Brothers In Arms

by Marcus Wynne

  The report was short and to the point. There was no description of the drug dealer, nor any picture. Youssef stared at the television screen, his thoughts racing. Was this true? Could there have been such a coincidence? Or was it just the coverup that the authorities would use if they were looking for him? He toyed with the idea of going back to the hostel, but that of course would be poor tradecraft and defeat the purpose of moving in the first place. A part of him wanted to go, though; wanted to see if he’d be picked up, his mission compromised and exposed. That would be one way out.

  The thought had come from nowhere, and he was angry with himself again. The weakness and indecision he thought he’d put aside had returned. Would there be no end to this? He had to think. What if the mission was compromised? What if the Americans were turning all their formidable resources to bear on him? How could they know? And even if they did, what could they do to stop him?

  That was of some comfort. There was no way to stop him—once he had the live agent, and he’d have that tomorrow. Tomorrow. He turned off the television and sat hunched in thought on the bed, one hand stroking the remote, the other drumming on the wrinkled bedspread. The events of the day unrolled in his mind as though on a movie screen, and he ran his memory of the signal he’d left over and over again. He’d felt as though he’d been watched, even though he hadn’t seen any overt surveillance; some of that could have been nerves. But if he’d been spotted and followed successfully to the hostel, why hadn’t they taken him then? He felt confident that no one had followed him on the bus and the Metro, and his final evasion in the taxi had ensured that no one was on his tail.

  So would the meeting be safe?

  There was only one way to tell.

  He took his courier bag from beneath the bed and removed the Pelican case. Then he took a vial of the agent and inserted it into the atomizer, careful not to discharge any of the contents. The process comforted him almost as much as if he’d been able to prepare a handgun to defend himself. The atomizer felt heavy in his hand, a live weight to it. Or dead weight, if one chose to think about it that way. There were more voices outside his door as people passed on their way to the elevator. Should he go out, test the product? It would be days before he’d know whether it was live or not, and by then he’d be long gone.

  Youssef stood and slipped the atomizer into his pocket, curling the fingers of his hand around it. He went to the window and, using both hands, threw it open and looked down on the street below. The sense of being up high and looking down brought back the memory of his nightmare in Amsterdam. This was the second time he’d thought of that, remembering the vision he’d had earlier today on the Metro escalator. He wondered if that was an omen. His mother was a dreamer of that sort: she wrote down what she dreamed, and insisted that there were messages in her dreams. He wondered what his mother and father would think if they knew he was the One. He wondered if they would be proud or appalled. He struggled to put that thought and the others away in a place in his head that felt crowded with such thoughts.

  Too much thinking was bad for an operator; too much imagination led to the musings he now had and that was a weakness. He remembered an instructor at the camp in Sudan, a former Russian KGB officer who taught about the demands of undercover work, and the tricks the mind could and would play, if you gave it free rein. It was up to the operator to discipline his thinking and prevent the insidious doubts from rising and interfering with his mission.

  So it was up to him now to do as he’d been trained. He could use more rest. He’d already run through what needed to be done tomorrow. He would sleep in, eat a good breakfast, then make his way to his appointment.

  Youssef left the window open. The street sounds rose, slightly muted, to his room. He lay back on the bed, fully dressed. He took out the atomizer and held it lightly in one fist, as though he were holding a bird in his hand, feeling its heart pulse against his fist.

  And then he slept.

  GEORGETOWN SAFE HOUSE

  Charley opened his eyes and blinked twice, deliberately, before he rolled onto his back and looked up at the ceiling of the room he slept in. All around him, other members of the special operating group breathed the deep sounds of slumber from their folding cots. His mouth was sticky and foul from sleep. He took out the bottle of water he kept beneath his cot and drained it, then got up, careful not to disturb the other men crowded into the room, and went to the bathroom down the hall, where he had a long and satisfying piss. He washed his face slowly and thoroughly in the sink, then shaved carefully. He studied himself in the mirror. The gray in his hairline seemed pronounced today, as were the lines in his face. The three deep furrows that crossed his brow seemed deep as valleys. Bluish bags beneath his eyes made him look more tired than he felt. He stroked his cheeks to feel for any rough spots he’d missed shaving, then took a stick of anti-perspirant from his shaving kit and applied it to his armpits. He stowed his gear back in the nylon bag he kept it in and went back in the hall, where one of the equipment operators stood patiently waiting.

  “Morning,” Charley said.

  The man nodded curtly as he went in. “Boss.”

  Back in the sleeping room, the other members of the command and control group stirred. Charley took out a Cordura duffel bag from beneath his cot and checked his gear as he donned it. The radio was good, the batteries fresh, and the mike he’d conceal beneath his photographer’s vest was brand new. He holstered a Glock 30, the .45-caliber compact pistol, with three spare magazines on his belt, two in a double pouch and the first one in a competition pouch set up for a fast reload. He touched his two knives, the personal totems he wore whenever he operated: a Perrin neck knife as done by Ernest Emerson and an Emerson CQC-7 clipped in his right front pocket. He wore loose blue jeans with wide belt loops to accommodate his gun belt, and a baggy beige polo shirt worn tucked in. A photographer’s vest went over all that to conceal his weapons and radio. Plainclothes and a photographer’s vest were the uniform of the special operator in an urban environment; he knew that. It was also the uniform of a photographer at work, and it amused him how his past and present occupations merged. Was he a photographer playing at being a special operator, or a special operator playing at being a photographer? All he knew was that he was a shooter, whether of guns or cameras, and the trappings of both professions crossed over. His second profession would provide cover for his first, today. He’d borrowed a camera with a long zoom lens from the surveillance team, and it would hang around his neck like any other avid photographer. But the body held no film. The lens would provide him an easy way to keep tabs on the situation without drawing attention to himself, and it rounded out the cover his clothing established.

  He was ready.

  He went down the hallway to the room where around-the-clock equipment operators perched in front of computer monitors, fax machines, telephones, and radios.

  “Anything?” he asked the two men on duty in the room.

  They both shook their heads no. One said, “Nothing yet, Charley.”

  They were responsible for monitoring the massive surveillance set up around the park bench where Youssef bin Hassan was to meet his contact from the Egyptian embassy. There were panel vans equipped with cameras and computers, busily screening the faces of anyone who walked near the bench, and whose lenses covered all approaches to it. The bench itself had a tiny but powerful listening device affixed to the bottom of the seat slats. Since sunup, burly men with shirttails worn outside to conceal their weapons lingered in the area. Parked nearby were vehicles containing more armed men.

  There was a cordon tight as a bell jar wrapped around the bench. Charley had artfully crafted a precarious balance of resources, trembling between a presence so heavy it would tip off their target and a presence adequate to respond to any threat. To deal with the biological weapon the One would be carrying was a team from the Center for Disease Control, completely outfitted with their space suits and decontamination equipment, sitting in a room borrowed from S
mithsonian security. Crouched on top of the Smithsonian museum buildings were snipers armed with rifles capable of penetrating any body armor the One might wear; the marksmen were capable of a wounding shot as well. The overriding goal was to take the One alive with his deadly package. If that meant a rifle shot to the leg, then so be it. They had medics equipped with a full range of combat trauma equipment, and they were only a short helicopter flight away from a major trauma unit. Two helicopters made a slow circle around the Mall, carefully picking their way through the restricted airspace that blankets Washington, DC. Each helicopter held a sniper team and spotters, for surveillance or interdiction.

  Charley listened to the crackle of radio checks coming across the command and control frequency. Everyone was up and on the ball; there would be no communication foul-ups.

  “Thanks, you guys,” Charley said. “You need any coffee or anything?”

  “No, boss. Thanks.”

  Charley went into the kitchen. Ray Dalton and Isabelle sat together at the table, Ray eating a cinnamon roll and Isabelle sipping delicately from an oversized mug. Charley poured himself a big mug of coffee from one of the three pots set up on the sideboard, then put plenty of cream and sugar into his cup. He sipped slowly from it, then turned and leaned back against the sideboard and considered the two at the table.

  “The couple from hell,” Charley said.

  Isabelle made a moue and set her cup in her lap, both hands wrapped round it. Ray snorted and said, “Want a roll? They’re in that box over there.”

  “Not yet,” Charley said. “I need to wake my stomach up first.”

  “How was your sleep?” Isabelle said.

  Charley smiled at her and waved his mug in salute. “You’re so polite for such a killer, Isabelle. I find that charming.”

  She lifted one eyebrow. “One must do what one can do to get along. Things are difficult enough.”

  “That’s true,” Charley said. “To answer your question, not very well. And you?”

  “The same. I am eager to get on with things.”

  “That’s three of us, then,” Ray said. “How are things out on the street?”

  “Everything is in place,” Charley said. “It’s as tight as it can be.”

  “When are you going down there?” Ray said.

  “Once my driver’s up and got some coffee in him.”

  “And what of me?” Isabelle asked.

  “Yes, what of you?” Charley said, looking at Ray.

  “Your call,” Ray said.

  Charley considered the woman for a long moment, then said, “You can come with me, Isabelle. You don’t have a part to play, but I think you deserve to see it all come down.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I deserve that. Will you give me a weapon?”

  “I don’t think so,” Charley said. “We’ve got shooters. I want you for an extra set of eyes, you know bin Hassan.”

  She shrugged, a gesture eloquent in its European fashion. “As you like. Of course you will protect me.”

  Charley laughed and was pleased to see a hint of a smile on Isabelle’s face. “You’re the least likely person to need protecting I’ve ever meet.”

  “I suppose that is a compliment,” she said.

  Ray watched the interplay with a sour look on his face. He didn’t seem pleased with the ease between Charley and Isabelle.

  “Are you ready to go?” Ray said.

  Charley’s driver came into the kitchen then and poured coffee into a plastic to-go mug.

  “Perfect timing,” Charley said. “Did you eat?”

  The driver shook his head no. “If you don’t mind, boss, there’s a bagel place on the way. I’d just as soon get something I can eat in the car.”

  “Bagels sound good,” Charley said. “Let’s go. Isabelle?”

  “I need only a moment,” she said. “Excuse me.”

  She left the kitchen after setting her mug in the sink. Ray watched her go, then turned to Charley and said, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Payne.”

  “We’ve got our deal,” Charley said. “Her only motivation is to protect her family. As long as she has that, she’s perfectly fine to do what we want.”

  “I’ll pull the car around front, boss,” the driver said, hastening out of the room.

  “I’ll be right there,” Charley called after him. “You’re scaring the help, Ray.”

  “Get on with it,” Ray said.

  “I will,” Charley said.

  Ray ran his finger around the rim of his coffee cup and studied Charley for a long minute. “Bring him in alive, Charley.”

  “I’ll do what I can. How it goes down depends on him.”

  Ray nodded. “Good hunting.”

  RESIDENCE INN, BETHESDA, MARYLAND

  Youssef bin Hassan rose with the sun, rested after a surprisingly peaceful night of sleep. He’d dreamed peaceful dreams for once, dreams that lingered at the edge of consciousness and slipped away when he tried to grasp them. That was well enough. The light of day filtered through the gap between the heavy curtains across his window, and when he stood and opened them, the light washed across him like a warm shower.

  It was a good morning.

  He took a long, hot shower, then carefully shaved his face. In the mirror, his face was calm and unlined, in repose. He wondered at his ease; there was no sign of the tension that had ridden him for so long.

  He took it as a sign that he was at last truly ready.

  The sun fell in a long sheet through the windows and across the pale blue carpet. He stood at the window and looked down at the street below, already busy with the morning rush of commuters on their way to work. He laid his palm against the window, and even with the coolness of the glass against his hand felt the heat of the day building outside. It would be hot today, and he considered that as he selected an oversized white T-shirt to go with his loose-fitting blue jeans. He opened the small Pelican case and checked the vials of smallpox agent, then took the charged atomizer from his pocket. Shouldn’t he replace the atomizer cartridge in the box? Something told him to wait. He shrugged, happy to go with the flow of his thoughts on this day, easy as they were, and put the charged atomizer in his pocket and the Pelican case into his courier bag.

  Youssef slung the bag over his shoulder and went out of the room and downstairs in the elevator, where he nodded good morning to the other guests as he made his way to the breakfast room. There was a serving line set up with a variety of breakfast foods and an eggs-to-order station; he ordered a spinach and cheese omelet, then loaded his plate with extra potatoes and a smaller plate with some pastries. The coffee was especially good, so much so that he had three cups, enjoying the slight rush the caffeine gave him as he worked his way through his big meal. There were free copies of the Washington Post and USA Today for guests; he plucked one from the pile at the end of the breakfast counter and sat back down to his coffee, flipping to the style section. The lead article was a profile of the actress Susan Sarandon, someone Youssef knew little about. He glanced through it, then carefully folded the paper so that the style section was foremost, then slid it into the outside pocket of his courier bag where it could be easily reached.

  The clock behind the serving line read seven thirty. Youssef weighed his options; he could linger here and relax till it was time to catch the Metro to his meeting, or he could go early and kill time on the street. He left his table with the dishes neatly arrayed for the bus-boy and went into the lobby and out the front door. The heat and humidity was oppressive even this early in the morning. Across the street long lines of people streamed in and out of the Metro station, and cars honked and hurried to beat the lights. He pursed his lips, then went back inside. The young girl on-duty at the front desk smiled brightly at him.

  “It’s going to be a hot one today,” she said.

  “Yes,” Youssef said. “I think I’ll wait a while before I go out.”

  “Are you here on vacation or business?”

  “A little of both.�
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  “It’ll be hotter later on. Supposed to be over a hundred today. Might be a good day to go to the Smithsonian—they have great air-conditioning there.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Youssef said. “How long is the Metro ride there?”

  “Not more than twenty, thirty minutes at the most.”

  “Thank you.”

  There was an assortment of magazines on the coffee table in the lobby seating area. Youssef took a handful and went to the elevator. Back in his room, he set the courier bag in a chair by the window and lay down on the bed and began to flip through the magazines. From time to time he glanced at his watch. Even though he felt rested, he set the magazines aside and closed his eyes as though to nap. It was good to rest.

  Soon he would be very busy.

  NATIONAL MALL, WASHINGTON, DC

  The black Chevy Suburban rumbled as the driver eased the big truck through the traffic in front of the National Gallery of Art, separated from the Air and Space Museum by the grassy expanse of the Mall.

  “Drop us here,” Charley said. “Then park over by the Air and Space Museum, the space they saved for us.”

  “Roger that, boss,” the driver said. He slowed to a stop directly in front of the sun-washed steps that led up to the entrance of the National Gallery. “Right here?”

  “Fine,” Charley said. He opened the passenger door and got out, then opened the rear door for Isabelle. “I’m on the radio.”

  The driver nodded as Charley shut the rear door. The Suburban drove away to circle the block and make its way over to the Air and Space Museum.

  “It’s quite warm,” Isabelle said, brushing the long black locks from her wig back from her face.

  Charley stood and surveyed his killing zone. Not a killing zone, a capture zone. But in his mind it was the killing zone of a massive ambush. He went up the long flight of steps in front of the National Gallery, and at the top the scene spread out before him. Overhead, his two helicopters made a wide circuit of the Mall; they attracted no special attention, as helicopter traffic was common in downtown Washington. Across the Mall, at the Air and Space Museum, there was construction on the Seventh Street side of the building. The many trucks coming and going provided an excellent cover for his surveillance vans parked there. He looked carefully at the roof of the museum for the snipers he knew were there, but there was no sign of them, which was as it should be. Lingering on the sidewalk on this side, spread out in small groups across the lawn and on the steps of the Air and Space Museum were twenty-four men and women, all armed and equipped with covert radios. They looked like college students, tourists, office workers on a break, but they were all specialists in unarmed apprehension, ready to bag the One once he appeared. Several of them, dressed in baggy skate-rat clothes, tossed a Frisbee back and forth while others sat on the patchy lawn and watched.