Spies Lie Series Box Set

by D S Kane

  “Cassie, get yourself, JD, and Ari back here. It’s not safe in there, and we need you alive to pay the bills.”

  Stunned, she laughed awkwardly. “Returning now.” She ignored the wailing voice in the back of her head as it screamed her guilt for all the death. The three walked back in silence. Cassie, lost and alone, felt bereft, realizing the real cost of lives lost so far.

  Halfway to the tunnel exit, Ari held up his arm. “Shh. I hear the footsteps.” Bullets flew at them from directly ahead. One of the shells hit just above Ari’s head, sending a rain of rock splinters cascading down into his face. “Shit. Can’t see. Blind from the dust.”

  JD tackled Ari to the ground. Cassie dropped flat, crawling with them to cover behind a large rock near the wall created by the explosion they had come to investigate. “Where’d they come from?” she wondered aloud. She hit the Talk button on the land line. “Major LeFleur, we’re under attack. Can you tell us what’s happened? And please send us assistance ASAP!”

  “Mademoiselle Cassie, Team Four was overrun. Everyone in that tunnel was lost. From the sounds I suspect the enemy used a grenade gun to blow the team apart. No radio contact. Probably no survivors. Then the hostiles entered tunnel six where you are. I can send Team Two but it will take time for them to reach you.”

  Cassie counted the origin points of the bullets. At least seven. She motioned to JD. “Get Ari and you out of the center of the path. Move quickly to the side of the cave. Major LeFleur said they have a grenade laun—”

  Before she could finish a bright bolt of light spouted in front of them, followed immediately by an explosion at the wall behind them. They moved fast, settling behind another boulder further from the wall. They sat, waiting for the inevitable. If a grenade hit near them, it would be all over.

  Another loud pop, followed by a bright explosion further back against the wall. Rock shreds sprayed over them.

  “That was too close,” said Ari. He rubbed his eyes. “I can see now.” He set his Ruger Mini-14 for single shot, aimed, and pulled the trigger. They heard a human wail of pain. “One down, six to go.”

  More shots came from a long way down the tunnel. The hostiles were surrounded. “They’ll be more desperate now,” said JD. “Ari, take the right side. Cassie, come with me.” JD positioned her behind a large rock. “Stay here. Do not move. Understand? Go nowhere.” He placed his hands on her shoulders and pushed her to the ground. “We’ll take care of this. No matter what, you must live!”

  “Okay.” She held the screeching voice in her head at bay and nodded. “I’ll behave.” JD and Ari looked at each other, their expressions indicating they weren’t convinced. Firing their Mini-14’s, they moved carefully forward, toward the tunnel exit.

  Far away on the other side, she heard the mercs’ guns roar, as the hostiles fired back at attackers who rushed at them from both directions.

  One more grenade passed over JD and Ari, headed directly for the spot where she hid. The explosion brought a wall of rock and dirt down on her. JD and Ari turned back and ran to her. JD lifted a large rock from the dirt covering her body. “My God, she’s buried.” They both dug with their hands, rapidly sweeping away the debris.

  Less than twenty feet away, the skirmish raged between the mercs and the hostiles.

  Ari cleared the dirt from her face. “She’s breathing.” He gripped both hands on her shoulders and gently lifted her head. “Cassie, can you hear me?”

  Cassie coughed out some dust. “Raughh?” She tried again. “What happened?”

  “Never mind,” said JD. “Can you move?”

  She nodded, and rose unsteadily to her feet. “My chest hurts.”

  Ari ran his fingers over her ribs.

  “Ouch! There may be one or two broken.”

  He patted her arms and shook his head. “No serious damage. Can you walk?”

  She nodded hesitantly and Ari offered his arm. “Let’s move our asses out of here.” The shooting had stopped. He reached into Cassie’s combat jacket and pulled out the land line receiver. “Major LeFleur, this is Ari. Thanks for the help. What’s our status? Have all the hostiles in tunnel six been rendered?”

  “Oui.”

  Ari said, “We go now.”

  She looked around. “Okay. I’m okay now. Don’t need help.” But she stumbled and Ari caught her. She took a deep breath, gathering herself. She waved her bodyguards off, then took a step.

  She could hear the buzzing of flies grow to a chorus as they passed the bodies of dead and wounded hostiles. The mercs were systematically executing any they found alive. She could smell the stench of death as they passed. She needed to vomit but her ribs hurt too much.

  They exited tunnel six into the bright daylight.

  She wondered how many more of her men would die. She wanted this over as soon as possible and called LeFleur on the GNU radio. “Major, is it possible to use nerve gas to kill them all?”

  “Probably not. I’d assume the innermost point in each tunnel is a cavern with their living quarters. If the cavern ceilings are higher than those in the tunnels, then the gas would float up and disperse.”

  “What choices do we have to limit our casualties?”

  LeFleur replied, “The only choice limiting casualties is to close all of the tunnel entrances with high explosives.”

  “Then do it. Get all our people out now. We’ll use their own trick to end them and this. Either the explosives will kill them all or they’ll be trapped within the caves until their food and water run out. Okay?”

  “Oui, Mademoiselle Cassie.” She could detect the disappointment in his voice.

  LeFleur felt contempt for the woman but tried to hide it. Shimmel had told him that she was his client and was the final arbiter of mission rules. But on this choice, he agreed. He shouted into the helmet microphone. “Put the fuses for the explosives on a fifteen-minute delay.” He had counted on recovering the contents of their armories; the value of those weapons on the open market could have made him and his men rich. He cursed fate for this defeat.

  Twelve minutes later, LeFleur assembled all the remaining team members, forty-seven of the original seventy, behind natural cover, waiting and watching as the mountain convulsed and shuddered.

  As Cassie watched the demolition, a thrill ran through her at the deaths of 700 humans. She found she bore no guilt over what she’d done. She thought, they are evil; they deserve death. An idiot’s grin decorated her face. She turned away from those who might see her. Is this what success in battle looks like? I’m hating myself!

  The entire merc force entered tunnel six and tried without success to move boulders sealing the team’s catacomb. Where the deaths of the terrorists gave her a thrill, she felt a heavy weight of guilt for the deaths of her mercs. Standing in the tunnel, she said a silent prayer for the souls of her soldiers, then cursed the souls of the fundamentalists they had killed before they died.

  She called Shimmel and Lee on the GNU radio. “We’re done here, and casualties were twenty-three dead. We lost ten of those men in an explosion which closed a tunnel. Stop jamming Afghanistan and tell Major McTavish I’m on my way to him with JD, Ari, Lester, and Shimon. Cassie out.”

  Cassie left LeFleur and his men to complete their work. She asked Major LeFleur, “Please try again to remove the boulders sealing tunnel six.”

  Thinking more about the weapons they could recover than the bodies of his dead men, LeFleur was happy to agree.

  She and her Mossad bodyguards took the Land Rover to Jalalabad’s airport for the next phase of their operation. The drive took most of the day. The longer they drove, the more morose Cassie became, thinking about the death she’d wrought on her own men.

  They left the vehicle at the private terminal where the Lear was waiting. As they climbed the steps into the jet, she realized this would be her first visit to Riyadh since the night she was raped by the assassin. She shivered as memories of being raped, fighting for her life, and fleeing while chased by a security team
all flooded unbidden into her mind. But it was too late for second thoughts. Steady, girl. This is the only path open to me now. Still, her stomach burned, overflowing with acid.

  Her mercenary force had found no evidence that either Tariq or Pesi had been in the caves, but she assumed one of them, probably Tariq, was there running the camp when her mercs blew out the tunnels. If she was correct, Tariq was dead and Pesi remained, waiting alone for her in Riyadh.

  She began an assassination meditation sequence the agency taught, visualizing Pesi Houmaz in front of her, a surprised look on his face, blood dripping from a tiny bullet hole just above his eyebrows.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  September 5, 9:21 p.m.

  Toronto Wharf, Toronto, Canada

  The ship’s crane hoisted another shipping container about fifty feet off the freighter’s deck and gently dropped it on the dock. Hidden inside this one were three dead bodies, including one of Raman’s wounded who’d died enroute, and a delivery truck. Sultan Raman had wanted to toss the dead into the ocean, but it would have been too dangerous to open the container. He braced himself against the fender. The truck contained the parts of one unassembled weapon minus its payload.

  He could hear English-speaking voices outside, coordinating the unloading of the freighter. Pesi Houmaz informed him the dock crews would unload the freighter and then quit for the night, leaving the dock unmanned until morning. He’d wait until 12:30 a.m. and then get his team—those alive and the bodies of both his dead and the ship’s crew they had murdered—into the truck. Before they left the pier in the truck, they’d dump the dead—weighted with trash from the container—into Lake Ontario. And then they’d drive to the US border crossing at Toronto.

  He told himself, almost there.

  Raman took a deep breath and prayed nothing would go wrong at the border.

  Hours passed. The men made no noise, anticipating they wouldn’t survive another discovery. Just after 12:30 a.m., Raman opened the container door and started the truck’s engine. In less than ten minutes, they drove off the pier and into Toronto’s streets.

  Hazret Ali, the local warlord for the Eastern Shura region of Afghanistan, spoke in Pashto to his local mullah, Maukvi Muhammed Khalis. “Sire, please let me destroy them now. They stole our money. By Islamic law, we’re required to cut off their hands, at the very least.”

  The mullah who commanded Ali refused, shaking his head. “No. Absolutely not. I believe these strangers did your work for you.” He looked south into the sky, at a dark cloud of smoke from Major LeFleur’s embattled hills. “First you must ask them who they are and if they’re here to kill the mountain insurgents or help them.”

  Filled with reluctance, Ali mounted his horse and took the white flag from his saddlebag, mounting it on his sword. “I’ll find out. The money they took is food from our children. Come with me if you want, but I don’t believe you’ll be safe, even in my company.

  Khalis smiled in reply as he mounted his horse. The two rode down the hillside toward Major LeFleur’s command tent.

  LeFleur watched them approach and read the printed instructions he’d been given by Cassie in the event of contact from the warlords. He was ready for them long before they arrived in the camp. If she was correct, these men would lead him to the remaining Houmaz Muslim extremists, and possibly to a greater understanding of any other plans they had.

  “Salaam,” said LeFleur in Pashto. “Welcome to our camp.”

  “Are you Americans?” asked Khalis.

  “No. We are mercenaries. A few come from America but most are from other countries. I am French.” He tried to appear to be as humble as possible.

  Even from so far away, all could hear the buzzing of flies feeding on the dead as the sun moved behind the valley hills. Khalis looked toward the smoky caves, satisfied. “May we speak with you within the hospitality of your tent?” he asked with deference to Ali’s disdain.

  LeFleur motioned with his arm for them to dismount and enter. “Please let my men care for your horses.” The three men went inside and sat in three of the six campaign chairs inside the tent. “How can I help you?”

  “We are curious. This is our valley and you are strangers. Why are you here, mercenary?” Ali’s expression was granite hard.

  LeFleur sat between them at the portable campaign table covered by a map of the mountain region. From inside the tent the buzzing insects were less obtrusive. He pointed toward the caves. “The men there stole money from us and murdered twenty-three of my men when we came to get back what they took.”

  Ali’s expression softened and he looked at Khalis. Khalis smiled at both men. “How much money did they steal from you?”

  LeFleur said, “Many millions of dollars.”

  Khalis smiled again. He pointed in the general direction of the smoking caves. “Have they have met their doom? Is your honor debt satisfied?”

  “Maybe,” said LeFleur. He thought of the script he’d memorized. So far, it had worked, down to the word without any deviation. He tried to keep the surprise from his face. “But I’m not sure we have dealt with all of them. There may be some who escaped or weren’t in the caves when we attacked. Is there another place, perhaps a house nearby, where they go for supplies or to meet?”

  Ali realized his own soldiers might not need to kill anyone or risk any danger—these mercenaries were so eager to die. It appealed to him as a leader to avoid risking his own men. “They have a compound in the village of Upper Pachir. Do you know this place?”

  Here was the first deviation from the script. LeFleur said, “Yes, on our way to these caves we drove on the road bordering the village. But I don’t remember any large house.”

  Ali smiled now, for the first time. “It is not on the road. It lies down a side street and up a hill, well hidden. Let me give you directions.”

  Just after nightfall, Major LeFleur’s mercs left their trucks on a street several blocks away with two mercs as guards. One of Cassie’s mercs, a short, stout German woman named Ina Boric, stood silent, swatting at mosquitoes. The sky was clear and the moon lit the men as they approached their target. They made no noise surrounding the large residence. The air cooled very fast after sunset, from boiling hot to frigid.

  An officer named Casselton placed several snipers into positions atop nearby buildings where they used their silenced sniper rifles to kill the compound’s six guards. LeFleur’s men swarmed the remaining hostiles, getting close enough to kill twenty-one more of them before they could respond. His group suffered no losses.

  When they breached the front door, they found four unarmed men alive inside the residence. These appeared to be unaccustomed to fighting. One spoke Arabic, proclaiming himself their banker. LeFleur decided to use him as the example for the others. “Banker, what do you do for Houmaz? What are their plans?”

  “Houmaz? What is Houmaz?” The banker’s expression was arrogant, one arm gripped over the large hole in his forearm made by a Ruger’s spinning bullet. “I demand you release us!”

  Dushov had given LeFleur a syringe and a vial of “truth serum” before they left California, for use with any survivors. But the small container had broken during the battle at the caves and, besides, his alternate plan would be more to his liking. Before their attack at the compound, LeFleur discussed the interrogation with his soldiers and requested volunteers. Each of the seven men with him knew what to expect. Two soldiers held the banker rigid while one man forced his non-wounded hand onto the conference table in the large room.

  LeFleur’s voice was very soft as he spoke, so all the captives had to strain to hear his words. “You stole money from us and the punishment is loss of a hand. But you took so much, we discussed it with your mullah, Maukvi Muhammed Khalis. He said we could take both hands from each of you. Unfortunately, we have no surgeon.”

  The banker smiled. “No surgeon? Will I keep my hands?”

  LeFleur signaled the fourth soldier who raised a metal hammer and smashed the small finger
of the banker’s left hand before the banker could see it coming. He smashed the thumb. Then the index finger. Next the ring finger. And then the middle finger. Each time, the man screamed, more in shock than in pain. But he said nothing.

  LeFleur asked, “Tell me about your plans, banker. My orders are to do whatever it takes to find out.” Then LeFleur’s soldier removed a hunting knife from his waistband and held it so the banker could see it. “And don’t lie or he will cut out your tongue. If he does, we’ll let you choke to death on your own blood while we simply move on to the next prisoner.”

  The banker gulped but said nothing. LeFleur motioned to the soldier who held the knife. “Remove his hand, please, corporal.” So fast it all happened in a blur, the corporal neatly severed the banker’s hand and held it up for the others to see. The banker howled and LeFleur yelled “Silence!” The corporal slapped the banker across the face. “Again. What are your plans?” As he waited, the corporal placed the flattened flesh which had been the banker’s hand onto the table and rolled all of the fingers in the severed hand like a piece of dough.

  The banker’s tongue moved in terror but no words came from him. Then he refocused. “I don’t know! Please, leave me alone.”

  LeFleur motioned to the corporal once again for the blade, using a slicing motion. “He is of no use to us. Take his tongue. We’ll move on to another to find out what we want to know.”

  The banker screamed but didn’t say anything more, and the corporal slowly but expertly carved the man’s tongue from his head. He held the bloody tongue up for the other captives to see while the banker choked to death. Almost immediately, the room was buzzing with flies, crowding around the mouth of the fresh corpse.

  LeFleur looked at the remaining Muslim extremists. “One of you will talk. Whoever does will go free. We will torture all the rest of you to death. It troubles me your banker didn’t understand. Think of yourselves as our toys, our entertainment. Do any of you wish to live?”