by Toby Tate
Al-Nassar drove the boy to a deserted desert town outside the city where his men had placed a mercenary soldier, one who had seen battle in hellholes like Bosnia—a trained killer in every sense of the word. There were no rules. If he could survive being hunted by their assassin, Cain, he would be paid well. This would be Cain’s most dangerous and challenging assignment yet.
The merc had already been turned loose by the time they arrived.
They stepped out of the Humvee and the desert heat hit them like a blast furnace. Al-Nassar walked around the vehicle and stopped in front of his protégé. They were now approximately the same height. He saw his reflection in Cain’s sunglasses and wondered if the boy was reading his mind.
“This is to be, essentially, your final assignment, your big test,” al-Nassar said. “Are you ready?”
Cain nodded once, saying nothing.
“There is only one rule,” al-Nassar continued. “Find the man and kill him, before he kills you.”
Cain wore desert camos and carried a Heckler & Koch HK416 carbine, as well as a KA-BAR combat knife, and a Sig Saur P226 MK25 Desert pistol. He turned and headed toward the main street of town, which was nothing more than a dirt road with several concrete buildings lining the sides.
Al-Nassar felt pride at what he had accomplished in the last few months, but something else nagged at his brain as he watched Cain glide down the dirt street like a stalking panther toward the nearest building—a feeling of trepidation.
* * *
Cain knew al-Nassar was watching him, judging his performance. But he knew it would be flawless. He had been preparing for months, training with some of the most skilled and cunning fighters from all over the world. They had put him through combat simulations with multiple targets, sometimes even with live fire. He had studied Krav Maga, the SPEAR system, Hapkido, and other fighting techniques that served to sharpen his already lightning-fast reflexes. He had learned how to operate everything from small arms and carbines to rocket launchers and armored vehicles. They had even taught him how to fly a small plane in a simulator.
Coupled with his abilities to see through solid objects and perceive the thoughts of those around him, he was almost invincible. But al-Nassar had taught him never to become arrogant and overconfident, because the enemy would take advantage of it and the victory would be theirs. Instead, he put everything out of his mind and focused on the task at hand. It wasn’t that he wanted to impress his teacher—he could not have cared less about that. No, he was testing his own abilities to see whether he was truly ready, because this was as close to the real world as one could get. He was told nothing about the target, though he picked up pieces from al-Nassar’s mind. The man had a strong will—very hard to read—though Cain would never admit it. Al Nassar was one of a rare breed that was able to hide things from him, partitioning them off behind a wall that Cain had not learned how to break down. All he knew was that his opponent was some kind of military operative, or at least trained in military tactics. It would be quite a challenge.
Cain made his way slowly down the dusty, deserted street, weapon at the ready, watching for any kind of movement, thinking about how it was going to feel to finally kill.
Chapter Twenty
The sun was beginning to set, though the heat was still oppressive. But Cain didn’t feel it. He was focused on one thing—locating and killing his opponent. He was sure the man was probably already watching him. He could be hiding anywhere, employing improvised munitions like pipe bombs, nail grenades, grenade tin-can land-mines, or any number of things.
All the structures were adobe, which was a popular building material in this part of Saudi Arabia because of its malleability, availability, and insulating qualities. Several minarets rose into the sky above the town, equipped with speakers once used to send out the call to prayer. Broken-down, dust-covered cars sat in the front of several buildings, which meant there was also gasoline available for bomb-making. Anything could become a weapon in the hands of an intelligent man. He would do well not to underestimate his opponent.
Cain decided to begin on the right, and made his way around to the back of the buildings in case the guy decided to take potshots at him from across the street. He reached the first building, a small hut that had probably been some sort of business, as most of the structures were. He stopped and peeled off his sunglasses, letting them hang from the strap, and then peered at the wall, focusing his eyes on whatever lay beyond. He could see everything clearly—shards of broken pottery lay strewn on the floor while bare wires crisscrossed the ceiling above. A single lightbulb hung in the middle of the room. There was no furniture.
He moved on to the next building, checking behind him as he did so. He stopped and peered inside. Nobody there. He moved on to the next building and the next until he had reached the end of the street. There, inside the last building, was a figure dressed in a traditional shumagg, sitting on the floor inside a closet and lying in wait. He didn’t seem to be armed, but there were several walls between them since this particular structure was the biggest on the street, so he couldn’t be sure. But it was beginning to get dark, which would not affect his vision, but would serve to give him more cover. That is, unless his opponent had night vision goggles. So far, the man hadn’t moved. What was his plan? Other than some wires hanging from the ceiling, there didn’t seem to be anything else inside.
He crept around to the front of the building and slowly opened the front door, peeking into the deepening darkness. There was nothing attached to the door that he could see, nothing on the floor that looked like a trip wire. He opened the door quietly and slipped inside. He walked soundlessly to an adjoining room and opened that door a crack, peered through. No booby traps there, but he did smell chlorine and thought that someone had left behind some cleaning supplies. He glanced down and saw an old ceramic bowl next to the door frame and a bottle on a shelf above. He put it out of his mind and spotted the closet door on the far side of the room.
He stepped inside and inched toward the closet door, glancing around for any sign of a trap as he did so. Cain stopped in front of the door and reached for the knob. He looked through the door and saw the figure still had not moved. Something was wrong. He could see no flesh inside the robe, felt no alpha waves coming from his brain. It looked to be some kind of decoy. Was this a trap after all? He decided to pull the door open, and when he did, the door behind him slammed shut. He whirled around in time to see the glass bottle fall from the shelf into the bowl and begin to fill the room with acrid black smoke.
Brake fluid and bleach.
Cain’s vision was immediately clouded as he inhaled the deadly fumes and began coughing. He moved toward the door and tried to open it. Locked from the other side. He put his fist through the cheap wood and tore it off the hinges, threw it aside and stumbled into the next room, wiping his eyes with the backs of his hands.
As his vision returned, he saw a man in a camo uniform just like his standing across the room, a carbine pointed directly at him.
“Surprise, mate,” the man said in Australian-accented English. Then he put a bullet in Cain’s head.
Chapter Twenty-One
Cain awoke on the floor on his back, his head swimming with pain. His helmet was still on, but the bullet had gone between his eyes. He should have been dead. So why wasn’t he?
He raised himself up on one elbow and pulled his helmet off with the other. It was covered with blood. He heard something clunk on the wooden floor and looked down. A bullet. He sat up and grabbed it, turned it over in his fingers. It was fairly flat, but it was roughly the size of a 5.56 mm NATO round, standard for a military carbine.
He dropped the bullet and then reached up and felt his forehead—the hole was almost completely healed. He felt the back of his head where the exit wound would have been and found the same. Did his body possess that kind of healing ability? Doctor al-Shamari had said his cells had exceptional regenerative powers, but this was something else altogether. It wa
s incredible—he was sure he had been dead, and now he was alive. If he believed in God, he would even call it miraculous.
He heard voices outside, men talking. One of them sounded like al-Nassar. He looked through the wall to see, but there were too many walls between them. He stood and swayed slightly as the blood rushed from his head, but otherwise he was okay. He slipped the helmet back on, bent down and grabbed his carbine off the floor where it had fallen. He made his way to the front door and slowly opened it, peering out into the darkness. Two men stood outside the building a few meters away, talking. They were both wearing desert pattern fatigues and helmets. He recognized al-Nassar from the back and the man talking as the one who had shot him. Cain probed al-Nassar’s mind, looking for the truth, and found that he didn’t like what he saw there.
He had been set up. Al-Nassar had told the man, a mercenary soldier from Australia, about Cain’s abilities to see through walls and read minds. That had given the merc the advantage. But al-Nassar wanted it to look as if he had died during training to keep the government off his back.
What al-Nassar didn’t know, apparently, was that Cain could not be killed, at least not with a bullet to the head. That would be al-Nassar’s mistake. But he would not kill his mentor—not yet. He was still needed.
But the merc wasn’t.
He raised the barrel of his carbine through the crack in the door, took aim and squeezed the trigger once, hitting the merc in the same spot Cain had taken a bullet—just above the bridge of the nose. The man’s eyes went wide with surprise, and then rolled up into his head as he collapsed in a heap on the ground in front of al-Nassar.
The commando spun around in time to see Cain push the door open and come toward him, but he stood his ground. Several of his men raised their weapons.
“Tell them to lower their weapons or I’ll shoot you and then I’ll shoot all of them, as well,” Cain said.
Al-Nassar held up a hand to stop them. “So, we didn’t kill you after all,” he said.
“No, and you won’t,” Cain said. He stopped in front of al-Nassar and despite the fact his mentor was twice his size, he hoisted the big man off the ground by his uniform collar, letting his feet swing in mid-air like a helpless schoolboy. “You wanted to have me killed. Why?”
“You’re dangerous, Cain,” al-Nassar rasped. “Not just to me, but to the whole human race.”
“Since when do you care about the human race?”
“I don’t, but I care about me, about my way of life. With you around, they won’t need men like me anymore.”
Cain stood for a moment, saying nothing, letting the man’s words sink in. Was al-Nassar saying that Cain would make him obsolete, the same way new technology sweeps aside the old?
Like training your own replacement.
He realized al-Nassar was probably right. But it still angered him, and anger was an emotion that he often used to his advantage .
“I have passed your test. You will now take me back to the research center or I will twist your head off and feed it to the wolves. If you lie to me again, I will pull out your intestines and feed them to you. Understood?”
Al-Nassar nodded once. Cain released his collar, letting him fall on his ass in the dirt, and then walked back toward the Humvee.
* * *
Two months went by and Cain, as promised, terminated every target he had been given without question. He was paid well—tens of millions of dollars. No one knew, or cared, what he did with it. As long as he performed his morbid tasks, he was left to his own devices.
When he eventually came to kill al-Nassar, the former commando wasn’t surprised. He didn’t even bother to run.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Gabe took a drink of coffee and stared at al-Shamari. “So, you’re saying he killed his trainer?”
“Not only his trainer. He came to the research center and killed my colleagues, as well. Only I was spared, as was my assistant, Lydia. But sometimes, I wish I had not been. They were more than colleagues—they were my friends. They did not deserve to die like animals. We let him have free run of the facility, to go anywhere he wanted. We tried to be his friends, in spite of what he thought of us. We had no intention of turning him into a cold-blooded killer. But we had no way of proving ourselves to him. We were guilty by association and Cain has no tolerance for liars.”
“Why did he let you and your assistant live?” Gordon asked.
Al-Shamari shrugged. “I suppose he felt he still had some use for us.”
“Or maybe he feels some kinship with you and Lydia,” Gabe said. “After all, you were the ones that first took him in, gave him a name. Maybe he felt he owed you.”
“Possibly. But that doesn’t mean he won’t try to kill us in the future.”
“So, what’s our next step?” Gordon asked.
“Our next step is to get to Abel,” Gabe said. “I really believe that he’s the key to helping us find Cain. They have some kind of psychic link. If we could tap into that, it would be invaluable.”
The scientist shook his head. “It’s not that easy. I can’t just go release him. He’s considered government property. The only people allowed to go in there are Lydia and me. They would never release him, and no amount of begging or pleading will change that.”
Gordon reached up and began rubbing his chin. “Well, what if you were to stage a little accident?”
Al-Shamari narrowed his eyes at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean a dead man can be taken off the premises, right? Give him a little shot of something that will make him appear dead, maybe some DMT.”
“Unfortunately, his body would likely destroy it before it could render him unconscious. Unlike tranquilizers, Dimethyltryptamine first causes hallucinations, then unconsciousness. By that time, the drug would be ineffective.”
“Well, then there’s only one solution,” Gabe said. Both men turned and looked at her. “I call in a favor to Scooter.”
Gordon rolled his eyes. “Oh shit. Here we go.”
“Who is Scooter?” al-Shamari asked.
“He runs a private military firm out of Miami, Florida called Bellator Prime,” Gabe replied. “They do things no one else can, or wants, to do. He’s helped me out before.”
“If they are caught, they will be executed. “
Gabe smiled. “Scooter doesn’t get caught.”
* * *
“You want me to what?”
Riley “Scooter” Johnson was a former Army major with the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, aka Delta Force, recruited by the CIA’s SAD/SOG division before striking out on his own. In less than a year, he opened Bellator Prime and scored a one-hundred-million-dollar contract with the Department of Defense. A six-foot-two, muscular African-American, he easily put the fear of God into his enemies and had seen action in Somalia, El Salvador, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, and more.
Scooter was a name given to him as a young man by other recruits who had seen him ride a scooter to meet the bus going to Army basic training. It stuck. Usually easy-going, the big man had one major weakness—a temper that often flared over differences in combat strategy, which usually ended in broken furniture and sometimes broken noses. He also carried a scar on the bridge of his nose, which he wore like a badge of honor, from a bar fight with a Navy SEAL back in his younger days.
He was not squeamish when it came to performing black ops, but Gabriele Lincoln was asking him to go above and beyond the call of duty. In fact, she was asking him to break the law and extract a non-US citizen from a highly-guarded facility in the middle of Saudi Arabia, an ally of the US
But Riley knew Gabe was never one to take on the easy assignments. She was also a hell of a good operative—he considered her among the best and had worked with her on several ops. Plus, she was damned hot. How could he say no?
“When do you need me on this?” he asked.
“As soon as possible.”
“How did I know you were gonna say that
?”
“Look, the guy we’re after is as dangerous as any terrorist organization. We need to find him and find out what he’s up to, and the only way to do that is with this prisoner. Will you help us?”
“When have I ever said no? But I think you can guess what the next question is going to be.”
“Ten million, in cash, half when you arrive, half when you complete the mission.”
“Ten million for one op? Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“This one is totally off the books. If we get caught, we’re on our own.”
“Well, then ten million makes sense.”
“One more thing. I’m pretty sure Cain works alone, but just in case…”
“I hear you. Don’t worry—we’ll be ready for his ass. I can get a five-man team together. We’ll fly into the Ahmed Al Jaber Air Base in Kuwait.”
“Thanks Scooter—you’re the best.”
“Yeah, so they tell me.”
He hung up the phone and stared at it for a long time. It was unlike Gabe to ask for help.
She must be in some deep shit.
He knew that she could take care of herself, but figured the sooner he got to Kuwait, the better. The old warrior grabbed the phone again and began making the first of many calls.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Gabe and Gordon sat at the desk in Gordon’s hotel room, drinking their coffee. Gabe would have killed for some black market alcohol right then, but since alcohol was completely forbidden in the kingdom, she had no desire to be arrested by the religious police. She had removed her abaya and head scarf and now wore jeans and a t-shirt. She would certainly be glad to get the hell out of this place.
