by Brad Taylor
Haider jumped between them and said, “Khalid, have you lost your mind? Stop it. Stop right now. My father would never want this.”
Khalid said, “Move away, brother. We aren’t really family yet.”
Haider raised his arms and said, “No. We aren’t doing this. Let’s get back to the airport and go home.”
Khalid gritted his teeth, realizing the dilemma he’d put them in. It was too late for that. They were committed. Stopping now would do nothing but guarantee the loss of his future patronage from Sharif, and yet Sharif’s son sought that end in front of him.
He said, “Brother, move away.”
Haider pressed his hands out in a gesture of surrender and slid forward, saying, “Don’t do this. You and I can still fight another day. This isn’t the end that you want it to be.”
Khalid realized that Sharif was correct. His son had no steel. No courage. Haider was worth more dead than alive as a lever of intimidation for Billings.
Khalid pulled the trigger, hitting Haider just below his left eye. The bullet tracked through his brain, exploding out of the back and whipping by Billings’s head, missing the secretary by inches and embedding in the wall. Haider’s brain matter sprayed out, a snap of moisture as if someone had popped a wet towel, the offal coating Billings in a thick mist.
Leslie screamed again, curling up on the floor and covering her head. Billings stood with his mouth open like a fish, shocked, afraid to close it and ingest the gore.
Khalid said, “Press the button on the radio, or you will be next.”
85
After only thirty minutes of tarmac time, our little caravan of vehicles left the airport, heading south toward Fredrikstad. Knuckles and I were up front in the sedan, Brett and Nick on two BMW G 650 touring bikes in the middle, and Jennifer in a van bringing up the rear, the back loaded with all of our kit. Knuckles said, “We’ve got about a forty-minute ride, which means we might beat Blaine to the cottage. You want to go laager outside the town, burn off some time?”
My phone vibrated and I said, “Speak of the devil. Blaine must be on the ground.” I answered, saying, “About time, Showboat. We’re inbound. What’s your status?”
“Waiting on customs. I can see your aircraft, and given what little time it took you to get on the road, I take it they’re not that thorough.”
“No. Thirty minutes max. Did you get any further guidance, or are we still flapping on this thing?”
“Still flapping, but I’m sure you’ve come up with a plan. Oversight Council’s working it through Billings. They still haven’t given Omega, but they want these guys under close watch. It’s a little political, to say the least.”
“Yeah. I figured. Listen, I’m going to need some information from Billings.”
“Okay. Like what?”
“I need to know where these guys are staying. I want to put a full blanket on them. Bug their rooms, tag their vehicles, and penetrate their communication systems. The usual. Build up a case for Omega, and Billings can help with that. He’s still talking to the targets, right?”
“Yeah, but he’s a diplomat, Pike. I don’t know if I can convince him to use his position as a lever to facilitate Taskforce operations. He’ll make decisions as part of the Council, but he won’t turn into a commando just because you asked. I think it’s going to be an issue of principle with him.”
“I only need him to do two things. One, give me the hotel. Two, set up a meeting with his boys, then keep them there for an hour. Half the team will crack into the room while they’re meeting, the other half will identify the target vehicles and get a handle on their cellular communications. After that, he’s done. It’s not like I’m asking him to start slinging lead, and we wouldn’t even be in this position if he’d have listened to Guy in the first place.”
He said, “Let me give it a go. Don’t show up at the cottage until I’m done. Seeing you might set him off.”
“Because he’s jealous of my innate skills?”
He said, “Because he hates your guts,” and hung up. I radioed the team, telling them we were pulling over for a spell. We corralled at a gas station and I told them what I knew, along with where I envisioned the mission going. We’d been waiting no more than ten minutes when Blaine called again. I looked at Knuckles and said, “That’s either great news or Billings has told us to pack sand.”
I answered, saying, “Tell me Billings has decided he’d like to attend Assessment and Selection.”
I heard no humor coming back. “Pike, something catastrophic has occurred. I can’t get Billings on the phone. I got his assistant, a woman named Leslie, and she’s almost catatonic. Get to the cottage, ASAP.”
I circled my hand in the air, telling everyone to load up, then said, “What’s happened? What am I walking into?”
“I don’t know. I need you to figure that out. All she kept shouting was that Secretary Billings was gone, and people are dead.”
I hung up the phone, seeing Brett and Nick getting on their bikes. I reversed my command. “Hold up.” I looked at Knuckles and said, “Surveillance just went out the window. Kit everyone up for assault.”
“What’s going on?”
“All I know is that Showboat says there are dead people. We’re headed straight to the cottage to sort it out, and we’re going armed.”
His eyes widened slightly, but he said, “Beats the hell out of following those turds for days.”
He turned away from the hood and waved over Jennifer. “Bring the kit around. We’re going in loaded for bear.”
Five minutes later, the motorcyclists were each outfitted with a suppressed Glock 23. Knuckles, Jennifer, and I had a Primary Weapons Systems MK109 chambered in .300 Blackout, a folding-stock AR rifle with a Gemtech suppressor that made the cycling of the bolt louder than the bullet.
I pulled up an overhead image on a tablet that showed the thread of the road leading to the cottage. I said, “Okay, the house is about four miles away. Brett and Nick will lead.”
I used a pen to point on the tablet. “Head down this asphalt road and get a feel for what we’re looking at, but don’t penetrate the second gate where the gravel road starts. Peel off before becoming engaged, and use the bikes to get into the woods. We know Billings has a diplomatic security team there and I don’t want any shooting. Give me an assessment and we’ll follow up.
“Knuckles and Jennifer, we’ll park on the outside road, then enter slowly. I’ll have out a US flag, and we’ll sort it from there. Beemer guys pull security while we check it out.”
I got an up, and we rolled. Eight minutes later, we were tucked into a turnout, waiting on the motorcycles to report.
When they did, I found out they’d rolled right up to the second gate, ignoring my orders. Obviously, they’d already sorted it out.
Brett came on, saying, “Bring it in, Pike. It’s a mess.”
“Roger that. What did you tell them?”
“I said we’re Department of Homeland Security. Stick with that for now. They’re too shell-shocked to ask for identification.”
We came upon a disaster scene, meeting a guy in mirrored shades who was acting like he was calm and collected, but I could see right through that. He was shaken. We retreated to the house, and we learned the damage.
Two Arabs had somehow managed to kidnap the US secretary of state. The diplomatic security guys were giving us the information we needed, not hiding anything, which was surprising, because somebody was going to get annihilated for this goat fuck.
There were five dead in the house, all laid out neatly in the bedroom with sheets covering them. Four were diplomatic security, one was Haider al-Attiya. One other man was barely conscious, his arm a pretzel, with Brett providing him medical attention. Leslie, the assistant, gave us the best information. When she was done talking, I said, “Why did you guys release the Range Rover?”
&
nbsp; The DSS man said, “Because the secretary of state demanded it. We’d already scrubbed it. There was no threat, and we sent a man with them.”
I pointed to the bedroom and said, “One of those guys?”
“Yes.”
“How did they get out?”
“They shot their way out. They came blazing to the gate and just started shooting. There isn’t any cover out there. We couldn’t return effective fire without harming Secretary Billings.”
“And your cars? The up-armored vehicles?”
“They were parked at the cottage. When we got to them, we found them disabled.”
Beating these guys up further was doing no good at all. I said, “How long ago? How much of a gap?”
“Less than twenty minutes.”
So the slaying had occurred while we were on the road. Making me regret pulling over to the side and waiting on Blaine.
I said, “All right. We don’t know what those guys are up to, but it’s either murdering Billings or harming the peace talks. I need you to go through State and lock down that site. Call off the rest of today’s activities and get them out of there.”
“What are you going to do?”
I continued as if I hadn’t heard him. “You got this scene. Call who you need to, at the State Department and the embassy, get anyone who needs medical care, but don’t call the police. I don’t need a bunch of gunslingers running amok with the SECSTATE’s life in the balance. We’ll take it from here for Secretary Billings.”
He said, “Whoa, wait a minute, that’s bullshit. Secretary Billings is my responsibility.”
I appreciated the sentiment, but that wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t taking a bunch of unknowns. “You’ve got your hands full here. It looks like you’re one of the last men standing, and this is what we do. Someone needs to coordinate with the embassy, and it isn’t going to be Leslie.”
He nodded, accepting the information, then said, “I don’t even know who you guys are.”
“We’re just another agency, but the other side of the coin. You protect defensively. We do so offensively. We’ve been tracking the Arabs.”
He said, “So I guess we both fucked this up.”
I took that in and then said, “Yeah, we did. We both trusted Billings’s judgment.”
86
Khalid saw a parking garage built into the side of a hill, an office building made of glass attached to it, and said, “Pull in there, get off the street.”
Sabour made the turn, going underground into the darkness.
Things had happened so quickly that Khalid needed time to think. To determine his next course of action. The drive out of the cottage had been a blur of gunfire and fear, Sabour plowing through the men at the gate as Khalid fired out the window, Billings cowering in the front seat in abject terror.
He remembered only short glimpses, like the flash of a camera. The security man slamming into the car frame as the bullets stitched his chest, the brass from his MP7 ricocheting inside the car as they raced out, the look of shock on the men’s faces at the gate.
Only one fired back, until someone screamed at him to stop, and then they were through, turning onto the main road hard enough to throw Khalid against the opposite seat. They’d crossed the Glomma River and entered the peninsula of Fredrikstad city, Sabour staying on Highway 110 until he swung through a traffic circle and began driving on surface streets.
Khalid had swiveled his head back and forth, but nobody seemed to be paying them any mind. Even so, when the vehicle disappeared into the underground garage, Khalid felt relief in the darkness. Sabour killed the engine without pulling into a spot.
He said, “What now?”
Khalid wiped the sweat from his brow and said, “We go to the peace meetings. We complete the mission.”
Billings sat up and spoke for the first time. “Khalid. You cannot succeed. You didn’t kill everyone, so they’ll be coming. They will have shut down the meetings. Give yourself up.”
Khalid cuffed him on the back of the head with the barrel of the weapon. “Shut up. You will take us to the meeting. Right now.”
Billings cradled his head, saying, “Why? Why must you do this? What possible good will it do?”
“You will never understand. Take me to the meeting.”
“No.”
Khalid raised his weapon, jamming the barrel into Billings’s mouth. “Killing you won’t be harming the peace process, but it will be close enough.”
He saw Billings’s phone flash on his hip, the vibrating buzz filling the interior. Nobody moved. Khalid said, “Don’t you dare answer that.”
It finished, leaving them in silence. Khalid said, “I’m going to count to five. You nod when you want me to stop. If I reach five, I’m blowing the back of your head out.”
Billings closed his eyes. Khalid said, “One,” punctuating it by jabbing the barrel and tearing Billings’s lip. “Two.”
Billings nodded.
Khalid withdrew the barrel. “Good choice.” He handed his smartphone to Sabour and said, “Pull up Google Maps, then hand the phone to the secretary.”
Billings said, “I’ll take you there. I just said I would.”
“No. You’ll tag the spot on the map, then we’ll drive there together.”
Resigned, Billings took the phone. He marked a location and handed it back. Khalid said, “A museum? The talks are happening in a museum?”
“Yes. It’s government controlled, and on a fortified island. You won’t get in.”
“We will with you.” He leaned into the back and withdrew the hidden CZ 75, handing it to Sabour. “Switch seats. Billings drives now.”
They did so and Khalid held up the phone. “If you deviate from the route, I’ll kill you.”
He saw a single headlight beam flash against the wall and said, “When this motorcycle passes, we go.”
It took a moment before it registered that the motorcycle was coming down the exit ramp, on the opposite side of the garage from the entrance they’d used.
87
I studied the satellite image on the tablet, the rest of the team forming a circle around me in the van, all of us waiting on a complete triangulation from the Rock Star bird. If it proved correct, the vehicle was in a parking garage just off a street called St. Croix Gate in the heart of downtown Fredrikstad.
We’d left behind the snow-covered fields and copses of barren trees in the countryside for the stone and steel of the Norwegian town.
Initially, we knew only two things: The vehicle was a Range Rover, and it had taken a right onto Highway 110 headed toward the Glomma River. I’d loaded everyone up, but intended to learn much more than that fact.
We hadn’t found Billings’s cell phone in the house, so I was assuming it was still on his person. I’d first called Billings direct and had gotten nothing but voice mail. I’d then called Blaine, demanding he launch my bird and load Billings’s cell phone markers into the electronic surveillance package in the nose. Believe it or not, initially I’d received pushback—because Secretary Billings was a United States citizen, and the Taskforce charter was forbidden from tracking AMCITS or otherwise interfering in their electronic communication unless they had been designated a global terrorist.
It was absolutely ridiculous. My first thought, given what Billings had done, was to push for a designation, but I knew that was going nowhere. The Oversight Council rapidly cleared up the idiocy, but I was going to make a pilot suffer over the delay.
The bird made one pass over the city and pinged on the phone downtown, with a circle of probable error of about seven hundred meters. We moved in that direction. By the time we’d gotten to the city center, he’d pinged a second time on a different trajectory and necked it down to the parking garage—but still with a hundred-meter circle of probable error. That could put Billings inside the office building
next door, or in a patch of scrub across the street near the river, but I was planning against him being in the garage.
From the satellite photo, it had a separate entrance and exit, with the entrance on our street and the exit a block up to the north. Street view showed it to be at most two levels, and from the width, it wouldn’t take a whole lot to search.
First, I wanted to isolate our target. Both the entrance and exit had drop bars, but they wouldn’t stop my motorcycle posse. I decided to send them to the exit, basically having them come in the wrong way to prevent us from missing our target if they drove out while we came in. Then, Knuckles and I would enter normally while Jennifer would park her van near the entrance, sealing it off after we went down, protecting us from discovery.
I needed to collapse on the crisis site with overwhelming force, which would necessitate positively identifying the vehicle without arousing suspicion. A tough call, considering at least one of the men in the vehicle knew both Knuckles and me by sight, and I wasn’t sure whether Brett and Nick had also been compromised. I hoped the helmets they wore would camouflage our intent.
I gave out the orders and asked for questions. Nick said, “What do you want us to do if we see the vehicle and can assault? Call first or seize the initiative?”
I said, “Do what you think is right. The priority here is rescuing Secretary Billings. If you get down there and can do it, execute. If not, give me a call.”
Brett said, “Rules of engagement?”
“Hostile force. Both Arabs are designated enemy combatants. Don’t worry about imminent threat to you. If you get one in your sights and his back is turned, drop him. I don’t care if you see a weapon or not.”
Brett nodded and said, “Roger that.”
My phone rang. It was the pilot. “Final pass complete. Do you have the data, or do I need to go around again?”
I looked at the tablet screen and the little green icon had shifted. About a millimeter. They were in the garage. I said, “I got it. You’re cleared to depart.”
