She knew what she was about to do was not how Alex would handle the situation. But they had to get Jaber back. No way was she letting this mission go belly-up because she couldn’t stop a delivery van.
She raised the sniper rifle. More screams rent the air as people saw her with the weapon. Sirens blasted from neighboring streets.
But she tuned out the din.
The cops would be here soon. Military, too, for all she knew. Those were problems she could deal with later.
Right now, she just needed to stop the van. Then she would move on to the next problem.
Compartmentalize.
That was a lesson she’d learned in the Marines. If you worried too much about taking over the whole city, you caught a bullet in the brain from the guy sniping from the house next door. All you could do was take things one block at a time, one house at a time, one foot at a time.
Then again, she had been a SuperCobra attack helicopter pilot, not one of the ground-pounding jarheads. She could blow the whole damn city away with the press of a button.
Pretty much like she was about to do now.
She set her rifle up on the trunk of a car parked alongside the road.
Pressing the stock against her shoulder, she peered through the scope. The van was flashing between sedans and SUVs. Give it thirty seconds, and it would be at her position.
She sucked in a deep breath, dragging the aiming reticle over the front of the van. Everything else in the world faded. The only sound she heard was her pulse rushing past her ears.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
The van drew closer. She couldn’t risk a shot through the windshield. Accidentally killing Jaber wasn’t in the game plan. Instead, she lowered her aim. Right at the tire. Risky, too, but less risky than letting these people get away.
She gently rocked back the trigger. The rifle let out a muffled whoomph, the stock nudging against her shoulder. Acting on instinct, she pulled back the bolt handle. The spent cartridge case flipped out of the ejection port, and she engaged the bolt, chambering another round.
But she didn’t need a second shot.
The van’s front passenger tire blew out. The driver lost control, banging against the cars on either side of it. Sparks flew from where the rim of the wheel scraped over the asphalt. The van crashed into a cab, bringing the whole thing to a grinding stop. Steam rose from under the crumpled hood.
She slung the rifle over her back and ran toward the van, drawing her handgun from its holster.
A couple of men across the street pointed at her, cell phones pressed to their ears.
She didn’t have much time.
Even before she made it to the van, the side door opened. Sunlight bled into the interior, and she swore the air inside practically sparkled.
A man came out of the van wearing a gas mask with pronounced filter canisters, unlike any she’d seen before. He leveled his gun at her.
But she was ready.
One, two, three shots straight into his chest. He collapsed backward, but he didn’t lose his grip on the weapon.
Must have body armor.
No matter. Another shot, and the faceplate on the gas mask cracked open. The man went still.
Skylar leapt over him and into the back of the van. The driver was hunched over the wheel of the car, his body still. Knocked out, deflated airbags sagged around him. The air smelled almost metallic inside the vehicle. Strangely familiar, but she couldn’t place it.
Didn’t matter anyway.
Compartmentalize.
She just needed Jaber. Then she’d get out of here. Then maybe figure out what in the hell was going on with this shit in the air.
When she looked at the portly man with his hands zip-tied behind his back, she didn’t recognize him at first. Worried she got the wrong guy. He was wearing a baggy sweatshirt instead of a suit jacket.
Must’ve changed clothes.
Either way, she did recognize the bulging eyes and sweat-covered, creased forehead of her target. From the hideaway sheath on her prosthetic calf, she took out a knife and made short work of the plastic ties holding Jaber’s limbs.
The sirens outside were growing louder. More people were yelling.
“Come on,” she said. “We need to move.”
She yanked Jaber up to his feet. He seemed dazed, but he complied. They ran out of the van as flashing light soaked the street.
“Vector One, I recovered our cargo,” she said. “Authorities incoming. Eyes on hostiles?”
“I shook them. Saw the van wreck. Headed your way.”
She didn’t have time to search the crowds to see where Alex was. Now her only objective was making sure the authorities didn’t catch up to her.
She ran, lugging Jaber with her.
The alleys called to her. An older woman stepped to the side as she charged toward the trash bags where stray dogs were digging into garbage. They skittered away as she and Jaber hurried past.
Alley to street to alley again, Skylar took Jaber as far as she could from the sounds of the crowds and the sirens. Those noises eventually faded, and she paused behind a graffiti-covered dumpster. She broke down her rifle and stored it in her pack again. Didn’t exactly want to be running around with a huge piece of hardware like that anymore. Jaber’s face was pale, his eyes wide. He looked like he’d swallowed a pickled pig’s foot and was desperate to throw it back up.
“You okay?” she asked.
Jaber managed a nod, gaze still distant. “Think so. Head hurts.”
The guy was acting like a zombie. What the hell had happened in that van? She wanted to know, but more than that, she wanted to get the hell out of there.
“Vector One, we’re moving again,” she said, pulling Jaber back to his feet. “Headed toward Sierra Hotel Bravo.”
“Copy,” Alex said. “See you soon.”
Sierra Hotel Bravo referred to a secondary safe house they had set up at an apartment in the southwest of Amman.
They rushed down the alley and out into another crowded marketplace. A quick scan revealed no more suspicious contacts. At least not yet.
Jaber looked like he was about to topple. The guy probably hadn’t done this much running in the entirety of his life. Skylar slowed to a more comfortable pace, adjusting the modesty scarf over her hair. Jaber wheezed beside her as they took another corner and headed down a busy street.
That was when a man strode out of an alcove to her left. He was wearing a cap pulled low over his brow and a dark track jacket, swooping toward her like an advancing soldier.
She yanked Jaber backward, ready to turn tail. They had been so close, just a block away from the safe house. Her fingers inched for the pistol holstered across her chest under her jacket, ready to fire if she had to.
But then she recognized the slight grin, the blond hair peeking out below the cap.
“Damn it, Alex,” she said. “Didn’t realize you changed too.”
“It was a productive day of shopping. Ready to head home now, though.”
“Me too,” Jaber said.
“Afraid that’s not in the cards,” Skylar said. “But I think it’s about time we had that chat you promised us.”
Frederick, Maryland
Kasim was relieved to hear Skylar and Alex finally had Jaber in their custody. But he knew that they weren’t in the clear yet. This was probably the eye of the hurricane, the brief calm before everything turned to flying shingles and broken tree branches again.
Vector was working against the clock.
He took a deep breath then settled into a chair at the conference table in the operations center. Morris took his cue, picking his laptop up, his eyes never leaving the screen, then setting it down on the table in front of him.
“Any idea who those men were chasing our team?” Kasim asked, scratching at his graying beard.
“No hits yet.” Morris took out his earbuds and placed them on the table. Tinny music droned out. “But it’s not like
we have much to go off of. A few gunmen in Jordan. No good pictures. Could be anything from Al Qaeda to GID.”
GID stood for the General Intelligence Directorate, Jordan’s eminent intelligence agency. The CIA, MI6, and even Mossad all had long-standing, albeit occasionally tumultuous, relationships with the organization.
Kasim sighed and took a swig of coffee. “I don’t pay you to tell me things I already know.”
“You don’t pay me at all,” Morris said. “Uncle Sam does.”
“Can you shut that music off?”
Morris pressed a button on his keyboard. The music stopped. “Not into Post Malone?”
“I don’t know what a Post Malone is, but I know what intel is. And that’s something we don’t have yet. Give me every action report from Amman over the past six months.”
“Even the stuff that’s nothing but black lines of redacted info?”
“Especially those. I want everything that can tell us more about what Ballard was up to. CIA didn’t give us anything on Jaber. Which means either they didn’t know who Ballard’s contact was or they were trying to bury it.”
Morris raised one dark eyebrow. “You think they were trying to bury it and then they send this case to us?”
“CIA is full of all types,” Kasim said. “We pretend like everyone there is on our side, but God knows that would be a mistake. The Agency teaches you not to trust anyone. Even and especially the people you work with. Ask Wolfe.”
“I will as soon as they’re back from Jordan,” Morris said.
“That was rhetorical.”
“I know. I was just buying time.”
“For what?”
Morris tapped on the conference table’s surface. The fake wood grain gave way as the integrated touch screen revealed a still image of a compound in the middle of a mountainous desert landscape. The compound was nothing more than a few square buildings surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire.
“While Alex and Skylar were playing tag with Jaber and friends, I was searching for more strange images or videos like the ones Weber found,” Morris said. “This is from a SEAL Team Six squad sent to take out a bomb maker.”
“SEALs for one bomb maker?”
“That’s what I thought,” Morris said. “Seems like overkill, right?”
“A little,” Kasim said. “Something else was going on, wasn’t it?”
“Debrief report only mentions a high-value target—the bomb maker. But I got a feeling that this video was supposed to be hidden.”
“Then how’d you get it?”
“You really want to know?”
Kasim gave him a dismissive wave. “Play it.”
Morris tapped on his laptop. Three Navy SEALs clad in black surged past the camera. It became clear that the video’s perspective was from a helmet-mounted cam on the squad leader.
“This was just four weeks ago, shortly before Ballard went dark. The video was erased from damn near every internal server.”
The video was eerily quiet except for the soft crunch of boots over gravel. Every step the SEALs took, they exuded the cool professionalism Kasim was used to seeing in America’s top warriors. The team used bolt cutters to slice through the fence surrounding the compound then rushed through the new hole.
Like silent angels of death, they assembled around the door to the largest building on the compound.
“There’s no guards, no alarms, not even a barking dog,” Kasim said. “Did you skip past those parts?”
Morris shook his head. “Totally clean entry.”
“That doesn’t make an ounce of sense. If we’re sending a SEAL team in after an HVT, it’s because we don’t think this is a cakewalk. Where the hell are their defenses?”
Morris grimaced. “You’re about to find out why.”
As one of the SEALs set charges around the door, the camera panned over the others. In addition to their night-vision goggles, the SEALs wore gas masks. The explosives around the door frame went off with a muffled pop. All four SEALs rushed in, rifles at the ready. The camera revealed a dark, sparsely furnished room.
A strange graininess suddenly filled the video. The infrared sensors on the night-vision camera seemed to be picking up some kind of interference.
“Signal problem?” Kasim asked.
“No, signal integrity wasn’t lost,” Morris said. “I don’t think it’s an imaging artifact, either.”
Kasim could practically feel the SEALs’ hearts beating. He waited for someone to pop out of the darkness. Or maybe an explosion, a booby trap set for the infiltrators.
But as they cleared room after room, they were met with no resistance.
“Did they get bad intel?” Kasim asked.
“Maybe,” Morris said.
“Maybe?”
Instead of answering, Morris gestured at the table.
The SEALs took a stairwell leading underground. They entered a cavernous chamber. But just like the first floor, as their aim roved over the space, Kasim saw no gunmen lying in wait. No evidence that a bomb maker had ever been there.
Three SEALs pushed forward into the darkness, ignoring the unexplained sparkle in the air, as they delved into the recesses of the basement. Stacks of crates and more doors awaited them at the other end.
But suddenly they froze.
“Is the volume still on?” he asked.
Morris nodded.
Then suddenly, one of the doors at the other end of the basement burst open. Two men with scarves wrapped around their faces emerged. Each carried an AK-47, but they cradled them as though they didn’t expect to use them.
Kasim expected the scene to erupt in a hailstorm of bullets. Those two gunmen should be lying on the floor dead by now.
But the SEALs didn’t move. One even dropped his rifle.
The two enemy gunmen slung their own rifles over their backs. They began securing plastic ties around the SEALs’ wrists. The Americans didn’t protest or fight back. Then the two gunmen went up to the last SEAL and tore off the helmet-mounted cam. The last image Kasim saw was a boot stomping the camera into the floor before static filled the screen.
Now Kasim understood why Morris showed him this video. “We don’t know what caused this?”
“Not my area of expertise, that’s for sure,” Morris said.
“Our guys had gas masks on. Couldn’t be a nerve agent.”
“True. Maybe it has something to do with that visual interference when they first entered the compound building.”
“Maybe,” Kasim said. “Show that to Weber and Park. See if they’ve got any bright ideas.”
“Will do.”
Kasim took off his reading glasses and put them in his pocket. Whatever this weapon was—a gas or something else—it had penetrated all the safety gear the SEALs were wearing.
So far, they had only seen videos of this weapon used on small groups. But what would happen when this weapon was turned on a large crowd? A city, even?
He feared they would find out very soon.
-9-
Highway 47 South, Jordan
Balagh sat in the back of a white pickup truck headed south toward the Wadi Rum desert. The landscape beside the highway made him think he was on Mars. Mountains and rocky formations stabbed up from red sand dunes.
Two other men sat in the back of the truck with him. Each had a dark beard and wore the long white thobe common among Bedouin men. One had on a pair of aviator sunglasses that reflected the last vestiges of purple light left after the sun had dipped below the horizon. The other closed his eyes, hands behind his head.
Balagh wasn’t sure how the man could sleep as the truck bounced over the bumpy, sand-strewn roads. Every tremor from a pothole or fissure in the asphalt shook up into his spine.
He wouldn’t complain, though. These men had seen him hiking along the road and picked him up. When they’d asked if he needed somewhere to stay, they offered to take him to their camp in the desert of Wadi Rum. They said it catered to tourists, bu
t they had a few spare tents. Balagh was more than happy to take them up on their offer.
It had been a gamble to trust them. But if they were allied with his attacker in the hotel, he had a feeling he would have already been dead.
He still had no idea why people were chasing him. Why they would want to kill him. His only hope was that this trip into the desert would buy him some time. Maybe enough to find his lost memories.
His duffel bag lay open underneath his knees. He kept waiting for his belongings to spark one of those missing memories. But the extra pair of pants and shirts did nothing for him. He still held out hope for the notebook he’d discovered.
Problem was, the notebook was nearly empty except for a few confusing pages. Just like his mind.
He flipped it open again, using the weak glow of the light from inside the truck’s cab to reread the few cryptic words he had found in it. He was certain there was a clue in that text. But the words were like those of a madman who wandered the streets, claiming he was the promised prophet.
The first page was filled with a drawing of a ring with a pentagram inside. While Balagh’s memories might be corrupted, he knew the implications of this symbol. It was the infamous signet associated with the occult. Of summoning the devil and his demons.
Beneath it was text. His brain recognized his own handwriting even though he couldn’t recall writing a single letter:
The demons came. They harassed the innocents. They stole their vitality. Solomon could not bear witness to such atrocity. He prayed in the temple, and Michael the archangel bestowed on him a talisman with the seal. A ring engraved with the seal. The symbol was thus imprinted on the demons. With the ring, Solomon could control them. He could protect his people.
Balagh massaged his forehead, staring at the words. Was this a code? Did they somehow encrypt a message he was supposed to understand?
His eyes traced over the story, reading it and rereading it. But eventually he gave up. The stars piercing the night sky in all their glittery brilliance didn’t shed enough light for him to read the text any longer, and squinting at them with the dim light from the truck cab was only making his head hurt.
Demon Mind (Vector Book 2) Page 8