by Brad Taylor
He went west, following the bank of the river, walking rapidly past outdoor cafés and shops. Eventually, he reached a restaurant that was larger than the others. Called Opus, it had both an inside and outside eating area and multiple escapes, north, south, and east. It was his choice for the meeting location for that very reason. He checked his watch, saw he was fifteen seconds early, and pulled the door open.
* * *
—
My radio broke squelch, and I heard a voice attempting to sound official, but coming across as something from a bad television movie. “Pike, this is Rogue, Tango One in sight. Over and out.”
I grimaced, seeing a smile play across Jennifer’s face. I keyed my radio and said, “Roger all. Stay off the net now. Everyone else acknowledge.”
I got a call from my team and saw Periwinkle, four tables up, surreptitiously hold a finger in the air, then drop it.
The call told me we had about five minutes before the target arrived. A waiter showed up, pouring us water—an Asian guy, which was about as weird as seeing a Swiss citizen serving falafels in Fallujah, Iraq. He left, and I said, “You know we have to do something with Amena.”
“We’re not going to drop her on the street with a wad of bills. I’ve told you that.”
I raised my hands and said, “I’m not talking about dropping her on the street, but there’s gotta be somewhere we can send her. I mean, surely there’s a refugee place around here.”
She crossed her arms, and I saw the granite wall. “We’re not going to abandon her. Her entire family was slaughtered. She’s traumatized. I will not just drop her at an orphanage like in a Dickens novel. I see you with her. Tell me you don’t like her. Tell me you think that’s right.”
And she hit a chord. I did like her, but I wasn’t running a daddy day care. I was catching terrorists. Even so, I knew to back off. I demurred, saying, “She can’t even use a correct callsign.”
Jennifer chuckled and said, “It was your decision to use her. Maybe I should have fought you on Koko.”
Rogue was the callsign Amena had taken for herself. It wasn’t one that I would have given her for this mission, and she didn’t seem to understand that you couldn’t pick your own callsign. Someone else picked it.
In the hotel the day before, when we’d developed our plan, I’d simply run out of people. I needed a capture team—which meant at least a three-to-one ratio to ensure dominance over the target. With Jennifer and me inside the restaurant to handle anything crazy this guy could do, or other contingencies, that left the rest of the team on the street—and no trigger. I most assuredly wasn’t going to trust Periwinkle to help.
Sitting in the corner, Amena had said, “I can spot him. It’s not that hard.” Of course I’d said no, because I couldn’t put her on the street to trigger a counterterrorist operation for the United States of America. She was a child, for God’s sake.
She’d answered by saying, “I’ve already done it once. What’s the big deal?”
She didn’t get what the “big deal” was, but she absolutely had a point. I’d looked at Jennifer, and she’d nodded. Knuckles chimed in, saying, “Same thing as before. There isn’t a threat.”
I said, “Okay, okay, but this is the last time.” Amena’s face had split into a smile, and I had to admit, a part of me admired her spunk.
We’d received the call earlier that Knuckles had convinced Periwinkle to play ball, and working with that asshat, we’d had him set up a meeting, along with developing a route for Yasir to follow. One segment would walk him in, the other would walk him out. What he didn’t know was the route walking him out would be into a kill zone for capture.
This initial meeting was supposed to just delineate the exchange of money for Yasir’s information—and I didn’t really care what they talked about, as long as it looked real and lulled the guy into thinking that we were on his side. Once I had my hands on him, we’d get every bit of information he had for free.
And so I’d made Amena a Taskforce member for this one operation, but she had to talk on the radio, meaning she needed a callsign. Amena had said, “I have one. I want Rogue.”
Just teasing her, not really caring what she was called, I said, “Look, kid, you want to be a part of the team, you don’t pick your callsign. We get to pick it.”
She said, “I’m not going to be a talking gorilla or named after a drug gang.”
Incensed, Brett said, “Hey, wait a minute. I told you, that’s not what my callsign means.”
She’d looked at me with her liquid brown eyes and said, “I am Rogue.”
I said, “Why?”
It turned out, she’d watched a bunch of bootleg DVDs with her brother, and Rogue was some X-Men character that she identified with. I’d scoffed at that and said, “You’re picking a comic book character? Be original. Something like Raghead would be much better.”
She’d looked at me solemnly and said, “I’m not being anything other than Rogue.” She then began talking about how Rogue couldn’t touch anyone because she’d harm them, and how she was always looking for some place to be where she could finally find a home. How her entire life was searching for a connection that she could never find.
As dumb as it sounded at first, her words were profound. I couldn’t tell if she was talking about herself, or the comic book character. Rogue she had become.
Inside the restaurant, I realized I should have spent my time teaching her proper radio procedures instead of arguing about her callsign.
Four minutes and thirty-eight seconds after Amena’s call, Yasir appeared outside the glass front door, right on time. He looked at his watch, then broke the threshold. I called, “All elements, all elements, target is inside the box.”
I got a “Roger” from my kill team, and then, “This is Rogue. I copy last transmission. Tango inside the box. This is Rogue, over and out.”
I rolled my eyes, and Jennifer chuckled. I said, “Sooner or later, we’re going to have to leave her.”
She said, “Later. No need to decide right now. You’re the one using her.”
Which was a good point.
Yasir came inside, glanced left and right, saw Periwinkle, and walked straight to his table. Which sort of crumbled Periwinkle’s whole alibi of “I’ll set it up, but I really don’t know the guy . . .”
He was a damn liar.
47
Yasir took a seat, and they began talking. The same Asian waiter walked over to them, pouring water from a pitcher. Yasir did a double take at the waiter’s heritage, then held out his glass.
The waiter left, and I saw Yasir begin waving his hands, clearly trying to make a point. Periwinkle countered with something, knowing his whole job was to make this look good. Understanding that Yasir’s ass in a cage would be the only thing that saved him. Yasir became animated, and Periwinkle took a sip of water, holding his other hand out as if to say, No good.
Yasir sagged back in his chair, saying something, then picked up his own glass. Periwinkle’s face grimaced in pain. Yasir raised his glass to his lips. Periwinkle clutched his chest, and I saw the Asian waiter staring at the table hard, and not because he was concerned.
I leapt up and charged across the floor, my chair falling over in a clatter and startling everyone in the small dining room. Periwinkle fell face-forward onto the table and I slapped the water glass out of the Syrian’s hand. It shattered against the wall and he flopped out of his chair, holding his arms over his head. I whirled to the “waiter,” and he snaked his hand into his jacket. I reached for my waist, underneath my own jacket, gripped the butt of my weapon, and stared at him.
We locked eyes, and he saw I was a killer, too. He backed up into the kitchen, his hand still on his weapon. The door swung shut and I glanced to the front, seeing the Syrian fleeing the way he’d come. Away from our planned kill zone. Jennifer reached the table and I said, “Start CP
R. See if you can keep him alive,” then leapt up the stairs to the front exit, breaking onto the net.
“All elements, all elements, the meeting was interdicted, the target is on the run, out the river side.”
My team was one block away from the river, in an ambush site complete with a vehicle for escape, and I knew I had to get them moving immediately. We had no idea where this guy was staying, but the Koreans clearly did, because they’d intercepted the instructions for this meeting. They knew a hell of a lot more than we did—with the exception that we knew where he was right this second. If we lost him, they’d kill him.
I broke out the front, looked left and right, and saw a man fleeing downstream, away from the lake. I gave chase, saying, “Target’s on the riverbank, moving east. Can anyone interdict?”
I heard, “This is Blood, we’re moving now.”
I kept running, seeing Yasir pass a concrete bridge without stopping, flinging tourists away from him. He was faster than I would have thought. I said, “I have him in sight, but I’m not gaining. Who’s with you?”
I heard huffing, then Brett said, “Nobody. I left them behind.”
Sprinting flat out, I grinned, because Brett Thorpe was possibly faster than Jesse Owens. Well, definitely faster running in civilian clothes with kit on.
Another covered wooden bridge appeared fifty meters ahead of me, and I saw Yasir dart into it, crossing the river. I said, “He’s just taken the second wooden bridge. The one east of the Chapel Bridge.”
I saw another figure sprint inside, and recognized Brett. I entered right behind him. Unlike the Chapel Bridge, which ran at an angle across the river, doing a little bit of a zigzag, this one was straight across, allowing me to see to the end. Yasir was running like he was being chased by zombies from the apocalypse. And then he stopped in his tracks.
Brett slowed down, and I caught up to him, saying, “What’s he doing?”
Yasir glanced back at us, and then forward. I followed his gaze, and saw a team of two Asian men on the far side, waiting. They saw his hesitation, then started walking forward, glancing around. I knew what their end state was from the restaurant. They weren’t attempting to capture him.
I pulled out my suppressed Glock and said, “They’re going to kill him right here.” Brett brought his weapon to bear and I saw the Koreans draw their own weapons, keeping them down low in an attempt to hide them. They hadn’t seen us yet. I said, “Get their attention. Don’t kill them. Make ’em rethink the decision.”
Yasir stood frozen between us, unsure of what to do, and I cracked a suppressed round, aiming for a support beam next to the head of one of the Koreans. It was muted, without the theatrics of an unsuppressed gun, but it was still loud enough for someone who understood what they were hearing. And he did.
He whipped his head away from Yasir, seeing both of us with pistols out. The few tourists on the bridge hadn’t even noticed the noise. The lead man said something, and both dropped into a crouch. Yasir ran to the railing of the bridge on the upstream side, looked at me, then at the Koreans, and jumped into the water.
The lead Korean said something, and they holstered their weapons, retreating back to the end of the bridge, disappearing from sight.
We sprinted forward, seeing Yasir had jumped right in front of a spillway, the water pouring over it in a foam of rage. He was struggling to stay afloat, and then was swept under the bridge. I ran to the far side and heard him shout, “I can’t swim! I can’t swim!”
Great.
I looked at Brett and he said, “Hey, I do the running. Not the swimming.”
I said, “You’re a damn combat diver!”
“So are you. I’ll get the vehicle and stage on the far side.”
I ripped off my jacket, shucked my shoes, and handed him my weapon, saying, “Evacuate the restaurant. Get Jennifer out. I don’t want her involved with ambulances and police.”
He said, “What happened?” I said, “Later,” and I leapt over the side of the bridge, onlookers starting to gather and point. Yasir was bobbing in the freezing water, the current subsiding from the spillway, but he was still struggling. I stroked to him, grabbed him around the neck and shoulders, then hoisted his head above the waterline.
He spit out a gout of water, and then started to fight me. I punched him in the temple, stunning him, giving me time to roll him onto his back. I said, “I’m trying to help you, dumbass.”
He quit fighting, allowing me to stroke to the far bank, him feebly attempting to swim as I towed him with me. He coughed and said, “Why didn’t you just kill me?”
I said, “You’re much too valuable to kill. Although I’d be interested to hear why those other assholes were trying to.”
48
Bashir saw a sign proclaiming the American Bar and Restaurant out the cab window and said, “This is good right here.” He was getting better at finding his way around the warren of alleys in the old town, mainly by memorizing reference points. He knew the cathedral was only a few blocks north from the bar.
He exited the vehicle, pulled out his packages, then paid the driver. He waited until the cab had disappeared before moving, not wanting the cabbie to have any idea which way he walked.
It had taken the better part of the day to find the supplies Sayid needed, but eventually, he’d managed it. He picked up the two large shopping bags and began walking north with a purpose. Five minutes later, he broke into the small square in front of the cathedral, winding through the throngs of people visiting the various outdoor cafés.
He reached the apartment, knocked twice, then unlocked the door. Sayid met him in the foyer, taking one shopping bag and saying, “Did you find everything?”
“Yes. The Inspire Two was the hardest, but they had one at a Fnac downtown.”
Last night, the imam had contacted them with startling instructions: Do not travel to Syria. Conduct the attack in France. When questioned, Khalousi had stated he had lost contact with Yasir, and he couldn’t ensure safe passage once they reached the port of Tartus. Bashir had asked about using the original plan of traveling through Turkey, but Khalousi had said he’d changed his mind on the location of the attack. French soldiers and warplanes had joined the fight, and an attack on French soil would provide a much greater impact. Killing French and American soldiers would cause turmoil, but using the Red Mercury on the unprotected would create chaos—and possibly cause the French to leave the fight, like the Spaniards had when they’d left Iraq after the Madrid train attacks.
They’d asked him for guidance on where. Did he expect them to travel to Paris? He’d told them Nice, at the exact same spot the previous attack had occurred. Not only would it create a major news story to reverberate around the world, but it would crush the economy in Nice.
Bashir and Sayid had spent the rest of the night brainstorming and using the Internet to research the promenade. Leveraging Google Maps, TripAdvisor, the Nice tourism website, and a plethora of other resources, they’d considered cars, motorcycles, booby-trapped bathrooms, restaurants—everything—but while each had an element they liked, none of the courses of action would unleash the potential of the Red Mercury. It needed to be dispersed through a crowd, not stationary like a single explosive event—and they couldn’t disperse it without being killed themselves.
And then, Sayid had a stroke of genius, falling back on his specialty in Iraq and Syria. “Why don’t we use a drone? I can rig it like the ones we used in Raqqa, only instead of dropping a bomb, we’ll simply fly it low and slow over the crowd.”
Bashir said, “Can you do that? Can you rig it here, in this apartment?”
“Yes, if we get the right equipment. The key will be getting a drone that will take the payload. Those cheap ones are fine for a hand grenade, but these canisters are bigger.”
He’d pulled up Google, and gone to work again, finding a professional quadcopter called the In
spire 2. Built by DJI, it could fly close to sixty miles an hour, with a range of more than three miles and a flight time of almost half an hour. Built with Hollywood cinematography in mind, its software program was state of the art, with obstacle avoidance, target tracking, and preprogrammed intelligent flight, making any accidental problems dummy proof. Screw anything up, and the drone simply returned home to where it was launched.
While the features were impressive, all Sayid cared about was the payload. Fabricated to carry professional cinematography equipment, the Inspire could hold up to three pounds. It was perfect.
The problem had been finding one in Nice. They could order one online and have it delivered in three days, but that would take too long. The boat would be leaving in two. Bashir had finally found one at a French electronics store called Fnac, astounded at the price. He’d burned through most of their disposable cash to purchase it and the electronic components Sayid needed.
Bashir opened the box and said, “I hope this was necessary, because it ate up almost all of our money.”
Sayid pulled the drone body from the box, turning it over in his hands. He said, “It’s worth it. Trust me. Not only will this deliver a devastating blow, but we can video the effects from a mile away. It will be the greatest production in the caliphate’s history.”
Bashir said, “I’ve been thinking about that. About the launch point. I know you wanted to fly it from the cemetery on top of Chateau Hill, but I think I have a better idea.”
Sayid laid out the tools and electrical equipment Bashir had purchased, saying, “Yes? What could be better than that? We launch it from the Jewish cemetery, fly it down the coast, releasing the agent, then escape to the boat. Nobody will catch us. Anywhere else and we’ll be martyred.”