by Brad Taylor
Get the hell out of there. Please get out.
53
We ignored the alarm and cleared the final door in the room, finding a walk-in closet, empty of people. I heard gunfire down the hallway.
What the hell?
“Game on. Move to the sounds of the guns.”
We got weapons out into the hallway, the team splitting left and right pulling security as we advanced at a jog to the back room. I saw a man pick up a chair and throw it through a large window at the rear of the room, then jump out and race away. I snapped off a couple of rounds but knew it was wasted effort.
We entered the room, finding three dead bodies and a crate on the floor.
“Search them.”
Inspecting the crate, Decoy said, “Found the explosives. SEMTEX. Complete with initiation capability.”
Retro said, “Got an Arab. Passport from Algeria. Nothing else but a room key to a hotel.”
I said, “Get a profile from him. Skip the iris capture. I’m not sure that’ll work on a dead guy.”
While Buckshot finished searching the others, Retro used a HIIDE biometric scanner to get fingerprints and much better facial recognition data than our cell phone pictures, which we’d eventually put into the system for clues as to who he had been.
Searching the other bodies, Buckshot said, “Just a bunch of thugs. Nothing interesting.”
Before Retro could finish fingerprinting the Arab, we were peppered with rounds through the open window. Hitting the floor, I counted at least five muzzle flashes and saw a dozen men boiling out of the carriage house.
Holy shit. I grabbed one end of the crate, shouting, “Move, move!”
Decoy entered the hallway to a fusillade of automatic fire, bouncing him back into the room.
“Hallway’s blocked with three men, armed with assault rifles.”
Through the window, I could see a platoon of shooters advancing.
Retro and Buckshot suppressed their fire with well-placed rounds, but we were now in a standoff. Which we would lose. I heard Buckshot shout and saw him snap back, holding his left arm. The situation crystallized in my mind. Even if we smashed the logjam in the hallway, we wouldn’t be able to outrun the mob from the carriage house. They’d overwhelm us as we tried to get to the vans.
Time for drastic action.
I snatched the roll of time fuse and cut off what I thought would be three minutes. Jamming it into a blasting cap, I crimped it closed with my teeth, hearing my instructor from years ago in my head. “It can be done, but it’s not the preferred technique.”
I shoved the cap into a block of SEMTEX, screwed on an igniter, and pulled the ring.
Decoy smelled the burn and turned from the doorway. “What the fuck did you do?”
“Avalanche,” I said.
“Are you fucking crazy?” he said. Then he repeated the code word for immediate evacuation through the radio. “Avalanche, avalanche, avalanche.”
Buckshot and Retro closed on the door, eyes wide, still returning fire.
“How bad?” I asked Buckshot.
“Just a graze. I’m still in the fight.”
Retro simply asked, “How long?”
I squeezed off three rounds through the window, seeing a shadow drop. “Three minutes, give or take a minute.”
He looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
“Hey, it’s old commie shit. I can’t predict the burn rate.”
Decoy unstrapped the duckbill shotgun from his thigh, muttering, “Crazy motherfucker.”
He tapped each man on the shoulder, saying, “We get one chance. Once I pop both barrels, I need all guns putting lead down the hallway.”
We backed up to him until we were all touching. When I felt him move, I rotated around, putting my barrel over his shoulder.
He entered the hallway low, the duckbill extended in front. The shotgun was deafening in the confined space, both barrels spewing out their load of buckshot in a horizontal arc that eviscerated the men we faced.
Retro and I fired at the same time, shredding the remaining man still standing while Buckshot kept a steady stream of fire to our rear. We didn’t stop to survey our damage.
Jennifer heard the avalanche call and couldn’t imagine how the assault could go any more wrong. It was the code word for evacuation at all costs, meaning something worse than the men shooting was inside the house. Something immediately deadly.
What the hell is going on?
She leapt to her feet, her adrenaline demanding action without a clear path to follow. She certainly couldn’t go into the house after the avalanche call, but running to the vans without the team was out of the question. Even though that’s what the call dictated.
She heard a distinct double boom, then rapid automatic fire. She caught movement through the windows and saw the front door fly open. Relief flooded through her when she recognized the team running onto the porch, followed by a blinding flash that launched the team into the air.
She threw herself onto the ground and covered her head from the falling debris. The shock wave of the blast subsided, leaving behind a steady ringing in her ears. She jumped up and ran to the team, thankful to see them rolling back and forth on the lawn.
She saw Pike pull up to his knees, his backpack with the Kevlar plates skewed off his shoulders. She shook him, shouting, “Are you okay?”
He nodded. She counted heads and saw the rest of the team moving, disoriented but alive. They slowly regrouped, checking to ensure they still had all their limbs and that they functioned. She went from man to man, ensuring they didn’t have some catastrophic wound hidden by adrenaline. Outside of some cuts and bruises, they seemed to be okay, with Retro’s Kevlar back plate cracked from taking a hit of something flying through the explosion.
Pike stood and looked at the house, now burning furiously. “Give me an up on weapons. We need to clear out.”
Jennifer went behind Retro and began swatting his smoldering pack, asking, “What happened? Did the terrorists have a suicide vest?”
On his knees, Retro spit out a blob of black phlegm. Decoy simply pointed at Pike.
54
Slowing to a ragged jog, his breath coming in gasps, Kamil heard the explosion and saw a flash of orange light in the distance behind him. He stopped and leaned against a tree, his mind trying to assimilate the disaster. Adnan dead. The explosives gone. And Rafik counting on him.
How did this happen?
He picked up a fast walk, moving across a small ridgeline in the direction of Budapest. Breaking into a clearing, he saw two vans near the edge of the wood line on a dirt road. He watched for a minute, seeing no movement.
Running up to the vans, he tried all the doors, finding them locked. He hammered the door of the last van in frustration, then began a light jog down the dirt road. His mind returned to the debacle. Somehow, they had been found out. Draco had been convinced that he and Adnan were out to get him and had even mentioned him being followed on their first visit. Which is something to be explored.
He reached the paved highway that had led him to the house and began walking back the way he had driven just thirty minutes ago, still trying to understand. To make the connection. Nothing happened without reason. And something had caused their plan to fall apart.
He came up completely empty. The only outside influence had been the pilot and loadmaster, and they’d been under his control the entire time. Except…
A fact clicked. I’ve had the loadmaster, but the pilot was left to his own devices, supposedly planning the trip to Montreal.
And he remembered something else. The pilot had checked in once a day, to ensure that his disgusting partner was okay, and had shown deference on each visit. Until the last one. This morning.
The pilot had come in acting extremely nervous, stealing glances at the loadmaster as if he wanted to signal something. Kamil hadn’t really paid attention, more concerned with preparing for the meeting with Draco, but, in hindsight, one instance came back vividly
: When he’d come out of the bathroom, he found the pilot right next to the loadmaster, and both had jumped as he came around the corner. He’d thought nothing of it, because Adnan had been in the room, albeit on the computer, but now he wondered.
Had the pilot come up with some way of rescuing his partner? Instead of planning travel, had he planned on a way for the police to attack the house while Kamil was in it?
Only one way to find out. He saw vehicle headlights coming down a dirt road perpendicular to the paved one he was on. A dirt road just like he’d taken to find the highway. He began jogging toward the vehicle.
We made it back to the van without any issues, although everyone’s bell had been rung. While I moved out, I had noticed four bodies strewn around the yard that weren’t as lucky as we had been in the explosion. They lay unmoving, either unconscious or dead.
Jogging to the wood line, I had heard Retro on the radio. “Jesus, that was close. All four of these fuckers got the short end of the blast. I had no idea they were so close behind us.”
A second later, Decoy, bringing up the rear, came on. “Pike, they aren’t burned. And all have head wounds.”
Jennifer was right behind me, but she didn’t say a word. I caught her eye and knew in an instant what had happened by her expression. She shook her head, not wanting to talk on the open net. Maybe not wanting to talk at all because it would make the killings real.
I keyed my radio, “Get in the wood line. Let’s haul ass. They’re no threat.”
Jennifer nodded and gave me a tight smile.
Decoy came back on. “Pike, someone else could be out here. What did Jennifer see? Did she see what happened?”
Still moving toward the vans, knowing I was about to have a break in contact as my entire team moved at a snail’s pace, looking for the boogeyman while Jennifer and I kept running, I gave Jennifer a little apologetic shrug and said, “Koko killed them. Keep moving.”
Decoy came back. “Pike, not trying to be an asshole, but there are four bodies out here. Four dead with head shots, and we didn’t get a single radio call? Is she next to you? Is her radio out? Why didn’t she call? Make sure.”
I stopped and looked at Jennifer. For a split second, I saw a flash of indignation.
Finally.
I clicked back on, giving them my irritation since Jennifer didn’t seem to mind the insult. “Get your ass moving, Goddammit. Yes, she killed all four. No, she didn’t call on the radio. I guess there wasn’t a fucking reason since they were all dead and our assault was protected. You copy?”
Nobody said a word.
Collapsing into the first van eight minutes later, the men all looked at her. They wanted her to talk, to say something that would give them an out for the usual ration of shit they wanted to throw her way. Cloaked compliments of her capability, and a highly selective opening of their world for her to enter. Something that was expected. She refused to say anything. I waited a beat, then gave out rapid orders.
“Jennifer, you got van two. Follow us to the hotel. Decoy, do what you can with the key you found. Figure out where it’s from. Get the hotel, then get a data dump on where it’s at. Retro, collate the biometric profile of the dead Arab and get it to the Taskforce before we forget.”
I waited until I saw Jennifer’s lights come on, then said, “Let’s roll. I want a location to hit by the time we reach Budapest.”
55
The loadmaster regained consciousness with a flutter of his eyelids. He cracked them and saw Kamil’s back at the computer. His hands were still handcuffed to the radiator pipe, and his lap was covered in blood. His shirt clung to his body, soaked in sweat. He saw his pants were still yanked down around his knees, and his thighs had more slices on them than he remembered before he passed out.
Kamil had come back in a rage, slapping his unprotected face and shouting nonsense about the police. When the loadmaster had no answers, Kamil had turned cold and clinical. He’d gone in the kitchen and returned with a knife and a shaker of salt. He’d made multiple small incisions on the loadmaster’s thighs, all just splitting the skin. He’d then begun to apply the salt, still asking questions about the police, alternating between Arabic and English.
The pain had been incredible. The loadmaster had screamed through the gag in his mouth until his voice had quit. Luckily, Kamil hadn’t asked about plans for escape. Only about the police. Even so, the loadmaster had almost told him about the cell phone. About the pilot’s plan. He had come close. Very, very close. Wanting to say anything to stop the pain. Through superhuman effort, he had kept the secret, knowing letting it go would cause his death. He had passed out before he could utter anything traitorous.
Keeping his eyes slitted, he heard Kamil talking to the computer. Luckily, because of the connection, both men were speaking slowly and distinctly, allowing him to comprehend the Arabic with his basic skills.
“I don’t know how it happened. Maybe it was just a coincidence. The loadmaster knows nothing, and he would have talked.”
The voice coming out of the Skype connection sounded mechanical. “I’m sorry about Adnan, but I’m relieved you have lived. That is the important thing. I’m going to need your help to accomplish our goal.”
“How? How can we continue? We’ve lost the explosives. Without them, the EFPs might as well be junk steel.”
“No, you’re wrong. The EFPs are the technology we need. It’s true we’ve been set back, but there are many ways to get explosives, and we have the patience to wait for another chance. This is a setback, but not failure.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Come to America. Meet me in Richmond in two days. The rest of the men are moving there now. I’ll have a meeting with them and decide what to do. It may mean simply waiting for a new opportunity. Our visas are good for six months.”
The loadmaster felt a moment of relief. Maybe these madmen would let them go. There was no need for an aircraft now, and they had nothing else to offer.
Kamil said, “I’ll get tickets tomorrow, but first I need to clean up the loose ends here. I have the loadmaster, so that’s not a problem, but I’ll need to set up a meeting with the pilot. I don’t want to bring him back here. This place is going to be messy enough.”
It took a moment before the meaning of the last sentence sank into the loadmaster’s head.
Standing in a courtyard off of Hajos Avenue, I hoped we were in the right place. Like a lot of buildings in the eastern bloc of the old soviet sphere of influence, this one was an imposing four-story structure that dripped despair. Nothing but concrete and iron, all circling around a depressing inner courtyard that would never have enough light to grow anything. The bottom level housed what could charitably be called honest businesses but were more than likely fly-by-night tourist fleece jobs. I only cared about one thing: The courtyard was surrounded by balconies, giving anyone who walked out the ability to see us.
The key we had found had a brass plate on it with an engraving of the Budapest Opera House on one side, and a room number and “if found, please call” phone number on the other side. Doing some quick research on the phone number, we had come up with a broker of apartments in Budapest who rented to travelers looking for a cheap stay. Further research had located a stretch of apartment rooms he maintained one block from the fabled Budapest Opera House on Andrassy Street on the Pest side of the Danube. We’d been able to glean photos of the building, along with check-in/check-out procedures, but outside of the engraving on the key, we really had no way of knowing if we were in the right place. The broker might have used the same engraving for all of his keys, regardless of location.
It was past midnight, but Andrassy Street was still rocking a block away. Jennifer had dropped us off there, right next to the metro stop, and we’d moved straight to the building we had found from our research.
A lot of people were moving around, even here, off of the main thoroughfare. I would never have expected this Eastern European country to be such a hotsp
ot for nightlife, but apparently it was, which would work in our favor. The building, after all, had at least a few apartments rented by tourists, so it wasn’t like a stranger would be out of place, and with the traffic coming and going, we’d be just one of many. Even so, a fight in here would be hard to escape from. One way in and one way out, along with the fact that we’d be running down four flights of stairs. We couldn’t afford a shoot-out, regardless of the fact that we would win. If this was the right place.
There was a group of people in the courtyard, clearly drunk, and we matched their attitude when they hollered at us, giving them the impression that we were tourists who’d had too much to drink as well. Besides helping us blend in, it would give us an excuse for any mistakes we made looking for the right door.
Moving up the stairs, I saw that there wasn’t any surveillance effort here. No cameras at all, which was odd in this day and age, but a strong indicator that we were in the right place. The Arabs wouldn’t want that.
We found room 406 and staged to fight. Decoy slapped on the radar scope, and we came up negative. I slotted the key, half expecting it to fail, but it slid in easily. I nodded. Right room. I rotated the key and opened the door, leaning back as the team entered, pistols drawn.
I followed in after the last man. While they cleared the apartment, I saw the damage. A man handcuffed to a radiator pipe. His eyes half open, his head lolling to the side, his pants down to his knees. The obscene view of his genitals overshadowed by the barbaric damage to his legs. The torrent of blood from his throat puddling around his waist.
The room stank of meat. Of packed steaks that had lost refrigeration. I waited for the all-clear, unable to take my eyes from the body. The blood off of his neck had blackened, but the pool around his waist was still liquid. I turned away, not wanting the image to become a fixture in my head for later dreams, although I knew it was too late.
Buckshot returned and gave the all-clear, looking at the body.
