Andrew Britton - The Exile

“Roger that.”

Kealey pocketed the phone, moved across to the right side of the hallway, flattened his back against the wall, and then sidled along to the edge of the closet’s door. His 9mm in his right fist, he reached his free hand across the wall for the closet door’s finger pull handle and tugged the door open on its tracks. Finally he heaved himself off the wall with a half turn so he’d end up looking directly into the closet.

There was the loud discharge of a gun inside it, and a bullet shrieked past his ear. The bodyguard hidden among the row of hanging garments had no chance to get off a second shot; Kealey, reflexively down in a squat, pumped three shots into his heart and watched him droop backward into a corner of the closet, one leg bent underneath him, the other sticking straight out across its floor.

Entering, Kealey crouched over the dead man and took the gun from his slackened grasp. It was a 9mm semiautomatic Caracal, the ammo usable for his own weapon. Depressing the catch, he ejected its magazine and shoved it into a cargo pocket on his trousers. Then he stepped over the guard’s outstretched leg and pushed aside the clothes on the hanger pole-traditional Arabic robes and shawls as well as Western-style suits.

There on the back wall of the closet were the telltale seams of a safe-room door…and the camouflaged digital peephole lens above it. Kealey moved deeper inside, stood in front of the steel-reinforced panel, and rapped it with his fist. The solid thud he heard was reminiscent of when he’d tested the door of the EU team’s armored BMW in Yaounde.

Kealey heard his phone trill in his pocket. Abby probably. She must have heard the shots. But there was no time to answer.

“Mirghani, I know you can hear me!” he shouted. Exactly how much time did he have before the police stormed in? Not much, it couldn’t be much at all, though he guessed he’d been in the house less than five minutes. “I’m telling you right now, you’re coming out. ”

No answer. Kealey hadn’t figured he’d get one.

“My people have the back entrance to the house covered!” he yelled. “Either you leave with me or you aren’t going anywhere.”

Nothing. Kealey’s mind raced. Mirghani would know the police were on the way. Figure he could wait things out till they got here. Unless…

Whirling in a circle, Kealey holstered his gun, then sprinted over to the stairs and down to the first floor. He couldn’t afford to lose a second.

In the main parlor now, he turned, ran through the foyer, and a heartbeat later was out in the courtyard. Abby was standing there inside the fence. Her cell phone in her hand, she was looking at him with tense, agitated features.

“Kealey, what’s going on? I heard the gunfire inside, and when you didn’t answer-”

“Just wait here,” he said. “Don’t move.”

And then he went loping across the street, zigzagging past rubber-neckers toward the Cherokee, where Swanson sat tensely behind the wheel, Phillips’s body covered with a blanket in the cargo section. He hurried around back without a word, yanked open the hatch, looked around for a jerrican, knowing there had to be one. This was an Agency vehicle, and here in Sudan, where you never knew when you’d be traveling hundreds of damned miles through the desert, it would be as standard as a tire wrench.

Kealey found the plastic container almost right away, reached inside to grab it from a storage slot in the rear compartment, then slammed the hatch shut and deliberately sloshed its contents around. It was three-quarters full, maybe better, meaning there had to be almost five gallons of gasoline inside.

He returned to the driver’s door. “Swanson, listen,” he said through its lowered window. “The second the cops get close, I mean the second, you and Abby take off without looking back…and make sure they see you. I’m going to need a deke, got it? We’ll have the embassy take care of the rest. These sons of bitches are going to find out soon enough we’re trying to save their president’s miserable ass.”

Swanson stared at him. “Kealey…what the hell are you doing?”

Kealey didn’t stop to answer now, but instead dashed back across to the house with the jerrican, pausing only to motion Abby toward the Jeep before he plunged inside, this time hooking sharply right through the two downstairs parlors into the kitchen. He looked around for matches, pulled open a drawer, still didn’t see any, decided to quit searching, and grabbed a dishrag from a countertop near the sink.

He wound the rag tightly into a makeshift torch, uncapped the jerrican, poured gasoline over one end. Next he went to the range, turned on a burner, and held the saturated end of the dishrag in the flame. It immediately caught fire.

Kealey went bounding to the second floor with the fiery rag in one hand and the open jerrican in the other. He’d need water in a minute, but the rag was really ablaze now, and he again jogged on past the bathroom to the walk-in closet.

“Mirghani!” He held the rag and jerrican up to the safe room’s peephole now. “See this? I’m setting fire to the closet-and if you think the police are coming, you’re wrong. I’ve got them fooled. Same if you think the firemen can get here before the smoke kills you. You watch, Mirghani. Watch! ”

And with that Kealey began dousing the closet with gasoline, splashing it over the clothes draped over the hangers, the walls, even the body of the guard he’d shot. When he’d emptied the container, he stepped back from the door panel and tossed the burning rag into the closet.

The gas-soaked clothes and body burst into flame with a whuuuump of displaced air, orange-yellow tongues of fire fiercely leaping upward over everything, climbing the walls to lick at the ceiling.

Kealey had time to hear an alarm go off before he ran back down the hall to the bathroom, snatching a large bath towel from a rack, then going to the tub and opening the cold water tap. He soaked the towel under the faucet, threw it over his head like a shawl, and returned to the walk-in closet.

It was already filled with churning, acrid smoke, gray blobs of it spewing into the hall, making his eyes water and his throat involuntarily clench. He hadn’t lied to Mirghani; while the door and walls of the safe room were bound to be fire resistant, possibly saving every material possession he might have stashed in there, it would not keep the carbon monoxide smoke from seeping through. He would die of asphyxiation if he stayed put.

The cold, dripping towel still covering his head and shoulders, Kealey thrust himself inside through the searing flames.

“Come out of there, you stupid bastard,” he said, almost overcome by smoke. The towel was sizzling around his head, steam coiling off it; it would not keep him from the fire’s clutches for very long. He could already feel the hair on his arms singeing from the heat. “Come on out! I told you I just want to talk-”

The door suddenly burst open, a man Kealey identified from photos as Ishmael Mirghani pushing into the closet, wheezing and gagging. “You’re a lunatic,” he gasped and hacked out a series of sputtering coughs. “Whoever you are, you will kill us both…”

“ Shut up! ” Kealey hollered and yanked him from the closet. The smoke had gotten so thick around him, it was hard to see, but he had no problem hearing the jangle of household fire alarms and, underneath it, the more troublesome howl of oncoming sirens. He had to get out of the place, toot sweet, and could only hope Swanson and Abby would provide a diversion if he needed it.

Grabbing Mirghani by his arm, he towed him downstairs into the main parlor, then outside through the door into the back garden. Outside its low hedge, Mackenzie sat parked against the curb in his Subaru.