by Brad Taylor
Ja’far said, “The other killer is none of your concern. It isn’t Hezbollah business. Leave us now and we may reconsider your fate.”
The assassin walked over to Ja’far, grabbed a fistful of hair, pulled his head back, and punched him deep with the push-blade. Ja’far’s arms swung wildly. He leapt to his feet, clamped his hands over the wound to his carotid artery, and ran in a circle like a decapitated chicken, finally slamming into a wall and sliding to the floor, the blood still pumping out of his destroyed neck.
The assassin looked at Majid. “I understand you plan on killing the Druze like you were planning on killing me. You guys just don’t give a shit who you fuck over, huh?”
Majid’s eyes were wide, but he said nothing.
“You’d better start talking, you raghead piece of shit. You wanted me dead, and now you reap what you sow.”
Majid said, “Abu Aziz will be here any time. You can kill me, but he will kill you. Make no mistake, you are dead.”
“Abu Aziz? The guy bringing the computer from the Druze? Is that who you mean? Actually, I don’t think he’s going to show up. At least not anytime soon. Maybe a little later. With a fucking mop to clean this place up.”
Majid showed his first sign of fear. “What do you want?”
“I want to know who the killer is. That’s it.”
“I don’t know his name. He calls himself the Ghost. That’s all I know.”
“Really. What alias did you give him? How’s he traveling?”
“I don’t know. He got his identity from a Palestinian group. We had nothing to do with it.”
“Bullshit. You gave him something.” He saw a computer at the back of the room, and went to it.
“Is it in here? The information?”
“That computer is nothing. Just a desktop work machine for the coffee shop.”
“Really? Okay, then type in the password. Now.”
Majid did as he asked, and the screen filled with Arabic.
“Can you read that, Infidel?”
The assassin felt his phone vibrate. He smiled. “No, but I think I know someone who can.”
He spoke briefly into the phone, then turned to Majid. “That’s the Druze computer coming up. Last chance. You help me now, and you live. You don’t, and you die.”
Majid closed his eyes and began rocking slightly, chanting in Arabic. The assassin shook his head. Fatalistic sons of bitches, that’s for sure.
He walked around the chair until he was behind the chanting man. He circled Majid’s neck with his forearm, cinched it tight, and twisted harshly. He let go and watched the body hit the floor, the right foot twitching.
He went quickly to the door and dragged inside the bloody body he’d killed on the threshold. He placed both of the dead guards’ bodies against the near wall, hiding them from first view. He was moving to the dead Hezbollah leadership, intent on hiding them as well, when he heard a knock at the door. He cursed, took one look around, then walked over and pushed it open.
The boy stood on the threshold, looking wide-eyed.
“Abu Infidel, what is all of this blood? What’s going on?”
The assassin smiled. “Nothing now. We had some issues. But it’s taken care of. I told you I’d get you in to meet the party faithful. Come on in and say hello.”
The boy nodded hesitantly and crossed the threshold. When he saw the massacre inside, he balked, attempting to back up and escape through the door.
The assassin stopped him, trapping his elbow joint in a come-along and forcing him to drop the computer he’d brought.
“I didn’t say they’d talk back. Be happy you get to see them at all.”
When the boy calmed down enough to assimilate his surroundings, the assassin continued.
“What I need you to do is go through these computers and tell me the identity of the target and the identity of the forger helping out the assassin. Do that, and I’ll let you live.”
25
I
pulled up the geolocation software suite one more time and was rewarded yet again with a null ping. I began to think we’d made a mistake giving the computer back to the enemy.
Probably not any free WiFi in this whole damn country. We’d made it out of the Ain al-Hilweh camp surprisingly easily. It had turned out that the building wasn’t heavily occupied, and since Jennifer and Samir had killed everyone above us, we only had a small contingent below, which had been effortlessly sandwiched between us and Samir’s men out front. No issues whatsoever, except I would have liked to make them suffer a little more.
We had split up and searched, with me giving guidance to focus on computer equipment. I knew we had plenty of time, since the “police” wouldn’t respond to a firefight here in the camps until they were sure it was over, but I didn’t want to push my luck by digging through terrorist sock drawers. We’d come away with a single laptop and some thumb drives.
We’d fled to Samir’s house in the Chouf Mountains. I had wanted to gut every single one of the Druze militiamen in the back of the van, but Jennifer held me back. Eventually, Samir had managed to convince me that he wasn’t Dr. Evil and hadn’t set me up. Which meant that someone else had an agenda. It remained to be seen who.
Going through the computer, we’d found the itinerary for Jeffrey McMasters, the new Middle Eastern envoy from the United States, along with a bunch of tangential information about the meeting that occurred today, including the bona fides for the two sides.
What caught my eye was the description of the assassin. It was nothing like the guy I had seen, with the exception of the coke-bottle eyeglasses. The person who was supposed to be at that table was a small, frail man. Instead, the man gutted by my computer bomb was a six-foot-three-inch bruiser. Which left a huge gap in our knowledge of what the hell was going on. McMasters was targeted for assassination, that much I was sure of, but we had no idea by whom. Forget the specific individual, we didn’t even know which ideological group, which was a necessary precursor to stopping the attack.
The first order of business had been to contact the Taskforce and feed them everything we had. Unlike Syria, Lebanon was still a freefor-all of Internet access, so we managed to get our “company” VPN up and running fairly easily, using the Internet from Samir’s house. I made Samir wait in another room and got Kurt on the line. Samir didn’t fight it, knowing full well by now that we did a little bit more than archeological work.
I gave Kurt a very succinct account of what had occurred. I let him know that Jennifer’s call of Prairie Fire was a good one, but downplayed my time in captivity, sticking to the mission. I didn’t mention what had happened to me, or the fear that still lingered, a rotting sore I pretended not to notice.
Jennifer had watched me closely on the ride back and on the VPN. I could feel her eyes on me, sensing my trauma like some rabbit detecting a coming earthquake.
We had never spoken about it, but we had a connection that was a little strange. Some sort of innate bond that defied explanation. From the very first time we had met, I had been able to intuit her pain, plugged into her being in some visceral, subliminal way.
In the past, it had been helpful because it had always been me bringing her through some traumatic event. Serious combat actions she had been exposed to for the first time, death and destruction the average person could only imagine that almost crushed her ability to continue. I had sensed when she was on the edge and had pulled her through every event, then patted myself on the back when it was done. After all, I was the commando.
Now, I was subconsciously hurting. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I was undergoing an unhealthy dose of post-traumatic stress, and she could smell it as well as I could. The connection apparently worked both ways, which did nothing but piss me off. I could handle the issue and didn’t need her starting in on some self-help bullshit.
I’d ignored her stare and gotten Kurt on the line through the VPN. I told him what we had and demanded a team.
He said, �
�I’ve got one moving now. Well, not a full team, but I can get you Knuckles, Decoy, and a new guy named Brett.”
I was surprised to hear he’d alerted anyone at all, but when I heard it was Knuckles and Decoy, I didn’t give a damn about anything else. Those two were worth an entire Taskforce team as far as I was concerned.
I said, “Perfect. What’s the story on the new guy?”
“Just came over from the Special Activities Division. I’m going to swim them in after launching them from Tunis by rotary wing. He was the only other guy who had subsurface infiltration experience. Don’t worry, he’s solid. He’s a former Force Recon guy.”
“Great. A jarhead. No issues here, as long as he knows who’s in charge. Which is something I need to know as well.”
I was a civilian, and Knuckles was still active duty. Technically, he should be in command, but I was the man on the ground who understood the situation.
Kurt smiled and said, “You’re ground force commander. Like you would have it any other way. I’ll let Knuckles know.”
I knew Knuckles wouldn’t care, but would have to make sure this new guy from SAD—which always had a tendency to push things— understood the chain of command.
Kurt had finished by giving me PM instructions for another meeting with the case officer, telling me to be prepared to pass off link-up instructions with the team.
After feeding the Taskforce everything we could intel-wise, including an image of the hard drive from the laptop, I decided to download and install a free software program called “Prey,” and give the laptop back to Hezbollah. Made to track stolen laptops and cell phones, the program would allow us to track the computer’s location, let us voicerecord anybody within range, get screenshots of the websites they were on, and allow us to get a webcam picture of whoever was using it. In short, get us more intel than we had now. Of course, we’d scrubbed the laptop first, deleting anything that could be potentially useful to the terrorists.
The software package wasn’t nearly as good as some of the custom applications the Taskforce could implant, but hey, you worked with what you had. The problem with my grand idea was that in order to initiate any of its features, the computer had to be within range of a WiFi hotspot, and so far we’d been out of luck. We had no idea where the computer had been taken after Samir met his Hezbollah contact and passed it off.
I pinged it again and was surprised to get a response.
“Hey, we’re in business! The computer’s stopped, and it’s sending a signal.”
Jennifer and Samir gathered around me as I initiated the geolocation feature. When a map came up, with an icon representing our computer, Samir said, “That’s the heart of the Dahiyeh. Headquarters for Hezbollah.”
“No surprise there.”
I initiated the webcam, and we got a shaky image of a young Arabic man. The pictures came in once every second, so it was like watching a herky-jerky old-fashioned movie. He was banging away on the keyboard and talking to someone out of range of the camera. Samir said, “That’s my contact.”
I turned on the microphone, getting a tinny response with the voices sounding like they were coming from a tunnel.
“Abu Infidel, I can’t find anything more on this computer. I’m not sure why the Druze gave it to me. It’s like everything but the original programs have been deleted.”
Jennifer became agitated. “He’s speaking English and he said infidel! He called that guy Infidel, just like the case officer said.”
I waved my hands to get her to be quiet so we could hear. I saw a set of arms above the boy’s shoulders, the head still hidden.
“Yeah, I agree. The other computer had all the information I needed anyway. You’ve done fine.”
One snapshot the boy was facing the camera, the next he was turned facing the man. He said, “So, can I go?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
And then, in stilted slow motion, an arm encircled the boy’s neck. He began to thrash in the chair, drool coating his chin, then blood. The individual webcam shots were as repulsive as a pornographic snuff film, and I felt a crippling déjà vu. The boy was dying in front of my eyes while I was impotent to do anything. Just like the dream of my family. I tried to turn away, but was riveted at the death. My adrenaline began to race, and I had to physically stop myself from grabbing the monitor and screaming, setting the dream free from the imagined world. The sliver of darkness in me stirred, straining for the face of the killer, as if it would provide the answer to my own demons.
One second we were looking at the eyes of the boy bugging out of his head, his mouth open in a silent scream, then the screenshot simply showed an empty chair.
Nobody said anything. A shadow passed over the screen as the killer sat down, taking the boy’s place.
It took a moment, but I recognized the figure.
“Oh my God,” Jennifer said. “That’s Lucas Kane.”
26
K
urt Hale watched the cloud of cigar smoke drift to the ceiling and was secretly sure President Warren had turned off the smoke detectors. The accumulated haze made it hard to see the ceiling of the Oval Office. The president didn’t seem concerned, puffing away and staring out the window behind his desk.
“So Pike’s okay? Out of enemy hands so to speak?”
Kurt said, “Yes, sir. He got dinged up a little, but he’s safe.”
The president spun his chair around. “Dinged up? That’s what you guys call it? I’d say he was tortured. And for nothing. This little Taskforce adventure was off the charts in stupidity. What on earth was Pike thinking? Who were the Lebanese he used? Without authority, I might add.”
Kurt grimaced. “They were some Druze that used to be in the LAF Special Forces. Pike trained them before the Taskforce existed. If he trusts them, so do I.”
“Some trust. They had him smuggle in a damn IED without his knowledge. Then he gets captured because of it. It’s loose as shit, even for Pike.”
“Sir, he’s just trying to get the mission done, and speaking of that, we have some indicators of—”
President Warren flipped open a folder on his desk and cut him off. “Get ’em home. Now. I’ve given orders for McMasters to skip Lebanon on his trip. I don’t care how much Pike trusts those men. That place is an absolute snake pit, and there’s no sense tempting fate, even if Pike says he blew up the assassin.”
“Sir, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. We’re not so sure the threat’s gone.”
President Warren closed the folder. “What do you mean?”
“Remember the reports I showed you about an American assassin codenamed Infidel?”
“Yeah. As I recall that theory was discounted by the intelligence from the Tunisian hit. What about it?”
“Pike took a computer from the site where he was held. We bled it dry of information, then he inserted it back into the extremist network using some software that allowed him to access it remotely.”
“And?”
“And we got a clear screenshot of an American from inside a Hezbollah headquarters building, along with McMasters’s entire itinerary on the computer. Infidel is real, and skipping Lebanon doesn’t mean McMasters is safe.”
“So you found a Westerner working for Hezbollah, and the official itinerary of a U.S. envoy. Why’s that a big deal? Every government he’s visiting will have the itinerary, and a white guy inside Hezbollah doesn’t equate to some badass assassin.”
“It was more than the official itinerary. It had specific hotels, events, and dates of stay. Much more than we ordinarily include in official message traffic. And it was in Hezbollah’s hands, not some friendly government.”
Kurt pulled out a laser-printed photo from his briefcase. “As for the white guy, we know who he is, and it’s not good.”
“Who?”
“Remember the hired gun Harold Standish used a couple of years ago? Tried to wipe out a Taskforce team in Bosnia?”
“Yeah. Lucas Kane, right? Got his own
team wiped out instead and then killed Standish as payback. I thought you guys were hunting him.”
“We were, but after he disappeared in Bosnia, his trail went absolutely cold. We heard rumors and ran them to ground, but always came up empty. I quit focusing on it because it was a drain on resources. He wasn’t a threat to U.S. interests, and I figured he’d turn up on his own sooner or later.” Kurt stood and tossed the screenshot photo on the president’s desk. “Looks like he has.”
The president stared at the grainy image for a moment. “So you think Lucas Kane is on the hunt here? That McMasters’s trip is in jeopardy anyway, even if we avoid Lebanon?”
“Yes.”
“And what would you have me do? Call it off completely? I can’t do that. It’s the first time in years we’ve been able to get the peace process rolling again.”
“No, sir. Of course not. Even if it were just a sightseeing trip, I wouldn’t advocate turning it off. We can’t be held hostage to threats. It gives the bastards exactly what they want. I’m just saying mix it up a little bit. Alter the itinerary so it’s different from what we found. Increase the security posture around him.”
He paused. President Warren said, “And?”
“And let me launch the Taskforce guys from Tunisia.”
The president leaned back, a half-smile on his face. Kurt continued. “The Oversight Council has already approved it. The only difference is our purpose for going. It’s the same country, same threats, same method of infiltration.”
“Kurt, please. The only thing ‘different’ is the primary reason for the approval. Now that Pike’s safe, there’s no justification to launch. We should go back to the Council.”
“Sir, they’re going to say no, and we’re going to lose the one lead we have. Lucas Kane is a proven killer, and we have no idea what identity he’s traveling under. If we don’t get on this quickly, he’ll disappear again. Best case, we simply lose an opportunity to bring him to justice. Worst case, we’re standing over the body of a dead Mideast envoy. And your peace process is in the gutter.”
“My, my, how attitudes change. I remember when you used to be the one demanding Oversight Council approval on everything. Now, you want to duck them.”
