The Enemies of My Country

by Jason Kasper

  “We were going to get tacos for Reilly, but I suppose we could head there instead. Push us all the imagery you can—we’ll plan our raid on the move.”

  “At this point, I think we need to consider roping in Duchess.”

  David shook his head.

  “We get shot up and killed, you call her and sing your heart out.”

  “Concur,” Cancer said. “We tell Duchess, she’s gonna send cops. Cops are bound by laws. We ain’t.”

  Reilly shrugged. “But if she sends cops, we have time for tacos.”

  David looked over and said, “Racegun, what do you think?”

  With a half-smile, Worthy said, “What are we doing, taking votes?”

  “No. Tell me anyway.”

  “If I’m going to spend the rest of my life in a prison cell or a non-extradition-treaty country, I want to go out with a bang. We’ve been hunting BK for too long to give up now. This isn’t about who gets the kill—but out of everyone in the world, the only guys I trust to get the job done no matter what are in this room.”

  “And me,” Ian said, “back at the team house.”

  “Sure. Whatever. Point is, I think there’s a sufficient sense of urgency to justify anything and everything we can do, that we’ll get more mileage out of extra-legal measures than the feds would with all their oversight. We’re already off the reservation. Let’s make it count.”

  Ian said, “You guys need to take it easy with the killing this time. The best thing you could do is capture some living detainees, especially BK. Finding out who put this operation together is as valuable as recovering the rockets.”

  It was David who responded.

  “Ian, I love you. You’re my brother. But there’s a hard truth you still haven’t learned about this business.”

  “What’s that?”

  David gave a patient smile before replying, his final response as the team made their way to the door.

  “Some people just need to get shot in the fucking face.”

  57

  Ian’s computer screens were filled with the live feed of every surveillance camera he could find around the seafood distribution center’s perimeter.

  The internet was a magical thing—by penetrating the online networks of the adjacent businesses, he could view their live surveillance camera footage with only slightly less effort than it would have taken him to hijack a traffic camera in Tehran.

  But the pitfalls of his current position were many: the available cameras presented an incomplete view of the business park surrounding the objective building, and there was precious little he’d be able to tell the team that they couldn’t see themselves in the next minute or two.

  Then came the matter of their communications.

  Ian was piping into the team frequency via a tenuous FM relay system that was already on the fritz, and he could only hear his teammates communicating between long garbled bursts of static. They’d only received his return traffic intermittently, so their backup connection of cellular phones was going to be required sooner rather than later.

  And finally there was Ian’s own reservations about the mission at hand.

  He suspected the rockets were stockpiled in that building, awaiting departure the moment their launch system was ready to be loaded. It didn’t make sense for the enemy to put all their eggs in one basket by combining the projectiles and launcher before they had to—that way, even if the launch system was interdicted by cops, they could relocate the rockets and await their next opportunity. Hell, they could lean the rockets against a rock and fire them whenever they pleased—insurgents in the Middle East had been doing just that with varying degrees of success for years—but precision-engineered launch tubes would provide Bari Khan with near-pinpoint accuracy, and Ian doubted the terrorist would waste an opportunity like that. Whatever his target, Bari Khan was going to hit it with everything at his disposal.

  Ian felt a knot forming in the pit of his stomach, which could have been attributed to a bad feeling or simply his unease at not being physically present with his team. As unsuited as he was for purely tactical situations, the reality here was much worse—he was relegated to watching from afar, with an incomplete view assembled by a patchwork of adjacent surveillance cameras and without adequate communications. He wanted to be there, felt a deep, undeniable drive to speed to Fredericksburg and join his team.

  But his position in Charlottesville was simply too valuable. He was the last remaining line of support for the team, the only one who could sift any intelligence they found since the Agency was formally out of the picture.

  There was another reason, too, and it was one of insurance.

  Should the team be wiped out to a man in the operation ahead, Ian was the only one who could report their findings to Duchess in a last-ditch effort to stop Bari Khan. If he made that call too soon, she would flood the distribution center with police in an attempt to arrest his teammates; if he made the call too late, Bari Khan could slip through their fingers yet again.

  Ian shook his head. As if a second domestic assault operation weren’t bad enough, he now had the legal ramifications of CIA blowback to consider.

  He caught a flash of movement on one of the screens, focusing in on it to see the unthinkable: a medium duty delivery truck speeding into view from the distribution center’s south side.

  Ian sensed at once that it was suspect, driving too quickly for the surroundings, running a stop sign between buildings as it careened down a side street and out of view. Even at the video screen’s oblique angle, he made out the Blackwood Seafood Company logo on the driver’s side door panel.

  Jesus, he thought, was that the attack platform? He didn’t have time to perform the mental math in determining if a delivery truck of that size could fit the launch tubes for every rocket currently at large—but if it could, it would be brilliant. That delivery truck could fit on any road accessible to the average American sedan, and probably half of those were too narrow for a semi to traverse.

  Grabbing the hand mic, he transmitted over the team frequency through the relay.

  “Stop movement, stop movement. One-by delivery truck leaving objective to the north, prepare for vehicle interdiction, how copy?”

  The only response was a squelch of static, and Ian had no way of knowing if his transmission had been received short of watching the screen before him.

  Then he saw that he was too late—two figures raced forward to initiate the assault.

  Ian’s hand flew to the phone beside him and, hesitating for a split second of consideration, he picked it up and began to dial.

  58

  Cancer led the way to his designated breach point, with Reilly following a few steps behind.

  He heard a burst of static over his earpiece, and knew at once that it was Ian’s dumb ass on the ineffective FM relay.

  David transmitted back, “Angel, you’re coming in broken. Clear the net.”

  Cancer smiled at the response, thinking it was one of several oddities playing out in the current situation.

  For one thing, they were in full combat gear, night vision devices flipped upward on their mounts as they slipped past the security lights ringing the building. The sounds of traffic reached them from adjacent side streets as they moved with weapons at the ready, slipping toward their target amid a completely unsuspecting civilian population.

  Then came the matter of their plan, which could be briefly summarized as follows: there was no plan. How could there be? With a time-sensitive target and no interior layout, precious little planning was required.

  The distribution facility shared one border with a larger building containing an auto repair facility and—go figure—a seafood restaurant.

  Out of the facility’s remaining three sides, all contained multiple loading docks, some for delivery trucks but most large enough to accommodate eighteen-wheelers.

  Without sufficient personnel to isolate the objective, they’d have to rely on Ian to notify them of any “squirters�
� fleeing the building. And given the FM relay going to shit every five seconds, Cancer wrote that possibility off from the start.

  So the solution was simple: the team was going to take their chances. Do what they’d always done, and play it fast and loose.

  Accordingly, the northeast wall would remain unguarded, while the southeast had a solid wall with the adjacent facilities. Cancer and Reilly would enter through the southeast side of the building, while David and Worthy breached through the northwest. Once inside, both split team elements would clear in a clockwise direction until they found the rockets or were killed.

  Like he thought at the outset: simple.

  Cancer darted up a set of concrete exterior stairs to a closed metal door, giving the handle a single short pull to confirm it was locked. The action was little more than a rote formality; no one was leaving the building unsecured, and as quickly as he registered the handle’s resistance, Cancer took a sidestep and spun outward, scanning for targets in the parking lot as Reilly moved in to apply the explosive charge to the door hinges.

  Taking in the sight before him, Cancer was both thrilled and mildly surprised to see that life was proceeding as normal in Fredericksburg: parked cars and vehicle headlights proceeded up the roads in his line of sight, even a few distant civilians made their way to the seafood restaurant at the far side of the building.

  No one looked up to see the two men in full tactical kit preparing to demolish a door before raiding the distribution facility, and even if they did, they’d likely have no idea what to make of it.

  It didn’t matter, he thought. They’d become aware of what he could conservatively term a minor disturbance soon enough.

  “We’re set,” Reilly whispered beside him.

  Cancer transmitted, “Team Two ready.”

  David’s response was near-immediate.

  “Stand by—three, two, one. Execute, execute—”

  The concussion of Reilly detonating his door charge washed over Cancer in a single explosive shockwave that was followed by car alarms ringing to life in the parking lot, headlights and turn signals flashing in quick succession as his vision cleared from the blast.

  Then Cancer spun toward the now-open doorway, raising his rifle as he darted inside and cut right to clear his first corner.

  59

  Duchess held the phone to her ear, feeling her lips slide into a smile—or was it a smirk?—at the sound of the panicked voice on the other end of the call.

  Christmas had come early, she thought.

  Here she was trying to track down David’s team with the help of multiple local law enforcement organizations on top of the FBI, and the intelligence operative from her wayward assassination element had just personally dialed her office phone.

  With Gossweiler breathing down her neck over the previous night’s raid in Charlottesville, Duchess wasn’t just going to have these men arrested.

  She was going to crucify them.

  “Where are you?” she asked. “I want a location in the next five seconds, and if you’re thinking about lying to me, know that you’ll live to regret it.”

  Ian replied, “Duchess. You’ve worked for the Agency for a long time, and I respect your opinion.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ian continued, “Now stop talking and listen to what I’m telling you. There’s a delivery truck with the Blackwood Seafood Company logo in Fredericksburg, Virginia, currently traveling northbound on US Highway One and passing the Route 17 interchange. The odds of the rockets not being aboard are about two percent. Forget about arresting us for the time being and interdict this goddamn thing before it kicks off an attack we can’t stop.”

  The call ended then, a hollow click followed by the sound of a man stating, “He ended the call, ma’am.”

  “Yeah,” Duchess said, “I got that.”

  “Any updates?” the man asked.

  He wasn’t inquiring about the content of the conversation—after all, he’d heard the exchange as clearly as she had, to say nothing of recording it for posterity. Rather, he was asking whether she took the conversation seriously enough to provide updated guidance to the law enforcement entities currently awaiting further orders.

  And that was a great goddamn question, she thought.

  David’s team had strung her along quite enough in the past four days, starting with their illegal transport of Agency equipment and ending with their current fugitive status. She knew good and well that this call could easily be the latest in a long line of diversions and half-truths.

  But the bottom line was that 633 rockets were at large, along with Bari Khan, and Duchess couldn’t afford to take any chances.

  She replied, “Get me the Fredericksburg PD first and the State Police second. Tell them we have an emergency update requiring immediate response.”

  60

  Worthy cleared his third doorway and cut left, sensing David entering the room behind him as both men scanned for threats and found none.

  While Worthy had never been inside a seafood distribution plant or anything close to it, his surroundings were about what he’d expect.

  Blue-painted metal staircases led to the second floor, rolling assembly lines with power cords descended from the ceiling, stainless steel tables and giant weighing scales interspersed with floor pallets were stacked high with boxes. The entire place was freezing cold, Worthy’s thin Georgia blood feeling frigid in his veins despite the effort of moving continuously under the weight of his full kit. Trolleys and hand carts were tucked against the little remaining wall space, obstacles he had to be careful not to trip over.

  Above all, the space smelled like ice and dead sea creatures, the scent filling his nostrils every angle he turned. They may as well have been clearing the interior of a giant lobster.

  There had been no trace of the rockets or even defensive measures in place to safeguard them, either from his element or the other split team; by all appearances, they’d just raided an empty building with the added complication of cops arriving at any second in response to what must have been numerous calls from concerned citizens reporting simultaneous explosions.

  Abandoned building and law enforcement response aside, Worthy had another concern.

  He was well enough versed in close quarters battle to know his teammates’ spoken and unspoken cues, and since he was paired with David yet again, he caught the sloppiness of motion indicative of lapses in alertness or worse, judgment.

  Worthy could do nothing at present to correct either, and so he cleared his corners with all the rapidity that his experience endowed before hurriedly checking David’s sectors, pulling double-duty for lack of trust in his partner.

  Following David’s lead, Worthy flowed into the next room—and it, like all the rest, was empty. Aside from the facility’s lights being on, there were no indications of human presence whatsoever. As they closed on the next doorway, he whispered to David.

  “What do you make of this?”

  David replied, “Either Ian was wrong and sent us to a dry hole, or it’s a trap.”

  As if someone was trying to clarify the situation, a man began moving beyond the doorway to the next room.

  The first footfalls Worthy heard sounded distant, echoing against the cavernous walls as they approached and increasing in speed. Within a second the noise of feet slapping the floor escalated to a run, not away but toward them.

  Worthy flowed inside the next doorway, panning sideways to identify the runner, wondering if he was about to intercept some terrified factory worker sent fleeing by the other split team element.

  But the man he saw running at them from across a wide seafood processing room didn’t look scared. He had Arab features and an athlete’s focus, moving in a bulky cold weather jacket as Worthy scanned him for weapons. His hands were balled into fists, with no visible firearm or even a knife.

  Worthy absorbed the sight within a fraction of a second, the only time he’d have to make a decision that could turn out to be the bes
t one he’d ever made—or the worst.

  Aligning his sights on the man’s face, Worthy fired a single suppressed gunshot that passed through the bridge of the man’s nose, sending a spray of brain matter out the back of his skull as he tumbled forward. The unzipped seam of his jacket flew open to reveal a neatly aligned row of rectangular blocks, visible for a fleeting moment before the man struck the ground chest-first.

  Ducking behind a metal rolling cabinet, Worthy transmitted in a feverishly urgent voice.

  “S-vest! S-vest!”

  He caught sight of David crouched behind a stack of boxes against the far wall, his transmission following Worthy's own by a fraction of a second.

  “Exfil, exfil, exfil.”

  Cancer replied, “Team Two copies.”

  Steadying his footing, Worthy prepared to cover his team leader’s withdrawal and watched for David to make the first move back out the way they’d come.

  But against all logic, running wasn’t on David’s agenda at the moment—he was taking aim deeper into the processing room, firing his first shots of the mission.

  Keeping his body behind cover, Worthy angled his rifle around the side of the rolling cabinet to scan for a target—if another man was sprinting toward them, they may have only a moment to kill him before disintegrating in a jihadist fireball.

  But Worthy’s next glance across the room didn’t reveal a single target; it revealed at least a half-dozen of them.

  As David fired beside him, Worthy drilled two rounds into the nearest man, sweeping his barrel right to engage a partially visible head emerging from behind a parked forklift. Worthy managed to fire two rounds in less than a second, a pink mist confirming his accuracy before he continued his sweep with a mounting sense of panic.

  The enemy fighters who suddenly appeared behind every possible object in the room may or may not have had suicide vests—but what they did have were firearms, and they began returning fire with deafening blasts as Worthy and David gunned them down as quickly as they appeared.