by D S Kane
He decided to put Bob Gault on this task. He felt that Gault, one of his direct reports, was most capable of keeping secrets.
From her seat on the bus as it slowed into city traffic, Cassie looked out at Boston’s Chinatown. She hoped McDougal would decide to help her. But she doubted anything good would result. She longed for a decent meal, having eaten nothing since the seafood on the sub. Hungry people walked down Beach Street, on their way to lunch from their office buildings into restaurants.
Major Jacques LeFleur entered the bus with a box from which steam was escaping. He brought the box to her and opened it. “Dim sum from The New Golden Gate on Beach Street, Mademoiselle Cassandra. Try the excellent steamed pork buns.”
She plucked out a char siu bao and started to devour it. “Thanks, Jacques. Oh, yummy. That’s good bao.” She chewed the pillow-like pastry and smiled as the taste of sweet pork embedded within exploded in her mouth. She wondered whether to try the har gow shrimp dim sum, or the steamed pork siu mai next. She picked the latter and took a bite. “Soul food.”
As she enjoyed the savory flavor, she wondered, have I eaten my last meal?
“Bob, I have a little chore for you to do. It’s personal, not company business. I need you to trace a call I’ll be making to someone’s cell phone, in about five minutes. I know you can set this up that fast, and I need you to bring me back the owner’s info, and connect to the NSA’s servers for a continuous backtrace so I know exactly where the person holding the phone is located. Make sure that this particular sub-page on our Intranet is unsecure and temporary. We’ll have it up for a few days, maybe a week at most. Give me the details of the temp page. Okay?”
The balding pear-shaped man in his late forties, nodded. “Unsecure, eh?” He scratched the spot at the top of his head, thinking. “Piece of cake. I’ll only need ten minutes.” Gault turned and disappeared from the office. McDougal looked at his watch. Waiting would be difficult for him with his family’s lives hanging in the balance. He knew that warning them would be futile. If he failed, the black operatives she could hire would find them wherever they ran.
The minutes slowly passed, until Gault poked his head back in McDougal’s office doorway about seven minutes later. “Ready now, Mark.” Gault held a gooey pastry in his hands. He turned on his heel and walked away.
McDougal picked up the telephone receiver and called Houmaz’s cell phone number. “This is Mark McDougal. We spoke over a month ago. I’m the one who gave you Sashakovich’s name. Do you remember me?”
“Yes, I do. Why are you calling me?”
McDougal looked at his wristwatch. He waited. Just a few more seconds. “We need to meet. She’s been threatening me. Meet me or I’ll—” He heard Houmaz end the conversation, but the connection would take a few more seconds until it terminated. When he was sure it was no longer active, he dropped his landline on its cradle.
His door opened again and Gault’s head popped back in through the doorway. “I got him. I’ve set it to automatically send updates on the cell phone’s location every five seconds, as he moves. I put the tracker on an unsecure Intranet page and made it available for you and anyone you give its user ID and password to. The link containing the website address, user ID, and password is on its way via your email.”
“Thanks, Bob. I owe you big time for this one.” As he spoke, McDougal’s email updated. He clicked on the link and viewed the locator moving around on a map of the Massachusetts Turnpike heading toward Boston.
Houmaz was just south of downtown, passing Back Bay at the Boylston Street exit near Boston University. He forwarded the link to Cassie’s website email. Thirty seconds later, he received an email from Cassie:
Mark—
The contracts are being pulled off right now. We can deal with the mess that you created and your responsibility for it later.
—Cassie
Chapter Forty
November 7, 4:27 p.m.
Agency headquarters, K Street, Washington, DC
Gault felt his pager vibrate and looked down at its screen. He hated pagers but because cell phones were forbidden within the agency’s buildings, all urgent matters were settled using the tiny ancient devices. It showed Greenfield’s name and one additional word: “URGENT.” Gault moved as fast as he could to the elevator. He wondered what Greenfield wanted now.
The director’s office was empty when he got there, and he scratched his head as Greenfield sprinted back into it, tossing his overcoat on the leather couch. “Sorry, but better you wait for me than I wait for you. Greenfield sat behind his desk and continued. “I just came back from seeing POTUS about another matter but this one I have for you is important. Very Important.”
The director took a few deep breaths. “I need you to get your ass to the wharf in Boston where the Russian submarine docked, as soon as possible. When you arrive, you’ll find about a thousand illegally armed men on that pier. Call me when you get there. I want you to witness Sashakovich’s execution and report it to me in writing. Record it on your cell’s camera. I want photos and a movie. Leave immediately and take an agency vehicle. Even with a government pass, you’ll never get on a plane. Everything to Boston is filled, and I can’t get a charter for something like this.”
Gault’s jaw hung open so wide he thought the director could have used it for a waste basket.
April May O’Toole sat at her desk working on a story about a Swiss arms dealer when her cell phone rang. She looked at its screen and smiled. “William Wing! How good of you to call me. You have something for me?”
“Cassandra Sashakovich. Don’t have her contact info right now. She’s still out of the office, maybe for another a day or two. I think the two of you have a bigger story to tell than her own. And I think with your help as a journalist and a researcher, both of you can find a way to make this work.”
“I’ve waited this long. Another day or two—”
“Good then. Wing out.”
She sat holding the phone. Be patient, she told herself. There is a great story here. O’Toole went to the kitchen and got herself a glass of Cima Collina Chardonnay. Finally, she’d have the cooperation of one of the principals as an interviewee. She looked out the window, wondering how much Sashakovich really knew.
Cassie followed Houmaz’s location as it moved north through Boston. In thirty minutes he’d arrived at a warehouse in Boston harbor, about three hundred feet from the sub. She called out, “Avram! Are we set up yet?”
The bus slowed as it neared the wharf. Cassie pulled the costume from her go bag. She stripped to her underwear and donned a Kevlar vest, then placed padding over it on her belly using duct tape. She drew a tattered old black dress over her head and pulled it down. With the gray wig on her head she now looked like an obese old woman with stringy hair.
The bus pulled to a stop on the street, just outside the entrance to the wharf. Cassie was the last to exit, trying to decide whether or not to take the walking stick with her. Its handle had a concealed button at its top, and pressing it would cause the cane to fire a single .22 caliber bullet. Fifty-two well-equipped mercs were her companions. The stick offered her no additional protection and she left it on the bus.
She moved within the hoard of soldiers and took cover with them around the wharf’s point of entry. The sub sat at the last station of this pier, docked about one hundred yards away.
According to the cell phone trace program, Houmaz was watching the action from the warehouse in front of her, less than thirty yards away. He was on the other side of the cargo pod they used for cover from the hitters and zombie patriots.
Louis Stepponi rolled to the edge of the top of the cargo pod. He watched a band of mercenaries group around an old woman. The mercs carried weapons, but wore Hawaiian shirts. What the fuck? He wondered what was happening ten feet below him. The woman’s face was obscured, but the last time he’d seen mercenaries, they’d decimated his competitors in Maui. He knew it would be dangerous to kill the woman. And, what if she
wasn’t Sashakovich? He’d never get away alive. Sounds from the harbor machinery, the waves splashing against the wharf’s pylons, and noise from the busy city street behind them all obscured his ability to hear any trace of them. Stepponi decided to wait and watch as things developed. He could always terminate her if he could confirm she was his target.
Cassie watched thousands of zombie patriots and assassins crowd together, with a small buffer space of one hundred feet to the sub. She noted that some of the zombie patriots held weapons, and a few held meat cleavers and wooden boxes. She shivered.
Shimmel had told her that yesterday, before they left the sub and set foot on the pier, triggering the legitimacy of their plea for “sanctuary” in America, the sailors had placed C-6 explosives throughout the sub. One of them had later donned scuba gear, left via a torpedo tube and placed enough C-6 under the wharf’s pylons to blow up the pier. The sub was empty now, all the sailors gone using the torpedo tubes to exit to the beach. They were now at hotels, waiting for the next part of their mission to end.
Cassie asked Shimmel, “Are we ready?”
“Yes, Sashakovich. First, we will visit the warehouse where Houmaz hides, and then attend to the army on the wharf.”
She took a deep breath. “Okay, then. Let’s be about it.” But when she moved toward the warehouse door, he touched her shoulder and shook his head.
Part Four
Chapter Forty-One
November 8, 4:46 p.m.
Pier 2, Boston Harbor, Massachusetts
Shimmel gripped her sleeve. “You cannot go. I promised Lee, and he’s right. We have professional soldiers, whose training gears them for battle.”
She frowned, but took a step back as she watched the action.
Forty-two mercenaries stood at the ready outside the warehouse on Pier 2 at Boston Harbor. Another ten mercs waited in reserve, standing ready by the bus just in case any of the zombie patriots tried to flee during the planned battle. Major McTavish said, “Captain Sambol, go in first. If Houmaz catches on to us before we have him cornered, speak in Arabic. Tell him that all you want is for him to surrender. We’ll treat him well. Be quiet, be careful.”
Halid Sambol replied, “Yes sir,” and silently opened the warehouse door. He slipped inside. Sambol turned on his night vision goggles. He pressed the Send function at the throat of his uniform and whispered into the microphone. “I’m in, fifteen feet on the left side. Seems quiet and clear. Send in Lieutenant Harrington and have him go right twenty feet to the hoist near the wall.”
The door opened again and closed as silently, as Henry Harrington moved in to take cover behind the hoist. One by one the others came in, until twenty-two men and women were spread out on the warehouse’s ground floor. All wore night vision goggles and some had the device turned on. Houmaz wasn’t on the ground floor.
At McTavish’s direction, Sambol padded up the steps to the mezzanine balcony, followed by Lisa Orley, who found cover behind a copier. She motioned to Sambol that she was in place and half the team began following them. The others remained on the bottom floor.
Lisa had missed killing Houmaz once when Schmidt’s Medi-Jector failed. This time her only technology was a Ruger Mini-14. Nearly foolproof. The barrels of this version of the Mini weren’t rifled, sending shots flipping end over end instead of spinning. Instead of boring through flesh and bone, they ripped into flesh, traveling up any bone they hit, until hitting another bone. The damage these modified guns could do was extensive, but their accuracy suffered at longer distances. The gun was also altered to feed rounds into the chamber at up to a hundred per minute, making up for accuracy issues.
Lisa looked around for her quarry, wanting so much to be the one who snuffed Houmaz that she felt heat rush up her core, inside her STF-enhanced Hawaiian shirt. She could almost taste his death, like a finely prepared gourmet meal.
Cassie and Shimmel stood together among the ten mercs who remained just outside the door to the warehouse. She looked back to the mercs stationed at the bus and then to the warehouse door in front of her. She smacked her lips, eager to join those hunting Houmaz.
Seeing her expression, Shimmel shook his head. “No. We already discussed this. Let your mercs do the job you pay them for. Be patient.”
She could feel her frustration nearing the boiling point. She feared for their lives, and could fully feel the guilt she’d already suffered. Guilt for other battles where her troops had fought and died on her behalf.
It soured her mind.
Achmed Houmaz crouched by the grimy warehouse window, looking at the sub. He focused on the activity there and a smile crept over his face. He thought, father, brothers, your revenge is at hand. Soon you can rest in peace. He felt grounded in his spiritual beliefs, as twisted as he knew they’d recently become.
When he heard the quiet scuffling, at first he thought it came from wharf rats. But the sounds came systematically. Rats didn’t behave like that. Unless the rats were human. He began to search for the locations from where the sounds came, and saw dark uniforms crouched and moving in a coordinated fashion through the darkened top floor of the warehouse. He couldn’t count them all. Too many for him to think that they meant him anything but death. Houmaz looked around him in panic.
He hadn’t thought about an escape route before, because he’d had no reason to think he’d need one. He didn’t fear death, but he wanted to live long enough to see Sashakovich’s head cut from her body. Now, he’d have to move, to live long enough to achieve his goal.
He searched for an exit. His enemies were at the staircase. The only way out was the window in front of him. Houmaz gulped looking down. Twenty feet, at least. He saw two figures standing right in front of the doorway leading into this warehouse. He couldn’t make out the faces; dusk cast the world into gray tones with no sunset to light his view.
His best chance of escape was to jump and set down right between them. Two enemies would be difficult but as many as came toward him right now meant imminent death. He’d aim and shoot at one of them as he jumped. If he was lucky, he might be able to kill the other as he landed.
He chambered a bullet in the Beretta and moved two steps back, away from the window. He crouched, preparing to jump. As he rose, Lisa Orley spotted him and took aim.
William Wing liked to sing while he worked. He knew it disturbed Sylvia to listen to him warbling off-key, but she stood and watched anyway, staring at the screens flying across the monitor. He was humming “Cross Road Blues,” a Robert Johnson song from the mid-1930s.
Suddenly he stopped to check his work. He looked right in front of him, speaking to no one. “Almost done now, you bastard. What mercs couldn’t do, I alone can! I’m CryptoMonger! Hope you like Wahhabi cooking, asshole.”
Chapter Forty-Two
November 8, 5:38 p.m.
Pier 2, Boston Harbor, Massachusetts
In the gray light, a pout covered Cassie’s mouth. “Well I still don’t like asking others to risk their lives while I stand here in safety. It’s not—”
She heard a Ruger’s characteristic thumping, followed by the crash of window glass twenty feet above. She looked up. The setting sun at last peeked rosy through a slit in the clouds, lighting them all. Glass splinters fell like rain, along with a rotund man holding a handgun. Shimmel and Cassie both covered their heads against the falling glass slivers, to keep shattered fragments from hitting their faces.
They dived away as fast as their legs could spring them.
Homaz dropped right between them, less than five feet away from her. Shimmel’s dive put him on the wood planking five feet behind Houmaz. As Avram fell, he aimed his Ruger Mini-14.
Cassie saw Houmaz aim as he dropped. At her head.
Underneath her disguise, her moving body was covered in a liquid armor Hawaiian shirt. Her head was unprotected. Houmaz’s aim was bad. The bullet hit her obliquely in the shoulder, but the bulletproof shirt ricocheted the shell up her armored chest. The bullet slammed through her tilted head
, butchering her right cheek, and plowing through the other side of her face to exit near her ear. She landed in a heap, unmoving, unfeeling, in shock.
Shimmel saw it all happen out of the corners of his vision as he fell—Houmaz firing at Sashakovich and Cassie hitting the ground amid a spreading puddle of her blood, pooling around her shattered head. Without thinking, Shimmel rolled, rose up again, and reacted, aiming his modified semi-automatic Ruger and firing a single shot that ripped the Arab’s arm off at the shoulder.
Houmaz’s Beretta fell to the floor, still gripped by the severed arm. His face contorted and he screamed in Arabic, surrounded by mercs at the warehouse entrance who suddenly noticed him. A river of blood poured from his armless shoulder. The mercs guns pointed at his head. Shimmel came close and examined Houmaz’s shoulder. There was no way to staunch the bleeding from so big a wound. He would surely die. And there was another wound that had blown out a piece of his hip, possibly just as he was starting to jump through the window.
Shimmel ran to Cassie as he screamed, “Medic!” He examined her head. There was a small hole in the cheek on her right side at the bullet’s point of entry, and a large chunk missing on the left side of her face where the bullet had exited, a fragment of it ripping out flesh just to the right of her carotid artery.
Cassie turned her head and looked into Shimmel’s eyes. Her eyes blinked fast. He could tell that she was falling into shock. Her breathing grew ragged. Her words were a slurred whisper. “Am I gonna die?”
“Be quiet and focus on staying conscious. Let’s hope that you are still lucky. Don’t move. Stay conscious. Think of your family.” He could clearly see the massive damage to her head.