Reckoning

by J. B. Turner

  “It’s not ideal, I’d imagine, to change things last minute.”

  “It’s far from ideal. But our operative will do whatever is required of her.”

  “I read in her file that she fantasized about being a martyr.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I share your concerns about scenario one. While there might not be a police presence on those rooftops, according to our intel anyway, have we considered news choppers inadvertently spotting our operative?”

  “That had been considered, but Clayton was sure the cameras in place were all at ground level for such a small visit. He thought the possibility was small.”

  “I want to talk about scenario three. What do you think about it?”

  “I think it’s interesting,” Strutt said. “What I liked about it was that it would allow the operative to get in close. The scenario said the female operative, wearing a white doctor’s coat and fake hospital lanyard with a real doctor’s name, would evade basic security quite easily. And then—well, it’s interesting.”

  “But you’re not convinced?”

  “I’m not convinced,” Strutt said.

  “So you could be persuaded?”

  “I think the scenario could have been tightened, giving it a far higher probability of success,” Strutt said.

  “How would you do that?”

  “Stage one, the female operative takes her action. I believe it will spark a reaction in the target. Our analysis shows he is, and I’m quoting, ‘highly susceptible’ and will very likely be triggered. Stage two, when he goes down, she will kneel down—she’s a doctor after all—and summon a doctor standing beside her, another one of our operatives, who will jab him surreptitiously on the back of his neck. Dead within seconds.”

  “So . . . walk me through this. The operatives—male and female?”

  “Yes. They’re brother and sister. Chechen. You saw the woman yesterday, I believe.”

  Berenger sighed. “The operatives would both be in plain sight, perhaps for thirty minutes, maybe more.”

  “It’s a risk.”

  “An acceptable risk?”

  “Ideally, we want zero risk. But this is real life. The rationale for scenario three is it would look like the target is collapsing, perhaps having a heart attack. But then, when he starts to seize, to have two doctors there right by his side would look convincing. They’re in there. And the target would be dead before he’s in the ambulance, which would be parked, with a doctor and two nurses, just over a hundred yards away.”

  “This wouldn’t be on live television?”

  “No. But there will be cameras there.”

  Berenger began to contemplate his favored scenario. It felt strange that instead of evaluations of an individual’s psychology he was assessing the best assassination strategy. But his years at the CIA and his knowledge of international security, terrorism issues, and the psychology of terrorism left him well placed to offer rational arguments in this arena.

  “The operatives, just to be clear, are capable of carrying this out. They would be inserted into the location by an ambulance. They aren’t on any watch lists. We’ve made sure of that. They’re clean skins.”

  Berenger reflected on that. “Are you sure? These are Chechens, and there’s no trace of terrorism?”

  “We’ve already made up some great IDs, lanyards, as a backup. My first rule is always have a backup in place.”

  “Do they speak English?”

  “Both fluent. She can speak four languages fluently.”

  “So face recognition wouldn’t pull them out of the crowd.”

  “Even better than that. We can update the hospital’s database remotely to have the photograph changed to match the IDs we gave them. And we have an operation green-lighted.”

  Berenger was quiet for a few moments. “And the medical records of the target. These are genuine?”

  “We hacked them. We have full access to his medical records.”

  “I see he had a fondness for cannabis as a student.”

  “Still does by all accounts. Very liberal. A mistress too. But his health details also reveal a rare condition that makes him susceptible.”

  “Tell me, does the media know about his medical condition?”

  Strutt shook his head. “Absolutely not. The target’s people have kept it quiet.”

  “Why do you think that is?”

  “Doesn’t fit into his healthy, sporty image.”

  “So this condition, this is good from our point of view.”

  “It is.”

  Berenger nodded. “OK, I like scenario three, but in two stages, not as you originally indicated. I want the Chechen girl, doctor’s coat on, getting a selfie with him. He’s not going to refuse, right?”

  “The guy’s a social media nut,” Strutt said. “Preoccupied with how he looks, how he comes across. There are literally thousands of photographs of him posing with people across Canada, America, Europe. He’s a narcissist. And a pretty girl wanting to get her picture taken with him? He’ll want that, trust me.”

  Berenger smiled. “Stage two, I want her brother, also in a doctor’s coat, alongside another operative dressed in hospital garb, in the back of the ambulance, which will reverse up within seconds of this happening. The target will be moved into the ambulance, and we assume how many security personnel would accompany him?”

  “Two. One in the passenger seat, another in the rear. Operative two begins to work on the target, and when he administers a drug to counteract the effects of his ailment, he will die.”

  Berenger leaned back in his seat and smiled. “Now that I like.”

  “There are no guarantees it will work.”

  “We’re not in the business of guarantees. However, this works in two ways. First, there will be TV footage of him collapsing, perhaps foaming at the mouth. Then him being transferred to the ambulance. His clean-cut, healthy image will be shot. Then the lethal dose inside the ambulance takes him out of the game for good. The cool thing is it’s made to look like a medical condition that has become fatal. By the time they realize what actually happened, if they even realize, we’ll all be long gone.”

  Sixty-Two

  Deshi Umarov was lying on her bed in a room deep within the bowels of the facility. She was thinking back to what her mother had told her. About how Deshi had been born in a freezing basement in Grozny as Russian artillery shells rained down. Amid the dust and dark, civilians huddled for warmth and comfort, reciting passages from the Koran as children cried. Her father was killed when he went outside to scavenge for food. And it was left to her mother to keep Deshi and her older brother alive, giving them whatever milk she had. The days turned into weeks. Then months.

  Deshi’s mother had told her these tales when she was a child. Stories of men and women she had seen drowning in sewage tunnels under the city. When she had emerged out into the streets, it was rubble, destruction.

  Deshi had grown to hate the Russians. Her great-grandfather, her mother said, had been one of the thousands of Chechens who had sided with the Nazis. Anything but the Russians. And when the war was over, Stalin had expelled thousands of Chechens, including her great-grandfather, sending them to Kazakhstan. They only returned in 1957, after Khrushchev allowed them back. But the simmering hatred for Russia remained.

  She closed her eyes. Her mind flashed back to when she was ten. The vigil for her mother as she lay dying. Her mother motioned her to come closer. And she whispered in Deshi’s ear.

  Commit yourself to jihad.

  Commit yourself to the Koran.

  Commit yourself to Islam.

  Commit yourself to die, my darling Deshi.

  At that moment, Deshi set aside any hopes and dreams she might have possessed. She had wanted to be a journalist. But from the day her mother died, she only wanted jihad. She wanted to commit herself to fight the enemies of Islam.

  It had begun when she was a teenager, with the fight against the Russians in Grozny. Ambushes on Russian troop
s. At sixteen, she was encouraged by Chechen fighters her age to move to Moscow. She worked in a factory. She was living in a Soviet-era apartment. She was part of a jihadist Chechen cell.

  Deshi had vowed that she would avenge the blood of the Chechens. She passed on intelligence about a man she suspected was in the FSB, the Russian secret police. She watched as he was killed in front of his family. She had been part of countless operations that had targeted the Moscow Metro. Explosions. Shootings. On and on, the rage against Mother Russia.

  Then one day, in Moscow, her brother introduced her to a soft-spoken American. He called himself Mike. A short while later, she was smuggled out of the country with her brother. Jordan became their home. They were trained by the CIA in bomb making. Sniping. Martial arts. Survival skills. Tradecraft used by spies. She learned about poisons. She learned languages. She became fluent in English. She learned all about assassination techniques. She learned how to kill with her bare hands. She learned how to use a knife. And guns.

  Deshi became proficient. She fought in Syria. In Iraq. She fought wherever she could. But now, this day, was something else.

  Today was the day she was going to die. Her blood would be spilled. It would be spilled on foreign soil. She did not care. This was not about her. It would spill for all the jihadists over the years, the centuries, who had sworn to fight those who disbelieved in the religion of Islam. The kafir.

  Sixty-Three

  Nathan was laying spread-eagle in a field, staring through high-powered binoculars at a remote house nearly a thousand yards away, fifteen miles outside Toronto. He watched as the security man leaned against the trunk of a car. The man wore a suit and was smoking a cigarette, talking into a cell phone. The man was one of those he’d seen inside the house Berenger was staying in. He scanned the windows of the rest of the house. The window of the room on the first floor where he’d had his meetings with Berenger, no lights on.

  The man ended his call.

  A few minutes later, a huge white moving van reversed down the gravel driveway and pulled up beside the car. The driver and two other guys jumped out and opened up the back of the truck.

  The double doors were wedged open and they traipsed in. Over the next twenty minutes, they removed everything. Desks, carpets, computers, laptops, a printer, large-screen TVs, wooden tables, three water coolers, paintings, filing cabinets, phones, trash cans, plastic trash bags bursting at the seams. Then a younger guy went up a ladder and removed security cameras from the front of the building.

  Nathan turned around and crawled back into the nearby woods. Then he doubled back and approached the house from the rear. Through fields, hedgerows, dirt paths, dirt roads. He was within one hundred yards and closing.

  The man’s voice could be heard talking into the phone. “They’ve taken everything. I watched them. The phone extensions all drilled out, removed. All the wiring, cameras, you name it, your guys have stripped it to the bone.” He laughed.

  Nathan waited until the guy ended the call. He waited until the man went inside to have one last look around. He headed down a gravel path, past the car, and then slipped into the lobby of the house.

  The man was upstairs by the sounds of it.

  Nathan tiptoed up the stone stairs in his rubber-soled sneakers. His senses were fully switched on. He crouched behind a pillar as footsteps came down the hall.

  Nathan waited and held his breath. He turned and pointed the gun. The man froze. “Hands in the air!”

  The man slowly raised his hands.

  “On your knees!”

  The man didn’t move.

  Nathan pulled back the slide and shot the guy’s right knee. The man screamed and the sound echoed around the walls of the old house. Then he crumpled in a heap, writhing in pain, as blood spilled onto the stone floor.

  “That’s better. I seem to have your attention now.” Nathan edged closer and stood over the man. He pressed his foot down hard onto the man’s bleeding knee. “Who are you?”

  The man grimaced in pain. “Motherfucker!”

  Nathan smiled, pressing his foot down hard again. “I don’t think that’s your name, is it? Now, let’s try again . . . Last time I’m gonna ask. Who are you?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “I did give you a warning, didn’t I?” Nathan aimed the gun down at the man’s face. “Did I or did I not give you a warning?”

  The man closed his eyes tight, teeth clenched. “Yes. I’m security for this project.”

  “What project is that? Just for this house?”

  The man screwed up his eyes. “No!”

  “I’m going to count backward from three, and if you haven’t given me a satisfactory and correct answer, I will blow your head off. How does that sound?”

  The man began to moan. “You’re Nathan?”

  “Three . . . Two . . .”

  “Hang on! Yes, I oversaw security for this house.”

  “The house that Berenger worked out of, right?”

  The man closed his eyes tightly and nodded. “Yes.”

  “Tell me about the facility.”

  “I worked there until a month ago. And then I was moved down here to look after Berenger.”

  “Did you know anything about my handler?”

  The man shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “Tell me more about the facility.”

  The man shrugged, tears spilling down his cheeks. “I’m just low-level security.”

  “How much do they pay you?”

  “Three hundred thousand US dollars. Tax-free.”

  “Who did you used to work for?”

  The man moaned. “I’m bleeding out here, man.”

  “Who did you used to work for?”

  “I’m a contractor. Private security. Iraq. You know the drill.”

  “Been there. Who else?”

  “The firm I worked for was contracted by the Agency from time to time.”

  “So you worked within the facility. What do you know?”

  “I know this place had to be clear by midafternoon. Not a trace.”

  “Why?”

  “Berenger’s in the facility now. He’s not here. So they decided to shut it down.”

  “Why is Berenger inside the facility?”

  “I heard he took over. He’s a cold bastard.”

  “Berenger’s in charge?”

  The man nodded.

  “What else?”

  “Everyone is on lockdown there.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know for sure. But I heard—”

  “Don’t fuck with me!”

  “It’s going down tonight.”

  “Here in Toronto?” Nathan pressed the gun tight to the man’s forehead. “Who’re they going to kill?”

  The man grimaced. “Goddamn it. I want to show you something.”

  Nathan smiled. “Don’t fuck around, my friend.”

  “My cell phone. Pocket.”

  Nathan reached into the guy’s inside jacket pocket and pulled out his cell phone. “Fingerprint recognition. Press your thumb on it.”

  The guy did as he was told.

  Nathan began to scroll through the messages. “So what am I looking for?”

  “Two months ago, I was sent a photo of a woman. The message was sent from my boss, Larry Campbell.”

  Nathan looked back and opened the message. It showed a grainy black-and-white picture of a young woman and a young man. “Who are they?”

  “I escorted them from a private plane that landed at the facility’s airfield to private quarters.”

  Nathan stared at the ghostly features of both.

  “They’re assassins. Jihadists. From Chechnya.”

  “And who’s the target?”

  “I don’t know. But they’ve been brought in as a false flag.”

  Sixty-Four

  Nathan dragged the man out of the house as he screamed in pain. He slammed the door shut and it clicked as its mechanism locked in place.

&nbs
p; “You can’t just leave me here!”

  Nathan pointed the gun at the man as he lay facedown on the gravel driveway. He pulled the man’s wallet out of his back pocket and scanned his details. “Is this real?”

  “It’s fake.”

  “Do you want to live?”

  “Of course I do, man!”

  Nathan sighed. “What are you supposed to do now?”

  “Disappear.”

  Nathan took a couple of steps back and turned around. He saw the keys were in the car. He popped open the trunk. Inside was a large empty backpack.

  The man was still moaning.

  Nathan examined the carpeted trunk. He pulled back the carpet, revealing a sealed metal compartment. Inside was a long-range Barrett scope rifle. It used .50 cal incendiary ammo, already locked and loaded. He took it out and pointed it at the man’s head. “What the fuck is this for?”

  “If I ran into trouble.”

  Nathan knew the power of the weapon and the ammo. It was an anti-matériel weapon. It could take out a car. Truck. An armored truck even. It was also very useful for nighttime, with the tracer fire to see the target. “This is a serious weapon. What about a car search at the border?”

  “They’ve taken care of that.”

  “Is that right? Get up.”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  Nathan cocked his head. “Get in the fucking trunk.”

  “Man, don’t do this.”

  Nathan stepped forward and smashed the man on the side of the head, splitting his lip, spilling more blood.

  “Motherfucker!” the man said.

  “In the trunk.”

  The man clambered in, whimpering. He adjusted himself into the space in the trunk. He looked up at Nathan, eyes pleading. “Don’t kill me, man.”

  Nathan took out the backpack. “Head down. Not a word.”

  “Don’t kill me.”

  Nathan slammed the trunk shut. He disassembled the rifle and put the parts, including the magazine and the tracer ammo, inside the backpack, zipped it up, and placed it at his feet. He started up the engine and drove off toward downtown Toronto.

  His actions made no sense. He was doing everything he’d been trained not to.