“I understand that. My issue is with the timing of this whole operation. We should have waited, gathered our assets more carefully, and moved from a position of strength. Now we’re committed to doing this while understrength, having to rely on outsiders for support.”
“Hey, you asked me to come along.”
“I didn’t mean you, Michael. I meant the Montalban Exchange. I don’t like this deal with them. I don’t like it at all. That woman, Katarina, is broken. I’ve seen such things before. In most cases the people were victims of the most horrific kinds of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. I don’t know what happened to that woman, but she’s . . . she’s . . .”
“She’s fucked up is what she is.” I hadn’t met the woman but I’d heard about everything that had transpired with her.
“As you say,” Ling agreed. “And there are disagreements on the execution of our own portion of the operation.”
“Disagreements? About what?”
“Katsumoto wanted to destroy the dam outright and flood The Crossroads.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Thousands would die if you did that. There are people here that are not involved in this. Women and children.”
“That is the argument that Ibrahim made. Katsumoto insisted that it was worth the price to destroy the base of Sala Jihan’s power for sure.”
“Isn’t that why they’re going to kill Jihan?”
Ling sighed, a puff of steam forming in the air as she did so. “There are no guarantees that he will be successful.”
“You guys keep talking about this asshole like he’s Sauron in Siberia. Jihan is only a man, Ling. Everyone has gotten spooked by all this hocus-pocus crap he pulls. He’s just a warlord with a bunch of crazy, drugged-up followers. I saw the same thing in Africa.”
“Perhaps,” Ling said, trailing off. “It’s just that if Ibrahim fails and The Crossroads remains, then we will have accomplished nothing here.”
“What do you think? Should we just blow the dam?”
“I think if Exodus had had such scorched-earth policies when they found me, I wouldn’t have survived to join. Yet Sala Jihan is a far greater evil than the human traffickers I knew in China. The plan is the best compromise we could come up with. I just hope it works.”
I smiled at her. “I’m glad you’re opening up to me a little bit. You’re one of the few people I know here. I feel like the outsider I am.”
“I admit I can be . . . standoffish . . . at times,” she said slowly. “Please don’t take it personally. It’s just . . .”
“I know how it is. I haven’t been super fun to be around lately either. I damn near shot Lorenzo back on the island.”
“So I heard.”
“Oh, don’t worry, it’s fine now. I think.” I laughed.
Ling smiled. “To be honest, I feel alone too. Shen and Antoine have been assigned to the main assault. They were the only members of my sword that were still with me.”
I felt bad for Ling. There’s a certain loneliness that comes with command. A lot is required of you to lead men into combat. “What happened to your team?” I asked hesitantly.
“It’s nothing dramatic,” Ling replied. “We took casualties in Mexico. I wasn’t . . . am not . . . the most experienced team leader. I shouldn’t have gotten a mission so important, not with Ariel’s life hanging in the balance.”
It all came back to that girl and her secrets again. “Don’t sell yourself short. That was a bad op from the very beginning, but you accomplished your objective in the face of impossible odds. By rights, none of us should’ve gotten out of that hellhole alive.”
“By rights, I shouldn’t have been in charge there in the first place,” Ling said. “But there was no choice. My team was in Mexico and there simply wasn’t anyone else available. We lacked the means to get to her on our own.”
“So you hired us. Decker was an ass. How were you able to convince my old boss to go along with it?” Adrian Decker had been the operations manager and CEO of Vanguard Strategic Solutions International. After the fiasco in Mexico, the UN had wanted to put him on trial at the Hague for war crimes. He got out of it, though. Decker always had a way out.
Ling raised her eyebrows. “You don’t know? Michael, Adrian Decker had done work for Exodus before. Several times. We don’t like to outsource work but we do build working relationships with outsiders. He was certainly receptive to our propositions.”
“He was always receptive to money.”
“Indeed, but he was discreet and reliable, and his personnel were the best that could be hired for any price. In any case,” Ling said, “You know the rest. You were there. It all went to hell. I lost good men.”
“So did we.”
Ling nodded. “After that, I was given missions that weren’t direct action. Support missions of different sorts. Things where a large strike team was not required. Personnel rotated in and out of my sword as necessary. Only Shen and Antoine stayed with me, by their own choice.”
“Did Exodus punish you for Mexico? Like that was your fault! You did everything humanly possible, and don’t you ever let any asshole that wasn’t there tell you any different.”
“That’s very sweet of you, Michael, but it wasn’t like that. My confidence had been shaken. I had been shaken, to the core. I thought of leaving the order, but Antoine talked me out of it. So I was assigned to what you might call lower stress operations until they . . . and I . . . felt I was ready. The mission to retrieve you was my first serious combat operation since Cancun.”
“Well, you pulled it off like a boss,” I said encouragingly. “I’m here, ain’t I?”
Ling actually laughed. I was glad to make her smile. “As you say. To be honest, I find I do better at the kinds of missions I’ve been doing. Espionage and intelligence seem to suit me better than door-kicking, as you might put it.”
“There were a lot of times, over the years when I wanted to quit,” I said. “Vanguard, I mean. After every big deployment I’d swear to myself that I was done, that I was going to go back to the States and get a real job and become a respectable citizen. See how well that worked out for me. I ended up a security guard in Las Vegas. I almost left, though. A few years back I managed to get my pilot’s license, and I had an in to transfer to the aviation support division of Vanguard. Flight pay was about the same as the special duty pay I got on the Switchblade teams and there was a whole lot less death.”
“Why didn’t you transfer, then, and become a pilot?”
I thought for a moment. “Tailor. Skunky. My teammates. Ramirez, my team leader. He was a good guy. Despite how terrible the work was sometimes, I loved working for him. I didn’t want to leave my team. Like you said, they were my family. And also . . .” I trailed off for a moment, looking up into the cloudy sky.
“I don’t know how else to live,” I said. “This sort of thing is familiar. Comfortable, even, in some crazy way. Standing over this burn barrel in the ass-end of Siberia feels like it makes more sense for me than working in a cubicle somewhere.”
Ling put a hand on my arm. “Is that why you came here with me?” She had a worried look on her face. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pressured you . . .”
I didn’t let her finish apologizing. “No, no, it’s not like that. This feels right. I have my misgivings, but . . . I don’t know. Ariel said this is where I’m supposed to be. I don’t believe in fate, but I really feel like I’m supposed to be here. This sort of thing is what I was born to do. And I might actually get to do some good this time. A lot of the shit we used to do was morally ambiguous, at best. I’ve done things I’m not proud of. It sounds stupid, but maybe I can make up for it here. Use my skills to help people for once.”
“It’s why I stay on, you know,” Ling said. “What we do is ugly business, but it’s necessary. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m glad to see that you’ve stopped running from who you are. I saw this in you in Mexico. And when I saw you risk your life to protect Ariel, I knew tha
t you were also a good man. Don’t doubt yourself anymore, Michael.”
Ling very subtly moved a little closer to me. I didn’t say anything else, not wanting to ruin a perfect, quiet moment of tranquility before the storm.
Chapter 18: Lotus Blossom
LORENZO
2.7 kilometers from Sala Jihan’s compound
March 25th
“Spring . . . my ass,” I muttered through chattering teeth.
It was damn cold. Mind-numbing, break-your-fingers-off, shatter-your-teeth, fucking-kill-you-dead cold. There was no wind, and the night sky was brilliantly clear, displaying unbelievable billions of stars, but somehow the stillness and clarity made it even colder. All I wanted to do was huddle in my parka and pray to get on with this.
“I got here in January,” Phillips replied, with that typical, abnormally-high-morale, Exodus can-do attitude. “This is nothing.”
“Yeah. Remember when we had that big storm last month? Dude. Now that was cold,” Roland radded. “We were way up the mountain trying to survey the compound with telescopes and—”
“And there was like this . . . ice tornado. It was awesome.” Phillips made a twirling motion with his hands.
“Well, until Rasheed froze his toe off.”
“Yeah, broke it right off.”
Both of the young Americans laughed. Even though it was dark inside the ice cave, my eyes were adjusted well enough to see Anders regarding the two like they were dimwits. Shen was squatting at the cave mouth, rubbing his hands together and occasionally blowing on them to keep the circulation up, as enigmatic as ever. He had his gloves off so that he could better operate the thermal camera. Luckily it was plastic, so the odds of him freezing his skin to the machine were relatively low.
Shen had only recently arrived. His usual partner, Antoine, was not exactly built for stealth, and would be on one of the choppers. Shen hadn’t fully acclimatized to the altitude yet, but he was in such good shape that it didn’t seem to affect him nearly as bad as it had hit me when I had first gotten here.
The five of us were inside a rock indentation, surrounded by fat, shiny icicles. There was a faint touch of wood smoke and yak in the air, drifting up the canyon from the nearby bunch of yurts. The cluster of fur dwellings was far too small to be considered a village, but it was something, and the nomads that made it their home seemed comfortable enough through our thermal and night-vision devices.
All of us were dressed for warmth, in state-of-the-art camouflage parkas and face masks. We looked like a mottled pile of white lumps. Even our weapons had been spray painted or wrapped with white tape. But despite the fancy gear, we were still freezing. The sudden drop in temperature had been unexpected. We probably should’ve huddled together for warmth, but every one of us was too stubborn or proud to do that.
“Hey, Lorenzo, you know Valentine?” Phillips asked.
“Sadly . . . What about him?”
“Is it true he single-handedly fought off like a hundred soldiers in Mexico?”
Ling had said Valentine had developed a bit of a rep with Exodus. “Hell if I know. Valentine’s just another asshole with mental problems and a gun.”
“Oh . . .” Phillips sounded disappointed.
“He’ll fit in great with Exodus. Anything yet, Shen?” I was ready to get this show on the road. Worst case scenario, the mark would decide that it was too damn cold and just stay in bed. Then we would have to abort the mission and try again next week. Shen shook his head. A mist of ice particles fell from his hood as he did so, and it hung suspended in the small window of light from the thermal cam. “Shit. He’s probably not going to come.”
“He’ll be here,” Anders stated.
“It’s a little cold for romance,” I replied, annoyed, but knowing that overall, Kat’s plan was a pretty good one, and she had been laying the groundwork for months.
“You haven’t seen this girl . . . ”
“Whatever.” I still had a hard time picturing one of Jihan’s minor business functionaries leaving the comfort of the compound once a week for a clandestine meeting with some nomad’s daughter, especially when Jihan had a bunch of slave girls available. Kat had assured me that there was more to it than that, and that the young functionary was actually in love, and had plans of running away with the girl. The functionaries weren’t slaves. They were the business people that kept Jihan’s finances in order while he was busy being creepy in the bottom of a missile silo.
The young businessman had met the nomad’s daughter in town. It was love at first sight, and though Jihan’s people were not allowed to leave the compound unescorted, this one had found a way. He had been meeting the girl once a week for the last few months. It was a forbidden love, and if Jihan found out, the young man was toast. However, once a week he risked it anyway. Of course he did. Kat had picked the girl herself, and trained her to be irresistible, a classic Juliet sting.
We were some distance from the compound, but the lights from the walls could be seen reflecting off of the mountain snow above us, giving the place a slight pink glow. The canyon we were watching led directly to the base of the fort. The climb was virtually impossible, but the mark had found a way back and forth, and tonight we intended to exploit it.
Provided he actually showed up.
Roland stirred as something buzzed inside his parka, and he had to struggle through multiple zippers to access his tac vest. There was a flicker of light as he opened the sat phone and studied the message.
“Ibrahim?” Phillips asked.
“No. My girlfriend sent me a text message.” He laughed as he read it. “She’s back in the States. She thinks I’m doing an internship with Toyota.” He pulled off one heavy glove so he could type with his thumb. “Hang on.”
Anders reached over and unceremoniously grabbed the phone. The giant pointed a massive finger at Roland’s face and wagged it condescendingly, before tossing the phone back to Roland. Anders was a singularly humorless individual. Roland shoved the phone back into his coat and sulked.
Every Exodus team was a little bit different. My experience had been with Ling and her highly formal men. Zack Roland and Nathan Scott Phillips didn’t really seem to fit that mold. They were attached to my group tonight because they were both supposed to be very good at this kind of infiltration mission, and they always worked together. Both of the Exodus operatives were in their mid-twenties. Roland was dark haired, and Jill said that he looked like the kid from High School Musical, which I hadn’t seen, while Phillips was blond, stocky, and perpetually jovial.
“Hey, Shen. I thought you Exodus types were all fanatical and intense. Where’d you find these two?” I wasn’t worried about being quiet, since if the mark showed up, he would glow on thermal as soon as he entered the canyon. Plus talking made me not think about the onset of hypothermia. Shen shrugged.
“Brazil,” Phillips said.
“We were mission companions,” Roland followed.
“Mormon missionaries.”
“You know. White shirts. Ties. Name tags.”
“Then we ran into some soldiers for a drug cartel. They raided an Amazon village we had been teaching in. And we weren’t going to stand for that.”
“I thought you guys didn’t go for violence,” Anders said.
“No, those are Quakers. We’re awesome at violence,” Phillips said.
“Yeah, we met Ibrahim when Exodus wasted those slavers. After we finished up our two years, we joined up, been on board ever since.”
Both of the young men made fists, and knocked their knuckles together, scattering snow. “Heck, yeah!”
I nodded as if this made perfect sense. The Lorenzos were Mormon, and Gideon Lorenzo had been extremely devout. Bob had been a missionary himself, and had gone to Russia, or so I’d been told since that had happened after I’d run off. Exodus seemed to be made up of a bunch of religious types, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, and Other. Ling had been wearing an Orthodox cross. I was surrounded by religious nuts. Pe
rsonally, I didn’t know if there was a God, but I was pretty sure there was a Devil. Me and him were old acquaintances. Anders glanced at me and shrugged. Apparently he was also a member of the Church of Moral Ambivalence and Whatever’s Convenient.
“Contact.” We all perked up at Shen’s voice. I was glad to see that the screwing around ceased immediately. Everyone was totally still. “Individual entering the canyon. Heading toward the village.”
Unable to make out anyone in the darkness, I slid forward and hunched down behind Shen’s view screen. A single blob of white trudged through the hip deep snow. The man positively glowed with heat compared to the frozen black backdrop, a halo of waste heat from exertion escaping his coat and leaving a trail behind him. He was heading toward the nomad’s yurts.
Well, I’ll be damned. That’s true love for you.
“I’ve got him,” I stated as I slid my night vision monocular over one eye and tightened the strap around the top of my head. My head began to freeze as soon as I dropped my hood. The world turned into brilliant green pixels as the lens settled into place. I quickly cinched the hood back up. I studied the other four in the green light. They were intense and ready. “You know the plan. Proceed on my signal. Roland, contact Ibrahim and tell him we’re on.”
The other four nodded. The great raid had just begun.
It took me longer than expected to traverse the snowfield leading to the yurts. I had hoped to take down the mark outside the village, but the snow was deep, and I kept stepping on hard bits that immediately cracked and plunged me down to my hips. I had to be careful, as noise seemed to travel forever across the stillness. My target was not bothering to conceal his movement, and I could hear him sliding, crashing, and grunting from a hundred meters away.
I could have just shot him from here, but I wanted to talk first. He had an accomplice who lowered a rope so he could secretly reenter the compound. I wanted to find out if there was a code word or something of that nature. Then I could shoot him.
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