by Brad Taylor
“You’re the one who preaches that cover is just a tool, not the mission. You’re the one who almost had a friend die because someone was too worried about their cover. Now this girl’s friend is going to die for the exact same reason. And it is part of our mission. She’ll be able to tell us a helluva lot more than that damn beacon.”
She crossed her arms and glared at me. I pondered for a few seconds, then shook my head. “Okay, okay, get her back in here. Ask her why a master terrorist and an Albanian mafia lord would discuss operational stuff in front of a whore. I’ll bet the answer is ‘uhh… I just made that up.’”
After they were settled in the back, Jennifer spoke to her calmly, questioning slowly. As the answers came out, Jennifer’s face became more and more enraged. She asked the same question a few different ways, making sure her fledgling grasp of French was capturing accurately what the girl said. Eventually, the prostitute broke down and began to cry. Jennifer stopped the questioning and stroked her back, telling us what she had learned.
The story sickened me.
I could tell it shocked the rest of the team as well. I looked each man in the eye, getting a nod, one by one. I said, “Okay, Jennifer, we’ll do it. But you need to understand something.”
“What?”
I locked eyes with her. “We don’t live in a comic book. We go in, and it’s full force. You remember the Bible verse on Johnny’s hat in Indonesia? The one you asked me about, wondering if Johnny was religious?”
She nodded.
“It’s Romans 3:8, and it says ‘Let us do evil that good may come.’ It’s an inside joke and an unofficial Taskforce motto. In Cairo you said you weren’t sure of the difference between the good guys and the bad, and there’s some truth to that if you’re on the outside looking in. We don’t arrest people. We don’t play fair. We solve problems through violence. No judge. No jury. It’s against everything America stands for, and the reason for the inside joke. We do it because it’s necessary. It’s not something the average American understands sitting in his La-Z-Boy, drinking a beer.”
I paused a minute to give her a chance to say something. She didn’t.
“If we go in there, a lot of people are going to die. Based on your say-so. I don’t have enough men to dominate the place, and these guys know how to fight. They cut their teeth killing Serbians in Kosovo. We aren’t going to shoot at legs or run around shouting, ‘Freeze!’ Anybody that’s a threat will be eliminated. Killed. No questions asked.”
I spoke softer, about something only she and I would know. “You remember Guatemala? What you saw there? That’s what’s going to happen here. You good with that?”
She grew distant for a minute, thinking of the maelstrom of violence she had experienced in Guatemala, the graphic images of the men I’d slaughtered to save her flitting through her mind.
She contemplated the child prostitute, reaching out and brushing a tear rolling down her cheek. The girl didn’t understand enough English to follow, but she sensed the lives of her friends hung in the balance. She squeezed Jennifer’s hands, a tentative smile on her face. Jennifer tried to smile back, but it came out as a grimace, like she was smiling through an injury to prove she was all right.
She said, “Okay. Let’s go do some evil.”
45
The image on the laptop looked like a black-and-white negative, with everything reversed. It was startlingly clear, allowing me to make out the individual limbs of trees even in the total darkness. Anything generating heat showed up as light shading. Anything cold showed up as dark. I spun the ball around, catching the van with Buckshot and Retro behind me, the hood pure white from the engine heat and the glass of the windshield looking like black sackcloth.
The image, fed to the laptop through fiber-optic cable, was produced by a thermal device made by FLIR industries. Called a Blackjack, it was based on the MarFLIR Talon, a nine-inch thermal and infrared sensor used in airborne and maritime environments. Of course, we took the best of that design and created our own sensor. Mounted on gimbals, it was gyrostabilized like the Talon, allowing it to be used on the move without the user getting seasick. It also maintained a healthy optical zoom capability, along with the Talon’s laser pointer capability. We kicked out everything else in order to get it small. Geo-location marking, laser range finder, lowlight CCD TV, all of that went to the curb. Our sensor was much less capable, but also a hell of a lot smaller, at only six inches in diameter. Which made it much easier to sneak through customs, like everything else we had on us.
As soon as we’d made the decision to take down what we were now calling the slave house, I sent Buckshot and Retro to our aircraft while I took Jennifer back to the hotel to change into something more suitable for an assault. While we waited for the kit, Jennifer had taken the girl into the shower and cleaned her up. I noticed that Decoy had hovered around, doing whatever Jennifer asked to make the girl more comfortable. Whatever he had acted like when we first met, something in his past had triggered a protective instinct like I’d never seen.
Eventually, Retro and Buckshot had returned from the airfield, bringing with them an arsenal of weapons and tools that would, hopefully, give us an edge on the assault. The team equipment that had come in on the jump would have been very useful if we’d remained in Egypt, but posed a serious issue getting into Europe. Luckily, Kurt had sent us a Gulfstream G4 with very special adaptations. The plane was built with a plethora of removable panels that would conceal Taskforce kit. On the outside — or inside — it looked like an ordinary airframe, but the walls themselves housed everything Buckshot had jumped in with. It caused an issue with noise isolation because the insulation had been removed to hold the kit, but that was a small price to pay.
While the G4 itself was a godsend, it did create potential risk, because my nascent company had miraculously acquired a lease on a multimillion-dollar aircraft. The plane itself was now permanently attached to our company, which was cool, but any in-depth investigation would reveal inconsistencies in the lease that potentially would cause problems. The Taskforce was big on not doing exactly what we were now doing, preferring to solve problems with a long-term solution, getting everything perfect for outside scrutiny before employment. Just like the enemy we hunted. Nothing to be done about it, because we needed the kit, and the EFPs weren’t something we could wish away.
Retro had come back with four H&K UMP assault rifles, four Glock 30s, and one H&K 416, along with a host of other unique items like the Blackjack. The UMPs and Glocks were tricked out with small red-dot sights and suppressors, but were chambered for.45 caliber, an age-old, distinctly American round. Plenty of modern cartridges beat it out in wound ballistics and carrying capacity, but it had one distinction that none of the others held: It was subsonic.
In the movies, all the actor has to do is slap a suppressor on a weapon and he’s now banging away without making any noise, but the truth of the matter is that, while the muzzle blast and explosion of the round can be effectively suppressed, all combat rounds will break the sound barrier with a loud crack, rendering the suppression useless in a clandestine assault where any noise will give you away. This forced most close-combat weapons to use special subsonic rounds in a clandestine assault, which detracted from the very capabilities they originally presented, along with altering the ballistic track of the bullet from what one had trained with. The.45, while old, didn’t have that problem. And make no mistake, it would knock a man down.
The 416 was for Jennifer. It fired a 5.56 round, just like the mainstay of the U.S. Army, and would be loud as hell, but it’s what she’d been trained on. She would be pulling security out front while we were in the house, and I wanted her comfortable with the weapon she had to use. There would be no second chances. And if she was cracking rounds downrange, it meant that the clandestine side of things had gone to shit, so a little noise wouldn’t matter.
I swung the Blackjack around with my joystick, surveying the area. Mounted on a mast, it stuck up about fi
fteen feet from the roof of the van, giving me a clear view of what we faced. The vehicle with the Diamondback beacon was parked out front, so the girl’s information had panned out so far. I zoomed in on the house, the lights outside generating white-hot heat with darkness surrounding it. No other heat sources. So, no close-in security.
I panned back out, surveying the long drive toward the solitary road we were now parked on. As I got to the intersection, I saw a heat source. Zooming in, I made out two men sitting outside of a guard shack. One had a cigarette in his mouth, which caused the screen to white out, blocking his features. The other was methodically cleaning a weapon. His eyes were black pools, something I always found disconcerting when looking through thermal imagery. It made a man look like he had no soul.
“Retro, I got two targets. About two hundred meters away at the entrance to the compound.”
“Roger that. Light ’em up. Buckshot and I will take care of them.”
“Everyone in my van. Final check.”
Retro and Buckshot entered the sliding door while Jennifer took the prostitute to the rear van. When she returned, I went over the rules of engagement and assault plan one final time, asking about the girl first.
“She going to be okay back there?”
“Yeah. She’s calmer than I am. She wants some payback. She can’t do anything but run away anyhow. She’ll stay until someone comes for the van.”
“She knows the signals?”
“Yeah. Someone comes to the van without flashing her twice with a white-lens flashlight, and she’s gone.”
The signal was a worst case. If it didn’t come, it meant we were all dead, but it was the best I could do. If things got that bad, I had no doubt she’d be dead as well.
I turned to the team, throwing down a sack with black Nomex balaclavas in it. “Okay. Remember what we discussed. No talking at all. No English in the presence of anyone still alive or conscious.”
Buckshot said, “Do we really need to wear the damn ski masks? They’re hot as shit and it’ll affect our assault. Everyone’s going to be dead anyway.”
“No. Not everyone’s going to be dead. I know what I said earlier, but we’re only going to kill when there’s a distinct threat. You find someone who’s not a threat, take him out, but don’t kill him. I don’t care about the damage you have to do, but we’re not slaying everything that moves.”
I saw the look on the faces of the team and cut it short. “You fuckers are the best in the world. You want to go inside like a bunch of gang-bangers on a drive-by, go back to where you came from. It ain’t happening here. We don’t know what we’re going to find. There might be some innocents mixed in with the trash. Either way, we need the masks. When we’re done, the girls will still be alive. I don’t want anyone to know what we look like.”
I waited for a nod from each man, relieved that they didn’t push the issue. “Okay, we clear from top to bottom. We need to clean out the entire house before we can do hostage recovery. First man to a stairwell leads the way. We keep it clandestine as long as possible. Hopefully, we secure the house before anyone even realizes we’re there.”
I turned to Jennifer. “You good with your job?”
She cradled the 416, a little nervous. “Yeah. Anyone comes up the drive, and I block their advance.”
She worked the bolt of the weapon, checking to make sure it functioned smoothly, riding it back and forth to see if there were any problems. She flipped the safety lever up and down until she was sure it wouldn’t hang up in a crunch, then turned on the EOTech sight, checking the reticle. She finished by seating a magazine and loading a round. When she was done, she looked up, ready. I saw the rest of the team watching and relaxing at her practiced moves. They had to rely on her with their lives, and I couldn’t have scripted her actions any better.
I pretended not to notice any of the activities, saying, “That’s right. We hear you fire, and it’s game on. We’ll be in a world of hurt, so don’t miss.”
She nodded, her eyes wide at the responsibility.
I smiled. “Don’t worry. If it comes to that, we still have more skill than anyone else on this continent. You included.”
I addressed the group. “Kit up. Let’s do this.”
Decoy brought out two duffel bags, with the men reaching in and pulling out ordinary-looking backpacks like college kids used. Each one unzipped to reveal a small arsenal of breaching charges and flash bang grenades, along with inserts that housed Kevlar plates for protection and Velcro belts that held magazines for the UMPs. When we were done, we looked like something out of The Boondock Saints, with makeshift assault kit that gave up ease of use for clandestine camouflage, and Nomex hoods that made us look like thieves.
Decoy strapped a thirteen-inch double-barreled shotgun to his thigh, the barrels themselves flattened out to spread the buckshot in a horizontal arc. The weapon was definitely not surgical. More like something that would kill everyone in its path. He saw me looking at him and said, “You never know when a room clear might be necessary. Mister Duckbill here will be just the ticket.”
I hesitated, then nodded, knowing that thing wouldn’t come out unless we heard Jennifer start banging away and things had gotten desperate.
I caught the eye of each man in turn, making sure they were ready. We had all done plenty of assaults like this in the past, before we joined the Taskforce, but always with the mighty green machine of the U.S. government behind us. Now we were on our own and doing something that was way outside of our mandate. We got in trouble here, and we’d be dead.
I said, “Last chance to reconsider.”
Nobody said anything for a second. Then Buckshot said, “Cut the fucking drama. Let’s go do some damage.”
I smiled and turned on the laser pointer, centering the beam on the head of the man at the guard shack, cleaning a weapon. Retro and Buckshot stared at the screen for a moment, then slipped into the night.
The pointer itself was infrared, which meant they couldn’t see it, but with his PVS-21 Night Observation Device on, Retro could. Nobody liked wearing NODs in an assault because it hampered the ability to index a weapon, but in these situations, it made you a god. Personally, I preferred the older ANVS-9 aviator NODs, but these could transition seamlessly to areas with light, unlike the older nines that would white out, forcing you to take them off. Something that would come in handy on our assault of the house. Here, it didn’t matter. All Retro had to do was follow the beam like a sadistic rainbow, until he reached the treasure at the end.
With the wide-field on, I saw Retro and Buckshot begin the stalk. They moved slowly and carefully, two white blobs closing in on the men like bacteria on a petri dish. When they got within thirty feet, they slowed to a standstill, moving a foot every twenty seconds. The beam was still centered on the head of the man cleaning the weapon, who was completely unaware of the death stalking him. As my team closed the gap, I zoomed in, keeping the four on the screen. By the time the team was ready to assault, they were all within a ten-foot square, and I could once again make out facial features of the men.
Retro circled around behind the man cleaning the weapon, while Buckshot did the same to the cigarette smoker. They paused for a moment, getting ready. Both rose like wraiths from a horror movie, collapsing on the targets, the blur from the thermal imaging blending the forms together. A white-hot jet spurted out of each man, coating the ground like lava on my screen before fading to black. Blood. Warm blood.
I heard a gasp behind me and turned to see Jennifer ashen faced. The young whore behind her had no such reaction, either because she didn’t realize what she was seeing or because she did and didn’t care. Jennifer clenched her jaw, then nodded at me.
Buckshot came on my radio.
“Entrance clear.”
“Rolling,” I said.
46
We moved the van forward, getting to within two hundred meters of the house before stopping. I’d milked the girl — Jennifer told me her name was Maria — fo
r all the information on the target I could get, and she’d given us the entire layout of the house, along with the alarm systems used. I didn’t question her loyalty. She clearly wanted us to succeed, but we took what she said with a grain of salt because the worst thing we could do was base our entire assault on her memory, only to find out it was wrong.
Looking through the Blackjack, I saw the first part of her recollection was correct: There was an infrared trigger across the drive to signal an approaching vehicle. Which meant the door alarms were probably real as well. The good thing about the setup was that it was designed to prevent anyone escaping, not for keeping people from breaking in. According to Maria, the alarm contacts were inside the house, on the doors leading down to the basement, where the girls were kept. Which is why we’d hit that last, after everyone hostile was killed or captured.
We exited the vehicle and used the shadows to snake our way to the front door. I pointed out Jennifer’s position, inside the shrubs, and continued on, glancing back over my shoulder to see if she was okay. She was already in the prone with the 416 aimed down the drive, wearing the PVS-21s, which looked like those ridiculous Venetian eye masks people wore on Mardi Gras, only instead of feathers, it had black plastic.
We crept up to the porch, avoiding any window observation. Retro placed a small object the size of a brick against the wall. Called a Radar Scope, it was basically a motion detector that could see through walls up to twelve inches thick, telling us whether anyone was in the room. It didn’t matter if the person was playing possum or not. Breathing alone would be enough motion for it to detect. We would use the scope as we cleared until we hit resistance. From that moment on, we’d assume we were compromised, and move as fast as possible.
In seconds, Retro signaled that the foyer just beyond was clear.
Buckshot began working the door, unlocking it in a matter of moments. He looked at me, black ski mask and Venetian eyewear, and I nodded. He turned the knob and we entered, silently moving forward with all guns taking a sector of security.
