The Old Man(100)

There was a knock on the door, and then the two men from downstairs swung it open and stepped inside. One carried a tray that held a plate and some food, and the other held an open bottle of red wine and a glass. When they saw Spencer, the man with the tray squatted to put it on the floor to free his hands, and the other dropped the glass and wine and tried to draw his gun.

Spencer fired once at that man and saw a hole appear in his forehead, and then shot the other man twice and saw him fall backward.

Spencer dragged the two the rest of the way into the room and closed the door. Then he went through their pockets. One of them had a key fob with a silver stripe along the edge that said RANGE ROVER. Spencer pocketed it, and then stepped back into the closet and fired one round into Faris Hamzah’s head.

He hurried to the storeroom where he had watched the cars arrive, and looked out the window. He could see no lights in any of the windows of the other two buildings in the compound. He could see the three SUVs—two parked by the barracks building, and one still parked at the front entrance to the house. Maybe it was parked there intentionally because Faris Hamzah walked with a cane, or maybe the watchman was supposed to park it somewhere else. It didn’t matter. He made his way down the stairway to the front of the building. He unlocked one of the twin front doors, stepped out, and closed it.

He went to the driver’s door and found it unlocked. He climbed in, started the engine, and drove toward the gate. As the car moved forward he searched the dashboard, the wells on the door panels, and finally found the remote control for the gate clipped to the sun visor. He pressed the button and the gate swung open toward him.

The mechanism seemed incredibly slow, and as the gate inched its way inward, he steered to the center so he would not waste a moment. As soon as there was enough space he steered between the two sides and pressed the button again so the gate stopped and began to close.

He glanced in the rearview mirror to see if anything had changed inside the compound. There were no new lights, no sounds of gunfire, no figures running yet. He drove on, adding speed as he could.

He was afraid someone had heard him driving out, and would run to the house and notice the men lying in Hamzah’s bedroom. He hoped that the bodyguards would assume the man who had murdered their employer was a member of a rival faction, and Spencer knew those factions would be fifty miles to the northwest of the village, engaged in the competition to control Benghazi. He must head east for Tobruk, the place that was held by Faris Hamzah’s friends and allies.

Spencer kept his speed conservative for a few blocks until he reached the turnoff toward Tobruk, the same route that he and Abdullah had traveled early this morning. Then he began to add speed, driving with both hands on the wheel and his eyes ahead.

The distance to Tobruk from Benghazi was nearly three hundred miles. But Abdullah had not taken him all the way to Benghazi, so he didn’t know how much closer than that he was now. He pushed the speed as hard as he dared, paying more attention to controlling the car than to the speedometer.

Minutes went by, and each time he saw another one pass on the dashboard clock he celebrated. He wished the SUV could fly, or that he could take it off the road and head east across country instead of bouncing along and twisting and turning. He strayed from the center of the highway only to hug the curves. As he came out of one he would aim for the next one he could see ahead, making as much of his head start as he could.

His minutes became an hour, and he was sure now that Hamzah’s men must have sped off toward Benghazi to pursue his killer. He couldn’t be so lucky that they had all fallen asleep and not heard anything.

Spencer was at the end of his second hour of driving and judged he must be nearly halfway to Tobruk when he came around a curve and saw lights about a quarter mile ahead on a long, straight stretch. After a few seconds he could see the lights were a military checkpoint. There were two Humvees parked a few feet apart with a wooden bar between them, and two uniformed men visible in front of them.

Spencer slowed down and opened the glove compartment to see if there were papers for the SUV he was driving. He felt under the seat, glanced for more storage wells in the doors, but found nothing. He quickly shoved the silenced pistol and its spare magazines under his seat.

He knew his best chance was to bluff. Maybe his age and his good Arabic would make him seem innocuous. He slowed to a stop at the roadblock and kept his hands visible on the steering wheel.

A sleepy-looking man in camouflage fatigues stood and walked to Spencer’s window. Spencer opened it and smiled at him expectantly.

The man said, “Where are you going, uncle?”

“I’m driving toward Tobruk, sir,” he said in Arabic.

“I can see that. What is the purpose of your trip?”

“I want to see the doctors at the Tobruk airport from a Canadian relief organization. I heard they’ll be there for another forty-eight hours.”

“Let me see your identification.”

Spencer thought about how carefully he had planned his trip. He had made sure to carry no identification so the Canadians would not be arrested as accomplices if he were killed. Now he regretted the precaution. “I don’t have any with me,” he said. “But my name is Mahmoud Haruq.”

The soldier looked weary. “Get out of the car.”

Spencer got out and stood beside the car. The soldier patted him down, and found nothing except a thick sheaf of Libyan dinars in his pocket.