Lethal Agent (Mitch Rapp #18)(25)

His earpiece buzzed and he picked up the satellite call. “Go ahead.”

“Do you see the Saudi jets?” Claudia said.

“They’re hard to miss.”

“According to the pilots, you’ve got two groups coming in on you. One from the northeast and the other from the southeast. As many as twenty vehicles in total. Another seven vehicles are coming in from the west to reinforce the men chasing you.”

That explained why their pursuers were keeping their distance. Halabi had called in the locals still loyal to him. Probably nowhere near the quality of the men they’d been dealing with so far, but it didn’t matter. The terrorist leader’s plan to capture him didn’t really demand crack troops. Just a lot of warm bodies willing to turn cold in an effort to overwhelm them.

“ETAs?”

“Call it twenty-five minutes for the forces approaching from the east. A little longer for the western reinforcement because now they’re going to have to go around the fire.”

“Can the Saudis take them out?” Rapp asked.

“Irene’s working on it and she’s gotten the president involved. He’s tried to contact the king directly, but he’s sick and not taking calls. I don’t think they’re going to help us, Mitch. The people Irene has reached out to are angry that the Agency’s operating in the area without notifying them and they’re throwing up a bunch of red tape.”

The fact that the two jets had turned back toward Saudi Arabia suggested that she was right. Yet another pain-in-the-ass development in what was turning out to be a serious pain-in-the-ass day.

“Mitch? Are you still there?”

“I’m here.”

“What can I do to help?”

“You tell me.”

When she spoke again she sounded like she was on the verge of breaking into tears. “I . . . I don’t know.”

“No problem. Can you do me a favor?”

“Of course. What?”

“Make us a reservation at that new Japanese place in Manassas for Saturday. I’ve had sushi stuck in my mind all day.”

She actually managed a choking laugh. “You’re getting better at this relationship stuff. I appreciate the effort.”

“It’s going to be fine,” he said and then cut off the call.

When he walked back to Coleman and his men, he found them all crammed into a sliver of shade provided by a boulder.

Bruno McGraw was the first to speak. “What’s the plan, boss?”

“We take off the monkey suits.”

That order was met with more enthusiasm than probably any he’d given in his career. The strict protocols necessary for the safe removal of the suits felt painfully slow, but after ten precious minutes, they were down to their custom desert camo. Despite the fact that temperatures were already hovering around ninety, Rapp felt like he’d just plunged himself into a frozen lake.

He squinted into the sun and pointed at two dust plumes now visible to the east. “Twenty vehicles total with an unknown number of men. ETA to us is about fifteen. Seven more vehicles coming in from the west to reinforce the men chasing us. ETA’s probably around twenty-five minutes.”

“What about the Saudis?” Coleman asked.

“Forget them. We’re on our own.”

The mood that had been elevated a moment before by the removal of the chem suits started to slide again.

“We’re limited on ammo and water,” Rapp said. “And there’s nowhere around here to get more.”

“The nearest village is a long way away,” Maslick pointed out. “And there ain’t much in it.”

“We could reverse course and charge the guys coming up behind us,” Wick suggested. “If they still don’t want to shoot us, it’ll be easy to whack them and take their gear.”

Rapp shook his head. “If they’re smart—and I think there’s a good chance they are—they’ll just run and lead us straight into the reinforcements coming in behind them. If you figure five men per vehicle, we could be facing a force of over forty men. They’ll blitz us and absorb whatever casualties they have to.”

“And even if we kill them all,” Coleman said, “by the time we do, we could have as many as another hundred men on top of us from the east.”

“Well, we can’t wander around on foot in the flats,” Wick said. “They might just be a bunch of pricks in pickups but that’s still cavalry as far as I’m concerned. And who’s to say those are the only people coming to the party? There could be another fifty vehicles gassing up somewhere.”

Rapp nodded. They were trapped on a narrow plain with a steep rocky slope rising about five hundred yards to the north and an equally steep and rocky one descending the same distance to the south.

“Seems like an easy decision,” Coleman said. “We climb. We’ll be way faster than the guys on foot, it’ll give us the high ground, and it’ll neutralize the advantage of the trucks.”

“What then, though?” Rapp asked. “You saw the map. That slope tops out into a mesa that’s about a quarter mile square.”

“Chopper extraction?”

“Based on what I’m hearing, I don’t think we can count on it.”

The group fell silent as Rapp walked back to a vantage point that allowed him to see the men digging in to the west. He scanned with his binoculars again, and again found a man scanning back. Rapp lowered his lenses and let him get a good long look at his face.