“Val!” Tailor yelled, startling me.
I blinked, realizing then that my revolver was in my hands. Confused, I slowly reholstered it.
“Nightcrawler, Nightcrawler, Control, what’s your status?” Sarah asked, the concern in her voice obvious. I tried to speak but couldn’t.
That’s when I saw Adar. He was lying on the floor, on his stomach, in a huge pool of blood. Some of it was his, some of it was the girl’s. A gory wound protruded from the center of his lower back. There was another exit wound on the back of his neck; hebeen nearly decapitated.
“Get it together, goddamn it!” Tailor yelled, grabbing my body armor and shaking me.
“I’m . . . what happened?” I asked. “I think I blacked out.”
“You fucked him up is what happened!” Tailor said, letting me go. He walked across the room, stepping over Adar’s corpse, and smashed the iPod. The horrid music silenced, Tailor keyed his microphone. “Control, Xbox, radio check.”
“Loud and clear, Xbox,” Sarah replied, relief obvious in her voice. “What’s your status?”
“The target’s dead,” Tailor said. “We’re fine. Stand by.” He looked up at me. “Why didn’t you just shoot him with your submachine gun?”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t remember shooting Adar. “Why didn’t you just shoot him?”
Tailor hesitated. “I don’t know, either,” he said. “Fuck it, it’s done. Let’s check for intel and get the hell out of here. This place is freaking me out.”
Nodding, I looked around Adar’s room. The mirror behind him had shattered, presumably from my bullets passing through him. The painting above the bed depicted a horrific monster, a mass of tentacles and teeth, devouring a girl. I looked back over at Adar’s victim. I felt dizzy, turned, and threw up on the floor.
“You alright, Val?” Tailor asked, calmer now.
“No,” I replied. “We can’t leave her like that!”
“What? Val, we gotta go, man, we don’t have time to —”
“We can’t leave her like that!” I shouted, standing back up.
“Listen, goddamn it!” Tailor said. “She’s dead! You can’t—”
“Tailor, please,” I said, much more quietly this time.
He mouthed another curse word. “Fine. Let’s hurry this up. We have to get out of here.” I closed my eyes as I held the girl’s feet. Tailor stood up on a chair and snapped out his automatic knife. He used it to cut the ropes that she’d been hung with and grabbed her shoulders. He helped me gently lower her body.
“Oh, God,” Tailor said, making himself look up at the ceiling. The girl’s head had flopped back as we carried her; her eyes were gone. Empty red sockets stared up at my partner. “This is fucked up. This is fucked up,” he said. Doing our best to ignore it, we carried her to Adar’s bed and wrapped her in the sheets. Tailor quickly looked away, sweat trickling down his face.
“Hey look,” I said, noticing for the first time a small safe. It was mounted in the wall next to the bed, and was open.
“Let’s . . . let’s check it out,” Tailor said, regaining his composure.
Inside was a stack of American hundred-dollar bills. “Wow.”
“There has to be fifty thousand dollars here,” Tailor said. He began stuffing the money into his assault pack.
“I don’t suppose you’re going to report that,” I said as I rummaged through the safe, stuffing documents into my pockets. At the very back of the safe, my hand touched something solid.
“What’s that?” Tailor asked as I pulled it out.
“I don’t know,” I said. It was a small wooden box wrapped in a plastic bag.
“Take it. Grab everything else you can find. We’ve gotta bounce, man. We been here too long.” We took one last look around the room but didn’t find anything else. As we turned to leave, I pulled an Ace of Spades out of my pocket and dropped it onto Adarback.
He hadn’t stopped smiling, even in death.
Chapter 8:
The Intern
LORENZO
April 16
The house was too quiet.
I should have known something was wrong as soon as I saw the compound’s front gate left open. After doing a quick pass by, we had modified the plan. Carl had parked a klick down the road, and I had snuck up on the isolated compound, consisting of a single large house surrounded by a ten-foot brick wall, on foot. It had been purchased by Al Falah as a safe house for his associates.
Approaching as quietly as possible, I had paused and scanned the gate repeatedly. The plan had been for both of us to sneak in, kill Adar and anybody else there as quickly as possible, grab the box, and get the hell out, but now that situation looked fishy. So I’d snuck in to take a quick peek. I was wearing body armor, covered with ammo and explosives, and had a short AR-15 carbine, and even weighed down that much I was far stealthier than most. Not trying to brag, but I would have made a damn good ninja.
The compound had appeared utterly dead, so I had sprinted right up to the door. Lights were on but nobody was home. Sweeping inside, I paused as I saw the first perforated corpse. “Somebody beat us to it,” I said into the radio as I surveyed the destruction in the living room. Brass casings rolled underfoot and the room stank of the recently dead.
“What do you mean?” Carl’s voice said in my ear.
“I mean that the guards are dead and the place is shot to hell. Somebody’s been here already.”
“Did they get the box? If those no-good thieves got the box, I swear I’m gonna—“
“Dude, we are no-good thieves. Chill.” I moved quickly through the room, careful not to step in any of the spreading puddles. Empty extended Glock magazines were on the carpet. Could this be the work of the same hitters that had screwed up Phase One?
I kept my rifle up as I moved through the house. It was dead silent, but there could still be somebody here.
“I bet it was those guys that almost botched the Falah job.” There was a single body half in the bathroom with a cloverleaf of bullet holes in his chest. I approached the bedroom door quietly, my suppressed 5.56 carbine at the ready, the red dot of the Aimpoint sight floating just under my vision, though I had a sneaky feeling that Adar wasn’t going to be a problem. The bedroom door slowly swung open. Adar was obviously dead. There was a second form under a blood-drenched sheet. I lifted it slowly.
I must have made some sort of strange noise into the radio.
“Lorenzo? What is it? Are you okay?”
“Better than the residents. It’s a bloodbath in here.” I hadn’t seen anything like this since Chechnya. That girl had been mutilated, dissected. Somebody had shot the hell out of Adar, too. I did a quick once over of the room, discovering that the stories about the Butcher of Zubara hadn’t been exaggerated. “Carl, Adar cut this girl . . . like . . . I don’t know what.”
“No time for that. Find that box. Hurry before somebody else shows up.”
Blood was everywhere. Adar hadn’t just been dropped, he’d been methodically taken apart. There was a blood-stained Ace of Spades playing card left on the perforated corpse. What the hell? Then I noticed a discarded revolver speed loader, five spent cases, and a single live .44 magnum cartridge. I picked up the round and examined it.
“Clint Eastwood was here.”
“Huh?” Carl responded. “Quit screwing around.”
Shoving the cartridge into my pocket, I kept searching. The safe had been cleaned out, Adar’s belongings had been rifled through, and I felt a sinking feeling in my gut that what we had come for was already gone.
The shooters had missed something.
“One second.” Having years of experience looking for bugs and planting them, I knew that most people would have missed Adar’s hidden camera. Apparently he liked to record his torture sessions. I followed the wire back behind the bed and found the recorder. It was still running. Maybe this would tell me who our mystery shooters were. I took the DVD out of the machine and hurried back down the stairs.
“I can’t find the damn box.”
Carl swore over the radio again. “Someone took it already, you think?”
“I think so. I’m leaving the duplicate anyway. Odds are whoever took it doesn’t know what it’s for, but the prince’s people have to think it’s been destroyed.” I took a small box from a pouch in my armor. It had been carved to very exacting specifications from some very specific pieces of wood. Pressure on some hidden indentations caused the intricate box to slide open, revealing the delicate key inside. I pulled the duplicate out and held it up to the light. This part had been trickier, since there were no recorded measurements for the actual device, but I was about to melt it into slag anyway, so it didn’t really matter. I twisted the base of the key, and dozens of tiny pins moved freely down the sides of the shaft. I placed it in the safe and started setting the bomb.
The incendiary device would immolate the entire room, burning a hole through the floor in seconds. This whole house would be nothing but ash and bones in a matter of minutes, and it was all so Adar’s extended family would think his box was toast. I set the timer for five minutes. Plenty of time to be down the road.
“Hurry up,” Carl said. “I’m getting nervous.”
“I know,” I answered, already heading for the exit, knowing with dread certainty that the box had probably been taken from the upstairs safe by the shooters. I made sure the DVD was still in place. Those shooters had my box, and I had to get it back, no matter what.
“Lorenzo, you better hurry.”
“What?”
“Two cars full of bad guys pulling into the compound. Run!”
I ran downstairs and crouched near the rear exit. The door was open, and the arriving headlights illuminated the back wall of the compound. The cars pulled to a stop and doors opened. Someone began to sing, drunken and off key. Adar must have been planning a homecoming party, and more guests had just arrived.
Not wanting to find out what kind of people a terrorist invited to a torture party, I tried to think of a way out, something, anything. If I made it to the back wall, I would surely be spotted before I could scale it. I could try to Rambo my way out, but from the noises coming from the yard, there were several bad guys.
“Carl, how many we got?”
“Couldn’t tell. It was too dark when they pulled in. Want me to come in shooting?”
“Hold on that. I’ve got an idea.” I moved quickly back into the home. The doorbell rang, long and raspy, and someone on the other side laughed. I had seen the fuse box in my search. The bell continued, the user obviously becoming frustrated. I pulled my pack off, removed my night-vision monocular, and strapped it onto my head. In another pouch was a small Semtex charge, and I squished it against the circuit breakers.
The ringing quit, and loud knocking started. The laughter was gone, and now voices called out with some concern. The radio initiator blinked green in my hand, we had contact. The charge would only kill the lights in the house, but hopefully this would be enough of an edge. I moved back toward the side entrance.
Now they were pounding on the front door. I pulled a frag from one of the MOLLE pouches on my armor and, staying low so as to not blot out the light coming through the peep hole, slid up to the door. I pulled the pin but carefully kept the spoon down until it was wedged tightly against the door’s base plate. The grenade had a five-second fuse, and it would be one heck of a surprise for our party guests. It’s those little touches that show you care.
Back toward the side door now. The pounding turned to kicking. I kept moving, wanting to get some space between me and that frag. The side door was in view, the rear wall of the compound visible through the portal, still illuminated in the headlights. A shadow moved on the back porch: a man with a gun. They were coming. I flipped down the monocular, and the view for one eye turned a pixilated green.
“Adar!” one of the men on the back porch shouted. The front door cracked and splintered on its hinges.
“Hide-and-seek time.” I took a deep breath and mashed the initiator.
There was a bang as the house plunged into darkness. My world was now a super illuminated green. I raised the AR to my shoulder, realized that I had not turned down the Aimpoint for night vision use as the dot appeared blindingly fuzzy, cursed under my breath, turned the knob to dial it down, and moved my hand back to the grip. Behind me the front door crashed open.
Five.
A man in a suit and headdress moved through the rear entrance into my sight, blinking stupidly, pistol held before him like a talisman to ward off evil.
Four.
I flipped the selector to semi and pulled the trigger twice, the dot of the Aimpoint barely moving as it bounced across his torso. The suppressor was deadly silent, but each bullet still made a very audible chuff noise as it violated the speed of sound.
Three.
I moved forward, sidestepping, gun still at the ready, slicing the pie, more of the back porch swinging into view. The first man was falling, a second man was behind him, looking surprised in my pixilated world, lifting his Tokarev sideways, gangster style. The dot sight covered his face. Chuff.
Two.
There was movement behind me, the rest of Adar’s guests piling into the entryway, surprised by the darkness. A few random gunshots rang out as they attacked the shadows.
One.
The concussion of the grenade was sharp inside the structure. Even with a few walls between us I could feel the impact in my eyeballs. Gliding over the bodies of the men that I had just shot, I took the corner slowly, watching for movement. Somebody started screaming.
There were two figures standing in front of the fancy fountain, easy targets. The carbine met my shoulder, but I stopped. Only one of the targets was a man, the other was female. The man had a subgun in one hand, and a rope leading to the bound wrists of the young woman. Her head was hung down, hair covering her face. He was staring, slack jawed, at the smoking front door of Adar’s home and his dying and injured companions.
Having seen that poor girl upstairs, I just reacted. I flipped the selector to full auto. The man never knew what hit him as I stitched him from groin to neck in one burst. The bullets were tiny, but they were fast, and at this range they fragmented violently, ripping through flesh and leaving softball-sized exit wounds. He stumbled back, falling into the fountain with a crimson splash, jerking the rope and sending the girl sprawling. I dropped the mag and reloaded as I scanned for threats, trying to break the tunnel vision. Clear.
Instead of heading for the back wall, I sprinted toward the captive. She appeared to be in a state of shock, probably a young Filipina worker. I’m a killer, and a thief, and a con man, and a hired gun, but I was not a monster, and in Zubara, girls like this were treated like slaves or worse.
“Come with me,” I said in Arabic, helping the girl to her feet, then quickly switching to Tagalog. “Come with me now or these men will kill you.” She looked at me, stunned or bewildered, probably drugged and incoherent.
“Lorenzo, what’s happening?” Carl’s voice was tense.
“Pick me up at the front gate,” I replied tersely. “We need to go, lady.” I gestured with my gun in the direction to move. “Now!”
“You’re an American!” she shouted in English. “Oh, thank God!”
“Uh . . .” That was unexpected. “Yes! I’m here to rescue you . . . or something. Let’s go.”
The van barely slowed as I shoved the still-bound girl into the back and climbed in after her. The incendiary bomb detonated with a brilliant flash that crackled from every window. I slammed the door as Adar’s burning compound shrank in the distance.
VALENTINE
Fort Saradia National Historical Site
April 16
0400
Alone in my room, I sat on the floor, my back to the wall. I was still wearing my cammies. My body armor was lying on the floor next to me. The door to the balcony was open; a cool breeze drifted into the room.
On the floor
next to me was Adar’s strange little box. I’d given it a half-hearted examination; it was some kind of puzzle box, made of wood, ornately carved. It looked very old. I tried for a minute to open it but quickly gave up.
I don’t know how long I’d been sitting there when I heard someone knocking on my door. I didn’t answer it. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. After a few moments, the knocking stopped, leaving me alone with my thoughts. Our trip back from Adar’s compound had been long, but I barely remembered it. We’d been debriefed by Gordon as soon as we’d returned to the compound. He, of course, had been overjoyed, especially at the intelligence we’d gathered. Tailor neglected to mention the fifty thousand dollars he’d stuffed into his backpack. I’d forgotten to turn over the puzzle box.
I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I could see that dead girl hanging from Adar’s ceiling. I wondered what her name had been, where she’d come from, how she’d ended up there. It reminded me so much of what happened to my mom, it hurt. My stomach was still twisted into knots, hours later.
I took another swig from the large plastic bottle in my hand. I’d managed to bum some booze from one of the other guys. I didn’t know what in the hell it was. It tasted terrible, but it was alcohol, and it was potent. It’d do. As I took another drink, my bathroom door suddenly opened. Sarah walked into my room.
“Hey,” I said, not looking up at her.
“Mike? Are you okay?” she asked, standing over me.
I raised my eyes up to hers. “Not really,” I said. I took another sip.
“What happened?” she asked, sitting on the floor next to me. She saw the bottle in my hand. “Are you drinking?”
“Yes, I am!” I said, loudly slurring my speech and saluting her with the bottle. Sarah grabbed it out of my hand. “Hey!” I protested, but she ignored me. She lifted it to her nose and made a face when she sniffed it.
“What is this stuff?”
“I was drinking that,” I said testily.
Dead Six Page 17
