Threat Level

by William Christie

  Storey’s target was the side of the man’s face, only about three inches of which were exposed. Thousands of hours and literally hundreds of thousands of rounds fired in the killing house at Fort Bragg didn’t make it easy, but it made it possible. It had made the process part of his instinctive muscle memory, so he did not have to consciously think about it. In the duration of a second his breathing was controlled, the luminous red dot of the sight floated onto the aim point, and his fingertip slapped the trigger twice.

  Storey could tell by the way the body fell back that it was dead, but the additional “double tap” of two more rounds to the chest was standard procedure. Terrorists were not protected by the Geneva Conventions, so everyone was shooting hollow-point ammunition.

  Storey and Silva didn’t let themselves become fixated on the target that was down. They continued their deadly dance through the room, flashlight beams sweeping around overturned furniture. There was one more man in there, but he was no terrorist. A fat middle-aged blond, bare-ass naked, crying in German. No terrorist, but experience had taught Storey to make no assumptions, so he handcuffed the man anyway.

  The woman was a Filipino, also naked, but silent, with eyes widened into two dark tunnels. Silva grabbed her and pulled her down to the floor, telling her she was all right and to stay there.

  Waiting for his partner had held Storey up before moving on to the bathroom. But his flashlight beam was trained on the door, and picked up the dark object sailing out.

  “Grenade!” Storey shouted, dropping flat onto the carpet.

  It was a high-explosive fragmentation, not a stun grenade, and therefore much more powerful. The blast lifted the ceiling of the room right off its flimsy supports. Gravity did the rest, bringing it and the contents of the upstairs room back down on top of everyone.

  Storey’s bell was well and truly rung, but the adrenaline and willpower were both roaring, like with a badly hurt accident victim who still has to be held down. As soon as he tried to move he realized that his right leg was pinned. Wiggling around until his back made contact with something solid, he tried to use his left leg to push away whatever was holding him. It didn’t budge on the first try, but then he put all his power into it. With his abdominal muscles feeling as if they were about to give, wood cracked and moved, and he was able to pull his leg free. With debris over his head, Storey looked around for an open space to pull himself up to. The windows and drapes had been blown out by the explosion, and sunlight was now streaming into the room.

  Storey could hear someone moving around. He hoped it was Silva, but on the chance it wasn’t he stayed silent and pushed himself through a gap in some timbers. Halted midway, he quickly realized that his rifle was pinned under the debris, and the sling was yanking him back like a leash. His fingers found the folding knife clipped to his vest and cut it.

  Big chunks of ceiling were lying on top of the hotel room furniture, which amazingly hadn’t collapsed under the weight. More furniture, from the upstairs room, was lying on top of that, but there were spaces and openings everywhere.

  Storey pulled himself up through one and emerged onto the top of the debris field. And found himself face-to-face with a Filipino crawling over the ceiling pieces, heading for the window, a pistol in his hand.

  At the sight of Storey he stopped and the pistol came around. Storey went for the .45 on his thigh holster, with a gunfighter’s melancholy realization that he was going to be the loser. The pistol was swinging right at his head; he might not even be able to take the bastard with him.

  While his hand moved Storey focused on the two brown eyes, hoping they’d hesitate or freeze. They didn’t even blink. Storey himself was blinking rapidly to fight off the adrenaline that was tunneling his vision. He couldn’t even pop off a last-ditch hip shot—he had to get the pistol up and over all the wood in front of his chest.

  Then, still focused on those eyes, Storey saw the hair on the side of the head puff up. The eyes changed, and with a crack that he first thought was the pistol though he quickly realized it wasn’t, a red mist clouded the air.

  His adversary’s body lurched back and then began spasming violently. Storey recognized the action. Brain shot. The destroyed brain was firing off a few last frantic, incoherent commands to the body.

  Storey looked out through the gaping hole of the window. That shot had to have come from the sniper team across the street. Well, he was buying the drinks.

  Storey climbed atop the debris and tried his radio. Dead; smashed, most likely. He called out, “Ricky, you all right?”

  The room began to fill up with Filipino Special Forces wielding pry bars and dragging in a Jaws of Life. Which was actually standard hostage rescue equipment.

  The German tourist was found under a desk, totally uninjured, though in deep shock. And still pink and naked and handcuffed.

  It took the Jaws of Life and six very strong men to get the beam off Silva’s back. The Filipino whore was underneath him, protected by his body, weeping quietly.

  Silva was conscious, and Storey was right next to his ear as the beam came off. “How you doin’, hombre?”

  “Can’t feel my legs, bro,” Silva replied. The words turned Storey’s stomach to ice. Silva’s eyes turned down to the girl. “But I may just have a hard-on right now.”

  Storey wanted to say a few other things, but what came out was, “We can all step outside if you don’t want to waste that woody.”

  “Nah.” Silva looked down at the girl again. “But make sure you get her phone number for me.”

  Doc Smith, the Delta medic and leader of the team that had covered the rear of the hotel, placed a plastic cervical collar on Silva and secured him to a backboard with straps and inflatable bags. Only then did they lift Silva up, turn him over, and take him off the girl. Doc Smitty started a bag of intravenous fluid and injected drugs to minimize swelling of the spinal cord.

  A chain of operators passed Silva out into the hallway. As they went down the stairs the girl, now wrapped up in a Mylar space blanket, broke away from her protectors and walked along with the backboard, her palm on Silva’s forearm.

  “You think we could get her back home without a visa?” Silva asked Storey. “Maybe I could adopt her or something?”

  “We’ll send for her later,” Storey suggested. “She’ll be a big help with your rehab.”

  As usual with these types of scenes in the Third World, the building quickly filled up with cops of all descriptions and various official and semiofficial rubberneckers. All of whom seemed to have their own press contingent to document their involvement. The Americans pulled their balaclavas up over their faces and hurried to clear the area.

  At the bottom of the stairs Storey ran into the intelligence team, who were carrying a big bag of material they’d gleaned from the hotel rooms. Storey was carrying his mangled rifle in one hand. “Good work, you two,” he said in the calm easy tone that made it even harder to take. “This is one guy.” He held up a single finger. “And this is three.” Three fingers went up. “You step out for a quick blow job and lose count?”

  They made no reply.

  What looked to be the local police chief, who had definitely not been informed of the raid for fear that he’d find someone to sell the information to, was shouting angrily at the Special Action Force commander. What looked to be the hotel owner began shouting at both of them, until a cop gave him a hard “mind your manners” slap on the back of the head.

  There was quite a crowd gathered on the street, and a lot more reporters and photographers. The thunderheads had arrived overhead and it was raining hard, a tropical downpour. The Americans piled into a van with tinted windows. Their prisoner was already inside, a cloth bag over his head.

  The Special Action Force Anti-Terrorist Unit boarded their own vehicles, leaving the scene cleanup to the locals.

  TV crews filmed them all the way to the Subic Bay gate, where they were left behind to argue with the guards.

  The vans followed Argona
ut Highway around to the far side of the bay, to the Subic Bay International Airport. Or what had once been the Cubi Point Naval Air Station.

  Waiting on the tarmac was a U.S. Air Force C-130 transport to take the Special Action Force and their vehicles back to Manila. And two Gulfstream business jets, in air force livery. One to take the prisoner, along with a CIA team, to the interrogation center at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

  Storey collared Doc Smith. “We taking Ricky to Manila?”

  Smith shook his head. “Kadena.”

  “You sure?”

  “Ed, you know Bin Laden could walk into a Manila hospital and shoot him in the head, and no one would even notice. He can make it to Kadena.”

  Storey hoped so, even though he understood the reasons.

  The sniper team, two DevGroup SEALs Storey had never worked with before, were unloading their rifle cases from the van.

  “Great shot,” he told them.

  They both grinned.

  “Who took it?” he asked.

  The younger of the two, black with a baby face that made him look even younger, raised his hand.

  Storey shook it. “Really great fucking shot.”

  “Yeah,” the SEAL replied. “I know.”

  Storey liked that. “If you’re drinking, I’m buying.”

  “Oh, we’re drinking,” the sniper said.

  Before the Filipinos boarded their aircraft, Storey passed among them shaking hands and passing out envelopes. Inside each was a crisp new hundred-dollar bill. The man in his team who’d been hit was all right. His vest had stopped the round, and he was proudly showing off the angry purple bruise. He got two envelopes.

  Inside a nearby parked car the unit commander was receiving a much thicker envelope from the CIA chief of station. An agent in the front seat surreptitiously took a photo of the exchange with his picture phone, just in case the future relationship ran into any snags. It was the way things were done in these parts.

  Storey’s envelopes were because the troops would never see any of that cash. Rank had its privileges. Once they got a peek inside, the operators pressed around Storey, giving him their phone numbers in case he needed them again. He dutifully entered every one into his PDA. You never knew when they might come in handy.

  The rain stopped with tropical abruptness, and the Gulfstream took off for Okinawa. Silva was laid on the cabin deck.

  When Storey emerged from the bathroom, Doc Smith motioned him over to the seat beside him. Storey sat down heavily, with an audible groan.

  “How you feeling?” Smith asked him.

  “Old, Smitty. Really fucking old.”

  “Ed, you’re thirty-four.”

  “Yeah,” Storey said, with feeling. “I sure am.”

  2

  It was just after 9:00 PM on the other side of the world. Roseville, Virginia, to be exact. A suburban development. The kind where all the houses looked the same at night, and anyone unfamiliar with the streets might end up driving in circles for hours.

  Two people walked down the sidewalk, occasionally detouring around a poorly placed lawn sprinkler. One was much shorter than the other. They were wearing dark clothing and hats, possibly baseball caps. And sneakers, because their feet made no sound on the concrete. The only streetlights were at the intersections. Otherwise it was just front door lights and flickering TVs through living room windows.

  The two walkers abruptly disappeared from sight, having turned down a short driveway. There was the sound of a garage door opening. A sound absolutely no one in the suburbs paid any attention to.

  To keep thieves from driving down a street, recording the radio codes of automatic garage door openers, and then simply playing them back whenever they wanted to break in, the door manufacturers used a simple encryption system that changed the code every time the door was opened. But all these systems had one thing in common. A resynchronization mode when the remote and the opener got out of sync. Universal remotes were available that used the resynchronization mode every time.

  The pair disappeared into the darkness of the garage, and the door rumbled closed behind them. Inching their way through was easy enough without turning on a light, since there was a car missing. A faint glow came from a small keypad mounted on the wall next to the door leading into the house.

  Most people enter and leave their homes through the garage, so that was where burglar alarm installers tended to mount the controller.

  Contrary to popular belief, burglars do not use hand-held computers that randomly generate numbers until the alarm PIN is entered. Why go to such trouble when the typical home owners leave their garage door open when they enter their PIN, not knowing they’re being watched through binoculars?

  There were even easier methods, but this had dropped into the pair’s laps the first day they cased the house.

  And instead of the usual technique of prying the door open with a crowbar, the shorter one produced an electric lock pick that looked just like a small battery-operated screwdriver. The pick and tension wrench were inserted into the keyhole of the very fine Yale dead bolt lock. The unit was turned on briefly, and it vibrated the pick needle like an electric toothbrush. This struck all the lock pins at the same time, causing them to jump into the air and become aligned. The split second that happened, a twist of the wrist turned the tension wrench and opened the lock.

  As soon as the pick gun had been turned on, there was a pounding of feet on stairs, fast-moving nails clicking on hardwood floor, and the wild, deep-throated barking of a very large dog on the other side of the door.

  The pair seemed neither surprised nor concerned. The tall one got a good grip high up on the door. He opened it quickly. The broad snarling head of a rottweiler lunged through. The door was pulled shut, hard, catching the dog’s neck between the door and the door frame like a cow in a chute. Even such a powerful animal could gain no leverage that would allow it to escape.

  The typical burglar would have hit the dog on the head with a hammer, but this pair was more benevolent. The short one produced a syringe pole, removing the plastic cap from the needle end. Around forty dollars from any Internet veterinary supply firm, the pole was basically a sixteen-inch stick with a disposable hypodermic syringe on one end. The pressure of the pole being jabbed into the animal’s front shoulder injected the drug. In this case two milligrams of Butorphanol, a synthetic opiate used to sedate both pets and people. In less than two minutes the dog was immobilized but not totally unconscious.

  The two stepped cautiously into the house. Both of them together couldn’t carry nearly two hundred pounds of deadweight very far, so they dragged the animal through the hardwood-floored entryway and into the kitchen, where there were no carpets to produce unneeded drag. They left the dog there, its eyes fluttering at half-mast and its stomach heaving up and down at every breath.

  Then they got to work. No lights were turned on. The tall one went upstairs. The short one passed by the TV and stereo without a glance. The computer was in a small study off the living room. The shorter intruder sat down in front of it. A tiny flashlight with a blue lens held between the teeth provided sufficient light. Blue rather than white preserved night vision.

  Paper clips were set down to mark the exact position of the computer keyboard on the desk before the unit was turned over and the screws removed with an actual battery-powered screwdriver. A great deal of care was taken to keep the small screws together. Then a box the size of a man’s thumb was inserted into the keyboard housing, a plastic clip snapping it onto the outgoing cable. The unit was screwed back together.

  The keyboard was returned to its original location, and the paper clips pocketed.

  Next a sheet of plastic was spread on the floor to catch any debris, and the louvered grate unscrewed from one of the central air ducts in the ceiling. Double-sided tape attached a black plastic box slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes to the metal side of the ductwork, far enough back to be out of immediate sight. The grate was screwed back into p
osition. Then plastic objects roughly the size of thick dimes were carefully salted throughout the room. Mainly inside the upholstered furniture.

  Working deep within the guts of an overturned armchair, the short intruder suddenly stopped and straightened up, pressing a finger to one ear. A voice crackled through the walkie-talkie earphone, “Get out. Get out.”

  The tall one came flying down the stairs, but both were halted by another radio call, “Coming down the street. Get out fast.”

  It was too late to exit through the garage. The tall one seemed to waver, but the short one pointed toward the kitchen, mimicking the plunging action of a hypodermic.

  The tall one followed the instructions. In the kitchen the dozing rottweiler was injected with 1.5 milligrams of Narcan, a drug used to treat overdoses. It quickly reversed the narcotic effect of opiates.

  The short one dashed for the garage entry, opening the door, reactivating the alarm, and ducking back into the house. The door was shut just as the garage door began to open.

  A cool and careful walk through the living room to make sure everything was back in its original position, then to the kitchen. Every alarm system had a delay before it armed, and with a big dog roaming the house there wouldn’t be motion sensors in the rooms. Only the doors and windows would be wired.

  The pair stood still as statues in the kitchen. The rottweiler was shaking its head groggily, beginning to regain consciousness.

  The garage door closed, and the dog was trying to get up.

  More time passed, marked by the ticking of the kitchen clock and low growling from the dog.

  The dog suddenly sat up on its front legs, head rolling about as if unable to focus. The tall intruder brandished a can of pepper spray that the short one immediately pushed away.