by Brad Taylor
The host cut him off. “Who is upstairs in the bedroom?”
“My date. We ate at a hole-in-the-wall in George Town, and I think some of the conch was bad. She’s been on the toilet most of the afternoon.”
The host nodded and said, “Would you mind showing me your invitation?”
Knuckles said, “Sure, sure,” then made a show of searching the pockets of his tuxedo. He came up empty, extended his hands, and said, “I don’t know. Maybe I left it with the man out front.”
The host flicked his head at one of the guards, and he disappeared. The host said, “Let’s go check on your date. I don’t want any medical emergencies.”
He started up the staircase and Knuckles said, “She’ll be fine. It’s just Montezuma’s revenge.”
The host ignored him. The security man who had come from the top of the stairs held out his hand, telling Knuckles to follow. Knuckles began to climb, keying his radio and saying, “We’re coming up the stairs.”
The host said, “What?”
Knuckles said, “Nothing,” and heard Jennifer grunt, “I’m not there, I’m not there.”
Shit.
They reached the master suite, walked around the bed to the sliding bathroom door. The host put his ear to the door, listening for a second, then knocked, saying, “Miss, miss, are you all right?”
No answer.
Knuckles pretended to be concerned, leaning forward and knocking on the door himself. He said, “Jennifer, is everything okay?”
No answer.
The host pulled the handle, finding it locked. He turned to the security man and said, “Open this. Right now.”
The guard turned and scurried downstairs. Knuckles made a show of banging on the door, acting as if he was about to panic, shouting her name. Creating enough noise to cover her return—if she made it.
The guard came huffing back up the stairs, carrying a small crowbar. He pushed Knuckles out of the way, jammed it in between the crack of the door and the wall. He cranked back hard. The doorjamb split, and the snap of noise spiked Knuckles into the next zone. No longer concerned with the charade, he now went into combat mode, preparing for a controlled dose of violence.
In the split second between the man jamming in the crowbar and the door exploding open, Knuckles sized up the two men, determining positioning and his next actions. He knew he’d have to take out the security guy first but couldn’t become so engaged that the host escaped back downstairs. He had to take them both out before an alarm was raised. Which meant some serious damage to the guy holding the crowbar. There was no time for a nice submission.
The security man pried the crowbar loose, then slammed the door into its sliding well, the wooden protection rolling back with a finality that only Knuckles understood. Knuckles stutter-stepped forward, winding up for a temple strike, and a shriek filled the air.
His arm cocked, the muscles a millisecond away from putting the guard out for the night, Knuckles caught a glimpse of Jennifer and a tangle of clothes.
She screamed, “Get out of here, asshole!”
They all stumbled back, the host looking mortified. Into the damaged doorway, he said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He turned to Knuckles and said, “I apologize profusely.”
Knuckles looked indignant, and Jennifer came through the door, holding her skirt and flashing her eyes.
She said, “What in the world is going on? I can’t use the bathroom without you guys breaking in? Who’s in charge of this damn event?”
The host bowed his head and said, “My sincerest apologies. We thought there was a medical emergency. We thought . . .” He let his comments dribble off, looking to Knuckles for support.
Jennifer glared at the host and said, “Tell that to the next woman you barge in on.” She looked at Knuckles and gave an imperceptible nod, saying, “I’ve had enough of this party. Honey, let’s go.”
She stormed toward the stairs, and the men followed, the host saying, “Please, don’t make a scene. I’m sorry. We only had your best interests at heart.”
They reached the bottom and were met by the security man who’d left previously. He leaned in and whispered to the host. He nodded, his face hardening.
Knuckles took Jennifer’s hand and headed to the stairwell leading to the bottom floor, and to their escape. He heard the host’s voice float above the crowd.
“Wait. Could I have a word before you go?”
12
Knuckles held up, turning around and pulling Jennifer to a stop. The host said, “You aren’t on the invitation list. There is no record of you coming through the front door.”
Knuckles said, “I’ve had about enough of this buffoonery. Doesn’t matter anyway. You got what you wanted. We’re leaving.”
One of the security men circled to the right and the host said, “I’m sorry, not until I know who you are.”
“I told you.”
The host looked at the security man who’d whispered in his ear earlier. The man said, “They do have a website. Based in Tampa, Florida. That checks out, but they sure aren’t on the invitation list.”
The host nodded, then looked at Knuckles. He said, “You can go, but not until we search you for electronics.”
The security man understood what was required before the host could tell him. He spoke into his sleeve.
Knuckles said, “What are you talking about? We had to give all of that up when we came in here.”
“Yes. I’m wondering why you haven’t asked for your cell phones back before you leave.”
Knuckles silently kicked himself and said, “We were searched when we came in, which I’m now regretting. We don’t have any electronics. Come on, my date has a little stomachache and now you want to search us? Fuck you. We’re leaving.”
Even as the words left his mouth, Knuckles knew that it would do no good.
A guard from the front door approached, carrying a wand like those in airports. No way could Knuckles allow that thing to come near them. The conversation had reached a head.
It was time to leave.
He said, “Okay. Fine, fine. Run that thing over us, but after that, we’re out of here.” He turned to Jennifer and said, “You got your Third Lung handy?”
Ignoring the men, Jennifer said, “Yes, but we still need to get down to the first floor.”
“Yeah. I know. That could be a little dicey.”
Jennifer looked to the balcony, the guests moving about, enjoying the breeze and the view. She said, “Not really.”
The host appeared confused at their conversation and Jennifer said, “These shoes are killing me.” She bent down and took them off, holding them in her hand. She looked at Knuckles and said, “Try to keep up.”
The guard with the wand motioned to Knuckles, telling him to hold out his arms.
All eyes focused on Knuckles, Jennifer took off running, exploding straight through the open sliding glass door, their original targets still on the couch, staring like everyone else. Before the men around Knuckles had even realized she was moving, she vaulted over the balcony and disappeared from view. The last Knuckles saw was her Velcro skirt floating away, caught in the ocean breeze.
Holy shit.
He turned to the open mouth of the host and said, “Great party. Gotta go.”
He sprinted through the room, racing through the sliding glass door and following Jennifer over the balcony. His feet finding purchase on the inch shelf of concrete at the bottom of the balcony, his hands still holding the railing, he searched for Jennifer. He saw her scrambling down a pillar, holding her Jimmy Choos in her mouth.
She hit the patio, creating a stir, but she held her ground and looked up. He heard the host shout and saw the two security goons around the pool begin to react.
Jennifer saw it as well and began running to the ocean, threading her way through the crowd.
Knuckles judged the drop, then scrambled until he was hanging from the bottom of the balcony. He took one more look, making sure he wasn’t going to break a leg, and let go. He landed hard and rolled, slamming into a statuesque blonde in a red dress, knocking her drink into the air.
He leapt up, ignoring her shouts, disgusted that he didn’t have a witty James Bond response. He sprinted around the infinity pool, reaching the stairs that led down to the sunbathing decks. Jennifer was right in front of him, skipping down the steps two at a time. A guard was to her front, both arms out wide, as if he was trying to capture a loose animal.
It was the man who’d “discovered” them doing hanky-panky.
Knuckles took the steps in leaping bounds, closing the gap. He saw Jennifer fling her high heels at the man’s head, causing him to raise his arms to block the projectiles. She slid low at that exact moment, taking the guard’s legs out from under him and springing back up. He continued to fight, trying to grab her from the ground. He got one ankle in his grasp, but Knuckles reached the scrum, punching him in the head with a rapid one-two strike, stunning him.
Jennifer jerked her leg free and Knuckles jumped over the body, shouting, “You got your lung?”
She held it up, and he dug into his own pouch at the small of his back, seeing a squad of security racing out of the house, all convinced they had their targets cornered against the ocean.
They reached the lower sunbathing deck and Knuckles ripped off his shoes, then tied his tuxedo jacket around his waist, not wanting to leave it behind for the host to find all of the hidden microphones. He glanced back, seeing the men bounding down the stairs.
He flicked out an eight-foot section of 550 cord, one end already tied to his wrist, the other with a loop for Jennifer. He tossed the end to her, speaking fast. “When we hit the surf, I’m going right, away from the lights. Just keep swimming. You feel the line go taut, swim back into the slack.”
He held out his Third Lung and said, “Remember, we only have about twenty breaths with these things. We go under, and don’t come up. I’m going until we’re out of air. You run out first, give the line a tug.”
The Third Lung was a modified scuba gadget based on the HEED—helicopter emergency egress device—used by aircrews flying over water. A quarter of the size, it had a quarter of the life.
She nodded and Knuckles moved to the cliff edge, Jennifer putting the loop around her left wrist and waiting on his command.
Knuckles looked back, saw the men running down the stairs, now past the first sunbathing deck, and said, “Hope Pike’s watching. Time to go.”
And jumped off the cliff.
They broke the water together, bobbed up long enough to emplace the small mouthpiece of the Third Lung, and Knuckles went under, stroking hard. He swam with fast, deep strokes to get away from the light, hoping to cause their pursuers to see nothing on the surface and wonder what the hell had just happened. The ocean became black, the light from the castle fading away. He kept swimming, one hand extended to his front to prevent him from slamming into a rock, using an internal compass and the experience from a bazillion night dives to dictate where he should go.
Three minutes later, he felt a tug on his line and stopped swimming. He drifted to the surface, breaking the water silently. He saw they were on the western side of the outcropping, nothing but tangled scrub between them and the house, vague shouting drifting over the surf.
Jennifer popped up next to him, just as quietly. She dropped the Lung and gasped, whispering, “Are you a fish? I ran out thirty seconds ago.”
He said, “Why didn’t you tug?”
She said, “I thought for sure you would run out too.”
He chuckled and said, “We keep going west.” He pulled out his phone—an innocuous replica of an iPhone 6 but definitely not original equipment, including the fact that it was waterproof—and initiated an internal beacon.
He said, “Hope Pike’s on the ball.”
Twenty minutes later, now swimming on the surface, the castle far behind them, Knuckles caught a glimpse of movement on the open water. He aimed his phone at the movement and took a picture, causing the camera to flash. The movement swerved his way, and he bobbed, waiting. The Zodiac pulled abreast of them, making no noise, Pike working the motor. He said, “I take it things didn’t go as planned.”
Knuckles tossed his waterproof pouch over the gunwale and said, “The microphones and earbuds are destroyed, but the digital recorder and Octopus are fine. They have no idea what our target was or what we were doing there. As far as I’m concerned, it was mission success.”
Jennifer threw in her own pouch, grabbed the rope anchored to points around the Zodiac, and said, “Not really.”
Knuckles said, “What? You didn’t get the phone data?”
She hoisted herself over the side and said, “Yeah, I got it. But I lost my damn Jimmy Choos.”
13
Murphy’s pub was beginning to fill up with the happy hour crowd, the locals starting to push out the tourists by sheer numbers. Having worked plenty of hours up in Washington, DC, I knew the rhythm of Old Town Alexandria, and had managed to get a table in the back, facing the door. Even though it was a little touristy, I still loved it, and since I was the stationary element for this meeting, I got to pick the location. If it had been up to Knuckles, it would have been at some hipster coffee shop where he could hit on a coed, using his sensitive lines.
We’d been back a week from the Caymans, and for some reason, Kurt Hale wanted a face-to-face meeting. It wasn’t unusual, really, but it didn’t happen that often, especially since I’d left active duty and started working with Jennifer.
We were partners in a company called Grolier Recovery Services, a unique—or, as Jennifer liked to call it, “boutique”—business that specialized in archeological work around the world. We didn’t actually do the digging. We facilitated it by coordinating everything from getting the proper permits from the host nation to providing security on the site. Since we’d formed in 2011, we’d been contracted by everyone from private millionaires who fancied themselves to be Indiana Jones to accredited universities, but by far our primary work was for the US government. As in the Taskforce.
Created with support from Kurt Hale, our true mission was as a cover organization conducting counterterrorism missions around the world. Because it was under deep cover as a functioning, for-profit corporation, we didn’t want to be associated with the umbrella cover of Blaisdell Consulting the Taskforce used over in Clarendon, and thus did these little face-to-face meetings at innocuous places around DC.
Jennifer came over carrying a couple of drinks, sat down, and said, “Quicker service from the bar.” I saw that there wasn’t a lime attached to the glass and said, “Is that just a Coke?”
Indignant, she said, “It’s only four thirty. And we’re on the clock.”
I started to mutter something about Kurt paying for the drinks, when I saw Knuckles come through the door, by himself.
I waved and he walked over, taking a chair. I said, “Where’s Kurt?”
“Held up doing something with personnel. Some sort of crisis. He’ll be here shortly. He told me to go ahead.”
I said, “Okay, then, what’s this all about? I know it’s not that castle mission. Nothing in it that was life-or-death. Unless he’s going to make me pay for the waterlogged electronics.”
He laughed and said, “Well, it’s not the castle mission per se. But it is because of that. Remember Guy George?”
“Yeah, of course. His brother was just KIA, right?”
Guy had served in the same troop as me in a Special Mission Unit on Fort Bragg, before I’d been recruited to the Taskforce by Kurt. We knew each other well enough, and had been in more than one scrape overseas together, back in the bad days of Iraq. Well, back in the US bad days of Iraq. I didn’t think Iraq would see any good days during my lifetim
e.
Guy had come over to the Taskforce a few years after me, along with a SEAL called Decoy. The one Jennifer had seen killed in front of her. They’d done Assessment and Selection together, then he’d gone to Johnny’s team, and Decoy had come to mine. Well, that’s not exactly true. Decoy had gone to my old team. Knuckles, as my second-in-command, had taken over as team leader after I left active duty—under a cloud. Since then, I’d come back and had become team leader again, as a civilian in Grolier Recovery Services.
As Facebook would say, it’s complicated.
Knuckles said, “Yeah. That’s right. Guy’s brother was KIA in Afghanistan working with seventh group. You know the Oversight Council update is tomorrow, right?”
“No. I don’t keep track of that shit. That’s what Kurt gets paid for.”
“Yeah, I’m with you. Well, it was also our biannual monkey show for the Oversight Council, where they anoint some poor fuck with an award. Guy was the chosen one this time for that hit in Croatia. The one that gave us the intel on the vice president’s son.”
“Good for him. Better him than me. What’s that got to do with this meeting?”
“He was adamant about not going to his brother’s memorial in Montana, saying he would wait until the burial at Arlington, so he was good to go for the ceremony. The memorial is either tomorrow or the next day, I can’t remember. Anyway, after our data from the Caymans was fed into the system, he had some meltdown. I don’t know why. Long and the short of it is, he decided he needed to go. Needed a break.”
“So? That’s a good thing. If I were Kurt, I’d have ordered him to leave. Better he’s doing it voluntarily.”
I had a little personal experience on losing someone close to you. Losing blood kin. I too had been ordered to stand down after, and had ignored it until it became a blister of pus, which was the reason I left active duty—and the Taskforce—under a cloud. I was glad Guy was taking the time off.
