Hunter Killer

by Brad Taylor

  They slunk around the hill, staying in the foliage and away from the concrete at the base of the cable car system, gingerly walking through the woods, hearing the marmoset monkeys chattering at them. Through the trees he could see Sugarloaf Mountain towering above him about eight hundred meters away, the cable systems for the cars rising steeply into the air to another landing at the top.

  He gestured to Kolva, then walked down the slope, leaving the hiking trail for the woods. He circled around the concrete and steel of the cable car stop, walking until he was right up against a sheer cliff face of rock, the valley spilling out two hundred meters below him. He looked behind him, wanting to ensure there was no way a stray tourist would find them, then scraped out a shallow cut, satisfied.

  He unspooled a kernmantle rope from his pack and anchored it to the trunk of a tree, saying, “Break out the security weapon.”

  Kolva did so, setting another H&K system like he’d used in Salvador on its bipod, this one colored coyote brown instead of black. He said, “Now what?”

  Alek threw the rope over the side and tested the anchor, making sure their escape route was good. Satisfied, he said, “Now, we wait. And pray that whoever placed the explosives on the car knew what he was doing.”

  Chapter 72

  Everyone in the room looked at Jennifer like she was carrying the Holy Grail. She held the phone out to me expectantly. I took it, still looking at her, and said, “Hey, sir, we’re talking about coming home.”

  He said, “Home? Forget about that. I have a mission for you. The Russians are about to kill the lead presidential candidate in Brazil.”

  Clearly agitated, his words came out so fast I had trouble assimilating them. I said, “Sir? Say again?”

  He said, “Pike, we don’t have a lot of time. Pedro Cardosa, the guy leading in the polls, is going up to Sugarloaf for a campaign stop. He’s going to be there in the next five hours. The Russians are going to kill him. You’re going to stop it.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “From your implants in Manaus. They’re holed up at some house with a hostage. We don’t know where that is, but they’re going to kill her, too. We can’t stop both, but we can stop the assassination of the candidate.”

  “What are they attempting to do? What’s their end state?”

  “They’re conducting something called Operation Harvest. We don’t know the scope, but the analysis is they’re trying to get a foothold in South America. Venezuela is falling apart, and they want to spread from there. The CIA says they’re messing with Brazil’s election just like they did with ours, only using WhatsApp instead of Facebook and Twitter. They have a preferred candidate, but he’s miles behind.”

  “Why Brazil?”

  “It’s a tit for tat. They want to get into our near abroad because of what we’re doing in their near abroad. They don’t like all the new NATO countries. Shit, they just tried to conduct a coup in Montenegro for this same reason. And they’re going to succeed if they eliminate that candidate.”

  I looked at the team, all of them hearing one-half of the conversation, and said, “So my little vengeance mission just became a national security threat?”

  I heard him sigh, and then, “Yeah. You want an apology, or do you want to start operating?”

  “What do you want us to do?”

  “Get up to Sugarloaf. You know the Russians on sight, right?”

  “Well, yeah, we know some of them. But we don’t know how many are down here.”

  “Pike, I can’t tell you what to do. I can only tell you that you’re sanctioned. I’ve been authorized to pull in anyone you need for reachback. Anything that I can give, you have.”

  “The Oversight Council agreed to that? Based on a single intercept? What happened to the news stories on conspiracy sites? If we miss, this is going to be a big posting. The Russians will eat us alive.”

  “The Oversight Council doesn’t know. They will soon, but right now this is between us and POTUS.”

  “Hannister agreed to this?”

  “Yes. It’s growing legs. The CIA is on it now, and they’re finding threads tied to that Carwash scandal and the Lulu oil fields. Petrobras has had some strange deaths lately. You were right all along. It’s not vengeance. It’s real. And you found it.”

  As comforting as those words were, they still didn’t help me to solve the mission. I said, “Do you have anything at all about what they have planned? Anything I can use as an anchor? I mean, I can’t just wander around at a campaign rally like Clint Eastwood from In the Line of Fire. I need something. Is it a sniper? An IED? What?”

  “All we know is that they have a safe house with someone called the ‘ombudsman.’ They’re going to murder that person when it’s through, but we don’t know where that is. We only have the anchor of Sugarloaf.”

  “Ombudsman? From Petrobras? She’s dead. They already killed her on the ferry.”

  I saw Knuckles perk up and raised a hand. I heard, “The person on the ferry with Knuckles was the Petrobras ombudsman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that makes one more strange death. Look, we don’t know who the ombudsman is that they have, but the candidate is the target. That’s your focus.”

  Knuckles was practically jumping up and down. I waved my hand at him and said, “Okay, sir. We’re on it. But I expect the support you promised. With this little information, it’s going to be messy, and I’m not hanging my ass out here just because some Russians want to kill a Brazilian.”

  “You have it. Give me some Pike magic. Like you did with Kurt.”

  “Will do, sir, but you need to prepare for the magic. Because it’s probably going to be black.”

  I hung up the phone and Knuckles said, “What was that about Willow?”

  “We have nothing on Willow. There’s a target being held labeled as the ‘ombudsman.’ It’s a safe house for the Russian control. That’s all we know.”

  He locked eyes with me and said, “She’s not dead.”

  I ignored him, saying to the room, “We have an anchor of Sugarloaf Mountain. The Russians are going to kill the next president of Brazil. We’re going to prevent it.”

  Knuckles pulled a card from his pocket and said, “I have the bed down. This is her house.”

  I said, “Knuckles, we have a mission. We’re going to Sugarloaf.”

  He held the card out, the silence growing. When I didn’t take it, he put it in his shirt pocket and said, “You’re going without me. She’s an American citizen. I give a fuck about some politician. I’m going to the house.”

  “You don’t even know if it’s the right target. We have a mission. The Taskforce is back.”

  He said, “I have a mission. It’s not like you said before. This is no longer vengeance. It’s not revenge. It’s a rescue.”

  Shoshana stepped forward, saying, “He’s correct. We have a choice. One is a politician we don’t even know. Another is a person who risked her life to save Knuckles. I do not care about the politician, or the political implications. I do care about family. She has earned the right to be saved.”

  Exasperated, I said, “I don’t have sanction for the woman. I have sanction for the politician. How do you think this is going to play out if I got ordered to save the next president of Brazil, and I chose to save an unknown American citizen? I hear you. I really do, but we have a single team.”

  Completely out of character, Brett said, “I’m with Shoshana and Knuckles. Those fucks on the Oversight Council did nothing to help us. They would have left me on the ferry to die because of politics, and now we’re supposed to save a guy because of politics? We have a woman who saved our lives. Saved my life. I’m going with Knuckles.”

  And I remembered he had been on the ferry. That left Aaron. I said, “And your vote?”

  He held his hands up and said, “Don’t enter me into this. I will do what I’m asked, but if you ask now, Shoshana is right. In Israel, the soldier is the one you save. The ombudsman is a so
ldier. And she deserves to be saved.”

  I felt like I was losing control. I turned from him to Jennifer. “What’s your vote?”

  She paced around in a tight circle, and everyone in the room knew I was asking her to side with me when she clearly didn’t want to.

  She stopped pacing and said, “My vote is for both. Do them both.”

  Wanting a way out, I said, “How?”

  She said, “We don’t even know what’s going on at Sugarloaf. We do know the address of the ombudsman. Let Shoshana and me go explore Sugarloaf on a recce. You guys take down the house.”

  Her words sank in, and, unbidden, I felt a revulsion about letting her go alone. I realized I didn’t want to put her in danger again. In that moment, I learned that I was afraid of losing her. Again. I said, “No. That’s not going to happen.”

  Shoshana floated her eyes over me, reading my intent, and, alone in the room, understood why I’d said that. She came to me and said, “Don’t make a decision based on emotion. Make it based on the mission.”

  She held my eyes, then said, “I won’t let her die.”

  She meant it, like she had some preternatural control over life and death. And I believed her. It was enough. I said, “Okay, Knuckles. You have a four-man team. Let’s figure out how we’re going to crack this nut.”

  Surprised at how quickly I’d changed my mind, he said, “You going to call Wolffe about that decision?”

  I said, “What the fuck for? No matter what he says, it won’t alter my decision.”

  My words told him I was all in. He was my second in command. My family, and I was going to protect the family.

  He pulled the card out of his pocket and held it up. Brett snatched it out of his hand, booting up a computer, and like an anthill had been kicked over, everyone began working, with Shoshana, Jennifer, and the rest of the team researching their prospective missions.

  A wolf grin slipped out and Knuckles said, “Looks like we’re back.”

  Chapter 73

  Jennifer arrived at the cable car entrance that took tourists to the top of Sugarloaf and saw they had a problem. They weren’t letting any cars go up. She asked a man at the gate what was happening, and he said, “It’s full up top. We can’t let any more people in. You should have arrived earlier.”

  A backpacker behind her, a blond guy with a two-day growth of beard, muttered, “That’s bullshit.”

  She ignored him, asking the man behind the window, “What time is the rally?”

  He looked at his watch and said, “Three hours.”

  “And it’s already full?”

  He smiled, saying, “Yes. People came very early.”

  She left the window, saying to Shoshana, “What are we going to do now?”

  Shoshana pointed at a policeman on the street and said, “I know what Pike told you, but maybe we should rethink not telling the police.”

  “No. I agree with Pike after the BOPE thing in Salvador. The Russians have a long reach, and we don’t know who to trust.”

  The backpacker came up to them, saw the rucksacks the two women carried, and assumed they were fellow global travelers. He said, “That’s a crock. I don’t care about the rally, I just wanted to go to the top. If they’d have said something on the website about the cars being stopped, I would have prepped to climb it.”

  Shoshana said, “Climb it? There’s a trail up to the top?”

  “Yes, but it’s a little hairy. You need ropes or risk a pretty big fall.”

  Jennifer said, “Where is it?”

  He pointed to a road that ran parallel to the beach, then disappeared into the forest at the base of the mountain, saying, “It starts over there, but I’m telling you getting to the top of Sugarloaf isn’t a beginner trail. You’d be better off walking up to the top of Morro da Urca. That’s more of a day hike.”

  Jennifer’s eyes followed where he pointed, thinking about what he’d said. He continued, saying, “Or we can just call it a day and go get a beer?”

  Shoshana saw the look on her face and knew what was going through Jennifer’s head. She watched Jennifer pull out her phone, searching the internet. She told the backpacker, “Thanks for the invitation, but we’ve already got plans.”

  He started to say something else, and she settled her gaze on him, a disquieting stare that caused him to rethink wanting to have anything to do with her.

  She took Jennifer by the elbow and walked out of earshot, saying, “You’re thinking of climbing that damn thing, aren’t you?”

  “Well, yeah. I just found a bunch of tour guides on the web that’ll take amateurs up to the top. They say no climbing experience necessary. It can’t be that big of a deal.”

  “Jennifer, take a look at what you’re talking about.”

  Before them were two peaks, both looking like a giant had made a sand castle from a bucket on the beach, the mountains rising straight up out of the ground. The first, Morro da Urca, was about seven hundred feet tall; the second, Pão de Açúcar, rose thirteen hundred feet above the ocean, looking almost vertical the entire way. Connecting them and landing back to earth behind Jennifer were the cables for the gondola.

  Jennifer held up her phone, saying, “Here’s a picture of a twelve-year-old going up. Come on.”

  Shoshana said, “She’s wearing a climbing harness and a helmet.”

  “She’s twelve.”

  “We have backpacks full of equipment.”

  “She’s twelve. I’m going up.”

  Jennifer started walking toward the edge of the forest. Shoshana shook her head, but followed. The road ended at a concrete pillar, a sign in Portuguese and English proclaiming danger beyond. Jennifer could see a worn path snaking upward.

  She took it, and for the first thirty minutes, the route was fairly easy. It was steep, and there were a couple of rock faces they had to traverse on their hands and knees, but it wasn’t like they were going up Everest.

  Standing back upright after scuttling across a face of bare stone, she said, “I told you this wouldn’t be that hard.”

  The trail rounded a bend and dead-ended into a rock wall, the stone rising almost vertical for twenty meters. Shoshana took one look at it and said, “Yeah, not hard at all.”

  In the center of the rock was a cut about two feet wide that ran the length of the face, like someone had taken a rake to the stone when it was still molten, leaving a jumble of handgrips and footholds. Jennifer spied anchor bolts alongside of it and said, “That’s the way up.”

  Shoshana said, “Are you serious?” She looked behind her, seeing the rocks of the beach far below. She said, “We slip on that, and it’s a long, long way to the bottom.”

  Jennifer put her hands in the cut, tested the stone, and rose up four feet, saying, “Then don’t slip.”

  She began climbing and reached a shelf halfway up. She sat down and looked below her, seeing Shoshana standing where she’d left her. She said, “What are you doing?”

  Shoshana said, “I’m afraid of very little, but this is apparently one of those things.”

  Jennifer laughed and said, “It just looks bad. It’s really not that hard.”

  Shoshana muttered something and began climbing. In ten minutes, she reached the shelf, sweat running down her face. Jennifer pointed up to the last bit of cliff face, saying, “This one’s a little steeper.”

  She stood and began scrambling up the cut again. Shoshana muttered, “Great. Just what I wanted to hear,” and followed. She had one harrowing moment when her foot slipped, leaving her dangling by her hands, gripping the rock face like a vise.

  She found her footing, and after twelve more minutes rolled over the top, her breath coming in gasps. Jennifer held out her hand and she took it, saying, “There will be payback for this.”

  Jennifer grinned and pointed behind her, saying, “We’re back on the trail, and I can see the top through the trees. We’re almost there.”

  They scrambled upward, using tree branches and bushes to pull themselve
s along the path. After a few more minutes of climbing, the trail ended at a bricked overlook, the back lined with benches. Behind the overlook was a concrete path zigzagging up the side of the mountain to the top.

  Jennifer stood on it and gazed outward, saying, “Look at that view.”

  Shoshana looked at her watch instead, saying, “I don’t give a shit about the view. We’re running out of time.”

  Jennifer turned to the path, saying, “You’re just aggravated that you’ll have your callsign changed from Carrie to some sort of gorilla, like me.”

  Shoshana said, “I told Pike I wouldn’t let you die, but that meant from someone else’s hand, not your own.”

  They walked up the concrete sidewalk, going left, then right, roping back and forth on the mountain crest, and eventually heard the buzz of a crowd. They reached the top, the path ending at a restaurant, the outdoor balcony jammed with people. Jennifer threaded through them, reaching a small amphitheater next to the cable car station, seeing hundreds milling about, all waiting on the arrival of the presidential candidate.

  The sheer scope of the problem overwhelmed her. She said, “We’re never going to find a Russian in this crowd. He could be anywhere.”

  Shoshana surveyed the mob, then turned back, her face granite, the dark angel seeking a release. She said, “He’s here. I can feel it.”

  Chapter 74

  We boarded the small Yamaha jet boat before the rental process was even complete, throwing our kit onto the floor. The rental agent looked at us with concern, and I waited on Knuckles to finish proving he was able to operate it. I said, “Last time I was in a boat with Knuckles, he couldn’t drive it.”

  Brett started sorting out his bag, saying, “Well, the guy’s not giving us a driving test. All he wants is a captain’s license. And Knuckles is the only one with that.”

  I said, “I’m pretty sure he Photoshopped that thing.”

  Aaron laughed and said, “Whatever it takes.”

  Knuckles boarded and said, “We need to go, before he runs my license through some system.”