by Brad Taylor
The airport ended up being about an hour outside of Algeciras, and Knuckles had exited the ramp of the plane like a condemned man, knowing he had to endure the entire drive next to Carly. He’d seen her talking to Jennifer and dreaded what he was about to experience, regretting what he’d said on the plane. He actually hoped that the man at the far end had some guns. Violence would be easier to face than Carly’s wrath.
Thankfully, Carly had spent the first twenty minutes just navigating, giving him directions while he drove. It wasn’t until they were on the long stretch of the A-381 highway that she finally tipped over the applecart.
She said, “Did you lie to me when we talked about me joining the Taskforce? Did you have some plan all along about me attending assessment and selection?”
Flustered, he said, “No. You were recruited by Kurt all on your own, for your actions in Greece. I don’t factor in for support hires. That’s someone else’s job.”
“That’s not what I asked. I came to you to discuss it, as a friend. To get advice I trusted about leaving my career at the CIA to come work for your organization. Did you give me your honest opinion, or did you have some other plan?”
“Carly, we weren’t even dating then. No, I had no other plan.”
“But the invitation was rescinded when the Taskforce was put on stand-down after Greece. Nobody even knew if it was going to survive. During the stand-down we started dating, and then that action in Poland happened, with the Taskforce saving the day, and the president putting you guys back into operation. After that, I got the invitation again—and I came to talk to you. Again.”
“I didn’t really think about it.”
She looked out of the window, playing with her hair. He knew he was in trouble. She said, “Jennifer believes you did. She told me you talked to her at length about her experiences. She didn’t think it was idle curiosity.”
He glanced at her but remained quiet. She said, “Well?”
He gripped the steering wheel harder than necessary and said, “Okay, okay. Maybe I did think about it. What’s wrong with that?”
“But you said on the plane we couldn’t have a relationship if I did that. So, I’m just wondering how this will work out. If you can’t have both, which one do you want?”
Knuckles slapped the wheel and said, “Christ! Stop the grilling. I don’t know what I want. Shit, I’ve never even had a true relationship before. Forget about it. It’s probably a moot point anyway. Even if you wanted to go, Kurt won’t allow it.”
She said nothing. They rode in silence, Knuckles fuming in the cloud of confusion she’d generated. In truth, he hadn’t really considered the fallout. Carly’s choices were different from Jennifer’s. Jennifer and Pike were civilians. He was active-duty Navy. But Carly wasn’t even in the military. She was CIA. How was that fraternization?
Mercifully, they reached the outskirts of Algeciras, and Carly began to navigate to the blue marble on the phone. They hit a traffic circle, and halfway around it, Carly pointed and said, “That’s the mosque.”
Knuckles kept going, circling to the next exit. He took it, then did a U-turn so they were facing the building, with the traffic circle between them.
He said, “Doesn’t look like a mosque. Looks like an auto-repair shop.”
“Well, whatever it is, that’s where the phone is located.”
There were a few cars in the small parking lot out front, and upward of a dozen bicycles chained to a metal fence. Knuckles said, “Lot of bikes for a car shop. Could be something else.”
The roll-up garage door began to rise, and Knuckles saw an open bay with rugs on the floor. Inside were about thirty men in the process of putting on their shoes from a rack on the left side, all Arabs.
Knuckles said, “Shouldn’t have doubted Retro.”
The men began to stream out, and Carly said, “Here we go.”
66
Knuckles said, “We don’t have to follow right behind the marble. Let’s give it some breathing room, separate it from the pack.”
Carly nodded, saying, “It’s in front of the mosque right now.”
Many of the men had already moved to bicycles or cars, with several already on the road, the pack breaking up. He waited a moment, then said, “Is it still there?”
She said, “Yes.”
There were now only seven or eight men left, and the group was being whittled down by the second as people wandered off. Knuckles tried to keep track of each one breaking off, anticipating a movement call. Eventually, there were only three left, and Knuckles was afraid the equipment was failing.
“Still there?”
She glanced up and said, “Yep. No change.”
“Well, it’s either one of those three guys, or we’re screwed.”
Eventually, one man wearing a jumpsuit and a skullcap began moving toward a bike. He spent a second unlocking it, then pedaled away from the traffic circle, into a neighborhood of concrete-block houses.
He disappeared, and Carly said, “It’s moving, it’s moving.”
“Which way?”
“North. It’s going north.”
That’s our guy.
“Okay, let’s follow him. Take the wheel.”
“Why?”
“You never know when an opportunity will present itself.”
Carly switched seats, muttering, “Here we go, flying by the seat of our pants.”
Knuckles slid over to the passenger side, saying, “You didn’t mind that seat-of-the-pants stuff when we first started dating. I remember a time at the Kennedy Center . . .”
She grinned, pulling into the circle. “There’s a time and a place for everything.”
They went through it, seeing the cyclist about two hundred meters ahead of them. Happy at the lightening of the tone, Knuckles said, “Let’s hope this is the time and the place.”
Carly followed, driving at a slow pace. Knuckles never gave a command, knowing this was her forte. As a CIA case officer, she had plenty of real-world experience conducting surveillance, and he trusted her instincts. This was one skill set where she was better than him.
The bike reached an intersection and took a right into a narrow lane, only one car wide. She reached it and kept going north. Knuckles said, “We’re going to lose him.”
Carly said, “Take a look around. This is his neighborhood. We’re the outsiders. We go down that lane and we’ll burn ourselves.”
Knuckles knew she was right. He said, “We’d better pray this technology works.”
She circled the block, then found a parking spot, saying, “What’s he doing? Continuing on, or stopped?”
“It’s stationary.”
She said, “I’ll bet that’s the bed-down. He lives down that alley.” She looked at him and said, “So, what now?”
Knuckles switched to Google Street View on the smartphone mapping app, studying the building the marble was in. He said, “It’s a row of block houses all connected together. Each one has a roll-up door for a garage, and an entrance door to the right.”
He rotated to the rear of the building, but the street view didn’t travel down the back-alley footpath. He pulled a satellite image of the building, seeing an alley with garbage cans and a line of balconies on each house. He said, “Let’s go on foot. You knock on the front door. I’ll go around to the back. If he’s got an escape plan, it will be through the rear.”
She said, “If he answers the door, what do I do?”
“You speak fluent Spanish. Act like an official from the gas company or something, but get inside.”
She said, “I don’t speak Castilian like they do here.”
He chuckled and said, “I don’t think he’ll know the difference. If anything, he’ll barely speak Spanish at all.”
“So, I knock on the door, and then, if he lets me in, I take him down?”
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“Yeah. Get a gun on him and get him facedown.”
She dug into her backpack, pulling out a Glock 27. She loaded a magazine, then racked a round. She looked skittish, and he said, “It’s not that hard. He’ll comply.”
He followed her example, loading his own pistol, then studied the location on the map. He pinpointed his stopping point in the alley, memorizing what he could from the image, then said, “You good?”
She turned to him and said, “Tell me the truth: Is this a test for me? Would you do this differently if I weren’t on the operation?”
Startled, Knuckles said, “No. No way. I would never put someone in harm’s way as a test. Jesus. This is a real-world operation. There are lives at stake. Is that what you think of me?”
She looked chagrined, then said, “I was just thinking about what Pike said when we left.”
“Pike’s looking for success. He’s not looking for a test, and neither am I. Are you ready for this?”
She nodded. He looked into her eyes, saying, “I’m sending you to the front because he might react if he sees me. He won’t suspect a woman. And because I trust you. Usually, I would only send an Operator on your mission, and as far as that goes, there’s only one other woman on the planet I would give your tasking.”
“Jennifer?”
He put in his Bluetooth earpiece, checked the connection, then opened the car door. He said, “Yep. But she’s an Operator. Trust me, I would never test you.”
He leaned back in and pecked her on the cheek, saying, “That’ll come later.”
She said, “What’s that mean?” but he was trotting down the street.
Knuckles went around the block to the back alley, checking out the escape routes as he jogged. There was a back door to each unit, but it looked more like an entrance to a storage area than egress to the alley. Above each was a small balcony with an iron railing. He counted them, stopping when he was behind the target house. The balcony above had a rope attached to it, knots spaced every three feet. He keyed his Bluetooth and said, “Carly, Carly, I’m set.”
She said, “I’m on the move.”
He said, “Put your connection to speaker.”
She did, and he heard the clicks of her steps and the brushing of her arms against her top as she walked. Eventually, he heard, “I’m here. About to knock.”
He said, “Be prepared for the unexpected. He’s not a mastermind, but there’s a rope back here, so he’s put some thought into this.”
She said, “Great,” then he heard the knock. He heard a jumble of noises, then a man speaking broken Spanish. Carly said something back, and then he heard her whisper, “He’s letting me in. He’s letting me in.”
“Get the door closed, then put him on the ground. I’m coming to the front.”
He started running, then heard a gunshot, louder in his ear from the Bluetooth than on the street. Two more erupted in his earpiece. It was a damn gunfight. He stopped his movement, feeling dread. He said, “Carly, Carly, status.”
He heard, “He’s running! He’s running! He’s armed! He ran upstairs. I’m following.”
He reversed course, streaking back down the alley, saying, “No. Let him go. I have him. Stay out of the line of fire. Let him think he’s safe.”
He saw a figure explode out onto the balcony, then flip onto the rope, scampering down it.
Halfway to the ground the man saw him coming down the alley. The man raised his pistol and got off one round, wide, just as Knuckles reached the tail end of the rope. He grabbed it and started violently swinging it left and right. The man dropped the pistol, clamping his hands onto the rope in an attempt to hold on. Knuckles ran with the rope sideways, then reversed back in the other direction, slamming the man’s body into the brick wall. He fell at Knuckles’s feet, the wind knocked out of him. He feebly tried to fight, raising his arms and gasping. Knuckles draped his arms around the man’s neck and cut off the blood to his brain. The man slumped.
He called, “Carly, he’s down. Get the vehicle. Meet me at the end of the alley.”
“What about the house? Shouldn’t we search it?”
She was right, but they had little time. He needed to carry this guy unconscious down the alley, and someone might have heard the gunshots. He said, “No time. Maybe we’ll come back, but we need to get out of here, now.”
She acknowledged, and he hoisted the man to his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. He hoofed it up the narrow alley, reaching the end without incident. Then he saw a small girl looking at him through an upstairs window.
Nothing he could do about it.
Carly pulled up two minutes later, and he slid the man into the backseat. He jumped in the front and said, “Get out of here. Head back toward Jerez, but pull over once you’re out of the city so I can tape this guy up.”
She started driving, weaving through the city faster than necessary, the adrenaline coursing through her. Working his phone, he was thrown against the door on one turn. He said, “Whoa, whoa, slow it down. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. We don’t want to get pulled over.”
She did so, and he contacted the Taskforce, saying he had a package for delivery. He hung up and said, “Well, that went okay.”
She smiled hesitantly, and he asked, “What? Did I miss something?”
“I screwed that up, didn’t I?”
“How? He’s in the backseat.”
“Yeah, but you expected me to take him down.”
“I didn’t ‘expect’ anything. That’s what flying by the seat of your pants means. You plan the best you can, and you react to the curveballs thrown your way.”
“I should have followed him upstairs. If I had, you wouldn’t have been exposed on the street, and we could have questioned him inside the house. I could have done it.”
“No, you should have listened to me, and you did. Your life isn’t worth chasing an armed man around an unknown floor plan. He lives there. He knew the terrain. You didn’t, and after the gunshots, there was no way we were going to interrogate him there. You need to learn to leverage the team.”
She nodded, unsure if he was just placating her. He said, “What happened, anyway?”
“He let me in, even turning his back to me. I followed him to the kitchen, and he opened a drawer, pulled a pistol, and took a shot. I fired back, and he took off running. That was about it.”
Knuckles saw that there had been more to the action than she was telling. It had been close, and it had impacted her. It was a gunfight, and those were never easy. He said, “You did fine. There’s no reason to be a hero unless it’s called for. All we wanted was the target, and we got him.”
She smiled, grateful, and he said, “But . . . you missed him?”
She gave him a sharp glare, and he said, “Now, that’s something we’ll have to work on.”
67
Kurt’s phone went off with the special ring. He rolled over in his bed and checked the time: two in the morning. Which meant it wasn’t good news.
He shook the sleep out of his head and answered, saying, “Colonel Hale.”
The duty officer for the Taskforce said, “Sir, we have an issue. Knuckles was successful, and he’s conducted an interrogation. It’s not good.”
“What is it?”
“I really think you need to speak to him directly.”
“Be there in ten. Tell him to stand by.”
He threw on some jeans and a T-shirt, racing out of his high-rise next to the Clarendon Metro stop. He could have driven, but it would be just as quick to run the two blocks to Taskforce headquarters.
He entered through the underground parking garage, breathing more heavily than he wanted and thinking he needed to get back to the gym. He badged in to the elevator and exited on the third floor, seeing George Wolffe.
He said, “How on earth did you beat me here?”<
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George laughed and said, “I was still here fighting the bureaucracy, doing the stuff you don’t have to worry about. Knuckles called jackpot, so I decided to wait and see what happened.”
They walked down the hall to the command center, Kurt saying, “And what’s he got?”
“Your call was good to go. He’s got a Moroccan who planted a bomb on a boat from Algeciras. It’s headed into Los Angeles as we speak.”
They entered the command center and Kurt said, “Bring it up on the main screen.”
The communications man said, “He’s inbound right now on the rendition bird, so it may be choppy.”
Kurt nodded, waiting. Eventually, the screen cleared, and Kurt saw Carly Ramirez. He said, “Carly, what’s up? What do you have?”
“Sir, the guy has planted a bomb on a container ship headed to Los Angeles. He’s working with the same cell. Jalal al-Khattabi—the guy we were chasing in Fez—helped him break security. It’s the same crew, and it’s planted on a boat called the Al Salam II.”
“Where’s the boat now?”
“The Taskforce is working that now, but that’s not the biggest problem. The bomb has a cylinder of cobalt 60 inside. That’s a radioactive material used for cancer treatment and food irradiation. It’s deadly, and if it’s exploded out, it will render the port inoperative.”
Kurt held up a finger and turned away from the screen, saying, “Get me a CBRN guy, right now.”
Two minutes later, George picked up the phone and said, “I got our CBRN officer on the line. Go easy. He thinks he’s been awakened because it’s the end of the world.”
Kurt said, “It might be. Put him on speaker.”
George punched a button, then nodded. Kurt said, “Hey, I don’t have a lot of time here. You’re the expert on chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear events?”
He heard a nervous voice. “Yes, sir. I’m branched chemical in the Army. I have a degree—”
