Swiftshadow

by D S Kane

  Another sultry kiss. Cassie felt his hand touch her robe, slip inside, and grope her breast, squeeze a nipple. When his other hand reached between her legs to stroke her, her legs grew unsteady. She exploded in ecstasy, wetting her seat through her open robe. Cassie moaned and felt too weak to move or speak, and motioned toward the bed with her eyes. Lee moved with her in tandem.

  She fitted herself atop him, drawing him inside her, her legs bent and her hands squeezing his nipples while he lay flat on the bed. Lee raised his head and sucked on one of her breasts. Surprised, Cassie moaned again and climaxed.

  * * *

  The next morning, she started on the RFP, working nonstop. Most RFPs were longish documents with endless details, but hers was more of a query letter. Just the scant details necessary to provoke a response. Shortly after noon she released this email to Stillwater:

  My company, an unfunded startup named Kahuna Software, is ready to contract with a chip manufacturer to design and manufacture a small lot (quantity 300) of beta-level 64-gigabyte microSD cards with hard-coded proprietary telecommunications programs and a proprietary wireless telecommunications interface built into the chip set.

  We must be sole providers and owners of all patents applied for in developing the resulting technology, both hardware and software, but if the beta-level chips lead to development of a commercial product, we would consider the company capable of producing the beta-level chips as a nonexclusive licensee.

  We have developed the functional and systems specifications for this product and they will be made available to you after you sign and return the attached NDA (non-disclosure agreement, in Microsoft Word format). Use those specifications to prepare your proposal.

  Please reply before Friday with a letter of intent and a signed NDA to the address on this email’s letterhead should you wish us to consider you for the project, and prepare a detailed proposal by the following Tuesday, if you wish to be considered.

  She knew she had an alternative provider: the company which stole Stillwater’s technology. But it left her with a bad taste to deal with thieves—like her.

  She looked at her watch. Wednesday. I’d better get used to waiting.

  She drifted without focus. Too anxious. She watched Lee rub his bleary eyes as he sent out email. She walked to the chair where he sat. “Come on, tiger, time for sleepy-bye.” Lee looked up from his keyboard in anticipation. “No, not sex. Sleep. We need rest more than sex right now.” She held her arms open to him.

  They moved to the bed, one slow step at a time, a day closer to either death or safety.

  CHAPTER 25

  August 19, 4:21 p.m.

  Houmaz family estate,

  east outskirts of Riyadh,

  Saudi Arabia

  Pesi Houmaz lay in the Sleep Number bed he’d shipped to Riyadh from Cleveland and thought about his failures. Twice he’d promised his brother Tariq he would find and torture the Sashakovich woman, and twice he’d failed. She’d executed the first team he sent. Tariq needed to know what she knew of their pending operation and if she’d told anyone else about it.

  He rolled over on the mattress, feeling the stress of his failures in the pains shooting through his back. He cursed his brother, always wanting and expecting him to perform. He thought aloud, “I’m just a man, Tariq. If Allah has a hand in what men do, then isn’t his will as much a factor as my own efforts?” But there was no answer, and his backache wasn’t helping. He lay there, eyes closed, thinking how to impress his older brother.

  But Pesi wanted her dead as vengeance for the agency’s theft of over $50 million from his brother and him. He knew if he failed to find her, or even worse, if he found her only to have her slip away again, he’d lose more face with Tariq than he could afford. He rose from the bed and went to the kitchen to make a cup of honey mint tea.

  As he sipped from the cup, thoughts raced through him—memories of better times, when, years ago, Tariq had studied engineering and his father had looked to the older brother as his successor in the family’s oil business. Days when Pesi was just the younger brother, attending high school in Riyadh, preparing to enter the University of London. But the “accident” on the drilling platform changed all that.

  He placed the half-filled cup on the nightstand and turned out the light. Would sleep end his waking nightmares?

  He tossed for an hour and turned the light on, grabbing the pad of paper and pen he kept at the nightstand. Pesi Houmaz crafted another plan to locate her. He wrote a complete plan, then read it and crumbled the paper into a ball. He tried again. And again. At 2 a.m. he gave up, almost as irritated with himself as he thought his brother was.

  He closed his eyes again, to a sleep that would not come, and thought about their pending operation. He smiled. At least this plan was about to yield fruit—that is, if Sashakovich didn’t know and hadn’t reported it to Homeland Security before she was ousted. He needed something to show his brother. Some way to prove his worth.

  Just after sunrise, he staggered into the conference room of their Riyadh compound, yawning wildly. Sultan Raman, one of their brightest and strongest soldiers, waited for him, sitting in one of the conference room side chairs that surrounded the elegant carved table. Raman’s brother, Agha Hassan Raman, was the only other survivor of the family. Their parents and sister had been killed by Israeli soldiers in Lebanon. Agha Hassan now trained as a suicide bomber at their camp in Afghanistan.

  Sultan rose from the chair and bowed his head slightly as Pesi entered. Houmaz merely nodded dismissively. They both sat. “Good morning, Sultan. Are you ready?”

  Raman smiled, revealing several missing teeth. He nodded his head. “The men are impatient. All our supplies for the trip are packed, and we have all the materials you wish shipped.” He held out the list and Houmaz examined it for completeness:

  Weapon Piece Truck Route

  1 1.1 – Timer 1 Canada, Toronto, 401E to 81S, then 95 to DC

  1 1.2 – Detonator 2 Canada, Toronto, US-219 south out of Buffalo, PA-153 to I-80 east, PA-970 to US-322 to US-220/I-99 to I-70 to I-270

  1 1.3 – Foil Globe 3 Mexico, Nogales, 19N to Tucson, 10E, 25N, 70E, then 95S to DC1

  1 1.4 – Bullet Tube 4 Canada, Toronto, Cross border at Lewiston, NY, SR 20/63 to IS 390/US 15 south, becomes I86/US15, to US 15/Susquehanna Trail, 15 becomes IS 83, to 695, 95S

  Houmaz could visualize these parts assembled into their casings, along with the tampers, plastic foam fillers, and other pieces. He imagined all the trucks arriving at the safe house, each driven by its own team. Then, the technicians could assemble the parts into three complete weapons. He pointed at Sultan. “You have no problem handling four trucks, even though they’ll each be leaving at least four hours apart?”

  Raman held up his cell phone. “I have enough of these, each is for one use only, and then I will destroy it. Each of the drivers has as many as he’ll need, and each one they hold corresponds with one of mine. So the drivers have four each and I have seventeen.”

  “And the seventeenth?” Houmaz tested Raman’s recollection.

  “It is to inform you when we have all the parts at the safe house in New Jersey, ready for assembly and transshipment to West Virginia, where the explosives will be fitted within the bombs.”

  “Yes.” Houmaz shook Raman’s hand and said, “Then leave now. The ship will meet you tomorrow evening in Oman to take you through the Suez. May Allah guide you.”

  CHAPTER 26

  August 19, 6:34 p.m.

  Fort Hunter Liggett,

  near Camp Roberts,

  Big Sur, California

  Major Avram Shimmel marched into his campaign tent, late for the meeting with his client. Shimmel was the owner of the mercenary army Lee contracted for their black ops. Lee had been there, waited for him, and now was gone. He’d left a note. Shimmel read it and cursed in Hebrew.

  Lee wanted Shimmel to explain how the functional teams would work when reformed into battle squadrons. Avram suspected Lee was not
faring well in this stressful situation. It must be unfamiliar territory for the former Army lieutenant. Shimmel would need to find a way to keep Ainsley’s emotions from turning this into an unmanageable situation.

  Shimmel had eight years as an officer in the Israeli army. He was a veteran of the skirmishes in Lebanon as a tank commander, and had been recruited as a Mossad operative.

  He smoothed out the jacket of his uniform and sat. He picked up the small picture frame holding a photo of his wife and daughters from the campaign table in his tent.

  He wiped the tears from his eyes as he thought about the day he lost his wife and daughter to a car bomb. Since his tragedy, he’d worked as a merc and saved the bulk of his income to fund his dream: a mercenary strike force to use against Muslim extremists.

  He prayed he would soon have the opportunity to kill those responsible for his grief. He hated the Houmaz brothers. Shimmel wanted to savor the bittersweet taste of their deaths.

  He’d found Ainsley to be adequate as a project manager but uninspired as a tactician and clueless as a strategist. It hadn’t mattered yet, since Ainsley wasn’t arrogant and took Shimmel’s suggestions every time, as he came to understand them.

  Leftovers from his coursework during his career with the Israeli Army were neatly stacked in a corner of his tent, including the works of Carl von Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Musashi Miyamoto, and John Boyd, as well as the doctrine on counterinsurgency by US Army Lieutenant Colonel Conrad Crane. He lifted a football playbook from the New England Patriots from the stack of books. It was autographed by their quarterback and he examined a page he’d dog-eared. This he removed and compared to a similar page in a loose leaf labeled “Military Playbook.”

  The Military Playbook was separated into four sections; Mission, Strategy, Tactics, and Operations. He placed the football playbook page into the loose-leaf Operations section.

  The page he examined included combinations for main, flanking, artillery, and aerial support to produce myriad permutations of battle force. These could be custom tailored on the fly to any situation.

  Shimmel scribbled notes on the margin of the page. “With this alteration, yeah, it will work now.”

  He thought for a second. Would there be any benefit in lessons from basketball or hockey? He made a mental note to research this.

  He was considered a legend in the Israeli Defense Force. His “American football playbook” approach to warfare had been taught to senior level officers at IDF since his retirement two years ago.

  None of his four functional teams—communications, explosives, assault, and stealth—were consolidated into combat teams yet. The functional team leaders were finally comfortable with their own functions, and had proven their skills to their team members. What Shimmel now planned would be their big test.

  Tonight he would tear apart each of these teams and reconfigure each into eight black ops combat teams. He intended to group them into one combat team with thirty members for the assault into the Houmaz compound in Riyadh, and seven others with ten members each for the seven caves they’d identified in the Afghanistan mountains. Each of the teams would contain members of the previous discipline-oriented functional teams.

  Shimmel hoped he truly understood his client, Lee Ainsley. Avram had been through this many times: Ainsley worried about variables he couldn’t understand, imagine, or control.

  Lee had interviewed Shimmel while deciding if Avram’s mercenary army would be the best fit to their project. But Shimmel had used the interview as an opportunity to gain intimate knowledge of his client. He’d learned that Lee had studied tactics at West Point. Ainsley had read many of the same textbooks Shimmel used to teach war. When he’d graduated as a lieutenant, Lee served just two years before being “moved” into the agency. Before now, Lee never had responsibility for military tactics, strategy, or even operations. As a soldier six years ago, Ainsley had been assigned to a security detail out of Fort Meade, before the agency trained him for computer network security.

  Avram knew Lee wasn’t ready to manage this operation.

  But Avram also knew Lee felt that not being ready wasn’t an acceptable excuse for failure and—for Ainsley—failure meant death.

  He remembered the questions Ainsley asked him during the interview: “Isn’t this crazy? How can we defeat these people when the entire United States government can’t?”

  And Avram remembered his own response: “No, not crazy. With enough will of purpose, properly trained and equipped troops can succeed in a planned surgical strike. I would never agree to lead my men into a losing battle. We will succeed.”

  Shimmel reread Ainsley’s printed message and realized from its tone they’d be training for just two more weeks at the outside. Was that enough time?

  At least he was almost finished babysitting his client.

  The assignment had been set up for him by Yigdal Ben-Levy, who until last year had been Associate Director of the Mossad. Ben-Levy had followed Sashakovich’s adventures since her “problem” in Riyadh. The Mossad wanted the Houmaz brothers sent to “a better place”—their graves. They’d funded the creation of Shimmel’s mercenary strike force, Kravgruppe, although no one at the Mossad realized it except Ben-Levy.

  Shimmel decided to call a meeting of all one hundred members of his battle team, to understand what they thought, felt, and believed they were capable of. He picked up the satphone and dialed a number. “McTavish, please get LeFleur and Giondella and tell them to bring their entire crews to my tent at nineteen hundred sharp. I have a few additional “plays” we must try, to ensure we’re battle-ready.”

  * * *

  Cassie walked around the room, cursing up a storm. Stillwater offered to build the software for free, but wanted “Kahuna” to give them exclusive rights to the technology.

  Cassie countered the offer, suggesting a nonexclusive license and a 25 percent commission. She thought her offer fair, but Stillwater had returned another aggressive counter.

  She thought of her negotiation with Norm Cisco from the Fed, so long ago. Whoever held the most powerful cards controlled the negotiation. Her best cards were that time is of the essence and Stillwater wasn’t the only chip maker in town. She keyed a reply and sent it to them in email:

  We have run out of time. Either you accept the last offer we made or we’ll go with one of your competitors with whom we’re also negotiating. Reply required no later than 4:30 p.m. today.

  The competitor she referred to was the company she had broken into in Hong Kong. She didn’t want to offer them the job. But if Stillwater didn’t agree to her terms, she’d start a new negotiation with them.

  She pressed the Send key with a grin of bitter determination, and checked her website for a response every five minutes. Less than fifteen minutes passed before they sent their begrudging acceptance.

  “Finally!”

  * * *

  Tariq sat stewing in the shade of the mountain cliffs outside the tunnel entrance. He picked up the call to his satellite phone on the third ring. In eastern Afghanistan, normal cell phone service was nonexistent. It was burning hot, and though it was dry, perspiration dripped down his neck. He’d been working eighteen hours a day or more. It had been three weeks since his last bath, but he was used to the overpowering stench of his body. Tariq could hear Pesi’s fear-tinged words, and wondered how bad his younger brother had screwed it up this time.

  “Tariq, uh, I’m in a small Lebanese restaurant in downtown Riyadh, uh, reporting status, both good and bad.” He heard Pesi’s rush to get the words out. “We haven’t found either Sashakovich or Ainsley. Both disappeared on the same day. They have not used cell phones since.”

  He stifled a curse thinking of Pesi’s failure to apprehend Sashakovich. “You’ve been trying to find her for months. We’re out of time. We must know what she knows before we mount our plan. Send an urgent immediate message to our mole at the agency. Threaten the mole. Use the mole’s family as leverage. Unless the mole can deliver Sashakovich t
o us within two weeks, we’ll do to the entire family what we were going to do to the bitch.”

  Tariq thought for a second. His brother had mentioned good news. “What is the other news? You have ‘good’ news?”

  “Our other project is proceeding on schedule. Sultan Raman left last night with eight mujahidin. Their truck is on a ship nearing the Suez at this moment. In two weeks the ship will reach Toronto. So even if we don’t find her until then, our plan can still work. Each of the three other trucks is either now in transit or will be by tomorrow evening. The pieces shipped by airplane are being packed today for the three commercial aircraft to take them to destinations within the United States. And those parts to be taken into the United States by their own military aircraft are now in our inventory. These will go out last to the safe house in Trenton, in about a week.”

  Tariq thought, finally, my brother did something right.

  But they couldn’t proceed until they knew what she knew. Tariq pictured her body, slowly bleeding out and mounted against the bed frame, the broom handle lodged deep within her. The thought sent a thrill through him. He rewarded Pesi with the barest of praise: “Salaam, brother. Track these shipments closely.”

  * * *

  The mole sat in the basement at one of the secure terminals in the headquarters building of Gilbert Greenfield’s unnamed intelligence agency on K Street, reading the email for the third time. The mole shuddered. How could this happen? Once again the Houmaz hoodlums are threatening my entire family. The mole had done “off the wire” projects. Operations without agency knowledge. And now there were no good choices left. Where was Ainsley or Sashakovich? The mole couldn’t reassign agency resources to locate them since they were probably within the borders of the United States. If the mole was caught, a prison sentence was likely even before the Houmaz bunch came to murder the mole’s family.

  The bureaucrat the mole reported to was starting to wonder what the mole was up to. To keep from giving more clues, the mole would have to go outside the agency for this project’s staff, and any help would have to be paid in cash. Another “off the wire” project. And if anyone sniffed this out, the mole would be toast.