Enemy of the People

by Peter Eichstaedt

  Raoul saw the body on the floor, the canvas desert boots, the legs clad in green camo pants, the face and neck swathed with a patterned scarf, eyes closed, seemingly dead. Raoul had been in these situations before, when the seemingly dead spring to life, and clutching a weapon, kill one more time before dying. Raoul pressed his gun barrel against the dead man’s neck, kneeling to the side of the body.

  “It’s Carlito,” Kyle said, looking over Raoul’s shoulder.

  Raoul pushed the scarf away from the face and gazed at Carlito’s lifeless eyes, the blood already drying at the corners of his mouth, his mouth open as if he were about to speak. “Sorry, kid. But when you run with dogs, you ….” Raoul’s voice trailed off. He knew the story and why the kid had a right to be angry. But this? Islamic jihad? Raoul closed Carlito’s eyes with a gentle brush of his thumb and index finger. Raoul looked up at Kyle with a nod. “He paid a price for his decision.”

  “A heavy price,” Kyle said, and drew a breath.

  “Look!” Ariel shouted.

  Raoul and Kyle turned and followed her pointed finger to the two partially obscured bodies on the floor near the wall. Raoul rose and held the rifle at his side as he stared at another young jihadi fighter lying beside a body—Morris’s body.

  “Wait!” Ariel said, brushing past Raoul’s outstretched arm and dropping to her knees beside Morris.

  Raoul stepped closer, thinking to pull Ariel back, fearing the bodies were booby-trapped. Then he saw the second body was a young woman, her head to the side, mouth open, skin pale, her crystalline blue eyes staring blankly.

  Ariel had two fingers at the woman’s neck. “She’s dead.”

  Kyle squatted beside Ariel, then looked from the dead girl’s blood soaked torso back at Raoul.

  “A gut shot,” Raoul said. “What the hell is she doing here?”

  “It’s Jennifer, Morris’s daughter,” Kyle said.

  “Then that’s Morris,” Raoul said, eying Morris’s bloodied body lying beside the girl. “They killed him.”

  “Maybe she was trying to protect him,” Kyle said.

  Ariel’s eyes watered, her lips mashed tightly, and she turned again to the dead girl, brushing the hair from the face.

  Raoul jerked back, again surveying the scattered pots and pans, the walls pocked with bullet holes. His eyes fell on the orange plastic case on the stainless steel counter, the lid open. He peered inside the case and saw the timer reeling off the seconds. It was down to 34:23 and ticking. “Fuck!” he shouted, pointing to the timer.

  Raoul glanced around in panic. Morris! He needed Morris to stop the damned thing! But Morris was dead. On the floor. “Fuck!” he shouted again, his mind reeling. He turned to Kyle and barked, “You know anything about bombs?”

  “They blow up,” Kyle said, with a quick head shake.

  “Okay, smart guy,” Raoul said, looking back at the plastic case. “We’ve gotta dismantle this damned thing or were all dead. And, you’re going to help me.”

  Kyle looked at him, lifted his hands, palms out, and shrugged. “I ….” His voice trailed off.

  Raoul shook his head in disgust, then exhaled slowly as he slipped a finger under the small iPad screen and lifted it. The screen was loose, just sitting on top of a thick and tightly wrapped mound, connected by a handful of thin wires. He traced them with his finger to a series of 9-volt batteries, then to the plastic wrapped bomb, the size of a loaf of bread. The malleable plastic explosive gave slightly as he pressed his finger into it. C4?

  He looked at Kyle. “That’s enough C4 to blow this place apart, us included.”

  Kyle stared, his eyes wide with fear.

  Raoul pulled the combat knife he’d taken from Ariel and poked the tip into the wrapper, slicing through it. The pliable plastic explosive looked like bright white putty. Raoul swallowed hard. “It’s supposed to be nuclear?” Raoul asked. “But this is C4. It isn’t radioactive.”

  Sweat beaded on Raoul’s his forehead as he took a deep breath and looked to Kyle for help.

  Kyle shrugged. “I hope to God you know what you’re doing!”

  Raoul pointed to the reeling numbers on the iPad.

  Kyle stepped close to Raoul, and at his side, pointed to the plastic. “That’s probably a small core,” Kyle said. “There’s probably a small piece of plutonium in there. The bomb needs another fissionable material. Like enriched uranium, or something. When the two are jammed together, it starts an instantaneous chain reaction. Boom!”

  “That doesn’t help me much,” Raoul said. He stared again at the slit he’d made in the wrapper, exposing the plastic explosive.

  “The fissionable material might be buried inside the C4,” Kyle said, pointing to the thick package. “It doesn’t take much.”

  “Thanks, Einstein.”

  “When the C4 explodes, that could be what triggers the nuclear material,” Kyle said. “That’s my guess.”

  “It couldn’t be that simple,” Raoul said. “Even without the radioactive material, the C4 alone would destroy the lodge.”

  Raoul and Kyle stared again at the counter. 28:47 and counting.

  “Jesus,” Kyle muttered.

  If Kyle was right, Raoul knew the first thing he had to do was to stop the C4 from exploding. That would prevent the second even more deadly stage of the bomb. If, not it was the end of them all.

  Raoul looked the bomb over again. Maybe it was insanely simple. When the counted down, it triggered an electronic pulse to the batteries, like turning on a switch, then the batteries sent a much stronger impulse into the C4, igniting it. All he had to do was cut the wires, he guessed. Stop the process before it started. Or not.

  There was only one way to find out. Raoul lifted the iPad up onto its side, then sliced the wires connecting it to the batteries. The iPad continued to flicker numbers. He threw it on the floor and stomped it repeatedly until it lay in pieces.

  “I think you killed it,” Kyle said.

  Raoul returned to the bomb, slipped the fingers of his left hand beside the batteries sitting in tandem, then carefully worked the tip of his knife below them, and lifted them out, severing the wires that connected them to the inside of the bundled C4 explosive.

  Raoul exhaled nervously and glanced at Kyle, who returned his stare.

  “We’re still alive, I think,” Kyle said.

  Raoul nodded, then closed the lid to the case and snapped it shut. He grabbed the handle and handed the case to Kyle. “I hope it’s disarmed. Now get it the fuck out of here.”

  “What the fuck?” Kyle said, scowling. “Where?”

  Raoul only pointed out the kitchen door. “Go!”

  Ariel stared at them both as Kyle stood paralyzed with indecision.,

  “The cave!” she yelled.

  Kyle turned to her and smiled. “Of course!”

  “It’s a perfect place to stash the bomb,” Ariel said. “If it explodes, the C4 blast will be contained by the collapse of the rock inside the cave. The mess can be cleaned up afterwards.”

  Raoul nodded. “The bomb guys can retrieve it later.”

  Kyle’s eyes grew wide as he turned and bolted out the door.

  Chapter 38

  Kyle trotted across the grassy landing circle and skirted the large trout pond, retracing the path he’d taken earlier. It seemed like hours ago. The orange hard plastic case with the bomb was heavier than he expected. He strained to look through the trees, shifted the case to his left hand, and angled up and across the slope knowing he’d intersect with the path that lead up to the trout lake at Eagle’s Nest. Minutes later he was on the path and moving quickly up the trail. He’d be at the cave soon.

  As he trekked, occasionally shifting the case from hand to hand, Kyle felt overwhelmed with the absurdity of the situation. Why had Vice President Marvin been so hesitant to act when Raoul and a few of his men had
quickly accomplished what the others suggested couldn’t be done?

  Now the lodge was full of dead jihadi fighters. Still, America’s top two congressional leaders were dead, one shot, the other decapitated, their bodies on the stone patio outside. How could all of this have happened so suddenly? It seemed so random, so chaotic, so sudden. But was it? Chaos theory argued that what appeared to be chaos had an underlying pattern. The pattern was not always apparent, but if you looked hard and long enough, it could be found.

  As he hurried along the path, Kyle pored over the tangle of events that brought him to this moment. It looked like Islamic jihad, pure and simple, but he wondered. More than two months earlier, the Border Patrol captain told him the deaths of the border agents didn’t have the feel of a chance encounter with the vajadores, the border bandits. Why? Because nothing had been stolen. Then the killers had simply disappeared. Two months later, jihadis crawled out of the mountains and captured the US president and the two top congressional leaders. And the jihadis possessed a suspected dirty bomb made a Los Alamos scientist who’d been held hostage in exchange for his daughter, a swap that failed.

  Kyle didn’t like the conclusion t staring him in the face. As much as he told himself it couldn’t be true, his thoughts and suspicions refused to fade.

  Kyle’s mind snapped back to the present as he paused to look at the narrow mouth of the cave. His arms ached, his legs felt weak, and his breath was labored. He wished he had brought water as he wiped the sweat from his face with the tails of his shirt. He exhaled slowly, then climbed into the mouth of the cave. It seemed larger now than when he, Raoul, Ariel and Morris had hidden there from predatory drone. Yes! The drones! Hank Benedict’s drones. Of course! Kyle felt a surge of energy as he knew what he had to do.

  Kyle made his way into the dark recesses of the cave, his eyes slowly adjusting to the diminished light, and found a crevice in the wall of the cave. It would do nicely. He looked around the cave one last time, then made his way back to the entrance, where he pulled out his phone and checked the signal. Yes! Kyle listened to the buzz of the phone call and looked out across the tree tops to the distant lodge.

  “This is Frankel,” the voice said.

  “It’s Kyle,” he said.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Frankel asked, almost shouting. “I’ve been trying to reach you for two days! Where the hell are you?”

  Kyle exhaled, his stomach quivering. “Right here,” he said. “Right where I’ve always been.”

  “Don’t play games, Kyle. Terrorists have the president in a mountain retreat, which is where I sent you so you could write about it, and I haven’t heard from you for 24 freaking hours! What the hell?”

  “Calm down,” Kyle said. “There’s a chance the president may be freed.”

  “What? Are you serious? How in the hell…?”

  “Just listen!” Kyle struggled to contain his impatience. “Now take some notes because I can’t write a damned thing now and don’t have time. I’ll get you up to speed. You can attribute all of the information to me, your man on the scene.”

  “But, but….”

  “Shut up and listen.”

  “Okay,” Frankel said, after a long pause. “Let me clear a screen.

  “I hope you can type as fast as I talk, because I don’t have much time.”

  “Shoot.”

  Kyle unloaded the basics of what had happened so far—finding Alan Morris, his entry into the lodge, the successful assault on the lodge led by Raoul. “They killed Morris, though, stabbed him to death. I just removed the bomb from the lodge now.”

  “What about the president?” Frankel asked.

  “That’s next,” Kyle said.

  “Next?” Frankel yelled. “What do you mean?”

  “The jihadis are dead, most of them, anyway, but the president is still in his room. Safe.”

  “Alive?”

  “We think so. That’s why I need to get back to you.”

  “What are you doing, Kyle?”

  “I’m going to see this through, Max.”

  “Don’t get yourself killed.”

  “I need something from you,” Kyle said.

  “What?”

  Kyle briefly explained his ideas about how the president had been captured.

  “If I follow what you’re saying, Kyle, you’re suggesting old man Benedict and his son orchestrated this whole and mess. If so, then he’s guilty of high treason.”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Kyle said.

  “Oh, my God,” Frankel said. “That kind of thing is not supposed to happen in our country. Who do these people think they are?”

  “You been in Washington for decades,” Kyle said. “Who do you know on the Security Council? Call someone you can trust who might be willing to do something.”

  “This is serious shit,” Frankel said.

  “I know.”

  “It’ll take more than one person, though,” Frankel said. “But I know a couple of people who can put things in motion.”

  “I gotta go.” Kyle ended the call, wondering if Frankel’s contacts could do any good at this point. The phone in his pocket, he turned to run back down the mountain path.

  Chapter 39

  Raoul peered around the corner of hallway. The green smoke now a thin haze hanging in the air like cigarette smoke, Raoul hurried though the foyer, paused at the fireplace, and again scanned the bodies. Five of the six men who had accompanied him on the assault were back in the main room. The sixth had been shot in the chest by a now dead jihadi hiding in the library. Shot through the heart, the commando died instantly. It made Raoul sick. He hated to lose anybody, ever, but one down on this mission was not bad. Still, they were far from finished.

  “We need to find which one is Jihadi John,” Raoul said, waving to the bodies scattered around the room.

  The commandos moved quickly, tugging away each of the dead jihadi’s facial scarves.

  After all were unmasked, Raoul scanned the dead faces uneasily. “Fuck. None of them is Jihadi John.”

  His eyes moved from the bodies and up to the top of the stairs where the air was relatively clear. The president was there, and he feared, so was Jihadi John. Raoul motioned for the commandos to follow him up the curving stairs, wide and wooden and affixed the back wall and fanning out at the bottom.

  The six men climbed one step at a time, cheeks pressed against the stocks of their assault rifles aimed high and held firmly against their shoulders, fingers on triggers. Three climbed a dozen steps, then paused while the other three moved up, wary of the creaks and groans of the aging wood.

  Movement at the top of the stairs was met with the hammering staccato of automatic weapons fire from Raoul’s assault team. Two jihadis, their heads swathed in black, snapped back, their bodies twisting awkwardly, as the fire from their AK-47s sprayed the ceiling and far wall, shattering glass.

  One of the commandos was hit and fell to the side, then tumbled backwards down the steps where he was caught by another. Blood appeared on the wounded commando’s arm, his chest having been protected by a Kevlar vest. The man glanced at Raoul, as if to say he was sorry, and shook his head. Raoul motioned for the man who’d stopped his tumble to take him down the steps and apply what aide he could.

  The remaining commandoes paused on the stairs, each crouching. Now they were down four. Raoul pointed to the top of the stairs, and taking the steps two at a time, reached the top, then crouched again, keeping a low profile, as the others followed, weapons at the ready, unsure of the jihadi threat.

  Raoul pointed for two of the men to go ahead. They moved quickly down the hallway, their steps the only sound, to the bedrooms where Troy Devine and Senator Blunt had stayed until they’d been killed.

  Raoul motioned for the third commando to clear Blount’s old room. The commando sidled carefully beside the d
oor, his back against the wall, then glanced back at Raoul, who nodded. He disappeared inside the room, and moments later, returned, shaking his head. Nothing.

  The move was repeated for Divine’s room. Again, nothing.

  There was only one room left, the president’s.

  Raoul gazed toward the secured presidential suite, where in the dim light and through the thin and drifting smoke, he saw a couple of bodies sprawled on the shadowy floor. Raoul took a dozen stutter steps then paused at the body of the first dead jihadi. He yanked away the black cloth from the jihadi’s face. The gray-green eyes were lifeless, yet even in death contrasted sharply with the face, the color of an old penny. The man had a hole in his forehead, thick with coagulated blood, his mouth frozen open.

  It had been a well-placed shot, Raoul knew, and came from a pro at close range. He moved warily to the next body and knelt beside it. The jihadi had also taken a face shot, the nose and cheek ripped away, the scarf soaked read with blood, already drying. It had been another well placed shot. The president had been well protected and hopefully was still alive.

  There was yet another, a third body, which made Raoul pause. He kept closer. This was no jihadi. A white shirt, dress pants, thinning blond hair. “Damn,” he said, knowing the man could only have been one of the Secret Service agents protecting President Harris.

  The agent’s body was gouged, the wounds wide and deep. Not from a knife. An axe? Of course, he thought. The lodge had plenty of them, hanging beside fire extinguishers. And outside, there’d been heavy wedge-shaped mauls used to split fire wood.

  As he gazed at the battered door to the presidential suite, he now understood. Jihadi John had used a couple of his men human shields. The Secret Service agent had resisted as best he could. He’d taken two jihadis with him, but not the third, the one swinging an axe.

  Any confusion about weapon used disappeared as Raoul looked at mangled door. They’d used an axe and a maul to demolish the handle and deadbolts. The door’s hinges had been bashed, but had held. The door was now jammed shut. Was the president behind the door and still alive?