Brothers In Arms

by Marcus Wynne

  By Marcus Wynne from Tom Doherty Associates

  Brothers in Arms

  No Other Option

  Warrior in the Shadows

  MARCUS WYNNE

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either

  fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  BROTHERS IN ARMS

  Copyright © 2004 by Marcus Wynne

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any

  form.

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  A Forge Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Wynne, Marcus.

  Brothers in arms / Marcus Wynne.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

  ISBN 0-765-30782-0 (acid-free paper)

  1. Special operations (Military science)—Fiction. 2. Torture

  victims—Rehabilitation—Fiction. 3. Terrorism—Prevention—Fiction. 4.

  Minneapolis (Minn.)—Fiction. 5. Washington (D.C.)—Fiction. 6. Assassins—

  Fiction. 7. Twins—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3623.Y66B76 2003

  813′.6—dc22

  2003061217

  First Edition: February 2004

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  This book is dedicated to the men and women of the

  US special operations community, especially those who lost their

  lives in Afghanistan and Iraq.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank, as always, my literary agent, Ethan Ellenberg, my foreign-rights agent, Danny Baror, and my film agents, Kevin Cleary and Josh Morris. Special thanks to my great publicist, Elena Stokes, her assistant, Jennifer “Buttercup” Hunt, and to Jennifer Marcus, Brian Callaghan, Tom Doherty, Linda Quinton, and Kathy Fogarty.

  As this is written, we are still at war in Iraq. While the outcome is not in doubt, many of the particulars I’ve mentioned about Iraq may have changed by the time this book sees print. I’ve made revisions to reflect the most likely course of events. There’s a military acronym: OBE, overtaken by events. That’s what happened in the writing of this book.

  Godspeed to our military, and good hunting.

  LINDEN HILLS NEIGHBORHOOD,

  MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA

  When the bodyguard team pulled up across the street, Dale Miller thought of a ballerina he once dated. She didn’t care that he couldn’t tell her what he did for a living; she enjoyed the intrigue and the edge it gave to their sex. Dale taught her to shoot and to street fight and she taught him how a ballet was built to a single vision and how each element of the dance reflected that vision. Later in his career, when he was introduced to the discipline of VIP protection, he found, to his surprise, that his girlfriend’s lessons had prepared him for the intricate moves a bodyguard team makes to protect the principal.

  So on this fine Minneapolis summer morning, comfortable in the tree-shadowed outdoor courtyard of his favorite coffeehouse, Dale was able to appreciate the complex moves of the bodyguard team moving into place across the street. He watched a tan four-door Ford sedan pull up in front of the Linden Hills Art Store and disgorge four large men in business suits, their jackets unbuttoned. One went immediately into the art store. The other three took up positions in the street, ignoring the cars that slowed to watch them, while the driver pulled the sedan forward. Seconds later, a black BMW sedan pulled up between the three men. The man on the street side blocked the rear driver’s side window with his body, while the two men on the curbside blocked the rear passenger door and the back window.

  The right front door of the BMW opened and a lean greyhound of a man in an expensive black suit got out. He went to the rear passenger door and stood there, his hand on the door handle, while he scanned the street thoroughly, first close, then far, left, then right, and let his hard eyes roam over the windows of the buildings that overlooked the store. Then he looked over his shoulder at the art store, where the first bodyguard stood in the open door, his right hand extended with the thumb up. Only then did the lean bodyguard open the BMW’s rear door.

  A short plump man, dark skinned, his suit carelessly folded around him and wearing a dusting of dandruff that was clearly visible from across the street, got out of the car, catching his toe in the door well and nearly falling. The lean man, the bodyguard team leader, caught his client and eased him out onto the sidewalk, where the plump man stood hesitantly while the other bodyguards closed in around him, forming a tight protective cordon that blocked him from any interference—or gunshot. The plump man looked down, as though embarrassed by the display, then at the ring of men, and then at the team leader. Only when the team leader nodded did the plump man move, the mobile barrier of big men surrounding him as he went into the art store. When they entered the store, two men peeled off the formation and remained on guard at the door.

  At the table next to Dale’s, a dark-haired woman in a T-shirt and Calvin Klein shorts said, “What’s going on over there?”

  Dale lied with the ease of long practice. “I don’t know. Looks like somebody important just went into the art store.”

  “Two cars of bodyguards?” she said. “Someone should tell him that that many is tacky.”

  Dale laughed. “It is conspicuous consumption.”

  He sipped his latte while he studied the protection detail. They were well practiced and sure in their movements, but they weren’t policemen. Cops had a way of standing that set them apart. Even in plainclothes they looked as though they were in uniform and wearing bulky pistol belts. This was either a high-level private crew or the feds. But who would go to an art store with a full bodyguard detail? There were plenty of wealthy people in the Twin Cities who could afford what it took to field a team like this, but Dale had done many threat assessments here and there was little to justify such a high level of protection. It could be a visiting diplomat or foreign businessman used to that much protection.

  Dale set his tall coffee cup down and shifted cautiously in the metal chair, careful not to bump the pistol he wore concealed beneath a baggy Hawaiian-pattern shirt against it.

  A small crowd of onlookers formed on the sidewalk outside the courtyard, blocking Dale’s view. He slid his chair first one way, then another, then settled back, content for the moment with brief glimpses of the stone-faced men standing across the street.

  A college-aged man, tanned in a tank top and shorts, said to his friend, “Why don’t you go over there and see who’s in the store?”

  “Look at those guys,” his friend said. “You go look.”

  “Not me,” the other said. Both men laughed.

  The crowd scattered suddenly as two young women on a moped pulled up on the sidewalk. They were both blond and wore short summer dresses they kept decent by tucking the front hems tightly beneath their legs. They each had a Patagonia courier bag slung across their back.

  “What’s going on?” the driver said. She had brilliant blue eyes and a pixie haircut framing a squarish face. Her passenger had green eyes that shimmered in a long, aquiline face; her hair was pulled back in a braided ponytail.

  The young man in the tank top nudged his friend and said, “Somebody important’s in the art store. Those are his bodyguards.”

  “Who is it?” the moped driver said.

  “We don’t know,” the hopeful young man said. “Why don’t you go ask those guys?”


  “What, are you afraid?” the moped driver said. She had a faint accent. “It doesn’t hurt to ask. Maybe we can get an autograph.”

  Her ponytailed companion laughed, a deep and throaty laugh that made her seem older than she looked, and said, “Let’s go over there and see who it is!”

  The two college boys looked at each other and grinned. They followed as the moped riders swung their bike in a wide U-turn, crossing the street. The other onlookers followed. Their departure left Dale with a clear view of the protection detail parked in the street. He had to stifle a laugh at the look on the faces of the two bodyguards outside the store as they watched the herd of curious pedestrians, led by the two blondes on the moped, come across the street at them. The two drivers, sitting in the idling cars, scanned their side and rear mirrors constantly, trying to keep an eye on the crowd.

  Small groups of onlookers had formed across the street as well. One of them was a tall blond man with a heavily lined face, dressed casually in a denim work shirt with the tails out over faded Levis. He stood with a coffee cup in his hand and watched the crowd grow around the art store. Something about him drew Dale’s eye. Maybe it was how the man had positioned himself to see the bodyguards; he watched them the way a coach might watch his players. Dale’s vigilance was rewarded a moment later, when the man shifted his stance and the material of his shirt bunched unnaturally a few inches behind his hip.

  The man was armed with a pistol concealed beneath his shirt—just as Dale was.

  Dale set his coffee cup down, pushed it to the center of the table, then eased his chair back a few inches. His view of the man across the street was obscured momentarily by passersby, then he saw him again. There was tension about the man, but it seemed more like close attention to the events unfolding in front of the art store than a preparation for violence. Dale had long experience in looking for those cues. This man didn’t look like an off-duty cop, either.

  So who was he and what was he doing here?

  There was a Unitarian church just up the block from the art store, at the top of the hill where Forty-fourth Street and Upton Avenue intersected. A van with the logo of AAA PLUMBING SERVICE on its side, eased slowly into a short-term parking space in front of the church. From that position one could easily see all the activity in front of the art store, as well as down the length of the block. That was why the driver had waited till the spot was free. In the back of the van, sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment crammed the tight quarters, forcing the two men there to sit thigh to thigh beside each other. They faced a small bank of video screens ringing one larger one where the circus in front of the art store played out.

  “This is a mess,” the first man said. He was in his early thirties, heavily muscled beneath the coveralls with the logo of AAA PLUMBING on the back.

  The other man was older, with short cropped gray hair and the lean build of a distance runner. “Good lesson here. These guys should have deployed low profile . . . look at the commotion they’ve caused.”

  “Truth,” said the first man. His name was Robert Sanders, and he and his partner Marcus Williams were surveillance specialists for a clandestine government operation called DOMINANCE RAIN. “They’d have been better off in one car.”

  “Heavy threat, though,” Williams said.

  “Harder to spot and follow.”

  “There’s that,” Williams conceded. “These guys aren’t bad at working the man. They’ve got good moves.”

  “Good moves don’t count if you create a circus everywhere you go.”

  Williams shrugged his thin shoulders. “Maybe they didn’t have a choice. The man likes having all his bully boys around.”

  “You see the legs on the moped beauties?”

  The older man grinned slyly. “I don’t pay attention to things like that when I’m working. What girls on a moped are you referring to?”

  “Like you’d miss that,” Sanders said. “Let me refresh your ancient brain.”

  Sanders turned a control knob while working a toggle stick with the other hand and zoomed the telescopic lens hidden in the ventilator hood onto the two girls. They were still perched on their moped, watching the door of the art store with the rest of the curious.

  “Some lookers, huh?” Sanders said.

  “Not bad. Probably kill a young guy like you, though. They need the proven stamina of an older man.”

  Sanders snorted and wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. He pulled the focus back to expand the point of view to include the whole crowd again.

  “People will be talking about this for a week,” he said.

  Williams nodded. “You got any possibles in the crowd?”

  “No . . . you?”

  “That one guy, with the work shirt untucked? Over there, same side of the street as the little blondies.”

  “I make him. What about him?”

  “Everybody else is either coming forward or staying where they started . . . he came just far enough to get a good look.”

  “You make him for a shooter?”

  “Zoom his face, we’ll run him through the database. Just to be sure. He’s got the look.”

  “Roger that.” The younger man zoomed in on the lined face of the man in the work shirt and touched a button. The picture froze for a moment, then continued with the live feed. “Want me to run it now?”

  “No, stay on the crowd. Put the image over on my screen, I’ll run it myself.”

  Sanders pushed buttons and the face of the man appeared on a small screen directly in front of Williams. Williams used a touch pad to move the cursor to a pull-down menu on the screen, then watched a progress bar beneath the man’s picture tick off percentages. The computer program he ran matched the face of anyone they imaged against a huge database of known terrorists, criminals, and other people of interest to the US intelligence community. If they were in the database, the program would match the face to a file and bring up the pertinent data. After a few seconds, the percentage bar disappeared and a message box saying POSSIBLE MATCH came up.

  “Well, well, what do we have here?” Williams said. He clicked on his touch pad and a small window opened beneath the man’s picture, with another full-face photo, an official-looking one, and a text file that he began to scroll through.

  “We’ve got one Charles Payne, former staffer in CIA’s Special Operations Division, operator with the Special Activities Staff . . . a shooter. It’s a small world. What the hell is he doing here?”

  “Is he operational?” Sanders said.

  “Nope,” Williams said. “Says here he resigned, no contact with the outfit since then. Working as a contract photographer for the local PD.”

  “Think he’s packing?”

  “Doubt it. Why would a contract photographer be carrying a gun?”

  “Guy with history with SAS, why wouldn’t he be packing a gun?”

  “Hmm,” Williams said. “Only if he had need, and he doesn’t have any need.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on him.”

  “That would be a good idea,” Williams said. “Let’s do just that.”

  Charley Payne felt conspicuous. He reminded himself that he was just an onlooker like the rest. His professional curiosity had gotten the better of him when he saw the protection detail pull up, and he’d moved with the certainty of long experience to the best vantage spot to watch them. While he’d been through the Secret Service protection course and the CIA’s own intensive training course, close protection was one special operation he had limited experience in. It was interesting to watch how this team was working. They were certainly attracting a lot of attention.

  As he was.

  He saw the athletic man with big sunglasses hiding half his face in the shaded courtyard of the Sebastian Joe’s coffee shop across the street. That guy was tuned in to everything going on around him, and while everyone else was watching the bodyguards, that guy was watching Charley. Another operator for the team? Planting a few plainclothes people in
the crowd to monitor things would be one way of ensuring additional security. That didn’t seem likely, though. If they were going to do that, they could have run the whole operation in a more low-key fashion.

  Charley smiled at how his imagination got away with him. The man across the street had the look, but he was probably an off-duty cop or some other kind of security professional. He felt as though he had to second-guess himself these days; his operational days were behind him. The only reason he maintained a civilian concealed carry permit was, well, he didn’t really know why except that he’d carried a gun for a living for most of his adult life and it just seemed natural to be armed. He touched his elbow to the butt of the pistol concealed beneath his baggy work shirt.

  He admired the two leggy blondes on the moped. They were laughing and having a good time, urging on the curious gawkers, beeping the moped horn and trying to talk to the two bodyguards outside the art store.

  “Who is in the store?” the one with the short hair said. “C’mon, give us a clue!”

  “Hey handsome,” the ponytailed blonde said. “I’ll show you something pretty if you tell us.”

  Grins flickered across the faces of the two men.

  “Ooooh, he wants us to show him something pretty,” the shorthaired one said. “Hey, here they come now!”

  The two outside guards straightened up as the door opened and a bodyguard came out, holding a framed and wrapped painting in both hands. He was followed closely by the pudgy principal and the other bodyguards, who attempted to herd the principal quickly across the sidewalk. The pudgy man hesitated, one hand to his wrinkled lapel, and looked at the people gathered to watch him.

  “Who is that?” someone called out.

  Charley watched as though in slow motion as the two blond women, their legs holding the moped firmly in place, dipped into their matching courier bags and came up holding machine pistols. He recognized them as Czech Skorpions, with the suppressor attachment and the wire stock unfolded. The twin blondes tucked the thin stocks into their shoulders with the familiarity that only long practice can achieve and they rolled the triggers expertly, putting a short burst each into the two outside guards, tracing a three-round burst across the bridge of their target’s nose and directly into the brain, dropping the men cross-legged where they stood.