Enemy of Mine: A Pike Logan Thriller

by Brad Taylor

  “How good are you and your men?”

  “Very, very good. Pike trained me, and I trained them. We don’t look like much, but we can get the job done.”

  “Weapons?”

  Samir turned to a man in the back. He unzipped a duffel, showing the worn bluing of a beat-up folding stock AK-47.

  “They aren’t fancy, but they’ll shoot.”

  “We do this, and I’m in charge, understand? You follow my orders. You don’t, and I’m going to start shooting in both directions assuming you’re a threat.”

  He looked like he’d swallowed curdled milk. “You? You think you’re going on the assault? Have you lost your mind? You’re an anthropologist. Leave this to us. We know how to fight. I understand your lack of trust, but this is something for professionals. You need certain skills to win.”

  She pulled out the AK and began a functions check. Satisfied it would work as advertised, she seated a magazine and racked a round.

  Seeing the surprise on Samir’s pummeled face, she bared her teeth in a predator’s smile.

  “You looked in a mirror lately? I’ve got the skills, and I’m in charge.”

  17

  Kurt Hale slammed his handset into the cradle. “Mike! Get your ass in here.”

  The duty officer, hearing the tone, stuck his head in the door in seconds.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Geolocate Pike’s cell phone ASAP. Text the grid to this number.” He looked at the last-called display on his desk phone and scribbled the number on a sticky note.

  “Got it. Commo section has Pike’s handset selectors already?”

  “Yeah. They’ve got something. IMEI, IMSI, or some other tech shit. I don’t care what they’re executing right now, they drop it. This is a Prairie Fire. Send the grid as soon as you get it, and include in the text for them to call secure immediately.”

  George Wolffe, the Taskforce deputy commander, was entering the office just as Mike raced away.

  “Whoa, must be free beer somewhere.”

  Mike said nothing, disappearing down the hall with a purpose.

  George said, “What’s that all about? What’s up?”

  “I don’t know. Pike’s in trouble. Jennifer called on an open line asking for the location of Pike’s cell phone. She triggered a Prairie Fire.”

  George said, “You’re shitting me.”

  Prairie Fire was the code word for a catastrophic event. It meant the overt compromise of a Taskforce team or the impending death of a Taskforce operator. When used, everything in the Taskforce came to a stop, with all assets that could react dedicated to that team. In all the years of Taskforce existence, the words had never been uttered.

  “Not shitting at all. I don’t know what it’s about, but it looks like you finally get to see your plan in motion.”

  Before accepting the position of DCO of the Taskforce, George had spent decades inside the CIA’s National Clandestine Services, most of that time in the Special Activities Division conducting covert operations on every continent but the Antarctic. Some of the missions had been just short of suicidal; with no way to call for help should the worst occur. Unlike the military, when SAD hung it out there, it was absolutely for keeps. No reserves, no cavalry, no rescue.

  George understood when that attitude was truly necessary, but on several occasions, when he’d come close to dying on a mission that was a little ill-conceived, he was convinced it was simply because of a lack of forethought. The CIA leadership was so used to the mission profile that they just took it on faith that nothing could—or should—be done if things went bad. After working with select Department of Defense Special Mission Units, and seeing the care they put into contingency planning for operations, his mind-set changed. When he helped form the mission profile for the Taskforce, he had implemented a panic button should a Taskforce operator find himself in dire straits. Kurt had picked the code words—the same code words used by his father on top-secret cross-border missions in Vietnam.

  Kurt said, “What can we leverage for Lebanon?”

  “Mostly tech stuff, which you’re doing now. Nothing in the AO, team-wise.”

  “What about Knuckles in Tunisia?”

  George paused, thinking. “Yeah. Crusty’s done, and they’re just doing cover development now, but you pull them officially and it’s a risk.”

  George was reminding him that one of the key ways to blow an operation was to flee too soon after it was over. The police would naturally look at who immediately left following a mission, searching for leads. Because of this, Taskforce teams would stay in the area of operations for as long as necessary, ostensibly doing whatever their cover said they should be doing. Knuckles’ team was now servicing the oil fields in Tunisia, finishing out their “contract.”

  “The black hole’s still off the coast of Tunisia, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Knuckles is a SEAL. So’s Decoy. Anyone else dive qualified on that team?”

  “Yeah. Brett, the new guy I brought over from Special Activities Division. He was a Force Recon Marine in an earlier life. Probably hasn’t done any scuba action in years, but he could figure it out. What are you thinking?”

  “Swim ’em into Beirut. Unofficial. Get ’em on Pike, then get ’em back to Tunisia, before anyone knows they’re gone.”

  “I don’t know…. Who’ll pick ’em up? Who’s doing the advanced force work? They can’t just walk out of the ocean.”

  “One step at a time. Find out who’s dive qualified on that team and give ’em a warning order. It may go nowhere, but I want ’em ready. I’ll be out of the net for a few hours. I have to alert the Oversight Council. They’ll need to approve any movement of Knuckles’ team.”

  An hour later, walking down the hall to the Taskforce conference room of the Old Executive Office Building, Kurt caught a glimpse of the West Wing of the White House out a window. As he neared the room, he could hear muted chatter spilling into the hallway, the members who were available for this quick meeting guessing as to what it was about.

  He stepped through the door and the buzz of conversation dropped away, as one by one they realized he had entered. A quick survey showed that only eight of the thirteen members were present, something that could be expected given the duties of the people appointed to the Council. He was surprised to see President Warren in the room, figuring if anyone had been unable to attend, it would have been the president.

  He went to the small podium at the front of the room and cleared his throat, unsure how to proceed.

  “You’re probably wondering why I’ve called you here” flashed through his mind. Instead, when he had everyone’s full attention, he just laid it out.

  “Today, at thirteen-forty-eight DC time, we had a Prairie Fire alert from Lebanon. One of our Taskforce operators is in jeopardy, quite possibly lethal. I’m looking to move a team into the country as soon as I can, and I need your approval to do so, because it’s not without risk.”

  All eyes were riveted on him. He continued with the specifics of what he knew, and his best guess as to the nature of the trouble. When he finished, President Warren spoke first.

  “So you don’t know he’s captured. You’re just worst-casing it?”

  “That’s correct, sir, although I can’t see what else it could be. Jennifer wouldn’t call over an open line for a lock-on, invoking Prairie Fire, if she’d simply lost him at a souk somewhere. She said he was in trouble. That, coupled with the phone grid, tells me he’s in bad-guy hands and she needed his location.”

  “What are the odds it’s the Lebanese authorities and not terrorists?”

  “I’d hate to guess. LAF would be best case, but if that happened I don’t think she’d call Prairie Fire, and his phone grid wouldn’t be in a Palestinian refugee camp notorious for hiding terrorists.”

  The national security advisor, Alexander Palmer, spoke up. “What’s this mean? Worst case? I get Pike getting killed, but that’s not worst case.”

  He saw Kur
t bristle and said, “Calm down. I’m not being callous, and we don’t have time for emotions. I want him back as much as you, but what’s it mean the longer he’s in custody?”

  “Catastrophic. He’s been in the Taskforce since its inception. He knows just about every cover and front company we use, along with every tactic, technique, and procedure. We can’t do anything operational until we get him back and determine what he was forced to divulge. If we don’t get him back, we have to assume everything’s compromised. The Taskforce is finished.”

  He saw a few eyes widen and realized they were thinking he meant the Taskforce would become public knowledge, along with their involvement.

  “I’m not talking about an exposé in the Post. If he’s been captured by Hezbollah or one of the Palestinian groups, they’re not going to brag about the intel bonanza. They’re going to use it to penetrate our counterterrorist capability so they can thwart it. That’s why I’m saying the Taskforce is finished. We’ll have to assume they know every method we utilize. It’ll be like us operating thinking we’re wearing camouflage when the enemy sees blaze orange.”

  Palmer said, “Didn’t we already have an indication that there’d been a penetration from the operation in Tunisia? Didn’t he know he was being hunted? Isn’t that why you guys took him down as a fleeting target?”

  Kurt said, “Yes, sir, we thought that, but we were wrong. Turns out Crusty was convinced he was being followed by the new Tunisian government for some heinous things he’d done in support of the old regime. It had nothing to do with terrorism. Just a coincidence. This, on the other hand, is the real deal.”

  “How long to get a team in there?”

  “I’ve got a warning order to Knuckles in Tunisia. He’s the closest one, but because he’s covered under the oil company, he can’t just pick up his team and fly to Lebanon without risking the exposure of the Crusty operation. Best case, I can get him in-country in forty-eight hours.”

  “How long do you think Pike can last?”

  “What do you mean by last? You mean live, or keep his mouth shut?”

  Palmer grimaced, then said, “I mean keep his mouth shut.”

  “I honestly don’t know. Pike’s as tough a man as I’ve ever seen, but if they’re using extreme pressure, forty-eight hours is a long, long time.”

  18

  The old man shouted at the toughs to stop the ineffectual slapping and punching, seeing it was getting them nowhere. In fact, they were moving backward because I was now having trouble talking through my swollen face.

  They sat back and studied me, waiting. Another man entered the room, middle-aged and carrying an old-fashioned leather doctor’s bag. With a chill, I realized that the punching had simply been for pleasure. They had no serious interest in my protests of innocence. They had been waiting on this man.

  He talked to the old man for a moment, then opened the satchel, pulling out a scalpel. He sliced my shirt off of my body, exposing my chest.

  Here we go. Need to focus. Need something to focus on.

  In surprisingly good English, he said, “You know, we can keep you alive forever. In a state of perpetual pain. I have worked on many men and have gotten very, very good at walking the balance. Do you know of William Buckley? Hmmm? Of course, you wouldn’t admit it—not yet anyway—but he was one of my first patients.”

  The statement made me physically nauseated, searing my core in fear.

  He put down the scalpel and pulled out a handheld set of pruning shears.

  “I like it when you know that death is coming. I’m humane that way. I don’t want you wondering each day if that day will be the last. I can’t imagine the mental pressure that would cause, so I’ve come up with a system. I cut off your fingers and toes as time goes on. Not in any systematic way, of course. You won’t wake up knowing today will be the day you’ll lose your pinky toe, for instance. You’ll just know that when you run out of fingers and toes, we have no more use for you.”

  “Today is your first one.”

  He approached with the shears, and I began to struggle, mightily trying to break my bonds. The two toughs clamped down on me, preventing what little wiggle room I had in my restraints. One shoved a piece of my shredded shirt in my mouth while the other held my hand steady.

  The doctor took my left pinky finger and placed it in the shears. I began to thrash like a shark on a line, to no avail. He looked me in the eye and clamped the shears closed.

  I screamed until my vocal cords felt shredded, the sweat pouring off of my face and the blood jetting out of my hand.

  He held me by my hair, shaking my head.

  “Look at me. See where this is going. You will talk, there’s no doubt about that. But you can die with nineteen fingers and toes, quickly and cleanly.”

  His words penetrated my pain, and I realized he was right. I needed to die right fucking now, before I started spilling my guts. In my thrashing, I had felt my right leg not as tight as my left. I thought I could slip it down far enough to stand up and throw myself backward. If I could break the chair, I could make a run for the door and get killed quickly.

  Before I break.

  I couldn’t do it right now, with the two toughs on me. I would need to last until I didn’t pose a threat. That meant I needed to focus for what was to come. I ignored the words coming out of the man’s mouth, knowing it was just more fear talk, and tried to find something to anchor against.

  I thought about Jennifer, about living to see her again, and felt nothing but despair.

  They got her too. Because of Samir. That son of a bitch.

  The fact that I wouldn’t get to punish him for his treachery made me see red, made me want to scream at the injustice. And I found my anchor.

  Jennifer had told Samir that I held a rage like he did, but that had been a little bit of an exaggeration to make him feel good. When my family had been murdered, my rage had been much, much worse. A blackness that wanted to destroy everything it touched. And Samir’s betrayal caused it to stir. A feeling I had spent years fighting, I now stoked until it was white-hot.

  Live long enough to kill Samir. Live to see him die.

  The man with the doctor’s bag had put down the shears and picked the scalpel back up. He saw the emotion flit across my face.

  “Oh? A tough one. I guess you don’t want to die with nineteen fingers and toes. We’ll see about that.”

  Deep inside the Ain al-Hilweh camp, Jennifer stayed underneath a moldy wool blanket, hidden from view. It was now past eight o’clock at night, but there was still enough light out to make her worry should someone look inside the van while they were stopped.

  True to his word, Samir had managed to talk to the Lebanese Army guards outside the camp and had gained access. She didn’t know what he had said and didn’t really care. All she cared about was Pike, and her imagination was running wild with the thoughts of what was happening to him. Every second was precious.

  She heard Samir say something and stuck her head out. He held her tablet in the passenger seat, directing the driver. He turned around.

  “That’s it. At least, that’s where his phone was today when you called.”

  She saw a three-story building that looked like an apartment complex, with two men standing at the entrance holding AKs.

  Jesus. We can’t go door-to-door in that place. We’ll last thirty seconds.

  “What is it? A housing area? Where do you think they’d have Pike?”

  He got the driver moving again and said, “It’s not housing. It’s one of their headquarters. There are no friendlies inside. Pike will be up high. On the second or third floor. It gives them time to hide him if anyone comes inside that shouldn’t.”

  By the time they had circled through the maze of alleys and buildings, a germ of an idea had begun to form. The darkening gloom gave her courage.

  “Can you guys climb buildings? Did Pike show you that?”

  “No. Not specifically, but we learned to climb mountains and rock walls w
ith ropes.”

  Dammit.

  “If you had a rope coming down, could you climb the back of that building?”

  Now parked to the rear, in a lot for an abandoned restaurant, Samir scanned the building, seeing the crude cinder-block walls and pipes jutting out.

  Watching him thinking about it, she said, “It’s only three floors. Surely you can do that.”

  “Yes. We can.”

  She touched a cheap yellow nylon towrope inside the van. It was a half-inch in diameter, and appeared to be long enough. “Tie in some knots. Every three feet. We’re running out of time.”

  “Who’s going to get it up there?”

  “I am. We can’t get in from the front. We’ll get in a gunfight right off the bat, and they’ll kill Pike before we reach him. We climb the back to the top balcony. I’ll lay in the rope, you guys follow. When we’re ready, we assault from top to bottom until we find Pike.”

  Samir said nothing for a moment, looking at the building. When he returned to her, he said, “Are you really an anthropologist?”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact I am. But not tonight.”

  One of the men finished with the rope, and Jennifer took the last AK-47 out of the duffel, locking in a full magazine and slinging it over her shoulder.

  “What’s that for?”

  “Pike. I imagine he’ll be wanting to kill someone by the time we reach him.”

  They exited the van and moved silently to the rear of the building, the adjacent walls blocking out the last stabs of the sun, covering them in shadow. Nobody challenged them in the alley, the Palestinians’ confidence in their superiority this far into the camp overweighing their security.

  Reaching the base, Jennifer’s concern became the myriad of electrical cables coming out of the building. There must have been a hundred, all haphazardly strewn out of the building and across the alley. It would make the climb hard, as anyone following her would have to thread them without the freedom she would have to move left and right, because they’d be using a rope.

  She said, “Is this building up to code?”