Tier One Wild by Dalton Fury Page B

up with your office.” Then he looked around the car, began eyeing Dr. Marris. “Tripwire looks like he’s about a deuce and a half. What are you, Curtis? ’Bout one-sixty-five soaking wet?”
    Curtis recognized the reason behind the question. He just said softly, “Oh, God.”
    *   *   *
    Digger’s slick driving lost the two vans before he made it out of the congestion of the city, but Kolt had no illusions that the men in the vehicles had not reported to their superiors that the fleeing UN inspector and his protection force were heading out of town to the south.
    They sped southeast on Ayn Zarah Road, passing fruit orchards and undeveloped land on both sides of the blacktop. Their tires kicked up dust that seemed to increase the farther they fled from the center of Tripoli.
    Soon Digger made a hard left off of Ayn Zarah and onto a narrow paved road. As he cleared the intersection, a VW bus pulled out of a grove of fruit trees and rolled into the street behind him. The minibus stopped in the lane, effectively blocking any traffic off of Ayn Zarah. Two men climbed out of the VW and went around to the back, where they lifted the rear engine access panel of the vehicle.
    “Bad guys?” Digger asked.
    “Negative. They work for the airlines,” Kolt answered as he keyed his radio’s mic to make a commo check with the blocking force.
    Digger floored it on the straight and empty road, raced a quarter mile up to the east, and then slowed and parked the car there so as to block both lanes of traffic.
    “Hold it here!” Kolt instructed.
    “What are we doing?” Curtis asked now, but Raynor held up a hand to listen to a radio transmission in his earpiece.
    “Thirty seconds out,” said a small voice in his ear.
    “Roger that,” Kolt said in response to the call, and then he transmitted to the men up the road pretending to work on their VW bus. “Blocker One, we secure?”
    “You’re clear for now,” came the reply from one of the men up the road.
    These men were from Air Cell, a unit of secret air assets operated by the United States government and available for clandestine work around the world. Air Cell had pulled Kolt and his mates out of a jam or two in his time in the Unit, and he trusted the pilots and support crew to get him out of his current predicament.
    Marris started to ask again just what the hell was going on when a small blue and white high-winged single-engine aircraft appeared over the top of the VW bus up the road. It touched down on the empty road seconds later. It barely slowed after its wheels hit the pavement; instead it raced all the way up to the five men in the car blocking any traffic from the east, and then turned around, aiming its nose again to the west.
    Over the loud buzz of the propeller, Raynor heard a transmission from Blocker One. “Unfriendlies inbound from the north! Two vans, hauling ass. ETA one mike.”
    Kolt shouted to the car, “Shit. Bad guys will be here in one minute. Everyone double-time it on board the plane!”
    Curtis and Slapshot did not need any prodding; they leapt from the car and climbed in back of the impossibly tight cabin of the plane.
    Kolt pulled Marris from the car, but he would not walk forward. “I’ll guide you,” Raynor said as he pushed on the bigger man, but Marris did not budge. He was still hooded, and still in a noncompliant mood.
    “Get in, Dr. Marris,” said Raynor, his hand tight on Marris’s jacket. Tight enough to insinuate that he would be dragged aboard the aircraft if he did not get in on his own power. The big man did not fight the American this time; he stumbled forward and then climbed into the aircraft, and Digger followed and strapped in next to him.
    Kolt himself sat in the tiny copilot seat of the plane. He put on the headset stowed in front of him and spoke into the mic quickly. “Eleven hundred pounds, plus or minus fifty. We gonna be too heavy?”
    “I’ll get us out of here,” the silver-haired pilot responded in