OPERATIVE - an action thriller: a Brill Winger Thriller (Brill Winger series Book 2)

by Chris Lowry

  Members of the patrol shouldered the box and the group disappeared back into the rocks.

  "Outstanding," thought Brill. Aslan had ensured the men would be distracted as he made the crossing tonight. Now all he had to do was wait for dusk to make his way through.

  Chapter Six

  Brill waited for twilight before he moved.

  He double checked that the plastic wrapped ball with the radio in the middle was secured under a small cairn of rocks, adjusted his pack and took off down the trail. The wash of stars that lit up the darkening sky provided a soft white glow that made it easy to pick his way through the mountains, only stumbling occasionally.

  It took a few hours to top the rise and start descending. The path followed a gentle curve around an outcropping of stone, and Brill was thinking about a stop for water and fuel when he rounded the rock and froze. A young boy of twelve or thirteen stood on the path holding a shepherd's crook. Behind him, a string of goats stretched across the trail in eerie silence.

  Damn, muttered Brill as his hand trailed up to his waist to rest on the pistol grip. Why didn't the goats make any noise? Normally the animal bleets could be heard for hundreds of yards. He could have hidden off the path and let them pass, or free climbed lower to go around. Goats in Africa had made plenty of noise, so much that his team learned to avoid them. The bleating cry of goats and cattle had betrayed more sneaking men than any sentry ever could.

  This mission was going sideways early and all because he had been thinking about water.

  The boy watched him, eyes wide in the darkness, just as quiet as the animals he tended. Brill almost shot him, and thought perhaps he would, but he didn't have a silencer on the pistol. If he pulled out the weapon and began screwing it on the barrel, the boy would run, maybe scream and scatter the goats, which would set off noise that would carry in the dark. He didn't know what was out there.

  Which meant he had to kill the boy. If he was part of the rebel camp, he would alert them of Brill's presence and the mission would be compromised. If he belonged to a village nearby, it was the same outcome. Brill couldn't let him go because he was an unknown quantity.

  He started to draw the pistol and the boy smiled.

  A boy. Young and full of potential, not yet hardened by the life that was waiting for him. He was going to turn rebel or get killed by bombing. He was going to lose family and friends, and even if he survived past the civil war that was tearing at his country, he would have to scratch out a meager existence on this dirt his people were so loyal to. But he smiled with the guile of a child, only slightly afraid of the grizzled man he ran into on a dark path just past twilight.

  Brill left the pistol in his waistband and slung his pack open. He twisted off a top of one of the bottles of water and held it out to the boy. After a few moments, the kid shuffled forward and reached for it with a tentative hand. Brill took a second bottle, opened it and tilted it up. The boy smiled again and mimicked him, giggling as a trickle of liquid sloshed past his lip and dribbled down his chin.

  Brill tore off the end of a protein bar wrapper and passed it to the boy. This time he didn't need prompting and started chowing down on the chewy sweet bar with gusto.

  Brill tried a smile. It must have worked because the boy smiled back, granola covering his teeth.

  The stood next to each other on the path drinking water and snacking on protein bars for a few moments.

  Brill decided he couldn't kill a kid. It may cost him the mission. The boy would probably tell and that would bring hell down on him from who knew what. He'd deal with it when it happened, and if the boy came back with a Kalashnikov, that was his choice. But not on this path, not on this night.

  The boy watched his face and shivered at the man's eyes. He may not have known how close he was to death, but something predatory in the eyes of the man beside him made him grip his staff tighter and hunch his head into his shoulders. There were legends of lions that once roamed the edges of the desert and the boy thought this man looked like one. Not his plain face which was hard to remember in the growing darkness, but his dark eyes that seemed to absorb the night and stare at him like a demon.

  Brill held out a fist.

  The boy stared at it unsure what to do. Brill demonstrated a fist bump with is other hand, popping the knuckles together lightly, and held out his hand again.

  The shepherd complied, holding up his fist just like Brill. The man bumped his fist and the boy grinned. They repeated the gesture again, and Brill moved past him and kept going down the path. The boy watched him go one hand rubbing his tummy with the treat and water in it, the other still holding a fist that he used to wave at Brill's departing back.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  He worked his way through the darkness parallel to the highway. Out here in the desert the stars and gibbon moon lit up the landscape in a white ghostly glow making it possible to travel quickly. There were no city lights along the roadway to blot out the stars, no electric glow from the city turning the horizon an orange shade not normally found in nature. He moved at a fast pace, eight minute miles that ate up the distance until he reached the edge of Idlib. It was where Aslan arranged for a meet with a contact of his own.

  Brill didn't like operating with unknown quantities, but there wasn't much to be done for it. Barraque had zero intel inside the borders of the nation, and their contact Aslan did. He had to rely on the man's knowledge. With the distraction he provided to the rebel mountain group, Brill thought he could be trusted.

  If he wasn't using speed and stealth to strike fast and hard, Brill would have set up shop in an apartment and worked to gather additional intelligence. He would stand out in the neighborhood, but posing as a Canadian photojournalist to match his fake credentials could open a few doors to publicity hungry Islamists who just wanted to share their story.

  Idlib was mostly dark, a few windows lit up on the horizon. He angled toward a darker part of the city toward a street Aslan gave coordinates to find. Southside of the village, three streets for the end of town. Look for the stone house with a green door. Someone would be waiting.

  No instructions to knock, no secret password or handshake.

  Just two men in a foreign country where he didn't speak the language and they were known to behead journalists giving him directions to save two lives. Three if he counted his own.

  A dog barked as he approached the third street. So much for the stealth approach.

  He found what looked like a green door on a stone house but he couldn't be one hundred percent confident. Green, black and blue, any dark color really, looked the same until the sun came up. There were no front lights burning to indicate it was the right house. But it was a stone house on a row of stone houses on the short street and the only one with a different door.

  That had to be significant.

  He took a chance and knocked.

  Shouting from behind the door carried down the street. Brill put his hand on his pistol and prepared for a fight.

  The door cracked open and a young woman stared at him with sleepy eyes. Almost immediately a hand slapped the back of her head and jerked her back behind the door. A man took her place, just out of his teens from the wispy mustache and beard that stained his face. He held the door halfway open to show one arm, the other hand gripping the edge of the frame while he yelled at the girl. He glanced at Brill and shouted at her again, the rapid-fire pace of words sputtering out in a guttural growl.

  He stopped talking and nodded at Brill.

  "You are the American?" his accent was thick on the verge of undecipherable.

  "Canadian," said Brill.

  The man grunted.

  "Same thing."

  "Syrian, Kurd, Turk," Brill wiggled his hand back and forth.

  The frown on the contact's face popped into a grin.

  "I get it," he slurred. "Canadian."

  He held out his hand.

  Brill passed him an envelope from Aslan. He didn't bother to look inside, just placed i
t inside the house and pulled the door shut as he stepped out into the street with Brill.

  "You know Aleppo?" he asked as he led Brill down the empty road.

  Brill shook his head.

  "The people you are looking for were at Aleppo."

  Brill remembered the city name from the map, and the report Barraque provided indicated it was a hotbed of rebel activity and Syrian government response. Bombing runs were a nightly occurrence and the groups were starting to wall off the city to outsiders.

  "Are they there now?"

  "Outside."

  He led Brill to a small building with one room. There were no doors, the windows were narrow slits, designed to let in the breeze and keep out the sun. It was an empty shell, just debris from former occupants on a simple wooden table against one wall. No bed, no chairs, no signs of ever having held life except for the table and a plate and cup on it.

  His contact moved to one side of the table and reached into his jacket. Brill's hand snapped to his pistol.

  "It's okay," the contact said as he pulled out a map and tiny flashlight. "It's okay."

  Brill watched him spread the map on the table and highlight Aleppo with the narrow flashlight beam.

  "Aleppo is here," the man told him. "Journalists are here."

  He pointed to a spot on the map several kilometers outside of the city.

  "Is that confirmed?"

  "What does mean?" the man looked confused.

  "Are you certain they are located there?"

  "Yes," the man grinned. "One hundred percent. Confirmed is the word?"

  "Confirmed means yes."

  "Confirmed then."

  "Does it have a name?"

  "Is not a city. Is a house, a waddi."

  "Walled compound."

  "Yes, walls. And guards. It will be very difficult for you to get to your friends. But I can help."

  "For the right price?"

  "Yes for good price. I can help you get in."

  Brill knew this was the shakedown. It happened in every Third World country he had ever been in. The bribe was a cultural expectation, and negotiating for more was part of the DNA.

  "I'll manage," he told the man and got a shrug.

  "Okay then."

  The man rolled up the map around the flashlight and slipped it back into his pocket. Despite the weak light, it took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the darkness. Brill heard the man shuffle and his silhouette blotted out the starlight in the doorway. Then he was gone.

  "Guess we're done," he muttered as he checked the exterior before following.

  It was one a.m. He still had time to make the compound and scope out the rescue. If he played it fast and loose, he could be back in Turkey before dawn.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It was easier to run on the road than in the hard-packed sand ten yards off the asphalt, though it would be difficult to argue which was less technical. The asphalt was sunbaked and damaged, a series of cracked and crumbling surfaces covered by a fine layer of gritty sand. Off road there were rocks and holes hidden in the sand, little fingers meant to reach up and snag a toe or punish the bottom of a foot.

  Since traffic was non-existent the road made more sense. It also made for better time and Brill settled into a seven-minute mile that he could hold comfortably for several hours. He knew it was an average and he needed some gas in his tank when he reached the compound because he wasn't sure what to expect, but the cool desert wind, the silence of the night so different from the jungle he was used to hearing, lulled him into a cadence and the miles disappeared.

  The compound was easy to locate. It was the only structure between Idlib and Aleppo. He noticed the walls as black marks on the horizon that blocked out a portion of starlight in an unnaturally square pattern. That was his training kicking in, noticing when something didn't fit in.

  He approached the walls in a soft walk, listening for sounds of life as he made his way around the back of the structure. He relied on the late hour and his ears to pick up any guards before he reached them as he slow stepped the compound, one hand trailing on the stonework of the wall.

  There were enough niches he could climb it if needed, though he hadn't practiced climbing in some time. He made a note to put that on the workout list and kept going. A wooden back gate was closed to the night, the splintered surface covered in peeling paint. There were no windows, no other access points other than the front gate which was blocked in a similar fashion.

  The rebels were stupid, he thought. Two squads could take the compound in five minutes by smashing through the front gate and setting up a crossfire along the backroad to catch the occupants as they peeled out of the back. Not a good sign. Dealing with stupid soldier's meant too much could go wrong because their patterns were hard to predict.

  For all he knew, he could be walking into a nest of suicide bombers all standing around in their vest waiting to blow themselves and the compound to hell.

  He wanted more intel.

  But the eastern horizon was beginning to turn dark purple, starlight winking out as the fringe of the sun scraped across the earth just below the sight line. He was out of time and didn't want to hide in the desert to bake all day.

  Brill dug his fingers into a niche and worked his way up the wall. It was easy going at first, but the last six feet was worn smooth by years of desert wind carrying small grains of sand to abut against the surface, blasting away imperfections and smoothing out edges. He didn't want to go back down so he searched, first with one hand, then the next while his toes began shaking under the strain.

  He found a narrow finger hold and grabbed it. If he could get his foot to the spot, it would be enough to reach the edge of the wall. Brill slipped his fingers along the surface back to the original position and slid his foot up toward the spot. He stretched to reach it, but the awkward angle put too much stress on his other leg. He needed to work on his flexibility, he thought as he stared at what looked like the beginnings of his shadow on the wall. Still no time.

  He gripped the wall tighter and exhaled as he shoved off with his right leg and reached with his left. He had to use his stomach to lift the leg up, but he found the purchase and locked it in. His right leg dangled free as he relieved some of the pressure from first one hand, then the next. He used his right foot to press against the wall and eased up to gain leverage, then shifted his weight to his left leg.

  This was the most dangerous part.

  He checked the traction of his fingers and right leg, took a deep breath and launched himself from those three points toward the top of the wall. He used his left leg to power up. The ledge crumbled under his toe in a scattering of plaster.

  But the fingers of his left hand gripped the edge of the top. He dangled by one hand and caught his breath, then reached up with the right hand and pulled himself to chin up the wall.

  It was a two story drop to the other side and this section of the compound was hard packed sand. A sprawling home spread out in the middle, three wings around a courtyard with a small well. There were other buildings scattered around the inside, perfect hiding places for kidnapped documentarians. The inside of the wall was smooth and bare on two sides, but two of the walls, the front and back, had ledges that ran the length and accessible by stairs that led down to the interior.

  Brill crawled on top of the wall and though he could walk faster and minimize the shadow he threw on the ground, he scooted on all fours to give himself time to recover from the climb.

  He reached the wooden timbers of the walkway and thudded inside the rebel compound. It was growing lighter each second which meant he was running out of time. He jogged down the stairs and went to the closest building. It was empty. He hurried to three others with the same result. They were being held inside.

  Brill studied the three wings, each about forty feet long and twenty feet wide and tried to picture how it would be laid out inside. Without access to prints or even architectural knowledge of the area, he had no way of knowing what he
was going to encounter. This trip had already identified two knowledge and training gaps he was going to have to fill when he got done and it pissed him off. Shelby and Barraque shouldn't have rushed the mission in their effort to conduct a favor so a Senator would owe him. It put the mission at risk, it put Brill at risk and that meant he might not be able to save the girl and her boyfriend.

  An image of a Angolan rebel with a gold tooth flashed through his head and Brill felt a veil of rage well up inside him.

  He put one hand on the wall of the house and leaned against it, working on a quick breath exercise to regain control. Doubt needed to be erased, fear for others needed to be quelled. He breathed in for a four count, held for four, and blew out for four to hold again for another count. He repeated it three times and the rage subsided. It would never disappear but he could control it, compact it into a tiny ball and bury it inside. Another three count and he could think clearly. He was inside the rebel compound on the verge of a rescue mission and he had accomplished it in less than eighteen hours. That was his specialty, that was the reason Barraque sent him in. He was going to save two innocents and kill the bad men that took them, and it started with finding them.

  Brill pushed off the wall and resumed his search. He looked for a smoke-stained wall above a window or a chimney, which would indicate a kitchen. The kitchen would have a door, and he could sneak inside from there. The problem he was facing, all he needed to do was a simple series of steps to complete each task and advance toward the goal. Get inside. Locate the couple. Get outside. Get clear.

  Then he could face what was coming next.

  He saw a darkened portion of the wall above a narrow window stained from years of smoke. It was next to a door at the top of two shallow steps. Brill tried the door and it opened to a dark interior. He stepped through the doorway and closed it behind him, waiting for his eyes to adjust. Step one done.