Black Operations- the Spec-Ops Action Pack

by Eric Meyer

  "Smith! No way, he's CIA to his fingertips. As ruthless as they come, but he's not an out and out crook, like Turner."

  "He knew about the missile, and he knew it could have killed us."

  "He would have decided it was worth the risk to get Mukhtar. I'd take a bet Smith told Turner to warn us to get out as soon as the Land Rover was parked outside Mukhtar's place."

  "He told Manuel to change vehicles when we found him, but he didn't say why."

  "Yeah, that sounds like Turner. Expected you to die when the missile hit, but covered his ass if you got through."

  "I reckon we need to talk to Major Turner. Explain to him what's what."

  She grinned. "I don't blame you. He's screwed just about everybody he worked with."

  The crowds were growing larger, as even in the middle of the night, people spilled out onto the street. Angry people, screaming slogans, assuming the war that had turned Cairo into a battleground had reached Nag Hammadi. It was fortunate the vehicle we were in was civilian. An Army truck coming toward us got hit by a petrol bomb and exploded into burning fragments. Winter swung the wheel over into a hard right turn to clear the area, but not before I'd seen screaming soldiers leaping from the wreckage, their uniforms on fire.

  We passed a part of the town that looked ancient, almost biblical. It was pause for thought, that this place had been the resting place for many of the sacred gospels, the so-called, 'Gnostic Gospels'. For two millennia, they had lain buried in the sand, codices that included Christian texts written down by early Coptic Christians. The buildings looked as if they could have dated from that time. Tiny dwellings made of mud bricks, just as they had been built during the time of Jesus. And long before, perhaps when the Hebrews escaped from the Egyptian yoke, they passed this very place and saw something much the same as we could see today.

  Yet in spite of all the good intentions, it seemed there had been no progress toward the central message of peace. We were the Hunter Killers, fleeing from our latest battleground and passing armed and angry crowds; determined to damage and kill in their quest to show their displeasure with the current regime. Even as recently as in 2010, Muslim gunmen had massacred eight Coptic Christians in front of the Nag Hammadi cathedral. The Coptics were leaving the church after celebrating midnight Christmas mass when the Muslims opened fire, continuing their long tradition of slaughtering those with whom they disagreed.

  I felt cold, tired, depressed, and dirty. Still trying to clean house after so much death, so much poverty, and so much misery. When would it end? When all the murdering scum like Mullah Mukhtar were dead? Probably not, but I could cling to one tiny ray of hope. Killing the mad Mullah would be a start.

  Yet there was something more about this town, and it was hard to put my finger on it, a kind of mystique, a strange feeling. One of those things that make your hair stand on end. Something in the air or the atmosphere, perhaps in the centuries of history that lay above and below the surface. Maybe I was just letting my imagination run riot.

  We reached the safe house. It appeared to have originally been a small carpet factory. It was an old-fashioned building and looked like it had been standing for over a hundred years. The front was ornate, all with sculpted brickwork along the line of the roof terrace. Even the perimeter wall was ornamental, topped with carvings and inlaid with delicate patterns of ceramic tiles. The dilapidation could not hide the glorious era in the past when this place had once been a thriving concern, a past overtaken by the corruption and hatred of successive Muslim regimes.

  We drove in through the gates and on into a drive-in workshop on the first floor. There were offices upstairs on the second floor and a stone staircase outside of the building. We closed the gates and then ran up the stairs to check out the second floor. It was empty, except for a desk in the center of the floor with a baseball bat on its surface. There was a rack of shelving on one wall, probably used for documents and box files. Now it was sagging, as if about to collapse. Leaning against the opposite wall was a pitchfork. I couldn't work out the significance of it, and I went back down to tell them it was clear. That's when I noticed Sabrina had been hit. She came toward me, but she was limping.

  "Your leg, you've been hurt!"

  "It's nothing. I felt something hit me back at the villa while we were sheltering behind the wall. I think it's just a scratch."

  "Let me take a look."

  She looked alarmed as I lifted the hem of her robe. Underneath, her leg was soaked in blood. I guessed a ricochet had hit her during the gunfight, and it had scoured a gouge from her flesh, just above the ankle.

  "You'll need treatment for that. I'll take you upstairs."

  "I'm okay, really," she insisted.

  I ignored her, swept into my arms, and carried her up. She was light, and it was no more than carrying a child. I lay her down on a desk and took another look at the wound.

  "You need antiseptics and a dressing." Niall had just appeared, and he overheard me.

  "I've got the stuff in my pack," he said immediately.

  He brought over antiseptic ointment and a field dressing. I got to work, cleaning the wound first and then applying the antiseptic and the dressing. As I worked, her obvious embarrassment at being treated by a man receded. I grasped she was staring at me.

  "What?"

  She giggled. "It's the first time a man has ever touched me."

  "Is that right?"

  "Schaeffer."

  I looked up. "Yeah?"

  "I'm glad it's you. Touching me, I mean."

  I was struck dumb. She was the most beautiful creature I'd ever encountered in my life, and to say I was smitten would be an understatement. But then again, she would smite any man. Well, maybe not Isra, but anyone else. She had that kind of fragile beauty, almost vulnerability. Yet underneath, it was obvious she was a clever, intelligent young woman, a young woman with a core of steel. I cautioned myself to take it easy. We were in the middle of hostile territory, and it was hardly the time to fall for a beautiful girl.

  "It's just a medical thing," I shrugged off her comments.

  She said nothing, and I continued fastening the dressing. I was almost done when I touched her ankle lower down, and she cried out in pain. It was obvious the wound troubled her more than she wanted to admit, and I gave her an ampoule of morphine, which we all carried in the field. It was quick acting, and after a few minutes, she started to go drowsy and then fell asleep.

  "Probably the best thing for her."

  I looked around. Winter was standing nearby, watching. I nodded.

  "I expect she'll be out for a couple of hours. I reckon we need to go over a couple of things. I still don't understand why you helped us out."

  She spread her hands, a gesture of openness. At first I assumed she was about to tell lies, but when I looked at her face, I could see the lines of strain and exhaustion. And it told in her voice. She sounded as if she was at the end of the line.

  "I know we played around at the start, Schaeffer, and I don't apologize for it. I have a job to do, and that's the way I was told to play it. We were in a difficult situation with Ghani Khan. On the one hand, he was supplying us with information on Islamic terrorism, and on the other, he was wanted for murdering American servicemen in Afghanistan. We played along with him at first, and even formed business agreements to get his confidence. But then he went crazy, and bodies started popping up all over the place. Besides, the intelligence angle was always something of a sideline to Turner. He saw the main chance with the drugs business, and he thought with Ghani Khan out of the picture, he could take over the entire region."

  "And you went along with him?"

  "He went to Smith and he okayed the hit. So yeah, I went along with it, but then it went too far."

  "When was that?" I asked her. I was interested to know what motivated her. Maybe I'd been wrong, and the heart beating inside her was a few degrees above absolute freezing. Or maybe I'd been right, and she was lying through her teeth.

 
"It was the point when your unit became a target. Turner persuaded him to agree to the drone strike, and Smith wrote you off as collateral damage."

  "Nice of him."

  A faint smile. "That's the way it goes, I guess. Except you lived."

  "Manuel didn't."

  "No, but that was nothing to do with the missile."

  She was right. I didn't trust her, any more than I'd trust an Arab with a gun in his hand, but I had to concede she'd helped us out. Without her warning, we'd have been crispy critters back in the smoking wreckage of the villa. I nodded to her.

  "You're right. Thanks for the heads up."

  She looked me in the eyes. "Any time, Schaeffer. Any time."

  I didn't acknowledge the offer. Maybe she was a changed person, maybe not, but I wasn't prepared to take the chance, not with her. It would be like jumping out of an aircraft without a parachute. Maybe not quite as dangerous at first, but the end result would be the same.

  I had a lot to think about, and I felt there was more, a lot more. Either she hadn't told me, or she didn't understand, or she was hiding a dagger in her undies, waiting to stick it in my throat.

  I left her and went outside into the yard where I joined Niall. He was looking around, checking for a back way out if things went bad.

  "How is she?"

  I thought he meant Winter at first, and was about to reply something along the lines of two degrees warmer, but still subzero. I comprehended he meant Sabrina.

  "She's sleeping."

  "Best thing. Have you given any thought to our situation here?"

  "It's complicated," I grinned, "Which part did you mean?"

  "The important part. We came here to do a job, and I can't remember a time when we tamely went home and left the job undone. Besides, I have a church that's falling down, and you have a murder rap waiting for you back at Fort Drum. We walk out of here, and we lose everything."

  "What are you suggesting?"

  I asked him that to gain time. I knew what he meant, but I was staggered. The man, the priest, who'd been wracked by conscience, suggesting we should continue on our mission.

  He shrugged. "Just that we finish the job."

  "You mean kill him."

  "Yeah, I guess."

  "Say it, Niall. Spell it out, so I'm not in any doubt. We came here for a lot of reasons, and one of them was to help find justice for Brad. So far, we've got nowhere, and his best friend Manuel is dead. So you tell me exactly what you're saying."

  He looked me in the eye. "I say we hunt him down and kill him. If we pull out now, we get nothing. They won't chase down Brad's killers, you'll get a life sentence for murder, and my church will become a parking lot. Not only that, but Mukhtar gets his way, and our guys in Afghanistan find themselves facing an arsenal of modern weapons. The casualties could run into thousands."

  He'd said about the only thing that could convince me. I couldn't give a shit right then whether I spent the rest of my life in prison or not. And if they wanted to park cars instead of people where the pews were, let them go ahead. I was sorry for Brad, but nothing would bring him back. It was the last part, the Mad Mullah planning a course of action that would destroy so many lives. That, and that alone, was worth dying for. Besides, if I went back empty-handed, a life sentence amounted to the same thing.

  Even so, what he proposed was not going to be easy.

  "You know what it means? He'll be back in Cairo by now, ready for the moment when the battles between the people and the Army tip the country into chaos. Sadat and his pals, helped by Mukhtar, will step in to save the nation, and our guys are fucked."

  "So we need to go to Cairo and finish him before that happens."

  I laughed out loud. "You and me against Christ knows how many of Sadat's soldiers. Why don't we just tie a rock round our necks and jump into the River Nile?"

  "Suicide is a mortal sin," he admonished.

  "Besides, you'd have help," a new voice added to the conversation. Winter.

  "How much did you hear?"

  "Enough to know you'll need me if you're going to have half a chance of succeeding."

  I started to shake my head, and that's when Isra and Sabrina stepped out of the shadows. She was limping, but she looked better after the short rest.

  "Don't forget us," she said, "If there's anything I can do to stop my father doing these things, I want to help."

  "We girls always work best in pairs," Isra added.

  Winter snorted, but I ignored her. Niall was staring at me.

  "Well?"

  I smiled. "Well what?

  "It looks like we have a fireteam. Why don't we go ahead and finish what we came here to do?"

  I could think of a hundred reasons. Give me an hour, and I could think of a hundred more. In the end, I agreed to think about it.

  "I need to get some rest. I'll go upstairs for a couple of hours."

  "I'll stand watch," Niall said immediately.

  I went back up to the abandoned office and sat down on the floor with my back to the wall. In truth, I didn't need sleep. My head was buzzing. Do the job. Don't do the job. Go to Cairo and try to finish Mullah Mukhtar, which would almost certainly mean the deaths of all of us. Niall, Isra, Winter, and worst of all, Sabrina. She was like a fine desert flower, almost a work of art. The idea of her getting killed was unbearable. I already felt bad that she'd been wounded in the fight at the villa. As for myself, I'd ceased caring a long way back, apart from Sabrina. I must have dozed or gone into a stupor. I was that far gone. When I awoke, she was sitting next to me.

  "How do you feel?"

  "I'm good. How's the leg?"

  "It's not so bad. The morphine helped a lot. I came to ask about your decision."

  I guess I'd already made up my mind. I looked at her and felt my heart soften at her gentle beauty.

  "It has to be no. He'll be well guarded, and it would be tantamount to a suicide mission."

  "So you're going back to the US to face a murder charge?"

  "Yes, at least no one else gets hurt."

  "Except those soldiers in Afghanistan. They'll be facing Egyptian armor and heavy guns. Probably fighter aircraft and attack helicopters. Doesn't that worry you?"

  "It worries me, but there are plenty of other people that can deal with your father. I have to look after the here and now."

  She put her hand on mine. "Do you mean me?" I was confused and didn't reply, "I feel close to you, Schaeffer. We've only known each other short time, and yet in that time we've lived as much as some people live in a lifetime. I hoped you felt the same way about me."

  I looked at her, astonished. Sure, to me she was the most amazing girl in the world, and I had no right to expect anything from her. Besides, I was here to kill her father.

  "Sabrina, I…"

  I don't know how it happened. It was like magnetism. We pulled toward each other, and then we were kissing, and I was holding her tight. I didn't want to let her go. Not ever. And she was holding me like she felt the same way. We stayed like that for a long time, maybe a half-hour, just enjoying the touch, the warmth of each other. Finally, her hold slackened, and she pulled away slightly.

  "Schaeffer, I don't want you to worry about me." I went to reply, but she put her finger to my lips, "No, hear me out. You're a soldier, and you have duty, responsibilities, stuff like that. I'm a daughter, the daughter of a man who is evil, evil enough to cause thousands of deaths, maybe tens of thousands, even more. I can't live with myself if I stand by and let it happen, so I'm going to Cairo."

  She meant to kill him. The determination was written in her eyes. I almost laughed; it was so absurd until she said the last bit.

  "He's coming with me."

  "Niall?"

  "Yes, and Isra." I smothered a grin, but then she said the last bit, "Winter's coming, too."

  "You're joking."

  "No, we're all going. It has to be done, and we all have our reasons. I've told you mine. Niall, well, he carries the burden of other people on
his shoulders."

  "He's a priest. That's what they do."

  She nodded.

  "And Isra?" I asked her, "What's in it for him? He doesn't seem a likely candidate."

  "Doesn't he?" Her voice was sharp, "Think about it. He feels he is a girl trapped in a man's body. Rightly or wrongly, that's the way he sees himself. And because of it, he faces a horrific fate if the extremists get their way. You know what they'd do to him."

  I shuddered. "So he wants to fight back?"

  "Yes, he's had enough, like all of us."

  That left only me, and they'd made the decision for me. We were going to Cairo. We'd be the most unlikely bunch of people who'd ever gone to war. I nodded to her.

  "You win. I'll lead you in."

  Niall had one last question for me. "What about General Sadat? I'm not comfortable about including him and his cronies on the target list."

  I shook my head. "I'm with you. Mukhtar, he's a legitimate target and deserves everything he gets. That's justice. The rest of them, that's politics. Way above my pay grade."

  He looked relieved. I looked around my small group. The Hunter Killers were back in business, although this time, it was different. I had a strong suspicion our best tactic would be to make them die laughing.

  "You know if we go on, we'll be up against it," I warned him, "There's one hell of a lot to do, and a long way to go."

  He grinned. "What was it Chairman Mao said? 'A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step'. We'll just be taking one small step."

  "That was Neil Armstrong when he set foot on the moon."

  "That sounds about right."

  Chapter Nine

  We rested through the day in preparation for the drive to Cairo that evening. The distance was about two hundred miles, and Winter maintained she'd be able to source a Mercedes to take us there. I didn't ask who she'd steal it from. It wasn't my business. I wondered whether ripping off and hot wiring Mercedes cars was part of the CIA basic training course, and why Mercedes? Was it some kind of anti-German thing, or just a preference for luxury European cars? That was more likely. The Agency tended to look after its own.

  She left us to find the car, and I had a bad moment when she said she'd go alone. Not so long ago, it was the first sign of the double-cross when she went off on her own, but now things were different. Either she was on the level, which I thought she was, or she was fixing up to get us all killed. In which case, I swore to make certain she took the first bullet. Besides, in the end she didn't go alone.