Brothers In Arms

by Marcus Wynne

  “Likewise, Charley,” the big man said. “Welcome to the Double O Farm.”

  “Seems like you’ve got all the comforts of home: gun range, plenty of privacy . . .” Charley said. “Where do you keep the bikini-clad beauties and the booze?”

  Rhino laughed. “I’m a bachelor farmer,” he said. “There’re some girls in town, but I don’t think you guys will have much time for that.”

  “I can only dream,” Charley said.

  “Let’s get you settled,” Rhino said.

  After showing Charley and Dale their room—right beside a fully equipped operations room complete with radios and television monitors that covered the approaches to the house—the range, and the outbuildings that served as dormitories for the rest of the team, Rhino introduced them to the new members of the team. There were twelve gunfighters including the drivers and Charley and Dale. Rhino didn’t count himself in the number as his job was, as he said, to oversee the overseers.

  “You do a lot of this?” Charley asked.

  “I’ve put some people up before,” Rhino affirmed. “And some of the folks I’ve had out here for training had special security needs. Those gigs pay for the equipment . . . I’ve got my pension and these gigs, and I don’t eat much, so most of what I make goes back into the facility. I had that range built last year, told the contractor I wanted a place to shoot my guns. Illinois is not the most gun-friendly state, but out here is the sheriff’s country, and I know that old boy and we leave each other alone . . . the old ways still apply out here.”

  “People are good out here, then?” Charley said.

  “Yep,” Rhino said. “This is the last bastion of civility in an uncivil world. Folks around here mind their own business, help out when you need it, and leave you alone unless you feel like company.”

  “I envy you,” Charley said. “You got good living out here.”

  “Well,” Rhino said, “I’ll leave you two alone and make sure our guest Uday is all set up. Do you want to keep the nurse? Two of these young shooters are SF medics and they can do anything that nurse can.”

  “He’s used to the nurse, and the nurse to him,” Dale said. “We’ll let them be, Rhino.”

  “Right-o, then,” Rhino said. “I’ll be out on the porch later. If you’d like, the early evening is good whiskey-sipping time.”

  Dale and Charley watched the big man go inside and shut the door behind him. They pulled two chairs together and sat out on the porch and watched one of the team walking along the range and then around to the side of the house.

  “Are you going to put patrols out?” Charley said.

  “We’ve got the video coverage,” Dale said. “I’ve got a ready team standing by. We’ll put light patrol coverage out at night and enhance the video coverage with the infrared equipment Ford and Harrison brought.”

  “State of the art,” Charley murmured. “So what do you think about what Uday said on the plane?”

  “Smallpox? That’s a scary thought. Uday was an associate of Hussein Kamel, Saddam’s son-in-law. He was in charge of the biological warfare program and we know that Iraq got smallpox samples from the old Soviet Union’s Biopreparat organization.”

  “I thought smallpox was wiped out.”

  “In the world at large, it has been. It was the first disease the World Health Organization considered eliminated by aggressive vaccination and surveillance. Supposedly the only two samples left in the world were in the Soviet Union Biopreparat and our Center for Disease Control. But that’s what makes smallpox such a danger . . . there’s no pool of immune people since we haven’t vaccinated against it since the seventies. It’s highly contagious . . . you only have to get within six to ten feet of an infected patient to pick up airborne pathogens, and there’s over a thirty percent fatality rate in the standard bug. That doesn’t take into account any improvements that the genetic engineers might want to make.”

  “I hate the thought of that.”

  “You and me both. I’ll pass that on to Callan; I’m sure he’ll want to look at that angle. I wish we could make more sense out of Uday when he has these clear spells. Keep on it, and see if you can get anything else out of him.”

  “Of course, dude. I’ll do what I can, take my meals with him and all that.”

  “That would be good, Charley.”

  Charley nodded and propped his feet up on the railing, the soles of his SWAT boots resting against the fine-mesh screen that did nothing to hide the view of the sprawling cornfields.

  “What do you want to do about the Twins?” he said.

  “I’ve been thinking about that very thing,” Dale said. “I’m wondering if you’re thinking the same thing I’m thinking.”

  “Those two have had two fair whacks at us. One for them, one for us. They’re too damn good for us to sit around and wait for them to come back.”

  “This isn’t the same situation as the Torture Center,” Dale said. “We’ve got information security buttoned up tight here. There’re no leaks and no exposure to the public like there was at the center. There’s no way they could have tracked us here. And even if they did, we could fight off a reinforced company with these guys. This is a real good crew.”

  “It goes against my nature to let them get away with just a little bruising,” Charley said.

  “So what are you thinking?” Dale said.

  “I’m thinking you got a world-class crew in a hardened facility . . . I think Uday will be just fine here. I think you should have Callan bring in his medicos and have them on-site, buttoned up just like the shooters, and have him wring what he can out of Uday. The kid-gloves treatment is fine and humane and all that, but I’ve come to believe that Uday is sitting on something else . . . something operational. And I think you and I should go pay the Twins a visit and put them off.”

  “Take them out?”

  “That’s a bit personal,” Charley said. “Though it wouldn’t cost me any sleep. I’m thinking more of bracing them in their home territory, let them know they’re vulnerable, too, and warn them off. They’re pros, they know they’ve missed their chance.”

  “Why bother to warn them off?”

  “Well, if Callan’s people have such deep pockets, maybe we could just pay the Twins to find out just who is putting up such big bucks to have Uday whacked.”

  “I doubt they’d go for that . . . they work all over the board as it is and they wouldn’t want it out that they turned over a client to the US for money.”

  “Why not? It’s done all the time. That could be part of the package, our silence on the matter.”

  Dale nodded in thought. There was merit to the idea, and he too chafed at the passive role called for in close protection. He didn’t want to sit around in the cornfields and wait for trouble to come his way. He wanted to take the fight to his opponents. He knew who they were, and they were formidable women. But they were women with a base in a city that was known to the special operations community, and they were professionals.

  Therein might be the key.

  FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA

  Ray Dalton held a secure cellular phone to his ear while he rested in his golf cart on the Sunnyside Golf Club course. Mike Callan’s voice was slightly distorted by the encryption equipment that ensured that their conversation remained private.

  “So what do you think, Ray?” Callan said. “A little direct action? Is that what you were herding Dale toward?”

  Ray was quiet for a moment. Then he laughed softly. He looked out over the golf course at his next lie. “I’ll say this . . . I wouldn’t be disappointed if the Twins were taught a lesson, even taken off the books.”

  “So what’s it going to be, paymaster?” Callan said. “Time to cry havoc and let slip the leash on the dogs of war?”

  “Yes,” Dalton said. “I think it’s time.”

  “I think you’ve been playing me, Ray. I don’t like that.”

  “I haven’t been playing you.”

  “This is a different game now, you g
ive Dale his hunting license. That’s putting him out there as a deniable operator. That’s not running a protection detail.”

  “Dale can handle it.”

  “It’ll be him and Payne.”

  “Payne was a good operator.”

  “You’re going to have to let your cover slip, Ray. They’ll need assistance that doesn’t come easily from any security company—even us.”

  “You have all the necessary information, equipment, and resources to make this happen . . . after all, we’ve made sure of that, haven’t we?”

  Callan was silent. There was only the hum of the phone in Ray’s ear.

  “Yeah,” Callan said finally. “I guess we have made sure of that.”

  “Then let’s get it done,” Dalton said.

  ATHENS, GREECE

  At night, the proud pillars and colonnades of the Acropolis are lit like a beacon atop the hill it stands on in Athens. Picking out the lights of the ancient temple from the sea of lights that lap around it is a pleasant way to spend a few moments. The air on this night was, for once, clear enough to lend sharpness to the battered old pillars gleaming from the powerful lamps that illuminated them. In a high hotel room near the Plaka, a man stood and looked out his window and thought of the old English poem about Ozymandias, and the line, “How mighty are the fallen.”

  That line would soon apply to the Americans.

  His face was long and saturnine, dominated by a hooked nose that gave him the look of a regal bird, a raptor of some kind. He stood at his window, his hands clasped behind his back, and looked out at the myriad points of light. It reminded him of his first trip to the United States, to New York City. He had gone with trepidation, as though he were going into the belly of a great beast. But there was much to admire in America, though the excess of western culture found its apex there. He was especially taken with the public libraries with their wealth of books on every possible subject; it was possible to be entirely self-educated if one could read and had a New York City Public Library card.

  Athens had once been like that, a bright and shining beacon in a sea of darkness and ignorance. But its time had passed, and now it was the polluted capital of a third-rate state that made its living hawking the tarnished remains of its former glory. The government of Greece, while not entirely sympathetic to the cause of the handsome man, looked the other way at his coming and going. As long as no operations were conducted against Greek citizens or on Greek soil, the state security apparatus was content to keep a casual eye on the terrorist organizations that came and went. That made Athens a good place for the man, whose name was Ahmad bin Faisal, to do his business.

  His business was terror.

  Ahmad bin Faisal was the equivalent of a corporate vicepresident in the Al-Bashir terrorist organization. He had only one specific tasking, a single job given him by the clerics that made up the board of directors of his organization, and he was here to meet with the single operative who comprised his tasking. After his flight from his home in Damascus, and after checking into his favorite Athens hotel, he’d enjoyed a walk around the Plaka before he returned to his room, where he waited for his guest.

  There was a knock at the door, and he turned away from the window and went to greet his visitor.

  “Hello, Youssef,” bin Faisal said. He embraced the younger man, who stood stiffly, then returned the embrace. “You are well?”

  “Yes, I am well, thank you,” Youssef said.

  Bin Faisal closed the door and ushered Youssef to a seat at the small table set up before the big window.

  “Sit, my friend,” bin Faisal said. “Have you eaten today?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Youssef said. “Would you have juice?”

  “Of course,” Faisal said. He took a small bottle from the minibar, opened it, and poured it into a glass. “Here you are.”

  “Thank you.”

  Bin Faisal stood and studied the young man sipping his orange juice. Youssef avoided his gaze, looking instead around the room and finally out the window at the lights of Athens.

  “What is on your mind, Youssef?” Faisal said. “You seem troubled.”

  The younger man shrugged. “It is difficult to be alone.”

  “Yes. It is difficult to be alone. Only the best could do such a thing as you are doing.”

  “Surely there must be others,” Youssef said. There was a hint of something like hope in his voice.

  “No, my friend. There is only you. You are the One.”

  Later, Ahmad bin Faisal worried about his lone operative Youssef bin Hassan. Youssef was young and inexperienced, but his background and his demonstrated ability in the camp had marked him out as the one to be chosen for this most difficult of missions. The loneliness of work far from home and the dangers of that was dealt with in the training camps; most deep-cover operatives that went to America found ways to relieve their loneliness, often getting married as that was a way of establishing legal residency. But that was not an option in this case.

  Bin Faisal hurried through security at the Athens airport, his long-practiced eye watching the guards for any undue interest in him. But there was nothing there, and he passed the soldiers with their submachine guns without another glance. He caught a direct flight to Damascus and in his comfortable first-class seat, he glanced over a few cryptic notes he’d taken during the debriefing of his field agent.

  It was a risk to use the One as a cutout for the elimination of Uday, to be a go-between for communication with the hired assassins and bin Faisal, but it was easy work and allowed Youssef to stretch his wings in a foreign venue and practice the tasks he would perform in America. He’d done well, thinking of new ways to spread the genetically altered smallpox virus. Using the blankets of the homeless was a brilliant stroke; the long incubation period of the altered virus coupled with the conditions of the homeless in the United States would guarantee a widespread contagion occurring simultaneously in several locations.

  Soon it would be time to provide the real virus to Youssef.

  AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS

  On a pathway that followed the sinuous curve of a canal, with row houses on either side, the windows gleaming brightly in the sun, Marie Garvais and Isabelle Andouille walked with their daughter. Ilse toddled between them, each mother holding a tiny hand. The little girl was dressed up for the day in a blue skirt and white blouse, a black beret on her head, and shiny black patent shoes with white socks. After passing a tobacco shop and a small appliance repair store, they came to an Italian gelato shop, a favorite stop for the family.

  “Shall we have an ice?” Isabelle said.

  “That would be good right now,” Marie said.

  They took their time selecting their flavors, the old man behind the counter smiling indulgently as he scooped a small peach cone for Ilse, who managed it with both hands, chocolate for Marie, and peach for Isabelle. They took their treats to the canal side and sat at a bench that looked over the waterway, a heavy chain linked between posts in front of them, and watched the passersby on the other side of the canal.

  “Be careful, Ilse,” Isabelle chided, taking a napkin from her pocket and brushing at a smear of gelato on Ilse’s chin. “We don’t want you to dirty your pretty dress.”

  “Have you thought more about what we should do with that contract?” Marie said.

  Isabelle brushed the child’s hair away from her face and tucked the loose ends under the beret.

  “There we go,” she said. “Now your hair won’t get in the way.” Isabelle brushed her own hair back and dipped her tongue delicately into her cone. “No. I haven’t thought about it.”

  “There is no new intelligence,” Marie said. “The target has disappeared . . . he was moved from the center, and our people were unable to determine when and how or where he was moved. The trail is cold, and we still have an open agreement with the Saudi.”

  “We earned our fee,” Isabelle said. “They can keep the completion installment.”

  “They want us
to go after him.”

  “I know that, Marie,” Isabelle said. She licked at her cone. “I’m sorry.”

  “I told the cutout we couldn’t do anything without better intelligence, and that we weren’t going to spend our money doing the work-up . . . that wasn’t the agreement and they know that. Money doesn’t seem to be an object.”

  “I don’t have a good feeling about this,” Isabelle said. “We have made two high-profile operations, and whoever is providing protection for them is very good. Good enough to make me think that it’s American intelligence who is protecting them, and we don’t want to go up against them. They have long memories and deep pockets.”

  “The money could help us . . . we took some bad losses in our investment portfolio.”

  “I know the money could help us, Marie,” Isabelle said. “But all the money we’ve made will be of no use if we’re not there to spend it. And Ilse needs us. When is enough enough?”

  “We’re not there yet,” Marie said. She crossed her legs at the ankles, then uncrossed them and brushed at her pants. “We need to do some more work.”

  “Then we should look at something close to home. I don’t think we need to work this contract anymore. There is something larger at play here and we don’t have enough of a picture . . . we’ve been exposed here and the problem is open-ended. We don’t have enough information to mount another operation against that target.”

  “I told the cutout that. He’s going to speak to his controller and see what information they can gather for us . . . and if they get enough, they want to know if we’ll take it on, complete the contract.”

  Isabelle reached out and stroked the back of their child and was silent for a long time. Then she spoke.

  “I’ll do whatever we have to do, but I don’t think we should try to complete this contract. We have upheld our end of the bargain and done the best we could do. Their intelligence was incomplete and contributed to the failure in Minneapolis. I don’t understand their insistence on us completing the contract; we took only the first half of the contract payment and that they got full value for, considering their intelligence failure. There’s something we don’t know about, and I am afraid . . . afraid that they are setting us up to take the fall for them. I know I don’t trust at the best of times, but this, this is something we must be careful for.”