by Peter Telep
“Thanks, Willie.”
“Yeah,” Willie groaned. “Some plan you got. Didn’t I tell you I wasn’t doing this again?”
“Bastard ran across some boards that collapsed.”
“And he took you for a nice swim, didn’t he. Easy day, huh? I don’t believe this—” Willie cut himself off as he came onto the stairs and drove Johnny forward, getting him up onto the first step, then helping him maneuver two steps higher.
Eventually, he guided Johnny up and onto the dry staircase, where the palsy of ice cold water meeting ice cold air seized their arms and legs. With hands he could barely control, Willie removed Johnny’s jacket and wrapped his dry one over the man. Swallowing and fighting once more against the tremors, he took up his smartphone and called Josh, who answered on the first ring. Willie gave them a situation report, proud that he only swore once.
“All right, hold there,” Josh said. “We’re on our way.”
“Hey, wait, you get your guy?”
“No, we lost him. You?”
“No luck.” Willie ended the call, then turned on the phone’s flashlight app and held it toward Johnny’s forehead. “You got a nice lump and a gash. Doesn’t look like it needs stitches. You nauseous?”
“Not really.”
Johnny’s pupils were equal and reactive to light, a damned good sign. “Can you stand?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Willie grabbed his arm, then, when he was certain Johnny was up and using the wall for support, he turned back and gathered his flashlight and pistol, then slung the rifle over his shoulder. He wrung out Johnny’s wet jacket and took it as well. No sense in leaving behind any more evidence than necessary.
They started up the stairs like World War II veterans, trailing thick breath and wondering if their skin might rattle off their creaking bones. The temperature was dropping even more rapidly. Down into the thirties, Willie guessed. Maybe even colder. They reached the ground floor as Josh and Corey ventured into the building, their lights lacerating a full column of steam rising from the broad rupture in the floor. As they neared and removed their balaclavas, they resembled participants in a séance, their faces lit from below, their eyes widening at the sight of Johnny’s forehead. Their fearless leader now sported a bloodshot third eye that seemed weirdly mystical to Willie, as though Johnny could use that eye to finally glimpse the truth.
“Let’s get him back to the Jeep,” said Josh. He lifted his chin at Willie. “And you, too.”
“I wasn’t in there as long as him.”
“Willie, your face is blue,” said Corey, removing his own jacket. “And you smell like a five dollar whore.” He thrust the jacket into Willie’s arms.
“Our guy might still be out there,” said Josh. “Let’s head back across the lot. We’ll get to Canton that way.”
“I can’t believe the cops aren’t here yet,” Corey said.
Willie snickered. “I read somewhere that average response time in Detroit is fifty-eight minutes—that’s if someone actually made the call.”
* * *
With Johnny injured and Willie freezing, Josh assumed leadership of the group. He gave Corey the binoculars and recruited him as a scout who would text back the letter K, indicating the path was clear.
While they were waiting for Corey to check in, Willie showed them the rifle he had collected from the dead jihadi. Serial numbers on the gun could be run through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms’ National Tracing Center. Their eTrace system provided an online portal to the Firearm Tracing System, where the origin of the rifle and associated paperwork could be researched. Plesner would handle that end of things, Josh assumed.
Corey signaled from the opposite end of the field; he had paused along a break in the old fence where it had collapsed under the weight a fallen tree. They dashed across the street, then kept to the trees whose roots busted through the sidewalk like the veins of weightlifters. Only then did a police siren rise in the distance. They kept on, shuffling through piles of dead leaves. They paused once more, Corey moved up, then after thirty seconds, Josh’s phone vibrated.
Corey’s text sounded ominous: I need you here.
Josh signaled for Johnny and Willie to wait. He wove between the trees and shrubs, reaching a wide oak just a meter off the curb. Corey huddled tightly behind that tree, peering up and down the street with Josh’s binoculars. He muttered something to himself, his tone suggesting he was surprised by what he saw.
As Josh slipped up behind Corey, he glimpsed the object of his partner’s attention: a two story warehouse of approximately 10,000 square feet with the requisite broken windows and colorful splashes of graffiti across its dingy walls.
“Hey, what’s up?” Josh asked.
“Take a look. On the roof.”
After accepting the binoculars, Josh zoomed in on a man wearing a black leather jacket and balaclava like their own. The man was crouched low behind the ledge, his attention riveted across the street. “That’s not our sniper.”
“No, it’s not.”
“What’s that in his hand?” Josh asked, squinting into the lens.
“Looks like a remote detonator to me.”
“And what’s he looking at?” Josh added, although he already knew the answer.
“He’s looking at our car.”
Just then a text from Willie and Johnny indicated they were too cold to wait anymore and were moving up. Once they arrived, Josh adopted a hard and even tone to share the news. Willie had a look for himself, as did Johnny, although he could barely keep the binoculars on target. The group’s morale dropped to funereal depths.
“Nazari set this all up,” said Johnny. “He planted the note, lured us here, and hoped we’d take the bait. That last guy is his insurance man, in case the snipers failed. We can confirm that by capturing him.”
“You might be right, Johnny, but we need to get you warm,” said Josh. “You need to get back in that Jeep—”
“Which our buddy has rigged to blow,” Willie finished. “I’m cold, but I’m good. Josh, let’s get inside the building and up on the roof. Corey, you hold here with Johnny. We get this guy, we’ll call you.”
“I’m good to go,” said Corey.
Johnny nodded. “Easy day.” But then an odd look washed over his face. He coughed, leaned over, and expelled the contents of his stomach.
* * *
After five minutes of painstaking progression, shifting as stealthily as they could through the warehouse’s back door, a door that had been jimmied open with a crowbar, Willie led Corey through a vast space whose floor was covered in a layer of dust and rocks akin to lunar regolith. Whatever they made in this place, some sort of concrete product perhaps, rose in gray clouds at their ankles. They reached a flight of metal stairs leading up to another door marked Rooftop Access.
With his pulse throbbing in his ears, Willie slammed open the door and ran across the roof. The jihadi in the leather jacket was hunkered down twenty yards ahead. Willie and Josh screamed for the man to freeze as they broke off from each other, advancing from the flanks to divide the man’s attention.
The jihadi whirled from the ledge, brought himself to full height, then raised his arms, maintaining his grip on the remote. While his other hand was empty, he could easily reach for a pistol in his pocket or holster beneath his jacket. Reaching for that weapon would be unwise, though, and the sheen in the man’s eyes suggested he knew that.
Relief flooded into Willie’s head, producing a welcoming buzz like alcohol, like lovemaking turned liquid, and he imagined that this journey, this onerous march up the coast and into the Midwest, was about to end. Even the stars suggested a denouement as they grew dimmer, veiled in clouds. This tall jihadi would sit behind a table and lay it all out for Johnny. He would name names and establish a truth that Johnny could carve in stone. He would give up the entire network of jihadis. Plesner and his JTTFs would conduct raids and make hundreds of arrests. Willie and the others would be touted as
heroes and dragged through the studios of morning news shows so they could be interviewed by women so attractive that his knees would buckle. There would be agents, publicists, new sponsors for his 3-Gun competitions, book and film deals, and country songs written about their exploits. But man, he hated all that celebrity crap, didn’t he? He would take the new 3-Gun sponsors and that’s about it. Or maybe there would be nothing. Maybe this would all go to hell again—because as much as Johnny said it, there was no easy day for Marines. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.
Willie drew in a long breath. “Take that remote and put it on the ground.”
The man nodded and began to move his arm.
In the next breath, their jihadi’s head exploded, the impact blasting the rest of his body clear off the roof. The shot boomed a half second later from at least four hundred yards away, maybe farther.
As Willie and Josh ducked and ran to the edge, the jihadi bounced like a marionette across the sidewalk, his arms flailing at improbable angles. The remote struck once, skittered over the concrete, then landed face down.
Willie could almost hear the detonator’s click.
With a sudden whoosh and tremendous kaboom, the Jeep Cherokee exploded in a fireball spanned by twinkling glass and shards of rocketing shrapnel. The flames writhed up to the overhanging limbs and set them ablaze. At the same time, the vehicle’s chassis, heaved some six feet off the ground, collapsed with a metallic crunch onto its side, striking a mere second before one of its doors spun down to impale the warehouse wall. Smaller pieces of the Jeep struck in a meteor shower, casting the narrow road in a volcanic and primordial glow.
“Get down!” Willie shouted, turning back toward the sniper fire.
At the far end of the Packard Plant, the remaining sniper rose from the ledge and jogged away, carrying his rifle and no doubt reveling over his remarkable shot. He was no amateur, no young jihadi recruit.
“Come on,” Josh urged Willie. They ran back toward the rooftop door, double-timed down the stairs, and fled outside to the sidewalk where they were bathed in heat and a flickering white-orange blaze. Willie’s body seemed instinctively drawn toward the fires.
Corey was already there, and he had torn off the jihadi’s balaclava to expose a blonde-haired man, or least what was left of his hair and head. “Found this,” he said, handing a pistol to Willie. “Nothing else.”
“Back to the woods down the street,” Josh ordered. “If the cops don’t come to check this out, the gangs will.”
Johnny, who had been standing behind them, ambled over to the fire and lifted his palms for a moment, savoring the heat. Willie shouted to him, and he joined the others as they rallied on the denser cover near the end of the block, past an open field gilded in firelight.
Out of breath, they rested a moment while Willie inspected the pistol, a well-worn .40 caliber Glock 22.
“I figured he’d have a pistol from Blue Door,” Josh said.
“Me, too,” Willie answered.
“Was he a cop?” asked Corey. “A lot of police carry the twenty-two, right?”
“They used to around here,” said Willie. “I remember Sal bragging how five or six years ago Detroit switched over to the Smith & Wesson MP40, the gun he prefers. The pistols were free in exchange for their Glocks. Of course, as a Glock man, I think that’s insane.”
“Well, if that guy wasn’t a cop then—”
Willie held up a finger, cutting off Josh. “The Glock 22 is also the service issue pistol of the FBI.”
“You think he was an FBI agent?” Corey asked. “No way.”
Willie lifted his brows. “You carry your most comfortable and familiar weapon. Train as we fight, right? Guy was a Caucasian. He look like a jihadi to you?”
Corey shrugged. “Maybe he converted.”
“Bullshit.”
“Why would an FBI agent want to kill us?” asked Josh.
“Not him per se,” said Johnny. “He was taking orders from someone else, the only guy who knew we’d be here.”
* * *
Charles Plesner was seated in the office of his six bedroom home on Division Street in Falls Church, Virginia. On the wall opposite his desk hung an antique cuckoo clock he had bought while traveling through the Black Forest in Germany. The current time was 12:17 a.m., and Janice had drifted by in her robe to query why he was up so late.
“Just paying the mortgage,” he snapped.
“It’s just a question, not an interrogation.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’ve been nasty and rude for weeks, and then you apologize and pretend everything is okay. What’s going on?”
“We’re under a lot of pressure.”
“Same old story. Aren’t you tired of this? Can’t someone else save the world?” She threw up her hands and flitted back toward their bedroom.
“I am saving the world,” he called after her.
He glanced down at the phone, cursed, then dialed Johnny’s number for the fourth time. He was ready to smash the phone across his desk when another of his prepaids began to ring.
The caller’s voice sounded like a diesel engine with a South African accent: “Everyone’s dead except me. They had Schneider cornered on the roof, so I took him out.”
“What are you saying? I recruited those guys in Dearborn for you. I paid you for a clean operation.”
“You’re lucky I got your babysitter before they did. He would’ve talked. You flew me all the way here from Namibia, and what did I tell you? I said this was a job for mercs. A job for my whole team. But you forced me to drag along your guy and your amateur jihadis. Now they’re dead. And your targets are still out there.”
“Are you tracking them?”
“I’m off my contract. And I’m done with you. I’m going back home.”
“Oh, no, you’re not.”
The man snorted. “You keep the rest of your money. I told you how to play. You didn’t listen. I’m sorry, but I only work with professionals.”
“Professionals?” Plesner bolted to his feet. “Do you know who I am?”
Of course, Plesner had never told him, but none of that mattered now. The mercenary had already hung up.
Plesner slumped to his chair, panting and trembling. He needed to call the Detroit Police. He would claim FBI jurisdiction over the scene and state there was possible terrorist activity by individuals associated with the Wayne State University Islamic Center of Detroit. An agent was down. The area needed to be cordoned off.
All right. He would do that. The next call would be to Nazari during which he would resume his role as the liaison and caution the man to step up his own security. If Dresden and Senecal learned of these leaks, they would consider Plesner a failure and have him take the fall. They had entrusted him with protecting the entire operation, and he had used his position to run interference, ensuring that Nazari and his people were lost in a plethora of misinformation and outdated intelligence.
While Plesner lacked the economic clout of men like Dresden and Senecal, he shared their undying belief that America was doomed unless agencies like his own were free to take action. He was “their friend in Washington,” their liaison, their brother in arms.
Soon the world would change—but only if he could locate those four jarheads and shut them down in time.
* * *
Willie’s 3-Gun buddy, Salvatore Rocco, had a crew cut the color of fluorocarbon fishing line. His beer keg torso bounced behind the wheel of his F-150 crew cab. When he spoke, Johnny had difficulty placing his accent—somewhere short of upper Midwest and leaning toward Hoboken. He gave Johnny and the others a ride back to his house, where they picked up the rental car, dry clothes, and some bandages for Johnny’s head. They discussed how the police would come looking for the Jeep’s owner. The story would be simple. The Jeep was stolen right off the neighbor’s driveway while the kid had run inside and left the car idling. Given the city’s reputation for crime, the tale was hardly farfetched. Johnny said he would p
ay book value plus an extra grand to replace the car, even though the kid had insurance. Salvatore would convey the news and ensure that everyone kept quiet. Besides, he still had goombas on the force who would look the other way if needed. His neighbors were good people. The kid would be thrilled to buy a new ride, one much nicer than his old one.
Johnny retired to Salvatore’s garage to call Mark Gatterton. He also needed to return a call to Pat Rugg, who had left a message for him at about the same time Johnny was confronting the jihadi with the shotgun. Pat was a great guy with monumentally bad timing.
Thanks to his waterproof case, Johnny’s smartphone had survived his dip into the lake of hell, although he did not use it to call Gatterton. He borrowed Salvatore’s smartphone and spent five minutes delivering a rapid fire synopsis of them being hired by Plesner then subsequently set up. By the time he was finished, Gatterton sounded wide awake. “You’re positive about this, Johnny?”
“He was the only guy who knew.”
“What about the terp? Your friend Bandar. You said you had him read the note to verify Plesner’s translation.”
“Trust me, Mark, he’s the last guy in the world who’d be involved.”
“What if Plesner shared intel with someone else?”
“This was all his idea, and we were flying under the radar—so he could do the same.”
“I don’t know, Johnny.”
“You’re defending this guy?”
Gatterton raised his voice. “He’s the goddamned E-A-D of National Security. And you want me to believe he’s in bed with jihadis?”
“That’s right. And he’s got an agenda. And oh, I forgot to mention we had a sniper pull off a miracle shot. This was not some clown practicing in his backyard.”
Gatterton groaned through a sigh. “Why would Plesner hire you, then try to kill you?”
“He was keeping his enemies close and controlled.”
“Why are you the enemy?”
