The Presence of Evil

by J. T. Patten

  Chapter 15

  As Drake sat in disbelief, a light rapping echoed through the tinted glass.

  When Woolf opened the door, a sympathetic look was on Sebastian’s face in the dim glow of the interior dome light. “Can we go?” he asked Drake.

  “Yeah.”

  It didn’t take but a few minutes before Woolf broke the silence. “He said you have some more details for me.”

  “I do. But I suspect you can figure it out.”

  “CIA?”

  “Nay. Not directly.” Sebastian cocked his head. “Your brother started as an access agent. He’s what you Americans term as an executive agent now. Placement, access, he kills, sabotages, and helps Central Intelligence recruit. Your father trained him, had him go through Field Tradecraft Certification, which is unprecedented for this type of situation. Certainly would be where I come from, but that’s my opinion.”

  “How long have you known?” Drake asked flatly as he still processed a conversation that he had longed for his whole adult life and didn’t happen at all how he had fantasized.

  “Not long. I knew of the code name only so we could white-list it at NSA, but never knew the man or the history. He came looking for you. He found me.”

  “How’d he find you?”

  “Your uncle’s files. Which as you can imagine troubled me greatly, but not of your concern. It’s been remedied.”

  “How did he come to you? I’m guessing not at the front door.”

  “Let’s say it was quite the surprise and something I’d rather not discuss. Short-lived incident. Comes with the life.”

  “Did he really kill OT?”

  “No question.”

  “You know this or he said this?”

  “Both. I suspect he did it for personal reasons and to protect you. But he left the surveillance video that caught part of him in the act. Probably to reinforce his cover. To finish a job. Beyond that, I can’t say. He’s in neck-deep. Bugger me if I’ve ever heard someone so long mixing with those sorts. Some question, and I’m just saying this in full transparency, right?”

  Drake absorbed the news.

  “They say he could be working for them now. Turned. Native. A sympathizer.”

  “It’s a lot to take in.”

  “Did he tell you about Chicago?” Sebastian asked.

  Drake shook his head in the darkness of the SUV. “No.”

  “He wants to help you take down the next wave. Hezbollah has acquired radioactive materials and plans to use them in the city. We have verified this from sources and technology. I know Sean’s down, but the task force was meant to be one man from the start. You’ll have support. I surmise your brother will remain close. Comment?”

  Drake gave a weak laugh. “No. But what else do I have?”

  Sebastian turned his head to the rear. “You have a country…and you have a team.”

  “I’ll settle for a car. And a new persona package.”

  “Right. I’ll drop you at the shop where you will stay for the time being. Proper accommodations have been completed to the level of a warrior’s appropriate comfort. Shitter, shower, and a blanket. Documents to your identity are in the vault. As for another automobile, consider yourself in isolation. I’ll have the team bring you food when they arrive at 1300 hours.”

  “What team exactly is this?”

  “Your new team, mate. Remember, I’m just a program manager. I handle administration, and you handle the dirty work. I’m an old man. I need my sleep. You’ll meet the crew tomorrow after some rest, Ibuprofen, water to hydrate, and fresh clothes. You’ll be right-ways in no time.”

  Part II

  “We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge. In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act.”

  —President George W. Bush, June 1, 2002

  Chapter 16

  Iran’s Major General Qasem Soleimani’s outburst was unprecedented. Relaxing in the family sitting area when his phone rang, it was his aftermath of shouts that awoke his napping granddaughter from his arms.

  She was crying, he was frustrated, and he chose to hang up the call and tend to baby Anya after only replying, “I will advise Department 9000, and it will be done. Unit 400 operations in America will cease with my call to Major General Abdollahi.”

  The call was unexpected from the commander of the Iranian Republican Guards Corps Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari. Jafari reported to Iran’s supreme leader, as did Soleimani.

  Soleimani called most IRGC and Qods Force shots, but he still reported, if in dotted line, only to Jafari. It was a dose of cold water reminder thrown at Soleimani that a pecking order remained. Jafari’s unusual call was short. Americans had just announced a discovery of new material support ties between Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria, and had linked them to Venezuela. Soleimani received in those moments from his superior subsequent stand-down orders while details of the crackdown remained unclear. The international investigation could take months if not years, but under the renewed scrutiny, a terror attack on US soil would most certainly bring a fury of reprisals. The Iranian regime wanted no loose ends that could be discovered about the Qods Force–driven operations in America. Iran didn’t need to give the Zionists any further excuse for direct retaliation, and the Soviets had weighed in heavily as well with a very clear message to the IRGC about containing their forays to their own immediate region and to reduce the footprint in Syria. Venezuela, specifically, was already a shit show and certainly didn’t need American boots on the ground there, too, sniffing around Iranian investments. Tehran’s birun marzi, meaning “outside the borders” group, also known as Department 9000, would handle the matter with the assistance of Unit 400 assassins. Whether it was tacit or explicit, the supreme leader called the stand-down, and sanitization, in favor of global political pressure.

  “Shhh,” he hushed, continuously walking and bouncing the baby to calm both of them down.

  His wife rushed into the room with a cacophony of questions.

  “Shhh,” he said again, this time to his wife, waving his hand down. “It’s all okay,” he assured her quietly in Farsi.

  His wife reached out her arms to take the baby. “If you have work, I will take her.”

  The Iranian Qods Force leader blocked her attempts with his shoulder. “She’s asleep. I have this little blessing now. Work can wait. What’s done is done.” The close-cropped silver hair and beard of the Revolutionary Guard commander darkened as he moved to the shadowed corner of the room where he sat on a long white sofa. “Come. Sit with me.” He beckoned to his wife, patting a cushion.

  His wife of over thirty years nestled closely to her beloveds. With her left hand, she stroked her granddaughter’s head. With her right, she scratched her husband’s.

  “That is what I needed.” He tilted his head back and closed his eyes. “I am a blessed man.”

  “You have few wants. I think you are tired.”

  He smiled. Eyes still closed. “I am not tired. I am weary.”

  “Weary of us?” she joked and rested her head on his shoulder. The olive-green uniform had softened with age, as had her husband.

  “I could never be weary of you and my precious little one.” He confirmed that which she didn’t need reassurance of. “I’m tired and weary of the work.”

  “Syria?”

  His eyes opened, and he turned to her. “We cannot speak of this. Ever.”

  “Qasem. Am I not to know my husband? My husband’s work? The world around us? The world views of our country? I’m an educated woman.” She tapped her husband’s head and tried to pull it back again. “And I know my love.”

  “It’s best that we do not speak. There are rules. Not just to keep secrets, but to keep you safe.”

  “I don’t need to
know details. I don’t want to know details. I only want to know what is troubling you.”

  The most powerful shadow warrior in the Middle East sighed and straightened, careful not to move too much and wake his granddaughter. He winced while adjusting. A quick pinch from his lower back pain and the tightness he felt in his prostate made him shift back to his former position. “There was a plan made. At great lengths. The Zionist regime and their American friends have made a discovery. It is unflattering to our country. And to my commanders. The Americans are threatening more sanctions. The Russians have made demands of us, as well. Once I stopped my personal control of our interventions—”

  “You can’t control everything,” she dismissed his justification. “We can’t even control our own children.” She referenced their eldest daughter living in Malaysia, who had chosen a different path in life.

  “It is simpler on the battlefield.”

  “The battlefield is for young men, now.”

  “Battlefields are changing now. Men are changing. I have to stop our plan. It was in my grasp,” he ranted, squeezing his fist tight.

  She reached to his arm, giving it a rub and pushing his hand down. “I don’t know much of war planning, but this I know, my husband. Every mother in this land talks of the honor of martyrdom.” She stood and took the sleeping baby from her husband.

  He remained quiet and listening, which was truer to his nature.

  “But in our hearts,” she continued, “we want our children to be happy. Have opportunity. Stay with us in our lands. Be married. Have children. To celebrate life together. And to never worry about missiles. Bombs coming to our homes at night.” She headed toward the hallway, leaving him to his thoughts.

  “It will not happen,” he tried to assure her.

  “If it does, the people will rise up.” She turned back to him. “They continue to take to the streets. They want freedom. Opportunities. Can you protect the children if this happens?”

  “It is because of children that I am willing to stop this.”

  “Then you know what you have to do. Simple.” She smiled.

  It may be harder to stop than we think, he fretted to himself.

  His orders were to obliterate the mission and all evidence. And that included everyone. Even if he had one in a noose.

  Chapter 17

  Drake Woolf popped two of Patches’s prescription pills and put his head down on the cot in the darkness of a nondescript outbuilding located within the premises of the Department of the Interior’s Geological Survey structure, simply known as the TFO “shop.” Within an hour of staring at the ceiling, fighting fatigue, Drake succumbed to his exhaustion and closed his eyes.

  As he drifted into slumber, a vivid event unfolded in the night terrors he sought to avoid by shunning sleep until his body could no longer resist.

  The mission in his mind was going wrong. Drake had a lock on the terrorist “crow’s” position by creating a signal triangulation. But the children were on the bus. It didn’t make sense because the man he was hunting was driving in the North African Sahara Desert. The UAS Predator feed on his display showed a white SUV. No, that was the screen display showing white within the black video. But the kids. They were there too. But not. They were in color. Drake’s brother Dexter was young again. A teen. Just as he had remembered him from back in Tunisia. Dex had a yellow-and-gray Walkman headset over his ears. Their parents were now in the car. The Predator was armed. The feed split and depicted a text prompt with the writing “SELECT TARGET.” He had to choose. His body was in the back with his brother now, but also in the back of the bus with the children. The selector was on a handheld. He had to choose. The rush of terror and emptiness surrounded him. He had to choose. Dad looked back. So did Mom. A little girl smiled at Drake. She handed him a petaled white flower with pink ribbon around the stem. He took it and thanked her. A little boy, wearing traditional Iraqi clothes, handed him a small box, which Drake opened. The boy danced with excitement. In the small container was a phone.

  “Push it,” the young boy coaxed, pointing to the Send button. “Push it,” he repeated, reaching over and pointing to the button. Drake looked at the small girl. “Push it,” she insisted. The kids on the bus chimed in. “Push it. Push it. Push it.”

  “No. We can’t push it. It’s too dangerous,” Drake replied. He searched his harness and kit for candy to hand out just as they had in the early days of the desert wars. His pockets were empty.

  “Push it, Daddy,” the little girl said. The straight-haired, emaciated Iraqi’s face changed to have curly brown hair silhouetting brown eyes and cherub cheeks. She had a blue Band-Aid on her forehead. Special Agent Halliday was sitting in a lounge chair by the pool. She wore a yellow flowing dress and had a cocktail with an umbrella. Her dress was like the one Drake’s mother wore on the last day of her life. “Drake!” Halliday screamed. “What did you do? Emma!” Emma. Drake was glad they chose that name.

  Emma pushed the button, and the Woolf family SUV exploded in a ball of fire. The touch pad flashed ARMED, and the white cross hairs showed the house with the pool explode with Woolf back in an operational position. The house erupted, and the flash from within the bus engulfed the children. Their faces flickered in front of his eyes. Faces of the dead he had seen in combat. The evil men he’d killed over a lifetime of professional soldiering taunted him. They were alive. They were shooting at him from all directions. He could see their faces, but they were dead. He had seen their gruesome death looks, and as his mind displayed them, their bullet-riddled, burnt, broken and torn faces showed of his parents, his brother, former teammates, his uncle, and his aunt. Drake reached into his harness, seeking magazines to reload. There was only candy.

  “You okay?” a voice asked from behind. It was Sean Havens and Lars. Drake thought he had awoken but was still trapped in his dream. Havens fired a sidearm into Drake’s stomach. Lars wielded a heavy axe to Woolf’s head. Drake didn’t feel the pain but felt his head falling to the ground, a witness to the surroundings of war’s hell before him. And the screaming got louder until his severed head turned to the noise, and he awoke as the falling sensation started again with the report of AK rounds snapping off in the distance exchanged for a succession of beeps, and a loud click, and his name.

  “Warren. Safe place. Safe place. You’re okay, lad.”

  Sebastian is in the room. “Am I awake? Is this real?”

  The dark voice roused in his head. So much for the pills. They’ve come to kill you, Drake. You slept, you idiot. You fucking fell asleep!

  Sebastian responded with his deep Scottish accent. “I’m behind you. You are in a safe place, Warren Woolf. Safe place. Nothing can harm you. Picture show’s over. They’re not real. Nothing’s real, boy. Plays on the mind. I used to drink myself to lights-out just to make the pains go away to the corners. You’re among friends. You’re in the team building in McLean. Lying on a camp bed. You came back last night from a bit of a mess. You spoke to your brother. Havens is doing well. Can you hear me?”

  Drake slowly unfolded from a twisted and tight sweaty body position. On his back, his arms flapped out limp and splayed over the cot edges. “Fuuuck.” He rolled over, tightening his body like an armadillo. “Get out,” he groaned.

  “Team’s out front of the building. I’ll buy you twenty minutes to shower. It’s past 1300. We’ll come back in at 1330. Collect yourself. You’ve got the bollocks. Drive it through. You’re strong enough. Game face on, and you be ready. If I tell you to take the ball and run, you do it. If I tell you to live another day, I expect you to.” Sebastian gave Woolf a pat on the shoulder and rubbed it to the blade and back. “You’ll be okay. Just getting the war trash out. It’s been our way since the dawn of man. What hasn’t taken our flesh and bone has a claw on our soul. Shower up. Ready in twenty.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Soggy pudding. Listen to me, boy.” Sebastian’s g
rip tightened. The man put a finger into a pressure point that Drake never knew existed. “You’re no more off your tits than any other special service soldier. I’ve seen war, and there is more war to come. I’ve also seen me, like you, fall into self-loathing. I protect my men, but I’m not a babysitter. We Charlie Mike up. Continue the Mission.”

  “It’s done, Sebastian. I can’t. I can’t keep doing this.” Drake squeezed himself tighter.

  “Of course you can. You survived the hard stuff. On with the easy stuff.”

  “I don’t want to anymore,” Drake argued, his voice muffled.

  “Look. If you’re going to off yourself, do it before I get back. Get cracking and do something about it. No one forced you to do this job despite what your shrink may be telling you. Normal men can’t go into battle and watch their friends, enemies, and innocents die. All-action, full ops tempo, never ending persistent threats? You eat if for breakfast because you’re an alpha. Embrace it. Taste it. Let it take you over. You’re a killer of men. And a bloody good one. That’s why you’ve done it for years. No one has you on a leash, man. Submit to yourself and banish the tears and teddy bear holding. If you can’t…get the fuck out of my shop.”

  Sebastian slapped Drake on the shoulder. “And if you choose to blow your brains out, don’t make a mess. I’d prefer you hang yourself from a rafter in the rear. Plenty of paracord in the boxes.”

  Chapter 18

  Drake took two more pills when Sebastian left. Sure as shit, twenty minutes later Drake could hear voices again. They weren’t in his head, they were in the building.

  Woolf finished toweling off and threw on the same shirt, albeit inside out as if that would help the dried-in white salt sweat and stench. He didn’t want to keep a team of his peer operators waiting any longer, and wondered if he may recognize any of them. Without knowing the mission, Drake suspected the usual type of crew. Tier One. A spook. Probably everyone was off the books.