Tom rose to a knee with RPG Two’s weapon. Whoosh! The grenade flew and exploded into the enemy truck’s engine. Mr. Overly Friendly lit them up with his machine gun.
The lead tango truck stopped, blocking the trucks behind it.
Max’s heart knocked so hard it felt like it would bust through his chest.
Hank drove out of the city and toward their rendezvous point in the trees. Max’s heart rate slowed a bit, and he looked for the sniper gals—neither was in sight. “Sierra One and Sierra Two,” Max said. “This is Yukon, we are at rendezvous point, what’s your ETA?”
“We see you,” Rojin said, panting for air.
“I don’t see you. Hurry, we need to extract ASAP.”
Mr. Overly Friendly examined the bodies of his companions. He bowed his head and sighed. He was the lone Jazz survivor.
Hank drove them into the woods, and Max glanced at Tom. “Side of your face is bleeding.”
“What’s up with your shoulder?” Tom asked.
“I’ll live.”
Fifty meters away, the silhouettes of Paris and Rojin ran through the woods like a pair of wolves. It looked like they’d make it. Max smiled. It was good to have them on his side.
Hank braked in the woods, where the trees prevented him from driving in further. “This is our stop,” he said over the radio.
Max picked up Commander al-Iraqi, and Tom helped dump him over the side of the truck. Then Max and Tom jumped out.
Hank exited the cab.
Max stared at him. “Your whole side is covered in blood.”
“Not my blood,” Hank said.
Mr. Overly Friendly said goodbye and drove the truck away without waiting for a reply. Max thought he was probably wise not to stick around for more of getting shot at. He and his Jazz teammates, except for the deserters, had fought bravely.
“Sierra One and Sierra Two arriving,” Paris said, identifying themselves so they wouldn’t be mistaken as enemies and get shot.
“I see you,” Max said.
“Roger,” Tom said.
Hank headed south. “Let’s move.”
Paris and Rojin fell in behind Hank. Max pulled al-Iraqi to his feet and pushed him forward. Tom brought up the rear.
The noise of truck engines came from the city, probably the two surviving Daesh technicals.
Hank sped up to a trot. Then a run. “Bucket, Alpha. We’re coming in hot.”
“Roger, Alpha,” Chief said. “Bucket on station, standing by to extract.”
The sound of the SOC-R’s engine sounded so sweet, making Max lighter on his feet as he kicked in his afterburners.
The enemy trucks homed in on the edge of the woods where the Waynes had parted ways with Mr. Overly Friendly. The tangos blazed away, but the sounds didn’t come close to Max’s team. Daesh was shooting at trees, trying to flush out their prey.
Max and his team wasn’t home yet, and Max kept his head on a swivel. They departed the woods. The dark profile of the SOC-R was a hooyah sight to behold. Max pushed al-Iraqi into the water and followed. Tom, Hank, and the snipers waded into the water, too. Max and Tom got al-Iraqi into the boat, and Hank and the snipers came aboard, also.
There were no propeller blades or rudders on the boat to snag on the bottom or shore. The SOC-R’s waterjets propelled them forward, and they turned away from the bank, spitting out water behind. The SOC-R glided over the river, putting distance between it and the extraction site.
A half-dozen AKs lit up from the shore on Hank’s side. Hank, Paris, Rojin, and the Swicks fired back. The AKs stopped.
The SOC-R skated atop the black vein of the Euphrates. As it reached a bend in the river, the boat didn’t turn. It was aimed at the bank. Chief was at the wheel, but something was wrong.
Max stepped over to him and gave him a shake. “Chief.” Chief’s body tipped over in his chair. Max caught him before he landed on his head.
Pig Pen rushed in and took the wheel. He steered away from the bank, spraying it with a giant fan of water. Then he rounded the bend.
Max rested Chief on the deck: “Wake up, Chief!” He inspected the Chief’s body for wounds—nothing. He ran his hand across Chief’s helmet. There was a thumb-sized dent and a scar, as if an AK round had glanced off it.
Chief stirred. Slowly he sat up and looked around. “Looks like I picked a helluva place to take a nap.”
Pig Pen smiled.
Max was about to help Chief to his feet, but he pushed Max’s hand away and stood on his own. Pig Pen stepped aside, and Chief regained command of the wheel.
“Chief is animalistical,” Quicksilver said.
“Chief is like Gandalf, dude,” Pretty Boy said. He gave his imitation of the famous wizard: “You shall not pass.”
Chief calmly glanced at the young men. They put on their war faces, returned their attention to their mounted machine guns, and covered their fields of fire.
Then Chief said to Max, “I’ve toured the Middle East for years. Most of these people are loyal to their tribes. Fighting other tribes is a way of life. Peace is merely a power agreement—temporary at best. It was that way before we came, and it’ll be that way after we’re gone.”
Max was happy he was okay and took Chief’s words to heart.
They sailed 150 klicks up the Euphrates River. Then the Chinook swooped down on them like an eagle, and its steel talons snatched their boat from the water. As they rose in the air, Max and the others climbed a rope ladder into the belly of the beast.
Max whipped out his iPhone, kneeled, pulled off Commander al-Iraqi’s hood, and said, “Smile.” Al-Iraqi didn’t smile, but Max snapped a close-up of his face, anyway. The Commander stared at him like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming car. Max turned al-Iraqi’s head and snapped a profile shot. Next, he stood and took a full body photo of him.
While Max encrypted the photo and transmitted it to Willy, Tom played CSI to collect DNA samples. He used a Q-tip and swabbed some blood from a wound on al-Iraqi’s head where Max smacked him earlier with his rifle. This wasn’t Max and Tom’s first session with an HVT—alive or dead.
Minutes later, Willy radioed back, “Touchdown, you got him!”
“Hell, yeah,” Max said. The others cheered at Willy’s confirmation.
The giant bird swooped down over Kobani FOB. Paris tilted toward Max and said, “I hope you get payback.”
“I hope you do, too,” Max said.
Max fist-bumped the Swicks, and the helo deposited the Swicks and their boat in the FOB with Paris and Rojin.
Lighter now, the Chinook pulled up and carried them through the dawn’s early light. Max wanted to celebrate more, but they hadn’t arrived inside Turkey, and they weren’t home yet. He closed his eyes to rest for a moment.
When he opened his eyes, the lights of Incirlik Air Base came into view. Soon they landed. It all felt a bit surrealistic—where others had failed to take down Commander al-Iraqi, the Waynes succeeded. They drugged their prisoner, bagged him in a large duffel, and dragged him off the chopper. Willy and two gorilla-hairy contractors helped the Waynes load their HVT into a van. Exhaust drifted out of its tailpipe. Max closed the van door, and the gorillas whisked al-Iraqi away.
Max, Tom, and Hank walked with Willy to his Gulfstream jet parked on the tarmac. Hank seemed preoccupied, as if thinking about something else.
“Where they going to take al-Iraqi?” Max asked.
Willy gave Max and Tom a high five. “Somewhere he can relax and talk freely.”
“I can’t believe we pulled it off,” Tom said.
Max stuck out his chest as they walked. “We’re Waynes. It’s what we do.”
Hank climbed the air stairs partway before he stopped and watched the van haul al-Iraqi away. The vehicle shrank smaller and smaller.
Max and the others stopped on the air stairs, too.
“Something wrong?” Willy asked.
Hank remained quiet.
“Hank?” Willy asked.
Hank swallow
ed hard as if drinking tears. “I’m just proud of my boys.”
PART TWO
Live fast, die young, and have a good-looking corpse.
–Willard Motley,
writer
12
“Well, is there going to be a third phase or not?” Max asked Willy.
The Gulfstream taxied down the runway.
Tom buckled his seatbelt. “Where are we flying to?”
Willy took a seat and strapped in, too. “Next target.”
Max sat beside Tom, and their chairs faced Hank and Willy.
“Third phase?” Max persisted.
“Where?” Tom repeated.
Willy gestured for them to relax. “I’ll explain. You completed phase one by obtaining the flash drive that supposedly contained the identities of Ringvereine’s leaders.”
“Supposedly,” Max said.
“I’ll get to that,” Willy said. “You completed phase two by bringing us Commander al-Iraqi. Phase three is to kill or capture the five leaders of the Ringvereine terrorist cell. The flash drive you obtained only contained information for one of those leaders.”
“One?!” Max said.
“One is better than none,” Tom said.
Willy continued. “We know that Ringvereine pretended to reform ex-convicts in Germany by giving them legitimate jobs. But secretly they hired the ex-cons to carry out more crimes. The gang showed solidarity by wearing a ring on their pinky, and soon they called themselves Ringvereine—the Ring Club. Later, they stopped wearing the rings, but the name stuck. Recently, they transformed into a terrorist cell answering to Commander al-Iraqi.”
“Are there photos of the one leader who was on the flash drive?” Tom asked.
Willy tapped his phone and the overhead video monitor lowered. “I have a photo of him …” He touched his phone again, but the monitor remained blank. “I have a photo of him here …” He tapped his phone again. Still nothing. “Dad-sizzle it,” he said. “Why does this have to be so complicated?”
Tom extended a helping hand. “Would you like me to take a look?”
“No,” Willy snapped.
Tom withdrew his hand and raised his eyebrows.
Max couldn’t resist a dig. “Would you like some chalk and a chalkboard?”
“I’d like you to shut the hell up, that’s what I’d like,” Willy said.
Hank gave Max the stink eye.
Max played innocent with a show of his palms.
Tom chuckled.
Willy gave up on the overhead monitor and passed his iPhone to Hank. Hank studied it. Then he handed it to Max, who shared it with Tom. On the small screen was a man’s photo. Max and his brother looked hard, but there was no noticeable scar on his face, like their mother’s killer would have.
“Look familiar?” Max asked.
Tom and Hank shook their heads, no.
“Langley is trying to gather more intel on the others,” Willy said, “but we do know that this lieutenant, a forger-counterfeiter nicknamed Blade, used to freelance for various criminal organizations until Ringvereine became his main client. Now he mostly works for them. Blade lives in Vienna. Our geographic code name for Austria is Green, and our CIA station there has a new contact whose code name is Grub.” CIA officers and agents were given code names that began with the first letters of the geographic code name. “Grub is reported to have more information about Blade.”
Max returned the phone to Willy and asked, “Has anyone directly met with this contact—Grub?”
“You guys will be the first,” Willy said, “so treat him accordingly. Grub could be part of a trap.”
“I’ll interview him,” Hank said.
Max said, “Tom and I can drive, provide security, and do a physical search on Grub.”
Tom nodded in agreement.
“Dandy,” Willy said. He touched the screen on his phone.
Max’s phone received a vibrating alert at the same time Tom’s and Hank’s did. Max pulled down the search bar in his phone and typed @utumn8264—Maman’s first name and the last four digits of his Social Security number—and he accessed a secret folder. Inside were new files from Willy: target folder, photo, and a cover file.
“We’re flying to Vienna under cover as businessmen working for Outdoor Lab Reviews,” Willy said, “a startup Internet business that’s like Consumer Reports meets the Outdoor Channel. We’re trying to expand the business in Vienna. Langley already set up a website for you with a handful of reviews, and there’s a real phone number with one of ours posing as a secretary and answering any calls. The temperature in Vienna is in the low thirties, so it’ll be chilly.”
Max examined his cover file.
Willy tapped his phone again. “Highwayman” by the Highwaymen played over the cabin speakers. He smiled. “At least the important things on this bird work.”
During the two-and-a-half-hour flight, Max studied his cover file and Blade’s target folder and photo. He never knew when he’d get the next chance to drink water, so before they landed, he went to the kitchen and hydrated. There he noticed some plastic wrap on the counter, and since all work and no play makes Jack a dull operator, he covertly took it, expecting to pull a practical joke later.
The Waynes disembarked the plane and loaded into a gray Mercedes-Benz, courtesy of the Agency. Tom sat in the driver’s seat with Hank beside him and Max in the back seat. With the car’s GPS as his guide, Tom drove out of Vienna International Airport and northwest past snowy groves of evergreens on one side and blankets of white to their left.
Out of the blue, Hank chuckled to himself.
“What?” Max asked.
“I just remembered something,” Hank said.
“What?” Max persisted.
Hank turned around in his seat and said, “You know when your mother was pregnant with you, I worried if I’d love you. You were a stranger about to live with us, and I wondered if I’d care for you the way a father should. Then one night I had a dream. It was so vivid. It was a spring day at the park with Autumn, her parents, and you—even though you hadn’t been born yet. It was like I was seeing the future. We were all so happy. It was such a powerful dream that it woke me up. And I never worried about loving you again. I knew everything would be okay.”
Max smiled.
Between banks of frosted willows, the blue Danube River rolled mightily in the opposite direction they were headed. Originating in Germany’s Black Forest, the Danube passed through Austria and eight more countries before she disappeared into the Black Sea.
“Vienna is the city of dreams,” Tom said.
“We live as we dream,” Hank said. “You know, before you were born, Tommy, your ma and I had a hard time picking a name for you. I was leaning toward Timothy, but she liked Thomas. I let her win, but later I regretted giving in so easily. Thought maybe your name really should be Timothy. A name is important—it helps shape who we are. I didn’t tell her I was having doubts. After you were born, we walked out of the hospital and sat in the car. When I fired up the engine and played the radio, it was tuned to the base radio station that she liked so much. David Bowie sang the words ‘Major Tom’ from ‘Space Oddity.’ Your mother and I looked at each other in amazement. It’s the only David Bowie song I know.”
“Because Tom’s a space oddity,” Max said.
“You’re the space oddity,” Tom said.
Max slapped Tom on the shoulder.
“Hey, I’m driving here, you want to get us killed?” Tom said.
Hank smiled.
Tom drove along straight, modern streets and passed both McDonald’s and Starbucks before they traveled back in time to snow-packed cobbled lanes that curved around Baroque buildings. Colonnades cast columns of shadows. The streets squeezed smaller and smaller.
“Almost there,” Hank said.
Max surreptitiously drew his Glock. “This Grub dude knows to come alone, right?
“Yep,” Hank replied.
Max press-checked his weapon to co
nfirm there was a round in the chamber. There was. He returned it to concealment under his jacket.
Tom parked in a three-hour parking zone. They exited the car and walked past a row of shops. Max had noticed wiener was written on various signs throughout the city. “Lot of wieners in this town,” he said.
“That’s German for ‘Viennese,’” Tom said.
“I knew that,” he lied.
They walked separately, so as not to seem to be travelling together, and floated through the pedestrian flow like gray ghosts. Max anticipated people clogging up pathways and avoided them. He slipped through openings before they shut. He kept pace with the Viennese so as to blend in. He drifted into a hotel, passed through the lobby to shake off any tails that might be following, and proceeded through the back exit. Outside again, he reached the home stretch. He searched ahead for anyone watching their approach—possible surveillance.
He opened the door to a building with Aida printed in pink fifties cursive above the door. Hank and Tom converged on him inside, where it looked like a 1950s diner. Max walked across a dark brown floor that matched the color of the wall and ceiling. A young waitress wearing a pink ’50s-style dress greeted them in German before she led them to plastic seats at a plastic table with pink trim.
Max pointed to an empty spot away from the door and said in English, “Could we sit over there?” He wanted to see who was coming before they arrived, and he’d seen the effects of enough car bombs to know better than to sit near a window facing the street. They all did.
“Yes,” the waitress replied in English and led them to the table away from the door.
Hank had taught Max and his brother from a young age to always note the exits when walking into a new place. Here there were three doors and a probable fourth leading out the back of the kitchen area. They’d followed the Golden Rule—the last one to arrive is the first one to get ambushed—and arrived early for their meeting. Better to be politely prompt than dead on arrival.
Max sat at the table with Tom and Hank. A variety of young and old customers drank coffee and ate cake and pastries nearby. A few minutes later, the waitress came to take their orders. Max loved to eat, and he was more than happy to order strudel to help him blend in with the other customers. Tom got Sacher torte, and Hank ordered Black Forest gateau.
Assassin's Sons: [#4] A Special Operations Group Thriller Page 8
