The Outside Man

by Don Bentley

  “You’re wrong, Matthew. I know exactly what I’ve done. Why else do you think your hands and feet are handcuffed to a chair bolted into concrete? I have nothing but the utmost respect for your abilities.”

  “Where is she?” I said in a dead voice.

  “Exactly where you left her. The video was taken with a telephoto lens. She’s completely safe. For now. Whether or not she remains that way is up to you. I will admit that the team watching her has nowhere near your skill. Then again, they don’t need it. I’m certain your wife is quite extraordinary, but she is, after all, only a woman.”

  I wanted to rail against the Devil’s casual dismissal of Laila, but Arab chauvinism aside, he was right. My wife was one of the most courageous people I knew, but she was an accountant. That was fine. She didn’t need to be a barbarian. That was where I came in.

  The Devil was a dead man walking.

  “Let’s get this over with,” the Devil said, turning the iPad to face himself. “I can see that you’re already considering solutions that are unhelpful. I need you to understand the seriousness of the situation. Hopefully, these photographs will make my case for me.”

  The Devil swiped the screen again and then doubled-tapped the center. “Yes, this will do,” the Devil said before turning the device again so I could see it. “I know everything about you, Matthew, including the people you would instinctively run to for help. People like your former bodyguard, Frederick Tyler Cates, call sign Frodo.”

  Images flickered across the iPad in slide-show mode. Frodo hobbling past the DIA’s main gate. Frodo walking to his apartment door.

  “And let’s not forget your boss, the indomitable James Scott Glass.”

  Now James was front and center. A distant shot of him leaving the gym. A closer one of him sitting at a restaurant table, a beer bottle pressed to his lips.

  “And then there are these people. I know some of them are better friends than others, but I want you to know how extensively I’ve prepared.”

  The images changed in rapid fire, showing Rawlings, and Frodo’s NSA girlfriend. Even my guitar teacher made the cut. And if the pictures had been the worst of what I saw, things still would have been manageable. Did I find it hard to believe that an Iraqi criminal had somehow penetrated my life and targeted my friends and coworkers? Yes. But at the end of the day, pictures were still just pictures. For all I knew, the Devil’s team consisted of a couple of surveillance experts who’d snapped pictures before beating feet out of country.

  But the series of images that came next put that thought to rest. The display changed from pictures to screenshots of e-mail accounts, text messages, contact lists, Google Maps printouts showing the locations of the cell phones belonging to my inner circle in real time. This shithead hadn’t just penetrated my life; he’d broken it wide open. Anyone I’d thought of contacting was already compromised. And then, just to drive his point home, the screen centered on the location of a single cell phone.

  Laila’s.

  Quite simply, what I was seeing was unbelievable.

  “I must confess that you were not an easy nut to crack, Matthew. I won’t insult your intelligence by pretending that I know everything about you. You are, after all, a professional. Still, I need you to understand that I know enough. More than enough, actually. If you attempt to contact anyone in your life, I will know. And once I know, unpleasant things will happen to your very beautiful wife. Extremely unpleasant.”

  “I’m going to burn you to the ground.” As before, the words tumbled out without conscious thought. Though I was seething, my voice was still emotionless. I wasn’t posturing. I was stating a fact. The Devil was worm food.

  “I know you believe that, Matthew, and I don’t fault you. In your shoes I would feel the same way. But I am not in your shoes. I’m in mine. Listen to me when I tell you that I don’t want to hurt your lovely Laila. I’m a businessman. Making an enemy of you would be very bad for business.”

  “Don’t you think that ship has already sailed?”

  The Devil shook his head. “No. You’re angry right now, but you’re still a professional. Moments like this are a hazard of your chosen vocation. But if you do what I ask, this will go away. Did it sting when Zain deceived you? I’m sure. But was it the first time an asset betrayed your trust? Or will it be the last? Of course not. Don’t make this any harder than it has to be.”

  “What do you want?” I said.

  “I want something that you are uniquely qualified to do.”

  “First you wanted to kill me, and now you want me to run an errand?” I said.

  “You’re right, Matthew,” the Devil said, unbuttoning his cuff links and rolling up his sleeves. “Deciding to kill you was premature. But surely you can see things from my perspective? For me, doing business depends on my reputation. A reputation you called into question by escaping from the terrorist cell I’d backed and destroying the chemical weapon I’d financed. Your actions caused my partners to doubt my ability to effectively manage my business, and doubt can be very dangerous.”

  “So you decided to kill me?” I said.

  The Devil shrugged. “Killing you would have erased the blight on my reputation while allowing Sayid’s son to prove his worth at the same time. But here again, you exceeded my expectations, Matthew. You eluded my team in Austin and tracked me here. You even did a fairly commendable job of escaping from your cell just now. No, a man like you is much too valuable to waste.”

  “Then what do you want?” I said.

  “One step at a time, Matthew. One step at a time. I respect your abilities too much to tell you what I require now. Especially since you’d then have thirteen hours to consider your options.”

  “Thirteen hours?”

  “Yes. I am a man of considerable means, but even I can’t make the trip across the Atlantic pass faster. But I’m not a monster. I booked you a first-class ticket. Still, I’m getting ahead of myself. First, you need to clean up. Then you need to get to Baghdad International and catch a flight to Istanbul. You’ll be given further instructions once you land.”

  “How?”

  “One step at a time, Matthew. One step at a time.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Turn here.”

  I obediently spun the wheel, directing our small sedan down a winding alley. Vendors clogged both sides of the street, hawking a variety of goods that would have given Walmart a run for its money. Pirated DVDs competed for space with freshly butchered meat. A rack of designer clothes stood next to a man selling genuine Persian rugs. So many merchants in such a confined space could have meant only one thing—an outpost manned by Americans had to be close by.

  “Go. Drive.”

  The jackass in the passenger seat next to me wasn’t much of a conversationalist. At first, I’d thought that was because he was the strong, silent type. Now I was beginning to realize that his English wasn’t quite up to spec. If this were a normal drive through the greater metropolitan area of Mosul, I would have offered to switch languages. But I didn’t. One, because I didn’t want to let my chaperone in on the fact that I could sling Arabic with the best of them. Two, I wasn’t really in the mood to make friends. I planned on killing this shithead.

  Soon.

  “Go!”

  This time, my navigator punctuated his command by slapping me in the back of the head. It was an open-handed slap hard enough to get my attention, but not hard enough to do damage. Still, the blow was going to cost him. A moment ago, killing him would have been just a means to an end. But where I come from, one grown man doesn’t slap another without consequences.

  Dire consequences.

  “Sorry,” I said, easing off the gas. “People are everywhere. It’s freaking me out. You know, performance anxiety.”

  My companion didn’t so much as crack a smile, which confirmed my suspicions. I mean, who in the English-speaking
world wouldn’t have laughed at that joke? Instead, he pointed his Beretta at my head.

  “Drive. Or die.”

  The pistol was a bit more compelling than his slap. I guess I could have pushed him even more, but sometimes discretion really is the better part of valor. Especially when you’re minus a gun. Or a phone. Or anything I’d had on my person when I’d climbed into the car with Zain what seemed like days ago.

  A man leading a camel stepped into the street, and I slammed on the brakes. The seat belt tightened across my shoulders. I turned toward my passenger only to find myself eye to eye with the Beretta.

  “Keep your pants on,” I said, threading my away around the animal. “I’ve never played chicken with a camel, but I think he’d probably win.”

  My captor kept the gun pointed at my temple for an uncomfortably long period of time. But after I edged past the camel and into the alley he’d indicated, he set the pistol in his lap.

  “Drive,” he said again.

  Another slap, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it. Or maybe he wasn’t sure where his job description as my babysitter began and ended. Could he rough me up a bit if the situation dictated? Sure. But did he have permission to kill me? I didn’t think so. Then again, thinking wasn’t the same as knowing.

  My problem was that the Devil hadn’t laid his evil plans bare like a movie villain. Instead, he’d told me that the operation was going to progress in stages and that I would find out what I needed to know when I needed to know it. Then he’d given me a cell phone with instructions to keep it on my body at all times and sent me on my merry way. But not before making clear in no uncertain terms what would happen to Laila if I deviated from his instructions or attempted to contact my friends.

  And I believed him.

  But that was the only part of his story I believed. There was no scenario in which I did what he wanted and Laila and I both came through the experience scot-free. That wasn’t how these things worked. The Devil needed Laila alive as leverage over me for now, just like he needed me alive for whatever role I was to play in his master plan. But once I’d done my part, we’d fare no better than his associate who’d been too trigger-happy with the Taser. If I wanted to survive, I needed to stop playing defense and take the initiative.

  I just wasn’t sure how.

  The opening sequence of one of my favorite Arnold Schwarzenegger movies came to mind. The one in which he plays a commando whose little girl has been kidnapped. After the dastardly deed is done, the bad guys leave one of their crew behind to negotiate with Arnold.

  Big mistake.

  Once Arnold realizes that the bad guy doesn’t know where his daughter was taken, the future Terminator sends him to the afterlife with extreme prejudice. Then he gets about the business of finding his girl.

  More than once, I’d considered just following Arnold’s example.

  Unfortunately, the Devil was a bit smarter than the average eighties bad guy. The phone I was carrying served as the Devil’s eyes and ears. If the phone left my body or I deviated from the Devil’s instructions, the guys watching Laila would go kinetic. On this topic, the Devil had laid out what would happen in exquisite detail. First, his men would snatch Laila. Then they’d video themselves raping and killing her.

  An image of that potential horror flashed through my mind, and my right hand began to tremble. With considerable effort, I pushed the thought away, once again compartmentalizing Laila. Was I terrified at the thought of a hit team surveilling my wife? Sure. But I couldn’t dwell on my terror—not now. Not while I was an ocean away with one of the Devil’s lackeys keeping me company. Somehow, I needed to change the equation.

  The alley gave way to a T intersection. I slowed the car and turned to my passenger.

  “Which way?”

  He pulled a phone from his shirt pocket with his left hand while still gripping the pistol with his right. After thumbing past a screen or two, he pointed left.

  I turned the wheel and added gas.

  This was new information. Either my babysitter didn’t know where we were going, or he did but didn’t know how to get there. Both of those scenarios lent themselves to certain possibilities.

  We came to another intersection and I looked at my passenger.

  “Well?”

  “Yamiin,” he said, pointing to the right.

  I obediently accelerated, sending the little car zooming down a second side street that emptied into a four-lane thoroughfare. Easing into traffic, I merged the only way possible in Iraq—fearlessly and with liberal use of the horn.

  Though I’d spent a good part of my adult life navigating the narrow thoroughfares that passed for streets in this part of world, practice did not make perfect. This was because driving in the Middle East was a bit like surfing a tsunami. Most of the time you were just along for the ride.

  A chorus of horns behind me reached a deafening crescendo. Looking in my rearview mirror, I realized I wasn’t the only American braving Iraqi traffic. The familiar boxy shape of an up-armored Humvee loomed about five car lengths back. The turret sported a dual-pintle mount outfitted with both an M249 SAW machine gun for antipersonnel and an Mk 19 40mm automatic grenade launcher for more persistent problems.

  The gunner had her gloved hands wrapped around the M249, and she was swiveling the turret across her assigned field of fire with a veteran’s practiced ease. I could see the outline of several other Hummers behind the lead vehicle, and the intermittent glimpses of their turrets showed them to be similarly outfitted. Whoever was leading this convoy was loaded for bear.

  In that moment a horrible thought popped into my mind—what if our meeting wasn’t random? What if this unsuspecting column of American soldiers had a role to play in the Devil’s still-unspoken plan?

  I slowly pressed down on the gas, opening a gap between me and the convoy. I stole a glance at my passenger as the distance widened. He was swiping his phone with one hand and holding the Beretta with the other. He either hadn’t noticed the convoy or didn’t care.

  Both answers were fine with me.

  Cutting off a pickup truck held together with baling wire and its driver’s hopes and dreams, I edged into the lane closest to the median and further increased my speed. Looking into the rearview mirror a final time, I silently wished my brothers and sisters in arms safe travels.

  But a flash of retina-burning white light let me know this was not to be.

  The boom and corresponding blast jarred my fillings and smashed me against my seat belt half a second later. I slammed on the brakes as several crunches happened in quick succession. The shock waves slammed our tiny sedan against its struts, threatening to overturn us.

  I fought the wheel, straining to keep our vehicle on all four tires, even as my fight-or-flight response kicked in. Multiple command-triggered IEDs. This wasn’t a simple insurgent gun and run. Multiple IEDs spoke to a certain level of sophistication as well as tactical patience. I was witnessing the opening salvos of a complex ambush.

  I turned around in my seat as we came to a stop, looking through the rear window. A cloud of dense, oily black smoke obscured my view. Then a breeze pushed aside the billowing clouds, revealing the broken Hummer lying on its side, one run-flat tire slowly spinning. The turret gunner was gone, but someone was trying to push open the heavy passenger door from inside the vehicle.

  Then the second phase of the ambush began.

  The baritone thump thump thump of heavy machine gun fire echoed from a series of rolling hills to the left of the road. What had been barren soil moments before now held a trio of technicals—Toyota Hilux trucks modified to accept crew-served weapons. The truck nearest me had a machine gun mounted to a rack above the crew cab—a Russian-made DShK by the looks of it.

  The heavy machine gun’s spindly black barrel belied its ferocity. The weapon fired four-inch-long shells capable of punching through lightly
armored ground vehicles and shredding helicopters that ventured too close.

  It would wreak havoc on infantrymen in the open.

  The gunner let loose another controlled burst of fire, walking green tracers across the broken Humvee. More than a few of the phosphorus-coated rounds lodged somewhere in the Hummer’s exposed underside, and tongues of flames began licking at the rubber tires.

  This was not good.

  A fourth technical crested the hill about one hundred meters from my position. But this Hilux wasn’t armed with anything as quaint as a machine gun. Instead, a long, narrow tube reminiscent of a skinny telephone pole sprouted from the back of the truck. As the driver backed the vehicle into position, two fighters oriented the recoilless rifle on the lead Hummer with the precise movements of a well-disciplined gun crew. Before my brain had time to fully process what I was seeing, the gun belched smoke, and the disabled Humvee erupted into flames.

  Fuck me.

  Things hadn’t exactly been looking good for the home team before the 106mm antitank gun had arrived on the scene. Now any soldiers still alive had about as much of a chance of surviving as fish in a barrel.

  “Drive! Drive! Drive!”

  My passenger punctuated his screams with slaps to my head. These weren’t so gentle. The thing of it was, he was right. Laila’s life was on the line, and I would do anything to save her.

  Absolutely anything.

  And yet . . .

  “Go!”

  Another smack.

  Putting the car into drive with my right hand, I simultaneously released the seat belt with my left. Then I floored it. The car lurched forward, tires squealing. The speedometer shot upward at an impressive rate for the old rattletrap. I waited for our speed to top forty. Then I took a deep breath, grabbed the steering wheel, locked both arms, and stomped on the brake.

  The car skidded to a stop, whiplashing us against the seats. My legs and arms took most of the g-forces generated by the sudden deceleration, but my head still banged against the doorframe.