“I shall pass that on to our employer. We had heard that there had been a few complications.” His voice was without inflection. He wouldn’t even give me a clue if he had just woken up or if it was late at night. Nobody even knew what time zone Big Eddie was in. “Nothing you couldn’t handle, I assume.”
“Of course not.”
“By the way, some of our men attended your niece’s dance recital. Rachel, I believe her name was. Let’s see, she belongs to your brother, Robert. They recorded the recital for Big Eddie. He commented that she is very graceful and talented for such a young girl.”
“I told you. I’ll do the job,” I stated.
“Of course you will. Eddie just likes to keep track of his employees. It is what makes him such an effective leader. Keep up the good work.” Then he hung up. I carefully put my phone away before smashing my fist into the wall.
Chapter 6:
From Sea to Shining Sea
VALENTINE
Ash Shamal District
April 1
2005
“Xbox, this is Shafter,” Hudson said over the radio, breathing hard. “We’re in position.”
Tailor looked over at me. I nodded, and he spoke into his radio. “Copy that. Stand by. Control, Xbox, we’re standing by.”
“Xbox, Control,” Sarah said, sounding as calm and distant as ever. “Execute. Be careful,” she added, her voice softening just a bit.
I smiled to myself. “This is going to be a turkey shoot,” I said, observing our target building through binoculars one last time. “You think they’d have beefed up security after we snatched the Al Falah kid out here.”
“They did,” Tailor corrected. “Look. That guy right there, he’s got a rifle.”
“What is that, a G3?” I asked absentmindedly. “Look, another guy in the doorway. Looks like he’s got a sub-gun.”
“I think they’re wearing vests,” Tailor said. He patted the driver on the shoulder. “Let’s go. Shafter, Ginger, stand by to execute. When you hear shooting, enter and clear. Watch for friendlies—we’ll be coming in from the other side.”
Hudson acknowledged. Our driver, a guy from another chalk that everyone called Animal, flipped on the headlights and stomped on the gas. Our up-armored van roared down the narrow street toward the social club.
The little side street had several cars parked on either side. Tonight was the most popular night, and it seemed that the disappearance of Al Falah hadn’t deterred the enemy from using the place. The two armed clowns outside wouldn’t pose a problem. Our plan was laughably simple: take out the two armed guards outside, then enter and kill every son of a bitch in the place. Tailor and I would enter from the front, while Hudson and Wheeler would enter from the rear. The rear door led down into a basement, where we believed there might be a weapons cache. Animal was going to stay with the van. He was from Singer’s chalk; he’d been hurt and couldn’t run, but he could still drive.
The terrorist with the G3 rifle was meandering up the street, checking the parked cars when he was illuminated by our headlights. I saw him clearly; he was wearing black fatigues, a ski mask, a blue body-armor vest, and a chest rig for spare magazines. He looked pretty squared away, and our van’s windshield probably wouldn’t stop direct hits from a 7.62x51mm weapon.
That didn’t deter Animal. He swerved the van right at the terrorist. I braced myself. The man in the black fatigues dodged to the left. He wasn’t fast enough. Our heavy, armored van came to a stop with a crunch of twisting metal and shattering glass. The little Toyota sedan we hit crumpled and was pushed up onto the curb. The man in black was pinned between our van and the Toyota, his legs and hips crushed.
“Move, move!” Tailor shouted, pulling the van’s right-side door open. I shouldered the paratrooper SAW I was carrying and headed for the door. I heard two quick shots as Animal leaned out the window and blasted the pinned terrorist with his .45. I ignored it as I ripped off a short burst at the man guarding the door, my machine gun roaring loudly in the narrow alley. The 5.56 mm bullets punched through him, splattering blood on the wall behind. He was so surprised he hadn’t even gotten his weapon ready.
I came up to the door. Tailor was right behind me. Stepping over the body, I reached forward and yanked the door open just as a long rattle of automatic fire could be heard from behind the building. I held the door open, and Tailor tossed in a pyrotechnic distraction device. We would’ve used grenades, but we didn’t know where Hudson and Wheeler were. A couple seconds later the device detonated, blasting the room with a head-splitting concussion.
Tailor and I stormed inside, weapons at the ready. The doorway dog-legged around into a main room. We rounded the corner. The social club was in chaos. Men were running in every direction, shouting and screaming in Arabic. Billiards tables lined one wall, and couches lined the other. The air stank of smoke from cigarettes, hookahs, and our flash-bang. Terrorist propaganda and Islamic flags were plastered all over the walls.
Men ran toward us, trying to get out of the building. They were either too confused and didn’t realize we were there, or thought we were their own armed guys. It didn’t really matter. I leveled my machine gun and squeezed the trigger.
It was a massacre. Tailor and I moved laterally across the main room, firing at anything that moved. A door burst open and a pair of men came running in, armed with assault rifles, but we cut them down before they even realized what was happening. The crowd of terrorist recruits turned, trying to escape down the stairs, tripping over overturned chairs, bodies, and each other as they fled. It didn’t do them any good.
“We’re in the basement,” Wheeler said over the radio. The men trying to flee out the back entrance were gunned down as they came upon Wheeler and Hudson.
The whole thing was over in a matter of minutes. I stood amongst the carnage in the social club, pulling a fresh belt of ammunition onto my weapon’s feed tray. The machine gun in my hands was hot to the touch; I’d gone through a hundred-round belt in less than two minutes. Probably two dozen bodies lay on the floor, ripped apart by gunfire. The air stank of powder, smoke, and death.
Tailor lit a cigarette, his carbine dangling from its sling. “April fool, motherfuckers,” he said, snapping his Zippo lighter shut. My hands started to shake. The Calm was wearing off, and soon I’d be hit with a flood of emotions as adrenaline dump shocked my system.
The only people we’d let out of the building alive were three Indonesian girls Hudson and Wheeler found in the basement. They were drugged up and had been used as playthings by the terrorist recruits. We found a weapons cache also. AK-103 assault rifles and GP-30 grenade launchers from Russia. G3 rifles from Iran and Pakistan. Rocket-propelled grenades and launchers from China. Thousands and thousands of rounds of ammunition. So we dumped some gas, popped a thermite grenade, and burned it all.
As we hurried outside, we noticed that the air reeked of gasoline. In the few minutes we were inside, Animal had kept himself busy by dousing all of the cars parked on the street with gas. As we backed down the street, Hudson tossed a road flare out of the van, igniting the gas and setting the whole row of cars ablaze, just like the building.
The fire quickly spread to the neighboring warehouses. Before long, the entire block was engulfed in flames. It took the city firefighters all night to put the inferno out. In the morning, they found an Ace of Spades playing card stuck to a light pole at the end of the street. Our little calling card been Colonel Hunter’s idea. I liked it.
LORENZO
April 10
I stood on the balcony of our apartment. It was part of a complex at the south end of the city, near the intersection of old world and new money, oil-rich and third world poor. The compound itself was relatively modern, but more importantly, it was landscaped in such a way that we had quite a bit of privacy. We had some university students sharing one wall, and an old couple below us, but they all kept to themselves. We entered only through the attached garage, and that was in a van with tinted windows.
The ID I had used to set up the lease was a top-of-the-line forgery of a Zubaran Oil Ministry employee who worked weird hours, and our only paleface, Reaper, never went outside anyway. We might as well have been invisible.
The balcony was where I came to contemplate. Every wall inside our hideout had something mission related tacked up, as I had to memorize a lot of facts and faces, but that could get obnoxious after a while. I had brought the manila folder from Thailand with me and had been absently flipping through the photos. It had been a long time since I had seen most of those people, and I had never met any of the kids, and now they were all going to die if I didn’t play my cards right.
Over the last few weeks there had been shootings, bombings, and all manner of craziness. Normally Zubara was a quiet place, but now there were blue uniformed SF troops on every corner, and random checkpoints set up by the secret police. There was a war going on, and it was making life difficult for us honest criminals.
I suppose I could call myself an honest criminal. I had tried being a regular criminal, but I found that I didn’t have the stomach to lie to and steal from normal folks. Terrorists on the other hand had lots of money, were fun to lie to, and nobody seemed to mind when I occasionally killed them. And it was easier to sleep at night since I was able to convince myself that I used my sociopathic tendencies for good. Mostly.
The local news was full of stories about random murders and disappearances. Somebody was going down a checklist of the Zoob’s terrorist underworld like a bad issue of The Punisher, and the worst part was that we had no idea who it was. The word on the street was that it was the emir’s secret police killing men loyal to General Sabah, but from what I had seen, this was too professional for those thugs. My money was on the Israelis, but even that didn’t make any sense. The hits were stirring up the fundies and talk of revolution was becoming more and more common. If the emir lost power, then the Izzies would have yet another oil-rich country hating them and funding Hezbollah and that struck me as a bad thing, but then again, I had never been the diplomat type.
So if it wasn’t the emir, and it wasn’t Mossad, who was raising so much hell in the area? It couldn’t be the CIA, as they were way too obvious. I had no evidence, but I was sure that whoever had blown Falah’s heart out was one of them. Having some sort of hit squad mowing down the people that I was supposed to be infiltrating was definitely screwing with my work. It didn’t really matter, though. I just had to keep a low profile until I could get to Adar. Piece of cake.
The sliding door opened and Reaper appeared, gangly and squinting at the sudden brightness. The boy really needed to get more sun, but that would take him away from his precious computers and high-speed Internet.
Reaper was an interesting case. He’d been one of those super-genius kids, awkward and goofy as hell I was sure, and he’d been attending MIT when he was fourteen. When I’d met him six years ago he’d been on the run from the law. Ironically enough, he had the most serious criminal record of my crew. My rap sheet only showed a handful of juvenile offenses whereas Reaper, the child prodigy, had been an overachiever and been indicted for several hundred counts of felony fraud, hacking, and embezzlement before he was old enough to drive.
Time magazine had written a cover story about him. Reaper had used that as his resume when he’d asked to join my crew.
He shuddered. “Man, it’s hot.”
I chuckled. “Wait until summer. It’s barely ninety. How’s your machine thingy coming?”
He shrugged. He’d been working on the device for Phase Three for weeks now. His room was covered in bits and pieces of the complicated gizmo. “I thought about going with a low-inductance capacitor bank discharge, but I said hell with it, the explosive pumped flux compression generator will be so much cooler.”
“You know, I dropped out of high school specifically so I wouldn’t have to know what any of those words meant.”
“I thought you dropped out to commit a triple homicide.”
“Quadruple,” I corrected him. “All I need to know is will it work and will it be ready in time?”
I knew it would be. Reaper had an IQ that was off the charts. He could process data like I could languages. “Starfish will be good to go, but we’ll need a couple of test runs out in the desert, just to make sure.”
“You named it Starfish?” It didn’t resemble a starfish, it looked like a big tube in an aluminum housing. “That’s cheesy.”
“Cheesy awesome,” he answered with pride. I’m sure the name had some sort of geeky historical reference. Reaper changed the subject and pointed at the folder in my hand. “You been thinking about your family?”
I shrugged. “A little, you know . . .” In actuality, I was terrified a bunch of my nieces and nephews were going to get shot in the head for something that they didn’t even know about, but I couldn’t let that show to the kid. He needed me to be sure, indomitable, fearless, all that leadership crap.
Reaper looked slightly embarrassed. “You worried about them?”
“Only if we fail.” The rest went unsaid. We both knew what would happen then: Eddie would kill everyone that had ever mattered to us just out of principle. But he hadn’t come out here to talk about that. “What’ve you got?”
“Adar bought the spoofed e-mails. He just wrote back. He’s leaving Iraq today. He’ll be back in a couple of days.”
I nodded. As long as he had the box, everything would be fine, but from everything I had learned, he always had the box. It was his prized possession and life-insurance policy. “Good. We’ll intercept him at his safe house outside of town.”
“You think he’s as scary as the rumors make him out to be?” Reaper asked. The word on Adar made him sound like some sort of jihadi Jack the Ripper. If Adar had been born into some other society, he probably would have been a serial killer. But luckily for the young murderer from Riyadh, Falah had recruited him and put his natural talents for cruelty to good use for their cause. “I mean, come on, we’ve dealt with some crazies, but this guy takes the cake. Dude, he like eats people and stuff.”
“No big deal.” I clapped my young associate on the back. “So he’s bug-nuts crazy and I get to kill him. I told you this job has some perks.”
“There’s more,” Reaper said. “I just heard on the news, they’re evacuating the American embassy. There’s a big mob protesting in front of it. The State Department said that all Americans need to leave Zubara right away.” His grin exposed a bank of grossly crooked teeth. “I’m guessing that doesn’t apply to us.”
I hadn’t been back in my home country in forever—too many laws, too much order. Life out on the fringe was much more to my liking. “It looks like the Zoob’s heating up. Don’t worry, we’ll be out of here before the place totally melts down.”
“I don’t know, chief,” Reaper said slowly, like he was the one with all the experience. “This shitty little country is important to a lot of powerful folks, shadowy, scary, secret government crazy shit. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a bunch of stuff going down.”
Oh, not again. I rolled my eyes. “You’ve been listening to that conspiracy theory talk-radio show again, haven’t you?”
“From Sea to Shining Sea?” Reaper shrugged. “You know, it isn’t always just space aliens and Reptoids of the Hollow Earth. Their political analysis is awesome. Way better than the propaganda you get from the regular news. You really should listen. I’ve got it streaming right now if you want.”
I snorted. “If I’m ever commissioned to rob Atlantis, I’ll tune in. In the meantime, you worry too much.”
“I’m just saying, I got a bad feeling about this is all.”
VALENTINE
Fort Saradia National Historical Site
April 11
1230
“Cover me, goddamn it!” Tailor snarled as fire poured onto his position.
“Hang on, hang on,” I said. I had a situation of my own to deal with. There were at least four bad guys coming up on my left.
/> “I need help now or I’m gonna die! Shit. I’m hit!”
I could see where Tailor went down. I started for him, but the distraction cost me. I didn’t see the guy with the chainsaw until it was too late.
“Come and save me, damn it.”
There was blood everywhere as I was cut in half. “Too late. I’m dead.” I tossed the vibrating controller on the couch. Tailor swore at me first and then the Xbox.
The biggest open room on the first floor of the dorms had been turned into the rec room. We’d scrounged up a couple of games, a bunch of free weights, and a dart board. Our chalk was enjoying the break. Wheeler was spotting Hudson, as our big man bench-pressed enormous amounts of weight. Wheeler saw that we were toast and got excited. “About time. Our turn. Wrap it up, Hud.”
Hudson grunted as he shoved up three hundred pounds for the ninth time. He was actually scary. “One. More.”
“You suck, Val,” Tailor whined as his character was curb-stomped to death. “You completely and utterly suck. You sucked so hard you choked on your suck. You suck at horde mode.”
I raised an eyebrow. “It’s this stupid controller. I hate playing shooters on a console. A keyboard and mouse is superior in every way.”
Before Tailor could rebut and begin another nerd argument, Hudson racked the weights and stood up. “Get outta my chair, Tailor.” He grinned. “Let me show you how it’s done.”
“How about me and you play, Hud?” Tailor asked him. “Let these uncoordinated monkeys go play Candy Land or something. Leave the horde to the real men.”
“It’s my turn,” Wheeler insisted. “Just because it’s your call sign doesn’t mean you can hog it all day. Here, I’ll pull all the weights off for you, and we’ll see if you can do just the bar. Val, you better be ready to spot so he doesn’t drop it on his concave chest and hurt himself.”
Dead Six Page 14
