One Rough Man pl-1

by Brad Taylor

  Knuckles said, “Well, unless he’s flying, we can beat him. We sent the 427 to the old Eagle base. No Americans there now, since SFOR left, but it is an operational airport. We can probably beat him to Sarajevo. The key question is whether that’s where he’s going.”

  “Won’t know that until we get there. Let’s load up. You can follow me. I still remember the way to Eagle base.”

  An hour and a half later we were flying south, with me fuming over the bureaucratic nightmare of getting the helicopter fueled up and ready to go at the old air base. Third-world bullshit. Maybe we should chase Carlos right into that damn terminal. Give ’em a sense of urgency. Watching the ground race underneath, I relaxed. It would take less than forty-five minutes to get to the Sarajevo airport, even taking into account more bureaucracy. We should be very close behind him.

  My mind wandered to the team we had killed, and how they had managed to find Jennifer and me. Eliminating everything I could think of, I was left with one possibility: They had somehow managed to track Kurt’s pager. I couldn’t see how on earth that would be true, since the pagers were treated as sensitive items in the Taskforce, but there simply wasn’t any other explanation. Short of some miraculous new technology, it was the only weak point I could find, and if Kurt’s pager was compromised, they were all probably vulnerable. With the team dead or bleeding on the side of the road, it was no longer a threat on this operation, but the compromise would need to be explored after we finished here.

  95

  Bakr waved his arms at a cloud of smoke spewed out by the departure of an inner-city bus. He surveyed the area, getting his bearings. Juka had given him directions to the house from the Sarajevo bus station, and Bakr had researched the city while waiting on Sayyidd to answer, but the image he had created in his mind didn’t fit the reality on the ground. Finding a map on the wall, he quickly located the tram that would take him to the city center.

  The trek back to his hotel room had been little trouble; the man from Guatemala and his henchmen were nowhere to be seen. He hadn’t pushed his luck, spending less than three minutes in his room, packing up his things and taking the detonator. The bus ride itself had been inside a bouncing, belching machine that should have been retired years ago, but that was quickly forgotten in his eagerness to find the safe house.

  Riding the tram parallel to the Miljacka River, he could still see the scars of war throughout the city, with mortar impacts slashing the street and bullet holes pocking the walls of older buildings. As the tram closed in on the old section of the city known as Bascarsija, he began to notice a healthy security presence. Pulling into his stop inside the old market area, he saw an overwhelming number of police. Too many for simple tourist protection.

  His first thought was that he had already been tracked and was now on the verge of getting captured. Frozen in place for a second, the panic rising, he debated whether he should simply keep riding. He was broken out of his thoughts by someone else trying to exit.

  Speaking in English, Bakr asked, “Why’re all the policemen here?”

  The Bosniak smiled and said, “Big ceremony today. It’s the fifteenth anniversary of the Markale massacres during the war. They’re just here to keep the peace.”

  Hoping the relief didn’t show on his face, Bakr exited with the man, asking what the massacre was about.

  “During the siege here the Serbians launched three separate mortar attacks on the Markale Market right up the road there. Killed a lot of people. They’re putting up a memorial today. Something more formal than a Sarajevo Rose.”

  Bakr thanked the man and moved on. He hadn’t known the name of the market but had read about the actions there, as well as the siege itself, in his research earlier. The Markale was the largest outdoor market in Sarajevo, and the attacks had killed hundreds of civilians who were simply trying to survive. He knew a “Sarajevo Rose” was the impact of the mortars themselves, now filled in with red paint and left as they were the day they were fired as a reminder of the callous act. Ultimately it had convinced the Western world to intervene in the bloody conflict.

  It disgusted Bakr that the Muslims here would turn to the West as their savior, going so far as to put up a monument commemorating their weakness. Maybe if they didn’t act so much like the infidel, they wouldn’t have needed the help of the infidel.

  He walked through the old section of the city and entered into the close-packed neighborhoods to the north. Using Juka’s directions, he approached what he thought was the safe house. It was hard to tell, since all the buildings looked the same, but this was the only house with a large concrete planter in the front yard, looking like a horse trough filled with dirt. Juka said it had been put up after a mortar round had landed in the street, but that it now served to keep people away from the front of the house. He could always call the number Juka had given him for the clean safe house somewhere nearby, but preferred to use that as a last resort.

  Bakr glanced around, seeing nothing more than a couple of pedestrians walking away from him and a woman beating a rug on an upstairs balcony down the street. He went around the left side of the house and jumped the waist-high concrete wall of the courtyard. He moved to the northeast corner and squatted down. Looking closely at the ground, he searched for a length of twine coming out of the neglected patch of flower garden. Pulling gently, he followed it for a foot and a half, eventually pulling up a key. He smiled. He had the right house.

  Bakr unlocked the back door and swung it open without going inside. He stood and listened for thirty seconds. Hearing nothing, he walked slowly into the house, smelling the musty, cloying odor of a space rarely used. He searched throughout the downstairs and upstairs, slowly walking and listening for anyone or anything. Eventually he was satisfied that the house was empty.

  He moved to the front and peeked out the window, getting a clear view up and down the street. He saw nothing out of the ordinary. The woman continued beating her rug, dust swirling around her head, giving her a halo in the afternoon light, but nothing else was moving. He found the basement door and went downstairs, fumbling a second before finding a light. He took a moment to let his eyes get used to the dazzle.

  Against the back wall, stacked from the dank floor to within a foot of the ceiling, were enough explosives to take out an entire city block. He saw blasting caps, AK-47s, blocks of Semtex, ball bearings, remote-control aircraft components, cotton vests, wiring, and anything else he might need to build his suicide weapon. It would take him some time to integrate his special detonator, but he had the expertise to make it work.

  * * *

  Lucas waited on his men outside of the Sarajevo customs area, where he was the first to make it through. The team didn’t have to worry about anyone in customs searching their bags — they were using black diplomatic passports secured by Harold Standish through contacts inside the National Security Council.

  He hung up his cell phone for the third time. For some reason he had no contact with Mason at all. The phone simply rang and went to voice mail. He chalked it up to a sorry cell network. He watched the first team member come through the customs hallway, carrying his duffel bag covered in military patches. Way to go, 007. Real inconspicuous. He reflected again on the fact that he was dealing with the second tier. They were all special operations guys, but not the cream of the crop. They were good enough at executing simple missions, with specific instructions, but would not do well at contingencies or thinking on the fly. They sure as shit aren’t as good as Mason’s team. Why won’t that guy answer the phone?

  96

  On final approach to the Sarajevo airport, I could see a flurry of activity on the tarmac. Instead of airport workers in yellow vests, I saw a bunch of guys in business suits casing the place. Getting on the headset, I asked the pilot what was going on.

  “Some sort of ceremony in town today. They got dignitaries coming in from all over Europe.”

  Knuckles cut in. “That’s great. Should make our illegal exfil with a captured t
errorist that much easier.”

  I grinned at him. “Come on. What’s the point of living on the edge if you don’t lean over a little?”

  He just shook his head.

  The pilot said, “Might work out better for us. We’re being directed to land at the old military side of the airport — away from all the security. Should be able to come and go freely from this end.”

  The Taskforce team exited the Bell 427 while the rotors were still turning, the whine of the engines slowly growing weaker. I was itching to get started. “We need some vehicles. Anyone know anything about this airport?”

  One of the pilots responded, “Yeah, there’re a couple of car rental places inside. The terminal’s small, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

  I wanted to start barking out orders but held back, waiting on Knuckles.

  “Okay,” he said, “pilots stay here, ready to move. Keep the helo on strip alert, because we’re probably coming back fast. Be prepared to flex to Tuzla. If I see the security’s too tight, we’ll exfil from there with the package. Retro, you and Jennifer go find a couple of rental cars. Something big enough to carry up to two more men than we have. You know what we’re looking for.”

  Jennifer and the man called Retro had started to leave when one of the pilots shouted, “Wait. I’ll go with you.” Jerking a thumb over his shoulder at Knuckles, he said, “He always wants ‘strip alert,’ but we usually end up sitting around for days, begging for food from anyone who passes by. I’ll get a car for us as well.”

  After they left, Knuckles asked me, “Well, what do you think? What’s the play? Go in hard right now?”

  He was doing all the right things, taking input from everyone, making me a little proud for no reason whatsoever.

  “No. I think we should get the cars and conduct a recce to get a feel for what we’re dealing with. From there we can make a plan.”

  Knuckles nodded. “Yeah, I agree.” He started giving orders. “Break out the visor cams. We don’t have a lot of time to go pure clandestine, so don’t worry about a deep install.”

  Jennifer and Retro returned in two beat-up sedans within twenty minutes, with the pilot right behind them. No sooner had they exited the cars than four men began rigging one for clandestine surveillance. Using four cameras the size of lipstick tubes, they hid them in the upholstery and fed the lines into a digital recording device. The cameras would give a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view around the chassis, allowing detailed planning against the target.

  While the car was being rigged, Knuckles and I studied a map of the target area with Bull, the man he had selected to conduct the reconnaissance. Knuckles had picked him because he most closely resembled the indigenous population, and I’d given him the leather jacket I’d bought as additional camouflage.

  Knuckles asked me, “You ever been here? What’re the neighborhoods like? Is it like Fallujah where everyone knows you don’t belong?”

  “I haven’t been in that neighborhood, but you know the city’s a significant tourist attraction, at least as far as Bosnia goes. I’d say that most of the tourist stuff is centered on the sights downtown but they probably see strangers quite a bit all over the place. It’s probably not suspicious to drive by, especially just once.”

  An idea hit me. “Hey, why don’t you take Jennifer as some eye candy? She’s pretty good under stress, and she’s already dressed like a Bosnian woman. She’ll lower the profile if she’s in the car. If they have some sort of early warning going on, they won’t suspect a couple.”

  Knuckles chewed the idea over for a few seconds. “Yeah, that’ll work. Bull, you got an issue with that?”

  “No. It’s not like we’re going into a gunfight. She’ll be much more of an asset than a liability.”

  I saw Jennifer getting a little aggravated with the talk going back and forth, as if she weren’t there or didn’t have a vote.

  “You game for that?” Knuckles asked her. “All you’d have to do is ride and keep your eyes open.”

  She said, “Yes. I can do that. Thanks for asking. I figured you were just going to tie me to the front seat no matter what I said.”

  Knuckles looked at me like he was going to scrub her participation.

  “She’s good to go,” I said, smiling at her. “She just likes to be the one telling people what to do. She doesn’t listen to me either.”

  Jennifer purposely ignored me. “You’re Bull, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  * * *

  Bakr placed the finishing touches on his explosive package, attempting to make it as unobtrusive as possible. Ordinarily he would have embedded the entire device in ball bearings and nails in an effort to create as much death and destruction as possible. In this case, all he wanted to do was disperse his Tupperware container of death without destroying it. He opted not to build a suicide vest but to utilize the backpack he already had.

  His biggest challenge was creating enough of an explosive effect to distribute the toxin over as large an area as possible without actually destroying it in the fire and pressure of the explosion itself. It was a delicate Catch-22. Go too large, and all he would get was an explosion that consumed the toxin. Go too small and he would kill very few people. Luckily, he’d had in-depth instruction on how to tamp the material and protect it from the fire of the explosion as well as how to maximize the downwind hazard once the poison was airborne.

  Taping down the blasting caps, he heard a vehicle approach down the road. He had been in the house for over an hour and hadn’t heard a single car yet. He paused his work and went upstairs to the window. He relaxed, seeing a beat-up sedan pass by with a Bosnian man and woman inside. They paid his house no attention whatsoever. He returned to the device, connecting his special detonator to the blasting caps.

  97

  Lucas wondered how far he could push his second-tier team. He decided to opt with their strengths: full-on frontal assault. Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that, as he had to assume that Mason’s team was on Pike right this moment, tracking him for the kill. He asked his tech man what was taking so long for a beacon fix, only to be told for the third time that the pager track download was locked up. He took a deep breath and let it out, asking again, “How much longer is this going to take?”

  “It’s rebooting now. Shouldn’t be but a few more minutes.”

  Lucas walked in a small circle, physically forcing himself to remain patient. The men returned from the rental agency, driving an SUV and a sedan. Together, they were large enough to hold the team plus equipment and perhaps one more person. The vehicles blended into the traffic around the airport, pleasing Lucas with the selection. Figured they’d bring back a convertible mustang or a two-seater Porsche. Maybe I’m selling them short.

  One of the drivers said, “Somebody just beat us to the counter. This is all they had available, but they should work.”

  Lucus mentally rolled his eyes. So much for thinking they made a conscious decision.

  * * *

  Knuckles paused the video at the target house, seeing the same two-story style with a courtyard in the back that appeared all over the area. The front of the house was clean, with a clear path to the door. No parked cars or fences to worry about. It was located on the east side of the street, with houses on both sides and behind it.

  “What were the atmospherics of the neighborhood?”

  “Quiet,” Bull said. “In fact, we didn’t see a single automobile. A couple of pedestrians and a few folks tending gardens, but definitely not a hopping place.”

  Knuckles stared at the still image. “All right. I don’t want to do a mounted assault. We do an offset on the main thoroughfare to the east, then conduct a dismounted movement to the target from the south, the opposite direction of the recce drive-by. We move in two groups. One takes squirter control in the rear, the other enters the house from the front.”

  Knuckles paused for questions, then continued. “Remember, we d
on’t know what’s in this house, so we can’t treat it as a hostile force. Discriminate on every target. We don’t want to end up killing some old housewife.”

  Knuckles finished the briefing by splitting the team, putting me on squirter control. Out of the fight again. I didn’t argue, knowing he was right.

  I moved off to the rear of the lead car, checking my weapon and spare magazine placement, working to ensure I could reload in a minimum amount of time. Jennifer walked over, tentatively asking, “Hey, I’m not trying to bug you, but I didn’t understand any of that.”

  I continued working on my kit. “Based on what you guys are saying about the traffic in the area, we don’t want to drive right up to the target. We’ll park on the main road to the east, then walk there. It should help us remain undetected. Me and another guy will move to the back to catch what we call squirters — really just a name for anyone trying to run. We’ll lock down the back of the house while the team enters from the front.”

  Jennifer nodded absently, looking distinctly uncomfortable at how fast this was progressing.

  “Relax,” I said. “Your job’s over. Don’t worry about us. We do this for a living.”

  I heard the other men beginning to load the cars. “See you in a few minutes.”

  She locked eyes with me, saying, “Please be careful. Let them do the hard stuff. Don’t do anything heroic. Don’t let Carlos blow you up.”

  “Cut that shit out. You should be worrying about him.”

  I started to get in our car when she grabbed me by the arm, “Pike, I’m serious. You might have nine lives, but you’ve been going through them like a chain-smoker. A life can only have so much luck. We’re both working on credit now. I can feel it. Promise you’ll be careful.”

  I looked at her, realizing she was deeply worried.

  “I’ll be careful. This’ll be all right. Trust me.”