by Chris Lowry
Or try.
One look at his eyes made him wonder if the man didn't already have a plan to kill them all.
A Marine told him that once. Have a handshake, a smile and a plan to kill everyone in the room.
He grinned, but it was sick gallows humor. Brill was no Marine, of that he was sure. But he did have military training, following the sync of the unit.
He was something more though, and Washington shuddered for a moment.
The memory of the man's dead shark eyes watching the LT as he tried to yell in a whisper.
Washington dragged him away with an info request on how to deploy the unit for observation and heading off any potential disasters.
LT assigned the Spook man to his hole just to get even.
“What do you see?” Brill asked from next to him.
“I don't see a platoon of Nigerians,” Washington whispered as he peered through the lens of a pair of binoculars.
“Mid-day,” said Brill. “I haven't gone up against Islamists before, but don't they pray?”
“Mission brief says they do,” Washington took a sip of water from his Camelback pack. “I haven't seen many pray though. Fornicate small boys and goats, lie, cheat, drink, kidnap girls into slavery, sure, but pray?”
“Been here before?”
“Not this sandbox, but one just like it. I wish there was a way to tell a good Muslim from an Islamist,” Washington blew out his breath.
“One of the guys in my old unit was a Muslim. Best guy I knew. Fucking Islamist blew him up in Afghanistan. Guy was dressed like a goat herder, had a wife and two kids with him when he detonated the bomb. How do you fight that shit?”
It was a question Brill couldn't answer and the CO didn't expect one.
When the enemy dressed like civilians and hid among civilians, it made traditional warfare outmoded.
Which is where Brill and guys like him came in.
He wasn't part of the military command structure and could operate outside the boundaries of the Geneva Convention.
His only role was to capture or to kill, with very little deviation from that mission.
Even here, as the SEALS were tasked to capture an Islamic fundamentalist for interrogation, Brill's job was to go a little bit further inland and eliminate a scientist.
No questions, no intelligence, just a simple kill order.
Something he was good at.
SEVEN
Dusk moved quickly in from the East.
The sky shifted from pink to purple to black with a swiftness that took a little getting used to. There were no city lights to fight back the night sky, and the milky way stretched across the horizon in an explosion of a million stars.
Brill took a moment to appreciate it.
Most of his time had been under a jungle canopy, with the stars blotted out by plant life, or clouds or mist.
The desert air was clear of all obstruction, except for dust particles that made the sunset a riot of colors to put a rainbow to shame, and now a sky full of stars that must have looked much the same a thousand years ago when nomads wandered the sands.
The LT called the squad together and outlined the plan.
Their day of observation had yielded little more than a sleepy village with no sign of militia or military.
They were going to go in at 3:00 a.m., that time of morning when the body is designed to hit REM.
Abu Aish was reported to be in the University in the city.
Even though the men had pictured brick walls and lush grounds, their experience was based on American and European Universities.
In Sokoto, it was two buildings, single story structures behind a wrought iron decorative fence. The grounds were sand covered dirt, with sand covered paths that led from a central courtyard.
One of the buildings was a dormitory, one was full of classrooms.
There was a light on in the classroom building, and IR indicated three bodies in prone positions in the room.
Sleeping men and their heat signatures.
The plan was to move in quick, grab the three and extradite them to a secure location to await pick up from the Red Cross plane.
Brill listened as the plan was laid out.
He knew, just as these men did, that no plan survived contact with the enemy.
The LT was well trained though and spent time going over contingencies with his men.
“What's the Spook's role?” asked one of them.
The LT turned to ask Brill what he was going to do while they grabbed the terrorist, but he was gone.
EIGHT
Slipping away from the SEALS in the dark wasn't easy.
If they pointed their IR goggles in his direction, they would see him jogging away at a steady seven-minute mile.
He could keep up the pace for two hours or so, plenty of time for him to reach his intended target.
He didn't know what it was about Islamists, but they liked to hide out in Universities.
Abu Aish used the students as cover, perhaps, or maybe he was looking for idealistic educated youth to convert to his cause.
No matter the reason while the SEAL team was taking him down at one location, Brill planned to be at a second University fifteen miles North.
“Your target is a Nigerian scientist,” he was told. “The man is giving chemicals and biologicals to terrorists.”
They gave him the name, description, apartment number on campus, and routine.
He memorized it all so if he was caught, he wouldn't have intelligence on him.
He didn't plan on getting caught.
He settled into the run, the steady pace scrunching into the sand as he knocked out the miles under the desert night.
He wouldn't have made it in the daytime.
He was used to heat training, three or four sauna sessions per week helped not only with recovery, but with some physiological benefits he couldn't explain.
Something to do with increased blood plasma density, which helped with recovery and oxygen delivery during exertion.
Maybe he'd ask the scientist about it before he killed him, he grimaced a wolfish grin as he ran.
Brill had no illusions about who he was.
He was a killer.
Ever since he was kidnapped in Africa and lost the love of his young life, he felt like a dead man walking, a ghost.
Ghosts had nothing to fear, not even death, and so he delivered it with great efficiency. He found his way into the South African Defense Force and became a Recce until his Platoon was ambushed.
It was sheer luck that saved his life, though he was counted among the dead.
He walked out of the jungle and into a band of vagabond surfers, living the dirtbag life out of their vans, chasing waves and drinking beer.
He spent months with them, learning to surf and meditate, adding yoga to his fitness mix and expanding his running resume.
He also did some investigation into his platoon, and connections that wanted to keep something in the jungle secret.
He was on the verge of discovering who orchestrated the ambush when he was rendered back to America to work for Barraque and Senator Shelby Johnson who wanted to develop his special skill set as a weapon to be deployed against enemies, foreign and domestic, both corporate and government.
If his scientist was supplying terrorists with biologicals and chemical weapons, why weren't the SEALS tasked with stopping him, Brill wondered.
The fifteen miles disappeared under his feet and he came to the edge of another small village. It was wind swept and sand blown, brown buildings baked to a dull sand colored tone from years under the desert sun.
Brill didn't need to dig in and observe.
The scientist lived on the third floor of an apartment building in the middle of a jam packed residential street.
There was no crowd now, but it seemed that all the residents lived in three story structures jammed side by side overlooking the narrow byway.
As Brill moved along the street, he saw wh
y.
There was a well in the middle of a courtyard between two buildings, probably the only source of water for miles around.
He walked up to the well and filled the bladder in his backpack, dropped in two iodine tablets to kill off most of the parasites.
He would be going back under the morning sun, which would increase his sweat rate.
Already he could tell he was getting low, so he sucked down the bladder full of water and refilled it again.
Dehydration was one of those things most people didn't talk about, but marketers in America had everyone convinced it was epidemic.
Ninety nine percent of the people were never going to have a problem, but Brill learned that the jungle sucked the moisture right out of you.
The desert was worse, even at night.
The brain was surrounded by a sack of fluid, which shrank when the body was low on water. It could impact thinking and critical motor skills at the wrong moment.
Better to keep hydrated when he had the chance.
The scientist was on the third floor of the middle building. It was a secure location, and it made getting to him difficult.
Not impossible, but Brill liked to play the odds, which were never in his favor.
In a street this crowded, the odds were against him that he would run into someone.
In a crowded building, the apartment would have residents on either side, and even though advance intel told him the scientist lived alone, Brill knew that it was fifty/fifty he had someone in the studio with him.
The odds were always fifty/fifty.
Either he would run across someone on his way up or he wouldn't. Either the neighbors would be fighting insomnia and hear him work, or they wouldn't.
Either scientist was by himself or he was with someone. It was always a coin toss, and every coin toss, no matter how many times you flipped it, had an equal chance of coming up head or tails.
Since he knew the odds, he marched over to the building with the same confidence he displayed on the pier. No one hardly ever bothered a confident man. They just assumed he knew what he was doing.
The door to the stairwell was locked with a simple latch.
He flicked open a six inch lock blade and shimmied the bar open. The door hinges squeaked as he slid it in.
Brill pulled the silenced pistol he carried from the pouch at his back and took to the stairs.
He used the edge of the wood to minimize creaking, but the age, the dry wood and rusty nails conspired against him.
He didn't want to sound like a man sneaking up the stairs, so instead he trudged in his best imitation of someone coming home after a long hard day.
Not too noisy, but not overtly trying to hide the noise either.
He hit the fifty percent chance of no one in the stairwell, and no one on the third-floor landing.
So far, so good.
The apartment was the door in the middle.
He could knock, but that would attract too much attention.
Brill studied the doorknob. It was a simple brass knob with a skeleton key lock.
He gripped the knob in one hand and lifted gently, sliding the lock blade between the frame and door, then sawing down softly.
He felt the blade catch on the latch and maneuvered it in slowly, shoving it into the door.
If the scientist used a deadbolt or chain, he would have to think of something else.
But the simple door lock was all he used.
He passed part of the neighbor odds and said a silent wish to the universe that the man was alone.
He was.
He slept on a small twin mattress in the corner, an oscillating fan blowing warm air over his naked body.
He was thin, and soft looking, with a scraggly beard and graying hair. The man didn't look like much of a threat, except between the ears where it mattered.
He was a chemist par excellence, with dual doctorates in chemistry and biology.
A potent combination.
If the guy wasn't an Islamic terrorist, he could have put his big brain to work solving everyday problems that faced his people.
The hunger and fear of food shortages could be solved with the creation of drought resistant crops.
The safety everyone desired for their family and loved ones could be introduced through better living conditions.
Brill knew that most advances in civilization came at the behest of a corporate entity working on increasing profit, so the common good wasn't always at the forefront of every development.
Still Arab history was peppered with genius, lost to fanaticism and fear across the ages as a thousand years of misguided shamans and imams led a righteous people backwards in time.
They weren't progressing, except in areas of how to kill Western influences and subjugate the masses.
Brill raised the pistol and settled it just above the bridge of his nose.
In World War II, America and Russia stole German scientists working on the Atom Bomb and secreted them away to warrens and dens in hinterlands of the country to continue their work.
In the war on terror, scientists were shot on sight, any potential good they could do for their world far outweighed by the horror they could inflict.
He pulled the trigger and spread the man's potential across the flat pillowcase.
Brill turned and faced the door to wait out the odds on the neighbors.
No one came.
He gathered up some paper material spread out on the desk and stuffed it in his pack.
Analysts back at Barraque could look over it to determine if it was viable intelligence.
He stopped with one piece of paper.
It was an invoice from Barraque, payment to the man dead in the bed.
Brill tilted his head in confusion.
Why had Shelby sent him after a scientist on the Barraque payroll.
Had the man gone rogue?
What was he doing out here?
A motor engine cut through the quiet of the village and set his hair on end.
It was out of place and ripped apart the silence.
No time to wonder, he shoved all the paper in his pack and took the stairs down three at a time.
NINE
Luck. It's one of those things that everyone says is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
Brill thought maybe the Scottish had a better angle on it.
Luck was something mystical, and energy in the universe that gave some folks an edge over others.
The converse could be true as well.
Brill was lucky.
At the bottom of the stairs, he slipped in the sand and spilled across the floor in a sliding heap.
As he fell, bullets peppered the doorway and shattered the wooden stairs where he had been just a microsecond before.
He covered his head and rolled behind the wall.
Bullets shattered the wood and sprayed him with splinters.
He pulled an extra magazine from his pouch and got ready.
Who was shooting? Why?
Those questions rolled through his mind as he searched for a way to peek outside.
He had no idea how many there were, or where they were situated.
They were using AK-47's, that much he could tell from the distinct sound it made when firing at him.
AK's were ubiquitous on the continent, practically a prize for every boy that turned thirteen. No answers there.
Still he just killed a terrorist scientist, so he could assume they had some sort of alarm on his door.
Even though he hadn't seen one.
Bootsteps pounded on the walk outside.
He heard the chatter of their voices, Arabic with a heavy African dialect.
They kicked in the front door and three men stormed the stairs, never bothering to clear the small foyer.
Brill lifted his pistol and sent three shots into the back of their heads.
The bodies pitched forward and slid down the stairs, leaving smears of blood and brains in
a path.
One of the legs of the lowest man twitched in a dead man's dance.
Screams erupted from outside, followed by more bullets.
They avoided the bodies of their fallen comrades, so the shots went high.
Brill cowered on the floor and wondered how fast he could roll across and grab a rifle.
