The Perfect Stranger (LOS SANTOS Cartel Story #2)

by Melissa Jane

  “Suárez, I’m picking up on a small figure, possibly a child,” Zero said more of a mention than a warning. Alamand’s eyes watched me with a curious interest.

  “Close?”

  “On your floor.”

  There was just a hint of it before I reacted. A smile. Wicked and satisfied. The corner of Yusuf’s Alamand’s lips turning up by the slightest degree was enough to have me turning on my booted heel just as a blast rang through the room. Behind me, someone seethed with pain, but I didn’t dare take my eye off the young boy standing in the doorway holding a .48-caliber.

  “Put the gun down,” I cajoled the oldest boy I had previously seen in the courtyard. Despite knowing this situation was not going to end well for anyone, I keep my voice soft and low. “Just put it on the ground.”

  The boy’s narrowed gaze flicked between me and Yusuf, who in his language was encouraging the youngster to continue his assault. I could see in his eyes the warring debate. Perhaps he had been set up to do this in the event of such a situation. Perhaps it was just a case of the apple not falling far from the tree.

  When the kid hesitated, Yusuf became aggressive. “Now,” he bellowed, and that was all the boy needed. He’d been taught his destiny should such an event arise. He was prepared to die. He saw no fear in what the afterlife held. He was told to die with pride, and that’s exactly what was happening as his finger pressed the trigger.

  His small body jolted, taking a hit above the heart but not before he had released two shots of his own.

  The .48-caliber he was holding fell from his tiny hand and clattered to the floor. His body, which had been a mere vessel for his ‘god,’ fell limp on the filthy linoleum. Small child eyes now looked to the roof with a blankness I saw far too often in this game.

  Speckles of blood marred his body on the front, and I winced at the damage that would have been caused by the exit wound.

  He was just a boy.

  But he was one of them. A child terrorist.

  But that didn’t matter.

  I had never killed a child before, and this had quickly become one of the darkest days of my life.

  If they were mad before, they were seething now. The men were a perfect mix of distraught and manic. Not the combination Jase and I needed to get the fuck out of the hell-hole.

  Turning my attention back to the target, I was happy to see Jase had his knee between the shoulder blades of our captive who clawed and bucked in an attempt to free himself.

  He swore in Arabic, spittle flying from his mouth. He was grieving for the boy and I didn’t blame him. The words of hatred he spewed over the loss only enhanced my guilt. And then I saw Jase’s arm. While he held his rifle loosely with his right hand, a steady stream of blood trickled out the cuff of his sleeve landing on his target’s pristine white thawb. One of the bullets from the boy had hit Jase in the shoulder, the other missing his head by less than an inch, securing itself in the wall behind.

  “You good?”

  With a small nod, Jase used his injured arm to handcuff both men. With them now upright, I hooked back into Zero. “Zero, you in?

  “I’m here.”

  “What happened to Garner?” Garner was our man monitoring the front.

  “That I don’t know. He’s not answering and he isn’t at his post.”

  “Fuck!” I muttered under my breath.

  This was supposed to be an easy mission. It was a simple in and out.

  No disappearances. No children. No unnecessary gunfire.

  “Extract the targets, Suárez,” Zero’s voice brought me back to reality.

  Assisting Jase, I took hold of the cuffs attached to Yusuf Alamand and hooked my rifle over my shoulder. Pulling my Glock free, I positioned it between his shoulders and urged him forward. Stepping over the child’s body, the man simply stared down, his face now void of all emotion.

  “Your son?” I asked, hiding my guilt behind stoicism.

  His eyes flicked to mine quickly before resting on the lifeless figure once more.

  “Yes.”

  The four of us, two trained tac-force snipers, and two trained terrorists stood in silence contemplating the notion of one of us, me, having killed someone so young.

  “You killed a good boy,” he started, his accent thick. He wasn’t taunting. Not in the sense that I expected, but in one that chilled me to the bone. “I had trained him well.”

  We held each other’s stare. A mutual hatred passing between us. His a promise that there was more to come, mine a promise that we would continue the fight until their cause and victories were nothing more than a myth, a fable of the most distorted kind.

  “Move.” I pushed Yusuf forward out into the stench-ridden hall.

  “Suárez,” Zero’s voice came through. “Still no contact from Garner. There’s movement within rooms both sides. Enemy targets unknown. Exercise extreme caution now Alamand is visible.”

  Positioning him in front, he would act as my human shield if Zero’s fears were to become a reality.

  We made it down to the first floor without any interaction from other residents. We moved stealth like and in silence but still something didn’t feel right. One of our men was down. MIA.

  Garner was new. I didn’t know him, but for him to just disappear entailed something far more sinister. He had served eleven years as SAS and was well versed in this sort of play.

  “Careful on your right,” Zero warned, and I turned our bodies toward the apartment office. The door was closed, so I urged us toward the exit keeping my eye trained on the handle. Almost at the threshold, the door flung open, and two men engrossed in conversation made to leave, their attention not focused on what and who was in front of them. They were almost identical both in looks and dress.

  Fighting against my hold, Yusuf Alamand bellowed a warning. Moments later the room exploded in a chaos of Arabic voices. Digging the Glock muzzle between his shoulder blades, my other hand tightening the hold of the cuffs, I jerked his arms high behind his back until he shut up and winced in pain.

  “Engage only when engaged,” Zero said, his uncertainty of the situation making me doubt my own judgment. There was no negotiating with a terrorist on any account. There was no backing down. Words would only fall on deaf ears.

  The first man out the door raised his hands in the air, eyes wide as he continued his surprised rant. The second man remained close behind his friend, and in comparison was deathly quiet and studied the scene unfolding through slit-like eyes.

  “Get back inside,” I ordered. My voice was calm and steady, an order that carried a promise he wouldn’t want me to deliver on.

  The first man began to back up, his attention darting around the room.

  “Get out of here, Jase,” I ordered to my partner without even glancing over my shoulder.

  If there was a response, I didn’t hear it. Not over the fire of an automatic Kalashnikov rifle coming from the threshold of the office. Pulling Yusuf closer, he acted as my shield while we moved out of the firing line. The glass windows behind me shattered as the bullets peppered a trail my way. It was the second man, the quiet one with the slit-like eyes. He had instantly become my new target as he pushed his friend out the way, brazen, exposing himself while he took aim. He stood tall and confident in his self-perceived glory, unfazed by impending death, his suicidal cause one that would ‘please’ his god. He looked down the eye of the barrel one last time, keen to miss the man who had no doubt been his mentor.

  “Let him go,” he ordered, his accent thick and husky.

  Yusuf Alamand was breathing heavy, a mumble of prayer filling the otherwise now quiet room.

  “Put the gun down,” I ordered back.

  “You kill me, I don’t care,” the gunman announced, and I could see by the indifference in his eyes that it was true. “We are your own personal cancer. We are among you. We assimilate with you for one reason… to do what a cancer does best. Kill.”

  His finger twitched on the trigger, but before he coul
d press down on it, I pulled my own. A neat bullet hole in the middle of his forehead appeared. The room once again fell silent as things moved in slow motion. The man’s eyes rolled until all I could see were his whites, his finger still on the trigger having lost all strength. His body became unbalanced, and just like someone was folding a piece of paper he collapsed to the ground, the rifle clattering on the tiles next to him.

  The first man who had scurried away to the corner of the room, watched in horror, his legs tucked tightly to his chest, hands used as a shield as if they would protect him from me. There was a genuine fear in his eyes, nothing compared to the confidence of his friend. He wasn’t a target.

  “I just deliver,” he pled, eyes darting to outside. I followed his gaze, and sure enough, there was a delivery truck with a stack of groceries bought from the local Islamic market stacked in milk crates on the sidewalk.

  “Man down in the foyer,” I relayed through to Zero. “Bomb disposal to come through immediately.

  “Confirm that. Preparing to lose visuals. See you soon.”

  Taking the dead man’s rifle, we exited through the obliterated doors. We crossed the dirty courtyard, me pushing Yusuf to pick up speed. Jase had left during the exchange of fire, but I knew he wouldn’t be far. Traveling through the dark tunnel—the sound of puddles beneath our feet the only noise—I brought Yusuf to a grinding stop.

  Mere yards away, four figures remained perfectly still, their silhouettes glimmering under the faint street lamp.

  They were all silent. Three sets of eyes now watched for my reaction. The fourth set saw nothing. Even in the dark shadows of the night, I could see blood still spilling down his slit throat. Garner was slumped in a chair pulled from somewhere. The woman I’d seen earlier on entry carrying shopping bags, the same woman who had feigned shock and innocence, now wore a suicide vest over her burka, the stained knife lying at her feet.

  I swallowed hard knowing my life just got a whole lot harder. Nothing about this mission had gone to plan. When the boss said this was a “quick in and out agency job,” with emphasis on ‘agency,’ I was at fault for being too trusting. I should have known when outsourced to the agency we were left with limited resources. I should have asked questions and raised concerns. But we were Special Forces, it was our job. Our risk assessment was to judge our risk on the fly. Act without fear of being court-marshalled or facing any form of retribution. But we were no longer in the Arabian Desert. We were in the pits of New York City, in peak hour—a soldier with a slit throat, a child lying dead in an explosives-filled room and a woman wearing a suicide vest about to be shot—all while holding the Osama Bin Laden in the making.

  ‘Agency jobs’ could go fuck themselves.

  The woman’s face was hardened, the expression mirroring the man I had killed in the foyer. Jase stood opposite, his eyes debating the logistics of dealing with a heavy explosive item.

  Yusuf and the woman began speaking in a controlled manner to each other, almost as if they were preparing for what was to come.

  Their conversation quickly became heated, Yusuf distracted with keeping his own safety in check while the woman’s thumb twitched on the remote. Using the opportunity, I glanced at Jase who subtly winked.

  Game on.

  My Glock slipped up Yusuf’s back who was too caught in his rant to notice quick enough. I fired over his shoulder and watched as the women jolted from the force, her cheek exploding in a mess of flesh, blood, and bone. It wasn’t a neat kill. I didn’t have time to be precise. There were no screams—her death, instant.

  Yusuf didn’t make a sound. They were so far detached from human relationships that they saw no value in life whatsoever. As the woman fell, Jase catching her in time before she hit the ground, saved the suicide vest from impact. She lay limp, face mutilated, her form added to the body count for a shit day’s work.

  “Well, that was a fucking mess!”

  The boss stroked his perfectly formed mustache in annoyance. We were one team member down, four others killed in total, including a woman and a child.

  I remained seated, leaning back with one ankle hooked over my knee. Jase was the one doing all the talking.

  “You know how they roll. They recruit anyone, anyhow.”

  “That’s beside the fucking point,” the boss yelled, clearly still trying to get a handle on the situation.

  “So what are you sayin’?” Jase rose to the challenge. “You don’t think we tried to keep it as simple as it could have been?”

  “Well, it ended up being far from simple now, didn’t it?” The phone in the office rang causing us all to jump. “What?” he barked, spittle shooting from his mouth. Poor bastard on the other end. Jase and I both watched as Chief Hanson’s face redden. “I don’t know what to fucking say yet, do I? I’m only just hearing about it all now.”

  There was a pause, and I idly drummed my fingers on the leather armrest.

  “Just fucking sort it out! It can’t get any worse than it has already.” The receiver almost split in two when he slammed it back onto the cradle. Behind me, the door clicked open and quickly shut again. A balding man in a loose-fitting suit wandered in dropping a pile of paperwork on Hanson’s desk. He then took a seat opposite, keeping a close eye on the two of us.

  “Gentleman,” the Chief breathed. “You’re very lucky that the only people who actually saw you are now dead. Otherwise—”

  “Whoa!” It was my turn to take the floor. “We simply did the job that was given to us. We asked no questions, and perhaps we should have, but this was not organized by Jase and myself. That was your job. The fact that the area wasn’t cordoned off was a major reason as to why shit went down today.”

  “If we had of cordoned off the area who knows who may have been alerted in the area. That neighborhood is crawling with those named on Government watch lists. There is such a thing as reprisal attacks Antonio, and Yusuf was not just a cell leader but an informant with webs everywhere.”

  “Well then, it goes without saying that now his wife and child are dead, we can expect some form of retaliation.” I couldn’t hide the bitterness from my tone. The balding man remained an expressionless picture.

  “Couldn’t you just have non-fatally shot the kid and woman?”

  “Options are slim when one carried a Russian Kalashnikov rifle and shot Jase, while the other wore a suicide vest. Garner’s job was to stop the foot traffic until we made a clear and seamless exit. The fact that he died the way he did tells me we were dumped in a cesspool just waiting for the damn thing to erupt.”

  “Watch it, Suárez,” the Chief warned.

  “We’ve had smoother operations in Iraq than what that was. We should have had back up. Why didn’t Zero have enough sat use to see beyond the target building? Why did we not have snipers up in the windows watching for the ground floor threat? How was a child able to wander the building carrying a rifle? Answer me that, and then see who wears the blame.”

  The Chief pursed his lips tightly together, eyes lost in contemplation. “You’re right,” he finally admitted. “This was not a case the government agency wanted to announce to the world. The last thing we needed was to have the public made aware of such a volatile threat living in the neighborhood. In hindsight, it could have been handled differently. We were lucky the rest of you came out alive.”

  “So where do we go from here?” Jase asked, a little perplexed by the Chief’s about turn.

  “I need you to check in your weapons and surrender your agency badges.”

  “What?”

  “Why?”

  “You just destroyed a cell or at least set them back considerably. The explosives you found would be enough, if strategically planned, to wipe out a quarter of the city.”

  “I’m not surrendering anything.” My refusal caused bald man to raise his eyebrows.

  “You have no choice. As of now, you have a target on your head and I can’t have this being dragged back to us.”

  “Why do I get the f
eeling we’re not hearing the whole story?” Jase asked, skeptical of what we were listening to.

  “Because you’re not,” came the voice belonging to bald man. He eyed me the way he would dog shit on his shoe.

  “And who are you exactly?”

  “You can call me Delacroix. Head of Criminal Fraud.”

  “And what role are you playing in this?” I asked.

  “Not that I owe you any form of explanation, but my team investigates the international financials entering the United States that support the independent cells like the one you brought down today.”

  “How many are you watching?” Jase asked.

  It was a fair question. We had only targeted one, but who knew how many of the smaller cells were out there.

  “A few. Yusuf Alamand was trying to establish himself amongst the independents as their leader.”

  “But that’s just one cell,” I began. “Yes, it could have killed thousands of people. But make no mistake. These independents are strong and powerful because they go largely undetected.

  “I only go for the big fish.” If I wasn’t mistaken, there was a threatening undertone to his statement that made me question his moral obligation to Homeland Security.

  “You played us.”

  “No,” the Chief answered to me. “I was simply using the resources available. You refuse to follow instructions, and you will be court-marshalled.”

  “You just said this was not government issued, so how can we be court-marshalled?”

  “It wasn’t. But I have the luxury of selecting where I send my men as long as I’m acting in accordance to Homeland Security. Now as a way of further protecting National Security, I order you to relinquish your weapons and badges until we’re sure the capture and killings have not been led back to us. And you disappear.”

  “Disappear?”

  “You are now officially on leave anyway, Suárez. Take the time, plus some more, and don’t come back until I get word to you. You are two of our finest men, we aren’t about to lose you.”