Barry Eisler - Rain Storm aka Choke Point

Belghazi nodded. He said something in Arabic to his driver, who walked over to the back of the Mercedes, where he retrieved a large black duffel bag from the trunk. He carried it back behind the van, set it on the ground, and unzipped it. It was stuffed with greenbacks.

“Would you like to count it?” Belghazi asked.

The Russian smiled. “It would take a long time to count five million dollars.”

Holy shit , I thought, what are these guys selling ?

“I doubt you would find it boring, though,” Belghazi said, and they all laughed.

Come on, fuckers, move out from behind that van , I thought. But they all stayed put.

Five minutes went by. They all watched the gate. No one spoke. I switched back to Dox.

“They’re still behind the van,” I said.

“I figured. I’d have seen them if they’d gone anywhere else.”

“Did you see that duffel bag?” I asked.

“Sure did. What’s in it?”

“I’m reluctant to tell you. It might affect your shooting.”

“Partner, nothing affects my shooting. When I’m looking through this scope, I could be getting a blow job and perineum massage from midget twins and I wouldn’t even know it.”

“Excuse me for a second. I need to drive a hot poker through my mind’s eye.”

He chuckled. “Well, what’s in the bag?”

“Five million U.S., it sounds like.”

“Well, that’s good,” he said. His tone was soft and even, and I realized he was telling the truth: when he was in sniping mode, he wasn’t going to be distracted by anything not directly related to the task at hand.

A Chinese man on a powered hand truck was pulling up to the gate. Four large metal crates were stacked across the vehicle’s tines.

“They’re going to open the gate,” I told Dox. “But I don’t think anyone is going inside. They’re going to load those crates into the van. Then the Russians are going to pick up the duffel bag and everyone will go back to his car. That’s our moment.”

“Roger that.”

The gate opened and the hand truck came through. The driver lowered the crates into the van, backed out, then stepped off the vehicle. Belghazi and one of the Russians climbed into the van.

“I think they’re inspecting whatever’s in the crates,” I said. “I can’t see inside the van. Shouldn’t be much longer.”

“Roger that.”

A minute later, Belghazi and the Russian came out of the van. They were smiling. Belghazi reached inside his jacket and handed a large envelope to the hand truck driver. The man nodded, got on the hand truck, and went back through the gate, which closed behind him.

One of the Russians picked up the duffel bag and zipped it shut. He shouldered it, then extended his hand to Belghazi. They smiled and shook. Everyone seemed to relax: the deal was done, money exchanged for merchandise, no unpleasant surprises.

Everyone, that is, but Belghazi’s driver, the bodyguard who had carried the duffel bag over from the Mercedes. He was fidgeting, looking from one face to the next. Despite the coolness of the night I could see beads of perspiration on his forehead through the Zeiss binoculars.

No one else seemed to notice. They’d all been worried about so many things-betrayal, the law, problems with the merchandise, problems with payment-none of which had happened. It was natural that their guards were down now, if only for a moment.

Belghazi noticed first. He glanced over at the bodyguard, and his brow furrowed. He said something. With the earpiece switched to Dox I couldn’t hear what. For a second, maybe less, an electric tension seemed to build.

I could see Belghazi getting ready to do something, his center of gravity dropping, his legs coiling beneath him. His instincts were excellent, perhaps dulled just slightly this one time because the source of the problem was a bodyguard, a direction from which he hadn’t expected trouble to come.

Hilger looked over at the bodyguard, too. And, possessing a set of sharp instincts of his own but without the personal relationship that had perhaps fractionally slowed Belghazi’s own reaction, he shot his hand toward the inside of his jacket.

But too late. The bodyguard had started his own move a second earlier. By the time Hilger’s hand had disappeared under his jacket, the bodyguard had reached into his rear waistband and withdrawn a pistol. He pointed it at Hilger and said something.

Everyone froze. Hilger slowly removed his hand from inside his jacket. It was empty.

Belghazi was looking at the bodyguard, his expression incredulous. He shouted something.

“Holy shit,” I said to Dox. “The bodyguard just pulled a gun on Belghazi.”

“Say what?”

“I think the inside job we were going to simulate is happening for real.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“I want to hear what they’re saying. But if Belghazi shows his head, make sure you drop him. No more chances.”

“Roger that.”

I switched over. Belghazi was yelling at the bodyguard in Arabic, cursing him, from the tone. The bodyguard was yelling back, gesturing with the gun, pointing it from man to man. Everyone else seemed frozen.

“Achille, can you tell me what he’s saying, please,” Hilger said to Belghazi, the words slow and calm. “I don’t speak Arabic.”

“Yes, what in fuck is going on here!” one of the Russians added loudly.

“Take out your guns!” the bodyguard shouted. “Slowly! Put them on the ground! Slowly, slowly, or I will shoot you!”

Belghazi never took his eyes from his man. His lips had pulled back from his teeth, and his body was coiled like a panther about to pounce. It seemed that only the gun prevented him.

“He says that he is stealing the shipment,” he said. Then he let out another hot stream of Arabic.

“Guns on ground!” the bodyguard yelled. “This is the last time I ask!”

The men did as he said. Each of them removed a pistol from a waistband or shoulder holster and slowly placed it on the ground.

“Now hands in the air! Hands in the air!” the bodyguard yelled. Everyone complied.

“Now kick the guns forward. Kick them!” Again, everyone complied.

The bodyguard turned his head to the Russians, but didn’t take his eyes from Belghazi. “I am very sorry about this,” he said in heavily accented English. “Very sorry. We tried to buy the missiles from you. But you wouldn’t sell them.”

“Who in fuck is ‘we’?” the Russian spat.

“It doesn’t matter,” the bodyguard said. “What matters is, we offered you money, and you told us you already had a buyer-Belghazi. We offered to pay you more! But you wouldn’t listen.”

“Because we know this man, we have business with this man,” the Russian said. “With motherfucker we don’t know, bullshit like this! You see?”

Belghazi let out another stream of Arabic abuse. Hilger said, “Achille, please, I need to know what’s going on. Did he say ‘missiles’?”

Belghazi flexed his hands open and closed, as though trying to burn off some surfeit of energy that would otherwise consume him. “Did you send that French piece of shit to Macau?” he said to the bodyguard. “It was you, wasn’t it.”

The man nodded. “I’m sorry, Mr. Belghazi, very sorry. But you were the only reason these men wouldn’t sell us the Alazans.”

Alazans ? I thought.

“ ‘Us.’ Who is us?”

The man shook his head.

Belghazi threw up his hands and laughed. The laugh sounded dangerous, almost mad. “You’re right, it doesn’t matter! Because I would have sold you the Alazans! All you had to do was ask!”

The man shook his head again. “These are special, you know that, you know you would have quadrupled the price. Also you would have sold them off in small numbers to many buyers. But we need them all. We had to buy direct, and you were in the way. I’m sorry.”