Stray Bullets: An Ian Kelly Thriller (Book 1) by Robert James

Author:Robert James [James, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTY-FOUR

Maram was dropped off a mile down road from Assad’s compound. It was dark. Samir said good luck to her and did a U-turn and drove back the way he came. She wore all black. Even the laces of her boots. She wore her hair in a tight ponytail. She had a cloth bag roped around both shoulders like a knapsack with bolt cutters inside.

She trekked through the desert staying low any time she heard a car up road. When she was close to Assad’s house, a truck approached with its wide headlights and she dropped to her stomach in the dry weeds until it drove past.

The night air reminded her of late nights playing under the stars as a child. On her grandparent’s olive grove in Israel while the adults partied. They drank wine and laughed. It was a time before her father’s military service. Before a nail bomb was thrown in his armoured car by a Hamas radicle.

She circled the compound wide and came to the darkest area of the wall. She stood listening but there were only the sounds of the birds of night. Unslinging her bag, she rested it on the desert soil. Then she took a running start at the wall and ran up the brick and latched onto the ledge. She lifted herself to the chin so she could see over. There was only the glow of the pool against the house and everything else was in a muted blue of the moon. The ground below was soil with no boulders as far as she could tell. She dropped down and rested her arms for a moment. Then she threw her bag over and it thumped to the other side. She took another running start and scaled the seven-foot brick as easily as she’d done in boot camp at twenty-three.

In truth, Maram was stronger than she was at twenty-three. She was in her prime at thirty-five. Years in the field had hardened her. It had given her a work ethic she didn’t have as a young woman. And narrowly cheating death over and over flipped a switch. Suddenly her workouts became different, more intense.

She did a parkour-style roll as she landed. Then she laid herself prone in the dirt between two shrubs. She laid there for several minutes. There didn’t seem to be anyone around.

Standing up, she pranced to the barn as quickly as she could without stomping her feet. She imagined her boots as pillows. The building was easy enough to make out in the dark, the silhouette of the sloped roof a cut-out from the dark blue sky.

When she reached the structure, she ran her hands over the old walls looking for any weakness that wouldn’t involve cutting the chain on the door. She pulled at the wood for loose boards. She picked at it with her nails to check for soft rot. But it was no use. Even the only window on that side had been boarded up, just as Ian had said.

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