Enemy of Mine

by Brad Taylor

  He padded barefoot to the small sink in the corner of the room and splashed water on his face, then peeked out between the shutters of the window. He could see an alley below him, with various wholesale stores selling dry goods. Nothing appeared to be out of place. No one standing around without a purpose.

  He placed the batteries in his final IMSI grabber and turned it on. Within seconds, it began registering dozens of numbers. He shut it off immediately, knowing he’d just disconnected quite a few phone calls. He was pleased that it worked as advertised, but didn’t need any anomalies in the cell system to generate suspicion.

  He placed it and the WiFi booster he’d purchased yesterday into his knapsack and glanced at his watch. In two hours the envoy would be landing. If all went well, in five he would be dead.

  Getting Jennifer in place inside the lobby of the Al Bustan Rotana turned out to be the easy part. Dressed nicely, she blended in well, drinking coffee at a small table next to an espresso bar that afforded a view of the entrance and both banks of elevators.

  Finding a place to conduct the ambush had been damn near impossible. The hotel itself looked more like a high-end prison, with metal detectors on all doors and roving men in suits wearing sunglasses and wired earbuds. This, in addition to the cameras all over the place.

  Initially, I had planned for Jennifer to walk to the parking garage, getting inside to some corner that was dark and scary, where we could thump Lucas unimpeded. When we arrived, we saw the garage entrance had been converted into a search-and-quarantine section, with every vehicle getting inspected bumper-to-bumper. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t be very pleased with the armament we had brought.

  This, coupled with the fact that Lucas’s phone had been stationary outside a spice souk in Deira for the entire morning, had almost caused me to change my mind and simply execute the mugging using the vehicle. Just follow and rip him off the street at the first opportunity.

  I really didn’t want to do that given the variables of location and time. I wanted—needed—to control the kill zone, so we kept looking. Eventually, we ended up behind the hotel at a back entrance that led to several attached restaurants. The restaurants were only open for dinner, and the hallway between them ultimately ended up back in the hotel lobby. Even better, the hallway had a single camera at the lobby entrance for the hotel and a single camera at the exit, outside the door. The kicker had been that instead of a metal detector at the exit, it was simply locked. The hotel had decided to shut it down for the duration of the envoy’s visit.

  Sitting next to me in the van, staring at his Taskforce smartphone, Knuckles said, “Target’s on the move.” I looked at my own phone, brought over in the support package Jennifer had received, and saw Lucas was crossing the Dubai Creek and headed to us. Or the airport.

  Moment of truth.

  The envoy’s party was due to land in about thirty minutes. If Lucas bypassed the hotel and made any indication that he was headed to the airport, we would be forced to take him down with the vehicle whether we liked it or not. I was betting he wouldn’t, though. He’d had the time to come up with something ingenious, and with the Saudi unknown helping him, I didn’t think he’d do some ghetto drive-by. He’d want to get away clean.

  I keyed the push-to-talk on my radio. “Everyone set?”

  Brett said, “Roger. I got the line of sight down the hallway.”

  Decoy said, “Yeah. I got the front door and the roundabout outside.”

  Jennifer said, “I’m still good. No change.”

  “Remember,” I said, “he doesn’t bite on the way in, we recock and try again on the way out.”

  Knuckles did a functions check on the new EMP gun we’d received in the drop, making sure it was ready to take out the camera above the door. I busied myself with my electric lockpick gun, mentally rehearsing in my mind the sequence I would go through.

  Our part of the mission was the one big risk to discovery. I had to get the door open before Jennifer reached it, which meant Knuckles would have to kill the camera before Lucas committed to the trap. If he didn’t, we’d have to cross our fingers that someone wouldn’t come out and investigate why the camera wasn’t working while we waited on round two.

  Knuckles said, “He’s made the turn on the road to the hotel.”

  I felt the adrenaline rise, knowing we were about two minutes out. Knuckles shut off the phone, slid open the door to the van, and said, “Decoy, your target.”

  “Roger.”

  Decoy was the trigger. The minute he saw Lucas, we’d be in motion.

  Sooner than expected, I heard, “Target at entrance. Held up with security. They’re searching his backpack.”

  That was one good thing about this location. We’d know positively that Lucas had no firearms. Knuckles handed me his radio and cell phone, then exited the vehicle, me right behind him. We slid down the wall of the hotel, doing whatever we could to stay out of the camera’s field of view.

  He reached within forty feet of the ball hanging above the door and began sighting. I backed up a few yards to prevent any backsplash from destroying our electronics. Especially my lock gun.

  The EMP hummed and Knuckles said, “Go.”

  I raced to the lock, taking a knee and sliding in the thin needle. I inserted the tension wrench, then began pulsing the lock gun. It rattled like crazy, much louder than I remembered.

  Decoy said, “Target’s passed. Jennifer, your show.”

  I continued to work the lock and told Decoy to give me a play-byplay. Jennifer had done a timing run, and I knew the hallway was two minutes from the lobby to the door. Unfortunately, the last bend, right in front of a Chinese restaurant, was only one minute and thirty seconds away. From it someone would have a view of the door and me behind it through the plate glass.

  “Jennifer’s up and looking sexy, giving Lucas an eyeful. Come on, baby, show him some skin.”

  Asshole. I grinned in spite of the seriousness of what we were doing. Decoy was busting my balls because of a fight we’d had last year in a similar situation involving Jennifer. He’d made some inappropriate comments, and I’d about taken his head off. Now, he was

  poking me in the eye for the fun of it.

  “Okay, Lucas has lock-on, and he definitely recognized her. He

  stopped for a second. He’s now staring at her back, but headed to the

  elevator. Target unsighted. Brett, it’s your ball.”

  Shit. Come on. Follow her.

  Brett said, “I got him. He’s at the elevator. Jennifer’s about fifty feet

  from the hallway. He’s still looking.”

  I continued working the lock, having trouble getting the pins to the

  shear line. One seated, then another, but slower than my rehearsal

  earlier in the van.

  “Bingo. He’s coming her way, walking fast. Jennifer, pick it up or

  he’s going to catch you.”

  I heard Jennifer acknowledge, and I started to sweat. “Time?” I

  asked Knuckles.

  Knuckles said,“Easy. You still got over a minute. Slow and smooth.” I felt another pin reach the shear line, realizing I was going to make

  it with half a minute to spare. The next call popped that illusion. “Shit, he just started running. Jennifer, get moving! He’s not going

  to follow. He’s coming hard to take you out. Jennifer, you copy?” I heard silence for a second, then, “Target unsighted. I say again,

  target unsighted.”

  I looked through the window, but saw nothing. At a sprint my time

  went from a minute and a half to about twenty seconds. I returned to

  the lock, the tension wrench having moved about forty-five degrees,

  which meant I had about two or three pins to go.

  I seated another pin and heard Knuckles say in a monotone, “Got

  her in sight. You’re out of time.” I looked up to see Lucas right behind

  her, bearing down like a bull in full
charge, both running flat out. Jennifer caught my eye, and I shook my head left and right in an exaggerated motion.

  She glanced over her shoulder and Lucas struck, attempting to

  wrap his arms around her in a full-body tackle. She rotated and drove her foot straight into his stomach, his forward momentum increasing the power of the strike.

  I heard his grunt and exhale of breath all the way outside as I frantically stroked the remaining pin.

  “Come on, Pike!” Knuckles shouted. “He’s getting back up!”

  Jennifer was in a fighting crouch, dancing out of his way, slowly using up her remaining space to the door, attempting to give me time.

  He swung a roundhouse at her head, hard enough to knock her out completely. She parried and redirected the energy away from her, then slipped inside his reach and gave him a palm strike to his nose, snapping her hip and driving her body behind it. His head popped back like he’d run into an unseen pole, and she danced back out of his reach. I could see the look of shock on his face, her skill completely taking him by surprise.

  He bellowed and rushed, wrapping her in a bear hug and trapping her arms. He slammed her full-force into a wall, and the last pin broke free.

  I ripped open the door, Knuckles flying through and running straight at the pair. Lucas heard the movement and turned, still holding Jennifer. Knuckles hit him full-force on the side of his head with a closed fist, rattling him enough to lose control of Jennifer. She rotated out and kicked him hard in the genitals. He shrieked and fell to his knees, attempting to control the pain and continue to fight. He started to rise, and Knuckles gave him an uppercut to his face, knocking him back into me. I put him in a rear naked choke, and in ten seconds his arms quit windmilling. He was out.

  Panting, I said, “What the hell happened to using the Taser?”

  “I didn’t have a clean shot with him holding Jennifer. And he deserved a little punishment.”

  “Jennifer, you all right?”

  Leaning against a wall and breathing heavy, she said, “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.”

  “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  54

  S

  taring down at Lucas’s battered face, I radioed Brett in the follow car. “Any activity?”

  “None. We’re clean so far.”

  I’d left him and Decoy within sight of the rear door to give me a feel on whether we’d been compromised or not, while Knuckles, Jennifer, and I had tossed Lucas in our van and driven a couple of alleys away from the hotel, giving Blaine in our makeshift hotel tactical operations center a SITREP. Satisfied we were good to go, I addressed Lucas for the first time.

  “Been a while. I’ll bet seeing me walking around was a big fucking surprise.”

  He said nothing, his face a blank canvas showing neither fear nor anger.

  “Look, I appreciate how tough you are, so I’m not going to go through a bunch of threats. Here’s the deal: The United States Middle East envoy is landing in minutes. I can afford to talk right now, but once that envoy hits the ground, I’ll be out of time. I know you’re out to kill him, I just don’t know how. Tell me that and you’ll spare yourself some pain later, I promise.”

  I expected all sorts of stalling tactics. What I got completely surprised me.

  Looking relieved, he said, “Pike, I’m on your side. That’s what I’m doing here. I know there’s a hit planned on the envoy, but it’s not me. It’s another guy from Lebanon called the Ghost. He’s the one targeting

  the envoy. I’m trying to stop him.”

  Surprised or no, I lightly slapped his face twice, saying, “Cut the

  crap. What’s the plan? The clock’s ticking and I’d rather not destroy

  the envoy’s itinerary by putting him back on a plane.”

  Which, of course, was a lie. I had no control over McMasters’s

  activities, but I didn’t want Lucas to know that.

  “I have no idea. That’s the truth. I was tracking the assassin, but I

  haven’t been able to figure out what he’s up to. I have a bed-down site

  I was using as an anchor, but he didn’t sleep there last night. Or if he

  did, he found another way out of the souk. If you guys can stop him,

  so much the better.”

  He saw me starting to get pissed and said, “Look, I don’t expect

  you to believe me, but I’ll tell you everything I know. I work for pay,

  but I don’t kill U.S. government officials. I have my limits, and that’s

  one. Up until a few days ago I was working for a group in Lebanon. I

  found out about this hit and we parted ways. Ever since then, I’ve been

  trying to track this guy down. He went to Yemen, then came here.” Despite myself, I found his words credible. I could confirm everything he had just said, to include the slaughter of the Hezbollah guys. Bullshit. This guy’s nothing but snake oil.

  “Why the hell did you try to blow me up then? In Lebanon with

  that computer bomb? If you were so fired up about protecting the

  envoy, you had to know I was doing the same thing.”

  “Blow you up? I didn’t even know you were in Lebanon! I gave an

  IED to a Hezbollah contact. They thought it was a camera to record

  a planning meeting about this hit, but I intended for it to kill the assassin. Somehow it missed, and he’s still running around loose.” I took that in and said, “So I suppose you thought Jennifer was part

  of the assassin’s master plan as well? That why you were about to kick

  her ass?”

  “I wasn’t going to hurt her. I recognized her and was trying to

  make contact. I was just going to talk to her. Yeah, I had to subdue her to do it because I know you guys want to kill me. It wasn’t like I trusted her for a nice sit-down conversation. I’ll admit I was going to prevent her from getting me in the crosshairs, but if I’d have hurt her, I wouldn’t have been able to get any help on protecting the envoy. Shit,

  she’s the one who kicked me first.”

  “What about the vehicle IED you emplaced yesterday? On a member of my team’s car?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I spent all of yesterday

  following the Ghost, trying to figure out his plan. I lost him at a mosque.

  There’s no way I could do that and go around building car bombs.” He looked genuinely puzzled by the question, as if he thought we

  were testing him and he knew his answer would fail. This is sounding

  too crazy. I put a double pillowcase on his head and motioned Jennifer

  and Knuckles out of the van. I positioned myself so I could see his

  body in the back and spoke over my shoulder.

  “What do you think?”

  Knuckles said, “I don’t know. He’s a slimy bastard, but everything

  he’s saying makes sense. It answers the question of why there’d be a

  bomb from Hezbollah targeting the very assassin they were looking to

  hire, and we did see him kill the Hezbollah leadership cell. As insane

  as it sounds, he might be telling the truth.”

  “Jennifer?” I said.

  “I don’t trust him. This could just be a stalling tactic. He’s pure evil.

  I find it hard to believe he’d do something that was morally just if no

  money were involved. He’s not built that way.”

  “Yeah, I’m with you. But distrusting him doesn’t solve our current

  problem. That Saudi is still running around.”

  Knuckles said, “Well, see what he can tell us about that guy. The

  minute he says something we can refute, we start getting rough.” Back in the van, I pulled his hood off. “Tell me about the Ghost.

  What’s he look like? Where was he bedding down? What was your

  plan to remove him?”

  “I need my tablet.”

  I dug the comp
uter out of his backpack and handed it to him. He

  held out his hands and said, “This would be quicker if you cut these

  flexties.”

  I cuffed the back of his head. “Nice try. Get to work or I’m going

  to assume you’re stalling.”

  In seconds, I was looking at a passport photo of the same guy from

  the Yemen biometric scan. The one who’d built the improvised shaped

  charge. The lighting was different in each, and in the passport photo

  he was wearing thick glasses, but there was no mistaking him. The

  name on the passport was the same as well. A citizen of Saudi Arabia. Lucas said, “This is the guy. I don’t know his true name, but he’s

  called the Ghost for other killings he’s done. He’s been here for a few

  days, but I haven’t been able to get a handle on his plan. I followed him

  most of the day yesterday, then, like I said, I lost him at a mosque. He

  went to electronic and hardware stores, but didn’t develop any pattern,

  as if he was rehearsing a vehicle hit or anything. I also never saw him

  conduct a recce of anything else I would consider a kill zone. The only

  thing out of place was a visit to the Dubai Mall and the Burj Khalifa.

  By the time I parked, I had lost him, so I’m not sure what he was doing.” “That’s not a whole lot. What can you give us to work with?” He manipulated his tablet, pulling up a map with icons embedded.

  Most were of the locations we’d already seen the previous day. He

  pointed at a new one.

  “I had a beacon installed into a briefcase he used. It hasn’t been

  much help, but it did go to these two locations. The first is the beddown site he used until last night. The second is inside the Burj Khalifa. Those are the only two anchors I have, which, since the briefcase

  only moved once during this entire time, I’m assuming are important.