A Long Gray Line

by Simon Gervais

  Time to disappear.

  Amid the commotion around him, he removed his grey hood and grabbed a loose-fitting beige jacked from his backpack. He put on the garment over the Shipka’s sling so his weapon wouldn’t be obvious but would remain accessible at the same time.

  Going north on Lexington Avenue, Zakhar walked past the Verizon store before turning right on East 44th Street. He didn’t dare look back when he heard the police vehicles roaring behind him as they raced on Lexington Avenue. His car, a navy blue Chevy Impala, was parked in a public parking garage just east of Third Avenue.

  The turmoil of Grand Central Station had somewhat vanished but Zakhar spotted two uniformed police officers running toward him from further up East 44th Street.

  They don’t have my physical description. Stay calm.

  Zakhar stepped down from the sidewalk and let the two officers run past him. His eyes followed after them, but neither gave him a second look. Once he was certain they didn’t represent a threat, he turned around to resume his walk toward his car but stopped dead in his tracks. Less than two meters away, a tall, heavyset man wearing a dark two-piece suit over a white shirt and blue tie blocked his way. The man’s right hand was inside his suit jacket where a service weapon would be if he had one. The gold NYPD detective badge on the man’s belt pretty much confirmed that assumption. How did he know?

  “Don’t move, and make sure your hands stay where they—”

  Zakhar never hesitated. Action’s faster than reaction. Always.

  He closed the distance almost instantly and threw a powerful kick at the detective’s right knee. The detective let out a loud cry but was nevertheless successful at pulling his service pistol out of its holster. Before he could fire, Zakhar was already on him, gripping the other man’s wrist with his right hand while his left grabbed the barrel of the pistol, pushing it outward. A shot went off harmlessly and Zakhar continued the outward movement of the pistol, effectively trapping the detective’s finger inside the trigger guard. The finger snapped. An enraged scream came out of the officer’s mouth. Zakhar was now in control of the detective’s pistol, but the other man wasn’t beaten yet. A powerful left hook connected with Zakhar’s chin followed by an uppercut that sent him flying in the air.

  Zakhar forced his eyes open. He was on his back, spread-eagled on the sidewalk with no pistol in hands. His vision was blurred, his head dizzy, and his jaw was throbbing. He tasted blood and his mouth and cut his tongue on a broken tooth.

  The detective’s eyes were filled with rage. A pocketknife had materialized in his hand. With no other options, and still on his back, Zakhar brought up the Shipka and fired.

  _________________________

  Mike Walton’s heart was racing. Where did the bastard go? Mike had holstered his Taurus to avoid unwanted attention. NYPD cruisers were now parked on Lexington Avenue. Mike guessed other police vehicles were also covering the other exits. Some uniformed officers had rushed in, while others remained outside.

  What would I do if I wanted to escape? Lexington Avenue’s traffic is to the south. If I didn’t want to make it easy for a police car, I’d go in the opposite direction.

  Mike jogged northbound on Lexington, but to no avail. No man with a gray hood. Aware his prey could have had a change of clothes, Mike estimated his chances of finding him from nil to very low.

  Three shots fired in rapid succession changed his mind.

  _________________________

  Zakhar watched the detective stagger backward. A weaker man would have already collapsed. The detective was strong, his will to live even stronger, guessed Zakhar. But the three red dots on his white shirt told Zakhar all he needed to know; the police officer had only a few seconds to live. Disbelief, surprise, and finally fear registered on the detective’s face. Then his eyes went blank and he fell.

  Cognizant the sound of his Shipka had attracted attention, Zakhar, still lightheaded, pulled himself together and forced himself to his feet. A dozen or so pedestrians looked at the scene in shock, some of them frozen in fear. But a few had their smartphones out and were recording.

  My face will be all over the news in less than an hour. I need to get out of here. Now.

  Disoriented, Zakhar realized the detective must have hit him harder than he had originally thought. He had difficulty focusing on anything. The world around him started to spin. His legs buckled under him.

  “Hey, you!” someone yelled behind him.

  Zakhar turned around. Two Arabic-looking men were walking purposefully toward him. The men were wearing red T-shirts with the word “Security” written on the front. They had baseball bats. Zakhar knew he was about to get hit. He tried to bring the Shipka up but couldn’t. He had no strength left.

  _________________________

  Mike Walton ran as fast as he could. Less than eighty meters away, a man was down on the sidewalk. Two men armed with baseball bats were surrounding another man, but this one had a submachine gun.

  Mike was sure he had found who he was looking for even though the grey hood had vanished. He had to take over the situation before anyone else got hurt. What are these two bozos playing at? Didn’t they know you never bring a baseball bat to a gunfight?

  Fifty meters.

  Mike reached for his Taurus and slowed his pace to a brisk walk. He wanted to make sure he had his breathing under control and that he could analyze the situation before getting in.

  Forty meters.

  Radios crackling and heavy footsteps behind him had him take a quick look.

  Mike cursed under his breath. Three uniformed officers, the same he’d seen standing right outside Grand Central Station’s Lexington exit less than two minutes ago, were now running with weapons in hand in the same direction he was headed. They’d probably heard the same gunshots he did. His FBI identification wouldn’t work with these guys. They wouldn’t care. The best thing was to let the officers do their job and then use the IMSI to dig out the intelligence the NYPD would get from the shooter.

  It didn’t please Mike, but he had no choice. Too many questions would be asked if he got involved. He holstered his Taurus and crossed the street to get a better look at the takedown he knew was about to happen.

  Then the head of the man he’d been chasing exploded, and Mike was forced to hit the ground one more time.

  Also by Simon Gervais:

  Mike Walton had experienced terrorism from every angle. As a covert field operations officer, he thought he’d seen it all. But that was before terrorism struck him directly at home. Suffering devastating physical injury and unthinkable personal loss, Mike had one of two choices: give up or fight back. And giving up wasn’t in his constitution.

  Mike and his wife Lisa – a medical doctor and fellow counter-terrorism expert – are recruited by the International Market Stabilization Institute, a privately funded organization operating outside official channels to protect North America’s financial interests. The strikes that destroyed Mike and Lisa’s household – the work of Sheik Al-Assad – are bringing the Western economy to its knees. And they are only the beginning. If the Sheik succeeds, the world will change forever, and the next attack is just around the corner. Mike and Lisa must lead a hastily assembled team to Europe to stop the madness before time runs out.

  Rippling with tension, raging with action, and replete with the kinds of details only a true counter-terrorism insider can provide, The Thin Black Line is a nonstop thriller of the first order.

  Here’s an excerpt:

  Macdonald-Cartier International Airport

  To: Inspector Robert McFiella OIC/RCMP APOFU

  From: Inspector Myles Gregory OIC INSET Ottawa

  Robert,

  We just got a report from Ben Cohen of Air Canada Security that four Middle Eastern passengers purchased last-minute tickets for Air Canada Flight 7662 Ottawa–Washington, DC. They were booked separ
ately but by the same travel agency. Their names were run through our databases, but nothing came up.

  Knowing that you have two air marshals onboard this flight, we checked the rest of the passenger list for anything suspicious and found that two Saudi nationals are also on the flight, and they only have one-way tickets. Both are in Canada under student visas that will expire in two days. Their names are Muhammad Hassan and Masri Fadl. Technically, they’re still in Canada legally, but I contacted our INSET team in Toronto to follow them on arrival for the next forty-eight hours to see if they will depart Canada or not.

  To help your officers identify them, I’ve attached the passport pictures of Hassan and Fadl, as well as their seat assignments for Flight 7662.

  Myles

  The note was short but to the point. The threat level for their flight to Washington, DC, had been upgraded to “High.” As a member of the federal air marshal program of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Sergeant Mike Powell was used to this kind of message.

  More often than not, the passengers mentioned in these notes had triggered an early warning detector embedded within the airline reservation software. Whether they had paid for their tickets with cash, had purchased one-way fares, or had done a multitude of other things the computers were looking for, it didn’t matter to Mike. He would treat this piece of information seriously. He always did.

  As he stood in the main terminal of Ottawa International Airport, his eyes were in constant motion. The long hallways were packed with passengers, as everybody was either going back home or visiting family for the Easter weekend. On his left he’d noticed an army captain with a black backpack sipping a cup of chain-restaurant coffee. To his right, a nice family with three young children was eating their breakfast burritos while chatting about their upcoming trip. The excited laughs of the children brought a rare smile to Mike’s lips as he remembered his daughter, Melissa, doing the same thing three weeks ago prior to their flight to Mexico.

  Before putting his secured Blackberry away, Mike read the message once again.

  After affixing the pictures of Hassan and Fadl in his mind, Mike replaced his phone in his pocket.

  While most of messages were somewhat similar to this one, this particular communication was the first with such a textbook scenario. Mike didn’t like the idea of an attack in his own backward but couldn’t help enjoying the adrenaline rush such thoughts provided.

  It would be a lie to pretend he didn’t wish to kill a terrorist or two. Since his father’s kidnapping exactly two years ago today, he’d craved revenge. Not only for himself, but also for all the pain the loss had caused his mother. It was one thing to lose a loved one in battle; it was another to have someone you love taken away from you and knowing this person was being tortured.

  A wave of nausea passed through Mike as he remembered the terrible day he learned his father was still alive.

  His mother, usually so composed, had called him early in the morning, yelling for him to come over. When he’d opened the front door of her luxurious downtown condo, his mother had been holding a knife to her throat.

  “Mom?”

  “I can’t take it anymore, Mike,” his mother had said. The hand holding the butcher knife was shaking. Her whole body was shaking.

  “What’s going on, Mom?” he said a lump in his throat.

  “Why don’t they fucking kill him? Why don’t they kill him, for God’s sake!” his mother screamed before collapsing on the hardwood floor. Mike ran to her and picked her up off the floor. Tears were flowing down her cheeks. “I can’t sleep anymore, Michael,” she murmured in his ear. “The only thing I dream of are the pictures.”

  “What pictures, Mom?”

  “Your father’s.”

  The first picture, or proof of life, had come two weeks after his father’s abduction. Then another followed suit every second Friday. The Sheik had sent them directly to the home of Mike’s mother in Ottawa. A note attached to each picture commanded that it was only for her, not to be shared with anyone else unless she wanted her husband to suffer an atrocious death.

  At first, he hadn’t understood why she was crying. Proof of life was a good thing, right? It meant that his father was alive. But when his eyes gripped the cruelty of the pictures, even Mike had to hold on to the table. His father’s features were barely recognizable. His face, unwashed, was so swollen that his left eye couldn’t possibly open. Another picture showed a severed finger, his father’s wedding ring still in place. The only thing that had kept him from loosing his mind was the knowledge that he needed to stay strong for his mother. Later that day, Mike’s mother, Celina, accepted his invitation to move in with him and his family. Mike was still angry with himself for not asking his mother to live with them sooner. Celina’s health was better now, but Mike highly doubted that anything less than the Sheik’s head would make her happy.

  _________________________

  Seated near Gate 17, in a manner that allowed him to observe most of the passengers who would shortly be boarding his flight, Mike glanced at his partner, Staff Sergeant Paul Robichaud, who was sitting close to the Air Canada ticket desk.

  Robichaud was a twenty-three-year veteran of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and former member of the Emergency Response Unit of the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, or INSET, the semi-covert unit of the RCMP tasked with acquiring and analyzing intelligence regarding terrorist threats. He was more than just Mike’s partner. He was his mentor.

  As Robichaud had said several times before, he had seen a younger version of himself in Mike the moment they’d met at the high-pressure INSET selection training four years ago. Mike, with Robichaud’s support, had been recommended to the INSET unit after only five years of service with the RCMP. His previous service spent as an infantry officer within the elite Canadian Special Operations Regiment had helped. Plus, the experience he’d earned leading combat operations in Afghanistan had given him an edge that none of the other candidates possessed. On average, less than fifty percent made it through the training, but Mike had excelled in all quadrants and had even broken all the shooting scores—including the ones held by Robichaud.

  As Mike’s gaze rove among the passengers, his Blackberry started to vibrate. After entering his twelve-digit password, he opened his most recent e-mail:

  To Mike and Paul: Please be advised I sent Agent Zima Bernbaum to back you up. She’s our new liaison officer from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.2 Her instructions are to remain covert and to act as an extra pair of eyes. You’ve never met her, so I’ve attached her photograph.

  Mike gasped when he saw the picture. I know her! His wife, Lisa, had met her in Toronto while taking jujitsu classes. They’d quickly become best friends and salsa dancing buddies. Mike, who’d be working long hours, never had the chance to really know her except for the occasional dinner. He knew his wife had kept in touch with Zima after their move to Ottawa and had even spent a girls-only weekend getaway in Las Vegas a few years back. Mike vaguely remembered his wife telling him Zima had accepted a position as an auditor of cultural content at a museum.

  Great cover for a CSIS agent, thought Mike. I’m wondering what Lisa will say when I tell her Zima’s CSIS.

  Mike stood up and slowly started to walk across the waiting area, scanning the section around Gate 17 to spot any of the six Arabic passengers. He saw no sign of them. He entered the men’s restroom to check if anyone was hiding. Remaining anonymous, he strolled to the sinks and glanced at the stalls behind him in the mirror. He had let his black hair grow a little longer since he had left ERT. His hair was now in a controlled freestyle that required nothing but a little hair gel and a good shake in the morning. At five foot ten inches, Mike was not tall, but he carried his 190-pound frame easily. He was proud to say that at thirty-eight years old, he was in the best shape of his life.

  He smoothed his navy herringbone suit and blue dre
ss shirt from Savile Row. Mike looked the part of the rich executive he was using as a cover for today’s flight. But if anyone were to look closely at him, they would see that amid his tanned skin and slightly crooked nose, his piercing green eyes did not miss anything. His movements were light but precise, and a contagious energy surrounded him.

  Mike spied no sign of movement after thirty seconds. He purposely dropped his Montblanc pen on the tiled floor, and the sound echoed through the space. As he bent to pick it up, he quickly scanned every stall. Nobody. He was in the process of exiting the restroom when his Blackberry vibrated twice.

  “Yes?”

  “Mike, it’s Paul here. Anything suspicious your way?”

  “I just checked the restrooms. They’re not in there.”

  “They still haven’t shown at the gate either.”

  “That’s strange,” said Mike. “Their flight boards in two minutes. What should we do?”

  “I’ll board first and get to my seat to get a good view of every single passenger getting on that plane. You board last. That way we won’t miss them if they are, in fact, on this flight. And why don’t you call Zima? Use her to cover more ground,” instructed Robichaud.

  “Sounds good,” said Mike before ending the call. He refocused on the crowd milling about the gate as he dialed Zima’s number. He wanted to know if she was in the area in case he and Robichaud needed assistance.

  “Yes? This is Zima.” Her voice was soft and gentle.

  “Hey, Zima, it’s Mike Powell.”

  “Hi, Mike. It seems like we’ll be working together on this one.”

  “The museum knows you’re here?” he asked, a big smile on his lips.

  He heard Zima’s laughter across the line. “C’mon, Mike, you know how these gigs work.”

  “Just pulling your leg, Zima. How are you?”

  “Living the dream,” she replied. “How’s Lisa?”