Blowback

Continuing on to the loading dock area, Reynolds kept looking for a way in, but the building was more secure than a bank vault. With steel-reinforced doors and bars covering what other few windows there were, the three Wahhabi stooges were obviously a lot more capable of keeping people out of their warehouse than they were of keeping people off their tail while driving. Reynolds realized that the only way he was going to get a look inside was if someone invited him.

By the time he came back around near the office, he had come to the conclusion that the best way to gain an invitation was to first smoke somebody out from inside. Setting his shotgun cum prayer rug against the side of the building, he removed his Benchmade tactical folding knife from his back pocket, popped open the circuit breaker covers for the air-conditioning units, and started knocking them offline one by one.

With one hundred plus degree temperatures raging outside, he figured it wouldn’t take too long for the people inside the building to start feeling the heat. The other thing Reynolds hoped he was right about was that with only one car parked in the warehouse’s parking lot, there was no one other than Mo, Larry, and Curly inside. Any more than that, and he could end up with a serious problem on his hands.

Picking his prayer rug back up, he leaned behind the office door and waited. Ten minutes later, he heard the sound of someone unlocking the door from the inside. Quietly, he unwrapped the shotgun and threw the rug off to the side.

There was the sound of voices from inside as the man’s colleagues urged him to hurry up and figure out what had gone wrong with the air conditioners. Reynolds waited until the man had stepped all the way outside and the door had closed behind him before pursing his lips and making the sound of two quick kisses.

The man spun around, only to be knocked unconscious by the butt of Reynolds’s shotgun. The only thing he would remember, if anything at all, was that his assailant wasn’t an Arab. That was probably one of the biggest advantages Reynolds had going for him. Saudi Arabia was awash with foreign contractors and consultants, and outside the people he worked with, nobody knew who the hell he was.

There was no knob or handle on the outside of the door. It could only be opened with a key. Fishing a set of keys from the militant’s pocket, Reynolds found the correct one, slid it into the lock, and slowly opened the door. It swung silently back on its hinges, and Reynolds stepped out of the heat and into the hallway of the considerably cooler offices.

Less than five feet away, he could hear two men talking. Not knowing how long their colleague outside would be napping, Reynolds decided not to waste any time.

Sweeping through the main office door, he brought the Remington up to the firing position and yelled at both of the men in Arabic to get intimate with the carpeting.

For a moment, neither of them moved. Then, as if they were telepathically connected, they both acted at the same time. One of them snatched up an AK-47 while the other made a beeline out a side door and into the warehouse.

Before the man with the AK could get his finger anywhere near the trigger, Reynolds hit him with three rounds from the Remington that nearly tore him in half and sent his bloody body flying across the room. Two stooges down, one to go.

It had been a while since Reynolds had seen this kind of action, and his heart was pumping a mile a minute as he crept into the packed warehouse. Pallets of bottled water as well as what appeared to be various spices were stacked floor to ceiling.

Reynolds tried to concentrate on finding the last remaining Wahhabi wiseguy. Once he was neutralized, Reynolds could drag their unconscious colleague in from outside and start tearing the place apart.

He heard a noise from the other end of the building that sounded like metal scraping on metal. Peeking out from behind the pallet of water bottles he was using for cover, Reynolds took aim with the shotgun and pulled the trigger two more times, but it was no use. The remaining militant had opened one of the doors near the loading bay and had taken off.

There was no telling what contacts the man might have in the neighborhood, so Reynolds had to act fast.

After a quick sweep of the warehouse that turned up nothing of real value, he ran back to the office and tore the entire place apart as he searched for anything that would explain what the hell these people were up to and what the meeting he had witnessed earlier in the day had all been about.

He was extremely thorough, but the office was shaping up to be another dead end. Ready to give up, Reynolds swept the assorted office supplies off one of the desks in frustration and in doing so sent the desk blotter sailing. As it hit the floor, he noticed several pages sticking out from underneath it.