The Power of Three

by J C Ryan

  Rex wrinkled his nose. He wouldn’t spend long with this man, but he was his best source of information about outside guards. After questioning him and learning that there were only himself and one other, on the side of the compound opposite the second gate, Rex put him out of his misery with a single swipe of his KA-BAR.

  “Good work, Digger,” he said.

  What were the odds that he could do what he needed to do before the other outside guard intervened? That was the question. He’d learned the completely inadequate two guards were posted where they were not to observe the compound, but to give early warning of attacks from the two hills that provided a tactical advantage. They didn’t even have any means of communicating with the guards on the inside. No two-way radio, or cellphones, they relied solely on their voices. What a sloppy outfit these drug lords have to protect them.

  The other sides of the compound were far enough away from the hills on those sides that early warning wasn’t needed – attackers would be seen coming well in advance via electronic monitors. That was valuable information. Somehow, Rex would have to disable those before he could get the drop on the gate guards.

  Rex also learned of a feature of the compound he hadn’t seen from his vantage point. Although there were no trees to take advantage of Digger’s climbing talent, there was a garage built outside the original wall on the opposite side of the compound. Rex hadn’t seen it because its roofline was below his line of sight across the wall. Access from inside was via an underground tunnel. It was Usama’s secret escape route, and it was about half the height of the walls, built partially underground, with an upward sloping driveway to the outside.

  Rex’s original plan was in tatters. He couldn’t take out guards without being seen, and he couldn’t get into the house to disable the monitors and the man watching them except through the garage. Now he and Digger had to work their way around the compound to access the garage. The route where they had the greatest chance of going unseen was through the other outside guard, whom he’d have to take out first.

  Rex pointed to the second hill, gave the command, and followed Digger as closely as he could, since he now knew it was safe. Between the two of them, they made short work of the second and last outside obstacle. Rex had Digger stay close to him as they made their way around the corner to assess the garage situation.

  The first guard hadn’t lied. The garage was almost exactly the height of the walls, which Rex estimated at eight feet. Once again, he marveled at the short-sightedness of whoever had built this compound. It was isolated, and it was surrounded by a wall, sure. But it was by no means impregnable.

  A few broken-down vehicles stood near the back and side of the garage, evidently left outside to make room for those in better shape. With lots of help in the form of old vehicles and other rubbish close to the wall, the roof of the garage would be an easy climb for Digger, but Rex wasn’t sure if there’d be a way inside from there.

  Over the wall from the roof would be an easy leap for Digger. Rex could do it, too. He’d stand on the roof of the garage and simply hoist himself over, as the wall would be only waist-high for him. An eight-foot drop would be a jolt, but not truly dangerous, unless a camera was pointed at the spot. He wouldn’t know that until he could peek over the wall. With no alternative any more likely to succeed, he decided to go for it.

  “Climb,” he ordered Digger.

  Digger looked at him, tilted his head and gave an uncertain wag of his tail. He wasn’t smiling.

  Shit, that’s not the command. Rex wracked his brain to remember the occasion when Trevor had first showed him Digger’s ability to climb trees. What had he commanded? Oh. “Roof,” he said.

  Digger took in the options open to him, jumped to the deck cover of the rusty BMW closest to the wall, scrambled to the top of that and then jumped to the roof of the garage. He disappeared from Rex’s view, then, and Rex assumed he’d be scouting the roof for an opening.

  He whispered “Stop” as he scrambled up the same way, hoping to keep Digger from going over the wall without him.

  When his head cleared the edge of the roof, he spotted Digger in alert position, hugging the wall between the garage roof and the wall. As he’d suspected, he didn’t see an opening in the roof for access to the inside of the garage.

  Too bad, that would have made it easier.

  Okay. So, Plan B it was. Rex duck-walked to the wall near Digger and cautiously lifted his upper body until he could see over the wall, his goggles still in place. He searched, sweeping his gaze in a tight grid pattern, for a camera pointed in the direction of the garage. It was with relief that he realized every camera he could see was pointed downward, at the ground inside the compound.

  What an idiot. Any fool could see this would be the way in.

  Despite his contempt for the man’s security measures, Rex was grateful that Usama was either much less intelligent than his position of power would presume, or too arrogant to consider that someone might eliminate his outside guards. Whatever it was, it worked to his advantage.

  “Let’s go,” he said to Digger, and vaulted over the wall, landing silently in a crouch. Digger made even less noise than Rex had, if that were possible. He stood quivering with excitement at Rex’s side, waiting for the command to work again.

  From his previous observations, Rex believed the main door to the house was opposite his current position, that was, on the south side. He hadn’t seen anyone go in or out to the east or north. West had been out of his field of vision, so that was the first way he went to update his reconnaissance. He had to get into the house first and eliminate the electronic surveillance. Only then could he eliminate the four circulating guards next, and then the two at the gates. He’d have to cross the bridge of how many were in the house when he came to it. At least he wouldn’t have any at his back if he stumbled into an unexpected situation inside.

  And finding the monitors would also maybe give him a chance to see what he was up against inside. He thought quickly. With no way to remotely observe, having Digger scout inside would be of no help. He’d have to leave the dog outside while he went in on his own. Strangely, it felt wrong to him, even though he’d done it that way before he met Digger.

  He told Digger to hide. When the dog blended into a shadow, Rex went forward cautiously, looking for a door other than the main door, which would be too exposed.

  23

  Outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, 10:15 p.m., June 24

  REX FOUND WHAT he was looking for before he’d rounded the corner to the back of the house. The door was not grand, nor did it lead to a part of the courtyard that was interesting or landscaped. In fact, it looked very much like what it turned out to be – a door to the working part of the house. A small anteroom Rex found himself in when he cautiously eased the door open led in one direction to the kitchen, in another to what his nose told him was a laundry, and in the third, to a hallway.

  Suspecting that the hallway led to servant’s quarters and the laundry to a dead end, he selected the kitchen as his best option for getting into the main part of the house to locate the surveillance camera monitors. As soon as he entered the kitchen, he wished he’d put the man-jammies in his backpack. With those on he could have blended into the bustle for at least a minute, before someone realized he didn’t belong.

  As it was, he was forced to immediately dispatch the first person he saw, the cook, he assumed, from the man’s position in front of a stove, stirring something on it. He did it by swiftly taking the man from behind in a choke-hold and tightening his arm until the sudden weight in his arms convinced him he’d crushed the man’s windpipe. The silent death gave him the time to drag the body into an alcove and strip it. He drew on the clothes he’d just acquired quickly, and went in search of the target room, on the lookout for other servants on his way.

  The place was unlike anything he’d seen before anywhere in Afghanistan. Inside, it resembled pictures he’d seen of palatial Middle Eastern homes of royalty. The stark wa
lls were softened by rich textile hangings or what looked like paintings of the Old Masters, in direct defiance of the Muslim proscription against figural depiction. Rex knew that the proscription was often honored in the breach in secular painting, even in the homes of ordinary Muslims, who could be as unfaithful to the central tenets of their religion as hypocritical Christians back home who with pious faces filled the front benches of churches for an hour or so on Sundays but during the week were unrecognizable as Christians in how they lived their real lives. But this display was almost obscenely outspoken in its opulence.

  Highly polished woods, an explosion of color from vases, precious Persian rugs, and rococo-style brass, silver, and gold frames for the art and mirrors were jumbled together in more of a celebration of conspicuous consumption than carefully planned décor.

  Usama was a very wealthy man, and he had no compunction about showing it.

  Rex was too busy doing his best to avoid appearing in any of the mirrors from any angle to express his opinion about the pretentiousness. He managed to get past several openings that would have been better for him had there been closed doors in them without encountering anyone. But before he found the monitor room, he was caught by a servant returning from the main part of the house in the direction of the kitchen.

  For a brief moment, Rex didn’t know who was more startled, himself or the servant, but the latter was pinned to the wall in such a way that he couldn’t draw a breath to scream before he recognized that the man he’d almost run down was not someone he knew. Rex posed one question, “Where is the room where they watch the feed from the cameras?”

  He let up his pressure on the man’s throat just enough for him to wheeze an answer, after telling him the consequences if he cried out. When Rex had a clear picture in his mind of the route to the room he sought, he got rid of the servant and stashed the body behind a big reclining chair in the next room he came to.

  When he finally came to the room, he had to deal with the challenge to open the door without the notice of the man inside. The servant who’d told him where the room was had graciously also provided the information that there was only one person in the room, that he thought there were more than ten individual monitors, and that there was an open intercom to allow the man monitoring the feeds to immediately raise the alarm if need be.

  Rex’s blood ran cold as he remembered the risk he and Digger had taken at the garage and in going over the wall. But there was no use in worrying about what hadn’t happened.

  The trick now would be to get to the observer and take him out without alerting anyone else, inside or outside the house. Rex had killed all the servants in the house, and soon someone would notice. Time was running short.

  A quick assessment made him change his mind about the outside guards. There was no time to go out and take them out after he’d eliminated the observer. Digger would have to handle them if they left their posts. If he didn’t do anything that raised their suspicion, even that wouldn’t be necessary. Rex relied on the assumption that they should stay at their posts and have no reason to enter the house unless he’d killed someone inside who should be checking in with them.

  For now, he had enough to worry about with the man in the observation room watching the security cameras. There’d been no time to ascertain that the servant wasn’t lying, but he’d said the door operated smoothly on its hinges without noise. Rex was about to find out.

  Soft-footed, like a cat, he crept up on the door. He took a quick look back down the corridor from where he came, before he carefully, slowly, pushed the door open.

  No squeaks so far, he thought, just as a whisper of noise from another door made him freeze in his tracks. If the man he could see seated in front of the bank of monitors turned, Rex would have less than a second to cover the distance between them before he’d raise an alarm. He couldn’t see any weapon on or near the man from his vantage point.

  At that moment, one of the monitors showed a gate guard looking full-face into the camera, and a speaker crackled. A short burst of Arabic followed the noise and the observer laughed. He leaned forward, answered, and Rex saw the guard laugh and turn away from the camera. The noise from the speaker had covered that made by the door, and Rex thanked his lucky stars that the guard was distracted by the crude joke at his leader’s expense.

  A few more cautious steps and his left hand snaked around the man’s face from the back, covering the observer’s mouth as his right arm encircled the neck.

  “Close the mic feed,” he ordered in a low voice.

  The observer had stiffened at the sudden trap. Rex could feel the man’s muscles bunch as if to fight back, and he tightened his grip on the man’s neck.

  “Do it, or you’re dead,” he urged. He tensed as the man’s arm came up. If his captive decided to fight, it would make noise, maybe enough to bring Usama or his guests from the other part of the house.

  But the man killed the mic instead.

  “Get up.” Rex kept his grip on the observer as he dragged him backward to the door and closed it softly with his foot. He then muscled the man into a straight chair. From his pocket, he pulled heavy-duty zipties and fastened the man’s arms and legs to the chair securely.

  Once more, he took the opportunity to interrogate a captive before eliminating him, and once more, he was gratified to receive the same information he’d gotten from the servants. He had no doubt these tangos would lie to him, if they thought they could get away with it. But so far, if they’d been lying, it was a consistent lie.

  After he’d learned which monitors covered what, confirmed that the gates and exterior guards were as he’d observed, and that there were only Usama and three guests inside the house, besides the servants, Rex sent the observer to enjoy the carnal pleasures of paradise and studied the monitors.

  There was no sign the guards were expecting to be relieved or change positions. The four he’d seen earlier were still visible, walking about aimlessly. The two gate guards were looking away from the buildings toward the blackness beyond the walls.

  The risk, of course, would be that one or another of them would decide to relieve their boredom by chit-chatting to the observer again, and might become suspicious when there was no answer. The longer it took for Rex to secure Usama and his guests, the more likely someone would realize someone – one of the servants or the observer – was missing and come to investigate.

  It was time to meet the four leaders.

  Rex wasn’t worried about the four-to-one odds. The monitor showed no signs of them being armed. It was very unlikely that the guests would be so rude as to carry guns in their host’s home. Maybe Usama would carry; therefore, he had to be disabled first.

  Knives were a different story. There was every likelihood everyone had at least a ceremonial dagger, which would not have been brought in as weapons, but as signs of prestige. Nevertheless, they would be just as effective as weapons when Rex appeared in the dining hall. His best option was to hit them as he was trained to do, with surprise, quickness, and overwhelming force. Take Usama first and use him to control the others with Usama as his hostage.

  At this point, interruption by the guards outside would be disastrous. He alerted Digger to watch his back.

  “Digger, guard front door,” he said. He had no idea whether Digger knew front from back from sideways, but he knew the dog understood the word guard. All he could hope was that Digger would guard the entire house against whatever door the guards would want to use. He’d just have to trust Digger to do his best on the outside while he did his on the inside.

  He watched the monitors and saw Digger emerge from his hiding place and glide across the open courtyard. He lost him again as he went in close to the house wall but tracked him as he went in and out of camera range. Yeah, this would never have worked without taking out the observer. So far, so good. Now to complete the mission.

  He left the observation room, now certain that Digger would hide and only come out if someone approached the house, a
nd retraced his steps back to the corridor where he’d surprised the last servant. Entering the opulent rooms where Usama lived and entertained, Rex was struck again by the contrast in the way this human parasite lived compared to the poor who he probably treated like dirt, served him, and fed his coffers with their labor. Not to mention that it all boiled down to the fact that the man’s wealth came from causing unspeakable misery through drug addiction and terrorism to untold numbers across the globe.

  He’d never seen Usama, not even a picture of him. Descriptions in this part of the world were useless. Every man was of average height, with swarthy skin, a heavy black or gray beard and hair, and brown eyes. That would even describe Rex tonight. But he had no doubt Usama would be the one seated in a chair slightly higher than his guests’, or maybe it would be slightly more ornate, and ten to one he would be seated at the end of the table. His clothing would be of better quality perhaps, his voice could be louder than the others, he would definitely be in command. A few minutes’ observation would tell him what he needed to know.

  Rex glided through the rooms, listening carefully to determine the direction from which he could hear desultory conversation and the clink of utensils against fine tableware. When he was in the room next to the dining hall, he hugged the wall as he found his way to the door. He crouched to be sure he was out of the line of sight of anyone at the table, and then peeked around the door frame. Spotting a mirror on one wall that allowed him a better view of the table, he drew back and watched for several minutes.

  When he was sure he knew which man at the table was Usama, he struck like a cobra. In two steps, he sprang across the room, his silenced Sig Sauer in his hand, and Trevor’s was safely tucked in the small of his back. In the same instant he arrived at Usama’s side, he saw the man’s eyes widen and his hand go toward his belt.