Hard Target

by Alan Jacobson

  “My name?”

  “This person doesn’t know you, probably doesn’t even know you exist. Said he heard the name ‘Uzi,’ and I got to thinking, there aren’t too many people with that name.”

  “In case you didn’t realize it, there’s a very popular submachine gun—”

  “It was in the context of a person—an agent, not a weapon.”

  Uzi took the cones from the vendor and faced Garza. “Your contact?”

  “Someone on the inside. That’s all I can say.”

  Uzi licked away a dollop of mocha chip perched on the cone’s edge. “On the inside? Inside of what? What the hell does that mean?”

  Garza took a bite of his ice cream.

  “You’re supposed to lick it,” Uzi said.

  “I bite mine, you mind?” Garza took another mouthful as they moved off into the crowd again. The teacher had gotten her group sorted out and was moving them off in single file.

  “Anyway,” Garza said, “I just thought you should be aware of things, people around you. People close to you.”

  Is Garza trying to tell me something? People close to me. Shepard? With the weird things going on, with what DeSantos and Knox had asked of him, his relationship with Shepard felt strained. But his friend, mixed up in a plot to assassinate citizens? On the other hand, Knox and his cadre...

  He became aware of Garza again doing his surveillance scans of the area as they neared a bookstore at the end of the station. Could DeSantos be involved in an assassination plot? He had participated in numerous black ops for just that purpose. But all were carefully orchestrated missions on foreign turf to take out rogue leaders, dictators, or terrorists—people who had designs on killing others, or whose purpose was to harm America, her citizens, or allies. Carrying out targeted hits on US soil was unheard of, even for his group of operatives.

  That aside, why would DeSantos want Bishop dead? And how did the NFA/Rathbone/Knox connection figure into this? How much could he tell Garza, and how far could he trust him?

  “I need to know more about your contact,” Uzi said.

  “Can’t. Not without jeopardizing his life and others around him.”

  Uzi’s cone had begun to melt, so he lopped off a coagulating hunk with his teeth.

  “I thought you’re not supposed to bite ice cream.”

  “You’re not giving me much to go on. How can I take this seriously when I don’t know the source? You’re passing on unconfirmed hearsay and expecting me to accept it as fact.”

  “Hearsay?” Garza said. He stopped walking. Uzi faced him. “This isn’t a court of law, Uzi. We’re talking a series of murders here, carried out by someone who could be entrenched in our own infrastructure.” His eyes danced around the area. “You hear what I’m saying?”

  “Yesterday you wanted to ram your fist down my throat for ratting out your buddy Osborn. Now you’re passing me info you say you got from a confidential informant. Info you say will supposedly help me out. But things have to make sense to me, Garza. If they don’t, I tend to go fucking crazy. It eats at me, so I get out my shovel and dig as deep as I have to dig to get at the truth. You hear what I’m saying?”

  “I shouldn’t have brought Jake into this. That was personal, and we’ve got a job to do. I’m sorry, it was unprofessional. I’m better than that.”

  Uzi looked him over, trying to assess Garza’s intentions.

  “I was wrong, Uzi, okay? You may still be a type-A, constipated, by-the-book bureaucrat with his finger up his ass, but I need to trust someone on this. And you’re it.”

  Uzi looked away. “I’m not type-A.”

  Garza laughed. “That still doesn’t excuse what you did to Jake, but you and I can deal with that when this case is over. Right now we’ve got some bad shit that needs our attention.”

  “But you still won’t tell me who this insider is.”

  Garza tossed his nearly finished cone in the garbage pail to his left. “Keep me in the loop. I promise to do the same for you.”

  Yeah, in the loop. A loop with so many knots it was impossible to tell which strings tightened the noose and which ones loosened it. Uzi licked at his melting cone, watching with overt disinterest as Garza headed off into the crowd. But inside, his mind was churning.

  4:41 PM

  69 hours 19 minutes remaining

  Following a briefing at Homeland Security, Uzi emerged from the parking garage as the longer shadows and yellow-tinted hue of afternoon daylight began the lazy transition to dusk. He needed to meet DeSantos in ninety minutes for pre-op planning.

  As he drove toward the hangar at Quantico, where they would review and then commence their operation, he tried to sort out his thoughts on DeSantos. Before initiating a risk-filled mission, it was crucial to know the people you were going in with, the people to whom you were trusting your life and career. Until recently, Uzi had no doubts whatsoever. While his newfound unease was based on suspicions and spurious information, it still bothered him.

  Adding to his uncertainty was the discovery of the surveillance chip in his coat. How had it gotten there? It appeared to be constructed of sophisticated materials to make it impervious to detection by most sensing devices, including the one with which Uzi had rigged his cell phone—the one DeSantos knew about, the one he’d seen in action. Coincidence?

  DeSantos made no effort to disguise his disdain for Bishop; were those his true feelings, though, or was he attempting to discredit the informant in Uzi’s eyes? From what he knew of DeSantos, he could make a case for both: the man clearly had seen things, had participated in missions, that would be fodder for fantastic action movies, things the average citizen would discount as being beyond belief. Little did they know that stranger things happened in real life, under the cloak of black ops.

  Still, DeSantos was like Uzi in that things had to make sense to him. Unlike Uzi, however, if he sensed that theories and unrelated incidents were being fabricated and strung together into fanciful scenarios laced with conspiracy, he would point his efforts in the opposite direction, build a wall and be closed to anything that person had to say. Uzi himself had come dangerously close to alienating his partner in this manner, he now realized.

  But if he was spying on Uzi, what would he hope to accomplish? Was it to keep Knox informed of his progress on the case—or was Knox running a parallel investigation, using leads and information Uzi was gathering to accomplish some other result? But what would that result be? Help Rathbone, and therefore ARM, escape scrutiny? Or something worse: was Knox involved with Rathbone and Flint in a plot to kill Rusch to help further NFA’s agenda? Or did it have something to do with Whitehall’s covert peace talks?

  Uzi shook his head. He was falling into the conspiracy theory trap. He had spent his life analyzing intelligence, sorting out who the enemy was, then working on ways to neutralize them. In his latter days with Mossad, he was often given his assignment, provided background information, and pointed in the right direction. For the rest of the op, he was on his own. Clarity of thought, the ability to peel away layers to get at the truth, lay at the core of his talents.

  It was a skill he had largely abandoned—or lost—when Dena and Maya were murdered. He refused to accept that he no longer possessed the skill set, however. He wanted to believe that if the situation arose, he could slip back into that mode. But it was not as easy as flipping a switch. It was a mind-set, a way of operating, with which he had now been out of practice for several years. In many ways, though the FBI had saved his life, it had retarded his skills.

  And now, as he approached the main gate to Quantico, he couldn’t shake the nagging sense that he was missing something.

  UZI DROVE INTO THE HANGER, killed his headlights, and shut off the engine. DeSantos was already dressed in his mission attire, a black divers’ skin sheath that conformed to the curves of his toned body. He was talking with another man in a weathered brown-leather bomber jacket and jeans, who stood a few inches taller than DeSantos.

  As Uzi
moved toward his partner, he wiped all doubt about him from his mind. Not only would DeSantos read it on his face, he didn’t want it influencing his actions on the mission. He felt reasonably certain DeSantos wanted this op to succeed—given the invested resources and effort, DeSantos could’ve devised a simpler ruse to throw Uzi off the trail. He would keep his eyes open—but his mind had to be totally committed to mission success. He’d reassess and sort things out after the op was in the books.

  DeSantos turned as Uzi approached. He elbowed the man standing beside him, then indicated Uzi with a tip of his head. “Aaron Uzi, this is—”

  “Troy Rodman.” DeSantos’s colleague’s voice was deep as James Earl Jones’s, though not as rich and resonant.

  Rodman’s dark eyes were devoid of emotion. “You’re a tough dude, I hear.”

  “That’ll be on my headstone some day: Uzi. Tough dude, didn’t know when to quit.”

  Rodman didn’t react. Uzi, usually a quick judge of character, didn’t get much from this man. Either Rodman wasn’t sure what to make of Uzi, or the big guy didn’t warm up to people easily.

  DeSantos indicated Rodman with a tilt of his head. “Hot Rod’s going to be flying the bird.”

  Uzi pulled his eyes off Rodman and turned to DeSantos. “How are we doing?”

  “Team’s assembled and ready for the briefing.”

  “Black Hawk?”

  “Fueled, prepped, ready to go.” DeSantos reached into the back of an adjacent pickup and pulled out a medium-sized gym bag, then shoved it into Uzi’s chest. “Go change.”

  Five minutes later, Uzi emerged from the head, clad in the same skin-tight insulated material DeSantos was wearing. He was glad he kept in shape, as this outfit hid nothing. He tossed the sack, now filled with his clothing, in the back of the truck and joined the rest of the team in the corner of the hangar.

  There were six other men gathered around DeSantos, each of them wearing what Uzi thought were Army paratrooper garb. He didn’t know if they were authentic or not, and didn’t care: in all the confusion they would generate, all they needed to do was look and act the part while Flint’s team tried to figure out what was going on and what to do about it.

  As Uzi approached, the jovial jousting came to an abrupt halt. Uzi thought of the old saying, “Don’t stop laughing on account of me...unless you’re laughing on account of me.” He figured with his investigation of Knox, their fearsome leader and the object of their diehard loyalty, Uzi was not their favorite mate just now.

  “Listen up,” DeSantos said. “Final mission briefing.”

  Uzi would not be formally introduced to the other six members of the team. He needed to know Rodman’s name because he would be running the show from the chopper. Other than that, these men’s identities were classified, on a need-to-know basis. For now, Uzi did not need to know.

  DeSantos, his right foot on the lower rung of a metal chair, motioned for Uzi to join him by his side. “My partner and I will enter the South fence, make our way toward the two storage sheds marked A and B on the Sat photos we reviewed. You guys will do your thing at the front gate.”

  DeSantos spent the next couple of hours reviewing the full complement of aerial images and briefing the team on mission details, escape routes, local law enforcement response times, commo procedures, and perhaps the most important element of a covert operation: the FUBAR scenario—Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. If the situation suddenly degenerated, the team needed a predetermined set of guidelines to minimize collateral damage and exposure of the group’s assets, affiliations, and identities.

  DeSantos rose from the ladder and stretched. “You each know your roles. Bottom line: make it convincing. Be confrontational because they’re paranoid shits and that’s what they’d expect. But we don’t want to provoke a gunfight. Remember, some of these militia guys are ex-Army Special Forces, so they know what they’re doing and they probably trained their comrades. We’re landing just outside their front porch with a huge fucking machine. It’ll intimidate without us lifting a hand. So keep your guns stowed. And remember: do not dismount under any circumstances.” DeSantos turned to Uzi. “You got anything to add?”

  “I’m good. Let’s do it.”

  DeSantos hit a large green button on the wall and the hangar doors rolled open. Beyond them was the Black Hawk, its still rotors drooped in repose. The group high-fived each other, then moved off. One of the larger men stared Uzi down as he brushed past him on the way out.

  “Just a crazy question,” Uzi asked, appraising the helicopter from a distance. “Our FUBAR scenario. Every part of that bird is traceable. Not to mention our team.”

  DeSantos shook his head. “We’ve got complete deniability. None of these guys will show up in a print or biometric database. All taken care of by a techie holed away in the bowels of the Pentagon. As for the bird, it was decommissioned five years ago. The guts have been totally stripped, completely changed out with untraceable parts. Not a fingerprint to be found anywhere. Officially, no one owns this thing.”

  “I’ve seen some of those aftermarket parts,” Uzi said, his voice staying level despite the whine of the helicopter’s engines starting up. “Not very airworthy.”

  “It’ll fly. For a mission like this one, we should be fine.”

  Uzi’s head whipped over to DeSantos. “Should be?”

  “A lot’s gone into making it a deniable craft. OPSIG wouldn’t be too happy if they lost it.”

  “They’re landing outside their property line, right? You’re sure Hot Rod won’t hot dog it.”

  “Man, you worry too much. Yes, outside the property. Despite what I said to the team, Hot Rod’ll make it as nonthreatening as he can. He’ll be walking a fine line, but I’ve put my life in his hands lots of times. He knows what he’s doing.”

  DeSantos received a thumbs up from Rodman, who was now settled into the pilot’s seat. DeSantos acknowledged the sign, then slapped Uzi in the chest with an open hand. “You ready?”

  Uzi looked his partner in the eyes, trying to read them while disguising his own. He wasn’t picking anything up other than a squint of deep focus. He pushed his residual doubts about DeSantos from his mind and nodded. “Ready.”

  THE CHOPPER WAS OVER its position twenty minutes later. Uzi and DeSantos rappelled into forested land a mile outside the compound. They would hike their way to the perimeter while Rodman moved off, returning when DeSantos signaled that he and Uzi were nearing their target.

  Aside from his stint in the Israel Defense Forces, Uzi had never been on a mission in which he had to dress in military garb. He had always operated in the backstreets, alleys, and shantytowns of the Middle East and Europe, wearing whatever the natives wore, his first objective being to blend in with the locals, to be invisible. Here, his goals were the same, with an important distinction: he needed to be not only figuratively invisible, but literally as well. He and DeSantos couldn’t be seen by anyone. Hence the need for stealthy infrared- and light-absorbing clothing.

  They carried nothing that could identify them in any way. Of course, if they ran into Nelson Flint or his lieutenant, Rodney McCourt, identity would be the least of their problems. Uzi and DeSantos were banking on their assumption that the men in charge would be busy at the main gate with Rodman and his group.

  Their equipment was sparse as well; they were unarmed except for a multi-purpose Navy Mk III Combat Knife. A versatile weapon capable of surgical incisions and slicing through bone as well as cutting through brush, its stainless, black-coated finish was both durable and anti-reflective. The knives were concealed by a slim resin sheath that strapped to the outside of their left thighs. While Uzi usually carried a Puma tactical knife, as well as a Tanto around his neck and a smaller boot knife—habits from his days with the Mossad—this mission demanded a versatile weapon that could be explained away.

  From this point forward, they would employ only commercially available two-way radios, using their squelch bursts as a crude form of code. It was f
ar from ideal, and from Uzi’s high-tech perspective a throwback to the dark ages of the fifties or sixties, but it was a wise precaution. If they were captured by roving guards, any high-tech gadgets would put them in Flint’s crosshairs regardless of what Rodman was doing—and perhaps because of it. Should their movements be detected, they felt confident they could split up and each successfully make their way to a predetermined location two miles from the perimeter of the ARM compound where, earlier in the day, DeSantos had left an unmarked car.

  Aside from their low-tech squelch code, the mission demanded silence going forward, so all close-contact communication would consist of hand and arm signals. While they had been able to evaluate ARM’s video surveillance capabilities from the heavens, they did not know what other security measures the compound sported. This was the part that bothered Uzi most. They were taking calculated risks and making educated guesses, but they were risks nonetheless.

  Twenty-five minutes later, they approached the South fence, along the back end of the property. They pulled black ski masks over their heads and settled nonreflective infrared sunglasses over their eyes. The glasses would not only block shine and sparkle, but the lens coating focused all available light to brighten the visual field. While they were not nearly as effective as NVGs—night vision goggles—to the untrained eye, they were indistinguishable from regular sunglasses, preserving their low-tech look. Of course, wearing sunglasses and neoprene tights at night might raise some suspicion, but anyone detaining them would be more concerned about their presence and assessing their potential threat than their odd clothing or eyewear.

  DeSantos signaled Rodman with three short commo bursts followed by a long one. To anyone listening in, it would merely sound like background static. Ten seconds later, Rodman responded with two short bursts.

  Per their plan, Uzi checked the fence for anticlimb sensors like the ones he had seen at the front gate. Because of the expense of deploying such technology over miles of land, he did not expect to find them—and as suspected, they were absent. He signaled that they were free to proceed, and then reached into the rucksack DeSantos was wearing and pulled out a coarse, densely woven fiber roll they would use to traverse the barb-tipped fence.