted.
If he wasn't using speed and stealth to strike fast and hard, Brill would have set up shop in an apartment and worked to gather additional intelligence.
He would stand out in the neighborhood, but posing as a Canadian photojournalist to match his fake credentials could open a few doors to publicity hungry Islamists who just wanted to share their story.
Idlib was mostly dark, a few windows lit up on the horizon.
He angled toward a darker part of the city toward a street Aslan gave coordinates to find.
Southside of the village, three streets for the end of town.
Look for the stone house with a green door.
Someone would be waiting.
No instructions to knock, no secret password or handshake.
Just two men in a foreign country where he didn't speak the language and they were known to behead journalists giving him directions to save two lives.
Three if he counted his own.
A dog barked as he approached the third street.
So much for the stealth approach.
He found what looked like a green door on a stone house but he couldn't be one hundred percent confident.
Green, black and blue, any dark color really, looked the same until the sun came up.
There were no front lights burning to indicate it was the right house.
But it was a stone house on a row of stone houses on the short street and the only one with a different door.
That had to be significant.
He took a chance and knocked.
Shouting from behind the door carried down the street.
Brill put his hand on his pistol and prepared for a fight.
The door cracked open and a young woman stared at him with sleepy eyes.
Almost immediately a hand slapped the back of her head and jerked her back behind the door.
A man took her place, just out of his teens from the wispy mustache and beard that stained his face.
He held the door halfway open to show one arm, the other hand gripping the edge of the frame while he yelled at the girl.
He glanced at Brill and shouted at her again, the rapid-fire pace of words sputtering out in a guttural growl.
He stopped talking and nodded at Brill.
"You are the American?" his accent was thick on the verge of undecipherable.
"Canadian," said Brill.
The man grunted.
"Same thing."
"Syrian, Kurd, Turk," Brill wiggled his hand back and forth.
The frown on the contact's face popped into a grin.
"I get it," he slurred. "Canadian."
He held out his hand.
Brill passed him an envelope from Aslan.
He didn't bother to look inside, just placed it inside the house and pulled the door shut as he stepped out into the street with Brill.
"You know Aleppo?" he asked as he led Brill down the empty road.
Brill shook his head.
"The people you are looking for were at Aleppo."
Brill remembered the city name from the map, and the report Barraque provided indicated it was a hotbed of rebel activity and Syrian government response.
Bombing runs were a nightly occurrence and the groups were starting to wall off the city to outsiders.
"Are they there now?"
"Outside."
He led Brill to a small building with one room.
There were no doors, the windows were narrow slits, designed to let in the breeze and keep out the sun.
It was an empty shell, just debris from former occupants on a simple wooden table against one wall.
No bed, no chairs, no signs of ever having held life except for the table and a plate and cup on it.
His contact moved to one side of the table and reached into his jacket.
Brill's hand snapped to his pistol.
"It's okay," the contact said as he pulled out a map and tiny flashlight. "It's okay."
Brill watched him spread the map on the table and highlight Aleppo with the narrow flashlight beam.
"Aleppo is here," the man told him.
"Journalists are here."
He pointed to a spot on the map several kilometers outside of the city.
"Is that confirmed?"
"What does mean?" the man looked confused.
"Are you certain they are located there?"
"Yes," the man grinned. "One hundred percent. Confirmed is the word?"
"Confirmed means yes."
"Confirmed then."
"Does it have a name?"
"Is not a city. Is a house, a waddi."
"Walled compound."
"Yes, walls. And guards. It will be very difficult for you to get to your friends. But I can help."
"For the right price?"
"Yes, for good price. I can help you get in."
Brill knew this was the shakedown.
It happened in every Third World country he had ever been in.
The bribe was a cultural expectation, and negotiating for more was part of the DNA.
"I'll manage," he told the man and got a shrug.
"Okay then."
The man rolled up the map around the flashlight and slipped it back into his pocket.
Despite the weak light, it took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the darkness.
Brill heard the man shuffle and his silhouette blotted out the starlight in the doorway.
Then he was gone.
"Guess we're done," he muttered as he checked the exterior before following.
It was one a.m.
He still had time to make the compound and scope out the rescue.
If he played it fast and loose, he could be back in Turkey before dawn.